I'm in favor of keeping the Libertarians around because I've read the Constitution and some of the Federalist papers and like to think I understand what they meant- especially my idol, Madison.
Trying to stamp them out only empowers them. Gives them desperation, an enemy, polarizes them. It's better to keep them around, give them a little input, keep them from accomplishing too much, pacify them. That's what a republic like ours is supposed to do. The Libertarians are a noisy small faction. By their own standards they should be crushed because they can't compete with the bigger political parties and platforms. Thankfully we don't use their standards, and so they need to be supported and kept around so their distinctive voice can continue to be heard. It's good for us, but more than that, it is The Right Thing, even if they're not very useful. It's what we do.
I realize this is subsidizing the Libertarians for partially altruistic reasons but I think they will tolerate that, just this once;)
Atlas Shrugged was fiction. That's why you don't ever see it happening in real life.
In real life, the people wanting to carry on that way tend to go and make their money in the least controlled way they can, by fair means or foul. Then when they are rich, they come to _my_ state, Vermont, one of the more socialistic states out there, and they build a big-ass mansion out where the air isn't so poisoned from smokestack industries, where the lower classes are more pacified by an extensive government support network, where there are quaint little stores selling maple syrup and Vermont cheese made from Vermont organic farmers- all of which would be obliterated in a heartbeat if we didn't work so diligently to preserve it all.
If Atlas Shrugged was real, people would retire to Manhattan- or Houston. Instead, you guys do your things until you're satisfied with your bankrolls, and then you come and retire to the most socialist places you can find, where the quality of living isn't horrible. Can't fault you for that, but you'd think it would teach you something about the validity of your political philosophy. Maybe you think places like Vermont are maintained by the Quality Of Living fairy as a final reward for good capitalists:P
Sorry, I get bitter when I see people like that. A lot of my local friends are part of the various cottage industries serving wealthy people, and some of the wealthy people are pretty rotten human beings- and, oddly enough, very unhappy and angry people.
That would be interesting. And have the advantage of happening on the other side of the country from me;)
Seriously- it would be interesting. On the one hand, stuff like legalizing drugs would fly there if it flew anywhere. Also, I expect that even after the debacle with California energy deregulation, there is still support for doing more of it- that didn't come out of nowhere. The fact that it was a disaster only shows that the concept doesn't work, it does NOT mean there aren't people still willing to try it some more, so that's a point in California's favor.
On the downside, California has already had some problems (SMOG!) so badly that special regulations were made just for it. Cal emissions standards are the toughest around- if you wanted to go there and get rid of all the emissions regulations, I bet the auto makers would love you, but the chances of accomplishing it are pretty bad: those emissions standards are there because people were tired of CHOKING on their air, and the free market would not solve that or see it as a problem. Same thing happened in Chile when they tried it- babies in hospitals on respirators, that kind of thing. Though I suppose you could privatize the hospitals too and let Darwin take the babies born to poor families.
Your problem is basically that libertarianism tends to scorch the earth- therefore the places which have a history of that kind of deregulation are the places where people remember what happens.
Mind you, there are places of a like mind where people refuse to NOTICE or acknowledge the simple truth. Why don't you all go to Houston? Enron may not be hiring, but apparently Houston has always been that way. A catastrophic real estate collapse that reduced most Houstonites to paupers did not change the nature of the place, so you probably can't either. Go there, they'd like you guys.
Try Colorado maybe? Nevada? I'd suggest New Hampshire, but that's too close to Vermont. _I_ live in Vermont. I _vote_ in Vermont, too. And every single Vermonter in Congress (Jeffords, Leahy and our socialist Rep Bernie Sanders, whom we are very fond of) sided against King Bush on that damned war appropriations bill lately- something which many of us consider important. Leahy's doing very good work in Washington at times. Jeffords singlehandedly broke up a partisan stranglehold the Republicans had on the Senate combined with the Oval Office, acting on his conscience, and Vermonters understood and supported him with it.
Stay the hell out of Vermont or you will face dedicated grassroots activism just specifically to counter you and everything you stand for. We have an openly Socialist representative, who is VERY VOCAL about curbing corporate abuses, and we like him that way. We have a damned good social system set up and operating- Vermont takes care of its people and we will not let you stop that.
When you've earned your money by tooth and claw and beat up everybody else to make yourselves rich, THAT is when you'll be coming to Vermont, buying an expensive mansion like so many rich flatlanders, hiring us Vermonters to sweep your damn floor, depending on our excellent social systems to keep the rabble pacified and far from YOUR door. That's fine, you go ahead and do that, we'll find a way to tax you and we'll all get along.
Don't plan on turning our home into your little Coliseum for Ayn Rand clones to battle in. You go do that in someone else's backyard.
Preferably somewhere FAR AWAY and I mean FAR away, too. Did you know that we occasionally get hazardous smog levels in the green mountains of Vermont? It comes up from New York and New Jersey, sometimes we have it literally worse than LA when the weather isn't cooperative. I for one don't want you axing regulations for things like smokestack industries etc. anywhere near us...
I doubt it. They'd be largely a rabble- no discipline. A dedicated Iraqi soldier might well be capable of undertaking action tantamount to a suicide mission- call it self-sacrifice. What Libertarian would sacrifice himself for his fellows? The selfishness is a handicap in military terms. Somebody's gotta take point, even if it costs them personally. I don't see any of the Libertarians being really big on self-sacrifice- aren't they more about trying to invent a society in which nobody is ever asked, much less expected, to be altruistic?
"I keep seeing the concept that, somehow, there is this sacrosanct bubble of massive profitability surrounding 'ideas' or 'creativity' that must never ever be tampered with lest it pop and we are swept back into the Dark Ages covered with pox because our artists stop singing, actors stop acting, programmers stop coding and biochemists throw their hands up in despair because they're surrounded by a world of need without any financial means to create."
+1,000,000 it's-about-time-someone-said-this
It's particularly annoying in that it flat-out contradicts reality. After Microsoft dominated many important market sectors for software programs, there were still people coding things like word processors or browsers- they would do it for nothing because there WAS no opportunity to earn money at it, and it was still what they did. After the RIAA locked down control of radio and distribution channels and turned the screws so tight that it was ludicrous to expect to pursue a 'career' as a musician, musicians continued to sing and play anyway (including me, see URL)- they would do it for nothing because it was what they did and they had no opportunity to make money at it. I don't know about the biochemists, but one comment I read mentioned a university researcher throwing up her hands in frustration because the years of work she had done for nothing had been outmaneuvered by a patent IP grab blocking her from continuing to work...
What tends to provoke my fury is that this retarded claim, this 'oh, civilization would stop if we don't give these colossal IP grants', invariably acts to empower the selfish entities (often corporations and companies) that actively stomp all over the 'free', 'altruistic' players, seeing them as competition! Microsoft trying to outflank Open Source and wipe it out. Drug IP companies ordering University researchers to cease work or pay the ransom. RIAA stamping out webcasting with onerous requirements.
I'm sorry, but the argument for IP carries less and less weight with me. Those it benefits seem to do damage WAY out of proportion to their real importance. What really gets to me is the 'Pravda'-esque doublethink of first stamping out the free/altruistic/noncommercial players, and then insisting that no such players could possibly exist.
"If you could make a word processor from academic research, wouldn't people be using it?"
"If you could come up with medicines from federally funded research, would private companies end up owning it?"
"If indie music was any good, wouldn't it be in the Top 40 and played on the radio?"
I swear, sometimes when I see the intellectual games played with logic in contradiction of obvious reality, I just want to kick some asses in. Certain people making certain arguments deserve to be _hit_. At least, sometimes I think so. What else can you do, jail them for thinking sociopathic craziness?
Yes, you're posting from a hidebound libertarian perspective in which the approach you advocate would actually work the best in practice.
To the extent that this isn't true, you can expect to see examples of people frustrating you by making it more complicated than that. Wasn't it Einstein who said things should be made as simple as possible- but NOT simpler?
Yes, absolutely: they want to raise the barriers to entry.
Here's what you do. Here's what you GOTTA do.
Anyone out there who can play, sing, compose, you need to get cracking and start working your ASS off- produce something. You're the front lines.
Anyone out there who can get the word out about musicians and bands that aren't RIAA but really should be getting work anyway- take some time, do it, get the word out. You're the supply lines.
Anyone out there who can hunt down indie music and spend even half as much as you're used to giving the RIAA, do it! Just because most indie acts put up free downloads doesn't mean you should be doing the download thing only- if they don't have a way for you to buy something tangible (CDs, shirts, what have you), then FIND a way to give them something. They're only doing the free downloads because (a) they're nice to you and/or (b) the RIAA have so poisoned the industry that they have no hope in hell of ever getting paid. By YOU. The RIAA have come between these musicians and YOU by setting up a situation in which the musicians are so locked out of mass media that they've given up completely and are putting up mp3s for nothing.
OK, so who am I to be saying all this? I'm a guy who can't sit on the sidelines any more. Recent events drove me into the studio because I _had_ to start turning out songs, songs with words, words that said what I needed to say.
With tracks like "Take A Number" I'm playing in the major leagues. I have been playing for twenty years and never had the kind of capabilities I have today, and I am using it to put out musical material that is better than a heck of a lot of the major label crap. How?
When I started, you could only get cassette multitracks. Now, I work on a 20 bit ADAT- you can also work on digital audio workstations, that barrier to entry has collapsed. The major label guys running 2" 24-track tape can beat you- but the majors are using DAWs for everything now!
When I started, there was a big gulf between pro and hobbyist gear. Now, I'm using a compressor (the FMR "RNC") that's widely raved about by working sound engineering professionals, and it's just $200. There's a reputable large-diaphragm condenser mic, the Studio Projects C1, also $200. FMR's coming out with a killer mic preamp for $500. You can buy decent guitars from Samick for dirt cheap and stick better pickups etc. in them, replace the electronics. That barrier to entry has collapsed- if you know what you're doing, you can get truly professional sound for damned little.
When I started, the only source of information was trade magazines. Now, the trade rags (except for 'Tape Op') are worthless tools of advertisers, but there's dozens of Internet gathering places for pros in every area of studio and live work. You have to not be a know-it-all but the amount of learning that can be done is shocking. Google Usenet search is your friend. We didn't have that when I started.
I started out dubbing tape cassette releases, buying bulk tapes and boxes, literally pasting up artwork to photocopy tape inserts and labels, with the lettering typed on a typewriter or rubbed on with Letraset. Now- well, do I have to mention Photoshop? Desktop layout and graphic design? Thought not. That barrier is demolished.
So, now that I have ALL THOSE capabilities, now that I am ready and motivated to blow the roof off and make fantastic music (I once took a music business course from a teacher named Peter Knickles. Talked to him after class as he was packing up. His two words of greeting? "Impress me." That's still the challenge, every time), now they want to bar the doors. Worse, they want to shut everyone else down- since by this point, large numbers of musicians realise it's a rigged game and they're hosed before even starting. You've got discouraged or contemptuous musicians refusing to even deal with the majors, knowing what a hose job they'd get.
Musicians make music. Whether there's money in it or not. That's why I kept playing these 20 years (started at around 14- I'm not an old codger, just 34;) ). If there's no hope for paying gigs, musicians will continue to make music and try to get it heard through avenues that aren't going to pay in money, they'll just try for some exposure because music is for hearing, and even THAT isn't good enough for the RIAA, they're trying to shut down even THAT!!
Well, fuck that.
I'm going to keep making music, and I'm NOT going to resign myself to a future in which it is worthless and marginalized. There's a lot of you who are ready to copy bootlegs of majorlabel CDs around, there's a lot of you who are ready to stream majorlabel tunes over the Internet. I'm the one who is ready to curse the major labels and never deal with them and function as a serious musician and songwriter completely apart from them. And you know what? I never did like marketing hype and schmoozing people to listen to my stuff and I don't give a damn if you all continue to just wank off with major label crap, persuading yourselves that you're being rebels because you're not paying them in cash, only in attention.
I'm not doing it for YOU.
I'm doing it because of a certain kid I once was, who listened to prog-rock in the middle of the night and wanted to be just like that, who struggled to learn how to play, who eventually learned the truth about the music business some years before it became obvious to everybody else, and whose heart was broken at the loss of that dream, seemingly forever.
The various scars and blisters on my hands, and the tunes I have for downloading, say this: that dream is only as dead as you want it to be. Some of you may be learning this, too.
Yes, but since the Castigate Wizard requires IE to be open to function, it will launch IE during your presentation, and your machine will crash before you can be castigated. So you should be safe:)
So, people are entirely responsible for their own decisions, to the point that even if they do not have the required information at all and can't possibly know about it, they are obligated to behave as if they had that information, by making stuff up?
I think it is a little much to claim such a person is solely responsible for making good judgement calls when they CAN'T.
Are you suggesting people be randomly skeptical based on their appraisal of how statistically likely it is for an average company to be totally lying to them?
You could make it a lot easier by abandoning all regulation and going totally free market, though. Then ALL the companies would lie like cheap rugs, loot the accounting books, and collapse mysteriously when all the money is gone:)
If every last one of those companies listed are doing the insider loans as a part of corporate bloat and corruption that is causing them to lose money, and Microsoft is doing insider loans, suffers corporate bloat and corruption... but hey, Microsoft, they make money!...
...then maybe you need to ask what is more likely- that Microsoft is mired in that kind of corruption and waste and yet unlike all those other companies makes loads of money, or that Microsoft is mired in corruption and LIES, claiming that it is making money.
Do you really think they are so different from the other companies on the list?
I just turned around a song out of my studio in just over 13 hours. Tracked, mixed, everything, most of all mastered to 16 bit CD format.
This was a very good lesson in how much is lost- even with the most hardcore esoteric wordlength reduction.
The tune is "Take A Number". This song was actually inspired from Slashdot- it comes out of those Columbine/Hellmouth threads and civil liberties threads, with lyrics like "and if any classmates are scary or fey/some nice men will come quick and take them away". Anyhow, I went through the entire recording process with this. It was recorded to a digital multitrack machine, but the summing was passive analog, and while setting up tracks I generally cranked up the instrument I was working on, heard it right up front clearly.
These 'solo' tracks, turned up loud, provided the clearest sound picture. I got familiar with exactly how each track sounded. Then working with the full mix over the passive analog mixer was an impressive experience- this is through analog 2-buss compression, but before any form of digital limiting or processing. The sound of this was freaking gi-normous, and that is what I'd like to dump to SACD. It was just huge, despite the digital sources. Technically the passive combining results in an effective resolution (minimum resolution to completely describe every sound) that is outlandishly huge, with no added noise to boot.
Capturing this to SPDIF, and monitoring over even 24 bit A/D to D/A, changed things a lot. The depth shifted somehow- the focus became more on the upfront things, and the massive scale of the analog/passive rig got quite a bit smaller.
Mastering that to 16 bit, even with highpass dither and IIR noise shaping, was another change in scale. If the same tonalities and balances were kept, the sound ended up a bit dull but without the energy or scale it'd had. Enter the mastering engineer- and the solution was to bring the focus still nearer. Result, a CD mastering that had as much of the liveliness of the original as possible- but the scale of the thing is totally, way off! It's like a choice- when you're down at 16 bits, you can have the scale, or you can have the liveliness- you can't get both at once. There's not enough data to carry it off, even in a best-case scenario.
Then of course I made an mp3 out of it, but there's no point even griping about that, it's so far from the original;) with luck it can still blast out of people's stereos okay.
But I just wish I had access to SACD authoring. To do what I do the way I do it, I could take advantage of that. Not everybody could, but I do stuff the way I do it for a reason.
You probably can't hear very high frequencies anymore, then, but you won't have any trouble hearing high resolution, as long as it's in the midrange and bass. In that case you'd want to avoid generic PCM systems like DVD-A that mainly boast very accurate performance in the high frequencies, and you'd prefer SACD, which is a quantum leap in resolution over bass/midrange freqencies, and can put out strong but inaccurate very high frequencies which maybe you'd hear, maybe you wouldn't.
"Many alternative and independent artists release their own CDs and do not contemplate moving to neither SACD or DVD-A media."
Like hell I don't! I can only speak for myself, but for me it's AUTHORING stopping me from trying to put out SACDs. I build my own gear, including a high-end passive attenuation resistance mixer, and I can max out the information on a 16-bit CD. Hell, I've had to write wordlength reduction software to get around the aggravating limitations of the medium. It's not so much the high frequency limits that bug me (though I can easily overwhelm that too, with real-world signals such as certain types of distorted guitar and certain guitar techniques), it's the resolution. Without hardcore wordlength reduction, CDs are grainy and as thin as cardboard- you can't get the sense of ambience out of them. (there's ambience in some of my recent work such as 'Houston, We Have A Problem', you should hear the original masters.)
I would LOVE to go to SACD, completely independent of any concerns of copy-prevention. SACD puts the resolution where it is useful- progressively higher res as the frequency drops, increasing distortion as the frequency rises. Can you hear 10% harmonic distortion on a 20K tone? Thought not. Can you appreciate that there's some kinda content going on at 40K? Hell yes. The super highs don't need to have such low distortion figures, but the super lows really benefit from it- THOSE overtones are well within the range of easy hearing.
I concede that with kickass dithering you can get a lot out of 16 bit. I do that all the time. SACD would still be better. (DVD-A is more of an incremental gain, with explosions and special effects going boom and sounds swirling around your head, plus a cheesy subwoofer;) )
Hey now, I personally underwent a double-blind, ABX test to tell a difference between a recording dithered to 16 bit and truncated to 16 bit. Under normal conditions, not an ideal choice of recording, and with cars and stuff going by outside.
I peaked out at about 8 out of 10 correct IDs, a 94% confidence. After that, my ear burned out and the confidence dropped with a series of bad guesses- I was ignoring good advice to not attempt to do a full course of 16 trials in one sitting, much less while fatigued and incapable of continuing to hear at that level. I got mad after that and blew off ANOTHER set of 16 trials real fast, and got 77% confidence I was hearing that one, even after burn-out. This is still with traffic outside and all.
I'm sorry- this stuff is not easy to consciously hear, but it has its subliminal effect and it IS real. Sometime I'm gonna take a recording of an acoustic space like my room, listen at a good volume at 3 in the morning rather than (cringe) 5 in the afternoon when I did those tests, and ace the annoying little buggers. For now, however- odds are, you're wrong.
That is very complicatedly put, and still leads to an insane conclusion. ("The net effect of all this is that it destroys the intellectual commons, no matter how you look at it. The FSF is just as guilty as Microsoft, in this regard.")
Can you simplify? It seems very counterintuitive that the FSF, the GPL, GNU et al are destroying the intellectual commons. One might even say you were flat-out wrong. What are you really trying to say?:)
Only to the extent that, in practice, a lot of people would go along with a new version if it wasn't too outrageous. I'm tempted to say 'no not at all, people could choose to stay with old versions' which is technically true, but the mirror image of the argument that 'people could buy the commercial BitKeeper'.
RMS has no way to MAKE people adopt a new version- they already have a GPL that works. McVoy has, I think, a way to MAKE people adopt new licensing on BitKeeper- people don't have ownership of his product, merely licenses to use it.
So, in practice RMS has a way to control the direction of the GPL, but by design this is not an absolute, and not even RMS has total control over it. It's bigger than he is, even though it's in his image- and if he did choose to get backseat-drivey on the GPL, it would not be from a position of control as the creator of it, but from a position of deep and abiding respect for him and desire to obey his wishes.
Which is to say you should NOT worry because it seems like nobody respects RMS and certainly won't do what he says, even if he's asking for sensible things. So in that case it's IMPOSSIBLE for him to affect the GPL anymore;)
Whoa. Very interesting and insightful background there, thank you muchly for all the information.
However, how can you possibly say dependence on proprietary software is more effective at achieving GNU goals than the GPL is?
Methinks you are radically misunderstanding something about whose goals for what and why. If you'd said 'it was more effective at achieving Linus's goals for Linux than the GPL', that would be very debatable and hard to prove, but it wouldn't be an insane statement. You need to rephrase, because in no sense would reliance on BitKeeper further any GNU or FSF goals.
What you have here is a situation where BitKeeper might be effective at furthering 'Open Source' goals, but completely bitchslaps 'Free Software' goals. Schism. This is where you can split the diamond with only a very light tap.
I think it is interesting that this has come up: it is a wonderful opportunity for Microsoft or some interested party to do some damage, or just lay plans. If you split the community into Open Source vs Free Software camps (ESR vs RMS?), the results are interesting. The Open Source camp would be considerably larger, have bigger projects, but it would be vulnerable to catastrophic failure- you could destroy it. The Free camp would be smaller and have fewer ties to big companies and 'name' projects, but it is the one that cannot be 'taken out' by hostile action.
It's a bit like Napster vs. Gnutella. Napster was much, much bigger- but it was possible to destroy, and it was destroyed. Gnutella and similar designs are just not as efficient, but you can't get rid of them...
This is much the same. In the end, RMS will be the last man standing. However, if you stand with him, people are gonna pass you by, pursuing grand plans that have fatal flaws, undertaking huge projects and suffering great defeats. To side with RMS you have to be thinking longterm. Few seem to.
Instead of 'products', since we are talking about software, how about saying 'software concepts'?
Then you'd be saying some software concepts can't thrive as Free Software.
Maybe you're right- depending on how you define 'thrive'. It's all shades of gray.
But if this type of software concept can't thrive as Free, why would there be license clauses blocking the development of it through use of BitKeeper? Even the free-beer license?
Can't have it both ways. If it truly is a niche that BitKeeper deserves to keep because Free alternatives would be too boring to develop, then there's no reason to block them. If it's a niche that naturally would tend towards a Free variant tailored to supporting Linux, then McVoy is intentionally blocking development of it for his own personal gain.
If it's a matter of 'but the Free version would be Good Enough (tm) to kill BitKeeper as a moneymaking enterprise while still not being really as good as truly proprietary software!'... Well, when did THAT ever stop Linux from growing? And the lame-but-good-enough version would be permanently available to build on and improve, which BitKeeper is not.
I don't think concerns of profitmaking software-development companies have any bearing on what should allow to take root in the Free sphere. If they are so afraid that a worse-but-Free variant will eat their business, well, sucks to be them. Maybe they need to try harder if they don't think they can still sell under those conditions.
I don't like to see these proprietary-coder guys coddled and given a cushier situation than what I face in a different field- as a musician;) I want to go, 'so starve and eat Ramen if you aren't willing to sweat fsckin' blood over your work and fight for years for even piddling small amounts of recognition, pansy!';) Wimps.;)
Funny, I thought there have been many Unix variants placing pragmatism above ideology.
Perhaps it's more relevant that in using the GPL, Linux chose licensing that specifically balks any attempt to impose authority over the codebase. You can call that anarchistic, or collectivist, with perfect accuracy- the only authority is in the wording of the license itself, working to maintain the lack of authority of anybody else over the codebase.
As a result, if you see GPLed Linux code, and you can qualify under the license, you OWN it and don't ever need to consult anybody or anything else. And you'll explicitly give up your legal rights to exert control over your contributions in turn- and the next person will see just as simple a picture: if you qualify to use this license, the code is yours right now, no further red tape or paperwork, all clear now and forever.
Do you really think Linus's avoiding of ideology (other than to choose the single most ideological pro-sharing license out there) has been more relevant to Linux's success than this?
True, but what is stopping them from putting that clause into the for-pay license too?
You're arguing that it's less important because the for-pay license permits development of competing products. There is NO inherent reason this, too, could not be changed. Then what?
You're quite correct- it's just that, if everyone thinks on strictly technical and practical concerns, RMS is hosed. The whole concept of Free software, as in software that's beholden to no authority but the rules of its own license, is not a technical concern. You could make an argument that it produces the most effective collective structure for development, but that's more of a research paper- it's not a simple technical point.
If you're going to refuse to deal on anything other than a technical or pragmatic level, then you should expect trouble from RMS, and you should expect to get some flak you don't understand and don't consider appropriate. What RMS observes that you don't is, operating purely from a technical/pragmatic level TENDS TOWARD non-optimal proprietary software.
It's pure game theory. Unless you jump outside the system of tech/pragmatic, you can't understand the manner in which you lose. Self-interested rationalism, even among coders, leads to game-theoretical problems like refusal to cooperate (what's in it for me?) and a variety of failures to efficiently produce a commons.
I'm afraid you can't stick to just pragmatic concerns. No, let me correct that- you can, but you can't expect everyone else to, because some people out there know better- and pragmatically, you don't have the power to control them or shut them up.
Fine- you do that. In ten years- hell, in three years- your 'open' source movement will be indistinguishable from proprietary software.
Isn't it true that for any proprietary software you could presumably get code if you satisfied the owners, paid them enough or whatever? It sounds very much like you see the point as being able to get code, but completely don't 'get' the idea of taking authority out of the original developer's hands.
'Open' source and proprietary source can both be transmitted to different coders given that you satisfy the owner, get their okay. Maybe sometimes they'll agree. Maybe they won't. Maybe they're dead, or out of town, simply unavailable.
Free code, you don't have to satisfy the owner- you have to qualify to BE an owner, at which point you get all privileges of ownership to the extent that the license permits. You're not dealing with a PERSON, you're dealing with a set of legal rules. It's set up in the only way it can be so that if you see code you can HAVE it. It defines a commons that is to some extent self-protecting.
The reason it's that way and not simple public domain is, a certain person saw years ago that the public domain naturally tended towards the proprietary. Stagnation, walling off IP. That person saw fit to arrange for something else to be available.
That's the person you want to get rid of.
That's why I say- go RIGHT ahead. I already know what will happen. You wouldn't be reacting the way you are, if you didn't have some underlying assumptions about how coders should have say over what happens to their code- the idea that people should make their own 'open' licenses, should get to determine their own rules for their openness.
This is no different from very permissive proprietary licenses. The thing about the GNU sphere that is different is that it is set up to balk any effort to impose authority, up to and including RMS's. If he did a new version of the GPL in which he got to come into your house and eat your Fritos and microwave all your nonfree software CDs, GNU would promptly fork and nobody would adopt his new license at all.
Because the GNU/GPL sphere goes against the grain in balking authority from outside itself, it isn't the instinctive choice of anybody- it's giving up your power to something bigger than you. Not a person or authority, but a concept- but it's still giving up your power, to use the GPL. You have legal rights that you intentionally let go of when you use GPL, because legally you are allowed to be proprietary and take ownership of your code.
RMS may or may not have known that what he was creating in Free code would be collectively successful- in fact it's led to huge things, much grander than cooperation among non-Free independent developers (given that Linux is grander than POV-Ray;) ). However, since it is collectively successful as a result of individual coders giving up some of their power to support the common interest, it makes sense to be interested in the reasons for this.
And it makes sense for RMS to be tireless, unbending, even maddening in his demands that people respect and understand this collective.
You only see him, the figurehead, loudly heading up this thing, and because you don't know better you see him as being in control. You see this guy as the leader, the one in charge.
The difference is, what he's leading, he has no real control over whatsoever- and he likes it that way. He can parade his ego all he wants and it won't do any harm because he HAS no authority over what he's supposedly leading.
Shouldn't you be reconsidering your hostility to the guy in light of the fact that he's not the boss of you, not the boss of Linux, not the boss of GNU, and not the boss of the GPL? You gotta make some allowances for the visionary type. Name one more socially acceptable person who's innovated something like the GPL universe, while not leaving a loophole for himself to direct and control it.
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Trying to stamp them out only empowers them. Gives them desperation, an enemy, polarizes them. It's better to keep them around, give them a little input, keep them from accomplishing too much, pacify them. That's what a republic like ours is supposed to do. The Libertarians are a noisy small faction. By their own standards they should be crushed because they can't compete with the bigger political parties and platforms. Thankfully we don't use their standards, and so they need to be supported and kept around so their distinctive voice can continue to be heard. It's good for us, but more than that, it is The Right Thing, even if they're not very useful. It's what we do.
I realize this is subsidizing the Libertarians for partially altruistic reasons but I think they will tolerate that, just this once ;)
In real life, the people wanting to carry on that way tend to go and make their money in the least controlled way they can, by fair means or foul. Then when they are rich, they come to _my_ state, Vermont, one of the more socialistic states out there, and they build a big-ass mansion out where the air isn't so poisoned from smokestack industries, where the lower classes are more pacified by an extensive government support network, where there are quaint little stores selling maple syrup and Vermont cheese made from Vermont organic farmers- all of which would be obliterated in a heartbeat if we didn't work so diligently to preserve it all.
If Atlas Shrugged was real, people would retire to Manhattan- or Houston. Instead, you guys do your things until you're satisfied with your bankrolls, and then you come and retire to the most socialist places you can find, where the quality of living isn't horrible. Can't fault you for that, but you'd think it would teach you something about the validity of your political philosophy. Maybe you think places like Vermont are maintained by the Quality Of Living fairy as a final reward for good capitalists :P
Sorry, I get bitter when I see people like that. A lot of my local friends are part of the various cottage industries serving wealthy people, and some of the wealthy people are pretty rotten human beings- and, oddly enough, very unhappy and angry people.
Seriously- it would be interesting. On the one hand, stuff like legalizing drugs would fly there if it flew anywhere. Also, I expect that even after the debacle with California energy deregulation, there is still support for doing more of it- that didn't come out of nowhere. The fact that it was a disaster only shows that the concept doesn't work, it does NOT mean there aren't people still willing to try it some more, so that's a point in California's favor.
On the downside, California has already had some problems (SMOG!) so badly that special regulations were made just for it. Cal emissions standards are the toughest around- if you wanted to go there and get rid of all the emissions regulations, I bet the auto makers would love you, but the chances of accomplishing it are pretty bad: those emissions standards are there because people were tired of CHOKING on their air, and the free market would not solve that or see it as a problem. Same thing happened in Chile when they tried it- babies in hospitals on respirators, that kind of thing. Though I suppose you could privatize the hospitals too and let Darwin take the babies born to poor families.
Your problem is basically that libertarianism tends to scorch the earth- therefore the places which have a history of that kind of deregulation are the places where people remember what happens.
Mind you, there are places of a like mind where people refuse to NOTICE or acknowledge the simple truth. Why don't you all go to Houston? Enron may not be hiring, but apparently Houston has always been that way. A catastrophic real estate collapse that reduced most Houstonites to paupers did not change the nature of the place, so you probably can't either. Go there, they'd like you guys.
Stay the hell out of Vermont or you will face dedicated grassroots activism just specifically to counter you and everything you stand for. We have an openly Socialist representative, who is VERY VOCAL about curbing corporate abuses, and we like him that way. We have a damned good social system set up and operating- Vermont takes care of its people and we will not let you stop that.
When you've earned your money by tooth and claw and beat up everybody else to make yourselves rich, THAT is when you'll be coming to Vermont, buying an expensive mansion like so many rich flatlanders, hiring us Vermonters to sweep your damn floor, depending on our excellent social systems to keep the rabble pacified and far from YOUR door. That's fine, you go ahead and do that, we'll find a way to tax you and we'll all get along.
Don't plan on turning our home into your little Coliseum for Ayn Rand clones to battle in. You go do that in someone else's backyard.
Preferably somewhere FAR AWAY and I mean FAR away, too. Did you know that we occasionally get hazardous smog levels in the green mountains of Vermont? It comes up from New York and New Jersey, sometimes we have it literally worse than LA when the weather isn't cooperative. I for one don't want you axing regulations for things like smokestack industries etc. anywhere near us...
I doubt it. They'd be largely a rabble- no discipline. A dedicated Iraqi soldier might well be capable of undertaking action tantamount to a suicide mission- call it self-sacrifice. What Libertarian would sacrifice himself for his fellows? The selfishness is a handicap in military terms. Somebody's gotta take point, even if it costs them personally. I don't see any of the Libertarians being really big on self-sacrifice- aren't they more about trying to invent a society in which nobody is ever asked, much less expected, to be altruistic?
+1,000,000 it's-about-time-someone-said-this
It's particularly annoying in that it flat-out contradicts reality. After Microsoft dominated many important market sectors for software programs, there were still people coding things like word processors or browsers- they would do it for nothing because there WAS no opportunity to earn money at it, and it was still what they did. After the RIAA locked down control of radio and distribution channels and turned the screws so tight that it was ludicrous to expect to pursue a 'career' as a musician, musicians continued to sing and play anyway (including me, see URL)- they would do it for nothing because it was what they did and they had no opportunity to make money at it. I don't know about the biochemists, but one comment I read mentioned a university researcher throwing up her hands in frustration because the years of work she had done for nothing had been outmaneuvered by a patent IP grab blocking her from continuing to work...
What tends to provoke my fury is that this retarded claim, this 'oh, civilization would stop if we don't give these colossal IP grants', invariably acts to empower the selfish entities (often corporations and companies) that actively stomp all over the 'free', 'altruistic' players, seeing them as competition! Microsoft trying to outflank Open Source and wipe it out. Drug IP companies ordering University researchers to cease work or pay the ransom. RIAA stamping out webcasting with onerous requirements.
I'm sorry, but the argument for IP carries less and less weight with me. Those it benefits seem to do damage WAY out of proportion to their real importance. What really gets to me is the 'Pravda'-esque doublethink of first stamping out the free/altruistic/noncommercial players, and then insisting that no such players could possibly exist.
"If you could make a word processor from academic research, wouldn't people be using it?"
"If you could come up with medicines from federally funded research, would private companies end up owning it?"
"If indie music was any good, wouldn't it be in the Top 40 and played on the radio?"
I swear, sometimes when I see the intellectual games played with logic in contradiction of obvious reality, I just want to kick some asses in. Certain people making certain arguments deserve to be _hit_. At least, sometimes I think so. What else can you do, jail them for thinking sociopathic craziness?
To the extent that this isn't true, you can expect to see examples of people frustrating you by making it more complicated than that. Wasn't it Einstein who said things should be made as simple as possible- but NOT simpler?
Here's what you do. Here's what you GOTTA do.
Anyone out there who can play, sing, compose, you need to get cracking and start working your ASS off- produce something. You're the front lines.
Anyone out there who can get the word out about musicians and bands that aren't RIAA but really should be getting work anyway- take some time, do it, get the word out. You're the supply lines.
Anyone out there who can hunt down indie music and spend even half as much as you're used to giving the RIAA, do it! Just because most indie acts put up free downloads doesn't mean you should be doing the download thing only- if they don't have a way for you to buy something tangible (CDs, shirts, what have you), then FIND a way to give them something. They're only doing the free downloads because (a) they're nice to you and/or (b) the RIAA have so poisoned the industry that they have no hope in hell of ever getting paid. By YOU. The RIAA have come between these musicians and YOU by setting up a situation in which the musicians are so locked out of mass media that they've given up completely and are putting up mp3s for nothing.
OK, so who am I to be saying all this? I'm a guy who can't sit on the sidelines any more. Recent events drove me into the studio because I _had_ to start turning out songs, songs with words, words that said what I needed to say.
With tracks like "Take A Number" I'm playing in the major leagues. I have been playing for twenty years and never had the kind of capabilities I have today, and I am using it to put out musical material that is better than a heck of a lot of the major label crap. How?
When I started, you could only get cassette multitracks. Now, I work on a 20 bit ADAT- you can also work on digital audio workstations, that barrier to entry has collapsed. The major label guys running 2" 24-track tape can beat you- but the majors are using DAWs for everything now!
When I started, there was a big gulf between pro and hobbyist gear. Now, I'm using a compressor (the FMR "RNC") that's widely raved about by working sound engineering professionals, and it's just $200. There's a reputable large-diaphragm condenser mic, the Studio Projects C1, also $200. FMR's coming out with a killer mic preamp for $500. You can buy decent guitars from Samick for dirt cheap and stick better pickups etc. in them, replace the electronics. That barrier to entry has collapsed- if you know what you're doing, you can get truly professional sound for damned little.
When I started, the only source of information was trade magazines. Now, the trade rags (except for 'Tape Op') are worthless tools of advertisers, but there's dozens of Internet gathering places for pros in every area of studio and live work. You have to not be a know-it-all but the amount of learning that can be done is shocking. Google Usenet search is your friend. We didn't have that when I started.
I started out dubbing tape cassette releases, buying bulk tapes and boxes, literally pasting up artwork to photocopy tape inserts and labels, with the lettering typed on a typewriter or rubbed on with Letraset. Now- well, do I have to mention Photoshop? Desktop layout and graphic design? Thought not. That barrier is demolished.
So, now that I have ALL THOSE capabilities, now that I am ready and motivated to blow the roof off and make fantastic music (I once took a music business course from a teacher named Peter Knickles. Talked to him after class as he was packing up. His two words of greeting? "Impress me." That's still the challenge, every time), now they want to bar the doors. Worse, they want to shut everyone else down- since by this point, large numbers of musicians realise it's a rigged game and they're hosed before even starting. You've got discouraged or contemptuous musicians refusing to even deal with the majors, knowing what a hose job they'd get.
Musicians make music. Whether there's money in it or not. That's why I kept playing these 20 years (started at around 14- I'm not an old codger, just 34 ;) ). If there's no hope for paying gigs, musicians will continue to make music and try to get it heard through avenues that aren't going to pay in money, they'll just try for some exposure because music is for hearing, and even THAT isn't good enough for the RIAA, they're trying to shut down even THAT!!
Well, fuck that.
I'm going to keep making music, and I'm NOT going to resign myself to a future in which it is worthless and marginalized. There's a lot of you who are ready to copy bootlegs of majorlabel CDs around, there's a lot of you who are ready to stream majorlabel tunes over the Internet. I'm the one who is ready to curse the major labels and never deal with them and function as a serious musician and songwriter completely apart from them. And you know what? I never did like marketing hype and schmoozing people to listen to my stuff and I don't give a damn if you all continue to just wank off with major label crap, persuading yourselves that you're being rebels because you're not paying them in cash, only in attention.
I'm not doing it for YOU.
I'm doing it because of a certain kid I once was, who listened to prog-rock in the middle of the night and wanted to be just like that, who struggled to learn how to play, who eventually learned the truth about the music business some years before it became obvious to everybody else, and whose heart was broken at the loss of that dream, seemingly forever.
The various scars and blisters on my hands, and the tunes I have for downloading, say this: that dream is only as dead as you want it to be. Some of you may be learning this, too.
So. Get out there and FIGHT!
-Chris Johnson
Yes, but since the Castigate Wizard requires IE to be open to function, it will launch IE during your presentation, and your machine will crash before you can be castigated. So you should be safe :)
I think it is a little much to claim such a person is solely responsible for making good judgement calls when they CAN'T.
Are you suggesting people be randomly skeptical based on their appraisal of how statistically likely it is for an average company to be totally lying to them?
You could make it a lot easier by abandoning all regulation and going totally free market, though. Then ALL the companies would lie like cheap rugs, loot the accounting books, and collapse mysteriously when all the money is gone :)
If every last one of those companies listed are doing the insider loans as a part of corporate bloat and corruption that is causing them to lose money, and Microsoft is doing insider loans, suffers corporate bloat and corruption... but hey, Microsoft, they make money!...
Do you really think they are so different from the other companies on the list?
I'm... speechless :D
I just turned around a song out of my studio in just over 13 hours. Tracked, mixed, everything, most of all mastered to 16 bit CD format.
This was a very good lesson in how much is lost- even with the most hardcore esoteric wordlength reduction.
The tune is "Take A Number". This song was actually inspired from Slashdot- it comes out of those Columbine/Hellmouth threads and civil liberties threads, with lyrics like "and if any classmates are scary or fey/some nice men will come quick and take them away". Anyhow, I went through the entire recording process with this. It was recorded to a digital multitrack machine, but the summing was passive analog, and while setting up tracks I generally cranked up the instrument I was working on, heard it right up front clearly.
These 'solo' tracks, turned up loud, provided the clearest sound picture. I got familiar with exactly how each track sounded. Then working with the full mix over the passive analog mixer was an impressive experience- this is through analog 2-buss compression, but before any form of digital limiting or processing. The sound of this was freaking gi-normous, and that is what I'd like to dump to SACD. It was just huge, despite the digital sources. Technically the passive combining results in an effective resolution (minimum resolution to completely describe every sound) that is outlandishly huge, with no added noise to boot.
Capturing this to SPDIF, and monitoring over even 24 bit A/D to D/A, changed things a lot. The depth shifted somehow- the focus became more on the upfront things, and the massive scale of the analog/passive rig got quite a bit smaller.
Mastering that to 16 bit, even with highpass dither and IIR noise shaping, was another change in scale. If the same tonalities and balances were kept, the sound ended up a bit dull but without the energy or scale it'd had. Enter the mastering engineer- and the solution was to bring the focus still nearer. Result, a CD mastering that had as much of the liveliness of the original as possible- but the scale of the thing is totally, way off! It's like a choice- when you're down at 16 bits, you can have the scale, or you can have the liveliness- you can't get both at once. There's not enough data to carry it off, even in a best-case scenario.
Then of course I made an mp3 out of it, but there's no point even griping about that, it's so far from the original ;) with luck it can still blast out of people's stereos okay.
But I just wish I had access to SACD authoring. To do what I do the way I do it, I could take advantage of that. Not everybody could, but I do stuff the way I do it for a reason.
You probably can't hear very high frequencies anymore, then, but you won't have any trouble hearing high resolution, as long as it's in the midrange and bass. In that case you'd want to avoid generic PCM systems like DVD-A that mainly boast very accurate performance in the high frequencies, and you'd prefer SACD, which is a quantum leap in resolution over bass/midrange freqencies, and can put out strong but inaccurate very high frequencies which maybe you'd hear, maybe you wouldn't.
Like hell I don't! I can only speak for myself, but for me it's AUTHORING stopping me from trying to put out SACDs. I build my own gear, including a high-end passive attenuation resistance mixer, and I can max out the information on a 16-bit CD. Hell, I've had to write wordlength reduction software to get around the aggravating limitations of the medium. It's not so much the high frequency limits that bug me (though I can easily overwhelm that too, with real-world signals such as certain types of distorted guitar and certain guitar techniques), it's the resolution. Without hardcore wordlength reduction, CDs are grainy and as thin as cardboard- you can't get the sense of ambience out of them. (there's ambience in some of my recent work such as 'Houston, We Have A Problem', you should hear the original masters.) I would LOVE to go to SACD, completely independent of any concerns of copy-prevention. SACD puts the resolution where it is useful- progressively higher res as the frequency drops, increasing distortion as the frequency rises. Can you hear 10% harmonic distortion on a 20K tone? Thought not. Can you appreciate that there's some kinda content going on at 40K? Hell yes. The super highs don't need to have such low distortion figures, but the super lows really benefit from it- THOSE overtones are well within the range of easy hearing.
I concede that with kickass dithering you can get a lot out of 16 bit. I do that all the time. SACD would still be better. (DVD-A is more of an incremental gain, with explosions and special effects going boom and sounds swirling around your head, plus a cheesy subwoofer ;) )
I peaked out at about 8 out of 10 correct IDs, a 94% confidence. After that, my ear burned out and the confidence dropped with a series of bad guesses- I was ignoring good advice to not attempt to do a full course of 16 trials in one sitting, much less while fatigued and incapable of continuing to hear at that level. I got mad after that and blew off ANOTHER set of 16 trials real fast, and got 77% confidence I was hearing that one, even after burn-out. This is still with traffic outside and all.
I'm sorry- this stuff is not easy to consciously hear, but it has its subliminal effect and it IS real. Sometime I'm gonna take a recording of an acoustic space like my room, listen at a good volume at 3 in the morning rather than (cringe) 5 in the afternoon when I did those tests, and ace the annoying little buggers. For now, however- odds are, you're wrong.
Oh, that would be just way too unbearably funny if that campaign was Made on a Mac (tm) ;)
Can you simplify? It seems very counterintuitive that the FSF, the GPL, GNU et al are destroying the intellectual commons. One might even say you were flat-out wrong. What are you really trying to say? :)
RMS has no way to MAKE people adopt a new version- they already have a GPL that works. McVoy has, I think, a way to MAKE people adopt new licensing on BitKeeper- people don't have ownership of his product, merely licenses to use it.
So, in practice RMS has a way to control the direction of the GPL, but by design this is not an absolute, and not even RMS has total control over it. It's bigger than he is, even though it's in his image- and if he did choose to get backseat-drivey on the GPL, it would not be from a position of control as the creator of it, but from a position of deep and abiding respect for him and desire to obey his wishes.
Which is to say you should NOT worry because it seems like nobody respects RMS and certainly won't do what he says, even if he's asking for sensible things. So in that case it's IMPOSSIBLE for him to affect the GPL anymore ;)
However, how can you possibly say dependence on proprietary software is more effective at achieving GNU goals than the GPL is?
Methinks you are radically misunderstanding something about whose goals for what and why. If you'd said 'it was more effective at achieving Linus's goals for Linux than the GPL', that would be very debatable and hard to prove, but it wouldn't be an insane statement. You need to rephrase, because in no sense would reliance on BitKeeper further any GNU or FSF goals.
What you have here is a situation where BitKeeper might be effective at furthering 'Open Source' goals, but completely bitchslaps 'Free Software' goals. Schism. This is where you can split the diamond with only a very light tap.
I think it is interesting that this has come up: it is a wonderful opportunity for Microsoft or some interested party to do some damage, or just lay plans. If you split the community into Open Source vs Free Software camps (ESR vs RMS?), the results are interesting. The Open Source camp would be considerably larger, have bigger projects, but it would be vulnerable to catastrophic failure- you could destroy it. The Free camp would be smaller and have fewer ties to big companies and 'name' projects, but it is the one that cannot be 'taken out' by hostile action.
It's a bit like Napster vs. Gnutella. Napster was much, much bigger- but it was possible to destroy, and it was destroyed. Gnutella and similar designs are just not as efficient, but you can't get rid of them...
This is much the same. In the end, RMS will be the last man standing. However, if you stand with him, people are gonna pass you by, pursuing grand plans that have fatal flaws, undertaking huge projects and suffering great defeats. To side with RMS you have to be thinking longterm. Few seem to.
Then you'd be saying some software concepts can't thrive as Free Software.
Maybe you're right- depending on how you define 'thrive'. It's all shades of gray.
But if this type of software concept can't thrive as Free, why would there be license clauses blocking the development of it through use of BitKeeper? Even the free-beer license?
Can't have it both ways. If it truly is a niche that BitKeeper deserves to keep because Free alternatives would be too boring to develop, then there's no reason to block them. If it's a niche that naturally would tend towards a Free variant tailored to supporting Linux, then McVoy is intentionally blocking development of it for his own personal gain.
If it's a matter of 'but the Free version would be Good Enough (tm) to kill BitKeeper as a moneymaking enterprise while still not being really as good as truly proprietary software!'... Well, when did THAT ever stop Linux from growing? And the lame-but-good-enough version would be permanently available to build on and improve, which BitKeeper is not.
I don't think concerns of profitmaking software-development companies have any bearing on what should allow to take root in the Free sphere. If they are so afraid that a worse-but-Free variant will eat their business, well, sucks to be them. Maybe they need to try harder if they don't think they can still sell under those conditions.
I don't like to see these proprietary-coder guys coddled and given a cushier situation than what I face in a different field- as a musician ;) I want to go, 'so starve and eat Ramen if you aren't willing to sweat fsckin' blood over your work and fight for years for even piddling small amounts of recognition, pansy!' ;) Wimps. ;)
Perhaps it's more relevant that in using the GPL, Linux chose licensing that specifically balks any attempt to impose authority over the codebase. You can call that anarchistic, or collectivist, with perfect accuracy- the only authority is in the wording of the license itself, working to maintain the lack of authority of anybody else over the codebase.
As a result, if you see GPLed Linux code, and you can qualify under the license, you OWN it and don't ever need to consult anybody or anything else. And you'll explicitly give up your legal rights to exert control over your contributions in turn- and the next person will see just as simple a picture: if you qualify to use this license, the code is yours right now, no further red tape or paperwork, all clear now and forever.
Do you really think Linus's avoiding of ideology (other than to choose the single most ideological pro-sharing license out there) has been more relevant to Linux's success than this?
You're arguing that it's less important because the for-pay license permits development of competing products. There is NO inherent reason this, too, could not be changed. Then what?
If you're going to refuse to deal on anything other than a technical or pragmatic level, then you should expect trouble from RMS, and you should expect to get some flak you don't understand and don't consider appropriate. What RMS observes that you don't is, operating purely from a technical/pragmatic level TENDS TOWARD non-optimal proprietary software.
It's pure game theory. Unless you jump outside the system of tech/pragmatic, you can't understand the manner in which you lose. Self-interested rationalism, even among coders, leads to game-theoretical problems like refusal to cooperate (what's in it for me?) and a variety of failures to efficiently produce a commons.
I'm afraid you can't stick to just pragmatic concerns. No, let me correct that- you can, but you can't expect everyone else to, because some people out there know better- and pragmatically, you don't have the power to control them or shut them up.
Isn't it true that for any proprietary software you could presumably get code if you satisfied the owners, paid them enough or whatever? It sounds very much like you see the point as being able to get code, but completely don't 'get' the idea of taking authority out of the original developer's hands.
'Open' source and proprietary source can both be transmitted to different coders given that you satisfy the owner, get their okay. Maybe sometimes they'll agree. Maybe they won't. Maybe they're dead, or out of town, simply unavailable.
Free code, you don't have to satisfy the owner- you have to qualify to BE an owner, at which point you get all privileges of ownership to the extent that the license permits. You're not dealing with a PERSON, you're dealing with a set of legal rules. It's set up in the only way it can be so that if you see code you can HAVE it. It defines a commons that is to some extent self-protecting.
The reason it's that way and not simple public domain is, a certain person saw years ago that the public domain naturally tended towards the proprietary. Stagnation, walling off IP. That person saw fit to arrange for something else to be available.
That's the person you want to get rid of.
That's why I say- go RIGHT ahead. I already know what will happen. You wouldn't be reacting the way you are, if you didn't have some underlying assumptions about how coders should have say over what happens to their code- the idea that people should make their own 'open' licenses, should get to determine their own rules for their openness.
This is no different from very permissive proprietary licenses. The thing about the GNU sphere that is different is that it is set up to balk any effort to impose authority, up to and including RMS's. If he did a new version of the GPL in which he got to come into your house and eat your Fritos and microwave all your nonfree software CDs, GNU would promptly fork and nobody would adopt his new license at all.
Because the GNU/GPL sphere goes against the grain in balking authority from outside itself, it isn't the instinctive choice of anybody- it's giving up your power to something bigger than you. Not a person or authority, but a concept- but it's still giving up your power, to use the GPL. You have legal rights that you intentionally let go of when you use GPL, because legally you are allowed to be proprietary and take ownership of your code.
RMS may or may not have known that what he was creating in Free code would be collectively successful- in fact it's led to huge things, much grander than cooperation among non-Free independent developers (given that Linux is grander than POV-Ray ;) ). However, since it is collectively successful as a result of individual coders giving up some of their power to support the common interest, it makes sense to be interested in the reasons for this.
And it makes sense for RMS to be tireless, unbending, even maddening in his demands that people respect and understand this collective.
You only see him, the figurehead, loudly heading up this thing, and because you don't know better you see him as being in control. You see this guy as the leader, the one in charge.
The difference is, what he's leading, he has no real control over whatsoever- and he likes it that way. He can parade his ego all he wants and it won't do any harm because he HAS no authority over what he's supposedly leading.
Shouldn't you be reconsidering your hostility to the guy in light of the fact that he's not the boss of you, not the boss of Linux, not the boss of GNU, and not the boss of the GPL? You gotta make some allowances for the visionary type. Name one more socially acceptable person who's innovated something like the GPL universe, while not leaving a loophole for himself to direct and control it.