See, when you make humourous reference to Maxwell, the joke and the punchline are effortlessly sorted into the right order. With Schrodinger jokes, on the other hand, you never know whether it's going to be funny or not until you tell it, and by then it's too late.
Is there really? What is the difference, for sake of argument? Pirating is X while sharing mp3 files with strangers via bit torrent is Y. What are X and Y and how are they different?
One is an crime, the other is an activity.
Example: I publish all my photos online under a Creative Commons License (Attribution, Share-Alike, for what it's worth). If you take a copy of a photo and post it on your own site, saying, 'I got this photo from Imagicity, I'm perfectly cool with that. But if - and this happens often enough - you take the photo and you either pretend it's yours or you don't say where you got it, I send you a polite notice saying, 'You're not abiding by the license. Please do so.'
If you keep ignoring me, I'll force you to take it down using whatever legal and technical means are at my disposal. I like sharing my work, but it's not going to generate much work for me if people don't know took the photo in the first place.
So: Both activities consist of sharing someone else's files over the Internet. The second infringes my grant of copyright, the first does not. That's because the infraction consists, not of sharing the file, but of willfully ignoring the terms under which file sharing is allowed.
So-called Content Publishers like to conflate these two acts into one, because it allows them to create exactly the confusion that you're experiencing, which in turn allows them to lobby everyone and his dog, asking to make this behaviour illegal. That would make life much simpler for them, because it would allow them to continue doing business as they always have done.
Unfortunately, actual creators like me prefer to leverage the freely shareable nature of digital file formats in a different way. We encourage people to make the best possible use of technology in order to build recognition and popularity. This is turn creates a market for our work where none existed before.
And that's why I'm willing to spend 15 minutes of my time composing a thoughtful reply to your question, while the *AA and their international cohorts spend millions calling my business model THEFT and PIRACY, all in caps and punctuated by elevenses.
Means they can break into people's houses to conduct illegal searches without recourse?
And kidnap Americans, to take them across the border, for interrogation, also without judicial recourse?
Doesn't it?
Yes, that's right. It also gives them special X-Ray Vision, which allows them to see hot chicks nekkid in their clothes, as well as giving them their own drive-through lane and allowing them to bowl free on Wednesdays.
But that's not all it does. President Obama has also exempted them from the laws of thermodynamics, so it won't be long before mustachioed INTERPOL agents in their secret mountain lair will be aiming their death ray at the Pentagon while anti-grav ships hover menacingly overhead.
But wait! There's more! INTERPOL also received permission to travel in time and fuck your mother when she was still hot. So when INTERPOL comes for you, young Skywalker, before you reach for your light saber, consider that the big guy in black with the asthma problem just might be your dad.
Interpol doesn't investigate crimes, you moron. They don't have agents, they have bureaucrats who co-ordinate information sharing between police agencies. They're on the same diplomatic footing as the International Pacific Halibut Commission now, and about as dangerous.
No, actually, the fishing commissions are far more dangerous than INTERPOL. See Canada's infamous Turbot War with the Spanish for a recent example. Shots fired! Ships seized! Speeches made!
Yes, I'm being silly, but this whole tempest in a teapot over INTERPOL (which really is probably one of the more innocuous international agencies around) is silly to begin with.
It's satire. Bono's tongue is so deep in his cheek he's practically gnawing it off. Go read the piece in question.
Er, no, it's really not satirical.
Bono's trying to be witty, that's true, but what results is something the Flying Karamazov Brothers like to call a 'Joke-Like Phrase': It has all the elements of a joke, but it's just not funny.
I'll accept that there's a fine line between making a mockery of oneself and actual satire, but in this case, Bono has managed to take a strong stand alongside the idiots.
Besides, I happen to watch for unusual stuff like SSL sessions open for long periods of time to address ranges belonging to cable modems and Verizon DSL subnets. Had a guy last month get fired for other reasons, and reviewing the logs and seeing that he was trying to tunnel out to his home music library simply added to the justification for firing him. He was a dipshit and has no recourse as we threatened him with a federal charge of hacking govt computers by trying to install tunneling software.
Wow, you fired someone and threatened him with criminal prosecution for listening to music, and he's the dipshit?
After all, last time, all the Chinese did to warrant invasion by Britain was cut off the opium supply. (google it if doubtful.)
Your point is correct, but unintentionally so. From Wikipedia:
The Opium Wars... were the climax of trade disputes and diplomatic difficulties between China under the Qing Dynasty and the British Empire after China sought to restrict British opium traffickers.
So yes, China was blocking the supply of opium... to its own people. The British were after Chinese commodities (esp. silk) and, like the whisky traders in the Old West, found that the cheapest way to procure these goods was by hooking people on Indian Opium and retaining a monopoly on its supply. The Chinese regime, for all its many faults, was actually acting in the interests of the its people in that particular case.
I agree with you that the Opium Wars are a fascinating example of international trade leveraged via force of arms. Well worth studying in detail.
Exactly. And its really odd that Disney has been so strongly for copyright extensions yet its entire classic film library is public domain tales. Lets see, based on a Wiki list: Snow White, Pinocchio, Bambi, Cinderella, Treasure Island, Alice in Wonderland, 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, Some parts of Davie Crockett, Sleeping Beauty, Swiss Family Robinson and many, many, many, many, many other films are all based off of public domain books. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Disney_Films has a list if you would like to see)
Great list, but you missed the one that best exemplifies them: Aladdin. It provided them with a movie franchise and a business model: "New lamps for old!"
To me an "uber" programmer is one who does NOT stare quietly into space thinking "I've seen this before", but rather, without pausing to take a breath implements the algorithm as fast as he can type.
I know what you're getting at, but that's only one kind of hacker, and I think the whole point of this discussion is to accept that there are more than one kind of effective hacker.
So, just to confuse things further, let me share the following:
An online database app was suffering from disastrously slow performance. The company that had commissioned the app got three of us together and (more or less) locked us in a basement for 2 weeks in a last-ditch effort to fix things. The company's guy looked after the design issues, the DB consultant worked on the data interface itself, and I wrote up the front end.
I'm not a lightning-fast typer, but when I'm confident about the code I'm writing, I can hit 60+ words a minute without really breaking a sweat. I have always written good-quality code with few if any bugs. My DB counterpart was a laconic Scot who had cut his teeth back in the days when you had to enter the operating instructions directly into the console on the front of the computer.
He typed at a rate of about 1 character a second.
So there I was, banging away on the keyboard, whipping together objects, debugging and testing at a pretty decent rate. And here's Scotty going TAP... TAP... TAP... like a metronome set to dirge. I'd debug, review, refactor, comment and polish, and Scotty would TAP... TAP... TAP....
But about once an hour or so, he'd pause, give his code a slow perusal, then compile. His code always ran the first time.
I was astounded, but he explained that, after years of entering the entire operating environment, by hand, into the front panel of a computer, he'd learned not to make mistakes. Back then, a single typo and you'd have to start all over again.
At the end of those two weeks, Scotty and I had each produced about the same amount of functionality, each at about the same level of quality.
Ever since then, I code more slowly and debug way less.
1. Measure twice, cut once.
2. Plan for the marriage, not for the wedding.
And one which never applies: if you build it, they will come.
Etc. etc. etc.
When I saw this review, I felt a small spark of hope that someone was actually attempting to express the essence of the web to people who don't really get this stuff. Unfortunately, all we seem to have is yet another fucking cookbook for managers who lack even an iota of imagination.
I would love to see a Sun Tzu-style book, a collection of simple, pithy aphorisms that properly express the essence of a website, its dynamics and the general rules that govern it. Something similar to this brilliant summary of programming truths.
If such a beast ever did come into existence, I'd be a very happy man. If nothing else, it would allow me to end a conversation with some wild-eyed, head-in-the-clouds client by quoting the 20 words that best encapsulate why their idea is madness itself. And if that didn't work, it would be small enough that I could hit someone over the head with it without injuring them seriously.
Sometimes a huge opportunity comes along that you can't pass up. Maybe you're already full so this'll have to be on top of the existing work-load. Maybe it's a job with lots of exposure and will lead to a lot of future work that you can plan for but don't have time to staff up for at present.
IME, that situation is a company-killer. The only way to grow is to take on more work than you can handle, but you can't handle more work. The dilemma is obvious, and knowing when and how to gamble with your staff's time is a (good) manager's stock in trade.
So on those rare days when there's a genuine opportunity from which everyone stands to profit, the manager signs off on some extra hours in exchange for the likelihood of future benefits for all concerned. The manager shares the pain and the staff share the glory. If all goes well, it's a remarkably empowering event.
But all too often, managers spend their entire careers chasing jackpots like this. They throw all of the company's resources into long-shot propositions again and again, and before long the staff would as soon strangle them as look at them.
In the first example, the manager's presence is crucial for support, morale and team cohesion. In the second example, the manager's presence is toxic, but only slightly more than it already is during normal working hours.
In short, if it's clear to your team that you are equally invested in their well-being, they'll welcome you. If it's not, then you'd best not pretend that you are.
A combination of Bugzilla and Wiki.
Wiki keeps track of backlog.
Bugzilla keeps track of tasks.
If you're going down this road, then just install and configure Request Tracker. It's got great workflow management, uses email (which works for all but network-related tasks) as the primary interface and has some great reporting tools, so at the end of every month you can hand your boss a shiny little report showing just how productive you are.
For bonus points, it also stores the history of every request, so if you need to, you can also demonstrate to your boss what a prick Henderson in HR is, and that you cut off his Internet access because he didn't seem to be able to stay away from Furry sites during working hours.
Okay, seriously: RT is well-designed, well-documented and well-supported. It's got a lot of solid add-ons (which might or might not have significance for a 1 man IT dept.), and though it takes a little effort to grasp, it's remarkably rewarding in terms of simplifying your day.
I realize that we’ve successfully confused people (yes, this is a sardonic comment) by using the same name as Microsoft’s forge (codeplex.com). I regret the confusion because it has made it a bit harder to explain the Foundation to those who are already aware of the forge. We may revisit the name in future generations of the Board of Directors.
This statement doesn't make understanding his organization's relationship to microsoft any less confusing. Can anyone fluent in corporate doublespeak translate?
"Everyone is confused about who we are and what we're doing because we named ourselves after a Microsoft service that looks similar to this, but is different in subtle and important ways. The name is not going to be changed by this board of directors.
Or, if you prefer, the Evil Conspiracy version:
"We deliberately obfuscated our nature and purpose by choosing a name identical to an existing Microsoft service. It's kind of like when we supported the sock-puppet Open Document Alliance and used them to sow confusion during the run-up to the ISO vote on our so-called standard. Except in this case, we use (watch carefully, here) the CodePlex Foundation to build a reputation that rubs off on software stored in Microsoft's Codeplex repository. We build the credibility, and Microsoft publishes its own software through its service, utters the magic word 'Codeplex' and gets a pass. Given that causing confusion and dissension in the FOSS world is our goal, we don't see any particular reason to change the name to something distinctly different."
NOTE: I actually lean more toward the first translation, but the second was way more fun to write. 8^)
That took all of one second to find in an md5 lookup database. And thirty seconds for me to realize that I could have looked two lines higher to see it in plaintext next to your userid.:wallbash:
Upside: You get to keep your geek card.
Downside: You'll never survive the world outside your basement.
In other words, the price of a GPL software is completely determined by the market, since anyone with money can buy you out and re-distribute at the market price. In contrast, the price of proprietary software is less constrained by the market, which explains the fact that almost all commercial software is proprietary.
Indeed. Because no one would ever consider redistributing proprietary binary-only software at a price below what the original vendor specified.
I'd better notify the torrent trackers and the Chinese DVD vendors down the road that they're on a fool's errand.
Okay, I shouldn't make light of what you're saying. It's valid, as far as it goes. But it's entirely based on the premise that a software application is a thing to be sold. Recent experience teaches us that binary blobs are really hard to treat as things, because other people keep getting infatuated with how easy they are to copy.
And lest I rely entirely on pirates and hippies to make my case, I should point to the fact that a huge amount of proprietary software is available free of charge as well. Apparently, even our corporate masters have come to realise that selling the service is a more sustainable proposition than selling the object itself.
And even more important - most software is not ever bought or sold. It has no resale value whatsoever. It runs internal systems and derives value for the company, that's true, but it has no measurable resale value. Whether it's proprietary or GPL/BSD/My Aunt Fanny has no bearing on its value.
This is almost certainly the case with the BusyBox implementations being discussed here. Its price is only (notionally) measurable as some fraction of the hardware product - which would cost more if proprietary software were used in its place. So any discussion about GPL's influence on commercial software is somewhat of a digression to begin with.
AND... what's at stake here is companies' non-compliance with GPL i.e. their refusal to release the sources for their software. It has yet to be demonstrated in any meaningful way that GPL compliance in these particular cases would do anything to undercut the companies' bottom line.
So-oo... why is proprietary still supposed to be better for commerce? I submit to you that this assertion's just a tired truism whose validity is diminished by the day.
Slashdot Mirror
Galileo!
MOON 1 [sings]:
I'm just a small moon
Nobody sees me
MOONS 2,3,4:
He's just a small moon
Smaller than Ganymede
GALILEO:
But wait! What? OH!
I think I've found Io!
MOONS 2,3,4:
He thinks he's found Io!
GALILEO:
I think I've found Io!
MOON 2:
GALILEO!
MOON 3:
GALILEO!
GALILEO:
FIGARO!
I know there's a joke in there somewhere, I just can't quite figure it out.
Not Schrodinger's Attorney. Maxwell's DA.
See, when you make humourous reference to Maxwell, the joke and the punchline are effortlessly sorted into the right order. With Schrodinger jokes, on the other hand, you never know whether it's going to be funny or not until you tell it, and by then it's too late.
One is an crime, the other is an activity.
Example: I publish all my photos online under a Creative Commons License (Attribution, Share-Alike, for what it's worth). If you take a copy of a photo and post it on your own site, saying, 'I got this photo from Imagicity, I'm perfectly cool with that. But if - and this happens often enough - you take the photo and you either pretend it's yours or you don't say where you got it, I send you a polite notice saying, 'You're not abiding by the license. Please do so.'
If you keep ignoring me, I'll force you to take it down using whatever legal and technical means are at my disposal. I like sharing my work, but it's not going to generate much work for me if people don't know took the photo in the first place.
So: Both activities consist of sharing someone else's files over the Internet. The second infringes my grant of copyright, the first does not. That's because the infraction consists, not of sharing the file, but of willfully ignoring the terms under which file sharing is allowed.
So-called Content Publishers like to conflate these two acts into one, because it allows them to create exactly the confusion that you're experiencing, which in turn allows them to lobby everyone and his dog, asking to make this behaviour illegal. That would make life much simpler for them, because it would allow them to continue doing business as they always have done.
Unfortunately, actual creators like me prefer to leverage the freely shareable nature of digital file formats in a different way. We encourage people to make the best possible use of technology in order to build recognition and popularity. This is turn creates a market for our work where none existed before.
And that's why I'm willing to spend 15 minutes of my time composing a thoughtful reply to your question, while the *AA and their international cohorts spend millions calling my business model THEFT and PIRACY, all in caps and punctuated by elevenses.
Means they can break into people's houses to conduct illegal searches without recourse?
And kidnap Americans, to take them across the border, for interrogation, also without judicial recourse?
Doesn't it?
Yes, that's right. It also gives them special X-Ray Vision, which allows them to see hot chicks nekkid in their clothes, as well as giving them their own drive-through lane and allowing them to bowl free on Wednesdays.
But that's not all it does. President Obama has also exempted them from the laws of thermodynamics, so it won't be long before mustachioed INTERPOL agents in their secret mountain lair will be aiming their death ray at the Pentagon while anti-grav ships hover menacingly overhead.
But wait! There's more! INTERPOL also received permission to travel in time and fuck your mother when she was still hot. So when INTERPOL comes for you, young Skywalker, before you reach for your light saber, consider that the big guy in black with the asthma problem just might be your dad.
Interpol doesn't investigate crimes, you moron. They don't have agents, they have bureaucrats who co-ordinate information sharing between police agencies. They're on the same diplomatic footing as the International Pacific Halibut Commission now, and about as dangerous.
No, actually, the fishing commissions are far more dangerous than INTERPOL. See Canada's infamous Turbot War with the Spanish for a recent example. Shots fired! Ships seized! Speeches made!
Yes, I'm being silly, but this whole tempest in a teapot over INTERPOL (which really is probably one of the more innocuous international agencies around) is silly to begin with.
It's satire. Bono's tongue is so deep in his cheek he's practically gnawing it off. Go read the piece in question.
Er, no, it's really not satirical.
Bono's trying to be witty, that's true, but what results is something the Flying Karamazov Brothers like to call a 'Joke-Like Phrase': It has all the elements of a joke, but it's just not funny.
I'll accept that there's a fine line between making a mockery of oneself and actual satire, but in this case, Bono has managed to take a strong stand alongside the idiots.
people seem to be more interested in free beer rather than free speech.
And as soon as you can demonstrate how to stamp out one without stamping out the other, we'll all be happy to draw the distinction.
Wow, you fired someone and threatened him with criminal prosecution for listening to music, and he's the dipshit?
I don't know what is.
After all, last time, all the Chinese did to warrant invasion by Britain was cut off the opium supply. (google it if doubtful.)
Your point is correct, but unintentionally so. From Wikipedia:
So yes, China was blocking the supply of opium... to its own people. The British were after Chinese commodities (esp. silk) and, like the whisky traders in the Old West, found that the cheapest way to procure these goods was by hooking people on Indian Opium and retaining a monopoly on its supply. The Chinese regime, for all its many faults, was actually acting in the interests of the its people in that particular case.
I agree with you that the Opium Wars are a fascinating example of international trade leveraged via force of arms. Well worth studying in detail.
Exactly. And its really odd that Disney has been so strongly for copyright extensions yet its entire classic film library is public domain tales. Lets see, based on a Wiki list: Snow White, Pinocchio, Bambi, Cinderella, Treasure Island, Alice in Wonderland, 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, Some parts of Davie Crockett, Sleeping Beauty, Swiss Family Robinson and many, many, many, many, many other films are all based off of public domain books. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Disney_Films has a list if you would like to see)
Great list, but you missed the one that best exemplifies them: Aladdin. It provided them with a movie franchise and a business model: "New lamps for old!"
Then for your sake I hope you're better at the latter. 8^)
I couldn't agree more.
Tell that to Imhotep.
WHATISBOT: In My Humble Opinion Too Easily Patented.
WHATISBOT: PRESS ENTER FOR MORE OPTIONS.
But you contradict yourself.
I knew it! The koala killed her!
Well, you know what they say: Karmic's a bitch.
No, we're PHPs and the rest are Pythons
Untrue. Some of us are Perls before swine.
... And we want you off our lawn.
I know what you're getting at, but that's only one kind of hacker, and I think the whole point of this discussion is to accept that there are more than one kind of effective hacker.
So, just to confuse things further, let me share the following:
An online database app was suffering from disastrously slow performance. The company that had commissioned the app got three of us together and (more or less) locked us in a basement for 2 weeks in a last-ditch effort to fix things. The company's guy looked after the design issues, the DB consultant worked on the data interface itself, and I wrote up the front end.
I'm not a lightning-fast typer, but when I'm confident about the code I'm writing, I can hit 60+ words a minute without really breaking a sweat. I have always written good-quality code with few if any bugs. My DB counterpart was a laconic Scot who had cut his teeth back in the days when you had to enter the operating instructions directly into the console on the front of the computer.
He typed at a rate of about 1 character a second.
So there I was, banging away on the keyboard, whipping together objects, debugging and testing at a pretty decent rate. And here's Scotty going TAP... TAP... TAP... like a metronome set to dirge. I'd debug, review, refactor, comment and polish, and Scotty would TAP... TAP... TAP....
But about once an hour or so, he'd pause, give his code a slow perusal, then compile. His code always ran the first time.
I was astounded, but he explained that, after years of entering the entire operating environment, by hand, into the front panel of a computer, he'd learned not to make mistakes. Back then, a single typo and you'd have to start all over again.
At the end of those two weeks, Scotty and I had each produced about the same amount of functionality, each at about the same level of quality.
Ever since then, I code more slowly and debug way less.
1. Measure twice, cut once. 2. Plan for the marriage, not for the wedding.
And one which never applies: if you build it, they will come.
Etc. etc. etc.
When I saw this review, I felt a small spark of hope that someone was actually attempting to express the essence of the web to people who don't really get this stuff. Unfortunately, all we seem to have is yet another fucking cookbook for managers who lack even an iota of imagination.
I would love to see a Sun Tzu-style book, a collection of simple, pithy aphorisms that properly express the essence of a website, its dynamics and the general rules that govern it. Something similar to this brilliant summary of programming truths.
If such a beast ever did come into existence, I'd be a very happy man. If nothing else, it would allow me to end a conversation with some wild-eyed, head-in-the-clouds client by quoting the 20 words that best encapsulate why their idea is madness itself. And if that didn't work, it would be small enough that I could hit someone over the head with it without injuring them seriously.
IME, that situation is a company-killer. The only way to grow is to take on more work than you can handle, but you can't handle more work. The dilemma is obvious, and knowing when and how to gamble with your staff's time is a (good) manager's stock in trade.
So on those rare days when there's a genuine opportunity from which everyone stands to profit, the manager signs off on some extra hours in exchange for the likelihood of future benefits for all concerned. The manager shares the pain and the staff share the glory. If all goes well, it's a remarkably empowering event.
But all too often, managers spend their entire careers chasing jackpots like this. They throw all of the company's resources into long-shot propositions again and again, and before long the staff would as soon strangle them as look at them.
In the first example, the manager's presence is crucial for support, morale and team cohesion. In the second example, the manager's presence is toxic, but only slightly more than it already is during normal working hours.
In short, if it's clear to your team that you are equally invested in their well-being, they'll welcome you. If it's not, then you'd best not pretend that you are.
That's because Titan wasn't winking at Earth. He was winking at Venus, who is, like, way hotter.
No, not "a COO d'état," it will be "the COO d'état."
It is Canonical, after all.
I hereby promote you to bureaucrat grade 13.
Dammit, there goes any hope of a life outside this basement!
Will this event be labeled a "COO d'état" ?
No, not "a COO d'état," it will be "the COO d'état."
It is Canonical, after all.
A combination of Bugzilla and Wiki. Wiki keeps track of backlog. Bugzilla keeps track of tasks.
If you're going down this road, then just install and configure Request Tracker. It's got great workflow management, uses email (which works for all but network-related tasks) as the primary interface and has some great reporting tools, so at the end of every month you can hand your boss a shiny little report showing just how productive you are.
For bonus points, it also stores the history of every request, so if you need to, you can also demonstrate to your boss what a prick Henderson in HR is, and that you cut off his Internet access because he didn't seem to be able to stay away from Furry sites during working hours.
Okay, seriously: RT is well-designed, well-documented and well-supported. It's got a lot of solid add-ons (which might or might not have significance for a 1 man IT dept.), and though it takes a little effort to grasp, it's remarkably rewarding in terms of simplifying your day.
This statement doesn't make understanding his organization's relationship to microsoft any less confusing. Can anyone fluent in corporate doublespeak translate?
"Everyone is confused about who we are and what we're doing because we named ourselves after a Microsoft service that looks similar to this, but is different in subtle and important ways. The name is not going to be changed by this board of directors.
Or, if you prefer, the Evil Conspiracy version:
"We deliberately obfuscated our nature and purpose by choosing a name identical to an existing Microsoft service. It's kind of like when we supported the sock-puppet Open Document Alliance and used them to sow confusion during the run-up to the ISO vote on our so-called standard. Except in this case, we use (watch carefully, here) the CodePlex Foundation to build a reputation that rubs off on software stored in Microsoft's Codeplex repository. We build the credibility, and Microsoft publishes its own software through its service, utters the magic word 'Codeplex' and gets a pass. Given that causing confusion and dissension in the FOSS world is our goal, we don't see any particular reason to change the name to something distinctly different."
NOTE: I actually lean more toward the first translation, but the second was way more fun to write. 8^)
That took all of one second to find in an md5 lookup database. And thirty seconds for me to realize that I could have looked two lines higher to see it in plaintext next to your userid. :wallbash:
Upside: You get to keep your geek card.
Downside: You'll never survive the world outside your basement.
8^)
Indeed. Because no one would ever consider redistributing proprietary binary-only software at a price below what the original vendor specified.
I'd better notify the torrent trackers and the Chinese DVD vendors down the road that they're on a fool's errand.
Okay, I shouldn't make light of what you're saying. It's valid, as far as it goes. But it's entirely based on the premise that a software application is a thing to be sold. Recent experience teaches us that binary blobs are really hard to treat as things, because other people keep getting infatuated with how easy they are to copy.
And lest I rely entirely on pirates and hippies to make my case, I should point to the fact that a huge amount of proprietary software is available free of charge as well. Apparently, even our corporate masters have come to realise that selling the service is a more sustainable proposition than selling the object itself.
And even more important - most software is not ever bought or sold. It has no resale value whatsoever. It runs internal systems and derives value for the company, that's true, but it has no measurable resale value. Whether it's proprietary or GPL/BSD/My Aunt Fanny has no bearing on its value.
This is almost certainly the case with the BusyBox implementations being discussed here. Its price is only (notionally) measurable as some fraction of the hardware product - which would cost more if proprietary software were used in its place. So any discussion about GPL's influence on commercial software is somewhat of a digression to begin with.
AND... what's at stake here is companies' non-compliance with GPL i.e. their refusal to release the sources for their software. It has yet to be demonstrated in any meaningful way that GPL compliance in these particular cases would do anything to undercut the companies' bottom line.
So-oo... why is proprietary still supposed to be better for commerce? I submit to you that this assertion's just a tired truism whose validity is diminished by the day.