"You should also have the freedom to make modifications and use them privately in your own work or play, without even mentioning that they exist. If you do publish your changes, you should not be required to notify anyone in particular, or in any particular way.
The freedom to use a program means the freedom for any kind of person or organization to use it on any kind of computer system, for any kind of overall job, and without being required to communicate subsequently with the developer or any other specific entity."
Which lays out my reluctance to explain to you or anyone else what my Firefox modifications do or why I put those changes into my copy of the program. I'd cite a relevant section of the applicable license, but no such section exists.
I don't know if they publish this anymore, but when Macromedia controlled Flash (as opposed to Adobe controlling Flash as it achieved by buying Macromedia), Flash specifications were available. The most recent Flash specs were available under some restrictive license I hadn't completely finished reviewing.
I believe that work on multiple free software Flash decoders proceeds apace, albeit slowly.
Finally, I don't understand what being opposed to "closed standards and technologies" means if you're a proponent of proprietary software—software would seem to me to be a "technology".
Gervase Markham's article for the Times Online would seem to disagree with you on that last point—a previous ruling meant a £1.5/day fine. Markham argued that Microsoft should just pay the fine as that fine was not so big:
"Still, Microsoft may consider this a good deal. One foundation of their success is their operating system monopoly, reinforced by the interactions and dependencies between the client and server versions which tie the two together. In 2003, they made £14 million a day from Windows client operating system licences alone. In the context of preserving that revenue, a fine of one-tenth of that figure suddenly doesn't seem so large.
Somehow a fine double that of the old fine still doesn't seem terribly significant in their daily take. And according to the BBC, Microsoft will appeal so perhaps this will ultimately result in a fine more to Microsoft's liking.
While it is right and proper to object to Flash on the basis of it being proprietary software, you're raising this objection to a proprietary web browser developer. Denying you the freedom to make your own modifications to the program and distribute the improved version to the community is part of their gig.
The caving refers to the difference between Microsoft's initial reluctance to do anything with ODF and their current position. Previously, all Microsoft reps did in Massachusetts was complain that it isn't good for disabled users (which, as numerous people have pointed out, has far more to do with an application than a file format) and is inadequate for government use. Their ironic complaint that they were being dictated to on file formats got well-deserved laughter from those who followed the case closely. Microsoft was missing how users were being treated—being told that Microsoft's changing format was what Microsoft dictated to them. In light of the secret changes to Microsoft Office formats, the state's insistence on preserving government documents into the forseeable future (which Mass. viewed as state soverignty) was never adequately addressed by Microsoft.
It's not so much that what you're saying is untrue, so much as what you're saying doesn't address how this change of stance is a caving-in for Microsoft. Their latest behavior doesn't jibe with their previous behavior, and now the public can see that even Microsoft needs to change in order to "compete in new markets where they were being gradually squeezed out". Hence, Microsoft is caving in to persistent competitive force.
Vigilance being the eternal price of freedom, it will be up to us to continue to point out the dangers of using proprietary software at all and making sure that all ODF implementors abide by the spec and produce interoperable documents. Don't let people convince you that this task is impossible. Those same people would have told you years ago that any ODF progress was a pipe dream (the initial reason PDF was not pitched as an editable file format, according to a Mass. state rep discussing ODF) and that nobody will make free (as in freedom) software.
First, copyright infringement isn't theft. Courts know the difference and so do lawyers. Historically, the US is in no position to make the complaints some of the trade groups are making such as the classic complaint that only surfaces when our ox is gored, but not when we do the goring. The US copyright system has its roots in what is being called "piracy" here (without much critical examination of that language, I might add). The US copyright system didn't initially recognize foreign exclusive rights, so American book publishers were free to domestically commercially reprint Dickens' serials without paying Dickens, for example. Dickens didn't like that, but plenty of other people did.
Also, some of the distortion in the argument proposed by the MPA, RIAA, and big book publishers focuses on the plight of the artist when it is actually these organizations that have no problem screwing these same artists in situations where illicit copying and distribution haven't entered the picture.
Some forms of media we cherish were initally percieved as wrong: Radio, which you mention, was initially dismissed as "piracy". So too was cable TV, recorded performances of various kinds (analog video tape, analog audio tape, digital audio tape, digital video recorders), and sheet music.
One thing seems clear to me through the years: the organized businesses apparently don't know their business well enough to be taken seriously when they claim the sky is falling on their business model, and it's not clear to me that the businesses are properly interpreting the intent of copyright.
Free software for maintainance.
on
Freedb.org Ending
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· Score: 3, Insightful
At the end of proprietary software development, the project ends and the free software community has to either do without or start anew from whatever they've got (which is not the proprietary program's source code and a license to run, inspect, share, and modify at any time for any reason). At the end of a free software project, others can pick up where the former free software hackers left off and continue improving the free software. If the license for the program is a copylefted free software license, the improved software continues to be free.
Let's hope source code for freedb2.org and database dumps from freedb2.org are shared under a free software license so that if freedb2.org dies we're not left with nothing but an increasingly out-of-date freedb.org database and freedb.org software.
Thanks so much for all the work, freedb.org hackers. Your efforts are greatly appreciated.
"While it's not enough to make me switch from Firefox yet--I still love certain Firefox features such as inline search--it's no longer an object of ridicule either. IE 7.0 Beta 3 includes huge functional and security advantages of IE 6 and is an absolute no brainer for anyone choosing to stick with IE."
MSIE is proprietary. Those three words cover a great deal of what is wrong with Thurrott's review, even granting him his status as a Microsoft sycophant (as another poster pointed out).
Security advantages are largely unknown because nobody can inspect the program. We'll undoubtedly learn that MSIE 7 is riddled with security problems which Microsoft will be slow to fix, if they fix them at all. Nobody else will be allowed to improve the program and distribute their improved software. These freedoms are what proprietors deny you and your community. This is the well-established pattern of many proprietors, Microsoft being only one. I seem to recall that MSIE 7 had security problems well before this pre-release.
Yes, being "no longer an object of ridicule" is damning with faint praise.
Feature counts are what's wrong with a lot of corporate media; covering the horserace without questioning the underlying, more important, reasons why things are the way they are. Covering the underlying reasons would expose that software freedom is more important than feature counts, and in particular with web browsers one need not give up one to get the other. The Mozilla Foundation has been lacking here too; they don't talk about software freedom as a reason to favor Firefox (or any of their other fine programs). They are buying into a contest that they'll undoubtedly lose to a more monied and advertisement-conscious organization—Microsoft—and we'll see this when MSIE regains significant numbers of the popularity percentage points it lost to Firefox over the last few years.
Comparing anything to perfection is a false dichotomy because nothing is perfect. The question the grandparent poster is asking is better answered by asking oneself cui bono—who benefits? Then you'll see that as long as a proprietor can keep open standards from taking hold, that proprietor benefits. If the most popular browser were to become a free software browser, such as Firefox, you'd see Microsoft change their browser implementation to better conform to standards because they wouldn't be able to compete with broken-by-design software.
Since the BSA has clients, they are not ""generic" software troopers" who "go in with a mind of checking one type of software". I don't know what a "software trooper" is, but the one type of software the BSA checks for is the software whose copyright is held by their clients.
The BSA doesn't care about programs whose copyrights aren't held by their clients. This is somewhat similar to music labels that don't sign up with the RIAA or movie studios that aren't signed up with the MPA—for all of their bluster about caring for artists, these representative organizations actually don't care because they're not paid by anyone but their clients.
The BSA doesn't care about free software either, so if you're violating a free software license the BSA won't alert the free software copyright holder.
The question that comes up a lot during these threads is how does the BSA gain entrance in the first place—read the licenses to all of your software (something you should do anyhow, regardless of how many licenses there are or if you're a business). Some proprietary software licenses say that you (the licensee) grant the licensor or their representatives the power to inspect for license conformance. Such inspection, in the BSA's opinion, can be done on-site or over a network. This is another on-the-ground practical reason why it behooves everyone to run exclusively free software.
Where did you get this information from? Without a source, this is hardly deserving of a +5 Informative moderation.
If Cisco feared warranty returns of inoperable routers (due to user's misflashing), why would Cisco release a router running the Linux kernel at all? Why would they release a router that had software which could be modified? It doesn't seem logical to change the model number to something else out of fear of "brick"ed warranty returns unless the WRT54GL is somehow un-"brick"able (which, I'm guessing, it isn't).
For many people Microsoft Word is a de facto standard, they wouldn't consider using anything else even though not that long ago they probably would have used WordPerfect and before that WordStar.
The point being that de facto standards can be toppled both from within the proprietary alternatives and the free software programs available. Microsoft has learned that to keep their users locked into Microsoft Office formats they have to do things we in the free software world can't do and wouldn't want to do—change the format, fail to document how the format really works, and provide no means of allowing others to improve upon any particular implementation of support for the format.
So don't get so lost in how things are that you fail to see how things were and how they can be better for users.
Then our business should go to their competitors. We'll do without their hardware, if what you say is true. However Sony sells cameras that make JPEG images; from what I understand, the attempts at demonstrating JPEG patent encumberances have fallen flat. Sony also sells PCs on which one can run free software OSes. But I think the major adverse publicity they have yet to live down is the recent Sony-BMG CD scandal.
Then when you get around to reading the transcript of the interview or listening to it, you should be pleased to learn that Stallman is not with the Open Source movement. He takes pains to tell people that his movement, the Free Software movement, is older than the Open Source movement and pursues a different philosophy. Stallman doesn't speak for the Open Source movement.
In this interview he points out one of the differences between the two movements:
Now, this is an interesting example of the difference between Free Software and Open Source. Some people promote what they call "Open Source DRM". Now, recall the difference in fundamental values between Free Software and Open Source. In Free Software, our values are freedom and community. We want to be part of a community of free people. Whereas, in Open Source, they talk about making powerful, reliable software and they promote a development model. Now, for us, the question of how a program is developed is a secondary issue. I mean, if some models work better than others, fine -- use them. But that's not what's really important to Free Software, to people who value -- who support the Free Software movement and value freedom.
So, there are people who say that they could apply that development model to developing software designed to restrict us. And maybe it's true; maybe if people study and share and collaborate in developing software designed to take away our freedom, it might become more powerful and reliable in taking away our freedom. But that's a bad thing. That's evil. It's -- in spirit, it's similar to collaborative development of a virus. If something is evil, we don't want it to be done well. We want it to be done as badly as possible.
Ah, the decades-old anti-GPL myths come up again.
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OpenWengo Code Camp
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Corporate sponsorship doesn't seem to be a goal or a problem for GPL-covered programs, unless you want to argue that IBM, Redhat, and HP aren't corporations. But why should corporations be given primacy? Users rights are far more important and happen to be eminently compatible with making money as well.
There also seems to be no lack of talent in programs licensed under the GNU GPL; such as the GNU utility programs which people seem to prefer against free and proprietary alternatives alike because they're free and so highly capable (even software proprietors including Apple agree; MacOS X is compiled with GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection).
Perhaps your Silicon Valley-based office should consider doing something more competitive than relying on GPL-incompatible licensing and namecalling.
Sounds like an attempt at an excuse for not doing one's own vetting. Allowing anyone to dynamically insert arbitrary content, or outsourcing ad vetting to another party makes one vulnerable and blameworthy. Ultimately, it comes down to what do site administrators value. Now we know.
I don't compare them on the basis of whether they abused their respective monopolies or not because that doesn't matter. Håkon Lie claims that Microsoft's font monopoly is an unrecognized (or perhaps under appreciated) leveraging of their monopoly elsewhere.
I'm also not making a legalistic argument. Looking at this from the user's perspective, it makes no difference whether antitrust regulation has caught up to what an organization is doing. I understand the significant market power, capital, popularity, and other business differences between the two monopolists. But those things aren't important here because the argument I'm getting at centers on user's freedoms.
Both organizations are monopolists. Users are not well-served to do business with monopolists, nor to become dependant on what monopolists offer (even if it's offered gratis). The Opera browser programs don't become more trustworthy, inspectable, sharable, or modifiable because the organization that distributes it has not been convicted for illegally leveraging a monopoly (like Microsoft has been in the US), or because Opera has not been found to have illicitly distributed software (like Microsoft was found doing in France).
In his news.com editorial, Lie recommends people download Larabie's "Goodfish" family even though the licensing for Goodfish isn't any better than Microsoft's Corefonts, thus a major portion of his editorial makes little sense.
Goodfish faces many of the same practical problems Microsoft's Corefonts families do—incomplete sets of glyphs for certain sets of characters making the font families not so useful or downright useless for some users. Goodfish's primary distribution site (myfonts.com) also wants you to register with them before downloading gratis copies of the font families. This registration is framed as though it's a bonus for the user: "Because MyFonts.com's products are all downloadable, our customers often find that they need to return at a later date to download their fonts again." but if the fonts were free software, I could get a replacement copy from anyone, even my next-door neighbor or some online repository which means I benefit from mirroring and I can get the font I want without the hassle of registration.
Goodfish is only licensed for 1-5 users to use the fonts (and it's not clear how Larabie would enforce this in the US without a license manager).
Furthermore, the hypocrisy of the last part of his essay cannot be overstated: all proprietary software distributors are monopolists. When you get the proprietary Opera browser, you are prohibited from fixing the bugs, improving it, or sharing your improved copy with others. The Opera 9 license even prohibits running the program on certain devices (again, without a license manager it's not clear that this portion of their license is enforcible in the US). If you want any changes, you have to go to the proprietor--the monopolist--for those changes. There is no other place to go because everybody else is prohibited from helping you. Opera won't distribute to you a copy of the Opera browser source code under a free software license to allow any of this activity.
Yet here's a monopolist decrying the state of affairs for fonts on the basis that Microsoft's fonts don't grant the user sufficient freedom.
I appreciate the bad position the user is in with fonts on the web, but the way out is not to build a dependence on fonts you can't use, inspect, share, and modify anywhere you want for any purpose. The way out is to find free software fonts or make them, build on them to improve them, use them, and distribute the free font with the freedoms intact so the community benefits. Some free software fonts have been named in this/. thread, complete with links.
These aren't mutually exclusive means of reaching a desirable goal: ending DRM-tainted media. You can simultaneously not buy CDs from RIAA labels and call them to tell them why you're not buying. For all they know, the reason why you're not buying is because your wage forces you to cut back on entertainment, or perhaps you've bought all the other Britney Spears CDs but her most recent CD isn't quite as good. Maybe you decided that you'd rather drink up your surplus money with your friends rather than buy any CDs. Being vocal and clear is better than being ambiguous and letting them fill in the blanks.
Had they proposed this and lost, I would have said it is ironic. Yes, it is inconvenient that we have this calculation and I think there is work afoot to change it now (work which, you'll undoubtedly point out, we wouldn't need to do had the standard gotten this right the first time). But to implement an existing open standard incorrectly is not laudable. To claim otherwise is to ignore the value of standards and rank them as less important than "I know better than you" with different versions of what is "better". Such efforts weaken interoperability, portability, and make things harder for users to control the work they'd rather focus on.
After all, why would Microsoft reward Massachusetts for taking no action to curtail an IT policy that favored ODF and rejected Microsoft's own XML format, especially after Microsoft has by all accounts lobbied so aggressively to bring about a change?
They wouldn't and they probably aren't, but they see that they are meeting organized opposition and Microsoft can't get as far as they'd like to get based on lies. The people fighting this pro-ODF have not fallen into the trap of saying it's all about money, thus they are able to pursue an argument which no proprietor can combat: value the freedom to read, share, archive, and modify these documents any time you want, for any reason, and value these freedoms for their own sake. Don't archive your work in file formats that are underdocumented, encumbered by patents, or unavailable to the public on free terms or else you risk not being able to pursue your archival mission in the forseeable future.
I don't think deRaadt screamed anything, and I don't think that my words (however kind or rude you perceive them to be) prove anything about his demeanor. I'm not him and I don't speak for him. However, I do believe that you're reading something into his words that is far more harshly spoken (or written, as this case is) than they really were.
The reason why Hifn chose to do worse than this 5 years ago (no access) eludes me as does the rationale behind their current campaign to collect personal data on implementors starting 2 years ago. I have no specific evidence of what Hifn seeks to gain by making these choices. I don't follow the OpenBSD lists closely, but it seems to me that neither of these Hifn policy changes were in any way provoked by OpenBSD developers; as far as I can tell, this brouhaha began sometime this year. So I don't think that it is OpenBSD's work or statements that have anything to do with Hifn's choices to grant (8 years ago), restrict (5 years ago), or mediate (2 years ago) access to their docs.
And as for dealing with OpenBSD, I don't think Hifn needs to do that at all—again, 8 years ago Hifn just made docs available to the world implicitly saying "Add support for our hardware to your software". I have no evidence of contact between Hifn and OpenBSD until recently after Hifn twice changed their docs policy. If Hifn simply goes back to how they used to do business 8 years ago, OpenBSD will be satisfied and the two organizations need never speak again. Hifn can continue to believe anything they want about OpenBSD's devs and enjoy the fruits of OpenBSD's free (in both senses) support where OpenBSD users demand that their machines carry Hifn-brand encryption hardware. But for all I know, Hifn has enough money sitting around where they can afford to choose to cut off their clients' access to tech specs out of spite. Hifn's here-and-gone-again docs support alone make me think that they're not too stable and one should be cautious before dealing with them. They should have more deeply considered this 5 years ago when they cut off all docs access; reopening docs access will make the organization seem uncertain.
There's something else going on with this story, and it's not explained by saying de Raadt was rude.
I tried visiting http://extranet.hifn.com/home/ but I couldn't get the page at all. So if the docs were licensed to allow verbatim non-commercial sharing, this wouldn't be a problem because I could get them from a mirror. It would be as OpenBSD wishes and this thread probably never would have happened.
Putting aside how many questions there are (a minor point), having to answer any personal questions and trusting them with my personal data (something recent headlines warn everyone against; how many companies have recently leaked or lost control of personal data?) is not open access which is what was offered 8 years ago, as de Raadt claims:
"8 years ago all the above data sheets were fully available
for download without any registration. Then about 5 years ago hifn closed
up completely, and documentation was totally unavailable. About 2 years ago
hifn went to this new model of "answer 50 personal questions"."
The change in policy goes either unaddressed by Hifn or is being pitched as "some liberalization of access in recent months" depending on what email you're reading. Framing the issue as liberalization of access in recent months" tries to get people to ignore that well before "recent months" (ending 5 years ago, in fact) these same docs were far more available to people who wanted to help Hifn sell their hardware, people Hifn should be willing to work with. Hifn was doing the right thing for years and recently chose to stop doing the right thing by stopping all distribution of the docs.
Hifn's representative knows that this change in policy doesn't make them look good. They don't dare explain why they can't go back to doing what they were apparently comfortable doing 8 years ago because that would mean acknowledging that their current policy isn't as good as their 8-year-old policy on the same docs. So they try to spin this hoping that you'll take the narrow reading on this and ignore the long-term read. Hence, I think the term lying is appropriate because Hifn's approach misrepresents by trying to get the audience to ignore that now you need to log into a webpage but you used to be able to get the docs no questions asked.
Slashdot Mirror
One of the freedoms of free software is that I'm under no obligation to publish my changes. In the words of the definition of the term "free software" in this context:
Which lays out my reluctance to explain to you or anyone else what my Firefox modifications do or why I put those changes into my copy of the program. I'd cite a relevant section of the applicable license, but no such section exists.
I don't know if they publish this anymore, but when Macromedia controlled Flash (as opposed to Adobe controlling Flash as it achieved by buying Macromedia), Flash specifications were available. The most recent Flash specs were available under some restrictive license I hadn't completely finished reviewing.
I believe that work on multiple free software Flash decoders proceeds apace, albeit slowly.
Finally, I don't understand what being opposed to "closed standards and technologies" means if you're a proponent of proprietary software—software would seem to me to be a "technology".
Gervase Markham's article for the Times Online would seem to disagree with you on that last point—a previous ruling meant a £1.5/day fine. Markham argued that Microsoft should just pay the fine as that fine was not so big:
Somehow a fine double that of the old fine still doesn't seem terribly significant in their daily take. And according to the BBC, Microsoft will appeal so perhaps this will ultimately result in a fine more to Microsoft's liking.
While it is right and proper to object to Flash on the basis of it being proprietary software, you're raising this objection to a proprietary web browser developer. Denying you the freedom to make your own modifications to the program and distribute the improved version to the community is part of their gig.
The caving refers to the difference between Microsoft's initial reluctance to do anything with ODF and their current position. Previously, all Microsoft reps did in Massachusetts was complain that it isn't good for disabled users (which, as numerous people have pointed out, has far more to do with an application than a file format) and is inadequate for government use. Their ironic complaint that they were being dictated to on file formats got well-deserved laughter from those who followed the case closely. Microsoft was missing how users were being treated—being told that Microsoft's changing format was what Microsoft dictated to them. In light of the secret changes to Microsoft Office formats, the state's insistence on preserving government documents into the forseeable future (which Mass. viewed as state soverignty) was never adequately addressed by Microsoft.
It's not so much that what you're saying is untrue, so much as what you're saying doesn't address how this change of stance is a caving-in for Microsoft. Their latest behavior doesn't jibe with their previous behavior, and now the public can see that even Microsoft needs to change in order to "compete in new markets where they were being gradually squeezed out". Hence, Microsoft is caving in to persistent competitive force.
Vigilance being the eternal price of freedom, it will be up to us to continue to point out the dangers of using proprietary software at all and making sure that all ODF implementors abide by the spec and produce interoperable documents. Don't let people convince you that this task is impossible. Those same people would have told you years ago that any ODF progress was a pipe dream (the initial reason PDF was not pitched as an editable file format, according to a Mass. state rep discussing ODF) and that nobody will make free (as in freedom) software.
First, copyright infringement isn't theft. Courts know the difference and so do lawyers. Historically, the US is in no position to make the complaints some of the trade groups are making such as the classic complaint that only surfaces when our ox is gored, but not when we do the goring. The US copyright system has its roots in what is being called "piracy" here (without much critical examination of that language, I might add). The US copyright system didn't initially recognize foreign exclusive rights, so American book publishers were free to domestically commercially reprint Dickens' serials without paying Dickens, for example. Dickens didn't like that, but plenty of other people did.
Also, some of the distortion in the argument proposed by the MPA, RIAA, and big book publishers focuses on the plight of the artist when it is actually these organizations that have no problem screwing these same artists in situations where illicit copying and distribution haven't entered the picture.
Some forms of media we cherish were initally percieved as wrong: Radio, which you mention, was initially dismissed as "piracy". So too was cable TV, recorded performances of various kinds (analog video tape, analog audio tape, digital audio tape, digital video recorders), and sheet music.
One thing seems clear to me through the years: the organized businesses apparently don't know their business well enough to be taken seriously when they claim the sky is falling on their business model, and it's not clear to me that the businesses are properly interpreting the intent of copyright.
At the end of proprietary software development, the project ends and the free software community has to either do without or start anew from whatever they've got (which is not the proprietary program's source code and a license to run, inspect, share, and modify at any time for any reason). At the end of a free software project, others can pick up where the former free software hackers left off and continue improving the free software. If the license for the program is a copylefted free software license, the improved software continues to be free.
Let's hope source code for freedb2.org and database dumps from freedb2.org are shared under a free software license so that if freedb2.org dies we're not left with nothing but an increasingly out-of-date freedb.org database and freedb.org software.
Thanks so much for all the work, freedb.org hackers. Your efforts are greatly appreciated.
MSIE is proprietary. Those three words cover a great deal of what is wrong with Thurrott's review, even granting him his status as a Microsoft sycophant (as another poster pointed out).
Comparing anything to perfection is a false dichotomy because nothing is perfect. The question the grandparent poster is asking is better answered by asking oneself cui bono—who benefits? Then you'll see that as long as a proprietor can keep open standards from taking hold, that proprietor benefits. If the most popular browser were to become a free software browser, such as Firefox, you'd see Microsoft change their browser implementation to better conform to standards because they wouldn't be able to compete with broken-by-design software.
Since the BSA has clients, they are not ""generic" software troopers" who "go in with a mind of checking one type of software". I don't know what a "software trooper" is, but the one type of software the BSA checks for is the software whose copyright is held by their clients.
The BSA doesn't care about programs whose copyrights aren't held by their clients. This is somewhat similar to music labels that don't sign up with the RIAA or movie studios that aren't signed up with the MPA—for all of their bluster about caring for artists, these representative organizations actually don't care because they're not paid by anyone but their clients.
The BSA doesn't care about free software either, so if you're violating a free software license the BSA won't alert the free software copyright holder.
The question that comes up a lot during these threads is how does the BSA gain entrance in the first place—read the licenses to all of your software (something you should do anyhow, regardless of how many licenses there are or if you're a business). Some proprietary software licenses say that you (the licensee) grant the licensor or their representatives the power to inspect for license conformance. Such inspection, in the BSA's opinion, can be done on-site or over a network. This is another on-the-ground practical reason why it behooves everyone to run exclusively free software.
Where did you get this information from? Without a source, this is hardly deserving of a +5 Informative moderation.
If Cisco feared warranty returns of inoperable routers (due to user's misflashing), why would Cisco release a router running the Linux kernel at all? Why would they release a router that had software which could be modified? It doesn't seem logical to change the model number to something else out of fear of "brick"ed warranty returns unless the WRT54GL is somehow un-"brick"able (which, I'm guessing, it isn't).
For many people Microsoft Word is a de facto standard, they wouldn't consider using anything else even though not that long ago they probably would have used WordPerfect and before that WordStar.
The point being that de facto standards can be toppled both from within the proprietary alternatives and the free software programs available. Microsoft has learned that to keep their users locked into Microsoft Office formats they have to do things we in the free software world can't do and wouldn't want to do—change the format, fail to document how the format really works, and provide no means of allowing others to improve upon any particular implementation of support for the format.
So don't get so lost in how things are that you fail to see how things were and how they can be better for users.
Then our business should go to their competitors. We'll do without their hardware, if what you say is true. However Sony sells cameras that make JPEG images; from what I understand, the attempts at demonstrating JPEG patent encumberances have fallen flat. Sony also sells PCs on which one can run free software OSes. But I think the major adverse publicity they have yet to live down is the recent Sony-BMG CD scandal.
Then when you get around to reading the transcript of the interview or listening to it, you should be pleased to learn that Stallman is not with the Open Source movement. He takes pains to tell people that his movement, the Free Software movement, is older than the Open Source movement and pursues a different philosophy. Stallman doesn't speak for the Open Source movement.
In this interview he points out one of the differences between the two movements:
Corporate sponsorship doesn't seem to be a goal or a problem for GPL-covered programs, unless you want to argue that IBM, Redhat, and HP aren't corporations. But why should corporations be given primacy? Users rights are far more important and happen to be eminently compatible with making money as well.
There also seems to be no lack of talent in programs licensed under the GNU GPL; such as the GNU utility programs which people seem to prefer against free and proprietary alternatives alike because they're free and so highly capable (even software proprietors including Apple agree; MacOS X is compiled with GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection).
Perhaps your Silicon Valley-based office should consider doing something more competitive than relying on GPL-incompatible licensing and namecalling.
I'm sure your profanity-laced submissions in the public domain, or under the new BSD or MIT X11 licenses will be given due consideration.
But some people care about the freedom of derivatives, so they prefer licenses which work to ensure that derivative works are also free.
Sounds like an attempt at an excuse for not doing one's own vetting. Allowing anyone to dynamically insert arbitrary content, or outsourcing ad vetting to another party makes one vulnerable and blameworthy. Ultimately, it comes down to what do site administrators value. Now we know.
I don't compare them on the basis of whether they abused their respective monopolies or not because that doesn't matter. Håkon Lie claims that Microsoft's font monopoly is an unrecognized (or perhaps under appreciated) leveraging of their monopoly elsewhere.
I'm also not making a legalistic argument. Looking at this from the user's perspective, it makes no difference whether antitrust regulation has caught up to what an organization is doing. I understand the significant market power, capital, popularity, and other business differences between the two monopolists. But those things aren't important here because the argument I'm getting at centers on user's freedoms.
Both organizations are monopolists. Users are not well-served to do business with monopolists, nor to become dependant on what monopolists offer (even if it's offered gratis). The Opera browser programs don't become more trustworthy, inspectable, sharable, or modifiable because the organization that distributes it has not been convicted for illegally leveraging a monopoly (like Microsoft has been in the US), or because Opera has not been found to have illicitly distributed software (like Microsoft was found doing in France).
In his news.com editorial, Lie recommends people download Larabie's "Goodfish" family even though the licensing for Goodfish isn't any better than Microsoft's Corefonts, thus a major portion of his editorial makes little sense.
/. thread, complete with links.
Goodfish faces many of the same practical problems Microsoft's Corefonts families do—incomplete sets of glyphs for certain sets of characters making the font families not so useful or downright useless for some users. Goodfish's primary distribution site (myfonts.com) also wants you to register with them before downloading gratis copies of the font families. This registration is framed as though it's a bonus for the user: "Because MyFonts.com's products are all downloadable, our customers often find that they need to return at a later date to download their fonts again." but if the fonts were free software, I could get a replacement copy from anyone, even my next-door neighbor or some online repository which means I benefit from mirroring and I can get the font I want without the hassle of registration.
Goodfish is only licensed for 1-5 users to use the fonts (and it's not clear how Larabie would enforce this in the US without a license manager).
Furthermore, the hypocrisy of the last part of his essay cannot be overstated: all proprietary software distributors are monopolists. When you get the proprietary Opera browser, you are prohibited from fixing the bugs, improving it, or sharing your improved copy with others. The Opera 9 license even prohibits running the program on certain devices (again, without a license manager it's not clear that this portion of their license is enforcible in the US). If you want any changes, you have to go to the proprietor--the monopolist--for those changes. There is no other place to go because everybody else is prohibited from helping you. Opera won't distribute to you a copy of the Opera browser source code under a free software license to allow any of this activity.
Yet here's a monopolist decrying the state of affairs for fonts on the basis that Microsoft's fonts don't grant the user sufficient freedom.
I appreciate the bad position the user is in with fonts on the web, but the way out is not to build a dependence on fonts you can't use, inspect, share, and modify anywhere you want for any purpose. The way out is to find free software fonts or make them, build on them to improve them, use them, and distribute the free font with the freedoms intact so the community benefits. Some free software fonts have been named in this
These aren't mutually exclusive means of reaching a desirable goal: ending DRM-tainted media. You can simultaneously not buy CDs from RIAA labels and call them to tell them why you're not buying. For all they know, the reason why you're not buying is because your wage forces you to cut back on entertainment, or perhaps you've bought all the other Britney Spears CDs but her most recent CD isn't quite as good. Maybe you decided that you'd rather drink up your surplus money with your friends rather than buy any CDs. Being vocal and clear is better than being ambiguous and letting them fill in the blanks.
Had they proposed this and lost, I would have said it is ironic. Yes, it is inconvenient that we have this calculation and I think there is work afoot to change it now (work which, you'll undoubtedly point out, we wouldn't need to do had the standard gotten this right the first time). But to implement an existing open standard incorrectly is not laudable. To claim otherwise is to ignore the value of standards and rank them as less important than "I know better than you" with different versions of what is "better". Such efforts weaken interoperability, portability, and make things harder for users to control the work they'd rather focus on.
Proprietors will reduce their price to lock in an audience. Pursuing free and open standards is better than focusing on price or an efficient development methodology.
Andy Updegrove asks:
They wouldn't and they probably aren't, but they see that they are meeting organized opposition and Microsoft can't get as far as they'd like to get based on lies. The people fighting this pro-ODF have not fallen into the trap of saying it's all about money, thus they are able to pursue an argument which no proprietor can combat: value the freedom to read, share, archive, and modify these documents any time you want, for any reason, and value these freedoms for their own sake. Don't archive your work in file formats that are underdocumented, encumbered by patents, or unavailable to the public on free terms or else you risk not being able to pursue your archival mission in the forseeable future.
I don't think deRaadt screamed anything, and I don't think that my words (however kind or rude you perceive them to be) prove anything about his demeanor. I'm not him and I don't speak for him. However, I do believe that you're reading something into his words that is far more harshly spoken (or written, as this case is) than they really were.
The reason why Hifn chose to do worse than this 5 years ago (no access) eludes me as does the rationale behind their current campaign to collect personal data on implementors starting 2 years ago. I have no specific evidence of what Hifn seeks to gain by making these choices. I don't follow the OpenBSD lists closely, but it seems to me that neither of these Hifn policy changes were in any way provoked by OpenBSD developers; as far as I can tell, this brouhaha began sometime this year. So I don't think that it is OpenBSD's work or statements that have anything to do with Hifn's choices to grant (8 years ago), restrict (5 years ago), or mediate (2 years ago) access to their docs.
And as for dealing with OpenBSD, I don't think Hifn needs to do that at all—again, 8 years ago Hifn just made docs available to the world implicitly saying "Add support for our hardware to your software". I have no evidence of contact between Hifn and OpenBSD until recently after Hifn twice changed their docs policy. If Hifn simply goes back to how they used to do business 8 years ago, OpenBSD will be satisfied and the two organizations need never speak again. Hifn can continue to believe anything they want about OpenBSD's devs and enjoy the fruits of OpenBSD's free (in both senses) support where OpenBSD users demand that their machines carry Hifn-brand encryption hardware. But for all I know, Hifn has enough money sitting around where they can afford to choose to cut off their clients' access to tech specs out of spite. Hifn's here-and-gone-again docs support alone make me think that they're not too stable and one should be cautious before dealing with them. They should have more deeply considered this 5 years ago when they cut off all docs access; reopening docs access will make the organization seem uncertain.
There's something else going on with this story, and it's not explained by saying de Raadt was rude.
I tried visiting http://extranet.hifn.com/home/ but I couldn't get the page at all. So if the docs were licensed to allow verbatim non-commercial sharing, this wouldn't be a problem because I could get them from a mirror. It would be as OpenBSD wishes and this thread probably never would have happened.
Putting aside how many questions there are (a minor point), having to answer any personal questions and trusting them with my personal data (something recent headlines warn everyone against; how many companies have recently leaked or lost control of personal data?) is not open access which is what was offered 8 years ago, as de Raadt claims:
The change in policy goes either unaddressed by Hifn or is being pitched as "some liberalization of access in recent months" depending on what email you're reading. Framing the issue as liberalization of access in recent months" tries to get people to ignore that well before "recent months" (ending 5 years ago, in fact) these same docs were far more available to people who wanted to help Hifn sell their hardware, people Hifn should be willing to work with. Hifn was doing the right thing for years and recently chose to stop doing the right thing by stopping all distribution of the docs.
Hifn's representative knows that this change in policy doesn't make them look good. They don't dare explain why they can't go back to doing what they were apparently comfortable doing 8 years ago because that would mean acknowledging that their current policy isn't as good as their 8-year-old policy on the same docs. So they try to spin this hoping that you'll take the narrow reading on this and ignore the long-term read. Hence, I think the term lying is appropriate because Hifn's approach misrepresents by trying to get the audience to ignore that now you need to log into a webpage but you used to be able to get the docs no questions asked.
Please do cite the insult in this message, the message this /. thread refers us to read to represent de Raadt's input on this topic. I selected the subject header in that message and saw one other message from de Raadt. Neither have insults in them, and insults are not of comparable weight as the loss of freedom.