Cable providers realize that if free or very low cost wireless becomes a reality and widespread more content providers will move to web distribution; using either commercial or subscription models. That will lessen the value of their cable franchise as consumers no longer want or need large bundles; forcing them to change their pricing structure to compete. As a side "benefit" they potentially will lose the internet and VIOP business as well as people move to the wireless option. Meanwhile, the big content providers will want a bigger cut for providing content since they already can reach consumers directly via the web; lessening their dependence on cable.
The real challenge will be for the marginal channels - the ones that get carried but have small viewership - can they translate that into a profitable web based service if cable loses enough customers so the cable revenue no longer can sustain their production costs?
OTOH, sports fan will get a bonanza since it now becomes easy and lucrative to broadcast all of your teams games anywhere since you would potential have a big enough subscriber base to make it worthwhile to stream via YouTube- a boon to big time college sports with world wide fan bases.
Make no mistake, this is the most serious threat cable has faced in a long time. Which is why they are playing white space wireless up as a "technical" threat - they want the government to squash this before it has a chance to take off.
While I agree that the grandparent is engaged in some first-rate asshattery, I'd just like to make one comment. You say:
Your accountant doesn't tell you to fix your own damn tax problem, the mechanic doesn't derisively laugh because you don't know how to re-gap your own spark plugs
The difference here is that you are paying your accountant and your mechanic for their expertise. Most of the people who receive comments along the lines of 'write a patch' have not contributed anything. On the Free Software project I co-run, we have a designer on the core team. He provides a lot of really high-quality artwork and some good UI ideas. If he comes to me with a feature request, then it goes quite high on my TODO list. Why? Because he's contributed to the project in ways that I am incapable of replacing with my own effort. I recently refactored a big chunk of my code to make it more reusable for someone else. Why? Because at the same time as asking me to, he sent me a diff fixing a few of my bugs.
Free Software is about cooperation. I only benefit from sharing my improvements if other people do as well. We both benefit from not having to reproduce the other's work, and so can get on with things we want to do much faster. If you want something done, then you have to convince me that it's in my interest to do it for you, usually by offering something in return. Whether this is code, artwork, documentation, or money is up to you. If you don't offer anything then the reply will be 'patches welcome' which means either offer me something of value in exchange for my time, or offer someone else something and get them to send me the patch.
That's fine; but to the OP's point - don't expect people to adopt your software or to embrace FOSS if they get the "write a patch" reply. As far as they are concerned that means it's just another buggy program with no support that's not worth their time to use or install. Beyond that, they will tell others not to bother when the use of FOSS is mentioned.
If all you want is a small community of active participants that's fine and your choice. However, those that want wider adoption of FOSS need to understand how the "write a patch" mentality prevents them from achieving their goals.
Umm... Isn't this old news?? I'm already running OO 3.0, the mirrors had it the other day... Looks fantastic! One more nail in the coffin of MSOffice....
While I like and use NeoOffice for my personal Mac (I like to not pirate software even though I could have from my work machine); OO (and NeoOffice) are barely driving the first nail in the coffin. My work machine has MS Office; and every client I have been at uses it as well. Why? It's the standard and volume licenses are relatively cheap - I doubt very many people pay anywhere near the list price for a copy. As long as it is cheap enough it will remain the overwhelming favorite; "free" is not enough to get people to switch. Here's the challenges as I see them for OO and NeoO:
1) Very few people even know they exist 2) MS Office is teh standard and most people like to play it safe plus 3) MS very aggressively prices its products when needed (such as a full MSOffice suite for $60 for students) 4) People view FOSS with skepticism - how will I get support?; How can I be sure it is reliable?; etc. 5) Many people can pirate a work copy for use at home if needed so it's essentially free anyway.
Don't sign anything without solid, real legal advice.
Secondly; what is the value of the project you are working on to the company? If it has any real commercial value, and your coding is critical, you should be talking a cut of the company or to someone else wiling to fund your work.
If they'd laid out a business plan to you and you are not under an NDA you could shop it around and find out what it is worth. Until you sign you owe them nothing.
Finally, don't sign a non-compete. If they want you bad enough they will back down on any terms you don't like, possibly to include code ownership and or wanting a cut of their company.
If they don't back down, chances are they want you cheap or something you did up to them is what they really want and simply are trying to lock you up.
At any rate - deciding to make money off your skills is not selling out.
OK I've always had trouble understanding the difference between economics and finance (and commerce, but let's save that one for another day).
Are you saying "economics" is not the study of money, per se, but also any kind of perceived "benefit" and "loss" that someone can gain or lose? So if I derive enjoyment from producing software, I am making an economic gain?
Yes, economics is more than just the study of money - it's also the study of why people undertake actions and how they value property, benefits and outcomes.
For example - I may chose not to sell a piece of land because I value the view more than what someone is offering in trade; whether it's cash or other property.
I would consider the happiness you get from coding an economic gain. This is not a new idea - many economists much smarter than I have applied the same ideas to many behavioral issues.
Furthermore, in legal terms, when we say "copyright protects economic rights", are you saying that it protects other kinds of "benefit" besides money?
(These are actual, not rhetorical, questions).
I would say it should - the inability to sell something you "own" does not mean you have no legal rights inherent in the property.
IANAL, but it seems to me that this is the way the law should work. A Judge does not necessarily rule in a particular way because it is right. He/She can do so, so that the case can proceed to the next level for judgment by a court with greater authority/skill/knowledge. Whether the parties take it to the next level is a matter largely for their wallets to decide - in this case, thankfully there were people ready to argue the case for free at that higher court.
IANAL as well, but I think the US appellate courts do not rule on the facts in the case but rather whether the law was properly applied; so in this case they decided the judge's legal reasoning was wrong and sent the case back for review and a new decision based on their interpretation of the law.
Yes he did, he lost his freedom. The other guy tried to derail his project. The grant of an open source license does not mean that that is the only license that you grant. You can have multiple licenses out there.
It's pure theft, this case, pure and simple.
You've missed the tag in the original post.
While *I* agree with you, many here make just that argument to justify copying others copyrighted works without permission or payment.
Of course, as in everything, it's only bad when it hurts you; not when it hurts the other guy.
Now the trial court found no copyright rights existed because copyright law is solely meant to protect economic rights.
That court has lost its way, and the appellate court's decision doesn't really correct it (though it certainly helps Jacobsen's case).
Copyright law is meant "to promote the progress of the arts and.. sciences." Anyone who looks at it in economic terms only, ignores an entire spectrum of human motivation, of which economic advantage, while important, is merely a part.
People sure as hell don't acquire things (e.g. train control software) for economic reasons ("ooh, my model train is now more efficient; I can finally crush my play-freight-delivering competitors!"), so why would economic reasons be the only motivation for producing things? It's absurd. It's also something any amateur programmer -- no, actually, any hobbyist in any field whatsoever -- would trivially understand.
I think you are confusing economic reasons with financial reasons - which are, as you stated, a part of, but not all, of the economic reasons why someone may do somethings.
Economics looks at why people do things and what benefits they gain from them; and tries to explain the links between the two. It would be pretty dismal indeed if all it looked at were financial causes; in fact some of the best economic research is around behavioral actions that result in non-financial outcomes.
I think the real reason Apple doesn't want to sell it's OS separately is not because they're so concerned about people who'd try to run their software on underpowered machines (since most of their machines came out of the factory underpowered for a long time), but rather they worry about the boutique hardware builders who would come out with platforms that would run OSX better than Apple's own offerings.
I think Apple would get squeezed at both ends - cheap laptops and desktops that run MacOS comparable to the Macbook / mini but at half the price and high end screamers that exceed Apple's best at the same price; leaving them with no hardware marketshare. That would leave them trying to break MS' OS stranglehold with little resources to do so compared to MS.
We also bought Umax clones. They had a significantly high failure rate a year or two out of warranty. In the end the old apples were sold or turned into backup servers and the old umaxes were junked, so the price difference was more than recouped... the TCO was lower on the Apples, and to a non-profit org, it made a difference.
We replaced ours every couple of years so we didn't have warranty issues, but we were lucky to be able to afford that.
Back in the late 90s I worked for UMAX, which made Mac clones when this was (briefly) legal. The business was successful, and was quickly killed by Apple, for exactly the same reason. Namely, UMAX could sell a more powerful machine than Apple did, for less money. Remember this was when Apple chipsets used the PPC 603 and 604, not x86 CPUs.
I remember them - we bought uMax machines do do our paper layout for the very reasons you mentioned - more powerful machines for less money. When we bought them we wondered how long it would be before Apple killed their OS license business.
revenue would take a big hit if people switches from Apple branded hw to others
Why do you have so little confidence in Apple's hardware?
If, as we are often told, Apple's hardware is so much better, then there should not be a "big hit" from people switching.
I actually think it may be the other way 'round. Most of the people I see using "Macs in public" would still buy the Apple product even if it came with Windows only.
It's not lack of confidence in Apple's hw (which I own and appreciate) but absolute confidence in the buying public's willing to forgo great hardware for cheap hardware if it saves them a buck. If you can get the MacOS experience on a $500 (laptop + MacOS) machine many people would buy it and not a Macbook or Mac desktop. Sure the $500 machine is not as fast or as cool but it is good enough - and good enough plus a few hundred cash in the pocket trumps better every time.
Take the educational market as an example - how many parenst will shell out for a Mac when they could get the equivalent OS for $500? You'd see a lot of Dells with MacOS if that were an option and far fewer Macbooks.
As for the "Macs in public" my experience is Mac users want the Mac experience, and pay extra to get it. If they had to use Windows by it self I'd bet most of them go for the cheaper Dell/HP/et. al. solution. It's not about the hardware but about the OS and Apple's "It just works" experience, and as long as Apple is the only place to get MacOS people who want it will pay the premium.
1) revenue would take a big hit if people switches from Apple branded hw to others.
Yes but they will get revenue from people buying mac os x as well people who are not buying mac due to the lack of hardware that fits them.
Yes, but the revenue from an OS sale is a fraction of that from a machine; they'd have to sell at least 10 MacOS licenses for every Mac hw sale they lost to make up the revenue hit; which I doubt would happen. That's teh crux pf the problem - would selling a stand alone MacOS canabalize existing sales or result in incremental revenue? My guess is the former.
2) shipping fewer units would mean higher unit costs and lower margins on those products
Apple can come out with products that are better priced at lower margins and ship more units and mac os x shipping units will go up..
So margins and revenue go down as teh result and it's good for Apple? How? Their stock would take a real hit from that. Considering they could lower margins today without introducing a new OS clone but haven't indicates they feel teh revenue boost woul dnot make up for the margin hit.
3) support costs would go up as Apple would have to ensure it worked on a variety oh hardware combos with products they currently do not support but are common such as WiFi cards from various manufacturers, or 4) they cut a deal with say Dell and HP but then they will need to significantly drop prices and stop update the build every time an internal component changes
They just need to add drives for common chip sets as most chipset / video cards are based on the same base chips and with more people with mac osx that will make more drivers come out.
I think ensuring comapatibility would involve a lot more tahn merely building in support for generic chipsets - not to mention the performance hit generic drivers might take over custoim ones. That's the real problem with Apple introducing a clone MacOS - how do you keep the "It just works" experience when tehre are an infinite permutation of possible builds in the market without becoming the mess that Windows is? If you tailor it to a particular brand; you face price presure to volume license it; cutting the margin and competing head to head with your higher priced machines.
It simply makes no sense for Apple to do this - they are a premium goods niche manufacturer, not a volume seller. To try to compete with MS at their own game is very risky; I doubt Apple wants to bet their company on taht, especially since tehy see the market not as for PCs but as a total entertainment experience.
Re:Every time I read an article like this
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OS X On the MSI Wind
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Their margins would be arguably higher, as selling software carries little additional cost versus hardware sales. Each additional unit is more-or-less pure profit.
I'm not convinced that it would be an instant end to the microsoft tax, but at least it would be another alternative. Neither option is free.
Two points:
1) revenue would take a big hit if people switches from Apple branded hw to others 2) shipping fewer units would mean higher unit costs and lower margins on those products 3) support costs would go up as Apple would have to ensure it worked on a variety oh hardware combos with products they currently do not support but are cmmon such as WiFi cards from various manufacturers, or 4) they cut a deal with say Dell and HP but then they will need to significantly drop prices and stop update the build everytime an internal component changes
I know responding to a signature is lame, but yours id oddly appropriate to this discussion.
I don't think it's lame at all. In fact being modded down for saying unpopular things, especially about Apple, Google and Firefox is something that often happens to me. Actually if you look at the moderation often I get modded right up then modded down into oblivion.
As someone who experience the same whenever I point out what I perceive as flaws in Linux/OOS/ Apple/etc. I know what you mean.
I'm not going to stop speaking my mind, but I do find it annoying, especially on a site that's suppose to be for the IT elite.
"Suppose" is the key there -/. S/N is actual quite low; and all it takes is a few fanboys to down mod a post but a much lager group of moderators to spot them and actually use mod points to fix that. I try too when I have mod points, but it's largely ineffective.
I'd like to see/. have uber-mods that when a post has divided + and - mods they can decide and lock further moderation, or use meta-moderation to remove unfair mods; but I don't see that happening. At any rate, the beauty of not carrying about Karma is you can speak your mind; and Karma being Karma it usually works out in the end if you post about a broad range of subjects.
Ideology Trumps Facts...if you're a closed minded prejudiced moron who can't face reality.
-- -1:Troll && -1:Flamebait != -1:StronglyDisagreeAndWishToCensor. Look up the definition of flame/troll.
I know responding to a signature is lame, but yours id oddly appropriate to this discussion.
For all the replies to this story decrying peoples mindless following of an ideology and refusal to consider counter arguments and how "we" are smarter than that;/. amply illustrates the original point.
Post something that points out flaws in OSS / LINUX / other/. favorites and out come the -1 Troll / Flamebait mods. After all, we CAN'T have anyone present a counter argument that might point out flaws in our beloved. Somebody might read them and decide NOT to join our cause. The HORRORS!
We don't often see the irony on/. since this is a self selected group that just knows they are right - just as every group of religious believers / political party members / Mac owners / etc. does - if they didn't know they were right they would not join nor act on what they know is right.
Can anyone say DRM? Consumers do not like DRM and thus are not buying Blu-Ray.
I doubt it. Most consumers have no idea the disks are copy protected; nor do they care. Those that do probably are probably savvy enough to realize there are solutions out there that let you rip blu-ray disks.
The poor economy is also a factor.
Certainly - especially given blu-ray's cost premium.
I think there are several factors at play:
Cost - $200 for a player and a premium for disks over DVD means many consumer simply will not buy a player; shutting out blue-ray from a significant percentage of the market.
Quality - Blu-ray is certainly better than DVD, but DVD is good enough for most consumers. Thye just watch a movie, and aren't interetsed in how much better is is in blu-ray, especially with a price premium. Unlike tape; where there we complelling quality and longevity reasons to switch, blu - ray doesn't have any such reasons to swtich.
Viewing habits - most people do not amass large collections of disks; they have a few they like and rent much of the rest. They're not going to replace their existing collection with blu-ray; the handfull of disks they will buy are fine on DVD; if they need another player the get a cheap DVD player since it meets there needs. If our PS3 did not have a player we'd have zero blu-ray disks; even so 50% of them now are the five we got free with the PS3.
It's a case where good enough is simply good enough and an entrenched standard is difficult to dislodge, especially since the newer one costs more. So the DVD format's base grows as blu-ray struggles.
Until they make significant price cust sin players and movie costs blu-ray is likely to stay a niche player.
Thank you, Senator Brownback. The intent of the DMCA is certainly good - to protect public forums from thousands of copyright lawsuits by providing simple guidelines for removing material. If the penalties for false takedown notices were pursued as zealously as the penalties for copyright infringement, then it would have met that intent and been fair. Unfortunately, the weight is completely on the side of the DMCA abuser. To counter a DMCA takedown notice, you have to counter-claim that you are not infringing, put your material back up and risk a $150,000 penalty for willful infringement, whereas the other side risks what? Harsh language? Penalties for false notices are few, although the EFF is pursuing some suits.
The problem is that the copyright violations are civil suits with monetary rewards so there is an incentive to pursue them as well as protect what they view as valuable property.
Perjury, OTOH, is a criminal action and requires prosecutors to go after it. In a DMCA case, I'm not surprised they don't pursue it because:
1) Prosecutors have limited resources and there are plenty of more serious crimes to pursue that some falsely claiming ownership of a piece of work.
2) Perjury is hard to prove - being wrong about a fact is not perjury. Given those making DMCA claims will have serious legal talent around why would a prosecutor bother with a low profile case that they probably won't win?
3) A judge is likely to look unfavorably at prosecuting something of such low impact when there are serious cases on the docket. Why piss off the judges?
My solution - make it a civil matter. Let someone counter sue if the claim is false. Require each notice to place a value on the property and collect treble damages of what was claimed, or at least some large minimum, say $100k. Alternatively, the law could allow purchasing a license for the claimed value to eliminate the "it's worth 5 cents" ploy to avoid suits.
Whether Nielsen is a governmental entity or not is quite irrelevant here. The DMCA notice being used to restrain free speech takes its power from the threat of legal penalty which would be inflicted by the government.
There is no restraint here; Wikipedia is free to continue to speak (so to speak) as it had before. If it is found to have hosted copyrighted material then it is subject to legal action; but then free speech never meant not being responsible for what you said.
In addition, in the US it is relevant if it is the government is the one preventing your exercise of free speech as they are the only ones restricted from doing so by the US Constitution;private citizens and corporations have the right to do so under many circumstances, and if they do it in an illegal manner are subject to legal action; but merely doing so is not illegal.
Now it may be true that this notice isn't valid, and therefore doesn't have the actual force of the government behind it (the article is sort of short on details there so I don't know), but the fact that the DMCA is constructed such that companies have every incentive to obey take down notices whether valid or not means that the law, and hence the government is responsible for the restraint of free speech, at least indirectly.
Since every law has the force of government behind it you could argue that every action taken in compliance with a law makes the government responsible for that; but I find that argument very weak.
The DCMA is constructed that way to provide some measure of certainty for companies hosting material provided for others; if it did not exist sites such as Wikepedia that have significant user posted content over which they exercise little control or review would probably be sued out of existence and overall we all would lose more than we do with the current DCMA provisions protecting them.
Avast, Apple! Ye scurvy dogs may have forgotten that we be havin' this provision in our rules statin' that something ye patent must not already be bein' made by someone else.
Foolish landlubbers need to walk th' plank, says I!
Yar. Youse be forgetten our rules be havin' a provision sayin ye who has the map to the gold bein the capitan; and them those who don't be keelhauled and sent to Davy Jones.
Interesting enough, Wikipedia changing to a later license would still leave everything published prior to that still licensed under the old license as well. Knol could chose to use it under the updated license and others under the old one.
Re:They also apply different standards
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Tech Vs. Business?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I believe that the business see the IT department as a car and them as the drivers.
Organizations view IT as a service - and as such just want them to fix problems. They are not viewed as part of the line operations; they're a cost center. Whether that is right or wrong is very debatable but nonetheless it is a reality. R&D is operations, fixing things whether it's a burned out light or a busted PC is service.As such, their survival and success depends on finding out what their customer needs and delivering that; as well as getting agreement on what they will do and how.
If they take a route that leaves them crawling in traffic at 20mph its "one of those things". If the car only crawls along at 20mph its "totally unacceptable".
In the first case it was their choice and error, in the second it's somebody else's fault. Guess what gets rationalized? It's no different than the IT guy saying the server went down - nothing we can do until it gets fixed. We all minimize our errors.
This was an important financial system, and I know that if it had not worked as required there would have been hell to pay.
Six months later someone decided to check our test data against the live configuration and found a very odd rule, giving people with worse credit histories better interest rates. We queried it and they said it was wrong but "why was the system so hard to understand".
If it was so important why didn't they run some real rigourous testing that would catch such flaws? Let me guess - the implementation was pushing up against the due date and in order to meet schedule the testing was cut back. Been there, done that. One of the biggest causes of such problems, in my experience, is failure to properly scope the project and realistically estimate the time needed. IT underestimates the work load, the customer pushes for an unrealistic deadline; and you get a poor result.
While I realize Apple does that, Best Buy probably has a bit more clout with Apple, and a lot more financial resources to devote to lawsuits, than the average app developer.
It would far easier, and smarter, to allow BB to do sell music via an app than risk a court deciding that Apple's actions are anti-competitive.
...how this wasn't a giant waste of cash and a sign that Best Buy is run by PHBs? Honestly, I understand the reasoning (online is where music distribution is, at this point, which cuts into their bottom line), but the Napster brand is, at least last I knew, pretty much useless as a brand. If I am wrong, someone please correct me.
Napster is a well known brand - and brand awareness is valuable - most folks have no idea whether Napster is good or not - but they know teh name.
Best Buy essentially hedged its bets on the future of music distribution. WalMart is pushing to reduce the price of music it sells - as well as floor space dedicated to CD's. Wal-Mart's clout is driving the retail CD sales industry and labels are forced to play ball or risk losing significant sales volume; especially since WM really doesn't care if the carry a specific CD since it's contribution to revenue is small unlike the labels where a 10% sales drop can be very expensive. This is forcing the labels to rethink distribution, and Best Buy needs a foot in the door as the market evolves. It isn't just about online purchases but in stor kiosks and cheap memory cards / CD burns to sell a broder catalog at a much lower costs to the store - read higher margins.
Napster gives them a quick and cheap way to get into the business without screwing up the Best Buy brand (I won't touch taht with a 10 foot pole) since problems will be associated with Napster, not BB. As it grows and the bugs get worked out they can transition to a BB branded service.
Finally, it also gives them a way to move into the iPhone market *if* they can get a purchase app on the iPhone. Once they get it (Napster) up and running they are no longer trheatened by online purcases reducing CD sales as tehy have a foot in that market as well. In fact, depending on teh margins, they may prefer it.
Slashdot Mirror
Cable providers realize that if free or very low cost wireless becomes a reality and widespread more content providers will move to web distribution; using either commercial or subscription models. That will lessen the value of their cable franchise as consumers no longer want or need large bundles; forcing them to change their pricing structure to compete. As a side "benefit" they potentially will lose the internet and VIOP business as well as people move to the wireless option. Meanwhile, the big content providers will want a bigger cut for providing content since they already can reach consumers directly via the web; lessening their dependence on cable.
The real challenge will be for the marginal channels - the ones that get carried but have small viewership - can they translate that into a profitable web based service if cable loses enough customers so the cable revenue no longer can sustain their production costs?
OTOH, sports fan will get a bonanza since it now becomes easy and lucrative to broadcast all of your teams games anywhere since you would potential have a big enough subscriber base to make it worthwhile to stream via YouTube- a boon to big time college sports with world wide fan bases.
Make no mistake, this is the most serious threat cable has faced in a long time. Which is why they are playing white space wireless up as a "technical" threat - they want the government to squash this before it has a chance to take off.
And 90% of what was said and written about Palin was untrue.
Perhaps, but that 90% is being written by Republicans in support of Palin.
While I agree that the grandparent is engaged in some first-rate asshattery, I'd just like to make one comment. You say:
Your accountant doesn't tell you to fix your own damn tax problem, the mechanic doesn't derisively laugh because you don't know how to re-gap your own spark plugs
The difference here is that you are paying your accountant and your mechanic for their expertise. Most of the people who receive comments along the lines of 'write a patch' have not contributed anything. On the Free Software project I co-run, we have a designer on the core team. He provides a lot of really high-quality artwork and some good UI ideas. If he comes to me with a feature request, then it goes quite high on my TODO list. Why? Because he's contributed to the project in ways that I am incapable of replacing with my own effort. I recently refactored a big chunk of my code to make it more reusable for someone else. Why? Because at the same time as asking me to, he sent me a diff fixing a few of my bugs.
Free Software is about cooperation. I only benefit from sharing my improvements if other people do as well. We both benefit from not having to reproduce the other's work, and so can get on with things we want to do much faster. If you want something done, then you have to convince me that it's in my interest to do it for you, usually by offering something in return. Whether this is code, artwork, documentation, or money is up to you. If you don't offer anything then the reply will be 'patches welcome' which means either offer me something of value in exchange for my time, or offer someone else something and get them to send me the patch.
That's fine; but to the OP's point - don't expect people to adopt your software or to embrace FOSS if they get the "write a patch" reply. As far as they are concerned that means it's just another buggy program with no support that's not worth their time to use or install. Beyond that, they will tell others not to bother when the use of FOSS is mentioned.
If all you want is a small community of active participants that's fine and your choice. However, those that want wider adoption of FOSS need to understand how the "write a patch" mentality prevents them from achieving their goals.
Umm... Isn't this old news?? I'm already running OO 3.0, the mirrors had it the other day... Looks fantastic! One more nail in the coffin of MSOffice....
While I like and use NeoOffice for my personal Mac (I like to not pirate software even though I could have from my work machine); OO (and NeoOffice) are barely driving the first nail in the coffin. My work machine has MS Office; and every client I have been at uses it as well. Why? It's the standard and volume licenses are relatively cheap - I doubt very many people pay anywhere near the list price for a copy. As long as it is cheap enough it will remain the overwhelming favorite; "free" is not enough to get people to switch. Here's the challenges as I see them for OO and NeoO:
1) Very few people even know they exist
2) MS Office is teh standard and most people like to play it safe plus
3) MS very aggressively prices its products when needed (such as a full MSOffice suite for $60 for students)
4) People view FOSS with skepticism - how will I get support?; How can I be sure it is reliable?; etc.
5) Many people can pirate a work copy for use at home if needed so it's essentially free anyway.
Don't sign anything without solid, real legal advice.
Secondly; what is the value of the project you are working on to the company? If it has any real commercial value, and your coding is critical, you should be talking a cut of the company or to someone else wiling to fund your work.
If they'd laid out a business plan to you and you are not under an NDA you could shop it around and find out what it is worth. Until you sign you owe them nothing.
Finally, don't sign a non-compete. If they want you bad enough they will back down on any terms you don't like, possibly to include code ownership and or wanting a cut of their company.
If they don't back down, chances are they want you cheap or something you did up to them is what they really want and simply are trying to lock you up.
At any rate - deciding to make money off your skills is not selling out.
OK I've always had trouble understanding the difference between economics and finance (and commerce, but let's save that one for another day).
Are you saying "economics" is not the study of money, per se, but also any kind of perceived "benefit" and "loss" that someone can gain or lose? So if I derive enjoyment from producing software, I am making an economic gain?
Yes, economics is more than just the study of money - it's also the study of why people undertake actions and how they value property, benefits and outcomes.
For example - I may chose not to sell a piece of land because I value the view more than what someone is offering in trade; whether it's cash or other property.
I would consider the happiness you get from coding an economic gain. This is not a new idea - many economists much smarter than I have applied the same ideas to many behavioral issues.
Furthermore, in legal terms, when we say "copyright protects economic rights", are you saying that it protects other kinds of "benefit" besides money?
(These are actual, not rhetorical, questions).
I would say it should - the inability to sell something you "own" does not mean you have no legal rights inherent in the property.
IANAL, but it seems to me that this is the way the law should work. A Judge does not necessarily rule in a particular way because it is right. He/She can do so, so that the case can proceed to the next level for judgment by a court with greater authority/skill/knowledge. Whether the parties take it to the next level is a matter largely for their wallets to decide - in this case, thankfully there were people ready to argue the case for free at that higher court.
IANAL as well, but I think the US appellate courts do not rule on the facts in the case but rather whether the law was properly applied; so in this case they decided the judge's legal reasoning was wrong and sent the case back for review and a new decision based on their interpretation of the law.
But he didn't -lose- anything
Yes he did, he lost his freedom. The other guy tried to derail his project. The grant of an open source license does not mean that that is the only license that you grant. You can have multiple licenses out there.
It's pure theft, this case, pure and simple.
You've missed the tag in the original post.
While *I* agree with you, many here make just that argument to justify copying others copyrighted works without permission or payment.
Of course, as in everything, it's only bad when it hurts you; not when it hurts the other guy.
That court has lost its way, and the appellate court's decision doesn't really correct it (though it certainly helps Jacobsen's case).
Copyright law is meant "to promote the progress of the arts and .. sciences." Anyone who looks at it in economic terms only, ignores an entire spectrum of human motivation, of which economic advantage, while important, is merely a part.
People sure as hell don't acquire things (e.g. train control software) for economic reasons ("ooh, my model train is now more efficient; I can finally crush my play-freight-delivering competitors!"), so why would economic reasons be the only motivation for producing things? It's absurd. It's also something any amateur programmer -- no, actually, any hobbyist in any field whatsoever -- would trivially understand.
I think you are confusing economic reasons with financial reasons - which are, as you stated, a part of, but not all, of the economic reasons why someone may do somethings.
Economics looks at why people do things and what benefits they gain from them; and tries to explain the links between the two. It would be pretty dismal indeed if all it looked at were financial causes; in fact some of the best economic research is around behavioral actions that result in non-financial outcomes.
I think the real reason Apple doesn't want to sell it's OS separately is not because they're so concerned about people who'd try to run their software on underpowered machines (since most of their machines came out of the factory underpowered for a long time), but rather they worry about the boutique hardware builders who would come out with platforms that would run OSX better than Apple's own offerings.
I think Apple would get squeezed at both ends - cheap laptops and desktops that run MacOS comparable to the Macbook / mini but at half the price and high end screamers that exceed Apple's best at the same price; leaving them with no hardware marketshare. That would leave them trying to break MS' OS stranglehold with little resources to do so compared to MS.
We also bought Umax clones. They had a significantly high failure rate a year or two out of warranty. In the end the old apples were sold or turned into backup servers and the old umaxes were junked, so the price difference was more than recouped... the TCO was lower on the Apples, and to a non-profit org, it made a difference.
We replaced ours every couple of years so we didn't have warranty issues, but we were lucky to be able to afford that.
Back in the late 90s I worked for UMAX, which made Mac clones when this was (briefly) legal. The business was successful, and was quickly killed by Apple, for exactly the same reason. Namely, UMAX could sell a more powerful machine than Apple did, for less money. Remember this was when Apple chipsets used the PPC 603 and 604, not x86 CPUs.
I remember them - we bought uMax machines do do our paper layout for the very reasons you mentioned - more powerful machines for less money. When we bought them we wondered how long it would be before Apple killed their OS license business.
revenue would take a big hit if people switches from Apple branded hw to others
Why do you have so little confidence in Apple's hardware?
If, as we are often told, Apple's hardware is so much better, then there should not be a "big hit" from people switching.
I actually think it may be the other way 'round. Most of the people I see using "Macs in public" would still buy the Apple product even if it came with Windows only.
It's not lack of confidence in Apple's hw (which I own and appreciate) but absolute confidence in the buying public's willing to forgo great hardware for cheap hardware if it saves them a buck. If you can get the MacOS experience on a $500 (laptop + MacOS) machine many people would buy it and not a Macbook or Mac desktop. Sure the $500 machine is not as fast or as cool but it is good enough - and good enough plus a few hundred cash in the pocket trumps better every time.
Take the educational market as an example - how many parenst will shell out for a Mac when they could get the equivalent OS for $500? You'd see a lot of Dells with MacOS if that were an option and far fewer Macbooks.
As for the "Macs in public" my experience is Mac users want the Mac experience, and pay extra to get it. If they had to use Windows by it self I'd bet most of them go for the cheaper Dell/HP/et. al. solution. It's not about the hardware but about the OS and Apple's "It just works" experience, and as long as Apple is the only place to get MacOS people who want it will pay the premium.
1) revenue would take a big hit if people switches from Apple branded hw to others.
Yes but they will get revenue from people buying mac os x as well people who are not buying mac due to the lack of hardware that fits them.
Yes, but the revenue from an OS sale is a fraction of that from a machine; they'd have to sell at least 10 MacOS licenses for every Mac hw sale they lost to make up the revenue hit; which I doubt would happen. That's teh crux pf the problem - would selling a stand alone MacOS canabalize existing sales or result in incremental revenue? My guess is the former.
2) shipping fewer units would mean higher unit costs and lower margins on those products
Apple can come out with products that are better priced at lower margins and ship more units and mac os x shipping units will go up..
So margins and revenue go down as teh result and it's good for Apple? How? Their stock would take a real hit from that. Considering they could lower margins today without introducing a new OS clone but haven't indicates they feel teh revenue boost woul dnot make up for the margin hit.
3) support costs would go up as Apple would have to ensure it worked on a variety oh hardware combos with products they currently do not support but are common such as WiFi cards from various manufacturers, or
4) they cut a deal with say Dell and HP but then they will need to significantly drop prices and stop update the build every time an internal component changes
They just need to add drives for common chip sets as most chipset / video cards are based on the same base chips and with more people with mac osx that will make more drivers come out.
I think ensuring comapatibility would involve a lot more tahn merely building in support for generic chipsets - not to mention the performance hit generic drivers might take over custoim ones. That's the real problem with Apple introducing a clone MacOS - how do you keep the "It just works" experience when tehre are an infinite permutation of possible builds in the market without becoming the mess that Windows is? If you tailor it to a particular brand; you face price presure to volume license it; cutting the margin and competing head to head with your higher priced machines.
It simply makes no sense for Apple to do this - they are a premium goods niche manufacturer, not a volume seller. To try to compete with MS at their own game is very risky; I doubt Apple wants to bet their company on taht, especially since tehy see the market not as for PCs but as a total entertainment experience.
Their margins would be arguably higher, as selling software carries little additional cost versus hardware sales. Each additional unit is more-or-less pure profit.
I'm not convinced that it would be an instant end to the microsoft tax, but at least it would be another alternative. Neither option is free.
Two points:
1) revenue would take a big hit if people switches from Apple branded hw to others
2) shipping fewer units would mean higher unit costs and lower margins on those products
3) support costs would go up as Apple would have to ensure it worked on a variety oh hardware combos with products they currently do not support but are cmmon such as WiFi cards from various manufacturers, or
4) they cut a deal with say Dell and HP but then they will need to significantly drop prices and stop update the build everytime an internal component changes
I know responding to a signature is lame, but yours id oddly appropriate to this discussion.
I don't think it's lame at all. In fact being modded down for saying unpopular things, especially about Apple, Google and Firefox is something that often happens to me. Actually if you look at the moderation often I get modded right up then modded down into oblivion.
As someone who experience the same whenever I point out what I perceive as flaws in Linux /OOS/ Apple /etc. I know what you mean.
I'm not going to stop speaking my mind, but I do find it annoying, especially on a site that's suppose to be for the IT elite.
"Suppose" is the key there - /. S/N is actual quite low; and all it takes is a few fanboys to down mod a post but a much lager group of moderators to spot them and actually use mod points to fix that. I try too when I have mod points, but it's largely ineffective.
I'd like to see /. have uber-mods that when a post has divided + and - mods they can decide and lock further moderation, or use meta-moderation to remove unfair mods; but I don't see that happening.
At any rate, the beauty of not carrying about Karma is you can speak your mind; and Karma being Karma it usually works out in the end if you post about a broad range of subjects.
Ideology Trumps Facts...if you're a closed minded prejudiced moron who can't face reality.
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-1:Troll && -1:Flamebait != -1:StronglyDisagreeAndWishToCensor. Look up the definition of flame/troll.
I know responding to a signature is lame, but yours id oddly appropriate to this discussion.
For all the replies to this story decrying peoples mindless following of an ideology and refusal to consider counter arguments and how "we" are smarter than that; /. amply illustrates the original point.
Post something that points out flaws in OSS / LINUX / other /. favorites and out come the -1 Troll / Flamebait mods. After all, we CAN'T have anyone present a counter argument that might point out flaws in our beloved. Somebody might read them and decide NOT to join our cause. The HORRORS!
We don't often see the irony on /. since this is a self selected group that just knows they are right - just as every group of religious believers / political party members / Mac owners / etc. does - if they didn't know they were right they would not join nor act on what they know is right.
Can anyone say DRM? Consumers do not like DRM and thus are not buying Blu-Ray.
I doubt it. Most consumers have no idea the disks are copy protected; nor do they care. Those that do probably are probably savvy enough to realize there are solutions out there that let you rip blu-ray disks.
The poor economy is also a factor.
Certainly - especially given blu-ray's cost premium.
I think there are several factors at play:
Cost - $200 for a player and a premium for disks over DVD means many consumer simply will not buy a player; shutting out blue-ray from a significant percentage of the market.
Quality - Blu-ray is certainly better than DVD, but DVD is good enough for most consumers. Thye just watch a movie, and aren't interetsed in how much better is is in blu-ray, especially with a price premium. Unlike tape; where there we complelling quality and longevity reasons to switch, blu - ray doesn't have any such reasons to swtich.
Viewing habits - most people do not amass large collections of disks; they have a few they like and rent much of the rest. They're not going to replace their existing collection with blu-ray; the handfull of disks they will buy are fine on DVD; if they need another player the get a cheap DVD player since it meets there needs.
If our PS3 did not have a player we'd have zero blu-ray disks; even so 50% of them now are the five we got free with the PS3.
It's a case where good enough is simply good enough and an entrenched standard is difficult to dislodge, especially since the newer one costs more. So the DVD format's base grows as blu-ray struggles.
Until they make significant price cust sin players and movie costs blu-ray is likely to stay a niche player.
Thank you, Senator Brownback. The intent of the DMCA is certainly good - to protect public forums from thousands of copyright lawsuits by providing simple guidelines for removing material. If the penalties for false takedown notices were pursued as zealously as the penalties for copyright infringement, then it would have met that intent and been fair. Unfortunately, the weight is completely on the side of the DMCA abuser. To counter a DMCA takedown notice, you have to counter-claim that you are not infringing, put your material back up and risk a $150,000 penalty for willful infringement, whereas the other side risks what? Harsh language? Penalties for false notices are few, although the EFF is pursuing some suits.
The problem is that the copyright violations are civil suits with monetary rewards so there is an incentive to pursue them as well as protect what they view as valuable property.
Perjury, OTOH, is a criminal action and requires prosecutors to go after it. In a DMCA case, I'm not surprised they don't pursue it because:
1) Prosecutors have limited resources and there are plenty of more serious crimes to pursue that some falsely claiming ownership of a piece of work.
2) Perjury is hard to prove - being wrong about a fact is not perjury. Given those making DMCA claims will have serious legal talent around why would a prosecutor bother with a low profile case that they probably won't win?
3) A judge is likely to look unfavorably at prosecuting something of such low impact when there are serious cases on the docket. Why piss off the judges?
My solution - make it a civil matter. Let someone counter sue if the claim is false. Require each notice to place a value on the property and collect treble damages of what was claimed, or at least some large minimum, say $100k. Alternatively, the law could allow purchasing a license for the claimed value to eliminate the "it's worth 5 cents" ploy to avoid suits.
Whether Nielsen is a governmental entity or not is quite irrelevant here. The DMCA notice being used to restrain free speech takes its power from the threat of legal penalty which would be inflicted by the government.
There is no restraint here; Wikipedia is free to continue to speak (so to speak) as it had before. If it is found to have hosted copyrighted material then it is subject to legal action; but then free speech never meant not being responsible for what you said.
In addition, in the US it is relevant if it is the government is the one preventing your exercise of free speech as they are the only ones restricted from doing so by the US Constitution;private citizens and corporations have the right to do so under many circumstances, and if they do it in an illegal manner are subject to legal action; but merely doing so is not illegal.
Now it may be true that this notice isn't valid, and therefore doesn't have the actual force of the government behind it (the article is sort of short on details there so I don't know), but the fact that the DMCA is constructed such that companies have every incentive to obey take down notices whether valid or not means that the law, and hence the government is responsible for the restraint of free speech, at least indirectly.
Since every law has the force of government behind it you could argue that every action taken in compliance with a law makes the government responsible for that; but I find that argument very weak.
The DCMA is constructed that way to provide some measure of certainty for companies hosting material provided for others; if it did not exist sites such as Wikepedia that have significant user posted content over which they exercise little control or review would probably be sued out of existence and overall we all would lose more than we do with the current DCMA provisions protecting them.
Avast, Apple! Ye scurvy dogs may have forgotten that we be havin' this provision in our rules statin' that something ye patent must not already be bein' made by someone else.
Foolish landlubbers need to walk th' plank, says I!
Yar. Youse be forgetten our rules be havin' a provision sayin ye who has the map to the gold bein the capitan; and them those who don't be keelhauled and sent to Davy Jones.
Interesting enough, Wikipedia changing to a later license would still leave everything published prior to that still licensed under the old license as well. Knol could chose to use it under the updated license and others under the old one.
I believe that the business see the IT department as a car and them as the drivers.
Organizations view IT as a service - and as such just want them to fix problems. They are not viewed as part of the line operations; they're a cost center. Whether that is right or wrong is very debatable but nonetheless it is a reality. R&D is operations, fixing things whether it's a burned out light or a busted PC is service.As such, their survival and success depends on finding out what their customer needs and delivering that; as well as getting agreement on what they will do and how.
If they take a route that leaves them crawling in traffic at 20mph its "one of those things". If the car only crawls along at 20mph its "totally unacceptable".
In the first case it was their choice and error, in the second it's somebody else's fault. Guess what gets rationalized? It's no different than the IT guy saying the server went down - nothing we can do until it gets fixed. We all minimize our errors.
This was an important financial system, and I know that if it had not worked as required there would have been hell to pay.
Six months later someone decided to check our test data against the live configuration and found a very odd rule, giving people with worse credit histories better interest rates. We queried it and they said it was wrong but "why was the system so hard to understand".
If it was so important why didn't they run some real rigourous testing that would catch such flaws? Let me guess - the implementation was pushing up against the due date and in order to meet schedule the testing was cut back. Been there, done that. One of the biggest causes of such problems, in my experience, is failure to properly scope the project and realistically estimate the time needed. IT underestimates the work load, the customer pushes for an unrealistic deadline; and you get a poor result.
Finally, it also gives them a way to move into the iPhone market *if* they can get a purchase app on the iPhone.
Hmmm, unlikely.
It would probably duplicate functionality
While I realize Apple does that, Best Buy probably has a bit more clout with Apple, and a lot more financial resources to devote to lawsuits, than the average app developer.
It would far easier, and smarter, to allow BB to do sell music via an app than risk a court deciding that Apple's actions are anti-competitive.
...how this wasn't a giant waste of cash and a sign that Best Buy is run by PHBs? Honestly, I understand the reasoning (online is where music distribution is, at this point, which cuts into their bottom line), but the Napster brand is, at least last I knew, pretty much useless as a brand. If I am wrong, someone please correct me.
Napster is a well known brand - and brand awareness is valuable - most folks have no idea whether Napster is good or not - but they know teh name.
Best Buy essentially hedged its bets on the future of music distribution. WalMart is pushing to reduce the price of music it sells - as well as floor space dedicated to CD's. Wal-Mart's clout is driving the retail CD sales industry and labels are forced to play ball or risk losing significant sales volume; especially since WM really doesn't care if the carry a specific CD since it's contribution to revenue is small unlike the labels where a 10% sales drop can be very expensive. This is forcing the labels to rethink distribution, and Best Buy needs a foot in the door as the market evolves. It isn't just about online purchases but in stor kiosks and cheap memory cards / CD burns to sell a broder catalog at a much lower costs to the store - read higher margins.
Napster gives them a quick and cheap way to get into the business without screwing up the Best Buy brand (I won't touch taht with a 10 foot pole) since problems will be associated with Napster, not BB. As it grows and the bugs get worked out they can transition to a BB branded service.
Finally, it also gives them a way to move into the iPhone market *if* they can get a purchase app on the iPhone. Once they get it (Napster) up and running they are no longer trheatened by online purcases reducing CD sales as tehy have a foot in that market as well. In fact, depending on teh margins, they may prefer it.