Since MS, quite overtly, ceases support to force upgrades expect quite vigorous defense of their intellectual property rights.
The words you use almost makes this sound ok. How about
"Since MS forces people to upgrade by refusing to support software that has already been purchased, expect them to be dicks about it and reassert their exclusive ownership of ideas so that no one else can use them, even if they no longer have a direct interest in those ideas."
Hooray for innovation. I'm sure this is what the framers had in mind.
Well, it's not going to features. Take wordpad for instance- the win95 and win98 versions allow you to save as a word document- the winXP version only lets you save as rtf or text. I guess the new hardware isn't good enough to support all the features a 386 with 4Megs of ram could.
This is interesting because the college debate topic for NDT/CEDA this year deals with increasing federal control over Indian Country, and these people research voraciously. I suspect a lot of future lawyers will begin to learn about how ridiculous Microsoft is as a result of this, and to think about the ways that policy and software interact (Lessig anyone?)
Well, it would be illegal to write controller code for a patent-lawyer-emulator-mecha-warrior robot named "Jack ValentEliza". Other than that though, you're basically right about the GPL and the weapons thing.
What do you need to do thats so goddamned important that you need a static IP? And what in the freak does a browser have to do with your ISP? That's not rhetorical.
I can't speak for the poster above, but the reason I got always-on internet service was so that I could shell into my home computer and access my files from wherever I like, not to mention forwarding X applications over the Internet when useful/necessary. Static ip is necessary for that.
And certainly just because someone says someone is something doesn't mean they are. Especially when an anonymous coward says it. And even more so when they don't even give reasons to believe that what they say is true, and instead rely on McCarthy-esque namecalling.
Yes, but their business model is premised on a promise to the community that they will open the source if they get enough subscribers. The community has a right to demand accountability.
Their competitors (who? Loki?) will find it difficult to capitalize on this information unless they release the same information. Even then, it's not clear how they could use this information to their advantage. Finally, markets can't operate efficiently without the free flow of information. We have the right as consumers (and especially as customers) to demand this information.
Here is transgaming's business model, which you'll notice mentions the street performer protocol and 20000 subscribers explicitly.
I am a subscriber and a believer in their business model. I just have one quibble.
I want them to publicly disclose their current number of subscribers and update it regularly- at least monthly, since that's the time segment by which subscriptions are divided. I actually don't even have hardware that can use the software I've paid for yet- I subscribed in hopes of rewarding an effort to create free software.
Transgaming has taken a bit of a risk, and I really hope that they are able to pull it off- if this business model works for them and the community gets their code, this will be a great way to solve the problem of how to reward the *creation* of code (which is scarce) as opposed to the *copying* of code (which is not). I will buy proprietary products if there is a reliable and realistic commitment to eventually free them when the authors have been properly compensated.
But we need open disclosure of these numbers. I subscribed for three months, but if I don't know how many subscribers they have at the end of that time, I intend to ask for a refund.
I don't blame you for being anonymous, coward. You don't have a leg to stand on. I have physically seen RMS publically announce that he is not a socialist or communist, and his writings/statements make that clear. And why on earth would I bother tackling your hackneyed communism analogy when you simply sidestep my comparisons to licenses that compromise fundamental freedoms?
And I'm sure you don't drive on any of those dirty socialist roads out there- corporate tollroads only, right?
It's not about state ownership anyway; you're just trying to slander the free software movement with the conservative bogeyman of the 80's. Nice try Ronald Reagan. It's really about only allowing contracts that are consistent with freedom. Right now you can't sign a contract making yourself a slave, no matter whether you consent to being a slave or not. Would you rather have the government stop meddling with your right to be a slave?
It's similar with license choice for software. Licenses which bottle up information and allow corporations to own and control it interfere with everyone's innate freedom to perceive the world as it is and act on their map between perception and reality: that is, information.
This communist-capitalist debate strikes me as being rather meaningless because each camp claims the other is some extreme
As Scarlet pointed out in Clue:
"No Mr. Green, communism is just a red herring"
Re:O'Reilley : RMS :: Libertarianism : Socialism
on
Freedom or Power Redux
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Actually, you're wrong. The basis of property is scarcity. Libertarianism requires that governments not intervene in the marketplace, so that free actors may engage in legitimate contracts with each other.
"Intellectual property" is a government granted monopoly. It's not compatible with the libertarian edict that that government which governs least, governs best. Property is defined by scarcity. Information itself is not scarce, it is the ability to create information that is scarce. Hence, in a truly free market, information would cost nearly nothing but the scarce commodity, the ability to create useful software, would be highly prized and sought after, and coders would refuse to deliver the goods unless they were paid in advance. But this is not a free market, and corporations (immortal, non-human, property-holding entities) can own information and keep humans from using it to make society better, or profit, or whatever.
Socialists would want to allow for communal ownership of everything. That means you can't sell information. That's not what the GPL says- it just says you can't sell it exclusively, just like you can't sell sunlight exclusively. The GPL is most definitely a libertarian document. The GPL attempts to correct the Government interference into the marketplace represented by copyright and patent law by accepting copyright and refusing the freedom-reducing priveleges that go along with a government granted monopoly.
In a free market, all this would be unnecessary.
For extra credit, what inefficiencies are introduced into a market when the free flow of information is hindered?
When I have seen him speak, he has bootstrapped his entire presentation from the simple principle that one should not be restricted from helping one's neighbor. Here is an audio recording (in ogg vorbbis format) of a speech he gave last January at ArsDigita University.
You seem to want to make him seem selfish. Why not listen to what Stallman himself has to say before drawing any conclusions?
On the other hand, I can see him disapproving of efforts like Wine, which have the potential of turning systems that already are 100% Free into less-than-100% Free. "Hey, MS Office runs in Linux now? Let's stop using KOffice!"
I once thought this very thing, then I saw him speak in January at ArsDigita University, and I asked him about this very thing. His answer, iirc and may paraphrase, was that projects that bridge proprietary and free operating systems and proprietary software are very important, and that GNU at first required and was developed with proprietary unices- but that as these requirements fall away (and we must make progress in making them fall away), they become unnecessary. But he approves of the WINE project specifically. Personally I think if there's a distinction to be made, it's that we should focus on making non-free apps run on free os's more than we should focus on making free apps run on non-free os's (and in non-free languages), but that's just my opinion.
You just think that anyone who wants freedom is a totalitarian.
You must also think that black is white, night is day, dumb is smart and smart is dumb.
It's not. It's true that evil people like to wrap themselves in the rhetoric of freedom. It's true that Stallman doesn't just want to make choices for himself. He wants everyone to have the maximum amount of freedom- and a system where no one can limit the ways in which others use information is a system where the greatest possible freedom for the greatest number is achieved.
Let me put it this way. If a company writes a license that says "you may use this software only on the condition that you permanently renounce your first amendment right to free speech". This would be a legally invalid license- you may not legally renounce your right to free speech, because it is a fundamental right. Similarly, Stallman thinks that not every license is valid- specifically, licenses that require people to give up fundamental freedoms, like the freedom to interact with the information in their world unconditionally, are illegitimate.
Certainly you don't think licensers have the freedom to choose any license they like? For instance, "you may only use this software if you kill the president". I hope you don't think that programmers have the freedom to impose this license on their users. Once we agree that there are some licenses that are illegitimate even if both parties agree, then we are simply discussing *which* licenses are illegitimate, and Stallman's answer is "the licenses that most restrict freedom are illegitimate".
You are implying that the freedom to restrict others freedom is fundamental, but Stallman thinks that the freedom to restrict others freedoms makes freedom the privelege of the few rather than the right of the many, and prefers the second situation to the first.
Given that we *must* choose one, everyone who has an opinion on this matter must, according to your theory, be an "anti-freedom totalitarian", since if their ideas are adopted they will be imposed on everyone. Each one limits freedom in some way- which one limits freedom least? You can't stand still on a moving train buddy.
Anti-freedom totalitarian? How much did microsoft pay you to say that? Get real. Why not call him a Nazi and accuse him of eating babies while you're at it?
I thought about writing a longer reply, but your silly comparison tells me you're either not serious or you're an idiot.
Wouldn't you know it, my mod points expired yesterday.
Richard Stallman thinks that all the software in the world should be licensed so everyone can use it. Bill Gates is a megalomaniac. Richard Stallman is at worst a populist demagogue, but I think if you look at what he's done with his life and compare it to anyone else you'll see that his motivations have to do with making software free for everyone, not personal fame, riches or glory.
A lot of people who live in glass houses are throwing stones at Stallman these days. Show some respect. Free software would be nowhere without him.
You can not contract away your fundamental freedoms. You can not sign a binding contract to become a slave, or to sell your own children. It is illegal to rope someone into an overly coercive contract.
RMS's point is that the right to use and modify software is a fundamental right that affects almost all of our interactions with the world as computers become increasingly ubiquitous. Hence, contracting away this fundamental freedom is much like signing a contract that makes you a slave- it should be illegal because it's *too* coercive and *too* restrictive of fundamental freedoms.
Slashdot Mirror
Since MS, quite overtly, ceases support to force upgrades expect quite vigorous defense of their intellectual property rights.
The words you use almost makes this sound ok. How about
"Since MS forces people to upgrade by refusing to support software that has already been purchased, expect them to be dicks about it and reassert their exclusive ownership of ideas so that no one else can use them, even if they no longer have a direct interest in those ideas."
Hooray for innovation. I'm sure this is what the framers had in mind.
Well, it's not going to features. Take wordpad for instance- the win95 and win98 versions allow you to save as a word document- the winXP version only lets you save as rtf or text. I guess the new hardware isn't good enough to support all the features a 386 with 4Megs of ram could.
Yay, innovation.
This is interesting because the college debate topic for NDT/CEDA this year deals with increasing federal control over Indian Country, and these people research voraciously. I suspect a lot of future lawyers will begin to learn about how ridiculous Microsoft is as a result of this, and to think about the ways that policy and software interact (Lessig anyone?)
We'll see.
Yep, that's me. 1117 baby.
Well, it would be illegal to write controller code for a patent-lawyer-emulator-mecha-warrior robot named "Jack ValentEliza". Other than that though, you're basically right about the GPL and the weapons thing.
All the computers in my neighborhood are a giant beowulf cluster!
Repeat after me: the network is the computer... the network is the computer...
I do forward X over ssh, over the internet.
Regarding Dynamic DNS, it's something I didn't undertstand before, and I'm glad I learned about it- wouldn't have if not for this thread.
Working on the clue. Thanks for the attitude.
What do you need to do thats so goddamned important that you need a static IP? And what in the freak does a browser have to do with your ISP? That's not rhetorical.
I can't speak for the poster above, but the reason I got always-on internet service was so that I could shell into my home computer and access my files from wherever I like, not to mention forwarding X applications over the Internet when useful/necessary. Static ip is necessary for that.
Lighten up on the attitude a little, k buddy?
um, how do you do that? I have one in my dining room I'm using as an email station.
bryguy
And certainly just because someone says someone is something doesn't mean they are. Especially when an anonymous coward says it. And even more so when they don't even give reasons to believe that what they say is true, and instead rely on McCarthy-esque namecalling.
Yes, but their business model is premised on a promise to the community that they will open the source if they get enough subscribers. The community has a right to demand accountability.
Their competitors (who? Loki?) will find it difficult to capitalize on this information unless they release the same information. Even then, it's not clear how they could use this information to their advantage. Finally, markets can't operate efficiently without the free flow of information. We have the right as consumers (and especially as customers) to demand this information.
Here is transgaming's business model, which you'll notice mentions the street performer protocol and 20000 subscribers explicitly.
Bryguy
I am a subscriber and a believer in their business model. I just have one quibble.
I want them to publicly disclose their current number of subscribers and update it regularly- at least monthly, since that's the time segment by which subscriptions are divided. I actually don't even have hardware that can use the software I've paid for yet- I subscribed in hopes of rewarding an effort to create free software.
Transgaming has taken a bit of a risk, and I really hope that they are able to pull it off- if this business model works for them and the community gets their code, this will be a great way to solve the problem of how to reward the *creation* of code (which is scarce) as opposed to the *copying* of code (which is not). I will buy proprietary products if there is a reliable and realistic commitment to eventually free them when the authors have been properly compensated.
But we need open disclosure of these numbers. I subscribed for three months, but if I don't know how many subscribers they have at the end of that time, I intend to ask for a refund.
Bryguy
The world hasn't stopped needing RMS's vision, it just really needs a new RMS.
I accept. When's the coronation ceremony?
:)
I think you've hit the nail on the head- the excessive moralisms this author piles on are predicated on fairy tales and children's books.
Greeeeat.
I don't blame you for being anonymous, coward. You don't have a leg to stand on. I have physically seen RMS publically announce that he is not a socialist or communist, and his writings/statements make that clear. And why on earth would I bother tackling your hackneyed communism analogy when you simply sidestep my comparisons to licenses that compromise fundamental freedoms?
State ownership is Socialism.
And I'm sure you don't drive on any of those dirty socialist roads out there- corporate tollroads only, right?
It's not about state ownership anyway; you're just trying to slander the free software movement with the conservative bogeyman of the 80's. Nice try Ronald Reagan. It's really about only allowing contracts that are consistent with freedom. Right now you can't sign a contract making yourself a slave, no matter whether you consent to being a slave or not. Would you rather have the government stop meddling with your right to be a slave?
It's similar with license choice for software. Licenses which bottle up information and allow corporations to own and control it interfere with everyone's innate freedom to perceive the world as it is and act on their map between perception and reality: that is, information.
This communist-capitalist debate strikes me as being rather meaningless because each camp claims the other is some extreme
As Scarlet pointed out in Clue:
"No Mr. Green, communism is just a red herring"
Actually, you're wrong. The basis of property is scarcity. Libertarianism requires that governments not intervene in the marketplace, so that free actors may engage in legitimate contracts with each other.
"Intellectual property" is a government granted monopoly. It's not compatible with the libertarian edict that that government which governs least, governs best. Property is defined by scarcity. Information itself is not scarce, it is the ability to create information that is scarce. Hence, in a truly free market, information would cost nearly nothing but the scarce commodity, the ability to create useful software, would be highly prized and sought after, and coders would refuse to deliver the goods unless they were paid in advance. But this is not a free market, and corporations (immortal, non-human, property-holding entities) can own information and keep humans from using it to make society better, or profit, or whatever.
Socialists would want to allow for communal ownership of everything. That means you can't sell information. That's not what the GPL says- it just says you can't sell it exclusively, just like you can't sell sunlight exclusively. The GPL is most definitely a libertarian document. The GPL attempts to correct the Government interference into the marketplace represented by copyright and patent law by accepting copyright and refusing the freedom-reducing priveleges that go along with a government granted monopoly.
In a free market, all this would be unnecessary.
For extra credit, what inefficiencies are introduced into a market when the free flow of information is hindered?
Bryguy
Yeah, I mean the star wars racer game lets you go over 800mph, and that came out over a year ago! Maybe I just need to overclock my processor...
:)
When I have seen him speak, he has bootstrapped his entire presentation from the simple principle that one should not be restricted from helping one's neighbor. Here is an audio recording (in ogg vorbbis format) of a speech he gave last January at ArsDigita University.
You seem to want to make him seem selfish. Why not listen to what Stallman himself has to say before drawing any conclusions?
On the other hand, I can see him disapproving of efforts like Wine, which have the potential of turning systems that already are 100% Free into less-than-100% Free. "Hey, MS Office runs in Linux now? Let's stop using KOffice!"
I once thought this very thing, then I saw him speak in January at ArsDigita University, and I asked him about this very thing. His answer, iirc and may paraphrase, was that projects that bridge proprietary and free operating systems and proprietary software are very important, and that GNU at first required and was developed with proprietary unices- but that as these requirements fall away (and we must make progress in making them fall away), they become unnecessary. But he approves of the WINE project specifically. Personally I think if there's a distinction to be made, it's that we should focus on making non-free apps run on free os's more than we should focus on making free apps run on non-free os's (and in non-free languages), but that's just my opinion.
Bryguy
Well, we've settled it- you're not not serious.
You just think that anyone who wants freedom is a totalitarian.
You must also think that black is white, night is day, dumb is smart and smart is dumb.
It's not. It's true that evil people like to wrap themselves in the rhetoric of freedom. It's true that Stallman doesn't just want to make choices for himself. He wants everyone to have the maximum amount of freedom- and a system where no one can limit the ways in which others use information is a system where the greatest possible freedom for the greatest number is achieved.
Let me put it this way. If a company writes a license that says "you may use this software only on the condition that you permanently renounce your first amendment right to free speech". This would be a legally invalid license- you may not legally renounce your right to free speech, because it is a fundamental right. Similarly, Stallman thinks that not every license is valid- specifically, licenses that require people to give up fundamental freedoms, like the freedom to interact with the information in their world unconditionally, are illegitimate.
Certainly you don't think licensers have the freedom to choose any license they like? For instance, "you may only use this software if you kill the president". I hope you don't think that programmers have the freedom to impose this license on their users. Once we agree that there are some licenses that are illegitimate even if both parties agree, then we are simply discussing *which* licenses are illegitimate, and Stallman's answer is "the licenses that most restrict freedom are illegitimate".
You are implying that the freedom to restrict others freedom is fundamental, but Stallman thinks that the freedom to restrict others freedoms makes freedom the privelege of the few rather than the right of the many, and prefers the second situation to the first.
Given that we *must* choose one, everyone who has an opinion on this matter must, according to your theory, be an "anti-freedom totalitarian", since if their ideas are adopted they will be imposed on everyone. Each one limits freedom in some way- which one limits freedom least? You can't stand still on a moving train buddy.
Anti-freedom totalitarian? How much did microsoft pay you to say that? Get real. Why not call him a Nazi and accuse him of eating babies while you're at it?
I thought about writing a longer reply, but your silly comparison tells me you're either not serious or you're an idiot.
Wouldn't you know it, my mod points expired yesterday.
Richard Stallman thinks that all the software in the world should be licensed so everyone can use it. Bill Gates is a megalomaniac. Richard Stallman is at worst a populist demagogue, but I think if you look at what he's done with his life and compare it to anyone else you'll see that his motivations have to do with making software free for everyone, not personal fame, riches or glory.
A lot of people who live in glass houses are throwing stones at Stallman these days. Show some respect. Free software would be nowhere without him.
You can not contract away your fundamental freedoms. You can not sign a binding contract to become a slave, or to sell your own children. It is illegal to rope someone into an overly coercive contract.
RMS's point is that the right to use and modify software is a fundamental right that affects almost all of our interactions with the world as computers become increasingly ubiquitous. Hence, contracting away this fundamental freedom is much like signing a contract that makes you a slave- it should be illegal because it's *too* coercive and *too* restrictive of fundamental freedoms.