Incorrect facts? Well, Captain of the debate team, here I thought my post was editorial.
As if an editorial citing incorrect facts is any better than any other type of misinformed tripe. (P.S. I never took debate, I just read what should be the Greek and Latin texts on logic and reason that should IMHO be required reading for high school students.)
I preface what I say with "i think" and "I feel".
Okay. That doesn't make your thoughts logical or your feelings justified. It also doesn't make them valuable commentary. If you don't want people pointing out your illogical thought processes and incorrect facts, why don't you write them in your diary instead of a public discussion forum?
It's not like I hate open source or anything, I just don't like it when software becomes religious.
Describing OSS as religious, is sort of a joke. I presented logic and reason, which is about as far from religion as you can get. Your "feelings" are a lot closer to religion than anything I presented.
In my opinion, I should be able to say that something works or does not work without some ass harping on me about what is free and not free.
No one was discussing what works or does not. Rather we were discussing how things work and what works best. The license affects the ongoing use of software and is a very valid consideration when deciding if something works and how well.
It's free if I don't pay money for it.
If I were to ambush you and toss you in a cage would you be free so long as I did not pay for you? The word "free" has multiple meanings. Something can be both free and not free at the same time as a result.
And I'm tired of free software advocates' make-believe capitalism.
Oh boy. I'm just going to savor the anticipation of your upcoming poorly educated and thought out views on economics for a moment here.
It's capitalism if they're making the most money.
Ha! No really, it isn't. Capitalism in general terms is private instead of government or secular control of trade. In economic terms, it means competition in a free and level market.
Microsoft spends the most and makes the most. Capitalist? Yep.
So if I were to spend more money than a competitor and had arsonist burn down all their facilities I'd just be a capitalist huh? What an, umm, interesting view of capitalism. Tell me, in your version of capitalism, is capitalism supposed to be a good thing or beneficial to society?
If capitalism were in play in free software, Linus would have been replaced by someone who's more qualified (working on the kernel, but not the lead) and Stallman would be fired for not doing anything.
In real capitalism, OSS is an innovation. It is basically capitalism working around the broken and non-free software industry which is anti-capitalist (in economic terms) by being government restricted via IP laws, and riddled with markets undermined by monopolies and trusts. Capitalism is of benefit to society because it leads to innovation, efficiency, and lower costs. OSS has some of the lowest margins of any business model undercutting even the cheapest closed source models, thus being more efficient and lowering costs. Your lack of understanding of economics notwithstanding.
As far as I'm concerned, the linux kernel and much of free software works like the slashdot meta-moderation: it's a goddamn popularity contest.
A free market is a popularity contest where consumers decide what is best. But free software in general is big business and profitable to boot. You don't think Linus works for free do you?
The GPL makes it essentially impossible to profit from your innovations without tying your code to some other non-GPLed products...
Really, because pretty much every company I've ever worked at has profited from innovations we added to OSS code (often GPL). What you're missing is the business model of developers as a service.
Heres a situation for you. I am hired to write innovative code by my company or as a contractor, because some user of GPL code wants that functionality. I write that code and give it to them. They pay me and in turn make money in their music distribution business using that code. I profited from innovation licensed under the GPL. They profited under code licensed under the GPL. Quite probably other people profited from code licensed under the GPL.
*That* is why some people don't think it's the best thing since sliced bread. They want to make money selling software.
The GPL is not the only way to make money creating and selling software. It is not the most profitable way all the time. To pretend it cannot be done, however, is to ignore a significant portion of today's software market.
Even if you have some awesome idea for a piece of software that every man and his dog will want to use, and do 99% of the heavy lifting yourself, that 1% worth of boring, mundane crap you used GPL code for essentially brings the potential price for your software crashing down to roughly $0.
Yeah, if you're locked into that business model and in that particular situation, then you screwed yourself choosing to use GPL code in the first place. Why not write the other 1% yourself instead of agreeing to swap your 99% of the code for that 1% work from others?
That said, I've never known anyone stupid enough to put themselves in your hypothetical situation.
If your PHB is interested in software freedom, it would be easier to go GPL like everyone else than try to reinvent it or waste time talking to Microsoft about something they hate.
The reality of the situation is, many people are likely to be evaluating software packages for adoption. MS will certainly be marketing those packages and trying to sell PHBs. What good engineers need to be able to do is explain why OSS software is better than closed source and what benefits it will bring (if any for your use cases). MS's shared source licenses have simply made this job harder by muddying the waters and making it harder to present oversimplifications. As such, it is useful for people to discuss here what the real benefits of code licensed say GPL versus MS-LRL so that when your PHB asks for an evaluation you can explain it him or her in a well thought out way. Simply telling them that MS's licenses should be ignored is not always going to be a realistic option.
Hey, this argument looks familiar... Find and replace: OSS with Scientology Stallman with L Ron Hubbard
Congratulations. This is the logical fallacy "argument by association" or would be if it was coherent enough to even be such flawed rhetoric.
Basically, you just continuously talked up the GPL, called all my quotes inflammatory and hypothetical,
Umm, I was referring to a whole section you referred to as "predictions." I'd say that is a bit hypothetical. You were postulating what you think people would say in response to something that has not yet happened.
Also didn't just talk up the GPL. Unlike you I addressed very specific points from your post including a quotation of your assertion before each point. If you cannot rebut my points that is fine, but ignoring them is certainly not the same thing. Weak man.
I just read an article by an OSS zealot and now I have one responding to my comment. Wonderful.
I'm not an OSS zealot. I've developed both OSS and closed source projects and recognize that each has their place. I use both open and closed source software daily, including MS software.
Here's an idea, if you don't like people tearing apart your weak and illogical arguments and pointing out your incorrect facts, you could inform yourself and start using logic.
I don't believe you know what a strawman argument is.
The GP didn't mention the shared source license, the MS licenses s/he talked about were the MS-RL and the MS-LRL;
Umm, both of those licenses are ones MS refers to as "shared source" licenses along with MS-PL, MS-RSL, and MS-LPL. You seem a bit misinformed.
if you're[sic] comment were to be applied to the former of those (& the MS-PL as well), the "people with a very superficial understanding of the benefits of OSS" would then apparently include the OSI and FSF's lawyers...
I don't even understand what you're trying to say with this garbled mess. If you disagree with one of my comments, cite it and explain how you think it is wrong.
Traditional OSS licenses have very well understood benefits among developers, and less so among business people. For example, most people know it can save them money, but they don't know it does this partly via the mechanism of allowing for competitive bids for future work.
So, for example, a GPL'd program your company adopted needs to interoperate with Blakberries which some of your employees are using. With the GPL you can take bids from several different companies to create said software, using the source code fro the GPL's software to understand how it needs to be done. Because you can get several companies to bid against one another, you end up paying less.
Imagine if, instead, your company had adopted code under the MS-LRL license. Because the new work you need done needs to run on a blackberry, you have no right to view the code for the purpose of creating an interoperable solution. As a result you must go back to the original copyright holder and get their permission to view the code for that purpose (likely paying a fee) or contract only that company to do the work, thus not getting bids from others and not saving money.
Because most users don't understand this mechanism by which the GPL saves them money, they don't consider it when considering a GPL versus a MS-LRL product initially and hence may just assume the MS-LRL product will bring them the same level of cost saving s in the future as the GPL'd program.
The only additional restriction seems to be that the modified software be only available for Microsoft platform. You know, it *benefits* ALL users of the software on Microsoft's platform. It just doesn't benefit users on Linux, or OS X, or OS/2 or AIX or Solaris, or similar.
This is simply not true. You see, users of Windows are also often users of other OS's these days. They also often need to interact with users of other OS's. So while you assertion could be true for an application that does not need to interoperate in any way for a user who only uses MS products, it is not true in the general case. A company looking to buy a solution to run on Windows desktops may still need to interact with their partner who is on Linux desktops and may want to be able to run a portable version on their Linux and OS X based smartphones. These are Windows users and it hurts them.
While in the end, it may benefit Microsoft, do we argue that because Linux is GPL that it benefits RMS? Or FSF?
No, because it does not benefit them specifically. It benefits all developers and users. It is a feature and a selling point. MS's shared source is a feature both intentionally made less useful than the competition and designed to confuse potential users about that fact.
I'd say the GPL crowd is crying foul because someone wants to place similar restrictions as GPL but benefiting their own segment of the market.
The "GPL crowd" is not crying foul at all. They're just trying to inform people that shared source is not the same thing as the GPL and will not bring the same benefits and that users should not be tricked into thinking that is so by MS's marketing and sales people. The concern is not that MS is writing a license under our existing copyright laws the same as the authors of the GPL did. The concern is that said license does not benefit users in the same way and that MS is trying to mislead users into thinking otherwise. Nobody gives a rat's ass if people want to license their code under MS's license. They do care that end users are confused that code licensed in such a way might be mistaken for having the same benefits as GPL licensed code.
And especially since it is the "great evil" Microsoft.
Actually, there is a consideration here. That consideration is not that MS is evil. It is that MS is a criminal that regularly abuses a monopoly and using a license to restrict developers to use code only on said monopolized product may well be both illegal and undermining free trade. That said, I haven't seen a single person (OSS advocate or not) who has brought up this consideration, so your comment is mostly just a strawman.
Is it workse[sic] than someone like MySQL having a LGPL licensed API library and then switching suddenly to "GPL only or pay us $$$"?
Yes. Nothing stops users from taking the LGPL code and forking it. There is no confusion as to if the GPL is the same as the LGPL. No monopoly is involved to be abused.
Use the code as the license states it, or don't use it. Microsoft wasn't forced to open their sources.
Again, no one cares if people use the code. People do care if users are misled into thinking they will be getting the benefits that they do from real OSS licenses.
They chose to do so and the license terms are their business.
And it is the OSS communities business and right to publicize and make clear the differences and dangers involved in buying/using MS's products so licensed. It is also the business of the courts if that license happens to be illegal (antitrust abuse or false advertising).
How does Microsoft's license "hijack" FOSS? It would only be hijacking if they forced you to use their code, thereby encumbering yourself with their license.
You're misunderstanding the application of the term "hijack." In this case it is used to allude to MS trying to capitalize upon the "brand" that is OSS, by creating something confusingly similar. Suppose some scientists were to come up with a way to use carbon nano fibers to create stronger and lighter automotive frames. Some auto makers jumped on this and the technology came to be known popularly as carbontech cars. Now a lot of people understood that these cars were better and sort of understood why in that they were lighter and hence provided better gas mileage and did not rust. They didn't really understand the benefits of tensile strength and deformability nor how much these frames cost the companies to make.
Now imagine some other company came along and started selling cars with traditional frames, which they coated with a carbon rust protection and which they stripped down to reduce the weight (and strength). Suppose they further sold these as "carbon science" cars. This was both misleading and was "hijacking" the popularity of real carbontech in the minds of buyers. Because both technologies really do utilize carbon, it makes it even more confusing, since people don't understand it is the nano-tech application of carbon that is the benefit, not just carbon itself.
MS is trying to capitalize upon the well known but poorly understood benefits of OSS without actually providing those benefits.
I've always heard the FOSS debate having something to do with the technical merits of being able to modify and view your source code for security or customization purposes. Even if it's platform-locked, this still applies to that general principle.
OSS is a series of development methodologies and business strategies. They result in both real technical benefits and financial and flexibility benefits. Removing the ability of the developer to lock you into a format or platform or product is one of the main benefits. A license that removes that ability has removed one of the main benefits.
But there are shades of madness in the open source community- once Microsoft fulfills the realistic argument for why you need the source code, suddenly it's not about actually having the source code.
People with a very superficial understanding of the benefits of OSS would think MS's shared source license provide those same benefits. This is not a coincidence. That is what MS's licenses were designed to do, provide not the most important benefits of OSS, but the benefits most understood by purchasers. It is basically marketing.
No- it's about porting it to linux and refusing to maintain it for windows, nay- FREEDOM. It's about some sort of weird ideal defined by Stallman, whose primary argument seems to remain that he doesn't like that things cost money or that there's a software industry hustling and bustling out there that he's not qualified to participate in. Suddenly it's no longer "you need the source code to make use of the product" but it's evolved into "I deleted the wifi firmware on my laptop because it wasn't free. Now I use a wire."
Strawman. Quote people who have actually made those arguments here and been modded up if you want this to be taken seriously.
Since the slashdot zealot crowd has so many shades of open source mania, it doesn't matter what microsoft will do.
In terms of licensing, MS can adopt GPLv3 for a significant amount of the code they release and then abide by the terms of that license long enough to develop a history of good behavior. That would satisfy most Slashdotters in terms of licensing and if their shared source licenses really bring the same benefits to users, why wouldn't they do this? [Note: the last comment was rhetorical.]
At this point in your rant, you seem to go into a lot of hypothetical and inflammatory ranting. I'll address a few points deserving of it, but I'm not going to try to address your random speculation about what you assume people here on Slashdot would say in some hypothetical situation.
My personal thought about this is that the Shared Source license is a way for Microsoft to make use of open source in some applicable categories without having their code licensed under something that is controlled by an organization of wingnuts, like the FSF.
The Free software foundation doesn't somehow magically have any more rights to or control of GPL'd code than anyone else. The point of the GPL is to release some of the rights to users and other developers in order to provide them with benefit. MS's shared source licenses do that, just in a very, very, very limited way designed to capitalize on misunderstandings of those users. It's like motorcycle manufacturer realizing that most people think CC of displacement necessarily indicates the power of a bike and so creating a bike engine that displaces a lot of area to capitalize on that misunderstanding without bringing many of the real benefits users want.
Thus, they could release their code under the GPL, but then Stallman will just draft a GPLv4 that says whoever uses the license needs to release the source code to Windows if they are called "Microsoft", which is basically like what the GPLv3 did to Novell.
That is complete bullshit. First, just because Stallman writes a GPL4, doesn't mean MS would have to switch to it. Second
See my reply to the comment above - I had meant users of the source code, not users of the software.
Yeah, this is just semantics. I was hoping to clarify the role a licensee as a developer or a user, but it is not to be, it seems.
Methinks we're arguing the same side here?
Methinks we're coming at this from different perspectives. You seem to have approached this from the perspective of an independent coder looking to license a new project and comparing MS's shared source license to the GPL for what restrictions should be added.
I was looking at it from the perspective of Microsoft, trying to compete with OSS projects by licensing the source to closed source projects they create internally and not adding restrictions compared to the GPL, but adding freedoms compared to closed source.
I actually think my perspective is more useful because I doubt any significant number of coders outside of MS and MS funded projects will ever use their shared source licenses. It provides no benefit over the GPL unless you are a closed source developer trying to market your product to people who have a real OSS alternative.
So yeah, I think we agree on the facts, but are just coming at the issue from opposite directions, which has lead to confusion over terminology.
How is this any different than what GPL did to BSD? Show up, act like you invented the term "free software", impose a bunch of draconian restrictions that didn't used to exist and loudly tell everyone that your choice of strictures does good for the community?
The GPL and BSD are different licenses, each ideal for different uses. In many cases the same developers will develop both BSD and GPL licensed code depending upon what they want to do with their creation. Sure there are idiots who claim everything should be GPL or BSD and that the other is not "real OSS" but those people are mostly uninformed twats. Seriously, very rarely are those opinions expressed by anyone here or in knowledgeable forums. The development community as a whole accepts and utilizes both; GPL for projects that are larger and need a lot of ongoing input from different players and the BSD license for core technologies where adoption of that technology is more important than keeping contributions to a reference implementation available to all.
For example, if I (or my employer) is investing in writing a userspace application like a page layout program, the GPL is most likely to garner contributions from others in a way that benefits me and the other developers as well as the user base. If I (or my employer) invests in writing code for a new auto-discovery over IP daemon the BSD license allows that code to be integrated into more devices and OS's more easily and both users and developers benefit only if adoption is widespread. The same developer or company will often find itself contributing under both these licenses. Very few developers consider it some sort of competition between the two or advocate only one license for all things... and most of those people are not industry insiders and probably have not contributed significant code in any case.
The shared source license is somewhat different in that the specific use case it is designed to solve is a marketing one, rather than a functional one. It is simply a way to provide a license that benefits the one and only developer at the expense of the user, by providing a very small subset of the benefits of other OSS licenses, while intentionally castrating the most important (but less understood) benefits. MS's problem is not that developers or users need more freedom to make the code better, it is that developers and users are demanding OSS because OSS code is helping others in ways they don't really understand and those developers and users need to be convinced that MS is giving them those same benefits, in a vague and not specifically explained way.
Preparing for inappropriate troll and flamebait mods. It's still a legitimate question.
If you're preparing for troll and flamebait mods, then you probably at least have an inkling that your view is both inflammatory and reflects a poor understanding of those licenses as they are commonly used by the OSS community. In future, if you think you're going to be modded down as a flame and troll, maybe you should assert less and instead ask people to inform you as to why the opinion would be so large of a misunderstanding that it would potentially result in such a moderation. You obviously have doubts about the legitimacy of your question, otherwise you would not phrase it the way you did.
Rising to the bait, GPL's restrictions act to restrict the current user in order to the benefit the community.
I disagree. Any given person/group/company can be a user of software and/or a developer of software. The GPL does not restrict them as a user, only as a developer. It basically says that if you want to develop the code, you have to share with other developers as the price.
Microsoft's restrictions benefit, well, Microsoft. That is, the original developer. Not the community, not the current user. Nobody else.
Microsoft's shared source license is more restricted than the GPL, certainly, but it does bring some benefits to users. That is to say, users can view the code to say, find security holes, or understand how to interoperate more easily. With this knowledge they can create security work arounds and such. They can also submit more specific feature requests to MS.
Shared source does benefit users, it just does so in a very weak way when compared to the GPL.
No really, they were very clever in both creating and naming these licenses. You see most people who have heard of open source software don't understand why it is beneficial. They have, at this point, some vague idea that it is beneficial, but do not understand the mechanism. If you sit down with someone and explain the benefits of open source code the normal topics to discuss are: security and cost. The most easily explained reasons for why open source is cheaper is that people can look at the code and donate improvements, lowering the cost. The most easily explained reason why it is more secure is that people can look at the code and find security holes themselves, thus providing a more extensive security audit. You'll note I said those were the most easily explained mechanisms, that by no means makes them the most potent mechanisms.
So when someone is making a purchasing decision, MS an trot out shared source (which the purchaser does not understand) in comparison to open source (which the purchaser does not understand). They can explain how both those two, most common talking points from the OSS crowd are taken care of, and thus get a sale. They don't explain the more important aspects of OSS or how those benefits are not the same, but not even all OSS advocates understand them either and they certainly aren't going to try to explain them to a PHB. So when you tell the boss OSS will save them money; they ask how. You tell them there is no up front license fee and a lot of the code is donated for free. MS tells them the same thing about shared source (which sounds oh so similar). You probably don't bother explaining to them how the GPL works to insure contributions from everyone are available to all nor how it allows you to take avoid vendor lock-in and take competitive bids on improvements, resulting in lower ongoing costs... because those things take significant understanding and most people don't want to put that much effort in.
Basically, "Shared source" is just MS's way of providing something that looks like OSS enough to fool people who don't really understand how OSS works and they have named it in such a way that is does, sort of, describe what it is and what most people think OSS is. It is just MS removing the most beneficial features for the actual user (but which would cost MS money) and trying to pass it of as the genuine article to anyone gullible enough. And there are a lot of people gullible enough.
But if there is not a perceived investment opportunity, many drugs sold for high prices today (and lower prices tomorrow) would never have been developed.
This is true, but maybe if we allocated our tax dollars better we would have better drugs yet. The way things are now, a lot of the research is already funded by tax dollars, even though private companies end up with the patents. They also pass up avenues for research that might result in cures, which are much less profitable than treatments.
The drug industry and health industry in general is a situation where the government interferes with the free market by enforcing patents and subsidizing some research and restricting other research. The problem is not necessarily government interference, but the fact that the government interference is directed by lobbyists making campaign contributions instead of by representatives acting in the best interests of the people.
...unless DirectX comes to OSX. Mac's make up 10% of the market, something like that, right? While I'm sure some games will be cross-platform, you try selling the idea of focussing your coding efforts on 10% of the total market to your CEO.
Okay. My presentation would go something like this. If we use DirectX for our next game we can target Windows and the XBox 360 simultaneously. Or we could go with portable code that has both DirectX and OpenGL functions and expand that market to include the Macintosh, Nintendo Wii, the Playstation3, and any Linux, cell phone, or other standards compliant platforms that may gain popularity in the next few years. Portable code will also save us costs on our next game because the code is also more reusable. Alternately, we could go OpenGL only and only lose the XBox360 from that list since everything else, including Windows, works with OpenGL.
Remember too; games written for DirectX just happen to port real easy to the XBox too - that is real margin savings right there for most game developers.
Yeah, but you neglected all the other platforms, like Wii and PS3.
Oh, and don't even compare OpenGL to DirectX because DirectX does way more than just graphics; it's an entire API set for every element of gaming.
All the major game companies not owned by MS (with a few minor exceptions) already have toolkits that target OpenGL OpenAL, OpenSL, etc. that are just as nice as the DirectX toolkit. Pretty much all major PC developers target the Mac from day one (9 out of 10 of the top selling games in 2007). The people who don't use OpenGL or at least have the hooks for it are pretty much small developers who don't know if they will make a profit on some game and companies Microsoft purchased (there are a lot more than most people realize).
That's pretty much the issue. From what I understand Microsoft bled out the ears just getting to where it is in the market. One assumes Apple is going to have to expect to do nothing but lose money on their first gen console. Which I assume would probably have to go up against the next gen consoles from Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony.
True enough.
So Apple can release a console that does what? Provide good graphics, streaming music and video, and online capabilities? That's pretty much what everyone's doing already...
Apple doesn't excel at graphics or streaming music or online capabilities. They excel at taking markets and removing pain points for normal users, usually thus expanding the market to new customers. It is possible they can do that with a gaming system, but I'm not really convinced. Still, there certainly are significant pain points on current consoles.
Areas for improvement include interoperability among devices. Think, your iPhone rings, your AppleTV notices and pauses the game you're playing while you answer it. Think, Macs and AppleTV integrating for communication, like video phone technology. Think buying and renting video games, movies, TV shows all from one connected system without any discs to insert. These are all areas to improve game consoles that Apple could still beat the competition to getting right. There is some opportunity.
...plus they all have big libraries of games to back all that up with.
This is an issue. MS solved it by leveraging relationships with PC game makers and by buying up a lot of game companies. They further leveraged DirectX to allow developers to target both the Xbox and Windows at the same time with little work.
Apple, is actually in a position to do something of the same. They have dev tools. They have OpenGL, etc. which are already used on the Mac and which Sony and Nintendo also use. They could create a kick ass set of dev tools that would let game developers target OS X, AppleTV, and iPod/iPhone. If they were even more cut throat, they could partner with Sony and Nintendo and make it target both of those platforms as well as Windows. Right now they all share technology, but not in a way that makes it easy to target all of them at once. Still, Apple has missed similar opportunities in the past and it would be a big risk for them.
Apple would have to be pretty arrogant to think that they could slam anybody in that market.
Before the Wii, I would have disagreed with you. As it is, Nintendo has really harvested the ow hanging fruit for bringing game consoles to a level of usability for the mainstream audience. At this point I think Apple might be smarter to try partnering with both Sony and Nintendo and letting them help counter MS's monopoly influence from creeping into video game consoles.
It's the same we users do with EULA. We say we agree and use the product, then don't comply with whatever we faked to agree to. It's not as if Skype was doing something so evil that it goes beyond our comprehension. We do it all the time.
Evil is a subjective term. What many people do by ignoring EULAs, however, is not the same as ignoring GPL obligations in several ways. First, by the time you see an EULA, you've usually already paid for the work. Adding additional, technological restricts at that point is dubious both ethically and legally. With the GPL, you are given a choice up front. Second, breaking the GPL is violating copyright law, something fairly well understood and clearly defined and which applies to all copyrighted works. Breaking an EULA is breaking a private contract that generally contains a number of unenforceable (read illegal) clauses. Users are not necessarily even legally or ethically obligated to follow any of the terms. In my state, for example, not reading a contract at the time of signing is grounds for it being voided.
Perhaps if you're trying to draw an analogy, you might look at uploading copyrighted songs to p2p networks without permission. That is a whole lot closer (although still not perfect given the GPL as a "copyleft" license).
If Mac had a stronger stranglehold on gaming and depending on how things go, isn't Apple based off Unix? So wouldn't that cause games to trickle down to Linux via people reverse engineering and other methods, as well?
Macs as gaming systems are already helping to make for an easier transition for games on Linux, but for the most part the Linux market isn't there. Mostly the affect is due to developers moving to OpenGL for flexibility of platforms (Windows, Mac, PS2, PS3, PSP Wii, NDS, and mobile phones) as opposed to DirextX (Windows and Xbox360).
Mac Minis and Macbooks aren't targeted in any way toward anyone who's interested in gaming.
I disagree. They are both targeted at the mainstream PC gaming crowd. You know, the ones who have made the Sims 2 the best selling game for 2007. Mainstream game developers target midrange systems from two years ago. Macs fit right in. It is a pretty similar casual gaming market as the Wii.
Mac minis and Macbooks aren't targeted at the niche, extreme gaming market where people need high end graphics cards costing significant cash. The problem is one of perception, because so many geeks and people on Slashdot are in this category, they assume it is the mainstream market and don't bother to actually see what is selling.
Hmm you could always go the apple route and just take BSD code that has a license that makes the software free to abuse as much as you like.
Technically, the BSD code costs too, it is just cheaper yet in that it only requires credit to the original authors. So long as you are crediting them, you're not abusing anything, you're just complying with the terms the authors asked for. (One might further note that Apple does go well beyond this and provides the source for their BSD based components, not out of altruism I'm sure, but they do.)
Well... isn't this the old EULA issue all over again? Users actually click the "I accept the EULA I have JUST read" without actually accepting what it says and... to be honest, not even reading it priorly.
No. EULAs restrict what you can do with a copy of software. The GPL is a license for making and distributing copies of software, not using them. Applying this to another medium, imagine you bought a DVD, and then discovered upon running it that it required you to agree not to watch it with the sound turned off. The GPL, on the other hand, would be like buying a DVD and then discovering that it came with a license agreement that would grant you permission from the copyright holder to make copies of the DVD and resell them, if you mailed 10% of the profit to the address listed. In the case of an EULA it is trying to place restrictions on you that are not part of law. In the case of the GPL, it is offering to allow you to take an action that would normally be against the law, provided you agree to the conditions.
EULAs are very questionable from a legal standpoint. The GPL is just a contract for distributing a copyrighted work, just like any other such agreement signed between a record company and Apple or a photographer and a magazine. It is just a very inexpensive agreement and as such, some people mistake it for not being an agreement at all and try to ignore their half of it.
s for the antitrust argument, I have a good handle on antitrust law and it makes absolutely no sense to me. I'll be quite curious to see what they are claiming for a market definition and abusive action. Personally, I think this is just trying to draw out the litigation in the hopes of buying their way out of it.
I've been using Macs since 1984. Every time someone says of a Mac app that it doesn't "feel" like a Mac app, I wonder, WTF? What's a Mac app supposed to feel like?
I consider an app to "feel native" if that is how you want to describe it, when it takes advantages of all the OS X features that programs built using the native tools do. That is to say, if I were to go to xcode a write a simple text editor in a few dozen lines, will the application under consideration be able to do all the same things as my bare bones text editor? Will it be able to use system services? Can I drag and drop it or run it from a flash drive without installation? Can it use the grammar checker on all the text fields? Can I use services I've installed without copying it into a native app and back? Does it use the default keyboard shortcuts for standard functions (from saving files to undoing the last action)? Are all the keyboard shortcuts used by the program ones that don't interfere with default OS X shortcuts?
There have been four or five major changes in the Mac OS. Every time the OS changes, the so-called "feel" changes.
Generally I think you can restrict it to the current generation OS at this point. OS 7 apps may have been native at the time, but that time has long since passed. I have a freeware application I installed on OS X 10.0. On OS X 10.5 it still works and still performs like a native application. It can still use the native spellchecker in OS X, whereas OO.org cannot. In fact, it can still do all the things I listed.
NeoOffice feels like a Mac app.
NeoOffice and the beta of OpenOffice both fail on pretty much all the points I listed. That isn't to say they suck, or are not worth using. They just lack functionality I can get from really, really simple applications that are native; functions that are fairly universal for all OS X apps. I can run Pages or TextEdit or Oxygen or BBedit or MS Word or Adobe InDesign or Abiword or CleverRabbit and I know that hitting the same key combination will tell me the number of characters, spaces, characters and spaces, words, and lines in the selection. The same is not true for OO.org and that is a real deficiency. I think of that deficiency as being a non-native application, or more specifically an incomplete port. If you want to call it something else, that is fine. Just so long as you recognize the difference in functionality. This is why software evaluation sites for OS X list native and non-native next to software listings and why people prefer the former.
CDA ("CD Audio") is a lossless format. If there's loss going from anything other than analog to CDA, then your converter is crap.
Just because one format is lossless does not mean that a conversion to that format cannot result in the loss of data. That applies only when converting from one lossless format to another. Theoretically it means there does not have to be loss, if there is enough compatibility between formats or if you're willing to expand the data enough.
So what I'm looking for is an actual reference to a converter that says it can transform mp4 to CDA without any loss. I haven't found any that claim to do so.
CDA is actually an implementation of linear PCM
Yes, I agree it is a lossless format. What I question is if there is loss in the normal conversion process from mp4.
reophile [stereophile.com], a well-respected audio magazine, compared MP3 to CDA in a section entitled "Lossless vs Lossy."
Okay, but that, again, does not speak to what happens in the conversion, only to the merits of the formats themselves once data is in them.
Hydrogen Audio [hydrogenaudio.org], a great resource for audio work...
One poster there writes, "IF you rip a cd burned with transparent mp3's and encode that to mp3 you will likely start to notice some loss." This is obviously just one opinion, but none of the opinions listed are clear or complete as to whether or not there is any loss in said conversion. Nor, would a particularly trust random people's opinions unless they could back them up either.
People in other fora [ehmac.ca] say that CDA is lossless: "So when you burn a CD from your Apple Lossless files, the tracks that are burned to CD are exact duplicates of those ripped from the original CD"
This is answering the wrong question. That is a lossless->lossless (ALAC->CDA) conversion not a lossy->lossless (mp4->CDA).
Basically, while you've provided a lot of links, none of them directly or authoritatively provide a reference to what I was questioning. It is still my understanding that the common converters for mp4 to CDA result in loss. I don't know that that always has to be the case, especially if you're converting mp4 to PCM and don't have to restrict yourself to the CDA subset and data limitations. At least in theory a high enough bit rate mp4 could not be loss-lessly transferred to a CD simply because of limitations in the amount of data that can be stored on a CD. So again, with regard to specifics of the tools in use. Can you provide a reference that the conversion from mp4 files Apple sells (in two different bit rates) can be transferred to CDA format without any loss?
Legally, it is not the product's responsibility. This is just MS kowtowing to the media companies in hopes of getting their content. Legally MS doesn't have to do this. They just think it will make them money, whereas Apple has been down this road before and wants as little DRM and as easy and flexible of a consumer experience as possible, because that is what they think will make them more money.
If some how I do manage to run copy protected works on the ZUNE and get hit by a law suit via the RIAA then am I protected because I assume the ZUNE as acting as a controller?
Playing copyrighted works is not illegal. Making a copy of a copyrighted work is potentially illegal. MS's actions offers you no increased legal protection and, in fact, reduces the likelihood your use would be protected under the fair use doctrine.
I am not a lawyer but to me if a products goes to such an extent to enforce copy protection then the liability of infringement would fall to the ZUNE and to Microsoft...
I recommend talking to a lawyer, but MS is trying to restrict playing video, not making copies of it in the first place. By the time you're trying to play it, the infringement has happened already.
No, that's not true. MP3->CDA is a lossless transformation.
First, I don't think that is true. Second, it's mp4 -> CDA, not mp3. From what I've read there is some loss of quality using all the popular tools for burning CDs including iTunes. If you can support your claim I'd be interested to read it.
I filed the first two long ago. Sadly the site you list requires registration including handing your personal info over to Sun. You'd think they'd add a bug report feature to the program, especially for a beta.
Slashdot Mirror
As if an editorial citing incorrect facts is any better than any other type of misinformed tripe. (P.S. I never took debate, I just read what should be the Greek and Latin texts on logic and reason that should IMHO be required reading for high school students.)
I preface what I say with "i think" and "I feel".Okay. That doesn't make your thoughts logical or your feelings justified. It also doesn't make them valuable commentary. If you don't want people pointing out your illogical thought processes and incorrect facts, why don't you write them in your diary instead of a public discussion forum?
It's not like I hate open source or anything, I just don't like it when software becomes religious.Describing OSS as religious, is sort of a joke. I presented logic and reason, which is about as far from religion as you can get. Your "feelings" are a lot closer to religion than anything I presented.
In my opinion, I should be able to say that something works or does not work without some ass harping on me about what is free and not free.No one was discussing what works or does not. Rather we were discussing how things work and what works best. The license affects the ongoing use of software and is a very valid consideration when deciding if something works and how well.
It's free if I don't pay money for it.If I were to ambush you and toss you in a cage would you be free so long as I did not pay for you? The word "free" has multiple meanings. Something can be both free and not free at the same time as a result.
And I'm tired of free software advocates' make-believe capitalism.Oh boy. I'm just going to savor the anticipation of your upcoming poorly educated and thought out views on economics for a moment here.
It's capitalism if they're making the most money.Ha! No really, it isn't. Capitalism in general terms is private instead of government or secular control of trade. In economic terms, it means competition in a free and level market.
Microsoft spends the most and makes the most. Capitalist? Yep.So if I were to spend more money than a competitor and had arsonist burn down all their facilities I'd just be a capitalist huh? What an, umm, interesting view of capitalism. Tell me, in your version of capitalism, is capitalism supposed to be a good thing or beneficial to society?
If capitalism were in play in free software, Linus would have been replaced by someone who's more qualified (working on the kernel, but not the lead) and Stallman would be fired for not doing anything.In real capitalism, OSS is an innovation. It is basically capitalism working around the broken and non-free software industry which is anti-capitalist (in economic terms) by being government restricted via IP laws, and riddled with markets undermined by monopolies and trusts. Capitalism is of benefit to society because it leads to innovation, efficiency, and lower costs. OSS has some of the lowest margins of any business model undercutting even the cheapest closed source models, thus being more efficient and lowering costs. Your lack of understanding of economics notwithstanding.
As far as I'm concerned, the linux kernel and much of free software works like the slashdot meta-moderation: it's a goddamn popularity contest.A free market is a popularity contest where consumers decide what is best. But free software in general is big business and profitable to boot. You don't think Linus works for free do you?
Really, because pretty much every company I've ever worked at has profited from innovations we added to OSS code (often GPL). What you're missing is the business model of developers as a service.
Heres a situation for you. I am hired to write innovative code by my company or as a contractor, because some user of GPL code wants that functionality. I write that code and give it to them. They pay me and in turn make money in their music distribution business using that code. I profited from innovation licensed under the GPL. They profited under code licensed under the GPL. Quite probably other people profited from code licensed under the GPL.
*That* is why some people don't think it's the best thing since sliced bread. They want to make money selling software.The GPL is not the only way to make money creating and selling software. It is not the most profitable way all the time. To pretend it cannot be done, however, is to ignore a significant portion of today's software market.
Even if you have some awesome idea for a piece of software that every man and his dog will want to use, and do 99% of the heavy lifting yourself, that 1% worth of boring, mundane crap you used GPL code for essentially brings the potential price for your software crashing down to roughly $0.Yeah, if you're locked into that business model and in that particular situation, then you screwed yourself choosing to use GPL code in the first place. Why not write the other 1% yourself instead of agreeing to swap your 99% of the code for that 1% work from others?
That said, I've never known anyone stupid enough to put themselves in your hypothetical situation.
The reality of the situation is, many people are likely to be evaluating software packages for adoption. MS will certainly be marketing those packages and trying to sell PHBs. What good engineers need to be able to do is explain why OSS software is better than closed source and what benefits it will bring (if any for your use cases). MS's shared source licenses have simply made this job harder by muddying the waters and making it harder to present oversimplifications. As such, it is useful for people to discuss here what the real benefits of code licensed say GPL versus MS-LRL so that when your PHB asks for an evaluation you can explain it him or her in a well thought out way. Simply telling them that MS's licenses should be ignored is not always going to be a realistic option.
Congratulations. This is the logical fallacy "argument by association" or would be if it was coherent enough to even be such flawed rhetoric.
Basically, you just continuously talked up the GPL, called all my quotes inflammatory and hypothetical,Umm, I was referring to a whole section you referred to as "predictions." I'd say that is a bit hypothetical. You were postulating what you think people would say in response to something that has not yet happened.
Also didn't just talk up the GPL. Unlike you I addressed very specific points from your post including a quotation of your assertion before each point. If you cannot rebut my points that is fine, but ignoring them is certainly not the same thing. Weak man.
I just read an article by an OSS zealot and now I have one responding to my comment. Wonderful.I'm not an OSS zealot. I've developed both OSS and closed source projects and recognize that each has their place. I use both open and closed source software daily, including MS software.
Here's an idea, if you don't like people tearing apart your weak and illogical arguments and pointing out your incorrect facts, you could inform yourself and start using logic.
I don't believe you know what a strawman argument is.
The GP didn't mention the shared source license, the MS licenses s/he talked about were the MS-RL and the MS-LRL;Umm, both of those licenses are ones MS refers to as "shared source" licenses along with MS-PL, MS-RSL, and MS-LPL. You seem a bit misinformed.
if you're[sic] comment were to be applied to the former of those (& the MS-PL as well), the "people with a very superficial understanding of the benefits of OSS" would then apparently include the OSI and FSF's lawyers...I don't even understand what you're trying to say with this garbled mess. If you disagree with one of my comments, cite it and explain how you think it is wrong.
Traditional OSS licenses have very well understood benefits among developers, and less so among business people. For example, most people know it can save them money, but they don't know it does this partly via the mechanism of allowing for competitive bids for future work.
So, for example, a GPL'd program your company adopted needs to interoperate with Blakberries which some of your employees are using. With the GPL you can take bids from several different companies to create said software, using the source code fro the GPL's software to understand how it needs to be done. Because you can get several companies to bid against one another, you end up paying less.
Imagine if, instead, your company had adopted code under the MS-LRL license. Because the new work you need done needs to run on a blackberry, you have no right to view the code for the purpose of creating an interoperable solution. As a result you must go back to the original copyright holder and get their permission to view the code for that purpose (likely paying a fee) or contract only that company to do the work, thus not getting bids from others and not saving money.
Because most users don't understand this mechanism by which the GPL saves them money, they don't consider it when considering a GPL versus a MS-LRL product initially and hence may just assume the MS-LRL product will bring them the same level of cost saving s in the future as the GPL'd program.
This is simply not true. You see, users of Windows are also often users of other OS's these days. They also often need to interact with users of other OS's. So while you assertion could be true for an application that does not need to interoperate in any way for a user who only uses MS products, it is not true in the general case. A company looking to buy a solution to run on Windows desktops may still need to interact with their partner who is on Linux desktops and may want to be able to run a portable version on their Linux and OS X based smartphones. These are Windows users and it hurts them.
While in the end, it may benefit Microsoft, do we argue that because Linux is GPL that it benefits RMS? Or FSF?No, because it does not benefit them specifically. It benefits all developers and users. It is a feature and a selling point. MS's shared source is a feature both intentionally made less useful than the competition and designed to confuse potential users about that fact.
I'd say the GPL crowd is crying foul because someone wants to place similar restrictions as GPL but benefiting their own segment of the market.The "GPL crowd" is not crying foul at all. They're just trying to inform people that shared source is not the same thing as the GPL and will not bring the same benefits and that users should not be tricked into thinking that is so by MS's marketing and sales people. The concern is not that MS is writing a license under our existing copyright laws the same as the authors of the GPL did. The concern is that said license does not benefit users in the same way and that MS is trying to mislead users into thinking otherwise. Nobody gives a rat's ass if people want to license their code under MS's license. They do care that end users are confused that code licensed in such a way might be mistaken for having the same benefits as GPL licensed code.
And especially since it is the "great evil" Microsoft.Actually, there is a consideration here. That consideration is not that MS is evil. It is that MS is a criminal that regularly abuses a monopoly and using a license to restrict developers to use code only on said monopolized product may well be both illegal and undermining free trade. That said, I haven't seen a single person (OSS advocate or not) who has brought up this consideration, so your comment is mostly just a strawman.
Is it workse[sic] than someone like MySQL having a LGPL licensed API library and then switching suddenly to "GPL only or pay us $$$"?Yes. Nothing stops users from taking the LGPL code and forking it. There is no confusion as to if the GPL is the same as the LGPL. No monopoly is involved to be abused.
Use the code as the license states it, or don't use it. Microsoft wasn't forced to open their sources.Again, no one cares if people use the code. People do care if users are misled into thinking they will be getting the benefits that they do from real OSS licenses.
They chose to do so and the license terms are their business.And it is the OSS communities business and right to publicize and make clear the differences and dangers involved in buying/using MS's products so licensed. It is also the business of the courts if that license happens to be illegal (antitrust abuse or false advertising).
You're misunderstanding the application of the term "hijack." In this case it is used to allude to MS trying to capitalize upon the "brand" that is OSS, by creating something confusingly similar. Suppose some scientists were to come up with a way to use carbon nano fibers to create stronger and lighter automotive frames. Some auto makers jumped on this and the technology came to be known popularly as carbontech cars. Now a lot of people understood that these cars were better and sort of understood why in that they were lighter and hence provided better gas mileage and did not rust. They didn't really understand the benefits of tensile strength and deformability nor how much these frames cost the companies to make.
Now imagine some other company came along and started selling cars with traditional frames, which they coated with a carbon rust protection and which they stripped down to reduce the weight (and strength). Suppose they further sold these as "carbon science" cars. This was both misleading and was "hijacking" the popularity of real carbontech in the minds of buyers. Because both technologies really do utilize carbon, it makes it even more confusing, since people don't understand it is the nano-tech application of carbon that is the benefit, not just carbon itself.
MS is trying to capitalize upon the well known but poorly understood benefits of OSS without actually providing those benefits.
I've always heard the FOSS debate having something to do with the technical merits of being able to modify and view your source code for security or customization purposes. Even if it's platform-locked, this still applies to that general principle.
OSS is a series of development methodologies and business strategies. They result in both real technical benefits and financial and flexibility benefits. Removing the ability of the developer to lock you into a format or platform or product is one of the main benefits. A license that removes that ability has removed one of the main benefits.
But there are shades of madness in the open source community- once Microsoft fulfills the realistic argument for why you need the source code, suddenly it's not about actually having the source code.
People with a very superficial understanding of the benefits of OSS would think MS's shared source license provide those same benefits. This is not a coincidence. That is what MS's licenses were designed to do, provide not the most important benefits of OSS, but the benefits most understood by purchasers. It is basically marketing.
No- it's about porting it to linux and refusing to maintain it for windows, nay- FREEDOM. It's about some sort of weird ideal defined by Stallman, whose primary argument seems to remain that he doesn't like that things cost money or that there's a software industry hustling and bustling out there that he's not qualified to participate in. Suddenly it's no longer "you need the source code to make use of the product" but it's evolved into "I deleted the wifi firmware on my laptop because it wasn't free. Now I use a wire."
Strawman. Quote people who have actually made those arguments here and been modded up if you want this to be taken seriously.
Since the slashdot zealot crowd has so many shades of open source mania, it doesn't matter what microsoft will do.
In terms of licensing, MS can adopt GPLv3 for a significant amount of the code they release and then abide by the terms of that license long enough to develop a history of good behavior. That would satisfy most Slashdotters in terms of licensing and if their shared source licenses really bring the same benefits to users, why wouldn't they do this? [Note: the last comment was rhetorical.]
At this point in your rant, you seem to go into a lot of hypothetical and inflammatory ranting. I'll address a few points deserving of it, but I'm not going to try to address your random speculation about what you assume people here on Slashdot would say in some hypothetical situation.
My personal thought about this is that the Shared Source license is a way for Microsoft to make use of open source in some applicable categories without having their code licensed under something that is controlled by an organization of wingnuts, like the FSF.
The Free software foundation doesn't somehow magically have any more rights to or control of GPL'd code than anyone else. The point of the GPL is to release some of the rights to users and other developers in order to provide them with benefit. MS's shared source licenses do that, just in a very, very, very limited way designed to capitalize on misunderstandings of those users. It's like motorcycle manufacturer realizing that most people think CC of displacement necessarily indicates the power of a bike and so creating a bike engine that displaces a lot of area to capitalize on that misunderstanding without bringing many of the real benefits users want.
Thus, they could release their code under the GPL, but then Stallman will just draft a GPLv4 that says whoever uses the license needs to release the source code to Windows if they are called "Microsoft", which is basically like what the GPLv3 did to Novell.
That is complete bullshit. First, just because Stallman writes a GPL4, doesn't mean MS would have to switch to it. Second
Yeah, this is just semantics. I was hoping to clarify the role a licensee as a developer or a user, but it is not to be, it seems.
Methinks we're arguing the same side here?Methinks we're coming at this from different perspectives. You seem to have approached this from the perspective of an independent coder looking to license a new project and comparing MS's shared source license to the GPL for what restrictions should be added.
I was looking at it from the perspective of Microsoft, trying to compete with OSS projects by licensing the source to closed source projects they create internally and not adding restrictions compared to the GPL, but adding freedoms compared to closed source.
I actually think my perspective is more useful because I doubt any significant number of coders outside of MS and MS funded projects will ever use their shared source licenses. It provides no benefit over the GPL unless you are a closed source developer trying to market your product to people who have a real OSS alternative.
So yeah, I think we agree on the facts, but are just coming at the issue from opposite directions, which has lead to confusion over terminology.
The GPL and BSD are different licenses, each ideal for different uses. In many cases the same developers will develop both BSD and GPL licensed code depending upon what they want to do with their creation. Sure there are idiots who claim everything should be GPL or BSD and that the other is not "real OSS" but those people are mostly uninformed twats. Seriously, very rarely are those opinions expressed by anyone here or in knowledgeable forums. The development community as a whole accepts and utilizes both; GPL for projects that are larger and need a lot of ongoing input from different players and the BSD license for core technologies where adoption of that technology is more important than keeping contributions to a reference implementation available to all.
For example, if I (or my employer) is investing in writing a userspace application like a page layout program, the GPL is most likely to garner contributions from others in a way that benefits me and the other developers as well as the user base. If I (or my employer) invests in writing code for a new auto-discovery over IP daemon the BSD license allows that code to be integrated into more devices and OS's more easily and both users and developers benefit only if adoption is widespread. The same developer or company will often find itself contributing under both these licenses. Very few developers consider it some sort of competition between the two or advocate only one license for all things... and most of those people are not industry insiders and probably have not contributed significant code in any case.
The shared source license is somewhat different in that the specific use case it is designed to solve is a marketing one, rather than a functional one. It is simply a way to provide a license that benefits the one and only developer at the expense of the user, by providing a very small subset of the benefits of other OSS licenses, while intentionally castrating the most important (but less understood) benefits. MS's problem is not that developers or users need more freedom to make the code better, it is that developers and users are demanding OSS because OSS code is helping others in ways they don't really understand and those developers and users need to be convinced that MS is giving them those same benefits, in a vague and not specifically explained way.
Preparing for inappropriate troll and flamebait mods. It's still a legitimate question.If you're preparing for troll and flamebait mods, then you probably at least have an inkling that your view is both inflammatory and reflects a poor understanding of those licenses as they are commonly used by the OSS community. In future, if you think you're going to be modded down as a flame and troll, maybe you should assert less and instead ask people to inform you as to why the opinion would be so large of a misunderstanding that it would potentially result in such a moderation. You obviously have doubts about the legitimacy of your question, otherwise you would not phrase it the way you did.
I disagree. Any given person/group/company can be a user of software and/or a developer of software. The GPL does not restrict them as a user, only as a developer. It basically says that if you want to develop the code, you have to share with other developers as the price.
Microsoft's restrictions benefit, well, Microsoft. That is, the original developer. Not the community, not the current user. Nobody else.Microsoft's shared source license is more restricted than the GPL, certainly, but it does bring some benefits to users. That is to say, users can view the code to say, find security holes, or understand how to interoperate more easily. With this knowledge they can create security work arounds and such. They can also submit more specific feature requests to MS.
Shared source does benefit users, it just does so in a very weak way when compared to the GPL.
No really, they were very clever in both creating and naming these licenses. You see most people who have heard of open source software don't understand why it is beneficial. They have, at this point, some vague idea that it is beneficial, but do not understand the mechanism. If you sit down with someone and explain the benefits of open source code the normal topics to discuss are: security and cost. The most easily explained reasons for why open source is cheaper is that people can look at the code and donate improvements, lowering the cost. The most easily explained reason why it is more secure is that people can look at the code and find security holes themselves, thus providing a more extensive security audit. You'll note I said those were the most easily explained mechanisms, that by no means makes them the most potent mechanisms.
So when someone is making a purchasing decision, MS an trot out shared source (which the purchaser does not understand) in comparison to open source (which the purchaser does not understand). They can explain how both those two, most common talking points from the OSS crowd are taken care of, and thus get a sale. They don't explain the more important aspects of OSS or how those benefits are not the same, but not even all OSS advocates understand them either and they certainly aren't going to try to explain them to a PHB. So when you tell the boss OSS will save them money; they ask how. You tell them there is no up front license fee and a lot of the code is donated for free. MS tells them the same thing about shared source (which sounds oh so similar). You probably don't bother explaining to them how the GPL works to insure contributions from everyone are available to all nor how it allows you to take avoid vendor lock-in and take competitive bids on improvements, resulting in lower ongoing costs... because those things take significant understanding and most people don't want to put that much effort in.
Basically, "Shared source" is just MS's way of providing something that looks like OSS enough to fool people who don't really understand how OSS works and they have named it in such a way that is does, sort of, describe what it is and what most people think OSS is. It is just MS removing the most beneficial features for the actual user (but which would cost MS money) and trying to pass it of as the genuine article to anyone gullible enough. And there are a lot of people gullible enough.
This is true, but maybe if we allocated our tax dollars better we would have better drugs yet. The way things are now, a lot of the research is already funded by tax dollars, even though private companies end up with the patents. They also pass up avenues for research that might result in cures, which are much less profitable than treatments.
The drug industry and health industry in general is a situation where the government interferes with the free market by enforcing patents and subsidizing some research and restricting other research. The problem is not necessarily government interference, but the fact that the government interference is directed by lobbyists making campaign contributions instead of by representatives acting in the best interests of the people.
...unless DirectX comes to OSX. Mac's make up 10% of the market, something like that, right? While I'm sure some games will be cross-platform, you try selling the idea of focussing your coding efforts on 10% of the total market to your CEO.Okay. My presentation would go something like this. If we use DirectX for our next game we can target Windows and the XBox 360 simultaneously. Or we could go with portable code that has both DirectX and OpenGL functions and expand that market to include the Macintosh, Nintendo Wii, the Playstation3, and any Linux, cell phone, or other standards compliant platforms that may gain popularity in the next few years. Portable code will also save us costs on our next game because the code is also more reusable. Alternately, we could go OpenGL only and only lose the XBox360 from that list since everything else, including Windows, works with OpenGL.
Remember too; games written for DirectX just happen to port real easy to the XBox too - that is real margin savings right there for most game developers.Yeah, but you neglected all the other platforms, like Wii and PS3.
Oh, and don't even compare OpenGL to DirectX because DirectX does way more than just graphics; it's an entire API set for every element of gaming.All the major game companies not owned by MS (with a few minor exceptions) already have toolkits that target OpenGL OpenAL, OpenSL, etc. that are just as nice as the DirectX toolkit. Pretty much all major PC developers target the Mac from day one (9 out of 10 of the top selling games in 2007). The people who don't use OpenGL or at least have the hooks for it are pretty much small developers who don't know if they will make a profit on some game and companies Microsoft purchased (there are a lot more than most people realize).
True enough.
So Apple can release a console that does what? Provide good graphics, streaming music and video, and online capabilities? That's pretty much what everyone's doing already...Apple doesn't excel at graphics or streaming music or online capabilities. They excel at taking markets and removing pain points for normal users, usually thus expanding the market to new customers. It is possible they can do that with a gaming system, but I'm not really convinced. Still, there certainly are significant pain points on current consoles.
Areas for improvement include interoperability among devices. Think, your iPhone rings, your AppleTV notices and pauses the game you're playing while you answer it. Think, Macs and AppleTV integrating for communication, like video phone technology. Think buying and renting video games, movies, TV shows all from one connected system without any discs to insert. These are all areas to improve game consoles that Apple could still beat the competition to getting right. There is some opportunity.
...plus they all have big libraries of games to back all that up with.This is an issue. MS solved it by leveraging relationships with PC game makers and by buying up a lot of game companies. They further leveraged DirectX to allow developers to target both the Xbox and Windows at the same time with little work.
Apple, is actually in a position to do something of the same. They have dev tools. They have OpenGL, etc. which are already used on the Mac and which Sony and Nintendo also use. They could create a kick ass set of dev tools that would let game developers target OS X, AppleTV, and iPod/iPhone. If they were even more cut throat, they could partner with Sony and Nintendo and make it target both of those platforms as well as Windows. Right now they all share technology, but not in a way that makes it easy to target all of them at once. Still, Apple has missed similar opportunities in the past and it would be a big risk for them.
Apple would have to be pretty arrogant to think that they could slam anybody in that market.Before the Wii, I would have disagreed with you. As it is, Nintendo has really harvested the ow hanging fruit for bringing game consoles to a level of usability for the mainstream audience. At this point I think Apple might be smarter to try partnering with both Sony and Nintendo and letting them help counter MS's monopoly influence from creeping into video game consoles.
Evil is a subjective term. What many people do by ignoring EULAs, however, is not the same as ignoring GPL obligations in several ways. First, by the time you see an EULA, you've usually already paid for the work. Adding additional, technological restricts at that point is dubious both ethically and legally. With the GPL, you are given a choice up front. Second, breaking the GPL is violating copyright law, something fairly well understood and clearly defined and which applies to all copyrighted works. Breaking an EULA is breaking a private contract that generally contains a number of unenforceable (read illegal) clauses. Users are not necessarily even legally or ethically obligated to follow any of the terms. In my state, for example, not reading a contract at the time of signing is grounds for it being voided.
Perhaps if you're trying to draw an analogy, you might look at uploading copyrighted songs to p2p networks without permission. That is a whole lot closer (although still not perfect given the GPL as a "copyleft" license).
Macs as gaming systems are already helping to make for an easier transition for games on Linux, but for the most part the Linux market isn't there. Mostly the affect is due to developers moving to OpenGL for flexibility of platforms (Windows, Mac, PS2, PS3, PSP Wii, NDS, and mobile phones) as opposed to DirextX (Windows and Xbox360).
I disagree. They are both targeted at the mainstream PC gaming crowd. You know, the ones who have made the Sims 2 the best selling game for 2007. Mainstream game developers target midrange systems from two years ago. Macs fit right in. It is a pretty similar casual gaming market as the Wii.
Mac minis and Macbooks aren't targeted at the niche, extreme gaming market where people need high end graphics cards costing significant cash. The problem is one of perception, because so many geeks and people on Slashdot are in this category, they assume it is the mainstream market and don't bother to actually see what is selling.
Technically, the BSD code costs too, it is just cheaper yet in that it only requires credit to the original authors. So long as you are crediting them, you're not abusing anything, you're just complying with the terms the authors asked for. (One might further note that Apple does go well beyond this and provides the source for their BSD based components, not out of altruism I'm sure, but they do.)
No. EULAs restrict what you can do with a copy of software. The GPL is a license for making and distributing copies of software, not using them. Applying this to another medium, imagine you bought a DVD, and then discovered upon running it that it required you to agree not to watch it with the sound turned off. The GPL, on the other hand, would be like buying a DVD and then discovering that it came with a license agreement that would grant you permission from the copyright holder to make copies of the DVD and resell them, if you mailed 10% of the profit to the address listed. In the case of an EULA it is trying to place restrictions on you that are not part of law. In the case of the GPL, it is offering to allow you to take an action that would normally be against the law, provided you agree to the conditions.
EULAs are very questionable from a legal standpoint. The GPL is just a contract for distributing a copyrighted work, just like any other such agreement signed between a record company and Apple or a photographer and a magazine. It is just a very inexpensive agreement and as such, some people mistake it for not being an agreement at all and try to ignore their half of it.
s for the antitrust argument, I have a good handle on antitrust law and it makes absolutely no sense to me. I'll be quite curious to see what they are claiming for a market definition and abusive action. Personally, I think this is just trying to draw out the litigation in the hopes of buying their way out of it.
I consider an app to "feel native" if that is how you want to describe it, when it takes advantages of all the OS X features that programs built using the native tools do. That is to say, if I were to go to xcode a write a simple text editor in a few dozen lines, will the application under consideration be able to do all the same things as my bare bones text editor? Will it be able to use system services? Can I drag and drop it or run it from a flash drive without installation? Can it use the grammar checker on all the text fields? Can I use services I've installed without copying it into a native app and back? Does it use the default keyboard shortcuts for standard functions (from saving files to undoing the last action)? Are all the keyboard shortcuts used by the program ones that don't interfere with default OS X shortcuts?
There have been four or five major changes in the Mac OS. Every time the OS changes, the so-called "feel" changes.Generally I think you can restrict it to the current generation OS at this point. OS 7 apps may have been native at the time, but that time has long since passed. I have a freeware application I installed on OS X 10.0. On OS X 10.5 it still works and still performs like a native application. It can still use the native spellchecker in OS X, whereas OO.org cannot. In fact, it can still do all the things I listed.
NeoOffice feels like a Mac app.NeoOffice and the beta of OpenOffice both fail on pretty much all the points I listed. That isn't to say they suck, or are not worth using. They just lack functionality I can get from really, really simple applications that are native; functions that are fairly universal for all OS X apps. I can run Pages or TextEdit or Oxygen or BBedit or MS Word or Adobe InDesign or Abiword or CleverRabbit and I know that hitting the same key combination will tell me the number of characters, spaces, characters and spaces, words, and lines in the selection. The same is not true for OO.org and that is a real deficiency. I think of that deficiency as being a non-native application, or more specifically an incomplete port. If you want to call it something else, that is fine. Just so long as you recognize the difference in functionality. This is why software evaluation sites for OS X list native and non-native next to software listings and why people prefer the former.
Just because one format is lossless does not mean that a conversion to that format cannot result in the loss of data. That applies only when converting from one lossless format to another. Theoretically it means there does not have to be loss, if there is enough compatibility between formats or if you're willing to expand the data enough.
So what I'm looking for is an actual reference to a converter that says it can transform mp4 to CDA without any loss. I haven't found any that claim to do so.
CDA is actually an implementation of linear PCMYes, I agree it is a lossless format. What I question is if there is loss in the normal conversion process from mp4.
reophile [stereophile.com], a well-respected audio magazine, compared MP3 to CDA in a section entitled "Lossless vs Lossy."Okay, but that, again, does not speak to what happens in the conversion, only to the merits of the formats themselves once data is in them.
Hydrogen Audio [hydrogenaudio.org], a great resource for audio work...One poster there writes, "IF you rip a cd burned with transparent mp3's and encode that to mp3 you will likely start to notice some loss." This is obviously just one opinion, but none of the opinions listed are clear or complete as to whether or not there is any loss in said conversion. Nor, would a particularly trust random people's opinions unless they could back them up either.
People in other fora [ehmac.ca] say that CDA is lossless: "So when you burn a CD from your Apple Lossless files, the tracks that are burned to CD are exact duplicates of those ripped from the original CD"This is answering the wrong question. That is a lossless->lossless (ALAC->CDA) conversion not a lossy->lossless (mp4->CDA).
Basically, while you've provided a lot of links, none of them directly or authoritatively provide a reference to what I was questioning. It is still my understanding that the common converters for mp4 to CDA result in loss. I don't know that that always has to be the case, especially if you're converting mp4 to PCM and don't have to restrict yourself to the CDA subset and data limitations. At least in theory a high enough bit rate mp4 could not be loss-lessly transferred to a CD simply because of limitations in the amount of data that can be stored on a CD. So again, with regard to specifics of the tools in use. Can you provide a reference that the conversion from mp4 files Apple sells (in two different bit rates) can be transferred to CDA format without any loss?
Legally, it is not the product's responsibility. This is just MS kowtowing to the media companies in hopes of getting their content. Legally MS doesn't have to do this. They just think it will make them money, whereas Apple has been down this road before and wants as little DRM and as easy and flexible of a consumer experience as possible, because that is what they think will make them more money.
If some how I do manage to run copy protected works on the ZUNE and get hit by a law suit via the RIAA then am I protected because I assume the ZUNE as acting as a controller?Playing copyrighted works is not illegal. Making a copy of a copyrighted work is potentially illegal. MS's actions offers you no increased legal protection and, in fact, reduces the likelihood your use would be protected under the fair use doctrine.
I am not a lawyer but to me if a products goes to such an extent to enforce copy protection then the liability of infringement would fall to the ZUNE and to Microsoft...I recommend talking to a lawyer, but MS is trying to restrict playing video, not making copies of it in the first place. By the time you're trying to play it, the infringement has happened already.
First, I don't think that is true. Second, it's mp4 -> CDA, not mp3. From what I've read there is some loss of quality using all the popular tools for burning CDs including iTunes. If you can support your claim I'd be interested to read it.
I filed the first two long ago. Sadly the site you list requires registration including handing your personal info over to Sun. You'd think they'd add a bug report feature to the program, especially for a beta.