Well, dual-licensing is definitely confusing. I guess the solution to that problem is to hire lawyers who write less-confusing licenses...
I've always thought the distinction between "non-commercial" and "commercial" purposes was clear enough though. That is, if you intend to use some software for use in a commercial (i.e. for business) manner, then one license applies, but if not, then the other license applies.
So, say you download Debian and KDE and use it on 5 different boxes at home. That'd be a non-commercial use, so it'd be free (in my world anyway).
But if you do the same thing and use Debian and KDE at work, then you would owe TT money, because you're using it for business purposes, i.e., for commerce, i.e., to make a profit.
If Redhat sells a SAN solution and uses KDE, then they would owe TT money because they're using it for commercial purposes (to sell TT's code to somebody else). Then the question is "how does the TT license replicate to other people?" i.e., does TT's license apply to you after being filtered through Redhat? IANAL, but I guess that would depend on what Redhat outlines in their own license agreement to you (i.e. they may have agreements w/ TT and other companies that say Redhat's customers can do whatever they want, nullifying TT's license. But probably not, and if not, then you'd be bound by TT's license).
Same applies for SuSE or other redistributors of TT's code...
At least, that's how I would see it. YMMV. *shrug*
Quite a response! I'll try to respond to some of your more-salient points...
Explain why people buy Windows, and why people buy bottled water. Users do not automatically gravitate to the product with the lowest cost, and sometimes increasing the price of a product increases demand.
You're right, they don't automatically gravitate towards products with the lowest cost. But look at the history of almost any product: the trend is that consumers want "more for less" - more product for less money, for normal goods.
Why else would rebates be so popular? Why else would auto manufacturers have sales and 0% financing offers? Why else would people clip coupons for when they go to the grocery store? These are all because the price of the product matters.
You mention bottled water. People do indeed pay silly amounts of money for what amounts to the same water they get out of their tap. What bottled water amounts to is a "luxury good" - a good that (supposedly) provides more utility for the buyer, at a higher price than can be found elsewhere in the market.
In the case of bottled water, the problem is that there is no "perfect knowledge" or "perfect information" about the product -- many people genuinely *believe* that bottled water really is cleaner and tastier than what comes out of their tap. And in some less-developed countries (e.g. Mexico), they're generally right... But here in the U.S., the difference is slight, at best; in fact, I remember hearing about one test somebody did where they were filling up bottles of water behind a restaurant with a garden hose, and selling them to the customers inside. Some of the customers remarked "wow, I can really taste a difference!" But when they found out that the bottles were being filled with a garden hose 50' away, they were a bit ashamed that their perception was wrong.
You analogize the situation to Windows. Windows has a similar problem -- imperfect information. Many people, if they knew about Linux at all and were competent enough to define their needs and determine whether Linux could be used to fulfill those needs, *could* switch to Linux.
But most people, even now, if they've heard of Linux at all, then all the know is that "it's a really stable OS competing against Windows" or something similar. They don't know how to install it or use it, and given that Linux can't run most of the less-common Windows apps people want to run (and yes, this includes BonziBuddy and other spyware, in some cases), there's little inclination for many people to switch.
The compatibility problem is the same one faced by Apple since the 1980s -- imperfect compatibility with Windows. That's the same reason most businesses still run Windows as well.
But businesses are wising up, realizing that most of their desktop uses can be fulfilled on a Linux desktop, and slowly but surely, more and more companies are making the switch. Users, in turn, will begin slowly switching afterwards as well, in order to maintain compatibility with their apps at work (unless they're using Win32/Linux cross-platform stuff, which is also possible).
Yours wasn't a perfect analogy (but it was a pretty reasonable one), because the Windows/Linux divide is a far more complex problem than the bottled water/tap water divide; there are lots more factors as to why people don't use Linux than why people don't drink more tap water...
...to you. The interesting part is that value is only real because we say it is. If you say something has a value of $0, and I say it has a value of $10, it probably has a value of $10 (or more.)
Value is often perception; just look at the dot-com bullshit boom of the late 1990s. Over-valued companies as far as the eye could see.
That doesn't refute my point that if somebody is giving away their work for free, that their time isn't worth anything. I'm paying nothing for somebody else's work, th
That is true, I forgot to mention their hosting of some projects.
Credit where credit is due -- they deserve praise for the hosting they do.:) I'll give particular praise for their development and hosting of Cygwin, at least...
I'm well-aware of the consequences of the GPL. The GPL, in summary, allows the end-user the right to use the GPL'd software in whatever way they want internal to their person/business. No source code release is required in this case, but the license doesn't forbid it either.
You're also free to redistribute unmodified binaries and/or unmodified source as you so choose, so long as either the license is GPL-compatible, is the original GPL license included with the software, or the new license does not impose further restrictions on recipients.
Where the GPL's sticking point comes into play is with modified code. If the modifications are used internally to one's person/business, one is free to use them as they please, and they don't have to be released to anybody.
But if the binaries are to be redistributed outside of one's person/business, then the source code for those modifications must be made available for a minimum of 3 years at no greater charge than the cost of distribution (bandwidth, CDs + shipping, etc.).
It is for this reason, as you note, that the GPL helps "comodize" (sp; try "commoditize") the product of software. I don't think I ever disputed that, nor did I ever say the GPL was a bad license...
Re: Redhat:
I never said Redhat has produced nothing at all; indeed, I listed some (Bluecurve, RPM, and kernel tweaks. They've also contributed to Cygwin, IIRC, at least in funding it, which is significant).
My point was that relative to the software made available to the community by the community of developers, Redhat's contributions back to it are pretty minor. That shouldn't come as too much of a shock, given that Redhat cannot employ anywhere nearly as many developers themselves as contribute to OSS from around the world of their own volition; Redhat simply *cannot* contribute a relatively-large amount by virtue of the cost of developer labor.
I also don't believe I ever said they were under obligation to provide anything back to the community, nor should they be (except as bound by the terms of whatever licenses of whatever software they choose to include with their distro).
I admit I mis-spoke when I said they "appropriated" peoples' work (I had a slightly-off definition of the word "appropriated" in mind when I wrote that) -- I'll grant you that much, and for that, I do apologize. That wasn't quite an accurate term -- "copied" is certainly safer. Regardless though, you can't deny the fact that most of the software they sell was not written by Redhat, it was written by other members of the community.
Then again, more power to them for it. If they can make money off the good nature of some people voluntarily giving away their own work, so be it; I'm not arguing for their demise. My whole point in all this, to be relevant to the original question, is that OSS developers are, in a way, committing suicide, or at least are working for free at the profit of somebody else, which seems backasswards to me.
It's obviously a very arguable point, and I don't hold it as a tautology (I think there are plenty of cases in which writing OSS is a very good thing for people -- basically any library you can think of seems like a good example to me, as it allows people to build off of fundamental software components), but I think maybe the trend here is for OSS developers to go running off a cliff, like lemmings, rather than stopping at the edge and asking, "OK, should I jump, or should I find an easier way down that doesn't kill me?"
Take it for what you will; I have a feeling your knee has jerked too hard to understand my point...
LOL, I am *far* from a god-worshipper. I'm personally an agnostic, borderlining on being an athiest.
He is merely making historical references, and the Bible, rightly or wrongly, is an historical text, regardless of the inaccuracies or made-up nonsense contained within it.
The rest of the article, IIRC, relates more to modern economics and much less to the Bible, FYI...
Indeed, TrollTech is IMO the very best example of a successful OSS company I can think of. They do purely development and support, and they make money off of both.
However, I would argue that the reason they make that money is because they have smartly found a niche that encourages it - writing libraries that everybody wants to use. And, of course, they do what I would suggest to would-be OSS developement companies -- dual licensing.
IMO, dual licensing is key to OSS. For non-commercial purposes, one is basically free to do what they want (or it's licensed under GPL, whatever). But for commercial purposes, the license becomes more restrictive and demanding of money.
TrollTech really is probably the model the OSS community should look towards...
Repeat after me: open-source software is not a business model, it is a softare development model.
The blunt fact is that in IT, there are really 2 classes of people: users, and developers. This is fully analogous to any other industry, where you have a consumer (users) and a producer (developers).
The users -- everybody from sysadmins and netadmins, on down to the secretary using her Office apps -- do not write code. They do not contribute anything beyond bug reports to OSS. Hence, their personal stake in the price of software is simply to get the cheapest software that will do the job. Given that OSS is free as in beer, users will naturally gravitate towards it and promote it. Just as in college, where there is free beer, there are students lined up around the block to get a drink.
Then there are developers -- the software engineers and programmers. They *do* write code; that is their job. They contribute more than bug reports to OSS; they contribute the very code that is required to build the apps that the users use. The trouble for developers is that OSS, by not charging a fee for the time spent developing, makes the value of developers' time equal $0. Time = money, and if money = $, then time = $0 as well.
When applied as a business model, that is how OSS works; there is no escaping this fundamental economic analysis. You cannot very long sell a product at a non-zero monetary sum that which one can get at zero monetary cost to themselves.
Thus, the only way OSS can survive in the business environment is if the developers are working for a company which has some other revenue stream then -- be it support services for the code they write if they are a software company, be it some other service if it is a non-software service business (e.g. a marketing firm, law firm, etc.), or be it some tangible, physical good (e.g. in any hardware company, car manufacturer, grocer, etc.).
It's an opportunity for creativity in business models to try and incorporate OSS into their business functionality, but from the developer's perspective, it's important to recognize this fact: because you are writing software which is being given away for free, your work is not directly making money for the company. Because your work is not directly making money for the company, you will be seen as "dead weight" in the company. Because you are seen as dead weight, you will have a hard time justifying your employment with management unless you can determine, clearly, how your work saved time somebody else in the company, or how your work drew in more customers for the company, or how your work generated more service contracts, and so forth. If you cannot do that -- and this will be difficult (though not impossible), given that you don't work in those departments -- you face job loss.
Hence, it is generally in the best interest of developers not to write OSS. OSS coders are literally coding their way out of their own jobs.
But all of the above largely assumes software is normally otherwise a product sold to people on store shelves, when in fact, most people already write code for internal use only anyway. What about those people?
OSS is still a negative to developers in most companies, because, after all, if you are writing code that would normally be for use within your company, that is potentially a competitive advantage for your company. But if you're giving away that code, you're giving away that advantage for other companies - other competitors - to use. This is good neither for the developer, nor the company paying the developer who released the code as OSS. After all, if you employ developers who just spent 6 months writing control software for, say, a large manufacturing company, why should the company release that software to the public? So that their competitors can go out and buy the same hardware, leverage this software they did not develop (and have no intention of contributing back to), and produce the same or very simi
Yes, but how do they sell that open-source product?
By relying largely on the work of people working for free.
Redhat didn't write KDE, did they? Redhat didn't write the Linux kernel, did they? Redhat didn't write the GNU cmd-line applications, did they? No, as a matter of fact, they did not.
They have appropriated the work of those who have contributed their labor for free and are now selling it to businesses for hundreds of dollars a license.
And it is the same elsewhere: SuSE, Mandrake, TurboLinux (are they still around?), and so on.
So what has Redhat produced? Not used, but produced? The answer is: not much.
They've tweaked the kernel for their own purposes - but they didn't do the majority of the coding. They did write Bluecurve, but that just borrows heavily from GNOME and KDE. They created the RPM package format, which by all accounts now (though this would've been heresy 5 years ago) is garbage.
Have they created much else? Not really. So, notice that the vast majority of what they do is sell work that you, the open-source community, have written out of the good-naturedness of your own hearts.
I do not count GNU/Linux distributors as "open source companies" unless they make significant developmental contributions back to the OSS community, and in large part, they do not. That is the Linux distributors' dirty little out-in-the-open secret that nobody seems to remember...
How long until MiniMo is ported to the Zaurus 5x00/6000L on the default Sharp ROM or OPIE ROM? I'm going to venture a wild guess of "never", seeing as I'm fairly sure this would likely require a rewrite of practically all the GUI code (to use QTopia libs)...
The US is the ONLY western country I can think of where it is common for people to own guns, the ONLY ONE.
Hey retard, even Michael Moore (noted gun hater) pointed out in Bowling for Columbine that Canada -- a separate country, not a province of the U.S. -- owns a lot of guns too (IIRC, an average of 7/10 of all households in Canada own guns). Even Michael Moore said that more guns does not lead to more crime!
Your theory that more guns leads to more crime was debunked years ago. Go back to gun-grabber school and try again.
Really? All by themselves? Bullets just go up to people and say "bang, you're dead?"
Incredible. I wonder why such a device requires no human action - some kind of "trigger" which, on the human's sole command, would "fire" the bullet from the gun in in the vector chosen by the person pulling said "trigger"...
It's hard to believe we have these bullets just doing whatever they darn well please without direction from people!
Really? All by themselves? Guns just walk up to people and say "bang, you're dead!"?
But it's ALWAYS the gun that does it.
Wow, this must be like a tripped-out late-night show on Cartoon Network or something, where guns act of their own accord to kill people. You aren't watching too much "Adult Swim" by any chance, are you? That cartoon has talking fast-food items, and I think your self-aware guns that behave of their own accord without regard to human trigger-pulling would be a natural addition to the show...
Indeed. Even in economics, students are required to take a basic course in C/C++ usually, and (at my school) wind up having a working competence with SAS.
As a soon-to-be BSCS and already-completed Econ. minor, I'd say this is good advice all-around.
I've worked with the programmer ideologues, and as an intern, worked *for* a programmer ideologue, writing C/C++ for a simple GUI app when a higher-level language like Java or Perl or Python would've done the trick just as well and could be implemented much more quickly.
These same programmers -- some of them have been my professors -- say ASM is still important to business. IME talking to an interviewing with several companies, that's only the case in certain specialized areas (e.g. old mainframe or embedded development); the vast majority of other companies I've talked to have literally, on multiple occasions upon reviewing my resume, told me "ASM? Why are they still teaching you ASM?! Nobody uses ASM anymore." (I just shrug and say "well, it was a requirement in the CS dept...) And even more such programmers still stick with C, no matter how prone to security holes it is or how long it takes to write an app in it vs. some higher-level language.
Neither group recognizes the fundamental "time is money" concept by which business lives and dies; it's the "I have a hammer, and everything looks like a nail" philosophy used over and over again among developers...
Of course, there are the monkeys at the opposite end, who would use C#, VB, Java, etc. for everything, even when performance *is* an issue, for which C or C++ would be more appropriate; they too fail to realize that CPU time, although generally becoming exponentially cheaper according to Moore's Law, can still matter in high-volume or heavy-computational scenarios.
The programmer ideologues simply don't recognize a practical "right tool for the job" mindset...
I personally did an Econ. minor because I find Economics interesting (and, along with physics and politics, it's one of the 3 fundamental systems I see as governing everybody's lives), and once thought about majoring in it (or double-majoring in it with CS). Even now I'm still considering going for a master's in Econ. (or IP law, if there's a law school which will take me) and possibly leaving IT (or at least applying my Econ. study to IT somehow), for a variety of reasons...
Unfortunately, I find Econ. more interesting at my school than my CS education because Economics is a much more theoretical study than CS is at my school (and I've discovered that I'm happiest studying both theory *and* its applications (whether it's in CS, physics, econ., etc.), not just its application, as is mostly the case in my CS dept. Basically, I chose the wrong school for CS), making me rather unhappy with my upcoming CS degree.:(
I'd like to find something that combines CS and Econ., but the closest to that ideal I've found is something along the lines of financial engineering, but I greatly doubt my math abilities would take me very far as a quant (which is why companies in the fin. eng. field tend to hire hard-science majors (physics especially) more than any other)...
Re:anonymous coward lobbyists are out in force her
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Free Wi-Fi Threatened?
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Well, FYI, I tried my WG511T with FreesBIE 1.1 today. I loaded up the ath_hal driver, set my WLAN config (my 4 128bit WEP keys, etc.) did "ifconfig ath0 up" and ran dhclient.
I got an IP from my router and could connect to any other host on my LAN. Seeing as FreesBIE 1.1 is based off of FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE-p2, the card should work in a normal, latest-stable FBSD install.
The caveat to my troubles was that for whatever reason, I couldn't access hosts outside my LAN, only within it. I initially thought it was the MAC filter on my WLAN router, but my MAC address is in that table and allowed through, so that wasn't the problem - and for the moment, I don't know what is...:-/ But, if I was able to connect to diff. boxes on my LAN, then the problem almost certainly is one w/ my routing config in FBSD or on my gateway, not w/ the ath driver...
This was all 802.11b, BTW. Haven't tried 802.11g or the 108Mbps "Super-G" modes yet (IIRC, the 108Mbps mode doesn't work yet on FBSD).
Previously, GMail complained about my use of Opera on the Zaurus (the only browser you can really use on the 6000L for now), and wouldn't let me login.
Now I can check my email there.:) Still can't change my settings though - they require a "more-supported" browser for that to view GMail in "standard mode", but at least email-checking works.
They just want to block government provided free wireless, not all free wireless.
That's true, and I forgot to acknowledge that part. My bad...
I still think it's a bad idea to prevent municipalities from running "free" wifi though.
From the rest of your post, I have to assume you think that's a good thing.
Well, generally, you're right. I'd much prefer to let the market sort out the issue of "free" wi-fi.
But I have far-less problem with local governments implementing openly-available wi-fi than my post might imply. Better that it be done at the local level than the state level; better at the state level than the federal level. Why? Because some people won't use it - and why should they be required to pay for it? It would be unfair to them that people like myself should be the primary beneficiaries of such a system... So long as it is implemented at a non-federal, and preferably non-state level, people are free to choose the cities in which they live and thus, whether or not they are to pay for "free" wifi service (there's a contradiction in terms: "pay for 'free' wifi", but that's exactly how taxes work).
If the govn't is to provide wifi service, I would suggest it be based on user fees, so as to be fair to those uninterested in paying for it. Those who want it, pay for it, those who don't, don't. But then, if govn't is going to run it like a business, then why not let a business do it instead?
I do have a shaky level of confidence in the idea that private business will invest in infrastructure-oriented services. History doesn't bode well for that problem, as infrastructure goods/services tend not to be terribly profitable during their construction (due to very high startup costs vs. very low usage/payments for that service), even if they provide clear benefits to all -- roadways, railroads, and telephone lines come immediately to mind.
That said, it's far easier to build wireless infrastructure than wired infrastructure -- which, in the telecom industry, has been the history on which this observation is based. Witness the various cellphone networks as evidence... So, at least for wifi hotspots, I don't think the case for govn't funding and/or operation is nearly as strong as for roadways, etc...
I do generally think that the government ought to provide that which the free-market has had ample opportunity to provide, but which has consistently failed to provide (which is why I'm not opposed to state-level govn't healthcare for those whom all available private insurers refuse to insure -- people with extremely-expensive pre-existing conditions, such as leukemia).
And with that in mind, I don't see a failure to provide service in the marketplace in the world of wifi yet - not by any means. My example of Panera Bread is a perfect case-in-point; open hotspots from generous private individuals serve as countless others. And those are free examples; for-profit ones exist as well, but I personally don't patronize them (T-Mobile, are you listening? I won't pay $5/hour or $30/month for rarely-used service!).
This is excellent news. Our NSA is (by design, by nature, arguably by necessity, though I would suggest our Constitutional code on treason should serve as argument against that theory) much too opaque, and anything which increases the transparency of government is a good thing, IMO.
Re:anonymous coward lobbyists are out in force her
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Free Wi-Fi Threatened?
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· Score: 1
Well, let me qualify my review with the fact that I haven't personally tried the WG511T on FreeBSD yet, although, it's looking likely that I'm going to install FBSD over my current Gentoo install (which the card works very nicely with on the 2.6.x kernel series).
So I might be testing the card w/ FBSD myself over the next few days...
Thanks for posting this. Knowing that Rauschenberger is putting this bill forth makes my blood boil, in part b/c I actually voted for him in the U.S. Senate primary (he didn't win, as you may recall). I thought he was more reasonable than this. He seemed like the "least-bad" of the bunch, but this bill makes me think we had yet-another bad basket of apples... All in a year's work for IL politics I suppose.
I'm not a big fan of municipally-provided wifi, as I don't see it as a legitimate function of any government, but if a municipality wants it, then I don't see why they ought not pay for it themselves to get it. As long as I have the freedom to move away from the community, should I decide I don't like it (and in truth, I wouldn't be that bothered), then it's tolerable.
Given this issue, I may consider writing my state senator for the first time...
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Translation: "if we didn't define the function here in the Constitution, then it is not a Federal-level duty of the government, and therefore, any other duty you wish to enact must be done at no higher than the state level."
So yes, if your state's constitution does not forbid public wireless via a similar clause remanding the government's powers down to lower levels, you could in fact have a socialized state-level "free" (ha ha) wireless access.
But your understanding of the Constitution is clearly in deficit (and no, the General Welfare clause does not permit it either, as even James Madison pointed out in Federalist 41).
Slashdot Mirror
Well, dual-licensing is definitely confusing. I guess the solution to that problem is to hire lawyers who write less-confusing licenses...
I've always thought the distinction between "non-commercial" and "commercial" purposes was clear enough though. That is, if you intend to use some software for use in a commercial (i.e. for business) manner, then one license applies, but if not, then the other license applies.
So, say you download Debian and KDE and use it on 5 different boxes at home. That'd be a non-commercial use, so it'd be free (in my world anyway).
But if you do the same thing and use Debian and KDE at work, then you would owe TT money, because you're using it for business purposes, i.e., for commerce, i.e., to make a profit.
If Redhat sells a SAN solution and uses KDE, then they would owe TT money because they're using it for commercial purposes (to sell TT's code to somebody else). Then the question is "how does the TT license replicate to other people?" i.e., does TT's license apply to you after being filtered through Redhat? IANAL, but I guess that would depend on what Redhat outlines in their own license agreement to you (i.e. they may have agreements w/ TT and other companies that say Redhat's customers can do whatever they want, nullifying TT's license. But probably not, and if not, then you'd be bound by TT's license).
Same applies for SuSE or other redistributors of TT's code...
At least, that's how I would see it. YMMV. *shrug*
You're right, they don't automatically gravitate towards products with the lowest cost. But look at the history of almost any product: the trend is that consumers want "more for less" - more product for less money, for normal goods.
Why else would rebates be so popular? Why else would auto manufacturers have sales and 0% financing offers? Why else would people clip coupons for when they go to the grocery store? These are all because the price of the product matters.
You mention bottled water. People do indeed pay silly amounts of money for what amounts to the same water they get out of their tap. What bottled water amounts to is a "luxury good" - a good that (supposedly) provides more utility for the buyer, at a higher price than can be found elsewhere in the market.
In the case of bottled water, the problem is that there is no "perfect knowledge" or "perfect information" about the product -- many people genuinely *believe* that bottled water really is cleaner and tastier than what comes out of their tap. And in some less-developed countries (e.g. Mexico), they're generally right... But here in the U.S., the difference is slight, at best; in fact, I remember hearing about one test somebody did where they were filling up bottles of water behind a restaurant with a garden hose, and selling them to the customers inside. Some of the customers remarked "wow, I can really taste a difference!" But when they found out that the bottles were being filled with a garden hose 50' away, they were a bit ashamed that their perception was wrong.
You analogize the situation to Windows. Windows has a similar problem -- imperfect information. Many people, if they knew about Linux at all and were competent enough to define their needs and determine whether Linux could be used to fulfill those needs, *could* switch to Linux.
But most people, even now, if they've heard of Linux at all, then all the know is that "it's a really stable OS competing against Windows" or something similar. They don't know how to install it or use it, and given that Linux can't run most of the less-common Windows apps people want to run (and yes, this includes BonziBuddy and other spyware, in some cases), there's little inclination for many people to switch.
The compatibility problem is the same one faced by Apple since the 1980s -- imperfect compatibility with Windows. That's the same reason most businesses still run Windows as well.
But businesses are wising up, realizing that most of their desktop uses can be fulfilled on a Linux desktop, and slowly but surely, more and more companies are making the switch. Users, in turn, will begin slowly switching afterwards as well, in order to maintain compatibility with their apps at work (unless they're using Win32/Linux cross-platform stuff, which is also possible).
Yours wasn't a perfect analogy (but it was a pretty reasonable one), because the Windows/Linux divide is a far more complex problem than the bottled water/tap water divide; there are lots more factors as to why people don't use Linux than why people don't drink more tap water...
Value is often perception; just look at the dot-com bullshit boom of the late 1990s. Over-valued companies as far as the eye could see.
That doesn't refute my point that if somebody is giving away their work for free, that their time isn't worth anything. I'm paying nothing for somebody else's work, th
That is true, I forgot to mention their hosting of some projects.
:) I'll give particular praise for their development and hosting of Cygwin, at least...
Credit where credit is due -- they deserve praise for the hosting they do.
Re: the GPL:
I'm well-aware of the consequences of the GPL. The GPL, in summary, allows the end-user the right to use the GPL'd software in whatever way they want internal to their person/business. No source code release is required in this case, but the license doesn't forbid it either.
You're also free to redistribute unmodified binaries and/or unmodified source as you so choose, so long as either the license is GPL-compatible, is the original GPL license included with the software, or the new license does not impose further restrictions on recipients.
Where the GPL's sticking point comes into play is with modified code. If the modifications are used internally to one's person/business, one is free to use them as they please, and they don't have to be released to anybody.
But if the binaries are to be redistributed outside of one's person/business, then the source code for those modifications must be made available for a minimum of 3 years at no greater charge than the cost of distribution (bandwidth, CDs + shipping, etc.).
It is for this reason, as you note, that the GPL helps "comodize" (sp; try "commoditize") the product of software. I don't think I ever disputed that, nor did I ever say the GPL was a bad license...
Re: Redhat:
I never said Redhat has produced nothing at all; indeed, I listed some (Bluecurve, RPM, and kernel tweaks. They've also contributed to Cygwin, IIRC, at least in funding it, which is significant).
My point was that relative to the software made available to the community by the community of developers, Redhat's contributions back to it are pretty minor. That shouldn't come as too much of a shock, given that Redhat cannot employ anywhere nearly as many developers themselves as contribute to OSS from around the world of their own volition; Redhat simply *cannot* contribute a relatively-large amount by virtue of the cost of developer labor.
I also don't believe I ever said they were under obligation to provide anything back to the community, nor should they be (except as bound by the terms of whatever licenses of whatever software they choose to include with their distro).
I admit I mis-spoke when I said they "appropriated" peoples' work (I had a slightly-off definition of the word "appropriated" in mind when I wrote that) -- I'll grant you that much, and for that, I do apologize. That wasn't quite an accurate term -- "copied" is certainly safer. Regardless though, you can't deny the fact that most of the software they sell was not written by Redhat, it was written by other members of the community.
Then again, more power to them for it. If they can make money off the good nature of some people voluntarily giving away their own work, so be it; I'm not arguing for their demise. My whole point in all this, to be relevant to the original question, is that OSS developers are, in a way, committing suicide, or at least are working for free at the profit of somebody else, which seems backasswards to me.
It's obviously a very arguable point, and I don't hold it as a tautology (I think there are plenty of cases in which writing OSS is a very good thing for people -- basically any library you can think of seems like a good example to me, as it allows people to build off of fundamental software components), but I think maybe the trend here is for OSS developers to go running off a cliff, like lemmings, rather than stopping at the edge and asking, "OK, should I jump, or should I find an easier way down that doesn't kill me?"
Take it for what you will; I have a feeling your knee has jerked too hard to understand my point...
LOL...
LOL, I am *far* from a god-worshipper. I'm personally an agnostic, borderlining on being an athiest.
He is merely making historical references, and the Bible, rightly or wrongly, is an historical text, regardless of the inaccuracies or made-up nonsense contained within it.
The rest of the article, IIRC, relates more to modern economics and much less to the Bible, FYI...
Indeed, TrollTech is IMO the very best example of a successful OSS company I can think of. They do purely development and support, and they make money off of both.
However, I would argue that the reason they make that money is because they have smartly found a niche that encourages it - writing libraries that everybody wants to use. And, of course, they do what I would suggest to would-be OSS developement companies -- dual licensing.
IMO, dual licensing is key to OSS. For non-commercial purposes, one is basically free to do what they want (or it's licensed under GPL, whatever). But for commercial purposes, the license becomes more restrictive and demanding of money.
TrollTech really is probably the model the OSS community should look towards...
Repeat after me: open-source software is not a business model, it is a softare development model.
The blunt fact is that in IT, there are really 2 classes of people: users, and developers. This is fully analogous to any other industry, where you have a consumer (users) and a producer (developers).
The users -- everybody from sysadmins and netadmins, on down to the secretary using her Office apps -- do not write code. They do not contribute anything beyond bug reports to OSS. Hence, their personal stake in the price of software is simply to get the cheapest software that will do the job. Given that OSS is free as in beer, users will naturally gravitate towards it and promote it. Just as in college, where there is free beer, there are students lined up around the block to get a drink.
Then there are developers -- the software engineers and programmers. They *do* write code; that is their job. They contribute more than bug reports to OSS; they contribute the very code that is required to build the apps that the users use. The trouble for developers is that OSS, by not charging a fee for the time spent developing, makes the value of developers' time equal $0. Time = money, and if money = $, then time = $0 as well.
When applied as a business model, that is how OSS works; there is no escaping this fundamental economic analysis. You cannot very long sell a product at a non-zero monetary sum that which one can get at zero monetary cost to themselves.
Thus, the only way OSS can survive in the business environment is if the developers are working for a company which has some other revenue stream then -- be it support services for the code they write if they are a software company, be it some other service if it is a non-software service business (e.g. a marketing firm, law firm, etc.), or be it some tangible, physical good (e.g. in any hardware company, car manufacturer, grocer, etc.).
It's an opportunity for creativity in business models to try and incorporate OSS into their business functionality, but from the developer's perspective, it's important to recognize this fact: because you are writing software which is being given away for free, your work is not directly making money for the company. Because your work is not directly making money for the company, you will be seen as "dead weight" in the company. Because you are seen as dead weight, you will have a hard time justifying your employment with management unless you can determine, clearly, how your work saved time somebody else in the company, or how your work drew in more customers for the company, or how your work generated more service contracts, and so forth. If you cannot do that -- and this will be difficult (though not impossible), given that you don't work in those departments -- you face job loss.
Hence, it is generally in the best interest of developers not to write OSS. OSS coders are literally coding their way out of their own jobs.
But all of the above largely assumes software is normally otherwise a product sold to people on store shelves, when in fact, most people already write code for internal use only anyway. What about those people?
OSS is still a negative to developers in most companies, because, after all, if you are writing code that would normally be for use within your company, that is potentially a competitive advantage for your company. But if you're giving away that code, you're giving away that advantage for other companies - other competitors - to use. This is good neither for the developer, nor the company paying the developer who released the code as OSS. After all, if you employ developers who just spent 6 months writing control software for, say, a large manufacturing company, why should the company release that software to the public? So that their competitors can go out and buy the same hardware, leverage this software they did not develop (and have no intention of contributing back to), and produce the same or very simi
Sure, but did they make $38.8m off of open-source based development?
No, IBM did not. They made that money off of support, not development.
Yes, but how do they sell that open-source product?
By relying largely on the work of people working for free.
Redhat didn't write KDE, did they? Redhat didn't write the Linux kernel, did they? Redhat didn't write the GNU cmd-line applications, did they? No, as a matter of fact, they did not.
They have appropriated the work of those who have contributed their labor for free and are now selling it to businesses for hundreds of dollars a license.
And it is the same elsewhere: SuSE, Mandrake, TurboLinux (are they still around?), and so on.
So what has Redhat produced? Not used, but produced? The answer is: not much.
They've tweaked the kernel for their own purposes - but they didn't do the majority of the coding. They did write Bluecurve, but that just borrows heavily from GNOME and KDE. They created the RPM package format, which by all accounts now (though this would've been heresy 5 years ago) is garbage.
Have they created much else? Not really. So, notice that the vast majority of what they do is sell work that you, the open-source community, have written out of the good-naturedness of your own hearts.
I do not count GNU/Linux distributors as "open source companies" unless they make significant developmental contributions back to the OSS community, and in large part, they do not. That is the Linux distributors' dirty little out-in-the-open secret that nobody seems to remember...
How long until MiniMo is ported to the Zaurus 5x00/6000L on the default Sharp ROM or OPIE ROM? I'm going to venture a wild guess of "never", seeing as I'm fairly sure this would likely require a rewrite of practically all the GUI code (to use QTopia libs)...
Hey retard, even Michael Moore (noted gun hater) pointed out in Bowling for Columbine that Canada -- a separate country, not a province of the U.S. -- owns a lot of guns too (IIRC, an average of 7/10 of all households in Canada own guns). Even Michael Moore said that more guns does not lead to more crime!
Your theory that more guns leads to more crime was debunked years ago. Go back to gun-grabber school and try again.
Really? All by themselves? Bullets just go up to people and say "bang, you're dead?"
Incredible. I wonder why such a device requires no human action - some kind of "trigger" which, on the human's sole command, would "fire" the bullet from the gun in in the vector chosen by the person pulling said "trigger"...
It's hard to believe we have these bullets just doing whatever they darn well please without direction from people!
Really? All by themselves? Guns just walk up to people and say "bang, you're dead!"?
Wow, this must be like a tripped-out late-night show on Cartoon Network or something, where guns act of their own accord to kill people. You aren't watching too much "Adult Swim" by any chance, are you? That cartoon has talking fast-food items, and I think your self-aware guns that behave of their own accord without regard to human trigger-pulling would be a natural addition to the show...
Indeed. Even in economics, students are required to take a basic course in C/C++ usually, and (at my school) wind up having a working competence with SAS.
As a soon-to-be BSCS and already-completed Econ. minor, I'd say this is good advice all-around.
:(
I've worked with the programmer ideologues, and as an intern, worked *for* a programmer ideologue, writing C/C++ for a simple GUI app when a higher-level language like Java or Perl or Python would've done the trick just as well and could be implemented much more quickly.
These same programmers -- some of them have been my professors -- say ASM is still important to business. IME talking to an interviewing with several companies, that's only the case in certain specialized areas (e.g. old mainframe or embedded development); the vast majority of other companies I've talked to have literally, on multiple occasions upon reviewing my resume, told me "ASM? Why are they still teaching you ASM?! Nobody uses ASM anymore." (I just shrug and say "well, it was a requirement in the CS dept...) And even more such programmers still stick with C, no matter how prone to security holes it is or how long it takes to write an app in it vs. some higher-level language.
Neither group recognizes the fundamental "time is money" concept by which business lives and dies; it's the "I have a hammer, and everything looks like a nail" philosophy used over and over again among developers...
Of course, there are the monkeys at the opposite end, who would use C#, VB, Java, etc. for everything, even when performance *is* an issue, for which C or C++ would be more appropriate; they too fail to realize that CPU time, although generally becoming exponentially cheaper according to Moore's Law, can still matter in high-volume or heavy-computational scenarios.
The programmer ideologues simply don't recognize a practical "right tool for the job" mindset...
I personally did an Econ. minor because I find Economics interesting (and, along with physics and politics, it's one of the 3 fundamental systems I see as governing everybody's lives), and once thought about majoring in it (or double-majoring in it with CS). Even now I'm still considering going for a master's in Econ. (or IP law, if there's a law school which will take me) and possibly leaving IT (or at least applying my Econ. study to IT somehow), for a variety of reasons...
Unfortunately, I find Econ. more interesting at my school than my CS education because Economics is a much more theoretical study than CS is at my school (and I've discovered that I'm happiest studying both theory *and* its applications (whether it's in CS, physics, econ., etc.), not just its application, as is mostly the case in my CS dept. Basically, I chose the wrong school for CS), making me rather unhappy with my upcoming CS degree.
I'd like to find something that combines CS and Econ., but the closest to that ideal I've found is something along the lines of financial engineering, but I greatly doubt my math abilities would take me very far as a quant (which is why companies in the fin. eng. field tend to hire hard-science majors (physics especially) more than any other)...
Well, FYI, I tried my WG511T with FreesBIE 1.1 today. I loaded up the ath_hal driver, set my WLAN config (my 4 128bit WEP keys, etc.) did "ifconfig ath0 up" and ran dhclient.
:-/ But, if I was able to connect to diff. boxes on my LAN, then the problem almost certainly is one w/ my routing config in FBSD or on my gateway, not w/ the ath driver...
I got an IP from my router and could connect to any other host on my LAN. Seeing as FreesBIE 1.1 is based off of FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE-p2, the card should work in a normal, latest-stable FBSD install.
The caveat to my troubles was that for whatever reason, I couldn't access hosts outside my LAN, only within it. I initially thought it was the MAC filter on my WLAN router, but my MAC address is in that table and allowed through, so that wasn't the problem - and for the moment, I don't know what is...
This was all 802.11b, BTW. Haven't tried 802.11g or the 108Mbps "Super-G" modes yet (IIRC, the 108Mbps mode doesn't work yet on FBSD).
Previously, GMail complained about my use of Opera on the Zaurus (the only browser you can really use on the 6000L for now), and wouldn't let me login.
:) Still can't change my settings though - they require a "more-supported" browser for that to view GMail in "standard mode", but at least email-checking works.
Now I can check my email there.
That's true, and I forgot to acknowledge that part. My bad...
I still think it's a bad idea to prevent municipalities from running "free" wifi though.
Well, generally, you're right. I'd much prefer to let the market sort out the issue of "free" wi-fi.
But I have far-less problem with local governments implementing openly-available wi-fi than my post might imply. Better that it be done at the local level than the state level; better at the state level than the federal level. Why? Because some people won't use it - and why should they be required to pay for it? It would be unfair to them that people like myself should be the primary beneficiaries of such a system... So long as it is implemented at a non-federal, and preferably non-state level, people are free to choose the cities in which they live and thus, whether or not they are to pay for "free" wifi service (there's a contradiction in terms: "pay for 'free' wifi", but that's exactly how taxes work).
If the govn't is to provide wifi service, I would suggest it be based on user fees, so as to be fair to those uninterested in paying for it. Those who want it, pay for it, those who don't, don't. But then, if govn't is going to run it like a business, then why not let a business do it instead?
I do have a shaky level of confidence in the idea that private business will invest in infrastructure-oriented services. History doesn't bode well for that problem, as infrastructure goods/services tend not to be terribly profitable during their construction (due to very high startup costs vs. very low usage/payments for that service), even if they provide clear benefits to all -- roadways, railroads, and telephone lines come immediately to mind.
That said, it's far easier to build wireless infrastructure than wired infrastructure -- which, in the telecom industry, has been the history on which this observation is based. Witness the various cellphone networks as evidence... So, at least for wifi hotspots, I don't think the case for govn't funding and/or operation is nearly as strong as for roadways, etc...
I do generally think that the government ought to provide that which the free-market has had ample opportunity to provide, but which has consistently failed to provide (which is why I'm not opposed to state-level govn't healthcare for those whom all available private insurers refuse to insure -- people with extremely-expensive pre-existing conditions, such as leukemia).
And with that in mind, I don't see a failure to provide service in the marketplace in the world of wifi yet - not by any means. My example of Panera Bread is a perfect case-in-point; open hotspots from generous private individuals serve as countless others. And those are free examples; for-profit ones exist as well, but I personally don't patronize them (T-Mobile, are you listening? I won't pay $5/hour or $30/month for rarely-used service!).
This is excellent news. Our NSA is (by design, by nature, arguably by necessity, though I would suggest our Constitutional code on treason should serve as argument against that theory) much too opaque, and anything which increases the transparency of government is a good thing, IMO.
Well, let me qualify my review with the fact that I haven't personally tried the WG511T on FreeBSD yet, although, it's looking likely that I'm going to install FBSD over my current Gentoo install (which the card works very nicely with on the 2.6.x kernel series).
So I might be testing the card w/ FBSD myself over the next few days...
Thanks for posting this. Knowing that Rauschenberger is putting this bill forth makes my blood boil, in part b/c I actually voted for him in the U.S. Senate primary (he didn't win, as you may recall). I thought he was more reasonable than this. He seemed like the "least-bad" of the bunch, but this bill makes me think we had yet-another bad basket of apples... All in a year's work for IL politics I suppose.
I'm not a big fan of municipally-provided wifi, as I don't see it as a legitimate function of any government, but if a municipality wants it, then I don't see why they ought not pay for it themselves to get it. As long as I have the freedom to move away from the community, should I decide I don't like it (and in truth, I wouldn't be that bothered), then it's tolerable.
Given this issue, I may consider writing my state senator for the first time...
You made the same point I did in your other thread.
I really need sleep now...
Stupid copy/paste job on my part. PEBCAK.
Article 9 of the Bill of Rights:
Translation: "if we didn't define the function here in the Constitution, then it is not a Federal-level duty of the government, and therefore, any other duty you wish to enact must be done at no higher than the state level."
So yes, if your state's constitution does not forbid public wireless via a similar clause remanding the government's powers down to lower levels, you could in fact have a socialized state-level "free" (ha ha) wireless access.
But your understanding of the Constitution is clearly in deficit (and no, the General Welfare clause does not permit it either, as even James Madison pointed out in Federalist 41).