I don't think these guys are _quite_ dumb enough to admit to this stuff in email. Much less on company email that is all under subpoena in the IBM litigation.
This email (if genuine) is from someone outside the company who arranged some deals, claims he can arrange more, and now wants to discuss how much money he gets for arranging those deals.
If you think it unlikely that that kind of thing would be discussed by email, please explain how else it would be discussed. If all less risky possibilities are also less convenient, convenience may have won over caution.
Regardless of whether or not Microsoft is bankrolling this lawsuit to stiffle competition from Linux, SCO either owns or doesn't own the code that they are trying to claim as theirs. If they own it, they'll win their lawsuits, regardless of who is paying for them.
At the end of SCO's various lawsuits, there won't be anything left of SCO. So who can be milked to pay the money to fund IBM's legal bill and the damages and punitive damages from SCO's illegal behavior? If MS intentionally and knowingly funded those lawsuits as part of a smear campaign, they should be liable for footing those bills IMO. (IANAL.)
Yes, it's the same person. I, and other Free Software developers whom I know well, have made very bad experiences with this person.
BTW, freedevelopers.net (which is linked to in the parent posting) is very dead. I'm still listed prominently on the "projects and proposals" page even though I've asked numerous times for my name to be removed from that page. I don't want to have anything to do with Tony Stanco or freedevelopers.net anymore.
What feature would longhorn contain that would make Linux a tough sell?
One of the major obstacles in the way of broader adoption of GNU/Linux and Free Software in general has been lock-in to Microsoft's proprietary file formats. OpenOffice.org is a good attack on this, but MS has a lot of smart people working on new lock-in strategies. In my view, currently the "digital rights management" stuff is the most dangerous of these, especially in view of the DMCA.
It is a very rare situation which we currently have with SCO stocks that there is publicly available information which makes it possible to determine beyond any reasonable doubt whether a stock is overvalued, undervalued, or appropriately valued (in this case it's grossly overvalued).
Because trustworthy information of this kind of information normally isn't available, investors make their investment decisions without first looking for "something like Groklaw".
Some investors will think "hmm maybe SCO actually has intellectual property in Linux, in that case their stock is grossly undervalued"... even if they consider the probability of that to be pretty low, it will appear reasonable to them to have a small (in relation to their total portfolio) SCO investment.
Some investors will think "I sure hope that this doesn't work out for SCO because I have investments in companies which will be hurt if GNU/Linux isn't free anymore", and they may decide to buy some SCO stock as part of a risk management strategy (to prevent unacceptable big losses in the case that an SCO victory kills GNU/Linux).
Some investors will think "Those SCO statements sound like utter nonsense to me". These won't buy, but they won't sell either - because they don't have SCO shares, and because "shorting stock", i.e. borrowing shares with a promise to give them back at a later date is difficult (impossible for small-time investors?) and very risky (even if we know that SCO stock will go down in the long run, it is quite possible that they temporarily might go up by say a factor of five for a short period of time before then, and if that's the time when you have to buy because you promised to give back those shares, you lose a *lot* of money).
The above analysis shows two categories of investors who are inclined to buy and one category of investors who are not likely to take any action.
This is consistent with the observed share prices.
Well if Microsoft's involved...it HAS to be bad, and an attempt to kill Linux.
Even if it's not directly an intentional attempt to "kill Linux" (why would the Intel engineers who designed it be interested in that!?), there can be no doubt that Microsoft is trying to do what they can to make sure that the next generation of pre-boot software for PCs will contain whatever is needed to make DRM work.
This will not stop you from running GNU/Linux or some other Free Software OS, but if a significant percentage of computer users ever get hooked on that DRM stuff, it will become hard to convince them to switch to a Free Software OS where they cannot legally access DRM'd content.
The KDE folks are cranky because they want the money that is to be spent promoting and developing UserLinux to be spent on their project and not on Gnome.
No, there's absolutely no reason to think that such greed motivated their protest.
First of all, they would wouldn't be working on KDE if they didn't believe in KDE. From this perspective, it's only natural if they think of KDE being the best choice.
Secondly, they is reason for genuine concern about the future of KDE. As GNU/Linux becomes mainstream in the enterprise, very soon the vast majority of application development for GNU/Linux will be done by profit-oriented businesses. If all major "GNU/Linux for the enterprise" distros are focused on GNOME, it'll become very difficult for KDE to keep up. There used to be two major "GNU/Linux for the enterprise" distros, one with a focus on GNOME (Redhat) and one with focus on KDE (SuSE). Now with Novell having acquired both Ximian (so they're effectively leading GNOME now) and SuSE, chances are that the SuSE distro will switch to GNOME sooner or later. If also UserLinux decides to use GNOME, that might suffice in creating enough momentum to make GNOME the de-facto standard. When something is Free Software, and good enough for my needs, and it's the de-facto standard at my workplace, why would I want to use something different at home?
A high/prohibitive distro fee is not functionally different from a closed source solution (binary license fees with an optional expensive source license).
No, there are big differences.
With the "closed source with expensive source license" approach it is possible that some of your competitors on the market for your primary (non-software) product are able to cut costs through using your relatively inexpensive binary-only distribution. The only way to justify this from a business perspective is if you manage to sell that binary-only license many times.
By contrast, the "expensive Free Software" approach that I suggest makes perfect sense even if you only make one sale; therefore there is no pressure to make sales; you are free to remain focused on your primary business.
I found this definition of a monopoly which is in my eyes a common understanding : A market in which there is only one seller.
I think this definition is ok if "seller" is clarified to mean "someone able to sell" and not "someone who currently sells".
What I don't understand is how this is transferable to OSS where anyone can develop and sell derivative work.
You're completely right, as soon as a program is made Open Source Software, it is not a monopoly anymore. (That exactly was the point that I made, and over which the other AC attacked me.)
The only way I see this happening is when the competence needed to develop the product is scarce.
You have a valid point here... if there are only a few people with the right skills, one could imagine a single company trying to achieve a monopoly, e.g. by hiring all of them.
Since I am paying for the development costs (even code monkeys need to be fed), why should I develop the software under the GPL and release it to my competitors as soon as it is complete?
In this situation, don't give it to them for free. You can still use the GPL, but you should distribute it only in exchange for a payment which is significantly higher than half your development costs. See the section on Expensive Free Software in the Free Software Business Strategy Guide.
AC wrote: ah, the beauty of slashdot, where people who don't understand economics talk about it anyways. [...] It's not about monopolies at all, unless a company is FORCED to choose a specific product/service.
Does AC's remark about "people who don't understand economics" refer to himself? Anyway, I'm firmly convinced that I understand what I'm talking about. Anyone who believes my point to be bogus should please post a reasonably precise definition of "monopoly" (any of the definitions used in economics textbooks will be acceptable to me), and I will explain why it applies to the issue under discussion.
Companies are concerned with Total Cost of Ownership.
First and foremost, they're concerned about maximizing profit. (Some think short-term, some think long-term, but almost all are concerned about profit.)
In order to achieve this objective, they look at various aspects of their operations. One of the quantities to look at is TCO (Total Cost of Ownership). There are several other major issues, such as e.g. capital expenditure and several types of risk.
Even if it is possibly true that open source might result in higher Total Cost of Ownership (the MS-funded studies which claim this make highly unrealistic assumptions of huge training costs, however even though the studies are bogus the claim might possibly still be true), I'm sure that Open Source / Free Software is still better for businesses. My main argument is that the risks (e.g. related to the possibility of the software not quite meeting the needs) are much smaller than with proprietary software.
If they use open source software then they are likely to need a software developer in house. This would likely raise the TCO
No. They don't need an in-house software developer, as there's always the option of buying whatever support they need from a specialized supprt company, e.g. a company like Red Hat. If having in-house software developers means a higher TCO, businesses will choose this option only if there are sufficiently big business benefits which justify the higher costs. I'm thinking of business benefits along the following lines:
With Open Source / Free Software, there are additional possibilities for adapting software to the specific needs of a company and even a single working group. If such adaption is likely to give a company a significant advantage over the competition, the company will not mind the higher TCO. (TCO comparisons are adequate only when comparing software options which give the same benefit.) It is acceptable for the option "Free Software plus in-house programmers" to cost more if this option gives important business benefits which are not available when you don't have in-house competence to modify the software that you're using.
You're totally right... "obey your neighbor" is not a good principle to live by. I wanted to write "love your neighbor as yourself". Next time I post, I'll re-read what I wrote before submitting!
i dont know where everyone gets the idea that you need profits to have a good economy
Whether we like this or not, it's a fact. Without hope of profits there is no reason to invest.
money is bullshit
I agree with those who call the love of money the "root of all evil". However, for as long as not everyone obeys the command to "obey your neighbor as yourself", the use of money in some form is necessary.
However it is true that many open source projects are non-commercial in nature. The resulting software is still quite often suitable for business use.
From an economics perspective, each proprietary software program is a monopoly - only one company is able to fix problems and release new versions. Monopolies are good only for the company holding the monopoly, not for everyone else.
Therefore, if proprietary software goes out of fashion, this will be bad for precisely those businesses whose main stream of revenue is from software licensing. This will however be good news for all other companies.
Whether this will mean less or more jobs for programmers is hard to say in advance. There will be fewer jobs at specialized software companies and there will be more jobs at companies which use software, since it'll make sense for companies which use software to have relevant expertise in-house.
Because it teaches to clarify matters of trademark ownership early on.
Right when LG started establishing a close relationship with SSC they should have made a contract that clarifies the question of who owns the trademark in case the relationship becomes sour.
As things are (without contract, and with no payment having been received by the original creators of LinuxGazette in exchange for trademark rights), I think that the linuxgazette.net folks are probably not guilty of any trademark violation when using the LinuxGazette name.
However, IANAL, and would be interested in reading comments from a lawyer on this matter.
then Microsofts own products, those of independent system developers and popular games will all be just as good on Linux, OSX, etc. as they will be on Windows.
For Microsoft's own products, I think that this is very unlikely. MS has quite a few aces up their sleeve that they can use to use to make it very hard to use MS apps on non-MS operating systems. Games are likely to be problematic also until the marketshare of GNU/Linux on home user desktops is big enough to make games vendors care about portable programming.
However, productivity apps will be easy to write in a portable manner, as soon as a good, portable System.Windows.Forms implementation is available, and that's why DotGNU has strong empasis in this area.
As soon as all the apps that businesses want are available on GNU/Linux (whether via DotGNU, via Mono, or as stand-alone apps doesn't matter), we'll see lots of businesses switching away from MS Windows. People will generally want to have the same OS and productivity apps at home that they use at work if they can afford it, and since everyone can afford GNU/Linux, this will lead to the migration of many home users. I predict that this will eventually lead to the slow, painful death of the MS Windows platform.
It should be noted however that obsolete OS platforms die slowly. Don't hold your breath.
Also, I'm sure that MS can survive this. They're diversified enough, e.g. in the entertainment area, and I don't see how the Free Software movement could possibly kill that profit center.
Unless you specifially add a clause to the GPL that you are allowed to include this code.
Don't add the clause to the GPL itself, but rather add it to the
legal boilerplate at the top of your program files, like this:
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
#
# In addition, as a special exception, if a patent holder offers a
# royalty-free patent license to every member of the public, and if
# that royalty-free patent license imposes on you conditions for
# redistributing this program that are impossible to comply with
# while at the same time complying with Section 6 of the GNU General
# Public License (Version 2), under these conditions you are granted
# permission to distribute this program if you comply with the
# requirements of the GNU General Public License as much as is
# possible while also complying with the requirements of the
# royalty-free patent license.
#
# If you modify this file, you may extend this exception to your
# version of the file, but you are not obligated to do so. If you do
# not wish to do so, delete this exception statement from your version.
Can you at least say what your opinion is? Are your reasons technical? Political? Or what?
I want to avoid saying anything is this response that the other side would consider offensive, since as I said I don't want this thread to develop into another round of bickering.
For this reason, I will only say this: I accept it as a reality of life that because of personality issues and the like it will not always work out to establish collaboration between two projects even when (provided those very human problems could be solved somehow) collaboration would clearly be mutually beneficial.
Has anyone summarized the similarities and differences between Mono and DotGNU?
Such a summary should IMO be written by an objective outsider who does not have a vested interest in the success of either of the two projects.
As far as I know, so far no-one has written a reasonably objective comparisom.
Why don't these projects merge?
I have made multiple attempts to establish cooperation between DotGNU and Mono. This has not worked out. I want to leave it at that. If I say what I, from my DotGNU perspective, think were the reasons, and the Mono folks respond by saying what they think were the reasons, we get just another round of pointless bickering, that would be a total waste of time.
I think it would be great though if someone with skills in the study of contemporary history wanted to study this question. The challenge here is that only an outsider can be sufficiently objective, but it will probably be difficult for an outsider to gain a good understanding of what has really been going on behind the scenes.
it is still not clear to me if Windows.Forms is going to be more mature (implement more of the Microsoft namespaces correctly) in the future
The DotGNU project is 100% committed to making Windows.Forms mature. We're even offering significant cash prizes as an additional incentive to help move this forward as fast as possible.
Or do I need to download special drivers, or windows drivers/dlls, etc??
You don't need anything besides what you already have... X11 on a GNU/Linux or other Unix-like system, or Microsoft's native APIs on the MS Windows system.
Slashdot Mirror
This email (if genuine) is from someone outside the company who arranged some deals, claims he can arrange more, and now wants to discuss how much money he gets for arranging those deals.
If you think it unlikely that that kind of thing would be discussed by email, please explain how else it would be discussed. If all less risky possibilities are also less convenient, convenience may have won over caution.
At the end of SCO's various lawsuits, there won't be anything left of SCO. So who can be milked to pay the money to fund IBM's legal bill and the damages and punitive damages from SCO's illegal behavior? If MS intentionally and knowingly funded those lawsuits as part of a smear campaign, they should be liable for footing those bills IMO. (IANAL.)
Yes, it's the same person. I, and other Free Software developers whom I know well, have made very bad experiences with this person.
BTW, freedevelopers.net (which is linked to in the parent posting) is very dead. I'm still listed prominently on the "projects and proposals" page even though I've asked numerous times for my name to be removed from that page. I don't want to have anything to do with Tony Stanco or freedevelopers.net anymore.
One of the major obstacles in the way of broader adoption of GNU/Linux and Free Software in general has been lock-in to Microsoft's proprietary file formats. OpenOffice.org is a good attack on this, but MS has a lot of smart people working on new lock-in strategies. In my view, currently the "digital rights management" stuff is the most dangerous of these, especially in view of the DMCA.
I've been thinking about the question you raise for quite some time. Check out the Free Software Business Strategy Guide and the paper Market Economics of Peer-to-Peer Networks and of the Software Industry.
Because trustworthy information of this kind of information normally isn't available, investors make their investment decisions without first looking for "something like Groklaw".
Some investors will think "hmm maybe SCO actually has intellectual property in Linux, in that case their stock is grossly undervalued"... even if they consider the probability of that to be pretty low, it will appear reasonable to them to have a small (in relation to their total portfolio) SCO investment.
Some investors will think "I sure hope that this doesn't work out for SCO because I have investments in companies which will be hurt if GNU/Linux isn't free anymore", and they may decide to buy some SCO stock as part of a risk management strategy (to prevent unacceptable big losses in the case that an SCO victory kills GNU/Linux).
Some investors will think "Those SCO statements sound like utter nonsense to me". These won't buy, but they won't sell either - because they don't have SCO shares, and because "shorting stock", i.e. borrowing shares with a promise to give them back at a later date is difficult (impossible for small-time investors?) and very risky (even if we know that SCO stock will go down in the long run, it is quite possible that they temporarily might go up by say a factor of five for a short period of time before then, and if that's the time when you have to buy because you promised to give back those shares, you lose a *lot* of money).
The above analysis shows two categories of investors who are inclined to buy and one category of investors who are not likely to take any action.
This is consistent with the observed share prices.
Even if it's not directly an intentional attempt to "kill Linux" (why would the Intel engineers who designed it be interested in that!?), there can be no doubt that Microsoft is trying to do what they can to make sure that the next generation of pre-boot software for PCs will contain whatever is needed to make DRM work.
This will not stop you from running GNU/Linux or some other Free Software OS, but if a significant percentage of computer users ever get hooked on that DRM stuff, it will become hard to convince them to switch to a Free Software OS where they cannot legally access DRM'd content.
I hope you'll do the same when something goes wrong in your area of responsibility.
This delay gave blackhats a lot more time than whitehats.
Not true. Blame the whitehats for not looking at the patches closely enough.
Perhaps this argues strongly for closed security bug reporting a la OIS' "responsible disclosure" mode
No. That doesn't help in cases like this where the security impact of a bug isn't recognized at the time of bug reporting.
No, there's absolutely no reason to think that such greed motivated their protest.
First of all, they would wouldn't be working on KDE if they didn't believe in KDE. From this perspective, it's only natural if they think of KDE being the best choice.
Secondly, they is reason for genuine concern about the future of KDE. As GNU/Linux becomes mainstream in the enterprise, very soon the vast majority of application development for GNU/Linux will be done by profit-oriented businesses. If all major "GNU/Linux for the enterprise" distros are focused on GNOME, it'll become very difficult for KDE to keep up. There used to be two major "GNU/Linux for the enterprise" distros, one with a focus on GNOME (Redhat) and one with focus on KDE (SuSE). Now with Novell having acquired both Ximian (so they're effectively leading GNOME now) and SuSE, chances are that the SuSE distro will switch to GNOME sooner or later. If also UserLinux decides to use GNOME, that might suffice in creating enough momentum to make GNOME the de-facto standard. When something is Free Software, and good enough for my needs, and it's the de-facto standard at my workplace, why would I want to use something different at home?
It'd be better to create an internet which is totally a p2p system and hence doesn't need anyone to be in charge of it.
No, there are big differences.
With the "closed source with expensive source license" approach it is possible that some of your competitors on the market for your primary (non-software) product are able to cut costs through using your relatively inexpensive binary-only distribution. The only way to justify this from a business perspective is if you manage to sell that binary-only license many times.
By contrast, the "expensive Free Software" approach that I suggest makes perfect sense even if you only make one sale; therefore there is no pressure to make sales; you are free to remain focused on your primary business.
I think this definition is ok if "seller" is clarified to mean "someone able to sell" and not "someone who currently sells".
What I don't understand is how this is transferable to OSS where anyone can develop and sell derivative work.
You're completely right, as soon as a program is made Open Source Software, it is not a monopoly anymore. (That exactly was the point that I made, and over which the other AC attacked me.)
The only way I see this happening is when the competence needed to develop the product is scarce.
You have a valid point here... if there are only a few people with the right skills, one could imagine a single company trying to achieve a monopoly, e.g. by hiring all of them.
In this situation, don't give it to them for free. You can still use the GPL, but you should distribute it only in exchange for a payment which is significantly higher than half your development costs. See the section on Expensive Free Software in the Free Software Business Strategy Guide.
Does AC's remark about "people who don't understand economics" refer to himself? Anyway, I'm firmly convinced that I understand what I'm talking about. Anyone who believes my point to be bogus should please post a reasonably precise definition of "monopoly" (any of the definitions used in economics textbooks will be acceptable to me), and I will explain why it applies to the issue under discussion.
First and foremost, they're concerned about maximizing profit. (Some think short-term, some think long-term, but almost all are concerned about profit.)
In order to achieve this objective, they look at various aspects of their operations. One of the quantities to look at is TCO (Total Cost of Ownership). There are several other major issues, such as e.g. capital expenditure and several types of risk.
Even if it is possibly true that open source might result in higher Total Cost of Ownership (the MS-funded studies which claim this make highly unrealistic assumptions of huge training costs, however even though the studies are bogus the claim might possibly still be true), I'm sure that Open Source / Free Software is still better for businesses. My main argument is that the risks (e.g. related to the possibility of the software not quite meeting the needs) are much smaller than with proprietary software.
If they use open source software then they are likely to need a software developer in house. This would likely raise the TCO
No. They don't need an in-house software developer, as there's always the option of buying whatever support they need from a specialized supprt company, e.g. a company like Red Hat. If having in-house software developers means a higher TCO, businesses will choose this option only if there are sufficiently big business benefits which justify the higher costs. I'm thinking of business benefits along the following lines:
With Open Source / Free Software, there are additional possibilities for adapting software to the specific needs of a company and even a single working group. If such adaption is likely to give a company a significant advantage over the competition, the company will not mind the higher TCO. (TCO comparisons are adequate only when comparing software options which give the same benefit.) It is acceptable for the option "Free Software plus in-house programmers" to cost more if this option gives important business benefits which are not available when you don't have in-house competence to modify the software that you're using.
You're totally right... "obey your neighbor" is not a good principle to live by. I wanted to write "love your neighbor as yourself". Next time I post, I'll re-read what I wrote before submitting!
Whether we like this or not, it's a fact. Without hope of profits there is no reason to invest.
money is bullshit
I agree with those who call the love of money the "root of all evil". However, for as long as not everyone obeys the command to "obey your neighbor as yourself", the use of money in some form is necessary.
That is nonsense.
First of all, open source software doesn't have to be non-commercial. For details, see the Free Software Business Strategy Guide.
However it is true that many open source projects are non-commercial in nature. The resulting software is still quite often suitable for business use.
From an economics perspective, each proprietary software program is a monopoly - only one company is able to fix problems and release new versions. Monopolies are good only for the company holding the monopoly, not for everyone else.
Therefore, if proprietary software goes out of fashion, this will be bad for precisely those businesses whose main stream of revenue is from software licensing. This will however be good news for all other companies.
Whether this will mean less or more jobs for programmers is hard to say in advance. There will be fewer jobs at specialized software companies and there will be more jobs at companies which use software, since it'll make sense for companies which use software to have relevant expertise in-house.
Because it teaches to clarify matters of trademark ownership early on. Right when LG started establishing a close relationship with SSC they should have made a contract that clarifies the question of who owns the trademark in case the relationship becomes sour.
As things are (without contract, and with no payment having been received by the original creators of LinuxGazette in exchange for trademark rights), I think that the linuxgazette.net folks are probably not guilty of any trademark violation when using the LinuxGazette name.
However, IANAL, and would be interested in reading comments from a lawyer on this matter.
For Microsoft's own products, I think that this is very unlikely. MS has quite a few aces up their sleeve that they can use to use to make it very hard to use MS apps on non-MS operating systems. Games are likely to be problematic also until the marketshare of GNU/Linux on home user desktops is big enough to make games vendors care about portable programming.
However, productivity apps will be easy to write in a portable manner, as soon as a good, portable System.Windows.Forms implementation is available, and that's why DotGNU has strong empasis in this area.
As soon as all the apps that businesses want are available on GNU/Linux (whether via DotGNU, via Mono, or as stand-alone apps doesn't matter), we'll see lots of businesses switching away from MS Windows. People will generally want to have the same OS and productivity apps at home that they use at work if they can afford it, and since everyone can afford GNU/Linux, this will lead to the migration of many home users. I predict that this will eventually lead to the slow, painful death of the MS Windows platform.
It should be noted however that obsolete OS platforms die slowly. Don't hold your breath.
Also, I'm sure that MS can survive this. They're diversified enough, e.g. in the entertainment area, and I don't see how the Free Software movement could possibly kill that profit center.
Don't add the clause to the GPL itself, but rather add it to the legal boilerplate at the top of your program files, like this:
I want to avoid saying anything is this response that the other side would consider offensive, since as I said I don't want this thread to develop into another round of bickering.
For this reason, I will only say this: I accept it as a reality of life that because of personality issues and the like it will not always work out to establish collaboration between two projects even when (provided those very human problems could be solved somehow) collaboration would clearly be mutually beneficial.
Such a summary should IMO be written by an objective outsider who does not have a vested interest in the success of either of the two projects. As far as I know, so far no-one has written a reasonably objective comparisom.
Why don't these projects merge?
I have made multiple attempts to establish cooperation between DotGNU and Mono. This has not worked out. I want to leave it at that. If I say what I, from my DotGNU perspective, think were the reasons, and the Mono folks respond by saying what they think were the reasons, we get just another round of pointless bickering, that would be a total waste of time.
I think it would be great though if someone with skills in the study of contemporary history wanted to study this question. The challenge here is that only an outsider can be sufficiently objective, but it will probably be difficult for an outsider to gain a good understanding of what has really been going on behind the scenes.
The DotGNU project is 100% committed to making Windows.Forms mature. We're even offering significant cash prizes as an additional incentive to help move this forward as fast as possible.
You don't need anything besides what you already have... X11 on a GNU/Linux or other Unix-like system, or Microsoft's native APIs on the MS Windows system.