By this logic, you should always obfuscate your code as much as you possibly can, so that there is no chance of less skilled programmers taking over...
Other people have suggested that notion in other threads as a possible tactic to make "making money from open source by selling services" work. I hope it doesn't really come to that.
Funny you should draw that parallel. Prior to Ford's mass production, cars were expensive works by experts in their trade. Now they're commodities. That's great for the consumer but perhaps not so great for the practicioners. Are you that anxious for your skills to become a cheap commodity?
I don't think Clemens Vaster in the original article is talking about wealth vs. an average income but an average income versus unemployment.
Call me conservative if you will, I'd have to say that I'd prefer to financially secure my future so that I can devote time to contribute to my community. I hope that the rise of open source does not lower the value of programmers (both open and closed source) as Clemens Vasters suggests, but what he says sounds quite plausible.
His point is that giving away software for free (BSD, GPL, or otherwise) devalues the practice of creating software. That's all. A weak analogy would be to say that people giving away bread for free would put all but the most skilled bread bakers out of a job.
It reads more to me like "Stop pissing in your own water dish." He does have a valid concern; once the core of an application is developed for free, said application and its components can be used by less skilled programmers to put together business solutions. This makes it less expensive to find programmers of adequate skills to do a given project (e.g. outsourcing). In turn this puts negative pressure on programmer wages. Linus and other master coders may still do well, but how will the average programmer fare
?
Is he right? I don't know. But just saying "Ha ha, that greedy old fogey just doesn't get it", rings of sticking our heads in the sand.
Mr. Perens, I have a question about your first bullet point:
Either the support for the DDoS against SCO is representative of the views of the Linux community or it isn't. If it isn't, then wouldn't it be more correct to ask the true members of the Linux community to speak out against and dissociate from those who have said that the DDoS is a good thing (your second bullet point) rather than telling people to not express their genuine opinions solely because it's damaging? If it is, why attempt to paper over the truth?
Unless I'm way off, this is what's called a Ball-Grid Array,...
You're way off, I think. Ball Grid Array refers to a IC form factor that has a grid of contacts on the bottom of the chip carrier. Each of these contacts is pre-filled with a small ball of solder. BGA devices aren't meant to be socketed.
Military systems are more stable than either open source or commercial systems because the military spends metric buttloads of cash to develop excruciatingly detailed specifications and do extensive QA. With those two things (and all other things being equal), it doesn't matter in the slightest whether it's open or closed source.
(And even after all that, the results are still not perfect.)
If a dozen of the biggest cities' IT departments dedicated one programmer each, the job could be done easily at a dispersed cost, trivial in comparison to the total spent when thousands of cities buy the software at commercial prices.
Not gonna work. That designated programmer is going to be the first to get the axe when a budget crunch hits on the assumption that the other dept's programmers will pick up the slack. Soon, *poof*, all of the programmers are gone.
It's unavoidable though. Regardless of what OS is used, end-users still aren't going to know to keep up to date on their patches as new exploits are discovered over time. The only solution I can envision is something like a form of Windows Update that can't be turned off for all OS distributions aimed at consumers.
Isn't RMS's stated goal to destroy copyright altogether? Logically, at that point anyone will be able to use or "steal" code in any way they want because there will be no way to enforce the author's wishes. Maybe KISS Technologies is just ahead of the game.;)
(I'm half serious here; what is supposed to happen after copyright no longer exists?)
That's just plain silly. After all, exactly what sort of technology MS would be swiping from Linux? While Linux is as capable as Windows on average, commercial Unixes are more advanced than either (or at least, I can't think of any technology that any commercial Unix vendor has adopted from Linux). The only way that Linux is more advanced than any of its competitiors is in its development model and its freeness(cost)/Freeness(GPL), and I seriously doubt MS will be using the latter.
Before you all get excited about this, note that this is not a win for OSS -- not really. Notice that no legality was established. Roland simply gave up because they have not been able to find their documentation establishing copyright.
Agreed. There's no question that Roland should own the copyright; they designed and manufactured the MT-32 after all. From what I've read on the site, they may lose their copyright only based on not being able to find the correct documentation to satisfy the requirements of a technicality invoked by omitting the copyright notice on the original ROM.
(Before any of you chime in saying that losing documentation is stupid, how many of you who work in IT would be hard pressed to provide licenses to all of the software you use if the BSA knocked on your door today, hm?)
I'm not celebrating this as a victory because it seems to me that obscure loopholes can just as easily be legal land mines for OSS developers, most of which can't afford to keep legal counsel on retainer.
Also note that it's more of a reprieve,
Roland, on failing to find to any substantial documentation, yields to the publication of the MT-32 emulator. It should be noted their offer is without prejudice, meaning that if any evidence does surface, Roland will request that this site be taken down again. (
Offer.pdf)
Yes, thoughout history there have been people or organizations who sponsor the work of creative individuals. But to imply that their goal is to sell images is a bit much. While there might be some artists that create solely for the benefit of money they are for the most part in the minority. As I mentioned before, most artists create for the joy that their work brings them. They'd continue to create whether they get paid to do it or not.
My point is that patronage is the only thing that gave them the freedom to create. Otherwise, they would have been working at some other job to support themselves, giving less opportunity and resources with which to create their art. There's no doubt that they kept a sharp watch on exactly what would please their patrons, i.e. as the original poster said "The goal is to sell images.". Keeping an eye on the bottom line in no way implies that they are not creating the works with love for their art, as your earlier post suggests.
>That may be your goal but that doesn't mean it was his or anyone elses. Most artists do what they do for the joy of creating something not just for the fact that they might be able to sell it.
While you're making patronizing comments, you might just want to look up the origin of the word "patron" and how frequently it occurs in conjunction with the names of the great artists and musicians in history. Artists have to be alive in order to create their works and that means paying the bills. What better way than through their art?
My tinfoil hat theory: x86 Linux is eating into the market share of proprietary Unix faster than it is for Windows, and MS knows it has a better chance of convincing people to switch if they don't have to dump their hardware.
One more good reason to go OSS, not that many here needed any more encouragement. Imagine if companies could buy support for NT 4 or Win98 for five bucks a machine after next month? There would be some companies still using them ten years from now. Well, some probably will anyway.
How is that an argument for OSS? The offer is only for security patches and on a per machine basis. Win98 and NT 4 had that for 5+ years for *free* for an unlimited number of machines.
There are plenty of reasons to love OSS, but blind advocacy is just lame.
Haven't you heard of the phrase, "jack of all trades, master of none"? The flexibility of FPGAs comes at the cost of unused resources; any part of each logic cell not needed to perform the selected task is wasted. Those unused resources indirectly translate to lower clock frequencies, higher power consumption, and higher manufacturing costs when compared to a hardwired design for volume production.
In general, what problems would there be in creating open-source engineering designs for hardware of all kinds branched off from off-patent intellectual property?
Because physical hardware costs physical resources to build (modern designs are more efficient to construct because of advanced materials and fabrication techniques now available) and consumes physical resources (newer designs are more energy efficient), it's more likely to make sense to pay the expense of creating a modern design up front, depending on the age of the OS desgin.
Contrast this with the unique position of software where it's possible to gradually accumulate more and more functionality until a package becomes good.
(Open-source is not some sort of magic uber-nostrum that solves every problem.)
That's, what, 24 hours or so from the attack to a full patch to a previously unknown exploit being released? Gotta give those Gentoo guys some credit, that's damned impressive...
Um, wait, unless it was a really simple fix (the diffs are a 580k gzip file, but there's no way to tell how much of that is the security fix), what kind of of QA tests could they have done in 24 hours?
Slashdot Mirror
Other people have suggested that notion in other threads as a possible tactic to make "making money from open source by selling services" work. I hope it doesn't really come to that.
Ha, ha, indeed.
Call me conservative if you will, I'd have to say that I'd prefer to financially secure my future so that I can devote time to contribute to my community. I hope that the rise of open source does not lower the value of programmers (both open and closed source) as Clemens Vasters suggests, but what he says sounds quite plausible.
His point is that giving away software for free (BSD, GPL, or otherwise) devalues the practice of creating software. That's all. A weak analogy would be to say that people giving away bread for free would put all but the most skilled bread bakers out of a job.
Is he right? I don't know. But just saying "Ha ha, that greedy old fogey just doesn't get it", rings of sticking our heads in the sand.
Mr. Perens, I have a question about your first bullet point:
Either the support for the DDoS against SCO is representative of the views of the Linux community or it isn't. If it isn't, then wouldn't it be more correct to ask the true members of the Linux community to speak out against and dissociate from those who have said that the DDoS is a good thing (your second bullet point) rather than telling people to not express their genuine opinions solely because it's damaging? If it is, why attempt to paper over the truth?
By low level talks, I suspect they mean that Google's lawyers were rolling around on the floor, laughing.
Unless I'm way off, this is what's called a Ball-Grid Array, ...
You're way off, I think. Ball Grid Array refers to a IC form factor that has a grid of contacts on the bottom of the chip carrier. Each of these contacts is pre-filled with a small ball of solder. BGA devices aren't meant to be socketed.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Military systems are more stable than either open source or commercial systems because the military spends metric buttloads of cash to develop excruciatingly detailed specifications and do extensive QA. With those two things (and all other things being equal), it doesn't matter in the slightest whether it's open or closed source.
(And even after all that, the results are still not perfect.)
If a dozen of the biggest cities' IT departments dedicated one programmer each, the job could be done easily at a dispersed cost, trivial in comparison to the total spent when thousands of cities buy the software at commercial prices.
Not gonna work. That designated programmer is going to be the first to get the axe when a budget crunch hits on the assumption that the other dept's programmers will pick up the slack. Soon, *poof*, all of the programmers are gone.
It's unavoidable though. Regardless of what OS is used, end-users still aren't going to know to keep up to date on their patches as new exploits are discovered over time. The only solution I can envision is something like a form of Windows Update that can't be turned off for all OS distributions aimed at consumers.
Isn't RMS's stated goal to destroy copyright altogether? Logically, at that point anyone will be able to use or "steal" code in any way they want because there will be no way to enforce the author's wishes. Maybe KISS Technologies is just ahead of the game. ;)
(I'm half serious here; what is supposed to happen after copyright no longer exists?)
That's just plain silly. After all, exactly what sort of technology MS would be swiping from Linux? While Linux is as capable as Windows on average, commercial Unixes are more advanced than either (or at least, I can't think of any technology that any commercial Unix vendor has adopted from Linux). The only way that Linux is more advanced than any of its competitiors is in its development model and its freeness(cost)/Freeness(GPL), and I seriously doubt MS will be using the latter.
Before you all get excited about this, note that this is not a win for OSS -- not really. Notice that no legality was established. Roland simply gave up because they have not been able to find their documentation establishing copyright.
Agreed. There's no question that Roland should own the copyright; they designed and manufactured the MT-32 after all. From what I've read on the site, they may lose their copyright only based on not being able to find the correct documentation to satisfy the requirements of a technicality invoked by omitting the copyright notice on the original ROM.
(Before any of you chime in saying that losing documentation is stupid, how many of you who work in IT would be hard pressed to provide licenses to all of the software you use if the BSA knocked on your door today, hm?)
I'm not celebrating this as a victory because it seems to me that obscure loopholes can just as easily be legal land mines for OSS developers, most of which can't afford to keep legal counsel on retainer.
From the Dec. 9 entry of the news section:
Dude, there is no such thing as "IP".
A sentiment shared almost exclusively by people who can't create anything anybody would bother to pi^H^Hcopyright infringe.
If "there is no such thing as 'IP'", can I go ahead and violate the GPL now?
Yes, thoughout history there have been people or organizations who sponsor the work of creative individuals. But to imply that their goal is to sell images is a bit much. While there might be some artists that create solely for the benefit of money they are for the most part in the minority. As I mentioned before, most artists create for the joy that their work brings them. They'd continue to create whether they get paid to do it or not.
My point is that patronage is the only thing that gave them the freedom to create. Otherwise, they would have been working at some other job to support themselves, giving less opportunity and resources with which to create their art. There's no doubt that they kept a sharp watch on exactly what would please their patrons, i.e. as the original poster said "The goal is to sell images.". Keeping an eye on the bottom line in no way implies that they are not creating the works with love for their art, as your earlier post suggests.
>>The goal is to sell images.
>That may be your goal but that doesn't mean it was his or anyone elses. Most artists do what they do for the joy of creating something not just for the fact that they might be able to sell it.
While you're making patronizing comments, you might just want to look up the origin of the word "patron" and how frequently it occurs in conjunction with the names of the great artists and musicians in history. Artists have to be alive in order to create their works and that means paying the bills. What better way than through their art?
>>After much grovelling through the vendor catalog
l
>That's a great image, but perhaps you should check a dictionary. Either that, or you need to start dealing with more friendly vendors.
He's referring to the slang definition of grovelling from the Jargon File.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/G/grovel.htm
RTFA, this is a HP-UX to Linux conversion.
My tinfoil hat theory: x86 Linux is eating into the market share of proprietary Unix faster than it is for Windows, and MS knows it has a better chance of convincing people to switch if they don't have to dump their hardware.
If someone wants to blow up an airplane it is not nearly as tricky or as expensive as it used to be.
Pardon the nitpick, dude, but cruise missiles aren't for blowing up aircraft.
One more good reason to go OSS, not that many here needed any more encouragement. Imagine if companies could buy support for NT 4 or Win98 for five bucks a machine after next month? There would be some companies still using them ten years from now. Well, some probably will anyway.
How is that an argument for OSS? The offer is only for security patches and on a per machine basis. Win98 and NT 4 had that for 5+ years for *free* for an unlimited number of machines.
There are plenty of reasons to love OSS, but blind advocacy is just lame.
Parent should be -1, arrant nonsense.
Haven't you heard of the phrase, "jack of all trades, master of none"? The flexibility of FPGAs comes at the cost of unused resources; any part of each logic cell not needed to perform the selected task is wasted. Those unused resources indirectly translate to lower clock frequencies, higher power consumption, and higher manufacturing costs when compared to a hardwired design for volume production.
In general, what problems would there be in creating open-source engineering designs for hardware of all kinds branched off from off-patent intellectual property?
Because physical hardware costs physical resources to build (modern designs are more efficient to construct because of advanced materials and fabrication techniques now available) and consumes physical resources (newer designs are more energy efficient), it's more likely to make sense to pay the expense of creating a modern design up front, depending on the age of the OS desgin.
Contrast this with the unique position of software where it's possible to gradually accumulate more and more functionality until a package becomes good.
(Open-source is not some sort of magic uber-nostrum that solves every problem.)
That's, what, 24 hours or so from the attack to a full patch to a previously unknown exploit being released? Gotta give those Gentoo guys some credit, that's damned impressive...
Um, wait, unless it was a really simple fix (the diffs are a 580k gzip file, but there's no way to tell how much of that is the security fix), what kind of of QA tests could they have done in 24 hours?