If there was only GPL libraries I might not have bothered to build the product, and that would have affected not only my welfare but also the consumers who bought it.
This was the point I was making in my first paragraph. I think that this is the reason many people use the BSD license for their code. Another is that they want to get as much recognition as possible (maybe so a for profit company will hire them, who knows?) and BSD license will result in the most widespread use of their software.
Great comment, however it's so far down the page now it's probably not getting much attention.
I think one reason people think differently to you and me is that they have the attitude of "why would I possible want to help a for profit venture"? They don't realize that helping for-profit companies helps the consumers of those companies products, and their shareholders (I wouldn't mind if a person richer than myself benefited from my work either, but it certainly wouldn't be strong motivating factor). Another point is that people don't code just out of altruism, but also in order to gain recognition, and this works better if more people use your library, whether or not they choose to open-source their own code
I made a similar (but less detailed and precise) argument here, but I made the mistake of using a personal example where I wanted to use a library in commercial software I was using, and so most of the replies were personal attacks. This could have been avoided by using a hypothetical example instead.
just wanted to add I never claimed to be entitled to anything, I was just saying what I thought was most efficient? Does this really have to be so personal? I know most people here spend there time writing GPL software, but as part of the tiny minority who either try to sell software or earn a wage from companies that do, I feel like I'm receive an undue amount of animosity.
I personally have nothing against for profit companies, and I'm as willing to do things for free for them as I am for end users. If I were to choose between GPL or BSD for my own work, my main consideration would be what the total benefit to society would be, including the benefit to the for-profit corporations who use that code. I wouldn't expect the people who used the code to give something back, because that wouldn't be why I made it open source in the first place.
I think that BSD is good for libraries, and GPL or proprietary code is good for end products. Everyone deserves to get rewarded for their work. However, an altruistic person might decide to make their library BSD so others can use it in their products. If they make is GPL, then less people will decide to use it, so their altruism will be less effective.
Also, I'm somewhat surprised by people's reaction to my using a personal example? Aren't many people here coders who work for companies, and therefore write proprietary software? How is it different that I planned to sell it myself instead of working for a wage for a company?
You are confusing ex ante scarcity with ex post scarcity. Once I write the software, the most efficient thing would be to make it open source since the marginal cost is 0. However if I do this, then I have less incentive to write the software in the first place. I'm not sure if this covers everything you wrote, perhaps try to cut down on the length and make your points clearer?
In GPL only world, the entry costs to producing and selling software become a lot higher. I cannot use an GPL code, so I must replicate all that functionality. You might think this is great since people will produce free software instead, but most people are motivated by money so what it really means is that people are more likely to work for a big company (which can overcome these entry costs) than start their own company.
To give a concrete example, I was working on some software (that I planned to sell) that would use matrix operations. I first considered Gnu Scientific Library, but if I used this I would have to GPL my own code. Not very conducive to selling it! Then I found out about Eigen which is BSD licensed.
Economically BSD is usually optimal (in the sense of maximizing societal welfare) because it creates a competitive market in the use of your software. You forgo your profits (usually when creating a library or framework) in order that the market can make use of the in the most efficient way. For example, your BSD software with a CLI and someone writes a GUI for it. That person can only charge more to the extent that people prefer a GUI. And furthermore, they can't charge too much more cause someone else might come along and write a GUI and sell it for cheaper.
GPL *might* have some advantages in preventing commercial forks, and therefore be a better license for things that require economies of scale, and are under threat of forking, like Operating Systems.
She was removed for "contempt", for refusing to apologize. This seems like a misuse of that kind of procedure. Contempt should be for, for example, swearing at another politician in the chambers. Being able to remove elected politicians on such a slim pretext is very dangerous to democracy.
That explains why in high level judo competitions, both players stand completely still. They know that any movement they make will be used against them by their opponent.
I agree with what you say, but I was addressing the criticisms in the article, which were that there was something improper about Tech sites covering this event, as opposed to simply these sites not having the expertise to produce something that readers would value.
Most likely the Tech sites thought that given the level of user interest in this topic, that any new perspective the they could add to the topic would be valuable to readers. Some sites mentioned claimed that they are not "Tech" sites or that they are trying to broaden their coverage.
The idea that tech blogs can cover stories about tech, but should leave coverage of serious political and human issues to the "big boys" of traditional media, is ridiculous. There is no special license needed to write about serious and important topics, only the usual requirement that the reporting be genuinely in the public interest. Presenting information from social networks, as long as it is labelled as such and not misrepresented as certain fact, is in no way improper. If people are interested in reading about that information, there is nothing wrong with providing it, and if tech blogs feel that because of their focus, they are especially able to do this, then they should.
I agree that it's suspicious the way things suddenly become "crimes" once companies don't approve of them. However there do seem to be distinctly criminal elements to what this trader did: taking very deliberate actions to invest money in an unauthorized way, making trades on behalf of a non-existent client. So I believe this case truly is a criminal matter. On the other hand, I doubt that it would still be considered if someone higher up had done the same thing (using more complex excuses to cover up their actions).
It is possible to promote generic drugs in third world countries from a "price discrimination" perspective. That is, you strike the best balance between maximizing the benefit of drugs once they have been discovered, and incentivizing the discovery of new drugs, when you have one price for first world countries and one price for third world countries (and maybe something in between too).
That said, James Love does not seem to arguing from this point of view, but rather attacking drug patents in general. I think we need to be very critical of arguments against protecting real, non-obvious inventions, as it is too easy to place excessive weight on the immediate, measurable benefit of removing these protections, relative to the hypothetical, hard to measure cost. It's similar to how people complain when companies lay off employees, even though the principe of a free labor market means that the decision to fire a worker should be as free as the decision to hire one.
It's also not clear what sources the claims about James Love's role in the promotion of generic AIDS drugs has been. A cursory google search didn't suggest that he had been one of the major players.
It is a matter of "not enough money" in the sense that if the government has limited the CSIRO's budget then they are forced to either downsize, or look for outside funding.
A typical academic or grad student will constantly revise a document. By the time I've written a paper, I've probably done editing equivalent to re-writing it 10x. Most of the time is spent writing text and formulas.
If you are spending a lot of time doing formatting, either of the document or very complex formulas, then LyX probably isn't a good solution. But if your formulas remain within what LyX can handle and the document is nothing but text and formulas, LyX great. I don't even bother to preview anymore, now my eyes have adjusted to the ugly formatting within the LyX gui.
you're free to believe what you want, my experience, and I imagine that of many readers, is that there is a large segment of political commentators that are (A) generally in favor of "workers rights' (B) generally against strict enforcement of immigration law against illegal immigrants. I'm not going to waste time trying to prove this to you, since it is, by its nature, something that is almost impossible to prove to someone who hasn't already come to that conclusion themself.
That may be true, but it doesn't change the fact that the people I described as "left wing" who are in favor of worker's rights, would be opposed to stringent enforcement of immigraiton law
My point is that the right can (and do) say that "we need illegal immigrants because of all the restriction placed on US labor by the left". This is a poor argument, since a better solution would be to ease those restrictions if necessary, but it is not hyprocitical.
The left is guilty of hypocricy because they themselves argue for even stronger restrictions of labor conditions (such as the article suggests) but the have the nerve to repeat the argument of the right: that illegals are needed because they will work for lower wages.
Any enforcement action against illegals hurts their employers and vice versa. It is meaningless to say that the government is pro employer of illegals but against the illegals themselves. As to what you call left and right, it really doesn't matter. The point is there is a large section of political commentators who claim to support workers rights, but think that the a situtation with lax enforcement of immigration law is better than a situation with strong enforcement of immigration law..
The left wants businesses that pay less than the minimum wage shutdown.
They claim to want this, but it's very clear that they prefer immigration authorities to turn a blind eye to illegal immigration. I don't see left wingers cheering whenever INS raid a business that hires illegals.
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If there was only GPL libraries I might not have bothered to build the product, and that would have affected not only my welfare but also the consumers who bought it.
This was the point I was making in my first paragraph. I think that this is the reason many people use the BSD license for their code. Another is that they want to get as much recognition as possible (maybe so a for profit company will hire them, who knows?) and BSD license will result in the most widespread use of their software.
Great comment, however it's so far down the page now it's probably not getting much attention.
I think one reason people think differently to you and me is that they have the attitude of "why would I possible want to help a for profit venture"? They don't realize that helping for-profit companies helps the consumers of those companies products, and their shareholders (I wouldn't mind if a person richer than myself benefited from my work either, but it certainly wouldn't be strong motivating factor). Another point is that people don't code just out of altruism, but also in order to gain recognition, and this works better if more people use your library, whether or not they choose to open-source their own code
I made a similar (but less detailed and precise) argument here, but I made the mistake of using a personal example where I wanted to use a library in commercial software I was using, and so most of the replies were personal attacks. This could have been avoided by using a hypothetical example instead.
Sure, you can donate here. They take paypal.
just wanted to add I never claimed to be entitled to anything, I was just saying what I thought was most efficient? Does this really have to be so personal? I know most people here spend there time writing GPL software, but as part of the tiny minority who either try to sell software or earn a wage from companies that do, I feel like I'm receive an undue amount of animosity.
I personally have nothing against for profit companies, and I'm as willing to do things for free for them as I am for end users. If I were to choose between GPL or BSD for my own work, my main consideration would be what the total benefit to society would be, including the benefit to the for-profit corporations who use that code. I wouldn't expect the people who used the code to give something back, because that wouldn't be why I made it open source in the first place.
I think that BSD is good for libraries, and GPL or proprietary code is good for end products. Everyone deserves to get rewarded for their work. However, an altruistic person might decide to make their library BSD so others can use it in their products. If they make is GPL, then less people will decide to use it, so their altruism will be less effective.
Also, I'm somewhat surprised by people's reaction to my using a personal example? Aren't many people here coders who work for companies, and therefore write proprietary software? How is it different that I planned to sell it myself instead of working for a wage for a company?
You are confusing ex ante scarcity with ex post scarcity. Once I write the software, the most efficient thing would be to make it open source since the marginal cost is 0. However if I do this, then I have less incentive to write the software in the first place. I'm not sure if this covers everything you wrote, perhaps try to cut down on the length and make your points clearer?
In GPL only world, the entry costs to producing and selling software become a lot higher. I cannot use an GPL code, so I must replicate all that functionality. You might think this is great since people will produce free software instead, but most people are motivated by money so what it really means is that people are more likely to work for a big company (which can overcome these entry costs) than start their own company.
To give a concrete example, I was working on some software (that I planned to sell) that would use matrix operations. I first considered Gnu Scientific Library, but if I used this I would have to GPL my own code. Not very conducive to selling it! Then I found out about Eigen which is BSD licensed.
Economically BSD is usually optimal (in the sense of maximizing societal welfare) because it creates a competitive market in the use of your software. You forgo your profits (usually when creating a library or framework) in order that the market can make use of the in the most efficient way. For example, your BSD software with a CLI and someone writes a GUI for it. That person can only charge more to the extent that people prefer a GUI. And furthermore, they can't charge too much more cause someone else might come along and write a GUI and sell it for cheaper.
GPL *might* have some advantages in preventing commercial forks, and therefore be a better license for things that require economies of scale, and are under threat of forking, like Operating Systems.
She was removed for "contempt", for refusing to apologize. This seems like a misuse of that kind of procedure. Contempt should be for, for example, swearing at another politician in the chambers. Being able to remove elected politicians on such a slim pretext is very dangerous to democracy.
That explains why in high level judo competitions, both players stand completely still. They know that any movement they make will be used against them by their opponent.
Actually you are right, as this article shows he did play a significant role.
I agree with what you say, but I was addressing the criticisms in the article, which were that there was something improper about Tech sites covering this event, as opposed to simply these sites not having the expertise to produce something that readers would value.
Most likely the Tech sites thought that given the level of user interest in this topic, that any new perspective the they could add to the topic would be valuable to readers. Some sites mentioned claimed that they are not "Tech" sites or that they are trying to broaden their coverage.
The idea that tech blogs can cover stories about tech, but should leave coverage of serious political and human issues to the "big boys" of traditional media, is ridiculous. There is no special license needed to write about serious and important topics, only the usual requirement that the reporting be genuinely in the public interest. Presenting information from social networks, as long as it is labelled as such and not misrepresented as certain fact, is in no way improper. If people are interested in reading about that information, there is nothing wrong with providing it, and if tech blogs feel that because of their focus, they are especially able to do this, then they should.
I agree that it's suspicious the way things suddenly become "crimes" once companies don't approve of them. However there do seem to be distinctly criminal elements to what this trader did: taking very deliberate actions to invest money in an unauthorized way, making trades on behalf of a non-existent client. So I believe this case truly is a criminal matter. On the other hand, I doubt that it would still be considered if someone higher up had done the same thing (using more complex excuses to cover up their actions).
Thanks for adding nothing to the discussion.
It is possible to promote generic drugs in third world countries from a "price discrimination" perspective. That is, you strike the best balance between maximizing the benefit of drugs once they have been discovered, and incentivizing the discovery of new drugs, when you have one price for first world countries and one price for third world countries (and maybe something in between too).
That said, James Love does not seem to arguing from this point of view, but rather attacking drug patents in general. I think we need to be very critical of arguments against protecting real, non-obvious inventions, as it is too easy to place excessive weight on the immediate, measurable benefit of removing these protections, relative to the hypothetical, hard to measure cost. It's similar to how people complain when companies lay off employees, even though the principe of a free labor market means that the decision to fire a worker should be as free as the decision to hire one.
It's also not clear what sources the claims about James Love's role in the promotion of generic AIDS drugs has been. A cursory google search didn't suggest that he had been one of the major players.
Sideshow Bob: (to Marge) Madame, your children are no more... than a pair of ill-bred trouble-makers.
Homer: Lisa, too?
Sideshow Bob: Especially Lisa! But, especially Bart!
It is a matter of "not enough money" in the sense that if the government has limited the CSIRO's budget then they are forced to either downsize, or look for outside funding.
I think it comes down to different workflows.
A typical academic or grad student will constantly revise a document. By the time I've written a paper, I've probably done editing equivalent to re-writing it 10x. Most of the time is spent writing text and formulas.
If you are spending a lot of time doing formatting, either of the document or very complex formulas, then LyX probably isn't a good solution. But if your formulas remain within what LyX can handle and the document is nothing but text and formulas, LyX great. I don't even bother to preview anymore, now my eyes have adjusted to the ugly formatting within the LyX gui.
Don't forget the Southerners. They need to be able to learn it too ya'll.
you're free to believe what you want, my experience, and I imagine that of many readers, is that there is a large segment of political commentators that are (A) generally in favor of "workers rights' (B) generally against strict enforcement of immigration law against illegal immigrants. I'm not going to waste time trying to prove this to you, since it is, by its nature, something that is almost impossible to prove to someone who hasn't already come to that conclusion themself.
That may be true, but it doesn't change the fact that the people I described as "left wing" who are in favor of worker's rights, would be opposed to stringent enforcement of immigraiton law
My point is that the right can (and do) say that "we need illegal immigrants because of all the restriction placed on US labor by the left". This is a poor argument, since a better solution would be to ease those restrictions if necessary, but it is not hyprocitical.
The left is guilty of hypocricy because they themselves argue for even stronger restrictions of labor conditions (such as the article suggests) but the have the nerve to repeat the argument of the right: that illegals are needed because they will work for lower wages.
Any enforcement action against illegals hurts their employers and vice versa. It is meaningless to say that the government is pro employer of illegals but against the illegals themselves. As to what you call left and right, it really doesn't matter. The point is there is a large section of political commentators who claim to support workers rights, but think that the a situtation with lax enforcement of immigration law is better than a situation with strong enforcement of immigration law..
The left wants businesses that pay less than the minimum wage shutdown.
They claim to want this, but it's very clear that they prefer immigration authorities to turn a blind eye to illegal immigration. I don't see left wingers cheering whenever INS raid a business that hires illegals.