If people's favourite band releases only on SDMI, then many will buy the player, however crippled, just to hear the band. The same happened with CDs. Consumers don't have any choice; some publisher has a monopoly on every band.
If enough people buy SDMI-enabled players, even if they use them just to play MP3s, the music industry cartel will be able to release music SDMI-only. I.e. No CD version. If that happens, you will not be able to listen to your music on two different systems without paying double. You will not be able to defragment your hard disk. You will be powerless if they decide to timebomb your music.
Merely by buying an SDMI-enabled player, you increase the chance of music ever being released on SDMI *only*. Don't do it if you value your freedom not to be screwed.
I agree with you, insofar as many people have adopted GPL'd free stuff without realising there was BSD free stuff that does the same. I disagree with you that the GPL is a bad thing, but we can agree that it would be better if people knew what they were getting into before they used it. I think people should examine the reasons why the GPL is *really* better than BSD, rather than using it because it's fashionable.
(I don't want to discuss the relative merits of the two licenses with you; I know we disagree. I'm just saying that many people use the GPL without really understanding it, and it would be better if they did).
You have to keep the effect the same, i.e. preserving all the same freedoms; that is, right to privacy, right to redistribute, right to have and modify source code. You have to use copyright law only, since EULAs are unenforceable internationally. It needs to be in as plain english as possible, so that developers can understand what they're doing.
I'm not sure you can make it binding on developers in the way you describe, whilst preserving the right to modify. It could be counterproductive if you wip out someone's right to make unrelated propriatory software, because many people do not want to give up that right. How will you stop companies having IPOs?
But if you can manage all that you claim, and your instincts really are to help, then go ahead: write a better version! Post a URL here, that way many people will read it. Also you might want to explain in plain english the advantages of your new version. If it genuinely is significantly better, then there's no reason why people won't start using it, including the FSF.
This is exactly what happened to me! I'd seen Linux being used, but I only decided I *really* needed to install it after reading the philosophy stuff at gnu.org.
I wonder how common this is? Maybe more amongst Debian users, since debian makes a big thing of "freedom" as opposed to "coolness" of software.
The internet population has surprised analysts by its resilience to "commercialisation" - i.e. paying for information. I think the reason is that the Internet is more of a "perfect market" than the high street - everyone has complete, instant access to the same information as everyone else. This allows competition to work more fluidly than in the high street: the hassle factor for distributing information has dropped to almost zero. If you know the right forum, you can say something to all the people on the internet who it would interest the most.
[GNU/]Linux distritributions are such a forum for free software. Historically, if you wrote some good code, you could post it on web sites, or newsgroups, but only people who were proactively interested would find out. You'd have to wait for the program to emerge in people's consciousness. Now if you can write something which gets included in a distribution, millions of people who would never have looked for source code on a newsgroup can instantly install the binary from CD or ftp. This improves people's information levels about the free software marketplace, and makes it very hard for a propriatory program to survive if there's a better free program.
Let me contrast the situation with Windows, which doesn't have this distribution thing. Suppose you wanted to get Windows software together with equivalent functionality as, say, Debian's "main" CD. How would you do it? Trawl through thousands of pages of shit on www.shareware.com? Search using altavista 1000 times? Look in a catalogue (this wouldn't work cos some of the stuff in Debian would never achieve wide distribution if sold alone)?
With linux, you can think one day, "hmmm I need a music typesetting program" and instantly find the best free offering, available on your CD / the ftp site. "I want a Pascal beautifier." "I want the cursor on X to disappear after a few seconds inactivity." Because any linux user can do this so easily, it adds an order of magnitude to the weight that will get behind any free software offering. Linux distributions have undoubtably helped free software.
You can get it via anonymous ftp, here. It's actually linked to from their webpage, but it's not very obvious. They probably didn't want to scare non-technical people.
Well some of them anyway. It has an X viewer, or it can spew out ascii, or it can create tex files so that you don't lose (all) the formatting.
Dunno if it'd be good enough for what you want, though. It should be available as part of your favourite linux distribution. Type "apt-get install catdoc" in debian.
Martin Luther-King? Gandhi? George Washington? Jesus?
None of these people were working for their "petty convenience". They suffered much inconvenience for standing up for their beliefs. This applies also to RMS.
The FSF doesn't need to convince the general public that the free software movement has better goals than the open-source movement. It only needs to convince potential authors of free software, so that they'll write stuff for the cause. I think the FSF does quite a good job of this.
The biggest danger from UCITA is the licenses which commercial software companies will impose. They'd be stupid not to; they can take rights from the customer in any way which is useful to them, without the customer even being able to read the license before buying the software. Maybe they won't all use those rights in serverely detrimental ways, but you can be sure that some company will at some point. Think about Unisys and the GIF issue. Suppose the next version of MS-Office had a clause in the license saying that MS Word's file format was their intellectual property, and that MS reserves the right to change the license without prior notice. They probably wouldn't enforce that right immediately, because it would wipe out sales of MS Office. However, if it ever comes to the point where MS Office is essentially dead, they can impose the following trilemma on you: either (1) delete all non-microsoft software from your system; or (2) delete all your documents which are now, or *ever have been*, in MS Word format; or (3) Pay MS a royalty fee of $100/year for the use of the file format.
Stallman's point that free software authors will in future be held liable for bugs in software which is already around today is a problem which affects the free software community. It wouldn't be as much of a problem for a vendor of proprietory software, because they relicense the software to you at every release. The original copyleft license, by contrast, can still be in force in portions of code which were written 10 years ago but are still used in modern software today. E.g. If I wrote a gcc patch 10 years ago then I'm still liable for bugs occurring as a result of that patch *now*.
... and almost no mainstream politician in America has believed that it works better than the free market, since about 1960. Look here to see the (more mainstream) theory proposed by Milton Friedman.
The developers who worked on linux, both in the early days and now, relied on gcc. There's no way that a snowballing mass of casual developers could have accumulated if they each had to pay $00s for a compiler. gcc was linux's midwife.
(I'm sure you know all this, just people might want to know)
... that's what people call it when the Solaris kernel runs with mainly GNU software on top. (And I can't think of many Solaris systems which don't have *some* GNU software installed).
You may not have heard the term before but it is in common use.
The HURD might have obsoleted Linux in ten years time. Or it may have died completely. To a Free Software user, it doesn't matter.
Users of non-free software have to worry in case their OS dies out. They will either have to keep using their obsolete machine, or bin all of their software and try and find modern apps that can read their old documents.
In contrast, if the HURD starts to gather pace then any popular Free Software currently available for Linux will be ported to the HURD. Users can continue using their current apps; they don't have to start afresh every time they change OS. This must be one of the big advantages of Free Software.
Nobody will switch OS just so they can watch certain video clips. However, many people might *not* switch OS because it would *stop* them from watching video clips. The lack of good linux videoclip support won't repel current linux users, but it might stop current windows users from becoming linux users.
Then again, I'm not sure that WMP will have a positive overall effect on the linux video playback capability, in the long term. It may squash some good offerings that are just getting started now. It might be manipulated by MS to ensure that Linux is not *quite* as good as Windows for video playback (you might decide to write a video player if the current situation is dire, but you probably won't bother if the current situation is merely tolerable).
Suppose Windows Media Player for Linux is ever released, and works ok. There won't be such a pressing need for linux video software any more. So fewer independent video playback programs will get written, and those that do might not get as much work as they deserve. If this happens, MS could use this to our disadvantage, by ensuring that the Windows version is always slightly more advanced / less buggy etc., ensuring that video playback is always better on Windows than on Linux.
Here is an example of this in action. For a long time, RealPlayer G2 has been available for Windows (and Mac), but only RealPlayer 5.0 for unix. 5.0 was all that many people needed, and it looked possible that a G2 player might be on the way, so the urge for independent programmers to develop a G2 player was not very strong. Real have finally made a G2 Player for Linux, but it's so unstable that it's better to use the Windows player under Wine. If there hadn't been a RealPlayer at all for unix, then it's quite possible that independent programmers would have written a player, but the existence of the 5.0 player stymied that. As a result, Windows is still a better platform for viewing G2 streams than Linux.
That example could apply to Windows Media Player. However now there is an extra factor. It would be in Real's interest to have as good a Linux player as possible, subject to development costs. But MS could do well out of putting time-wasting for loops in the code, or not debugging it very well. In this case, MS is more dangerous than just any closed-source vendor, because their main product is in direct competition with Linux. I think this sounds ominous.
... from the looks of things. They're advertising Directory Opus 5 on the web page. I don't know how different the versions are. Literally porting it might be difficult, because it's probably very Amiga-specific. However it should be quite easy to copy the interface.
I'm not sure you're right that punch cards last well. What I mean is this. If you have 650MB worth of punch cards, what's the chances of every single bit of data surviving for longer than, say, if you have 3 copies of the same CD? Y'd have to house them in a sterile warehouse or something. You could probably get CDs to last better, spending equivalent $/MB on looking after them. Or at least magnetic tape.
Slashdot Mirror
If people's favourite band releases only on SDMI, then many will buy the player, however crippled, just to hear the band. The same happened with CDs. Consumers don't have any choice; some publisher has a monopoly on every band.
If enough people buy SDMI-enabled players, even if they use them just to play MP3s, the music industry cartel will be able to release music SDMI-only. I.e. No CD version. If that happens, you will not be able to listen to your music on two different systems without paying double. You will not be able to defragment your hard disk. You will be powerless if they decide to timebomb your music.
Merely by buying an SDMI-enabled player, you increase the chance of music ever being released on SDMI *only*. Don't do it if you value your freedom not to be screwed.
I agree with you, insofar as many people have adopted GPL'd free stuff without realising there was BSD free stuff that does the same. I disagree with you that the GPL is a bad thing, but we can agree that it would be better if people knew what they were getting into before they used it. I think people should examine the reasons why the GPL is *really* better than BSD, rather than using it because it's fashionable.
(I don't want to discuss the relative merits of the two licenses with you; I know we disagree. I'm just saying that many people use the GPL without really understanding it, and it would be better if they did).
You have to keep the effect the same, i.e. preserving all the same freedoms; that is, right to privacy, right to redistribute, right to have and modify source code. You have to use copyright law only, since EULAs are unenforceable internationally. It needs to be in as plain english as possible, so that developers can understand what they're doing.
I'm not sure you can make it binding on developers in the way you describe, whilst preserving the right to modify. It could be counterproductive if you wip out someone's right to make unrelated propriatory software, because many people do not want to give up that right. How will you stop companies having IPOs?
But if you can manage all that you claim, and your instincts really are to help, then go ahead: write a better version! Post a URL here, that way many people will read it. Also you might want to explain in plain english the advantages of your new version. If it genuinely is significantly better, then there's no reason why people won't start using it, including the FSF.
This is exactly what happened to me! I'd seen Linux being used, but I only decided I *really* needed to install it after reading the philosophy stuff at gnu.org.
I wonder how common this is? Maybe more amongst Debian users, since debian makes a big thing of "freedom" as opposed to "coolness" of software.
The internet population has surprised analysts by its resilience to "commercialisation" - i.e. paying for information. I think the reason is that the Internet is more of a "perfect market" than the high street - everyone has complete, instant access to the same information as everyone else. This allows competition to work more fluidly than in the high street: the hassle factor for distributing information has dropped to almost zero. If you know the right forum, you can say something to all the people on the internet who it would interest the most.
[GNU/]Linux distritributions are such a forum for free software. Historically, if you wrote some good code, you could post it on web sites, or newsgroups, but only people who were proactively interested would find out. You'd have to wait for the program to emerge in people's consciousness. Now if you can write something which gets included in a distribution, millions of people who would never have looked for source code on a newsgroup can instantly install the binary from CD or ftp. This improves people's information levels about the free software marketplace, and makes it very hard for a propriatory program to survive if there's a better free program.
Let me contrast the situation with Windows, which doesn't have this distribution thing. Suppose you wanted to get Windows software together with equivalent functionality as, say, Debian's "main" CD. How would you do it? Trawl through thousands of pages of shit on www.shareware.com? Search using altavista 1000 times? Look in a catalogue (this wouldn't work cos some of the stuff in Debian would never achieve wide distribution if sold alone)?
With linux, you can think one day, "hmmm I need a music typesetting program" and instantly find the best free offering, available on your CD / the ftp site. "I want a Pascal beautifier." "I want the cursor on X to disappear after a few seconds inactivity." Because any linux user can do this so easily, it adds an order of magnitude to the weight that will get behind any free software offering. Linux distributions have undoubtably helped free software.
Ok, I guess I'll retract that claim :-) Economists have been decided on the issue for decades; Tricky Dicky was apparently not so sure.
You can get it via anonymous ftp, here. It's actually linked to from their webpage, but it's not very obvious. They probably didn't want to scare non-technical people.
Well some of them anyway. It has an X viewer, or it can spew out ascii, or it can create tex files so that you don't lose (all) the formatting.
Dunno if it'd be good enough for what you want, though. It should be available as part of your favourite linux distribution. Type "apt-get install catdoc" in debian.
Is he worth $40m or something?
Outside the developed worlds, hospitals don't have the financial clout to do as you say. They have to rely on shrinkwrapped software.
Martin Luther-King? Gandhi? George Washington? Jesus?
None of these people were working for their "petty convenience". They suffered much inconvenience for standing up for their beliefs. This applies also to RMS.
The FSF doesn't need to convince the general public that the free software movement has better goals than the open-source movement. It only needs to convince potential authors of free software, so that they'll write stuff for the cause. I think the FSF does quite a good job of this.
The biggest danger from UCITA is the licenses which commercial software companies will impose. They'd be stupid not to; they can take rights from the customer in any way which is useful to them, without the customer even being able to read the license before buying the software. Maybe they won't all use those rights in serverely detrimental ways, but you can be sure that some company will at some point.
Think about Unisys and the GIF issue. Suppose the next version of MS-Office had a clause in the license saying that MS Word's file format was their intellectual property, and that MS reserves the right to change the license without prior notice. They probably wouldn't enforce that right immediately, because it would wipe out sales of MS Office. However, if it ever comes to the point where MS Office is essentially dead, they can impose the following trilemma on you: either (1) delete all non-microsoft software from your system; or (2) delete all your documents which are now, or *ever have been*, in MS Word format; or (3) Pay MS a royalty fee of $100/year for the use of the file format.
Stallman's point that free software authors will in future be held liable for bugs in software which is already around today is a problem which affects the free software community. It wouldn't be as much of a problem for a vendor of proprietory software, because they relicense the software to you at every release. The original copyleft license, by contrast, can still be in force in portions of code which were written 10 years ago but are still used in modern software today. E.g. If I wrote a gcc patch 10 years ago then I'm still liable for bugs occurring as a result of that patch *now*.
... and almost no mainstream politician in America has believed that it works better than the free market, since about 1960.
Look here to see the (more mainstream) theory proposed by Milton Friedman.
> there is no such thing as GNU/Linux
Look here and here to see that GNU/Linux exists.
... oops, where's sed gone? Or is that GNU/sed?
The developers who worked on linux, both in the early days and now, relied on gcc. There's no way that a snowballing mass of casual developers could have accumulated if they each had to pay $00s for a compiler. gcc was linux's midwife.
(I'm sure you know all this, just people might want to know)
... that's what people call it when the Solaris kernel runs with mainly GNU software on top. (And I can't think of many Solaris systems which don't have *some* GNU software installed).
You may not have heard the term before but it is in common use.
The HURD might have obsoleted Linux in ten years time. Or it may have died completely. To a Free Software user, it doesn't matter.
Users of non-free software have to worry in case their OS dies out. They will either have to keep using their obsolete machine, or bin all of their software and try and find modern apps that can read their old documents.
In contrast, if the HURD starts to gather pace then any popular Free Software currently available for Linux will be ported to the HURD. Users can continue using their current apps; they don't have to start afresh every time they change OS. This must be one of the big advantages of Free Software.
> Unless, of course, you're willing to take the
> uneasy position that Microsoft has ever had
> superior technology.
The Microsoft mouse is nice - not cutting edge, and not three-buttoned, but unassuming and pleasant to use.
Maybe DOJ should negotiate for the mouse division to be put in charge.
Nobody will switch OS just so they can watch certain video clips.
However, many people might *not* switch OS because it would *stop* them from watching video clips.
The lack of good linux videoclip support won't repel current linux users, but it might stop current windows users from becoming linux users.
Then again, I'm not sure that WMP will have a positive overall effect on the linux video playback capability, in the long term. It may squash some good offerings that are just getting started now. It might be manipulated by MS to ensure that Linux is not *quite* as good as Windows for video playback (you might decide to write a video player if the current situation is dire, but you probably won't bother if the current situation is merely tolerable).
Suppose Windows Media Player for Linux is ever released, and works ok. There won't be such a pressing need for linux video software any more. So fewer independent video playback programs will get written, and those that do might not get as much work as they deserve. If this happens, MS could use this to our disadvantage, by ensuring that the Windows version is always slightly more advanced / less buggy etc., ensuring that video playback is always better on Windows than on Linux.
Here is an example of this in action. For a long time, RealPlayer G2 has been available for Windows (and Mac), but only RealPlayer 5.0 for unix. 5.0 was all that many people needed, and it looked possible that a G2 player might be on the way, so the urge for independent programmers to develop a G2 player was not very strong. Real have finally made a G2 Player for Linux, but it's so unstable that it's better to use the Windows player under Wine.
If there hadn't been a RealPlayer at all for unix, then it's quite possible that independent programmers would have written a player, but the existence of the 5.0 player stymied that. As a result, Windows is still a better platform for viewing G2 streams than Linux.
That example could apply to Windows Media Player. However now there is an extra factor. It would be in Real's interest to have as good a Linux player as possible, subject to development costs. But MS could do well out of putting time-wasting for loops in the code, or not debugging it very well. In this case, MS is more dangerous than just any closed-source vendor, because their main product is in direct competition with Linux. I think this sounds ominous.
... from the looks of things. They're advertising Directory Opus 5 on the web page. I don't know how different the versions are.
Literally porting it might be difficult, because it's probably very Amiga-specific. However it should be quite easy to copy the interface.
I'm not sure you're right that punch cards last well. What I mean is this. If you have 650MB worth of punch cards, what's the chances of every single bit of data surviving for longer than, say, if you have 3 copies of the same CD?
Y'd have to house them in a sterile warehouse or something. You could probably get CDs to last better, spending equivalent $/MB on looking after them. Or at least magnetic tape.