Perhaps if the Eastern bloc just held to it's ideals, the US would just capitulate, and let people pirate the software they wanted in the first place, to be able to benefit from all the extra freedoms that the software allowed (i.e. backups and such things allowed in the civilized world).
You are being sarcastic, but if Russia and China insisted that US companies either embrase a more reasonable version of IP rights (backups == good, use on device of user's choice == good, downloading warez from Internet == bad) or be banned, many companies would comply at the threat of losing at least a quarter of world's population and likely choose or be pressured to also offer these rights in US.
Wow, that's an excelent, informative post. But wouldn't you agree Linus got a measly sum compared to Steve Jobs, whose company has a market share which is not dramatically different? Many smaller contributors who, say, wrote a new virtual memory manager for Linux kernel, could have earned at least 100K in commercial companies, probably just got a thanks and bragging rights.
So the bottom line is: Some free software naturally requires support. Most doesn't, and some minumum amount of money can be made through convinient updates/CD-ROMs/t-shirts/online ads/tips. Beyond that, make $$$ by selling some commercial software that people are not willing to write for their own enjoyment or use. Agree?
Wait just a second here. Gas mixed with air explodes in a closed chamber and creates pressure. Wouldn't it accelerate your train just a bit, provided that the force generated is greater than the rolling friction? The existance of steam locomotives seams to confirm it's possible. Of course, the chamber needs to contract back without wheels of the train moving much, so the mechanical design may need to be modified compared to a car that accelerates quickly.
But if modern train use generator-motor coupling even once they start moving and get some RPM, either all engineers are incredibly stupid, or that is really more efficient than mechanical transmission.
You are talking about paying for commercial software in a business environment. It's probably cheaper to have you download a free VB.Net date control and spend an hour figuring out how to use it than paying for support and having you spend time talking to them.
Now imagine playing with your PC at home and a choice between paying $100 or spending the evening manually installing and configuring free software. If you value your time that much, just let me know and I will be happy to assist with your computer difficulties:-)
Yes, I would pay for a free software subscription. I even occasionally click on google ads while searching to buy a particular item. But it would be a long time before I spend $299 that I might pay for a complex app that really meets my needs. Yes you can make money from side business if software itself is free, but probably not enough to cover writting software in the first place. Perhaps enough to cover distribution and minor bug fixes.
Of course support can be expensive, but that's only for corporate customers, and even then many free apps can be "supported" by googling for info. What kind of questions about Firefox are worth $100 a pop?
Let's just accept that most free software is written as a hobby, as an academic project or for personal use. Linus didn't set out to make great riches, and as far as I know he didn't. If you are trying to make money off either free or pay software that other people are willing to write and maintain as a hobby, well you should have known better.
I don't see why these people are getting "quietly arrested"
I guess these just aren't high-profile cases. They are not murderers or child molesters, just small-time con artists trying to sell people some non-working creams to enhance one's gender features. They will be tried, unglamourously, and where evidence is good pay fines or serve small jail terms. As it should be - why treat e-mail differently from any other medium of communication and conning?
As a student it is YOUR responsibility to act responsibly and in accordance with the academic principles of integrity and honsety.
Wow. Never went through mandatory school? Never been forced to take idiotic classes in a taxpayer-funded university when all you wanted is some job skills? Then yes, I guess you volunterely agreed to those academic principals.
As for the rest of us, buying a paper is just like using software to skip unwanted warnings and previews on a DVD. Dumb if you are sloppy enough to get caught caught, but no big deal otherwise. With all the outsourcing/cheap labor craze, soon you will be able to buy a paper individually written for you in Banglore, customized with your usual writting style, for like $30. Well worth it if you are busy studying for important exams. What then? Elective classes that students take because they are interested and have little motivation to cheat, perhaps?
Sure, you might initially make more money selling few copies at high price, but the first competitor will wipe you out clean, because you don't have any mindshare. On the other hand, if you initially sell many copies at cost, people will write books about your product, send out documents in your proprietory format, learn about in school and tend to use it at work later and so on. Even if you gave your stuff away from free, now you can make a killing selling enterprise versions, plugins and other products that will benefit from your popularity and reputation.
I suspect most companies will benefit the most in long term by selling the basic version of their product well below the top of bell curve to still make some profit while protecting their market share. And it's normal for previously unknown companies to lose money by giving away stuff for a couple of years to establish their reputation.
Which would be absolutely fine, if the countries in question didn't arrest Microsoft employees or ban their citizens from buying the software even if they wanted to.
And above all, if Microsoft didn't decide that not putting a country on the map is just a business decision. If the didn't bend over, perhaps the bully countries in question would give in and use Windows anyway - pirated copies at least - to be able to benefit from business software, CAD, games and other nice products of the civilized world. Use your monopoly for a good cause for a change!
If your logic was true why do we have 3 strikes laws, and keep conviction records AFTER a person is released...
Yes, why exactly? If we, as a society, see fit to release someone from jail, we should give them at least a reasonable chance to work flipping burgers. Of course sensitive jobs that involve handling prescription drugs or working with children can still do background checks. As it is, ex-cons have little choice but go back to life of crime.
Maybe we should give Real a chance so long as they are playing nice with Helix, OGG and hopefully pushing Apple to lower prices and/or open up their architecture.
Easy, stop any further distribution of the compromised product and, if your existing customers ask for the source, send them a version with your stolen code stripped out and an explanation.
But if you continue to distribute the binary with both your code and GPLed code, you have no recourse. Just because your code is stolen, you have no right to steal mine in return by violating my license terms.
Realistically though, if you shipped a GPLed product, having this free functionality out was probably in your business interest. What does it matter to you that you unknowingly "provided" some of it yourself?
Include a game or a new UI theme with every major security update. Periodically include standalone "bonus items" that only unlock when you use new functionality in the patch immediatelly.
"Like my Vanilla Secret 1 theme? Well, you should have installled service pack 2 on the day it was released and reviewed your firewall and antivirus settings within one hour. And now you can only watch and salivate, you poor soul!"
Surely Yahoo targeted promotional e-mail, based on keywords in your inbox, can be useful sometimes. Also, I have been hearing about those beneficial worms patching windows holes. Perhaps a firewall plugin is in order.
A lot of people would do oppotunistic nastiness, like sending "I am a gay american" e-mail from your account to all your coworkers, but wouldn't do anything unless the opportunity presents itself. Anything that discourages them is good.
Most 55 year old users have no trouble downloading, unpacking and de-iceing a packaged chicken, deleting unneccessary components according to instructions, installing other things like salt and pepper, making sure that the correct version (red vs black) is used and waiting until the system is optimized for optimum taste.
On the other hand, if you just like a candy bar in convinience store, you will not buy it if you need to defrost it before eating. So if you are designing a web page that people will just occasionally read, don't expect them to install Java, Flash or a particular browser just for your benefit. But for serious programs like word processors and even big games that people will play for weeks, some setup and even an $40 memory upgrade is not a big obsticle.
Sure, some people want to eat their chicken soup from US army rations. But it will never taste as good and may be harzardous to your health in the long run. So farmers selling packaged, frozen chicken shouldn't worry just yet. And if adding red pepper to your mexican dish will cause your spicy candy to use it instead of black one, you need to switch to a better cooking system.
if the SCO people could manufacture loyal userbase
With proper indoctrination, there is no problem for SCO employees to get their children to use UnixWare. Effective immediately, the company is hiring hundreds of female interns and putting curtains on cubicle entrances to maximize manufacturing productivity.
This guy wrote his assembler to generate unusual form of MOV instructions at least 10 years ago. In this way, he can find out if a program is generated using an unregistered version of A86.
Any CPU that has an instruction to exchange two registers will have some redundancy, but for X86 even basic mov (as well as add, sub, cmp and so on) specifies both two operands and a flag that specifies which one is source and which one is destination. The significance is that both operands can be registers, but only one can be a memory reference.
A much more impressive use would be a program that reads its own code as data to save the last few bytes, especially if it has a real purpose, like fitting a game into a fixed-size ROM.
The only acceptable punishment for these people is the complete destruction of their lives and their families lives.
This kind of assumes I can kill my relatives if I think they are about to do anything I will be destroyed for. Hopefully you don't have a gun-carrying uncle with an unusual fondness for DMCA.
I don't know if jail is the right answer either. I would be scared to stay in a "country club" where Darl might try to fsck my unauthorized backdoors.
The thing is, all SCO/Darl did is hand in some papers to court. The judge could have consulted slashdot, Grocklaw or just his/her own common sense and told Darl to use the papers to clean his own backdoor. That's also what would happen in most countries, or in US 10-20 years ago. Except for slashdot, Grocklaw or female judges that is.
The real solution is to clean up the legal system so that you need a darn good evidence to start a lawsuit, you need to convince a skeptical judge before you even contact another party with an C&D letter and you have to pay the costs government wasted on your case if you fail.
You are free to have an abortion without threats of violence
You are not expected to carry an ID in public
Radio stations are allowed to talk about sexuality
Moore would cringe from things people are saying about government, or people in the government are saying about each other.
Republics were allowed to become separate countries because people there wanted to. Chechnian first war was a sad exceptions. Eventually they were allowed independence and current war is a result of them attacking a neighbor.
You have a right to fair use of your software, music, DVDs and e-books, by reverse-engineering DRM if necessary.
This is not to say everything is rosy. Poverty is widespread and military draft is an inexcusible abuse of half of country's population. Mostly abuse by commanders and lowlife that should be in jail but was also drafted as soldiers rather than any enemies. That's why I am in US, thank you very much. But I am sure this guy was very glad to get the hell out of here.
Should be to ask Virgin to use MP3 format, which is already licensed to everyone. I don't understand how they can accuse Apple of anti-competitive behaviour and then demand that m4p format is given to them but not everyone else. When it comes to competition, the more the merrier!
Make them disclose any copy protection they use on their CDs and WMA tracks to ensure interoperability with our favourite Linux player. Fair is fair, right?
This depends on the whole system being secure - no programs setting wrong permissions for temporary files, no public-accessible stuff in home directories. Me, I would rather put a criminal in jail than let him wonder around and make sure everyone else got bars on the windows.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps if the Eastern bloc just held to it's ideals, the US would just capitulate, and let people pirate the software they wanted in the first place, to be able to benefit from all the extra freedoms that the software allowed (i.e. backups and such things allowed in the civilized world).
You are being sarcastic, but if Russia and China insisted that US companies either embrase a more reasonable version of IP rights (backups == good, use on device of user's choice == good, downloading warez from Internet == bad) or be banned, many companies would comply at the threat of losing at least a quarter of world's population and likely choose or be pressured to also offer these rights in US.
Wow, that's an excelent, informative post. But wouldn't you agree Linus got a measly sum compared to Steve Jobs, whose company has a market share which is not dramatically different? Many smaller contributors who, say, wrote a new virtual memory manager for Linux kernel, could have earned at least 100K in commercial companies, probably just got a thanks and bragging rights.
So the bottom line is: Some free software naturally requires support. Most doesn't, and some minumum amount of money can be made through convinient updates/CD-ROMs/t-shirts/online ads/tips. Beyond that, make $$$ by selling some commercial software that people are not willing to write for their own enjoyment or use. Agree?
Wait just a second here. Gas mixed with air explodes in a closed chamber and creates pressure. Wouldn't it accelerate your train just a bit, provided that the force generated is greater than the rolling friction? The existance of steam locomotives seams to confirm it's possible. Of course, the chamber needs to contract back without wheels of the train moving much, so the mechanical design may need to be modified compared to a car that accelerates quickly.
But if modern train use generator-motor coupling even once they start moving and get some RPM, either all engineers are incredibly stupid, or that is really more efficient than mechanical transmission.
You are talking about paying for commercial software in a business environment. It's probably cheaper to have you download a free VB.Net date control and spend an hour figuring out how to use it than paying for support and having you spend time talking to them.
:-)
Now imagine playing with your PC at home and a choice between paying $100 or spending the evening manually installing and configuring free software. If you value your time that much, just let me know and I will be happy to assist with your computer difficulties
Yes, I would pay for a free software subscription. I even occasionally click on google ads while searching to buy a particular item. But it would be a long time before I spend $299 that I might pay for a complex app that really meets my needs. Yes you can make money from side business if software itself is free, but probably not enough to cover writting software in the first place. Perhaps enough to cover distribution and minor bug fixes.
Of course support can be expensive, but that's only for corporate customers, and even then many free apps can be "supported" by googling for info. What kind of questions about Firefox are worth $100 a pop?
Let's just accept that most free software is written as a hobby, as an academic project or for personal use. Linus didn't set out to make great riches, and as far as I know he didn't. If you are trying to make money off either free or pay software that other people are willing to write and maintain as a hobby, well you should have known better.
I don't see why these people are getting "quietly arrested"
I guess these just aren't high-profile cases. They are not murderers or child molesters, just small-time con artists trying to sell people some non-working creams to enhance one's gender features. They will be tried, unglamourously, and where evidence is good pay fines or serve small jail terms. As it should be - why treat e-mail differently from any other medium of communication and conning?
As a student it is YOUR responsibility to act responsibly and in accordance with the academic principles of integrity and honsety.
Wow. Never went through mandatory school? Never been forced to take idiotic classes in a taxpayer-funded university when all you wanted is some job skills? Then yes, I guess you volunterely agreed to those academic principals.
As for the rest of us, buying a paper is just like using software to skip unwanted warnings and previews on a DVD. Dumb if you are sloppy enough to get caught caught, but no big deal otherwise. With all the outsourcing/cheap labor craze, soon you will be able to buy a paper individually written for you in Banglore, customized with your usual writting style, for like $30. Well worth it if you are busy studying for important exams. What then? Elective classes that students take because they are interested and have little motivation to cheat, perhaps?
Sure, you might initially make more money selling few copies at high price, but the first competitor will wipe you out clean, because you don't have any mindshare. On the other hand, if you initially sell many copies at cost, people will write books about your product, send out documents in your proprietory format, learn about in school and tend to use it at work later and so on. Even if you gave your stuff away from free, now you can make a killing selling enterprise versions, plugins and other products that will benefit from your popularity and reputation.
I suspect most companies will benefit the most in long term by selling the basic version of their product well below the top of bell curve to still make some profit while protecting their market share. And it's normal for previously unknown companies to lose money by giving away stuff for a couple of years to establish their reputation.
Which would be absolutely fine, if the countries in question didn't arrest Microsoft employees or ban their citizens from buying the software even if they wanted to.
And above all, if Microsoft didn't decide that not putting a country on the map is just a business decision. If the didn't bend over, perhaps the bully countries in question would give in and use Windows anyway - pirated copies at least - to be able to benefit from business software, CAD, games and other nice products of the civilized world. Use your monopoly for a good cause for a change!
Uh.. How exactly the patient came to be exposed to cat pollen?
If your logic was true why do we have 3 strikes laws, and keep conviction records AFTER a person is released...
Yes, why exactly? If we, as a society, see fit to release someone from jail, we should give them at least a reasonable chance to work flipping burgers. Of course sensitive jobs that involve handling prescription drugs or working with children can still do background checks. As it is, ex-cons have little choice but go back to life of crime.
Maybe we should give Real a chance so long as they are playing nice with Helix, OGG and hopefully pushing Apple to lower prices and/or open up their architecture.
Easy, stop any further distribution of the compromised product and, if your existing customers ask for the source, send them a version with your stolen code stripped out and an explanation.
But if you continue to distribute the binary with both your code and GPLed code, you have no recourse. Just because your code is stolen, you have no right to steal mine in return by violating my license terms.
Realistically though, if you shipped a GPLed product, having this free functionality out was probably in your business interest. What does it matter to you that you unknowingly "provided" some of it yourself?
Include a game or a new UI theme with every major security update. Periodically include standalone "bonus items" that only unlock when you use new functionality in the patch immediatelly.
"Like my Vanilla Secret 1 theme? Well, you should have installled service pack 2 on the day it was released and reviewed your firewall and antivirus settings within one hour. And now you can only watch and salivate, you poor soul!"
Surely Yahoo targeted promotional e-mail, based on keywords in your inbox, can be useful sometimes. Also, I have been hearing about those beneficial worms patching windows holes. Perhaps a firewall plugin is in order.
A lot of people would do oppotunistic nastiness, like sending "I am a gay american" e-mail from your account to all your coworkers, but wouldn't do anything unless the opportunity presents itself. Anything that discourages them is good.
Well, in Safari it never turns off squares, so the solution is kind of obvious. So long for cross-platform application replacement
Most 55 year old users have no trouble downloading, unpacking and de-iceing a packaged chicken, deleting unneccessary components according to instructions, installing other things like salt and pepper, making sure that the correct version (red vs black) is used and waiting until the system is optimized for optimum taste.
On the other hand, if you just like a candy bar in convinience store, you will not buy it if you need to defrost it before eating. So if you are designing a web page that people will just occasionally read, don't expect them to install Java, Flash or a particular browser just for your benefit. But for serious programs like word processors and even big games that people will play for weeks, some setup and even an $40 memory upgrade is not a big obsticle.
Sure, some people want to eat their chicken soup from US army rations. But it will never taste as good and may be harzardous to your health in the long run. So farmers selling packaged, frozen chicken shouldn't worry just yet. And if adding red pepper to your mexican dish will cause your spicy candy to use it instead of black one, you need to switch to a better cooking system.
if the SCO people could manufacture loyal userbase
With proper indoctrination, there is no problem for SCO employees to get their children to use UnixWare. Effective immediately, the company is hiring hundreds of female interns and putting curtains on cubicle entrances to maximize manufacturing productivity.
This guy wrote his assembler to generate unusual form of MOV instructions at least 10 years ago. In this way, he can find out if a program is generated using an unregistered version of A86.
Any CPU that has an instruction to exchange two registers will have some redundancy, but for X86 even basic mov (as well as add, sub, cmp and so on) specifies both two operands and a flag that specifies which one is source and which one is destination. The significance is that both operands can be registers, but only one can be a memory reference.
A much more impressive use would be a program that reads its own code as data to save the last few bytes, especially if it has a real purpose, like fitting a game into a fixed-size ROM.
The only acceptable punishment for these people is the complete destruction of their lives and their families lives.
This kind of assumes I can kill my relatives if I think they are about to do anything I will be destroyed for. Hopefully you don't have a gun-carrying uncle with an unusual fondness for DMCA.
I don't know if jail is the right answer either. I would be scared to stay in a "country club" where Darl might try to fsck my unauthorized backdoors.
The thing is, all SCO/Darl did is hand in some papers to court. The judge could have consulted slashdot, Grocklaw or just his/her own common sense and told Darl to use the papers to clean his own backdoor. That's also what would happen in most countries, or in US 10-20 years ago. Except for slashdot, Grocklaw or female judges that is.
The real solution is to clean up the legal system so that you need a darn good evidence to start a lawsuit, you need to convince a skeptical judge before you even contact another party with an C&D letter and you have to pay the costs government wasted on your case if you fail.
This is not to say everything is rosy. Poverty is widespread and military draft is an inexcusible abuse of half of country's population. Mostly abuse by commanders and lowlife that should be in jail but was also drafted as soldiers rather than any enemies. That's why I am in US, thank you very much. But I am sure this guy was very glad to get the hell out of here.
Should be to ask Virgin to use MP3 format, which is already licensed to everyone. I don't understand how they can accuse Apple of anti-competitive behaviour and then demand that m4p format is given to them but not everyone else. When it comes to competition, the more the merrier!
Make them disclose any copy protection they use on their CDs and WMA tracks to ensure interoperability with our favourite Linux player. Fair is fair, right?
because people would be thinking there's a link between Katie.com and the book
Hey everyone! Download great free pr0n here!
This depends on the whole system being secure - no programs setting wrong permissions for temporary files, no public-accessible stuff in home directories. Me, I would rather put a criminal in jail than let him wonder around and make sure everyone else got bars on the windows.