Well, slashdot certainly don't teach them. According to slashdot its ok to rip people off, steal property and don't give a shit about the people who made the content.
Isn't the difference between yours and mine teached in school in these days?
The content of them is everything but irrelevant. If not so many people commited crimes (taking other peoples work and not paying) we wouldn't have this problem.
"There is no way you can develop a full-featured application for a total cost of $300"
Take a simple example. Say we have a projects that takes five people one year to complete. The cost for each person is about twice his/her salary (taxes, sickness, etc etc).
Lets say each person make $4.000 a month, that makes the total cost 4.000 * 2 * 5 * 12 = $480.000 a year. Just to survive!
I just don't understand how anyone can beleive that those kind of money can be made on service&support and bonds like in this case.
If you spend X amount of money doing something you must make atleast X amount of money on it. Simple as that!
If you give it away (as in open source), there is no way people are going to give you this kind of money.
That the software has the source with it is not much of a problem, that people can modify isn't either. BUT, that people can redistribute it however they want to is.
Where the hell have you been, didn't you notice the IT crash?
It's not less revenue (that is what this would make) that is required but a lot more!
The problem with the great number of new IT-related companies is that they are run by people who have absolutely no idea what so ever about how much revenue a company need. Or how to run them at all for that matter.
People look at companies and say that they make too much money. They don't. Do you have any idea what the costs are? Vacations, sickness, taxes, training and so on...
Say you have a pure consultant company. Not much additional costs above salaries for it's consultants. Just to make it (without profit, just avoid bancrypsy) each person have to make about twice his or her salary. Say you have ten people (a small company), you do the math for a year. You will discover that it's expensive to live!
Most companies have alot higher costs than this example company.
Bonds, you can't be serious! What we need are real companies, run as real companies with real (big enough) revenue.
And, just how the hell do anyone have the nerv to point fingers at the venture capitalists of all people? They are after all the ones that put in million after million to companies without income. They are the ones that lost ALOT of money because these companies are run by incompetent people who thinks it's possible to live on air.
You can blame VCs for being stupid for putting in money into companies without real revenue but it's certainly not their failt that they are failing.
"but more so to keep rich people from getting richer while poor people got poorer. "
What kind of bulllshit is this? US law and the whole country for that matter is built around the goal to be free. Please not that free also means free to charge whatever you want for products you make.
In the old world (Europe) people ceratainly wasn't equal, it was built into the system (both law and social) that the upper class was the upper class and the lower class is the lower class. You should be stuck where you where. i america you have the possibility to make a fortune if you have a good idea (heard of the american dream?). This is why copyright are so important, they protect the individual from getting ripped of by others.
Just take a look at Redhat and great bridge (who makes postgresql). Redhat ripped of postgresql, changed it's name to Redhat db and there is nothing great bridge can do about it. Without laws that protects peoples work the capital strong who can build strong trademarks will rip off the others.
The normal jargon here on slashdot is that themselfs should be allowed to hack, crack, steal anything they want to without paying the people who put their hard work in it.
On the other hand they scream bloody murder if the authors even tries to protect their own work.
About stallman himself,
"A short list of his coding accomplishments would include Emacs as well as most of the components of the GNU/Linux system, which he either wrote or helped write. "
This is just amazing, how hard can it possible be to grasp simple basic economic concepts?
Example:
Say I work at company C. We develop product P for X amount of money. Say we are a small company with 20 people developing, this will make the personell cost only about 2 million USD a year (salaries, taxes, vacasions, sickness, training etc).
Such a company needs to make about 3 million USD a year just to avoid bancrypsy in the long run.
Now, we sell support for this product P. The problem is that everybody else also can do this WITHOUT contributing to the development costs. This means they can lower the price way below our price because the only thing they have to cover is the salaries to those who sells the support. We must require enough money to pay salaries to both the support staff and the developers.
If you spend X money developing something you basically must get atleast X money by selling the very same thing.
This is the first problem. The second problem is that the market is too small. There certainly is a market for selling service&support but it's way to small.
To sell something you must have customers who wants to buy it.
The problem with FSF is that they are out of touch with reality when it comes to economics.
"Please read and understand, then post if necessary; those first two steps are the most important!"
Again, I have read everything the FSF has ever written, the problem is that they are simply wrong. They need to get out into the reality.
As in market for a large-scale shift towards a service&support business model for the majority of programmers and companies world wide.
I have made money on service&support myself. There are a couple on areas where there is a need for service&support. The problem is that the demand (to be able to sell something there must be someone who wants to buy it you know) isn't big enough if you look at the tech-industry as a whole.
If the millions of programmers word-wide looses the revenue from selling software itself we will be in big trouble.
"You may have experience, but your user name and your attitude betray that it's in a different field than the one I am talking about."
What do you mean? I do work to make a living, thats right. I do have bills to pay. I have certainly never said anything else.
Are we talking about different things here? I was under the impression that you suggested that service&support is a working business model, as in possible to live on. I said it isn't. Did I misunderstand you?
How have work for a living have anything to do with that?
"If you contend otherwise, then all I can say is that your failure does not necessarily extend to others. The Free Software community is not putting all its eggs in your particular basket."
I didn't fail, where did you get that assumption from? I have made some money on service&support but the market is way to small. You can only sell service&support for a tiny fraction of software that is hard enough to use, therefore the need for support.
There is simple not anyone asking for service&support for most software. How do you suggest anyone should be able to sell something then where is noone who is interrested in buying it? That makes no sence.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with you that companies aren't the ones that should educate people.
/. does a better job.
I was just saying that I don't think
"I don't believe you. "
:)
You should since it's the truth.
I'm not originally from USA but I work on improving my English. It's not that easy to adopt new languages when you are not a kid anymore.
", most laws written at the whim of the rich to benefit the rich, "
What kind of bullshit is that. Point me to such a law, it doesn't exist.
However, there are laws that let people control their own work and thats a important part of our economy.
Ripping of people of their honest work is immoral ofcause, punk.
Do most gun-users use their guns to commit crimes? No.
Do most people with cars use them for robbery. No.
Do most Napster users use it to commit crimes. Yes!
If most people who buys guns was using them to commit crimes instead of protecting themselfs they would be outlawed very quickly.
That was exactly what I meant buddy! :)
The freeloaders are the robbers.
English is not my native language.
Well, slashdot certainly don't teach them. According to slashdot its ok to rip people off, steal property and don't give a shit about the people who made the content.
Isn't the difference between yours and mine teached in school in these days?
I'm not really following you here but what is the problem.
If you read the article it says that they scan for copyrighted work. If you don't do anything illegal they will not get to you. Simple as that.
They have done some wrongoings, what right. But why do you beleive that makes it ok for us to steal other peoples work?
Complain about their wrongdoings instead of complaining when they just stops people from stealing. They are fully entitled to do so.
"Or is it such that *we* can break copyright, but *they* shouldn't be allowed to? "
That is often the way people here sees things. I have rights, others do not.
Sorry, the original post was labeled "Slashdot.org ", "Listen up" was a reply to that one.
Check it out!
Hey, check the parent up! Would be a very very interresting experiment.
"The content of those files is irrelevant, "
The content of them is everything but irrelevant. If not so many people commited crimes (taking other peoples work and not paying) we wouldn't have this problem.
Very true I must say! Without them we wouldn't have those problems.
It's like blaiming victims of robbers for the fact that we have police driving around checking out all of us.
"There is no way you can develop a full-featured application for a total cost of $300"
Take a simple example. Say we have a projects that takes five people one year to complete. The cost for each person is about twice his/her salary (taxes, sickness, etc etc).
Lets say each person make $4.000 a month, that makes the total cost 4.000 * 2 * 5 * 12 = $480.000 a year. Just to survive!
I just don't understand how anyone can beleive that those kind of money can be made on service&support and bonds like in this case.
If you spend X amount of money doing something you must make atleast X amount of money on it. Simple as that!
If you give it away (as in open source), there is no way people are going to give you this kind of money.
That the software has the source with it is not much of a problem, that people can modify isn't either. BUT, that people can redistribute it however they want to is.
...even for a slashdot post.
Where the hell have you been, didn't you notice the IT crash?
It's not less revenue (that is what this would make) that is required but a lot more!
The problem with the great number of new IT-related companies is that they are run by people who have absolutely no idea what so ever about how much revenue a company need. Or how to run them at all for that matter.
People look at companies and say that they make too much money. They don't. Do you have any idea what the costs are? Vacations, sickness, taxes, training and so on...
Say you have a pure consultant company. Not much additional costs above salaries for it's consultants. Just to make it (without profit, just avoid bancrypsy) each person have to make about twice his or her salary. Say you have ten people (a small company), you do the math for a year. You will discover that it's expensive to live!
Most companies have alot higher costs than this example company.
Bonds, you can't be serious! What we need are real companies, run as real companies with real (big enough) revenue.
And, just how the hell do anyone have the nerv to point fingers at the venture capitalists of all people? They are after all the ones that put in million after million to companies without income. They are the ones that lost ALOT of money because these companies are run by incompetent people who thinks it's possible to live on air.
You can blame VCs for being stupid for putting in money into companies without real revenue but it's certainly not their failt that they are failing.
They didn't throw him in jail for poiting out a flaw. They throw him in jail for selling software that breaks adobes software.
"but more so to keep rich people from getting richer while poor people got poorer. "
What kind of bulllshit is this? US law and the whole country for that matter is built around the goal to be free. Please not that free also means free to charge whatever you want for products you make.
In the old world (Europe) people ceratainly wasn't equal, it was built into the system (both law and social) that the upper class was the upper class and the lower class is the lower class. You should be stuck where you where. i america you have the possibility to make a fortune if you have a good idea (heard of the american dream?). This is why copyright are so important, they protect the individual from getting ripped of by others.
Just take a look at Redhat and great bridge (who makes postgresql). Redhat ripped of postgresql, changed it's name to Redhat db and there is nothing great bridge can do about it. Without laws that protects peoples work the capital strong who can build strong trademarks will rip off the others.
This is exactly what I'm talking about :)
That is the typical 'I have rights, you do not'.
Yes, thats right, balanced.
The normal jargon here on slashdot is that themselfs should be allowed to hack, crack, steal anything they want to without paying the people who put their hard work in it.
On the other hand they scream bloody murder if the authors even tries to protect their own work.
You can't be serious calling this balanced????
"involving corporatism, free speech, intellectual property and the movement of ideas online. "
/. thinking. Only I have rights to do whatever I want to. The author doesn't have any rights. What kind of one-way rights are this?
Again, the typical
Your rights stops where the next man/companies begins!
Have you seen this statement by RMS on fsf.org?
w .html
:-)
http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/luispo-rms-intervie
About stallman himself,
"A short list of his coding accomplishments would include Emacs as well as most of the components of the GNU/Linux system, which he either wrote or helped write. "
This is just amazing, how hard can it possible be to grasp simple basic economic concepts?
Example:
Say I work at company C. We develop product P for X amount of money. Say we are a small company with 20 people developing, this will make the personell cost only about 2 million USD a year (salaries, taxes, vacasions, sickness, training etc).
Such a company needs to make about 3 million USD a year just to avoid bancrypsy in the long run.
Now, we sell support for this product P. The problem is that everybody else also can do this WITHOUT contributing to the development costs. This means they can lower the price way below our price because the only thing they have to cover is the salaries to those who sells the support. We must require enough money to pay salaries to both the support staff and the developers.
If you spend X money developing something you basically must get atleast X money by selling the very same thing.
This is the first problem. The second problem is that the market is too small. There certainly is a market for selling service&support but it's way to small.
To sell something you must have customers who wants to buy it.
The problem with FSF is that they are out of touch with reality when it comes to economics.
"Please read and understand, then post if necessary; those first two steps are the most important!"
Again, I have read everything the FSF has ever written, the problem is that they are simply wrong. They need to get out into the reality.
"Uhh, too small for who? "
As in market for a large-scale shift towards a service&support business model for the majority of programmers and companies world wide.
I have made money on service&support myself. There are a couple on areas where there is a need for service&support. The problem is that the demand (to be able to sell something there must be someone who wants to buy it you know) isn't big enough if you look at the tech-industry as a whole.
If the millions of programmers word-wide looses the revenue from selling software itself we will be in big trouble.
The demand for service&support isn't that big.
"You may have experience, but your user name and your attitude betray that it's in a different field than the one I am talking about."
What do you mean? I do work to make a living, thats right. I do have bills to pay. I have certainly never said anything else.
Are we talking about different things here? I was under the impression that you suggested that service&support is a working business model, as in possible to live on. I said it isn't. Did I misunderstand you?
How have work for a living have anything to do with that?
"If you contend otherwise, then all I can say is that your failure does not necessarily extend to others. The Free Software community is not putting all its eggs in your particular basket."
I didn't fail, where did you get that assumption from? I have made some money on service&support but the market is way to small. You can only sell service&support for a tiny fraction of software that is hard enough to use, therefore the need for support.
There is simple not anyone asking for service&support for most software. How do you suggest anyone should be able to sell something then where is noone who is interrested in buying it? That makes no sence.