As for privacy, I don't see the problem. Like has been pointed out before, you just remove the transponder when you get home.
The problem is that in practice you generally won't
be able to do this. In order for the tags to be
most useful, they have to be difficult or impossible
to remove. So they'll be buried in the spines of
books you buy, sewn into your clothing, etc.
When considering the privacy consequences of new
technology, it's more realistic to consider the
worst case than the best.
AFAIK, cable in the US is also a monopoly. There
may be a lot of providers, but any given customer
only has a single choice (unless you want to move across
town).
Much of this discussion assumes that the "discovery", or IP, has substantial inherent value that can be exploited without additional investments in support, marketing, etc. For specialized fields like bioinformatics, this is simply not true - the program may provide important new capabilities, but it will have little commercial value without appropriate packaging, integration with other biological information, training, and support.
If the software has little commercial value, but (presumably) sustantial real value to humanity, that seems like a good reason right there to license it as Free Software, Open Source, etc.
The universities do not do these "commercial" tasks, neither does the government. Companies do this sort of thing, but not without some guarantee (e.g. an exclusive license) that limits their risk.
Many companies, particularly badly run ones, would certainly accept such a monopoly if offered one, but most software isn't written on this basis. Companies that sell word processors or statistics packages don't rely on monopoly control of the underlying math/science/algorithms; they're able to make their money basic on quality, features, marketing, etc. Wise consumers of software usually understand a company's statement "Our software uses proprietary/patented methods." to mean "We are idiots and we have a large legal department."
As a biologist (?), you understand that an entity that lacks competition within their niche will not experience any of the selective pressure that would cause them to improve. Applied to this case, if a researcher's software is freely licensed, companies will have to compete vigorously to have high quality implementations. If one company has an exclusive license, the implementation will tend to be of the poorest quality that will seem to the buyer to be better than nothing.
Biology has its own problems with openness. Consider the recent debacle of Science agreeing to publish a paper the only relevance of which is a dataset that won't be freely released to the public. (See this story at Wired, for example.) Are independent persons really able to verify that this data is what Celera Genomics says it is?
In addition, it seems like a great deal of the software described in biology articles is not available in an Free Software or Open Source form.
Both of these disciplines, at least as far as the academic side is concerned, need to remember what academia is all about ("Is it good for humanity?").
One objection to the MP3 audio format is that it is not possible to have a free and legal software encoder (or decoder, as far as I know). For me, this is a show-stopper.
I disagree with pretty much all of your assumptions and arguments here, but I thank you for answering two of my questions at some length.
I would like to comment on the most striking part of your answer, which is that you think the GPL should be declared to be unenforceable, either by the courts or via legislation. I write Free Software, and I choose to distribute it under the GPL. Distributing it in this way is my remuneration for writing the software; that remuneration is very valuable to me (and I'd be a lot less motivated to do the work if I wasn't so compensated).
What you're saying is that the State should unilaterally step in and take this compensation away from me. Yikes. Isn't this exactly the sort of behavior we don't want from our government?
(It's not really clear whether you want unenforceability to mean that no one gets to use my software or that everyone can use it any way they like, but I'm substantially poorer either way.)
I've seen a lot of posts over the last few years from Glass condemning the GPL (and RMS and the FSF, I think). I'm not sure if he just hates these licenses or whether he actually believes we shouldn't even be able to have the option of using them. (It seems like he'd be a lot happier in the proprietary world.)
Copyright laws protect people who need to make a living. You have no right to steal their property or circumvent protection of intellectual property so you can get free stuff. No matter what you package it under, 99% of all so-called "free speech" trials against prominent open sources are about people who want free stuff.
There are a lot of bad assumptions here (e.g., that fair use is stealing), but let's ignore that and suppose we live in the RIAA's fair use-less fantasy world, where copyrights are absolute, and individuals can do only as the RIAA company wishes with its "property".
Now, how do I refuse delivery? That is, how do I avoid being exposed to copyrighted material that I have no wish to buy? Everywhere I go, in restaurants, movie theaters, elevators, on telephone hold, etc., I am constantly being bombarded by such material. I don't want to hear it--how do I make it stop (without moving to a desert island)?
But you say that that material is free (or otherwise paid for) and that I'm free to listen to it or not, as I please. No, it's not free to me--it fills my brain with (mostly inane) material that I can't even hum to myself without becoming a thief.
Music, even bad music (and other art forms, etc.), can be addictive; if you hear something repeatedly, you can easily come to want to hear it whenever you choose. RIAA members impose upon us this way all the time. If an addictive drug like cocaine is illegal, it hardly seems fair to allow dealers to market it to us, does it? This is absurd.
Copyright really is a bargain. The imposition on the public mentioned above is one of the things the RIAA gets in return for reasonable fair use. If they want to take fair use off the table, we ought to get a meaningful choice to not be exposed to their products in return.
I would seriously prefer local groups, making realistic money (money like a school teacher would make), playing good, interesting, original music to the current sludge that comes out of the entertainment machine.
I think this is an excellent idea, and one of the best things about it is that we can do this, legally. (Which is not to say that we shouldn't fight the DMCA.)
How? When you're spending the your money on music, make sure you get it into the hands of real people (via Fairtunes, for example). There's loads of great stuff out there being created by individuals in their garages (or whatever). The kids at Assembly completely blow me away.
If you must listen to Brittany (ugh), tape it off the radio.
what if the gnu decided that a future version of the license were to force authors to append "gnu/" to the beggining of your code?
It's a moot question because they simply don't have this power. Read the license. The people who own the code (meaning you, if you wrote it, and not on some company's time), can relicense at will. The people who contribute (significant) patches also have this power. The power that the FSF retains for itself via upgrades to the GPL is exceedingly narrow (and might even be so limited as to be completely useless).
Besides, who [sic] ever elected RMS dictator of his own projecct[?]
Read your history. When he started the FSF, no one really appreciated the need for software freedom. Not everyone agrees with him, but he's certainly walked his talk, and has more credibility than anyone else when it comes to furthering the FSF's goals.
RMS could, in theory, release a new version of the GPL that says "Employees of the Free Software Foundation, Incoporated, do not have any redistribution requirements."
Yes, this is possible, but you have to trust somebody. It's important for the license to be upgradeable in order that future, presently unforseen problems may be fixed. And if you want your software to live beyond you, some entity other than a single person needs to have that power.
Nobody else (except maybe SPI) even comes close to the trustworthiness the FSF has earned on this issue. I don't think even RMS's most vicious and vitriolic attackers seriously believe he'll run off with GPL'ed software and sell out to a proprietary interest.
He shows up at the Boston Computer Society
Linux and UNIX users group, and of course
demands that the group rename itself to the
GNU-slash-Linux users group.
Okay, I'll bite. Exactly how did he "demand" this? What were his words? How were they said?
Did he say something like "I am Richard Stallman, your god, and I demand that you change the name of this group as I decree". That doesn't ring true.
Are you sure he wasn't just arguing in favor of it (perhaps in a poorly chosen way)?
Towards the end of the article, Raymond attacks RMS and the FSF saying "Hypothetically, if they could pass a law that would make proprietary software illegal, they would". A hypothetical condition which has never even been discussed before being the basis for discrediting what they have to say???
Yes, this is an excellent point. It really troubles me to see ESR blatantly and (I assume) knowingly misstating the RMS/FSF position.
The OS camp likes to paint RMS as some sort of fascist/communist demon, but when you listen more closely there's an awful lot of shrill stuff in there. A few of the more extreme OSers seem to feel that we shouldn't even be allowed to GPL our own software.
We all need to read between the lines and realize the FSF is not a religion but that it very much stands for communism. The basic premise is that the community outweighs the individual. Communal freedoms overrule individual freedoms. Software is not the property of the individual or corporation that develops it but rather the community that uses it.
Huh? The GPL is quite capitalist--it's explicitly an agreement about compensating the person who writes the software. The compensation is not in dollars, but rather in a bit of control regarding what happens to the software going forward.
If you need to label something Communist, it should be the BSD license, which explicitly gives without compensation, right?
This is a pretty brash statement, considering there's published evidence to the contrary (see the fuzz papers).
This is just a flat-out lie. I know patents aren't popular here because so many in the community have learned from the FSF to hate them. The reality is that patents of *any* kind are a huge factor in levelling the playing field with the "big corporations" Kuhn so likes to demonize. A world without patents simply guarantees that companies like Microsoft will have total domination.
Earth to FUD-guy! Guess what? Microsoft does have total domination. And software patents are a tool they'll use to keep it.
This is very interesting to those of us that have long held that despite their protestations to the contrary, the free software movement is indeed inextricably tied to a communist worldview. RMS and others routinely deny this even though it's the only logical conclusion one can reach upon reading and thoughtful consideration of their positions on the issues.
So, if I decide I want to release my software under the GPL, thus requiring a compensation (in a behavioral form) from those who want to benefit from my work, I'm a Commie, too? Ugh.
If you take out glibc, gcc and gdb (because the sources are not primarily from the GNU project, even though they were donated to it) you find that GNU software actually plays only a minor part in a normal Linux system.
You seem to be glossing over a lot here. First, didn't RMS write the original gcc? And for that matter, didn't GNU lay down the foundations (at least) for gdb and glibc?
Second, you seem to be using GNU to mean just the people on the GNU project payroll. When I hear GNU, I think of all of the people who are philosophically aligned with the FSF and have produced (or otherwise contributed to) Free Software. In that sense, the people that are part of Cygnus, Debian, Red Hat, Linux, etc., are credited by that GNU moniker. That's how I look at it anyway.
I don't especially care whether or not Linux is called GNU/Linux or GNU/Linux is called Linux, but I think it's very important to understand the value of Free Software.
Without the people who value Free Software, Linux as we know it simply wouldn't exist.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is that in practice you generally won't be able to do this. In order for the tags to be most useful, they have to be difficult or impossible to remove. So they'll be buried in the spines of books you buy, sewn into your clothing, etc.
When considering the privacy consequences of new technology, it's more realistic to consider the worst case than the best.
--Mike
Mike
Mike
As a biologist (?), you understand that an entity that lacks competition within their niche will not experience any of the selective pressure that would cause them to improve. Applied to this case, if a researcher's software is freely licensed, companies will have to compete vigorously to have high quality implementations. If one company has an exclusive license, the implementation will tend to be of the poorest quality that will seem to the buyer to be better than nothing.
--Mike
In addition, it seems like a great deal of the software described in biology articles is not available in an Free Software or Open Source form.
Both of these disciplines, at least as far as the academic side is concerned, need to remember what academia is all about ("Is it good for humanity?").
--Mike
http://slashdot.org/articles/99/01/10/173223.shtml
--Mike
--Mike
--Mike
--Mike
I would like to comment on the most striking part of your answer, which is that you think the GPL should be declared to be unenforceable, either by the courts or via legislation. I write Free Software, and I choose to distribute it under the GPL. Distributing it in this way is my remuneration for writing the software; that remuneration is very valuable to me (and I'd be a lot less motivated to do the work if I wasn't so compensated).
What you're saying is that the State should unilaterally step in and take this compensation away from me. Yikes. Isn't this exactly the sort of behavior we don't want from our government?
(It's not really clear whether you want unenforceability to mean that no one gets to use my software or that everyone can use it any way they like, but I'm substantially poorer either way.)
--Mike
- Do you think I'm acting unethically?
- Do you think it should be illegal for me to do so?
If so, why can't I do what I like with the software I write? If not, what exactly is your problem?--Mike
--Mike
--Mike
There are a lot of bad assumptions here (e.g., that fair use is stealing), but let's ignore that and suppose we live in the RIAA's fair use-less fantasy world, where copyrights are absolute, and individuals can do only as the RIAA company wishes with its "property".
Now, how do I refuse delivery? That is, how do I avoid being exposed to copyrighted material that I have no wish to buy? Everywhere I go, in restaurants, movie theaters, elevators, on telephone hold, etc., I am constantly being bombarded by such material. I don't want to hear it--how do I make it stop (without moving to a desert island)?
But you say that that material is free (or otherwise paid for) and that I'm free to listen to it or not, as I please. No, it's not free to me--it fills my brain with (mostly inane) material that I can't even hum to myself without becoming a thief.
Music, even bad music (and other art forms, etc.), can be addictive; if you hear something repeatedly, you can easily come to want to hear it whenever you choose. RIAA members impose upon us this way all the time. If an addictive drug like cocaine is illegal, it hardly seems fair to allow dealers to market it to us, does it? This is absurd.
Copyright really is a bargain. The imposition on the public mentioned above is one of the things the RIAA gets in return for reasonable fair use. If they want to take fair use off the table, we ought to get a meaningful choice to not be exposed to their products in return.
--Mike
I think this is an excellent idea, and one of the best things about it is that we can do this, legally. (Which is not to say that we shouldn't fight the DMCA.)
How? When you're spending the your money on music, make sure you get it into the hands of real people (via Fairtunes, for example). There's loads of great stuff out there being created by individuals in their garages (or whatever). The kids at Assembly completely blow me away.
If you must listen to Brittany (ugh), tape it off the radio.
--Mike
It's a moot question because they simply don't have this power. Read the license. The people who own the code (meaning you, if you wrote it, and not on some company's time), can relicense at will. The people who contribute (significant) patches also have this power. The power that the FSF retains for itself via upgrades to the GPL is exceedingly narrow (and might even be so limited as to be completely useless).
Besides, who [sic] ever elected RMS dictator of his own projecct[?]
Read your history. When he started the FSF, no one really appreciated the need for software freedom. Not everyone agrees with him, but he's certainly walked his talk, and has more credibility than anyone else when it comes to furthering the FSF's goals.
--Mike
Yes, this is possible, but you have to trust somebody. It's important for the license to be upgradeable in order that future, presently unforseen problems may be fixed. And if you want your software to live beyond you, some entity other than a single person needs to have that power.
Nobody else (except maybe SPI) even comes close to the trustworthiness the FSF has earned on this issue. I don't think even RMS's most vicious and vitriolic attackers seriously believe he'll run off with GPL'ed software and sell out to a proprietary interest.
--Mike
Okay, I'll bite. Exactly how did he "demand" this? What were his words? How were they said? Did he say something like "I am Richard Stallman, your god, and I demand that you change the name of this group as I decree". That doesn't ring true.
Are you sure he wasn't just arguing in favor of it (perhaps in a poorly chosen way)?
--Mike
The OS camp likes to paint RMS as some sort of fascist/communist demon, but when you listen more closely there's an awful lot of shrill stuff in there. A few of the more extreme OSers seem to feel that we shouldn't even be allowed to GPL our own software.
--Mike
Huh? The GPL is quite capitalist--it's explicitly an agreement about compensating the person who writes the software. The compensation is not in dollars, but rather in a bit of control regarding what happens to the software going forward.
If you need to label something Communist, it should be the BSD license, which explicitly gives without compensation, right?
--Mike
This is a pretty brash statement, considering there's published evidence to the contrary (see the fuzz papers).
Earth to FUD-guy! Guess what? Microsoft does have total domination. And software patents are a tool they'll use to keep it.
So, if I decide I want to release my software under the GPL, thus requiring a compensation (in a behavioral form) from those who want to benefit from my work, I'm a Commie, too? Ugh.
--Mike
You seem to be glossing over a lot here. First, didn't RMS write the original gcc? And for that matter, didn't GNU lay down the foundations (at least) for gdb and glibc?
Second, you seem to be using GNU to mean just the people on the GNU project payroll. When I hear GNU, I think of all of the people who are philosophically aligned with the FSF and have produced (or otherwise contributed to) Free Software. In that sense, the people that are part of Cygnus, Debian, Red Hat, Linux, etc., are credited by that GNU moniker. That's how I look at it anyway.
I don't especially care whether or not Linux is called GNU/Linux or GNU/Linux is called Linux, but I think it's very important to understand the value of Free Software.
Without the people who value Free Software, Linux as we know it simply wouldn't exist.
--Mike
--Mike
They set up this Internet load test after all; I'm sure they'd like to hear of the results...
--Mike