Linux as a brand cannot compete with Windows, because Linux is not a brand, not a product. There is not even a single definition of what "Linux" is, except a bunch of software running on top of a specific kernel.
Even the concept of "competition" is a straw man.
Linux represents a total, brutal, and unstoppable commoditization of technology that follows the same rules which drive "Moore's Law". When you remove the costs of improving a technology, its marginal cost will fall to zero as people compete to be the key suppliers.
Software is basically becoming free, and this is what will kill Windows, whether or not it's something called "Linux" that takes over.
Most likely, "Linux" will never become more than a niche OS, excellent for servers but rare for desktops. But what it represents - unlimited and perfect software at no cost - will, inevitably, rule the desktop as it will rule every single computing platform, for the simple reason that no amount of lock-in or marketing is going to get people to keep paying more than the going rate for a commodity.
Apple's strategy - where the OS and a bunch of software is basically thrown in for free - is the trend of the future.
I hate to say it, because I truly love using Microsoft's well-engineered products, but between the commoditization of their core markets and the parasites eating their way in from the internets, they are dead, Linux or no Linux.
I'm unsure what you mean by the "size" of a TLD. Number of domains? Number of people surfing in Germany?
When we had a lot of downloads of our free softare, something like 20% came from.de.
But I don't think this necessarily means that the domain extension.de is the cause - it's surely more to do with the size of the German population and the fact that all German ISPs have a.de domain.
I've nothing against national domains. Fine, if this matches a specific sense of identity. Like the alt.de. newsgroup hierarchy. Excellent.
But this is simply not a suitable model for the rest of the world. Why should I, running an international company from Brussels, be forced to choose between.be and.com, neither suitable for what I want, which is a host of services and names under a single, well-protected, name..de is huge, I'm sure, but it's hardly a vindication of the current TLD policy.
Well, personally I'm tri-lingual (English, Dutch, French), but if I want Google in French, I go to google.com and then click "French". What I will never do is visit google.fr.
I dislike and boycott sites that force a language choice on me - e.g. hotels.com, which since I'm in Belgium, forces me to choose either Dutch or French. So I go to the.co.uk page and get English, and pay in UKP. Stupid, stupid.
Country domains are fine in countries with one non-English language. But that's a subset of the world. And it's far better to use the browser settings to choose the language for a user. If my desktop language is French, probably I want to surf in French too. But not because I go to a.be or.fr site, for crying out loud!
There have been some studies of human DNA and these have often produced very interesting results, showing accurately how people migrated across the globe.
The problem up to now is that these have been relatively small studies confined to specific issues - such as the colonisation of the Pacific islands, which happened from Indonesia, not South America (sorry, Thor).
A large-scale analysis of human DNA that includes Africa - the richest mix of DNA by far - will be very, very interesting.
For example, there are theories that modern Africans are largely descended from relatively recent immigrants from the Indian Ocean basin who recolonised from the East coast and mixed with aboriginal Africans - such as the Khoi and San - eventually pushing these into the margins.
Indeed,.com would be enough since trademarks mean anyone with a.com will try to get.net and.org as well.
So, if everyone was under.com, you could just remove.com and get the same result - more or less what I am proposing.
The current system just translates into lots and lots of registration fees.
Take any business that operates in many countries. It is ridiculous for it to have to get domain names businessname.countryname. No-one wants to categorise companies or organisations per country.
What it should be able to do is get countryname.businessname. Thus, we'd see names like "uk.itunes' instead of 'itunes.co.uk' (which incidentally was snapped up by a bright young thing before Apple could get it).
The concept of national domains is anarchaic, and irrelevant. It's a totally useless concept and every popular country domain is one that is abused - e.g..tv,.to, etc.
Trademarks are entirely compatible with a freer scheme. Imagine two companies share the same name but operate in different markets. Easy - if you have a trademark, you are entitled to request a 2nd-level domain matching your name. I.e. two businesses with the same name, in different sectors, can share a TLD, with one or other acting as registrar for the other. The ICANN can be kept for arbitrage.
We'd see the end of cyberquatting, stupid disputes, and fat fees for registrars just because one has to register an endless list of domains just to get adequate protection for a trademarked name.
As so often, a bunch of administrators have decided that they need to regulate the market, but are driven more by self-interest (justifying their jobs) than by interest in supporting a free market.
It's Parkinson's Law: bureaucrats expand their work to fill their budgets. It's why half of my country's GDP goes to pay for civil servants.
In the case of internet domains the only satisfactory long term solution is to allow any company to register a top level domain, with some rules to avoid abuse, and then to allow a free market for reselling, giving, using sub domains.
Since the market has been restricted for so long, there should be a period in which existing domain holders and trademark holders can get "their" names without excessive conflict.
All the rest - the "official registrars", the annual fees, the ICANN and their rules - it's just a tax on using the Internet for building interesting communications structures.
I'd add that patents on ideas that are highly likely to be reinvented by other teams are also highly likely to be unoriginal - with or without prior art.
Patents on such ideas do not just curtail the economically-sound interchange of such ideas in the future, they actively remove people's rights to the fruit of their own labour, the copyrighted works they produce independently.
A broad software patent can, at a stroke, turn a life's work into something with no value. Unlike patents on physical inventions, this is not unlikely... in fact it's going to become more and more common to hear about such stories.
The patent offices are, basically, in a corrupt symbiosis with patent lawyers, stealing ideas from the "commons", and turning the real inventors into peons. It's a classic abuse of the "tragedy of the commons", in which corrupt officials argue that the commons need "their protection" when in fact there is a well-functioning economy already in place.
It's much expropriating property - someone's house, or a park, or public lands - for business reasons.
Parkinson's law: officialdom will always expand to consume its budget. In the case of the patent offices, the budget is limitless.
The patent offices, and the patent lawyers, are IMHO the real villains of the affair. I am quite surprised that no-one has yet launched a lawsuit against the USPTO for larceny.
I don't think you will get many useful replies from the patent lawyers who read this.
They do a lot of research, so hold many patents, in software and other domains. I'd say that most of these patents are well-researched and original, and even if we don't like software patents, IBM's are generally the least obnoxious.
They sponsor a fair amount of open source, through the Apache Foundation. Sure, this could stop tomorrow.
But, they have started to rely on open source as the basis for many of their lucrative services. IBM has really aimed at ending their own software development and replacing much of the expensive and risky software research by much cheaper and more efficient open source.
And who is most threatened by all this open source? It's Microsoft, who has also been the only significant competitor to IBM in the last two decades.
Microsoft is desperately collecting patents because it can see no other weapon or strategy to stop the open source revolution. IBM sees what Microsoft is doing - trying to collect patents that will harm open source projects.
So IBM is (a) protecting its own investment in patents, by preparing arguments why the entire software patent scheme should not be scrapped, and (b) aiming a warning shot at Microsoft and other patent freaks to behave, or they will be the target of non-trivial lawsuits.
IBM wants, finally, to make its patents open for open source, which it feels creates significant value for its own branded services, while preventing commercial competitors from using them.
This is not a random strategy, and it's unlikely to change over the next 20 years. If anything, expect IBM to defend open source use of patents, while trying to keep software patents "clean" so that it has the most weaponry against competitors like Microsoft.
Are there any studies that measure the economic impact of Linux and FOSS in general in Europe. I know that an Airbus is 30% cheaper than a similar Boeing, and perhaps this is in part due to a broader use of more efficient/economical software in the European aerospace industry.
So if Europeans do use Linux more, does this show in the overall efficiency of the EU economies?
This is somewhat of a misbelief. Wealth is not a raw material that we can spend in different ways. Wealth is rather the indirect result of our economic activity. In other words, how we spend our money affects how much money we have.
To be precise: all our wealth as a society comes from the productivity gains made when we specialise. This is why "free trade" (like many freedoms) is a key part of creating wealth.
An example. Say I can earn $50 in a day cooking in a restaurant, and it costs me $10 a day to get someone to clean my house. I can certainly clean my own home but clearly it's better for me to pay someone the $10 and gain the chance to earn $50.
All wealth is created through this kind of trade.
Now, back to the music business. If we spend $100 on an inefficient structure, we may create a certain amount of wealth. But if we spend the same $100 on a more efficient structure, we can create more wealth.
This is why new technologies that make trading more efficient, that open larger markets, and that increase competition, also create wealth.
Point-to-point apps are potentially very lucrative. The problem is that when wealth is created, it usually ends up in new hands.
TLDs should not be restricted in this way. It creates an artificial shortage which simply acts as a tax. Is there any technical reason why TLDs cannot be created by anyone with the capability?
1. Buying something very expensive but wanting to pay over time. In this case, leasing is just like a loan with a package of services. You can value both those and see if the lease is worth while or not.
2. When a capital good is not 100% fiscally deductible. E.g. in Belgium, a car is not fully deductible. When leasing a car, the total cost is somewhat higher but is totally deductible (since the lease is a service).
In some businesses leasing is also used as a way of turning capital goods into money, but this is again just a form of loan. A mortgage on the goods. Governments enjoy doing this before elections so they can boost their "income".
Perhaps at moments. But not when I posted my comment...
Having been at the receiving end of one too many spurious lawsuit, whose goal was simply to disrupt and blackmail, and where winning brought no satisfaction nor gain, I feel my opinion is based on something pretty solid.
This case reminds me a lot of the unknown person who said, "I dislike what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
I hate spammers and I hate spam, but I will defend their right to send email to Microsoft users so long as this is within the law. Microsoft cannot claim damages for something that is both legal and part of their operational model (receiving email). This lawsuit is simply about using legal weight to bully.
Who do you trust to legislate proper behavior on the internet?
The same institutions I trust to legislate proper behaviour everywhere else. True, my trust in the current crop of legislators is pretty low. But still higher than my trust in large corporations.
Spam solvable? OK, solve it. Whatever technique you develop, people will find a way around it. Forever. If you can eliminate spam as it exists today, new varieties will appear that bypass whatever guards you place. Look at the "win an ipod" signatures - this is spam.
I do not like watching Microsoft (or any wealthy entity) using the courts as a weapon. Period.
Lastly, spam will disappear anyhow. Not soon, but eventually. I'd explain why but the margin is too small to hold my notes...
Although it's tempting to cheer as Mr Richter is beaten down by the weight of Microsoft's legal muscle, I have severe misgivings about this.
First, corporations should not be attempting to lay down the law. The legality or not of spamming is for the State to decide, and there should be criminal prosecution of those who break the law.
When corporations can turn the law to their advantage, they will inevitably attack the real threats to their business - competitors.
Second, criminalising spam (or bankrupting spammers through civil suits) will only drive spammers to work outside the reach of the US courts. While US spammers can reasonably be expected to evolve over time to collaborate with their host society, foreign spammers don't have any incentive to (e.g.) refuse to promote child snuff porn.
Lastly, spam is a problem that will, eventually, go away by itself. Yes, I actually think this. There will come a time when people say, "of course you could send a million unwanted emails, but who would be so stupid?"
Spam is unsolvable by technical means, and it's unsolvable by legal suits, civil or criminal. It will disappear when the Internet has matured to the point where business is more than a one-shot affair, and tit-for-tat becomes the rule, not the exception.
So when the school bully picks on someone you don't like, don't cheer. Next time it'll be you.
One of the major instruments of the ruling political class is to divide and distract public opinion with intense moral-laden debate about subjects that in most other countries are treated as private matters.
Morality-driven debate is such a powerful tool because you can, by fine-tuning the argument, get a balanced 50-50 split on just about any subject.
And so, we get the endless debates about gay weddings, about living wills, about abortion, about the "theory" of evolution, about the role of religion in public structures, and so on.
Meanwhile debate about subjects that in any open democracy would make the front pages, would bring millions onto the streets, and would topple presidents... almost totally absent.
The general public does not debate the role of the state, the yawning chasms in the democratic process, the boom in military spending, gerrymandering, government-sponsored TV "news", political prisoners, torture, the corruption of every agency meant to protect the public, the environment, the economy into an agency designed to exploit and abuse...
Give the plebians bread, and circuses, and you can pretty much do what you like.
It's remarkably stupid of Microsoft to continue to fund studies slamming Linux. The choice between operating systems is not one that people make on the basis of slight opinion. They follow trends, and technological trends are influenced by people who understand the impact of their choices.
Linux has been the choice of the leading edge for several years, it is well-established as the choice for the early adopter, and it's now starting to become a serious option for the mass market.
The mass market listens to the early adopters, the early adopters listen to the pioneers. That's the way it goes with technology, and that's why marketing only helps when products are otherwise equal.
Microsoft should work on the real problem - the low quality of their products, and the real gap between their outdated expensive proprietary software and the commodity alternatives - rather than try to influence the market with propaganda. Unless, of course, they have come to the realisation that they cannot fix the problems.
It will be newsworthy when a study finds that Microsoft has made a better product than the community, and when the study is both independent and accurate.
If Apple can do it, why can't you guys at Microsoft? It's just software... infinitely plastic, and you are so smart, so rich...
Nope. They won't do it. They just don't get it. They will continue to bitch and bluster and bluff until it's too late.
It's a shame. All that talent, all that money, and all they can do is pay people to lie.
Remember Big Steel, Big Auto, Big Air... large monopolies subsidised by the State, inefficient providers of substandard goods... being eventually driven to the edge of extinction by cheap foreign competition, surviving only by embracing modern practice and competing equally?
Remember how world leaders turned to world losers in just 15 years, unable to change with the times?
We're rapidly entering the same phase with software. Big Software in the US (and to some extent in Europe) is largely dependent on its monopoly position, bolstered by State support, using the argument "we pay taxes and create jobs" (both false) as blackmail.
Meanwhile the rest of the world is rapidly evolving to use modern practice (which means open standards and open code) so that they can compete against the previously unassailable US Big Software giants.
It's going to happen exactly the same way. Trauma, crisis, mass layoffs, and finally, when it's almost too late, an understand that Big Software sees that it cannot fight the commoditization of its industry through marketing, politics, or blackmail.
Remember that the version 2 of the GPL dates from June 1991. It is an incredible document, and I agree with Moglen's assertion that it's the basis of a multi-billion dollar industry. Stallman will go down in history as a visionary.
But after 14 years, GPL/2 is starting to age. Yes, it addresses current problems, but remember that software written and licensed today must still be protected and viable in 15 years' time.
There is absolutely no point in postponing the introduction of GPL/3. There must be a migration, and there will be a period of overlap.
But change is not something to fear in itself. It's something to plan and to manage, and in this case, it's essential.
Last thing: if you followed the FSF's recommendations as to how to use the license, your code would contain this text:
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or # modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as # published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of # the License, or (at your option) any later version.
Which all my company's GPL software contains.
Thanks to Moglen, and the FSF for their fantastic work.
Slashdot Mirror
Kill TV, Kill Windows, Kill Bill?
Anyone else find these paeolithic hunting metaphors just a touch funny?
Why is every business goal imagined as a ten-ton hairy mammoth?
Linux as a brand cannot compete with Windows, because Linux is not a brand, not a product. There is not even a single definition of what "Linux" is, except a bunch of software running on top of a specific kernel.
Even the concept of "competition" is a straw man.
Linux represents a total, brutal, and unstoppable commoditization of technology that follows the same rules which drive "Moore's Law". When you remove the costs of improving a technology, its marginal cost will fall to zero as people compete to be the key suppliers.
Software is basically becoming free, and this is what will kill Windows, whether or not it's something called "Linux" that takes over.
Most likely, "Linux" will never become more than a niche OS, excellent for servers but rare for desktops. But what it represents - unlimited and perfect software at no cost - will, inevitably, rule the desktop as it will rule every single computing platform, for the simple reason that no amount of lock-in or marketing is going to get people to keep paying more than the going rate for a commodity.
Apple's strategy - where the OS and a bunch of software is basically thrown in for free - is the trend of the future.
I hate to say it, because I truly love using Microsoft's well-engineered products, but between the commoditization of their core markets and the parasites eating their way in from the internets, they are dead, Linux or no Linux.
I'm unsure what you mean by the "size" of a TLD. Number of domains? Number of people surfing in Germany?
.de.
.de is the cause - it's surely more to do with the size of the German population and the fact that all German ISPs have a .de domain.
.be and .com, neither suitable for what I want, which is a host of services and names under a single, well-protected, name. .de is huge, I'm sure, but it's hardly a vindication of the current TLD policy.
When we had a lot of downloads of our free softare, something like 20% came from
But I don't think this necessarily means that the domain extension
I've nothing against national domains. Fine, if this matches a specific sense of identity. Like the alt.de. newsgroup hierarchy. Excellent.
But this is simply not a suitable model for the rest of the world. Why should I, running an international company from Brussels, be forced to choose between
The submitter did not RTFA. 'nuf said.
Well, personally I'm tri-lingual (English, Dutch, French), but if I want Google in French, I go to google.com and then click "French". What I will never do is visit google.fr.
.co.uk page and get English, and pay in UKP. Stupid, stupid.
.be or .fr site, for crying out loud!
I dislike and boycott sites that force a language choice on me - e.g. hotels.com, which since I'm in Belgium, forces me to choose either Dutch or French. So I go to the
Country domains are fine in countries with one non-English language. But that's a subset of the world. And it's far better to use the browser settings to choose the language for a user. If my desktop language is French, probably I want to surf in French too. But not because I go to a
Forget all the "big brother" comments.
There have been some studies of human DNA and these have often produced very interesting results, showing accurately how people migrated across the globe.
The problem up to now is that these have been relatively small studies confined to specific issues - such as the colonisation of the Pacific islands, which happened from Indonesia, not South America (sorry, Thor).
A large-scale analysis of human DNA that includes Africa - the richest mix of DNA by far - will be very, very interesting.
For example, there are theories that modern Africans are largely descended from relatively recent immigrants from the Indian Ocean basin who recolonised from the East coast and mixed with aboriginal Africans - such as the Khoi and San - eventually pushing these into the margins.
Good stuff.
Indeed, .com would be enough since trademarks mean anyone with a .com will try to get .net and .org as well.
.com, you could just remove .com and get the same result - more or less what I am proposing.
.tv, .to, etc.
So, if everyone was under
The current system just translates into lots and lots of registration fees.
Take any business that operates in many countries. It is ridiculous for it to have to get domain names businessname.countryname. No-one wants to categorise companies or organisations per country.
What it should be able to do is get countryname.businessname. Thus, we'd see names like "uk.itunes' instead of 'itunes.co.uk' (which incidentally was snapped up by a bright young thing before Apple could get it).
The concept of national domains is anarchaic, and irrelevant. It's a totally useless concept and every popular country domain is one that is abused - e.g.
Trademarks are entirely compatible with a freer scheme. Imagine two companies share the same name but operate in different markets. Easy - if you have a trademark, you are entitled to request a 2nd-level domain matching your name. I.e. two businesses with the same name, in different sectors, can share a TLD, with one or other acting as registrar for the other. The ICANN can be kept for arbitrage.
We'd see the end of cyberquatting, stupid disputes, and fat fees for registrars just because one has to register an endless list of domains just to get adequate protection for a trademarked name.
As so often, a bunch of administrators have decided that they need to regulate the market, but are driven more by self-interest (justifying their jobs) than by interest in supporting a free market.
It's Parkinson's Law: bureaucrats expand their work to fill their budgets. It's why half of my country's GDP goes to pay for civil servants.
In the case of internet domains the only satisfactory long term solution is to allow any company to register a top level domain, with some rules to avoid abuse, and then to allow a free market for reselling, giving, using sub domains.
Since the market has been restricted for so long, there should be a period in which existing domain holders and trademark holders can get "their" names without excessive conflict.
All the rest - the "official registrars", the annual fees, the ICANN and their rules - it's just a tax on using the Internet for building interesting communications structures.
Project this onto an untreated wooden surface, you have zero bugs and nothing to clean:
http://www.expansys.com/product.asp?code=118539
Nice surface for bugs, grease and moisture hangs around for ages.
Wood is what you need. Dries out the bugs in no time at all.
I've seen wooden keyboards but they are horrendously expensive. Sigh.
The motto is: don't share your keyboard, and when you go to a cybercafe, wash your hands afterwards, and don't pick your nose.
I'd add that patents on ideas that are highly likely to be reinvented by other teams are also highly likely to be unoriginal - with or without prior art.
Patents on such ideas do not just curtail the economically-sound interchange of such ideas in the future, they actively remove people's rights to the fruit of their own labour, the copyrighted works they produce independently.
A broad software patent can, at a stroke, turn a life's work into something with no value. Unlike patents on physical inventions, this is not unlikely... in fact it's going to become more and more common to hear about such stories.
The patent offices are, basically, in a corrupt symbiosis with patent lawyers, stealing ideas from the "commons", and turning the real inventors into peons. It's a classic abuse of the "tragedy of the commons", in which corrupt officials argue that the commons need "their protection" when in fact there is a well-functioning economy already in place.
It's much expropriating property - someone's house, or a park, or public lands - for business reasons.
Parkinson's law: officialdom will always expand to consume its budget. In the case of the patent offices, the budget is limitless.
The patent offices, and the patent lawyers, are IMHO the real villains of the affair. I am quite surprised that no-one has yet launched a lawsuit against the USPTO for larceny.
I don't think you will get many useful replies from the patent lawyers who read this.
IBM's position on patents is not arbitrary.
They do a lot of research, so hold many patents, in software and other domains. I'd say that most of these patents are well-researched and original, and even if we don't like software patents, IBM's are generally the least obnoxious.
They sponsor a fair amount of open source, through the Apache Foundation. Sure, this could stop tomorrow.
But, they have started to rely on open source as the basis for many of their lucrative services. IBM has really aimed at ending their own software development and replacing much of the expensive and risky software research by much cheaper and more efficient open source.
And who is most threatened by all this open source? It's Microsoft, who has also been the only significant competitor to IBM in the last two decades.
Microsoft is desperately collecting patents because it can see no other weapon or strategy to stop the open source revolution. IBM sees what Microsoft is doing - trying to collect patents that will harm open source projects.
So IBM is (a) protecting its own investment in patents, by preparing arguments why the entire software patent scheme should not be scrapped, and (b) aiming a warning shot at Microsoft and other patent freaks to behave, or they will be the target of non-trivial lawsuits.
IBM wants, finally, to make its patents open for open source, which it feels creates significant value for its own branded services, while preventing commercial competitors from using them.
This is not a random strategy, and it's unlikely to change over the next 20 years. If anything, expect IBM to defend open source use of patents, while trying to keep software patents "clean" so that it has the most weaponry against competitors like Microsoft.
Slightly off topic, but...
Are there any studies that measure the economic impact of Linux and FOSS in general in Europe. I know that an Airbus is 30% cheaper than a similar Boeing, and perhaps this is in part due to a broader use of more efficient/economical software in the European aerospace industry.
So if Europeans do use Linux more, does this show in the overall efficiency of the EU economies?
This is somewhat of a misbelief. Wealth is not a raw material that we can spend in different ways. Wealth is rather the indirect result of our economic activity. In other words, how we spend our money affects how much money we have.
To be precise: all our wealth as a society comes from the productivity gains made when we specialise. This is why "free trade" (like many freedoms) is a key part of creating wealth.
An example. Say I can earn $50 in a day cooking in a restaurant, and it costs me $10 a day to get someone to clean my house. I can certainly clean my own home but clearly it's better for me to pay someone the $10 and gain the chance to earn $50.
All wealth is created through this kind of trade.
Now, back to the music business. If we spend $100 on an inefficient structure, we may create a certain amount of wealth. But if we spend the same $100 on a more efficient structure, we can create more wealth.
This is why new technologies that make trading more efficient, that open larger markets, and that increase competition, also create wealth.
Point-to-point apps are potentially very lucrative. The problem is that when wealth is created, it usually ends up in new hands.
In the red corner, Old, with its established monopolies, its heavy labour-intensive structures, its lobbyists, and its wealth.
... adapt, or die.
In the blue corner, New, with its sharp technological tools and paper-thin cost structures. No lobbyists, not much wealth.
It happened with Big Auto, Big Steel, Big Telecoms, and it will happen with Big Music, Big Media, and Big Software...
Technology has changed the way things work. The old structures solve problems (communication, mainly) that are no longer there.
Of course, Big Whatever never adapts until it's practically on its knees.
TLDs should not be restricted in this way. It creates an artificial shortage which simply acts as a tax. Is there any technical reason why TLDs cannot be created by anyone with the capability?
Two scenarios in which I'd lease something:
1. Buying something very expensive but wanting to pay over time. In this case, leasing is just like a loan with a package of services. You can value both those and see if the lease is worth while or not.
2. When a capital good is not 100% fiscally deductible. E.g. in Belgium, a car is not fully deductible. When leasing a car, the total cost is somewhat higher but is totally deductible (since the lease is a service).
In some businesses leasing is also used as a way of turning capital goods into money, but this is again just a form of loan. A mortgage on the goods. Governments enjoy doing this before elections so they can boost their "income".
So that the media will destruct at the moment I die. This will save my heirs from a lot of unnecessary work and embarrasment.
You're an idiot...
Perhaps at moments. But not when I posted my comment...
Having been at the receiving end of one too many spurious lawsuit, whose goal was simply to disrupt and blackmail, and where winning brought no satisfaction nor gain, I feel my opinion is based on something pretty solid.
This case reminds me a lot of the unknown person who said, "I dislike what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
I hate spammers and I hate spam, but I will defend their right to send email to Microsoft users so long as this is within the law. Microsoft cannot claim damages for something that is both legal and part of their operational model (receiving email). This lawsuit is simply about using legal weight to bully.
Who do you trust to legislate proper behavior on the internet?
The same institutions I trust to legislate proper behaviour everywhere else. True, my trust in the current crop of legislators is pretty low. But still higher than my trust in large corporations.
Spam solvable? OK, solve it. Whatever technique you develop, people will find a way around it. Forever. If you can eliminate spam as it exists today, new varieties will appear that bypass whatever guards you place. Look at the "win an ipod" signatures - this is spam.
I do not like watching Microsoft (or any wealthy entity) using the courts as a weapon. Period.
Lastly, spam will disappear anyhow. Not soon, but eventually. I'd explain why but the margin is too small to hold my notes...
Although it's tempting to cheer as Mr Richter is beaten down by the weight of Microsoft's legal muscle, I have severe misgivings about this.
First, corporations should not be attempting to lay down the law. The legality or not of spamming is for the State to decide, and there should be criminal prosecution of those who break the law.
When corporations can turn the law to their advantage, they will inevitably attack the real threats to their business - competitors.
Second, criminalising spam (or bankrupting spammers through civil suits) will only drive spammers to work outside the reach of the US courts. While US spammers can reasonably be expected to evolve over time to collaborate with their host society, foreign spammers don't have any incentive to (e.g.) refuse to promote child snuff porn.
Lastly, spam is a problem that will, eventually, go away by itself. Yes, I actually think this. There will come a time when people say, "of course you could send a million unwanted emails, but who would be so stupid?"
Spam is unsolvable by technical means, and it's unsolvable by legal suits, civil or criminal. It will disappear when the Internet has matured to the point where business is more than a one-shot affair, and tit-for-tat becomes the rule, not the exception.
So when the school bully picks on someone you don't like, don't cheer. Next time it'll be you.
One of the major instruments of the ruling political class is to divide and distract public opinion with intense moral-laden debate about subjects that in most other countries are treated as private matters.
Morality-driven debate is such a powerful tool because you can, by fine-tuning the argument, get a balanced 50-50 split on just about any subject.
And so, we get the endless debates about gay weddings, about living wills, about abortion, about the "theory" of evolution, about the role of religion in public structures, and so on.
Meanwhile debate about subjects that in any open democracy would make the front pages, would bring millions onto the streets, and would topple presidents... almost totally absent.
The general public does not debate the role of the state, the yawning chasms in the democratic process, the boom in military spending, gerrymandering, government-sponsored TV "news", political prisoners, torture, the corruption of every agency meant to protect the public, the environment, the economy into an agency designed to exploit and abuse...
Give the plebians bread, and circuses, and you can pretty much do what you like.
It's remarkably stupid of Microsoft to continue to fund studies slamming Linux. The choice between operating systems is not one that people make on the basis of slight opinion. They follow trends, and technological trends are influenced by people who understand the impact of their choices.
Linux has been the choice of the leading edge for several years, it is well-established as the choice for the early adopter, and it's now starting to become a serious option for the mass market.
The mass market listens to the early adopters, the early adopters listen to the pioneers. That's the way it goes with technology, and that's why marketing only helps when products are otherwise equal.
Microsoft should work on the real problem - the low quality of their products, and the real gap between their outdated expensive proprietary software and the commodity alternatives - rather than try to influence the market with propaganda. Unless, of course, they have come to the realisation that they cannot fix the problems.
It will be newsworthy when a study finds that Microsoft has made a better product than the community, and when the study is both independent and accurate.
If Apple can do it, why can't you guys at Microsoft? It's just software... infinitely plastic, and you are so smart, so rich...
Nope. They won't do it. They just don't get it. They will continue to bitch and bluster and bluff until it's too late.
It's a shame. All that talent, all that money, and all they can do is pay people to lie.
Remember Big Steel, Big Auto, Big Air... large monopolies subsidised by the State, inefficient providers of substandard goods... being eventually driven to the edge of extinction by cheap foreign competition, surviving only by embracing modern practice and competing equally?
Remember how world leaders turned to world losers in just 15 years, unable to change with the times?
We're rapidly entering the same phase with software. Big Software in the US (and to some extent in Europe) is largely dependent on its monopoly position, bolstered by State support, using the argument "we pay taxes and create jobs" (both false) as blackmail.
Meanwhile the rest of the world is rapidly evolving to use modern practice (which means open standards and open code) so that they can compete against the previously unassailable US Big Software giants.
It's going to happen exactly the same way. Trauma, crisis, mass layoffs, and finally, when it's almost too late, an understand that Big Software sees that it cannot fight the commoditization of its industry through marketing, politics, or blackmail.
Remember that the version 2 of the GPL dates from June 1991. It is an incredible document, and I agree with Moglen's assertion that it's the basis of a multi-billion dollar industry. Stallman will go down in history as a visionary.
But after 14 years, GPL/2 is starting to age. Yes, it addresses current problems, but remember that software written and licensed today must still be protected and viable in 15 years' time.
There is absolutely no point in postponing the introduction of GPL/3. There must be a migration, and there will be a period of overlap.
But change is not something to fear in itself. It's something to plan and to manage, and in this case, it's essential.
Last thing: if you followed the FSF's recommendations as to how to use the license, your code would contain this text:
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
# modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
# published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of
# the License, or (at your option) any later version.
Which all my company's GPL software contains.
Thanks to Moglen, and the FSF for their fantastic work.