That's just plain stupid. First, the law says nothing about "standards" It says "Open" formats. Not "standard" ones. Second, MS isn't charging any fee, and the license they are issuing them under is perpetual.
Why don't you just stop making things up. You won't sound so ridiculous.
You don't appear to know what you're talking about. DRM is a feature that is optional, and is, by its very nature proprietary. You don't like it, don't use it. There won't be any DRM tags in your XML.
Except that the phrase "propritary extensions to XML" is meaningless. How exactly do you (or anyone) plan for XML to be extended? Microsoft has certainly made no effort to do so.
Now, they *MIGHT* have meant "Propritary DTD's or Schema's" but that's something entirely different than extending XML itself.
Still, MS has mde it's formats open, and licensed under a royalty free and non-discriminatory license similar to licenses that are approved by other standards bodies such as OASIS, ISO, and the ECMA.
They may not be "open enough" for strict "Free Software" pundits, but it's certainly not "proprietary".
Umm.. I don't believe the term "Open Office" in the article means OpenOffice.org, I beleive it means Open (office documents) not (open office) documents.
Office 12 is going to save to XML by default anyways, so I don't see how this is "dumping" Office.
So, because you have no need for most of the features of a given program, that makes you an expert on those features for everyone else?
You're like one of those people that say "Nobody needs one of them newfangled Auto-mo-beels. A good old horse and cart is good enough for me, so nobody else should need anything more either".
The usual argument is that people only use about 10% (if that) of the features of a big suite, but the problem is that it's a different 10% for everyone.
Indeed. Most people don't have the familiarity with the law that you do, and simply would not know what to do, or even HOW to file a 50 page legal brief (much less dozens of them). Further, you have to consider the other expenses, including time taken off of work to defend the case, etc..
However, even if you do ALL that, and it still goes to court, you're still going to be dealing with a judge who likely doesn't understand technology and will treat an open AP as the same thing as an open swimming pool or something where someone is hurt or killed, YOU would be considered responsible because you allowed people to use it.
What's more, the more technical knowledge you display in defending yourself, the more it will count against you that you SHOULD Have known better.
Indeed, you probably could win a lawsuit against the MPAA if you really wanted to. But it would probably cost you a lot more than they offer to "settle" with you for. Probably 2-3x as much, if not more.
While it's true that many of the trackers were hosted off site, there's also the fact that the website itself monitored the trackers (so you could see how many seeders, leechers, etc..) and this information may well have been logged as well. In fact, they could have very well been logging everything the tracker knew.
I'm just saying, don't assume they don't have that information. It's quite possible, they do.
While it's true that the http logs only show that you downloaded a torrent, they also kept tracker logs as well. They know exactly how many bytes you downloaded, whether you "finished" the file, etc.. (that is, unless you were using a client that didn't accurately report that information).
It would help if you considered the comments in the context of what they were written.
When I said "It's not free" it was in response to someone implying that google is providing a free search engine out of the goodness of their heart.
I fully expect them to make money, and that's good. I just have issue with people claiming that because they offer a free service to their visitors, this is some kind of sainthood. No, they are getting paid to do it. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's not the unselfish act it's being made out to be.
This is like claiming that broadcast television is saintly because they offer you a service free of charge as well.
No, I don't work for Yahoo, or any search engine provider. I work in the government space.
I'm not arguing that any of these things are bad for consumers at all. I'm just saying that the arguments you and others are making are stupid.
First it's "Wake when Google is a monopoly" so I point out how they nearly weild monopoly power so it's changed to "Wake me when they abuse their monopoply and leverage their products to gain entry into other markets" so I point out how they ARE in fact tying their products to gain leverage in other markets. Then it's "But that's not a bad thing", which I never said it was.
The point was that YOU set the bar for "evil behavior" and when it turns out that Google meets that behavior, you suddently want to change the bar.
Google isn't providing a free service. Their service is paid for by advertising revenue. Part of what makes advertising with them so attractive is that the users don't pay anything, so they are not losing those people that won't pay for the service (magazines, cable, etc..).
But, google is not providing their search engine out of the goodness of their hearts. They're paid for it.
No, the GPL is a mechanism that attempts to ensure that all software covered by it is Free. One such mechanism is binary distribution, but the GPL was written 20 years ago before the distribution mechanisms changed.
The GPL is not about binary files, and in fact covers the software itself, including the source code. It just happens to have a clause in it about binary file distribution as well.
Tell me, what's the difference between distributing a binary file, with an API to access it and distributing an API to access a web service? Not much, other than an internet RPC call is made rather than a shared library call.
The spirit of the GPL is that, if you give someone access to a GPL'd bit of code to USE, they have the right to see the code, modify the code, and redistribute the code. Google isn't doing that.
Google is certainly using "tying" to enter other markets. For example, they're using their massive internet search engine service to get a foothold on the desktop search market. By tying Google Desktop Search into their WWW search, they gain an unfair advantage in this fledgling market space.
Again, it happens to be a good advantage that people want, but you can't say they aren't leveraging their search engine business to gain desktop market share.
Also, what about that GDS database on your local computer? Is that using an open format? Can I migrate that to another desktop search tool if I want? Can i get access to it to build other tools to benefit from it? No. That's vendor lock-in.
Face it, Google is starting to use some of the same tactics as Microsoft. You may *LIKE* what they're doing, but that doesn't change the fact that they're using them.
That's just it. They *ARE* distributing it, just not in the traditional way. They're distributing it as a "service" rather than as a binary. Yes, it's legal. No, it's not in the spirit of the GPL.
Once again, being a monopoly doesn't mean you're the only one, or even that you have > 50% of the market. It just means you have *CONTROL* of the market, something that as I said, google is getting damn close to.
Even so, > 90% of the searches to the sites I control come from google. I don't believe those statistics are THAT accurate. I think the "power searchers" use google, which means > 90% of the searches (not just the users) are done by google. THAT is power.
Look, I didn't mean to belittle the works you HAVE released. I'm sorry about that.
What I meant was that you have benefitted greatly from open source. Your entire operation runs on code derived from open source, yet you have released next to nothing of that derived code back into the open source community.
The core code you use to run your operation, not tangential code used in side projects. You've released *NOTHING* that can be used to challenge your search engine dominance.
Also, much of the stuff you have released has been things like API's, which are merely stubs to access open source derived code being distributed as a service.
Why aren't you releasing GDS as open source? Why aren't you releasing Google toolbar as open source? That's my point.
I don't misunderstand the GPL at all. And that's why I said "violating the spirit" rather than "violating".
Google is distributing their software as a service, rather than as a binary. This is just as opaque as distributing a binary and violates the basic principles behind the GPL. No, it doesn't violate the *LETTER* of the GPL, and that's because the GPL was written long before "software as a service" was really an issue.
Google is doing everything legal. There is no doubt about that (at least as far as we know), but that doesn't mean they're not doing things wrong ethically.
That's not the only barrier to entry. You also have to have content WORTH changing the bookmark for. And that isn't cheap (as Microsoft has found out).
Changing your OS to Linux is free as well, and using Open Office is free, but yet Microsoft still has a monopoly. The cost for the consumer (or even ease for the consumer) is irrelevant.
Hmm.. Actually, Google is pretty close to having a monopoly on search engine services. Remember, you don't have to be the only provider to have a monopoly, you just have to weild "monopoly power", that is the ability to control the market, and I think Google is getting damn close to that.
As for "support for open source" wake when they have a Linux "Desktop Search", or Linux "google deskbar" or any of a number of other technologies they implement on Windows (and don't give source code away for). Yes, *USE* open source, and they occasional do something to give back, but this has been pretty pathetic so far, considering all the benefit they've gained from Open Source without having to release their changes.
In fact, one could say that google is violating the spirit of the GPL. They're "distributing" their software via a web server, but nobody gets to see the code behind the scenens, improve it, or fix bugs, or anything else.
Personally, I don't believe that Microsoft has a real monopoly. I think they have a "Monopoly by default". If and when Linux (or MacOS now that it will be on x86) can provide what consumers are looking for, I think Linux will gain enough market share that this will not be the case any longer.
Lots of people find Linux "good enough" to replace (or even better than) Windows, but not yet enough to make a major dent. You might argue that this is because consumers don't know about Linux, but I would disagree. For Linux to be a complete solution, it has to include commercial applications, and so far that's been rare.
Wine doesn't really cut it either, since that's still an imperfect solution that sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. Besides, that's just like keeping Windows around anyways. Linux should be able to stand on its own.
Whenever someone doubts you, you go on the conspiracy theory front line. You owe me a serious appology on this, and you need to take a chill pill and stop accusing everyone around you of trying to deceive you.
While my slashdot ID is not as old as yours, it's certainly not new. I've been posting here for a good 5 or 6 years, and my posting history has never had ANYTHING to do with Mambo. In fact, this is the first i've even mentioned it.
The address I posted to the Opensourcematters board from is in a netblock that has nothing to do with the Mambo Foundation, and I would be highly surprised if anyone from the Mambo Foundation were even in the same state as me, much less using the same IP address (which is NAT'd by the way).
You're welcome to post the logs of both my ip address, and the IP address of whomever you think I am to prove your argument, otherwise give me an appology. You're full of shit.
From what I have read, this is not true. Apparently the developers that were members of the Mambo Steering Comittee voted in favor of the creation of the foundation. They just didn't like the way it was set up.
The community is the one that actually ASKED miro to create the foundation. So claiming there was no input is doesn't seem to be accurate.
Further, from what I have read, not all members of the board were Miro employees. Only a few of them were. There were people from the community who were not developers, as well as several developers who claimed they weren't even asked (though it wouldn't surprise me if they simply changed their minds after the brouhaha started and didn't want to be villified, but in any case they WERE appointed).
Sorry but the core devs and the code they create are the project.
You're right. So what? That doesn't have anything to do with a community that has no legal protection or has any legal status at all.
And, as you point out, it *IS* GPL'd. If *I* want to create a foundation for Mambo, even though I'm not involved in any way, I can. I can take the code and create my own project. The devs are not the sole owners of it, everyone is.
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That's just plain stupid. First, the law says nothing about "standards" It says "Open" formats. Not "standard" ones. Second, MS isn't charging any fee, and the license they are issuing them under is perpetual.
Why don't you just stop making things up. You won't sound so ridiculous.
You don't appear to know what you're talking about. DRM is a feature that is optional, and is, by its very nature proprietary. You don't like it, don't use it. There won't be any DRM tags in your XML.
Problem solved.
Except that the phrase "propritary extensions to XML" is meaningless. How exactly do you (or anyone) plan for XML to be extended? Microsoft has certainly made no effort to do so.
Now, they *MIGHT* have meant "Propritary DTD's or Schema's" but that's something entirely different than extending XML itself.
Still, MS has mde it's formats open, and licensed under a royalty free and non-discriminatory license similar to licenses that are approved by other standards bodies such as OASIS, ISO, and the ECMA.
They may not be "open enough" for strict "Free Software" pundits, but it's certainly not "proprietary".
Umm.. I don't believe the term "Open Office" in the article means OpenOffice.org, I beleive it means Open (office documents) not (open office) documents.
Office 12 is going to save to XML by default anyways, so I don't see how this is "dumping" Office.
Given NASA's track record, isn't it sort of inviting disaster to name your spacecraft "Phoenix"?
Who wants to be it explodes on entry.
So, because you have no need for most of the features of a given program, that makes you an expert on those features for everyone else?
You're like one of those people that say "Nobody needs one of them newfangled Auto-mo-beels. A good old horse and cart is good enough for me, so nobody else should need anything more either".
The usual argument is that people only use about 10% (if that) of the features of a big suite, but the problem is that it's a different 10% for everyone.
Indeed. Most people don't have the familiarity with the law that you do, and simply would not know what to do, or even HOW to file a 50 page legal brief (much less dozens of them). Further, you have to consider the other expenses, including time taken off of work to defend the case, etc..
However, even if you do ALL that, and it still goes to court, you're still going to be dealing with a judge who likely doesn't understand technology and will treat an open AP as the same thing as an open swimming pool or something where someone is hurt or killed, YOU would be considered responsible because you allowed people to use it.
What's more, the more technical knowledge you display in defending yourself, the more it will count against you that you SHOULD Have known better.
Indeed, you probably could win a lawsuit against the MPAA if you really wanted to. But it would probably cost you a lot more than they offer to "settle" with you for. Probably 2-3x as much, if not more.
While it's true that many of the trackers were hosted off site, there's also the fact that the website itself monitored the trackers (so you could see how many seeders, leechers, etc..) and this information may well have been logged as well. In fact, they could have very well been logging everything the tracker knew.
I'm just saying, don't assume they don't have that information. It's quite possible, they do.
While it's true that the http logs only show that you downloaded a torrent, they also kept tracker logs as well. They know exactly how many bytes you downloaded, whether you "finished" the file, etc.. (that is, unless you were using a client that didn't accurately report that information).
It would help if you considered the comments in the context of what they were written.
When I said "It's not free" it was in response to someone implying that google is providing a free search engine out of the goodness of their heart.
I fully expect them to make money, and that's good. I just have issue with people claiming that because they offer a free service to their visitors, this is some kind of sainthood. No, they are getting paid to do it. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's not the unselfish act it's being made out to be.
This is like claiming that broadcast television is saintly because they offer you a service free of charge as well.
No, I don't work for Yahoo, or any search engine provider. I work in the government space.
I'm not arguing that any of these things are bad for consumers at all. I'm just saying that the arguments you and others are making are stupid.
First it's "Wake when Google is a monopoly" so I point out how they nearly weild monopoly power so it's changed to "Wake me when they abuse their monopoply and leverage their products to gain entry into other markets" so I point out how they ARE in fact tying their products to gain leverage in other markets. Then it's "But that's not a bad thing", which I never said it was.
The point was that YOU set the bar for "evil behavior" and when it turns out that Google meets that behavior, you suddently want to change the bar.
Google isn't providing a free service. Their service is paid for by advertising revenue. Part of what makes advertising with them so attractive is that the users don't pay anything, so they are not losing those people that won't pay for the service (magazines, cable, etc..).
But, google is not providing their search engine out of the goodness of their hearts. They're paid for it.
No, the GPL is a mechanism that attempts to ensure that all software covered by it is Free. One such mechanism is binary distribution, but the GPL was written 20 years ago before the distribution mechanisms changed.
The GPL is not about binary files, and in fact covers the software itself, including the source code. It just happens to have a clause in it about binary file distribution as well.
Tell me, what's the difference between distributing a binary file, with an API to access it and distributing an API to access a web service? Not much, other than an internet RPC call is made rather than a shared library call.
The spirit of the GPL is that, if you give someone access to a GPL'd bit of code to USE, they have the right to see the code, modify the code, and redistribute the code. Google isn't doing that.
Google is certainly using "tying" to enter other markets. For example, they're using their massive internet search engine service to get a foothold on the desktop search market. By tying Google Desktop Search into their WWW search, they gain an unfair advantage in this fledgling market space.
Again, it happens to be a good advantage that people want, but you can't say they aren't leveraging their search engine business to gain desktop market share.
Also, what about that GDS database on your local computer? Is that using an open format? Can I migrate that to another desktop search tool if I want? Can i get access to it to build other tools to benefit from it? No. That's vendor lock-in.
Face it, Google is starting to use some of the same tactics as Microsoft. You may *LIKE* what they're doing, but that doesn't change the fact that they're using them.
That's just it. They *ARE* distributing it, just not in the traditional way. They're distributing it as a "service" rather than as a binary. Yes, it's legal. No, it's not in the spirit of the GPL.
Once again, being a monopoly doesn't mean you're the only one, or even that you have > 50% of the market. It just means you have *CONTROL* of the market, something that as I said, google is getting damn close to.
Even so, > 90% of the searches to the sites I control come from google. I don't believe those statistics are THAT accurate. I think the "power searchers" use google, which means > 90% of the searches (not just the users) are done by google. THAT is power.
Look, I didn't mean to belittle the works you HAVE released. I'm sorry about that.
What I meant was that you have benefitted greatly from open source. Your entire operation runs on code derived from open source, yet you have released next to nothing of that derived code back into the open source community.
The core code you use to run your operation, not tangential code used in side projects. You've released *NOTHING* that can be used to challenge your search engine dominance.
Also, much of the stuff you have released has been things like API's, which are merely stubs to access open source derived code being distributed as a service.
Why aren't you releasing GDS as open source? Why aren't you releasing Google toolbar as open source? That's my point.
I don't misunderstand the GPL at all. And that's why I said "violating the spirit" rather than "violating".
Google is distributing their software as a service, rather than as a binary. This is just as opaque as distributing a binary and violates the basic principles behind the GPL. No, it doesn't violate the *LETTER* of the GPL, and that's because the GPL was written long before "software as a service" was really an issue.
Google is doing everything legal. There is no doubt about that (at least as far as we know), but that doesn't mean they're not doing things wrong ethically.
This is an interesting argument. The only reason Microsoft is bad is because you don't like their products.
If you liked their products, it wouldn't matter all the other stuff they did, because you'd LIKE them, right?
That's not the only barrier to entry. You also have to have content WORTH changing the bookmark for. And that isn't cheap (as Microsoft has found out).
Changing your OS to Linux is free as well, and using Open Office is free, but yet Microsoft still has a monopoly. The cost for the consumer (or even ease for the consumer) is irrelevant.
Hmm.. Actually, Google is pretty close to having a monopoly on search engine services. Remember, you don't have to be the only provider to have a monopoly, you just have to weild "monopoly power", that is the ability to control the market, and I think Google is getting damn close to that.
As for "support for open source" wake when they have a Linux "Desktop Search", or Linux "google deskbar" or any of a number of other technologies they implement on Windows (and don't give source code away for). Yes, *USE* open source, and they occasional do something to give back, but this has been pretty pathetic so far, considering all the benefit they've gained from Open Source without having to release their changes.
In fact, one could say that google is violating the spirit of the GPL. They're "distributing" their software via a web server, but nobody gets to see the code behind the scenens, improve it, or fix bugs, or anything else.
Personally, I don't believe that Microsoft has a real monopoly. I think they have a "Monopoly by default". If and when Linux (or MacOS now that it will be on x86) can provide what consumers are looking for, I think Linux will gain enough market share that this will not be the case any longer.
Lots of people find Linux "good enough" to replace (or even better than) Windows, but not yet enough to make a major dent. You might argue that this is because consumers don't know about Linux, but I would disagree. For Linux to be a complete solution, it has to include commercial applications, and so far that's been rare.
Wine doesn't really cut it either, since that's still an imperfect solution that sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. Besides, that's just like keeping Windows around anyways. Linux should be able to stand on its own.
Bullshit.
Whenever someone doubts you, you go on the conspiracy theory front line. You owe me a serious appology on this, and you need to take a chill pill and stop accusing everyone around you of trying to deceive you.
While my slashdot ID is not as old as yours, it's certainly not new. I've been posting here for a good 5 or 6 years, and my posting history has never had ANYTHING to do with Mambo. In fact, this is the first i've even mentioned it.
The address I posted to the Opensourcematters board from is in a netblock that has nothing to do with the Mambo Foundation, and I would be highly surprised if anyone from the Mambo Foundation were even in the same state as me, much less using the same IP address (which is NAT'd by the way).
You're welcome to post the logs of both my ip address, and the IP address of whomever you think I am to prove your argument, otherwise give me an appology. You're full of shit.
From what I have read, this is not true. Apparently the developers that were members of the Mambo Steering Comittee voted in favor of the creation of the foundation. They just didn't like the way it was set up.
The community is the one that actually ASKED miro to create the foundation. So claiming there was no input is doesn't seem to be accurate.
Further, from what I have read, not all members of the board were Miro employees. Only a few of them were. There were people from the community who were not developers, as well as several developers who claimed they weren't even asked (though it wouldn't surprise me if they simply changed their minds after the brouhaha started and didn't want to be villified, but in any case they WERE appointed).
Sorry but the core devs and the code they create are the project.
You're right. So what? That doesn't have anything to do with a community that has no legal protection or has any legal status at all.
And, as you point out, it *IS* GPL'd. If *I* want to create a foundation for Mambo, even though I'm not involved in any way, I can. I can take the code and create my own project. The devs are not the sole owners of it, everyone is.