Have you ever seen a license agreement for proprietary vertical market software?... I've seen agreements that specify 10k an hour penalties for unscheduled downtime."
You mean stuff like telephone switching systems, as I'm currently employed to support. Yes I'm familiar with them, but they're exactly the kind of application which Open Source is unlikely to usurp. But it's a small portion of the overall market for proprietary software.
Part of the problem with the whitepaper is that it make no distinction between the use of Open Source for nuclear launch systems and Open Source for word processing documents. The author of the whitepaper invokes the image of coders from Microsoft and Adobe out of work (for shame) when millions of copies of office applications are replaced with an Open Source equivalent, while at the same time implying the risk of malicious nuclear reactor controller code downloaded from CPAN.
I wonder what would happen if the government started demanding $10k per hour penalties for Windows downtime? Something tells me Microsoft's $45 billion nest egg wouldn't last the week.
We'll presume it is, or that I'm planning to do something else with it (such as distribute it) which the MPAA would frown upon. The argument is incomprehensible without this assumption.
If they make a claim that you should pay them for all 5000 hours though, that's different. Your argument is flawed.
Unclear, yes. But not as flawed as you might think. Consider...
If I make a documentary with 100 minutes of footage, but which includes 50 seconds of some other movie, footage, or music video, the original copyright owner may well claim a copyright interest in my documentary.
Another consideration for the U.S. government is that all source code developed under the GPL could have mirrored availability to the public. This poses unlimited security issues. Wheeler comments, There are many programs developed by the government which are THEMSELVES classified, and many - and probably most - of the various programs most important to national security are in this category (e.g., weapons systems). In that case, neither binaries nor source code of those particular applications are released to anyone else; besides being illegal, releasing the binary executables would give away far too much information."
So don't release them. The GPL encumbers software only if it is released. Classified code obviously wouldn't be released, so the inclusion of GPL'd code within a classified program is acceptable as long as it remains illegal to release the program. I mean, who's gonna be stupid enough to call up the CIA and say "Hey, I noticed the source to GlobalThermonuclearWar 2.1.1 wasn't on the server I stole the binary from. Are you gonna give me the source or do I have to call Richard Stallman?"
There may be some limited circumstances in which a democratically elected government is justified in keeping secrets from the populace it governs. Those circumstances should never cover "how" decisions are made (the laws), only "what" decisions are made (the policies). But even in a transition period where some of the processes must be obscured for national security reasons, this does not conflict with the requirements of the GPL.
Another security concern is that the primary distribution channel for GPL open source is the Internet. As opposed to proprietary vendors, open source is freely downloaded. However, software in the public domain could contain a critical problem, a backdoor or worse, a dangerous virus. Downloaded software would require resources to perpetually screen its source code.
Even if we overlook the obvious gaffe of including public domain code in the mix, the author clearly misunderstands Open Source and the GPL. If an organization has no process in place for vetting the software it deploys, then neither open nor closed code will offer any barrier to malicious code. It is true that a truly security conscious organization would need to screen every proposed change to open source software, the use of closed code substitutes a blind trust in the proprietary vendor; a vendor with neither an understanding of the local deployment environment nor a motivation other than profit.
As mentioned earlier, open source code is not guaranteed nor does it come with a warranty.
I wonder if the author has ever read a commercial (closed source) license agreement? Here's a hint: the phrase "AS IS, NO WARRANTY" is standard industry boilerplate. So that means GPL'd software is no better and no worse than proprietary software, right? Well actually it is. The closed nature of proprietary code denies the user the minimal "self help" provisions. On the other hand, there's nothing preventing a concerned organization from requesting competitive bids for the support of an open source application. The winner of such a contract would be under competitive pressure to perform, because they would not have a captive audience.
Open source products are often distributed without manuals, instructions or technical information. While a commercial developer is obligated to produce manuals, diagrams and information detailing the functionality of their products, open source programmers are not.
Perhaps the author would care to cite the law obligating commercial developers to produce manuals, or ensuring those manuals are correct, complete, and relevant? Furthermore, the author glosses over the fact that while the GPL demands that the source for a program be freely distributed, there is no such requirement for the manuals, instructions or technical information of that software. Again, the competitive market serves to ensure that quality add-ons are produced and maintained.
If software is freely re-engineered, it will inevitably impact the value of software on the market.
And of course, the would go against the very reason we have a government in the first place. What was that First Amendment again? Something about the right to keep others from cutting into your profits through their own expression of your ideas shall not be infringed?
I'll agree with other posters here. There's too much FUD here for me to waste any more of my time.
If a software application representing 5000 hours uses GPL code that reflects only 100 hours, is the GPL fair in its argument that the entire product is GPL?
If I have 5000 hours of video in my library, but only 100 hours of that is copyrighted by Hollywood, is the MPAA being fair in their argument that I'm stealing from them?
How many here would actually give up BROADBAND internet in protest?
I would, and have. I live in the dial-up world (because voice channels are covered under common carrier shield) and probably pay more (about $50 per month) for 28.8Kbps than most people pay for cable or DSL.
Now on to the next question: Since many people have linked the rise of free software and the popularity of Linux to the widespread availability of the Internet, do you think the free software movement could survive it? Imagine if a certain monopolistic internet service provider formed a corporate partnership with a certain company from Redmond. You make find posts from various kernel mailing lists getting mistaken as SPAM. Your browser may report that the host "linux.org" is down or unreachable.
I probably wouldn't object to the sitcom makers filming the cola cans with bluescreen labels so that whichever sponsor's logo could be superimposed, but there's a risk here you're missing.
There are certain television shows where these type of product placement strategies are inappropriate (at best) or impossible (at worst).
Think about nature documentaries. Are we going to see the Mountain Dew(tm) logo carved into the fur of the cheetah?
How about news programs? When the evening news show scenes of rioters hurling the familiar Coca-Cola(tm) bottles at the police, do we need to be concerned that these images will be digitally altered to show them as a more generic form or bottle? How far will this editing of the news go? Will the reports of poverty stricken children living in trash-strewn streets instead show the streets clean, because all the (identifiable) sponsors paid to have their trash digitally removed?
When the daily business report show does the stock price wrap-up, will we hear about the day's performance of "Always Trustworthy, Always Reliable(tm) Arthur Anderson Accounting sliding another ten and a quarter points on news of additional fraud probes by the SEC"? Aren't we already seeing this with the reports of stock analysts paid to promote stocks they think are trash?
Are we creating a television system where only the entertaining shows have enough commercial potential to get aired; a television good for nothing other than entertainment? Is this all our "50 years of spectrum rights" was able to purchase; a handful of Simpson episodes?
Or, worse still, are we creating a class division between those who can afford "commercial skip" technology (and can watch for free) and those too poor to afford it, and must be subject to these commercials?
In some ways this mirrors what is happening, has been happening, on the Internet, only at a much accelerated pace. Already there are web sites which are unusable to those of us who cannot get (or cannot afford) broadband. (cnn.com takes a good two minutes to load the home page if you're browsing via dial-up.) Email has become virtually unusable to anyone who has not deployed (or cannot afford) some sort of SPAM-blocking technology. If you weren't technically inclined, and had to run Windows, would you even think of connecting to the Internet without both a rock-$olid firewall and the latest anti-viru$ $oftware?
So for example, the US gov't could specify that any productivity suite purchased by it's departments must support completely an open standard file format of their choosing or design. If MS Office chooses to support that file format properly, that there is no cap on how many units of MS Office could be purchased. If they choose not to, then it cannot be considered.
Great idea, but flawed execution.
In reality, it doesn't really matter much if the file format itself is an open standard or closed and proprietary one. Microsoft's power does not come from keeping it's file formats secret, but rather from it's ability to change those formats at will (which is why throughout the antitrust trial they've always demanded to keep what they call their "ability to innovate"). To be sure, demanding open file formats disarms Microsoft in this respect, but only indirectly because they can't control an open format. If Microsoft opened their file formats, but retained their market share, and therefore their ability to choose a new (albeit open) file format at will, the problem would persist.
Alternately, if a large customer (such as the USG) were to "standardize" on the closed and proprietary Office 2000 format, and refuse to purchase any software which couldn't read and write documents in this format, all non-Microsoft competitors would quickly reverse-engineer the file format. They would do this because they would have the promise of a large customer once they succeeded as well as a target format which Microsoft couldn't pull out from under them once they did succeed.
Unfortunately, Microsoft is now so heavily dependent on controlling the file formats that they might well choose to "write off" any single large customer (including the USG) and rely on the network effects to force them to upgrade anyway. Even the USG would not be a large enough market to support all of their competitors; eventually the USG would have to upgrade to the new proprietary Microsoft format and applications, or be unable to communicate with the "rest of the world".
This is especially true if you consider that it is not in Microsoft's interest to even provide a mechanism to convert documents in a Microsoft proprietary format to an open format. Doing so only provides a captive market with a mechanism to defect to a competitor. Consider; If the USG decided today that all documents must be converted to some open format (such as SGML), how much would it cost to convert all Word documents into this new format? How much of the content of those documents (think formating tags, layouts, etc.) would be lost in the conversion if it couldn't be done in a 100% clean fashion? (I've been through an exercise of converting a large library of documents (proprietary applications, proprietary formats on a mainframe) into SGML. It was an expensive, time consuming PITA which was never 100% effective, even though in that case the "proprietary applications and formats" were ones we had written ourselves.)
The other trick Microsoft is trying to get "up their sleeve" is the mixing of the data with the application through their.NET initiative. What's the point of having an open standard and knowing that a certain data structure within a file represents an object of a certain type, if you still have to buy a license from Microsoft to manipulate that object? You're still in the same boat, only now Microsoft can claim their file formats (as in.NET) are 100% open.
Don't expect drug addicts to choose a sane drug policy, and don't expect any answers to the Microsoft problem to come from those organizations already hopelessly addicted to Microsoft. If you're using Microsoft products, you can only expect to need them more and more in the future, until the day you've become addicted. If you've already become addicted, you can expect a fall at some point in the future; even Rome eventually fell. The only sane strategy is to bite the bullet and start detox now.
1. Have your senior management read this entire plan. If they dont do this up front, they'll think you were trying to blindside them. Cost to date $0
2. Freeze the interfaces. For example, determine what file format (like Word98) is most commonly used for exchanging word processing documents and make that the corporate standard. Note: standardize on the interfaces, not on the applications which create and use them. Have the CEO sign a decree accepting and mandating that standardized format. (The signature is important.) Make sure everyone who needs to access documents of this type has some sort of software which can access these documents. Cost to date $0
3. Get a written comittment from the senior management that this corporate standard document format will not be changed without their signature and their peraonal acceptance of the cost to allow that change. Cost to date $0
4. Get rid of any application which cannot read and write documents in this corporate standard file format by default. When the next round of software updates hit, refuse to deploy any application which cannot seemlessly access documents in the corporate standard format and save new or changed documents in the corporate standard format by default. If it can't do both of these, it isn't even in the running (no matter how helpful that damned paperclip is). Cost to date $0
About this point in their first reading of this plan, smart managers will realize that if they agree to this while still using a proprietary file format, it means that they are agreeing to be personally responsible for the decision tying them into either a) a dead-end platform and mass migration costs (because Microsoft is not going to maintain full backward compatibility with the Word98 file format forever) b) paying Microsoft for a custom support contract (which, if you can believe it, will be even more expensive than a mass migration.) A smart manager will realize that he's already backed into this corner, won't allow himself to be backed further into this corner and instead demand that the corporate standard file format be something other than a proprietary one. (SGML, for example).
Once you've convinced your senior management that it's their responsibility to remain in control of their own computers, and that placing corporate intellectual property assets into a proprietary file format represents a questionable off-book liability which could get them in heaps of trouble, you'll be in a much better position to get their cooperation.
As soon as they've agreed that a non-proprietary file format is the only way to go, proceed with the plan as above:
1. Have them read this plan.
2. As per their direction, declare SGML to be the corporate standard.
3. Get their buy-in and signature.
4. Get rid of any application which cannot read and write documents in this corporate standard file format by default.
Whoops! That means you have to get rid of proprietary software like Microsoft Office, because it can't be set to read and write documents in your chosen corporate standard by default.
Repeat the above procedure for every component interface, ignoring the applications themselves. In this, a file format (SGML) is an interface, a network protocol (SAMBA) is an interface, email (POP3) is an interface; look only at the interfaces. Standardize on HTML 4.0, instead of Microsoft Internet Explorer. Standardize on POP3 and IMAP, rather than Microsoft Exchange. In this way, your company will never be backed into the proprietary software trap.
You'll likely find that only open source applications on an open source operating system meet the corporate standards. How you get them from that conclusion all the way to a Star Office on Linux solution is your own problem.
"Why?" he asked. "We need to list a reason." Wondering why that was any of his business and eager to finally get off the phone, I mumbled something about having switched to cable. "You can piggyback AOL on cable," Brian interrupted. "That's not really a good reason."
I'm terminally ill; I'll be dead in a week...
That usually stops them.
All you need to do is break their script. Most phone drones will hang up rather than ever try to recover.
Re:What happens when you're successful?
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Creative Commons
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But, what happens when an ad agency hears your music and wants an exclusive license?
Then they can't have one, can they? Because you've already agreed to release the work on a non-exclusive basis.
Sometimes we make choices in life. Do you want exposure or do you want the fat payoff of exclusivity? If you demand the fat payoff up front, you may never get the exposure you need.
I could just as easily re-word your example to say "what if I've written my first book, and RandomPublisherA offers me $10K for it. Then RandomPublisherB says he likes it and offers me $100K for it. Do I abandon RandomPublisherA and spill my sour grapes to the world?
I'm sorry but I'm not stupid enough to help my boss figure out how to replace me.
That's funny. I do just that (well, actually I'm helping him figure out how to eliminate my job) every day, and it's kept me steadily employed for more than a decade.
It's one of those counter-intuitive things I seem to graps intuitively.
Re:Another book on the topic...
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Enigma
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If you don't start developing your code breaking ability before the war begins, the war will likely end (with you as the loser) before you can even make it to court to file the complaint.
I can't cite the quote, but I believe it came from a Harvard Business School study in the early 90's. Microsoft realized early on that mindshare was important. Like your average drug dealer; the first hit is always free...
I know their (at the time lax) policy toward piracy was one of the reasons I swore off them a years ago: I got fed-up being the "only kid on the block" who was actually paying for their software rather than just pirating it like everyone else.
Call me a moral pedantic, but I think it just proves the rule that doing what's right will eventually pay you back in the end.
I agree with your sentiments, even if the dates are disputable. But to your specific point "that if we were waiting for Hurd, there would be no free Unix-like OS for our PCs." I have to agree completely.
Then again, if we were all waiting for Linux, there would be no Linux either. Fortunately for us, Linux didn't wait, and others joined the team.
Imagine if Hewlett-Packard were to start with a base HP-UX distribution, replace the kernel with a Linux kernel, and recompile all of their proprietary tools (DeskMgr, Starbase, LAN Manager, SNAplus, etc.) for the Linux kernel they've used and release (sell) it as a product?
Would you call this Linux?
Imagine (admittedly unimaginable) if Microsoft were to do the same thing; start with a Linux kernel, and recompile all of what they'd like us (or the Judge, at least) to think of as "Windows" to run on it. No shell. No vi or emacs. No cat, pipe, grep or sed. No Gnome or KDE. No/dev. No init scripts. Just Office and IE and the rest of the crew. Would the resulting quivering mass meet your personal definition of a Linux box?
Let's turn it around the other way. Imagine starting with a base HP-UX system and replacing every possible application with a GNU equivalent compiled to run under HP-UX, leaving you with a system proprietary only in it's kernel. Would that meet your definition of a Linux system?
Would any of the above be useful to most people who call themselves "Linux users"? Remember, there's a significant portion of the total computer user community who would swear that an application with "minimum requirements" of Win98 won't run on a Win95 system.
Long before there was a Linux kernel for the GNU tools to run on, there was the HURD kernel. HURD is just as free (it's GPL'd) as Linux, but the project has received much less attention, and stalled for many years.
I believe what Stallman wants is for the relationship between GNU and Linux to be clarified. If you are discussing the kernel itself, or engaging in a discussion where the kernel context is implied, then it is inappropriate to describe it as GNU/Linux. But very few of us (but for the kernel hackers) consider the kernel to be useful outside of the context of the "whole ball of wax" which makes it a usable system. In that sense, the nomenclature of "GNU/Linux" is appropriate to distunguish it from the other existing (GNU/HURD) and possible (GNU/HP-UX) balls of wax which could be put together.
To take it a step further, as a LinuxPPC user, I'm often upset when I hear yet another vendor declare "Today, we're releasing a version of our proprietary application/plug-in which runs under Linux" for the PR value, only to discover three-clicks later that they mean x86-based Linux, and there's no (and likely never will be) any version compiled for any other processor.
So there's two sides (at least) to the argument. Demanding the longer and more specific name can have a balkanizing effect on the greater Linux community, (shades of the Gnome/KDE wars) but also serves to remind us where we came from, how much we have in common, and how far we have to go.
In any case, I find it hard to believe Microsoft would have done this.
If Microsoft can engage in criminal behavior and still win in court, why would you suspect that they are still innocent when they have lost in court? I would think their lawyers would have been able to defend them well enough in that case.
Or is this some sort of slam against the French court system?
Industrys' major goal was to be able to offer wireless devices that did not require a license from the FCC, so that such wireless devices could be sold over the counter to anyone, everywhere.
Innovation will occur where it's allowed to occur.
Or, as has been said, Innovation is a wildflower; you cannot choose where it will blossom, but you can choose where it won't.
You're discrediting Office for the Mac, because people can't write documents about the fucking Start menu?
emphasis in the original
No, I'm discrediting people who presume that having a cross-platform office suite is a viable path to having a cross-platform office. It is not. It doesn't matter how good the Macintosh version of Microsoft Office is, or even how much better than the Windows version it is.
It's a function of Gresham's Law: bad money drives out the good. If the majority of users are on Windows, then the majority of content will be targeted at Windows users. Macintosh users will always be an after thought. Features of the Macintosh version which are unavailable on the Windows version will be discouraged and ingnored (even if superior) and features of the Windows version which are unavailable on the Macintosh (even if inferior) will be deemed a "Macintosh Problem". This is a function of the network effects, not related to the quality or functionality of the underlying software. People in the majority who create cross-platform documents which disadvantage those in the minority will be deemed to have sinned less than those in the minority who create cross-platform documents which disadvantage those in the majority.
Years ago, maybe. Like before OS X was even announced. Like When Word 6 was the latest Word on the mac.
Yes, that's the timeframe I'm talking about. Things may be different today than they were yesterday; that only serves to remind us that things could be different tommorrow than they are today. The precedent has been set; Microsoft has demonstrated that they are both willing and able to create an application suite which disadvantages a competitor where it serves their interests. I see no evidence to support the assertion that they would never do this again in the future, and much evidence to support that they continue the same or equivalent behaviors in other areas even today.
Office for mac is now a rewritten-from-the-ground-up polished mac application, fully compatible with it's PC counterpart. In fact, by many accounts, the Mac version of Office is even better than the Windows version.
You appear to have inadvertently contradicted yourself. It cannot be both "fully compatible with it's PC counterpart" and "even better than the Windows version" at the same time, which was the heart of my posting. Any deviation from the PC version standard, even a deviation which makes it "better" (whatever that means) is still a deviation, which implies a differential, which implies incompatibility.
That sounds like an indisputible argument, especially with the evidence cited as a link like that. Too bad it ain't true.
We learned this the hard way several years ago when we decided to standardize on Microsoft Office in a business environment with a large Macintosh and Intel PC base. It seemed like the natural choice. We quickly discovered two problems.
First, we discovered that everyone who was using a certain hardware platform presumed that everyone else was using the same hardware platform and therefore had the same operating system, performed the same tasks the same way, had the same integrated capabilities, etc. As an example, people would create fully cross platform Microsoft Word documents detailing platform dependent procedures. (Go to the Start menu...) People would attach (or recommend) applications which were not available on the other platform, specify fonts or colors which did not translate correctly between platforms, etc.
The other problem came directly from Microsoft; this was right at the time when Microsoft considered Apple to be it's biggest threat. The Mac version of Word was atrocious, and the Excel was as slow as a dog.
The result was that anyone who paid for Microsoft Office on either platform was also paying for Microsoft Windows within a year.
Microsoft's claim that Microsoft Office is available on multiple platforms is a joke. There will never be a truly compatible office suite for any platform other than Windows as long as Microsoft Office is controlled by the same company as Microsoft Windows.
If you've adopted Microsoft Office as your standard office suite, be prepared to spend the rest of your days on Microsoft Windows.
(b)(4) EXEMPTION - Trade Secrets, Commercial or Financial Information. This exemption protects "trade secrets and commercial or financial information obtained from a person [that is] privileged or confidential." This exemption is intended to protect the interests of both the government and submitters of information.
I wonder...
If the government maintains information about me in an MSWord-format file, can I request an electronic copy of that file? Is it legal for the Government to deliver FOIA information in a proprietary format; one which would require me to purchase a license in order to view it? Or, would they have to convert that information (all of it, including proprietary tags and table formating commands) into a standardized format? Or can they claim an exemption under 5 USC 552(b)4?
If they kept information about me in an encrypted file, they would have to either decrypt the file or give me the key, right? How is the MSWord proprietary format any different?
I am hoping that Peru manages to reap huge financial rewards and survives some sort of electronic internet based attack from Asia while the US falls so that the intelligence behind the Peruvian decision can be shown.
Typical American attitude.;-)
This is not about saving money, although I suspect it will do so in the end.
This is about preserving Peru's democracy. That much is highlighted clearly in the bill:
The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law, such as:Free access to public information by the citizen.
Permenence of public data.
Security of the State and Citizens.
I suspect this is why Free Software has such a strong (dare I say patriotic) following among general users but often fails to sway businesses; few businesses are run as democracies.
This is yet another reason why the Free Software/Open Source community needs to focus on pushing free software into Governmental use. Microsoft will argue the business side of software (the "it's more expensive, less interoperable" FUD) but should we really endanger the democratic principles on which this country was founded just to save a few (unsubstantiated) bucks?
Were I actually selling you the software (or a copy of the software) I would lose my ownership rights to that software (or to that copy of the software). First Sale would apply and you could do anything you want with it; your rights would not be infringed. You could even deny me (as the previous owner of the software) the right to do anything with that software (or that copy of the software I sold to you). In the case of having sold you a copy, I presume I would still have rights with respect to other copies of that software I might posess.
Instead, under the GPL, you are only licensing the software, which means you are entering into an agreement whereby you agree to certain terms in exchange for some consideration.
The guy who "sold" QDOS to Bill Gates understands the distinction between the two, and I presume he wouldn't make that mistake again.;-)
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You mean stuff like telephone switching systems, as I'm currently employed to support. Yes I'm familiar with them, but they're exactly the kind of application which Open Source is unlikely to usurp. But it's a small portion of the overall market for proprietary software.
Part of the problem with the whitepaper is that it make no distinction between the use of Open Source for nuclear launch systems and Open Source for word processing documents. The author of the whitepaper invokes the image of coders from Microsoft and Adobe out of work (for shame) when millions of copies of office applications are replaced with an Open Source equivalent, while at the same time implying the risk of malicious nuclear reactor controller code downloaded from CPAN.
I wonder what would happen if the government started demanding $10k per hour penalties for Windows downtime? Something tells me Microsoft's $45 billion nest egg wouldn't last the week.
We'll presume it is, or that I'm planning to do something else with it (such as distribute it) which the MPAA would frown upon. The argument is incomprehensible without this assumption.
Unclear, yes. But not as flawed as you might think. Consider...
If I make a documentary with 100 minutes of footage, but which includes 50 seconds of some other movie, footage, or music video, the original copyright owner may well claim a copyright interest in my documentary.
On the other points, however, we seem to agree.
So don't release them. The GPL encumbers software only if it is released. Classified code obviously wouldn't be released, so the inclusion of GPL'd code within a classified program is acceptable as long as it remains illegal to release the program. I mean, who's gonna be stupid enough to call up the CIA and say "Hey, I noticed the source to GlobalThermonuclearWar 2.1.1 wasn't on the server I stole the binary from. Are you gonna give me the source or do I have to call Richard Stallman?"
There may be some limited circumstances in which a democratically elected government is justified in keeping secrets from the populace it governs. Those circumstances should never cover "how" decisions are made (the laws), only "what" decisions are made (the policies). But even in a transition period where some of the processes must be obscured for national security reasons, this does not conflict with the requirements of the GPL.
Even if we overlook the obvious gaffe of including public domain code in the mix, the author clearly misunderstands Open Source and the GPL. If an organization has no process in place for vetting the software it deploys, then neither open nor closed code will offer any barrier to malicious code. It is true that a truly security conscious organization would need to screen every proposed change to open source software, the use of closed code substitutes a blind trust in the proprietary vendor; a vendor with neither an understanding of the local deployment environment nor a motivation other than profit.
I wonder if the author has ever read a commercial (closed source) license agreement? Here's a hint: the phrase "AS IS, NO WARRANTY" is standard industry boilerplate. So that means GPL'd software is no better and no worse than proprietary software, right? Well actually it is. The closed nature of proprietary code denies the user the minimal "self help" provisions. On the other hand, there's nothing preventing a concerned organization from requesting competitive bids for the support of an open source application. The winner of such a contract would be under competitive pressure to perform, because they would not have a captive audience.
Perhaps the author would care to cite the law obligating commercial developers to produce manuals, or ensuring those manuals are correct, complete, and relevant? Furthermore, the author glosses over the fact that while the GPL demands that the source for a program be freely distributed, there is no such requirement for the manuals, instructions or technical information of that software. Again, the competitive market serves to ensure that quality add-ons are produced and maintained.
And of course, the would go against the very reason we have a government in the first place. What was that First Amendment again? Something about the right to keep others from cutting into your profits through their own expression of your ideas shall not be infringed?
I'll agree with other posters here. There's too much FUD here for me to waste any more of my time.
If I have 5000 hours of video in my library, but only 100 hours of that is copyrighted by Hollywood, is the MPAA being fair in their argument that I'm stealing from them?
I would, and have. I live in the dial-up world (because voice channels are covered under common carrier shield) and probably pay more (about $50 per month) for 28.8Kbps than most people pay for cable or DSL.
Now on to the next question: Since many people have linked the rise of free software and the popularity of Linux to the widespread availability of the Internet, do you think the free software movement could survive it? Imagine if a certain monopolistic internet service provider formed a corporate partnership with a certain company from Redmond. You make find posts from various kernel mailing lists getting mistaken as SPAM. Your browser may report that the host "linux.org" is down or unreachable.
I probably wouldn't object to the sitcom makers filming the cola cans with bluescreen labels so that whichever sponsor's logo could be superimposed, but there's a risk here you're missing.
There are certain television shows where these type of product placement strategies are inappropriate (at best) or impossible (at worst).
Think about nature documentaries. Are we going to see the Mountain Dew(tm) logo carved into the fur of the cheetah?
How about news programs? When the evening news show scenes of rioters hurling the familiar Coca-Cola(tm) bottles at the police, do we need to be concerned that these images will be digitally altered to show them as a more generic form or bottle? How far will this editing of the news go? Will the reports of poverty stricken children living in trash-strewn streets instead show the streets clean, because all the (identifiable) sponsors paid to have their trash digitally removed?
When the daily business report show does the stock price wrap-up, will we hear about the day's performance of "Always Trustworthy, Always Reliable(tm) Arthur Anderson Accounting sliding another ten and a quarter points on news of additional fraud probes by the SEC"? Aren't we already seeing this with the reports of stock analysts paid to promote stocks they think are trash?
Are we creating a television system where only the entertaining shows have enough commercial potential to get aired; a television good for nothing other than entertainment? Is this all our "50 years of spectrum rights" was able to purchase; a handful of Simpson episodes?
Or, worse still, are we creating a class division between those who can afford "commercial skip" technology (and can watch for free) and those too poor to afford it, and must be subject to these commercials?
In some ways this mirrors what is happening, has been happening, on the Internet, only at a much accelerated pace. Already there are web sites which are unusable to those of us who cannot get (or cannot afford) broadband. (cnn.com takes a good two minutes to load the home page if you're browsing via dial-up.) Email has become virtually unusable to anyone who has not deployed (or cannot afford) some sort of SPAM-blocking technology. If you weren't technically inclined, and had to run Windows, would you even think of connecting to the Internet without both a rock-$olid firewall and the latest anti-viru$ $oftware?
Great idea, but flawed execution.
In reality, it doesn't really matter much if the file format itself is an open standard or closed and proprietary one. Microsoft's power does not come from keeping it's file formats secret, but rather from it's ability to change those formats at will (which is why throughout the antitrust trial they've always demanded to keep what they call their "ability to innovate"). To be sure, demanding open file formats disarms Microsoft in this respect, but only indirectly because they can't control an open format. If Microsoft opened their file formats, but retained their market share, and therefore their ability to choose a new (albeit open) file format at will, the problem would persist.
Alternately, if a large customer (such as the USG) were to "standardize" on the closed and proprietary Office 2000 format, and refuse to purchase any software which couldn't read and write documents in this format, all non-Microsoft competitors would quickly reverse-engineer the file format. They would do this because they would have the promise of a large customer once they succeeded as well as a target format which Microsoft couldn't pull out from under them once they did succeed.
Unfortunately, Microsoft is now so heavily dependent on controlling the file formats that they might well choose to "write off" any single large customer (including the USG) and rely on the network effects to force them to upgrade anyway. Even the USG would not be a large enough market to support all of their competitors; eventually the USG would have to upgrade to the new proprietary Microsoft format and applications, or be unable to communicate with the "rest of the world".
This is especially true if you consider that it is not in Microsoft's interest to even provide a mechanism to convert documents in a Microsoft proprietary format to an open format. Doing so only provides a captive market with a mechanism to defect to a competitor. Consider; If the USG decided today that all documents must be converted to some open format (such as SGML), how much would it cost to convert all Word documents into this new format? How much of the content of those documents (think formating tags, layouts, etc.) would be lost in the conversion if it couldn't be done in a 100% clean fashion? (I've been through an exercise of converting a large library of documents (proprietary applications, proprietary formats on a mainframe) into SGML. It was an expensive, time consuming PITA which was never 100% effective, even though in that case the "proprietary applications and formats" were ones we had written ourselves.)
The other trick Microsoft is trying to get "up their sleeve" is the mixing of the data with the application through their .NET initiative. What's the point of having an open standard and knowing that a certain data structure within a file represents an object of a certain type, if you still have to buy a license from Microsoft to manipulate that object? You're still in the same boat, only now Microsoft can claim their file formats (as in .NET) are 100% open.
Don't expect drug addicts to choose a sane drug policy, and don't expect any answers to the Microsoft problem to come from those organizations already hopelessly addicted to Microsoft. If you're using Microsoft products, you can only expect to need them more and more in the future, until the day you've become addicted. If you've already become addicted, you can expect a fall at some point in the future; even Rome eventually fell. The only sane strategy is to bite the bullet and start detox now.
Or, if you really want to be subversive, a copy of GNUCash.
One of the things you need to know when you hit college, and likely haven't already learned, is how to manage all of your own expenses.
It's also one of those things they never bother to teach you in most places.
2. Freeze the interfaces. For example, determine what file format (like Word98) is most commonly used for exchanging word processing documents and make that the corporate standard. Note: standardize on the interfaces, not on the applications which create and use them. Have the CEO sign a decree accepting and mandating that standardized format. (The signature is important.) Make sure everyone who needs to access documents of this type has some sort of software which can access these documents. Cost to date $0
3. Get a written comittment from the senior management that this corporate standard document format will not be changed without their signature and their peraonal acceptance of the cost to allow that change. Cost to date $0
4. Get rid of any application which cannot read and write documents in this corporate standard file format by default. When the next round of software updates hit, refuse to deploy any application which cannot seemlessly access documents in the corporate standard format and save new or changed documents in the corporate standard format by default. If it can't do both of these, it isn't even in the running (no matter how helpful that damned paperclip is). Cost to date $0
About this point in their first reading of this plan, smart managers will realize that if they agree to this while still using a proprietary file format, it means that they are agreeing to be personally responsible for the decision tying them into either a) a dead-end platform and mass migration costs (because Microsoft is not going to maintain full backward compatibility with the Word98 file format forever) b) paying Microsoft for a custom support contract (which, if you can believe it, will be even more expensive than a mass migration.) A smart manager will realize that he's already backed into this corner, won't allow himself to be backed further into this corner and instead demand that the corporate standard file format be something other than a proprietary one. (SGML, for example).
Once you've convinced your senior management that it's their responsibility to remain in control of their own computers, and that placing corporate intellectual property assets into a proprietary file format represents a questionable off-book liability which could get them in heaps of trouble, you'll be in a much better position to get their cooperation.
As soon as they've agreed that a non-proprietary file format is the only way to go, proceed with the plan as above:
1. Have them read this plan.
2. As per their direction, declare SGML to be the corporate standard.
3. Get their buy-in and signature.
4. Get rid of any application which cannot read and write documents in this corporate standard file format by default.
Whoops! That means you have to get rid of proprietary software like Microsoft Office, because it can't be set to read and write documents in your chosen corporate standard by default.
Repeat the above procedure for every component interface, ignoring the applications themselves. In this, a file format (SGML) is an interface, a network protocol (SAMBA) is an interface, email (POP3) is an interface; look only at the interfaces. Standardize on HTML 4.0, instead of Microsoft Internet Explorer. Standardize on POP3 and IMAP, rather than Microsoft Exchange. In this way, your company will never be backed into the proprietary software trap.
You'll likely find that only open source applications on an open source operating system meet the corporate standards. How you get them from that conclusion all the way to a Star Office on Linux solution is your own problem.
I'm terminally ill; I'll be dead in a week...
That usually stops them.
All you need to do is break their script. Most phone drones will hang up rather than ever try to recover.
Then they can't have one, can they? Because you've already agreed to release the work on a non-exclusive basis.
Sometimes we make choices in life. Do you want exposure or do you want the fat payoff of exclusivity? If you demand the fat payoff up front, you may never get the exposure you need.
I could just as easily re-word your example to say "what if I've written my first book, and RandomPublisherA offers me $10K for it. Then RandomPublisherB says he likes it and offers me $100K for it. Do I abandon RandomPublisherA and spill my sour grapes to the world?
That's funny. I do just that (well, actually I'm helping him figure out how to eliminate my job) every day, and it's kept me steadily employed for more than a decade.
It's one of those counter-intuitive things I seem to graps intuitively.
I know their (at the time lax) policy toward piracy was one of the reasons I swore off them a years ago: I got fed-up being the "only kid on the block" who was actually paying for their software rather than just pirating it like everyone else.
Call me a moral pedantic, but I think it just proves the rule that doing what's right will eventually pay you back in the end.
Then again, if we were all waiting for Linux, there would be no Linux either. Fortunately for us, Linux didn't wait, and others joined the team.
Um. It's been over 10 years that they've been developing Linux, too. Does that make it bad?
Perhaps you prefer something like WinXP which has only been in development since....when?
ducks and runs from the ensuing flamefest...
Would you call this Linux?
Imagine (admittedly unimaginable) if Microsoft were to do the same thing; start with a Linux kernel, and recompile all of what they'd like us (or the Judge, at least) to think of as "Windows" to run on it. No shell. No vi or emacs. No cat, pipe, grep or sed. No Gnome or KDE. No /dev. No init scripts. Just Office and IE and the rest of the crew. Would the resulting quivering mass meet your personal definition of a Linux box?
Let's turn it around the other way. Imagine starting with a base HP-UX system and replacing every possible application with a GNU equivalent compiled to run under HP-UX, leaving you with a system proprietary only in it's kernel. Would that meet your definition of a Linux system?
Would any of the above be useful to most people who call themselves "Linux users"? Remember, there's a significant portion of the total computer user community who would swear that an application with "minimum requirements" of Win98 won't run on a Win95 system.
Long before there was a Linux kernel for the GNU tools to run on, there was the HURD kernel. HURD is just as free (it's GPL'd) as Linux, but the project has received much less attention, and stalled for many years.
I believe what Stallman wants is for the relationship between GNU and Linux to be clarified. If you are discussing the kernel itself, or engaging in a discussion where the kernel context is implied, then it is inappropriate to describe it as GNU/Linux. But very few of us (but for the kernel hackers) consider the kernel to be useful outside of the context of the "whole ball of wax" which makes it a usable system. In that sense, the nomenclature of "GNU/Linux" is appropriate to distunguish it from the other existing (GNU/HURD) and possible (GNU/HP-UX) balls of wax which could be put together.
To take it a step further, as a LinuxPPC user, I'm often upset when I hear yet another vendor declare "Today, we're releasing a version of our proprietary application/plug-in which runs under Linux" for the PR value, only to discover three-clicks later that they mean x86-based Linux, and there's no (and likely never will be) any version compiled for any other processor.
So there's two sides (at least) to the argument. Demanding the longer and more specific name can have a balkanizing effect on the greater Linux community, (shades of the Gnome/KDE wars) but also serves to remind us where we came from, how much we have in common, and how far we have to go.
If Microsoft can engage in criminal behavior and still win in court, why would you suspect that they are still innocent when they have lost in court? I would think their lawyers would have been able to defend them well enough in that case.
Or is this some sort of slam against the French court system?
Innovation will occur where it's allowed to occur.
Or, as has been said, Innovation is a wildflower; you cannot choose where it will blossom, but you can choose where it won't.
No, I'm discrediting people who presume that having a cross-platform office suite is a viable path to having a cross-platform office. It is not. It doesn't matter how good the Macintosh version of Microsoft Office is, or even how much better than the Windows version it is.
It's a function of Gresham's Law: bad money drives out the good. If the majority of users are on Windows, then the majority of content will be targeted at Windows users. Macintosh users will always be an after thought. Features of the Macintosh version which are unavailable on the Windows version will be discouraged and ingnored (even if superior) and features of the Windows version which are unavailable on the Macintosh (even if inferior) will be deemed a "Macintosh Problem". This is a function of the network effects, not related to the quality or functionality of the underlying software. People in the majority who create cross-platform documents which disadvantage those in the minority will be deemed to have sinned less than those in the minority who create cross-platform documents which disadvantage those in the majority.
Yes, that's the timeframe I'm talking about. Things may be different today than they were yesterday; that only serves to remind us that things could be different tommorrow than they are today. The precedent has been set; Microsoft has demonstrated that they are both willing and able to create an application suite which disadvantages a competitor where it serves their interests. I see no evidence to support the assertion that they would never do this again in the future, and much evidence to support that they continue the same or equivalent behaviors in other areas even today.
You appear to have inadvertently contradicted yourself. It cannot be both "fully compatible with it's PC counterpart" and "even better than the Windows version" at the same time, which was the heart of my posting. Any deviation from the PC version standard, even a deviation which makes it "better" (whatever that means) is still a deviation, which implies a differential, which implies incompatibility.
That sounds like an indisputible argument, especially with the evidence cited as a link like that. Too bad it ain't true.
We learned this the hard way several years ago when we decided to standardize on Microsoft Office in a business environment with a large Macintosh and Intel PC base. It seemed like the natural choice. We quickly discovered two problems.
First, we discovered that everyone who was using a certain hardware platform presumed that everyone else was using the same hardware platform and therefore had the same operating system, performed the same tasks the same way, had the same integrated capabilities, etc. As an example, people would create fully cross platform Microsoft Word documents detailing platform dependent procedures. (Go to the Start menu...) People would attach (or recommend) applications which were not available on the other platform, specify fonts or colors which did not translate correctly between platforms, etc.
The other problem came directly from Microsoft; this was right at the time when Microsoft considered Apple to be it's biggest threat. The Mac version of Word was atrocious, and the Excel was as slow as a dog.
The result was that anyone who paid for Microsoft Office on either platform was also paying for Microsoft Windows within a year.
Microsoft's claim that Microsoft Office is available on multiple platforms is a joke. There will never be a truly compatible office suite for any platform other than Windows as long as Microsoft Office is controlled by the same company as Microsoft Windows.
If you've adopted Microsoft Office as your standard office suite, be prepared to spend the rest of your days on Microsoft Windows.
Typical American attitude. ;-)
This is not about saving money, although I suspect it will do so in the end.
This is about preserving Peru's democracy. That much is highlighted clearly in the bill:
I suspect this is why Free Software has such a strong (dare I say patriotic) following among general users but often fails to sway businesses; few businesses are run as democracies.
This is yet another reason why the Free Software/Open Source community needs to focus on pushing free software into Governmental use. Microsoft will argue the business side of software (the "it's more expensive, less interoperable" FUD) but should we really endanger the democratic principles on which this country was founded just to save a few (unsubstantiated) bucks?
Were I actually selling you the software (or a copy of the software) I would lose my ownership rights to that software (or to that copy of the software). First Sale would apply and you could do anything you want with it; your rights would not be infringed. You could even deny me (as the previous owner of the software) the right to do anything with that software (or that copy of the software I sold to you). In the case of having sold you a copy, I presume I would still have rights with respect to other copies of that software I might posess.
Instead, under the GPL, you are only licensing the software, which means you are entering into an agreement whereby you agree to certain terms in exchange for some consideration.
The guy who "sold" QDOS to Bill Gates understands the distinction between the two, and I presume he wouldn't make that mistake again. ;-)
Sir Issac was not "sitting" under a tree; in fact, he was lying down, and he was sound asleep.
It wasn't just any apple which happened to fall onto him; it was a rather large apple, which fell because it had gone thoroughly rotten to the core.
And Newton did not say "I've discovered Gravity", but rather just commented "the world sucks."