I beg to differ - you take one point out of context, exaggerate it, then ridicule the whole article based on your own exaggeration.
Actually, this is a rather well written article, with several points you chose to ignore (including the Google Voice fiasco, treatment of App Store developers, his analysis of the changing trends in the press surrounding Apple plus a dozen more).
I know this is slashdot, and who am I to tell you to RTFA (I don't usually read them myself, I'm more interested in the comments) but in this case it's well worth it. The author doesn't seem to be your usual Apple-basher at all. Not nearly as obviously as parent seems to be an Apple fanboy, dismissing any Apple criticism... "the obvious bias behind such obviously fallacious arguments"... obviously;)
As always, they're playing upon the ignorance of their userbase. I give it, say, 35 minutes before someone here posts why Apple is full of balderdash for saying this. I give it 5 minutes before some iTard rushes to their defense.
Well, this is not exactly a technical explanation, but here we go... I live in Vietnam, where basically you can buy the latest and greatest of any brand (I own a HTC Touch HD), but the majority of cellphones are local brands (for example Bavapen) or clones of popular phones (mostly blackberries). I've just read a report on how they are done. Basically parts are imported from China, and assembled in mom & pop shops (Bavapen is a major brand, but you have dozens of smaller brands), loaded with whatever baseband processor software is available.
Now the thing is, it's incredibly easy to set up shop and assemble your own phones. This part of the market seems to be completely unregulated. And yet, in this 85+ million market I never heard anything about dangers to cell towers. We have basically 3 major and 5-6 minor carriers, 99,99% of all phones are not locked to any of these, and a good chunk of the phones are loaded with software from who knows what sources. I would assume that the situation is very similar in the rest of SE Asia and China.
Now I know this is not proof in itself, and I don't know for sure about the rest of Asia, but it is safe to assume that we have hundreds of millions of phones on the market with hundreds of different baseband processor software coming from shady sources, yet to my knowledge, there hasn't been in single attack on cell towers via software loaded on the phones themselves. And although this region is relatively stable, cyberattacks, just like elsewhere, are pretty common. I believe that if this could be done, it would have been done or tried already.
Actually, loading binary drivers dynamically is ok. In theory, loading a binary driver into the kernel can be regarded as creating a new derivative work, however, you can still legally use the kernel if you don't plan to distribute it. That's how actually binary drivers like NVidia's and ATI's work. Statically linking binary code with GPL code is a different matter, however, and I think this is what actually happened here.
Applauded for what? Complying with copyright laws? Are you serious? When did we get to the point where we applaud someone who DOES NOT BREAK the law? Well, I know, we're talking about Microsoft here..
On a separate note, they DID try to take it as far as they could, putting a massive marketing spin on the whole thing. I don't believe they could have gone farther than that in the current situation. They have been under legal pressure for quite some time now, I don't think playing hardball would have gained them anything at this point. Not to mention that they've been trying hard to reshape their image since the Vista flop.
They won't. It has always been the policy of the FSF to try to work out GPL violation problems behind the scenes, then if it fails, go public (unless the public finds out first about the violation) and finally seek legal remedies. I don't know any cases that reached this final stage.
What really bothers me is the marketing spin they put on what is essentially complying with copyright laws. "Today, in a break from the ordinary, Microsoft..." yada yada - break from the ordinary my ass! This is what happened:
Code was found in violation of the GPL by Stephen Hemminger - the main engineer at the open-source networking vendor Vyatta
Hemminger approached Greg Kroah-Hartman, who agreed that there is a problem and worked behind the scenes to rectify the situation.
MONTHS later Microsoft ended its copyright violation by finally releasing the code and complying with the GPL.
Then they went on with another spin:
"We arrived at the decision to release the drivers to the community under the GPLv2 through this process. Both Greg K-H and Jim Zemlin of the Linux Foundation have reiterated that this is the same process that other companies follow when deciding how to release new device drivers to the Linux community."
This is so typical - there are some half-truths in there. It is the normal process the FSF has pursued for getting violators in complience with the GPL, however, it is NOT the NORMAL process for those companies or individuals who genuinely want to donate code to the FSF or the linux kernel. "Today in a break from the ordinary..." yeah, well you can say this is a break for the ordinary, for usually it takes far more time to get Microsoft to comply with laws and regulations. 5 months only - amazing!
Last two notebooks I bought came with FreeDos too - A dell Vostro 1400 and a Vostro 1300 (for a friend). The shop was selling windows licenses separately - if you bought one they would install it for you. Or they'll install windows for free if you make enough of the staff laugh:) That's how things work here in Vietnam. The Vietnamese are fun loving people. If you need a favor (or if you want to be taken seriously), make them laugh;)
I think it IS about files and folders in general. While should we care where application X puts its bin file? Opt,/usr,/usr/bin,/usr/local/bin - I don't really care as long as they work. And they do on all recent distroes I have used (suse, mandriva, fedora). The only directory exposed to your typical desktop *nix user is your home directory. And that's where I find myself spending time organizing and reorganizing my growing number of documents. Now I'm not sure any other alternative would work better - it might be something we just have to live with.
Amarok is a good example. You have numerous options for accessing your collection - tags, genres, albums, whatnot - all done automatically - seems easier, more user friendly, right? And yet, I still find using the file view a lot more confortable...
How would you cope with copying to/from USB/CD/DVD etc...? Where or how would I find the file I need and where would I copy it? Your concept seems interesting, I'm just curious about how you would move data b/w PCs (exluding the Internet of course).
So it's not the hideous hw support - up until the past 1-2 years - that makes linux unsuccessful. And still today, if you have PC preinstalled with linux, you can't just pick up any... scanner, for instance, pop in the driver cd, press next next next than have it working after a reboot.
It's not that I can't get my laptop's LCD and my Samsung LCD working in dual mode properly - and they work fine in windows.
It's not that if you want to do anything CAD you have don't have much of a choice but to run Windows.
It's not that 99% of all computers come with Windows preinstalled, and if they not there is a 99% chance that a friend, a classmate, a colleague or a family member will do it for you.
It's not that 90% percent of the population haven't even heard of linux, and when you ask them what operating system they run, they'll say Microsoft Office.
It's not that people generally prefer what they are already familiar with if it works in a reasonable way. Mind that by now, viruses and *wares became so entrenched, that most people believe that it falls within reason having to protect against them.
No, it's because we have choice. Right.
Can someone please shoot down the "lets ditch X in favour of Y because we should have ONE" trolls? Educating them will fail, they'll never understand that programmers in a free software world work on what they LIKE. You can't get a mono enthusiast to use QT just because you want everything mono. Same with GTK vs QT and so on.
But in the meantime, it's excellent marketing - the news is everywhere, it made it to the BBC headlines, it's on NYT, etc... Now if you consider that 99% of pc users never heard about Chrome before...
Also, you probably won't need to stay online all the time to do what you usually do on your PC. Lots of apps have nice web interfaces run locally from your computer in a browser window. VLC has a web interface, some music players, dvd authoring software, etc. Even Google Docs could use a local client running in Chrome that synchronizes with your online account when net connection is available.
I heard the cross platform argument before, so I'll bite. Mono has been around for how many years exactly? And in that time, how many great, or wait, I settle for useful cross platform applications has been written that run on both *nix and windows?
Care to point to yours or anyone else's windows app written in C# that I need on linux (and is actually feasable to port)?
Reaching adulthood and then preserving the body of a 20-year-old forever is one thing. This is quite something else.
It is not so much failure to age, as failure to grow/mature. It remains to be seen whether her abnormality will grant longer life span in practice.
Don't forget that it's not just about growth. She gets terminal diseases (like brain cancer) for no good reason than they vanish without a trace in a few weeks. Everyone is focused on the growth/maturity issue - I think this aspect of her condition as at least if not more interesting.
Reread my post more carefully please. I don't criticize PJ - I criticize those tho criticize her:)) I wrote about her article about Novell forking openoffice.org, because that article caused much stir here on slashdot, and I still think that it was not a good writing. It prompted people to begin calling groklaw unreliable and PJ biased. I tried to point out that she is not, and that people confuse style and enthusiasm with content. Her current article is proof for that: I completely agree with her points, which are well argued, and there is nothing wrong with it. For some reason you seem to think that I think something is wrong with PJ. I don't - nothing is wrong with her, you must have missed something in my original post to arrive at this conclusion. In other words: I don't attack PJ, in fact, my main problem is with those who attack PJ (the person, her enthusiasm) while completely ignoring the content of her writings. In other words, what you ask me (Plz attack the issue, not the person) is what I ask others, even in my original post.
What's wrong with you? I like groklaw and PJ's writings, that's what I said, not the opposite. I was trying to point out that those who accuse her of being biased usually are the same folks who don't want to argue. I think you completely misunderstood my post.
Just to let you know, it's Slashdot, not Dotslash. You made that mistake each time you referenced the site in your post. Might wanna watch out for something like that.;)
And it is full of grammatical errors too - a shame (even though english is not my native language)! But thanks for the heads-up, this one I haven't noticed. Dotslash comes more naturally when abbreviated, probably because of./configuring./running_scripts, etc.:))
Well, did you read the FA? Which point you didn't get? Ubuntu is not an isolated venture. If a company works really hard to work around the GPL (that has been responsible for the health of the free software ecosystem in the past decades) - that's bad for everyone who distributes GPL-ed software. And that's what Novell did. Did they ask Eben Moglen or the FSF about the legality of the deal? No, they talk to their lawyers, and Microsoft's lawyers, and found a way not to breach the letter of the GPL, while breaking the spirit of the GPL, or at least one aspect of it: equal rights to the four freedoms for all recipients. Currently, the situation is this: Novell customers (recipients of free software) are different from Canonical customers (recipients of free software). They have a promise from MS not to sue for patent violations (which alone legitimizes claims about patent and IP "issues" in linux, or at least it has the same effect). Moreover, Novell began to build its marketing on this difference. As a side effect, they have also provided plenty of ammo for Ballmer to speak about IP issues in linux - in other words, spread FUD. Yes, being free software and all, linux is not going away, but please forget about the romantic notion of the anonymous developer working in a basement somewhere in Asia for make benefit glorious free software movement. A very large part of both the application stack as well as some important features of the linux kernel is developed by payed developers. Those developers are payed because there is a corporate interest in linux. If the viability of linux suffers because of bogus IP "issues" (which Novell helps to create) - linux can suffer on the long term.
But again, why not read the article first, and ask questions if something is not clear, or you disagree with the points raised by PJ?
PJ sometimes tends to get emotional - which is absolutely fine by me, but she did little to explain her latest comments about Novell forking openoffice. That was a bad article - and people immediately jumped the gun, and a began to talk about he PJ has changed, how Groklaw is no longer a reliable source of information. Because it is so obviously biased. That was the main reason. Which is kinda ironic, because it rests on the assumption that other sources are unbiased, which is naive to say the least. What's more important is this: does groklaw provide accurate information, and good arguments to support their claims? Usually, with PJ, you have lots of enthusiasm, and lots of good arguments. In almost all cases when people criticize her here on./ it is because her style and "bias" - which usually fails to align with her critics' own bias. The last article (the ooo.o forking one) lacked on the argument side, and this was an error on PJ's side: she had good reason to be upset and even emotional (because she clearly cares about free software), but she failed to provide the argument part. She assumed that everyone knows what she knows, and therefore, everyone will see her point without the need of an explanation. This did a lot of damage, because those who criticize her on./ and elsewhere, usually do so by completely avoiding to address any of her points by reducing her article to the "emotional" part. Too bad that in the openoffice case, they did have a point.
As I said, I don't have a problem with enthusiasm - others may feel different, because lots of peeps consider the display of emotions or enthusiasm as weakness, and they invest a lot of emotions in pretending to not care or feel something about these issues. But except for this last case, you will hardly find any criticism of groklaw and PJ that tries to address the issues she raises with logical arguments. I haven't followed the happening on groklaw in the past few years to closely, but since hell broke out about the Novell-MS deal, I have been regularly reading groklaw, and I have to say this: the oo.o fork article was not a trend, but an exception. PJ is still the same PJ I have come to know when the SCO case started: exceptionally thorough and logical in providing arguments to prove her point, but also a bit emotional and enthusiastic (which made some of her writings an easy target for those, who failing provide rational arguments concerning the points she made, dismissed her articles on the note of being "biased".)
This is not necessarily FUD - Bob Sutor has a point when he warns against the danger of OpenXML. It is extremely difficult to adopt the specifications (thousands of pages) - and Novell (typical) does it right now in a way that they will have a headstart (even if they contribute code back later). Moreover, they can only hope to successfully implement parts of the OpenXML specs, while providing MS with enough ammo to continue to push their specs over ODF.
Yes, you're right, except for the last part: profit. This very much depends on the company. The fall in the stock price may not effect a company's profit margins at all. High stock rates might be important if a company plans large investments, and needs capital to do that (and has plenty of stock to sell). In case of RH, their falling stock prices doesn't mean much. They have an established business, with exceptional customer satisfaction rates and a business model that doesn't depend on stock rates that much. With the current situation, RH is a borderline case inasmuch as it hasn't been in the 25$ range for long enough to consider the drop in their share rates merely temporary. OTOH it has been there long enough not to consider the fall final either (as far as "final" goes with stock prices, especially in the IT sector). This is a wait and see situation - with my personal prediction being that their stock will rise 10-20% over the next few months (fairly large error margin there you might say:), but that's just speculation (and you better not listen to./ speculations, especially considering the stock market). The point is, that in their case, their stock price has a negligible effect on their performance as a company.
OSDL is shrinking (again) by 33%. VA Software (The owner of Slashdot) is still bleeding. Linspire has largely flopped. Novell is only making money because MS just gave them a big cash infusion. Red Hat is the only OSS company out there making any money, from what I can tell, and even Red Hat is in trouble from the big boys (lots of other people agree... lots of short selling of their stock.
Trolltech. MySQL AB. Google - not an open source company per se, but uses OSS to turn on profits. So does IBM now. Stock prices alone are not directly related to a company's strenght & health.
...but the groupthink on this site is getting REALLY old. Want a story accepted? Just go on a psuedo-intellectual rant that contains the words "open source", bash Microsoft, or mention the RIAA.
Want to get modded up? Just rant about slashdot groupthink, complain about submissions, others getting modded up, etc. This is getting REALLY old.;)
Submitter/article author is clearly a troll, and the submission is FUD - and it was tagged accordingly (groupthink?)...
'm no expert, but I've heard that it's a huge pain in the ass to make non-identical iso's on an industrial scale. I think commercial CD's are produced by making a 'stamp' and then: WHUMP WHUMP WHUMP - three copies.
But even if that's not how it's done any more, you'd have to use a pretty complicated solution to make watermarked iso's - it can't just be a serial number embedded somewhere or it could be pinpointed just by doing a diff of two images.
Yes, you might be right, I said that before thinking it through.
I agree, this is great for Microsoft in many ways. First the people who pay for the 'virgin' copies have a great amount of flexibility on their deployment. Second the noobs that get it pirated have to look over their shoulders, so to speak as they would likely have a copy with the latest malware-du-jour.
Exactly - and what's worse regarding this article is that it has always been this way. As to PGP signatures (or sha256/md5 sums) - I believe each win xp iso is unique. At least that would make sense if MS is keen on preventing piracy. Otherwise it would be easy to make the correct hashes known, and distribute pirated copies that can be verified to be free of any modifications.
Actually, I'm all for MS cracking down on pirates/making their lives very difficult. Not because I think it is unethical to pirate windows - especially in poorer countries. The price of Windows is way out of proportion - and is due to their unethical, monopolistic practices that they can keep it that high. I agree with RMS here. Software, once written, can be infinitely replicated with no or very little cost. Even if we distribute the cost of development of the Windows operating system among all the customers who bought it, we will end up with a fraction of the price Microsoft sells it. Stallman contrasts a piece of software to a loaf of bread. If somebody takes my loaf of bread, I don't have it anymore; it's a limited resource. But software is like an infinitely replicable loaf of bread. To not share your loaf with me, when you'd still have your loaf, is what Stallman calls "software hoarding." I support Microsoft's anti-piracy efforts because it can drive people to try out free alternatives, that work just as good - in some cases even better - than windows, especially for home users. Years ago, free alternatives were not there, but for the past couple of years this has changed. In my personal opinion, this happened in the time frame ooo.org 2.0 was released, which coincided with other pieces of the free software application stack reaching maturity - KDE, GNOME, apps like Scribus, Gimp, etc. There is absolutely no reason to stay on Windows if you think its price is too high. If you don't, than by all means, go and pay for it, but don't steal it, because now you have a choice of staying competitive without breaching any laws.
Slashdot Mirror
*Yawn* Wake me up when you got a picture of the Syreen station orbiting Betelgeuse.
Actually, this is a rather well written article, with several points you chose to ignore (including the Google Voice fiasco, treatment of App Store developers, his analysis of the changing trends in the press surrounding Apple plus a dozen more).
I know this is slashdot, and who am I to tell you to RTFA (I don't usually read them myself, I'm more interested in the comments) but in this case it's well worth it. The author doesn't seem to be your usual Apple-basher at all. Not nearly as obviously as parent seems to be an Apple fanboy, dismissing any Apple criticism... "the obvious bias behind such obviously fallacious arguments" ... obviously ;)
As always, they're playing upon the ignorance of their userbase. I give it, say, 35 minutes before someone here posts why Apple is full of balderdash for saying this. I give it 5 minutes before some iTard rushes to their defense.
Well, this is not exactly a technical explanation, but here we go... I live in Vietnam, where basically you can buy the latest and greatest of any brand (I own a HTC Touch HD), but the majority of cellphones are local brands (for example Bavapen) or clones of popular phones (mostly blackberries). I've just read a report on how they are done. Basically parts are imported from China, and assembled in mom & pop shops (Bavapen is a major brand, but you have dozens of smaller brands), loaded with whatever baseband processor software is available.
Now the thing is, it's incredibly easy to set up shop and assemble your own phones. This part of the market seems to be completely unregulated. And yet, in this 85+ million market I never heard anything about dangers to cell towers. We have basically 3 major and 5-6 minor carriers, 99,99% of all phones are not locked to any of these, and a good chunk of the phones are loaded with software from who knows what sources. I would assume that the situation is very similar in the rest of SE Asia and China.
Now I know this is not proof in itself, and I don't know for sure about the rest of Asia, but it is safe to assume that we have hundreds of millions of phones on the market with hundreds of different baseband processor software coming from shady sources, yet to my knowledge, there hasn't been in single attack on cell towers via software loaded on the phones themselves. And although this region is relatively stable, cyberattacks, just like elsewhere, are pretty common. I believe that if this could be done, it would have been done or tried already.
Actually, loading binary drivers dynamically is ok. In theory, loading a binary driver into the kernel can be regarded as creating a new derivative work, however, you can still legally use the kernel if you don't plan to distribute it. That's how actually binary drivers like NVidia's and ATI's work. Statically linking binary code with GPL code is a different matter, however, and I think this is what actually happened here.
On a separate note, they DID try to take it as far as they could, putting a massive marketing spin on the whole thing. I don't believe they could have gone farther than that in the current situation. They have been under legal pressure for quite some time now, I don't think playing hardball would have gained them anything at this point. Not to mention that they've been trying hard to reshape their image since the Vista flop.
What really bothers me is the marketing spin they put on what is essentially complying with copyright laws. "Today, in a break from the ordinary, Microsoft..." yada yada - break from the ordinary my ass! This is what happened:
Then they went on with another spin:
"We arrived at the decision to release the drivers to the community under the GPLv2 through this process. Both Greg K-H and Jim Zemlin of the Linux Foundation have reiterated that this is the same process that other companies follow when deciding how to release new device drivers to the Linux community."
This is so typical - there are some half-truths in there. It is the normal process the FSF has pursued for getting violators in complience with the GPL, however, it is NOT the NORMAL process for those companies or individuals who genuinely want to donate code to the FSF or the linux kernel. "Today in a break from the ordinary..." yeah, well you can say this is a break for the ordinary, for usually it takes far more time to get Microsoft to comply with laws and regulations. 5 months only - amazing!
Last two notebooks I bought came with freedos.
Last two notebooks I bought came with FreeDos too - A dell Vostro 1400 and a Vostro 1300 (for a friend). The shop was selling windows licenses separately - if you bought one they would install it for you. Or they'll install windows for free if you make enough of the staff laugh :) That's how things work here in Vietnam. The Vietnamese are fun loving people. If you need a favor (or if you want to be taken seriously), make them laugh ;)
You want it? Here it is. i'd sooner destroy it than give it away.
Yeah, that would surely be in line with TPBs and the Pirate Party's general philosophy :)
Amarok is a good example. You have numerous options for accessing your collection - tags, genres, albums, whatnot - all done automatically - seems easier, more user friendly, right? And yet, I still find using the file view a lot more confortable...
How would you cope with copying to/from USB/CD/DVD etc...? Where or how would I find the file I need and where would I copy it? Your concept seems interesting, I'm just curious about how you would move data b/w PCs (exluding the Internet of course).
It's not that I can't get my laptop's LCD and my Samsung LCD working in dual mode properly - and they work fine in windows.
It's not that if you want to do anything CAD you have don't have much of a choice but to run Windows.
It's not that 99% of all computers come with Windows preinstalled, and if they not there is a 99% chance that a friend, a classmate, a colleague or a family member will do it for you.
It's not that 90% percent of the population haven't even heard of linux, and when you ask them what operating system they run, they'll say Microsoft Office.
It's not that people generally prefer what they are already familiar with if it works in a reasonable way. Mind that by now, viruses and *wares became so entrenched, that most people believe that it falls within reason having to protect against them.
No, it's because we have choice. Right.
Can someone please shoot down the "lets ditch X in favour of Y because we should have ONE" trolls? Educating them will fail, they'll never understand that programmers in a free software world work on what they LIKE. You can't get a mono enthusiast to use QT just because you want everything mono. Same with GTK vs QT and so on.
Also, you probably won't need to stay online all the time to do what you usually do on your PC. Lots of apps have nice web interfaces run locally from your computer in a browser window. VLC has a web interface, some music players, dvd authoring software, etc. Even Google Docs could use a local client running in Chrome that synchronizes with your online account when net connection is available.
Care to point to yours or anyone else's windows app written in C# that I need on linux (and is actually feasable to port)?
Reaching adulthood and then preserving the body of a 20-year-old forever is one thing. This is quite something else.
It is not so much failure to age, as failure to grow/mature. It remains to be seen whether her abnormality will grant longer life span in practice.
Don't forget that it's not just about growth. She gets terminal diseases (like brain cancer) for no good reason than they vanish without a trace in a few weeks. Everyone is focused on the growth/maturity issue - I think this aspect of her condition as at least if not more interesting.
Reread my post more carefully please. I don't criticize PJ - I criticize those tho criticize her :)) I wrote about her article about Novell forking openoffice.org, because that article caused much stir here on slashdot, and I still think that it was not a good writing. It prompted people to begin calling groklaw unreliable and PJ biased. I tried to point out that she is not, and that people confuse style and enthusiasm with content. Her current article is proof for that: I completely agree with her points, which are well argued, and there is nothing wrong with it. For some reason you seem to think that I think something is wrong with PJ. I don't - nothing is wrong with her, you must have missed something in my original post to arrive at this conclusion. In other words: I don't attack PJ, in fact, my main problem is with those who attack PJ (the person, her enthusiasm) while completely ignoring the content of her writings. In other words, what you ask me (Plz attack the issue, not the person) is what I ask others, even in my original post.
What's wrong with you? I like groklaw and PJ's writings, that's what I said, not the opposite. I was trying to point out that those who accuse her of being biased usually are the same folks who don't want to argue. I think you completely misunderstood my post.
And it is full of grammatical errors too - a shame (even though english is not my native language)! But thanks for the heads-up, this one I haven't noticed. Dotslash comes more naturally when abbreviated, probably because of ./configuring ./running_scripts, etc. :))
But again, why not read the article first, and ask questions if something is not clear, or you disagree with the points raised by PJ?
As I said, I don't have a problem with enthusiasm - others may feel different, because lots of peeps consider the display of emotions or enthusiasm as weakness, and they invest a lot of emotions in pretending to not care or feel something about these issues. But except for this last case, you will hardly find any criticism of groklaw and PJ that tries to address the issues she raises with logical arguments. I haven't followed the happening on groklaw in the past few years to closely, but since hell broke out about the Novell-MS deal, I have been regularly reading groklaw, and I have to say this: the oo.o fork article was not a trend, but an exception. PJ is still the same PJ I have come to know when the SCO case started: exceptionally thorough and logical in providing arguments to prove her point, but also a bit emotional and enthusiastic (which made some of her writings an easy target for those, who failing provide rational arguments concerning the points she made, dismissed her articles on the note of being "biased".)
This is not necessarily FUD - Bob Sutor has a point when he warns against the danger of OpenXML. It is extremely difficult to adopt the specifications (thousands of pages) - and Novell (typical) does it right now in a way that they will have a headstart (even if they contribute code back later). Moreover, they can only hope to successfully implement parts of the OpenXML specs, while providing MS with enough ammo to continue to push their specs over ODF.
Yes, you're right, except for the last part: profit. This very much depends on the company. The fall in the stock price may not effect a company's profit margins at all. High stock rates might be important if a company plans large investments, and needs capital to do that (and has plenty of stock to sell). In case of RH, their falling stock prices doesn't mean much. They have an established business, with exceptional customer satisfaction rates and a business model that doesn't depend on stock rates that much. With the current situation, RH is a borderline case inasmuch as it hasn't been in the 25$ range for long enough to consider the drop in their share rates merely temporary. OTOH it has been there long enough not to consider the fall final either (as far as "final" goes with stock prices, especially in the IT sector). This is a wait and see situation - with my personal prediction being that their stock will rise 10-20% over the next few months (fairly large error margin there you might say :), but that's just speculation (and you better not listen to ./ speculations, especially considering the stock market). The point is, that in their case, their stock price has a negligible effect on their performance as a company.
Trolltech. MySQL AB. Google - not an open source company per se, but uses OSS to turn on profits. So does IBM now. Stock prices alone are not directly related to a company's strenght & health.
Want to get modded up? Just rant about slashdot groupthink, complain about submissions, others getting modded up, etc. This is getting REALLY old. ;)
Submitter/article author is clearly a troll, and the submission is FUD - and it was tagged accordingly (groupthink?)...
Yes, you might be right, I said that before thinking it through.
Exactly - and what's worse regarding this article is that it has always been this way. As to PGP signatures (or sha256/md5 sums) - I believe each win xp iso is unique. At least that would make sense if MS is keen on preventing piracy. Otherwise it would be easy to make the correct hashes known, and distribute pirated copies that can be verified to be free of any modifications.
Actually, I'm all for MS cracking down on pirates/making their lives very difficult. Not because I think it is unethical to pirate windows - especially in poorer countries. The price of Windows is way out of proportion - and is due to their unethical, monopolistic practices that they can keep it that high. I agree with RMS here. Software, once written, can be infinitely replicated with no or very little cost. Even if we distribute the cost of development of the Windows operating system among all the customers who bought it, we will end up with a fraction of the price Microsoft sells it. Stallman contrasts a piece of software to a loaf of bread. If somebody takes my loaf of bread, I don't have it anymore; it's a limited resource. But software is like an infinitely replicable loaf of bread. To not share your loaf with me, when you'd still have your loaf, is what Stallman calls "software hoarding." I support Microsoft's anti-piracy efforts because it can drive people to try out free alternatives, that work just as good - in some cases even better - than windows, especially for home users. Years ago, free alternatives were not there, but for the past couple of years this has changed. In my personal opinion, this happened in the time frame ooo.org 2.0 was released, which coincided with other pieces of the free software application stack reaching maturity - KDE, GNOME, apps like Scribus, Gimp, etc. There is absolutely no reason to stay on Windows if you think its price is too high. If you don't, than by all means, go and pay for it, but don't steal it, because now you have a choice of staying competitive without breaching any laws.