Free Software isn't about taking down Microsoft and other big corporations. I don't use FreeBSD because I want to "stick it to the man." Free software is about being able to use software unencumbered by licensing restrictions. And what do you mean that nerds have no vision? Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, the BSD developers, and hundreds of other nerds have the vision of creating completely free software for everyone. Yes, we still have some things to work on (like that Swedish thesaurus and spell checker that you mentioned), but it's getting there.
"Free software", at least as Stallman understands it, is not about avoiding licensing restrictions. It is simply about making sure the code and derivate works always be released with their source code, which is a completely different thing.
If what he wanted to do was to seriously make software free of the encumberance of licenses then he would not be supporting the GPL (which IS a license).
"OpenOffice 2.0 Faces Opposition over Its Use of Java."
As long as whoever is complaining takes the necessary steps to provide a different solution I guess they have a right to speak up their minds. Of course they should understand that the Open Office developers are still FREE to do as they wish.
The blueprints for the car, on the other hand, are intellectual expression of ideas too. So I don't see how asking for those blueprints is different to asking for the source code of a program.
In any case, freedom means that it is up to the developer to decide what to do with his ideas. The end user will have the chance to decide which solution he prefers, and that is his freedom.
The whole "all software should be open source" argument is just religion.
"Do I respect black people? As far as I am concerned I always did." Just replace the class of people we're talking about with another oppressed group and you can see how bigoted your statement is.
Problem for you is I am not talking about black people. Try to stick to this discussion without "replacing" words in what I write. It sure is easy to replace words here and there to extend the discussion in ways in which it was not meant to be extended.
If you think it is wrong to actually point out that there are differences between different situations, then you are basically being negligent about accepting those differences. Grow up and learn to "deal" with those differences rather than pretend they don't exist in the first place.
We are not supposed to be all the same, which basically means that we are also not supposed to treat all situations the same way.
No it's not. It's all a matter of definition, which is the point you are missing here.
I am not saying gay people shouldn't be able to unite and live together. Even have certain advantages like families do. But these two SHOULD be different cathegories. You just can't take the rules from one case and apply it to the other one. New rules have to be defined for such an union.
Likewise, while I can accept such an union between gay people, I honestly don't see a reason why they should be able to adopt kids. A kid should have a paternal and a maternal figure at home. I am sure gay people can teach lots of things to kids. But they can't teach some things that would take a person from the opposite sex to do so.
Now should the same rules that apply to a marriage between a man and a woman apply to a gay couple? No, because it's plainly not the same case.
Do I respect gay people? As far as I am concerned I always did. Do I think their situation should be promoted as a state of complete normality? No, but then again people can disagree with me.
Btw, I am not making someone a second class citizen by making a distinction where a distincion exists. And most importantly I have never had anything to say to the gay people I know.
Denying rights? And who gets to decide that it is a right for gay people to get married? You alone?
We live in a democracy here, and I am sure glad it is so. If you don't like the definition that the majority have given to the term, then you are free to go to the far east that you apparently admire so much. It will also save you the hassle of watching those DeBeers ads.
I have never heard of anyone dying from a lack of gaming (or from music or movie withdrawal either for that matter). It's not at all like price gouging on food and water during some kind of natural disaster. If the market will bear the price and it isn't something that people need then although the price may be too high for some people there is nothing "unfair" about it.
Of course water in the desert is far more importan than a game can be. My point is simply that people sometimes will pay more than they consider a fair price because they can afford to pay for something they consider important (almost necessary). You're not going to die if you don't play games, but are teenagers willing to excercise their power as consumers because of an excess of $20?
There is no such thing as too expensive. The consumer has the power, exercising their right not to purchase the product. (as you have) If enough people feel the same way, then the price will come down to make sales. The game is selling just fine, so it would seem the pricing is on target.
There IS such thing as too expensive. If enough people feels like they are paying more than they should be paying for the game then Blizzard's image will probably be damaged, which is just another way to excercise your power as a consumer.
If I sold you a bottle of water in the middle of the desert for a thousand bucks would you feel like you're paying a fair price?
With Blizzard's game it's the same... people know it's one of a kind and paying an excess of 10 or 20 bucks is not going to stop them.
That said, the patent itself isn't regarding a Help Icon. It is the function where you first click on the help icon/button, and then on the particular function you need help with.
In court, Just System insisted that the Matsushita Patent was for a help ICON, which is usuall an item on the desktop, much like a file or folder, whereas the Just System Ichitaro used a button. The second point was that the "help" key on a keyboard already performed said function, and taking the keyboard to a GUI analogy did not require any insight, but was rather an obvious move as more and more keyboard functions were moved to the GUI.
This is yet another demonstration of how important patents are in the world of computer software. They are here for a reason and that is to protect those companies that spend their money on research and development. Surely Matsushita spent a lot of their resources in developing this advanced help technology and deserve a lot more than seeing some other company make unauthorized use of it. It doesn't matter wether Just System wrote from scratch their own implementation because they are plainly copying an IDEA, which surely is a great loss for whoever came up with it.
We should also thank patents because they help make courts throughout the world a better place. When we spend our time fighting for our rights to make exclusive use of certain icons and functions we do not have the time to commit serious crimes. An even further step could be to bring to court more trivial matters like unauthorized clicking of buttons by end users.
Patents also teach us about the importance of being selfish. Don't get me wrong: usually being selfish is seen as a bad thing; but to some extent you have to worry about yourself as well. I really appreciate it that our governments are starting to realize how important it is to have full control over anything you might have ever thought.
A good C programmer might be able to cut the exploit rate down to some very small value, but they're going to work pretty hard to get to that point while people in managed languages get it for free. And good C programmers still fuck up sometimes.
A good programmer knows that any program he writes needs to be carefully debugged. No program is going to come out of the mind of a programmer without bugs unless it is the "hello world" type. And this is the same no matter the language.
You should also not forget that sometimes the "managed" solutions are not good enough when it comes to scalability and speed. Sure simple programs can be coded in Java and friends but simple programs are seldom target of attacks. How many successful browsers do you know that are written in Java for example? How many server programs? How many mail clients?
There are some for sure, but do they deserve to win a first prize?
You're insane if you think IBM's push into Open Source is being done for any idealistic reasons of Good vs Evil. IBM just wants to make software a free complimentary commodity so they can make tons of cash on hardware and service/support. Basic economics.
The fact that this causes them to do something that you consider "good" is coincidental.
There's nothing coincidential in it.
There are many ways in which a company can get profit, it's not always about getting cash in the short term. IBM is investing in it's image with these moves, and will probably get tons of advantages in the future because of it.
By the way, basic economics DO give a great importance to extraeconomical values in companies.
This is a rephrasing of what I said. The only case where our ideas clash is when developers decide to restrict the user's freedom. The freedom that you're talking about is the ability for the developer to take away this freedom from the end user.
If you get me to sign a contract that states that I shall hereby be your slave, the contract is not legally binding. In a sense, you don't have the freedom to enslave me with a contract, and I don't even have the freedom to give up my liberties like that in a contract.
But contracts and licenses are not illegal per-se. Now if you point is regarding abusive situations in contracts and licenses then I completely agree with you. But I can't really see the concept of close sourced products as abusive at all. And certainly not like the concept of slavery (no sarcasm intended).
Now as a developer who makes a living out of coding small programs I can't see at all the advantages of open source for me right now. Unfortunately if a bigger company picked up my product and developed it further I would have no chance to beat them myself. And given how much of my own time and effort I have dedicated to these projects I can't really see why the rest of the world should have the rights I have over it. It doesn't work like that in any industry that I know of.
Obviously, if I feel like it will be of great advantage to humanity I may eventually decide to share it with the world... but isn't the decision mine to take?
I'm not advocating making proprietary software illegal. All I'm pointing out is that the only freedoms you're protecting here are ones that come at the expense of the freedoms of others.
The only freedom that I think the GPL specifically doesn't protect is my freedom to decide what to do with my own work (= time and effort). And that doesn't restrict other people's freedom, because they still have the freedom to decide not to purchase my product. After all this is the basis of capitalism (and wether I like it or not, I still have to pay my bills here).
If people don't value that freedom, however, it seems like a fair trade. Unfortunately, if enough people get together and collectively ignore this freedom, all sorts of nasty things start happening to everyone. If every user valued his freedom, and refused to support shackled software, we would never have to worry about things like trusted computing. They are a function of people accepting that, unlike any other product you can buy, locking down software and hiding what's in side is acceptible.
I certainly am worried about concepts such as trusted computing and I will not buy any product that supports that idea. That's my way to vote.
But would I only get advantages if all software was open source?
I honestly feel like I can get the most out of my computing experience by supporting qualities rather than ideals. Why? Because by supporting qualities I am getting much more software that feets my needs. I am basically telling the developers that they are doing a good job.
PS: hope the persistance is not annoying. I really find this topic interesting.
You mean, real freedom can only be achieved by letting either the developers or the end-users give up freedom to the other party?
No. I mean that real freedom can only be achieved by letting the developer choose how to develop and the customer choose what to buy.
It is the developers who are tempted to restrict the freedom of the end-users, not the other way around. They're the ones that generate the product and decide how to proliferate it.
And that's why the customer has the right to choose what to buy. Exactly like in any other industry.
Through a similar meritocracy it is the market that makes the decision in the end. So if open source is a real and primal value to end users they are free to show their support to it (like you are doing right now). You are doing a good thing when you support what you think is valuable. But that works the other way round too.
It also depends on what your definition of "free" software is. While I personally like the idea of the GPL and open source software, I don't really think about similar licenses as a choice of freedom.
A license that ensures freedom is a paradox. Real freedom in software can be achieved by only letting both the developer and the end-users choose what's best for them. So why not accept both closed source and open source as valid solutions?
Isn't this the kind of freedom of choice that's important?
Meanwhile the chance that Nasa may calculate accurate odds so soon has shrunk to 1 in 99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999... [TO BE CONTINUED]
I have the original spectre box. Just found it in my garage. The game was cool... much better than anything else I had at the time I bought it. And the best thing was you could play multiplayer!!
It doesn't happen everyday that you stumble upon an universe as cool as the Marathon universe was. I remember playing multiplayer games with my brother for hours.
How could I forget:
"Frog blast the ventcore!!" "Hey! He's shooting at us!" The SPNKR.
Slashdot Mirror
"Free software", at least as Stallman understands it, is not about avoiding licensing restrictions. It is simply about making sure the code and derivate works always be released with their source code, which is a completely different thing.
If what he wanted to do was to seriously make software free of the encumberance of licenses then he would not be supporting the GPL (which IS a license).
As long as whoever is complaining takes the necessary steps to provide a different solution I guess they have a right to speak up their minds. Of course they should understand that the Open Office developers are still FREE to do as they wish.
Completely wrong. In both cases you can do it through reverse engineering. And in both cases you don't have the blueprints.
I wouldn't tell someone to install Windows just as I wouldn't tell them to jump out of the window. I would feel like such a bastard.
The blueprints for the car, on the other hand, are intellectual expression of ideas too. So I don't see how asking for those blueprints is different to asking for the source code of a program.
In any case, freedom means that it is up to the developer to decide what to do with his ideas. The end user will have the chance to decide which solution he prefers, and that is his freedom.
The whole "all software should be open source" argument is just religion.
Of course that only works if you think you have the right to the blue-prints when you purchase a license to the binaries.
Go tell Ford you want the blue-prints for the car you bought and see what answer you get.
PS: this is not against open source software... just against the mentality that anything non open source is bad
Microsoft: "It just works!!!!!!"
Customer: "Cool!! Can i test it?"
Microsoft: "erm..." - eyes the calendar
Problem for you is I am not talking about black people. Try to stick to this discussion without "replacing" words in what I write. It sure is easy to replace words here and there to extend the discussion in ways in which it was not meant to be extended.
If you think it is wrong to actually point out that there are differences between different situations, then you are basically being negligent about accepting those differences. Grow up and learn to "deal" with those differences rather than pretend they don't exist in the first place.
We are not supposed to be all the same, which basically means that we are also not supposed to treat all situations the same way.
No it's not. It's all a matter of definition, which is the point you are missing here.
I am not saying gay people shouldn't be able to unite and live together. Even have certain advantages like families do. But these two SHOULD be different cathegories. You just can't take the rules from one case and apply it to the other one. New rules have to be defined for such an union.
Likewise, while I can accept such an union between gay people, I honestly don't see a reason why they should be able to adopt kids. A kid should have a paternal and a maternal figure at home. I am sure gay people can teach lots of things to kids. But they can't teach some things that would take a person from the opposite sex to do so.
Now should the same rules that apply to a marriage between a man and a woman apply to a gay couple? No, because it's plainly not the same case.
Do I respect gay people? As far as I am concerned I always did. Do I think their situation should be promoted as a state of complete normality? No, but then again people can disagree with me.
Btw, I am not making someone a second class citizen by making a distinction where a distincion exists. And most importantly I have never had anything to say to the gay people I know.
Denying rights? And who gets to decide that it is a right for gay people to get married? You alone?
We live in a democracy here, and I am sure glad it is so. If you don't like the definition that the majority have given to the term, then you are free to go to the far east that you apparently admire so much. It will also save you the hassle of watching those DeBeers ads.
Everyone is entitled to making their own choices, but that doesn't mean everyone else should agree with them.
You don't know but I am clapping at what you just said.
Of course water in the desert is far more importan than a game can be. My point is simply that people sometimes will pay more than they consider a fair price because they can afford to pay for something they consider important (almost necessary). You're not going to die if you don't play games, but are teenagers willing to excercise their power as consumers because of an excess of $20?
There IS such thing as too expensive. If enough people feels like they are paying more than they should be paying for the game then Blizzard's image will probably be damaged, which is just another way to excercise your power as a consumer.
If I sold you a bottle of water in the middle of the desert for a thousand bucks would you feel like you're paying a fair price?
With Blizzard's game it's the same... people know it's one of a kind and paying an excess of 10 or 20 bucks is not going to stop them.
This is yet another demonstration of how important patents are in the world of computer software. They are here for a reason and that is to protect those companies that spend their money on research and development. Surely Matsushita spent a lot of their resources in developing this advanced help technology and deserve a lot more than seeing some other company make unauthorized use of it. It doesn't matter wether Just System wrote from scratch their own implementation because they are plainly copying an IDEA, which surely is a great loss for whoever came up with it.
We should also thank patents because they help make courts throughout the world a better place. When we spend our time fighting for our rights to make exclusive use of certain icons and functions we do not have the time to commit serious crimes. An even further step could be to bring to court more trivial matters like unauthorized clicking of buttons by end users.
Patents also teach us about the importance of being selfish. Don't get me wrong: usually being selfish is seen as a bad thing; but to some extent you have to worry about yourself as well. I really appreciate it that our governments are starting to realize how important it is to have full control over anything you might have ever thought.
Ideas need to be protected.
A good programmer knows that any program he writes needs to be carefully debugged. No program is going to come out of the mind of a programmer without bugs unless it is the "hello world" type. And this is the same no matter the language.
You should also not forget that sometimes the "managed" solutions are not good enough when it comes to scalability and speed. Sure simple programs can be coded in Java and friends but simple programs are seldom target of attacks. How many successful browsers do you know that are written in Java for example? How many server programs? How many mail clients?
There are some for sure, but do they deserve to win a first prize?
There's nothing coincidential in it.
There are many ways in which a company can get profit, it's not always about getting cash in the short term. IBM is investing in it's image with these moves, and will probably get tons of advantages in the future because of it.
By the way, basic economics DO give a great importance to extraeconomical values in companies.
Be wise and buy IBM stock.
But contracts and licenses are not illegal per-se. Now if you point is regarding abusive situations in contracts and licenses then I completely agree with you. But I can't really see the concept of close sourced products as abusive at all. And certainly not like the concept of slavery (no sarcasm intended).
Now as a developer who makes a living out of coding small programs I can't see at all the advantages of open source for me right now. Unfortunately if a bigger company picked up my product and developed it further I would have no chance to beat them myself. And given how much of my own time and effort I have dedicated to these projects I can't really see why the rest of the world should have the rights I have over it. It doesn't work like that in any industry that I know of.
Obviously, if I feel like it will be of great advantage to humanity I may eventually decide to share it with the world... but isn't the decision mine to take?
The only freedom that I think the GPL specifically doesn't protect is my freedom to decide what to do with my own work (= time and effort). And that doesn't restrict other people's freedom, because they still have the freedom to decide not to purchase my product. After all this is the basis of capitalism (and wether I like it or not, I still have to pay my bills here).
I certainly am worried about concepts such as trusted computing and I will not buy any product that supports that idea. That's my way to vote.
But would I only get advantages if all software was open source?
I honestly feel like I can get the most out of my computing experience by supporting qualities rather than ideals. Why? Because by supporting qualities I am getting much more software that feets my needs. I am basically telling the developers that they are doing a good job.
PS: hope the persistance is not annoying. I really find this topic interesting.
No. I mean that real freedom can only be achieved by letting the developer choose how to develop and the customer choose what to buy.
And that's why the customer has the right to choose what to buy. Exactly like in any other industry.
Through a similar meritocracy it is the market that makes the decision in the end. So if open source is a real and primal value to end users they are free to show their support to it (like you are doing right now). You are doing a good thing when you support what you think is valuable. But that works the other way round too.
It also depends on what your definition of "free" software is. While I personally like the idea of the GPL and open source software, I don't really think about similar licenses as a choice of freedom.
A license that ensures freedom is a paradox. Real freedom in software can be achieved by only letting both the developer and the end-users choose what's best for them. So why not accept both closed source and open source as valid solutions?
Isn't this the kind of freedom of choice that's important?
In short: a meritocracy.
Meanwhile the chance that Nasa may calculate accurate odds so soon has shrunk to 1 in 99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 ... [TO BE CONTINUED]
Point is that Marathon is probably the most popular game in the Mac community.
I still have the manuals and CDs of Marathon 1, 2 and Infinity
I have the original spectre box. Just found it in my garage. The game was cool... much better than anything else I had at the time I bought it. And the best thing was you could play multiplayer!!
You mean far ahead from Doom, right?
Seriously I can't remember Doom having a story at all when compared to the several thousand Marathon terminals you had to read to finish the game.
It doesn't happen everyday that you stumble upon an universe as cool as the Marathon universe was. I remember playing multiplayer games with my brother for hours.
How could I forget:
"Frog blast the ventcore!!"
"Hey! He's shooting at us!"
The SPNKR.