Interestingly here in Italy a similar law was signed about a year ago. So I may guess extradition between US and Italy IS possible..
Don't know, there are extradition difficulties for mass murderers, I can't believe this could be applied for file sharers. Still it might be possible by law.
>> The problem of course is that if the non-free version gets good, others will simply fork.
This is the reason why you can profit off big open source projects, where support, maintanance, services, non free components, etc. have an importance.
Profit from small, simple applications is not feasible as now.
I can't find where I read this, But I'm sure I've read that MS explicitely included replacements of most common installers in WinXP x64 so that 16 bit installers are replaced on the fly with their 32bit version, to work flawlessly. [It was in some msdn blog, maybe Raymond Chen, but really I can't remember].
Yes, but an employer has no mean to judge if you had a good or bad education. So he will choose the boy with MS Office education instead of the OOo one because he will know how to use Word wether he had a good or bad education.
This does not solve the major problem. The major one is not seeing a good feature in a product and violate a patent in trying to reproduce it. The big problem is trying to implement some [often trivial] feature and accidentally break a patent in a software which we don't even know exists!
For example if I had an ecommerce site, I would probably have implemented a one-click buy option even if I haven't seen amazon before.
Nothing illegal in keepin file formats proprietary. On the contrary there could be at least something illegal in reverse engineering them - whether do you like it or not.
M$ has some very illegal things to destroy competition, this is not one of them.
If this is a problem it's only because people are using the wrong format to share documents - doc files are not written on that purpose.
1) Commercial RH linux is NOT a 100% GPL product afaik: some portions are not GPL and if you want to redistribute RH linux you have to remove them. Also this portions are usually what makes a difference between a linux distro and another. 2) With linux you can sell a reasonable support and update service, and they are appetible services because it's quite a complex product. This kind of business is nonsense if your product is simple enough.
Employee will probably prefer to close source their work as much as possible.
If a sw is open sourced there could be much more programmers out there knowing how your internal software works and this deevaluates the value of your programmers. For example you can refuse a raise to a programmer, since even if he decides to go away you have plenty of other programmers who already know your sw. So cunny employees will not insist on giving away their changes if possible.
1) You have paid internally to develop that tool, so you have spent, let's say 5000$, more than you competitors 2) The ones who may probably take a greater advantage from your sw are your competitors, to whom you are already behind of 5K$ 3) Under most common OSS licenses your competitors are not even obligated to release their modified version, since they do not distribute it (for personal use you can keep the source under GPL for example) 4) You risk giving away hints of your secrets : I don't think every firm evaluates coupon promotion costs the same way and you are giving away your formula which may or may not be something powerful in the competitors' hands. 5) The sw should probably be cleaned up before publication and this is a loss of time 6) Even if the released sw gets publicly modified by someone (probably your competitors) you hardly gain something from it, since if you don't have some features probably is because you didn't need them in the first place. 7) You can forget concepts like "many eyes mean less bugs".. sometimes someone still finds and exploits bugs in firefox (used by millions of users).. do you expect so much code inspection from your "3 possible users in the world" software ? 8) In the end, you may or may not lose something but you surely gain nothing at best.
Nitpick: The only one advantage is that you might be able to find a new employer who worked for your competitors and already knows your software! But that employer will easily cost more (knowing your software he will ask for more money!). And for this fact your own developers are discouraged to open source their own software, since by doing this they lose "power":)
Actually Chernobyl has killed THOUSANDS of people.
You should take into account also all the cancers caused by radiation.
There is still a danger for people living in those areas, especially for children.
This is not to say that nuclear power is inherently bad but its dangers must not be underrated.
Anyway, electricity is inherently a cleaner power source than oil. Most of electricity in the world gets wasted at nighttime and, anyway, it's possible for the government to slowly improve electricity sources, while there is no way to improve car's pollution beyond certain limits.
Then this means using less evolved tools to develop, just because developers always have to support some other systems. Also this doesn't push Kaffe and other OOS JVMs to develop! Having all *BSD users cut away from using OOo is a major push to develop a compatible JVM for BSD systems.
Portability is not a strict requirement to an Open Source project. Infact this aim for 100% on every platform in the world is something that's keeping OSS back.
Are you sure all Windows, Linux and MacOS (that is 99% of the world) users are happy to have some features missing (or simply come late) because the author has to support SomeBSD version -sqr(2) running on a Zylog Z80 processor so that Joe the hacker could run OOo on the eprom of his scsi controller ?
The scream of many OSS supporters is "Evolve or Die". Let's say that to old hardware and less used operative systems too.
Wow! and if the government rules OSS to be illegal ?
That could happen, it's not like they've never made stupid (or simply, malicious) choices in the (false) name of security, or in the (false) name of progress, or in the (guess it ? false) name of capitalism or in the (probably false) name of (anything you can think about). [this is not an attack to the US government - any gov't of the world do wrong and stupid choices in IT field]
Or maybe in a couple of years we will all be using my own Purplet-OS where the EULA explicity prohibites coding in Python..
There will always be some improbable scenario where all else fail, and no choice is future proof.
BTW I remember a Visual Basic like tool which was OSS, at the time I was trying Slackware 2.0. I can't remember its name.. probably because it doesn't exist anymore. Good luck I didn't code in that language back then!
to most user it's a completely straightforward route to "fdisk format and bring my f**** old windows back"
no, common people don't want to use the command line and look at 1300+ lines of arcane shell scripts, C++ compiler and linker in the 21st century.
1) There is enough fear that many ones do not use P2P anymore.
3) RIAA was not worried about me exchanging music tapes with my school mates. They become worried when I exchange MP3s with the rest of the world.
4) 95% of people aren't able to do that. And they will trust the antivirus and kill it.
5) For the same reason, in the world, there should be only region free dvd players right ?
Defaults are MS choices for users not able to make a choice. What I was saying is that Microsoft SHOULD make always the best choice for users, and we all can see the impact it has when MS does the wrong choice (admin by default).
Anyway what MS can do with WinFS is:
1) Distribute it for XP in a service pack or optional download advertised in Windows Update : this way most people will have it. It has its advantages because if anyone gets used to WinFS they will be less likely to migrate to a WinFS-less platform. But costs for support raises, since non savvy users will have it installed, some system behaviour changed and they'll be lost.
2) As 1, but the product is disabled by default : reduces support costs.
3) Distribute it for XP as a free optional download, the way Unix services are for XP and 2000 and Application Compatibility Toolkit is for Win2000. This way only saviour users will have it on non-Longhorn machines, reducing support costs for existing customers.
4) Distribute it for Longhorn only, which probably is the best choice not only for support costs, but for incentive to upgrade. One big problem MS has is that most users still have Windows 2000 because there is so little to be gained (especially before SP2 and DEP) in upgrading to XP.
Wrong.
People would make bad choices, and they would blame it on Microsoft, dropping the reputation further.
BTW we usually complain that one of the greatest flaws of XP is running as Administrator by default. If people should be allowed to make their own decisions, no matter how poor, this is not an XP problem but a users' one. However we know this is not the case, and MS should offer by default the best choice for everyone. The only thing they really have to offer is the ability to turn off/uninstall a given feature.
99% of the users out there cannot tell the difference between Windows and Word, however they still go bitching around about Windows problems (when most of their problems lie in their ignorance)..
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Interestingly here in Italy a similar law was signed about a year ago. So I may guess extradition between US and Italy IS possible..
Don't know, there are extradition difficulties for mass murderers, I can't believe this could be applied for file sharers. Still it might be possible by law.
Those with Clue are playing with Mrs Scarlett with the candle in the kitchen.
>> The problem of course is that if the non-free version gets good, others will simply fork.
This is the reason why you can profit off big open source projects, where support, maintanance, services, non free components, etc. have an importance.
Profit from small, simple applications is not feasible as now.
I can't find where I read this, But I'm sure I've read that MS explicitely included replacements of most common installers in WinXP x64 so that 16 bit installers are replaced on the fly with their 32bit version, to work flawlessly. [It was in some msdn blog, maybe Raymond Chen, but really I can't remember].
Yes, but an employer has no mean to judge if you had a good or bad education. So he will choose the boy with MS Office education instead of the OOo one because he will know how to use Word wether he had a good or bad education.
This does not solve the major problem.
The major one is not seeing a good feature in a product and violate a patent in trying to reproduce it. The big problem is trying to implement some [often trivial] feature and accidentally break a patent in a software which we don't even know exists!
For example if I had an ecommerce site, I would probably have implemented a one-click buy option even if I haven't seen amazon before.
Where do you want to go today ?
[ ] Hospital
[ ] Police Station
[ ] E.R.
[ ] Fire Station
Writing with Some random Letters is an Encryption method. If you Read some Content of it You can be Sued as DmCa Violator!
Were all Lotus formats (Smartsuites files, Notes files and protocols, etc) all open ? Just out of curiosity..
>> . Intresting but every give a thought why Linux has so many supporters and Windows dosen't?
May I hazard the hypothesis that Windows fans simply don't read/post on slashdot all day long ?
And may I suggest that 99% of users could care less of the OS they are using ?
Nothing illegal in keepin file formats proprietary. On the contrary there could be at least something illegal in reverse engineering them - whether do you like it or not. M$ has some very illegal things to destroy competition, this is not one of them. If this is a problem it's only because people are using the wrong format to share documents - doc files are not written on that purpose.
Quite funnily, I use Photoshop CS without problems on my XP SP2 box using even NX bit.
Yet another reason for which having a 100% GPL product is not a 100% viable solution.
Effectively one can use free (as in both beer and freedom) sw as a publicity vehicle.
Now I've to go, I have to open www.officialgentoo.com to sell my distro for 20$/copy.
[Before you write, yes I would be liable for the name, and for the same reasons Lindows.com had to change to Linspire..]
Differences :
1) Commercial RH linux is NOT a 100% GPL product afaik: some portions are not GPL and if you want to redistribute RH linux you have to remove them. Also this portions are usually what makes a difference between a linux distro and another.
2) With linux you can sell a reasonable support and update service, and they are appetible services because it's quite a complex product. This kind of business is nonsense if your product is simple enough.
Employee will probably prefer to close source their work as much as possible. If a sw is open sourced there could be much more programmers out there knowing how your internal software works and this deevaluates the value of your programmers. For example you can refuse a raise to a programmer, since even if he decides to go away you have plenty of other programmers who already know your sw. So cunny employees will not insist on giving away their changes if possible.
Simple logic :
: :)
1) You have paid internally to develop that tool, so you have spent, let's say 5000$, more than you competitors
2) The ones who may probably take a greater advantage from your sw are your competitors, to whom you are already behind of 5K$
3) Under most common OSS licenses your competitors are not even obligated to release their modified version, since they do not distribute it (for personal use you can keep the source under GPL for example)
4) You risk giving away hints of your secrets : I don't think every firm evaluates coupon promotion costs the same way and you are giving away your formula which may or may not be something powerful in the competitors' hands.
5) The sw should probably be cleaned up before publication and this is a loss of time
6) Even if the released sw gets publicly modified by someone (probably your competitors) you hardly gain something from it, since if you don't have some features probably is because you didn't need them in the first place.
7) You can forget concepts like "many eyes mean less bugs".. sometimes someone still finds and exploits bugs in firefox (used by millions of users).. do you expect so much code inspection from your "3 possible users in the world" software ?
8) In the end, you may or may not lose something but you surely gain nothing at best.
Nitpick
The only one advantage is that you might be able to find a new employer who worked for your competitors and already knows your software! But that employer will easily cost more (knowing your software he will ask for more money!). And for this fact your own developers are discouraged to open source their own software, since by doing this they lose "power"
Actually Chernobyl has killed THOUSANDS of people.
You should take into account also all the cancers caused by radiation.
There is still a danger for people living in those areas, especially for children.
This is not to say that nuclear power is inherently bad but its dangers must not be underrated.
Anyway, electricity is inherently a cleaner power source than oil. Most of electricity in the world gets wasted at nighttime and, anyway, it's possible for the government to slowly improve electricity sources, while there is no way to improve car's pollution beyond certain limits.
Then this means using less evolved tools to develop, just because developers always have to support some other systems. Also this doesn't push Kaffe and other OOS JVMs to develop! Having all *BSD users cut away from using OOo is a major push to develop a compatible JVM for BSD systems.
Portability is not a strict requirement to an Open Source project.
Infact this aim for 100% on every platform in the world is something that's keeping OSS back.
Are you sure all Windows, Linux and MacOS (that is 99% of the world) users are happy to have some features missing (or simply come late) because the author has to support SomeBSD version -sqr(2) running on a Zylog Z80 processor so that Joe the hacker could run OOo on the eprom of his scsi controller ?
The scream of many OSS supporters is "Evolve or Die". Let's say that to old hardware and less used operative systems too.
Wow! and if the government rules OSS to be illegal ?
That could happen, it's not like they've never made stupid (or simply, malicious) choices in the (false) name of security, or in the (false) name of progress, or in the (guess it ? false) name of capitalism or in the (probably false) name of (anything you can think about). [this is not an attack to the US government - any gov't of the world do wrong and stupid choices in IT field]
Or maybe in a couple of years we will all be using my own Purplet-OS where the EULA explicity prohibites coding in Python..
There will always be some improbable scenario where all else fail, and no choice is future proof.
BTW I remember a Visual Basic like tool which was OSS, at the time I was trying Slackware 2.0. I can't remember its name.. probably because it doesn't exist anymore. Good luck I didn't code in that language back then!
>> " There will always be one person smart enough to break the DRM and put it up free and clear. "
This is the reason they push for trusted computing.
if Jon Johansen and all its colleagues will ever stop breaking the DRM then there would be no reason for t.c..
That is, if the world was without criminals there will be no need of police patrols around.
to most user it's a completely straightforward route to "fdisk format and bring my f**** old windows back" no, common people don't want to use the command line and look at 1300+ lines of arcane shell scripts, C++ compiler and linker in the 21st century.
1) There is enough fear that many ones do not use P2P anymore. 3) RIAA was not worried about me exchanging music tapes with my school mates. They become worried when I exchange MP3s with the rest of the world. 4) 95% of people aren't able to do that. And they will trust the antivirus and kill it. 5) For the same reason, in the world, there should be only region free dvd players right ?
Defaults are MS choices for users not able to make a choice.
:
What I was saying is that Microsoft SHOULD make always the best choice for users, and we all can see the impact it has when MS does the wrong choice (admin by default).
Anyway what MS can do with WinFS is
1) Distribute it for XP in a service pack or optional download advertised in Windows Update : this way most people will have it. It has its advantages because if anyone gets used to WinFS they will be less likely to migrate to a WinFS-less platform. But costs for support raises, since non savvy users will have it installed, some system behaviour changed and they'll be lost.
2) As 1, but the product is disabled by default : reduces support costs.
3) Distribute it for XP as a free optional download, the way Unix services are for XP and 2000 and Application Compatibility Toolkit is for Win2000. This way only saviour users will have it on non-Longhorn machines, reducing support costs for existing customers.
4) Distribute it for Longhorn only, which probably is the best choice not only for support costs, but for incentive to upgrade. One big problem MS has is that most users still have Windows 2000 because there is so little to be gained (especially before SP2 and DEP) in upgrading to XP.
Wrong. People would make bad choices, and they would blame it on Microsoft, dropping the reputation further. BTW we usually complain that one of the greatest flaws of XP is running as Administrator by default. If people should be allowed to make their own decisions, no matter how poor, this is not an XP problem but a users' one. However we know this is not the case, and MS should offer by default the best choice for everyone. The only thing they really have to offer is the ability to turn off/uninstall a given feature. 99% of the users out there cannot tell the difference between Windows and Word, however they still go bitching around about Windows problems (when most of their problems lie in their ignorance)..