While I agree with your fanboy critique your criticism that any attempt to denounce a study in favor of Microsoft is always a knee jerk reaction simply isn't relevant in this particular instance.
I don't know if you took the time to read the response from the Linux vendors to the Forrestor report but it is clear that if Forrestor conducted the analysis as described that they made a HUGE statistical error. The question naturally must be asked "how could a supposedly well funded source miss such an obvious gaff?" It takes time and money to do research, surely Forrestor has one above average statistician on staff.
To have performed such a study and in the end wasted their money would seem incredulous. This is akin to being asked to write a word processor and coming up with a spreadsheet program. A natural supposition than is to question the motives of the researchers, however this could easily be a case of "never put down to malice what can easily be attributed to incompetence."
Never believe anyone who refers to the use of shared public domain code as "theft".
From the rest of that article Enderle obviously has an axe to grind. It is quite possible he was threatened by a minority in the Linux community that can't seem to grow up and has obviously decided to hold a grudge against Linux as a whole.
His argument for taking SCO's side boils down to "I'm pissed at some Linux fanboys!" That's fine but I hope he doesn't expect anyone to ever take him seriously as an analyst again(if they ever did). Almost by definition Analysts and Critics must have a thick skin because there's always someone who is going to insult them. Once they lose their objectivity they are effectively washed up.
He further insults the integrity of Groklaw without actually pointing to any flaws in the facts that Groklaw presents. He ignores all the evidence mounting up against SCO and the fact that SCO has been back pedaling so fast they're tripping over themselves to get out of the way of the coming storm.
Except that there's no significant indication that artists are being ripped off by P2P networks. They are far more likely to be ripped off by the recording companies.
The recent study in the states(see last weeks slashdot articles) showed that at worst there is only a small negative affect, but that the affect due to people with disposal income was actually a positive affect(e.g. people with money bought more albums).
Furthermore, one factor that everyone seems to be missing is that even the best quality of MP3 found on P2P networks is still a far cry from the quality of the actual wav file on the production CD. Think about it, the best quality MP3 is still usually compressed by 10x the original size, in other words they are getting rid of 10x the information. Try doing that with a book and tell me that the result is even reasonably close to the original. Recording companies have nobody but themselves to blame if they are not promoting that significant difference between the version people download and the one they can get by buying the full fidelity CD. It's even worse than not promoting this difference correctly, the recording companies are actually complaining that the problem with MP3's and the like is that people can make "exact copies". Big deal I say, making an exact copy of a turd just leaves you with twice as much sh*t.
Wow. You sure are working hard to earn that nickname aren't you?
So as a socialist your argueing that when private enterprise and the government compete for a service that private enterprise will always win. Welcome to the capitalist side what took you so long?
Question, what is forcing you or anybody else to go to a private clinic? What's forcing you to pay twice for a service? Nothing, except need. If the government can't or won't perform a service in a timely manner for me I want the option to pay my hard earned money, that my government has dained to let me keep, for a service that they aren't performing.
Secondly, where the hell are you buying your MRI's, $20 Million, please lets try that again! Thirdly, I'm living in the communist paradise of Saskatchewan, if there are long wait times for MRI it's purely the government's fault if they aren't running them full out. It's not mine and not private enterprise.
Hell, it doesn't even have to be run privately, the government can run it if they want and let me pay to have my MRI on "off hours" when it's supposedly too costly for them to run with the tax dollars they're already stealing from me!
Hell, in Saskatchewan the government contracts out to private labs so tell me again how that for profit private lab is making the government run health system into a slum? We have private radiologists, private physiotherapists, private chyropractic clinics...
Yup having those privately run MRI units, or private CT scanners now that's a problem. We don't dare go there or the whole system will fall apart.
Medical services are no different than any other service. People pay what they value the cost to be. If your life isn't worth $20,000 than don't pay it, wait for the public system to take care of you instead. If your "elective" knee surgery costs too much privately,don't worry you can wait the 5 years(my brother) it takes to get you in but that's o.k. you didn't really need the full use of that knee.
Oh, and if you CAN'T pay the $20,000 than no private clinic regardless of where it is is an option for you, and in reality that's what really burns you isn't it? The idea that somebody else could possibly be able to afford better care than you just eats you up right? We should all be held hostage to the least common denominator rather than have an option for something better because you can't afford it!
Before you attempt to impune my intelligence maybe you should first question your own assumptions.
When you see this kind of obvious chicken little type argument there is hardly incentive to reply.
What's wrong reading too much "Mein Kampf" lately?
Let's get this straight already, NOONE IS ARGUING FOR DITCHING MEDICARE! So you can free load off the system all you want. The rich will pay their taxes, they just want the chance to pay less for their medical care than they do now by not having to travel to the States! The middle class(yes me) will still pay our taxes we just want the option to pay for an MRI in our own province if I feel waiting almost 2 years is too long!
I want the option to say "screw you" to the Health Region that postpones critical surgery due to political fighting.
(First I have to pick myself off the floor, I haven't laughed that hard in a while "typically well-off residents of Western provinces and everyone else", you sir should take your act on the road that was absolutely hilarious, I'm sure the movers & shakers in TO would love to hear they've been clumped in with "everyone else")
Since this is in reply to me you should know 1) I'm an athiest 2) I'm middle class so I'll be lining up in those queues just like everyone else.
Emergency service is not in question, although the head of emergency in the Saskatoon Health Region was just fired for speaking his mind(no politics there of course).
Where in anything that I said did you get the belief that I wanted to abolish medicare? That's the problem with leftest, you can't damn well read! I guess it's that great education system we have.
Lastly, since you obviously just don't get it I'll make this very clear, we already have a two tiered health care system so get used to it! If you don't think so then please ask yourself where Belinda Stronach, Jean Chretien, Paul Martin and thousands of others get their health care?
Surely you don't believe that if Jean Chretien or Paul Martin needed heart by-pass surgery or something they'd wait around in Canada to have it done? Hell it's not even them, I personally know someone who is "well-off" but certainly not rich that went to the States rather than wait around here.
The thing that socialists hate is the idea that someone could possibly get better care than them just because they either were born with a silver-spoon in their mouth, or more likely, worked damn hard to get enough to pay for "better". It gets pathetically obvious when noone has said anything about ditching Medicare yet we get the above spew!
So keep believing in your communist/socialist paradise, it doesn't exist. Your harming noone but youself the well-off,rich and really rich are doing just fine.
So! Nice argument. And why can't we have a parallel system here that would keep that money in Canada! Christ this is just stupid.
Face it we have two tiered health care already! The only thing now is to keep the money and the really good doctors in Canada. That socialists can't/won't see this shows just how bankrupt their thoughts and policies have become.
I'm Canadian too and had I even thought of it I might have bought American health insurance. Our Social Healthcare is a shambles. 22 Month wait times for an MRI? Critical surgeries being postponed because of budget problems! Christ it's just getting ridiculous.
Oh and don't even mention "two-tiered health care", man you'll scare the socialists/free loaders right out of their pants. Try pointing out the fact we already have two-tiered health care and they just ignore you.
Except that "they"(I presume you mean CRIA/RIAA) have the rights to those songs so they can download,upload, write them on t-shirts or do anything else they want and it's not copyright infringement. They can hardly argue that I committed copyright infringement by sharing their copyrighted material with them!
I haven't actually been arguing about profit in a monetary sense at all. What I'm trying to argue is that users of freedom software must be conditioned to know that the expectation is that they give back something. I don't care what it is, coding, documentation, word of mouth of how freedom helps them or money.
In your case I've been trying to condition you to react by both giving back software and evangelizing freedom NOT free beer.(since you mentioned your a coder)
This started because it seemed to me that you expect that software must be free of cost in a monetary sense. Monetary free is only a possibility from freedom source not a mandatory requirement.
"The only way to make money with information is to either generate new information or to provide a more efficient way to spread,gather or copy information"
There you go you got it. Well at least you have part of it. Where in your above statement does it say anything about the nature of the license attached to the information? It doesn't matter if the information is licensed under the GPL, if I make my product more attractive, easier to use, more worth while, more...something. Than people will pay, either through their own hard work, word of mouth or with money. In fact it should be expected that people do pay in one of these manners. Anyone not paying somehow, not necessarily with money, is a free loader pure and simple. In the long run enough people will see the value of paying for freedom software to make it profitable.
As to the music,movie, television industries. Their problem isn't that they are losing control of distribution it's that they are LAZY. They refuse to charge the correct amount for the information or they refuse to provide sufficient value-added to make buying the information desirable.
I will pay a reasonable amount to have a CD,book,DVD or easy cable access. Currently all of these are too high for the product that is sold. I care not a wit for "Top 40" music it's not worth even a penny to me. If a music exec asked himself why than maybe they'd understand. The reason is there is absolutely no value in that information to me. I won't even waste bandwidth on it. However, if you somehow got George Clinton and Parliament back together, put together a good CD of funk, with bitchin' liner notes and maybe throw in the possibility of tickets to see them at a concert in New York(e.g. put a coupon in random jewel cases) I might pay $30,$40 or even more dollars for that. In both cases the information is free(the music) but only in the latter is there a value added service that I'd pay for.
As a physicist by training and a coder by profession I KNOW information wants to be free. The question is what are you willing to pay for sharing in it?(Again pay is not just in a monetary sense.)
Free speech software is only free beer if the customer wants it to be. If they see no value in paying for it than they won't.
Redhat makes good money selling boxed versions of their software.
All statements about free-speech software automatically leading to free-beer software are true and miss the point. If the majority of users don't care about free speech software than it's likely they are the same ones whom the boxed retail version of a product is aimed at. That whole "a fool and his money..." thing, or it could just be that the retail purchaser sees value in making sure the company survives.
In any case my premise with the poster I was originally taking issue with is the mentality that software MUST be free as in beer rather than free as in freedom. If the choices were to pay a reasonable amount for freedom software or get proprietary software for gratis, I would pay the reasonable amount.
The arguements do work. Damn rights either pay or gpl! What are they free loaders? Cheap, that's what they are. They want something for free, that's all. They want to take and NOT give back. Robber barons, thiefs, and scoundrels the lot of them. Either pay to keep your damn secrets or don't and give them away.
Granted paying for a propriatary license for Qt is more costly than the LGPL'd GTK but if your making a commercial product the proprietary license cost better not be your main cost anyway.
If the point of using GTK is to save a few bucks on licensing than the developer of the software has missed the point entirely.
I won't try to comment on which toolkit is technically better but if Novell were to successfully generate a wide acceptance of a single toolkit such that writing for that one toolkit made life easier on a developer and created a larger market, than any developer crying about having to pay TrollTech for a development license doesn't deserve my pity.
Here's a question for you. Why should I pay a company money for an application based on LGPL'd libraries when they are too cheap to pay for development of that library? I would much rather pay a company for a proprietary app that I know supported Free software by giving money to TrollTech than to pay for a proprietary app that was free loading on the backs of other developers.
Naturally if the app is free source than I don't care which libraries they use.
I'm with Stallman on this one, the LGPL is a cancer. A developer should have to either pay to keep their app proprietary or release the code and make it GPL'd. Why should proprietary vendors get help for free?
They are not "forced" to do anything. They make choices. Why are they paying $200 dollars for that professional version? Why not get it for free and pay for support? Or pay what they think is reasonable and still use the free version?
There are plenty of decent IDE's for free as well. I really don't know if $1500 to trolltech is excesive or not since I don't know the cost of the alternative(Windows Visual development).
I also don't understand why in-house stuff would be so off limits to the GPL. If it's just for internal use and not a product what possible secrets are you giving away by GPLing it?
Lastly if $1500 dollars is excessive to keep their secrets than they aren't exactly state secrets are they? Think about that, $1500 dollars, not exactly a princely sum. The alternatives may be cheaper, like I said, I don't know but if keeping their stuff secret is so important to them than $1500 dollars should be worth it.
No I was talking "Free" as with the FSF and the GPL. The GPL doesn't say anything about payment for the binary it only speaks to payment for the source under which you must only charge a "reasonable" amount for providing it.
The fact that the GPL makes the binaries for software possible to get for gratis doesn't mean that you can't pay money for it. Redhat sold/sells many boxed versions of their software.
This started because the poster I responded to made it clear he EXPECTS his software for "free as in beer". Think about that, he has come to believe that free in "free software" is associated with money and not freedom. I'm not sorry in saying that that concept is abhorent to me.
We must work to make the "free" mean freedom. Users who get their software for gratis must understand that that form of "free" comes because of the freedom inherent in the source. And in fact that the software isn't totally gratis, there should be an expectation of some return. If you can code you should share your changes, if you can write than do documentation, if you can't do either and can't/don't want to pay than you should at least promote the freedom of the software. In other words DO SOMETHING! Don't just be a free-loader.
How can I say that? Well let's see, there are many boxed versions of Redhat & Suse that have been sold and I don't think anyone was ripped off.
While it is probably impossible for Redhat not to create a free as in beer version of their free as in speech software, the fact that it can and is paid for is very telling.
The main advantage of Open Source to most people is absolutely NOT the free binary whether they know it or not. It is not a "few geeks such as yourself" there is a very large world of geeks out here that value the source to their programs for many reasons other than that it may be free as in beer as well.
If in fact you value the monitary freeness of your software over the freedom of the source than I would argue that your not a geek at all but just someone who wants to ride a gravy train.
Furthermore the dichotomy you used between KDE & gnome is false because both are GPL'd. Would you rather pay for an Open Source KDE or get a closed source Windows for free? If you choose the Windows option than you definitely don't understand freedom and your no geek I want to hang out with.
The fact is that people have to stop with this idea that "free" in the GPL'd way means "free beer". Free software is a costly thing,I have spent untold hours of my valuable time helping to code free software, but that's fine I don't expect payment for that work because I was paid in kind by other coders. But users who just take and never give back must understand exactly what they are doing. I can't force anyone to pay for software they can get for "free" but your mentality that software MUST be free as in beer is totally antithema to the actual freedom that is espoused by free(dom) software.
Freedom software is about having the source, never looking over your shoulder for the thought police, adding to something and feeling you've contributed, learning, sharing. "Free beer" software is about being a leech!
Hmm. I hope you mean free as in speech not as in beer because otherwise that's not much of an argument.
The point of "free" software is that it is open for perusal, poking, sharing, etc. not that it's gratis so you don't have to pay for it. Granted because of the first the gratis part is often the case but the mentality that free speech software MUST mean free beer software is just wrong.
Re:"hazards and risks are poorly understood"
on
Buckyballs Kill Fish
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· Score: 2, Insightful
>>Saying the 'physics are wierd' at that scale is a bit of hand-waving.
I'll say. Especially since its chemistry their dealing with and not physics. I know the dividing line isn't precise but buckyballs aren't damaging fish due to quantum effects. Those old bucky's are way too big for that.
Excuse me, please tell us how many people died or had premature death or even debilating illness due to "all" those accidents that were all only stopped by pure luck.
Second please explain how your going to collect ALL the pollutants from your coal plant. You can stick the nuclear waste(after recycling of course because we have to be good recyclers) under my bed any day, try sticking all the coal pollutants under your bed, I suggest you look for a different place to live though.
Stories of government handouts and boondoggles don't impress me. They do that kind of shit with pig farms too. The only thing that does is prove government should stay out of business.
Tell you want, first get all the greenies out of my way, than I'll get you to pay me and I'll take it, refine it, sell it back to you and charge you again to take that "waste". Anything that can't be reused I'll put back in this nice little container I have around called the earth.
You seem like a reasonable person, don't be concerned about disposal. It can be handled and would be if politics and so called "environmentalists" weren't getting in the way.
Think about this, cyanide has an infinite half-life so it is always toxic.
Your stupid git. It is almost impossible to prove a SINGLE death due to radiation in the long term but it's easy to show whether or not the people around TMI died significantly prematurely compared to the rest of the population. If not death, the same statistical techniques can be used to determine if residents around TMI show significant increase in any given disease.
It is that information after 25 years I'd like to see rather than some nebulous affect on safety regulations.
Maybe he's not just displeased with MS but with his so called "friends" that don't have the tact to not ask a highly paid professional for free work.
I wish I had his guts. I'm sick of fixing Window's problems for my friends as well. I don't use this shit why should I be subjected to it's problems just because I have an aptitude for thinking and I work in the computer field.
If I was a mechanic and my friends asked me to fix their cars as much as I have to fix Window's problems, without pay even, I think I would be justified in telling them to "go f**k themselves".
I don't know about the other guy, but I've moved far past fixing computers for a living. I've moved up in the world and I don't care to toy with broken pieces of bile anymore it's a complete waste of time!
Slashdot Mirror
While I agree with your fanboy critique your criticism that any attempt to denounce a study in favor of Microsoft is always a knee jerk reaction simply isn't relevant in this particular instance.
I don't know if you took the time to read the response from the Linux vendors to the Forrestor report but it is clear that if Forrestor conducted the analysis as described that they made a HUGE statistical error. The question naturally must be asked "how could a supposedly well funded source miss such an obvious gaff?" It takes time and money to do research, surely Forrestor has one above average statistician on staff.
To have performed such a study and in the end wasted their money would seem incredulous. This is akin to being asked to write a word processor and coming up with a spreadsheet program. A natural supposition than is to question the motives of the researchers, however this could easily be a case of "never put down to malice what can easily be attributed to incompetence."
Never believe anyone who refers to the use of shared public domain code as "theft".
From the rest of that article Enderle obviously has an axe to grind. It is quite possible he was threatened by a minority in the Linux community that can't seem to grow up and has obviously decided to hold a grudge against Linux as a whole.
His argument for taking SCO's side boils down to "I'm pissed at some Linux fanboys!" That's fine but I hope he doesn't expect anyone to ever take him seriously as an analyst again(if they ever did). Almost by definition Analysts and Critics must have a thick skin because there's always someone who is going to insult them. Once they lose their objectivity they are effectively washed up.
He further insults the integrity of Groklaw without actually pointing to any flaws in the facts that Groklaw presents. He ignores all the evidence mounting up against SCO and the fact that SCO has been back pedaling so fast they're tripping over themselves to get out of the way of the coming storm.
The recent study in the states(see last weeks slashdot articles) showed that at worst there is only a small negative affect, but that the affect due to people with disposal income was actually a positive affect(e.g. people with money bought more albums).
Furthermore, one factor that everyone seems to be missing is that even the best quality of MP3 found on P2P networks is still a far cry from the quality of the actual wav file on the production CD. Think about it, the best quality MP3 is still usually compressed by 10x the original size, in other words they are getting rid of 10x the information. Try doing that with a book and tell me that the result is even reasonably close to the original. Recording companies have nobody but themselves to blame if they are not promoting that significant difference between the version people download and the one they can get by buying the full fidelity CD. It's even worse than not promoting this difference correctly, the recording companies are actually complaining that the problem with MP3's and the like is that people can make "exact copies". Big deal I say, making an exact copy of a turd just leaves you with twice as much sh*t.
Except that in Canada, since we pay a "copyright tax" on blank material I'm allowed to make a copy of that disk. Cool huh?
Wow. You sure are working hard to earn that nickname aren't you?
So as a socialist your argueing that when private enterprise and the government compete for a service that private enterprise will always win. Welcome to the capitalist side what took you so long?
Question, what is forcing you or anybody else to go to a private clinic? What's forcing you to pay twice for a service? Nothing, except need. If the government can't or won't perform a service in a timely manner for me I want the option to pay my hard earned money, that my government has dained to let me keep, for a service that they aren't performing.
Secondly, where the hell are you buying your MRI's, $20 Million, please lets try that again! Thirdly, I'm living in the communist paradise of Saskatchewan, if there are long wait times for MRI it's purely the government's fault if they aren't running them full out. It's not mine and not private enterprise.
Hell, it doesn't even have to be run privately, the government can run it if they want and let me pay to have my MRI on "off hours" when it's supposedly too costly for them to run with the tax dollars they're already stealing from me!
Hell, in Saskatchewan the government contracts out to private labs so tell me again how that for profit private lab is making the government run health system into a slum? We have private radiologists, private physiotherapists, private chyropractic clinics...
Yup having those privately run MRI units, or private CT scanners now that's a problem. We don't dare go there or the whole system will fall apart.
Medical services are no different than any other service. People pay what they value the cost to be. If your life isn't worth $20,000 than don't pay it, wait for the public system to take care of you instead. If your "elective" knee surgery costs too much privately,don't worry you can wait the 5 years(my brother) it takes to get you in but that's o.k. you didn't really need the full use of that knee.
Oh, and if you CAN'T pay the $20,000 than no private clinic regardless of where it is is an option for you, and in reality that's what really burns you isn't it? The idea that somebody else could possibly be able to afford better care than you just eats you up right? We should all be held hostage to the least common denominator rather than have an option for something better because you can't afford it!
Before you attempt to impune my intelligence maybe you should first question your own assumptions.
When you see this kind of obvious chicken little type argument there is hardly incentive to reply.
What's wrong reading too much "Mein Kampf" lately?
Let's get this straight already, NOONE IS ARGUING FOR DITCHING MEDICARE! So you can free load off the system all you want. The rich will pay their taxes, they just want the chance to pay less for their medical care than they do now by not having to travel to the States! The middle class(yes me) will still pay our taxes we just want the option to pay for an MRI in our own province if I feel waiting almost 2 years is too long!
I want the option to say "screw you" to the Health Region that postpones critical surgery due to political fighting.
(First I have to pick myself off the floor, I haven't laughed that hard in a while "typically well-off residents of Western provinces and everyone else", you sir should take your act on the road that was absolutely hilarious, I'm sure the movers & shakers in TO would love to hear they've been clumped in with "everyone else")
Since this is in reply to me you should know 1) I'm an athiest 2) I'm middle class so I'll be lining up in those queues just like everyone else.
Emergency service is not in question, although the head of emergency in the Saskatoon Health Region was just fired for speaking his mind(no politics there of course).
Where in anything that I said did you get the belief that I wanted to abolish medicare? That's the problem with leftest, you can't damn well read! I guess it's that great education system we have.
Lastly, since you obviously just don't get it I'll make this very clear, we already have a two tiered health care system so get used to it! If you don't think so then please ask yourself where Belinda Stronach, Jean Chretien, Paul Martin and thousands of others get their health care?
Surely you don't believe that if Jean Chretien or Paul Martin needed heart by-pass surgery or something they'd wait around in Canada to have it done? Hell it's not even them, I personally know someone who is "well-off" but certainly not rich that went to the States rather than wait around here.
The thing that socialists hate is the idea that someone could possibly get better care than them just because they either were born with a silver-spoon in their mouth, or more likely, worked damn hard to get enough to pay for "better". It gets pathetically obvious when noone has said anything about ditching Medicare yet we get the above spew!
So keep believing in your communist/socialist paradise, it doesn't exist. Your harming noone but youself the well-off,rich and really rich are doing just fine.
Significantly? 72,69.3 & 68.3 for Canada,US & Cuba.
I would hardly call 1.7 years "significant", I'm not giving them back mind you but it's still hardly significant.
So! Nice argument. And why can't we have a parallel system here that would keep that money in Canada! Christ this is just stupid.
Face it we have two tiered health care already! The only thing now is to keep the money and the really good doctors in Canada. That socialists can't/won't see this shows just how bankrupt their thoughts and policies have become.
I'm Canadian too and had I even thought of it I might have bought American health insurance. Our Social Healthcare is a shambles. 22 Month wait times for an MRI? Critical surgeries being postponed because of budget problems! Christ it's just getting ridiculous.
Oh and don't even mention "two-tiered health care", man you'll scare the socialists/free loaders right out of their pants. Try pointing out the fact we already have two-tiered health care and they just ignore you.
Granted it could be worse but it's getting there.
Except that "they"(I presume you mean CRIA/RIAA) have the rights to those songs so they can download,upload, write them on t-shirts or do anything else they want and it's not copyright infringement. They can hardly argue that I committed copyright infringement by sharing their copyrighted material with them!
You almost have it.
I haven't actually been arguing about profit in a monetary sense at all. What I'm trying to argue is that users of freedom software must be conditioned to know that the expectation is that they give back something. I don't care what it is, coding, documentation, word of mouth of how freedom helps them or money.
In your case I've been trying to condition you to react by both giving back software and evangelizing freedom NOT free beer.(since you mentioned your a coder)
This started because it seemed to me that you expect that software must be free of cost in a monetary sense. Monetary free is only a possibility from freedom source not a mandatory requirement.
"The only way to make money with information is to either generate new information or to provide a more efficient way to spread,gather or copy information"
There you go you got it. Well at least you have part of it. Where in your above statement does it say anything about the nature of the license attached to the information? It doesn't matter if the information is licensed under the GPL, if I make my product more attractive, easier to use, more worth while, more...something. Than people will pay, either through their own hard work, word of mouth or with money. In fact it should be expected that people do pay in one of these manners. Anyone not paying somehow, not necessarily with money, is a free loader pure and simple. In the long run enough people will see the value of paying for freedom software to make it profitable.
As to the music,movie, television industries. Their problem isn't that they are losing control of distribution it's that they are LAZY. They refuse to charge the correct amount for the information or they refuse to provide sufficient value-added to make buying the information desirable.
I will pay a reasonable amount to have a CD,book,DVD or easy cable access. Currently all of these are too high for the product that is sold. I care not a wit for "Top 40" music it's not worth even a penny to me. If a music exec asked himself why than maybe they'd understand. The reason is there is absolutely no value in that information to me. I won't even waste bandwidth on it. However, if you somehow got George Clinton and Parliament back together, put together a good CD of funk, with bitchin' liner notes and maybe throw in the possibility of tickets to see them at a concert in New York(e.g. put a coupon in random jewel cases) I might pay $30,$40 or even more dollars for that. In both cases the information is free(the music) but only in the latter is there a value added service that I'd pay for.
As a physicist by training and a coder by profession I KNOW information wants to be free. The question is what are you willing to pay for sharing in it?(Again pay is not just in a monetary sense.)
Free speech software is only free beer if the customer wants it to be. If they see no value in paying for it than they won't.
Redhat makes good money selling boxed versions of their software.
All statements about free-speech software automatically leading to free-beer software are true and miss the point. If the majority of users don't care about free speech software than it's likely they are the same ones whom the boxed retail version of a product is aimed at. That whole "a fool and his money..." thing, or it could just be that the retail purchaser sees value in making sure the company survives.
In any case my premise with the poster I was originally taking issue with is the mentality that software MUST be free as in beer rather than free as in freedom. If the choices were to pay a reasonable amount for freedom software or get proprietary software for gratis, I would pay the reasonable amount.
The arguements do work. Damn rights either pay or gpl! What are they free loaders? Cheap, that's what they are. They want something for free, that's all. They want to take and NOT give back. Robber barons, thiefs, and scoundrels the lot of them. Either pay to keep your damn secrets or don't and give them away.
Granted paying for a propriatary license for Qt is more costly than the LGPL'd GTK but if your making a commercial product the proprietary license cost better not be your main cost anyway.
If the point of using GTK is to save a few bucks on licensing than the developer of the software has missed the point entirely.
I won't try to comment on which toolkit is technically better but if Novell were to successfully generate a wide acceptance of a single toolkit such that writing for that one toolkit made life easier on a developer and created a larger market, than any developer crying about having to pay TrollTech for a development license doesn't deserve my pity.
Here's a question for you. Why should I pay a company money for an application based on LGPL'd libraries when they are too cheap to pay for development of that library? I would much rather pay a company for a proprietary app that I know supported Free software by giving money to TrollTech than to pay for a proprietary app that was free loading on the backs of other developers.
Naturally if the app is free source than I don't care which libraries they use.
I'm with Stallman on this one, the LGPL is a cancer. A developer should have to either pay to keep their app proprietary or release the code and make it GPL'd. Why should proprietary vendors get help for free?
They are not "forced" to do anything. They make choices. Why are they paying $200 dollars for that professional version? Why not get it for free and pay for support? Or pay what they think is reasonable and still use the free version?
There are plenty of decent IDE's for free as well. I really don't know if $1500 to trolltech is excesive or not since I don't know the cost of the alternative(Windows Visual development).
I also don't understand why in-house stuff would be so off limits to the GPL. If it's just for internal use and not a product what possible secrets are you giving away by GPLing it?
Lastly if $1500 dollars is excessive to keep their secrets than they aren't exactly state secrets are they? Think about that, $1500 dollars, not exactly a princely sum. The alternatives may be cheaper, like I said, I don't know but if keeping their stuff secret is so important to them than $1500 dollars should be worth it.
No I was talking "Free" as with the FSF and the GPL. The GPL doesn't say anything about payment for the binary it only speaks to payment for the source under which you must only charge a "reasonable" amount for providing it.
The fact that the GPL makes the binaries for software possible to get for gratis doesn't mean that you can't pay money for it. Redhat sold/sells many boxed versions of their software.
This started because the poster I responded to made it clear he EXPECTS his software for "free as in beer". Think about that, he has come to believe that free in "free software" is associated with money and not freedom. I'm not sorry in saying that that concept is abhorent to me.
We must work to make the "free" mean freedom. Users who get their software for gratis must understand that that form of "free" comes because of the freedom inherent in the source. And in fact that the software isn't totally gratis, there should be an expectation of some return. If you can code you should share your changes, if you can write than do documentation, if you can't do either and can't/don't want to pay than you should at least promote the freedom of the software. In other words DO SOMETHING! Don't just be a free-loader.
How can I say that? Well let's see, there are many boxed versions of Redhat & Suse that have been sold and I don't think anyone was ripped off.
While it is probably impossible for Redhat not to create a free as in beer version of their free as in speech software, the fact that it can and is paid for is very telling.
The main advantage of Open Source to most people is absolutely NOT the free binary whether they know it or not. It is not a "few geeks such as yourself" there is a very large world of geeks out here that value the source to their programs for many reasons other than that it may be free as in beer as well.
If in fact you value the monitary freeness of your software over the freedom of the source than I would argue that your not a geek at all but just someone who wants to ride a gravy train.
Furthermore the dichotomy you used between KDE & gnome is false because both are GPL'd. Would you rather pay for an Open Source KDE or get a closed source Windows for free? If you choose the Windows option than you definitely don't understand freedom and your no geek I want to hang out with.
The fact is that people have to stop with this idea that "free" in the GPL'd way means "free beer". Free software is a costly thing,I have spent untold hours of my valuable time helping to code free software, but that's fine I don't expect payment for that work because I was paid in kind by other coders. But users who just take and never give back must understand exactly what they are doing. I can't force anyone to pay for software they can get for "free" but your mentality that software MUST be free as in beer is totally antithema to the actual freedom that is espoused by free(dom) software.
Freedom software is about having the source, never looking over your shoulder for the thought police, adding to something and feeling you've contributed, learning, sharing. "Free beer" software is about being a leech!
Huh? There is a version of Qt under GPL your clients are free to use it for development even if they want to do commercial development.
Either you didn't know this or your hopped up on too much caffeine.
So take a break, enjoy the GPL, but most of all "DON'T PANIC".
Hmm. I hope you mean free as in speech not as in beer because otherwise that's not much of an argument.
The point of "free" software is that it is open for perusal, poking, sharing, etc. not that it's gratis so you don't have to pay for it. Granted because of the first the gratis part is often the case but the mentality that free speech software MUST mean free beer software is just wrong.
>>Saying the 'physics are wierd' at that scale is a bit of hand-waving.
I'll say. Especially since its chemistry their dealing with and not physics. I know the dividing line isn't precise but buckyballs aren't damaging fish due to quantum effects. Those old bucky's are way too big for that.
Excuse me, please tell us how many people died or had premature death or even debilating illness due to "all" those accidents that were all only stopped by pure luck.
Second please explain how your going to collect ALL the pollutants from your coal plant. You can stick the nuclear waste(after recycling of course because we have to be good recyclers) under my bed any day, try sticking all the coal pollutants under your bed, I suggest you look for a different place to live though.
Stories of government handouts and boondoggles don't impress me. They do that kind of shit with pig farms too. The only thing that does is prove government should stay out of business.
Tell you want, first get all the greenies out of my way, than I'll get you to pay me and I'll take it, refine it, sell it back to you and charge you again to take that "waste". Anything that can't be reused I'll put back in this nice little container I have around called the earth.
You seem like a reasonable person, don't be concerned about disposal. It can be handled and would be if politics and so called "environmentalists" weren't getting in the way.
Think about this, cyanide has an infinite half-life so it is always toxic.
Your stupid git. It is almost impossible to prove a SINGLE death due to radiation in the long term but it's easy to show whether or not the people around TMI died significantly prematurely compared to the rest of the population. If not death, the same statistical techniques can be used to determine if residents around TMI show significant increase in any given disease.
It is that information after 25 years I'd like to see rather than some nebulous affect on safety regulations.
The fact is dead men do tell tales!
Maybe he's not just displeased with MS but with his so called "friends" that don't have the tact to not ask a highly paid professional for free work.
I wish I had his guts. I'm sick of fixing Window's problems for my friends as well. I don't use this shit why should I be subjected to it's problems just because I have an aptitude for thinking and I work in the computer field.
If I was a mechanic and my friends asked me to fix their cars as much as I have to fix Window's problems, without pay even, I think I would be justified in telling them to "go f**k themselves".
I don't know about the other guy, but I've moved far past fixing computers for a living. I've moved up in the world and I don't care to toy with broken pieces of bile anymore it's a complete waste of time!