Actually, hard work can lead to failure. For example, you could work so hard that your boss might fear that you'll replace him, so he finds a way to get rid of you. Business in the real world isn't a purely logical or even rational process.
It's the same old story. Those who have been fortunate enough or haven't been around long enough to have trouble finding or keeping a job believe that their success is all due to their hard work and good planning. Then one day they get laid off in a bad market, they have to struggle to get their next job and suddenly luck starts entering their calculus.
Don't get me wrong: Hard work and perseverance will give you your best shot, but it guarantees nothing.
"As in a very small number of people make a very large sum of money while everybody else is screwed?"
I think you have a basic misunderstanding of the software market. Some companies make a lot of money while others only get modest return on their investment. As in any business, there are many more consumers in the marketplace than there are producers.
"It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work. It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons."
What are those reasons that you claim are exactly the same in both cases. Even if I agreed with your claim (which I don't) I'd say the reasons would actually be quite different. But the main point is who decides when an IP creator has been rewarded "too many times"?
I could make a similar unsupported claim about services "It's wrong that a company providing services should be rewarded too many times for the one body of knowledge they possess." In other words, it's OK for Red Hat to charge a single customer (or pick your favorite number here) for updates, but since that update is "one piece of work", additional copies should be available at no charge.
I think that a consistent application of this "too many times" theory will render most businesses "wrong".
I don't believe the evidence supports your conclusion. Look at all the no-cost applications available on the Internet: search engines, email, source control, conferencing, etc. People are happy to use it and don't consider it junk just because it is free. In any case, there's no evidence that a random selection of a GPL'd work is of any higher quality than a random selection of shareware.
Well, we are talking about business uses aren't we? How many people clean up the beach 40 hrs a week for nothing? Besides, if you follow the politically-correct FSF model it's OK to charge for the service of cleaning the beach as long as you're willing to share any modifications you make to the trash with the community.
Apple is famous for not caring about backwards compatibility and they have a devoted following that will go along with almost anything. Also the Mac ecosystem (hardware and software) is much less diverse and complex; thus reimplementing the "Mac experience" based on BSD wasn't that hard.
MS customers are not so forgiving. Reimplementing Windows with a Unix core would be an enormous undertaking that is unlikely to be a cash-positive move for MS. Besides, most of the complexity of Windows wouldn't go away by changing to a different kernel or making everything "look like a file" or any other Unix attribute.
You won't get much argument from me. I think all the business plan aspects of GPL'd software are just an afterthought and excuse. Sure, companies like Red Hat can make a profit (at least for now) because 90% of the key work on Linux was done before they invested any money, but if they actually paid for all the early work they'd be out of business.
If and when Linux becomes more mainstream, look for Red Hat's profits to dwindle as the update process gets simpler and people realize that they don't really need a support contract.
You're right. Hardcore real-time embedded software is fading fast as an art. All the hard stuff is being done in hardware these days and resources are nearly unlimited. Now we are more integrators and customizers of other people's code. It sucks!
"You do need it warped to want to tie your company's commercial future to a small proprietary software vendor with no second source."
What are you saying? IF QNX goes out of business your binaries explode? In an embedded system, the software is the least of your "sourcing" issues. Besides, in the embedded market you shouldn't be tying your company's future to anything beyond your current products. If, for example, you say "We'll be using Linux in our products from now on", you're asking for trouble.
It's funny that you describe the dominant and very successful business model for the software industry as "confused". Not every company wants to be in the consulting and contracts business and many customers aren't interested in paying for such services.
I have used proprietary embedded OS's before and we never would have paid for consulting services or maintenance contracts. If the OS's is of good quality and is reasonably well documented, what else would we need? However, if the OS was available for free for commercial use, we'd be happy to use it without paying for it (We wouldn't care much about having the source code: the whole point of buying it is to avoid doing the work ourselves). On the other hand, if it required us to release our code, we'd probably pass on it.
"And this is why Free Software advocates laugh at people who say 'Open Source' is not ambiguous."
RMS is the king of ambiguity. That's why the phrases "free as in free" and "free as in beer" had to be invented. It should have been called "Freedom Software", but that doesn't have quite the marketing value that "Free Software" does.
I not aware of any real embedded OS that has anything to do with the kind of corruption you refer to. As far as the kind of "stability" you refer to, that seems to be quite irrelevant to most embedded systems as well. Embedded system makers aren't usually in the OS business, so they have little motivation to arbitrarily replace the OS.
"Well, no, because it's his/FSF's license and software."
Well, that's fine if RMS and the FSF are the only parties to the license and the software. If however, other parties are involved with an agreement, than it matters equally what both parties see as the "spirit" of the agreement. Otherwise RMS could be making up what the "spirit" means as fast as Bush is adding Presidential powers.
Of course, with respect to the "letter" of the agreement, it doesn't ultimately matter what either party thinks, just what the courts think.
"The GPL'd GNU/Linux environment is a far more stable and and corruption-proof than any proprietary environment."
For embedded systems? You're joking right? If you're really building a custom PC rather than a true embedded system and need all the functionality of a general purpose computer, than you may be right. In may cases, an embedded OS will do that is a fraction of the size of the smallest Linux kernel, is as least as stable and is 100% corruption-proof (unless you start removing chips).
As usual, it's a matter of using the right tool for the right job and no tool is right for everything.
"For many embedded devels these days, keeping things proprietary is pointless, the systems are built on cheapo COTS reference implementations anyway, and it'd take the competition longer to copy/clone the software than the product cycle."
Obviously the length of the product cycle is not a constant, but varies with the category and product. Not everyone develops "me too" products, BTW. It would help your potential competitors a lot if you GPL'd your software for an innovative product they hadn't thought of yet.
"The GPL License is a/user/ license. It was intended to preserve the freedom of the/user/ of GPL software."
As a practical matter, this really isn't true. Unless a "user" is really a developer or wishes to employ one to make changes, the GPL'd software might as well be freeware. This type of user represents a tiny minority now and will get even smaller as GPL'd software becomes more mainstream.
Of course the GPL doesn't protect against your contributions from being exploited without " giving back" because non-distributed derived works don't require distribution of source.
The original Lotus 123 was a DOS character mode application and thus couldn't really draw spreadsheet cells. Eventually 123 was upgraded to Windows and thus started to look more like Excel.
I can't really comment on the legal issues since I haven't studied it, but I can comment on the technical ones. Much of the Atari 2600 hardware was undocumented and yet many different companies were able to reverse-engineer it.
"When a company doesn't release specs, we can't do that."
Sure, you can. It's just harder. If people have time to spend on worthless hacking like making an XBox run Linux, they should have the time to do something useful like reverse engineering these WiFi chipsets.
I entirely agree. Furthermore, nobody is going to do such a study. Scientists won't because there's really no scientific theory that would account for it working. The polygraph community isn't going to do one because they have nothing to gain and everything to lose from such a study.
The fact that an "examiner" must be present and is the one "evaluating" the result makes the whole process quite suspect. If I get an EKG, or an MRI, or some other diagnostic test, the process is usually handled by a nurse or technician, not the doctor who evaluates the result.
It's most likely that the outcome is based on the non-polygraph observations of the examiner and the bluff factor with the polygraph as an impressive prop.
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Actually, hard work can lead to failure. For example, you could work so hard that your boss might fear that you'll replace him, so he finds a way to get rid of you. Business in the real world isn't a purely logical or even rational process.
It's the same old story. Those who have been fortunate enough or haven't been around long enough to have trouble finding or keeping a job believe that their success is all due to their hard work and good planning. Then one day they get laid off in a bad market, they have to struggle to get their next job and suddenly luck starts entering their calculus.
Don't get me wrong: Hard work and perseverance will give you your best shot, but it guarantees nothing.
Well, a library isn't an application. I also don't see the connection between an FFT library and the underlying OS.
"As in a very small number of people make a very large sum of money while everybody else is screwed?"
I think you have a basic misunderstanding of the software market. Some companies make a lot of money while others only get modest return on their investment. As in any business, there are many more consumers in the marketplace than there are producers.
"It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work.
It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons."
What are those reasons that you claim are exactly the same in both cases. Even if I agreed with your claim (which I don't) I'd say the reasons would actually be quite different. But the main point is who decides when an IP creator has been rewarded "too many times"?
I could make a similar unsupported claim about services "It's wrong that a company providing services should be rewarded too many times for the one body of knowledge they possess." In other words, it's OK for Red Hat to charge a single customer (or pick your favorite number here) for updates, but since that update is "one piece of work", additional copies should be available at no charge.
I think that a consistent application of this "too many times" theory will render most businesses "wrong".
I don't believe the evidence supports your conclusion. Look at all the no-cost applications available on the Internet: search engines, email, source control, conferencing, etc. People are happy to use it and don't consider it junk just because it is free. In any case, there's no evidence that a random selection of a GPL'd work is of any higher quality than a random selection of shareware.
Well, we are talking about business uses aren't we? How many people clean up the beach 40 hrs a week for nothing? Besides, if you follow the politically-correct FSF model it's OK to charge for the service of cleaning the beach as long as you're willing to share any modifications you make to the trash with the community.
Apple is famous for not caring about backwards compatibility and they have a devoted following that will go along with almost anything. Also the Mac ecosystem (hardware and software) is much less diverse and complex; thus reimplementing the "Mac experience" based on BSD wasn't that hard.
MS customers are not so forgiving. Reimplementing Windows with a Unix core would be an enormous undertaking that is unlikely to be a cash-positive move for MS. Besides, most of the complexity of Windows wouldn't go away by changing to a different kernel or making everything "look like a file" or any other Unix attribute.
You won't get much argument from me. I think all the business plan aspects of GPL'd software are just an afterthought and excuse. Sure, companies like Red Hat can make a profit (at least for now) because 90% of the key work on Linux was done before they invested any money, but if they actually paid for all the early work they'd be out of business.
If and when Linux becomes more mainstream, look for Red Hat's profits to dwindle as the update process gets simpler and people realize that they don't really need a support contract.
You're right. Hardcore real-time embedded software is fading fast as an art. All the hard stuff is being done in hardware these days and resources are nearly unlimited. Now we are more integrators and customizers of other people's code. It sucks!
"I find the history of QNX very frustrating"
I find your history of QNX very puzzling. MS-DOS and QNX were never really competitors since they were really in different markets.
"... and overall lack of applications."
It's an embedded OS: It's your job to write the application.
"You do need it warped to want to tie your company's commercial future to a small proprietary software vendor with no second source."
What are you saying? IF QNX goes out of business your binaries explode? In an embedded system, the software is the least of your "sourcing" issues. Besides, in the embedded market you shouldn't be tying your company's future to anything beyond your current products. If, for example, you say "We'll be using Linux in our products from now on", you're asking for trouble.
It's funny that you describe the dominant and very successful business model for the software industry as "confused". Not every company wants to be in the consulting and contracts business and many customers aren't interested in paying for such services.
I have used proprietary embedded OS's before and we never would have paid for consulting services or maintenance contracts. If the OS's is of good quality and is reasonably well documented, what else would we need? However, if the OS was available for free for commercial use, we'd be happy to use it without paying for it (We wouldn't care much about having the source code: the whole point of buying it is to avoid doing the work ourselves). On the other hand, if it required us to release our code, we'd probably pass on it.
"And this is why Free Software advocates laugh at people who say 'Open Source' is not ambiguous."
RMS is the king of ambiguity. That's why the phrases "free as in free" and "free as in beer" had to be invented. It should have been called "Freedom Software", but that doesn't have quite the marketing value that "Free Software" does.
UNIX is a commodity OS and MS would make more money selling mice than they would selling a MS-UNIX.
Of course if Windows went away and it was all UNIX, perhaps a new generation of developers would get sick of it and create a new and better OS.
I not aware of any real embedded OS that has anything to do with the kind of corruption you refer to. As far as the kind of "stability" you refer to, that seems to be quite irrelevant to most embedded systems as well. Embedded system makers aren't usually in the OS business, so they have little motivation to arbitrarily replace the OS.
"Well, no, because it's his/FSF's license and software."
Well, that's fine if RMS and the FSF are the only parties to the license and the software. If however, other parties are involved with an agreement, than it matters equally what both parties see as the "spirit" of the agreement. Otherwise RMS could be making up what the "spirit" means as fast as Bush is adding Presidential powers.
Of course, with respect to the "letter" of the agreement, it doesn't ultimately matter what either party thinks, just what the courts think.
"The GPL'd GNU/Linux environment is a far more stable and and corruption-proof than any proprietary environment."
For embedded systems? You're joking right? If you're really building a custom PC rather than a true embedded system and need all the functionality of a general purpose computer, than you may be right. In may cases, an embedded OS will do that is a fraction of the size of the smallest Linux kernel, is as least as stable and is 100% corruption-proof (unless you start removing chips).
As usual, it's a matter of using the right tool for the right job and no tool is right for everything.
"For many embedded devels these days, keeping things proprietary is pointless, the systems are built on cheapo COTS reference implementations anyway, and it'd take the competition longer to copy/clone the software than the product cycle."
Obviously the length of the product cycle is not a constant, but varies with the category and product. Not everyone develops "me too" products, BTW. It would help your potential competitors a lot if you GPL'd your software for an innovative product they hadn't thought of yet.
Funny how the spirit of the agreement as defined by RMS is the only intrepretation that counts. Isn't the other party allowed to have an opinion?
"The GPL License is a /user/ license. It was intended to preserve the freedom of the /user/ of GPL software."
As a practical matter, this really isn't true. Unless a "user" is really a developer or wishes to employ one to make changes, the GPL'd software might as well be freeware. This type of user represents a tiny minority now and will get even smaller as GPL'd software becomes more mainstream.
Of course the GPL doesn't protect against your contributions from being exploited without "
giving back" because non-distributed derived works don't require distribution of source.
The original Lotus 123 was a DOS character mode application and thus couldn't really draw spreadsheet cells. Eventually 123 was upgraded to Windows and thus started to look more like Excel.
I can't really comment on the legal issues since I haven't studied it, but I can comment on the technical ones. Much of the Atari 2600 hardware was undocumented and yet many different companies were able to reverse-engineer it.
"When a company doesn't release specs, we can't do that."
Sure, you can. It's just harder. If people have time to spend on worthless hacking like making an XBox run Linux, they should have the time to do something useful like reverse engineering these WiFi chipsets.
I entirely agree. Furthermore, nobody is going to do such a study. Scientists won't because there's really no scientific theory that would account for it working. The polygraph community isn't going to do one because they have nothing to gain and everything to lose from such a study.
The fact that an "examiner" must be present and is the one "evaluating" the result makes the whole process quite suspect. If I get an EKG, or an MRI, or some other diagnostic test, the process is usually handled by a nurse or technician, not the doctor who evaluates the result.
It's most likely that the outcome is based on the non-polygraph observations of the examiner and the bluff factor with the polygraph as an impressive prop.