"I don't see how they can assume that visitors [...] must believe that FOSS isn't really free, unless they're rabid Adam Smith fans."
You know, there used to be a saying about Linux at one point: Linux is only free if your time is worth nothing. This isn't a bash against Linux or OSS: _nothing_ is really free, not even a pirated copy of Windows.
Can a "free" (as in beer) solution be actually more expensive than a proprietary expensive one? Yes, quite easily in fact: if it costs enough extra hours to use/admin/whatever, it _is_ actually more expensive.
Extreme example: consider (A) using an expensive CAD package like AutoCAD for some 5,000 Euro or so, versus (B) using a pencil and ruler for some $5 (assuming more than one pencil used). Which is cheaper? Well, once you factor in the cost of labour, actually the AutoCAD way may actually be cheaper.
Less extreme example: MS Office vs Open Office. If you're in a position where you must accept MS Office documents (e.g., your main customer is a big corporation and your choices are accept the Excel documents it sends you or go bankrupt), Open Office might actually not be cheaper. The effort to convert those documents and deal with conversion problems, can actually cost you more in wages than you saved by not buying MS Office.
Basically anyone who can claim with a straight face that _any_ solution, OSS or otherwise, is free as in 0$ doesn't have a fucking clue what he/she/it is talking about. It's not about being a "rabid Adam Smith fan", it's just about having the most bare minimum clue of economics.
Just to clarify a point, I started it while I was still in college, which didn't help either with having the time to do it right. Not that finishing college and going full time at it helped any. It just meant more time to spend doing something I didn't enjoy, and couldn't do right.
I did try it when I was about 22, and found it wasn't quite what I wanted to do.
Not much to lose? I don't think so.
I lost a lot of time doing not quite what I had gone to college for, for a start. I had to spend countless hours in meetings with potential customers answering stuff like "yes, you can have a button", "yes, if it's a button you can click on it" and "yes, it is very much possible to have it on a toolbar". I got basically bullied around by the customers, because they _knew_ I didn't have much choice.
I had long periods with no paying contracts, doing just the above. I also had to deal with accounting, legal stuff, etc, which meant paying someone to do it, because I don't even understand legalese or accounting. And btw, when I've said above that I got bullied around, it also means they paid peanuts and wanted it ready the day before yesterday.
Very early I also faced a choice between money and self-respect. I chose _not_ to be an asshole and a liar, but that that doesn't help with the money problem, you know.
Compared to the money I could have made on a normal salary at half the effort, it was a loss all right.
Even getting rid of the company in the end was a pain in the rear, because it turned out the accountant had been a tad sloppy. Luckily nothing warranting more than a fine, but still, that was a bit of extra stress to go through, and a bit more of a loss.
I guess at this point someone will jump in and say "bah, you were a lousy manager then". Which is, in fact, the truth of the matter. It's in fact the whole point.
It's not even just that I wasn't trained or skilled to be a manager or marketer, it's that I had never really wanted to be one in the first place. If I had wanted to, I'd have went to a business college instead. I _loved_ computers, so that's really what I wanted to do with my life. I think that pretty much describes virtually anyone who's actually any good at CS.
Now on the other hand, if one happens to be one of those who went into CS or EE college just because they thought it pays better, got through it purely by social engineering, and would very much rather talk than program and manipulate people than design, true, those might find it more entertaining to run a company.
First of all, *shrug* I never said you should go GPL. I'm not advocating that GPL is one-size-fits-all or anything. It isn't.
And, in fact, I can appreciate the honesty in an attitude that basically says "we don't want to GPL our code, so we don't use GPL'ed code." That _is_ indeed one of the honest choices for any license: if you don't like it, don't use it. You have my respect then.
The ones I do have a problem with is the ones who go the "maybe they won't notice theft" route, and then the "maybe we'll scare them with lame legal threats" route.
But just for the sake of repeating the obvious, you're missing that point that in order to end up having to do that, you'd have to be a thief to start with. The chances that an 100,000+ line of code program would just accidentally end up identical with another program, are a joke.
And that we _are_ in a thread about a group that's notorious for repeatedly violating GPL and then trying to work their way out by legal threats.
So, let's put it into context. Basically, this whole sub-thread is about advocating... what? Basically, "but the community should fuck off, and leave the individual developpers undefended, so corporate lawyers can maybe scare them into submission"? I can see how that would be a corporate wet dream, but it's not gonna happen.
In fact, a bit of flaming is the least of worries from that community: it's repeatedly shown before that it can back a copyright infringement lawsuit too.
OK, let's now talk about the "GPL community" for a bit. Sure, making wise-cracks about "braying zealots" is fun, but misses the point by a mile. There are a thousand ways to defuse a PR disaster _if_ you did nothing wrong. However what invariably happened in these cases was that the company itself was the one who acted like an asshole and fanned the flames.
As pointed above, there are ways to make your case in an intelligent manner. But what they did was send inflamatory bullshit and inflamatory canned lawyers' letters, instead of addressing the real issues. _How_ was that supposed to defuse the problem?
It seems to me like it's just a case of: they act like assholes, you get flamed like assholes. It's that simple. If you flame and do some lame attempt to intimidate that community, you get flamed in return. That's all there is to it.
It doesn't even have to do with GPL. I can think of many non-GPL-related cases -- like Indrema being called vapourware by HardOCP -- where _if_ they really were in the right, they could have handled it as such. But no, they send some vague legal threats instead and consistently refuse to address the real case. In fact, even their legal threats are vague enough when it comes to the real case.
_How_ is it the community's or the "braying zealot's" fault, then?
Let's put it like this: if your application also has every single buffer overflow, exploit and other bug of the "re-implemented" application, yes, some of us will very much suspect code theft.
That's usually one tell-tale sign of such "re-implementation". A _real_ clean room implementation of a API, file format, etc, will have its own bugs. Code theft won't.
If, for example, running the exact same buffer overflow on it executes the exact same malicious code, it says not only that both forgot to check buffers. It also says that both "accidentally" chose the exact same buffer size _and_ had it in the exact same place on the stack. Typically meaning that the "re-implemented" function had the same variables and in the same order.
That it all is one big coincidence is a _very_ hard to swallow proposition, if it happens in more than one function. Doubly so if the binary code also looks awfully like a duplicate.
That it's a clean room bug-for-bug re-implementation is also a very hard to swallow argument. To have actually tested so thoroughly that you found all the bugs on your own, when each of them takes researcher teams months to find, is already improbable. To then have deliberately re-implemented every single critical exploit would be such extreme stupidity, that it's hard to believe.
Basically, let's put it like this: "but we actually re-implemented in months 100% of what a major suite took _years_ to implement and debug" is a _very_ tempting defence for all the code thiefs out there. However _if_ that's actually the case, it's a very very easy case to make.
In fact, if that's actually the case, chances are you won't get accused in the first place. Sure, some people might have their suspicions anyway, but the hell only really breaks loose when they do have signifficant proof that there's no way in hell that that's a clean room re-implementation.
And even then _if_ the code is really different, it still is easy to prove without releasing your code to the world at large: just get a third party, under NDA and all, to compare the code. There are even tools which will compare a checksum of each line of code for duplicates, without anyone actually seeing your code.
So you're telling me that someone got unjustly accused and just couldn't do any of the above to disprove it? Sorry, I don't buy it.
Well, look at it this way: stuff like this happened from day zero. Computing power keeps increasing up to a point where there is a viable market for something less powerful but cheaper or smaller.
That's how we got, for example, mini-computers and then micro-computers.
Each of those was awfully under-powered when they appeared. E.g., early minis were _very_ under-powered. Don't think "DEC Vax", think 8 or 12 bit machines that had all the computing power of a C64 or less. E.g., the original IBM PC was a pretty shitty machine, compared to a Vax, and the 8 bit CP/M machines were doubly so. Yet they were a very valid market.
Sure, a lot of companies would have preferred a big mainframe instead of a mini, and they sure could think of applications that would have run better on a big mainframe, but then again a mini was cheaper and enough.
Sometime later, sure, most of us would have preferred a personal mini near the desk instead of a micro-computer on the desk. I mean, again, have you used an 8080 CP/M machine with a 8" floppy back then? Ooer, those were slow. Running some database program off a floppy would give any programmer nowadays permanent trauma. But then again, noone could afford to give everyone a mini. So the micro-computer had to do.
My gut feeling is that the same _could_ work for this kind of machines. If they're not crippled to the point of being useless, which was the mistake of other cheap PC attempts, it could find a niche.
Sure, the users _will_ very much prefer a PC that can play games and run Excel instead, but given enough economic incentive some will settle for these instead.
There are countries for which $200 is a month's pay (or in some cases a _year's_ pay), and you have about a 1/10 of that left after rent and food. So buying a high end gaming PC for $1000 would pretty much mean someone's lifetime savings. I'm guessing they'll settle for the $200 PC instead.
That's simple: you don't have to GPL those, if they are distinct programs.
I've already given examples where that was no problem whatsoever. But just for the sake of repeating myself: E.g., WinCVS being a clearly separate program that just executes the command-line CVS was never a problem, and never flamed for it.
"What about if one of our programmers accidentally includes propritery code in a GPL application?"
You have, obviously, a copyright violation. Same as if the same program used it in any other way, and in any other program, without having a license to do that.
"What if we dual licence our own software so we can share a library between a GPL portion and a non GPL portion?"
If it's only your own software, you can do whatever you please with it. There are several pieces of software out there with dual licenses.
"What if we implement the same API as a piece fo free software for compatibility purposes?"
If it's 100% your own implementation, it's your own software, you can license it as you see fit.
E.g., Motif was never required to have the same license as Lesstif, just because Lesstif implemented the same functions. E.g., Intel's C compiler ICC never had to be GPL'ed just because it does the same thing as GCC.
"How about rewriting some of the GPL portions as proprietry code?"
That's very clear too: If you rewrite pieces of a GPL'ed program, then those pieces must be GPL'ed too.
That's actually the only case that so far that's resulted in flammage and/or lawsuits: people take some GPL'ed program, change/add a few functions, and then act surprised when they're asked to open that code. "Nooo, but it's our own code! You have no right to it!" Well, tough luck. If you modified something that was originally GPL'ed, you can't put a more restrictive license than GPL on it.
That's the "price" I was talking about: the price to have that program available for you to modify in the first place, is that any changes you make to it will also be GPL'ed. Failure to do so isn't a "slight mistake", it's a clear copyright violation.
But again, that does not extend to the case where we're talking separate programs which merely execute each other. E.g., if you modified a GPL'ed program to be able to use plugins, you only need to GPL that. Any clearly separate plugins you then write for it, and which clearly aren't based on any of the GPL'ed code (including the headers!), do not need to be GPLed.
Again, all that is based on the bullshit premise that it's that easy to make "just a slight mistake" unintentionally.
I fail to see _how_ can something like, for example, CherryOS and spewing bullshit and lies for _months_ to avoid GPL count as a honest slight mistake. You mean, what? They really meant to post the sources, but purely accidentally, by honest mistake, they instead lied about it and claimed they hadn't even heard of PearPC?
And that's the whole point: in all cases it took several bullshit responses and outright lies from a company before the serious flaming began. You mean someone really meant to go post the sources in good faith, but instead accidentally posted lies and/or sicked their lawyers on somene?
How _does_ one make that kind of a "slight mistake" unintentionally? No, seriously, now you got me really curious.
In the meantime, no, I don't think that the whole "slight mistake" argument holds any water. In all the cases I've seen where any signifficant flaming happened, claiming it was an unplanned unintentional mistake is like claiming that you wanted to go to work but unintentionally accidentally robbed a bank and drove across state border instead. Honest unintentional mistake, really.
That's why I treated it as "planned" in that answer.
"If we start releasing the source to some of our software, people will ask what we're hiding."
Funny how noone asked SuSE or RealNetworks that, when RealPlayer got included on the same CD as the rest of SuSE's Linux distro.
Also for a long time WinCVS was a closed source front end to CVS, except there was a very clear separation between the closed source GUI and the command-line CVS which was supplied with all sources and copyright notice. Funny how noone flamed those.
"If we start releasing the source to some of our software, people will ask what we're hiding. "
Just like they asked IBM to provide the sources for AIX too when IBM provided stuff like Jikes and JFS with sources? Oh, wait, noone asked IBM to do that.
"Common sense... Interesting. I'll suggest this to the braying mod of zealots who are screaming "release the source" to code they have no right to."
Except I've never yet seen much "braying" when there wasn't an actual GPL violation. I.e., pay attention, it happened when they actually _did_ have a right to that code.
There is a very clear case when you can mix your own programs with GPL'ed stuff: when they are clearly distinct programs. E.g., since you mention GCC in another message, if you make a closed source IDE that just calls GCC as a separate program, but is clearly a distinct executable, you don't have to publish the sources to your own IDE. And I haven't seen much "braying" when that was the case.
What people seem to conveniently "mistake" it for is actually including GPL'ed code in their program and thinking they can then skip publishing their own files that went into building that program. Which, intentional or just through stupidity, _is_ a copyright violation. And it also means that then those "braying zealots" _do_ have a right to your code.
Actually, yes, I've carefully read what he wrote in the first place, and it basically boils down to "but our boss is affraid we'll ge flamed"... when so far the only ones flamed were clear cut cases of GPL violations. There was nothing "perceived" or "slight" about, say, CherryOS, just a clear cut case of violating copyright law.
So his boss is affraid of... what?
Of falling in that category? Well, that's very very easy to avoid. Noone accused, say, PGCC of being a GPL violation of GCC, because, surprise, PGCC was GPLed too. Apple also wasn't accused of anything when they based Safari on Konqueror, because, again, they did release the changed sources.
Of being accused of violating the GPL for the clearly distinct programs that aren't based on GPL sources? Well, that's again very easy to avoid. Just make those programs very clearly distinct programs. I don't think anyone accused, say, SuSE or Mandrake of GPL violations for including proprietary software (e.g., ATI or NVidia drivers or RealPlayer) on the same CD with the rest of their Linux distro.
So all that remains is one of the following:
1. Either his boss is utterly retarded, or
2. His boss was just looking for an excuse to avoid GPL anyway, and grasped at the nearest straw, or
3. His boss was actually planning to be in the category that gets flamed or sued over GPL violations, meaning the ones actually violate it.
"Why would we need to use an FTP server? [...] If we used GPL code, we'd simply include the source on the hard drive or on a CD."
Then instead of posting the URL _if_ someone flames you about GPL, you post something like "The sources are in the 'sources' directory on the CD." Problem solved, and it didn't take 10 months.
"our boss did some more research, lurking on the community boards for free software. He was shocked by the attitude and venom caused when users noticed someone infringing the GPL. Most of the time the people who wrote the code weren't even involved in the discussion. He realised that if we made the slightest mistake under the terms of the GPL, even if it was only a perceived mistake, we'd have to spend the next 10 moonths dealing with these people."
So lemme get this straight: he actually _plans_ to break copyright law, and is shocked that people would not take to it kindly?
Would he prefer the way the BSA treats copyright violations with other software? Yeah, I don't think those would post flames on a board. They'd just show up for an audit and sue his pants off. Very professionally and without any flaming or venom involved.
Also it seems to me like there aren't many ways to make just "the slightest mistake" or "only a perceived mistake" under the GPL. Either you publish your own source code under GPL too, or you don't. I don't think it's possible to get flamed or "spend the next 10 months dealing with these people" if you did publish your code.
And if someone did post a bullshit thread, you just point them to the FTP or HTTP URL where they can get the code, and that's the end of it there and then. Hardly takes 10 months to cut and paste an URL.
It seems to me like all the flames I've seen so far on this subject were on stuff that was a _very_ clear case of GPL violation. I.e., people who hadn't released any code, and/or outright lied about using GPLed code at all. There's nothing "slight" or "perceived" about it.
So your boss's problem is...? Was he planning to be in that category, or? Lemme guess... He wanted to just "slightly", "mistakenly" forget to comply with the GPL, right? I.e., again, copyright law violation.
"Stop the hysteria, people. You're harming open source!"
I'm not even too pro-open source, yet I fail to see how this is harming anything. That it stops some people from breaking the license? I hardly consider _that_ to be any harm.
Look, as I've said before, I'm not even really pro-GPL, but like any other license it's a case of "take it or leave it". You get someone's code, there is a license to observe and a price to pay for it. In this case, the price is _your_ code. If you can't pay the price, don't use the product. It's that simple.
It's not even about GPL. I think the same about any other software and any other license. And especially for people making a living from software, I find it _lame_ when then they go and steal someone else's software. Whether it's by working with pirated copies of Visual Studio or breaking the GPL, I find it inherently abhorrent that someone would show so little respect for the very field they work in.
So again, the damage is...? That it caused someone to think twice about theft? I hardly think that stopping theft ammounts to causing harm.
Heissenberg's uncertainty principle only really matters at particle sizes and energies.
If you're studying something electron sized in a 5nm transistor, yeah, at any given time you can either know that it's on this side of the gate but maybe it has enough energy to go through anyway, or that it doesn't have enough energy, but it may already be on the other side.
If you're, however, studying something the size of an ant, then it becomes utterly irrelevant. If the expected uncertainty is something like 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% (and in practice it'll be a helluva lot lower than even that), you can very safely ignore it.
And if you're studying something the size of a deer, doubly so.
No, I mean even the story is what you'd enjoy the most at that age.
Think about it. As a kind you think you'll grow up to be the greatest man/woman/whatever that ever walked the Earth. You know you're better than those boring old people. You also still believe the world is as simple as good-vs-evil, young super-heroes against old arch-villains, and all that. The rebels being the good ones is a bonus.
There's a reason old Obi Wan has to die, for Luke to succeed where he failed. Or why your typical Sith (Palpatine, Count Dooku, etc) looks like he's 1000 years old. (In fact, if you've played SW games like KOTOR, going dark side _makes_ you look old.)
You also have a lot less trouble accepting stories that don't even make any sense.
Basically Lucas is IMHO a genius when it comes to telling a story to _kids_. (By that, of course, including half of us males up to the late twenties or so;)
Would I have loved Episode 4 back then? Hell yeah, I'd bet my soul on that.
But then slowly growing up kinda creeps up on one. You start realizing things. Like that the volume knob also goes to the left. Or that you're not the Chosen One. That the ugly duckling more realistically grows into a bitter and lonely adult duck.
And you start expecting more from a story than the rushed Episode 4.
"I know, what's even worse are those first few movies. Just a few spaceships, Luke discovers the force, shoots a bunch of stormtroopers and blows up a Death Star or two. And Darth's his father. I mean seriosuly, what do people see in these things?"
You know, I must be one of the very few total nerds who nevertheless haven't even seen Episode 4 until a few months ago. You know what? I can't see what people saw in that either.
The acting isn't really any good. The story really does justice to the "Episode 3" title, because it's like waking into the middle of a movie with not much clue as to what's happened, why are they really fighting, and wth that's really solved. And the one lightsaber fight is not like between the most powerful Jedi alive and his Master, but like between people who've never used one before. Obi Wan holds it like he'd hold his... ahem, let's just say now I see why the "I see your schwartz is as big as mine" scene was there in the Spaceballs parody.
I guess the one that said it the best was one of Scott Kurtz's characters in his PvP Online comic: it's not Lucas that ruined your childhood memories, it's growing up that did it. The only way you could find the new episodes as entertaining as the old ones (or I'd add, the only way to find the old ones entertaining at all too) is if you could see them through the eyes of a 6 year old.
So while you were probably going for sarcasm, I find what you wrote there actually true: the old movies really _are_ even worse.
"ANYONE who's ever been interested in Star Wars knew the story. Anakin falls to the dark side, Obi-wan knocks him into lava so he gets the suit, Luke and Leia are born, Obi-wan and Yoda disappear to distant planets. The rest is really just details. This isn't exciting because no one knows what's going to happen, it's exciting because we DO know what, but we want to see *HOW*."
Bingo. That's the whole thing.
I knew that Anakin was gonna turn to the dark side ever since the original trilogy. I didn't know how or why.
After playing the video game, I know exactly how and why. And, while trying not to go into any explicit spoilers, let's say it was a bit... not what I expected, and it puts Episodes 4 to 6 in a very different light too.
So trust me, when I say the video game gives away the story, I don't mean just "it tells you that Anakin falls to the dark side, falls in the lava and gets a cool black suit." It gives away a helluva lot more.
Well, I wasn't planning to see Episode 3, and gave Episode 2 a skip too. Admittedly, it wasn't because of reviews, but (A) because of Episode 1, (B) because I'm not a big SW fan anyway, and (C) because they released the Episode 3 video game before the movie. Which neatly gives away the whole story. Gotta wonder what were they smoking there.
The instant someone _can_ milk a cash cow, they _will_ milk it. It's their duty to shareholders and all that. You just can't expect a company to think "we now own the whole market, so we'll be nice, provide a good service for the minimum fee to recoup our costs, and gladly share it all with our competitors". It's just not how capitalism works.
Which is why I wonder what they were smoking when they created those monopolies to start with.
They've been struggling to make them play nice ever since. Me, I wonder what gave them the idea that you can expect a monopoly to play nice.
Looking at all the European countries whose idea of "privatizing" was creating one absolute monopoly corporations, I can't help but wonder "WTF were they SMOKING?" The USA went through the legal effort to break up AT&T because of monopolistic practices, yet half of Europe went to great lengths to _create_ their own monopolies.
I mean, let's just look at the Deutsche Telekom here. They didn't just get the whole phone and data lines, they actually got the TV cables too. I.e., they got _everything_ that could have been competition.
Can you even get a cable modem instead of DSL? Well, no, in 90% of Germany you can't, because the Telekom isn't going to compete with itself.
1. Electric engines and direct coupling are good and fine, but the problem nowadays is that, basically, batteries suck. They don't come anywhere _near_ the energy density of gasoline or diesel.
Which doesn't just limit your range in an all-electric car, but also makes the whole car heavier. It means you actually need more energy to move at the same speed and over the same distance.
Hybrids acknowledge that reality. The electricity in a hybrid ultimately comes from gasoline too, and is only used so often.
I.e., expect to see hybrids instead of all-electric cars for a long time.
2. The whole "waah, but oil is going to end" premise is bogus anyway.
Yes, fossil reserves will eventually end. But here's the fun part: we already know how to produce synthetic oil. We've known it for a long time. And not just theoretically: Germany's WW2 tank warfare was _based_ on synthetised fuel. It wasn't cheap, but it did keep the panzers rolling nevertheless.
That's really the only thing that keeps us using fossil fuels right now: it's cheaper than making synthetic fuel. If fossil reserves start running low, whoppee, we'll just start making synthetic fuel. And all those gasoline or diesel cars will keep running just the same.
In fact, doing that is probably a more economical and viable way to store energy than a ton of batteries in a car.
"want to make an exact copy of my car and leave mien intact and not hamper me in any way, feel free. "
The point is that if it was possible to do that, it _would_ hamper you in more than one way. There's no free meal: someone has to pay. For each pirated copy, someone else paid extra. _That_ is my beef with pirates. They steal not from some corporation, they steal from people like _me_.
But let's talk about cloning cars.
Do you have any idea how much R&D goes into a car? I'm not even only talking about the chasis and engine. You'd be surprised how much work goes into every single detail. E.g., if your car has bucket seats, months of testing were involved in making sure they won't deform when you put your leg over the edge as you get in and out.
So let's say everyone and their grandma copied cars.
So now all those R&D costs would have to be recoupped from selling a quarter as many cars as before. Well, I hope you'd enjoy a world where, if you're a honest consumer, you'd pay twice as much for a car. Because _that_ is what you're advocating.
Or let's talk economy.
Since noone can copy cars, not everyone drives a Ferrari. There is a whole range of cars for all budgets. Someone might be able to afford a Ford Siesta or VW Lupo instead. And if a citizen of Russia can't afford either, they can afford a locally produced Lada.
That all translates into jobs and taxes that help the local economy. E.g., Russia gets to have some local jobs and get some taxes out of producing those Lada. If everyone copied cars, that would be as viable as their local software market, where piracy runs rampant: i.e., dead as a door nail.
Or let's talk monopolies.
Look at software for example: there used to be a market for all niches. E.g., you didn't have just MS Word as a doc format, you also had WordStar, WordPerfect, AmiPro, StarOffice and a bunch of others as valid options. They might not have had 100% of the MS Word features, but they were also cheaper. Except in the face of the "or pirate MS Office for free" choice, they all failed. StarOffice is only "surviving" because Sun is bleeding money to artifficially keep its carcass alive, and even that's not going that well.
Congrats, it helped create a monopoly which sucks tens of billions out of the economy per year.
Want to see the same thing happen to cars? Well, then hope someone discovers how to duplicate one for free.
Now I'm not arguing that the RIAA is good or anything, and yes, it's just about money.
But arguing that Apples DRM in any way means "Gives you freedoms/etc at our expense" for RIAA, is the epitome of hypocrisy. It gives you exactly what freedom? The "freedom" to have exactly one choice of online music?
Apple _is_ using two products in a way that each keeps you pretty much locked into the other. Same as, you know, Microsoft loves to use its own products to enforce a monopoly.
In fact, _that_ is MS's monopoly. It's not just "waah, they're evil because they have money", it's that each product reinforces the other, as to (A) make it painful to break out of that vicious circle if you're already hooked, and (B) make it a painfully high entry barrier: if you want to compete with Windows you have to pretty much compete with all of them at the same time.
So why is it good and "freedom" when Apple does it?
Well, just like real money, money has no value by itself. The only value is what you can buy with those money. In this case: an undeserved advantage in a multiplayer game. That's what that RL money buys them.
Personally I have no respect for that kind of people. Cheating in a single player game is one thing, and I have nothing against that. But cheating in MP? That's the kind of thing that's already the mark of the low-life lamer.
Doubly so for those who actually _pay_ for that. I mean, FFS, at least the lamers with wall-hacks and aim-bots in CS have just downloaded those. But actually paying good money to cheat in MP? How desperate _can_ one get?
Methinks that that's well past the point where one should take a break and just think it all over. I'm a game addict myself, and all, and normally won't go "it's just a game", but... when one gets _that_ caught up with keeping up with the virtual joneses, when those virtual achievements become a _must_ at all cost, it's time to worry. Really worry.
So he wants games only for the l33t, games which assume you're already l33t at FPS and just kick you in the pants as soon as you've hit "Start new game".
Anyone else see the stupidity there? What about those who _didn't_? You know, those who (potentially l33t or not) just moved into the age bracket for violent games.
If anyone started making games which are outright hostile to newbies, that genre would dwindle and die. Any market needs a steady supply of new customers, and doubly so for the games market which needs exponential growth just to keep up with the costs of those high res graphics.
So he proposes... what? That everyone should concentrate only on those who are already l33t at fps? Yes, and those gradually get married, get a kid, run into a job where overtime is required, or whatever, and get out of that market. Then what?
Slashdot Mirror
"I don't see how they can assume that visitors [...] must believe that FOSS isn't really free, unless they're rabid Adam Smith fans."
You know, there used to be a saying about Linux at one point: Linux is only free if your time is worth nothing. This isn't a bash against Linux or OSS: _nothing_ is really free, not even a pirated copy of Windows.
Can a "free" (as in beer) solution be actually more expensive than a proprietary expensive one? Yes, quite easily in fact: if it costs enough extra hours to use/admin/whatever, it _is_ actually more expensive.
Extreme example: consider (A) using an expensive CAD package like AutoCAD for some 5,000 Euro or so, versus (B) using a pencil and ruler for some $5 (assuming more than one pencil used). Which is cheaper? Well, once you factor in the cost of labour, actually the AutoCAD way may actually be cheaper.
Less extreme example: MS Office vs Open Office. If you're in a position where you must accept MS Office documents (e.g., your main customer is a big corporation and your choices are accept the Excel documents it sends you or go bankrupt), Open Office might actually not be cheaper. The effort to convert those documents and deal with conversion problems, can actually cost you more in wages than you saved by not buying MS Office.
Basically anyone who can claim with a straight face that _any_ solution, OSS or otherwise, is free as in 0$ doesn't have a fucking clue what he/she/it is talking about. It's not about being a "rabid Adam Smith fan", it's just about having the most bare minimum clue of economics.
Just to clarify a point, I started it while I was still in college, which didn't help either with having the time to do it right. Not that finishing college and going full time at it helped any. It just meant more time to spend doing something I didn't enjoy, and couldn't do right.
I did try it when I was about 22, and found it wasn't quite what I wanted to do.
Not much to lose? I don't think so.
I lost a lot of time doing not quite what I had gone to college for, for a start. I had to spend countless hours in meetings with potential customers answering stuff like "yes, you can have a button", "yes, if it's a button you can click on it" and "yes, it is very much possible to have it on a toolbar". I got basically bullied around by the customers, because they _knew_ I didn't have much choice.
I had long periods with no paying contracts, doing just the above. I also had to deal with accounting, legal stuff, etc, which meant paying someone to do it, because I don't even understand legalese or accounting. And btw, when I've said above that I got bullied around, it also means they paid peanuts and wanted it ready the day before yesterday.
Very early I also faced a choice between money and self-respect. I chose _not_ to be an asshole and a liar, but that that doesn't help with the money problem, you know.
Compared to the money I could have made on a normal salary at half the effort, it was a loss all right.
Even getting rid of the company in the end was a pain in the rear, because it turned out the accountant had been a tad sloppy. Luckily nothing warranting more than a fine, but still, that was a bit of extra stress to go through, and a bit more of a loss.
I guess at this point someone will jump in and say "bah, you were a lousy manager then". Which is, in fact, the truth of the matter. It's in fact the whole point.
It's not even just that I wasn't trained or skilled to be a manager or marketer, it's that I had never really wanted to be one in the first place. If I had wanted to, I'd have went to a business college instead. I _loved_ computers, so that's really what I wanted to do with my life. I think that pretty much describes virtually anyone who's actually any good at CS.
Now on the other hand, if one happens to be one of those who went into CS or EE college just because they thought it pays better, got through it purely by social engineering, and would very much rather talk than program and manipulate people than design, true, those might find it more entertaining to run a company.
First of all, *shrug* I never said you should go GPL. I'm not advocating that GPL is one-size-fits-all or anything. It isn't.
And, in fact, I can appreciate the honesty in an attitude that basically says "we don't want to GPL our code, so we don't use GPL'ed code." That _is_ indeed one of the honest choices for any license: if you don't like it, don't use it. You have my respect then.
The ones I do have a problem with is the ones who go the "maybe they won't notice theft" route, and then the "maybe we'll scare them with lame legal threats" route.
But just for the sake of repeating the obvious, you're missing that point that in order to end up having to do that, you'd have to be a thief to start with. The chances that an 100,000+ line of code program would just accidentally end up identical with another program, are a joke.
And that we _are_ in a thread about a group that's notorious for repeatedly violating GPL and then trying to work their way out by legal threats.
So, let's put it into context. Basically, this whole sub-thread is about advocating... what? Basically, "but the community should fuck off, and leave the individual developpers undefended, so corporate lawyers can maybe scare them into submission"? I can see how that would be a corporate wet dream, but it's not gonna happen.
In fact, a bit of flaming is the least of worries from that community: it's repeatedly shown before that it can back a copyright infringement lawsuit too.
OK, let's now talk about the "GPL community" for a bit. Sure, making wise-cracks about "braying zealots" is fun, but misses the point by a mile. There are a thousand ways to defuse a PR disaster _if_ you did nothing wrong. However what invariably happened in these cases was that the company itself was the one who acted like an asshole and fanned the flames.
As pointed above, there are ways to make your case in an intelligent manner. But what they did was send inflamatory bullshit and inflamatory canned lawyers' letters, instead of addressing the real issues. _How_ was that supposed to defuse the problem?
It seems to me like it's just a case of: they act like assholes, you get flamed like assholes. It's that simple. If you flame and do some lame attempt to intimidate that community, you get flamed in return. That's all there is to it.
It doesn't even have to do with GPL. I can think of many non-GPL-related cases -- like Indrema being called vapourware by HardOCP -- where _if_ they really were in the right, they could have handled it as such. But no, they send some vague legal threats instead and consistently refuse to address the real case. In fact, even their legal threats are vague enough when it comes to the real case.
_How_ is it the community's or the "braying zealot's" fault, then?
Let's put it like this: if your application also has every single buffer overflow, exploit and other bug of the "re-implemented" application, yes, some of us will very much suspect code theft.
That's usually one tell-tale sign of such "re-implementation". A _real_ clean room implementation of a API, file format, etc, will have its own bugs. Code theft won't.
If, for example, running the exact same buffer overflow on it executes the exact same malicious code, it says not only that both forgot to check buffers. It also says that both "accidentally" chose the exact same buffer size _and_ had it in the exact same place on the stack. Typically meaning that the "re-implemented" function had the same variables and in the same order.
That it all is one big coincidence is a _very_ hard to swallow proposition, if it happens in more than one function. Doubly so if the binary code also looks awfully like a duplicate.
That it's a clean room bug-for-bug re-implementation is also a very hard to swallow argument. To have actually tested so thoroughly that you found all the bugs on your own, when each of them takes researcher teams months to find, is already improbable. To then have deliberately re-implemented every single critical exploit would be such extreme stupidity, that it's hard to believe.
Basically, let's put it like this: "but we actually re-implemented in months 100% of what a major suite took _years_ to implement and debug" is a _very_ tempting defence for all the code thiefs out there. However _if_ that's actually the case, it's a very very easy case to make.
In fact, if that's actually the case, chances are you won't get accused in the first place. Sure, some people might have their suspicions anyway, but the hell only really breaks loose when they do have signifficant proof that there's no way in hell that that's a clean room re-implementation.
And even then _if_ the code is really different, it still is easy to prove without releasing your code to the world at large: just get a third party, under NDA and all, to compare the code. There are even tools which will compare a checksum of each line of code for duplicates, without anyone actually seeing your code.
So you're telling me that someone got unjustly accused and just couldn't do any of the above to disprove it? Sorry, I don't buy it.
Well, look at it this way: stuff like this happened from day zero. Computing power keeps increasing up to a point where there is a viable market for something less powerful but cheaper or smaller.
That's how we got, for example, mini-computers and then micro-computers.
Each of those was awfully under-powered when they appeared. E.g., early minis were _very_ under-powered. Don't think "DEC Vax", think 8 or 12 bit machines that had all the computing power of a C64 or less. E.g., the original IBM PC was a pretty shitty machine, compared to a Vax, and the 8 bit CP/M machines were doubly so. Yet they were a very valid market.
Sure, a lot of companies would have preferred a big mainframe instead of a mini, and they sure could think of applications that would have run better on a big mainframe, but then again a mini was cheaper and enough.
Sometime later, sure, most of us would have preferred a personal mini near the desk instead of a micro-computer on the desk. I mean, again, have you used an 8080 CP/M machine with a 8" floppy back then? Ooer, those were slow. Running some database program off a floppy would give any programmer nowadays permanent trauma. But then again, noone could afford to give everyone a mini. So the micro-computer had to do.
My gut feeling is that the same _could_ work for this kind of machines. If they're not crippled to the point of being useless, which was the mistake of other cheap PC attempts, it could find a niche.
Sure, the users _will_ very much prefer a PC that can play games and run Excel instead, but given enough economic incentive some will settle for these instead.
There are countries for which $200 is a month's pay (or in some cases a _year's_ pay), and you have about a 1/10 of that left after rent and food. So buying a high end gaming PC for $1000 would pretty much mean someone's lifetime savings. I'm guessing they'll settle for the $200 PC instead.
"What about applications that execute others?"
That's simple: you don't have to GPL those, if they are distinct programs.
I've already given examples where that was no problem whatsoever. But just for the sake of repeating myself: E.g., WinCVS being a clearly separate program that just executes the command-line CVS was never a problem, and never flamed for it.
"What about if one of our programmers accidentally includes propritery code in a GPL application?"
You have, obviously, a copyright violation. Same as if the same program used it in any other way, and in any other program, without having a license to do that.
"What if we dual licence our own software so we can share a library between a GPL portion and a non GPL portion?"
If it's only your own software, you can do whatever you please with it. There are several pieces of software out there with dual licenses.
"What if we implement the same API as a piece fo free software for compatibility purposes?"
If it's 100% your own implementation, it's your own software, you can license it as you see fit.
E.g., Motif was never required to have the same license as Lesstif, just because Lesstif implemented the same functions. E.g., Intel's C compiler ICC never had to be GPL'ed just because it does the same thing as GCC.
"How about rewriting some of the GPL portions as proprietry code?"
That's very clear too: If you rewrite pieces of a GPL'ed program, then those pieces must be GPL'ed too.
That's actually the only case that so far that's resulted in flammage and/or lawsuits: people take some GPL'ed program, change/add a few functions, and then act surprised when they're asked to open that code. "Nooo, but it's our own code! You have no right to it!" Well, tough luck. If you modified something that was originally GPL'ed, you can't put a more restrictive license than GPL on it.
That's the "price" I was talking about: the price to have that program available for you to modify in the first place, is that any changes you make to it will also be GPL'ed. Failure to do so isn't a "slight mistake", it's a clear copyright violation.
But again, that does not extend to the case where we're talking separate programs which merely execute each other. E.g., if you modified a GPL'ed program to be able to use plugins, you only need to GPL that. Any clearly separate plugins you then write for it, and which clearly aren't based on any of the GPL'ed code (including the headers!), do not need to be GPLed.
Again, all that is based on the bullshit premise that it's that easy to make "just a slight mistake" unintentionally.
I fail to see _how_ can something like, for example, CherryOS and spewing bullshit and lies for _months_ to avoid GPL count as a honest slight mistake. You mean, what? They really meant to post the sources, but purely accidentally, by honest mistake, they instead lied about it and claimed they hadn't even heard of PearPC?
And that's the whole point: in all cases it took several bullshit responses and outright lies from a company before the serious flaming began. You mean someone really meant to go post the sources in good faith, but instead accidentally posted lies and/or sicked their lawyers on somene?
How _does_ one make that kind of a "slight mistake" unintentionally? No, seriously, now you got me really curious.
In the meantime, no, I don't think that the whole "slight mistake" argument holds any water. In all the cases I've seen where any signifficant flaming happened, claiming it was an unplanned unintentional mistake is like claiming that you wanted to go to work but unintentionally accidentally robbed a bank and drove across state border instead. Honest unintentional mistake, really.
That's why I treated it as "planned" in that answer.
"If we start releasing the source to some of our software, people will ask what we're hiding."
Funny how noone asked SuSE or RealNetworks that, when RealPlayer got included on the same CD as the rest of SuSE's Linux distro.
Also for a long time WinCVS was a closed source front end to CVS, except there was a very clear separation between the closed source GUI and the command-line CVS which was supplied with all sources and copyright notice. Funny how noone flamed those.
"If we start releasing the source to some of our software, people will ask what we're hiding. "
Just like they asked IBM to provide the sources for AIX too when IBM provided stuff like Jikes and JFS with sources? Oh, wait, noone asked IBM to do that.
"Common sense... Interesting. I'll suggest this to the braying mod of zealots who are screaming "release the source" to code they have no right to."
Except I've never yet seen much "braying" when there wasn't an actual GPL violation. I.e., pay attention, it happened when they actually _did_ have a right to that code.
There is a very clear case when you can mix your own programs with GPL'ed stuff: when they are clearly distinct programs. E.g., since you mention GCC in another message, if you make a closed source IDE that just calls GCC as a separate program, but is clearly a distinct executable, you don't have to publish the sources to your own IDE. And I haven't seen much "braying" when that was the case.
What people seem to conveniently "mistake" it for is actually including GPL'ed code in their program and thinking they can then skip publishing their own files that went into building that program. Which, intentional or just through stupidity, _is_ a copyright violation. And it also means that then those "braying zealots" _do_ have a right to your code.
Actually, yes, I've carefully read what he wrote in the first place, and it basically boils down to "but our boss is affraid we'll ge flamed"... when so far the only ones flamed were clear cut cases of GPL violations. There was nothing "perceived" or "slight" about, say, CherryOS, just a clear cut case of violating copyright law.
So his boss is affraid of... what?
Of falling in that category? Well, that's very very easy to avoid. Noone accused, say, PGCC of being a GPL violation of GCC, because, surprise, PGCC was GPLed too. Apple also wasn't accused of anything when they based Safari on Konqueror, because, again, they did release the changed sources.
Of being accused of violating the GPL for the clearly distinct programs that aren't based on GPL sources? Well, that's again very easy to avoid. Just make those programs very clearly distinct programs. I don't think anyone accused, say, SuSE or Mandrake of GPL violations for including proprietary software (e.g., ATI or NVidia drivers or RealPlayer) on the same CD with the rest of their Linux distro.
So all that remains is one of the following:
1. Either his boss is utterly retarded, or
2. His boss was just looking for an excuse to avoid GPL anyway, and grasped at the nearest straw, or
3. His boss was actually planning to be in the category that gets flamed or sued over GPL violations, meaning the ones actually violate it.
Take your own pick there.
"Why would we need to use an FTP server? [...] If we used GPL code, we'd simply include the source on the hard drive or on a CD."
Then instead of posting the URL _if_ someone flames you about GPL, you post something like "The sources are in the 'sources' directory on the CD." Problem solved, and it didn't take 10 months.
"our boss did some more research, lurking on the community boards for free software. He was shocked by the attitude and venom caused when users noticed someone infringing the GPL. Most of the time the people who wrote the code weren't even involved in the discussion. He realised that if we made the slightest mistake under the terms of the GPL, even if it was only a perceived mistake, we'd have to spend the next 10 moonths dealing with these people."
So lemme get this straight: he actually _plans_ to break copyright law, and is shocked that people would not take to it kindly?
Would he prefer the way the BSA treats copyright violations with other software? Yeah, I don't think those would post flames on a board. They'd just show up for an audit and sue his pants off. Very professionally and without any flaming or venom involved.
Also it seems to me like there aren't many ways to make just "the slightest mistake" or "only a perceived mistake" under the GPL. Either you publish your own source code under GPL too, or you don't. I don't think it's possible to get flamed or "spend the next 10 months dealing with these people" if you did publish your code.
And if someone did post a bullshit thread, you just point them to the FTP or HTTP URL where they can get the code, and that's the end of it there and then. Hardly takes 10 months to cut and paste an URL.
It seems to me like all the flames I've seen so far on this subject were on stuff that was a _very_ clear case of GPL violation. I.e., people who hadn't released any code, and/or outright lied about using GPLed code at all. There's nothing "slight" or "perceived" about it.
So your boss's problem is...? Was he planning to be in that category, or? Lemme guess... He wanted to just "slightly", "mistakenly" forget to comply with the GPL, right? I.e., again, copyright law violation.
"Stop the hysteria, people. You're harming open source!"
I'm not even too pro-open source, yet I fail to see how this is harming anything. That it stops some people from breaking the license? I hardly consider _that_ to be any harm.
Look, as I've said before, I'm not even really pro-GPL, but like any other license it's a case of "take it or leave it". You get someone's code, there is a license to observe and a price to pay for it. In this case, the price is _your_ code. If you can't pay the price, don't use the product. It's that simple.
It's not even about GPL. I think the same about any other software and any other license. And especially for people making a living from software, I find it _lame_ when then they go and steal someone else's software. Whether it's by working with pirated copies of Visual Studio or breaking the GPL, I find it inherently abhorrent that someone would show so little respect for the very field they work in.
So again, the damage is...? That it caused someone to think twice about theft? I hardly think that stopping theft ammounts to causing harm.
Heissenberg's uncertainty principle only really matters at particle sizes and energies.
If you're studying something electron sized in a 5nm transistor, yeah, at any given time you can either know that it's on this side of the gate but maybe it has enough energy to go through anyway, or that it doesn't have enough energy, but it may already be on the other side.
If you're, however, studying something the size of an ant, then it becomes utterly irrelevant. If the expected uncertainty is something like 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% (and in practice it'll be a helluva lot lower than even that), you can very safely ignore it.
And if you're studying something the size of a deer, doubly so.
No, I mean even the story is what you'd enjoy the most at that age.
Think about it. As a kind you think you'll grow up to be the greatest man/woman/whatever that ever walked the Earth. You know you're better than those boring old people. You also still believe the world is as simple as good-vs-evil, young super-heroes against old arch-villains, and all that. The rebels being the good ones is a bonus.
There's a reason old Obi Wan has to die, for Luke to succeed where he failed. Or why your typical Sith (Palpatine, Count Dooku, etc) looks like he's 1000 years old. (In fact, if you've played SW games like KOTOR, going dark side _makes_ you look old.)
You also have a lot less trouble accepting stories that don't even make any sense.
Basically Lucas is IMHO a genius when it comes to telling a story to _kids_. (By that, of course, including half of us males up to the late twenties or so;)
Would I have loved Episode 4 back then? Hell yeah, I'd bet my soul on that.
But then slowly growing up kinda creeps up on one. You start realizing things. Like that the volume knob also goes to the left. Or that you're not the Chosen One. That the ugly duckling more realistically grows into a bitter and lonely adult duck.
And you start expecting more from a story than the rushed Episode 4.
"I know, what's even worse are those first few movies. Just a few spaceships, Luke discovers the force, shoots a bunch of stormtroopers and blows up a Death Star or two. And Darth's his father. I mean seriosuly, what do people see in these things?"
You know, I must be one of the very few total nerds who nevertheless haven't even seen Episode 4 until a few months ago. You know what? I can't see what people saw in that either.
The acting isn't really any good. The story really does justice to the "Episode 3" title, because it's like waking into the middle of a movie with not much clue as to what's happened, why are they really fighting, and wth that's really solved. And the one lightsaber fight is not like between the most powerful Jedi alive and his Master, but like between people who've never used one before. Obi Wan holds it like he'd hold his... ahem, let's just say now I see why the "I see your schwartz is as big as mine" scene was there in the Spaceballs parody.
I guess the one that said it the best was one of Scott Kurtz's characters in his PvP Online comic: it's not Lucas that ruined your childhood memories, it's growing up that did it. The only way you could find the new episodes as entertaining as the old ones (or I'd add, the only way to find the old ones entertaining at all too) is if you could see them through the eyes of a 6 year old.
So while you were probably going for sarcasm, I find what you wrote there actually true: the old movies really _are_ even worse.
"ANYONE who's ever been interested in Star Wars knew the story. Anakin falls to the dark side, Obi-wan knocks him into lava so he gets the suit, Luke and Leia are born, Obi-wan and Yoda disappear to distant planets. The rest is really just details. This isn't exciting because no one knows what's going to happen, it's exciting because we DO know what, but we want to see *HOW*."
Bingo. That's the whole thing.
I knew that Anakin was gonna turn to the dark side ever since the original trilogy. I didn't know how or why.
After playing the video game, I know exactly how and why. And, while trying not to go into any explicit spoilers, let's say it was a bit... not what I expected, and it puts Episodes 4 to 6 in a very different light too.
So trust me, when I say the video game gives away the story, I don't mean just "it tells you that Anakin falls to the dark side, falls in the lava and gets a cool black suit." It gives away a helluva lot more.
Well, I wasn't planning to see Episode 3, and gave Episode 2 a skip too. Admittedly, it wasn't because of reviews, but (A) because of Episode 1, (B) because I'm not a big SW fan anyway, and (C) because they released the Episode 3 video game before the movie. Which neatly gives away the whole story. Gotta wonder what were they smoking there.
The instant someone _can_ milk a cash cow, they _will_ milk it. It's their duty to shareholders and all that. You just can't expect a company to think "we now own the whole market, so we'll be nice, provide a good service for the minimum fee to recoup our costs, and gladly share it all with our competitors". It's just not how capitalism works.
Which is why I wonder what they were smoking when they created those monopolies to start with.
They've been struggling to make them play nice ever since. Me, I wonder what gave them the idea that you can expect a monopoly to play nice.
Looking at all the European countries whose idea of "privatizing" was creating one absolute monopoly corporations, I can't help but wonder "WTF were they SMOKING?" The USA went through the legal effort to break up AT&T because of monopolistic practices, yet half of Europe went to great lengths to _create_ their own monopolies.
I mean, let's just look at the Deutsche Telekom here. They didn't just get the whole phone and data lines, they actually got the TV cables too. I.e., they got _everything_ that could have been competition.
Can you even get a cable modem instead of DSL? Well, no, in 90% of Germany you can't, because the Telekom isn't going to compete with itself.
1. Electric engines and direct coupling are good and fine, but the problem nowadays is that, basically, batteries suck. They don't come anywhere _near_ the energy density of gasoline or diesel.
Which doesn't just limit your range in an all-electric car, but also makes the whole car heavier. It means you actually need more energy to move at the same speed and over the same distance.
Hybrids acknowledge that reality. The electricity in a hybrid ultimately comes from gasoline too, and is only used so often.
I.e., expect to see hybrids instead of all-electric cars for a long time.
2. The whole "waah, but oil is going to end" premise is bogus anyway.
Yes, fossil reserves will eventually end. But here's the fun part: we already know how to produce synthetic oil. We've known it for a long time. And not just theoretically: Germany's WW2 tank warfare was _based_ on synthetised fuel. It wasn't cheap, but it did keep the panzers rolling nevertheless.
That's really the only thing that keeps us using fossil fuels right now: it's cheaper than making synthetic fuel. If fossil reserves start running low, whoppee, we'll just start making synthetic fuel. And all those gasoline or diesel cars will keep running just the same.
In fact, doing that is probably a more economical and viable way to store energy than a ton of batteries in a car.
"want to make an exact copy of my car and leave mien intact and not hamper me in any way, feel free. "
The point is that if it was possible to do that, it _would_ hamper you in more than one way. There's no free meal: someone has to pay. For each pirated copy, someone else paid extra. _That_ is my beef with pirates. They steal not from some corporation, they steal from people like _me_.
But let's talk about cloning cars.
Do you have any idea how much R&D goes into a car? I'm not even only talking about the chasis and engine. You'd be surprised how much work goes into every single detail. E.g., if your car has bucket seats, months of testing were involved in making sure they won't deform when you put your leg over the edge as you get in and out.
So let's say everyone and their grandma copied cars.
So now all those R&D costs would have to be recoupped from selling a quarter as many cars as before. Well, I hope you'd enjoy a world where, if you're a honest consumer, you'd pay twice as much for a car. Because _that_ is what you're advocating.
Or let's talk economy.
Since noone can copy cars, not everyone drives a Ferrari. There is a whole range of cars for all budgets. Someone might be able to afford a Ford Siesta or VW Lupo instead. And if a citizen of Russia can't afford either, they can afford a locally produced Lada.
That all translates into jobs and taxes that help the local economy. E.g., Russia gets to have some local jobs and get some taxes out of producing those Lada. If everyone copied cars, that would be as viable as their local software market, where piracy runs rampant: i.e., dead as a door nail.
Or let's talk monopolies.
Look at software for example: there used to be a market for all niches. E.g., you didn't have just MS Word as a doc format, you also had WordStar, WordPerfect, AmiPro, StarOffice and a bunch of others as valid options. They might not have had 100% of the MS Word features, but they were also cheaper. Except in the face of the "or pirate MS Office for free" choice, they all failed. StarOffice is only "surviving" because Sun is bleeding money to artifficially keep its carcass alive, and even that's not going that well.
Congrats, it helped create a monopoly which sucks tens of billions out of the economy per year.
Want to see the same thing happen to cars? Well, then hope someone discovers how to duplicate one for free.
Now I'm not arguing that the RIAA is good or anything, and yes, it's just about money.
But arguing that Apples DRM in any way means "Gives you freedoms/etc at our expense" for RIAA, is the epitome of hypocrisy. It gives you exactly what freedom? The "freedom" to have exactly one choice of online music?
Apple _is_ using two products in a way that each keeps you pretty much locked into the other. Same as, you know, Microsoft loves to use its own products to enforce a monopoly.
In fact, _that_ is MS's monopoly. It's not just "waah, they're evil because they have money", it's that each product reinforces the other, as to (A) make it painful to break out of that vicious circle if you're already hooked, and (B) make it a painfully high entry barrier: if you want to compete with Windows you have to pretty much compete with all of them at the same time.
So why is it good and "freedom" when Apple does it?
Well, just like real money, money has no value by itself. The only value is what you can buy with those money. In this case: an undeserved advantage in a multiplayer game. That's what that RL money buys them.
Personally I have no respect for that kind of people. Cheating in a single player game is one thing, and I have nothing against that. But cheating in MP? That's the kind of thing that's already the mark of the low-life lamer.
Doubly so for those who actually _pay_ for that. I mean, FFS, at least the lamers with wall-hacks and aim-bots in CS have just downloaded those. But actually paying good money to cheat in MP? How desperate _can_ one get?
Methinks that that's well past the point where one should take a break and just think it all over. I'm a game addict myself, and all, and normally won't go "it's just a game", but... when one gets _that_ caught up with keeping up with the virtual joneses, when those virtual achievements become a _must_ at all cost, it's time to worry. Really worry.
So he wants games only for the l33t, games which assume you're already l33t at FPS and just kick you in the pants as soon as you've hit "Start new game".
Anyone else see the stupidity there? What about those who _didn't_? You know, those who (potentially l33t or not) just moved into the age bracket for violent games.
If anyone started making games which are outright hostile to newbies, that genre would dwindle and die. Any market needs a steady supply of new customers, and doubly so for the games market which needs exponential growth just to keep up with the costs of those high res graphics.
So he proposes... what? That everyone should concentrate only on those who are already l33t at fps? Yes, and those gradually get married, get a kid, run into a job where overtime is required, or whatever, and get out of that market. Then what?
Geesh.