It's simply this following dialogue in some form of another when such things like bnetd appear: Corporation Exec: Project Foo is killing our profits, what can we do? Lawyer: You can always kill it, send the [insert antipiracy group here], or make them unable to continue the project by making them spend all their money on fighting your company in court. Corporation Exec:Do it.
There are some things, such as not having the time to write the software, where you need some kind of solution to deal with an urgent problem. Also, you have to work with what standards your corporation / group places on what can be implemented to solve the problem at hand. To even throw a bit more at this, your hardware may be made in some cases, proprietary(not neccesarily M$), as in the case of the Fujitsu Point 510, where it's digitizer specs are (for now) M$ only, and require the proper software to work and solve the problem. Trying to develop in these cases would be more expensive than the eval! However, if you have hardware that was designed in such manner that open source is allowable, go ahead. Just be mindful that you may entangle additional cost of money/time.
To cut the clutter on dealing with the/. uberuser:
1)If you must, do your work open source under the various licenses.
2)If you happen to be the closed source type offering a demo, just offer it in a clear place - you are on their time, and respect that.
3)If you need to send out information relevant to the program, do it with haste. Again, you are on their clock.
4)If you even think about collecting email addresses, they'd better be staying in your possession. Otherwise, expect the lawyers knocking at your door.
5)This is for you TDS 3(diamondcs) types: dont be doing anything that smacks of spyware, even if it's checking that auth key and triggering your pirated key procedure. Spying on your users generates distrust, and thus generates less want for your inferior product. You are just going to backfire your efforts. Be truthful about what's in that black box of closed source code, and you might get some sales.
6)If 1-5 dont seem to comprehend well, and you're the closed source type, have somebody who understands it use a clue-by-four on you until you do understand. Tolerance is something in short supply here for the clueless.
Well, given the average slashdotter, you probably will get next to nil out of it because of the following:
1)Whatever you do, their tech savvy will outdo you.
2)Your marketing department is mostly a bunch of people who still adhere to the idea that privacy is a non-issue.
3)You still think your "potential customer base" is about as smart as your average cattle farm and sell accordingly.
With this in mind, not even a clue-by-four would help. So hope you've got alternate business plans.
Re:How to make this work.
on
e-Denounce
·
· Score: 0
Unfortunately, not everybody *cares* to be legal, you're just probably one of those among the elite, jealous because you cant get to that kind of stuff - Free Software and/or FAST "F" is your way of revenge. Free Software isnt the complete answer to the problem. What has to be done is to completely start copyright law from scratch and write it so that author and user both can benefit, versus the "it threatens our profits, it's illegal - Send our lawyers!" response we see a la bnetd and DeCSS. In short, not everyone wants legality, and those who seek it will find it escaping from them rather than it being held to them.
If I'm right, this is one of the most desperate examples here of flamebait; this being one of the most insidious of such - given the time/effort put in to this post.
Slashdot Mirror
It's simply this following dialogue in some form of another when such things like bnetd appear:
Corporation Exec: Project Foo is killing our profits, what can we do?
Lawyer: You can always kill it, send the [insert antipiracy group here], or make them unable to continue the project by making them spend all their money on fighting your company in court. Corporation Exec:Do it.
There are some things, such as not having the time to write the software, where you need some kind of solution to deal with an urgent problem. Also, you have to work with what standards your corporation / group places on what can be implemented to solve the problem at hand. To even throw a bit more at this, your hardware may be made in some cases, proprietary(not neccesarily M$), as in the case of the Fujitsu Point 510, where it's digitizer specs are (for now) M$ only, and require the proper software to work and solve the problem. Trying to develop in these cases would be more expensive than the eval!
However, if you have hardware that was designed in such manner that open source is allowable, go ahead. Just be mindful that you may entangle additional cost of money/time.
To cut the clutter on dealing with the /. uberuser:
1)If you must, do your work open source under the various licenses.
2)If you happen to be the closed source type offering a demo, just offer it in a clear place - you are on their time, and respect that.
3)If you need to send out information relevant to the program, do it with haste. Again, you are on their clock.
4)If you even think about collecting email addresses, they'd better be staying in your possession. Otherwise, expect the lawyers knocking at your door.
5)This is for you TDS 3(diamondcs) types: dont be doing anything that smacks of spyware, even if it's checking that auth key and triggering your pirated key procedure. Spying on your users generates distrust, and thus generates less want for your inferior product. You are just going to backfire your efforts. Be truthful about what's in that black box of closed source code, and you might get some sales.
6)If 1-5 dont seem to comprehend well, and you're the closed source type, have somebody who understands it use a clue-by-four on you until you do understand. Tolerance is something in short supply here for the clueless.
Well, given the average slashdotter, you probably will get next to nil out of it because of the following:
1)Whatever you do, their tech savvy will outdo you.
2)Your marketing department is mostly a bunch of people who still adhere to the idea that privacy is a non-issue.
3)You still think your "potential customer base" is about as smart as your average cattle farm and sell accordingly.
With this in mind, not even a clue-by-four would help. So hope you've got alternate business plans.
Unfortunately, not everybody *cares* to be legal, you're just probably one of those among the elite, jealous because you cant get to that kind of stuff - Free Software and/or FAST "F" is your way of revenge. Free Software isnt the complete answer to the problem. What has to be done is to completely start copyright law from scratch and write it so that author and user both can benefit, versus the "it threatens our profits, it's illegal - Send our lawyers!" response we see a la bnetd and DeCSS. In short, not everyone wants legality, and those who seek it will find it escaping from them rather than it being held to them.
If I'm right, this is one of the most desperate examples here of flamebait; this being one of the most insidious of such - given the time/effort put in to this post.