I see a critical difference between the open source and free software philosophies -- for the open source movement these "alternative sources of software" you talk about include doing government work in proprietary software using proprietary formats (this has obvious short and long-term adverse impact for citizens who want to read government documents; even the state of Massachusetts recognized this before their caving into Microsoft, or revealing the real purpose of the so-called "open formats" project, depending on which way one looks at it).
This is because the open source movement message focuses on things software proprietors can cater to in some way -- fewer bugs, faster development, lower costs, and leveraging talented developers worldwide -- all issues constructed from the very narrow frame of debate businesses talk about. These are not bad things in themselves but they don't speak to a user's freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify software anytime for any reason.
So long as software freedom isn't a part of the debate, users will be encouraged to choose one software proprietor over another. The issue here is not how many dollars the government can save (the main issue many/. posters are examining), the issue is what the government gets for the money it spends. Choosing one master over another is not freedom.
I manage the website for a locally-produced radio show called "News from Neptune". We distribute episodes of the show under a Creative Commons license in three formats: Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, and Speex.
My father has a MacOS X machine (one of the early dual-CPU G4s) and his installation of MacOS X is fully updated as of the time/date stamp on this post. I was curious how easily MacOS X users could play the show file. We tried to play a FLAC-encoded episode of the show using the QuickTime player program.
He installed the FLAC QuickTime component without a problem, and then he downloaded a FLAC-encoded episode of the show to test (streaming the FLAC show was not working). Despite the FLAC component being installed, the FLAC file was not registered to work with the QuickTime Player so double-clicking the file was not going to do the right thing (but he knows how to change this to make it work this way in the future). He went through the file requestor to open the FLAC file.
There was a noticeable delay (about 15 seconds) before the audio began playing (a slower machine might mean a longer delay). Judging by the length of the delay, we guessed that the FLAC file was being converted (in its entirety) to something else. Then he saved a.mov file (not self-contained, a pointer file) using the QTPlayer program. He was left with a small (~180k) file. This file is not large enough to do anything but point to some other file--reading the strings in the file confirms it. This file points to the FLAC file (not a decoded equivalent).
The kicker: Quitting the QTPlayer, and double-clicking on the newly-made.mov file started the QTPlayer and played the file instantly with no delay. Opening the FLAC file still imposed a delay to play. iTunes would only allow him to place the.mov file into an iTunes library. We didn't try doing anything with iTunes beyond this (such as burning an audio CD).
Off the cuff, this gives me the impression that Apple is imposing an unnecessary delay with the FLAC file.
In my experience no operating system does everything I want it to do out of the box, and Microsoft Windows and MacOS X only come close when I install a bunch of third-party software that didn't come with the system. Also, this entire framing of the debate ignores the far more important issue of software freedom (and many would, no doubt, cite the circular argument that this lack of debate on software freedom is proper and right because the mass audience doesn't know about software freedom).
People's choices are narrowed to favor things which proprietors can cater to. The framing of the issue excludes alternatives to proprietary software, effectively narrowing the allowed scope of debate. Free software OSes don't ship with many personal computers, and they aren't advertised to the degree proprietary software is, and they are often behind in features. But they excel in delivering software freedom--something proprietors cannot deliver at all. In many venues there is no discussion about what the free software community has been working on for the past two decades. Sometimes, if free software comes into play at all, it is just used to drive down the cost of some proprietary software (I recall reading a New York Times report which talked about a Microsoft memo that said something to the effect of "Lose no sale to Linux").
Perhaps if we did a better job of teaching the importance of valuing software freedom for its own sake, we would see this values reflected in more people's opinions (much to the ire of software proprietors).
Sounds to me like a justification to make and distribute a free software FLAC QuickTime plugin so our friends burdened with the proprietary QuickTime implementation Apple distributes can play streaming FLAC data or play FLAC files.
I see no technical justification of Apple's Lossless format that convinces me it is superior to FLAC (of course, since Apple's Lossless format is only available in proprietary software, it will always lose for those that care about software freedom). Yet I'm sure people will use it and encourage others to use it because it is distributed with their proprietary software. In this way, it reminds me of the odd stance some people take with Ogg Vorbis versus MP3--they know that the Vorbis codec has performed at least as well as MP3 in many listening tests, they acknowledge that Ogg is a better encapsulation format (allowing for more expressive tags, for instance), and they insist on using "the best tool for the job". But they cave in to popular pressure to conform to using a lesser "tool" and endorse the continued use of MP3, sometimes even exclusively (which is really silly).
I hope nobody interprets what I'm writing as though this takes away from this new BSD-licensed Apple Lossless decoder. I'm grateful for what has been done here--it was needed and it is a great contribution to the free software community. I think there's a great future for it at archive.org in case anyone submits audio encoded with Apple's Lossless codec. This could allow archive.org to decode that and re-encode it with something else (many archive.org recordings are encoded many ways). However, when I distribute losslessly encoded copies of audio, I'll continue to dismiss Apple's Lossless codec out of hand and prefer FLAC. I help manage the website for a locally-produced talk radio show called "News from Neptune" and there you can find copies of the show encoded in FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, and Speex. FLAC serves our needs excellently.
Actually, what IBM contributed is quite unclear. Read the revocation clause at the end of IBM's announcement in their patent pledge. IBM can revoke the pledge from anyone who sues "Open Source Software" (odd in that nobody sues software) for any "intellectual property" matter (a purposefully vague and undefined term in the IBM patent pledge). I was surprised at how poorly specified their pledge is.
So, if someone involved in "Open Source Software" (a reasonable inference on what IBM meant by their language) distributes one of my GPL-covered programs under a license other than the GPL, that's copyright infringement. I have to decide if I want to risk losing my access to IBM's pledged patents or defend my rights under law and pursue a lawsuit against the copyright infringer. This is hardly a good choice to have to make, but considering the small number of pledged patents and how unlikely I am to be sued for patent infringement by IBM anyhow, I might choose to risk forgoing access to the pledged patents. I certainly won't write any software planning to implement any of IBM's patented ideas (but I might not be able to help it, since patents are written to be quite expansive).
No, you can't patent anything. Lawyers, for instance, know what a hassle the patent system is and aren't about to sick that system on themselves by allowing legal strategy patents, as a hypothetical example.
They know what a benefit it is to their business to make sure all other fields of endeavor are patentable.
If I recall correctly, some years ago in the US surgeons turned down the chance to lock up their work by allowing patents on surgical techniques.
I think most people are choosing to do exactly that--not give any money. It's okay to talk about why we're not giving money.
I'm choosing to do that for a good reason: I'd get nothing for my donation. When I donate money to my local community radio station, a far more cash-poor outfit than Viacom, I get a t-shirt or a CD. Gifts like these are small but nice (this is a common way for the organization to say thanks to their donors). Even though my community radio station is incorporated, I get something far more valuable for my contribution: I become a member of the station. I volunteer there and I can rise as far in the station's hierarchy as I wish to go. I can make important station decisions as I dedicate more of my time and effort there. Anyone in the public can come to periodic meetings where everyone (who isn't on-air) goes to meet and discuss station issues. This is unusual--corporations are built to deny democratic access.
Quite the contrary is true of donating to a multinational corporation like Viacom. You'll get nothing in return for your donation (not even a DVD copy of the episodes you helped to make possible--considering how few people are donating, this would cost virtually nothing to supply). As a producer, you'll have to see the shows you funded with ads as they run on TV the first time. In exchange for paying the production costs, you won't control the copyright to the episodes (even jointly with all the other donors).
So when the revenue from DVDs and syndication dries up, you will have no power to relicense the shows you paid for. This means you can't relicense the shows under, say, a Creative Commons license where others can non-commercially share and enjoy the show, or build on it so long as they share their work under the same terms you shared your sponsored work with them ("ShareAlike").
This donation effort is apparently run by people who don't seem to understand the wisdom behind not treating a corporation like a charity. They also don't seem to get that when you pay for something to be produced you get more control over the result. Considering all the additional revenue Viacom makes from Star Trek (merchandising, for instance), which apparently Viacom would be allowed to keep, it becomes clear that these donors aren't so much donating to keep Enterprise going as they are donating to keep Viacom going.
Yes, I want them to improve how they make their decisions. Unlike teaching a dog calculus, I don't think it's beyond them to do so, I think that there needs to be someone opposing the round-the-clock lobbying corporations put into getting them to seeing things their way.
I don't think it's a lot to ask of the public, even though (as you note) elected officials so often disappoint. If nobody asks, there is absolutely no pressure on them to do anything differently. So we shouldn't be surprised that they don't do what we want when we don't engage in the process. Merely asking isn't enough, of course, we really need organized people to tell them that they'll not vote for the incumbent if they make the wrong decision or base their decision on bad policy. Perhaps then we can combat the organized money opposing our efforts.
I saw nothing in the introduction that addressed my question but the FAQ had this to offer:
"Our proposal to Paramount is to sponsor the production of another season of Star Trek: Enterprise in 2005/06 without any further creative and legal demands ("no strings attached"). It may be sold to any network or cable channel, or broadcasted in first-run syndication."
Which tells me why I wouldn't donate a dime to this effort. These folks are seriously entertaining treating a corporation as a charity, donating money to Viacom so they can make money on my donation. They don't seem to understand that paying for something gives you increased control over that thing. This is what producers do--raise money for production of shows. If I'm helping to pay for the show, I would want something more than I get by buying a copy of a series I had nothing to do with on a DVD in a store. At least with a DVD of a show I didn't help pay production costs on, I get to watch a high-quality never-degrading copy of the show in perpetuity. With the Enterprise deal, I don't even get a copy of the DVD; I have to go out and buy it and the DVD I buy will give me no right to share even verbatim copies of it non-commercially.
I was hoping that these fans would have come up with something more creative than this. It's not too much to ask that since these fans would be, ostensibly, funding an entire season of Enterprise, they would control the copyright to the episodes and be able to license the episodes (thus eventually getting back some of their costs in syndication rights and DVD sales, then when the market for these episodes has dried up in a few years, they could release the episodes under an appropriate Creative Commons license).
But since this really is just a call for corporate charity, this effort strikes me as profoundly naive.
Do you have some figures to show us so we can get a better understanding of what you mean by real time access and how PostgreSQL and MySQL are inadequate to the task? It's information like this that can help us not dismiss your anecdote as you tell us to do ("anectodal data doesn't mean anything").
As it stands, if you're writing a dispatching system for the New York Police Department (which I take you mean by NYPD), most people aren't doing that so I would find it hard to believe that they would be convinced away from choosing a free software or open source database program instead of the proprietary programs you're advocating.
My boss, who sits on Ways and Means (the committe which is in charge of the budget) and a few of his friends have been talking amongst themselves and they are planning a number of hearings this year to discuss open source in general and more specifically as a way to save goverement money from going to huge software companies like M$ as a way to help cut some goverement spending.
That's a real shame because it means that they have genuinely taken in the watered-down message the open source movement promotes--that we should weigh software issues not on ethics or freedom, but on cost of development, distribution, and even (ironically) settle for proprietary software when it is technically more functional than an "open source" competitor. The open source movement pitches this message because they're chiefly speaking to businesses and they believe any freedom talk will interfere with conveying their development methodology message to businesses.
As such, if the US Government is doing what you describe, they're probably just using that talk to get Microsoft to drop its price on the software it licenses to the US Government. Other countries and US states have done this before, and it will be done again. Lowering the cost of Microsoft software is probably the reason why Massachusetts allowed Microsoft's proprietary Office formats to be included as an "open format". There's no part of the open source movement's message a proprietor can't cater to, so proprietors love to frame the issues at hand as the open source movement discusses them.
Better to focus on software freedom, which the free software movement has been pitching for over a decade longer than the open source movement has been touting their message. Those who want software freedom for its own sake never have to settle for stumping for non-free software because the free software message doesn't focus on a development methodology to make development cheaper, faster, and produce less buggy software. The free software movement centers on giving computer users the freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify computer software. The open source movement's goals are fine as far as they go, but they don't go far enough. They say nothing about the most important question we can ask: how should we treat other people? This is an ethical question which demands an ethical response.
You have lost software freedom for those "various network appliances, switches, routers, etc." and you still have software freedom for OpenSSH. They are different programs licensed differently despite that the non-free programs are derivatives of the free software program. It's sad that you chose to make your point with swearing and exaggerating to prove a false point. It doesn't make your argument more convincing.
One thing that is not clear from the articles linked to in this story is who would hold the copyright to the fan-funded episodes of the show, should these fans contribute money for more episodes to be made.
Would this qualify as a work for hire (where Paramount studios arranges for casting people, writers, costumers, etc. to be available to anyone who has a few million to put together a show)? Or are these fans planning on treating a multinational corporation like a charity and donating their money to Viacom so that Paramount will make more episodes?
Without passing judgement, it is very clear that Linus values convenience above principle. This is part of the reason so many Slashbots like him: he is, in their minds, "refreshingly" a-political.
I forgot to include this in my previous follow-up: it seems quite a political statement to me to favor convenience above software freedom. I'd hardly call Torvalds apolitical, I'd say that his views are the views people have been taught to value--use what helps you get jobs done, push aside any other concerns regardless of their effect on society--hence they are popular.
This man [Theo de Raadt] is every bit as committed to software freedom as RMS is.
If de Raadt were that committed to software freedom, he would agree with copyleft which preserves software freedom for derivatives. Instead, the software de Raadt distributes is non-copylefted free software; software which is licensed to allow non-free derivatives. That means someone else (or some organization) has the power to separate the freedom from the software for their derivative and distribute that derivative which denies software freedom to their users. The effect on society is not the same with non-copylefted and copylefted free software licenses.
I think RMS is grateful for all the free software de Raadt writes and distributes, but I doubt that RMS and de Raadt would agree that they are equally committed to software freedom. One promotes non-copylefted free software licenses to encourage popularity (popularizing Ogg Vorbis, for instance, where the reference libraries are licensed under a new-BSD-like license) and the other uses a non-copylefted free software license routinely. None of this is to take anything away from de Raadt's award or how much he deserves it; he's done good work that ought to be celebrated.
This is probably from the newly-introduced synaptic driver; either disable it in xorg.conf and use the [IM]PS/2 driver to go back to FC2-style functionality, or RTFM and tune it the way you like.
Aside from the gratuitous and needless swearing, this is an example of very poor design. Placing the trackpad regions and the like in an X.org driver means all users get them by default, whether they want them or not. There's no way to tell xorg.conf that one user wants them on and another user does not. Or that one user wants this arrangement of trackpad regions, and another user wants a different arrangement. This isn't xorg.conf's job, this is the kind of functionality one should be able to configure in the mouse preferences.
My rule of thumb with OSes is to give them three major releases to work out the major user-visible kinks, then investigate whether the system is worthwhile, mediocre, or unusable (or somewhere in between these three points). The OS distributors pick their schedule, and I live with whatever schedule they pick (including allowing for any delays they wish to have). I think that your kind words about FC3 goes a little too far on the rosy side. In no particular order, here are some user-visible problems with FC3:
Under FC2, my laptop battery status worked. I didn't know how much time I had left to charge or left on the battery because the version of the battery status applet didn't estimate in terms of time. But under FC3, the battery applet never shows the correct information (it can't tell when I'm plugged in versus on battery, it can't tell how much the battery is losing power). As I understand it, this is a Linux kernel issue. I'd love to help debug this; is there some program I can run to send to knowing developers informing them of my system information so the kernel can do a better job of getting battery status like FC2's kernels did?
The trackpad has hidden (and apparently unmodifiable) regions where one can use a scrollwheel-like area, and a couple of areas which function as "buttons" for back and forward in Firefox. Had I set these up myself, these would not be annoying; I could have chosen where they were located on the trackpad, if they were there at all, and possibly when I wanted them there. But as they are, these trackpad regions make the trackpad unusable. Also, the acceleration is way too high; I'm constantly overshooting the mark with the trackpad in FC3. None of these problems existed in FC2 on the same laptop. The mouse preference panel is useless for trackpad regions and the acceleration setting has no effect on my trackpad. It's not at all clear where to look. If these functions are programmed into X, then there are some major design problems that need to be addressed (trackpad regions have no place being outside user-settable state).
gamin sometimes holds an open filehandle on directories preventing ejectable/removable media from being gracefully ejectable or removable. No ordinary user should have to open a terminal, run/usr/sbin/lsof and grep out the directory of the unejectable device, discover it is gam_server, kill gam_server (thus making it drop its open filehandles), and wait for some other process to restart it. GNOME still doesn't tell you what process is making a drive unejectable, so you have to "know" what the likely culprits are. As far as I can tell, gamin is no improvement over fam which had the same problem in FC2.
Sometimes ejectable devices don't show up as icons on the desktop in a timely manner. I don't know why, but sometimes they show up minutes later with no provocation on my part.
FC3 is no better than FC2 about recognizing my wireless device and my ethernet device then keeping them working properly -- both devices can be seen, both work well, but their configuration changes in system-network-configure (switching from "OK" to "system" and sometimes to "config"). The docs on this don't seem to exist, and so it's hard to tell why this happens. The database where this is kept appears to be self-corrupting because the make & model information is almost always wrong and the tiny icon indicating the kind of device each communication device is (ethernet versus wireless, for instance) becomes wrong after a couple of graceful reboots, for no apparent reason.
Installing new packages after the OS is installed is still flakey and the Add/Remove Applications panel is pretty much a joke. I have to use yum (which only recently became somewhat usable) and even then, a lot of repos don't have mirrors that work with yum. yum is remarkably slower than apt to do the same kinds of major function (searching, for instance). The default FC3 repo list for u
Distributing services in addition to the software doesn't mean that distributor will give you a copy of the GPL-covered software at no fee. RMS did exactly this with GNU Emacs for a while, distributing the program commercially on tape to those who didn't have Internet access. His distribution came with no other support (but he made that available too at hundreds of dollars per hour, which some firms were willing to pay). CheapBytes distributes copies of GPL-covered software (and other free software) without adding other services to it. The GPL is a commercial license and has been since the first time a GPL-covered program was distributed for a fee.
Try telling the staff at Borders books that. I tried and they looked at me like I was crazy. After all, I was asking for free WiFi so I could look up reviews of books I wanted to get from their store. Borders has some ridiculously expensive subscription WiFi service (T-Mobile). Maybe that's why they thought my request was so odd -- they are only familiar with the overpriced WiFi service they have, perhaps they assumed that every other WiFi setup costs the same amount of money.
After the Borders employees curtly dismissed my request, I left the store and bought the books I wanted from a local bookseller -- one which offers free WiFi. Borders lost the sale and left a lingering bad memory for me.
As is common with the focus on features and price, there's no accounting for software freedom. I would not want to deploy a server that was essentially a black box instead of a server I could run, inspect, modify anytime, and share with anyone. I'll never inspect all the software I run, but I rely on a community of inspectors and a huge collection of improvements made by people near and far. I think that when people share source code under a free software license, they don't have the room to get away with the nasty problems that plague proprietary software. I don't see Microsoft's IIS giving me software freedom, but Apache does. I remain uncomfortable handing over the integrity of a client's website to a proprietor.
I'd like to turn off autocompletion in the URL bar. I don't want to turn off my history, I don't want to set my history to 0 day retention, but I am willing to run an extension. I don't want to do these other things because they don't work and they have ugly side-effects I don't want.
Mozilla suite made it easy to accomplish this. Firefox appears to have no mechanism for doing this at all, nor do I know of any about:config preference to change to make URL bar autocompletion go away.
I don't like URL bar autocompletion because it gives away where I have been browsing. When I browse with my laptop, I'm not interested in advertising to onlookers where I've been.
Sam Greenblatt, a member of the OSDL board, was quoted as saying something very unclear: "Eventually there should be three licenses: The GPL, a commercial version of the GPL...". The GNU General Public License (GPL) allows one to distribute copies of covered works for a fee. Many people have turned GCC (the GNU Compiler Collection), one noteworthy GPL-covered program, into a commercial work by distributing copies of it for a fee, some have also based for-hire consulting services on GCC. These consultants develop GCC as a business activity.
Most of the time when people say "commercial" in this context, they don't mean that. That word was just a poor choice which may stem from not fully understanding what software freedom entails. What they really meant to say was "proprietary", which is something different. In this case, I don't know what that other meaning would be; a proprietary GPL would not be the GPL, it would be a perverse opposite of what the GPL stands for and accomplished long before the open source movement existed. Thus I'm left thinking Greenblatt's statement is at best unclear, non-sensical at worst.
NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP didn't use vector graphics for a lot of the most commonly seen graphics. The buttons on windows, the application icons, and the buttons in various programs were all bitmaps.
Some programs exploited Display Postscript more than others, but on the whole, I'd expect to see a lot more vector graphics use in a typical free software OS in the next few years than I saw with NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP. I was never much of a PS hacker, but I understand that PS can do a lot more than graphics work.
I own a NeXT cube system (currently in my attic, unused) which I used to use regularly from NeXTSTEP 2.1 through NeXTSTEP 3.2.
To all those who give up on software freedom (like a recent discussion I participated in on GNOME-marketing concerning an upcoming live multimedia CD which may include MP3s and a non-free (for some) MP3 player program), take a look at what the anti-software-patents organizers have accomplished so far. This didn't come about because they used the circular logic so many use to justify pushing aside what they know to be best.
I applaud those who organized this effort for having the courage of their convictions to pursue better policy. You offer us who are burdened with software patents something to aspire to.
Slashdot Mirror
I see a critical difference between the open source and free software philosophies -- for the open source movement these "alternative sources of software" you talk about include doing government work in proprietary software using proprietary formats (this has obvious short and long-term adverse impact for citizens who want to read government documents; even the state of Massachusetts recognized this before their caving into Microsoft, or revealing the real purpose of the so-called "open formats" project, depending on which way one looks at it).
This is because the open source movement message focuses on things software proprietors can cater to in some way -- fewer bugs, faster development, lower costs, and leveraging talented developers worldwide -- all issues constructed from the very narrow frame of debate businesses talk about. These are not bad things in themselves but they don't speak to a user's freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify software anytime for any reason.
So long as software freedom isn't a part of the debate, users will be encouraged to choose one software proprietor over another. The issue here is not how many dollars the government can save (the main issue many /. posters are examining), the issue is what the government gets for the money it spends. Choosing one master over another is not freedom.
I manage the website for a locally-produced radio show called "News from Neptune". We distribute episodes of the show under a Creative Commons license in three formats: Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, and Speex.
My father has a MacOS X machine (one of the early dual-CPU G4s) and his installation of MacOS X is fully updated as of the time/date stamp on this post. I was curious how easily MacOS X users could play the show file. We tried to play a FLAC-encoded episode of the show using the QuickTime player program.
He installed the FLAC QuickTime component without a problem, and then he downloaded a FLAC-encoded episode of the show to test (streaming the FLAC show was not working). Despite the FLAC component being installed, the FLAC file was not registered to work with the QuickTime Player so double-clicking the file was not going to do the right thing (but he knows how to change this to make it work this way in the future). He went through the file requestor to open the FLAC file.
There was a noticeable delay (about 15 seconds) before the audio began playing (a slower machine might mean a longer delay). Judging by the length of the delay, we guessed that the FLAC file was being converted (in its entirety) to something else. Then he saved a .mov file (not self-contained, a pointer file) using the QTPlayer program. He was left with a small (~180k) file. This file is not large enough to do anything but point to some other file--reading the strings in the file confirms it. This file points to the FLAC file (not a decoded equivalent).
The kicker: Quitting the QTPlayer, and double-clicking on the newly-made .mov file started the QTPlayer and played the file instantly with no delay. Opening the FLAC file still imposed a delay to play. iTunes would only allow him to place the .mov file into an iTunes library. We didn't try doing anything with iTunes beyond this (such as burning an audio CD).
Off the cuff, this gives me the impression that Apple is imposing an unnecessary delay with the FLAC file.
In my experience no operating system does everything I want it to do out of the box, and Microsoft Windows and MacOS X only come close when I install a bunch of third-party software that didn't come with the system. Also, this entire framing of the debate ignores the far more important issue of software freedom (and many would, no doubt, cite the circular argument that this lack of debate on software freedom is proper and right because the mass audience doesn't know about software freedom).
People's choices are narrowed to favor things which proprietors can cater to. The framing of the issue excludes alternatives to proprietary software, effectively narrowing the allowed scope of debate. Free software OSes don't ship with many personal computers, and they aren't advertised to the degree proprietary software is, and they are often behind in features. But they excel in delivering software freedom--something proprietors cannot deliver at all. In many venues there is no discussion about what the free software community has been working on for the past two decades. Sometimes, if free software comes into play at all, it is just used to drive down the cost of some proprietary software (I recall reading a New York Times report which talked about a Microsoft memo that said something to the effect of "Lose no sale to Linux").
Perhaps if we did a better job of teaching the importance of valuing software freedom for its own sake, we would see this values reflected in more people's opinions (much to the ire of software proprietors).
Sounds to me like a justification to make and distribute a free software FLAC QuickTime plugin so our friends burdened with the proprietary QuickTime implementation Apple distributes can play streaming FLAC data or play FLAC files.
I see no technical justification of Apple's Lossless format that convinces me it is superior to FLAC (of course, since Apple's Lossless format is only available in proprietary software, it will always lose for those that care about software freedom). Yet I'm sure people will use it and encourage others to use it because it is distributed with their proprietary software. In this way, it reminds me of the odd stance some people take with Ogg Vorbis versus MP3--they know that the Vorbis codec has performed at least as well as MP3 in many listening tests, they acknowledge that Ogg is a better encapsulation format (allowing for more expressive tags, for instance), and they insist on using "the best tool for the job". But they cave in to popular pressure to conform to using a lesser "tool" and endorse the continued use of MP3, sometimes even exclusively (which is really silly).
I hope nobody interprets what I'm writing as though this takes away from this new BSD-licensed Apple Lossless decoder. I'm grateful for what has been done here--it was needed and it is a great contribution to the free software community. I think there's a great future for it at archive.org in case anyone submits audio encoded with Apple's Lossless codec. This could allow archive.org to decode that and re-encode it with something else (many archive.org recordings are encoded many ways). However, when I distribute losslessly encoded copies of audio, I'll continue to dismiss Apple's Lossless codec out of hand and prefer FLAC. I help manage the website for a locally-produced talk radio show called "News from Neptune" and there you can find copies of the show encoded in FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, and Speex. FLAC serves our needs excellently.
Actually, what IBM contributed is quite unclear. Read the revocation clause at the end of IBM's announcement in their patent pledge. IBM can revoke the pledge from anyone who sues "Open Source Software" (odd in that nobody sues software) for any "intellectual property" matter (a purposefully vague and undefined term in the IBM patent pledge). I was surprised at how poorly specified their pledge is.
So, if someone involved in "Open Source Software" (a reasonable inference on what IBM meant by their language) distributes one of my GPL-covered programs under a license other than the GPL, that's copyright infringement. I have to decide if I want to risk losing my access to IBM's pledged patents or defend my rights under law and pursue a lawsuit against the copyright infringer. This is hardly a good choice to have to make, but considering the small number of pledged patents and how unlikely I am to be sued for patent infringement by IBM anyhow, I might choose to risk forgoing access to the pledged patents. I certainly won't write any software planning to implement any of IBM's patented ideas (but I might not be able to help it, since patents are written to be quite expansive).
No, you can't patent anything. Lawyers, for instance, know what a hassle the patent system is and aren't about to sick that system on themselves by allowing legal strategy patents, as a hypothetical example.
They know what a benefit it is to their business to make sure all other fields of endeavor are patentable.
If I recall correctly, some years ago in the US surgeons turned down the chance to lock up their work by allowing patents on surgical techniques.
I think most people are choosing to do exactly that--not give any money. It's okay to talk about why we're not giving money.
I'm choosing to do that for a good reason: I'd get nothing for my donation. When I donate money to my local community radio station, a far more cash-poor outfit than Viacom, I get a t-shirt or a CD. Gifts like these are small but nice (this is a common way for the organization to say thanks to their donors). Even though my community radio station is incorporated, I get something far more valuable for my contribution: I become a member of the station. I volunteer there and I can rise as far in the station's hierarchy as I wish to go. I can make important station decisions as I dedicate more of my time and effort there. Anyone in the public can come to periodic meetings where everyone (who isn't on-air) goes to meet and discuss station issues. This is unusual--corporations are built to deny democratic access.
Quite the contrary is true of donating to a multinational corporation like Viacom. You'll get nothing in return for your donation (not even a DVD copy of the episodes you helped to make possible--considering how few people are donating, this would cost virtually nothing to supply). As a producer, you'll have to see the shows you funded with ads as they run on TV the first time. In exchange for paying the production costs, you won't control the copyright to the episodes (even jointly with all the other donors).
So when the revenue from DVDs and syndication dries up, you will have no power to relicense the shows you paid for. This means you can't relicense the shows under, say, a Creative Commons license where others can non-commercially share and enjoy the show, or build on it so long as they share their work under the same terms you shared your sponsored work with them ("ShareAlike").
This donation effort is apparently run by people who don't seem to understand the wisdom behind not treating a corporation like a charity. They also don't seem to get that when you pay for something to be produced you get more control over the result. Considering all the additional revenue Viacom makes from Star Trek (merchandising, for instance), which apparently Viacom would be allowed to keep, it becomes clear that these donors aren't so much donating to keep Enterprise going as they are donating to keep Viacom going.
Yes, I want them to improve how they make their decisions. Unlike teaching a dog calculus, I don't think it's beyond them to do so, I think that there needs to be someone opposing the round-the-clock lobbying corporations put into getting them to seeing things their way.
I don't think it's a lot to ask of the public, even though (as you note) elected officials so often disappoint. If nobody asks, there is absolutely no pressure on them to do anything differently. So we shouldn't be surprised that they don't do what we want when we don't engage in the process. Merely asking isn't enough, of course, we really need organized people to tell them that they'll not vote for the incumbent if they make the wrong decision or base their decision on bad policy. Perhaps then we can combat the organized money opposing our efforts.
I saw nothing in the introduction that addressed my question but the FAQ had this to offer:
Which tells me why I wouldn't donate a dime to this effort. These folks are seriously entertaining treating a corporation as a charity, donating money to Viacom so they can make money on my donation. They don't seem to understand that paying for something gives you increased control over that thing. This is what producers do--raise money for production of shows. If I'm helping to pay for the show, I would want something more than I get by buying a copy of a series I had nothing to do with on a DVD in a store. At least with a DVD of a show I didn't help pay production costs on, I get to watch a high-quality never-degrading copy of the show in perpetuity. With the Enterprise deal, I don't even get a copy of the DVD; I have to go out and buy it and the DVD I buy will give me no right to share even verbatim copies of it non-commercially.
I was hoping that these fans would have come up with something more creative than this. It's not too much to ask that since these fans would be, ostensibly, funding an entire season of Enterprise, they would control the copyright to the episodes and be able to license the episodes (thus eventually getting back some of their costs in syndication rights and DVD sales, then when the market for these episodes has dried up in a few years, they could release the episodes under an appropriate Creative Commons license).
But since this really is just a call for corporate charity, this effort strikes me as profoundly naive.
Do you have some figures to show us so we can get a better understanding of what you mean by real time access and how PostgreSQL and MySQL are inadequate to the task? It's information like this that can help us not dismiss your anecdote as you tell us to do ("anectodal data doesn't mean anything").
As it stands, if you're writing a dispatching system for the New York Police Department (which I take you mean by NYPD), most people aren't doing that so I would find it hard to believe that they would be convinced away from choosing a free software or open source database program instead of the proprietary programs you're advocating.
That's a real shame because it means that they have genuinely taken in the watered-down message the open source movement promotes--that we should weigh software issues not on ethics or freedom, but on cost of development, distribution, and even (ironically) settle for proprietary software when it is technically more functional than an "open source" competitor. The open source movement pitches this message because they're chiefly speaking to businesses and they believe any freedom talk will interfere with conveying their development methodology message to businesses.
As such, if the US Government is doing what you describe, they're probably just using that talk to get Microsoft to drop its price on the software it licenses to the US Government. Other countries and US states have done this before, and it will be done again. Lowering the cost of Microsoft software is probably the reason why Massachusetts allowed Microsoft's proprietary Office formats to be included as an "open format". There's no part of the open source movement's message a proprietor can't cater to, so proprietors love to frame the issues at hand as the open source movement discusses them.
Better to focus on software freedom, which the free software movement has been pitching for over a decade longer than the open source movement has been touting their message. Those who want software freedom for its own sake never have to settle for stumping for non-free software because the free software message doesn't focus on a development methodology to make development cheaper, faster, and produce less buggy software. The free software movement centers on giving computer users the freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify computer software. The open source movement's goals are fine as far as they go, but they don't go far enough. They say nothing about the most important question we can ask: how should we treat other people? This is an ethical question which demands an ethical response.
You have lost software freedom for those "various network appliances, switches, routers, etc." and you still have software freedom for OpenSSH. They are different programs licensed differently despite that the non-free programs are derivatives of the free software program. It's sad that you chose to make your point with swearing and exaggerating to prove a false point. It doesn't make your argument more convincing.
One thing that is not clear from the articles linked to in this story is who would hold the copyright to the fan-funded episodes of the show, should these fans contribute money for more episodes to be made.
Would this qualify as a work for hire (where Paramount studios arranges for casting people, writers, costumers, etc. to be available to anyone who has a few million to put together a show)? Or are these fans planning on treating a multinational corporation like a charity and donating their money to Viacom so that Paramount will make more episodes?
I forgot to include this in my previous follow-up: it seems quite a political statement to me to favor convenience above software freedom. I'd hardly call Torvalds apolitical, I'd say that his views are the views people have been taught to value--use what helps you get jobs done, push aside any other concerns regardless of their effect on society--hence they are popular.
I think the following goes too far:
If de Raadt were that committed to software freedom, he would agree with copyleft which preserves software freedom for derivatives. Instead, the software de Raadt distributes is non-copylefted free software; software which is licensed to allow non-free derivatives. That means someone else (or some organization) has the power to separate the freedom from the software for their derivative and distribute that derivative which denies software freedom to their users. The effect on society is not the same with non-copylefted and copylefted free software licenses.
I think RMS is grateful for all the free software de Raadt writes and distributes, but I doubt that RMS and de Raadt would agree that they are equally committed to software freedom. One promotes non-copylefted free software licenses to encourage popularity (popularizing Ogg Vorbis, for instance, where the reference libraries are licensed under a new-BSD-like license) and the other uses a non-copylefted free software license routinely. None of this is to take anything away from de Raadt's award or how much he deserves it; he's done good work that ought to be celebrated.
Aside from the gratuitous and needless swearing, this is an example of very poor design. Placing the trackpad regions and the like in an X.org driver means all users get them by default, whether they want them or not. There's no way to tell xorg.conf that one user wants them on and another user does not. Or that one user wants this arrangement of trackpad regions, and another user wants a different arrangement. This isn't xorg.conf's job, this is the kind of functionality one should be able to configure in the mouse preferences.
My rule of thumb with OSes is to give them three major releases to work out the major user-visible kinks, then investigate whether the system is worthwhile, mediocre, or unusable (or somewhere in between these three points). The OS distributors pick their schedule, and I live with whatever schedule they pick (including allowing for any delays they wish to have). I think that your kind words about FC3 goes a little too far on the rosy side. In no particular order, here are some user-visible problems with FC3:
Distributing services in addition to the software doesn't mean that distributor will give you a copy of the GPL-covered software at no fee. RMS did exactly this with GNU Emacs for a while, distributing the program commercially on tape to those who didn't have Internet access. His distribution came with no other support (but he made that available too at hundreds of dollars per hour, which some firms were willing to pay). CheapBytes distributes copies of GPL-covered software (and other free software) without adding other services to it. The GPL is a commercial license and has been since the first time a GPL-covered program was distributed for a fee.
Thanks for the info. The last time I looked at Mozillazine they didn't have anything like this KnowledgeBase.
Try telling the staff at Borders books that. I tried and they looked at me like I was crazy. After all, I was asking for free WiFi so I could look up reviews of books I wanted to get from their store. Borders has some ridiculously expensive subscription WiFi service (T-Mobile). Maybe that's why they thought my request was so odd -- they are only familiar with the overpriced WiFi service they have, perhaps they assumed that every other WiFi setup costs the same amount of money.
After the Borders employees curtly dismissed my request, I left the store and bought the books I wanted from a local bookseller -- one which offers free WiFi. Borders lost the sale and left a lingering bad memory for me.
As is common with the focus on features and price, there's no accounting for software freedom. I would not want to deploy a server that was essentially a black box instead of a server I could run, inspect, modify anytime, and share with anyone. I'll never inspect all the software I run, but I rely on a community of inspectors and a huge collection of improvements made by people near and far. I think that when people share source code under a free software license, they don't have the room to get away with the nasty problems that plague proprietary software. I don't see Microsoft's IIS giving me software freedom, but Apache does. I remain uncomfortable handing over the integrity of a client's website to a proprietor.
I'd like to turn off autocompletion in the URL bar. I don't want to turn off my history, I don't want to set my history to 0 day retention, but I am willing to run an extension. I don't want to do these other things because they don't work and they have ugly side-effects I don't want.
Mozilla suite made it easy to accomplish this. Firefox appears to have no mechanism for doing this at all, nor do I know of any about:config preference to change to make URL bar autocompletion go away.
I don't like URL bar autocompletion because it gives away where I have been browsing. When I browse with my laptop, I'm not interested in advertising to onlookers where I've been.
Any tips on applicable extensions or settings?
Thanks.
Sam Greenblatt, a member of the OSDL board, was quoted as saying something very unclear: "Eventually there should be three licenses: The GPL, a commercial version of the GPL...". The GNU General Public License (GPL) allows one to distribute copies of covered works for a fee. Many people have turned GCC (the GNU Compiler Collection), one noteworthy GPL-covered program, into a commercial work by distributing copies of it for a fee, some have also based for-hire consulting services on GCC. These consultants develop GCC as a business activity.
Most of the time when people say "commercial" in this context, they don't mean that. That word was just a poor choice which may stem from not fully understanding what software freedom entails. What they really meant to say was "proprietary", which is something different. In this case, I don't know what that other meaning would be; a proprietary GPL would not be the GPL, it would be a perverse opposite of what the GPL stands for and accomplished long before the open source movement existed. Thus I'm left thinking Greenblatt's statement is at best unclear, non-sensical at worst.
NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP didn't use vector graphics for a lot of the most commonly seen graphics. The buttons on windows, the application icons, and the buttons in various programs were all bitmaps.
Some programs exploited Display Postscript more than others, but on the whole, I'd expect to see a lot more vector graphics use in a typical free software OS in the next few years than I saw with NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP. I was never much of a PS hacker, but I understand that PS can do a lot more than graphics work.
I own a NeXT cube system (currently in my attic, unused) which I used to use regularly from NeXTSTEP 2.1 through NeXTSTEP 3.2.
To all those who give up on software freedom (like a recent discussion I participated in on GNOME-marketing concerning an upcoming live multimedia CD which may include MP3s and a non-free (for some) MP3 player program), take a look at what the anti-software-patents organizers have accomplished so far. This didn't come about because they used the circular logic so many use to justify pushing aside what they know to be best.
I applaud those who organized this effort for having the courage of their convictions to pursue better policy. You offer us who are burdened with software patents something to aspire to.