I would like to see an example where a "big" company did business with Microsoft and did not end up selling out or going out of business. Even DEC caved into Microsoft,
Microsoft is in decline and now OSS has taken over the task of running small proprietary companies out of business. Why is this ok?
Microsoft wiped out many competitors by bundling products into windows or other big products, essentially giving stuff for free (like IE). It's hard to compete with free, which is what OSS is doing. OSS is the new borg... assimilate and clone a free version of any interesting software out there, essentially wiping out or drastically reducing revenues of various innovative companies.
What? Closed source benefits developers and users with fair trade of service/product for profit, not the one-sided exchange like OSS. The closed source model has worked for thousands of years. OSS is just hippie, socialist crap for slave labour.
Ok, then show one example in which greed actually helps anything beyond the short-term gain of the individual.
If you're not a little bit greedy, someone could take advantage of you and make you work for as little as possible, like a slave. Greed ensures you put your needs above others.
Saying that nobody can improve (read innovate) in open source is a flat out lie, and he knows it.
Is it? Open source mostly clones apps, features and UI from closed source. They don't innovate by creating new products, barring a few exceptions. The vast majority of OSS is clones like Open Office (MS Office), Linux (Unix), Gimp (Photoshop), KDE (Windows).
Innovative products come from small companies that improve a product. However, they can't invest 1 or 3 years of their lives building products when they have to compete with the "free" price tag of OSS. Even if their product is superior (say, a better OS than Linux), there is no market for such a product unless it is immensely better. Therefore users are sometimes stuck with inferior OSS products, or reduced innovation even if the product is not inferior.
Once OSS enters a certain field, there is no profit left, and hence no innovation. OSS can survive without innovating as they don't rely on income from the product. It used to be the same when small companies avoided direct competition with Microsoft a decade ago. Today, the problem has gotten worse with OSS becoming the new Microsoft of unfair competition.
I would pose the following question to slashdot: how has Java being closed source affected you personally...?
Closed source Java makes no difference to me, since I rarely have to delve into the source. If the Java API does not function as documented, it's a bug and Sun engineers usually fix that.
The main advantage of open-source Java is Sun will save a lot of money by using OSS volunteers to maintain Java, instead of the millions spent in programmer salaries today. As long as programmers are willing to work for free, why not use them?
Putting proprietary companies out of business (as everyone's pointing out) is *obviously* a good thing.
Open source is not a good way to develop software. Most of OSS is a clone of proprietary software (Linux, KDE, OpenOffice, GIMP, etc.); without proprietary software there will be little left to clone, hurting innovation. OSS does not foster innovation as there is no loss if the product sucks. However, the OSS free clones cut off air supply of innovative companies. And no commercial company will attempt to innovate in a field where OSS is dominant because of low ROI.
By working for free like slave labour, OSS developers deny income to proprietary software devs. The commercial users of OSS are in a nice position to double or triple their profits. Meanwhile programmers, some of whom produce work harder than a lawyer or doctor could, make less income than someone flipping burgers. How is this fair?
Most OSS supporters are deluded and brainwashed into thinking that profit is bad. Well, if you don't charge fair value for your labour and product, someone up the chain, using your product will reap the extra profits. Is this altruism or stupidity? you decide. OSS simply increases the profits of those who are already filthy rich.
Ideas are a dime a dozen; attaching monopoly rights to them simply makes the market less efficient and ends up with transaction costs that dwarf the inherent value of the improvement.
O'Really? Maybe you have a dozen ideas on how to speed up programs on multi-core systems better than what is available today, then. You could make a few billion if you did.
There are no non-trivial patents. All innovation is evolutionary steps from previous work. For anyone sufficiently skilled in the appropriate art, all solutions are obvious.
All solutions are obvious once you understand them, but you would not have come up with the idea yourself without the (valid/non-obvious) patent. Patents are instructions for someone skilled in the trade to recreate the product.
That's the problem. It's hard to centralize profit when an idea can be replicated forever over the wires.
When the product takes $0 cost to build, only the idea is valuable and that's why patents are a good idea. It's fair that the patent creator/owner gets compensated for their genius (in cases where the patent is non-trivial).
On the flip-side, open-source in particular shows that instead of benefiting the top of the pyramid, wealth can be spread around much more evenly giving everyone the benefits and moving the area of competition to a different market.
LOL... open source is like slavery. Millions of users (eg: RedHat) use the product to make billions, while the actual creators of the software work for free (less than what african slaves earned centuries ago), and have to get a second job to pay for their living.
If humans evolved from a chemical soup, according to the evolution theory, morals are meaningless. Killing, lying etc would be completely okay.
I mean what morals does a stone or cup of water have to follow.
But you can patent technology. All current techonology be it automobiles, electronics, or medicine is "software" simulation invented on computers and later simply manifested with metals, silicon or chemicals. The actual "invention" is created and tested with computer software, only the physical manifestation of the product is non-software.
Does it take more inventive genius to invent some car or electronics technology than to invent something in software?
Without patents, there is no point in spending tremendous time, money and effort creating something new because somebody else will steal it. Why bother studying for an university exam when you can simply copy from your neighbor?
Without patents there only be copycats, like 80-90% of OSS right now, all clones of commercial software with very little innovation.
Doesn't OSS screw the creator too? How many pennies have Linux devs earned for their talent and work?
Communist govt keeps all the profit for work of its citizens. sounds very similar to... Red Hat keeps all the profit from work done by linux devs
What a great system where boring tasks like packaging a CD and supporting mundane OS issues is rewarded million times more than actually creating the OS
How much do you want to bet Google doesn't use assembly? I read some of their whitepapers years ago stating something about increasing max efficiency of cpu resources like cache.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft is in decline and now OSS has taken over the task of running small proprietary companies out of business. Why is this ok?
Microsoft wiped out many competitors by bundling products into windows or other big products, essentially giving stuff for free (like IE). It's hard to compete with free, which is what OSS is doing. OSS is the new borg... assimilate and clone a free version of any interesting software out there, essentially wiping out or drastically reducing revenues of various innovative companies.
Naw... more like 3143 seconds
Interesting... care to elaborate if you don't mind?
Screw voting machines... I'll take hanging chads any day compared to malicious voting software that fraudulently gave bush the 2004 election.
Charging a token amount for a product is greed? Do you work for free for your employer? How do you pay for your living? Parents? Govt. welfare?
What? Closed source benefits developers and users with fair trade of service/product for profit, not the one-sided exchange like OSS. The closed source model has worked for thousands of years. OSS is just hippie, socialist crap for slave labour.
If you're not a little bit greedy, someone could take advantage of you and make you work for as little as possible, like a slave. Greed ensures you put your needs above others.
Is it? Open source mostly clones apps, features and UI from closed source. They don't innovate by creating new products, barring a few exceptions. The vast majority of OSS is clones like Open Office (MS Office), Linux (Unix), Gimp (Photoshop), KDE (Windows).
Innovative products come from small companies that improve a product. However, they can't invest 1 or 3 years of their lives building products when they have to compete with the "free" price tag of OSS. Even if their product is superior (say, a better OS than Linux), there is no market for such a product unless it is immensely better. Therefore users are sometimes stuck with inferior OSS products, or reduced innovation even if the product is not inferior.
Once OSS enters a certain field, there is no profit left, and hence no innovation. OSS can survive without innovating as they don't rely on income from the product. It used to be the same when small companies avoided direct competition with Microsoft a decade ago. Today, the problem has gotten worse with OSS becoming the new Microsoft of unfair competition.
Closed source Java makes no difference to me, since I rarely have to delve into the source. If the Java API does not function as documented, it's a bug and Sun engineers usually fix that.
The main advantage of open-source Java is Sun will save a lot of money by using OSS volunteers to maintain Java, instead of the millions spent in programmer salaries today. As long as programmers are willing to work for free, why not use them?
Open source is not a good way to develop software. Most of OSS is a clone of proprietary software (Linux, KDE, OpenOffice, GIMP, etc.); without proprietary software there will be little left to clone, hurting innovation. OSS does not foster innovation as there is no loss if the product sucks. However, the OSS free clones cut off air supply of innovative companies. And no commercial company will attempt to innovate in a field where OSS is dominant because of low ROI.
By working for free like slave labour, OSS developers deny income to proprietary software devs. The commercial users of OSS are in a nice position to double or triple their profits. Meanwhile programmers, some of whom produce work harder than a lawyer or doctor could, make less income than someone flipping burgers. How is this fair?
Most OSS supporters are deluded and brainwashed into thinking that profit is bad. Well, if you don't charge fair value for your labour and product, someone up the chain, using your product will reap the extra profits. Is this altruism or stupidity? you decide. OSS simply increases the profits of those who are already filthy rich.
Google pagerank for one. I bet Google wouldn't be search king if Microsoft could easily clone their algorithms.
That's right, you can't, because it's not easy.
The future looks bleak where they track everything you do, where you drive, what you buy, what you eat, how much you work and goof off.
I bet the brainwashed idiots think this is progress.
What if they were tricked/deceived into thinking they were willing? That would be rape.
I mean what morals does a stone or cup of water have to follow.
Preventing copying, of course. Isn't this the reason patents were created in the first place?
Does it take more inventive genius to invent some car or electronics technology than to invent something in software?
Without patents, there is no point in spending tremendous time, money and effort creating something new because somebody else will steal it. Why bother studying for an university exam when you can simply copy from your neighbor?
Without patents there only be copycats, like 80-90% of OSS right now, all clones of commercial software with very little innovation.
Doesn't OSS screw the creator too? How many pennies have Linux devs earned for their talent and work?
Communist govt keeps all the profit for work of its citizens.
sounds very similar to...
Red Hat keeps all the profit from work done by linux devs
What a great system where boring tasks like packaging a CD and supporting mundane OS issues is rewarded million times more than actually creating the OS
How much do you want to bet Google doesn't use assembly? I read some of their whitepapers years ago stating something about increasing max efficiency of cpu resources like cache.
Or "Based off movies"?
How is this offtopic? Brain is obviously a choline-fed super rat!