Perhaps you weren't on the net when IE first came about, so your ignorance can be forgiven, but just so you'll know:
My ignorance? I never said Microsoft _ever_ charged for IE. I know very well IE was and always has been free to download. Could IE have a price attached to it? Sure. I was using some of the first IE versions out there. When people were still saying Netscape this Netscape that. When people were also saying what trash IE was and that it had no future.
I agree with you that small companies cannot simply drop projects. This is why smaller companies must choose wisely what they are to pursue. They need to choose a product that they can develop and market within their "window of opportunity." I think my post sounded like Eazel should have dropped Nautilus and started a new project. It should have probably read "Eazel should never have started Nautilus without a plan of making money on it." Netscape, on the other hand had a little more wiggle room and already had more projects going on.
I don't believe MS is _all_ wasteful. I'm sure there are many failed projects, but they claim to innovate. How do you innovate without making a few (or many) mistakes? To learn anything you must be willing to make mistakes. I'm also sure they go about their projects in an efficient way that is least wasteful (time and money).
If you really want to see wasteful projects, check out academia. Most research is rarely utilized (and I'm talking _tons_ of research) and is locked up by the schools (read the past Cisco & Stanford article on slashdot). Many of the projects are done with tax-payer dollars (government grants, etc.) also.
Ahh. I thought his talk of 80/20 seemed a bit out of place. Didn't quite understand how percent of "features" would be a universal (economic) concept..
Maybe he was thinking of a "Commercial Software Myth" when he was being interviewed.
I disagree. Microsoft can now make mistakes because they were smart about making past mistakes. They understood how to market their products and obtain the profit needed to weather any storm. It is survival of the fittest, and I haven't seen much that can take on MS. I have seen competition, but it is nothing compared to what MS provides.
On a related note: from what I understand, Quicken is still holding strong. They have tax-filing software, and various other products. They have been around very long and weathered many storms, I'm sure. Plus their products are easy to use and I believe they know this. I also believe they know what their customers want.
I believe the key to Microsoft's success is knowing when to let go of a bad idea. Such as MS Bob, MS Chat and various others. It is when you still believe in a product which doesn't make money that you fail. It doesn't have to be superior or even new. It just has to have piss poor marketing and no good entrance to the market to lose.
Going on a rant here: this is why I believe Eazel failed. They held on to their file management program, but failed to realize it would not make them money when they needed it most. This is what I believe happened with Netscape also. They could not figure out a way to utilize Navigator for profit, but kept developing it. It would have probably been a good idea to release the source code then, while MS would only have been comfortable going as far as no-charge with IE (thus, giving Netscape the upper-hand). I also believe IE was a failure with Microsoft as well, though people don't realize it. Now that IE is free MS makes no money on it, and does not, IMO, know how either. The result of this action is that Microsoft is stuck developing the worlds most popular web browser for free with no way to recoup development costs. A total loss to Netscape? I don't think so..
It's hypocrisy plain and simple. Miguel would not allow Trolltech to make money on proprietary software, yet this is exactly what he is doing. The scope of the software does not matter. Trolltech had every _right_ to sell proprietary software. Miguel and the GNOME crowd bashed Trolltech from choices _KDE_ made. In the end Qt is now free enough even for RMS, yet they have a stained public image from Miguel tossing gross claims that they could turn "evil" and force people to bow to them via control of the desktop. Where did he get such ideas? He _imagined_ them. There is nothing to link what Qt does to the likes of Microsoft, which I'm sure Miguel was thinking of when bashing KDE/QT.
So you are saying Trolltech should not be allowed to charge people to use a proprietary Qt? Miguel thinks they shouldn't.
encryption is about math it implies some sort of algorithm that no matter you know it or not (what we're calling obscurity) the maths ensure that you can hardly decode the information encrypted (huge hardware requirements for example)
Using math is obscurity. Just because most crackers (script kiddies) can't figure it out does not mean it is secure. To those who know the math, it is not obscure. To those who don't, it is. There is no such thing as "huge hardware requirements" today when potential crackers already use tens to hundreds of broken into machines and create distributed denial of service.
My point is I think you're misunderstanding what it's call obscurity
My point is the readers of Slashdot have a hidden agenda when they speak of "security through obscurity" (in other words, they are not really discussing security, but rather, methods of obtaining a sense of security. In which case most readers I see want openness and non-proprietary solutions).
obscure:
1.) Covered over, shaded, or darkened
2.) inconspicuous to the sight
3.) Not noticeable
4.) Not easily understood
5.) Not clear, full, or distinct
For example, say I develop a new top secret encryption scheme, called Rot-13. I tell no one of how it works. Since I am not a professional cryptographer, the chances are my algorithm is not cryptographically sound. So it is only secure as long as its method is secret. Once the secret is out, its security is gone. This is security through obscurity.
Okay, but you still have some security there (not very much of course).
An example of the opposite would be RSA. The algorithm is well known, therefore with peer review, it is thought of as secure. Even though I know how RSA works, I'm still unlikely to be able to crack it if used properly.
I believe this is flawed thinking in regards to security. I'm sure you have seen the many times on Slashdot that such-and-such method of encryption, which everyone believes to be the most superior, gets cracked in a matter of days. Then I hear "it was cracked by a team" or "it took 4 days." This lessens the impact and makes it appear as if RSA is still very secure.
I believe it is a huge flaw to think RSA will keep you safe because it is well known and peer-reviewed. It may be secure from those script kiddie attacks, which would only install an IRC bot or maybe erase your hard drives. It is not secure if you ever run into someone with a strong motivation to get into your system. The same strong motivation that was able to break the such-and-such encryption in only so many days.
Another problem with open security methods is that they can be detected. If you don't tell anyone what encryption method you are using on a certain site then it will be hard to break in. Now, if you don't tell anyone (obscurity), but you use a well known algorithm (peer-reviewed) then your security method is more easily detected. Crackers will pick up on certain reoccuring bit-patterns, the length of the encryption key or a number of other things. What happens is most sites proudly state "using PGP encryption," or something similar. Which is not really security at all, but just prancing around saying "we are hiding our private stuff in bank X, bet you can't get it!" And most people using PGP or some such are using it for meaningless data which does not need security.
I feel a big part of this debate is people have some sort of urge or agenda to make all software open. If "security through obscurity is bad" really means "proprietary software vs. open software" then we should skip the debate about security and look at facts about software methods producing secure software.
Those facts for wu-ftp are:
- wu-ftp is open and peer-reviewed
- wu-ftp had a serious flaw
- wu-ftp's flaw was released publicly
- wu-ftp is (was?) not yet patched on most systems
This is a repeating pattern among free software. It has happened more times than I can remember with just the Linux kernel itself. It also happens with sendmail and bind more than I would like to know about. And today someone will surely believe that wu-ftp is secure now that is patched. This is what I call "security after the fact." Which, to me, seems what the open software crowd is more concerned with than "security before the fact."
This bug is the result of a poor implementation of malloc() and free(). Passing an invalid pointer to free() shouldn't corrupt the heap.
Oh, but it does. It has in the past and will in the future. Maybe not today, though.
It's not impossible to write a C implementation that's immune to the vast majority of these problems.
The more I use C the more I believe it is impossible to prevent memory related bugs. A portable language, it is. A suitably secure language, it is not.
I hear this all the time. "Security through obscurity is bad!" What other forms _are_ there? Passwords and encryption _is_ the same as obscurity. People using this "security through obscurity is bad" argument seem to have another agenda: tearing down IP laws and promoting freedom of information. While IP may be bad, it is a very seperate issue.
How do people claim security through obscurity is a bad thing? Why is it bad? How else does security work? There is physical security or there is abstract/obscure (i.e. encryption) security. What else?
There is also insecurity through ignorance, which seems like a disease in the networked world. It really doesn't matter much if you post the memo on the admin/end-user's forehead if they don't bother to read it. This seems to be the case more than script kiddies finding out before knowledgable admins. After all, where do script kiddies get their info? Same place admins do: Bugtraq. By the time those damn elusive script kiddies on IRC exploit a few holes in nasa.gov, I'm sure at least one knowledgable admin has posted a report to bugtraq. In case you didn't pick up the sarcasm, most script kiddies travel in herds and attack usually obvious "high-risk" sites. If someone knows something before Bugtraq, I'm sure you have very little to worry about. The exploiter is probably a knowledgable cracker and probably has specific targets. If you happen to be a target, I wish you well, but I don't think any amount of Bugtraq info will keep someone determined to get in your system out (hint: There is a whole world of social explotation that is damn near impossible to detect or even be aware of).
You fork your own program. Make one release that works with GTK+ 1.2 and only apply bug fixes to it. The other release you make with GTK+ 2.0 and put the new stuff in there. Otherwise you might be supporting GTK+ 1.2 for a long long time. This lets your users know that you plan to move to GTK+ 2.0.
I think this is a problem with autoconf/automake/etc. They can be a little too convenient and will turn good design and code into #ifdef spagetti in no time. Trust me. I wrote a program which supported GNOME, QT, _and_ plain GTK+. While the QT code was very seperate, the GTK+ and GNOME code overlapped much so I thought "hey, code reuse!" Bad idea. Once a new GTK+ version was out (no matter if it was a minor release or not) _everything_ broke. And there is always the case of relying on this one special "feature" of GTK+ only to have it gone in the next bugfix.
Okay, then substitute Alias/Wavefront or any of the numerous honest development houses. I just picked Adobe at random, but it doesn't take much searching to find a decent software house.
(i.e. selling support or t-shirts, etc. is not a solution)
I know very well what Red Hat and Cygnus (and Sendmail, Aladdin, etc. etc.) do. They sell t-shirts and support.
Now let's put this in perspective. Red Hat did not create the software they sell. Red Hat could never produce software such as Linux. They would have been bankrupt long ago. The same goes for Cygnus and the rest. They have had massive outside support. I do not believe technical support alone can bring in enough profit to actually create new software. Whatever became of Eazel anyhow?
Or is it that you're just morally opposed to paying for development of free software through support contracts?
If you want to bring morals into the discussion then why not talk about what these companies are doing. Red Hat is selling work done through charity and Ximian is a corporate entity masquerading around as a non-profit. From Ximian Mono web site:
Ximian will not be able to taken on the whole project on its own. Mono will be a free software/open source community project, that is the only way we can hope to implement something of this size. You can contribute to this effort.
and..
Question 57: How can you expect Mono to compete with Microsoft, wont this require an effort too large?
You are right. Mono will never become a reality without the help of other contributors. Ximian is a small company that can not finish Mono alone. We will be working with members of the community to deliver the product.
I don't see how that translates into a healthy business. You don't see IBM out there saying "Help us build these computers! So we can deliver the product to the consumer!" The FSF ideals are turning innocent programmers into sweatshop slaves and they don't even realize it.
erm. I think the person you replied to meant "free software in the GNU sense." Not in the absolute sense. The two predominant camps are "free software" (GNU and only GNU) and "Open Source(TM)" (BSD, GNU, etc.). In other words, I don't think he was debating whether GNU is truely free--he was just stating that "Open Source" != "free software" when talking with respect to RMS.
Freedom is the choice of software, not the limitations of it.
Exactly. While I agree with many of the ideas of free software, much of what RMS says sounds to me like "I want what I want and who cares what you want." I believe it is time for RMS to provide answers to serious questions if GNU is to move forward. I'm saying this because right now GNU has the spotlight. If they truely want free software in the world (and less proprietary) they really need to provide answers. Otherwise they will miss their chance and free software ("fad" as some might see it today) could fade away. The signs are already present too (such as infighting and coder burnout, etc.).
That's fine and dandy, but how does he expect all software to come with source code and freely distributable? If someone like Adobe did this I'm sure they would be out of business within a year or two. It is one thing to have ideals and stick to them. It is another to gripe about what others do (i.e. proprietary software shops) and offer no real solutions to their problems. This is exactly what RMS does.
It is not my problem of resenting him having ideals--I agree with a lot of what he says. A man with ideals who will not discuss or debate them, though, is like a stubborn child who always has to get what he wants.
I discovered GNU and the FSF around '95-96 and thought what they were doing was amazing--and it is. Before I found GNU there were only "snippits" (i.e. various fragments of code) which could help me learn programming. Having fully featured programs helped me incredibly. I was inspired by what RMS was doing. Now his extremist attitude of "free software or no software" is wearing a bit thin. Partially because there is only questions of how to make money with free software, but no real solutions (i.e. selling support or t-shirts, etc. is not a solution). It seems as if they (GNU) give only ideal solutions which fit only what they want. There is no compromise or even debate, from what I can tell, coming from the FSF. I like the idea of free software, but there is only so much I personally would like to give. If RMS' vision of an ideal software industry is a bunch of people working for charity, then I want no part of it. Until there are real solutions to real problems, then I will never be in full agreement with the FSF.
Just once I would like RMS to come out and say "Yes, producing free software and making a decent living is hard, but here is how we can fix it.." or "Not all problems in the world are solved by free software, here is where we can safely draw the line.."
Especially for a monopolostic company, you need to understand how consumers use your software. As usual MS missed the boat.
Hardly. MS understands exactly how their consumers will use their product. They know the public will pirate their software. This is why they have partnerships with manufacturers. This is also part of the reason they are a monopoly. Piracy keeps competition at bay.
Piracy allows a whole bunch of people to use something right away, if they like it, they give it to their friends
Yes, let us give away software which costs others both time and money to produce.
I dare say a large number of games have gotten enormously popular riding fame based partly in piracy (unreal tournament?)
It's funny you bring this up. I have a computer mag from the Doom era. In it there is an article about the guys at id Software talking about piracy. IIRC John Romero was extremely angered that he found Doom everywhere on the internet and claimed it was like watching the food fly out of his kids' mouths. Maybe if people would stop pirating software there would actually be a sensible computer game market, rather than this one we have today which forces developers to create clones of past successful games just so they can make ends meet. It costs way too much to produce something that will be pirated all over, but never actually bought.
The only benefit to piracy is it costs you nothing. You can believe in freedom of software (Free Software Foundation), but do not infringe on others rights and freedoms by your beliefs. It is their right to produce proprietary software as it is very much your right to refuse to purchase it and/or use free (GPL) software. Keep that in mind.
Software subscriptions aren't a violation of the GPL. I'm not sure what you mean "license subscriptions," if the GPL is your license. If you pay upfront $45.99 for a 1 year software subscription to a GPL program and will obtain a CD every month full of bugfixes and new features, then that is _not_ a violation of the GPL. The person who receives the CD will be allowed to distribute _that cd_ at will (and modify the software). Nothing wrong there either. As copyright holder you are allowed to do anything you want with the source code--even sell patches for it by the month. Even people who patch _your_ programs can turn around and sell it. They are even allowed to have a monthly subscription type program for _your_ software. The only restriction the GPL places on the end-user is they are not allowed to restrict other's freedoms.
I agree with your points and some of the original posters.
I believe "Open Source(TM)" hoopla will die down and that is a great thing. It means there will be a time again that I can go to freshmeat and find decent programs which are not in the "pre-planning almost idea not quite vapor yet but hey! look at me! I got XML!" stage. Instead of trying to impress or compete, programs will just be there--like the good old days. Don't work for ya? Fix it or find another program that does what you want. No more elaborate bugtracking, CVS project management, IRC server and 10 different mailing lists. Just the source code and a README. Nothing more nothing less. No elaborate schemes for hijacking others projects or dirt throwing. No more hype. Just software and the enjoyment of computers.
Ah, but I believe those days are long gone. Things have changed. People make money on other's work. It isn't the same atmosphere as even 1996 (when I discovered Linux). I think many people have become jaded. The same jadedness that caused Richard Stallman to create the FSF in the first place? Possibly.
Please re-read (or simply read) the previous post (to which I replied).
This isn't a basic freedom issue. It's about consumers and potential being protected from a predator (M$). Who said that a time warner tax was okay? I want that removed also.
You are saying that being protected is not a freedom? Who cares what you want? I don't. Neither does the government. Does MS or the people working there care what you want? I don't think so. This is America. Freedom for all. Not just freedom for you.
I want the ability to read M$ word documents on my Unix box, I want software that doesn't need to be updated just because M$ saw a need to fix^h^h^change^h^h^h^h^h^break it so that their monopoly is broken
That's nice and good, but who has the time and resources to do this? Who will pay? MS doesn't care about *ix. Why should they? There is no market for *ix (or a very fragmented one). Even Microsoft doesn't have the resources to devote to fixing the incoherent fuckup that *ix is.
I want Netscape to have enough funding (and the ability to make money) so that a better product than IE is available to me.
Netscape failed because they couldn't hack it. IE was a better product and beat Netscape fairly. And guess what. It was not because MS gave IE away for free--this is a myth. Netscape gave their Navigator out for free since the beginning. They had no business plan and would have failed even if MS did not step up to the table. Hell, AOL would have kicked Netscape's ass. Plus Netscape was already beaten by the time MS started bundling IE w/ Windows.
Yet, I can't have any of these things since the DOJ has decided to protect the M$ monopoly.
Haha. Guess who put MS into power? Consumers. Guess who can put whatever wet dream you may have into power? Consumers. Where is your money? Why haven't you thrown something into the ring? Want to know why the DOJ is reluctant to do something? They are trying to protect the consumers who voted for Microsoft with their money. It's as simple as that.
I would have really loved to have seen Netscape's business plan of 1994-95. Then again it might get a bit boring looking at an empty sheet of paper. They had the Killer App at the right time and were backed by momentum the world hasn't seen in probably half a century. They screwed it all up by not thinking ahead and planning. They got a little excited by the billions their company was then valued as and dropped the ball. That's not to say Microsoft won the battle, though. The internet is fairly unchanged from 1995. Infact, from listening to the grandiose ideas spewing from Silicon Valley at the time you would assume that the internet would be nothing like what it is today.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with you that small companies cannot simply drop projects. This is why smaller companies must choose wisely what they are to pursue. They need to choose a product that they can develop and market within their "window of opportunity." I think my post sounded like Eazel should have dropped Nautilus and started a new project. It should have probably read "Eazel should never have started Nautilus without a plan of making money on it." Netscape, on the other hand had a little more wiggle room and already had more projects going on.
I don't believe MS is _all_ wasteful. I'm sure there are many failed projects, but they claim to innovate. How do you innovate without making a few (or many) mistakes? To learn anything you must be willing to make mistakes. I'm also sure they go about their projects in an efficient way that is least wasteful (time and money).
If you really want to see wasteful projects, check out academia. Most research is rarely utilized (and I'm talking _tons_ of research) and is locked up by the schools (read the past Cisco & Stanford article on slashdot). Many of the projects are done with tax-payer dollars (government grants, etc.) also.
Ahh. I thought his talk of 80/20 seemed a bit out of place. Didn't quite understand how percent of "features" would be a universal (economic) concept..
Maybe he was thinking of a "Commercial Software Myth" when he was being interviewed.
I disagree. Microsoft can now make mistakes because they were smart about making past mistakes. They understood how to market their products and obtain the profit needed to weather any storm. It is survival of the fittest, and I haven't seen much that can take on MS. I have seen competition, but it is nothing compared to what MS provides.
On a related note: from what I understand, Quicken is still holding strong. They have tax-filing software, and various other products. They have been around very long and weathered many storms, I'm sure. Plus their products are easy to use and I believe they know this. I also believe they know what their customers want.
I believe the key to Microsoft's success is knowing when to let go of a bad idea. Such as MS Bob, MS Chat and various others. It is when you still believe in a product which doesn't make money that you fail. It doesn't have to be superior or even new. It just has to have piss poor marketing and no good entrance to the market to lose.
Going on a rant here: this is why I believe Eazel failed. They held on to their file management program, but failed to realize it would not make them money when they needed it most. This is what I believe happened with Netscape also. They could not figure out a way to utilize Navigator for profit, but kept developing it. It would have probably been a good idea to release the source code then, while MS would only have been comfortable going as far as no-charge with IE (thus, giving Netscape the upper-hand). I also believe IE was a failure with Microsoft as well, though people don't realize it. Now that IE is free MS makes no money on it, and does not, IMO, know how either. The result of this action is that Microsoft is stuck developing the worlds most popular web browser for free with no way to recoup development costs. A total loss to Netscape? I don't think so..
It's hypocrisy plain and simple. Miguel would not allow Trolltech to make money on proprietary software, yet this is exactly what he is doing. The scope of the software does not matter. Trolltech had every _right_ to sell proprietary software. Miguel and the GNOME crowd bashed Trolltech from choices _KDE_ made. In the end Qt is now free enough even for RMS, yet they have a stained public image from Miguel tossing gross claims that they could turn "evil" and force people to bow to them via control of the desktop. Where did he get such ideas? He _imagined_ them. There is nothing to link what Qt does to the likes of Microsoft, which I'm sure Miguel was thinking of when bashing KDE/QT.
So you are saying Trolltech should not be allowed to charge people to use a proprietary Qt? Miguel thinks they shouldn't.
My point is the readers of Slashdot have a hidden agenda when they speak of "security through obscurity" (in other words, they are not really discussing security, but rather, methods of obtaining a sense of security. In which case most readers I see want openness and non-proprietary solutions).
obscure:
1.) Covered over, shaded, or darkened
2.) inconspicuous to the sight
3.) Not noticeable
4.) Not easily understood
5.) Not clear, full, or distinct
I believe this is flawed thinking in regards to security. I'm sure you have seen the many times on Slashdot that such-and-such method of encryption, which everyone believes to be the most superior, gets cracked in a matter of days. Then I hear "it was cracked by a team" or "it took 4 days." This lessens the impact and makes it appear as if RSA is still very secure.
I believe it is a huge flaw to think RSA will keep you safe because it is well known and peer-reviewed. It may be secure from those script kiddie attacks, which would only install an IRC bot or maybe erase your hard drives. It is not secure if you ever run into someone with a strong motivation to get into your system. The same strong motivation that was able to break the such-and-such encryption in only so many days.
Another problem with open security methods is that they can be detected. If you don't tell anyone what encryption method you are using on a certain site then it will be hard to break in. Now, if you don't tell anyone (obscurity), but you use a well known algorithm (peer-reviewed) then your security method is more easily detected. Crackers will pick up on certain reoccuring bit-patterns, the length of the encryption key or a number of other things. What happens is most sites proudly state "using PGP encryption," or something similar. Which is not really security at all, but just prancing around saying "we are hiding our private stuff in bank X, bet you can't get it!" And most people using PGP or some such are using it for meaningless data which does not need security.
I feel a big part of this debate is people have some sort of urge or agenda to make all software open. If "security through obscurity is bad" really means "proprietary software vs. open software" then we should skip the debate about security and look at facts about software methods producing secure software.
Those facts for wu-ftp are:
- wu-ftp is open and peer-reviewed
- wu-ftp had a serious flaw
- wu-ftp's flaw was released publicly
- wu-ftp is (was?) not yet patched on most systems
This is a repeating pattern among free software. It has happened more times than I can remember with just the Linux kernel itself. It also happens with sendmail and bind more than I would like to know about. And today someone will surely believe that wu-ftp is secure now that is patched. This is what I call "security after the fact." Which, to me, seems what the open software crowd is more concerned with than "security before the fact."
wasn't Code Red fixed before anyone knew about it? Like months before? I even thought MS had a security statement on their site..
Oh, but it does. It has in the past and will in the future. Maybe not today, though. The more I use C the more I believe it is impossible to prevent memory related bugs. A portable language, it is. A suitably secure language, it is not.
explotation -> exploitation ..where is my spell checker..
Do tell me the other forms of security.
I hear this all the time. "Security through obscurity is bad!" What other forms _are_ there? Passwords and encryption _is_ the same as obscurity. People using this "security through obscurity is bad" argument seem to have another agenda: tearing down IP laws and promoting freedom of information. While IP may be bad, it is a very seperate issue.
How do people claim security through obscurity is a bad thing? Why is it bad? How else does security work? There is physical security or there is abstract/obscure (i.e. encryption) security. What else?
There is also insecurity through ignorance, which seems like a disease in the networked world. It really doesn't matter much if you post the memo on the admin/end-user's forehead if they don't bother to read it. This seems to be the case more than script kiddies finding out before knowledgable admins. After all, where do script kiddies get their info? Same place admins do: Bugtraq. By the time those damn elusive script kiddies on IRC exploit a few holes in nasa.gov, I'm sure at least one knowledgable admin has posted a report to bugtraq. In case you didn't pick up the sarcasm, most script kiddies travel in herds and attack usually obvious "high-risk" sites. If someone knows something before Bugtraq, I'm sure you have very little to worry about. The exploiter is probably a knowledgable cracker and probably has specific targets. If you happen to be a target, I wish you well, but I don't think any amount of Bugtraq info will keep someone determined to get in your system out (hint: There is a whole world of social explotation that is damn near impossible to detect or even be aware of).
You fork your own program. Make one release that works with GTK+ 1.2 and only apply bug fixes to it. The other release you make with GTK+ 2.0 and put the new stuff in there. Otherwise you might be supporting GTK+ 1.2 for a long long time. This lets your users know that you plan to move to GTK+ 2.0.
I think this is a problem with autoconf/automake/etc. They can be a little too convenient and will turn good design and code into #ifdef spagetti in no time. Trust me. I wrote a program which supported GNOME, QT, _and_ plain GTK+. While the QT code was very seperate, the GTK+ and GNOME code overlapped much so I thought "hey, code reuse!" Bad idea. Once a new GTK+ version was out (no matter if it was a minor release or not) _everything_ broke. And there is always the case of relying on this one special "feature" of GTK+ only to have it gone in the next bugfix.
I sure hope you don't go around eating any kind of food from a grocery store. No more Coke/Pepsi/etc. for you.
Okay, then substitute Alias/Wavefront or any of the numerous honest development houses. I just picked Adobe at random, but it doesn't take much searching to find a decent software house.
Here:
I know very well what Red Hat and Cygnus (and Sendmail, Aladdin, etc. etc.) do. They sell t-shirts and support.
Now let's put this in perspective. Red Hat did not create the software they sell. Red Hat could never produce software such as Linux. They would have been bankrupt long ago. The same goes for Cygnus and the rest. They have had massive outside support. I do not believe technical support alone can bring in enough profit to actually create new software. Whatever became of Eazel anyhow?
If you want to bring morals into the discussion then why not talk about what these companies are doing. Red Hat is selling work done through charity and Ximian is a corporate entity masquerading around as a non-profit. From Ximian Mono web site:
and..
I don't see how that translates into a healthy business. You don't see IBM out there saying "Help us build these computers! So we can deliver the product to the consumer!" The FSF ideals are turning innocent programmers into sweatshop slaves and they don't even realize it.
erm. I think the person you replied to meant "free software in the GNU sense." Not in the absolute sense. The two predominant camps are "free software" (GNU and only GNU) and "Open Source(TM)" (BSD, GNU, etc.). In other words, I don't think he was debating whether GNU is truely free--he was just stating that "Open Source" != "free software" when talking with respect to RMS.
That's fine and dandy, but how does he expect all software to come with source code and freely distributable? If someone like Adobe did this I'm sure they would be out of business within a year or two. It is one thing to have ideals and stick to them. It is another to gripe about what others do (i.e. proprietary software shops) and offer no real solutions to their problems. This is exactly what RMS does.
It is not my problem of resenting him having ideals--I agree with a lot of what he says. A man with ideals who will not discuss or debate them, though, is like a stubborn child who always has to get what he wants.
Score 4 with rating of "Flamebait." Go figure.
I discovered GNU and the FSF around '95-96 and thought what they were doing was amazing--and it is. Before I found GNU there were only "snippits" (i.e. various fragments of code) which could help me learn programming. Having fully featured programs helped me incredibly. I was inspired by what RMS was doing. Now his extremist attitude of "free software or no software" is wearing a bit thin. Partially because there is only questions of how to make money with free software, but no real solutions (i.e. selling support or t-shirts, etc. is not a solution). It seems as if they (GNU) give only ideal solutions which fit only what they want. There is no compromise or even debate, from what I can tell, coming from the FSF. I like the idea of free software, but there is only so much I personally would like to give. If RMS' vision of an ideal software industry is a bunch of people working for charity, then I want no part of it. Until there are real solutions to real problems, then I will never be in full agreement with the FSF.
Just once I would like RMS to come out and say "Yes, producing free software and making a decent living is hard, but here is how we can fix it.." or "Not all problems in the world are solved by free software, here is where we can safely draw the line.."
Yes, let us give away software which costs others both time and money to produce.
It's funny you bring this up. I have a computer mag from the Doom era. In it there is an article about the guys at id Software talking about piracy. IIRC John Romero was extremely angered that he found Doom everywhere on the internet and claimed it was like watching the food fly out of his kids' mouths. Maybe if people would stop pirating software there would actually be a sensible computer game market, rather than this one we have today which forces developers to create clones of past successful games just so they can make ends meet. It costs way too much to produce something that will be pirated all over, but never actually bought.
The only benefit to piracy is it costs you nothing. You can believe in freedom of software (Free Software Foundation), but do not infringe on others rights and freedoms by your beliefs. It is their right to produce proprietary software as it is very much your right to refuse to purchase it and/or use free (GPL) software. Keep that in mind.
Software subscriptions aren't a violation of the GPL. I'm not sure what you mean "license subscriptions," if the GPL is your license. If you pay upfront $45.99 for a 1 year software subscription to a GPL program and will obtain a CD every month full of bugfixes and new features, then that is _not_ a violation of the GPL. The person who receives the CD will be allowed to distribute _that cd_ at will (and modify the software). Nothing wrong there either. As copyright holder you are allowed to do anything you want with the source code--even sell patches for it by the month. Even people who patch _your_ programs can turn around and sell it. They are even allowed to have a monthly subscription type program for _your_ software. The only restriction the GPL places on the end-user is they are not allowed to restrict other's freedoms.
I agree with your points and some of the original posters.
I believe "Open Source(TM)" hoopla will die down and that is a great thing. It means there will be a time again that I can go to freshmeat and find decent programs which are not in the "pre-planning almost idea not quite vapor yet but hey! look at me! I got XML!" stage. Instead of trying to impress or compete, programs will just be there--like the good old days. Don't work for ya? Fix it or find another program that does what you want. No more elaborate bugtracking, CVS project management, IRC server and 10 different mailing lists. Just the source code and a README. Nothing more nothing less. No elaborate schemes for hijacking others projects or dirt throwing. No more hype. Just software and the enjoyment of computers.
Ah, but I believe those days are long gone. Things have changed. People make money on other's work. It isn't the same atmosphere as even 1996 (when I discovered Linux). I think many people have become jaded. The same jadedness that caused Richard Stallman to create the FSF in the first place? Possibly.
You are saying that being protected is not a freedom? Who cares what you want? I don't. Neither does the government. Does MS or the people working there care what you want? I don't think so. This is America. Freedom for all. Not just freedom for you.
That's nice and good, but who has the time and resources to do this? Who will pay? MS doesn't care about *ix. Why should they? There is no market for *ix (or a very fragmented one). Even Microsoft doesn't have the resources to devote to fixing the incoherent fuckup that *ix is.
Netscape failed because they couldn't hack it. IE was a better product and beat Netscape fairly. And guess what. It was not because MS gave IE away for free--this is a myth. Netscape gave their Navigator out for free since the beginning. They had no business plan and would have failed even if MS did not step up to the table. Hell, AOL would have kicked Netscape's ass. Plus Netscape was already beaten by the time MS started bundling IE w/ Windows.
Haha. Guess who put MS into power? Consumers. Guess who can put whatever wet dream you may have into power? Consumers. Where is your money? Why haven't you thrown something into the ring? Want to know why the DOJ is reluctant to do something? They are trying to protect the consumers who voted for Microsoft with their money. It's as simple as that.
Yup yup yup.
I would have really loved to have seen Netscape's business plan of 1994-95. Then again it might get a bit boring looking at an empty sheet of paper. They had the Killer App at the right time and were backed by momentum the world hasn't seen in probably half a century. They screwed it all up by not thinking ahead and planning. They got a little excited by the billions their company was then valued as and dropped the ball. That's not to say Microsoft won the battle, though. The internet is fairly unchanged from 1995. Infact, from listening to the grandiose ideas spewing from Silicon Valley at the time you would assume that the internet would be nothing like what it is today.