I agree that the article does make a few good points, both sides have certainly overreached on their reactions. Unfortunately we have gotten to a point in modern politics where two disagreeing parties will take up extremist positions and argue from a black & white perspective. The problem is that this doesn't usually solve any problems, but it sure does help Rolaids sell product.
If you look around you'll see this everywhere. Abortion debate is the prime one, the pro-life groups are convinced that anybody who doesn't agree with them is in favor of baby killing. In music you are either a pirate, or you are an evil industrialist. In software you either are for closed source or you are an evil communist. It just goes on and on, the way the debates get polarized like this.
The Independence Party candidate for Governor here in Minnesota(Tim Penny) has spoken of this quite a bit. He's of the opinion that extremist groups who hold these opinions should have some say in the discussion, but they should not control the debate, or control the solution to the problem. A middle road which attempts to take both sides comments along with the overwhelming public good should be responsible for making the final decision.
But middle of the road candidates don't get money from special interests, and so they aren't very competitive in politics, so we end up with a lot of these black & white debates dominating the landscape. Perhaps if Minnesota can elect a second governor from an indepdent party that may start a new trend. We'll see.
These are certainly valid concerns. It's just not clear to me why people think the GPL is a solution.
If the technology created by the government research is of any use, it's going to be of interest by commercial firms. If you use the GPL that simply means that they will recreate the source via a simple reverse-engineering process. i.e. document the APIs and write flow-charts for method calls and then rewrite from scratch. They may contribute back some comments, but it won't be in the form of source patches because their implementations are different.
Now if the BSD license were used, the commercial companies could integrate the exact source into their product, most likely contributing back updates and suggestions on how to improve it. This insures a certain level of compatibility and similarity between implementations. If they do not contribute back then ohwell, the BSD version is still available and can be maintained by non-commercial entities interested in that. You have not lost anything.
Either way the consumer will have a choice, the free version or the commercial version. It's just in the GPL case you've created a lot of extra work for someone, and it's not quite clear to me what the purpose of that is. If you say it's because it's not fair that a commercial entity would profit off the work, then charge something for it. Government agencies do that all the time to try to recuperate costs. But if it's not available at all, I think a very valid argument could be made that says it is not the job of the government to invest in such research if it is closed off from commercial usage.
This debate appears to me to be taking the form of "We have the GPL, now we must find problems to justify using it!" Rather, why don't we first lay out the problems, and then think of ways to solve those problems which provide an adequate solution to all parties involved?
Most of the arguments seem to revolve around the need to have access to the source code. Understandable, and I think we can find ways to do this with commercial software. Remember, commercial software does not mean closed source, that just happens to be the defense mechanism used today because of abuse. But what if all software were mandated to come with source? Then it'd be pretty easy to look for source code plagarism, and I think it would benefit the entire industry by showing others how to do things. This would also provide some balance with the use of software patents.
In all of these discussion, what I'm not seeing is a justification for the freely distributable point. Other than a desire for a handful of geeks to get software for free, what valid purpose does this serve above and beyond the availability of source code with the product? If I have the source, I have openness and maintainability. What does forcing freely redistributable gain me other than being anti-commercial?
On the one hand this is good, because it forces people to realize that we are becoming a more global society. Release the movies to the whole world all at once! This would make the new digital movie format all the more attractive.
On the other hand, I suppose it's bad because it forces the world to be more global. That is, you can't have a different version of the movie in Japan than in Germany or the US. If the Germans don't like some scene in the film... well too bad, they get it anyway.
This globalization forces all cultures to merge. This is either good or bad, depending on how you look at it.
The article makes this statement, "Many complaints criticized the agency for providing the fruits of research to everyone, not just U.S. companies, and thus hurting American business."
This statement is wrong. If the NSA had wanted to make a secure version of FreeBSD, then the fruits of the research would have been available to everyone. It is because they choose to use Linux, which is licensed under the GPL, that they received complaints because the fruits of the research would be available only to non-commercial entities. [Keep in mind the fruits of the research refers to the source code, not the binaries. A lot of Free Software advocates seem to like to confuse those terms.]
Towards the end of the article they mention some cooperation with Apple on making a secure version of FreeBSD. There are drastic differences between the BSD and GPL licenses, and it is extremely frustrating to see those issues either not addressed, or purposefully blurred. Commercial software developers are not complaining about Open Source, they are complaining about the GPL.
Isn't it amazing when people are faced without the ability to make a valid argument they accuse the other side of not thinking?
The only way your argument could be considered logical is if the OSS way of doing things was better. Unfortunately that is not the case, so your entire argument simply falls apart.
Why don't you go to the user group meetings and find out for yourself?
The few meetings I have been to had around 200 people, some of the early ones were closer to 500-600. None of these people were paid to be there, they all just came because they were interested in learning more about.Net. I don't see that as astroturfing.
Is astroturfing posting a big story on slashdot about a March on the San Francisco city hall to support Linux, but then not posting any of the stories which said only 10 people showed up?
Ok. I have Red Hat 7.3 Linux... I have KDE 3.0 installed on this machine.
I want to know the answer to two questions.
a. Am I vulnerable? b. If so where do I download a binary patch?
http://www.kde.org has no news postings about this flaw, they are apparently more interested in letting us know about a release candidate for KOffice.
http://bugs.kde.org is unreachable.
http://www.redhat.com has no security bulletins relating to KDE 3.0 that shipped with Redhat 7.3.
Meanwhile back at the ranch, you go to http://www.microsoft.com/security, click on the IT Professional information and this issue is the top headline. Yes, there is no patch yet, but at least Microsoft is acknowledging that there is a problem and letting us know that they are working on it.
Fact is, until there is a binary patch available for my Redhat 7.3 install, along with a security bulletin on the website at least acknowledging the issue... the issue is not resolved.
Oh yeah, I find no mention of this on the Mandrake Linux website either despite them shipping with KDE 2.2.x which is supposedly impacted. You know with all this patting yourself on the back, you sure haven't done anything to help out the enduser.
In other words, this approach only makes sense when the outside services are OSS / FS / public domain, which means that developers of programs can check their integrity and submit improvements.
Granted, peer review by others is always a good idea.
Now what would you say if Microsoft understands this so that they have third parties such as RSA Laboratories help to develop and review their cryptographic routines? It's really not all that hard to believe that third parties work with Microsoft, is it?
I guess my question is, are you claiming that somehow you know more about cryptography than some of the well known members of the crypto community? I guess I'm just curious if giving you the source code is really going to make much of a difference?
This OSS is the only way to achieve peer review trumpet has been tooted too many times without any thought behind it to still be credible.
Now I just hope you realize that Tim O'Reilly and millions of other people are members of what constitutes the public and also get their say in this debate?
This is actually a pretty poor argument, and my guess is when this legislation is defeated on a 95 to 5 margin you will be be shouting something about the people being too stupid to govern themselves.
When government funded software is used in a commercial product, you are not paying for it twice.
You are paying for the modifications made by the commercial developer. Or in most cases they are not so much modifications, as it is a case of the software being integrated into a much larger package. Like say incorporating the Apache web server into a J2EE application server environment, etc.
Once you realize that most of your argument falls away.
As far as source code availability to government, I agree with that. I even believe the source code for software should be available to all purchasers.
Where I disagree is the Open Source communities claim that all software should be free. I simply feel if you buy some software, you should have the source. You should be able to modify the source. You should be able to distribute your patches. But that does not mean you should be able to distribute the original software, or any modified versions of it. Why? Because it discourages investment into software by not allowing software developers to recover their R&D costs.
Software distributed under something like the BSD license can be used by any taxpayer for any purpose. It can be used in free products, or commercial products. It is unencumbered, completely unrestricted.
Software distributed under the GPL is not. It is encumbered with it's anti-commercial clauses and may only be used in non-commercial applications such as research. (BTW when I say used, I mean the source code, not the compiled binary and please don't confuse the issue any further than you have already done so)
When a company uses software licensed under the BSD in a commercial product, they are not taking anything away from you. What they are selling to you is the value that they added to the software. You are still free to use the original software all you want, you are still free to modify the original software all you want. Nothing has been taken away from you. If you do not see value in the changes that this company is selling, then you do not need to buy from them.
personally, i don't appreciate giving money to the government, in the form of taxes, and then having to buy back from them what they discovered thanks to my money...
Personally I don't appreciate giving money to the government in the form of taxes so that it can be used to compete against my free market corporation.
but consider their reasons aren't just financial: in the case of Peru, they were very much interested in having the ability to fix code themselves, look through it for spyware, and write their own
It's important to note that all of these legitimate goals can be accomplished without the use of the GPL.
Basically the Open Source community has distorted the argument. If you read the Redhat proposed bill it all sounds very good until you get to the anti-commercial software clauses in Section 3, items e and f which demand that all software must be free as in beer as well as open source.
so it's not completely loaded -- it is against open source, partially, under the veil of being pro-choice...
Similar to how the Redhat proposed bill is anti-commercial software under the veil of being pro-freedom?
"Basically, the taxpayers' money should be used to finance "commercialized products" that make money for somebody else... "
No, they're making money for me because the industry hires software developers to improve upon these innovations and commercialize them. I really like having a job, don't you?
"And we all know that anti-capitalism is..communism."
Pretty much, especially if you are trying to use government to kill capitalism.
"If a government uses taxes to fund research/development of software, the benefit ti the said government is software--why should it care how it is licensed, as long as it is functional? "
Because Government tax dollars only exist if you have commercial interests building products, hiring people and generating salaries.
If you wish to be anti-capitalist, it is perfectly acceptable for you to do so on your own time and on your own dollar. Buy a piece of land out in Idaho and create a coop where you and your many Linux loving pals can raise tomatoes and write software without being subjected to evil capitalist ideologies.
But when you try to get the government to forcibly seize assets from citizens(what we like to call taxes) so as to fund your software experiments, then I'm afraid we're going to have a public policy debate and you may not like what you hear.
I suspect he's talking about new CD images being shipped by Microsoft to OEMs which include IE6 into the base Win2k code.
I haven't seen one of these yet, but it wouldn't surprise me if they existed as Microsoft has always done this in the past.
Of course the stupid thing is, they don't normally ship these CDs in the retail boxes. You get the same Win2k CD that was released in 2/2000 without any extra CDs with updates.:(
Joe Barr has been an anti-Microsoft zealot for as long as I can remember. Years ago he used to plague us with his Team OS/2 crap. Then it was his anti-Internet Explorer crap. In fact for a while there his website denied access to IE web browsers just to prove some kind of point. Now he's a Linux bigot and hates the Windows 2000 installer? Go figure.
How about getting someone who isn't biased to do a comparison?
Anyway, Windows 2000 installs fairly easy by itself now that SP3 is out. It was more of a pain prior to that with all the various hotfixes. WinXP handles hotfixes better and you can more easily install them all at once without reboots. Also if you make your own custom installation cd you can really streamline the process by installing SP3 right from the start. [see www.nu2.nu]
What I think is nice since I create new Win2k environments under VMware quite frequently is using sysprep. I simply copy the base image I created over into a new directory... rename the config file, boot with vmware and then sysprep prompts for the machine name and I'm up and running including all my default software.
"I did not imply, I read his web page. Do the same sodablue.org IIRC. He's pretty up front about it."
This appears to be an ad-hominem argument, although I'm not sure where you think you are going with it.
It is curious, however, that you couldn't find any examples of successful companies that rely solely upon GPL software.
In the case of Nusphere sells commercial/closed-source software and have in the past violated the GPL with regards to mySQL.
Redhat and Mandrake are not profitable, although I suppose you could argue they are successful if measured by publicity.
IBM backs GPLed software in order to sell hardware. This is the one area where the GPL does work to some degree, although you'll note that IBM still invests heavily in commercial software to differentiate themselves, and you have yet to see any of their core products released under the GPL.
Do you want to try to answer the question again, this time providing some good examples?
"Argument anytime some points out the errors in your arguments. How about a cluepon, try and debate on the facts, not "you disagree so you can't understand" cyclical arguments."
Now I really find it curious that you didn't respond to your misrepresentation of commercial software by using sub-genres of shrink-wrap and proprietary. I take it from this response that you do understand the differences, you have simply chosen to purposefully misrepresent them?
Your entire argument is based on this presentation that Microsoft is evil. Here is a clue for you... The majority of commercial software, if you count number of products, is not created by Microsoft. Most of it is created by small businesses.
In your supposed fight with Microsoft you are only harming small businesses. Collateral damage, or is this also purposeful?
"Nope, no misquote... You pointedly say that there has to be a balance between corporate sponsorship and university research. I pointed out that there should be no balance; the two should not be connected."
Ahh, well at least you admit the misquote. Am I wrong in assuming that this was purposeful on your part as an attempt to distort the discussion?
But the fact remains that the two are not disconnected. University research is intended to better society, and to accomplish this ultimately requires commercial interests to bring the implementation of the research to the consumers. In so doing they generate economic growth which nets tax dollars which flows back into University research. It is a positive feedback loop and breaking the loop will cause the system to fail.
But again, there must be balance between the corporate and societal interests. This was the part you misquoted me on in your attempt to turn a debate of grey scales into one of simply black and white.
Ok, you seem to be either really naive or just want to argue based on splitting hairs.
The GPL requires you to release your work if you distribute it, that pretty much means that you use it internally only, or you donate it to the world at large.
"Your mistake is assuming that the majority of those are software companies making money from selling proprietary software. "
Your mistake is confusing proprietary software with commercial software.
"You miss the boat here. University research is not (in most cases) and should not be driven by corporations. "
Apparently you also don't know how to read, as you misquoted me when I said exactly that.
"I found your proprietary shrink-wrap software point of view interesting to say the least."
Again you confuse shrink-wrap software with commercial software. Hint: Most software developed commercially does not come with a shrink-wrap license.
I don't exactly see how you can try to have an intelligent discussion with regards to the software industry if you are unfamiliar with the industry. Perhaps you could enlighten me on that?
Really all you are insuring thorugh your use of the GPL is that Microsoft(or whoever) will have to recreate the software code for the new concept. That's it, and if it is a trivial code, it'll cost them maybe a few extra million to re-develop.
Now in the case of Microsoft if they spent $20 million writing some software, that really is pretty much a drop in the bucket considered their vast sums of cash and the potential market they have access to.
But software isn't solely developed by Microsoft. There are thousands of other companies out there, some large but many small. In the case of Smith's Software Co over in Hoboken, they don't have $20 million to redevelop the software for the base idea. But they happen to have some very bright ideas as to how to extend this concept in a new way that would be very beneficial to the country.
Now they could extend your GPLed software, incorporate these new ideas and then re-release everything to the world as required. What does this net? Well absolutely nothing for Smith Software Co. Now their competitors and everybody else has exactly the same code that they just invested millions in creating. They have no way to recoup their investment because it's impossible to charge for free beer. So Smith Software Co goes bankrupt, lays off 40 people who now have no way to feed their families.
On the other side, if the software had been released under the BSD. You, and everybody else would have access to the basic software. But Smith Software Co would be allowed to invest their time and effort into extending it with their new cool idea, and then sell this on the market and recoup their R&D. The end result, Smith Software Co goes public, hires an additional 2,000 persons, and everybody in the world has access to both the original concept and this extended idea. Furthermore Smith Software Co has more cash that they can reinvest back into more R&D and improve the software even further.
The GPL really just acts as an anti-corporate license, that's it. Exactly how this is better for the economy at large is questionable.
The fundamental flaw in your argument is your belief that somehow tax dollars just magically exist. They don't. Tax dollars exist solely because of there are companies in this country who are paying employees to do work for them. Without the companies, no tax dollars.
So by trying to discourage corporate investment, you are only hurting university research. Now that doesn't mean you have to go entirely the other way either and have all Univ research entirely corporate driven. I think there is a balance that can and should be maintained.
Slashdot Mirror
And a good communist always bases his arguments on class warfare!
It's just best to place michael in the "No, I don't ever want to see articles from this moron" group.
I agree that the article does make a few good points, both sides have certainly overreached on their reactions. Unfortunately we have gotten to a point in modern politics where two disagreeing parties will take up extremist positions and argue from a black & white perspective. The problem is that this doesn't usually solve any problems, but it sure does help Rolaids sell product.
If you look around you'll see this everywhere. Abortion debate is the prime one, the pro-life groups are convinced that anybody who doesn't agree with them is in favor of baby killing. In music you are either a pirate, or you are an evil industrialist. In software you either are for closed source or you are an evil communist. It just goes on and on, the way the debates get polarized like this.
The Independence Party candidate for Governor here in Minnesota(Tim Penny) has spoken of this quite a bit. He's of the opinion that extremist groups who hold these opinions should have some say in the discussion, but they should not control the debate, or control the solution to the problem. A middle road which attempts to take both sides comments along with the overwhelming public good should be responsible for making the final decision.
But middle of the road candidates don't get money from special interests, and so they aren't very competitive in politics, so we end up with a lot of these black & white debates dominating the landscape. Perhaps if Minnesota can elect a second governor from an indepdent party that may start a new trend. We'll see.
These are certainly valid concerns. It's just not clear to me why people think the GPL is a solution.
If the technology created by the government research is of any use, it's going to be of interest by commercial firms. If you use the GPL that simply means that they will recreate the source via a simple reverse-engineering process. i.e. document the APIs and write flow-charts for method calls and then rewrite from scratch. They may contribute back some comments, but it won't be in the form of source patches because their implementations are different.
Now if the BSD license were used, the commercial companies could integrate the exact source into their product, most likely contributing back updates and suggestions on how to improve it. This insures a certain level of compatibility and similarity between implementations. If they do not contribute back then ohwell, the BSD version is still available and can be maintained by non-commercial entities interested in that. You have not lost anything.
Either way the consumer will have a choice, the free version or the commercial version. It's just in the GPL case you've created a lot of extra work for someone, and it's not quite clear to me what the purpose of that is. If you say it's because it's not fair that a commercial entity would profit off the work, then charge something for it. Government agencies do that all the time to try to recuperate costs. But if it's not available at all, I think a very valid argument could be made that says it is not the job of the government to invest in such research if it is closed off from commercial usage.
This debate appears to me to be taking the form of "We have the GPL, now we must find problems to justify using it!" Rather, why don't we first lay out the problems, and then think of ways to solve those problems which provide an adequate solution to all parties involved?
Most of the arguments seem to revolve around the need to have access to the source code. Understandable, and I think we can find ways to do this with commercial software. Remember, commercial software does not mean closed source, that just happens to be the defense mechanism used today because of abuse. But what if all software were mandated to come with source? Then it'd be pretty easy to look for source code plagarism, and I think it would benefit the entire industry by showing others how to do things. This would also provide some balance with the use of software patents.
In all of these discussion, what I'm not seeing is a justification for the freely distributable point. Other than a desire for a handful of geeks to get software for free, what valid purpose does this serve above and beyond the availability of source code with the product? If I have the source, I have openness and maintainability. What does forcing freely redistributable gain me other than being anti-commercial?
On the one hand this is good, because it forces people to realize that we are becoming a more global society. Release the movies to the whole world all at once! This would make the new digital movie format all the more attractive.
On the other hand, I suppose it's bad because it forces the world to be more global. That is, you can't have a different version of the movie in Japan than in Germany or the US. If the Germans don't like some scene in the film... well too bad, they get it anyway.
This globalization forces all cultures to merge. This is either good or bad, depending on how you look at it.
The article makes this statement, "Many complaints criticized the agency for providing the fruits of research to everyone, not just U.S. companies, and thus hurting American business."
This statement is wrong. If the NSA had wanted to make a secure version of FreeBSD, then the fruits of the research would have been available to everyone. It is because they choose to use Linux, which is licensed under the GPL, that they received complaints because the fruits of the research would be available only to non-commercial entities. [Keep in mind the fruits of the research refers to the source code, not the binaries. A lot of Free Software advocates seem to like to confuse those terms.]
Towards the end of the article they mention some cooperation with Apple on making a secure version of FreeBSD. There are drastic differences between the BSD and GPL licenses, and it is extremely frustrating to see those issues either not addressed, or purposefully blurred. Commercial software developers are not complaining about Open Source, they are complaining about the GPL.
Please try thinking next time.
Isn't it amazing when people are faced without the ability to make a valid argument they accuse the other side of not thinking?
The only way your argument could be considered logical is if the OSS way of doing things was better. Unfortunately that is not the case, so your entire argument simply falls apart.
Your question is irrelevant.
No, the only thing irrelevant here is your inability to argue with my point.
Why don't you go to the user group meetings and find out for yourself?
.Net. I don't see that as astroturfing.
The few meetings I have been to had around 200 people, some of the early ones were closer to 500-600. None of these people were paid to be there, they all just came because they were interested in learning more about
Is astroturfing posting a big story on slashdot about a March on the San Francisco city hall to support Linux, but then not posting any of the stories which said only 10 people showed up?
When Konqueror had this specific bug, it could be uprgraded easily enough.
Where do I download the patch?
I know nothing about compiling source code.
Ok. I have Red Hat 7.3 Linux... I have KDE 3.0 installed on this machine.
I want to know the answer to two questions.
a. Am I vulnerable?
b. If so where do I download a binary patch?
http://www.kde.org has no news postings about this flaw, they are apparently more interested in letting us know about a release candidate for KOffice.
http://bugs.kde.org is unreachable.
http://www.redhat.com has no security bulletins relating to KDE 3.0 that shipped with Redhat 7.3.
Meanwhile back at the ranch, you go to http://www.microsoft.com/security, click on the IT Professional information and this issue is the top headline. Yes, there is no patch yet, but at least Microsoft is acknowledging that there is a problem and letting us know that they are working on it.
Fact is, until there is a binary patch available for my Redhat 7.3 install, along with a security bulletin on the website at least acknowledging the issue... the issue is not resolved.
Oh yeah, I find no mention of this on the Mandrake Linux website either despite them shipping with KDE 2.2.x which is supposedly impacted. You know with all this patting yourself on the back, you sure haven't done anything to help out the enduser.
In other words, this approach only makes sense when the outside services are OSS / FS / public domain, which means that developers of programs can check their integrity and submit improvements.
Granted, peer review by others is always a good idea.
Now what would you say if Microsoft understands this so that they have third parties such as RSA Laboratories help to develop and review their cryptographic routines? It's really not all that hard to believe that third parties work with Microsoft, is it?
I guess my question is, are you claiming that somehow you know more about cryptography than some of the well known members of the crypto community? I guess I'm just curious if giving you the source code is really going to make much of a difference?
This OSS is the only way to achieve peer review trumpet has been tooted too many times without any thought behind it to still be credible.
Now I just hope you realize that Tim O'Reilly and millions of other people are members of what constitutes the public and also get their say in this debate?
This is actually a pretty poor argument, and my guess is when this legislation is defeated on a 95 to 5 margin you will be be shouting something about the people being too stupid to govern themselves.
THAT is why government develuped software SHOULD be develuped under GPL liccenses or never released in any way shape or form.
Or better yet, government tax dollars should just not be spent developing software. That would solve your particular complaint just as well.
the united states government for software R&D on a discount.
If the government is doing R&D which cannot ever be used to benefit citizens, then this is a waste of money that should not be funded.
Do you have any other problems you wish me to solve for you?
Campaigning against a law which bans commercial software is not at all the same as campaigning against open source.
When government funded software is used in a commercial product, you are not paying for it twice.
You are paying for the modifications made by the commercial developer. Or in most cases they are not so much modifications, as it is a case of the software being integrated into a much larger package. Like say incorporating the Apache web server into a J2EE application server environment, etc.
Once you realize that most of your argument falls away.
As far as source code availability to government, I agree with that. I even believe the source code for software should be available to all purchasers.
Where I disagree is the Open Source communities claim that all software should be free. I simply feel if you buy some software, you should have the source. You should be able to modify the source. You should be able to distribute your patches. But that does not mean you should be able to distribute the original software, or any modified versions of it. Why? Because it discourages investment into software by not allowing software developers to recover their R&D costs.
I'll simplify this for you.
Software distributed under something like the BSD license can be used by any taxpayer for any purpose. It can be used in free products, or commercial products. It is unencumbered, completely unrestricted.
Software distributed under the GPL is not. It is encumbered with it's anti-commercial clauses and may only be used in non-commercial applications such as research. (BTW when I say used, I mean the source code, not the compiled binary and please don't confuse the issue any further than you have already done so)
When a company uses software licensed under the BSD in a commercial product, they are not taking anything away from you. What they are selling to you is the value that they added to the software. You are still free to use the original software all you want, you are still free to modify the original software all you want. Nothing has been taken away from you. If you do not see value in the changes that this company is selling, then you do not need to buy from them.
Please stop trying to distort the issues.
personally, i don't appreciate giving money to the government, in the form of taxes, and then having to buy back from them what they discovered thanks to my money ...
...
Personally I don't appreciate giving money to the government in the form of taxes so that it can be used to compete against my free market corporation.
but consider their reasons aren't just financial: in the case of Peru, they were very much interested in having the ability to fix code themselves, look through it for spyware, and write their own
It's important to note that all of these legitimate goals can be accomplished without the use of the GPL.
Basically the Open Source community has distorted the argument. If you read the Redhat proposed bill it all sounds very good until you get to the anti-commercial software clauses in Section 3, items e and f which demand that all software must be free as in beer as well as open source.
so it's not completely loaded -- it is against open source, partially, under the veil of being pro-choice
Similar to how the Redhat proposed bill is anti-commercial software under the veil of being pro-freedom?
"Basically, the taxpayers' money should be used to finance "commercialized products" that make money for somebody else... "
No, they're making money for me because the industry hires software developers to improve upon these innovations and commercialize them. I really like having a job, don't you?
"And we all know that anti-capitalism is..communism."
Pretty much, especially if you are trying to use government to kill capitalism.
"If a government uses taxes to fund research/development of software, the benefit ti the said government is software--why should it care how it is licensed, as long as it is functional? "
Because Government tax dollars only exist if you have commercial interests building products, hiring people and generating salaries.
If you wish to be anti-capitalist, it is perfectly acceptable for you to do so on your own time and on your own dollar. Buy a piece of land out in Idaho and create a coop where you and your many Linux loving pals can raise tomatoes and write software without being subjected to evil capitalist ideologies.
But when you try to get the government to forcibly seize assets from citizens(what we like to call taxes) so as to fund your software experiments, then I'm afraid we're going to have a public policy debate and you may not like what you hear.
Let me guess, you believed the FUD that /. was spreading about the SP3 EULA?
Go read it again, it does not say what they claim it said.
I suspect he's talking about new CD images being shipped by Microsoft to OEMs which include IE6 into the base Win2k code.
:(
I haven't seen one of these yet, but it wouldn't surprise me if they existed as Microsoft has always done this in the past.
Of course the stupid thing is, they don't normally ship these CDs in the retail boxes. You get the same Win2k CD that was released in 2/2000 without any extra CDs with updates.
Joe Barr has been an anti-Microsoft zealot for as long as I can remember. Years ago he used to plague us with his Team OS/2 crap. Then it was his anti-Internet Explorer crap. In fact for a while there his website denied access to IE web browsers just to prove some kind of point. Now he's a Linux bigot and hates the Windows 2000 installer? Go figure.
How about getting someone who isn't biased to do a comparison?
Anyway, Windows 2000 installs fairly easy by itself now that SP3 is out. It was more of a pain prior to that with all the various hotfixes. WinXP handles hotfixes better and you can more easily install them all at once without reboots. Also if you make your own custom installation cd you can really streamline the process by installing SP3 right from the start. [see www.nu2.nu]
What I think is nice since I create new Win2k environments under VMware quite frequently is using sysprep. I simply copy the base image I created over into a new directory... rename the config file, boot with vmware and then sysprep prompts for the machine name and I'm up and running including all my default software.
"I did not imply, I read his web page. Do the same sodablue.org IIRC. He's pretty up front about it."
This appears to be an ad-hominem argument, although I'm not sure where you think you are going with it.
It is curious, however, that you couldn't find any examples of successful companies that rely solely upon GPL software.
In the case of Nusphere sells commercial/closed-source software and have in the past violated the GPL with regards to mySQL.
Redhat and Mandrake are not profitable, although I suppose you could argue they are successful if measured by publicity.
IBM backs GPLed software in order to sell hardware. This is the one area where the GPL does work to some degree, although you'll note that IBM still invests heavily in commercial software to differentiate themselves, and you have yet to see any of their core products released under the GPL.
Do you want to try to answer the question again, this time providing some good examples?
"Argument anytime some points out the errors in your arguments. How about a cluepon, try and debate on the facts, not "you disagree so you can't understand" cyclical arguments."
Now I really find it curious that you didn't respond to your misrepresentation of commercial software by using sub-genres of shrink-wrap and proprietary. I take it from this response that you do understand the differences, you have simply chosen to purposefully misrepresent them?
Your entire argument is based on this presentation that Microsoft is evil. Here is a clue for you... The majority of commercial software, if you count number of products, is not created by Microsoft. Most of it is created by small businesses.
In your supposed fight with Microsoft you are only harming small businesses. Collateral damage, or is this also purposeful?
"Nope, no misquote... You pointedly say that there has to be a balance between corporate sponsorship and university research. I pointed out that there should be no balance; the two should not be connected."
Ahh, well at least you admit the misquote. Am I wrong in assuming that this was purposeful on your part as an attempt to distort the discussion?
But the fact remains that the two are not disconnected. University research is intended to better society, and to accomplish this ultimately requires commercial interests to bring the implementation of the research to the consumers. In so doing they generate economic growth which nets tax dollars which flows back into University research. It is a positive feedback loop and breaking the loop will cause the system to fail.
But again, there must be balance between the corporate and societal interests. This was the part you misquoted me on in your attempt to turn a debate of grey scales into one of simply black and white.
Ok, you seem to be either really naive or just want to argue based on splitting hairs.
The GPL requires you to release your work if you distribute it, that pretty much means that you use it internally only, or you donate it to the world at large.
"Your mistake is assuming that the majority of those are software companies making money from selling proprietary software. "
Your mistake is confusing proprietary software with commercial software.
"You miss the boat here. University research is not (in most cases) and should not be driven by corporations. "
Apparently you also don't know how to read, as you misquoted me when I said exactly that.
"I found your proprietary shrink-wrap software point of view interesting to say the least."
Again you confuse shrink-wrap software with commercial software. Hint: Most software developed commercially does not come with a shrink-wrap license.
I don't exactly see how you can try to have an intelligent discussion with regards to the software industry if you are unfamiliar with the industry. Perhaps you could enlighten me on that?
Really all you are insuring thorugh your use of the GPL is that Microsoft(or whoever) will have to recreate the software code for the new concept. That's it, and if it is a trivial code, it'll cost them maybe a few extra million to re-develop.
Now in the case of Microsoft if they spent $20 million writing some software, that really is pretty much a drop in the bucket considered their vast sums of cash and the potential market they have access to.
But software isn't solely developed by Microsoft. There are thousands of other companies out there, some large but many small. In the case of Smith's Software Co over in Hoboken, they don't have $20 million to redevelop the software for the base idea. But they happen to have some very bright ideas as to how to extend this concept in a new way that would be very beneficial to the country.
Now they could extend your GPLed software, incorporate these new ideas and then re-release everything to the world as required. What does this net? Well absolutely nothing for Smith Software Co. Now their competitors and everybody else has exactly the same code that they just invested millions in creating. They have no way to recoup their investment because it's impossible to charge for free beer. So Smith Software Co goes bankrupt, lays off 40 people who now have no way to feed their families.
On the other side, if the software had been released under the BSD. You, and everybody else would have access to the basic software. But Smith Software Co would be allowed to invest their time and effort into extending it with their new cool idea, and then sell this on the market and recoup their R&D. The end result, Smith Software Co goes public, hires an additional 2,000 persons, and everybody in the world has access to both the original concept and this extended idea. Furthermore Smith Software Co has more cash that they can reinvest back into more R&D and improve the software even further.
The GPL really just acts as an anti-corporate license, that's it. Exactly how this is better for the economy at large is questionable.
The fundamental flaw in your argument is your belief that somehow tax dollars just magically exist. They don't. Tax dollars exist solely because of there are companies in this country who are paying employees to do work for them. Without the companies, no tax dollars.
So by trying to discourage corporate investment, you are only hurting university research. Now that doesn't mean you have to go entirely the other way either and have all Univ research entirely corporate driven. I think there is a balance that can and should be maintained.