It's a light but true example that Microsoft still holds the game. And no matter how Mac users may cry the end of Microsoft day and night, it wont be the mac and its "exciting new technology" that will be the catalyst, it will be Linux.
Ubuntu passed the "mom" test, it passed the "daughter" test, it passed the "wife" test, it passed the "13 year old who likes games" test, it passed the "professional developer" test, it passed the "professional designer" test, and it passed the "visitor using the computer" test.
Personally, the only reason I use Windows anymore is because I have to run Selenium tests against IE. I consider it a highly overpriced pain in the ass that acts as a barrier to getting work done.
We have seen this before, however, an open source chip maker producing free chips is not so likely. That is why Intel must be kept in line.
No, but we might see tools brought to the people that will let them manufacture their own. For example, the RepRap project, while far from having a tool that can manufacture chips, could in theory be advanced until it is capable of doing so.
It's not like computer chips require expensive materials to manufacture. They're made of the cheapest stuff on earth. Hell, if a government that isn't motivated by profit and leverage were to seize one of those fabs, they could use them to make hundreds of chips for every man, woman and child on earth. The scarcity only exists because we allow them to shut the things off and hold them over our heads like carrots to make us jump.
Yeah, but it's kind of hard to consider having ~90% of the market to be irrelevant. They may not be the hip new thing, but they're definitely relevant to most people.
They're like people who run NN4... things don't work right, but they're used to it and consider it par for the course, so they don't complain about it. You don't actually develop for them, you just tack some sort of accommodation in as an afterthought to make sure it's functional enough for them to access it. They're not really that relevant.
I don't know very many people in this age who don't own a television, but it too is not particularly relevant anymore, and in the same fashion.
Actually, to me it sounds more like confidence than desperation. They are expecting people to go out and pay for it AFTER using it for a year and deciding if they like it or not. Quite the opposite of going out and buying a new OS, then you're S.O.L. if you don't like it, and you've wasted $100+.
Its about getting developers to decide that the platform is worth developing software for. If developers decide due to low market penetration that Windows 7 is as appealing to write for as Mac OS9, the money train will end and Microsoft will most likely fail as a company.
Personally, I don't consider them to be particularly relevant anymore. The exciting new technology doesn't come from Microsoft anymore, and hasn't in years...
Yeah. TFA has relegated to its second page a couple of the techniques that used to be important to me nearly 30 years ago: self-modifying code and patching code while it was actually running. These came under the heading of "hazardous duty", since if you got it wrong you could fuck things up quite spectacularly, and EVERYONE would know about it and give you a hard time. This was the sort of thing that was guaranteed to the adrenaline going.;-)
That doesn't belong on the list. Deploying patches to servers that are coordinating the operations of thousands to millions of people in real time is par for the course these days.
Nothing like having thousands of people getting paid to sit around playing solitaire until you fix things to make your heart explode...
If we lived in a different and better world, you would not be creating scarcity by doing that. However, we live in a world where there are legal presuppositions that grant you control over the resource and enforce the scarcity.
If you didn't release your code under a license, if you just printed it off and left it on the bus one day or some other nonsense, then it could be argued that you didn't create the situation and were not involved.
However, when you actually take the time to actively release something under a license, that argument doesn't carry any weight, because you've demonstrated consciousness of the issues involved. When you omit to release people from other legal ensnarements while actively publishing your creation, you manufacture the situation I described in my previous post.
In summary, there is no flaw with my argument. You just feel that it's an impediment to antisocial things you've decided you're entitled to do to other people, and you don't like being made to feel bad about it, so you're playing stupid word games to confound the issue.
What, in which "Open Source" license, makes you pay to support goons?
I am forced to pay taxes. Those taxes are used to pay goons. Those goons dress in blue, or sometimes in camouflage, but I pay for all of them, and I'm trapped by them, and unless you've explicitly released me from any obligation using a license that spells it out, they're hanging over my head like a weapon in your hand. If you still find it hard to understand, read one of RMS' talks on "ruinous compromise".
Well, the customer management system is both a tool and a product. A tool for the 'food maker', a product for the customer management system vendor. How does this help us justify whether the software should be gpl or not?
The food maker can invest in GPL software and meet the need permanently. If they choose to fund closed source software and use it, they make themselves hostage as they continue to make food.
The system vendor who distributes closed source code holds people hostage long after the work is done and it's time to move on to some other project that needs doing. They use people like the farmer. People must continue to work, endlessly, so the executives at the system vendor organization can live like kings, with no end in sight, and with no need whatsoever.
The farmer and the employees of the system vendor should get together and string the system vendors up by the neck for trying to make them all into slaves, work together to ensure the farmers infrastructure is up to snuff, then work the land together and all eat well and work less. Then they can use their spare time to make the nice things the executives would have demanded if they wish, for their own enjoyment, or they can catch some rays at the beach... that's up to them.
It's a big, ugly, convoluted system of normalized and socially ratified parasitic behavior where no ones hands are clean and pretty much everyone is a victim, and it's not easy to see what's really going on by intent, but that's the general nature of the situation.
Pass pass pass the buck, off to someone else... I got paid, I don't give a shit, economics is hell... We need food and we need heat, what are we to do... Screw the farm, screw the axe, I'll take what I need from you...
I think you're missing his point. If you make food, and you have a customer management system that is a means towards the end of staying in touch with those you supply food to, then the software is a means to an end, and the GPL makes sense.
The dual licensing schemes like MySQL don't fit this descriptor. The software is not a means to an end for those guys, it's an end in itself. And yeah, it's a scam. You want a great example of that scam in operation, look into the history behind Project Mayo, DivX Networks and XviD. A few guys took a boatload of peoples contributions and then sold em out, now they basically get a tax for every video player in existence.
That's an odd view... personally, I think what really matters is that you can't make money with the code. Money comes from controlling a resource that is scarce. Money requires poverty as a precursor. Wealth comes from abundance.
The argument in the article misses the point when they keep talking about code quality, efficiency and market forces, because the GPL isn't about creating higher quality code. The GPL is about protecting something that is naturally abundant from the corrupting influences of law and commerce.
If you want to create artificial scarcity that is manifested, you use closed source distribution. You can't remove a law and create abundance, you need to actually kick in their door and download the source off their server. You don't get to have people who are outside your little conspiracy I mean corporation help with the work, and that's the cost you pay.
If you want to create artificial scarcity that is not manifested, but enforced by goons with guns from the BSA, you use an "Open Source" license. The code is out there, everyone could theoretically draw advantage from it immediately, but we're forced to pay to support the goons who watch us and prevent us from doing so. If you aren't already using other legal mechanisms to enforce your right to control the code, you're an idiot who just gave some group of patent trolls a present that will be used against you.
One could argue that this is the worst case scenario... better never to give you a car than to give it to you, tell you you're not permitted to use it, appoint guards to watch you day and night to catch and punish you if you do drive the car, and finally force you to feed the guards with your taxes.
If you want to create abundance, you distribute under a "Free Software" license, like the GPLv3. The code is out there, everyone can draw advantage from it immediately, except groups that are involved in creating manufactured poverty in your field are obligated to stop if they wish to participate.
Those groups are caught in a situation where the poisonous system that grants a thin veneer of legitimacy to their claims of entitlement is turned against them, and they are forced to either drift into irrelevance and be disempowered or ditch the layers of misdirection and exercise the violence that is the basis of their control overtly rather than covertly and indirectly.
That is what Free Software is all about, and why Open Source isn't good enough.
You do know the story from Iraq, right? Saddam's people were setting up anti-aircraft posts just under the walls of culturally important sites, so that attacking the posts would damage the mosques etc. The mean RAF (and I guess USAF) took to dropping training bombs on them. These were non-explosive and made of concrete but could take out an anti-aircraft post nicely. Iraq complained under the Geneva Convention which bans the use of "unconventional weapons".
I know that story... some guy with a deep, powerful voice says "You can run to the far reaches of the wilderness, you can hide behind treasured works of humanity, you can hide behind women and children, but we're not going to stop dropping bombs from the sky no matter what you do. That's the way we roll."
Then people die in droves, like an ants nest doused in gasoline by an abused child.
You people are really god damned stupid... are you thick in the head or something?
Communism means everyone gets a share of production. Capitalism means it's privately held.
Democracy means everyone gets a say in how things are run. Totalitarianism means that's privately held.
When things are privately held, there is fucking corruption, and when they aren't privately held, there isn't. There can't be, because there isn't any systematically ratified thing you can offer a person to corrupt them.
When a country tries to put a stop to corruption, we bomb the living hell out of them, then spend generations publishing textbooks shitting on their name and distribute them in history class to our kids. That's the way it works.
I believe that SAAS and freedom are fundamentally incompatible.
I don't believe the entrapment issue is entirely solvable. Even if a company can take their data with them, they will need to reproduce the service before they can continue operating. This is similar to proprietary software where large investments may be made into data and processes that are difficult to perform in another way.
If, as a business, you distributed your entire stack, including the custom stuff, to the customers, what is to stop a customer from starting their own business using it? They would use your R&D to compete.
I don't know that I'd go so far as to say that. For example, if you can use Google Apps to work on your documents from any browser and access them from any computer, that's a service. If you're able to download them in ODF format and open them on your computer with OpenOffice, you haven't lost any freedom, even if you decide you don't want to continue with Google Apps. And if the service automatically transmits a copy to an archive you designate on a network connected device that you own on a regular basis, you can be assured that you won't lose any freedom.
You sure it's not just guilty conscience making them run? They are a bunch of thieves and parasites, after all, and those are the sort that seem to have planes land on their heads in this modern age...
Congrats on being a position whore. Post directly to the story or at least find a related post.
Ok, now I'm pissed... you mean people actually get paid to do this? I've been acting like a position slut and giving it away for free! I wants my money!
Oracle expects Sun to contribute to its operating profit right away. To make that happen, Oracle may pull funding and staff from projects such as JavaFX, Project Looking Glass, and Project GlassFish.
Ahh, but Oracle may decide to turn their offices into an exotic nightclub and force the engineers to work overtime as erotic dancers. You never know what they might do...
If you agreed with RMS in principle, and wanted to create a SAAS business that is ethical, how would you do it?
Because really, it's the entrapment that makes it non-ethical, not the collaboration.
Making sure your users are able to get copies of their data in a useful format that are complete enough for them to walk away from you is an obvious one. Using an entirely open source stack and releasing any changes and improvements you make back to the community is another, more indirect one.
What other steps might you take?
Seems to me, releasing your entire source tree wouldn't necessarily be relevant for a lot of web apps, because they're more about representing network effects and business relationships on a grand scale, and are only useful if you wish to also be a service provider. Giving someone the source code that makes eBay run isn't going to be particularly useful if all they want to do is sell used merchandise.
The United States was created because Britain tried to enforce shit like this, and the people of the New World didn't think it was right, so they fought against it.
You have forgotten the face of your father, and created these calamities. You should be ashamed. You will end your days whimpering in the dark because of your lack of vision, and so will I. Thanks.
I.B.M. plans to announce Monday that it is in the final stages of completing a computer program to compete against human 'Jeopardy!' contestants. If the program beats the humans, the field of artificial intelligence will have made a leap forward.
In what way would this be a leap forward? Looking up trivial facts in a database and spitting them out is easy, and not particularly significant...
Society at large are bearing the burden of those creators. And if we're going to bear that burden, we should be able to maximize our return on investment by distributing the creations as far and wide as we can.
Copyright destroys value. It's effect is to systematically remove access to knowledge and culture from the majority of people in the world.
We need a different mechanism that doesn't destroy the value of the creation as a side effect of calculating the reward due for the creative act. If we agree on one, we'll all get richer. Societies that refuse to do so will have a population that are stupid and ignorant compared to the global average, and will be on a one way ticket to third world status.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a light but true example that Microsoft still holds the game. And no matter how Mac users may cry the end of Microsoft day and night, it wont be the mac and its "exciting new technology" that will be the catalyst, it will be Linux.
Ubuntu passed the "mom" test, it passed the "daughter" test, it passed the "wife" test, it passed the "13 year old who likes games" test, it passed the "professional developer" test, it passed the "professional designer" test, and it passed the "visitor using the computer" test.
Personally, the only reason I use Windows anymore is because I have to run Selenium tests against IE. I consider it a highly overpriced pain in the ass that acts as a barrier to getting work done.
We have seen this before, however, an open source chip maker producing free chips is not so likely. That is why Intel must be kept in line.
No, but we might see tools brought to the people that will let them manufacture their own. For example, the RepRap project, while far from having a tool that can manufacture chips, could in theory be advanced until it is capable of doing so.
It's not like computer chips require expensive materials to manufacture. They're made of the cheapest stuff on earth. Hell, if a government that isn't motivated by profit and leverage were to seize one of those fabs, they could use them to make hundreds of chips for every man, woman and child on earth. The scarcity only exists because we allow them to shut the things off and hold them over our heads like carrots to make us jump.
Damn that would be awesome...
Yeah, but it's kind of hard to consider having ~90% of the market to be irrelevant. They may not be the hip new thing, but they're definitely relevant to most people.
They're like people who run NN4... things don't work right, but they're used to it and consider it par for the course, so they don't complain about it. You don't actually develop for them, you just tack some sort of accommodation in as an afterthought to make sure it's functional enough for them to access it. They're not really that relevant.
I don't know very many people in this age who don't own a television, but it too is not particularly relevant anymore, and in the same fashion.
Actually, to me it sounds more like confidence than desperation. They are expecting people to go out and pay for it AFTER using it for a year and deciding if they like it or not. Quite the opposite of going out and buying a new OS, then you're S.O.L. if you don't like it, and you've wasted $100+.
Its about getting developers to decide that the platform is worth developing software for. If developers decide due to low market penetration that Windows 7 is as appealing to write for as Mac OS9, the money train will end and Microsoft will most likely fail as a company.
Personally, I don't consider them to be particularly relevant anymore. The exciting new technology doesn't come from Microsoft anymore, and hasn't in years...
Yeah. TFA has relegated to its second page a couple of the techniques that used to be important to me nearly 30 years ago: self-modifying code and patching code while it was actually running. These came under the heading of "hazardous duty", since if you got it wrong you could fuck things up quite spectacularly, and EVERYONE would know about it and give you a hard time. This was the sort of thing that was guaranteed to the adrenaline going. ;-)
That doesn't belong on the list. Deploying patches to servers that are coordinating the operations of thousands to millions of people in real time is par for the course these days.
Nothing like having thousands of people getting paid to sit around playing solitaire until you fix things to make your heart explode...
If we lived in a different and better world, you would not be creating scarcity by doing that. However, we live in a world where there are legal presuppositions that grant you control over the resource and enforce the scarcity.
If you didn't release your code under a license, if you just printed it off and left it on the bus one day or some other nonsense, then it could be argued that you didn't create the situation and were not involved.
However, when you actually take the time to actively release something under a license, that argument doesn't carry any weight, because you've demonstrated consciousness of the issues involved. When you omit to release people from other legal ensnarements while actively publishing your creation, you manufacture the situation I described in my previous post.
In summary, there is no flaw with my argument. You just feel that it's an impediment to antisocial things you've decided you're entitled to do to other people, and you don't like being made to feel bad about it, so you're playing stupid word games to confound the issue.
What, in which "Open Source" license, makes you pay to support goons?
I am forced to pay taxes. Those taxes are used to pay goons. Those goons dress in blue, or sometimes in camouflage, but I pay for all of them, and I'm trapped by them, and unless you've explicitly released me from any obligation using a license that spells it out, they're hanging over my head like a weapon in your hand. If you still find it hard to understand, read one of RMS' talks on "ruinous compromise".
Well, the customer management system is both a tool and a product. A tool for the 'food maker', a product for the customer management system vendor. How does this help us justify whether the software should be gpl or not?
The food maker can invest in GPL software and meet the need permanently. If they choose to fund closed source software and use it, they make themselves hostage as they continue to make food.
The system vendor who distributes closed source code holds people hostage long after the work is done and it's time to move on to some other project that needs doing. They use people like the farmer. People must continue to work, endlessly, so the executives at the system vendor organization can live like kings, with no end in sight, and with no need whatsoever.
The farmer and the employees of the system vendor should get together and string the system vendors up by the neck for trying to make them all into slaves, work together to ensure the farmers infrastructure is up to snuff, then work the land together and all eat well and work less. Then they can use their spare time to make the nice things the executives would have demanded if they wish, for their own enjoyment, or they can catch some rays at the beach... that's up to them.
It's a big, ugly, convoluted system of normalized and socially ratified parasitic behavior where no ones hands are clean and pretty much everyone is a victim, and it's not easy to see what's really going on by intent, but that's the general nature of the situation.
Pass pass pass the buck, off to someone else...
I got paid, I don't give a shit, economics is hell...
We need food and we need heat, what are we to do...
Screw the farm, screw the axe, I'll take what I need from you...
I think you're missing his point. If you make food, and you have a customer management system that is a means towards the end of staying in touch with those you supply food to, then the software is a means to an end, and the GPL makes sense.
The dual licensing schemes like MySQL don't fit this descriptor. The software is not a means to an end for those guys, it's an end in itself. And yeah, it's a scam. You want a great example of that scam in operation, look into the history behind Project Mayo, DivX Networks and XviD. A few guys took a boatload of peoples contributions and then sold em out, now they basically get a tax for every video player in existence.
That's an odd view... personally, I think what really matters is that you can't make money with the code. Money comes from controlling a resource that is scarce. Money requires poverty as a precursor. Wealth comes from abundance.
The argument in the article misses the point when they keep talking about code quality, efficiency and market forces, because the GPL isn't about creating higher quality code. The GPL is about protecting something that is naturally abundant from the corrupting influences of law and commerce.
If you want to create artificial scarcity that is manifested, you use closed source distribution. You can't remove a law and create abundance, you need to actually kick in their door and download the source off their server. You don't get to have people who are outside your little conspiracy I mean corporation help with the work, and that's the cost you pay.
If you want to create artificial scarcity that is not manifested, but enforced by goons with guns from the BSA, you use an "Open Source" license. The code is out there, everyone could theoretically draw advantage from it immediately, but we're forced to pay to support the goons who watch us and prevent us from doing so. If you aren't already using other legal mechanisms to enforce your right to control the code, you're an idiot who just gave some group of patent trolls a present that will be used against you.
One could argue that this is the worst case scenario... better never to give you a car than to give it to you, tell you you're not permitted to use it, appoint guards to watch you day and night to catch and punish you if you do drive the car, and finally force you to feed the guards with your taxes.
If you want to create abundance, you distribute under a "Free Software" license, like the GPLv3. The code is out there, everyone can draw advantage from it immediately, except groups that are involved in creating manufactured poverty in your field are obligated to stop if they wish to participate.
Those groups are caught in a situation where the poisonous system that grants a thin veneer of legitimacy to their claims of entitlement is turned against them, and they are forced to either drift into irrelevance and be disempowered or ditch the layers of misdirection and exercise the violence that is the basis of their control overtly rather than covertly and indirectly.
That is what Free Software is all about, and why Open Source isn't good enough.
Yeah, whatever. Debating with unrepentant war criminals and listening to their empty justifications... that's a productive way to spend my time...
Go catch the swine flu.
You do know the story from Iraq, right? Saddam's people were setting up anti-aircraft posts just under the walls of culturally important sites, so that attacking the posts would damage the mosques etc. The mean RAF (and I guess USAF) took to dropping training bombs on them. These were non-explosive and made of concrete but could take out an anti-aircraft post nicely. Iraq complained under the Geneva Convention which bans the use of "unconventional weapons".
I know that story... some guy with a deep, powerful voice says "You can run to the far reaches of the wilderness, you can hide behind treasured works of humanity, you can hide behind women and children, but we're not going to stop dropping bombs from the sky no matter what you do. That's the way we roll."
Then people die in droves, like an ants nest doused in gasoline by an abused child.
That was a great story, that one...
You people are really god damned stupid... are you thick in the head or something?
Communism means everyone gets a share of production. Capitalism means it's privately held.
Democracy means everyone gets a say in how things are run. Totalitarianism means that's privately held.
When things are privately held, there is fucking corruption, and when they aren't privately held, there isn't. There can't be, because there isn't any systematically ratified thing you can offer a person to corrupt them.
When a country tries to put a stop to corruption, we bomb the living hell out of them, then spend generations publishing textbooks shitting on their name and distribute them in history class to our kids. That's the way it works.
Ahhh, corruption. Where would democracy be without it?
It would be with communism. That's the reason for fighting communism; it's not consistent with corruption.
Baronesse, why can't you just fucking say it.
The home office is tainted.
That's what MINIX reminds me of too...
I believe that SAAS and freedom are fundamentally incompatible. I don't believe the entrapment issue is entirely solvable. Even if a company can take their data with them, they will need to reproduce the service before they can continue operating. This is similar to proprietary software where large investments may be made into data and processes that are difficult to perform in another way. If, as a business, you distributed your entire stack, including the custom stuff, to the customers, what is to stop a customer from starting their own business using it? They would use your R&D to compete.
I don't know that I'd go so far as to say that. For example, if you can use Google Apps to work on your documents from any browser and access them from any computer, that's a service. If you're able to download them in ODF format and open them on your computer with OpenOffice, you haven't lost any freedom, even if you decide you don't want to continue with Google Apps. And if the service automatically transmits a copy to an archive you designate on a network connected device that you own on a regular basis, you can be assured that you won't lose any freedom.
You sure it's not just guilty conscience making them run? They are a bunch of thieves and parasites, after all, and those are the sort that seem to have planes land on their heads in this modern age...
Congrats on being a position whore. Post directly to the story or at least find a related post.
Ok, now I'm pissed... you mean people actually get paid to do this? I've been acting like a position slut and giving it away for free! I wants my money!
Oracle expects Sun to contribute to its operating profit right away. To make that happen, Oracle may pull funding and staff from projects such as JavaFX, Project Looking Glass, and Project GlassFish.
Ahh, but Oracle may decide to turn their offices into an exotic nightclub and force the engineers to work overtime as erotic dancers. You never know what they might do...
Speculation for nerds, stuff that's made up
If you agreed with RMS in principle, and wanted to create a SAAS business that is ethical, how would you do it?
Because really, it's the entrapment that makes it non-ethical, not the collaboration.
Making sure your users are able to get copies of their data in a useful format that are complete enough for them to walk away from you is an obvious one. Using an entirely open source stack and releasing any changes and improvements you make back to the community is another, more indirect one.
What other steps might you take?
Seems to me, releasing your entire source tree wouldn't necessarily be relevant for a lot of web apps, because they're more about representing network effects and business relationships on a grand scale, and are only useful if you wish to also be a service provider. Giving someone the source code that makes eBay run isn't going to be particularly useful if all they want to do is sell used merchandise.
Anyone got any clever ideas?
The United States was created because Britain tried to enforce shit like this, and the people of the New World didn't think it was right, so they fought against it.
You have forgotten the face of your father, and created these calamities. You should be ashamed. You will end your days whimpering in the dark because of your lack of vision, and so will I. Thanks.
I.B.M. plans to announce Monday that it is in the final stages of completing a computer program to compete against human 'Jeopardy!' contestants. If the program beats the humans, the field of artificial intelligence will have made a leap forward.
In what way would this be a leap forward? Looking up trivial facts in a database and spitting them out is easy, and not particularly significant...
The problem is what it always was.
Society at large are bearing the burden of those creators. And if we're going to bear that burden, we should be able to maximize our return on investment by distributing the creations as far and wide as we can.
Copyright destroys value. It's effect is to systematically remove access to knowledge and culture from the majority of people in the world.
We need a different mechanism that doesn't destroy the value of the creation as a side effect of calculating the reward due for the creative act. If we agree on one, we'll all get richer. Societies that refuse to do so will have a population that are stupid and ignorant compared to the global average, and will be on a one way ticket to third world status.