Oh, of course. Linus, RMS, Alan, Larry, Guido, and Eric are just sloppy patzers. Not professional at all.
As for getting paid to work on free software, there are a fair number of people doing that at Red Hat, for example.
As for "if all software is free, then who pays the programmers?", you're confusing free speech and free beer. There's no reason people can't be paid for free (speech) software.
As for programmers getting paid in general, offhand I'd guess most contributors to free projects get paid quite well at their day jobs, developing custom software that is only useful to one company, and they're probably a hell of a lot more productive because of all the free software out there they can draw upon.
Of the claim that it will be difficult to find programmers to do the "unsexy" work with Linux, for example, he writes...[at Microsoft] People worked on things that interested them and projects still got complete coverage. There is no reason that the same should not be true of Linux, especially given the size of the Linux community.
It would appear Mr. Barr is unaware of the history of the GNU Project. They developed the "unsexy" but necessary parts of GNU before Linux existed.
It's much easier to make that sort of thing work when one entity controls the software and the interfaces, as Microsoft does; and it's much more worthwhile to add features like that when you're aiming at the mass market, as Microsoft does.
We (hackers, free software developers/users), on the other hand, are hampered by the inability to force decisions on users. We have to work things out through consensus. It's very similar to the difference between democracy and totalitarianism. It takes longer.
Also, of course, we have different priorities. We want to build a solid infrastructure first. We want to make sure our decisions today won't paint us into a corner tomorrow. We try to keep the bugs down. We try to make things modular and reusable and extensible. Our notions of ease of use are not the same as Joe Sixpack's.
I feel quite sure that any functionality enough of us want will be developed when the time is ripe. If Microsoft's customers have it years earlier, well, there has to be something to keep them walking into the shearing pen.
Nothing new under the sun. Assuming Petreley is right, which he may be, we will see the same old progression:
while (1) {
clueless people sign on with MS;
they sneer at us for being backward, paranoid zealots;
they play with their nifty toys, fat and happy and completely unaware of the precipice they're dancing next to;
MS screws up their stuff, or someone 0wns the system;
they scream;
the brightest 3% wake up and come over to our side;
meanwhile, MS banks another two billion;
}
You have a point, but I think there's a somewhat higher expectation of impartiality and integrity from a university than from a commercial concern like Gartner. We'll have to rethink that perception, won't we?
I suppose this is just a troll, but just in case the poster is really this clueless, I'll answer it.
Speaking for myself, I do not regard every corporation as evil. If they lie to the public, that's evil. If their lies result in the public being massively cheated, that's evil. If their lies result in people dying, as with tobacco, that's very evil. And if their lies result in people dying, who really had no way to know the risks, as with certain American carmakers, that bloody well ought to guarantee a nice long prison term for the corporate officers responsible.
How about when their lies cause widespread ecological havoc, as the doctored global warming studies may yet do? What punishment would be appropriate then? Send them to a penal colony on Venus, perhaps, to let them have a taste of what could happen here because of their lies?
They're focusing on the GPL because that's the one license they can't get around. (At least I think it is. I'm not aware of any other copyleft licenses that apply to software, except the LGPL, which is rarely used and isn't too relevant to this issue.)
I used to read a fair amount about aviation and I seem to recall that a lot of kitplanes are made with composites. Not much carbon fiber, that's expensive, but generally a foam core (light and space-filling) covered with various resins (stiff). You end up with a very light, strong airframe that beats the hell out of conventional metal designs. That's how the Rutans circumnavigated the globe on one tank of gas.
Thing is, kitplane designers and builders do this sort of thing out of love. They're basically the hackers and overclockers of the aviation world. The general aviation companies are scared silly of liability, which is only sensible in today's climate, and they also don't dare risk their shareholder's money on anything that doesn't have a twenty year track record. So you end up with a situation much like computing before GNU/Linux: commercial products with mediocre performance and exciting projects that no one wants to invest big money in.
I don't know what will happen to break the logjam, but it will be very interesting when it happens.
Let's face it. If Microsoft ever made quality job one, they would very quickly catch up to free software in terms of quality. They have an insane amount of money to burn, they can hire better coders and managers and testers than they have now, they can create five departments to do it five different ways and keep the best results. I doubt their people would be as good as, say, Linus or Alan or RMS, but there would be a lot of them and they would be working on it full time, which most free software developers can't do.
Now, I don't think they will, because it would cost a lot of money and not make them much. They know their priorities - make money and dominate the market - and they know how to achieve them. They won't work hard on quality until we really start cutting into the desktop market. And at that point it will probably be too late.
My point is, quality is not now and never has been the point of free software. It is an important point for open source, which is basically about getting business to try free software, even if it's not all that free. If you're trying to convince executives who don't give a rat's ass about freedom, you have to put it in terms they can understand. The open source movement has gotten a lot of people to open up their code and use other people's free software, who otherwise would still be dismissing GNU as a bunch of left-wing wackos not living in the real world. Which they decidely are not, but sometimes you have to take a lateral approach to make people see that.
Free software is, and always has been, about freedom. The fact that it tends to result in better quality code is a fortuitous side effect. It's not the reason it exists, and it's not why I use it.
For heaven's sake. This isn't bloody Microsoft we're talking about. This is free software. No one can shove anything down your throat.
There are three major possibilities:
Lots of people agree with you. Result: a makefile option is added so people can choose whether they want it or not.
Very few people agree with you.
One (or more) of those people is a reasonably competent programmer, has time to maintain a forked version that does what you want, and is public-spirited enough to distribute it. Result: the fork is available to anyone who bothers to look for it. The early stage of case 1 may look like this.
No one who cares is able to tweak the kernel or hire someone to do so. Result: you're in a backwater, but you can still use older kernel versions. This case is extremely unlikely if more than 20 people agree with you.
You only have to release source if you distribute the derivative works...
Yes, very important correction to the original post, you beat me to it. If I tweak (say) the Linux kernel to do something nifty, I don't even have to reveal I've done so, much less distribute my tweak.
I can make a derivative work out of your software, sell a single copy for... One Million Dollars... and I only have to release the source to my one licensee. I don't have to give it to you.
True, but not important in any practical sense. No one is going to get rich off other people's work this way. If you don't add much value to the freely-available version, no one will pay much for it. There is also nothing to prevent any of your licensees from turning around and redistributing your version to world+dog, for a fee or no fee.
Lawyer: Well, sir, I'm afraid you don't have a leg to stand on. You signed the contract and ACME debited your account in accordance with the contract. It's a legal contract. We have no case.
Driver: But there must be something I can do about this! I can't go 55! My livelihood depends on being the fastest thing on the road!
Lawyer looks puzzled by this statement, then shrugs.
Lawyer: Well, sir, you could always go with another rental company.
Driver: Another...huh? What do you mean? There aren't any other companies. ACME is all there is!
Lawyer stops dead; he is completely at sea. A pause.
You can tweak efficiency, conserve, recycle, digitize your information, employ redundant design, make backups of backups of backups, use nanotechnology, draw energy from the vacuum, slow it down all you like; entropy always wins in the end.
Slashdot Mirror
As for getting paid to work on free software, there are a fair number of people doing that at Red Hat, for example.
As for "if all software is free, then who pays the programmers?", you're confusing free speech and free beer. There's no reason people can't be paid for free (speech) software.
As for programmers getting paid in general, offhand I'd guess most contributors to free projects get paid quite well at their day jobs, developing custom software that is only useful to one company, and they're probably a hell of a lot more productive because of all the free software out there they can draw upon.
It would appear Mr. Barr is unaware of the history of the GNU Project. They developed the "unsexy" but necessary parts of GNU before Linux existed.
"SOS. SOS. Calling any peacekeeping forces in the area. This freighter Kobayashi Maru, out of Osaka. Vessel on fire. Please respond."
Through a glass, darkly.
We (hackers, free software developers/users), on the other hand, are hampered by the inability to force decisions on users. We have to work things out through consensus. It's very similar to the difference between democracy and totalitarianism. It takes longer.
Also, of course, we have different priorities. We want to build a solid infrastructure first. We want to make sure our decisions today won't paint us into a corner tomorrow. We try to keep the bugs down. We try to make things modular and reusable and extensible. Our notions of ease of use are not the same as Joe Sixpack's.
I feel quite sure that any functionality enough of us want will be developed when the time is ripe. If Microsoft's customers have it years earlier, well, there has to be something to keep them walking into the shearing pen.
That's not a bug, it's a feature!
while (1) {
clueless people sign on with MS;
they sneer at us for being backward, paranoid zealots;
they play with their nifty toys, fat and happy and completely unaware of the precipice they're dancing next to;
MS screws up their stuff, or someone 0wns the system;
they scream;
the brightest 3% wake up and come over to our side;
meanwhile, MS banks another two billion;
}
OK, fine, they're catching fraudulent farmers. But can they catch seriously disturbed farmers???
You have a point, but I think there's a somewhat higher expectation of impartiality and integrity from a university than from a commercial concern like Gartner. We'll have to rethink that perception, won't we?
Speaking for myself, I do not regard every corporation as evil. If they lie to the public, that's evil. If their lies result in the public being massively cheated, that's evil. If their lies result in people dying, as with tobacco, that's very evil. And if their lies result in people dying, who really had no way to know the risks, as with certain American carmakers, that bloody well ought to guarantee a nice long prison term for the corporate officers responsible.
How about when their lies cause widespread ecological havoc, as the doctored global warming studies may yet do? What punishment would be appropriate then? Send them to a penal colony on Venus, perhaps, to let them have a taste of what could happen here because of their lies?
Are you serious or is this a troll? It doesn't have to be any good. You just have to convince people it is. Duh...
Yeah, it's a good article. I thought my /. article submission on this was pretty sarcastic but the Reg article has me beat hands down.
They're focusing on the GPL because that's the one license they can't get around. (At least I think it is. I'm not aware of any other copyleft licenses that apply to software, except the LGPL, which is rarely used and isn't too relevant to this issue.)
Thing is, kitplane designers and builders do this sort of thing out of love. They're basically the hackers and overclockers of the aviation world. The general aviation companies are scared silly of liability, which is only sensible in today's climate, and they also don't dare risk their shareholder's money on anything that doesn't have a twenty year track record. So you end up with a situation much like computing before GNU/Linux: commercial products with mediocre performance and exciting projects that no one wants to invest big money in.
I don't know what will happen to break the logjam, but it will be very interesting when it happens.
Now, I don't think they will, because it would cost a lot of money and not make them much. They know their priorities - make money and dominate the market - and they know how to achieve them. They won't work hard on quality until we really start cutting into the desktop market. And at that point it will probably be too late.
My point is, quality is not now and never has been the point of free software. It is an important point for open source, which is basically about getting business to try free software, even if it's not all that free. If you're trying to convince executives who don't give a rat's ass about freedom, you have to put it in terms they can understand. The open source movement has gotten a lot of people to open up their code and use other people's free software, who otherwise would still be dismissing GNU as a bunch of left-wing wackos not living in the real world. Which they decidely are not, but sometimes you have to take a lateral approach to make people see that.
Free software is, and always has been, about freedom. The fact that it tends to result in better quality code is a fortuitous side effect. It's not the reason it exists, and it's not why I use it.
(Hope they don't come after me for this joke the way the Co$ went after Keith Henson).
There are three major possibilities:
Yes, very important correction to the original post, you beat me to it. If I tweak (say) the Linux kernel to do something nifty, I don't even have to reveal I've done so, much less distribute my tweak.
I can make a derivative work out of your software, sell a single copy for ... One Million Dollars ... and I only have to release the source to my one licensee. I don't have to give it to you.
True, but not important in any practical sense. No one is going to get rich off other people's work this way. If you don't add much value to the freely-available version, no one will pay much for it. There is also nothing to prevent any of your licensees from turning around and redistributing your version to world+dog, for a fee or no fee.
Should've used this one: http://images.slashdot.org/topics/topicms.gif
I don't doubt that Apache and the kernel have gotten faster, but still...we all know how reliable and meaningful benchmark results are.
Driver: But there must be something I can do about this! I can't go 55! My livelihood depends on being the fastest thing on the road!
Lawyer looks puzzled by this statement, then shrugs.
Lawyer: Well, sir, you could always go with another rental company.
Driver: Another...huh? What do you mean? There aren't any other companies. ACME is all there is!
Lawyer stops dead; he is completely at sea. A pause.
Lawyer: I beg your pardon, Mr. Coyote?
Really? How do you park?
You can tweak efficiency, conserve, recycle, digitize your information, employ redundant design, make backups of backups of backups, use nanotechnology, draw energy from the vacuum, slow it down all you like; entropy always wins in the end.
The same thing we do every night, Pinky - try to take over the world!
How we gonna do that, Brain?
Camouflage, Pinky, camouflage!