Until OSS liberalises it's view and allows other degrees of free software to fall under it's umbrella, companies will continue to view it extremely cautiously. That is, taking and not giving.
Personally, until I can be garunteed that I will not be moved off a project that I created because of someones political agenda, there's no way I'll open source a single SLOC.
If OSS was truly about freedom, they'd allow me the freedom to distribute under my terms....but I guess it's only freedom if we do things your way...hey, wait a minute, that sounds an awful lot like...no freedom at all.
And in regards to assistance choosing a license, I have been through just about every license I could find and read all the documentation...they are all extemely left wing and do not allow me to contribute any code.
you may want to look further than simple cash before refusing the senior generation social security. I don't know what it's like in the U.S., but in australia a large amount of the previous generations sacrificed their standard of living so that my standard of living could be better. My parents didn't go to Uni and worked very hard so that it would be my right to be able to be educated. I'm guessing it's the same for a lot of others. Our generation is rich in all senses because of the previous generations sacrifice. It might make us all better people to remember that.
I know this doesn't fit into the model most open source champions prefer...but inflexibility is the mother of nothing, so here goes (no flames please).
Is there a license that is essentially open source (i.e. you can take this source, do what you want with it, use the program, go nuts etc) but restricts redistribution (i.e all redistributions have to be approved by the project leader).
I know it's not 100% the spirit of open source...however since the two features that everyone touts as being the main benefits of open source (free and the ability to change to suit your needs) are addressed I would imagine it would only be the hard core open source zealots would object.
using idiotic emotive language like "ruining an industry
idiotic is a bit harsh...I'm not allowed to express my opinions? Yes, it's my opinion that open source applications are slowly ruining this industry. I'm allowed to have it, I'm allowed to express it...and I can do so with or without documented proof to back it up. (and before you go on about how it's not very smart to express an opinion without proof etc...well, I'm not a robot...I'm a human...and I extrapolate views based on experience from a wide range of sources, not all of them documented --re: conversations --...it's called experience and gut instinct:) )
Ok, enough rant, back to the point in question. Patents do protect ideas, and yes I do use them. However I should have been clearer there, I wasn't necessarily talking ideas, I was talking actual code...anyone can have ideas...they're a dime a dozen, and patents, in the real world, don't actually protect you that much. However GPL/LGPL and the like say that whoever downloads my code has the option of freely distributing it, changing it, and making a business from it.
So, let's look at a hypothetical. The natural progression of opensource is that all software will eventually have to be opensource to compete. i.e. why would someone pay for a product they can get free with the source code. Now,lots of people will say that the money is then made from support, documentation etc. Fine, I'm with you all the way...but, oops...there's that pesky real world again, where the customer will buy support from the biggest player, with the biggest support team, who's message is shoved in front of their face 24/7 in advertisin (IBM global support anyone?). So, I release our product open source...it takes off, next things there's an IBM product X division, and I can't even get support contracts anymore. So I get upset and say, "Fine, I'm going to close source/change my license/stop developing the software...or a range of other technique to enforce my ability to put food on my table...then 'yoink', IBM says "great...we have 1000 developers around the world gullibly waiting to pick up where you left off and do so without us paying them...we'll give you a job if you want, but your company's toast from here on in"....and let's see if there's precedence there? XFree, changes it's license....'yoink' now there's XOrg, run by HP...sorry XFree guys, but thanks for the code, you go away now.
Open source is definitely about freedom...freedom for the biggest player in an industry to easily maintain it's market dominance at the expense of small companies and developers.
Ah, but don't forget the other 'bite in the a$$' part of open source. That's a fantastic idea...peer review of code...I'm all for it...but GPL/LPGL says that in order to open source, microsoft would have to allow people to take over their product...to give them the right to sell years of M$ hard work as their own.
This is a big con by the open source community...they say, 'it's free as in speech, not free as in beer'...but read the GPL, in order to be free as in speech, you HAVE to be free as in beer.
show me one license that specifies source availability for peer review/submission, yet maintains a commercial interest, that is endorsed by stallman and his crew. There is none...in fact the licenses that do enforce that paradigm...things like 'that changes must come through the main project to be released', are specifically rejected by official open source (look at the accepted licenses at GNU, the forestated is a real rejection).
I have a product...I would love to make it open source...I would love to give it away free and just make money off the support...I would make a really good living at that...but I can't run the risk that someone with more money than I (read: IBM) will take my code and great ideas and use them to put me out of business....yeah, hell fair that is:)
Show me how you'll protect my income, staff and company and I'll open source in a second...until then, stop ruining an industy.
The code you are writing is probably very tailored to the specific needs of your employer and so "the competition" really wouldn't be helped much by having access to it
What absolute bollocks. The only thing that seperates even a service based software house from it's competitors is time to implement and quality of implementation. If a company does well in the, say, taxation market because it has developed a suit of well tested libraries it can rapidly redeploy in various situations, it has a significant edge of it's competitors. Start giving away your competative edge and you might as well call yourself a charity. Do you really think that if my employer was Nokia then Samsung wouldn't benefit commercially from knowing the code to the software I write? This might be true with very _very_ generic libraries like xml parsing...but that's about it!
If you look into the open source hype at the moment, you'll find that all of the major players that are pushing it (sun, ibm etc), make their money from hardware...can you, as a developer, start building new processors in your backyard to compete with these guys? No, so they'll continue to take your free software and laugh behind your back.
...in the future, every developer will be stuck working for IBM global services and small startups will be obliterated by the IBM/OpenSource monolith...you've giving another monopoly all the free code it needs to dominate again (anyone remember IBMs ethics last time it was the dominant industry force?).
Well done open source....way to destroy an industry.
It was later recorded by the university database that not only did they promptly pay the find, they _overpaid_ by almost 2000 pounds. Of course, a refund was issued instantly.
Couldn't figure out why they were snickering though?
If you read/. with any regularity, you will hear two really strongly held beliefs.
1) Open source is good for everyone. That developers need to realise that theirs is no longer a specialized skill, and that the jobs lost to open source can be somewhat offset with contracting/support, and that it leaves more money for business to spend elsewhere...so all in all, the jobs lost to open source is a good things
and...
2) Jobs lost to india are bad!
Same outcome guys...job losses in local IT markets, more money for companies to spend elsewhere...and the creation of local support/customization markets.
if you look at the big picture, the company is trying to save $$. If the company is trying to save such small amounts of $$ (as the few k per month supplying those items) then they may not be in as good a financial shape as you thing. Time to start freshening that resume
...actually...our boss supplies fruit...pretty much as much as you can eat, and we always have filtered water chilled in the fridge...I love caffiene...and I've worked places that supply free cola as well...and I've gotta say, it's great working for a boss that thinks two steps ahead of me and knows that while I may work insanely long hours on caffiene, I'll still be working for him in 10 years on fruit/water.
being able to project and hit predetermined deadlines is one of the many attributes that seperate professional developers from moronic time wasters who think they might try their had at 'coding'.
Being able to program doesn't make you a programmer...being able to project and hit deadlines, build in reusable blocks, well document your code...these are the things that make a programmer.
so...if you can't hit a deadline...move aside and stop giving the rest of us a bad name. </rant>
news for nerds...stuff....about boats!?
on
Rowing the Pond Again
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
...insure your stuff...back up nightly...and encrypt sensitive data.
Then you can walk around with your armani carry bag, proudly wearing your D&G sun glasses and your pierre cardin watch and if someone tries to mug you, just say "sure budy, here's my laptop, wallet, cash and ipod...you want fries with that?"...
then head merrily off to your home in suburbia, make your insurance claim, restore your backups to another laptop and call all your friends to tell them about your exciting experience.
lol...you think that's bad...we have a problem at Universities in Australia where asian parents and student (sorry to stereotype and all...but it is actually true in this case because a lot of wealthy families up through asia send their children to school here because it's supposed to be better quality education) are getting angry at faculty for 'failing' students. They pay a lot of money to go to Uni here rather than in their home country, and they are outraged that after paying that kind of money the university have the right to fail their kids. There's been a couple of current affair stories done on threats to deans etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Until OSS liberalises it's view and allows other degrees of free software to fall under it's umbrella, companies will continue to view it extremely cautiously. That is, taking and not giving.
Personally, until I can be garunteed that I will not be moved off a project that I created because of someones political agenda, there's no way I'll open source a single SLOC.
If OSS was truly about freedom, they'd allow me the freedom to distribute under my terms....but I guess it's only freedom if we do things your way...hey, wait a minute, that sounds an awful lot like...no freedom at all.
And in regards to assistance choosing a license, I have been through just about every license I could find and read all the documentation...they are all extemely left wing and do not allow me to contribute any code.
you may want to look further than simple cash before refusing the senior generation social security. I don't know what it's like in the U.S., but in australia a large amount of the previous generations sacrificed their standard of living so that my standard of living could be better. My parents didn't go to Uni and worked very hard so that it would be my right to be able to be educated. I'm guessing it's the same for a lot of others. Our generation is rich in all senses because of the previous generations sacrifice. It might make us all better people to remember that.
I know this doesn't fit into the model most open source champions prefer...but inflexibility is the mother of nothing, so here goes (no flames please).
Is there a license that is essentially open source (i.e. you can take this source, do what you want with it, use the program, go nuts etc) but restricts redistribution (i.e all redistributions have to be approved by the project leader).
I know it's not 100% the spirit of open source...however since the two features that everyone touts as being the main benefits of open source (free and the ability to change to suit your needs) are addressed I would imagine it would only be the hard core open source zealots would object.
Anyone know of anything that suits those needs?
using idiotic emotive language like "ruining an industry
...I'm a human...and I extrapolate views based on experience from a wide range of sources, not all of them documented --re: conversations --...it's called experience and gut instinct :) )
idiotic is a bit harsh...I'm not allowed to express my opinions? Yes, it's my opinion that open source applications are slowly ruining this industry. I'm allowed to have it, I'm allowed to express it...and I can do so with or without documented proof to back it up. (and before you go on about how it's not very smart to express an opinion without proof etc...well, I'm not a robot
Ok, enough rant, back to the point in question. Patents do protect ideas, and yes I do use them. However I should have been clearer there, I wasn't necessarily talking ideas, I was talking actual code...anyone can have ideas...they're a dime a dozen, and patents, in the real world, don't actually protect you that much. However GPL/LGPL and the like say that whoever downloads my code has the option of freely distributing it, changing it, and making a business from it.
So, let's look at a hypothetical. The natural progression of opensource is that all software will eventually have to be opensource to compete. i.e. why would someone pay for a product they can get free with the source code. Now,lots of people will say that the money is then made from support, documentation etc. Fine, I'm with you all the way...but, oops...there's that pesky real world again, where the customer will buy support from the biggest player, with the biggest support team, who's message is shoved in front of their face 24/7 in advertisin (IBM global support anyone?). So, I release our product open source...it takes off, next things there's an IBM product X division, and I can't even get support contracts anymore. So I get upset and say, "Fine, I'm going to close source/change my license/stop developing the software...or a range of other technique to enforce my ability to put food on my table...then 'yoink', IBM says "great...we have 1000 developers around the world gullibly waiting to pick up where you left off and do so without us paying them...we'll give you a job if you want, but your company's toast from here on in"....and let's see if there's precedence there? XFree, changes it's license....'yoink' now there's XOrg, run by HP...sorry XFree guys, but thanks for the code, you go away now.
Open source is definitely about freedom...freedom for the biggest player in an industry to easily maintain it's market dominance at the expense of small companies and developers.
Ah, but don't forget the other 'bite in the a$$' part of open source. That's a fantastic idea...peer review of code...I'm all for it...but GPL/LPGL says that in order to open source, microsoft would have to allow people to take over their product...to give them the right to sell years of M$ hard work as their own.
:)
This is a big con by the open source community...they say, 'it's free as in speech, not free as in beer'...but read the GPL, in order to be free as in speech, you HAVE to be free as in beer.
show me one license that specifies source availability for peer review/submission, yet maintains a commercial interest, that is endorsed by stallman and his crew. There is none...in fact the licenses that do enforce that paradigm...things like 'that changes must come through the main project to be released', are specifically rejected by official open source (look at the accepted licenses at GNU, the forestated is a real rejection).
I have a product...I would love to make it open source...I would love to give it away free and just make money off the support...I would make a really good living at that...but I can't run the risk that someone with more money than I (read: IBM) will take my code and great ideas and use them to put me out of business....yeah, hell fair that is
Show me how you'll protect my income, staff and company and I'll open source in a second...until then, stop ruining an industy.
The code you are writing is probably very tailored to the specific needs of your employer and so "the competition" really wouldn't be helped much by having access to it
What absolute bollocks. The only thing that seperates even a service based software house from it's competitors is time to implement and quality of implementation. If a company does well in the, say, taxation market because it has developed a suit of well tested libraries it can rapidly redeploy in various situations, it has a significant edge of it's competitors. Start giving away your competative edge and you might as well call yourself a charity. Do you really think that if my employer was Nokia then Samsung wouldn't benefit commercially from knowing the code to the software I write? This might be true with very _very_ generic libraries like xml parsing...but that's about it!
If you look into the open source hype at the moment, you'll find that all of the major players that are pushing it (sun, ibm etc), make their money from hardware...can you, as a developer, start building new processors in your backyard to compete with these guys? No, so they'll continue to take your free software and laugh behind your back.
...in the future, every developer will be stuck working for IBM global services and small startups will be obliterated by the IBM/OpenSource monolith...you've giving another monopoly all the free code it needs to dominate again (anyone remember IBMs ethics last time it was the dominant industry force?).
Well done open source....way to destroy an industry.
Quite simple...any pornography where the participant are, or look to be, under the age of 16.
"Excuse me, those books over there, how much?"
"Over where?"
"Over there, those ones"
"You mean Dickens...the collected works of Charles Dickens."
"Yes, are they real leather?"
"they're real Dickens."
"I need leather books to go with my leather sofa...everything else in my house is real...I'll give you 200 pounds"
"are they leather bound pounds?"
"no...they're just ordinary pounds"
"sorry, I need leather bound pounds to go with my wallet....next"
It was later recorded by the university database that not only did they promptly pay the find, they _overpaid_ by almost 2000 pounds. Of course, a refund was issued instantly.
Couldn't figure out why they were snickering though?
How do you know when a terrorist has been in your fridge?
<drum-sting>
WMD in the butter!
</drum-sting>
If you read /. with any regularity, you will hear two really strongly held beliefs.
1) Open source is good for everyone. That developers need to realise that theirs is no longer a specialized skill, and that the jobs lost to open source can be somewhat offset with contracting/support, and that it leaves more money for business to spend elsewhere...so all in all, the jobs lost to open source is a good things
and...
2) Jobs lost to india are bad!
Same outcome guys...job losses in local IT markets, more money for companies to spend elsewhere...and the creation of local support/customization markets.
Make up your mind eh
if you look at the big picture, the company is trying to save $$. If the company is trying to save such small amounts of $$ (as the few k per month supplying those items) then they may not be in as good a financial shape as you thing. Time to start freshening that resume
don't forget, this also counts as a 'public disclosure' which in a lot of countries actually revokes the right for you to patent it
...any smart developer out there want to give a run down on how this differs fron JINI?
for the non U.S. residents here
...helper monkey
...actually...our boss supplies fruit...pretty much as much as you can eat, and we always have filtered water chilled in the fridge...I love caffiene...and I've worked places that supply free cola as well...and I've gotta say, it's great working for a boss that thinks two steps ahead of me and knows that while I may work insanely long hours on caffiene, I'll still be working for him in 10 years on fruit/water.
I doubt very much whether he has personally missed any deadline
being able to project and hit predetermined deadlines is one of the many attributes that seperate professional developers from moronic time wasters who think they might try their had at 'coding'.
Being able to program doesn't make you a programmer...being able to project and hit deadlines, build in reusable blocks, well document your code...these are the things that make a programmer.
so...if you can't hit a deadline...move aside and stop giving the rest of us a bad name.
</rant>
hmmmm
...I'm all pissy because no one will pay me for the 'free' software that I decided to develop.
...insure your stuff...back up nightly...and encrypt sensitive data.
Then you can walk around with your armani carry bag, proudly wearing your D&G sun glasses and your pierre cardin watch and if someone tries to mug you, just say "sure budy, here's my laptop, wallet, cash and ipod...you want fries with that?"...
then head merrily off to your home in suburbia, make your insurance claim, restore your backups to another laptop and call all your friends to tell them about your exciting experience.
lol...you think that's bad...we have a problem at Universities in Australia where asian parents and student (sorry to stereotype and all...but it is actually true in this case because a lot of wealthy families up through asia send their children to school here because it's supposed to be better quality education) are getting angry at faculty for 'failing' students. They pay a lot of money to go to Uni here rather than in their home country, and they are outraged that after paying that kind of money the university have the right to fail their kids. There's been a couple of current affair stories done on threats to deans etc.
...all this time you waste with area 51...can't you see it's just a decoy to keep you away from areas 1 to 49