You are right that if a contract contains outrageous clauses, you can challenge them in a court of law. But it doesn't mean contracts don't matter. They do most of the time. I wouldn't call the no-reverse-engineering clause unreasonable. After all, you didn't have to use the product to begin with if you didn't like that clause. It's not that you didn't have a choice.
Let's look at reverse engineering for a minute. First of all, even the DMCA has a clause that protects reverse engineering for the purposes of interoperability. That's right, one of the most draconian media laws we've ever seen protects the right to figure out what something does so that you can interface to it. This is precisely what Tridge was attempting to do.
But if you agreed not to do it, by accepting BK's license, yet still did it anyway. It is a violation of contract law.
Installing software is an administrative task, not a user task. Software installation *should* require admin access.
Just one more example of MS not understanding the difference between administration and use.
So long as IBM held the patents, there was a good chance they'd stay out of the hands of Microsoft, Time Warner, Comcast, etc. I doubt Tivo has the cash to hold off a determined effort by any of those companies. Should those patents fall into the wrong hands, it could put a serious crimp not only on stand-alone PVRs, but even the PC boards that have equivalent functionality.
While I can sympathise with Richard Grimes and certaqinly agree with him that.Net is more of a marketing exercise than technological breakthrough (even C# is Microsoft's response to Sun's lawsuit over MS' mangling of Java), I don't think Microsoft can now afford to give it up.
I think it is extreme to call.Net as a marketing exercise. Although C# was modeled after Java, hence not innovative in the programming world, it is a great leap forward for VB developers and MFC developers. You cannot argue C#'s object oriented programming style is quite different from VB's programming style and C#'s garbage collection is quite different from C++'s new and delete. In that sense,.Net is a natural evolution for Microsoft developers. Would you call Java Windows environment a thin wrapper around Win32? Hardly..Net has obvious technical merits, why would Microsoft give up on that?
If MS does innovate, it usually means buying a company that did the innovating. My idea of innovation must be completely different than Microsofts. I see it as contributions to computer science and MS sees it as bring a product (however it was obtained) to market. And usually this spells the death of the innovating company.
It's not just Microsoft. Inventors invent. Capitalists by the invention but make money on it. This is how capitalism works. You have a problem with that?
You have been consistently trying to play down the fact that there is a strong force within the Linux camp to dethrone Microsoft, and big corporations like IBM are behind the force. If Linux is just an amateurs' hobby, then it won't bother Microsoft very much. But it isn't, maybe not to you, but to many Linux supportors who want to use Linux as a weapon to fight Microsoft in the business world. We can argue whether those people are representative of the Linux supporters or not, but we don't think we can agree on this issue. I also found that when I argue with Linux supportors they tend to focus on finding faults instead of trying to understand a different perspective. So let's just agree we disagree and get back to our lives.
But that has nothing whatsoever with your imagined scenario where "OSS" is hypocritical because they want to take over the world.
Because they do want to take over the world, otherwise, why would they focus most of their energy on Microsoft, who happens to dominate the world desktop market at the time being? Just because there is no central command, doesn't mean they are not working toward the same goal. Do you think every guerilla fighter in Afganistan and Iraq is directly controlled by the same leaders, say Bin Laden? But do they share a common cause? Yes. Do they all want to end the world dominance by the US? Yes. Do they want to dominate the world if given a chance? Yes. The only difference here is that they are bony humans with lots of hair.
What do IBM's and Novell's and Oracle's motivations have to do with Joe Average Linux developer?
I am not so sure. IBM employees have contributed to Linux codebase, sometimes encourage by IBM.
I am a long time software developer myself. I learned in my career that there are many things average programmers outside big corporations don't know, no matter how smart they are. It's not a matter of intelligence or motivation, it's a matter of experience. Without the direct contribution from experienced corporate developers, Linux will lack many enterprise critical features which makes it unlikely to be adopted by enterprises.
Without the backing of corporate heavyweights like IBM, Oracle, Novell, who happen to be Microsoft's biggest competitors, without corporations like Red Hat and , Linux would not have been as widely adopted as today. Those corporations emphasized the grassroot aspect of Linux to make it a great marketing story. But their true intention is to drive out their biggest competitor, Microsoft, and dominate the world afterwards.
I understand your argument that Linux will still be here without the support of those corporations, but it will be far less widely adopted as today and a nonentity for Microsoft.
Uh, yeah. That's been the historical truth. Do you have a counterexample?
It all depends on a person's perspective. Let's see...
Microsoft gave IE away for free. As a Windows user, that meant I didn't have to pay for Netscape. But for Microsoft haters, they did it to kill a competition, a hidden agenda.
Microsoft gave AntiSpy ware away for free. Again for Microsoft haters, they did it to kill a competition, a hidden agenda.
Microsoft gave MediaPlayer away for free. For Microsoft haters, they did it to kill a competition, a hidden agenda.
OSS gave Linux away for free. For Microsoft haters, they did it for the benefit of human race, a noble cause. The fact that they want to kill their competition, Microsoft, and control the world desktop afterwards, is not a hidden agenda.
What can I say? A bunch of hypocrites.
They've basically blown it with the cable providers, so their only real hope in making some serious cash just hit the shitter.
I worked in the cable TV industry for many years. The bottomline is vendors don't make a lot of money having cable operators as their customers. Most small vendors went belly up after exhausting investment money. Even established vendors lose money on 90% of their new products. Unfortunately, Ramsay was right that you cannot make money selling softwares to cable operators. But vendors don't have a choice either, because cable operators control the pipeline into people's home. As far as working with cable operators is concerned, you are damned if you do and you are damned if you don't.
It's OK to show a little appreciation sometimes, even for Microsoft. No! Never!
When Microsoft gives away free software, it's for evil purpose with a hidden agenda. When the OSS community gives away free software, it's for noble causes just for the welfare of the world. The two can never be compared, not on slashdot anyway.
Anyone ever done a study to determine the mean time between when OSS camp claims Linux is secure (which is constant and at every opportunity) and when the next security patch is released?
You are making/.'ers hate M$ more with stories like this. We all know that the true reason for so much hatred toward M$ on/. is that M$ hasn't extended such generous offers to every self-claimed genious programmer on/.
The Hubble telescope cost billions of dollars to build and maintain. It has given us back a big fat zero dollars in return. So is it a failure? Financially, yes, you could say it's a failure. However, you cannot put a figure on the data the Hubble has sent back to scientists. The knowledge gained is incalculable, and to many it's worth every penny and more, it has been the greatest success in the history of NASA. To those who just look at numbers, it's a flying heap of scrap and and a financial black hole.
I would argue even knowledge has a price. And overpaying for knowledge is bad investment as well. Spending billions of dollars to send a camera to Titan for a couple of pictures is hardly good investment. How can those pictures help us now? When people can travel to Titan regularly, the pictures taken then will be much more valuable and useful. Since that won't happen until many years later, billions of dollars today is a bad investment compared to spending the same money on low cost space vehicle development or robot development. Of course that's just my personal opinion and I have no control over how EU waste their money. At least the investment provided entertainment value for nerds and geeks. But the knowledge gained through this entire endeavor is finite, and its impact on human race is calculable. The maximum value would be the total value generated by all those geeks and nerds inspired by this particular mission.
It would be ok if microsofts success with "borrowed" ideas was because they implemented them better than anyone else. But they don't. They're successful because they abuse their monopoly status. And that's worthy of bashing.
That's an extreme statement. Microsoft did many things better than its competitors from time to time. OLE enabled drag and drop between a word processor and a spreadsheet, I couldn't do it between WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3. Windows GUI was easier to use than most X-Terminal GUI or SUN desktop GUI I had used at that time. Visual C++ 4.2 was better than Borland C++ 5.0 at that time. The Visual Studio development environment was much easier to use for small to medium sized projects than UNIX flavored development environments. Even today, C# GUI development is easier than Java GUI development.
I agree Microsoft has shipped many lame products. But many Microsoft haters adamently refuse to admit that Microsoft has shipped many good products as well.
Believe it or not freedom is just like any other natural resources. Its supply is limited. When there are 1.3 billion people who all want the same resource, you have to pay a much higher price for it.
Weird such a big company with so many people who absolutely hate and despise them. You don't find that many people hating GE.
Maybe because GE has so completely dominated its markets that no competitor has any chance of overtaking it ever. On the other hand, there is real intense competition in the software industry. Microsoft's competitors still have the money to sue, have the clout to influence government decisions and have the chance to win their markets back. In other words, Microsoft is not a real monopoly as GE, because its competitors still have real chances. Ironic, isn't it?
Thank you for your interest in a Linux-based Notes solution. We appreciate your being an IBM product user.
Since Notes has been a mature product, the majority of its development team has been reassigned (think laid off) in the previous company wide reorganizations. We are currently considering out-sourcing the Linux Notes development to India. A second option under consideration is to publish the Notes API and rely on Open Source developers to build the Linux version. But we need to figure out how we can still make money out of the free work of others. We'll keep you posted when a decision is made.
Slashdot Mirror
You are right that if a contract contains outrageous clauses, you can challenge them in a court of law. But it doesn't mean contracts don't matter. They do most of the time. I wouldn't call the no-reverse-engineering clause unreasonable. After all, you didn't have to use the product to begin with if you didn't like that clause. It's not that you didn't have a choice.
Let's look at reverse engineering for a minute. First of all, even the DMCA has a clause that protects reverse engineering for the purposes of interoperability. That's right, one of the most draconian media laws we've ever seen protects the right to figure out what something does so that you can interface to it. This is precisely what Tridge was attempting to do.
But if you agreed not to do it, by accepting BK's license, yet still did it anyway. It is a violation of contract law.
Installing software is an administrative task, not a user task. Software installation *should* require admin access. Just one more example of MS not understanding the difference between administration and use.
Who is going to be the admin for home users?
According to your logic, a patent is in the "right hands" if the owner has no interest in building a product based on the patent.
So long as IBM held the patents, there was a good chance they'd stay out of the hands of Microsoft, Time Warner, Comcast, etc. I doubt Tivo has the cash to hold off a determined effort by any of those companies. Should those patents fall into the wrong hands, it could put a serious crimp not only on stand-alone PVRs, but even the PC boards that have equivalent functionality.
What makes you think IBM is the "right hands"?
While I can sympathise with Richard Grimes and certaqinly agree with him that .Net is more of a marketing exercise than technological breakthrough (even C# is Microsoft's response to Sun's lawsuit over MS' mangling of Java), I don't think Microsoft can now afford to give it up.
.Net as a marketing exercise. Although C# was modeled after Java, hence not innovative in the programming world, it is a great leap forward for VB developers and MFC developers. You cannot argue C#'s object oriented programming style is quite different from VB's programming style and C#'s garbage collection is quite different from C++'s new and delete. In that sense, .Net is a natural evolution for Microsoft developers. Would you call Java Windows environment a thin wrapper around Win32? Hardly. .Net has obvious technical merits, why would Microsoft give up on that?
I think it is extreme to call
To save Tivo, please add a feature to download and burn popular video file formats to DVD. The company is dying any way, worry about lawsuits later.
If MS does innovate, it usually means buying a company that did the innovating. My idea of innovation must be completely different than Microsofts. I see it as contributions to computer science and MS sees it as bring a product (however it was obtained) to market. And usually this spells the death of the innovating company.
It's not just Microsoft. Inventors invent. Capitalists by the invention but make money on it. This is how capitalism works. You have a problem with that?
You have been consistently trying to play down the fact that there is a strong force within the Linux camp to dethrone Microsoft, and big corporations like IBM are behind the force. If Linux is just an amateurs' hobby, then it won't bother Microsoft very much. But it isn't, maybe not to you, but to many Linux supportors who want to use Linux as a weapon to fight Microsoft in the business world. We can argue whether those people are representative of the Linux supporters or not, but we don't think we can agree on this issue. I also found that when I argue with Linux supportors they tend to focus on finding faults instead of trying to understand a different perspective. So let's just agree we disagree and get back to our lives.
But that has nothing whatsoever with your imagined scenario where "OSS" is hypocritical because they want to take over the world.
Because they do want to take over the world, otherwise, why would they focus most of their energy on Microsoft, who happens to dominate the world desktop market at the time being? Just because there is no central command, doesn't mean they are not working toward the same goal. Do you think every guerilla fighter in Afganistan and Iraq is directly controlled by the same leaders, say Bin Laden? But do they share a common cause? Yes. Do they all want to end the world dominance by the US? Yes. Do they want to dominate the world if given a chance? Yes. The only difference here is that they are bony humans with lots of hair.
What do IBM's and Novell's and Oracle's motivations have to do with Joe Average Linux developer?
I am not so sure. IBM employees have contributed to Linux codebase, sometimes encourage by IBM.
I am a long time software developer myself. I learned in my career that there are many things average programmers outside big corporations don't know, no matter how smart they are. It's not a matter of intelligence or motivation, it's a matter of experience. Without the direct contribution from experienced corporate developers, Linux will lack many enterprise critical features which makes it unlikely to be adopted by enterprises.
Without the backing of corporate heavyweights like IBM, Oracle, Novell, who happen to be Microsoft's biggest competitors, without corporations like Red Hat and , Linux would not have been as widely adopted as today. Those corporations emphasized the grassroot aspect of Linux to make it a great marketing story. But their true intention is to drive out their biggest competitor, Microsoft, and dominate the world afterwards.
I understand your argument that Linux will still be here without the support of those corporations, but it will be far less widely adopted as today and a nonentity for Microsoft.
Uh, yeah. That's been the historical truth. Do you have a counterexample?
It all depends on a person's perspective. Let's see...
Microsoft gave IE away for free. As a Windows user, that meant I didn't have to pay for Netscape. But for Microsoft haters, they did it to kill a competition, a hidden agenda.
Microsoft gave AntiSpy ware away for free. Again for Microsoft haters, they did it to kill a competition, a hidden agenda.
Microsoft gave MediaPlayer away for free. For Microsoft haters, they did it to kill a competition, a hidden agenda.
OSS gave Linux away for free. For Microsoft haters, they did it for the benefit of human race, a noble cause. The fact that they want to kill their competition, Microsoft, and control the world desktop afterwards, is not a hidden agenda.
What can I say? A bunch of hypocrites.
They've basically blown it with the cable providers, so their only real hope in making some serious cash just hit the shitter.
I worked in the cable TV industry for many years. The bottomline is vendors don't make a lot of money having cable operators as their customers. Most small vendors went belly up after exhausting investment money. Even established vendors lose money on 90% of their new products. Unfortunately, Ramsay was right that you cannot make money selling softwares to cable operators. But vendors don't have a choice either, because cable operators control the pipeline into people's home. As far as working with cable operators is concerned, you are damned if you do and you are damned if you don't.
It's OK to show a little appreciation sometimes, even for Microsoft.
No! Never!
When Microsoft gives away free software, it's for evil purpose with a hidden agenda. When the OSS community gives away free software, it's for noble causes just for the welfare of the world. The two can never be compared, not on slashdot anyway.
Anyone ever done a study to determine the mean time between when OSS camp claims Linux is secure (which is constant and at every opportunity) and when the next security patch is released?
Now that everyone has hit the jackpot at google, they may donate the entire company as well.
Who needs to work at google any way?
You are making /.'ers hate M$ more with stories like this. We all know that the true reason for so much hatred toward M$ on /. is that M$ hasn't extended such generous offers to every self-claimed genious programmer on /.
The Hubble telescope cost billions of dollars to build and maintain. It has given us back a big fat zero dollars in return. So is it a failure? Financially, yes, you could say it's a failure. However, you cannot put a figure on the data the Hubble has sent back to scientists. The knowledge gained is incalculable, and to many it's worth every penny and more, it has been the greatest success in the history of NASA. To those who just look at numbers, it's a flying heap of scrap and and a financial black hole.
I would argue even knowledge has a price. And overpaying for knowledge is bad investment as well. Spending billions of dollars to send a camera to Titan for a couple of pictures is hardly good investment. How can those pictures help us now? When people can travel to Titan regularly, the pictures taken then will be much more valuable and useful. Since that won't happen until many years later, billions of dollars today is a bad investment compared to spending the same money on low cost space vehicle development or robot development. Of course that's just my personal opinion and I have no control over how EU waste their money. At least the investment provided entertainment value for nerds and geeks. But the knowledge gained through this entire endeavor is finite, and its impact on human race is calculable. The maximum value would be the total value generated by all those geeks and nerds inspired by this particular mission.
It would be ok if microsofts success with "borrowed" ideas was because they implemented them better than anyone else. But they don't. They're successful because they abuse their monopoly status. And that's worthy of bashing.
That's an extreme statement. Microsoft did many things better than its competitors from time to time. OLE enabled drag and drop between a word processor and a spreadsheet, I couldn't do it between WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3. Windows GUI was easier to use than most X-Terminal GUI or SUN desktop GUI I had used at that time. Visual C++ 4.2 was better than Borland C++ 5.0 at that time. The Visual Studio development environment was much easier to use for small to medium sized projects than UNIX flavored development environments. Even today, C# GUI development is easier than Java GUI development.
I agree Microsoft has shipped many lame products. But many Microsoft haters adamently refuse to admit that Microsoft has shipped many good products as well.
Believe it or not freedom is just like any other natural resources. Its supply is limited. When there are 1.3 billion people who all want the same resource, you have to pay a much higher price for it.
Weird such a big company with so many people who absolutely hate and despise them. You don't find that many people hating GE.
Maybe because GE has so completely dominated its markets that no competitor has any chance of overtaking it ever. On the other hand, there is real intense competition in the software industry. Microsoft's competitors still have the money to sue, have the clout to influence government decisions and have the chance to win their markets back. In other words, Microsoft is not a real monopoly as GE, because its competitors still have real chances. Ironic, isn't it?
Thank you for your interest in a Linux-based Notes solution. We appreciate your being an IBM product user.
Since Notes has been a mature product, the majority of its development team has been reassigned (think laid off) in the previous company wide reorganizations. We are currently considering out-sourcing the Linux Notes development to India. A second option under consideration is to publish the Notes API and rely on Open Source developers to build the Linux version. But we need to figure out how we can still make money out of the free work of others. We'll keep you posted when a decision is made.
Iraqi government is hiring US contractors to help them count ballots.
How can we possibly trust a statistical study that was conducted by Americans anyway?
Maybe the statistical calculations were out-sourced.