The law was passed to stop the NRAs and EPAs from dropping exspensive, sometimes decietful ads right before the election when no one can do anything about them.
EPA? The Environmental Protection Agency?
I got an idea, why don't we just outlaw all discussion on political issues? Must prevent people from making those deceitful statements.
While "Brook's law" might be a law, it's only useful in retrospect. Most software projects have no idea how far behind they really are. So basically, you can always add manpower, you're really only half way through anyways...
I don't understand your point. If Brook's Law is valid, then it's useful not only in retrospect, but at any time, I think.
While it may be true that most software projects have no idea how far behind they really are, that has little to do with Brook's Law. Brooks's Law doesn't say "adding manpower to a project that might be late will only make it late", it says "adding manpower to a project that's already late will only make it later". Certainly, most software projects know if they are already late, they may not know by how much, but if Brooks's law holds (in retrospect or not), do they really want to be even later?
Now if you are referring to the fact that projects sometimes miss milestones and are predicted to be late, when in fact they won't be, what's the point of adding manpower in this situation?
It seems to me that Brooks's Law at all phases of a projects lifetime. It even holds at the project start. If the project is already late before it's started, it will certainly get later if you staff it.:-) Better to start a different project with a more realistic deadline, no?
Having said this, I understand that some people have done some excellent work in how you can avoid Brooks's Law to some extent. This work qualified exactly how to add manpower to a late project to help in various ways. I don't have the reference handy, though.
Sure. See Stallman's GNU Manifesto, where he interleaves statements about the AI Lab -- and how he wants to destroy programmers' prospects of getting good jobs outside academia so that they won't leave -- with ones about why he "must write GNU."
I went and reread the manifesto. I'm not getting that "The GPL's purpose is to kill software companies". In the Q&A section, he acknowledges that it may be the effect that software companies that don't "share" source will not be able to survive.
The purpose is so that he can always share in source that he himself helped write. He feels that this goal extends to other like-minded individuals.
How can one say that his purpose is to kill software companies when he says:
If your business needs to be able to rely on support, the only way is to have all the necessary sources and tools. Then you can hire any available person to fix your problem; you are not at the mercy of any individual. With Unix, the price of sources puts this out of consideration for most businesses. With GNU this will be easy. It is still possible for there to be no available competent person, but this problem cannot be blamed on distribution arrangements.
Which is an outline to how software companies will run in his imagined world of GNU dominated software.
To say that the purpose of the GPL is to destroy software companies is equivalent to saying that Project Gutenberg's purpose is to destroy the reprint houses. That may be a result, but it's not the purpose.
You ignore the point that I made earlier that every other software license has the same goal, to eliminate competition. Somehow, this is only vicious when it's done by a community and not by a corporation?
He felt that the source was "community source", because he'd spent so much time himself working on it.
I'll have to check that reference, but I don't see that GNU (the OS) has much in common with the Lisp environments that those companies were working on. Can you provide a quote that backs this point?
(Remember, RMS first wrote it as part of his effort to destroy software companies whose founders had left the MIT AI Lab, leaving him all alone.)
RMS saw an inequity in those who took community source to profit without giving anything back.
Since none of the source that those companies that raided the MIT AI Lab was GPLd, he clearly didn't do it to destroy those companies.
He did it so people couldn't profit in the future from community developed code. Actually, there's nothing in the GPL that makes it impossible to profit from the code, it just makes it necessary that you give back to the community from which you benefitted. Seems equitable to me.
The GPL is no different from any Closed Source License (like SAP's for example). If you take Closed Source that you have licensed, you are not able to incorporate that into a product of your own. I don't see you complaining about how Closed Source licenses are attempting to destroy software companies.
The only companies that could be destroyed are those that want to take GPLd software and sell it without giving back the changes to the community.
I know, it sounds ridiculous. When Bill says that Open Source like BSD implements a healthy software ecology where Open software benefits and proprietary software benefits, it sounds pretty lame when MS has never given anything back to that Open software world.
I do see a lot of problems with this scenario. But, if they are serious about having an OSS strategy, I can't think of a better one for them. Anything else would be pretty transparent and meaningless.
I posted the question to this discussion wondering aloud if MS was actually asking this question in their JWinterboy disguise. I didn't see any other discussion of my question, but I didn't go looking down at -1 or anything. I was down modded as Redundant for that question. Do people seriously believe that MS was asking Slashdot?
I disagree. Capitalist businesses will benefit greatly by not having to pay for restrictive software licenses.
That is, assuming the software exists for them not to pay restrictive licenses for. ERP systems like SAP R/3 are, well, dull. I don't think they'd exist if people weren't being well-paid to develop them.
Agreed! That's one of the many reasons that I feel commercial software will do just fine.
Businesses will benefit from not paying restrictive licenses for some things. ERP vendors will benefit from the OSS tools, compilers, Operating Systems on which to develop their systems.
Everybody benefits. Free roads have not been a hindrance to the transportation industry, rather it's been a boon. OSS software should be viewed the same way.
We're talking about capitalism here, not specific products.
Companies were having a hard time making money on Unix before Linux came along. SCO was just scraping by and all of the other Unix offerings were really tied closely to a hardware architecture. The Unix vendors really made their money on the HW, not on Unix.
SCO has been replaced by the Linux distro vendors, who are taking their turn at just scraping by.
Capitalism itself is not under attack, but there has been a change in products.
Saying that OSS is an assault on captialism because of what it's done to the Unix vendors is like saying that the automobile was a threat to capitalism because it didn't allow the buggy whip manufacturers to make a profit.
The big problem I see is that Linux is basically anathema to MS's culture.
Who said anything about Linux? I was saying they could take a BSD derived system and make that the centerpiece of their Open Source Strategy.
It fits with what Bill has to say about give and take between the Free and Proprietary software worlds. Now, to make his words have any meaning, MS actually has to give something, which is why my strategy might be a good fit for them.
With a BSD licensed OS, they could give back to the community while at the same time developing proprietary software into a product that they would profit from.
The strategy is one of "taking the air supply" away from Linux. How many businesses would opt for the free version of Darwin over Linux if it had $Billions of support? How many businesses would opt for the premium, supported and tested version?
I think we'd be whistling in the dark for a settlement from the anti-trust suit that will be much of anything.
A lot of damaging stuff is still coming out in the 9 states trial. But, you're probably right. Even if the 9 states win, MS will fight it for as long as it takes to make all the issues irrelevant.
Darwin, without the Apple-centric goodies on top, isn't much more than FreeBSD with chocolate chips. I wouldn't count on seeing anything like this while Jobs lives and breathes.
First, MS supporting Darwin development in a big way would completely legitimize the whole strategy to the marketplace and would be a big boost to Apple. Second, Jobs really wouldn't have a choice. MS could take Darwin (or FreeBSD if licensing prohibits this) and do it themselves. If you were Jobs, which side of that wall would you want to be on?
Possible, but I don't think so. MS seems to me to simply outwait and outspend competition when rivals threaten. I think that is why they've been so flaccid in combatting the midrange server marketshare erosion they're experiencing due to Free OSes. This competitor is not one they can outspend or outwait--in fact, out-waiting will likely eat them alive.
Well, if that doesn't sound like a "sick culture of non-competition" I don't know what is.
But, of course, they aren't just standing around. They're pressuring the OEMs to not support Linux in any visible way and they are doing a PR blitz against Linux and GPL. Neither of which are engineering solutions to their problems. They seem to have suppressed Linux on the desktop effectively, so far.
I've read that the Office divisions on Mac and Windows are fierce competitors.
That's friendly competition. Neither of those divisions believes that the other is in direct competition. They have their own spheres. Kinda like Win9x and WinNT.
There is no way we can condense MS's strategy in the limits of an HTML . They may do parts of this, none of this, or the whole thing, as well as merge with Johnson & Johnson and make WindowsTP(tm) for the bathroom.
It is fun to speculate. "If I was Bill, I'd...."
Sure, it's wild speculation and it is just for fun. That's the main reason I post here, for the fun of it.
Please check Netscape's IPO filing -- they were originally an enterprise server software company. The browser was intended to turn on some lightbulbs and provide free advertising.
When James Clark approached Andreesen about founding Netscape, the thought was the browser would be the product. They had to adjust the strategy by the time they came out with their IPO.
Still, the main point stands, I think. You can't sell into a market that's already dominated by a good free product that dominates like NCSA Server did early on. Apache is just an updated NCSA Server.
Counter-example: Netscape Enterprise Server (which unlike the browser, was intended to be a profit center) -- steamrolled by Apache.
Actually, the browser was initially supposed to be a profit center for Netscape, but then MS "took away their air supply".
Netscape Enterprise Server was just too costly and never offered anything over Apache. NES would have lost out to the old NCSA Server had Apache not been around. Certainly, nobody in academia was going to pay in the hundreds or thousands of $ for NES when there was a free alternative. As long as there was a free alternative that was widely used in Academia, where all of the early Web stuff happened, then for sure it was going to be improved. In fact, that's pretty much the story of Apache!
Sure, commercial software always loses when a good enough free alternative is available. But that's always been true. This has nothing to do with the rise of OSS, it's just the result of a bad business plan.
In fact, I bet Apple would love to see a modest investment, say $6 Bln - a fraction of MS' current warchest, estimated at >$30Bln - into Darwin. An investment into an OSS platform might be part of a settlement that would satisfy the 9 states. Maybe not, but it's worth a try.
A solid OSS OS like Darwin, with support from Apple and MS, available for X86 and PPC would be a considerable competitor to Linux. A lot of corporate types would feel comfortable about using this where they currently feel unsure about Linux. MS could sweeten it a lot by offering their Office Suite on this OS, but insist that they'll never offer it on Linux. This would backup Bill's contention that there's a healthy ecology between OSS and proprietary that the GPL breaks.
MS could, at some point, come out with their own Darwin-based OS with proprietary kernel enhancements integrated into it. They already have a start with the CLR ported to FreeBSD. This new OS could use a Windows GUI, but be mostly Darwin underneath. The corporations that want to have the benefits of running OSS would snap up such a Darwin based offering from MS. It would represent the best of both worlds. The advantages of community development and the testing and deep pockets of MS behind it.
This new OS might be more appropriate for Net appliances, web servers, and a number of things where *BSD is showing to be superior. Heck, it might compete head-to-head with Windows, but they wouldn't really have to position it that way at first.
MS could move all the people in their development groups who might be sympathetic to Open Source over to these projects, energizing the Windows people to compete.
Now, it seems that the MS culture is one where they don't feel they have to compete on engineering as MS can depend on their power to intimidate and eliminate competitors. This fosters a sick culture of non-competition.
I think companies that are afraid of internal competition don't recognize that it's better to compete internally than to leave the opportunities up to your external competitors.
I doubt that MS would ever do any of this, however.
Besides, Microsoft has already made clear that the GPL is a threat to capitalism; hence, their desire to have nothing to do with it.
Well, it is. Now, whethor or not a threat to capitalism is a good or bad thing is left to the reader to determine.
I disagree. Capitalist businesses will benefit greatly by not having to pay for restrictive software licenses.
Although I don't have hard data, I would venture that most people in software are not employed writing and testing closed source products that are sold, but making custom mods for internal use, supporting installed systems, doing system installation and integration and other services. These endevours can all benefit from Open Source.
Furthermore, the closed source companies seem to be doing OK. Microsoft is making record profits. Oracle, Siebold, SAP all seem to be unaffected, so far, from Open Source.
Open Source represents competition to the Closed Source companies, but I believe that everyone benefits from competition. For example, the improved reliability of W2K and WXP over earlier offerings is, IMHO, a direct reaction, to some extent, to Linux and FreeBSD. I think that MS has actually benefitted from this renewed focus on stability. You can actually learn your best lessons from your competitors, if you are listening.
All this speculation about how OSS will kill the software companies is, so far, just speculation.
As far as schools go, I thought I covered that, but no, govt has no place in schools. Schools are a perfect example of the triumph of private industry over govt. Govt schools exist all over, and with greater budgets than private schools, yet privately schooled and homeschooled kids consistantly outperform publicly educated children.
While I agree that the Government run schools are a shambles, does that imply that Government doesn't have a place in ensuring universal education? Vouchers might do the trick here, no?
I'm in favor of vouchers.
I think Government involvement in education and even higher education in this country has historically been a good thing. You can chart America's rise to greatness with near universal literacy and access to higher education. I think the land grant Universities were a good thing. We were the first country that recognized that higher education was beneficial to not just the rich.
I also think that transportation, making sure rivers are navagible and US Highways, have been a net benefit. I don't have a problem extending the concepts of ensuring an informed and educated populace and transportation for a healthy economy to providing Internet Infrastructure.
Heh. I agree in part regarding campaign finance reform. However, instead of full disclosure, why not have a constitutionally limited government? (shocking idea, I know). If they followed the constitution, and remained limited to only those powers allowed them there'd be no NEED to bribe, buy, or influence them. It'd do you no good.
If you haven't already read it, I would suggest you might want to give Bastiat's The Law a read.
I read that back in my Libertarian days, but it's been over 20 years ago. I do agree that if government was limited, we'd have less corruption. In the meantime, you have to get around the American people, including the Corporations, who all seem to have their hands out.
Thanks. I'll go give The Law another read. As I recall, it argued solely on moral grounds for limited government. I'm concerned that things are very much more complicated today.
Slashdot Mirror
EPA? The Environmental Protection Agency?
I got an idea, why don't we just outlaw all discussion on political issues? Must prevent people from making those deceitful statements.
After the next election, it will be illegal for PACs to run issue ads 60 days before an election.
Can you imagine that? Illegal to speak up about an important issue 60 days before an election, when it might do the most good?
I guess they had to get the corrupting power of the voice of the people, err, money, out of politics.
Oh, and VAXen never ran Digital Unix, but Ultrix was a Unix made by Digital.
True. But Tru64 is just a Digital Unix renamed which was Digital OSF/1.
DEC did used to sell an OS called Ultrix, which ran on DEC's line of MIPS machines and on VAXen. Ultrix was based on BSD 4.2 (IIRC).
Oops, you're right. The old Tandem stuff wasn't based on Unix, but I guess it has been based on Unix for quite a few years now. My mistake.
Am I falling for a Troll? Oh well, here goes...
BZZZT! Wrong!
Here's a short list of commercially available OSs that are not based at their core with Unix:
Thanks for playing, though!
I guess they thought that when they retired that Apache/BSD server that it'd pretty much be lights out for that old Unix, eh?
Best Buy where I live has it. Don't they have Best Buy in California?
I don't understand your point. If Brook's Law is valid, then it's useful not only in retrospect, but at any time, I think.
While it may be true that most software projects have no idea how far behind they really are, that has little to do with Brook's Law. Brooks's Law doesn't say "adding manpower to a project that might be late will only make it late", it says "adding manpower to a project that's already late will only make it later". Certainly, most software projects know if they are already late, they may not know by how much, but if Brooks's law holds (in retrospect or not), do they really want to be even later?
Now if you are referring to the fact that projects sometimes miss milestones and are predicted to be late, when in fact they won't be, what's the point of adding manpower in this situation?
It seems to me that Brooks's Law at all phases of a projects lifetime. It even holds at the project start. If the project is already late before it's started, it will certainly get later if you staff it. :-) Better to start a different project with a more realistic deadline, no?
Having said this, I understand that some people have done some excellent work in how you can avoid Brooks's Law to some extent. This work qualified exactly how to add manpower to a late project to help in various ways. I don't have the reference handy, though.
It helps support the manufacturers for the razor thin margins or breakeven they make on the low end!
I went and reread the manifesto. I'm not getting that "The GPL's purpose is to kill software companies". In the Q&A section, he acknowledges that it may be the effect that software companies that don't "share" source will not be able to survive.
The purpose is so that he can always share in source that he himself helped write. He feels that this goal extends to other like-minded individuals.
How can one say that his purpose is to kill software companies when he says:
Which is an outline to how software companies will run in his imagined world of GNU dominated software.
To say that the purpose of the GPL is to destroy software companies is equivalent to saying that Project Gutenberg's purpose is to destroy the reprint houses. That may be a result, but it's not the purpose.
You ignore the point that I made earlier that every other software license has the same goal, to eliminate competition. Somehow, this is only vicious when it's done by a community and not by a corporation?
He felt that the source was "community source", because he'd spent so much time himself working on it.
I'll have to check that reference, but I don't see that GNU (the OS) has much in common with the Lisp environments that those companies were working on. Can you provide a quote that backs this point?
RMS saw an inequity in those who took community source to profit without giving anything back.
Since none of the source that those companies that raided the MIT AI Lab was GPLd, he clearly didn't do it to destroy those companies.
He did it so people couldn't profit in the future from community developed code. Actually, there's nothing in the GPL that makes it impossible to profit from the code, it just makes it necessary that you give back to the community from which you benefitted. Seems equitable to me.
The GPL is no different from any Closed Source License (like SAP's for example). If you take Closed Source that you have licensed, you are not able to incorporate that into a product of your own. I don't see you complaining about how Closed Source licenses are attempting to destroy software companies.
The only companies that could be destroyed are those that want to take GPLd software and sell it without giving back the changes to the community.
I know, it sounds ridiculous. When Bill says that Open Source like BSD implements a healthy software ecology where Open software benefits and proprietary software benefits, it sounds pretty lame when MS has never given anything back to that Open software world.
I do see a lot of problems with this scenario. But, if they are serious about having an OSS strategy, I can't think of a better one for them. Anything else would be pretty transparent and meaningless.
I posted the question to this discussion wondering aloud if MS was actually asking this question in their JWinterboy disguise. I didn't see any other discussion of my question, but I didn't go looking down at -1 or anything. I was down modded as Redundant for that question. Do people seriously believe that MS was asking Slashdot?
That is, assuming the software exists for them not to pay restrictive licenses for. ERP systems like SAP R/3 are, well, dull. I don't think they'd exist if people weren't being well-paid to develop them.
Agreed! That's one of the many reasons that I feel commercial software will do just fine.
Businesses will benefit from not paying restrictive licenses for some things. ERP vendors will benefit from the OSS tools, compilers, Operating Systems on which to develop their systems.
Everybody benefits. Free roads have not been a hindrance to the transportation industry, rather it's been a boon. OSS software should be viewed the same way.
Companies were having a hard time making money on Unix before Linux came along. SCO was just scraping by and all of the other Unix offerings were really tied closely to a hardware architecture. The Unix vendors really made their money on the HW, not on Unix.
SCO has been replaced by the Linux distro vendors, who are taking their turn at just scraping by.
Capitalism itself is not under attack, but there has been a change in products.
Saying that OSS is an assault on captialism because of what it's done to the Unix vendors is like saying that the automobile was a threat to capitalism because it didn't allow the buggy whip manufacturers to make a profit.
Is anybody curious about who JWinterboy is and why he's asking?
Hmmm... High uid, no comments. Could it be that MS is asking Slashdot for it's opinion?
Who said anything about Linux? I was saying they could take a BSD derived system and make that the centerpiece of their Open Source Strategy.
It fits with what Bill has to say about give and take between the Free and Proprietary software worlds. Now, to make his words have any meaning, MS actually has to give something, which is why my strategy might be a good fit for them.
With a BSD licensed OS, they could give back to the community while at the same time developing proprietary software into a product that they would profit from.
The strategy is one of "taking the air supply" away from Linux. How many businesses would opt for the free version of Darwin over Linux if it had $Billions of support? How many businesses would opt for the premium, supported and tested version?
A lot of damaging stuff is still coming out in the 9 states trial. But, you're probably right. Even if the 9 states win, MS will fight it for as long as it takes to make all the issues irrelevant.
First, MS supporting Darwin development in a big way would completely legitimize the whole strategy to the marketplace and would be a big boost to Apple. Second, Jobs really wouldn't have a choice. MS could take Darwin (or FreeBSD if licensing prohibits this) and do it themselves. If you were Jobs, which side of that wall would you want to be on?
Well, if that doesn't sound like a "sick culture of non-competition" I don't know what is. But, of course, they aren't just standing around. They're pressuring the OEMs to not support Linux in any visible way and they are doing a PR blitz against Linux and GPL. Neither of which are engineering solutions to their problems. They seem to have suppressed Linux on the desktop effectively, so far.
That's friendly competition. Neither of those divisions believes that the other is in direct competition. They have their own spheres. Kinda like Win9x and WinNT.
It is fun to speculate. "If I was Bill, I'd...."
Sure, it's wild speculation and it is just for fun. That's the main reason I post here, for the fun of it.
When James Clark approached Andreesen about founding Netscape, the thought was the browser would be the product. They had to adjust the strategy by the time they came out with their IPO.
Still, the main point stands, I think. You can't sell into a market that's already dominated by a good free product that dominates like NCSA Server did early on. Apache is just an updated NCSA Server.
Actually, the browser was initially supposed to be a profit center for Netscape, but then MS "took away their air supply".
Netscape Enterprise Server was just too costly and never offered anything over Apache. NES would have lost out to the old NCSA Server had Apache not been around. Certainly, nobody in academia was going to pay in the hundreds or thousands of $ for NES when there was a free alternative. As long as there was a free alternative that was widely used in Academia, where all of the early Web stuff happened, then for sure it was going to be improved. In fact, that's pretty much the story of Apache!
Sure, commercial software always loses when a good enough free alternative is available. But that's always been true. This has nothing to do with the rise of OSS, it's just the result of a bad business plan.
In fact, I bet Apple would love to see a modest investment, say $6 Bln - a fraction of MS' current warchest, estimated at >$30Bln - into Darwin. An investment into an OSS platform might be part of a settlement that would satisfy the 9 states. Maybe not, but it's worth a try.
A solid OSS OS like Darwin, with support from Apple and MS, available for X86 and PPC would be a considerable competitor to Linux. A lot of corporate types would feel comfortable about using this where they currently feel unsure about Linux. MS could sweeten it a lot by offering their Office Suite on this OS, but insist that they'll never offer it on Linux. This would backup Bill's contention that there's a healthy ecology between OSS and proprietary that the GPL breaks.
MS could, at some point, come out with their own Darwin-based OS with proprietary kernel enhancements integrated into it. They already have a start with the CLR ported to FreeBSD. This new OS could use a Windows GUI, but be mostly Darwin underneath. The corporations that want to have the benefits of running OSS would snap up such a Darwin based offering from MS. It would represent the best of both worlds. The advantages of community development and the testing and deep pockets of MS behind it.
This new OS might be more appropriate for Net appliances, web servers, and a number of things where *BSD is showing to be superior. Heck, it might compete head-to-head with Windows, but they wouldn't really have to position it that way at first.
MS could move all the people in their development groups who might be sympathetic to Open Source over to these projects, energizing the Windows people to compete.
Now, it seems that the MS culture is one where they don't feel they have to compete on engineering as MS can depend on their power to intimidate and eliminate competitors. This fosters a sick culture of non-competition.
I think companies that are afraid of internal competition don't recognize that it's better to compete internally than to leave the opportunities up to your external competitors.
I doubt that MS would ever do any of this, however.
Well, it is. Now, whethor or not a threat to capitalism is a good or bad thing is left to the reader to determine.
I disagree. Capitalist businesses will benefit greatly by not having to pay for restrictive software licenses.
Although I don't have hard data, I would venture that most people in software are not employed writing and testing closed source products that are sold, but making custom mods for internal use, supporting installed systems, doing system installation and integration and other services. These endevours can all benefit from Open Source.
Furthermore, the closed source companies seem to be doing OK. Microsoft is making record profits. Oracle, Siebold, SAP all seem to be unaffected, so far, from Open Source.
Open Source represents competition to the Closed Source companies, but I believe that everyone benefits from competition. For example, the improved reliability of W2K and WXP over earlier offerings is, IMHO, a direct reaction, to some extent, to Linux and FreeBSD. I think that MS has actually benefitted from this renewed focus on stability. You can actually learn your best lessons from your competitors, if you are listening.
All this speculation about how OSS will kill the software companies is, so far, just speculation.
It was an 1886 decision.
This is excellent opinion piece that gives some of the history.
While I agree that the Government run schools are a shambles, does that imply that Government doesn't have a place in ensuring universal education? Vouchers might do the trick here, no? I'm in favor of vouchers.
I think Government involvement in education and even higher education in this country has historically been a good thing. You can chart America's rise to greatness with near universal literacy and access to higher education. I think the land grant Universities were a good thing. We were the first country that recognized that higher education was beneficial to not just the rich.
I also think that transportation, making sure rivers are navagible and US Highways, have been a net benefit. I don't have a problem extending the concepts of ensuring an informed and educated populace and transportation for a healthy economy to providing Internet Infrastructure.
If you haven't already read it, I would suggest you might want to give Bastiat's The Law a read.
I read that back in my Libertarian days, but it's been over 20 years ago. I do agree that if government was limited, we'd have less corruption. In the meantime, you have to get around the American people, including the Corporations, who all seem to have their hands out.
Thanks. I'll go give The Law another read. As I recall, it argued solely on moral grounds for limited government. I'm concerned that things are very much more complicated today.