And how do you think the KHTML base that Apple got for free was worth? How much would it have cost Apple to replicate it (assuming they COULD produce a browser of equal quality on their own)?
Cooperating with the KHTML team results in a more closely matched codebase. This means the work done by the KHTML team has a greater chance of being relevant in Safari and Apple benefits immensely from that. In the end that saves more work than it creates and therefore results in a better bottom line. Whether Apple is another mindless profit machine or the "good guy"s they would have their users believe, this is in their best interest.
"KHTML developers ARE whining,"
Yup, at users who are bitching at them for not having features/functionality that is in Safari. NOT at Apple. The REASON they do not have those features and functionality is that Apple is not playing ball. They are simply directing annoyed users to correct party to complain at.
"OS X is faster, more stable and more secure than ANY OTHER VERSION OF BSD or Linux out there."
Sure, unless you consider that compared to linux running on the same systems it is slow and has had numerous 0-day exploits in its short lifetime.
"This isn't because of the BSD attitude, this is because Apple pays professional american coders good wages to create intellectual property that they then sell commercially"
Yup, it was the closed source attitude that caused them to gank open source code when they failed to produce their own OS. Instead, they took something produced by volunteers instead of trying to replicate the MASSIVE amounts of development already done, they put their efforts into building on top of an already developed community work. Oh wait, that is the open source attitude, the closed source attitude is to do whatever is cheapest and garners the greatest profit.
They aren't complaining about the fork, they are complaining somewhat about Apple giving users the impression that they have contributed to open source and moreso are complaining that because of that impression, users expect KHTML to have features from Safari.
Open source requires whatever the license your using requires but the GPL is different. Under the GPL if you modify or use GPL code AND distribute the modified version to someone you must make the COMPLETE source for the MODIFIED VERSION available to that person for no more than the cost of distribution. That means the source for YOUR version and changes, not the source for the orignal. There is nothing voluntary about that.
If you are simply redistributing an unchanged binary you only have to provide a link to the source from the official website but if you make a change and pass the changed version to a 3rd party your changes MUST be distributed.
Actually if you open the same page in a second tab (or window if that is your thing) you will see the numbers are different. As time goes on however they slowly synchronize just to turn around and differ again and so forth. The counter apparently just has some fancy mechanics behind it.
Only if the bug reports are behaviorial aspects that annoy people who are not within the intended audience. For instance, for projects I work on, the intended audience is generally ME.
"Windows has WMP and OS X has iTunes. Both manage your music effectively, and without issue."
Along with every other decent music player.
"No need to compile a piece of software that's illegal in this country. Both play DVDs without fuss, and both handle shakey multimedia files without crashing the video subsystem. (Although VLC and Xine seem to be much better than MPlayer on this.)"
The first is a legal issue, not a technical issue. Xine and mplayer both handle shakey files easily also. The worst I have ever seen is an application crash and that is pretty rare. I watch 3-5 feature length videos encoded using , I do not encounter any significant stability issues in Linux multimedia solutions. To say there are not videos that will not play would be a lie. The same is true of windows. My wife uses a windows box to play a certain game. So far from what I have seen MORE videos play successfully on linux (although not by a huge margin) and only one has failed to play on both platforms.
"OS X? I just plug devices in, and they work. Period."
Unless of course you actually consider 3rd party hardware that is.
"The last time I used Linux CD burning, I had to run from hell and back just to configure the burner program. I ended up as a very unhappy customer, with several CDs that didn't work right on the XP machine they were intended for."
Really? I do not know what kind of flakey nonsense you are using, personally I have never had graphical linux burning applications require manual configuration and fail to automatically detect a burner. Unlike the windows and mac apps they also have ALL had to the ABILITY to be manually configured if autodetection did not work properly. Burning from the CLI is a different story and this could use some work (simply because I am an advanced user and capable of manual configuration does NOT mean I want to manually configure if detection works properly).
They are adding secure startup to linux. You will soon be able to boot from a linux floppy and perform a virus scan. Errr... you could do that now, I should say that soon the linux boot/virus scan disks will theoretically be able to read these nasty secure startup drives.
"(I *still* use 'find . -exec grep {} \;' if I actually need to *find* something),"
Are you really going to claim that is not a flexible enough solution?
"advanced multimedia handling"
Advanced in what fashion? Multimedia handling has been mature for ages. The only thing new in Multimedia handling that I am aware of is a couple more codecs and DRM. Linux supports pretty much all the codecs.
"reliable plug and play"
Are you aware of a system that has more reliable plug and play? True, there is no "one true system" but the distributions I have used were extremely effective in this department.
"and integrated CD/DVD burning?"
that would be like when I select and right click a group of files, and I look under actions and see this "write files to cd" function I use all the time? If you meant functional cd/dvd burning being included with the OS, Linux is quite a few steps ahead of the competition.
Does your family consist only of the generation around today or everyone who decends from you in the future? Getting a paycheck for copying an existing program today helps your family in the short-term. Getting a paycheck for writing/modifying a new/existing program today helps your family in the shoft-term and may add to the species body of knowledge, thus helping future generations of your family.
Companies that depend on closed source profit by imposing artificial limitations on copying. Most companies and individuals do not depend on aritificial limitations and could thrive in an all open software world.
So what happens when you die then? Are you out of the game?
You might believe that is the best strategy. I think it is a better strategy to pass on my genes through offspring and to work toward increasing the survival of my species by advancing knowledge. In that way we increase the quality of life for everyone, we increase the length of life for everyone, and we increase the odds of our species surviving a catastrophe of global proportion. Karma has little to do with it.
According to you... "thinking along this logic", a line of logic so obvious that any random slashdotter can follow it. So obvious that a broad statement like mine is modded up and recieves little criticism in and of itself in a community of anal geeks, and yes I include myself;P Simple, the evidence supports this as the purpose for any beings existance. There is no evidence to support any other proposed solution to the question, merely random assertions.
"2) How is writing code furthering the species?"
Code is a productive expression of thought. Despite what an Engineer wants to tell you programmers create when they write software. Actually, even a lowly factory worker is creating when they produce something. Software is used to increase the productivity of almost every other industry, therefore writing code in general advances the species. You never know, even randomized mp3 player could include an algorithm that is stumbled upon by someone at Nasa and used to save a few clock cycles and get a little more work out of a rover somewhere.
The Interent for instance is a case of software (not any one app, but software just the same) enabling massive global communications that benefitted all mankind.
I maintain that in general, producing something or rendering a service is contributing to the species even the contribution does not prove useful.
"thinking along this logic, what race of the species will survive: the one sharing its work with others or the one making $$$?"
Before answering that, let me solve an assumption you an many others are making. Sharing does not mean not making money. Sharing means that contract programming increases and large firms that thrive on artificial limitations to digital products (cpu licenses, pro-versions, planned obsolesence, etc) either convert or die.
When a program, let us use MSOffice as an example since it is a useful closed source program and produced by the biggest firm of the type I have mentioned. When a program is produced by a large firm who sells "copies" to hundreds of millions of businesses, a small amount of production occurs (as little as possible actually, production is the primary expense after all) and individual companies are not likely to invest in production since they can not modify msoffice and work around any specific features they would like.
In the all open source world, they still wouldn't produce an office suite. Most would use something like OO as is. Many however would scratch an itch where they felt it worthwhile and contract programmers to do it. Some use enough software they would keep programmers on staff. Others would need software with little enough interest that they would staff programmers full-time. Unless the software was sensitive in some fashion, most would contribute back any modifications the project would accept to benefit from debugging and 3rd party development. Anything contributed back can be distributed virtually free to millions of other users because no artificial limitations are imposed upon copying.
Programmers clearly still get paid. Software firms that depend on artifical copying limitations go out of business but will be replaced by contract firms. The only difference is that more will be produced, by the companies that save money and by the programmers/firms that do more programming.
"thinking along this logic, what race of the species will survive: the one sharing its work with others or the one making $$$?"
Fortunately the two are not exclusive. If they were, the ones making the money would survive first. But lacking the ones who share these greedy beings would produce little and exploit much. Basically it would be a return to the Dark Ages where greed ruled and sharing of knowledge (Education) was discouraged. By culling the species of the genes responsible for human advancement we will end with a genepool likely to destroy itself, either directly with resource wars or by failing to be prepared to handle a calamity of global proportion when it finally comes (when not if) such as a meteor, polar shift, or whatever suits your fancy.
"However, it does not further the species if I live in my parents' basement. I've found getting paid to write software is a nice way to make a living.
It's not an either/or proposition. It's possible to write software for profit and contribute to open source software."
Absolutely. This does not conflict with my point at all. When you produce a good (or software) or provide a service to someone who is producing a good you are contributing to the species. You can certainly be doing this for a profit. But the more a single effort is copied rather than a solution being produced the less is being contributed.
Everytime someone settles on an existing solution like msoffice because it is easier rather than customizing an open source solution to their needs like OO those are jobs lost and more importantly less produced. An office feature is not sensitive at all so without the software lobby pushing the intellectual PROPERTY nonsense a company will probably prefer to share anything the community will accept to reap whatever benefits they can from increased testing and 3rd party contribution. Yes, the applications mature but REAL technological barriers change constantly and that results in REAL reasons to update and modify software that is unlikely to ever end.
On closer inspection I see that you are indeed correct. I did the search because I had remembered reading something about bacteria being found in volcanos and the search results appeared to support that.
I probably was remembering a Slashdot headline indicating bateria living in volcanos and pointing to an article saying bacteria lived in vents.;)
Microsoft has exploited how much money and resources via write once get paid billions of times techniques? That money is pooled among the massive financial reserves of the corporation and the wealthy shareholders and therefore does not actually benefit ANY economy. How much of that could be used to strengthen economies and increase the quality of life?
With just one of the billions held by an entity that only exists on paper you could take a 1000 bums off the street of new york or fatally starving ethopians and put them in the top 10% of the wealthiest nation in the world. I am not really suggesting this wealth be used for charity, just trying to put thing into perspective. These leech industries horde wealth by exploiting artifically created supply and demand, entirely artificial limitions and restrictions, and artificially limited characteristics and functionality. So we have an artificial entity, with artificial rights, exploiting artificial properties of an artificial product. And the result is that REAL people do without and REAL people starve to DEATH.
"Money is exchanged for goods and services. That is how life works. If I have a kick ass idea, do you think my first thought is "hmmm, I should give this away and get good Karma!" or "Hey, cool, I could sell this and make a million bucks!". Hmmm, lets see.... Karma.. or.. A Million Dollars? I'll take the $$ every time. Screw Karma, I need to live in the real world."
Services are rendered, goods are exchanged. Software is copied. Therein lies the difference. In order to give something away you have to lose whatever that item is. Remember, the meaning of life is not "get as much as possible, enjoy as much as possible, and do as little as possible", it is to further the SPECIES. You further the species by contributing to it.
"Why do people try to get other people on their side in an argument instead of just arguing alone?"
Likely the reason is because if you are not trying to convince others then you are standing there silent. Therefore, by definition, an argument requires trying to convince others.
Then again, I suppose you could sit in a room arguing with yourself or "the voices."
Honestly I couldn't care less about other users. The reason I try to clue people in to better systems is that increased usage translates into increased support. The more people using Firefox, the more interest there is in the project and therefore more and better developers. This translates into fewer bugs and more features for me.
Compatability is the other thing, keeping with the Firefox example. As a result of increased Firefox adoption, many formerly "Best viewed with IE" sites are being made standards compliant.
Essentially, my reasons are purely selfish. But since software is virtually infinately copiable for virtually no cost, everyone can enjoy those same benefits I selfishly seek.
Some call open source communism and others viciously contest the claim. Personally I do not. Communism is an IDEAL principle that has nothing to do with vicious dictators. The reason it does not work in practice is because there aren't enough resources to go around, in reality people are lazy and greedy. They try to aquire as much as they can with as little effort as possible and are willing to do so at the expense of everyone else. Capitalism is a system that recognizes and condones this behavior and therefore is much more effective. With software however, if even one person works, EVERY person reaps an equal benefit no matter how many people there are.
In the practical world if I bake a loaf of bread, that loaf must be divided into ever smaller pieces to be shared a among the group. In a group of 5, it is not so bad. In a group of 10 those portions are getting small and so forth. In the digital world, if I produce a loaf (program) I can share the entire loaf with 5, 10, or 1 billion people and still keep an entire loaf for myself. Suddenly a very tiny portion of people being altruistic and a very tiny portion having interests that coincide with the public good can scale to enough benefit to cover the other 99.999% of lazy and greedy users (actually even their complaints are feedback that is useful in its own manner).
Everyone has an equal opportunity to contribute and in so doing they EARN an increased voice (this coincides with the IDEALS of capitalism) but nobody goes without (thus meeting the ideals of communism).
"It's a miracle that some life can live around the boiling point of water; Venus temperatures are just ridiculous - it's like expecting to find life in a volcano."
But there ARE bacteria in volcanos... try googling "bacteria in volcano" and looking at some of the top 10 results.
"Back that one up a bit -- relative percentages have nothing to do with it. What's better from a marketing perspective -- an ad that 50% of your potential audience really likes, and 50% of of them really dislike, or an ad that 100% of your audience likes?"
It doesn't really matter what ad they like. All that matters is what ad they remember. When it comes time to register a new domain I am going to check the actual features and objective factors of the hosts I think of, not go with the company whose name I can't remember with a neat ad.
In many cases people will pay MORE for a product with NO ADDED VALUE if produced by a brand they have heard of. Brand recognition is all. That my friend, is why there is no such thing as bad press.
The SCO suit was mentioned earlier, but SCO was not even on the radar for most people before that nonsense. The only reason it didn't work for SCO is that they do not have a worthwhile offer compared to others with brand recognition. GoDaddy , on the other hand, had a rock bottom price. They merely needed to get the attention of the target audience to let the audience see that.
Slashdot Mirror
"Apple is in it for the money"
And how do you think the KHTML base that Apple got for free was worth? How much would it have cost Apple to replicate it (assuming they COULD produce a browser of equal quality on their own)?
Cooperating with the KHTML team results in a more closely matched codebase. This means the work done by the KHTML team has a greater chance of being relevant in Safari and Apple benefits immensely from that. In the end that saves more work than it creates and therefore results in a better bottom line. Whether Apple is another mindless profit machine or the "good guy"s they would have their users believe, this is in their best interest.
"KHTML developers ARE whining,"
Yup, at users who are bitching at them for not having features/functionality that is in Safari. NOT at Apple. The REASON they do not have those features and functionality is that Apple is not playing ball. They are simply directing annoyed users to correct party to complain at.
"OS X is faster, more stable and more secure than ANY OTHER VERSION OF BSD or Linux out there."
Sure, unless you consider that compared to linux running on the same systems it is slow and has had numerous 0-day exploits in its short lifetime.
"This isn't because of the BSD attitude, this is because Apple pays professional american coders good wages to create intellectual property that they then sell commercially"
Yup, it was the closed source attitude that caused them to gank open source code when they failed to produce their own OS. Instead, they took something produced by volunteers instead of trying to replicate the MASSIVE amounts of development already done, they put their efforts into building on top of an already developed community work. Oh wait, that is the open source attitude, the closed source attitude is to do whatever is cheapest and garners the greatest profit.
They aren't complaining about the fork, they are complaining somewhat about Apple giving users the impression that they have contributed to open source and moreso are complaining that because of that impression, users expect KHTML to have features from Safari.
In what way does KHTML benefit from an increased Safari installbase if none of the benefits of that increased installbase are rolled back into KHTML?
APPLE has benefited a great deal from KHTML but I haven't heard anything to indicate that the reverse has occured.
"They're providing the modified source code"
No. They are providing THESE patches, most of their modifications would merge just fine if they had been providing ALL their modifications.
FALSE.
Open source requires whatever the license your using requires but the GPL is different. Under the GPL if you modify or use GPL code AND distribute the modified version to someone you must make the COMPLETE source for the MODIFIED VERSION available to that person for no more than the cost of distribution. That means the source for YOUR version and changes, not the source for the orignal. There is nothing voluntary about that.
If you are simply redistributing an unchanged binary you only have to provide a link to the source from the official website but if you make a change and pass the changed version to a 3rd party your changes MUST be distributed.
Actually if you open the same page in a second tab (or window if that is your thing) you will see the numbers are different. As time goes on however they slowly synchronize just to turn around and differ again and so forth. The counter apparently just has some fancy mechanics behind it.
Right oh, and when you encounter this the best description of Firefox to give is that it is an IMPROVED Internet.
"with suggestions"
Sometimes, with demands, always.
"bug reports"
Only if the bug reports are behaviorial aspects that annoy people who are not within the intended audience. For instance, for projects I work on, the intended audience is generally ME.
"Windows has WMP and OS X has iTunes. Both manage your music effectively, and without issue."
Along with every other decent music player.
"No need to compile a piece of software that's illegal in this country. Both play DVDs without fuss, and both handle shakey multimedia files without crashing the video subsystem. (Although VLC and Xine seem to be much better than MPlayer on this.)"
The first is a legal issue, not a technical issue. Xine and mplayer both handle shakey files easily also. The worst I have ever seen is an application crash and that is pretty rare. I watch 3-5 feature length videos encoded using , I do not encounter any significant stability issues in Linux multimedia solutions. To say there are not videos that will not play would be a lie. The same is true of windows. My wife uses a windows box to play a certain game. So far from what I have seen MORE videos play successfully on linux (although not by a huge margin) and only one has failed to play on both platforms.
"OS X? I just plug devices in, and they work. Period."
Unless of course you actually consider 3rd party hardware that is.
"The last time I used Linux CD burning, I had to run from hell and back just to configure the burner program. I ended up as a very unhappy customer, with several CDs that didn't work right on the XP machine they were intended for."
Really? I do not know what kind of flakey nonsense you are using, personally I have never had graphical linux burning applications require manual configuration and fail to automatically detect a burner. Unlike the windows and mac apps they also have ALL had to the ABILITY to be manually configured if autodetection did not work properly. Burning from the CLI is a different story and this could use some work (simply because I am an advanced user and capable of manual configuration does NOT mean I want to manually configure if detection works properly).
They are adding secure startup to linux. You will soon be able to boot from a linux floppy and perform a virus scan. Errr... you could do that now, I should say that soon the linux boot/virus scan disks will theoretically be able to read these nasty secure startup drives.
"(I *still* use 'find . -exec grep {} \;' if I actually need to *find* something),"
Are you really going to claim that is not a flexible enough solution?
"advanced multimedia handling"
Advanced in what fashion? Multimedia handling has been mature for ages. The only thing new in Multimedia handling that I am aware of is a couple more codecs and DRM. Linux supports pretty much all the codecs.
"reliable plug and play"
Are you aware of a system that has more reliable plug and play? True, there is no "one true system" but the distributions I have used were extremely effective in this department.
"and integrated CD/DVD burning?"
that would be like when I select and right click a group of files, and I look under actions and see this "write files to cd" function I use all the time? If you meant functional cd/dvd burning being included with the OS, Linux is quite a few steps ahead of the competition.
Does your family consist only of the generation around today or everyone who decends from you in the future? Getting a paycheck for copying an existing program today helps your family in the short-term. Getting a paycheck for writing/modifying a new/existing program today helps your family in the shoft-term and may add to the species body of knowledge, thus helping future generations of your family.
Companies that depend on closed source profit by imposing artificial limitations on copying. Most companies and individuals do not depend on aritificial limitations and could thrive in an all open software world.
So what happens when you die then? Are you out of the game?
You might believe that is the best strategy. I think it is a better strategy to pass on my genes through offspring and to work toward increasing the survival of my species by advancing knowledge. In that way we increase the quality of life for everyone, we increase the length of life for everyone, and we increase the odds of our species surviving a catastrophe of global proportion. Karma has little to do with it.
"1) Says who?"
;P Simple, the evidence supports this as the purpose for any beings existance. There is no evidence to support any other proposed solution to the question, merely random assertions.
According to you... "thinking along this logic", a line of logic so obvious that any random slashdotter can follow it. So obvious that a broad statement like mine is modded up and recieves little criticism in and of itself in a community of anal geeks, and yes I include myself
"2) How is writing code furthering the species?"
Code is a productive expression of thought. Despite what an Engineer wants to tell you programmers create when they write software. Actually, even a lowly factory worker is creating when they produce something. Software is used to increase the productivity of almost every other industry, therefore writing code in general advances the species. You never know, even randomized mp3 player could include an algorithm that is stumbled upon by someone at Nasa and used to save a few clock cycles and get a little more work out of a rover somewhere.
The Interent for instance is a case of software (not any one app, but software just the same) enabling massive global communications that benefitted all mankind.
I maintain that in general, producing something or rendering a service is contributing to the species even the contribution does not prove useful.
"thinking along this logic, what race of the species will survive: the one sharing its work with others or the one making $$$?"
Before answering that, let me solve an assumption you an many others are making. Sharing does not mean not making money. Sharing means that contract programming increases and large firms that thrive on artificial limitations to digital products (cpu licenses, pro-versions, planned obsolesence, etc) either convert or die.
When a program, let us use MSOffice as an example since it is a useful closed source program and produced by the biggest firm of the type I have mentioned. When a program is produced by a large firm who sells "copies" to hundreds of millions of businesses, a small amount of production occurs (as little as possible actually, production is the primary expense after all) and individual companies are not likely to invest in production since they can not modify msoffice and work around any specific features they would like.
In the all open source world, they still wouldn't produce an office suite. Most would use something like OO as is. Many however would scratch an itch where they felt it worthwhile and contract programmers to do it. Some use enough software they would keep programmers on staff. Others would need software with little enough interest that they would staff programmers full-time. Unless the software was sensitive in some fashion, most would contribute back any modifications the project would accept to benefit from debugging and 3rd party development. Anything contributed back can be distributed virtually free to millions of other users because no artificial limitations are imposed upon copying.
Programmers clearly still get paid. Software firms that depend on artifical copying limitations go out of business but will be replaced by contract firms. The only difference is that more will be produced, by the companies that save money and by the programmers/firms that do more programming.
"thinking along this logic, what race of the species will survive: the one sharing its work with others or the one making $$$?"
Fortunately the two are not exclusive. If they were, the ones making the money would survive first. But lacking the ones who share these greedy beings would produce little and exploit much. Basically it would be a return to the Dark Ages where greed ruled and sharing of knowledge (Education) was discouraged. By culling the species of the genes responsible for human advancement we will end with a genepool likely to destroy itself, either directly with resource wars or by failing to be prepared to handle a calamity of global proportion when it finally comes (when not if) such as a meteor, polar shift, or whatever suits your fancy.
"However, it does not further the species if I live in my parents' basement. I've found getting paid to write software is a nice way to make a living.
It's not an either/or proposition. It's possible to write software for profit and contribute to open source software."
Absolutely. This does not conflict with my point at all. When you produce a good (or software) or provide a service to someone who is producing a good you are contributing to the species. You can certainly be doing this for a profit. But the more a single effort is copied rather than a solution being produced the less is being contributed.
Everytime someone settles on an existing solution like msoffice because it is easier rather than customizing an open source solution to their needs like OO those are jobs lost and more importantly less produced. An office feature is not sensitive at all so without the software lobby pushing the intellectual PROPERTY nonsense a company will probably prefer to share anything the community will accept to reap whatever benefits they can from increased testing and 3rd party contribution. Yes, the applications mature but REAL technological barriers change constantly and that results in REAL reasons to update and modify software that is unlikely to ever end.
On closer inspection I see that you are indeed correct. I did the search because I had remembered reading something about bacteria being found in volcanos and the search results appeared to support that.
;)
I probably was remembering a Slashdot headline indicating bateria living in volcanos and pointing to an article saying bacteria lived in vents.
Microsoft has exploited how much money and resources via write once get paid billions of times techniques? That money is pooled among the massive financial reserves of the corporation and the wealthy shareholders and therefore does not actually benefit ANY economy. How much of that could be used to strengthen economies and increase the quality of life?
With just one of the billions held by an entity that only exists on paper you could take a 1000 bums off the street of new york or fatally starving ethopians and put them in the top 10% of the wealthiest nation in the world. I am not really suggesting this wealth be used for charity, just trying to put thing into perspective. These leech industries horde wealth by exploiting artifically created supply and demand, entirely artificial limitions and restrictions, and artificially limited characteristics and functionality. So we have an artificial entity, with artificial rights, exploiting artificial properties of an artificial product. And the result is that REAL people do without and REAL people starve to DEATH.
"Money is exchanged for goods and services. That is how life works. If I have a kick ass idea, do you think my first thought is "hmmm, I should give this away and get good Karma!" or "Hey, cool, I could sell this and make a million bucks!". Hmmm, lets see.... Karma.. or .. A Million Dollars? I'll take the $$ every time. Screw Karma, I need to live in the real world."
Services are rendered, goods are exchanged. Software is copied. Therein lies the difference. In order to give something away you have to lose whatever that item is. Remember, the meaning of life is not "get as much as possible, enjoy as much as possible, and do as little as possible", it is to further the SPECIES. You further the species by contributing to it.
"Why do people try to get other people on their side in an argument instead of just arguing alone?"
Likely the reason is because if you are not trying to convince others then you are standing there silent. Therefore, by definition, an argument requires trying to convince others.
Then again, I suppose you could sit in a room arguing with yourself or "the voices."
Honestly I couldn't care less about other users. The reason I try to clue people in to better systems is that increased usage translates into increased support. The more people using Firefox, the more interest there is in the project and therefore more and better developers. This translates into fewer bugs and more features for me.
Compatability is the other thing, keeping with the Firefox example. As a result of increased Firefox adoption, many formerly "Best viewed with IE" sites are being made standards compliant.
Essentially, my reasons are purely selfish. But since software is virtually infinately copiable for virtually no cost, everyone can enjoy those same benefits I selfishly seek.
Some call open source communism and others viciously contest the claim. Personally I do not. Communism is an IDEAL principle that has nothing to do with vicious dictators. The reason it does not work in practice is because there aren't enough resources to go around, in reality people are lazy and greedy. They try to aquire as much as they can with as little effort as possible and are willing to do so at the expense of everyone else. Capitalism is a system that recognizes and condones this behavior and therefore is much more effective. With software however, if even one person works, EVERY person reaps an equal benefit no matter how many people there are.
In the practical world if I bake a loaf of bread, that loaf must be divided into ever smaller pieces to be shared a among the group. In a group of 5, it is not so bad. In a group of 10 those portions are getting small and so forth. In the digital world, if I produce a loaf (program) I can share the entire loaf with 5, 10, or 1 billion people and still keep an entire loaf for myself. Suddenly a very tiny portion of people being altruistic and a very tiny portion having interests that coincide with the public good can scale to enough benefit to cover the other 99.999% of lazy and greedy users (actually even their complaints are feedback that is useful in its own manner).
Everyone has an equal opportunity to contribute and in so doing they EARN an increased voice (this coincides with the IDEALS of capitalism) but nobody goes without (thus meeting the ideals of communism).
"It's a miracle that some life can live around the boiling point of water; Venus temperatures are just ridiculous - it's like expecting to find life in a volcano."
But there ARE bacteria in volcanos... try googling "bacteria in volcano" and looking at some of the top 10 results.
"Back that one up a bit -- relative percentages have nothing to do with it. What's better from a marketing perspective -- an ad that 50% of your potential audience really likes, and 50% of of them really dislike, or an ad that 100% of your audience likes?"
It doesn't really matter what ad they like. All that matters is what ad they remember. When it comes time to register a new domain I am going to check the actual features and objective factors of the hosts I think of, not go with the company whose name I can't remember with a neat ad.
In many cases people will pay MORE for a product with NO ADDED VALUE if produced by a brand they have heard of. Brand recognition is all. That my friend, is why there is no such thing as bad press.
The SCO suit was mentioned earlier, but SCO was not even on the radar for most people before that nonsense. The only reason it didn't work for SCO is that they do not have a worthwhile offer compared to others with brand recognition. GoDaddy , on the other hand, had a rock bottom price. They merely needed to get the attention of the target audience to let the audience see that.
Not to mention "cracker" already specifically refers to someone who reverse engineers apps/games to bypass copyright protection.
lolol *cries*