Bounties are a TERRIBLE way to fund development of software.
No serious developer is going to go after a bounty, because you only have a 1/N chance of getting the prize if there are N other contenders. The person who finishes first is going to be the one who cuts the most corners and spends the least amount of time on design and documentation, so you'll end up rewarding the person who can produces the crappiest software to a minimum standard faster than anyone else!
The competitive aspect also makes people keep their work secret, preventing peer review and feedback.
Sheesh, if someone has $20,000 to spend on software development they should just HIRE a skilled person who will get the job done properly. It's not like there's a shortage of skilled software developers at the moment! They don't even have to be a free software developer because if you're hiring them you call the shots and choose whatever license you want.
When are people going to realise that these parody sites are just so BORING and PATRONIZING?!
Maybe the first ten were funny but it's getting pretty tedious now. If somebody has a good idea about how to organize international trade, or whatever, I'd rather they just made a short factual web page about it and let that be judged on its merit. I mean, we all know that there are major problems in the world but the way these sites go on they are just patronizing.
I mean they generally try to make some ridiculous point, like the world bank, IMF, etc supposedly being responsible for all the worlds problems, while the sites authors seem to have all the answers. Sheesh, even high-school debating societies are on a higher intellectual level than that. I really think these sites just show that the people behind them are mentally-maladjusted and somehow want to show how they are just superior to everybody else.
The people who put all their time into these sites would be better using their skills to do something useful, like
writing free software that would help people in developing countries for example.
Look at the reality.. the patent office doesn't give a DAMN about prior art! Free software development is going to be slowly strangled to death by software patents over the next 10 years. No patents on software! They don't work, they are supposed to encourage innovation but they just turn it into a legal quagmire. It's not like people are going to stop inventing new algorithms just because they can't get a patent on them. It's like saying nobody would invent new scientific theories if there was no nobel prize.
For total portability and ease of programming use ANSI C and Curses, maybe extended with a very simple interpreted language like scheme. Run the program from dos or the console. It's not like this hasn't been done before. Everybody wants to make life complicated for themselves these days. Humans went to the MOON and back with less technology. Pretty soon people are going to need UML diagrams to blow their nose or something.
BSD licensed projects rely on the goodwill of people contributing patches back to the free version, rather than profiting themselves by keeping their changes proprietary. That is more naive than the GPL. In fact it is contrary to economic logic.
It's naive open-source zealots who say that giving away software is supposed to be profitable. I agree that these people are insane. Obviously it's not profitable, but that doesn't mean free software is any more non-viable than,say, public radio for example.
> no lawyer in the world would advise you to cop to something you
were totally innocent of to avoid a lengthy trial
Yeah right, in your fairy tale world.
Not only do lawyers, especially public-defenders, tell innocent people to take
a plea bargain, innocent people even confess
under police pressure. DNA evidence has shown
many cases of wrongful conviction. Just search for "plea-bargain dna wrongful-convection" on google for plenty of examples.
One example here.
I basically agree. The fact is he called the newspaper and told them about the security hole (undisputed, right?), whereas if his intent was purely criminal he would obviously have kept quiet about it.
Downloading the scripts was stupid but I don't regard it as a matter for the FBI. As far as I can tell, nobody got hurt. He didn't actually try to sell the script -- if he had tried to do that it would be a different matter. Heck, if somebody downloaded a cgi-script off my server by some obvious security hole like directly typing a url into the cgi directory then I wouldn't consider the need to bring in Federal Agents and have the guy sent to prison.
I am amazed at the number of people saying that he deserves everything... obviously they have never been wrongly accused of anything. Honestly, some posters sound like they want the guy to go on death row or something.
The only new thing google added was the page rank algorithm (patented for the next 25 years). If providing a clean fast site was enough then the older search engines would have done that. Expect any competitors who try to introduce variations on the pagerank algorithm to be sued once they IPO. With the pagerank algorithm they own the optimal gateway to the web, and the shareholders will exploit that to the max.
Google may 'rock' now but it won't after an IPO. I will get flamed for this but things you can expect to see are some of the following,
banner ads, pop-ups
intrusive user tracking
links for 'product placement'
smart people leaving the company disillusioned
Tell me "it can't happen"... it has every time before and it will here
In 12-24 months google will suck badly, mark my words. You will be ashamed to have promoted it.
By the way, my understanding is that they are profitable and don't need an IPO -- but no doubt the private investors want their 10x return on their original capital. After all, do you think that multimillionaires invest in these things out of good-will?
The only way to have a search engine that does want you want in the long term is for it to be owned by the users.
Any corporation can use GPL'ed code, Government funded or otherwise. They just have to release the resulting product under the GPL too. So what's the big deal? Just because the consumers (also taxpayers) have the right to the source code doesn't mean the company can't have a profitable business. Of course, the company would have to provide a good service, support etc that people would be willing to pay for, and I guess it might be a problem for SOME companies to realise that they have to do that.
So tell me again, what is capitalistic about working together for the common good?;-)
The Marxist slogan "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" -- also sounds a lot like free software to me.
Before my brain overloads here I'd say we need a more reliable defintion of what is 'capitalistic'!!
In particular, there is the theory of 'Rational Choice Marxism' (as in the rational choice axioms of economics), which defines marxist concepts mathematically through game theory.
e.g. if you have two coalitions C1 and C2, and C1 would be worse off if C2 acted for itself, and C2 would be better off, then C1 is said to exploit C2 (if C2 doesn't act for itself, despite it being materially better then C1 is said to dominate C2 or something like that). I don't remember all the details and theorems right now.... it is heavy stuff.
C1 and C2 might be bourgeosie/proletariat, princes/serfs, or proprietary software shareholders/software developers. And you need to consider all possible coalitions, equilibrium points, etc. Anyway IIRC the theory leads to a more rigorous way of determining what is capitalistic. Maybe someone could work that out for free software and let us know the answer to three decimal places.
Slashdot Mirror
good post
GE exists because Edison got patents on the light bulb (or whatever). If he hadn't got patents he probably would have died in poverty.
No serious developer is going to go after a bounty, because you only have a 1/N chance of getting the prize if there are N other contenders. The person who finishes first is going to be the one who cuts the most corners and spends the least amount of time on design and documentation, so you'll end up rewarding the person who can produces the crappiest software to a minimum standard faster than anyone else!
The competitive aspect also makes people keep their work secret, preventing peer review and feedback.
Sheesh, if someone has $20,000 to spend on software development they should just HIRE a skilled person who will get the job done properly. It's not like there's a shortage of skilled software developers at the moment! They don't even have to be a free software developer because if you're hiring them you call the shots and choose whatever license you want.
Maybe the first ten were funny but it's getting pretty tedious now. If somebody has a good idea about how to organize international trade, or whatever, I'd rather they just made a short factual web page about it and let that be judged on its merit. I mean, we all know that there are major problems in the world but the way these sites go on they are just patronizing.
I mean they generally try to make some ridiculous point, like the world bank, IMF, etc supposedly being responsible for all the worlds problems, while the sites authors seem to have all the answers. Sheesh, even high-school debating societies are on a higher intellectual level than that. I really think these sites just show that the people behind them are mentally-maladjusted and somehow want to show how they are just superior to everybody else.
The people who put all their time into these sites would be better using their skills to do something useful, like writing free software that would help people in developing countries for example.
Look at the reality.. the patent office doesn't
give a DAMN about prior art! Free software
development is going to be slowly strangled to
death by software patents over the next 10 years.
No patents on software! They don't work, they
are supposed to encourage innovation but they
just turn it into a legal quagmire. It's not like
people are going to stop inventing new algorithms
just because they can't get a patent on them. It's
like saying nobody would invent new scientific theories if there was no nobel prize.
For total portability and ease of programming use ANSI C and Curses, maybe extended with a very simple interpreted language like scheme. Run the program from dos or the console. It's not like this hasn't been done before. Everybody wants to make life complicated for themselves these days. Humans went to the MOON and back with less technology. Pretty soon people are going to need UML diagrams to blow their nose or something.
There is no comparison with Napster.
Napster was blatantly illegal and deserved to be shut down. It was just a warez site for music.
If people were trading free music that would be different. Some artists produce free music and it is up to the public what they choose to listen to.
BSD licensed projects rely on the goodwill of people contributing patches back to the free version, rather than profiting themselves by keeping their changes proprietary. That is more naive than the GPL. In fact it is contrary to economic logic.
It's naive open-source zealots who say that giving away software is supposed to be profitable. I agree that these people are insane. Obviously it's not profitable, but that doesn't mean free software is any more non-viable than ,say, public radio for example.
How long till we see NetApache, OpenApache, and FreeApache?
Yeah right, in your fairy tale world.
Not only do lawyers, especially public-defenders, tell innocent people to take a plea bargain, innocent people even confess under police pressure. DNA evidence has shown many cases of wrongful conviction. Just search for "plea-bargain dna wrongful-convection" on google for plenty of examples. One example here.
the newspaper and told them about the security hole (undisputed, right?), whereas if his intent was purely
criminal he would obviously have kept quiet about it.
Downloading the scripts was stupid but I don't
regard it as a matter for the FBI. As far as I can tell, nobody got hurt. He didn't actually try to sell the script -- if he had tried to do that it would be a different matter. Heck, if
somebody downloaded a cgi-script off my server
by some obvious security hole like directly typing
a url into the cgi directory then I wouldn't
consider the need to bring in Federal Agents and have the guy sent to prison.
I am amazed at the number of people saying that he deserves everything... obviously they have never been wrongly accused of anything. Honestly, some posters sound like they want the guy to go on death row or something.
The only new thing google added was the page
rank algorithm (patented for the next 25 years).
If providing a clean fast site was enough
then the older search engines would have done that.
Expect any competitors who try to introduce variations
on the pagerank algorithm to be sued once they IPO.
With the pagerank algorithm they own the optimal gateway to the web,
and the shareholders will exploit that to the max.
Google may 'rock' now but it won't after an IPO. I will get flamed for this but things you can expect to see are some of the following,
banner ads, pop-ups
intrusive user tracking
links for 'product placement'
smart people leaving the company disillusioned
Tell me "it can't happen"... it has every time before and it will here
In 12-24 months google will suck badly, mark my words. You will be ashamed to have promoted it.
By the way, my understanding is that they are profitable and don't need an IPO -- but no doubt the private investors want their 10x return on their original capital. After all, do you think that multimillionaires invest in these things out of good-will?
The only way to have a search engine that does want you want in the long term is for it to be owned by the users.
Any corporation can use GPL'ed code, Government funded or otherwise. They just have to release the resulting product under the GPL too. So what's the big deal? Just because the consumers (also taxpayers) have the right to the source code doesn't mean the company can't have a profitable business. Of course, the company would have to provide a good service, support etc that people would be willing to pay for, and I guess it might be a problem for SOME companies to realise that they have to do that.
You forgot to mention that both of Linus' parents were members of the Finnish Communist Party.
So tell me again, what is capitalistic about working together for the common good? ;-)
The Marxist slogan "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" -- also sounds a lot like free software to me.
Before my brain overloads here I'd say we need a more reliable defintion of what is 'capitalistic'!!
In particular, there is the theory of 'Rational Choice Marxism' (as in the rational choice axioms of economics), which defines marxist concepts mathematically through game theory.
e.g. if you have two coalitions C1 and C2, and C1 would be worse off if C2 acted for itself, and C2 would be better off, then C1 is said to exploit C2 (if C2 doesn't act for itself, despite it being materially better then C1 is said to dominate C2 or something like that). I don't remember all the details and theorems right now.... it is heavy stuff.
C1 and C2 might be bourgeosie/proletariat, princes/serfs, or proprietary software shareholders/software developers. And you need to consider all possible coalitions, equilibrium points, etc. Anyway IIRC the theory leads to a more rigorous way of determining what is capitalistic. Maybe someone could work that out for free software and let us know the answer to three decimal places.
Install MindGuard -- it works!