Te current myth oof the day is the gov can do good...
Exactly the opposite is true. You only need to spend some time in a place without effective government to realise that.
The (uniquely American) myth of the day is that there is no role for government in countless different areas that other societies have been fighting tooth and nail to get government to look at.
You want know what life is like when you government ceases to play a role in your life? Corruption is the first sign that things are going wrong. It becomes rampant because nobody's looking out for you, so you have to look out for yourself. People stop planning and start looking for the shortest distance between them and the next meal.
Then security starts to wane. Fewer police patrolling makes the streets less safe, so people -rightly- begin to trust one another less and less.
Then education goes into the shitter, because only the schools run by and for the wealthy are self-sustaining, and the others are staffed by teachers who have to take a second job to make ends meet, even if that means not showing up a day or two a week.
Then crime gets worse, because you get an entire generation of disaffected, unemployed, cynical and frustrated youth who stop giving a damn about you because you never gave a damn about them. They'll just as soon jack you up for your mobile as look at you.
And then it just goes spiraling down from there....
Think I'm making this up? Don't. I'm describing exactly what's happening in the developing country I'm living in. We at least have an excuse, because our government has extremely limited means. You folks in the developed world have no such luxury. So here's my advice: Stop bitching about whether government services are good, and start talking about how to make them better.
1) HTTPS gets turned off for a few hours in most of Northern Africa and the Middle East, and a few pacific islands
2) Several countries in the Middle East are experiencing unrest, therefore
3) IT MUST BE INTENTIONAL!!11
Not to take away from your argument (I agree that Hanlon's Razor applies here) but the South Pacific island nation mentioned in the Register story is Fiji, which is currently ruled military junta that regularly practices censorship and suppresses both free speech and fair journalism. Of all the nations mentioned, the only one that I saw that doesn't have a government that's anti-free-press is the Bahamas. (Congo might count, but only because it doesn't really have a functioning government.)
You're assuming the goal is wealth, rather than merely independence from the golden chains of wage slavery. For some people, there *is* such a thing as enough money.
Not really. I actually grant right up front that freedom from wage-slavery is pretty important. What I take issue with is the assumption that one can focus on the money first and then get to the important things afterwards. In my admittedly uncommon experience (I walked away from the corporate world in 2002 and have lived and worked in the developing world since then), waiting until you have the means to achieve important things leads to a lifetime of waiting.
In my home country (Canada), there was an ad campaign for a life insurance company, titled 'Freedom 55'. Its premise was that, if you work hard and save now, you'll not be too old to enjoy the benefits when they finally accrue. I always found them wryly amusing, because I was enjoying myself - fulfilling myself - already, and I was only in my thirties.
Now, I'm closer to 50 than 40. But I'm healthy, happy, with a rich and challenging home life. I do work that's demonstrably important to the development of my adopted country (and about 20 more throughout the region). In my own humble way, I've been able to assist in the development of a small but thriving society. I'm fairly well off by local standards, but if I chose, I could be much, much richer. The problem is that the time I spent chasing a secure income would be taking away from the very things that give me the greatest joy and fulfillment.
My argument, then, is: Why wait? What is so important about economic independence that it can't simply be considered one of several equally important corollaries that stem from the desire to lead an interesting life?
Google's position is extremely precarious for two reasons. First, there isn't anything that prevents the majority of its users from switching to a rival search engine.
Oh, but there is: Google is better. At least, that's the premise on which Google operates. They do what's necessary to make the Web and the Internet in general more amenable to sharing data, searching, etc. and use their engineering skills to separate themselves from the pack.
Recently, they realised that the only way they could maintain a landscape conducive to their style was to give Microsoft a kick in the pants. Hence the Chrome browser. Likewise, Apple's walled-garden approach was a threat to their long-term survival, so they created Android. The 'scorched earth' phrase is a poor one, because Google is really doing the opposite, they're opening fertile new ground in order to give the population somewhere to move.
If we absolutely need a territory-based analogy, then Microsoft is a slumlord. It didn't set out to be, but all those little ticky-tacky sheds quickly degraded and the poor roads and communications made policing difficult. Apple, on the other hand, is a city planner. It creates gated communities that offer you everything they imagine you could want, all within the perceived safety and comfort of their ivy-covered walls.
Google wants something completely different. They want an Oklahoma Land Rush - rather than seeking to contain and corral people into their own plantation (sorry), they want a generation of homesteaders. They're confident that the homesteaders will keep coming to them for materials because they believe in the quality of their engineering.
Second, the vast majority of its users cannot reach its services except by using Microsoft products. Therefore Microsoft is trying to leverage its monopoly position on the desktop and in IT to nudge people away from Google toward Bing.
Hence the need for Google to move the stakes. They're not interested in fighting over Microsoft's turf; they're interested in creating new territory. Territory that, not coincidentally, they feel confident they can dominate.
Microsoft is playing itself into a holding action. They are on the defensive, trying to hold onto what they have, and all the while people are leaving the slums for an often ragged and imperfect existence, free however from the constraints that once bound them.
None of this should be taken as an endorsement of one tactic over another. The preceding is simply an effort to explain the lay of the land.
I'd have thought striving to be independently wealthy would be an admirable goal - it's a lot easier to be a philanthropist when you don't have to worry about the roof over your head and where your next meal is coming from.
You'd have thought, but you'd have been wrong.
The pursuit and acquisition of wealth generally breeds greater stress and worry rather than less. Granted, there is a level of income below which one struggles constantly to manage even the most basic aspects of daily living.
Having lived on both sides of the divide, I can say with some assurance that living in poverty is debilitating, but so is significant wealth.
The one lesson of any value I've learned is that if you're really serious about helping others (or helping make important things happen), you're doing it already. Opportunities tend to look for people willing to accept them. You don't have to be rich or powerful to achieve important things. Most of the time, you'll find yourself pitted against the rich and powerful - at least you will if what you're doing represents any sort of change. Even then, there are always influential allies to be found. Put in enough hours, demonstrate - no, prove - your abilities and Good Things do happen.
But here's the catch. To do so is to accept uncertainty and risk as your constant companions. You are guaranteed to fail more than you succeed. Every victory, save a very choice few, will be temporary or mitigated by compromise. Your own needs and satisfaction will always take second place to those of others. You'll find yourself - as I do - older, wiser, largely contented, but with very little to guarantee a contented, comfortable retirement.
All of this, of course, runs counter to the American myth of Success, where the sole measure of influence and importance is wealth. Rightly or wongly, it highlights people like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, relegating Knuth, Woz, Mohammed Younus and countless other more meritorious figures to the shadows. This is a distortion. It's not false, but it's fake.
In rare cases, wealth will accompany accomplishment, but that's not always the case, and if you let the former stand for the latter, that's all you'll have. As a wise man once said to me, 'If you go into the hills looking for gold, all you'll find is gold.'
"Considering the way they drove Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox into near oblivion with devious practices, this seems a lot like sending a valentine’s day card to your rape victim, every year."
Well, if you want to be picky about it, a closer analogy would actually be the child of the murdered parent.
And given that Mozilla is looking more and more like Inigo Montoya... yeah, I'd send cake.
If I posted a picture of you and said "my neighbor is a terrorist", shouldn't you hope that Flickr would remove it?
Not if it's a photo of me wearing a bomb vest.
Okay, jokes aside: They should not touch the photo until my lawyer has got the proper clearance from a court of law to force its removal. I'll need the evidence at the libel trial.
See, the problem is that I don't want Flickr to apply its own arbitrary sense of what is moral/ethical and what isn't - at least, not beyond a few basic unavoidable community standards (e.g. The US' bizarre taboo against nekkid bodies). More to the point, I don't want them applying the rules arbitrarily and inconsistently, as they have done here. Most to the point, I don't want to see the brutality of a 40-year-long despotic rule hidden behind a veil of false morality.
Why, I would like to know, is it easier for pipsqueaks like us to stand up to government coercion than for large corporations with a stable of capable lawyers on hand and not a fear in the world for their own safety? Of course, we already know the answer.
The CEOs of all of the world's great corporations are scaredy-cats?
Well, not to put too fine a point on it: Yes.
The column I wrote on the topic (and linked above) makes pretty much exactly this point. Once introduced to the corridors of power, people suddenly become controlled by their fear of being cast out again. This explains the corrupting influence of both Washington and Wall St.
Shame indeed. I live and work and write occasional newspaper columns in the tiny nation of Vanuatu, Last week, our Minister of Infrastructure and Public Utilities arrived in the offices of our national newspaper with a gang of 8 thugs and proceeded to beat the crap out of the publisher. His sin? Telling the truth about a litany of crooked dealings the Minister was involved in.
This prompted people from all walks of life in the Pacific Islands region to stand up and make themselves heard. The staff of the Daily Post newspaper - and contributors like myself - were defiant in the face of overt coercion and threats.
Why, I would like to know, is it easier for pipsqueaks like us to stand up to government coercion than for large corporations with a stable of capable lawyers on hand and not a fear in the world for their own safety?
It's hard to comment without knowing what we're talking about. If those were pictures of people being tortured, then if you were one of those people would you want your suffering and humiliation shown around the world? There are ways of getting the word out without harming the torture victims again.
On the other hand if the faces were blurred, or the photos were just of implements of torture, than I don't see the need to remove them.
They were photos of the torturers themselves. All you had to do was visit the guy's site to find this out. But now that you know, how tough does the call feel to you?
I don't see anywhere where the person you are bitching at says they use GPL code.
Fine. 'Copyleft'. Which, not coincidentally, is 99% GPL.
He says it is poison, so I assume that means he doesn't use it.
So how, then, is it expensive to him? How is it poisonous if he didn't take it?
See, the problem I have here is not that people don't like the license. It's that they seem to imply that it's costly. But we all know this is code for 'it's poisonous to me when you use the GPL because it takes away another opportunity for rent-seeking behaviour on my part.'
The vast majority of businesses profit from GPL (and yes, all the other copyleft) software, because software is a cost centre. For the few who treat software as a product, then yeah, commoditisation is a bitch. But you know what? I'll say the same thing to them as I say to telcos and the entertainment industry: Your business environment is changing. Adapt or die.
As far as your other asinine assertions, yes, I am sure Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, Oracle, IBM, SAP, BEA, etc would all be the corporations they are today if they gave away their source code. Clearly, giving your source code away costs you nothing.
Dude, IBM, Apple and, to a much lesser degree, Microsoft do give away significant chunks of their source code. So I guess they would be the corporations they are today... because they, uh, are.
To be honest, it's FAR easier to comply with proprietary licenses because they don't have all the political baggage behind them.
Would it kill you to explain what 'political baggage' is, in your opinion, and why it's more draconian than, for example, the non-compete and non-disclosure clauses that come with the majority of commercial licenses?
Seriously: I'd like to know exactly what part of the GPL is 'political', in your opinion. There is a philosophical reason for the license, it's true, that says, 'share and share alike'. But that's not 'political'. It's certainly no more 'political' than contract law, which exerts a comparable pull in the opposite direction (i.e. 'do NOT share this with others, except under these terms and conditions....').
... Or are you just using the word 'political' to mean 'a philosophical viewpoint that I don't share'? (Or, more to the point, 'a philosophical viewpoint that is unfamiliar to me, and therefore scary'?) I'm fine with people disagreeing with the tenets of the GPL. I just wish they'd stop pretending that software commercialism isn't just as rife with philosophical assumptions as the GPL.
For some of us, copyleft code is, by far, the most expensive code there is. In fact, it's pretty much poison.
What?!?
Explain, please, in 300 words or less, how using GPL software costs you money.
And no, opportunity cost does not count as costing you money. It wasn't your code to begin with, so you haven't lost money because you can't treat it as if it were. (That would be what a lot of software capitalists call 'Piracy'.)
And no, you don't lose money because someone else improved on your code. Other people got to benefit from your labour, but you get to benefit from theirs as well. It's quid pro quo all the way down.
And no, losing your customers to Johnny-come-lately competitors is not theft. It's perfectly fair. It's called competition. You don't have some innate God-given right to customers. You have to earn them every day. And if your customers are willing to drop you at the first opportunity, you've got more problems with your business than the GPL.
And no, having to maintain and provide source code to your customers is neither expensive nor 'poisonous'. If you're not maintaining your source code well, then that's the fish you have to fry - it's a problem with your processes, not with the GPL.
So remind me once again: How is the GPL poisonous, except insofar as it makes life difficult for rent-seeking leeches? How is sharing willingly and openly costing you money?
Why bother with microwave links, cables, mountains, etc. when you can drop a few hundred satellite modems with wifi. I guess they have satellite dishes already, all they need are a modem and an omnidirectional antenna in each neighborhood.
BINGO
More importantly, modern VSAT equipment is moderately portable (e.g. in a small vehicle). You can break it down in about 10 minutes and set it up again in about 20. Perfect for the rebel/journalist/activist on the move. You can buy complete systems (dish, modem, switches, software etc.) for less than US$5000.00. Add a couple/three 12 dBi wifi panels and you can service a fairly large area, depending on your location. Power requirements are low enough that you could run most of it from the battery of the truck you're transporting it on.
(Yeah, I've looked into this stuff in the past while doing consulting work in the developing world....)
If you could organize a union without seniority rules, and with the ability to pay more to high performers and less to weak performers, and with the ability to layoff whomever you thought would provide the most cost savings, I might join. But then I'm not sure what that union would be negotiating.
Well, maybe they'd be negotiating for the protection of workers' rights against silly 'I own all the fruits of your labour' clauses in employment contracts, which is what started this thread in the first place.
Serious question: Why is it that the appearance of certain words and phrases (like 'union', 'socialism', 'global warming' and 'president') suddenly remove the ability to think rationally?
(I am now guaranteed at least one response complaining about the madness, the unreasoning incoherence of the other side, complete with demonising language and coupled with utter blindness to the merits of any potential counter-argument. It will also be devoid of any insight into the irony of the response.)
I suggest Jamaica or perhaps Tahiti, plenty of beaches and sun.
Well, Tahiti, the nation that gave the world the coconut bra, is full of French people, a society that knowingly, deliberately aided and abetted Jerry Lewis' decades-long spree of crimes against comedy....
As a douche, I am also very offended at being likened to the scum at PayPal, you insensitive clod!
That's anti-algae-ism at its worst! How dare you associate the soul-less hacks at PayPal to perfectly respectable single-celled organisms! signed The Pond Scum Anti-Defamation League
Paypal is a private entity. Unfortunately, it's not doing anything illegal or unconstitutional, as far as I can tell, by choosing not to do business with someone.
Indeed. The question is not whether PayPal has the right to do this. They most assuredly do.
The question is whether PayPal management are, collectively, acting like the most retarded douches ever in the history of online finance. Once again, they most assuredly are.
(My apologies to any retards who might be offended by the comparison.)
Slashdot Mirror
Te current myth oof the day is the gov can do good...
Exactly the opposite is true. You only need to spend some time in a place without effective government to realise that.
The (uniquely American) myth of the day is that there is no role for government in countless different areas that other societies have been fighting tooth and nail to get government to look at.
You want know what life is like when you government ceases to play a role in your life? Corruption is the first sign that things are going wrong. It becomes rampant because nobody's looking out for you, so you have to look out for yourself. People stop planning and start looking for the shortest distance between them and the next meal.
Then security starts to wane. Fewer police patrolling makes the streets less safe, so people -rightly- begin to trust one another less and less.
Then education goes into the shitter, because only the schools run by and for the wealthy are self-sustaining, and the others are staffed by teachers who have to take a second job to make ends meet, even if that means not showing up a day or two a week.
Then crime gets worse, because you get an entire generation of disaffected, unemployed, cynical and frustrated youth who stop giving a damn about you because you never gave a damn about them. They'll just as soon jack you up for your mobile as look at you.
And then it just goes spiraling down from there....
Think I'm making this up? Don't. I'm describing exactly what's happening in the developing country I'm living in. We at least have an excuse, because our government has extremely limited means. You folks in the developed world have no such luxury. So here's my advice: Stop bitching about whether government services are good, and start talking about how to make them better.
1) HTTPS gets turned off for a few hours in most of Northern Africa and the Middle East, and a few pacific islands 2) Several countries in the Middle East are experiencing unrest, therefore 3) IT MUST BE INTENTIONAL!!11
Not to take away from your argument (I agree that Hanlon's Razor applies here) but the South Pacific island nation mentioned in the Register story is Fiji, which is currently ruled military junta that regularly practices censorship and suppresses both free speech and fair journalism. Of all the nations mentioned, the only one that I saw that doesn't have a government that's anti-free-press is the Bahamas. (Congo might count, but only because it doesn't really have a functioning government.)
Can't you just say "Who watches the watchers?" like a normal person?
Quid?
Eat it!
This is McAfee we're talking about. You're looking at the wrong end of the dog.
You're assuming the goal is wealth, rather than merely independence from the golden chains of wage slavery. For some people, there *is* such a thing as enough money.
Not really. I actually grant right up front that freedom from wage-slavery is pretty important. What I take issue with is the assumption that one can focus on the money first and then get to the important things afterwards. In my admittedly uncommon experience (I walked away from the corporate world in 2002 and have lived and worked in the developing world since then), waiting until you have the means to achieve important things leads to a lifetime of waiting.
In my home country (Canada), there was an ad campaign for a life insurance company, titled 'Freedom 55'. Its premise was that, if you work hard and save now, you'll not be too old to enjoy the benefits when they finally accrue. I always found them wryly amusing, because I was enjoying myself - fulfilling myself - already, and I was only in my thirties.
Now, I'm closer to 50 than 40. But I'm healthy, happy, with a rich and challenging home life. I do work that's demonstrably important to the development of my adopted country (and about 20 more throughout the region). In my own humble way, I've been able to assist in the development of a small but thriving society. I'm fairly well off by local standards, but if I chose, I could be much, much richer. The problem is that the time I spent chasing a secure income would be taking away from the very things that give me the greatest joy and fulfillment.
My argument, then, is: Why wait? What is so important about economic independence that it can't simply be considered one of several equally important corollaries that stem from the desire to lead an interesting life?
Oh, but there is: Google is better. At least, that's the premise on which Google operates. They do what's necessary to make the Web and the Internet in general more amenable to sharing data, searching, etc. and use their engineering skills to separate themselves from the pack.
Recently, they realised that the only way they could maintain a landscape conducive to their style was to give Microsoft a kick in the pants. Hence the Chrome browser. Likewise, Apple's walled-garden approach was a threat to their long-term survival, so they created Android. The 'scorched earth' phrase is a poor one, because Google is really doing the opposite, they're opening fertile new ground in order to give the population somewhere to move.
If we absolutely need a territory-based analogy, then Microsoft is a slumlord. It didn't set out to be, but all those little ticky-tacky sheds quickly degraded and the poor roads and communications made policing difficult. Apple, on the other hand, is a city planner. It creates gated communities that offer you everything they imagine you could want, all within the perceived safety and comfort of their ivy-covered walls.
Google wants something completely different. They want an Oklahoma Land Rush - rather than seeking to contain and corral people into their own plantation (sorry), they want a generation of homesteaders. They're confident that the homesteaders will keep coming to them for materials because they believe in the quality of their engineering.
Hence the need for Google to move the stakes. They're not interested in fighting over Microsoft's turf; they're interested in creating new territory. Territory that, not coincidentally, they feel confident they can dominate.
Microsoft is playing itself into a holding action. They are on the defensive, trying to hold onto what they have, and all the while people are leaving the slums for an often ragged and imperfect existence, free however from the constraints that once bound them.
None of this should be taken as an endorsement of one tactic over another. The preceding is simply an effort to explain the lay of the land.
I'd have thought striving to be independently wealthy would be an admirable goal - it's a lot easier to be a philanthropist when you don't have to worry about the roof over your head and where your next meal is coming from.
You'd have thought, but you'd have been wrong.
The pursuit and acquisition of wealth generally breeds greater stress and worry rather than less. Granted, there is a level of income below which one struggles constantly to manage even the most basic aspects of daily living.
Having lived on both sides of the divide, I can say with some assurance that living in poverty is debilitating, but so is significant wealth.
The one lesson of any value I've learned is that if you're really serious about helping others (or helping make important things happen), you're doing it already. Opportunities tend to look for people willing to accept them. You don't have to be rich or powerful to achieve important things. Most of the time, you'll find yourself pitted against the rich and powerful - at least you will if what you're doing represents any sort of change. Even then, there are always influential allies to be found. Put in enough hours, demonstrate - no, prove - your abilities and Good Things do happen.
But here's the catch. To do so is to accept uncertainty and risk as your constant companions. You are guaranteed to fail more than you succeed. Every victory, save a very choice few, will be temporary or mitigated by compromise. Your own needs and satisfaction will always take second place to those of others. You'll find yourself - as I do - older, wiser, largely contented, but with very little to guarantee a contented, comfortable retirement.
All of this, of course, runs counter to the American myth of Success, where the sole measure of influence and importance is wealth. Rightly or wongly, it highlights people like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, relegating Knuth, Woz, Mohammed Younus and countless other more meritorious figures to the shadows. This is a distortion. It's not false, but it's fake.
In rare cases, wealth will accompany accomplishment, but that's not always the case, and if you let the former stand for the latter, that's all you'll have. As a wise man once said to me, 'If you go into the hills looking for gold, all you'll find is gold.'
I love it when a pacific island lights up.
Sorry, that was me. I've been upgrading some of the desktops at the University of the South Pacific campus here in Vanuatu.
"Considering the way they drove Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox into near oblivion with devious practices, this seems a lot like sending a valentine’s day card to your rape victim, every year."
Well, if you want to be picky about it, a closer analogy would actually be the child of the murdered parent.
And given that Mozilla is looking more and more like Inigo Montoya... yeah, I'd send cake.
Not if it's a photo of me wearing a bomb vest.
Okay, jokes aside: They should not touch the photo until my lawyer has got the proper clearance from a court of law to force its removal. I'll need the evidence at the libel trial.
See, the problem is that I don't want Flickr to apply its own arbitrary sense of what is moral/ethical and what isn't - at least, not beyond a few basic unavoidable community standards (e.g. The US' bizarre taboo against nekkid bodies). More to the point, I don't want them applying the rules arbitrarily and inconsistently, as they have done here. Most to the point, I don't want to see the brutality of a 40-year-long despotic rule hidden behind a veil of false morality.
Why, I would like to know, is it easier for pipsqueaks like us to stand up to government coercion than for large corporations with a stable of capable lawyers on hand and not a fear in the world for their own safety? Of course, we already know the answer.
The CEOs of all of the world's great corporations are scaredy-cats?
Well, not to put too fine a point on it: Yes.
The column I wrote on the topic (and linked above) makes pretty much exactly this point. Once introduced to the corridors of power, people suddenly become controlled by their fear of being cast out again. This explains the corrupting influence of both Washington and Wall St.
Shame on you Flickr....
Shame indeed. I live and work and write occasional newspaper columns in the tiny nation of Vanuatu, Last week, our Minister of Infrastructure and Public Utilities arrived in the offices of our national newspaper with a gang of 8 thugs and proceeded to beat the crap out of the publisher. His sin? Telling the truth about a litany of crooked dealings the Minister was involved in.
This prompted people from all walks of life in the Pacific Islands region to stand up and make themselves heard. The staff of the Daily Post newspaper - and contributors like myself - were defiant in the face of overt coercion and threats.
Why, I would like to know, is it easier for pipsqueaks like us to stand up to government coercion than for large corporations with a stable of capable lawyers on hand and not a fear in the world for their own safety?
Of course, we already know the answer.
It's hard to comment without knowing what we're talking about. If those were pictures of people being tortured, then if you were one of those people would you want your suffering and humiliation shown around the world? There are ways of getting the word out without harming the torture victims again.
On the other hand if the faces were blurred, or the photos were just of implements of torture, than I don't see the need to remove them.
They were photos of the torturers themselves. All you had to do was visit the guy's site to find this out. But now that you know, how tough does the call feel to you?
I don't see anywhere where the person you are bitching at says they use GPL code.
Fine. 'Copyleft'. Which, not coincidentally, is 99% GPL.
He says it is poison, so I assume that means he doesn't use it.
So how, then, is it expensive to him? How is it poisonous if he didn't take it?
See, the problem I have here is not that people don't like the license. It's that they seem to imply that it's costly. But we all know this is code for 'it's poisonous to me when you use the GPL because it takes away another opportunity for rent-seeking behaviour on my part.'
The vast majority of businesses profit from GPL (and yes, all the other copyleft) software, because software is a cost centre. For the few who treat software as a product, then yeah, commoditisation is a bitch. But you know what? I'll say the same thing to them as I say to telcos and the entertainment industry: Your business environment is changing. Adapt or die.
As far as your other asinine assertions, yes, I am sure Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, Oracle, IBM, SAP, BEA, etc would all be the corporations they are today if they gave away their source code. Clearly, giving your source code away costs you nothing.
Dude, IBM, Apple and, to a much lesser degree, Microsoft do give away significant chunks of their source code. So I guess they would be the corporations they are today... because they, uh, are.
To be honest, it's FAR easier to comply with proprietary licenses because they don't have all the political baggage behind them.
Would it kill you to explain what 'political baggage' is, in your opinion, and why it's more draconian than, for example, the non-compete and non-disclosure clauses that come with the majority of commercial licenses?
Seriously: I'd like to know exactly what part of the GPL is 'political', in your opinion. There is a philosophical reason for the license, it's true, that says, 'share and share alike'. But that's not 'political'. It's certainly no more 'political' than contract law, which exerts a comparable pull in the opposite direction (i.e. 'do NOT share this with others, except under these terms and conditions....').
... Or are you just using the word 'political' to mean 'a philosophical viewpoint that I don't share'? (Or, more to the point, 'a philosophical viewpoint that is unfamiliar to me, and therefore scary'?) I'm fine with people disagreeing with the tenets of the GPL. I just wish they'd stop pretending that software commercialism isn't just as rife with philosophical assumptions as the GPL.
For some of us, copyleft code is, by far, the most expensive code there is. In fact, it's pretty much poison.
What?!?
Explain, please, in 300 words or less, how using GPL software costs you money.
And no, opportunity cost does not count as costing you money. It wasn't your code to begin with, so you haven't lost money because you can't treat it as if it were. (That would be what a lot of software capitalists call 'Piracy'.)
And no, you don't lose money because someone else improved on your code. Other people got to benefit from your labour, but you get to benefit from theirs as well. It's quid pro quo all the way down.
And no, losing your customers to Johnny-come-lately competitors is not theft. It's perfectly fair. It's called competition. You don't have some innate God-given right to customers. You have to earn them every day. And if your customers are willing to drop you at the first opportunity, you've got more problems with your business than the GPL.
And no, having to maintain and provide source code to your customers is neither expensive nor 'poisonous'. If you're not maintaining your source code well, then that's the fish you have to fry - it's a problem with your processes, not with the GPL.
So remind me once again: How is the GPL poisonous, except insofar as it makes life difficult for rent-seeking leeches? How is sharing willingly and openly costing you money?
Why bother with microwave links, cables, mountains, etc. when you can drop a few hundred satellite modems with wifi. I guess they have satellite dishes already, all they need are a modem and an omnidirectional antenna in each neighborhood.
BINGO
More importantly, modern VSAT equipment is moderately portable (e.g. in a small vehicle). You can break it down in about 10 minutes and set it up again in about 20. Perfect for the rebel/journalist/activist on the move. You can buy complete systems (dish, modem, switches, software etc.) for less than US$5000.00. Add a couple/three 12 dBi wifi panels and you can service a fairly large area, depending on your location. Power requirements are low enough that you could run most of it from the battery of the truck you're transporting it on.
(Yeah, I've looked into this stuff in the past while doing consulting work in the developing world....)
I've used ie6-upgrade-warning for some of my projects.
It's quite obnoxious, and usually gets the job done.
Obnoxious? I won't be happy until MS hosts the site at www.sorryforfuckingupyourinternetforadecade.com
What is more open than goatse?
URL: open.org/asm
For bonus points, code it in Assembler./pu
Will you lot stop mumbling. I can't make out what you're tolkien about.
Pay no attention to him. He's just Tolkien out his arse.
While you were posting this, I was drinking a Tim Horton's coffee.
Well in that case you've been punished enough.
If you could organize a union without seniority rules, and with the ability to pay more to high performers and less to weak performers, and with the ability to layoff whomever you thought would provide the most cost savings, I might join. But then I'm not sure what that union would be negotiating.
Well, maybe they'd be negotiating for the protection of workers' rights against silly 'I own all the fruits of your labour' clauses in employment contracts, which is what started this thread in the first place.
Serious question: Why is it that the appearance of certain words and phrases (like 'union', 'socialism', 'global warming' and 'president') suddenly remove the ability to think rationally?
(I am now guaranteed at least one response complaining about the madness, the unreasoning incoherence of the other side, complete with demonising language and coupled with utter blindness to the merits of any potential counter-argument. It will also be devoid of any insight into the irony of the response.)
I suggest Jamaica or perhaps Tahiti, plenty of beaches and sun.
Well, Tahiti, the nation that gave the world the coconut bra, is full of French people, a society that knowingly, deliberately aided and abetted Jerry Lewis' decades-long spree of crimes against comedy....
Lock and load, boys. IT'S WOOOOOAAAAARRRRRR!
As a douche, I am also very offended at being likened to the scum at PayPal, you insensitive clod!
That's anti-algae-ism at its worst! How dare you associate the soul-less hacks at PayPal to perfectly respectable single-celled organisms!
signed
The Pond Scum Anti-Defamation League
Paypal is a private entity. Unfortunately, it's not doing anything illegal or unconstitutional, as far as I can tell, by choosing not to do business with someone.
Indeed. The question is not whether PayPal has the right to do this. They most assuredly do.
The question is whether PayPal management are, collectively, acting like the most retarded douches ever in the history of online finance. Once again, they most assuredly are.
(My apologies to any retards who might be offended by the comparison.)