I use disclosed source-code to refer to all situations where source is available without reference to licensing. That means source available with a no modification permitted license, or with Sun SCSL, or with GNU GPL.
Sometimes it makes sense to talk about that without licensing coming in to the picture.
You are correct that all cases of non-disclosed source code are probably proprietary. But my argument didn't rest on the license being compliant with the Open Source Definition, so there was no point in bringing Free/Proprietary into it.
Well, let's take another example. I buy a package of Kodak film, and I spend $100,000 to hire models and do a location photo shoot. The film turns out to be no good and I lose all of the work I spent $100,000 for. Should Kodak be liable for that?
Take a look at the Kodak box, any Kodak box made in the last 30 years or more, and you'll see they are not liable for more than replacement of the blank film. And that makes sense to me. If I want that kind of insurance, I'll buy it when I need it.
This doesn't mean that wouldn't do my best to fix bugs and protect the users. That's the attitude that is important to getting mainstream customers, and that's what Linux distributions should be doing to the software they distribute - and for the most part they are. Certainly Debian has fixed 50K bugs in the lifetime of its bug system, no doubt the others do something similar.
Well, before I purchased an appliance recently I checked out reviews of it in Consumer Reports and elsewhere. That doesn't make me a washer-drier expert. The point here is that if there is a publicly known problem with a piece of software, you can probably find out about that easily and it's going to be hard to claim ignorance in court later. With disclosed source-code or true Open Source the details are out there where people can see them and it's more likely a problem will be publicly known.
People who want to provide warranties should be allowed to provide them, for a fee. If everyonehas to provide warranties, it is going to drive costs up for applications where warranties are neither desired nor necessary.
Disclosed source-code software has much less of a problem with negligence since the user and distributor are able to perform due diligience on their own - if the user has something to lose they can check the code or read other people's reviews of the code and protect themselves from damage. If there is damage due to negligence, the fault is at least in part the user's because they had the power to protect themselves.
This is not the case with Microsoft's non-disclosed-source-code software - they don't give the customer the power to check or fix their negligence, thus the negligence is all theirs.
True Open Source in general declines warranties because the software is distributed gratis or at very low cost. Of course, you have the option to make a contract with a support provider who might provide you warranties against negligence. I don't think it's likely that a provider of gratis software, Open Source or not, would be found liable for damages he explicitly disclaims. I'd like to hear of any cases where this has happened.
Sorry, it is off-topic. He brought up day-traders and VA and I was off and running with a hastily-considered answer. I am sitting here with a really painful case of sinusitis and have not touched my email in 48 hours because I wouldn't make sense. Of course that doesn't keep me off slashdot:-)
OK, sorry for the over-simplistic explanation. I figured someone would nail me for not compounding it. If you're going to state it that way, you should use 0.995 ^ 520, but the result is about the same and you lose only 93% of your portfolio.
I am relatively innumerate as programmers go, and let the CFO crunch the numbers.
I think you are wrong on point 2 because it is not 1% of earnings but %1 of your gross portfolio daily. As for the non-use of calculus, which is necessary for obtaining an accurate answer, guilty as charged.
Assume that daytrader buys and sells his entire portfolio once per day, and trades 300 days out of the year. On every stock there is a spread between the buy and sell prices which is profit for the market-maker. Assume that daytrader loses half a percent of his portfolio to the spread on every buy and every sell, thus he loses 1% per day to spread. His loss per year is 300%. Thus, his trading strategy must triple his money every year simply to break even. It's unlikely that he'll do that well.
No wonder they go nonlinear. The system is stacked against them from the start.
Although GPS might be part of the system, you would not track one of these with a GPS receiver, nor can a GPS receiver be adapted to track other objects than itself on the ground. Their literature shows it being tracked by a network of base stations, and possibly repeating the satellite GPS signal on its own frequency.
Also, congress did not cut GPS funding, it cut funding for a modernization of the civilian GPS system in an incompatible way, adding new features. It's possible that DOD could decide to upgrade the defense GPS, the one we are now using, in an incompatible way, but unlikely (think of all the GPS owners in the U.S. calling their congress people).
Nope, it's really the OSD. Even the paragraph numbering is the same for much of it, the requirements are the same, and they are in the same order. See the Portugese translation of the OSD here.
OK, perhaps I am blowing my own horn a bit much. I was just completely blown away by finding the OSD written into a proposed Brazilian law. This does not happen every day and you can expect me to be a little nonlinear when it does. Sorry!
That's a translation of a translation of the Open Source Definition, by yours truly and the Debian developers. The original, with explanation, is available here.
I'd be happy to offer assistance to the people who are pushing this bill, if anyone can put me in touch with the right people.
Is every company LCG invests in expected to be profitable within a reasonable amount of time
Every company, but not every project. In general an Open Source company might have software development as a cost center and support as a profit center. That means one costs money and the other makes money, and both are essential to your business.
Do you feel LCG has the experience and contacts to help find CEO's and management, connect startups with clients outside of the Linux domain, and give advise on all the nuts and bolts of starting a new company and making it profitable?
A lot of this is what Randall and Bern bring to the table. The both have a lot of experience in negociations between businesses, running businesses, etc. And of course we're looking for more people to help with this.
I have already discussed this with Richard (months ago). At the moment I don't have money to contribute, but that will change. Meanwhile, Richard called me this morning and asked me to put a link on the VC firm's home page, and I did that. If there's anything else I can do for FSF, I will.
No, it won't hinder Debian development. In cooperation with the Debian developers means we will submit patches back to them, communicate with maintainers of stuff we're working on, get their opinions on stuff, contribute services and hopefully money, and in general be good members of the community. We even put their current project leader on the investment company's advisory board - he's advising the company that owns Progeny Linux. But Debian is free to ignore us.
I sort of thought that might be how Coda works. But you don't expect me to know everything, do you? Ian is the network filesystem expert. Somewhere on the U. of Arizona web site you can find all of his distributed filesystem work. He can no doubt tell you all of the pros and cons of his project over Coda in great detail.
Unfortunately, a qualified investor is someone with a 6-digit amount of money to put in, and enough money that they are not investing so that if we fail it won't blow their whole wad. Everything I said about the small investor being able to get in does not apply until our IPO. At that time, you will be able to buy into all of the partner companies pre-IPO by purchasing stock in Linux Capital Group (this is not an offering).
I'm not happy with the fact that I can't open it to the small investor yet, but I really don't want to run awry of securities law, etc.
I promise not to lose sight of my goals of social change and I'll remember the goals behind the GPL. I can't promise not to be caught up in the money game, many people would consider that by being a corporate CEO I am already caught up, and for me to make such a promise would simply not sound sincere. But I'm not looking for a Lear jet or to be admitted to the aristocracy, if that's what you are thinking of. I'd settle for sending Stanley to college and having a retirement fund for when we are old and sick.
I've tried to make the point that money is power for political change, so maybe you'll grant that some good could come out of it.
Actually, it's not in direct competition with Corel, and I was considering it but nothing was agreed. Remember that the comment, in a Debian mailing list, got rather blown out of proportion and put where I didn't intend it to be. Still, I should have been more circumspect. If you want to know if I screwed up and said something I should not have, yes, I screwed up and said something I should not have.
That doesn't mean that I'm happy with the situation, though. They don't need that in their license, and it's an insult to all of the legal minors who wrote parts of their system.
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Sometimes it makes sense to talk about that without licensing coming in to the picture.
You are correct that all cases of non-disclosed source code are probably proprietary. But my argument didn't rest on the license being compliant with the Open Source Definition, so there was no point in bringing Free/Proprietary into it.
I hope that makes it easier to understand.
Thanks
Bruce
Take a look at the Kodak box, any Kodak box made in the last 30 years or more, and you'll see they are not liable for more than replacement of the blank film. And that makes sense to me. If I want that kind of insurance, I'll buy it when I need it.
This doesn't mean that wouldn't do my best to fix bugs and protect the users. That's the attitude that is important to getting mainstream customers, and that's what Linux distributions should be doing to the software they distribute - and for the most part they are. Certainly Debian has fixed 50K bugs in the lifetime of its bug system, no doubt the others do something similar.
Thanks
Bruce
People who want to provide warranties should be allowed to provide them, for a fee. If everyone has to provide warranties, it is going to drive costs up for applications where warranties are neither desired nor necessary.
Thanks
Bruce
This is not the case with Microsoft's non-disclosed-source-code software - they don't give the customer the power to check or fix their negligence, thus the negligence is all theirs.
True Open Source in general declines warranties because the software is distributed gratis or at very low cost. Of course, you have the option to make a contract with a support provider who might provide you warranties against negligence. I don't think it's likely that a provider of gratis software, Open Source or not, would be found liable for damages he explicitly disclaims. I'd like to hear of any cases where this has happened.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce
I am relatively innumerate as programmers go, and let the CFO crunch the numbers.
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce
Common name? No. You mean generic. Currently, it would not pass the test of being a generic name, although maybe Unix would.
Bruce
No wonder they go nonlinear. The system is stacked against them from the start.
Bruce
Bruce
Also, congress did not cut GPS funding, it cut funding for a modernization of the civilian GPS system in an incompatible way, adding new features. It's possible that DOD could decide to upgrade the defense GPS, the one we are now using, in an incompatible way, but unlikely (think of all the GPS owners in the U.S. calling their congress people).
Bruce
No problem. I really didn't write those Brittany Spears songs... And I'm not really bigger than Cher :-)
Bruce
Bruce
He means "per se".
Cool.
Bruce
I'd be happy to offer assistance to the people who are pushing this bill, if anyone can put me in touch with the right people.
Thanks
Bruce
Every company, but not every project. In general an Open Source company might have software development as a cost center and support as a profit center. That means one costs money and the other makes money, and both are essential to your business.
Do you feel LCG has the experience and contacts to help find CEO's and management, connect startups with clients outside of the Linux domain, and give advise on all the nuts and bolts of starting a new company and making it profitable?
A lot of this is what Randall and Bern bring to the table. The both have a lot of experience in negociations between businesses, running businesses, etc. And of course we're looking for more people to help with this.
Thanks
Bruce
I suspect that the investment is calculated to pay him out $30K/year. Gee, you're really nasty.
Thanks
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce
I sort of thought that might be how Coda works. But you don't expect me to know everything, do you? Ian is the network filesystem expert. Somewhere on the U. of Arizona web site you can find all of his distributed filesystem work. He can no doubt tell you all of the pros and cons of his project over Coda in great detail.
Thanks
Bruce
I'm not happy with the fact that I can't open it to the small investor yet, but I really don't want to run awry of securities law, etc.
Thanks
Bruce
I've tried to make the point that money is power for political change, so maybe you'll grant that some good could come out of it.
Thanks
Bruce
That doesn't mean that I'm happy with the situation, though. They don't need that in their license, and it's an insult to all of the legal minors who wrote parts of their system.
Bruce