Goddammit, I'm getting VERY tired of the way every criticism is immediately labeled "FUD." FUD is a very specific meaning: fear, uncertainty, and doubt. There was no fear, uncertainty, or doubt in my post. Just criticism of what I consider a disturbingly misguided philosophy. If I were spouting FUD, I'd say something like, "Are you really sure you want to base your business on the work of a bunch of anti-business, anti-capitalist zealots who oppose property rights on principle and who would love nothing more than to establish a world in which nobody could own anything, and therefore everything (except the people, of course) could be 'free?'"
That would be FUD. My comments aren't FUD. They're just an opinion that differs (strongly) from yours.
Rather, he beleives quite strongly that software should be free.
And I believe, quite strongly, that software is an inanimate object, and as such, cannot be "free" in the sense that RMS uses the word. The very use of the word "free" (in the sense of "having liberty of self-determination") to apply to a thing or idea is deliberately misleading and wrong.
But RMS has defined what he considers free quite explicit.
I could define my butt as something that monkeys fly out of, too, but that wouldn't make it so. Basically what Stallman has done is to take a big word, rich in positive connotation-- freedom-- and twist its meaning to apply it to his particular brand of "you can and can't do this" philosophy. And that's WRONG of him. That's using a word incorrectly. It's not a matter of definitions; it's a matter of correct and incorrect.
If you have a difference of opinion, then you could of course email Stallman himself.
But why would I do that? Stallman is the source of the problem. He's made up his mind. He is lost, gone, as far as I'm concerned. The important people are the impressionable young Slashdot readers who might run across a "software should be free" rant and get the idea that piracy is okay, that copyright and other intellectual property rights are injust, and that it's okay to take software and music and movies without paying for them. Those are the people that I'm concerned with.
Now, let me explain specifically why RMS's ideas are (1) wrong, and (2) bad.
First, know that I make my living by writing and selling software. That is, I write it, and my company sells it. We don't sell support, or training, or services. We sell software, plain and simple. This should tell you something about my point of view.
Now, on to the argument. The following are points on which RMS and I do not see eye-to-eye.
I believe that personal gain is a perfectly legitimate motivation. Just like anything else, too much of it is a bad thing. But to the extent that one's actions don't violate any laws, social norms, or moral or ethical guidelines, acting in one's own best interest is entirely appropriate.
I believe that the creators of computer programs own their creations. This is no different than any other type of creation. If I weave a basket, I own that basket. If I bake some bread, I own that bread. If my friend and I build a house together, we own that house jointly, unless we agree to some other arrangement. And if I write a computer program, I own that program's source code.
I believe that the owner of a computer program has the right to sell it. Specifically, the owner has the right to require everybody who uses the program to give the owner some money in return. In that situation, the owner of the program is entitled to receive that amount of money from every person who uses the program.
I believe that, in the above situation, if a person uses the program without paying the owner, the user is stealing the use of that program from the owner. I believe that this is theft, plain and simple.
I believe that all of the aforementioned things are true in an absolute sense, despite any possible harmful effects that may be attributed to them. The doctrine of personal property naturally implies scarcity and inequity. That doesn't make it any less so. Any discussion of a world in which the doctrine of property does not govern men's affairs moves out of the applied and into the abstract, and so is outside the scope of my interest. In other words, there's a time and place for talking about how things should or could be, but in discussing matters of policy or normative guidelines of behavior, it's far more important to talk about how they are.
And finally, I believe that freedom (speaking of freedom for people, here, not freedom for inanimate objects or ideas) includes, as the Founders said, the rights of "life, liberty, and property." I can't accept any philosophy that opposes property rights but advocates freedom. That just doesn't make sense.
So it should be clear by now that RMS and I couldn't disagree much more than we do. If that were the extent of it, then everything would be fine, and I would simply try to ignore RMS as much as possible.
But that's not the extent of it. The more I read RMS's writings, the more I find that they have moved out of the realm of pure philosophy and into the arena of hard-core propaganda. Consider the first two paragraphs of "Why Software Should Not Have Owners."
Digital information technology contributes to the world by making it easier to copy and modify information. Computers promise to make this easier for all of us. Not everyone wants it to be easier. The system of copyright gives software programs ``owners'', most of whom aim to withhold software's potential benefit from the rest of the public. They would like to be the only ones who can copy and modify the software that we use.
Notice the use of language here. RMS carefully and deliberately establishes, at the very beginning of his essay, an "us-verus-them" situation. He describes owners-- notice his use of quotation marks, a subtle trick to discredit the term-- as being people who "aim to withhold software's potential benefit from the rest of the public." This kind of statement is wildly inaccurate and incomplete. It's also one tiny mustache away from being a great example of Godwin's Law. This is propaganda, plain and simple.
The rest of it carries on in the same vein-- ownership and property rights are inherently evil-- for page after page. Here's a particularly telling example from the same document:
All four practices [of the Software Publisher's Association] resemble those used in the former Soviet Union, where every copying machine had a guard to prevent forbidden copying, and where individuals had to copy information secretly and pass it from hand to hand as ``samizdat''.
RMS is quick to associate the Software Publisher's Association with totalitarianism and oppression. He uses this rhetorical technique time and time again in his writings to cast aspersions on his opponents by associating them with well-known evils. Here he associates the assertion of ownership rights with blasphemy:
The term ``creator'' as applied to authors implicitly compares them to a deity (``the creator''). The term is used by publishers to elevate the authors' moral stature above that of ordinary people, to justify increased copyright power that the publishers can exercise in the name of the authors.
This kind of rhetorical misdirection is found throughout RMS's published writings. When I see an author trying to persuade me emotionally rather than through reason or logic, it makes me suspicious.
So first, I disagree with RMS's ideas. Then, I am personally concerned by the tone and technique of his writings. But the last straw, for me, is what I consider to be the deliberate and calculated misapplication of the words "free" and "freedom."
RMS's definition of the term "free software" is so counter-intuitive and complex that it requires its own web page to define. It basically boils down like this: "free software," under RMS's definition, is quite thoroughly restricted in its use and distribution.
This is especially true of software like GNU Readline. Readline is a library; programmers are supposed to link the Readline library to their programs and call Readline functions from within their code. Readline is licensed under the GPL, and as such, any software that is linked to it must also be licensed under the GPL. (Note that this is distinctly different from the LGPL, although that license has serious restrictions as well.)
I have personal experience with this. Two years ago I was assigned the task of rewriting a large portion of one of my company's products to remove dependencies on Readline. The details of the GPL had not been sufficiently understood by our company's legal department, and approval had been given to use Readline in our program. Naturally we had no intention of releasing our software under the GPL, so we had no choice but to remove Readline from our program completely. This cost us a deadline, and several weeks of work.
These restrictions are carefully hidden under the banner "free software." Orwell could have taken lessons from RMS's use of newspeak here. "This license seriously restricts what you can and can't do with this program. We will therefore call it 'free.'"
The GPL is a software license, nothing more. And like all licenses, it gives the user of the software certain rights, and spells out certain restrictions. That's all it does. In the case of the GPL, the rights include things like, (in paraphrase) "You have the right to compile and run this software. You have the right to redistribute this software without changing it. You have the right to change this software without redistributing it." And so on. The restrictions are simpler: "You may not redistribute this software under another license."
How software licensed under the GPL is more "free" than other software is lost on me. I get more rights with GPL'd software than I do with some other software, but I get fewer rights than I would with BSD-licensed software. So how is it free?
That's where the doublethink comes in. See, the GPL restricts the rights of the user in order to preserve the "right" of the software itself to be "free."
In order to make that sentence work, you have to twist your definition of the words "right" and "free" so far that they're in danger of breaking. That's not right, and it's my biggest problem with RMS and his group.
This has gone on far too long, so I'll just stop here and sum up.
1. RMS and I do not agree on the basic assumptions of his philosophy.
2. RMS's writings are laced with rhetorical propaganda techniques that simply could not have crept in there by accident. This leads me to wonder why he chooses to resort to these techniques if he truly believes himself to be in the right, and to suspect that we might not know everything about his true agenda.
3. RMS's use of the word "free" to describe GPL-licensed software is deceptive. This blatant use of the word "free" in a misleading way really makes me angry.
All of these things, plus a few I didn't take the time to mention, have led me to hate RMS's beliefs, the GNU organization, and the Free Software Foundation, and to vocally oppose them.
I understand that very well, because I've come to the same conclusion. But that's exactly what I have the biggest problem with. Code is not a living thing. It is not entitled to freedom, in any sense of the word. The word "freedom" is meaningless when applied to an inanimate thing. When you say that an inanimate thing is "free," you're just misusing language to cloud your real message: that people-- real people, who count-- are being told what they can and can't do.
I have no problem, moral or otherwise, being told what I can and can't do. That's the world we live in. But I have a serious problem with people who tell me what I can't do, then claim that they're not telling me what I can't do, then try to take the moral high ground by throwing around words like "freedom."
Okay, I'll concede that point. But for myself, I have found NetInfo to be superior in terms of consistency and ease of use to NIS. Heaven knows the learning curve is shallower. Maybe I shouldn't generalize. For me, a person with about ten years' experience doing general UNIX system admin tasks and such, and with very little patience for poor or incomplete documentation, the learning curve was shallower for NetInfo than for NIS.
Calling it "freedom" when it's really just a different kind of restriction is a little bit of provocation, don't you think?
If the "free" software movement were to drop their misleading and inappropriate use of the word "free," I'd be much less opposed to the whole thing. As it is, I'll never pass up an opportunity to point out how hypocritical RMS and his followers are.
I don't want you to take this the wrong way; I have no beef against you personally-- or most anybody else, for that matter. So don't get all offended.
Whenever somebody says things like, ``rebellion against power'' and ``destruction of liberty,'' I just have to laugh. That kind of rhetoric makes it sound like we're talking about the Alien and Sedition Act, for crying out loud. Go crack a history book and absorb a little sense of perspective.
Human beings have the right to be free in their affairs, within limits set down by a just and legitimate government. Get that? Human beings. When RMS and his cadre of fanatics talk about how ``information should be free,'' they're exhibiting a deep confusion about what ``free'' really means.
The BSD guys got it right, and the Gnu guys got it wrong. When you pick up a piece of BSD-licensed software, the license basically says, ``you, the user of this software, are free to do whatever you want with it.'' But when you read the Gnu license, the message is clear: ``the software is free, but you, the user, are sorely restricted in what you can and can't do.'' And they have the sheer audacity to call that freedom!
It's doublethink, and it's wrong. If it weren't so obviously absurd, it would be dangerous.
If you want to take up a cause, look at Cuba. Look at North Korea. Look at China. Look at the places around the world where people are denied basic rights of personal and economic self-determination. Or look at the Middle East, where blowing up buses is actually considered a valid form of political resistance.
Take a look around you, and realize how good you actually have it. And then think, just for a minute, that maybe rebelling against the ideals on which this country, this culture, and this way of life are based might not be the best use of your time or energy.
What makes you think ``free'' software isn't under somebody's control? Every piece of software out there is under the control of the licensor. It's just that the GPL details an extremely specific sort of control, i.e., no unlicensed or differently licensed public derivative works.
But that point aside, I think it should have been pretty clear from context what I was talking about. Maybe I should have known better than to use a little figurative language on Slashdot, of all places.
They could sell both OS X and Mac hardware, or they could sell x86 clones that look really good.
Because companies that sell x86 clones that look really good go out of business. Quickly.
Look at SGI as an example. (No, they're not out of business.) They produced a series of absolutely 100% standard PCs called the 230 and 330. One or two PIII processors, AGP graphics by Nvidia, PCI slots, the whole bit. Sound little machines with high production quality and good-- if not perfect-- industrial design, and prices that weren't completely unreasonable. You could even order them on the web site!
Those machines were discontinued mere months after SGI released them, and SGI's product division responsible for them is long since disbanded.
Apple would turn out the same way. They're either release machines that are built very well with all the bits and pieces fully integrated into the system-- which nobody would buy because they're too expensive and not compatible-- or they'd release identical clones of everybody else's PCs that happen to have some cool plastics on the outside-- which nobody would buy because they're too expensive. In order to succeed, Apple would have to compromise their vision to produce cheap computers that everyone would buy. Move 'em to Round Rock and call 'em Dell, as far as that goes.
1. Apple at times seems rather militaristic about its intellectual property. Unless Apple gets a change in attitude, this will continue to piss off free software people.
I'm not sure if you intended this to have a positive or negative connotation, or any connotation at all. But in the interest of being fair, Apple came by their intellectual property the hard way: by tucking in and innovating the hell out of the personal computer. Every time Apple sends a cease-and-desist letter to some kid who posted an Aqua theme for windowmanager-you-like on the web, I let out a little cheer, because it means Apple still cares about doing it right.
Nobody wants to see one monopoly simply replaced with another.
I'm not sure you're right about this. I don't want to turn this into a political discussion (I do plenty of that elsewhere on Slashdot), but it seems to me that the most vocal ``free'' software advocates are pushing for just that: to replace the monopoly of commercial software with a monopoly of ``free'' software. When people like RMS say things like, ``software should be free,'' and ``intellectual property patents are bad,'' they're not speaking in specific or limited terms. They're being very general about it. I think the big ``free'' software advocates would love it if commercial software were to disappear in favor of their particular brand of open source software.
That's just my two cents, however.
As for myself, I love monopolies... as long as they're the right monopolies. The problem with the world is simply that we have all the wrong monopolies right now.
Either way the Mac doesn't care if the file system is Fat32, NTFS, HFS, HFS+, UFS...
Not quite. There's a lot of legacy Mac software out there that requires an HFS or HFS+ filesystem. Just the other day I was reading the ReadMe for Adobe InDesign, and while it works really well under OS X, you have to install it on an HFS or HFS+ partition. It requires resource forks to work properly. Most Mac software is like that.
So while the Mac technically doesn't care, the old apps still do.
I didn't mention the old ``just install the hard drive in the Mac'' trick for the precise reason you mentioned: it's a ``geek'' answer, not an ``average user'' answer. That doesn't mean it's not a legitimate (and, in most cases, most elegant) answer. Just means I didn't want to sound like I was telling people that they have to mess around inside their computers just to use their old files.
And I mostly agree with your sentiment that Apple isn't trying to get people to replace new PCs with new Macs... but I'm not 100% sure. If you look at the ads carefully, the theme is mostly the same, and it reads like country music: My PC done me wrong, so I use a Mac now. They talk about blue screens of death, lost papers, and horrible little machines. All true, of course.;-)
I think Apple's trying to pick the low-hanging fruit, but in a slightly different way than they ever have before. With the Switchers campaign, Apple's actively going after PC owners who are already fed up with their computers and who are looking for a way out.
I'm hard pressed to think of a reason why a cheap computer can't include one of Ethernet, AirPort, or CDRW. If you don't want to use a motherboard equipped with Ethernet, then bundle a $19 10BASE-T card, for crying out loud.
But the worst offender is the (late, unlamented) Compaq. My company bought a number of Compaq laptops, although I can't recall the model number we chose. The laptop includes an Ethernet port, but no Ethernet NIC. We spent hours trying to figure out why Windows wasn't seeing the network adapter. Finally, only a phone call to Compaq solved the mystery. They included the port, but it's not wired up to anything in the case.
A cheap computer without Ethernet is bad enough. A laptop without Ethernet is truly unbelievable.
You should check out Mac OS X Server sometime. It has really exceptional interfaces for managing things like the web server software; the UIs are a lot better than Microsoft's management UI from Windows 2000, and unlike IIS, OS X Server has pure Apache under the hood. You can either use the graphical manager (you will want to, once you see it) or the same command-line tools and config files you're accustomed to.
That's just one example. You really should check it out.
When the article says apples sells more "Unix" boxes than dell or hp does that not count linux boxes too ? Is this a misleading statistic
First of all, as lots of Slashdotters love to point out, Linux isn't UNIX. It's a UNIX-like operating system. Mac OS X, on the other hand, is UNIX all the way to the bone.
But more importantly, it's not a misleading statistic unless you choose to interpret it as such. Apple says they ship more computers with UNIX than any other vendor. (I haven't checked the facts here; I'm giving Apple the benefit of the doubt that this is true on its face.) Hardly anybody, in the grand scheme of things, ships computers with Linux on them. People buy computers with Windows on them and then add Linux, or remove Windows and install Linux. So those can't be counted as computers shipped with UNIX for at least two reasons.
Apple may or may not be correct; I think it's pretty darned likely that they did some homework before making such a bold statement, so I'm going to assume that they're correct. They're definitely not trying to be misleading.
A single button mac mouse is reason enough to avoid macs in general, at least for now.
Which is, of course, no reason at all. This has been beaten to death already, but you can buy any number of mult-button mice for your Mac, even straightfromtheAppleStore.
almost all users? Almost all windows users wouldn't know how to transfer their mp3 collection, office documents, favorite sites, etc, etc without a cd burner.
Which is why Apple published this handy ``How to Switch to a Mac'' page. Of course, it necessarily has to gloss over burning CDs on the PC, because there are so damn many different ways to do it. All Apple can do is say, ``Read the instructions that came with your PC.''
Of course, if you don't want to use CDs, you can just share your hard drive on your PC and mount it from your Mac over AirPort. Macs and PCs interoperate flawlessly over AirPort, and Mac OS X mounts Windows shares over the network without any third-party software required.
Don't have AirPort? Run an Ethernet cable between PC and Mac (either straight or crossover; the PC probably cares, but the Mac doesn't) and mount your PC's drive that way.
Don't have AirPort or Ethernet or a CD burner? I hear a lot of PCs, for reasons that are beyond me, still don't ship with any of those built in. Amazing! Well, in that case, you can buy or borrow an external FireWire hard drive to move your files over. Initialize it on the PC, copy your files to it, then just plug it right in to your Mac. Poof.
Oh, wait. Your PC probably doesn't have FireWire. That's okay. A USB drive will work just as well, but be prepared to wait a really long time.
Sounds to me like there are plenty of easy ways to move your files to the Mac. And I haven't even mentioned Move2Mac yet. I haven't seen it myself, but it's supposed to take the pain out of getting all your stuff out of the various Windows nooks and crannies and over to your new Mac.
That's kind of the Mac philosophy in a nutshell, with apologies to Larry Wall: there's more than one way to do it, and one of those ways is to just pay somebody else to do it for you.
As for me, is there any program to load a list of music videos? I use media player b/c I can make a playlist of my 600+ music video collection.
So use Windows Media Player for Mac OS X. I haven't used it myself, so I can't say whether it has the specific feature you want, but if that's what you're comfortable with, it's just a download away.
Are there open source versions to look at and play with?
You're kidding... right? Of course there aren't any open source versions. This isn't some graduate student's research project we're talking about here. This is extremely expensive commercial software that very big companies use to make very big movies. Inferno goes for about $650,000, new. The computer it runs on is six feet tall and draws more current than the average household dryer. This is serious stuff.
God, does nobody understand what ``FUD'' means? If I were slinging FUD, I'd mention the case from several months ago in which Apple had to remove various bits of code from the Darwin project because one of the contributors was under 18. Because he was a minor, he was legally unable to waive his copyright and other rights in submitting code to Apple. Apple had no choice but to reject his submissions-- actually backing out checked-in code, if I remember correctly-- because, in a few years when that kid hits majority, there would be nothing stopping him from suing Apple on a copyright or other IP rights infringement claim. And he'd win, too. Apple would have been using his code without his permission, since, as a minor, he was legally unable to give permission to them, no matter what he may have said or done.
Then there's the case of Tilly, from just this past spring. He did some work on some pretty important Perl modules while working for an employer with whom he had an inventions contract. In that case, Tilly had no right to waive the rights to his work, because they were never his to begin with. His employer owned the rights to everything he had done during his employment, which included some fairly well-known open source work.
The lesson from both of these instances is the same: you can't give away what you don't own. Because there's nobody out there double-checking the validity of programmer's claims when they GPL their code, there's no safety net at all to ensure that this sort of thing isn't happening every day. So, basically, unless somebody took the trouble to do a background check, there are no guarantees that any of that so-called ``free'' software is anything of the sort. Consider the odds-- of all the open source programmers in the world, how many of them are under 18, or are under contract to an employer? All that code-- or, rather, all your rights to use that code-- could disappear tomorrow, if the wind were to shift just a little bit. Is that something you're willing to bet your business on?
For me, the answer is yes. My company has a number of Linux file and application servers inside our firewalls, and everything outside is running one flavor or another of BSD. Once you get all the bugs worked out, you just can't beat the cost-effectiveness of Linux or BSD servers.
But on the desktop, the stuff just doesn't work. So we're a Windows shop all the way. At home, I value my time more than my money, so I only own Macs.
Still think I'm a turfer?
There's enough fear, uncertainty, and doubt surrounding ``free'' software as it is. I don't need to press the point, and I sure as hell don't get paid to do so.
I would happily take a job as an Apple astroturfer, however. I'd take that job in a heartbeat.
Maybe I wasn't clear. These are absolutely mainstream products now, and have been for several years. You can buy them on the open market any time you like.
The techniques you talk about in such breathless terms have been in commercial use for several years. Discreet's compositing software has a 3D tracker module that can infer three-dimensional relationships from moving video; it works pretty well under most circumstances. And there's an outfit called RealVis, I think, that can turn a scene or a series of stills into a fully textured 3D model with only minimal human interaction. They used the same basic technique on The Matrix, way back in '98, to build virtual sets for some specific special effects shots.
The only real limitations are contrast-- a computer couldn't isolate a polar bear in a snowstorm no matter how well lit and shot-- and field of view. If you don't shoot the back of the car, you can't see the back of the car. (I know that's kind of a ``duh,'' but you'd be surprised how many people don't get that at first.)
Unless one has access to the original film reel, it is unlikely that any sort of improvements could be made....
Film masters are treated with great respect for this very reason. Whole companies exist, like Technicolor and FotoKem, whose business revolves around storing original camera negatives. There's a FotoKem vault somewhere-- I don't know which one, exactly-- that holds the original camera negative for Gone With The Wind.
Of course, negatives can deteriorate over time even under the best of circumstances, but that's a different issue. Film restoration is a fairly well understood process these days, and more and more films are being digitally restored and archived as digital masters rather than film masters.
Even if the camera negative was lost, there would still be various prints-- interpositives, internegatives, and so on-- that could be used to reconstruct the film, albeit with some loss of quality. If, somehow, every film copy of a movie were to vanish, you could go back to the 1", 3/4", or D1 video master. The chance that you'd have to go all the way back to VHS videotape to restore a film is so close to zero as to be hardly worthy of consideration.
Always beware of a man who acts in the name of ``enlightenment'' or ``principle.'' He's either conning you, or deluding himself. Any person who acts contrary to his own self-interest-- particularly where business is concerned-- is either a liar, a fool, or a saint. Calculating the odds is left as an exercise for the reader.
If you would rather work for an ``enlightened'' company than a successful and profitable one, then by all means, get out. If you're a decent employee, I will happily consider re-hiring you in six months when you find that you can't put your kids through college working on your highly principled, highly enlightened, not-for-profit, eco-friendly, neo-collectivist software kibbutz.
well, i think anyone paying all that money for an iBook deserves more than that
All what money? You can get a very nice iBook for $1200. That's right in line with what other laptops cost. The iBook isn't particularly expensive at all.
Where in the article did it mention him indicating the end of Open Source? The warning statement was about the end of "Open Computing," and I believe he was referring to Digital Rights Management and other cryptographic technologies being built into the hardware and operating system.
I think you're reading too much into a paraphrase of a quotation that was taken out of context. I think the more likely explanation is that Gates was talking about the end of the largely-free Internet. Free information sites are dropping fast because they can't stay in business. Steve Jobs said pretty much the same thing last week during his Macworld keynote. And, of course, Microsoft has been following Apple's lead for years....
Slashdot Mirror
Goddammit, I'm getting VERY tired of the way every criticism is immediately labeled "FUD." FUD is a very specific meaning: fear, uncertainty, and doubt. There was no fear, uncertainty, or doubt in my post. Just criticism of what I consider a disturbingly misguided philosophy. If I were spouting FUD, I'd say something like, "Are you really sure you want to base your business on the work of a bunch of anti-business, anti-capitalist zealots who oppose property rights on principle and who would love nothing more than to establish a world in which nobody could own anything, and therefore everything (except the people, of course) could be 'free?'"
That would be FUD. My comments aren't FUD. They're just an opinion that differs (strongly) from yours.
Rather, he beleives quite strongly that software should be free.
And I believe, quite strongly, that software is an inanimate object, and as such, cannot be "free" in the sense that RMS uses the word. The very use of the word "free" (in the sense of "having liberty of self-determination") to apply to a thing or idea is deliberately misleading and wrong.
But RMS has defined what he considers free quite explicit.
I could define my butt as something that monkeys fly out of, too, but that wouldn't make it so. Basically what Stallman has done is to take a big word, rich in positive connotation-- freedom-- and twist its meaning to apply it to his particular brand of "you can and can't do this" philosophy. And that's WRONG of him. That's using a word incorrectly. It's not a matter of definitions; it's a matter of correct and incorrect.
If you have a difference of opinion, then you could of course email Stallman himself.
But why would I do that? Stallman is the source of the problem. He's made up his mind. He is lost, gone, as far as I'm concerned. The important people are the impressionable young Slashdot readers who might run across a "software should be free" rant and get the idea that piracy is okay, that copyright and other intellectual property rights are injust, and that it's okay to take software and music and movies without paying for them. Those are the people that I'm concerned with.
Now, let me explain specifically why RMS's ideas are (1) wrong, and (2) bad.
First, know that I make my living by writing and selling software. That is, I write it, and my company sells it. We don't sell support, or training, or services. We sell software, plain and simple. This should tell you something about my point of view.
Now, on to the argument. The following are points on which RMS and I do not see eye-to-eye.
I believe that personal gain is a perfectly legitimate motivation. Just like anything else, too much of it is a bad thing. But to the extent that one's actions don't violate any laws, social norms, or moral or ethical guidelines, acting in one's own best interest is entirely appropriate.
I believe that the creators of computer programs own their creations. This is no different than any other type of creation. If I weave a basket, I own that basket. If I bake some bread, I own that bread. If my friend and I build a house together, we own that house jointly, unless we agree to some other arrangement. And if I write a computer program, I own that program's source code.
I believe that the owner of a computer program has the right to sell it. Specifically, the owner has the right to require everybody who uses the program to give the owner some money in return. In that situation, the owner of the program is entitled to receive that amount of money from every person who uses the program.
I believe that, in the above situation, if a person uses the program without paying the owner, the user is stealing the use of that program from the owner. I believe that this is theft, plain and simple.
I believe that all of the aforementioned things are true in an absolute sense, despite any possible harmful effects that may be attributed to them. The doctrine of personal property naturally implies scarcity and inequity. That doesn't make it any less so. Any discussion of a world in which the doctrine of property does not govern men's affairs moves out of the applied and into the abstract, and so is outside the scope of my interest. In other words, there's a time and place for talking about how things should or could be, but in discussing matters of policy or normative guidelines of behavior, it's far more important to talk about how they are.
And finally, I believe that freedom (speaking of freedom for people, here, not freedom for inanimate objects or ideas) includes, as the Founders said, the rights of "life, liberty, and property." I can't accept any philosophy that opposes property rights but advocates freedom. That just doesn't make sense.
So it should be clear by now that RMS and I couldn't disagree much more than we do. If that were the extent of it, then everything would be fine, and I would simply try to ignore RMS as much as possible.
But that's not the extent of it. The more I read RMS's writings, the more I find that they have moved out of the realm of pure philosophy and into the arena of hard-core propaganda. Consider the first two paragraphs of "Why Software Should Not Have Owners."
Digital information technology contributes to the world by making it easier to copy and modify information. Computers promise to make this easier for all of us. Not everyone wants it to be easier. The system of copyright gives software programs ``owners'', most of whom aim to withhold software's potential benefit from the rest of the public. They would like to be the only ones who can copy and modify the software that we use.
Notice the use of language here. RMS carefully and deliberately establishes, at the very beginning of his essay, an "us-verus-them" situation. He describes owners-- notice his use of quotation marks, a subtle trick to discredit the term-- as being people who "aim to withhold software's potential benefit from the rest of the public." This kind of statement is wildly inaccurate and incomplete. It's also one tiny mustache away from being a great example of Godwin's Law. This is propaganda, plain and simple.
The rest of it carries on in the same vein-- ownership and property rights are inherently evil-- for page after page. Here's a particularly telling example from the same document:
All four practices [of the Software Publisher's Association] resemble those used in the former Soviet Union, where every copying machine had a guard to prevent forbidden copying, and where individuals had to copy information secretly and pass it from hand to hand as ``samizdat''.
RMS is quick to associate the Software Publisher's Association with totalitarianism and oppression. He uses this rhetorical technique time and time again in his writings to cast aspersions on his opponents by associating them with well-known evils. Here he associates the assertion of ownership rights with blasphemy:
The term ``creator'' as applied to authors implicitly compares them to a deity (``the creator''). The term is used by publishers to elevate the authors' moral stature above that of ordinary people, to justify increased copyright power that the publishers can exercise in the name of the authors.
This kind of rhetorical misdirection is found throughout RMS's published writings. When I see an author trying to persuade me emotionally rather than through reason or logic, it makes me suspicious.
So first, I disagree with RMS's ideas. Then, I am personally concerned by the tone and technique of his writings. But the last straw, for me, is what I consider to be the deliberate and calculated misapplication of the words "free" and "freedom."
RMS's definition of the term "free software" is so counter-intuitive and complex that it requires its own web page to define. It basically boils down like this: "free software," under RMS's definition, is quite thoroughly restricted in its use and distribution.
This is especially true of software like GNU Readline. Readline is a library; programmers are supposed to link the Readline library to their programs and call Readline functions from within their code. Readline is licensed under the GPL, and as such, any software that is linked to it must also be licensed under the GPL. (Note that this is distinctly different from the LGPL, although that license has serious restrictions as well.)
I have personal experience with this. Two years ago I was assigned the task of rewriting a large portion of one of my company's products to remove dependencies on Readline. The details of the GPL had not been sufficiently understood by our company's legal department, and approval had been given to use Readline in our program. Naturally we had no intention of releasing our software under the GPL, so we had no choice but to remove Readline from our program completely. This cost us a deadline, and several weeks of work.
These restrictions are carefully hidden under the banner "free software." Orwell could have taken lessons from RMS's use of newspeak here. "This license seriously restricts what you can and can't do with this program. We will therefore call it 'free.'"
The GPL is a software license, nothing more. And like all licenses, it gives the user of the software certain rights, and spells out certain restrictions. That's all it does. In the case of the GPL, the rights include things like, (in paraphrase) "You have the right to compile and run this software. You have the right to redistribute this software without changing it. You have the right to change this software without redistributing it." And so on. The restrictions are simpler: "You may not redistribute this software under another license."
How software licensed under the GPL is more "free" than other software is lost on me. I get more rights with GPL'd software than I do with some other software, but I get fewer rights than I would with BSD-licensed software. So how is it free?
That's where the doublethink comes in. See, the GPL restricts the rights of the user in order to preserve the "right" of the software itself to be "free."
In order to make that sentence work, you have to twist your definition of the words "right" and "free" so far that they're in danger of breaking. That's not right, and it's my biggest problem with RMS and his group.
This has gone on far too long, so I'll just stop here and sum up.
1. RMS and I do not agree on the basic assumptions of his philosophy.
2. RMS's writings are laced with rhetorical propaganda techniques that simply could not have crept in there by accident. This leads me to wonder why he chooses to resort to these techniques if he truly believes himself to be in the right, and to suspect that we might not know everything about his true agenda.
3. RMS's use of the word "free" to describe GPL-licensed software is deceptive. This blatant use of the word "free" in a misleading way really makes me angry.
All of these things, plus a few I didn't take the time to mention, have led me to hate RMS's beliefs, the GNU organization, and the Free Software Foundation, and to vocally oppose them.
(Now I sit back and watch my karma evaporate.)
I understand that very well, because I've come to the same conclusion. But that's exactly what I have the biggest problem with. Code is not a living thing. It is not entitled to freedom, in any sense of the word. The word "freedom" is meaningless when applied to an inanimate thing. When you say that an inanimate thing is "free," you're just misusing language to cloud your real message: that people-- real people, who count-- are being told what they can and can't do.
I have no problem, moral or otherwise, being told what I can and can't do. That's the world we live in. But I have a serious problem with people who tell me what I can't do, then claim that they're not telling me what I can't do, then try to take the moral high ground by throwing around words like "freedom."
Okay, I'll concede that point. But for myself, I have found NetInfo to be superior in terms of consistency and ease of use to NIS. Heaven knows the learning curve is shallower. Maybe I shouldn't generalize. For me, a person with about ten years' experience doing general UNIX system admin tasks and such, and with very little patience for poor or incomplete documentation, the learning curve was shallower for NetInfo than for NIS.
Calling it "freedom" when it's really just a different kind of restriction is a little bit of provocation, don't you think?
If the "free" software movement were to drop their misleading and inappropriate use of the word "free," I'd be much less opposed to the whole thing. As it is, I'll never pass up an opportunity to point out how hypocritical RMS and his followers are.
Ok, just so nobody patents it: Slashdot hereby provides prior art for putting an ad behind semi-transparent content.
I'm not 100% sure, but I believe it has to be on purpose to qualify as prior art.
I don't want you to take this the wrong way; I have no beef against you personally-- or most anybody else, for that matter. So don't get all offended.
Whenever somebody says things like, ``rebellion against power'' and ``destruction of liberty,'' I just have to laugh. That kind of rhetoric makes it sound like we're talking about the Alien and Sedition Act, for crying out loud. Go crack a history book and absorb a little sense of perspective.
Human beings have the right to be free in their affairs, within limits set down by a just and legitimate government. Get that? Human beings. When RMS and his cadre of fanatics talk about how ``information should be free,'' they're exhibiting a deep confusion about what ``free'' really means.
The BSD guys got it right, and the Gnu guys got it wrong. When you pick up a piece of BSD-licensed software, the license basically says, ``you, the user of this software, are free to do whatever you want with it.'' But when you read the Gnu license, the message is clear: ``the software is free, but you, the user, are sorely restricted in what you can and can't do.'' And they have the sheer audacity to call that freedom!
It's doublethink, and it's wrong. If it weren't so obviously absurd, it would be dangerous.
If you want to take up a cause, look at Cuba. Look at North Korea. Look at China. Look at the places around the world where people are denied basic rights of personal and economic self-determination. Or look at the Middle East, where blowing up buses is actually considered a valid form of political resistance.
Take a look around you, and realize how good you actually have it. And then think, just for a minute, that maybe rebelling against the ideals on which this country, this culture, and this way of life are based might not be the best use of your time or energy.
What makes you think ``free'' software isn't under somebody's control? Every piece of software out there is under the control of the licensor. It's just that the GPL details an extremely specific sort of control, i.e., no unlicensed or differently licensed public derivative works.
But that point aside, I think it should have been pretty clear from context what I was talking about. Maybe I should have known better than to use a little figurative language on Slashdot, of all places.
They could sell both OS X and Mac hardware, or they could sell x86 clones that look really good.
Because companies that sell x86 clones that look really good go out of business. Quickly.
Look at SGI as an example. (No, they're not out of business.) They produced a series of absolutely 100% standard PCs called the 230 and 330. One or two PIII processors, AGP graphics by Nvidia, PCI slots, the whole bit. Sound little machines with high production quality and good-- if not perfect-- industrial design, and prices that weren't completely unreasonable. You could even order them on the web site!
Those machines were discontinued mere months after SGI released them, and SGI's product division responsible for them is long since disbanded.
Apple would turn out the same way. They're either release machines that are built very well with all the bits and pieces fully integrated into the system-- which nobody would buy because they're too expensive and not compatible-- or they'd release identical clones of everybody else's PCs that happen to have some cool plastics on the outside-- which nobody would buy because they're too expensive. In order to succeed, Apple would have to compromise their vision to produce cheap computers that everyone would buy. Move 'em to Round Rock and call 'em Dell, as far as that goes.
1. Apple at times seems rather militaristic about its intellectual property. Unless Apple gets a change in attitude, this will continue to piss off free software people.
I'm not sure if you intended this to have a positive or negative connotation, or any connotation at all. But in the interest of being fair, Apple came by their intellectual property the hard way: by tucking in and innovating the hell out of the personal computer. Every time Apple sends a cease-and-desist letter to some kid who posted an Aqua theme for windowmanager-you-like on the web, I let out a little cheer, because it means Apple still cares about doing it right.
Nobody wants to see one monopoly simply replaced with another.
I'm not sure you're right about this. I don't want to turn this into a political discussion (I do plenty of that elsewhere on Slashdot), but it seems to me that the most vocal ``free'' software advocates are pushing for just that: to replace the monopoly of commercial software with a monopoly of ``free'' software. When people like RMS say things like, ``software should be free,'' and ``intellectual property patents are bad,'' they're not speaking in specific or limited terms. They're being very general about it. I think the big ``free'' software advocates would love it if commercial software were to disappear in favor of their particular brand of open source software.
That's just my two cents, however.
As for myself, I love monopolies... as long as they're the right monopolies. The problem with the world is simply that we have all the wrong monopolies right now.
Either way the Mac doesn't care if the file system is Fat32, NTFS, HFS, HFS+, UFS...
Not quite. There's a lot of legacy Mac software out there that requires an HFS or HFS+ filesystem. Just the other day I was reading the ReadMe for Adobe InDesign, and while it works really well under OS X, you have to install it on an HFS or HFS+ partition. It requires resource forks to work properly. Most Mac software is like that.
So while the Mac technically doesn't care, the old apps still do.
i don't know of Apple could make and sell a $399 machine, if they could i think they would.
Ah, but they do.
I didn't mention the old ``just install the hard drive in the Mac'' trick for the precise reason you mentioned: it's a ``geek'' answer, not an ``average user'' answer. That doesn't mean it's not a legitimate (and, in most cases, most elegant) answer. Just means I didn't want to sound like I was telling people that they have to mess around inside their computers just to use their old files.
;-)
And I mostly agree with your sentiment that Apple isn't trying to get people to replace new PCs with new Macs... but I'm not 100% sure. If you look at the ads carefully, the theme is mostly the same, and it reads like country music: My PC done me wrong, so I use a Mac now. They talk about blue screens of death, lost papers, and horrible little machines. All true, of course.
I think Apple's trying to pick the low-hanging fruit, but in a slightly different way than they ever have before. With the Switchers campaign, Apple's actively going after PC owners who are already fed up with their computers and who are looking for a way out.
I'm hard pressed to think of a reason why a cheap computer can't include one of Ethernet, AirPort, or CDRW. If you don't want to use a motherboard equipped with Ethernet, then bundle a $19 10BASE-T card, for crying out loud.
But the worst offender is the (late, unlamented) Compaq. My company bought a number of Compaq laptops, although I can't recall the model number we chose. The laptop includes an Ethernet port, but no Ethernet NIC. We spent hours trying to figure out why Windows wasn't seeing the network adapter. Finally, only a phone call to Compaq solved the mystery. They included the port, but it's not wired up to anything in the case.
A cheap computer without Ethernet is bad enough. A laptop without Ethernet is truly unbelievable.
You should check out Mac OS X Server sometime. It has really exceptional interfaces for managing things like the web server software; the UIs are a lot better than Microsoft's management UI from Windows 2000, and unlike IIS, OS X Server has pure Apache under the hood. You can either use the graphical manager (you will want to, once you see it) or the same command-line tools and config files you're accustomed to.
That's just one example. You really should check it out.
When the article says apples sells more "Unix" boxes than dell or hp does that not count linux boxes too ? Is this a misleading statistic
First of all, as lots of Slashdotters love to point out, Linux isn't UNIX. It's a UNIX-like operating system. Mac OS X, on the other hand, is UNIX all the way to the bone.
But more importantly, it's not a misleading statistic unless you choose to interpret it as such. Apple says they ship more computers with UNIX than any other vendor. (I haven't checked the facts here; I'm giving Apple the benefit of the doubt that this is true on its face.) Hardly anybody, in the grand scheme of things, ships computers with Linux on them. People buy computers with Windows on them and then add Linux, or remove Windows and install Linux. So those can't be counted as computers shipped with UNIX for at least two reasons.
Apple may or may not be correct; I think it's pretty darned likely that they did some homework before making such a bold statement, so I'm going to assume that they're correct. They're definitely not trying to be misleading.
A single button mac mouse is reason enough to avoid macs in general, at least for now.
Which is, of course, no reason at all. This has been beaten to death already, but you can buy any number of mult-button mice for your Mac, even straight from the Apple Store.
almost all users? Almost all windows users wouldn't know how to transfer their mp3 collection, office documents, favorite sites, etc, etc without a cd burner.
Which is why Apple published this handy ``How to Switch to a Mac'' page. Of course, it necessarily has to gloss over burning CDs on the PC, because there are so damn many different ways to do it. All Apple can do is say, ``Read the instructions that came with your PC.''
Of course, if you don't want to use CDs, you can just share your hard drive on your PC and mount it from your Mac over AirPort. Macs and PCs interoperate flawlessly over AirPort, and Mac OS X mounts Windows shares over the network without any third-party software required.
Don't have AirPort? Run an Ethernet cable between PC and Mac (either straight or crossover; the PC probably cares, but the Mac doesn't) and mount your PC's drive that way.
Don't have AirPort or Ethernet or a CD burner? I hear a lot of PCs, for reasons that are beyond me, still don't ship with any of those built in. Amazing! Well, in that case, you can buy or borrow an external FireWire hard drive to move your files over. Initialize it on the PC, copy your files to it, then just plug it right in to your Mac. Poof.
Oh, wait. Your PC probably doesn't have FireWire. That's okay. A USB drive will work just as well, but be prepared to wait a really long time.
Sounds to me like there are plenty of easy ways to move your files to the Mac. And I haven't even mentioned Move2Mac yet. I haven't seen it myself, but it's supposed to take the pain out of getting all your stuff out of the various Windows nooks and crannies and over to your new Mac.
That's kind of the Mac philosophy in a nutshell, with apologies to Larry Wall: there's more than one way to do it, and one of those ways is to just pay somebody else to do it for you.
As for me, is there any program to load a list of music videos? I use media player b/c I can make a playlist of my 600+ music video collection.
So use Windows Media Player for Mac OS X. I haven't used it myself, so I can't say whether it has the specific feature you want, but if that's what you're comfortable with, it's just a download away.
Are there open source versions to look at and play with?
You're kidding... right? Of course there aren't any open source versions. This isn't some graduate student's research project we're talking about here. This is extremely expensive commercial software that very big companies use to make very big movies. Inferno goes for about $650,000, new. The computer it runs on is six feet tall and draws more current than the average household dryer. This is serious stuff.
God, does nobody understand what ``FUD'' means? If I were slinging FUD, I'd mention the case from several months ago in which Apple had to remove various bits of code from the Darwin project because one of the contributors was under 18. Because he was a minor, he was legally unable to waive his copyright and other rights in submitting code to Apple. Apple had no choice but to reject his submissions-- actually backing out checked-in code, if I remember correctly-- because, in a few years when that kid hits majority, there would be nothing stopping him from suing Apple on a copyright or other IP rights infringement claim. And he'd win, too. Apple would have been using his code without his permission, since, as a minor, he was legally unable to give permission to them, no matter what he may have said or done.
Then there's the case of Tilly, from just this past spring. He did some work on some pretty important Perl modules while working for an employer with whom he had an inventions contract. In that case, Tilly had no right to waive the rights to his work, because they were never his to begin with. His employer owned the rights to everything he had done during his employment, which included some fairly well-known open source work.
The lesson from both of these instances is the same: you can't give away what you don't own. Because there's nobody out there double-checking the validity of programmer's claims when they GPL their code, there's no safety net at all to ensure that this sort of thing isn't happening every day. So, basically, unless somebody took the trouble to do a background check, there are no guarantees that any of that so-called ``free'' software is anything of the sort. Consider the odds-- of all the open source programmers in the world, how many of them are under 18, or are under contract to an employer? All that code-- or, rather, all your rights to use that code-- could disappear tomorrow, if the wind were to shift just a little bit. Is that something you're willing to bet your business on?
For me, the answer is yes. My company has a number of Linux file and application servers inside our firewalls, and everything outside is running one flavor or another of BSD. Once you get all the bugs worked out, you just can't beat the cost-effectiveness of Linux or BSD servers.
But on the desktop, the stuff just doesn't work. So we're a Windows shop all the way. At home, I value my time more than my money, so I only own Macs.
Still think I'm a turfer?
There's enough fear, uncertainty, and doubt surrounding ``free'' software as it is. I don't need to press the point, and I sure as hell don't get paid to do so.
I would happily take a job as an Apple astroturfer, however. I'd take that job in a heartbeat.
Maybe I wasn't clear. These are absolutely mainstream products now, and have been for several years. You can buy them on the open market any time you like.
The techniques you talk about in such breathless terms have been in commercial use for several years. Discreet's compositing software has a 3D tracker module that can infer three-dimensional relationships from moving video; it works pretty well under most circumstances. And there's an outfit called RealVis, I think, that can turn a scene or a series of stills into a fully textured 3D model with only minimal human interaction. They used the same basic technique on The Matrix, way back in '98, to build virtual sets for some specific special effects shots.
The only real limitations are contrast-- a computer couldn't isolate a polar bear in a snowstorm no matter how well lit and shot-- and field of view. If you don't shoot the back of the car, you can't see the back of the car. (I know that's kind of a ``duh,'' but you'd be surprised how many people don't get that at first.)
Unless one has access to the original film reel, it is unlikely that any sort of improvements could be made....
Film masters are treated with great respect for this very reason. Whole companies exist, like Technicolor and FotoKem, whose business revolves around storing original camera negatives. There's a FotoKem vault somewhere-- I don't know which one, exactly-- that holds the original camera negative for Gone With The Wind.
Of course, negatives can deteriorate over time even under the best of circumstances, but that's a different issue. Film restoration is a fairly well understood process these days, and more and more films are being digitally restored and archived as digital masters rather than film masters.
Even if the camera negative was lost, there would still be various prints-- interpositives, internegatives, and so on-- that could be used to reconstruct the film, albeit with some loss of quality. If, somehow, every film copy of a movie were to vanish, you could go back to the 1", 3/4", or D1 video master. The chance that you'd have to go all the way back to VHS videotape to restore a film is so close to zero as to be hardly worthy of consideration.
Always beware of a man who acts in the name of ``enlightenment'' or ``principle.'' He's either conning you, or deluding himself. Any person who acts contrary to his own self-interest-- particularly where business is concerned-- is either a liar, a fool, or a saint. Calculating the odds is left as an exercise for the reader.
If you would rather work for an ``enlightened'' company than a successful and profitable one, then by all means, get out. If you're a decent employee, I will happily consider re-hiring you in six months when you find that you can't put your kids through college working on your highly principled, highly enlightened, not-for-profit, eco-friendly, neo-collectivist software kibbutz.
well, i think anyone paying all that money for an iBook deserves more than that
All what money? You can get a very nice iBook for $1200. That's right in line with what other laptops cost. The iBook isn't particularly expensive at all.
Where in the article did it mention him indicating the end of Open Source? The warning statement was about the end of "Open Computing," and I believe he was referring to Digital Rights Management and other cryptographic technologies being built into the hardware and operating system.
I think you're reading too much into a paraphrase of a quotation that was taken out of context. I think the more likely explanation is that Gates was talking about the end of the largely-free Internet. Free information sites are dropping fast because they can't stay in business. Steve Jobs said pretty much the same thing last week during his Macworld keynote. And, of course, Microsoft has been following Apple's lead for years....