Seems to me that you're debate skills are prenatal. Any idiot knows that ad hominem attacks are usually the sign of someone who doesn't actually have a decent rebuttal.
I'll have an easier time supporting this if they teach some of our Open Source Kids (like the article submitter) the difference between "too" and "to" and "it's" and "its".
But Gates Foundation or no, the linked article is very clear on MS' involvement (and it's non-monetary-- so it works is they give stuff to the school which costs them very little incrementally to produce, then they write off the full retail value on their taxes, essentially making a profit on their tax return).
Microsoft's contribution will not be monetary, but services worth millions of dollars, including a full-time on-site project manager, planning and design expertise, staff training and ongoing technology support. It plans to bring in other technology partners.
On top of the likely tax benefits, this also constitutes a ton of free advertising and the ability to undermine the democratic process by installing people who make decisions not as a response to the public will, but as a response to the direction of their corporate masters. Want to guess how often they will entertain using GNU/Linux on servers or Macs in Graphic Arts classes?
I'd like to think you're just being idealistic and hoping people will develop respect for other people's work to the point where copyrights and patents are truly unnecessary.
I respect other people's work. Quite a bit, in fact. It's this notion that ideas can be owned that has me worried to no end. Indeed, copyrights and patents prevent me from working my own raw materials into an interesting form, simply because someone else did it earlier or had an idea like that before I did. Talk about a lack of respect for work! While copying computer files is relatively easy, imagine making a copy of a marble statue. That's an infringement of copyright, but it takes a similar level of skill to that of the original sculptor and quite a bit of work... but because of the law, that second statue is illegal to make and could even be taken/confiscated, with no recompense for the theft!
Exactly. An exmaple from amazon.com == DVD: snap-case edition of "The Matrix"? $14.99. CD: "The Matrix: Music from the Motion Picture"? $14.99.
Seems to me that one of these is a feature-packed disc with a few hours of full-motion video that cost many millions to produce and that one of these is 13 short tracks of minimally interesting audio that cost a fraction of what the other cost to produce. Even more telling, Lawrence Fishburne hasn't appeared at any MPAA gatherings giving speeches like Courtney Love's "Math" speech. So I also wonder which set of "artists" is being more fairly compensated for their work.
No. This is the part where one of us mentions that Linux is available free of charge and that one rightfully should expect more from a multi-billion dollar company which charges hundreds of dollars for their software.
The courts have ruled that mere possession of the physical medium does not imply license to use, as does the possession of a book or musical recording, because to make use of the digital data it must be copied into memory first and that copying is covered under copyright law as restricted. Thus you need a license to copy that which you have already purchased for use.
Bull-hockey. The courts have ruled no such thing. In fact, the copyright law specifically allows for this sort of "copying" the data into memory in the case of computer software or other cases where such "copying" is a necessary part of using the copyrighted work.
117. Limitations on exclusive rights: Computer programs
(a) Making of Additional Copy or Adaptation by Owner of Copy. -- Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:
(1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner, or
(2) that such new copy or adaptation is for archival purposes only and that all archival copies are destroyed in the event that continued possession of the computer program should cease to be rightful.
No kidding. These are the people who always ask me if I need help finding stuff and I'm usually left wondering... is alphabetical order really that complicated?
If you have a server running with files visible that allows me to download those files, then your server (or filesharing software) is making and sending me a copy. I am not doing the copying, the server is. It is literally duplicating the stream of bits on your HD and sending those duplicate bits down the wire. On my end, the client is only receiving a single set of bits and transferring them to the HD. At no point am I in possession of more than one set of bits (caching and temporary file issues aside).
Furthermore, you DO NOT have a right to display copyrighted works on your front lawn or the internet. The right of public performance is limited to the copyright holder and its licensees.
In the case of the library, the person who actually makes the copy is not the library (and in any case, there are actually exceptions in Title 17 that allow libraries to make copies under certain circumstances). In your example, the person who takes the book home and copies it is at some point engaged in the act of copying. It does not matter where or how they obtained that book.
The fines were for violating a court order, not for the content of the claims themselves. The court order was the result of a lawsuit against SCO, and essentially the order was "stop saying this until the matter is settled" not "you can't say this because it's wrong." It's not a finding of fact and it's just as possible that a similar preliminary injunction could be issued by a U.S. court given the right court filings on the part of the plaintiffs. It happens all the time.
No kidding-- if it came with a monitor the price might be more appropriate. Reading the components list the word "integrated" appears more often than in a Civil Rights history textbook-- meaning that almost everything is soldered right onto the motherboard. IOW, you could build one of these in five steps. Mount mobo in case, mount CPU on mobo, insert RAM, connect HD, close case. And then when you need a modem you have money left over to buy the real thing, complete with blinking lights.:)
What if that software you designed to make your business more efficent is released open source, and your competitors start using it.
If you depend on that software as a competitive advantage, then you'd be stupid to give it away to your competitors. But unless you patent the underlying business methods implemented in your software this isn't much of a competitive advantage in the first place. I would certainly hope in your example that your senior managers have something better up their sleeve than your software, since it would be relatively easy for your competitors to hire developers that are as good as you are (or maybe they'd just hire you outright, after all, you have experience).
It's still important if you are dealing with government data. All the time I'm finding Excel worksheets or Word documents on government sites. At least those are halfway sensible formats compared with the far more popular PDF which is essentially a glorified PostScript where the only metadata is layout information. Worse than HTML files that way, PDFs are.
I never once said the U.S. system was superior. The German case was a situation where SCO appears to have decided not to fight the injunction at all. Further, I don't have any information that anyone in the U.S. has sought a similar preliminary injunction against SCO. The comparison is apples and oranges. As to your ad hominem attack: I don't know where you're from, but apparently they need to teach reading comprehension and critical thinking there.
The U.S. has laws against lying to the public in order to damage the reputation of one's business competitors or to inflate one's stock price or any number of other things. In fact, one company, Red Hat, is taking advantage of said laws and has filed a court case against SCO in a U.S. court. Any number of other companies involved in Linux-related work could do the same.
Additionally, the German court didn't just decide one day to prohibit this speech. The injunction was the result of a lawsuit filed by private parties in Germany (LinuxTag, if I'm not mistaken), and the fine is for violating the court's order, not so much for the content of the speech.
I think you have your wires crossed. Market economics ultimately makes a few people very wealthy and most people extremely poor.
I am not an American, but I have been to New York, and I can tell you, in the heart of capitalism, I have never seen such poverty living alongside such obscene wealth.
On the one hand you are making sweeping statements about market economics. On the other you're pointing out one of the worst examples of a "market economy" ever invented. While I agree that we should seek after an economic model based on cooperation rather than competition, such a thing is elusive and in the meantime capitalism does offer some exciting opportunities.
However, your example of the disparities found in the U.S. is not a fair indictment of free market economics. Most aspects of the American economy are so regulated or so poorly managed or whatever that calling it "capitalism" seems to me only to be correct in that most of what happens here is intended to benefit those with existing capital. And one of the biggest problems with that is that we've all started on very unequal footings regarding the initial distribution of capital and that over time/generations those inequities build up or remain in pockets.
This is one of the problems with the free software community, politics plays too heavy of a role in their actions.
Um, Earth to TedCheshireAcad, come in TedCheshireAcad. The "free software" movement is a social movement-- everything that happens in the movement is a political act. Just writing software and giving it away is a political act. Your concerns about your "clients" sounds a lot more like the rhetoric of the Open Source movement to me.
Besides, if you go to set up a "[GNU/]Linux-doodad for a client", maybe as a professional (and someone with half a clue) you should be prepared for network outages and things like that. Relying on a web site on the other side of the Atlantic is the worst risk management ever. You need to have all your software and tools readily available on CD-ROM, I think. I mean, were you going to install Windows over the net by just going to some web site?
Moderators: please mod parent down in spite of his request that you "do your worst". Notes like that to moderators ought to garnish at least a -1 just for putting that little challenge to the moderators.
1) If people don't value their own freedom, then that's their problem. I value mine. I know I learned to value freedom in software because of problems I had with non-free software (especially Mac OS 8.*).
2) I never said the level of "know-how" required was up to where users should be able to compile a kernel or whatever. In fact, I specifically pointed out that Red Hat has already done the hard work in the UI arena to achieve a "standard" desktop and set of applications. If someone is competent in either Mac or Windows, I would expect relatively little pain for them in switching to that.
My point was that this discussion is useless and that instead we should be thinking of ways to get preinstalled systems into the hands of users. I don't think potential GNU/Linux users are turned off by the range of choice available. I think they're turned off by the utter lack of any retail options for purchasing a system that is already up and running when they take it home. Please reread my point about Apple who arguably make much better systems than the Wintel crowd crank out and what it means to be shut out of the mainstream retail environment. What regular user wants to go buy a new computer, paying a premium to have XP installed and all that, only to take it home and install some freebie OS off the internet on it instead of all the good stuff that came with the machine?
The freedom in free software is not there for the programmers. It's there for the users.
Personally I don't disagree that having cooperation and a common base is a good thing. But so what? The most important thing about GNU/Linux is the freedom. If I didn't care about that why would I even bother with GNU/Linux.
So here's your chance. Sell me on GNU/Linux. Pretend I'm a normal user and I've been thinking about buying a Mac. Why is that a bad idea? Why is GNU/Linux a better option for me? I don't mind spending a little more money on Apple stuff because I know it's extremely well-designed and "just works" for pretty much everything I'll want to do. Tell me why I should try this OS you can't buy preinstalled in any major computer store (except for those Lindows machines at Wal-Mart).
I didn't jump anywhere. And my conclusion was not the result of ridicule rather than sensibility. Obviously if you had accidents that precipitated the replacement of cases, that's not really indicative of the quality from the manufacturer (but you didn't mention that in your original post, which is why I responded).
So instead of wondering about Apple quality at this point, I'll just consider you accident prone and admire the fact that your laptop survived without any serious damage-- after all, the case is there to protect the sensitive insides.:)
Well, there's no reason that distribution vendors can't do as Red Hat has done and essentially do their best to merge the two major desktops in terms of look/feel and default appliations. Personally I don't give a rat's hindquarters what will get Linux a bigger "share" of the desktop. This is the flawed thinking of the open source movement, that somehow things like "market share" are measures of success.
Not true. Absolute freedom in the software is what's important. As long as we have that, any GNU/Linux vendor in the world is free to cooperate with other vendors and standardize or not standardize as they see fit. A properly functioning economy (both in terms of money and ideas) requires lots of small companies (suppliers) all competing for the dollars/yen/euros/attention of the consumer.
At this time, however, the majority of GNU/Linux users (fortunately) value freedom and choice. Any move to "dumb down" the GUI or make it more rigid without providing a big red button that says "click here if you want to take back complete control of your system" will simply alienate the current user base (that would be those of us who contribute dollars, time, or money to groups like the FSF, Debian, KDE, or even SUSE or RedHat in the form of buying the box sets).
Personally I feel like users expect too little from their systems, and too little from themselves as well. Computers are complicated machines that require a certain level of know-how. If the user wants simple, I don't see how they can go wrong with existing distributions like Red Hat.
The idea that we should "start with a standard GUI" (to quote the article) is nonsense. What we need is to demonstrate value to users, both in terms of the value of freedom (which is pooh-poohed in this article, I think) and in terms of the excess funds spent on proprietary software that users are only using minimally (you know they hit the main 10% of the features, but the other 90% they paid for go to waste). Plus, the real need here is to get preinstalled systems out there at affordable prices and offer some decent support and training options. If people can't walk into Circuit City, Fry's, or Best Buy and pick up a GNU/Linux system, forget it. Look how well Apple does against that, and they have extremely polished, monolithic systems with some of the best ad campaigns known to man on their side.
Slashdot Mirror
Er, s/you're/your/.
Seems to me that you're debate skills are prenatal. Any idiot knows that ad hominem attacks are usually the sign of someone who doesn't actually have a decent rebuttal.
I'll have an easier time supporting this if they teach some of our Open Source Kids (like the article submitter) the difference between "too" and "to" and "it's" and "its".
But Gates Foundation or no, the linked article is very clear on MS' involvement (and it's non-monetary-- so it works is they give stuff to the school which costs them very little incrementally to produce, then they write off the full retail value on their taxes, essentially making a profit on their tax return).
Microsoft's contribution will not be monetary, but services worth millions of dollars, including a full-time on-site project manager, planning and design expertise, staff training and ongoing technology support. It plans to bring in other technology partners.
On top of the likely tax benefits, this also constitutes a ton of free advertising and the ability to undermine the democratic process by installing people who make decisions not as a response to the public will, but as a response to the direction of their corporate masters. Want to guess how often they will entertain using GNU/Linux on servers or Macs in Graphic Arts classes?
I'd like to think you're just being idealistic and hoping people will develop respect for other people's work to the point where copyrights and patents are truly unnecessary.
I respect other people's work. Quite a bit, in fact. It's this notion that ideas can be owned that has me worried to no end. Indeed, copyrights and patents prevent me from working my own raw materials into an interesting form, simply because someone else did it earlier or had an idea like that before I did. Talk about a lack of respect for work! While copying computer files is relatively easy, imagine making a copy of a marble statue. That's an infringement of copyright, but it takes a similar level of skill to that of the original sculptor and quite a bit of work... but because of the law, that second statue is illegal to make and could even be taken/confiscated, with no recompense for the theft!
Exactly. An exmaple from amazon.com == DVD: snap-case edition of "The Matrix"? $14.99. CD: "The Matrix: Music from the Motion Picture"? $14.99.
Seems to me that one of these is a feature-packed disc with a few hours of full-motion video that cost many millions to produce and that one of these is 13 short tracks of minimally interesting audio that cost a fraction of what the other cost to produce. Even more telling, Lawrence Fishburne hasn't appeared at any MPAA gatherings giving speeches like Courtney Love's "Math" speech. So I also wonder which set of "artists" is being more fairly compensated for their work.
No. This is the part where one of us mentions that Linux is available free of charge and that one rightfully should expect more from a multi-billion dollar company which charges hundreds of dollars for their software.
Bull-hockey. The courts have ruled no such thing. In fact, the copyright law specifically allows for this sort of "copying" the data into memory in the case of computer software or other cases where such "copying" is a necessary part of using the copyrighted work.
RTFM:
Yeah. OK. Good luck with that then. FWIW I think you're wrong on all counts, legal and technical.
No kidding. These are the people who always ask me if I need help finding stuff and I'm usually left wondering... is alphabetical order really that complicated?
Short answer: no. Long answer: RTFM-- especially the section entitled "What is Copyright?". It's very clear on all of these matters. :)
Where did I say the invoice wouldn't violate the court order?
If you have a server running with files visible that allows me to download those files, then your server (or filesharing software) is making and sending me a copy. I am not doing the copying, the server is. It is literally duplicating the stream of bits on your HD and sending those duplicate bits down the wire. On my end, the client is only receiving a single set of bits and transferring them to the HD. At no point am I in possession of more than one set of bits (caching and temporary file issues aside).
Furthermore, you DO NOT have a right to display copyrighted works on your front lawn or the internet. The right of public performance is limited to the copyright holder and its licensees.
In the case of the library, the person who actually makes the copy is not the library (and in any case, there are actually exceptions in Title 17 that allow libraries to make copies under certain circumstances). In your example, the person who takes the book home and copies it is at some point engaged in the act of copying. It does not matter where or how they obtained that book.
I never said it wouldn't... as long as they do it in Germany.
The fines were for violating a court order, not for the content of the claims themselves. The court order was the result of a lawsuit against SCO, and essentially the order was "stop saying this until the matter is settled" not "you can't say this because it's wrong." It's not a finding of fact and it's just as possible that a similar preliminary injunction could be issued by a U.S. court given the right court filings on the part of the plaintiffs. It happens all the time.
No kidding-- if it came with a monitor the price might be more appropriate. Reading the components list the word "integrated" appears more often than in a Civil Rights history textbook-- meaning that almost everything is soldered right onto the motherboard. IOW, you could build one of these in five steps. Mount mobo in case, mount CPU on mobo, insert RAM, connect HD, close case. And then when you need a modem you have money left over to buy the real thing, complete with blinking lights. :)
What if that software you designed to make your business more efficent is released open source, and your competitors start using it. If you depend on that software as a competitive advantage, then you'd be stupid to give it away to your competitors. But unless you patent the underlying business methods implemented in your software this isn't much of a competitive advantage in the first place. I would certainly hope in your example that your senior managers have something better up their sleeve than your software, since it would be relatively easy for your competitors to hire developers that are as good as you are (or maybe they'd just hire you outright, after all, you have experience).
It's still important if you are dealing with government data. All the time I'm finding Excel worksheets or Word documents on government sites. At least those are halfway sensible formats compared with the far more popular PDF which is essentially a glorified PostScript where the only metadata is layout information. Worse than HTML files that way, PDFs are.
I never once said the U.S. system was superior. The German case was a situation where SCO appears to have decided not to fight the injunction at all. Further, I don't have any information that anyone in the U.S. has sought a similar preliminary injunction against SCO. The comparison is apples and oranges. As to your ad hominem attack: I don't know where you're from, but apparently they need to teach reading comprehension and critical thinking there.
BS.
The U.S. has laws against lying to the public in order to damage the reputation of one's business competitors or to inflate one's stock price or any number of other things. In fact, one company, Red Hat, is taking advantage of said laws and has filed a court case against SCO in a U.S. court. Any number of other companies involved in Linux-related work could do the same.
Additionally, the German court didn't just decide one day to prohibit this speech. The injunction was the result of a lawsuit filed by private parties in Germany (LinuxTag, if I'm not mistaken), and the fine is for violating the court's order, not so much for the content of the speech.
I think you have your wires crossed. Market economics ultimately makes a few people very wealthy and most people extremely poor. I am not an American, but I have been to New York, and I can tell you, in the heart of capitalism, I have never seen such poverty living alongside such obscene wealth.
On the one hand you are making sweeping statements about market economics. On the other you're pointing out one of the worst examples of a "market economy" ever invented. While I agree that we should seek after an economic model based on cooperation rather than competition, such a thing is elusive and in the meantime capitalism does offer some exciting opportunities.
However, your example of the disparities found in the U.S. is not a fair indictment of free market economics. Most aspects of the American economy are so regulated or so poorly managed or whatever that calling it "capitalism" seems to me only to be correct in that most of what happens here is intended to benefit those with existing capital. And one of the biggest problems with that is that we've all started on very unequal footings regarding the initial distribution of capital and that over time/generations those inequities build up or remain in pockets.
This is one of the problems with the free software community, politics plays too heavy of a role in their actions.
Um, Earth to TedCheshireAcad, come in TedCheshireAcad. The "free software" movement is a social movement-- everything that happens in the movement is a political act. Just writing software and giving it away is a political act. Your concerns about your "clients" sounds a lot more like the rhetoric of the Open Source movement to me.
Besides, if you go to set up a "[GNU/]Linux-doodad for a client", maybe as a professional (and someone with half a clue) you should be prepared for network outages and things like that. Relying on a web site on the other side of the Atlantic is the worst risk management ever. You need to have all your software and tools readily available on CD-ROM, I think. I mean, were you going to install Windows over the net by just going to some web site?
Moderators: please mod parent down in spite of his request that you "do your worst". Notes like that to moderators ought to garnish at least a -1 just for putting that little challenge to the moderators.
1) If people don't value their own freedom, then that's their problem. I value mine. I know I learned to value freedom in software because of problems I had with non-free software (especially Mac OS 8.*).
2) I never said the level of "know-how" required was up to where users should be able to compile a kernel or whatever. In fact, I specifically pointed out that Red Hat has already done the hard work in the UI arena to achieve a "standard" desktop and set of applications. If someone is competent in either Mac or Windows, I would expect relatively little pain for them in switching to that.
My point was that this discussion is useless and that instead we should be thinking of ways to get preinstalled systems into the hands of users. I don't think potential GNU/Linux users are turned off by the range of choice available. I think they're turned off by the utter lack of any retail options for purchasing a system that is already up and running when they take it home. Please reread my point about Apple who arguably make much better systems than the Wintel crowd crank out and what it means to be shut out of the mainstream retail environment. What regular user wants to go buy a new computer, paying a premium to have XP installed and all that, only to take it home and install some freebie OS off the internet on it instead of all the good stuff that came with the machine?
The freedom in free software is not there for the programmers. It's there for the users.
Personally I don't disagree that having cooperation and a common base is a good thing. But so what? The most important thing about GNU/Linux is the freedom. If I didn't care about that why would I even bother with GNU/Linux.
So here's your chance. Sell me on GNU/Linux. Pretend I'm a normal user and I've been thinking about buying a Mac. Why is that a bad idea? Why is GNU/Linux a better option for me? I don't mind spending a little more money on Apple stuff because I know it's extremely well-designed and "just works" for pretty much everything I'll want to do. Tell me why I should try this OS you can't buy preinstalled in any major computer store (except for those Lindows machines at Wal-Mart).
I didn't jump anywhere. And my conclusion was not the result of ridicule rather than sensibility. Obviously if you had accidents that precipitated the replacement of cases, that's not really indicative of the quality from the manufacturer (but you didn't mention that in your original post, which is why I responded).
:)
So instead of wondering about Apple quality at this point, I'll just consider you accident prone and admire the fact that your laptop survived without any serious damage-- after all, the case is there to protect the sensitive insides.
Well, there's no reason that distribution vendors can't do as Red Hat has done and essentially do their best to merge the two major desktops in terms of look/feel and default appliations. Personally I don't give a rat's hindquarters what will get Linux a bigger "share" of the desktop. This is the flawed thinking of the open source movement, that somehow things like "market share" are measures of success.
Not true. Absolute freedom in the software is what's important. As long as we have that, any GNU/Linux vendor in the world is free to cooperate with other vendors and standardize or not standardize as they see fit. A properly functioning economy (both in terms of money and ideas) requires lots of small companies (suppliers) all competing for the dollars/yen/euros/attention of the consumer.
At this time, however, the majority of GNU/Linux users (fortunately) value freedom and choice. Any move to "dumb down" the GUI or make it more rigid without providing a big red button that says "click here if you want to take back complete control of your system" will simply alienate the current user base (that would be those of us who contribute dollars, time, or money to groups like the FSF, Debian, KDE, or even SUSE or RedHat in the form of buying the box sets).
Personally I feel like users expect too little from their systems, and too little from themselves as well. Computers are complicated machines that require a certain level of know-how. If the user wants simple, I don't see how they can go wrong with existing distributions like Red Hat.
The idea that we should "start with a standard GUI" (to quote the article) is nonsense. What we need is to demonstrate value to users, both in terms of the value of freedom (which is pooh-poohed in this article, I think) and in terms of the excess funds spent on proprietary software that users are only using minimally (you know they hit the main 10% of the features, but the other 90% they paid for go to waste). Plus, the real need here is to get preinstalled systems out there at affordable prices and offer some decent support and training options. If people can't walk into Circuit City, Fry's, or Best Buy and pick up a GNU/Linux system, forget it. Look how well Apple does against that, and they have extremely polished, monolithic systems with some of the best ad campaigns known to man on their side.