That's the argument used anytime someone suggests doing something that businesses wouldn't like...
"Global economic collapse"
Bullshit. There'd still be a market for products, there'd still be people willing to make those products. They might not be willing to invest in any company that comes along, and they might demand more information about the day-to-day policies of the company, but they wouldn't refuse to invest at all.
Especially in this situation. If they took 'reasonable' measures (as defined by a judge) to ensure that the company wasn't breaking any laws, they wouldn't be guilty of contributory infringement. You need to either intend to break laws, or intentionally turn a blind eye to it.
So they'd be right where they are now, with their investment money at risk, but not their freedom.
I'd personally welcome laws like this. Everyone I know who supports Microsoft in the monopoly trials owns MS stock. They're hoping MS gets away with monopolistic and restrictive trade practices and outright law breaking simply because their stock will go up. With any decent laws they'd be held partly responsible in any judgement and they'd be trying to clean MS's act up, instead of encouraging it.
They're advocating ignoring gross injustice because it benefits them, but they'll be crying later when some other company (which they don't hold any stock in) does the same things.
I advocate leveling the playing field, making everyone follow the laws, and compete on the merits of their business. That's the capitalist way. If companies like MS can't compete in fair markets, they don't deserve to be in business.
Well, I agree with you, even if nobody else does...
The police don't have a right to search everyone just because they MAY be committing a crime, and I don't want them to be doing that. It's worth a bit of personal discomfort to collect the evidence and prove to people that the police are doing these things.
This is especially true with a stupid law like the criminalization of pot. It they were searching your building for someone who had built a bomb and taken out an airliner, I'd be a little more willing to co-operate. Especially if laws were changed to forbid police from searching you for one reason and arresting you for something else they see while in there. (I think they should be able to act on very serious crimes, like if they search you for drugs and find human remains, but not if they search you for drugs and discover cuban cigars, or copied DVDs, etc.)
btw, I can't say anything about hate magazines, but I remember an article a while back that said the same thing about kiddy porn, the goverment comes very close to entrapment in its production of this (well, rerelease of existing material, I'd assume) to snare anyone who tries to order more.
I don't see why people are afraid of the GPL. It's a COPYRIGHT license. It uses copyrights, not patents. If you see a piece of GPLed code that you like, rewrite it, that'll make it yours.
I can see a point where 95% of the software is GPLed, because it's so damned easy to write an application when you can borrow code. But that last 5%? That'll be by people who don't like the GPL, or who for some reason want or need closed source software.
They'll still be able to write closed-source software, by not using any GPLed code. It's only a problem if they feel they have to use someone else's code.
But, really, I don't care that some company can't copy GPLed code - wah... (I don't really care about them copying my GPLed code, I write (when not at work) silly fractal zoomers and filesystems for emulators... Not exactly big-buck stuff.)
Because they count on many of those people going to the theatre and then buying the movie on DVD.
Not that I give a rat's ass... If they can't run their business well enough to give people incentive to view a movie in the theatre, then they don't require any protection imho.
It's not MY fault that they can't run their business very well.
They can either get the movie to theatres in Australia faster, delay DVD releases here, or suck it up and accept that their mistakes will cost them money. But when they look for laws to be passed, specifically to keep them from having to change their outdated business practices...
I personally don't feel bound to follow any law that a corp has paid for. That's not law, that's bribery and treason that we simply haven't punished yet. I'm not saying I'll break it in front of the police - that'd be like taunting a bully to his face, but I will work to circumvent the law and bring financial ruin to the companies that subverted the legal system I live in just to pad their pockets.
IMHO people have the right to TRY TO make a profit, not the right a profit. That's a *big* difference.
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It's a troll because you say something that's obviously false as if it were true. The 'troll' part is that you say something like 'MS rocks' on Slashdot. If you did it elsewhere it wouldn't be a troll, just wrong.
Having cheap software is an obvious benefit in the industry, however you can see from products like Dr Dos that other companies were in the same market space. MS was big because it got the contract from IBM and was the 'official' vendor of OSes for IBM hardware.
This isn't to say that MS didn't do anything note-worthy, or that the industry would be exactly the same without them, but it would certainly be mostly similar.
If you want to blame/thank a company for this situation, it should be either IBM for outsourcing its OS, expanding the market for software-only companies, or compaq, etc, for cloning the PC, expanding the market for cheap hardware. Those were the non-apparent actions, which may not have happened again, unlike MS's simply filling a niche someone else made.
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Oh, boo hoo.
You mean you pro-MSers will have to scroll down over a link and the blurb.
Wah.
If you don't like it, piss off. You and the "Quit Slashdotters" and all other babies who are upset that THEIR story didn't get posted are the only real problem with this site.
If you don't like it, don't read it. Especially, don't post telling us that you don't like it. If you don't, just silently go away.
You see, your opinion is worthless. You are a nobody, and your bashing/. doesn't change that. Wow, a 14-year old with a stick up his ass. That'll sure convince me to read another news site.
Re:Mundie's real argument, and why it doesn't matt
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I know it's a troll, but I just have to correct this misconception...
You can't generalize from a sample size of one. You can't claim that anything is the way it is now because of MS because we don't have a comparable yet seperated industry to compare it to.
Moore's law has held constant since he conceived of it, that means computers have gotten more complex over time. At some point they became powerful enough to be easy to use, enabling millions of users to get on the net, etc.
Your hypothesis is that MS made computers easy to use. The more reasonable hypothesis is that companies like MS and Apple made computers as easy to use as was possible with the hardware of the day. Companies like Intel made computers more powerful, enabling MS and Apple (etc) to build powerful GUI OSes.
Computers are right where they would be without MS. Apple made the first consumer GUI, AOL sent out free trial disks for all popular OSes... The only difference without MS would be that BeOS and Amiga might still be fringe players and Apple would be larger.
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This is also safer for them to say. Many people understand the idea of investing in a business that MAY be profitable in the future. Many industries require a long start-up time and large up-front costs.
If they say they'll be profitable soon, their stock will plummet when 'soon' comes and they're still not profitable. If they say that they'll be profitable only when they have developed a market, that's a variable goal, from six months to ten years. As long as their investors picked it as a risky long-term stock, they're set.
Nobody will drop their stock if they become profitable before they indicated, but they would drop the stock if their failed to become profitable when they said they would.
You actually have the only right that matters. The right that copying can be done. Without a law, or disregarding the law, it is.
That law is trying to control natural behaviour.
Who the hell do they think they are to regulate the actions of the people by calling upon the government and their backing of deadly force?
Copyright law is a TRADE between the 'people' and the 'producers', saying that we offer them protection (which they could not expect otherwise) in trade for them producing things which we get limited access to for a while, then the full NATURAL access to.
Every idea is based off of other ones. Nobody is where they are today truly on their own. They didn't invent the language they use, the insturments they use, these are all ideas they get from the rest of society, for free, so why do they have the right to forbid other people access to their ideas?
They don't. If they don't live up to their end of the bargain, as the people wanted it, and they bribe politicians to pass stupid copyright extensions, they lose the right to claim anything. Copyright is mutually beneficial, or was. If it stops being that way, why should the people still be bound by it when the producers aren't?
Really? How come all these discussions involve some BSD guy saying "Use BSD, it's like the GPL, but not communist!"
The GPL is voluntary. If you use GPLed code it's by choice.
Further, if you can't code something better than a GPLed sample, with the GPL to use as an example, you don't deserve to make any money from your code as it's obviously substandard.
Maybe your idea of free software is to waste your time writing something that the MSs of the world can use for free, even as they steamroll over the rights of the people.
This is precisely what the GPL is for, to make sure that only people who will contribute free software benefit from it. If someone can't be bothered to help the community, why should the community help them?
The only people who like the BSDL better are freeloaders and people who've been brainwashed into thinking the GPL is communist, or some other crap.
I didn't say they could remove the BSD'd version, but they can get something for nothing. That both annoys me personally and makes bad business sense for the original contributor.
Most businesses I've worked with have liked the GPL, it grants them code to use, and means that if they release anything, nobody can proprietize it and start selling it.
They don't mind using it, but want their piece if someone is getting charged for it. (But, they'd rather just let everyone have it for free, instead of trying to collect royalties on some small program.)
Adding things like Chatzilla didn't delay Mozilla much, if at all. The developers working on Chatzilla, for the most part, are ones who joined the project for that purpose.
It does take some work from the core developers to write the interfaces, but then, imho, that's important. I want Mozilla to support many pluggins, I'll just be picky about which ones I install.
I don't specifically want a browser that's an email client, but I want one that you can closely integrate with one, which Mozilla is better at for their practice at integrating their own client, and Chatzilla, etc, etc.
Those people playing in 512x384 with the textures blurred aren't playing you, they're playing each other.
What's a real pain in Quake is when you're in the middle of a battle and get a quarter-second pause when running into a new room as the computer loads textures. If you die because of that, it takes all the fun out of it. For you and for your opponent.
The point of dropping the detail is to remove the computer from the equation as much as possible, so it's a game of skill between the players, not their machines.
In something like Myst, the graphics are everything. In something like Quake3, the graphics are just a way of describing the world that contains you, your opponent, and the weapons.
Both licenses allow that. If IBM wrote the code, they can release it under any license they like, at any time. They can't revoke a license like the BSDL or GPL, but they can add a license. (Or lack thereof, with a proprietary release.)
It would mean that they can't fold Apache into that proprietary release, if it was GPLed. In that, you're right.
If IBM releases something under the GPL they've prevented anyone from filing off the name and rereleasing it as a proprietary project. So any of those Redhat, or Suse, users will see that they're using something by IBM, a maker of "big iron". When they have serious computer needs, who are they going to talk to?
For instance, if you're using IBM's DB2 database on Redhat, and you decide that even a cluster of high-end PCs can't keep up anymore, who are you going to contact to get better hardware? SGI? Nope, IBM... because they've shown you their product and let you use it.
Now if DB2 has some neat feature that Oracle doesn't, Oracle can't simple copy that feature, they need to rewrite the whole thing. So it's IBM's protection to keep competitors from easily benefitting from their code, while still letting potential customers have all the access they need to fully evaluate and use the product.
And as for the Vatican? What kind of crack are you smoking?
Sure, those 'other companies' I talked about could rewrite IBMs code and end up with the same thing, basically. But they couldn't just do a cut & paste job. It's makes it harder for them to benefit. With the BSD license they wouldn't care about rewriting it, they'd just grab it.
Right. The GPL can't be applied to someone else's code, they choose to do it because they want the benefits. And they still own the IP, and can relicense their part (without everyone else's contributions) seperately.
But RMS intended the GPL to slowly lessen the control of IP, by building enough GPLed software that the only smart thing for people to do was use some of it in their project, thus making the rest free.
So it wouldn't destroy IP, but it'd create a condition in which IP wasn't the point of business, where businesses provided a service instead of figuring out some piece of IP and blackmailing anyone who thought of the same idea.
The GPL isn't anti-business, and RMS never said that it was. He said it was anti-IP.
There's a HUGE difference. IP is the ability to own ideas. To control the actions of others, tell them what they're allowed to know.
Business is the action everyone takes when they put food on the table. Either if they're self-employed, or work for someone else.
There are hundreds of successful businesses that use or work with the GPL. Many consultants I know spend 75% or more of their time migrating businesses to unix servers and other non-proprietary software. I know of three tech companies basing custom hardware on RT-Linux (well, a RT flavor of Linux, not specifically RT-Linux).
The GPL isn't suited for megacorps - Stallman will tell you that, but it's not designed to sabotage them either. As long as they have a business method which doesn't involve squatting on IP, they'll be fine.
The GPL is as business neutral as the color blue. Many companies make great use of it, others don't. Many companies fail, many don't. The color blue doesn't play a part in this, and neither does the GPL. But CEOs sure grasp at straws to justify their company losing money... It's like that just can't admit that their incompotence had to do with it.
Heh. Let companies whine about how they don't want to embrace open source. They'll kill themselves, or relegate themselves to a niche market, and let other more flexible competitors take over.
Microsoft is already pushing itself out the server market. Many businesses are ditching MS in favor of the tried and true. They know propoganda when they see it. They know that having a GPLed webserver is irrelevant to its performance, they don't buy MS's FUD, but they recognize the fact that MS is sure spending a lot of time and money on that FUD.
Well, it'll work itself out in the end. MS may or may not still sell server-level OSes then, but their FUD won't change a thing.
Why would a company like IBM invest a ton of money into something with the BSD license? It'd just get used by some closed source company who didn't return anything to the community or to IBM.
However, if IBM uses the GPL then they have the ability to use any innovations they discover people have made to their code.
Say IBM releases a file-system. They GPL it and Linux starts using it, and some smart person comes up with a better caching algorithm, improving the performance drastically. Now IBM can take that improvement, rewrite it to obtain their own copyright, and fold it into their closed-source version of that file-system as well. Not only that, but when Linux is reviewed and that file-system is mentioned, IBM will be known as the creators. It's a win-win situation. They gave something away, to people who wouldn't have bought it anyways, and got something back, even if only in minor bug fixes.
Their competitors didn't get anything, unless they want to link to GPLed code written by IBM, and what kind of statement would that make to investors? Mainly that IBM produces better code than they could. Every version of the competitors product would be an advertisment for IBM.
However, if IBM used the BSD license their code would be quietly snapped up and used in their competitors products, without any compensation to IBM. That's the inexcusable (to stockholders) action.
Clearly, if you want to reap the benefits of open source, you need to make sure the source stays open. That's GPL.
Software on Windows tends to be either a one-click install, where it's smart enough to find the boot drive when it's not C, to use the real program files, etc. Or it's a disaster where they hardcode stuff and it refuses to work unless you tweak a lot of option - if they let you tweak.
This is almost exactly the same as Linux software. Some RPMs install perfectly, some were written by idiots. If they work well, it's seamless, if not, they'll screw the computer up, just without the pretty graphics.
Now, as to the idea of a LSP...
This is quite reasonable to expect. The LSP would have perfect access to your computer, not like PC Anywhere and other Windows remote access programs. They could do anything remotely that a good admin could do locally.
In fact, they'd find it easier because if the 'user' didn't have root privs for anything they'd be unable to screw things up, so the main system would be untouched since the LSP had last connected.
Well, sure. An ideal capitalism doesn't sound so bad, but it requires enlightened people and would end up functioning somewhat like an enlightened socialism (everyone helping society to make it run smoother, etc).
But I think there are things in real life that prevent capitalism from ever working like the ideal versions. For one, to be fair, it has to give everyone a chance when they start. The system is massively biased towards the rich, and even if everyone starts equal, the next generation will be unbalanced.
When there's a large unbalance the system easily gets corrupt and people start having too much power over each over.
I personally think a strongly regulated market is a good market, at least compared to what would happen if there were no laws related to business practice. IMHO, monopolies are a natural result of capitalistic businesses and monopolies do not serve the consumer. As each company relies on many consumers, the good of the many is sacrificed for the good of the one.
Ayn Rand would say that this is simply the natural order, the smart rise to the top, the stupid fall to the bottom, and with laws, force the smart to support them.
I disagree, thinking that the rich only get rich with the cooperation of the poor. It's only because the poor are law abiding that they let the rich exert company-town type pressure on them without simply taking what is theirs.
I don't believe in any 'natural order', which means I don't really think there's moral force behind "what's theirs", but I also don't see any moral reason why you should sit and have less while someone has a hundred times more than they need simply through an accident of birth.
So, basically, I think capitalism is interesting, in school, along with communism, and other pure forms of economy that rely of too many invisible hands. But in practice, a government actively controled by the citizens should strongly control all business, and not in the interests of the business, but in the interests of the people. Striking enough of a balance to make the business work running, without giving them a divine right to control the workers.
Must say though, that it is nice talking with you Hawk, while we often disagree, it's nice to talk to someone who doesn't resort to flames.
Heh, yeah. Of all the CDs I've burned over the years (150 or so), probably 95% of the pirated ones (ie, not backups) were games. I burned one disk of MP3s, the rest were applications (Photoshop, etc).
The musicians shouldn't get any of the CD Tax I pay, but the game companies would get a pretty decent cut.
Slashdot Mirror
That's the argument used anytime someone suggests doing something that businesses wouldn't like...
"Global economic collapse"
Bullshit. There'd still be a market for products, there'd still be people willing to make those products. They might not be willing to invest in any company that comes along, and they might demand more information about the day-to-day policies of the company, but they wouldn't refuse to invest at all.
Especially in this situation. If they took 'reasonable' measures (as defined by a judge) to ensure that the company wasn't breaking any laws, they wouldn't be guilty of contributory infringement. You need to either intend to break laws, or intentionally turn a blind eye to it.
So they'd be right where they are now, with their investment money at risk, but not their freedom.
I'd personally welcome laws like this. Everyone I know who supports Microsoft in the monopoly trials owns MS stock. They're hoping MS gets away with monopolistic and restrictive trade practices and outright law breaking simply because their stock will go up. With any decent laws they'd be held partly responsible in any judgement and they'd be trying to clean MS's act up, instead of encouraging it.
They're advocating ignoring gross injustice because it benefits them, but they'll be crying later when some other company (which they don't hold any stock in) does the same things.
I advocate leveling the playing field, making everyone follow the laws, and compete on the merits of their business. That's the capitalist way. If companies like MS can't compete in fair markets, they don't deserve to be in business.
Well, I agree with you, even if nobody else does...
The police don't have a right to search everyone just because they MAY be committing a crime, and I don't want them to be doing that. It's worth a bit of personal discomfort to collect the evidence and prove to people that the police are doing these things.
This is especially true with a stupid law like the criminalization of pot. It they were searching your building for someone who had built a bomb and taken out an airliner, I'd be a little more willing to co-operate. Especially if laws were changed to forbid police from searching you for one reason and arresting you for something else they see while in there. (I think they should be able to act on very serious crimes, like if they search you for drugs and find human remains, but not if they search you for drugs and discover cuban cigars, or copied DVDs, etc.)
btw, I can't say anything about hate magazines, but I remember an article a while back that said the same thing about kiddy porn, the goverment comes very close to entrapment in its production of this (well, rerelease of existing material, I'd assume) to snare anyone who tries to order more.
I don't see why people are afraid of the GPL. It's a COPYRIGHT license. It uses copyrights, not patents. If you see a piece of GPLed code that you like, rewrite it, that'll make it yours.
I can see a point where 95% of the software is GPLed, because it's so damned easy to write an application when you can borrow code. But that last 5%? That'll be by people who don't like the GPL, or who for some reason want or need closed source software.
They'll still be able to write closed-source software, by not using any GPLed code. It's only a problem if they feel they have to use someone else's code.
But, really, I don't care that some company can't copy GPLed code - wah... (I don't really care about them copying my GPLed code, I write (when not at work) silly fractal zoomers and filesystems for emulators... Not exactly big-buck stuff.)
Because they count on many of those people going to the theatre and then buying the movie on DVD.
Not that I give a rat's ass... If they can't run their business well enough to give people incentive to view a movie in the theatre, then they don't require any protection imho.
It's not MY fault that they can't run their business very well.
They can either get the movie to theatres in Australia faster, delay DVD releases here, or suck it up and accept that their mistakes will cost them money. But when they look for laws to be passed, specifically to keep them from having to change their outdated business practices...
I personally don't feel bound to follow any law that a corp has paid for. That's not law, that's bribery and treason that we simply haven't punished yet. I'm not saying I'll break it in front of the police - that'd be like taunting a bully to his face, but I will work to circumvent the law and bring financial ruin to the companies that subverted the legal system I live in just to pad their pockets.
IMHO people have the right to TRY TO make a profit, not the right a profit. That's a *big* difference.
It's a troll because you say something that's obviously false as if it were true. The 'troll' part is that you say something like 'MS rocks' on Slashdot. If you did it elsewhere it wouldn't be a troll, just wrong.
Having cheap software is an obvious benefit in the industry, however you can see from products like Dr Dos that other companies were in the same market space. MS was big because it got the contract from IBM and was the 'official' vendor of OSes for IBM hardware.
This isn't to say that MS didn't do anything note-worthy, or that the industry would be exactly the same without them, but it would certainly be mostly similar.
If you want to blame/thank a company for this situation, it should be either IBM for outsourcing its OS, expanding the market for software-only companies, or compaq, etc, for cloning the PC, expanding the market for cheap hardware. Those were the non-apparent actions, which may not have happened again, unlike MS's simply filling a niche someone else made.
Oh, boo hoo.
/. doesn't change that. Wow, a 14-year old with a stick up his ass. That'll sure convince me to read another news site.
You mean you pro-MSers will have to scroll down over a link and the blurb.
Wah.
If you don't like it, piss off. You and the "Quit Slashdotters" and all other babies who are upset that THEIR story didn't get posted are the only real problem with this site.
If you don't like it, don't read it. Especially, don't post telling us that you don't like it. If you don't, just silently go away.
You see, your opinion is worthless. You are a nobody, and your bashing
I know it's a troll, but I just have to correct this misconception...
You can't generalize from a sample size of one. You can't claim that anything is the way it is now because of MS because we don't have a comparable yet seperated industry to compare it to.
Moore's law has held constant since he conceived of it, that means computers have gotten more complex over time. At some point they became powerful enough to be easy to use, enabling millions of users to get on the net, etc.
Your hypothesis is that MS made computers easy to use. The more reasonable hypothesis is that companies like MS and Apple made computers as easy to use as was possible with the hardware of the day. Companies like Intel made computers more powerful, enabling MS and Apple (etc) to build powerful GUI OSes.
Computers are right where they would be without MS. Apple made the first consumer GUI, AOL sent out free trial disks for all popular OSes... The only difference without MS would be that BeOS and Amiga might still be fringe players and Apple would be larger.
This is also safer for them to say. Many people understand the idea of investing in a business that MAY be profitable in the future. Many industries require a long start-up time and large up-front costs.
If they say they'll be profitable soon, their stock will plummet when 'soon' comes and they're still not profitable. If they say that they'll be profitable only when they have developed a market, that's a variable goal, from six months to ten years. As long as their investors picked it as a risky long-term stock, they're set.
Nobody will drop their stock if they become profitable before they indicated, but they would drop the stock if their failed to become profitable when they said they would.
You actually have the only right that matters. The right that copying can be done. Without a law, or disregarding the law, it is.
That law is trying to control natural behaviour.
Who the hell do they think they are to regulate the actions of the people by calling upon the government and their backing of deadly force?
Copyright law is a TRADE between the 'people' and the 'producers', saying that we offer them protection (which they could not expect otherwise) in trade for them producing things which we get limited access to for a while, then the full NATURAL access to.
Every idea is based off of other ones. Nobody is where they are today truly on their own. They didn't invent the language they use, the insturments they use, these are all ideas they get from the rest of society, for free, so why do they have the right to forbid other people access to their ideas?
They don't. If they don't live up to their end of the bargain, as the people wanted it, and they bribe politicians to pass stupid copyright extensions, they lose the right to claim anything. Copyright is mutually beneficial, or was. If it stops being that way, why should the people still be bound by it when the producers aren't?
Really? How come all these discussions involve some BSD guy saying "Use BSD, it's like the GPL, but not communist!"
The GPL is voluntary. If you use GPLed code it's by choice.
Further, if you can't code something better than a GPLed sample, with the GPL to use as an example, you don't deserve to make any money from your code as it's obviously substandard.
Maybe your idea of free software is to waste your time writing something that the MSs of the world can use for free, even as they steamroll over the rights of the people.
This is precisely what the GPL is for, to make sure that only people who will contribute free software benefit from it. If someone can't be bothered to help the community, why should the community help them?
The only people who like the BSDL better are freeloaders and people who've been brainwashed into thinking the GPL is communist, or some other crap.
I didn't say they could remove the BSD'd version, but they can get something for nothing. That both annoys me personally and makes bad business sense for the original contributor.
Most businesses I've worked with have liked the GPL, it grants them code to use, and means that if they release anything, nobody can proprietize it and start selling it.
They don't mind using it, but want their piece if someone is getting charged for it. (But, they'd rather just let everyone have it for free, instead of trying to collect royalties on some small program.)
Adding things like Chatzilla didn't delay Mozilla much, if at all. The developers working on Chatzilla, for the most part, are ones who joined the project for that purpose.
It does take some work from the core developers to write the interfaces, but then, imho, that's important. I want Mozilla to support many pluggins, I'll just be picky about which ones I install.
I don't specifically want a browser that's an email client, but I want one that you can closely integrate with one, which Mozilla is better at for their practice at integrating their own client, and Chatzilla, etc, etc.
The BSD license specifically allows companies to fork a project and close-source their fork.
That's the big difference between the licenses.
So how does the BSD license prevent a company from rolling an open source project into it's closed source?
Those people playing in 512x384 with the textures blurred aren't playing you, they're playing each other.
What's a real pain in Quake is when you're in the middle of a battle and get a quarter-second pause when running into a new room as the computer loads textures. If you die because of that, it takes all the fun out of it. For you and for your opponent.
The point of dropping the detail is to remove the computer from the equation as much as possible, so it's a game of skill between the players, not their machines.
In something like Myst, the graphics are everything. In something like Quake3, the graphics are just a way of describing the world that contains you, your opponent, and the weapons.
I didn't say they should release all their code, just that the code they do release should be GPLed.
Really, everyone should release GPLed code for everything, just to piss off MS who lives by stealing code.
Both licenses allow that. If IBM wrote the code, they can release it under any license they like, at any time. They can't revoke a license like the BSDL or GPL, but they can add a license. (Or lack thereof, with a proprietary release.)
It would mean that they can't fold Apache into that proprietary release, if it was GPLed. In that, you're right.
If IBM releases something under the GPL they've prevented anyone from filing off the name and rereleasing it as a proprietary project. So any of those Redhat, or Suse, users will see that they're using something by IBM, a maker of "big iron". When they have serious computer needs, who are they going to talk to?
For instance, if you're using IBM's DB2 database on Redhat, and you decide that even a cluster of high-end PCs can't keep up anymore, who are you going to contact to get better hardware? SGI? Nope, IBM... because they've shown you their product and let you use it.
Now if DB2 has some neat feature that Oracle doesn't, Oracle can't simple copy that feature, they need to rewrite the whole thing. So it's IBM's protection to keep competitors from easily benefitting from their code, while still letting potential customers have all the access they need to fully evaluate and use the product.
And as for the Vatican? What kind of crack are you smoking?
Sure, those 'other companies' I talked about could rewrite IBMs code and end up with the same thing, basically. But they couldn't just do a cut & paste job. It's makes it harder for them to benefit. With the BSD license they wouldn't care about rewriting it, they'd just grab it.
Right. The GPL can't be applied to someone else's code, they choose to do it because they want the benefits. And they still own the IP, and can relicense their part (without everyone else's contributions) seperately.
But RMS intended the GPL to slowly lessen the control of IP, by building enough GPLed software that the only smart thing for people to do was use some of it in their project, thus making the rest free.
So it wouldn't destroy IP, but it'd create a condition in which IP wasn't the point of business, where businesses provided a service instead of figuring out some piece of IP and blackmailing anyone who thought of the same idea.
The GPL isn't anti-business, and RMS never said that it was. He said it was anti-IP.
There's a HUGE difference. IP is the ability to own ideas. To control the actions of others, tell them what they're allowed to know.
Business is the action everyone takes when they put food on the table. Either if they're self-employed, or work for someone else.
There are hundreds of successful businesses that use or work with the GPL. Many consultants I know spend 75% or more of their time migrating businesses to unix servers and other non-proprietary software. I know of three tech companies basing custom hardware on RT-Linux (well, a RT flavor of Linux, not specifically RT-Linux).
The GPL isn't suited for megacorps - Stallman will tell you that, but it's not designed to sabotage them either. As long as they have a business method which doesn't involve squatting on IP, they'll be fine.
The GPL is as business neutral as the color blue. Many companies make great use of it, others don't. Many companies fail, many don't. The color blue doesn't play a part in this, and neither does the GPL. But CEOs sure grasp at straws to justify their company losing money... It's like that just can't admit that their incompotence had to do with it.
Heh. Let companies whine about how they don't want to embrace open source. They'll kill themselves, or relegate themselves to a niche market, and let other more flexible competitors take over.
Microsoft is already pushing itself out the server market. Many businesses are ditching MS in favor of the tried and true. They know propoganda when they see it. They know that having a GPLed webserver is irrelevant to its performance, they don't buy MS's FUD, but they recognize the fact that MS is sure spending a lot of time and money on that FUD.
Well, it'll work itself out in the end. MS may or may not still sell server-level OSes then, but their FUD won't change a thing.
Why would a company like IBM invest a ton of money into something with the BSD license? It'd just get used by some closed source company who didn't return anything to the community or to IBM.
However, if IBM uses the GPL then they have the ability to use any innovations they discover people have made to their code.
Say IBM releases a file-system. They GPL it and Linux starts using it, and some smart person comes up with a better caching algorithm, improving the performance drastically. Now IBM can take that improvement, rewrite it to obtain their own copyright, and fold it into their closed-source version of that file-system as well. Not only that, but when Linux is reviewed and that file-system is mentioned, IBM will be known as the creators. It's a win-win situation. They gave something away, to people who wouldn't have bought it anyways, and got something back, even if only in minor bug fixes.
Their competitors didn't get anything, unless they want to link to GPLed code written by IBM, and what kind of statement would that make to investors? Mainly that IBM produces better code than they could. Every version of the competitors product would be an advertisment for IBM.
However, if IBM used the BSD license their code would be quietly snapped up and used in their competitors products, without any compensation to IBM. That's the inexcusable (to stockholders) action.
Clearly, if you want to reap the benefits of open source, you need to make sure the source stays open. That's GPL.
First a quick remark to your parent post...
Software on Windows tends to be either a one-click install, where it's smart enough to find the boot drive when it's not C, to use the real program files, etc. Or it's a disaster where they hardcode stuff and it refuses to work unless you tweak a lot of option - if they let you tweak.
This is almost exactly the same as Linux software. Some RPMs install perfectly, some were written by idiots. If they work well, it's seamless, if not, they'll screw the computer up, just without the pretty graphics.
Now, as to the idea of a LSP...
This is quite reasonable to expect. The LSP would have perfect access to your computer, not like PC Anywhere and other Windows remote access programs. They could do anything remotely that a good admin could do locally.
In fact, they'd find it easier because if the 'user' didn't have root privs for anything they'd be unable to screw things up, so the main system would be untouched since the LSP had last connected.
Well, sure. An ideal capitalism doesn't sound so bad, but it requires enlightened people and would end up functioning somewhat like an enlightened socialism (everyone helping society to make it run smoother, etc).
But I think there are things in real life that prevent capitalism from ever working like the ideal versions. For one, to be fair, it has to give everyone a chance when they start. The system is massively biased towards the rich, and even if everyone starts equal, the next generation will be unbalanced.
When there's a large unbalance the system easily gets corrupt and people start having too much power over each over.
I personally think a strongly regulated market is a good market, at least compared to what would happen if there were no laws related to business practice. IMHO, monopolies are a natural result of capitalistic businesses and monopolies do not serve the consumer. As each company relies on many consumers, the good of the many is sacrificed for the good of the one.
Ayn Rand would say that this is simply the natural order, the smart rise to the top, the stupid fall to the bottom, and with laws, force the smart to support them.
I disagree, thinking that the rich only get rich with the cooperation of the poor. It's only because the poor are law abiding that they let the rich exert company-town type pressure on them without simply taking what is theirs.
I don't believe in any 'natural order', which means I don't really think there's moral force behind "what's theirs", but I also don't see any moral reason why you should sit and have less while someone has a hundred times more than they need simply through an accident of birth.
So, basically, I think capitalism is interesting, in school, along with communism, and other pure forms of economy that rely of too many invisible hands. But in practice, a government actively controled by the citizens should strongly control all business, and not in the interests of the business, but in the interests of the people. Striking enough of a balance to make the business work running, without giving them a divine right to control the workers.
Must say though, that it is nice talking with you Hawk, while we often disagree, it's nice to talk to someone who doesn't resort to flames.
Heh, yeah. Of all the CDs I've burned over the years (150 or so), probably 95% of the pirated ones (ie, not backups) were games. I burned one disk of MP3s, the rest were applications (Photoshop, etc).
The musicians shouldn't get any of the CD Tax I pay, but the game companies would get a pretty decent cut.