Here on Slashdot, every time some mention of new commercial software being released for Linux hits the front page, the zealots start up whining that, in true RMS style, it's "not free enough". Even if it's being given away as freeware.
And, frankly, they have a point. Software freedom is an issue that occasionally gets burried by pricetags and flash. The fact that you mention "freeware" only demonstrates the point.
Which is the problem, since it's "not free enough", the zealots simply dismiss it, and lets face it, the zealots are the ones helping spread Linux usage. It's stupid and it needs to stop.
The last couple of times I saw some commercial software being announced for Linux and dismissed by "zealots" was products that were too little, too late. Software is a rough market. Your product has to compete - being available alone doesn't get you much (although apparently some think otherwise).
In my own consideration... if something isn't FOSS, it's already competing at a disadvantage. But there is proprietary software that manages to get my dollar vote none the less.
I don't see how it would matter one bit if this project was open source or not.
Because if this wasn't being presented as "Open Source", it wouldn't have gotten the attention it did? Think about it.
Only law enforcement agencies have access to it, and it's not like any of them are that interested in how it works. To them it's a tool to make their jobs easier, and looking under the hood only makes that job more complicated.
Of course, law enforcement doesn't hire any IT folks. And they certainly never build their own tools so they wouldn't be interested in improving this one based on their own needs. Or do they?
Is saying "good job" too much to ask for? What does MS need to do to earn a thank you from all the nay-sayers.
OK. Fine. Atta-boy Microsoft.
And that's about the extent of the praise. This is simply another nice, albiet minor, gesture to go with a scant handfull of other nice, small gestures. It hardly makes up for an ongoing history of considerably less-than-nice gestures. Don't expect high praise.
They did a good thing, appreciate it. It is not FUD, I am sorry to say that in this case the FUD is from you at first post.
The OP didn't state that this was FUD. They did claim that it calls in to question Microsoft's anti-OSS FUD. I would suggest that such a claim is a bit... agressive. Microsoft's message has evolved over time and their current line would be closer to anti-GPL. Unless this code is GPL licensed, the point is incorrect.
How do you "open source" support services? Didn't Redhat offer support services before it "repositioned itself"? Didn't Redhat offer enterprise solutions before even that?
Even if they try to open source they still have problems as they are now dealing with copyrighted code.
Just to be picky - they've always been dealing with copyrighted code. GPL is a license, not abandonment of copyright. The only way copyright wouldn't be involved is if the code in question was placed in to the public domain by the copyright holder. And again, this is not what the GPL does.
The CentOS Team has been contacted by representatives of a Prominent North American Enterprise Linux Vendor's hired legal team regarding the use of said Prominent North American Enterprise Linux Vendor's Trademarks on www.centos.org. (Full Email follows.) While the CentOS team feels we are using the Prominent North American Enterprise Linux Vendor's marks in a fair and legal manner, we have no choice but to eliminate the majority of the Prominent North American Enterprise Linux Vendor's marks that are being used on www.centos.org.
This is about trademark - not copyright. From Redhat's email to CentOS:
As you are aware, our client is the owner of rights for numerous trademarks, including but not limited to its famous RED HAT mark and RHEL (collectively, the "RED HAT marks").... While Red Hat permits others to redistribute the software that constitutes Red Hat Linux, Red Hat does not authorize any person to use the RED HAT marks in association with such redistribution in any fashion, except by express agreement. In this regard, our client is concerned that your use of the RED HAT marks on your web site in this manner is likely to create confusion, mistake and/or deception among consumers with respect to the source, origin, sponsorship or approval of the products sold under your company name.
This has nothing to do with the software that makes up Redhat which is (last time I looked) entirely GPLed. And CentOS continues today - sans Redhat trademarks.
This is the dumbest fucking analogy that I have ever heard.
As I pointed out earlier, it's not my analogy. And I agree that it's flawed. Do yourself a favor - read the thread next time before being too eager to hit 'reply' and acting like an ass. You might be able to contribute to a conversation next time.
For reasons stated by most of the replies, the analogy is just plain dumb.
It's not my analogy. From the parent post to MY post:
I went to the store today. i had to pay for bread and milk.
And I agree - the analogy doesn't work. If anything, my version is simply a somewhat corrected version of an already flawed analogy. I'm not entirely sure yours is much better.;)
Never tried to eat software. But I know someone who baked his hard drive. And someone who's wife stuck all his floppy disks in the oven and threatened to turn it on. Different intended outcomes though.
Did your grocery store ever offer you free bread and milk? Did they imply that this would be an ongoing offer? Was there ever a concern that your household was becoming dependant on that free bread and milk? And once you did become dependant on that free bread and milk, did your grocery store now demand the 4 bucks because they discovered one of your household members was learning how to bake bread?
That's more or less what I was doing with Privoxy. I had a drop-in filter list compiled from other sources. The issue I had with that was a configuration-by-comitee ended up blocking more content than I really wanted. Again - I'm not against ads per se... it's specific types of content that I don't care for. Granted - I'm probably in that "power-user" category. But if it weren't for that requirement... privoxy would have been fine. In fact, those who have to use multiple browsers may find privoxy the better choice since their filter set can be applied to every browser configured to use it.
Privoxy was my primary choice before I moved to Adblock; good stuff. I still have it running on my home network for when IE is required or those who don't want to bother with their own filter set. Its been great on both Linux and Windows platforms; as a service and for local use only. And there are a number of sources for drop-in filter sets if you can't be bothered building you own.
I use fire fox, but not adblock, because I am willing to support the sites I visit by viewing some of the ads. (blink or flash just once and your image server is on my shit list).
I use Adblock for exactly the same reason. I had previously used Privoxy but found that I was generally blocking all ads since it was a pain to be selective. To do so, I needed an interface that allowed me to quickly modify my filters on a case by case basis (Privoxy may have this and I'm just ignorant of it).
Adblock lets me allow most ads and only target the sources of particularly loathesome content (tracking cookies, java / flash tricks, popup / unders, etc.). As a new source of annoying ads self-identifys, I can quickly bring up the offending URL and create a suitable filter. The tradeoff is that I have a little extra overhead ocasionally creating new filters to handle new sources of annoyance ads (usually something along the lines of "*.adserver.com/*.swf*").
Let's consider for a moment. You are driving down the highway in thousands of pounds of machinery at 65 miles an hour with your most beloved people in the world. You are doing this with thousands of other people each in their thousands of pounds of machinery traveling at high speeds.
Wow. How ever do we manage to do this every single day without automated monitoring and tracking? All that freedom that can only be abused. How frightening.
Hehe, when I was in elementary school I remember hearing about how great the space station (then S.S. Freedom) was going to be when it was built.
One quick point - the S.S. Freedom never happened. ISS is not the same project.
Your parents also heard about space stations and space tourism. 2001: A Space Odyssey was the not-so-distant future. Yet here we are in 2005 and no massive orbiting space stations launching deep-space research projects. No flying cars either.
Heh. Actually - that came to mind. But that just means the fresh machines get immediately re-infected by the malware written to the fileserver / attached media.:)
If it's just an email/gaming machine, they can buy a new one that's faster anyway.
Wait. That's a business oportunity! Just like a linen or knife service. I'll come in and swap out your old, malware-infested machines with new, clean ones! Once a week. Every few months, we'll roll upgraded hardware in to the cycle.
Wait. What do you mean you got important data on those things?
Sure. They let YOU in... then others are gonna want in... and so on. Look - not everyone likes the Massively Multiplayer genre despite what you might see on the 'net.
A more interesting test would compare how hard it is to get spyware onto a user's computer via the default webbrowser since that seems to be the primary vector these days. However, this is problematic since it's heavily dependent on user stupidity.
To some extent... perhapse. There's only so much that can be done with a user that seems hell-bent on self destruction. And most of that is damage control.
But having said that - I'm not convinced. By discounting all this to intentional behavior, you're ignoring the "drive-by download" issue. My work environment has over 15,000 managed Windows workstations. We get a fair amount of malware traffic. And in a majority of day-to-day cases, the end user didn't do anything particularly "stupid".
That's not to say I'm not occasionally impressed by the tenacity of stupid users in our environment - but they're not the whole problem.
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And, frankly, they have a point. Software freedom is an issue that occasionally gets burried by pricetags and flash. The fact that you mention "freeware" only demonstrates the point.
The last couple of times I saw some commercial software being announced for Linux and dismissed by "zealots" was products that were too little, too late. Software is a rough market. Your product has to compete - being available alone doesn't get you much (although apparently some think otherwise).
In my own consideration... if something isn't FOSS, it's already competing at a disadvantage. But there is proprietary software that manages to get my dollar vote none the less.
Because if this wasn't being presented as "Open Source", it wouldn't have gotten the attention it did? Think about it.
Of course, law enforcement doesn't hire any IT folks. And they certainly never build their own tools so they wouldn't be interested in improving this one based on their own needs. Or do they?
Public domain isn't a license - it's an abandonment (or expiration) of copyright.
OK. Fine. Atta-boy Microsoft.
And that's about the extent of the praise. This is simply another nice, albiet minor, gesture to go with a scant handfull of other nice, small gestures. It hardly makes up for an ongoing history of considerably less-than-nice gestures. Don't expect high praise.
The OP didn't state that this was FUD. They did claim that it calls in to question Microsoft's anti-OSS FUD. I would suggest that such a claim is a bit... agressive. Microsoft's message has evolved over time and their current line would be closer to anti-GPL. Unless this code is GPL licensed, the point is incorrect.
Got a link to Redhat's "own open-source license"?
How do you "open source" support services? Didn't Redhat offer support services before it "repositioned itself"? Didn't Redhat offer enterprise solutions before even that?
Just to be picky - they've always been dealing with copyrighted code. GPL is a license, not abandonment of copyright. The only way copyright wouldn't be involved is if the code in question was placed in to the public domain by the copyright holder. And again, this is not what the GPL does.
This is about trademark - not copyright. From Redhat's email to CentOS:
This has nothing to do with the software that makes up Redhat which is (last time I looked) entirely GPLed. And CentOS continues today - sans Redhat trademarks.
As I pointed out earlier, it's not my analogy. And I agree that it's flawed. Do yourself a favor - read the thread next time before being too eager to hit 'reply' and acting like an ass. You might be able to contribute to a conversation next time.
No problem. It also teaches me the apparent value in quoting what I'm replying to. :P
It's not my analogy. From the parent post to MY post:
And I agree - the analogy doesn't work. If anything, my version is simply a somewhat corrected version of an already flawed analogy. I'm not entirely sure yours is much better.
Never tried to eat software. But I know someone who baked his hard drive. And someone who's wife stuck all his floppy disks in the oven and threatened to turn it on. Different intended outcomes though.
If you equate bread and milk with drugs... let's just say that if I were your neighbor, I'd be concerned about what you're cooking in your kitchen.
Did your grocery store ever offer you free bread and milk? Did they imply that this would be an ongoing offer? Was there ever a concern that your household was becoming dependant on that free bread and milk? And once you did become dependant on that free bread and milk, did your grocery store now demand the 4 bucks because they discovered one of your household members was learning how to bake bread?
That's more or less what I was doing with Privoxy. I had a drop-in filter list compiled from other sources. The issue I had with that was a configuration-by-comitee ended up blocking more content than I really wanted. Again - I'm not against ads per se... it's specific types of content that I don't care for. Granted - I'm probably in that "power-user" category. But if it weren't for that requirement... privoxy would have been fine. In fact, those who have to use multiple browsers may find privoxy the better choice since their filter set can be applied to every browser configured to use it.
....black, ominous pringles cans?
Privoxy was my primary choice before I moved to Adblock; good stuff. I still have it running on my home network for when IE is required or those who don't want to bother with their own filter set. Its been great on both Linux and Windows platforms; as a service and for local use only. And there are a number of sources for drop-in filter sets if you can't be bothered building you own.
I use Adblock for exactly the same reason. I had previously used Privoxy but found that I was generally blocking all ads since it was a pain to be selective. To do so, I needed an interface that allowed me to quickly modify my filters on a case by case basis (Privoxy may have this and I'm just ignorant of it).
Adblock lets me allow most ads and only target the sources of particularly loathesome content (tracking cookies, java / flash tricks, popup / unders, etc.). As a new source of annoying ads self-identifys, I can quickly bring up the offending URL and create a suitable filter. The tradeoff is that I have a little extra overhead ocasionally creating new filters to handle new sources of annoyance ads (usually something along the lines of "*.adserver.com/*.swf*").
Wow. How ever do we manage to do this every single day without automated monitoring and tracking? All that freedom that can only be abused. How frightening.
One quick point - the S.S. Freedom never happened. ISS is not the same project.
Your parents also heard about space stations and space tourism. 2001: A Space Odyssey was the not-so-distant future. Yet here we are in 2005 and no massive orbiting space stations launching deep-space research projects. No flying cars either.
I've heard the Grey have been providing us with technical ideas on how to deal with the complexities of space travel for years.
Of course not! Then they'd have to use words like "partners" to describe the Russians.
Heh. Actually - that came to mind. But that just means the fresh machines get immediately re-infected by the malware written to the fileserver / attached media. :)
Wait. That's a business oportunity! Just like a linen or knife service. I'll come in and swap out your old, malware-infested machines with new, clean ones! Once a week. Every few months, we'll roll upgraded hardware in to the cycle.
Wait. What do you mean you got important data on those things?
Sure. They let YOU in... then others are gonna want in... and so on. Look - not everyone likes the Massively Multiplayer genre despite what you might see on the 'net.
To some extent... perhapse. There's only so much that can be done with a user that seems hell-bent on self destruction. And most of that is damage control.
But having said that - I'm not convinced. By discounting all this to intentional behavior, you're ignoring the "drive-by download" issue. My work environment has over 15,000 managed Windows workstations. We get a fair amount of malware traffic. And in a majority of day-to-day cases, the end user didn't do anything particularly "stupid".
That's not to say I'm not occasionally impressed by the tenacity of stupid users in our environment - but they're not the whole problem.