Is your patch "guaranteed to end up in main line code"? No, of course not. Is it likely to if your patch fixes a bug and works well with the rest of the system. Hell yes!
This "feedback" system is a joke and an insult to competent developers...
Actually you are just having an emotional reaction and not thinking. Your assertion regarding a good fix getting into the system in erroneous, someone still needs to get it to the principle developers of a FOSS project who maintain the official branch of the code. These developers are looking around for incarnations of their code that might have been changed. They are busy making their own changes and expect people who want their changes to be mainlined to submit them. The FOSS procedure is pretty much the same as the Microsoft procedure.
There was also quite a bit of spin with respect to "hand-holding -- not that you get that much of it with Windows". Nearly anyone who is proficient with Windows has done a bit of handholding for coworkers, friends, and family. Such individuals probably do much to encourage the use of Windows, the less tech savvy feel more comfortable with it since they know someone they can get help from.
Actually I take it back, the editorial comment wasn't spin. It was FUD or evangelical blindness.
"The issue is not complying with the letter of the BSD license, the issue is ethical behavior and the spirit of FOSS. At the core of FOSS is the ethic of giving back to those whose shoulders you stand upon. If you are taking a BSD work, integrating it into your GPL project, and making *minor* changes or bug fixes it is ethical to submit those changes/fixes to the BSD community."
The ethics, if there are any, is the idea that code changes should be available. And they _have_ made their code changes available.
What they aren't doing is releasing those changes under BSD, but that is hardly against the spirit of somebody who believes in the GPL.
GPL is *not* intervhangeable with FOSS. In the FOSS spirit of giving back the minor changes/fixes would need to be usable to those whose shoulder you are standing upon. To expect these original developers to change their license is ungrateful and petty, childish actually. Again, if the GPL dev made significant enhancements that then the situation is different.
The problem is, the GPL advocates believe in "keeping the code free", so to speak.... See, the conflict here isn't over giving back to those who helped make that code. It's about giving to those who won't.
Given that we are dealing with only small changes or bug fixes such zealotry is petty and childish.
I thought the real problem here was the fact that one dev removed part of a BSD licensed file which is unchangeable? Wasn't that reverted though, very quickly?
Beyond restoring the original copyright, I think the authors of the minor changes/fixes were tracked down and they OK'd putting these updates into the original code base. In short, they behaved as ethical adults.
If you want something to happen with regards to how your code is used then put it in your license.
I don't think you quite understood my post. I am not saying that everyone should be required to give back. What I am claiming is that those who claim to be ethical members of the FOSS community should behave in that spirit, not merely the letter of the license. It is not so much the actions, but the hypocrisy that reveals the true character.
... Unfortunately most of us can't see past our immediate self and how our choices will have a short-term benefit to our person. That's why you need restrictions in your license - to push people to act in ways they might not otherwise be willing to act.
I was hoping that GPL devs would act ethically without such arm twisting. To be clear, I am only referring to relatively small changes and bug fixes.
If the world was full of unselfish good people the BSD license would be the way to go. It isn't - so the GPL is smarter. BSD dreams of a utopian society while GPL builds a workable, utopiaisk, society in our current reality.
You can hardly claim the GPL leads to a utopia-isk society if ethical behavior is optional, hypocrisy acceptable. Again, if a closed proprietary dev does not contribute small changes and bug fixes to the original devs that is fine. They are not claiming the moral superiority of being part of the FOSS community.
I am not sure you understand the problem, it is *not* how to write a multithreaded program. It is how to write "normal" code, say a for loop, that will automatically be executed in parallel if multiple cores are present.
There is no spirit inherent in the license. People have built that around the projects.
The licenses are quite explicit on what is expected. If more is expected, it should be a part of the license.
Saying "you can do x, y and z" then getting mad when someone does precisely that becuaes they didnt do "a" is absolutely idiotic.
You seem to have misunderstood my post. Compliance with a license and living within the spirit of FOSS are two different things. Giving back to those whose shoulders you stand upon, assuming your changes are relatively minor, is part of the latter. Again, it is a matter of ethics, not a matter of license compliance. Ethical behavior is not required, but that is no reason not to encourage people to behave ethically.
It seems kind of petty to whine about someone stealing your code if you're releasing it under the BSD license though. By using the BSD license instead of the GPL you're choosing to let people take from you without giving back. I frequently hear the argument that BSD licensed code is really free, and the GPL isn't, over exactly this issue.
You completely misunderstand the issue. The issue is not complying with the letter of the BSD license, the issue is ethical behavior and the spirit of FOSS. At the core of FOSS is the ethic of giving back to those whose shoulders you stand upon. If you are taking a BSD work, integrating it into your GPL project, and making *minor* changes or bug fixes it is ethical to submit those changes/fixes to the BSD community. If you are making *major* additions then there would be no ethical requirement to share, but for minor changes and bug fixes there is. Again, I'm referring to ethics and the spirit of FOSS, which is certainly something different than the letter of a license.
I also find *some* hypocrisy among the more enthusiastic GPL advocates. They defend the letter of the license with respect to using BSD code, yet they claim that those selling products based upon Linux should go beyond the GPL and give back more than the source code. That such vendors should also target their products towards Linux desktop users rather than only Windows and Mac users. I have nothing against encouraging vendors to consider Linux, but this logic bothers me given the way BSD developers are sometimes treated. Which is it? Share when it is not excessively burdensome to do so or do what is minimally required by law?
That's only a theoretical scenario (how often does this actually happen?) and one that is unlikely to be practical for more than a short time. Once the GPL'd code diverges from the orginal BSD, changes will be dependent on GPL'd code written by third parties and consequently it would be a GPL violation to back port them to the original BSD code base.
You seem to be rationalizing the original GPL coder's decision not to live by the spirit of FOSS and give back. Furthermore, a bug fix is often so simple that it can not be copyrighted.
"If you take some free software, make some minor modification, and redistribute it as part of your own project, is is then considered good style to contribute the modification back to the original project, under the original license?"
almost everybody will answer yes, no matter what the original license is, and what free software license they themselves prefer.
It is not "good style" to follow this policy, it is good ethics. Comments made by Theo are irrelevant, they occured after GPL fans decided that only the letter of the license, and not the spirit of FOSS, was to be supported. Unlike in the comment that started this thread where the spirit of FOSS is invoked to say that a manufacturuer should target Linux users. It makes the GPL community *look* hypocritical. I realize most members are not hypocritical, but the way Theo colors your view of BSD, comments like the original color the view of GPL fans.
But wasn't that part of the point of the summary -- they saved a ton by using a premade OS rather than building their own. What's so hard about giving back to the community a tiny little something. After all, it is that very community that made their profits possible in the first place. It's about good citizenship, not an extra two cents profit per device.
Linux did *not* make their profits possible, nor was the alternative building their own. Linux was merely a convenient tool. If Linux had not existed BSD may have been an option, or perhaps the incremental cost of a commercial license (QNX?) would have been largely irrelevant. The point is that Linux makes a minor contribution to the profit, not a deal winning or a deal breaking contribution, but it is non-zero so why not pick it up.
With respect to good citizenship, I smell a little hypocracy among the GPL advocates. I don't want a redundant thread so I'll just refer to a different response for those interested. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=310539&cid=20775403
"But why should a company support linux just because their gadget has linux running inside it?"
Because they are benefiting from a mature, open source, and well understood pre-established operating system. If there was no Linux they would have to spend much more development costs in building their own OS for their devices.
I am sensing some hypocracy here, not with respect to this poster but Linux/GPL advocates in general. When BSD folks complain about GPL folks not respecting the spirit of FOSS and "giving back"(1) there is a strong sentiment from the GPL advocates of "too bad, the letter of your license allow us to take and not give back". However when corporation comply with the letter of the GPL and do not "give back" beyond source code GPL advocates complain.
(1) For example in a scenario where a GPL developer takes BSD code, incorporates it into a GPL based project, makes minor fixes or improvements, but does not update the original BSD code with these fixes or minor improvements. Absolutely legal with respect to the BSD license but against the FOSS spirit of giving back to those whose shoulders you stand upon.
The usability experts didn't want to hear what anybody with half a brain had to say about it, the were just interested in what the infantry soldiers had to say about it.
To be honest, I'm not sure it was wrong for them to discount engineers whose relevant experience was playing Quake or something, and only wanting to hear from the guys who crawl around in real mud with real rifles.
Which means the weren't going to do ANY improvements until the entire system was complete, and they could hand the working thing over.
And how is this different from various iterative software engineering methodologies that are promoted around here? Get a minimal version to a real customer as fast as possible to get real feedback. Don't waste time letting non-customers guess at what customers really want or need, find out from customers what they need.
We can decide to be reasonable and rational and agree to set rules on the competitions short of life and death battles to the death.
Pacifism leads to death unless you have non-pacifists around to protect you. Being reasonable and fair is fine and good, and we should strive for that path, but one must also be willing and able to use deadly force in defense. Even in modern times, over a small number of generations, we have seen a population split, the two halves become isolated, one become pacifist, and when the two halves reestablish contact the pacifists are murdered and/or enlsaved by their blood relatives. Sorry, read this in a book so I don't have a link handy, the people were Pacific islanders, timeframe 19th century IIRC.
Tomorrow, the Internet will. There will be less risk for artists, because their fans will already know who they are.
I don't think so. Advertising will gravitate towards popular sites and the ad rates will favor the well funded. The fact that an artist will get coverage somewhere is not all that different from the not to distant past where they got attention from alternative/local radio, alternative/specialty retail outlets, local TV/cable, specialty newpapers/magazines, etc. In short, every band always had access to media of some sort, the differences were in the reach of individual media vehicles. The internet is replacing one vehicle with another, but it is not replacing general trends. The better funded will get the better coverage, even on the internet.
You could have smaller touring agencies working for a much smaller share than a label, because they can estimate the risk so much better when you know how many fans you already have in the area.
This model has always existed, there have always been local/specialized outfits to work at that level. Tthe only difference is emailing an MP3 rather than snail mailing a cassette. More importantly there were and always will be artists who will not settle for such limited success. They want the national and global success and sign with the larger labels. Personally I'd say that the more talented are probably more attracted to larger more capable agencies.
Except, of course, that Apple's 256kb AACs -- which is what folks are discussing -- don't have DRM, and are playable without modification on a wide variety of non-Apple players.
Thank you, that's good to know. I thought the extra 30 cents was just getting you a greater bit rate, my bad. However I believe my point is still valid at this point in time with respect to universality, that "wide variety of non-Apple players" that support AAC is quite the minority.
There's no "vendor lock" for AAC either, just lots of crap vendors who haven't added support for it yet.
We are comparing Amazon's MP3 downloads to Apple's AAC downloads, Apple's AAC's have DRM. The fact that you can rip your CD to AAC is largely irrelevant. Most folks I know reconfigure iTunes to rip as MP3 rather than the default AAC, exceptions are die hard long term Mac owners.
In addition to the preceding, "vendor lock" does not require a technological enforcement. Simple market forces where only one vendor says a particular format is of interest counts too, as is the current situation.
$8-$9 is too much for an album.
It's like they took the distribution costs of a CD, (which could be estimated at $5-$8,) chopped them off, and are still expecting to make the same profit. Why can't they charge much less and make up the profits on volume?
Well the main reason is the consumer's willingness to pay. But record labels also need to recoup their investments and one "successful" artist has to pay for many "unsucceful" artists.
Artists need a label if they desire a certain level of commercial success. It takes a lot of money to promote an artist and bring them to the attention of the mass national or world market. Artists can not afford to do this on the money they making playing in small venues, among their core audience. If they manage to feed themselves they are doing above average, if they can support a family they are so rare they are nearly an anomoly.
The label system persists because there will always be some artists who want large scale success. Of course these successful artists gripe when they think about the small percentage they receive themselves but the truth is they are getting a small percentage of a much larger pie. If you are only getting 5 cents on the dollar, but you are generating several hundred times (or more) the revenue then they are far ahead.. To be faiir to the labels they need a disproportionately large cut from one artist to pay for the dozens of other artists they had *speculatively* financed they did not attain large scale commercial success. Please understand that I am not saying the current label/artist split is correct, I have no way to calculate what the split should be. I am merely arguing that the label system is quite logical and it is economically justifiable for the labels to receive a large percentage due to the speculative nature of their investments.
Artists have almost always needed patrons throughout history. Centuries ago it was the church, royalty, or the wealthy. Today the record label fulfills that role.
Amazon trumps iTunes on DRM-free volume, but iTunes trumps Amazon by selling 256kbps AAC, as opposed to the 256kbps MP3 that Amazon sells.
Isn't that 256kb AAC the optional higher priced version?
More importantly the improved "quality" of 256 kb AAC over 256kb MP3 is largely hypothetical, few if any could tell the difference. However even if we accept marginal quality and size improvements these are overwhelmingly outweighed by the universal nature of MP3 files. Every digital player supports MP3. Portables, cars, home stereos, etc. There is no vendor lock.
The Russians who are in a far more corrupt nation then we are know the value of space travel.
For Russia I think it is more a matter of national pride than future profit. With the collapse of the soviet union and communism several generations have little to look back upon with pride. The soviet space program is about the only prideful accomplishment that can be embraced and the current Russian space program is what remains of soviet program.
And... space is the military high ground. To not be in space resigns oneself to being a second class military power. Given the history within Russia's living memory this is also a major consideration.
As a female geek (but a non-gaming geek) I am pretty sure that we are nearly as rare as hen's teeth in these MMORPGs. I have met exactly two women gamers in my entire life, and I know quite a lot of people.
That used to be true but with MMORGs it is far less true than with other genres, and it is especially untrue for World of Warcraft (WoW) which made quite an effort to attract people at the more casual end of gaming rather than just the hard core. WoW is the first game that I've seen wives and girlfriends begin to play. Voice chat is also another source of evidence that female players are far more common in WoW than in other games.
Why should artists remain with them in this scenario?
Artists need a label if they desire a certain level of commercial success. It takes a lot of money to promote an artist and bring them to the attention of the mass national or world market. Artists can not afford to do this on the money they making playing in small venues, among their core audience. If they manage to feed themselves they are doing above average, if they can support a family they are so rare they are nearly an anomoly.
The label system persists because there will always be some artists who want large scale success. Of course these successful artists gripe when they think about the small percentage they receive themselves but the truth is they are getting a small percentage of a much larger pie. If you are only getting 5 cents on the dollar, but you are generating several hundred times (or more) the revenue then they are far ahead.. To be faiir to the labels they need a disproportionately large cut from one artist to pay for the dozens of other artists they had *speculatively* financed they did not attain large scale commercial success. Please understand that I am not saying the current label/artist split is correct, I have no way to calculate what the split should be. I am merely arguing that the label system is quite logical and it is economically justifiable for the labels to receive a large percentage due to the speculative nature of their investments.
Artists have almost always needed patrons throughout history. Centuries ago it was the church, royalty, or the wealthy. Today the record label fulfills that role.
I would not be surprised to see this develop to their logical conclusion where there are distribution sites that offer a range of services to artists to distribute their work but do not "own" the distribution or copyrights to those works. This can only help artists in the long run, although the conversion to that environment will mostly likely have some short-term hiccups as marketing etc is worked out.
The marketing required is far beyond hiccup level. What is the source of money used to *speculatively* promote an artist beyond the level I decribed above?
Well, if we charge companies (rather than after-the-fact charging the public) maybe they'll choose not to pollute in the first place?
Charging companies is an illusion, costs of cleanup or prevention merely get baked into the costs of goods or services. Companies don't really care one way or the other as long their competition has to work under the same rules as them.
Slashdot Mirror
Is your patch "guaranteed to end up in main line code"? No, of course not. Is it likely to if your patch fixes a bug and works well with the rest of the system. Hell yes! This "feedback" system is a joke and an insult to competent developers...
Actually you are just having an emotional reaction and not thinking. Your assertion regarding a good fix getting into the system in erroneous, someone still needs to get it to the principle developers of a FOSS project who maintain the official branch of the code. These developers are looking around for incarnations of their code that might have been changed. They are busy making their own changes and expect people who want their changes to be mainlined to submit them. The FOSS procedure is pretty much the same as the Microsoft procedure.
There was also quite a bit of spin with respect to "hand-holding -- not that you get that much of it with Windows". Nearly anyone who is proficient with Windows has done a bit of handholding for coworkers, friends, and family. Such individuals probably do much to encourage the use of Windows, the less tech savvy feel more comfortable with it since they know someone they can get help from.
Actually I take it back, the editorial comment wasn't spin. It was FUD or evangelical blindness.
"The issue is not complying with the letter of the BSD license, the issue is ethical behavior and the spirit of FOSS. At the core of FOSS is the ethic of giving back to those whose shoulders you stand upon. If you are taking a BSD work, integrating it into your GPL project, and making *minor* changes or bug fixes it is ethical to submit those changes/fixes to the BSD community."
The ethics, if there are any, is the idea that code changes should be available. And they _have_ made their code changes available. What they aren't doing is releasing those changes under BSD, but that is hardly against the spirit of somebody who believes in the GPL.
GPL is *not* intervhangeable with FOSS. In the FOSS spirit of giving back the minor changes/fixes would need to be usable to those whose shoulder you are standing upon. To expect these original developers to change their license is ungrateful and petty, childish actually. Again, if the GPL dev made significant enhancements that then the situation is different.
The problem is, the GPL advocates believe in "keeping the code free", so to speak. ... See, the conflict here isn't over giving back to those who helped make that code. It's about giving to those who won't.
Given that we are dealing with only small changes or bug fixes such zealotry is petty and childish.
I thought the real problem here was the fact that one dev removed part of a BSD licensed file which is unchangeable? Wasn't that reverted though, very quickly?
Beyond restoring the original copyright, I think the authors of the minor changes/fixes were tracked down and they OK'd putting these updates into the original code base. In short, they behaved as ethical adults.
If you want something to happen with regards to how your code is used then put it in your license.
... Unfortunately most of us can't see past our immediate self and how our choices will have a short-term benefit to our person. That's why you need restrictions in your license - to push people to act in ways they might not otherwise be willing to act.
I don't think you quite understood my post. I am not saying that everyone should be required to give back. What I am claiming is that those who claim to be ethical members of the FOSS community should behave in that spirit, not merely the letter of the license. It is not so much the actions, but the hypocrisy that reveals the true character.
I was hoping that GPL devs would act ethically without such arm twisting. To be clear, I am only referring to relatively small changes and bug fixes.
If the world was full of unselfish good people the BSD license would be the way to go. It isn't - so the GPL is smarter. BSD dreams of a utopian society while GPL builds a workable, utopiaisk, society in our current reality.
You can hardly claim the GPL leads to a utopia-isk society if ethical behavior is optional, hypocrisy acceptable. Again, if a closed proprietary dev does not contribute small changes and bug fixes to the original devs that is fine. They are not claiming the moral superiority of being part of the FOSS community.
Just use pthreads and forget that other nonsense.
I am not sure you understand the problem, it is *not* how to write a multithreaded program. It is how to write "normal" code, say a for loop, that will automatically be executed in parallel if multiple cores are present.
There is no spirit inherent in the license. People have built that around the projects. The licenses are quite explicit on what is expected. If more is expected, it should be a part of the license. Saying "you can do x, y and z" then getting mad when someone does precisely that becuaes they didnt do "a" is absolutely idiotic.
You seem to have misunderstood my post. Compliance with a license and living within the spirit of FOSS are two different things. Giving back to those whose shoulders you stand upon, assuming your changes are relatively minor, is part of the latter. Again, it is a matter of ethics, not a matter of license compliance. Ethical behavior is not required, but that is no reason not to encourage people to behave ethically.
It seems kind of petty to whine about someone stealing your code if you're releasing it under the BSD license though. By using the BSD license instead of the GPL you're choosing to let people take from you without giving back. I frequently hear the argument that BSD licensed code is really free, and the GPL isn't, over exactly this issue.
You completely misunderstand the issue. The issue is not complying with the letter of the BSD license, the issue is ethical behavior and the spirit of FOSS. At the core of FOSS is the ethic of giving back to those whose shoulders you stand upon. If you are taking a BSD work, integrating it into your GPL project, and making *minor* changes or bug fixes it is ethical to submit those changes/fixes to the BSD community. If you are making *major* additions then there would be no ethical requirement to share, but for minor changes and bug fixes there is. Again, I'm referring to ethics and the spirit of FOSS, which is certainly something different than the letter of a license.
I also find *some* hypocrisy among the more enthusiastic GPL advocates. They defend the letter of the license with respect to using BSD code, yet they claim that those selling products based upon Linux should go beyond the GPL and give back more than the source code. That such vendors should also target their products towards Linux desktop users rather than only Windows and Mac users. I have nothing against encouraging vendors to consider Linux, but this logic bothers me given the way BSD developers are sometimes treated. Which is it? Share when it is not excessively burdensome to do so or do what is minimally required by law?
That's only a theoretical scenario (how often does this actually happen?) and one that is unlikely to be practical for more than a short time. Once the GPL'd code diverges from the orginal BSD, changes will be dependent on GPL'd code written by third parties and consequently it would be a GPL violation to back port them to the original BSD code base.
You seem to be rationalizing the original GPL coder's decision not to live by the spirit of FOSS and give back. Furthermore, a bug fix is often so simple that it can not be copyrighted.
"If you take some free software, make some minor modification, and redistribute it as part of your own project, is is then considered good style to contribute the modification back to the original project, under the original license?"
almost everybody will answer yes, no matter what the original license is, and what free software license they themselves prefer.
It is not "good style" to follow this policy, it is good ethics. Comments made by Theo are irrelevant, they occured after GPL fans decided that only the letter of the license, and not the spirit of FOSS, was to be supported. Unlike in the comment that started this thread where the spirit of FOSS is invoked to say that a manufacturuer should target Linux users. It makes the GPL community *look* hypocritical. I realize most members are not hypocritical, but the way Theo colors your view of BSD, comments like the original color the view of GPL fans.
But wasn't that part of the point of the summary -- they saved a ton by using a premade OS rather than building their own. What's so hard about giving back to the community a tiny little something. After all, it is that very community that made their profits possible in the first place. It's about good citizenship, not an extra two cents profit per device.
Linux did *not* make their profits possible, nor was the alternative building their own. Linux was merely a convenient tool. If Linux had not existed BSD may have been an option, or perhaps the incremental cost of a commercial license (QNX?) would have been largely irrelevant. The point is that Linux makes a minor contribution to the profit, not a deal winning or a deal breaking contribution, but it is non-zero so why not pick it up.
With respect to good citizenship, I smell a little hypocracy among the GPL advocates. I don't want a redundant thread so I'll just refer to a different response for those interested. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=310539&cid=20775403
"But why should a company support linux just because their gadget has linux running inside it?"
Because they are benefiting from a mature, open source, and well understood pre-established operating system. If there was no Linux they would have to spend much more development costs in building their own OS for their devices.
I am sensing some hypocracy here, not with respect to this poster but Linux/GPL advocates in general. When BSD folks complain about GPL folks not respecting the spirit of FOSS and "giving back"(1) there is a strong sentiment from the GPL advocates of "too bad, the letter of your license allow us to take and not give back". However when corporation comply with the letter of the GPL and do not "give back" beyond source code GPL advocates complain.
(1) For example in a scenario where a GPL developer takes BSD code, incorporates it into a GPL based project, makes minor fixes or improvements, but does not update the original BSD code with these fixes or minor improvements. Absolutely legal with respect to the BSD license but against the FOSS spirit of giving back to those whose shoulders you stand upon.
The usability experts didn't want to hear what anybody with half a brain had to say about it, the were just interested in what the infantry soldiers had to say about it.
To be honest, I'm not sure it was wrong for them to discount engineers whose relevant experience was playing Quake or something, and only wanting to hear from the guys who crawl around in real mud with real rifles.
Which means the weren't going to do ANY improvements until the entire system was complete, and they could hand the working thing over.
And how is this different from various iterative software engineering methodologies that are promoted around here? Get a minimal version to a real customer as fast as possible to get real feedback. Don't waste time letting non-customers guess at what customers really want or need, find out from customers what they need.
We can decide to be reasonable and rational and agree to set rules on the competitions short of life and death battles to the death.
Pacifism leads to death unless you have non-pacifists around to protect you. Being reasonable and fair is fine and good, and we should strive for that path, but one must also be willing and able to use deadly force in defense. Even in modern times, over a small number of generations, we have seen a population split, the two halves become isolated, one become pacifist, and when the two halves reestablish contact the pacifists are murdered and/or enlsaved by their blood relatives. Sorry, read this in a book so I don't have a link handy, the people were Pacific islanders, timeframe 19th century IIRC.
The Iraqis run around with just guns and walky talkys, and they seem to be doing just fine...
Consider that in their mind dying in battle is "doing just fine".
"Today the record label fulfills that role."
Tomorrow, the Internet will. There will be less risk for artists, because their fans will already know who they are.
I don't think so. Advertising will gravitate towards popular sites and the ad rates will favor the well funded. The fact that an artist will get coverage somewhere is not all that different from the not to distant past where they got attention from alternative/local radio, alternative/specialty retail outlets, local TV/cable, specialty newpapers/magazines, etc. In short, every band always had access to media of some sort, the differences were in the reach of individual media vehicles. The internet is replacing one vehicle with another, but it is not replacing general trends. The better funded will get the better coverage, even on the internet.
You could have smaller touring agencies working for a much smaller share than a label, because they can estimate the risk so much better when you know how many fans you already have in the area.
This model has always existed, there have always been local/specialized outfits to work at that level. Tthe only difference is emailing an MP3 rather than snail mailing a cassette. More importantly there were and always will be artists who will not settle for such limited success. They want the national and global success and sign with the larger labels. Personally I'd say that the more talented are probably more attracted to larger more capable agencies.
Except, of course, that Apple's 256kb AACs -- which is what folks are discussing -- don't have DRM, and are playable without modification on a wide variety of non-Apple players.
Thank you, that's good to know. I thought the extra 30 cents was just getting you a greater bit rate, my bad. However I believe my point is still valid at this point in time with respect to universality, that "wide variety of non-Apple players" that support AAC is quite the minority.
There's no "vendor lock" for AAC either, just lots of crap vendors who haven't added support for it yet.
We are comparing Amazon's MP3 downloads to Apple's AAC downloads, Apple's AAC's have DRM. The fact that you can rip your CD to AAC is largely irrelevant. Most folks I know reconfigure iTunes to rip as MP3 rather than the default AAC, exceptions are die hard long term Mac owners.
In addition to the preceding, "vendor lock" does not require a technological enforcement. Simple market forces where only one vendor says a particular format is of interest counts too, as is the current situation.
$8-$9 is too much for an album. It's like they took the distribution costs of a CD, (which could be estimated at $5-$8,) chopped them off, and are still expecting to make the same profit. Why can't they charge much less and make up the profits on volume?
Well the main reason is the consumer's willingness to pay. But record labels also need to recoup their investments and one "successful" artist has to pay for many "unsucceful" artists.
Artists need a label if they desire a certain level of commercial success. It takes a lot of money to promote an artist and bring them to the attention of the mass national or world market. Artists can not afford to do this on the money they making playing in small venues, among their core audience. If they manage to feed themselves they are doing above average, if they can support a family they are so rare they are nearly an anomoly.
The label system persists because there will always be some artists who want large scale success. Of course these successful artists gripe when they think about the small percentage they receive themselves but the truth is they are getting a small percentage of a much larger pie. If you are only getting 5 cents on the dollar, but you are generating several hundred times (or more) the revenue then they are far ahead.. To be faiir to the labels they need a disproportionately large cut from one artist to pay for the dozens of other artists they had *speculatively* financed they did not attain large scale commercial success. Please understand that I am not saying the current label/artist split is correct, I have no way to calculate what the split should be. I am merely arguing that the label system is quite logical and it is economically justifiable for the labels to receive a large percentage due to the speculative nature of their investments.
Artists have almost always needed patrons throughout history. Centuries ago it was the church, royalty, or the wealthy. Today the record label fulfills that role.
Amazon trumps iTunes on DRM-free volume, but iTunes trumps Amazon by selling 256kbps AAC, as opposed to the 256kbps MP3 that Amazon sells.
Isn't that 256kb AAC the optional higher priced version?
More importantly the improved "quality" of 256 kb AAC over 256kb MP3 is largely hypothetical, few if any could tell the difference. However even if we accept marginal quality and size improvements these are overwhelmingly outweighed by the universal nature of MP3 files. Every digital player supports MP3. Portables, cars, home stereos, etc. There is no vendor lock.
"the lack of DRM truly makes it YOUR music"... and YOURS, and YOURS, and HIS, and HER, and THEIR.
Irrelevant. Given that we a dealing with digital goods, whether the source for the MP3 was Amazon or a CD-ROM rip is of no consequence, trivia.
Assuming of course the Amazon MP3 is not watermarked in some way to indicate the original purchaser.
The Russians who are in a far more corrupt nation then we are know the value of space travel.
... space is the military high ground. To not be in space resigns oneself to being a second class military power. Given the history within Russia's living memory this is also a major consideration.
For Russia I think it is more a matter of national pride than future profit. With the collapse of the soviet union and communism several generations have little to look back upon with pride. The soviet space program is about the only prideful accomplishment that can be embraced and the current Russian space program is what remains of soviet program.
And
As a female geek (but a non-gaming geek) I am pretty sure that we are nearly as rare as hen's teeth in these MMORPGs. I have met exactly two women gamers in my entire life, and I know quite a lot of people.
That used to be true but with MMORGs it is far less true than with other genres, and it is especially untrue for World of Warcraft (WoW) which made quite an effort to attract people at the more casual end of gaming rather than just the hard core. WoW is the first game that I've seen wives and girlfriends begin to play. Voice chat is also another source of evidence that female players are far more common in WoW than in other games.
Why should artists remain with them in this scenario?
Artists need a label if they desire a certain level of commercial success. It takes a lot of money to promote an artist and bring them to the attention of the mass national or world market. Artists can not afford to do this on the money they making playing in small venues, among their core audience. If they manage to feed themselves they are doing above average, if they can support a family they are so rare they are nearly an anomoly.
The label system persists because there will always be some artists who want large scale success. Of course these successful artists gripe when they think about the small percentage they receive themselves but the truth is they are getting a small percentage of a much larger pie. If you are only getting 5 cents on the dollar, but you are generating several hundred times (or more) the revenue then they are far ahead.. To be faiir to the labels they need a disproportionately large cut from one artist to pay for the dozens of other artists they had *speculatively* financed they did not attain large scale commercial success. Please understand that I am not saying the current label/artist split is correct, I have no way to calculate what the split should be. I am merely arguing that the label system is quite logical and it is economically justifiable for the labels to receive a large percentage due to the speculative nature of their investments.
Artists have almost always needed patrons throughout history. Centuries ago it was the church, royalty, or the wealthy. Today the record label fulfills that role.
I would not be surprised to see this develop to their logical conclusion where there are distribution sites that offer a range of services to artists to distribute their work but do not "own" the distribution or copyrights to those works. This can only help artists in the long run, although the conversion to that environment will mostly likely have some short-term hiccups as marketing etc is worked out.
The marketing required is far beyond hiccup level. What is the source of money used to *speculatively* promote an artist beyond the level I decribed above?
Well, if we charge companies (rather than after-the-fact charging the public) maybe they'll choose not to pollute in the first place?
Charging companies is an illusion, costs of cleanup or prevention merely get baked into the costs of goods or services. Companies don't really care one way or the other as long their competition has to work under the same rules as them.