Everytime someone posts a article that the police (FBI and others) spies on phones and internettraffic there is huge nagging here on slashdot that their rights to leech mp3's are in danger.
The economic hardtimes that the dotcom (and other IT-related) companies are seeing now it quite self inflicted.
Those companies has not had a working business-model. The major part of the dot-coms have lived on banners and thats just unrealistic.
In you put ads in a newspaper you can get nice big ad-space that really draws attension to your products. Compare that to a banner at the top of a site, do even someone look at them?
And for other IT-related companies I think the focus on market-share instead of revenue just makes it impossible to keep companies alive. Many seems to have thought "market share is everything, revenue is something we deal with then the VC money is gone".
Many has given their products away for free and have thought that later down the line they are going to be able to charge for it. Personally I think it's very hard to make people pay for something that they got for free before. If not impossible.
How much money are Redhat paying all those who have written code to their products?
I don't think it's about not returning at all, it's about the individual becomming powerless.
I agree that noone should be allowed to grab other peoples work and sell, thats why I don't support the BSD license. But the GPL is in reality not much better because big companies still have their IP rights and are using them.
What kind of society do you want? A society where big companies like Redhat and IBM makes money on others free work while the rest of the population works for free? This is unfortunately the effect the GPL has had, a license like BSD isn't a solution to this. Something else would be needed that gives the author some rights over big-corp.
...I have seen this coming for a long time. The problem isn't really people ripping a mp3 to use in their portable player or car but the fact that people copying their CD's to millions of others. Thats just an impossible situation.
As much as the slashdot crown would like it to be otherwise there is not much value in material and other "hard" things nowaways, it way a houndred years ago but not today. Today most value is in different sorts of intellectual property. A car that you buy for $30.000 costs about $3.000 (1/10) to make. A top-of-the-line intelship (P4) costs $20 or so to make. All value is in engineering, development, marketing and stuff like that.
The tools for transfeering a song from a CD to a mp3 player can also be used for widespread piracy, this I beleive is the problem.
I really hope there will be some sort of protection that allowes transfeer from different devices that I own in some fair way, but I doubt it.
If you talk about private individuals that may be true. To make them pay at all it must be easy, like havning an integrated payment system in the software or something.
Companies would on the other hand pay, so if your software is going to be used by companies alot you could expect that they will pay.
"I see one serious problem - license enforcement. "
Agreed, I think such a license would work best against companies. But that could very well be enough for many open source projects today. The financial support from companies using the software is way better than no financial (or some pathetic service&support BS) support at all. Remember that Netscape only charged from companies (free for personal use) and they where the fastest growing (calculated in REAL revenue) company on the planet the first couple of years.
"Such a license should have one other clause, IMHO - if you quit selling, supporting, or distributing a version of the software, it becomes public domain within a year. "
I have to agree again, would be a very good thing for the user and really not much of a drawback for the author(s).
You are saying that all the people here bashing Microsoft is still using Microsoft producs if they are the best choice in a lineup of different possible software?
Really, isn't there many readers on slashdot who doesn't use microsoft products because they don't like microsofts bussiness practices?
And...I don't judge it after people, I do judge the idea. I think it's immoral to set out a plan to stop authors to be able to charge for their own work. If people just GPL their own innovation, thats quite ok, thats their bussiness. But the free software foundation is doing what they are doing for the purpose of stopping people from using commercial software (and hey! Don't give me that free speech != free beer bullshit please). That IS to force your will upon others.
Different people have different views on what moral behaiviour are. Mine certainy isn't the same as the FSF one.
Didn't he meen the OS licens. The applications is a different matter(except for GNU yelling GNU/whatever all the time), what licenses they choose is their bussiness.
I don't like either one of them. I certainly don't like the GPL because of the people who created it and what they stand for (fanatism). Look at my respons to "Advocacy (I Am Not A BSD Advocate) " above.
One big problem as I see it is that only some IP rights are taken away, namely those that you as a individual and author has. Big companies with capitalists investing in them (IBM, redhat, others) still have theirs (trademarks).
Just take a look at great bridge vs. Redhat, that must be one of the most unethical things I have ever seen in any bussiness. How can a company just rip another company off like that, thats just insane.
What effect does this really have? People will associate Linux and all the software for it with those companies, those strong capital companies are really the ones that have a chance selling this software with associated service and hardware (the service&support market is not by far as big as the major part of the/. crowd thinks). It just makes the individual free labour. Is that really a nice world to live in?
I think many are so blinded by their MS hate that they refuse to see anything else that is happening.
Free as in speech has become the same as free as in beer.
Personally I think the best solution would be a licens that is basically a open source licens but makes it possible for the authors to charge for the softwares USE. In other words, you get the source, you may modify it however you want to but you have to pay for it if you use it.
...that not only fanatics are allowed to post/answer to articles/interviews here on slashdot. To bad that anyone else saying anything similar is modded down as a troll in a few seconds.
"I must admit that I have grown very tired of all the fanatic GPL advocates screaming loud whenever they see something non-GPL though and if I ever go away from GPL altogether (to for example the BSD license) it would most likely be in protest against the attitude of the GPL advocates."
Gosh, A sane person on slashdot, is that really possible?
Slashdot Mirror
It only requires a licence if you use it to sell something. I would guess the people behind this company has bills to pay like everyone else?
(and PLEASE spare me bullshit replies about service&support)
...there is no nagging on slashdot a day as this one about FBI wiretapping the internet and phones?
Everytime someone posts a article that the police (FBI and others) spies on phones and internettraffic there is huge nagging here on slashdot that their rights to leech mp3's are in danger.
I hope you remember that now...
They get free labour, thats the ultimate workforce for any company.
The economic hardtimes that the dotcom (and other IT-related) companies are seeing now it quite self inflicted.
Those companies has not had a working business-model. The major part of the dot-coms have lived on banners and thats just unrealistic.
In you put ads in a newspaper you can get nice big ad-space that really draws attension to your products. Compare that to a banner at the top of a site, do even someone look at them?
And for other IT-related companies I think the focus on market-share instead of revenue just makes it impossible to keep companies alive. Many seems to have thought "market share is everything, revenue is something we deal with then the VC money is gone".
Many has given their products away for free and have thought that later down the line they are going to be able to charge for it. Personally I think it's very hard to make people pay for something that they got for free before. If not impossible.
How much money are Redhat paying all those who have written code to their products?
I don't think it's about not returning at all, it's about the individual becomming powerless.
I agree that noone should be allowed to grab other peoples work and sell, thats why I don't support the BSD license. But the GPL is in reality not much better because big companies still have their IP rights and are using them.
What kind of society do you want? A society where big companies like Redhat and IBM makes money on others free work while the rest of the population works for free? This is unfortunately the effect the GPL has had, a license like BSD isn't a solution to this. Something else would be needed that gives the author some rights over big-corp.
You say that the artist cannot live on his/her work anymore.
:)
As a programmer I say: Welcome to my problem.
This is basically the same thing as the GPL and has basically the same effect.
As I programmer I say: Welcome to my problem :)
It has exactly the same effect that the GPL have for programmers. No more, no less.
Open source as a bussinessmodel.
...I have seen this coming for a long time. The problem isn't really people ripping a mp3 to use in their portable player or car but the fact that people copying their CD's to millions of others. Thats just an impossible situation.
As much as the slashdot crown would like it to be otherwise there is not much value in material and other "hard" things nowaways, it way a houndred years ago but not today. Today most value is in different sorts of intellectual property. A car that you buy for $30.000 costs about $3.000 (1/10) to make. A top-of-the-line intelship (P4) costs $20 or so to make. All value is in engineering, development, marketing and stuff like that.
The tools for transfeering a song from a CD to a mp3 player can also be used for widespread piracy, this I beleive is the problem.
I really hope there will be some sort of protection that allowes transfeer from different devices that I own in some fair way, but I doubt it.
"Would people do it? Only a percentage."
If you talk about private individuals that may be true. To make them pay at all it must be easy, like havning an integrated payment system in the software or something.
Companies would on the other hand pay, so if your software is going to be used by companies alot you could expect that they will pay.
"I see one serious problem - license enforcement. "
Agreed, I think such a license would work best against companies. But that could very well be enough for many open source projects today. The financial support from companies using the software is way better than no financial (or some pathetic service&support BS) support at all. Remember that Netscape only charged from companies (free for personal use) and they where the fastest growing (calculated in REAL revenue) company on the planet the first couple of years.
"Such a license should have one other clause, IMHO - if you quit selling, supporting, or distributing a version of the software, it becomes public domain within a year. "
I have to agree again, would be a very good thing for the user and really not much of a drawback for the author(s).
You are saying that all the people here bashing Microsoft is still using Microsoft producs if they are the best choice in a lineup of different possible software?
:-)
I don't think so
Really, isn't there many readers on slashdot who doesn't use microsoft products because they don't like microsofts bussiness practices?
And...I don't judge it after people, I do judge the idea. I think it's immoral to set out a plan to stop authors to be able to charge for their own work. If people just GPL their own innovation, thats quite ok, thats their bussiness. But the free software foundation is doing what they are doing for the purpose of stopping people from using commercial software (and hey! Don't give me that free speech != free beer bullshit please). That IS to force your will upon others.
Different people have different views on what moral behaiviour are. Mine certainy isn't the same as the FSF one.
Didn't he meen the OS licens. The applications is a different matter(except for GNU yelling GNU/whatever all the time), what licenses they choose is their bussiness.
I don't like either one of them. I certainly don't like the GPL because of the people who created it and what they stand for (fanatism). Look at my respons to "Advocacy (I Am Not A BSD Advocate) " above.
One big problem as I see it is that only some IP rights are taken away, namely those that you as a individual and author has. Big companies with capitalists investing in them (IBM, redhat, others) still have theirs (trademarks).
/. crowd thinks). It just makes the individual free labour. Is that really a nice world to live in?
Just take a look at great bridge vs. Redhat, that must be one of the most unethical things I have ever seen in any bussiness. How can a company just rip another company off like that, thats just insane.
What effect does this really have? People will associate Linux and all the software for it with those companies, those strong capital companies are really the ones that have a chance selling this software with associated service and hardware (the service&support market is not by far as big as the major part of the
I think many are so blinded by their MS hate that they refuse to see anything else that is happening.
Free as in speech has become the same as free as in beer.
Personally I think the best solution would be a licens that is basically a open source licens but makes it possible for the authors to charge for the softwares USE. In other words, you get the source, you may modify it however you want to but you have to pay for it if you use it.
...that not only fanatics are allowed to post/answer to articles/interviews here on slashdot. To bad that anyone else saying anything similar is modded down as a troll in a few seconds.
"I must admit that I have grown very tired of all the fanatic GPL advocates screaming loud whenever they see something non-GPL though and if I ever go away from GPL altogether (to for example the BSD license) it would most likely be in protest against the attitude of the GPL advocates."
Gosh, A sane person on slashdot, is that really possible?
"Corporations have to make short term decisions that maximize profits for their shareholders "
Really?
"profits for their shareholders or they can be sued"
Is that so?
Where on the planet do you live? In Russia? Get a clue.
Well, what do people really suggest here.
First, they hail the merge that gives us less competition on the hardware front.
Second, they suggest that all the linux flavours except linux should be dropped, also less competition.
Is that supposed to be good?
According to the /. crowd Linux rules the market and microsoft is dying so they don't have that control over everything anymore, do they? :)
"Nobody is forcing you or anyone else to devote free time to developing Gnome. "
Is that really true? The free software foundation wants to ban non-free software. They _do_ want to force people to give their software away.
(please, spare me BS replies about free speech != free beer)
I guess you haven't looked at either closed or open source code.
Open source is not better than closed, not a chance.
Generally you can say that projects that run over a long time and/or has much people involved are worse than small projects written over a short time.
There are exceptions to the rule ofcause.
...are less competition a good thing for the public?