Its not "expecting pay" that makes them bad. Its writing closed-source software that does.
Closed-source software, as opposed to Free Software, is not only not a contribution to society, but actually a harm.
It creates problematic dependencies on specific architectures and software components. It wastes everyone's resources. At least until the end of the reign of software copyright, it limits everyone's freedom of exchange of information.
Abusing copyright law by writing closed-source software is unethical and thus my claim about ignorance/unethical behaviour. If a programmer is to make money, he should use ethical means to do so, even if those are less profitable.
Writing Free Software has money in it, and many people are earning money doing it. Without copyright, Free Software will even have more money in it as people will be paid to create the Free Software that is needed by minorities that don't "scratch an itch".
My comment was about which software is better looking at the global picture, not through the narrow view of a greedy programmer either ignorant or without ethics.
There's also money in fraud, theft and other fields, but that is not necessarily a good reason to support such activities.
Free Software does not have to waste its resources writing futile mechanisms to prevent "unauthorized copying".
Free Software does not require that programmers choose between hacking together half-usable components with their program, or paying a lot of money to buy binary-only components that probably suffer from the same problems. Instead, Free Software lets programmers share the work and use any piece of code from the entire set of existing Free Software.
Non-Free software is a waste of resources that could be utilized doing meaningful things.
Use only Free Software, and put an end to wasteful activities that harm individual's freedom in the name of a providing an incentive to create software that just barely competes at all.
After seeing a lot of complaints about popups/popunders, I couldn't help but quotePaul Graham:
"In this scenario, spam would, like OS crashes, viruses, and popups, become one of those plagues that only afflict people who don't bother to use the right software."
Hey Kuwanger, Long time no see! Any idea where the rest of the gang can be found these days?:)
Capabilities would definitely diminish MSBlaster like attacks, because the RPC service would only have capabilities to accept connections on port 135 and to do very specific things, not incluing the creation of new connections to other 135 ports. This means that once taking over an RPC service, one cannot make it redistribute itself.
Commercial software development not only gives me freedom of speech, it feeds my family. Such a higher cause is far more moral than your zealotry.
You demonstrate ignorance. "Commercial" has nothing to do with open/closed software.
Commercial Free Software is fine. Commercial closed-source software is immoral. Same with non-commercial software.
Distributing closed-source software under restrictive licensing limits everyone's freedom of speech with regard to that piece of software and increases the dependency of people on closed solutions from which one cannot learn and get inspired to create new works.
You can work doing commercial Free Software development, feed your family and promote Freedom.
Well, it doesn't seem people are really searching for a solution, or they'd be working to implement Capability Systems to replace the crappy ACL systems we have today, that provably and significantly reduce many of today's security problems.
I'd say those that lean towards Free Software are moral enough and man/woman enough to stand for their morals, at the cost of risking their acceptance to the job (On the other hand, why work for an immoral company?)
Assuming that using the best technology for any given task is the best and most "savvy" option is arrogant.
In my oppinion, one should lean towards software that promotes Freedom and should avoid as much as possible Closed software.
To exaggerate in order to make a point: What if you were asked to rape children as part of your daily job?
Telling it that it "should" encourage an input is meaningless.
You are correct that I could have stated it better: Capitalist countries should encourage free resources rather than limiting those resources in order to create jobs (Destroying free oxygen to create jobs for oxygen creating factories, for example).
However, capitalism is not perfect. It only works well in the average case. Both globalization and the GPL lead to edge cases where the laws of capitalism don't lead to an optimal result.
That's evidence of your ignorance of capitalism. Capitalism is all based on the extreme-case estimations of a global, extermely huge market. That's when it is supposed to work well. For example, Capitalism theory predicts prices will lower to production costs. This is something that will only happen in huge markets with a lot of competition.
The bigger the market, the closer capitalism theory is to capitalism in practice.
I'm not advocating anything, I just think that it is important to remember that jobs are lost due to OSS as well as foreign outsourcing. On/., we focus on losses due to outsourcing, but ignore the OSS losses (because this community, including me, tends to be pro-OSS and anti-offshore). In some cases, those losses are the same, when OSS work is done in foreign countries. If you want to be protectionist by making it harder to off-shore work, shouldn't you also be trying to limit OSS?
You start with agreeable arguments (People doing things for free in their spare time means less jobs in the field), and yet reach a very weird (and dangerous?) conclusion: We should limit what people do in their spare time for free.
This is rediculous, capitalism should encourage resources that come for free. Jobs that are created by artficial limitations and would otherwise not be required are not really good for the economy as they may seem. Might as well pay these people that same money to do anything that's really required, while getting the original service for free.
Maybe the oxygen producing factories are not making enough money now? Jobs are being lost. We should cut down trees and limit their ability to create oxygen because those trees are hurting the ability of oxygen creation factories to make a living. I see this as equivalent.
I'm not quite with the "governments should make laws forcing Open Source down people's throats"
No person may have Free Software (or opensource code) shoved down his throat. Companies may have "Free Software" forced on them - but they're not people, and their interests in this case do not coincide with those of the people.
Anyhow, counter this with: * I am not quite with the "governments should make laws forcing Freedom down people's throats" The negative association is only added by the "throats" part, and there's no real reason not to force Freedom of (modifying and redistributing) Software, like other freedoms.
I currently use, among other things, Visual Studio.Net 2003, WSAD 5, Delphi 7, TextPad and XmlSpy. If they are weak in comparison to the tools you mention, I do not notice it.
I know previous versions of most of those tools, and yes they are far weaker and less efficient than the Free Software solutions that have been in development for decades - by far more talented programmers (including RMS).
The main example of this is Emacs. Being based on a dynamic language and still beating the static-language Microsoft development platforms to dust in flexibility, power, extensibility and most notably due to its nature - in performance.
You should really try to learn to use and configure Emacs. Replace your GUI development tools with the more portable and more powerful Qt. You will not only help spread freedom of change and restribution, but also discover how much more efficient these tools are.
I notice in other posts of yours that you seem not to prefer staticly typed dynamically bound languages, so I doubt we'll see eye to eye much on anything.
I used to prefer static typing. Most programmers who have grown accustomed to static typing prefer it for most tasks. That is, until they really spend a lot of time with a dynamic language. Then they understand the sheer amount of effort they have wasted writing repetitive code trying to convince the compiler that their program is typesafe - when they could have spent that time writing automatic unit-tests or working on better designs.
Once you really try using dynamically typed languages for a while, you will, as all invariably do, convert to use dynamic typing almost exclusively.
If you can't understand that, well, go back to your dorm room/mom's basement, crank up your pirated mp3, watch a stolen dvd, play a cracked RPG on your ivory tower of ideals. (See how bad it makes you look to make dumbass assumptions about someone's beliefs and motivations?)
You? Sounds like you should work on your presentation. Instead of making a case for Free software, you seemed a bit rabid to me.
In fact, I never had and probably never will have a tough time getting a job as a programmer, writing for closed or open platforms.
I have not yet seen a list of wanted programmer positions that did not include *nix programming and jobs with better respect for freedom - or at least jobs that do not support the large entities that are buying the government to destroy those freedoms.
If you are not talented enough to get jobs in such a field, why don't you move to some other field where you don't have to be a pawn of the corrupt powers?
Do you not find the Win32 API and all existing wrappers utter crap like most good programmers do? If you do - how can you program on Windows, are you masochistic?
Do you use weak editors and tools like Visual Studio, C#, etc or the vastly superior alternatives such as (a well-configured) emacs, Python, Pyrex, etc?
Do you, as a programmer, not appriciate the ability to debug, seek or at least report bugs in the software you use?
Do you not mind the utter lack of control you as a user have on the software you use?
Slashdot Mirror
Even then, there would be a whole lot of patent violations, and it would be hard to sue every cell that replicates the virus.
Its not "expecting pay" that makes them bad.
Its writing closed-source software that does.
Closed-source software, as opposed to Free Software, is not only not a contribution to society, but actually a harm.
It creates problematic dependencies on specific architectures and software components. It wastes everyone's resources. At least until the end of the reign of software copyright, it limits everyone's freedom of exchange of information.
Abusing copyright law by writing closed-source software is unethical and thus my claim about ignorance/unethical behaviour. If a programmer is to make money, he should use ethical means to do so, even if those are less profitable.
Writing Free Software has money in it, and many people are earning money doing it. Without copyright, Free Software will even have more money in it as people will be paid to create the Free Software that is needed by minorities that don't "scratch an itch".
My comment was about which software is better looking at the global picture, not through the narrow view of a greedy programmer either ignorant or without ethics.
There's also money in fraud, theft and other fields, but that is not necessarily a good reason to support such activities.
Free Software does not have to waste its resources writing futile mechanisms to prevent "unauthorized copying".
Free Software does not require that programmers choose between hacking together half-usable components with their program, or paying a lot of money to buy binary-only components that probably suffer from the same problems. Instead, Free Software lets programmers share the work and use any piece of code from the entire set of existing Free Software.
Non-Free software is a waste of resources that could be utilized doing meaningful things.
Use only Free Software, and put an end to wasteful activities that harm individual's freedom in the name of a providing an incentive to create software that just barely competes at all.
Are you that ignorant of the history of Europe during WWII?
After seeing a lot of complaints about popups/popunders, I couldn't help but quote Paul Graham:
"In this scenario, spam would, like OS crashes, viruses, and popups, become one of those plagues that only afflict people who don't bother to use the right software."
I had a 49G, but I recall it was quite unusable simply because its keys were very difficult to press (physically).
It did seem pretty good in many other aspects, but its funny how a small basic failure in the UI field can ruin an otherwise good product.
The drivers' EULA cannot forbid fair use, which is what applying them to Linux is.
Its not that simple.
An eye-for-an-eye may prevent someone from plucking out an eye due to fear of having his own eye plucked out.
Huh? Sharon accepted it.
new code is tainted by knowledge of the now removed code
This is not possible under copyright law.
Copyright only regards the specific expression of something, and not ideas.
Bah.
Debian GNU/Linux is much better than Windows even as a desktop.
KDE 3 is so much better tuned and more refined than the latest Windows its not even funny.
Don't believe me? Download KDE 3.2 and its vast collections of software and see for yourself.
Its faster, more powerful, simpler, prettier, better programmed, more consistent and more efficient than Windows.
Hey Kuwanger, Long time no see! Any idea where the rest of the gang can be found these days? :)
Capabilities would definitely diminish MSBlaster like attacks, because the RPC service would only have capabilities to accept connections on port 135 and to do very specific things, not incluing the creation of new connections to other 135 ports. This means that once taking over an RPC service, one cannot make it redistribute itself.
Commercial software development not only gives me freedom of speech, it feeds my family. Such a higher cause is far more moral than your zealotry.
You demonstrate ignorance. "Commercial" has nothing to do with open/closed software.
Commercial Free Software is fine. Commercial closed-source software is immoral. Same with non-commercial software.
Distributing closed-source software under restrictive licensing limits everyone's freedom of speech with regard to that piece of software and increases the dependency of people on closed solutions from which one cannot learn and get inspired to create new works.
You can work doing commercial Free Software development, feed your family and promote Freedom.
That was an exaggaration to make a point.
Not always the best technical option is the option you should choose.
Some people value the Freedom of speech in its form of software above the few extra dollars.
I did not even imply that I had preferred it, but that these people were brave enough to stand for their morals above their financial requirements.
ACLs are probably not even a part of any secure solution, and are not very useful for secure computing. That when comparing them to capabilities.
POSIX has done a very bad service to the computing world by defining the term POSIX capability contraductory to the original term.
POSIX capabilities are more like ACLs than real capabilities.
Well, it doesn't seem people are really searching for a solution, or they'd be working to implement Capability Systems to replace the crappy ACL systems we have today, that provably and significantly reduce many of today's security problems.
Well, for some people its about morality.
I'd say those that lean towards Free Software are moral enough and man/woman enough to stand for their morals, at the cost of risking their acceptance to the job (On the other hand, why work for an immoral company?)
Assuming that using the best technology for any given task is the best and most "savvy" option is arrogant.
In my oppinion, one should lean towards software that promotes Freedom and should avoid as much as possible Closed software.
To exaggerate in order to make a point: What if you were asked to rape children as part of your daily job?
In old Pascal, arrays of different sizes were considered different types and so you couldn't write generic-array functions, even for specific types.
Is this still a problem today?
Telling it that it "should" encourage an input is meaningless.
You are correct that I could have stated it better:
Capitalist countries should encourage free resources rather than limiting those resources in order to create jobs (Destroying free oxygen to create jobs for oxygen creating factories, for example).
However, capitalism is not perfect. It only works well in the average case. Both globalization and the GPL lead to edge cases where the laws of capitalism don't lead to an optimal result.
That's evidence of your ignorance of capitalism. Capitalism is all based on the extreme-case estimations of a global, extermely huge market. That's when it is supposed to work well. For example, Capitalism theory predicts prices will lower to production costs. This is something that will only happen in huge markets with a lot of competition.
The bigger the market, the closer capitalism theory is to capitalism in practice.
I'm not advocating anything, I just think that it is important to remember that jobs are lost due to OSS as well as foreign outsourcing. On /., we focus on losses due to outsourcing, but ignore the OSS losses (because this community, including me, tends to be pro-OSS and anti-offshore). In some cases, those losses are the same, when OSS work is done in foreign countries. If you want to be protectionist by making it harder to off-shore work, shouldn't you also be trying to limit OSS?
You start with agreeable arguments (People doing things for free in their spare time means less jobs in the field), and yet reach a very weird (and dangerous?) conclusion: We should limit what people do in their spare time for free.
This is rediculous, capitalism should encourage resources that come for free. Jobs that are created by artficial limitations and would otherwise not be required are not really good for the economy as they may seem.
Might as well pay these people that same money to do anything that's really required, while getting the original service for free.
Maybe the oxygen producing factories are not making enough money now? Jobs are being lost. We should cut down trees and limit their ability to create oxygen because those trees are hurting the ability of oxygen creation factories to make a living. I see this as equivalent.
I'm not quite with the "governments should make laws forcing Open Source down people's throats"
No person may have Free Software (or opensource code) shoved down his throat. Companies may have "Free Software" forced on them - but they're not people, and their interests in this case do not coincide with those of the people.
Anyhow, counter this with:
* I am not quite with the "governments should make laws forcing Freedom down people's throats"
The negative association is only added by the "throats" part, and there's no real reason not to force Freedom of (modifying and redistributing) Software, like other freedoms.
I currently use, among other things, Visual Studio .Net 2003, WSAD 5, Delphi 7, TextPad and XmlSpy. If they are weak in comparison to the tools you mention, I do not notice it.
I know previous versions of most of those tools, and yes they are far weaker and less efficient than the Free Software solutions that have been in development for decades - by far more talented programmers (including RMS).
The main example of this is Emacs. Being based on a dynamic language and still beating the static-language Microsoft development platforms to dust in flexibility, power, extensibility and most notably due to its nature - in performance.
You should really try to learn to use and configure Emacs. Replace your GUI development tools with the more portable and more powerful Qt. You will not only help spread freedom of change and restribution, but also discover how much more efficient these tools are.
I notice in other posts of yours that you seem not to prefer staticly typed dynamically bound languages, so I doubt we'll see eye to eye much on anything.
I used to prefer static typing. Most programmers who have grown accustomed to static typing prefer it for most tasks. That is, until they really spend a lot of time with a dynamic language.
Then they understand the sheer amount of effort they have wasted writing repetitive code trying to convince the compiler that their program is typesafe - when they could have spent that time writing automatic unit-tests or working on better designs.
Once you really try using dynamically typed languages for a while, you will, as all invariably do, convert to use dynamic typing almost exclusively.
If you can't understand that, well, go back to your dorm room/mom's basement, crank up your pirated mp3, watch a stolen dvd, play a cracked RPG on your ivory tower of ideals. (See how bad it makes you look to make dumbass assumptions about someone's beliefs and motivations?)
You? Sounds like you should work on your presentation. Instead of making a case for Free software, you seemed a bit rabid to me.
In fact, I never had and probably never will have a tough time getting a job as a programmer, writing for closed or open platforms.
I have not yet seen a list of wanted programmer positions that did not include *nix programming and jobs with better respect for freedom - or at least jobs that do not support the large entities that are buying the government to destroy those freedoms.
If you are not talented enough to get jobs in such a field, why don't you move to some other field where you don't have to be a pawn of the corrupt powers?
Really?
Do you not find the Win32 API and all existing wrappers utter crap like most good programmers do?
If you do - how can you program on Windows, are you masochistic?
Do you not believe in the freedom to change and redistribute software?
Do you use weak editors and tools like Visual Studio, C#, etc or the vastly superior alternatives such as (a well-configured) emacs, Python, Pyrex, etc?
Do you, as a programmer, not appriciate the ability to debug, seek or at least report bugs in the software you use?
Do you not mind the utter lack of control you as a user have on the software you use?