The goal of the GPL is software freedom. These freedoms are zero indexed, of course:
* The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
* The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
* The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
* The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
I think speaking of a "GNU GPL law" only serves to confound the issue. The issue is software freedom, whether this is something society should value, and what means work best to achieve that end.
I've spent some time in Morocco. Not a third world country, but certainly not first world either. There are large towns, cities, where the majority of the community shares a phone. (I've been absent a few years, so forgive me if things have changed.)
Digital divide?! Most people in world don't even have telephones!
So, the argument goes, we must, with all due haste, do all we can to make sure that anyone anywhere can reach anyone else anywhere, at anytime. We must make all information available to everyone at all times.
Well, maybe. But, despite my white male American technoliterate sysadmin background, I don't give any of these objectives high priority.
What is life like, when you can't drive? Can't make ad hominem (sic) social arrangements with your friends across town? Can't keep pace with the gyrations of the NYSE? Well, you probably know your neighbors.
Answer this: What are your neighbor's names? Where did they grow up? What do they do for a living? What are their ambitions? Are you good friends? Could you, with all of your magical technological sophistication, do something to make their life better? Do you think maybe, if you got to know them, techo-illiterates though they may be, they might be able to make your life better?
I have a sick number of computers at my disposal. Throw them all in the river, and give me tajine on the mountains overlooking the beaches of Agadir. For all our wizardry, we are still existential infants. Don't let your sophistication get to your head.
Unless the e-mail address is intended for receiving huge amounts of e-mail, it IS inconsiderate to post it on the front page of a news site that gets several hundred thousand viewers a day.
What a bunch of balony. If the people in charge of a technological project of such magnitude aren't equiped to handle email, they shouldn't be making these decisions. This is exactly where comments should be sent; as opposed to, say, staring into your navel by confining your ranting to Slashdot.
Are you really afraid of people's manners, or maybe are you just afraid of what they might say?
What's this "Write your congressman!", but no, wait, "Don't write to Belgium!" dyspepsia going around on Slashdot? I guess you're only supposed to advocate that people you agree with get involved. I disagree wholeheartedly with your sentiment that this is a "good thing". This would be terrible. I certainly wrote a letter, as follows:
I urge you to please abdicate your decision to pursue having Microsoft provide software in your (noble) effort to conquer the digital divide.
If you would truly like to present the people of Belgium with an opportunity to participate in the global digital revolution, you should promote the use of free software (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html). Free software empowers people to not only/use/ computers, but also to advance the state of computing. To actively participate in, rather than passively subsidize, the digital revolution. It does so by promoting four essential freedoms:
* The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
* The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
* The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
* The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits. (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
Installing proprietary software, such as that produced by Microsoft, will only serve to shackle the people of Belgium to Microsoft's eternal desire for profit. While profit is a worthy objective, when it becomes the highest objective, as it has for many corporations, other worthy principles often fall to the wayside.
Since you are just beginning this venture, now is the best time to avoid the eternal dominion of Microsoft's licensing entanglements and other schemes to ensnare and entrap new legions of revenue enhancing impotent users. Avoid this path before it is too late.
Speaking of providing the less fortunate with a PC...
I'd just like to put in a plug for Kite, Inc.: "a nonprofit organization addressing the global digital divide by offering free, customized computer support packages and technical training to community groups in the 'Third World'."
Do you buy books? Then you can help them, by purchasing from galtbooks: "The mission of galtbooks is to assist charitable and community organizations in generating revenues for their cause."
No, I am not affiliated with either organization. I only heard of them just recently, and thought "wow, I'm really glad someone's doing that". Sorry if this comes off as just more spam.
It cost much more that $1 billion and ten years to produce Windows XP.
Why is that? I don't see how highlighting exemplary examples of market inefficiencies bolsters your point.
But what's really starting to irk me is how the robber barons believe they hold dominion over the definition of the word "pirate". Piracy is an act of robbery. Like, say, telling me that the software I paid for doesn't really belong to me.
Here's a question I'll waste on an expiring thread in an old article: How many people who rigorously defend proprietary software actually own and profit from proprietary software? If you code for Microsoft, you don't own jack shit. Why do you code? For money. It's work for hire, pure and simple. Code ownership has nothing to do with it. And if proprietary software were outlawed tomorrow, does anyone really think that the demand for software would evaporate?! Bullocks. People would get paid to develop software just like they do today. Except that they would actually be able to continue building on their own work, no matter who they worked for.
Sure, China is oggling free trade, but will it (or can it?) curb pirating?,
Selling a copy of Windows XP for $1 is curbing piracy. If the free market allows someone to make a profit distributing software for such a low cost, the real pirates are those who would have China choke that market with US-style IP regulations.
There is a scarcity in software and 'digital content', its in the cost of the labour to produce it.
There's a scarcity of labor cost? I think the opposite. I'm assuming you mean that there would be a scarcity of labor without the software industry being propped up by the federal government.
That's demonstrably empirically wrong. Witness the success of the free software movement. And if you consider that this movement was only really able to acquire any traction with the advent of widespread access to the Internet, it only stands to reason that this success will continue to grow.
Furthermore, I'm not arguing that developers should not get paid.
Hmm, yes. Well, let me just nurse my post along by saying that this whole WIPO thing stinks to high heaven also. I really don't think people understand the significance of what's going on here. In fact, I don't think most people even know it's going on at all. And if they did, they probably haven't spend an iota of time considering the ramifications.
Remember the presidential debates? Remember the lengthy discussions that were had concerning the role "intellectual property" should play in a civilized society? Me neither. Yet vast portions of the world economy are affected by these ideas.
I feel disaffected and disenfranchised. I'm not ready to throw tea into the harbor. Yet. But damn it, what right do our elected leaders have to be signing far-reaching treaties which they never sold to the public during their campaigns? I never heard George Bush represent that we must strengthen intellectual property protections both at home and abroad. Did anyone? Were all sides of the issue presented to the public for their consideration? I don't just blame George - where were his oppenents?
I also blame myself. I've traditionally only given serious consideration to the democratic and republican contenders. Maybe an independant candidate will emerge someday who can really pull it all together. From now on, I'm certainly going to be seriously looking...
It wouldn't be right to refab, say, a specific piece of hardware (identical to the original) and then sell it like an original version, that's outright stealing.
You mean the way Compaq reverse engineered IBM's PC BIOS so that they could manufacture and market a clone; thereby creating an open platform and launching the PC revolution? Are you saying that little bit of engineering should have been declared illegal? Why?
"Stealing" usually refers to someone taking something that belongs to someone else. In this case, you're talking about manufacturing something, based on someone else's pattern. It's perfectly acceptable to do this, unless the object in question is under patent protection.
Software only seems to get special treatment because of the way it is easily re-distributed.
That's one reason, and a very good one. The whole notion of "property" hinges on a corresponding scarcity. There's absolutely no need for society to establish protections for things that can be had in abundance.
The idea here is that we've imposed these so-called 'protections' on ourselves, and for no good reason. Software is not a product like any other. I enjoy the comparison to math. Imagine you could patent math theorems - that would be nonsense. But we live in a world where we patent generally applicable algorithms and business methods. Thank god that computer science had enough history behind it before this phenomenon really took hold that prior art could pre-empt the wholesale rape of the industry. Do you think the world is worse for wear because there is no patent on binary trees? Do you wish that someone in the world claimed ownership to binary arithmetic?
unless one assumes that a strong economy is an end in itself, more important than the welfare of the people some of us thought the economy was supposed to serve.
I don't see how having a strong economy can be incompatible with social welfare. I've always kind of thought they are the same thing. I think the problem is that some people equate 'strong economy' with a dystopian vision of concentrated power and greed uber alles. Stomping competing software and competing licensing models out of existence does nothing to create a 'strong economy' that I can see.
...Russia has just as big a problem with illegal copying of software...
...steps should be made to try and curb the rampant disregard for software licenses.
Isn't a bit of a leap to presume that the laws of the United States prevail for the rest of the planet! You are talking about sovereign nations!
Except that powerful corporate interests defended by the United States would have these countries bend to their will. Who's the 'pirate', 'thief', 'criminal'? Yeah, sure, let's put a little downward economic pressure on the economic might of the Ukraine. Evil, evil, evil, greedy bastards. That's all I can think of to say.
While the world's exemplar of freedom becomes a police state, and a world police state at that; former police states embrace freedom. Interesting times, indeed.
Algorithms, problem-solving functions, and procedures such as you're talking about
...can also be objects. See SGI's STL Manual for some examples.
I'm not arguing in favor of using OO for everything, just pointing out that "objects" can be more broadly defined that the typical C++ intro depicts them.
Although not foolproof, BIOS/FIRMWARE password to prevent floppy/CD booting is key.
I should have been more clear. The problem isn't the client, it's the protocol. NFS is inherently insecure. Sure, you can BIOS protect your workstations. But you can't bios protect my laptop. You can't stop me from spoofing my mac address, my ip address, etc.
Now you're right, of course, that most people can't/won't do this. On the other hand, what are you trying to protect? When your boss asks "is this secure?", what do you say? Remember too, that you don't have be much of a whiz to do a google search.
Are you going to export your accounting folder? How about HR stuff? There are good (well, maybe 'good' isn't the right word...;) reasons people would want at the information therein. It really doesn't take a lot of effort to get it, if you're using NFS.
Any decent admin worried about security will disable booting from CD (and floppy) and password-protect the BIOS configuration screen.
Except that you don't always have control of all of the workstations. University personally owned computers, for example. What you're suggesting will only work in a rigidly controlled environment. Better to have a more secure filesharing methodology. NFS4, for example. Or I understand AFS to be more secure. However, this would seem to be a difficult system to use in an evironment that must also cooperate with, say, Windows clients.
I hate to say it, but as things stand today, you'll end up with a much more secure shared filesystem if you use samba + windows clients. Unless you use a system like AFS that doesn't play nice with others. This is definitely a chink in the *nix armor.
Maybe I just don't understand AFS well enough. I've been pinning my hopes on NFSv4, but this certainly looks discouraging. Maybe umich will save us. By June 30th, they say... Here's to William, Jim, Kendrick, and Jake!
If you have linux clients, what's to prevent me from mounting any user's data that I want? I pop in a Linux boot CD, become root, read the necessary ssh private/public key data. Then I become any user I like, and mount away.
>What we don't have is a system to compell the process. That's a good thing.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by this. Do you not think paid free software developers would be a good thing?
Sure. What I mean is that the bottom-up machinations of a free market will devise better solutions than top-down planning. This requires that we purge the software industry of regulations, such as patent law, copyright, the DMCA, etc. that interfere with the proper operation of the marketplace. I'm not saying that donation systems are the only or best way to promote free software development. Nor am I knocking any of your ideas. I was just making a minor correction, and using that as an excuse to rant a bit...
Now, I do think that if the market were truly free to operate, that the software economy would likely deflate. But there's a big difference between 'deflate' and 'disappear'. Image there are no software patents. Image that all software is free. Are people going to stop wanting new types of software? Are people going to stop wanting newer, faster, different hardware architectures? Nope. And I have no fear whatever that a truly free market would fail to fulfill these needs.
There is no reason free software developers shouldn't get paid. The problem is that we have no system in place to conduct the process.
Umm, all of those links you see in the article are to locations that inform you how to make financial contributions to support various projects. So there is a system in place. Maybe it doesn't work as well as people would like, but it certainly exists.
What we don't have is a system to compell the process. That's a good thing.
Are you thinking about something like the GPL Farm? Someone else just posted the link (so redundify me if you like) - I never heard of this before.
Free software (or open source, if you prefer) is a philosophy, not a business model. Paying someone to write software that you would like to have, however, is a business model as old as the software industry itself. Connecting talented developers with unmet business requirements sounds like a money tree to me. Easier said than done...
I think everybody agrees with this. The disagreement revolves around what should be considered "fair". Is it fair to 'license' software to users, thereby depriving them of rights that consumers who purchase other products expect to have? Is it fair for monopolists to leverage their power to screw consumers into perpetually upgrading to maintain compatibility with the rest of the world? Is it fair for the U.S. Patent Office to pick winners and losers in the marketplace? Is it fair that de-facto proprietary standards compell people to use software with serious security flaws and innumerable other defects? Defects that they cannot fix themselves.
I agree with your sentiments completely, but I think the marketplace you refer to is badly broken. The competitive marketplace for software that you speak of exists, but not where you think it does.
There's no irony to speak of selling free software. The irony is that people are willing subsidize multi-billion dollar multi-national corporations to temporarily acquire limited rights to software that sucks.
Larry, you're a lawyer. Not a geek. You wannabe, but you're not. Appreciate your help, but let's get a couple of things clear here.
Yes, the IP protocol is designed to enable unfettered best effort communication between two endpoints.
Sometimes that's not good enough. Existing Internet protocols do not handle streaming media gracefully, because of their content agnostism. You call that an ethical coup. I call that a flaw. Handling streaming media gracefully requires the cooperation of intermediaries. You may call that unfortunate, but it's true.
All I'm saying here is let's base our objectives on facts, not pie-in-the-sky idealism. Your job is to make sure that the people who do, who must, have control of the pipelines are unable to abuse their privileged position. There's nothing wrong with privilege, just abuse of privilege.
Slashdot Mirror
The goal of the GPL is software freedom. These freedoms are zero indexed, of course:
* The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
* The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
* The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
* The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
I think speaking of a "GNU GPL law" only serves to confound the issue. The issue is software freedom, whether this is something society should value, and what means work best to achieve that end.
The GPL is just a tool.
Everything in moderation. Including moderation. ;)
I've spent some time in Morocco. Not a third world country, but certainly not first world either. There are large towns, cities, where the majority of the community shares a phone. (I've been absent a few years, so forgive me if things have changed.)
Digital divide?! Most people in world don't even have telephones!
So, the argument goes, we must, with all due haste, do all we can to make sure that anyone anywhere can reach anyone else anywhere, at anytime. We must make all information available to everyone at all times.
Well, maybe. But, despite my white male American technoliterate sysadmin background, I don't give any of these objectives high priority.
What is life like, when you can't drive? Can't make ad hominem (sic) social arrangements with your friends across town? Can't keep pace with the gyrations of the NYSE? Well, you probably know your neighbors.
Answer this: What are your neighbor's names? Where did they grow up? What do they do for a living? What are their ambitions? Are you good friends? Could you, with all of your magical technological sophistication, do something to make their life better? Do you think maybe, if you got to know them, techo-illiterates though they may be, they might be able to make your life better?
I have a sick number of computers at my disposal. Throw them all in the river, and give me tajine on the mountains overlooking the beaches of Agadir. For all our wizardry, we are still existential infants. Don't let your sophistication get to your head.
most companies (i'm talking non-tech here) run windows, and not knowing the OS would be serious hindrance to these people finding a job.
The jobs these people care about are in Belgium ! How does ceding a significant percentage of the country's total GDP to Microsoft aid Belgium ?!
Unless the e-mail address is intended for receiving huge amounts of e-mail, it IS inconsiderate to post it on the front page of a news site that gets several hundred thousand viewers a day.
What a bunch of balony. If the people in charge of a technological project of such magnitude aren't equiped to handle email, they shouldn't be making these decisions. This is exactly where comments should be sent; as opposed to, say, staring into your navel by confining your ranting to Slashdot.
Are you really afraid of people's manners, or maybe are you just afraid of what they might say?
What's this "Write your congressman!", but no, wait, "Don't write to Belgium!" dyspepsia going around on Slashdot? I guess you're only supposed to advocate that people you agree with get involved. I disagree wholeheartedly with your sentiment that this is a "good thing". This would be terrible. I certainly wrote a letter, as follows:
/use/ computers, but also to advance the state of computing. To actively participate in, rather than passively subsidize, the digital revolution. It does so by promoting four essential freedoms:
I urge you to please abdicate your decision to pursue having Microsoft provide software in your (noble) effort to conquer the digital divide.
If you would truly like to present the people of Belgium with an opportunity to participate in the global digital revolution, you should promote the use of free software (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html). Free software empowers people to not only
* The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
* The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
* The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
* The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits. (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
Installing proprietary software, such as that produced by Microsoft, will only serve to shackle the people of Belgium to Microsoft's eternal desire for profit. While profit is a worthy objective, when it becomes the highest objective, as it has for many corporations, other worthy principles often fall to the wayside.
Since you are just beginning this venture, now is the best time to avoid the eternal dominion of Microsoft's licensing entanglements and other schemes to ensnare and entrap new legions of revenue enhancing impotent users. Avoid this path before it is too late.
Speaking of providing the less fortunate with a PC...
I'd just like to put in a plug for Kite, Inc.: "a nonprofit organization addressing the global digital divide by offering free, customized computer support packages and technical training to community groups in the 'Third World'."
Do you buy books? Then you can help them, by purchasing from galtbooks: "The mission of galtbooks is to assist charitable and community organizations in generating revenues for their cause."
No, I am not affiliated with either organization. I only heard of them just recently, and thought "wow, I'm really glad someone's doing that". Sorry if this comes off as just more spam.
It cost much more that $1 billion and ten years to produce Windows XP.
Why is that? I don't see how highlighting exemplary examples of market inefficiencies bolsters your point.
But what's really starting to irk me is how the robber barons believe they hold dominion over the definition of the word "pirate". Piracy is an act of robbery. Like, say, telling me that the software I paid for doesn't really belong to me.
Here's a question I'll waste on an expiring thread in an old article: How many people who rigorously defend proprietary software actually own and profit from proprietary software? If you code for Microsoft, you don't own jack shit. Why do you code? For money. It's work for hire, pure and simple. Code ownership has nothing to do with it. And if proprietary software were outlawed tomorrow, does anyone really think that the demand for software would evaporate?! Bullocks. People would get paid to develop software just like they do today. Except that they would actually be able to continue building on their own work, no matter who they worked for.
Sure, China is oggling free trade, but will it (or can it?) curb pirating?,
Selling a copy of Windows XP for $1 is curbing piracy. If the free market allows someone to make a profit distributing software for such a low cost, the real pirates are those who would have China choke that market with US-style IP regulations.
There is a scarcity in software and 'digital content', its in the cost of the labour to produce it.
There's a scarcity of labor cost? I think the opposite. I'm assuming you mean that there would be a scarcity of labor without the software industry being propped up by the federal government.
That's demonstrably empirically wrong. Witness the success of the free software movement. And if you consider that this movement was only really able to acquire any traction with the advent of widespread access to the Internet, it only stands to reason that this success will continue to grow.
Furthermore, I'm not arguing that developers should not get paid.
Hmm, yes. Well, let me just nurse my post along by saying that this whole WIPO thing stinks to high heaven also. I really don't think people understand the significance of what's going on here. In fact, I don't think most people even know it's going on at all. And if they did, they probably haven't spend an iota of time considering the ramifications.
Remember the presidential debates? Remember the lengthy discussions that were had concerning the role "intellectual property" should play in a civilized society? Me neither. Yet vast portions of the world economy are affected by these ideas.
I feel disaffected and disenfranchised. I'm not ready to throw tea into the harbor. Yet. But damn it, what right do our elected leaders have to be signing far-reaching treaties which they never sold to the public during their campaigns? I never heard George Bush represent that we must strengthen intellectual property protections both at home and abroad. Did anyone? Were all sides of the issue presented to the public for their consideration? I don't just blame George - where were his oppenents?
I also blame myself. I've traditionally only given serious consideration to the democratic and republican contenders. Maybe an independant candidate will emerge someday who can really pull it all together. From now on, I'm certainly going to be seriously looking...
It wouldn't be right to refab, say, a specific piece of hardware (identical to the original) and then sell it like an original version, that's outright stealing.
You mean the way Compaq reverse engineered IBM's PC BIOS so that they could manufacture and market a clone; thereby creating an open platform and launching the PC revolution? Are you saying that little bit of engineering should have been declared illegal? Why?
"Stealing" usually refers to someone taking something that belongs to someone else. In this case, you're talking about manufacturing something, based on someone else's pattern. It's perfectly acceptable to do this, unless the object in question is under patent protection.
Software only seems to get special treatment because of the way it is easily re-distributed.
That's one reason, and a very good one. The whole notion of "property" hinges on a corresponding scarcity. There's absolutely no need for society to establish protections for things that can be had in abundance.
The idea here is that we've imposed these so-called 'protections' on ourselves, and for no good reason. Software is not a product like any other. I enjoy the comparison to math. Imagine you could patent math theorems - that would be nonsense. But we live in a world where we patent generally applicable algorithms and business methods. Thank god that computer science had enough history behind it before this phenomenon really took hold that prior art could pre-empt the wholesale rape of the industry. Do you think the world is worse for wear because there is no patent on binary trees? Do you wish that someone in the world claimed ownership to binary arithmetic?
unless one assumes that a strong economy is an end in itself, more important than the welfare of the people some of us thought the economy was supposed to serve.
I don't see how having a strong economy can be incompatible with social welfare. I've always kind of thought they are the same thing. I think the problem is that some people equate 'strong economy' with a dystopian vision of concentrated power and greed uber alles. Stomping competing software and competing licensing models out of existence does nothing to create a 'strong economy' that I can see.
...Russia has just as big a problem with illegal copying of software...
...steps should be made to try and curb the rampant disregard for software licenses.
Isn't a bit of a leap to presume that the laws of the United States prevail for the rest of the planet! You are talking about sovereign nations!
Except that powerful corporate interests defended by the United States would have these countries bend to their will. Who's the 'pirate', 'thief', 'criminal'? Yeah, sure, let's put a little downward economic pressure on the economic might of the Ukraine. Evil, evil, evil, greedy bastards. That's all I can think of to say.
While the world's exemplar of freedom becomes a police state, and a world police state at that; former police states embrace freedom. Interesting times, indeed.
Algorithms, problem-solving functions, and procedures such as you're talking about
...can also be objects. See SGI's STL Manual for some examples.
I'm not arguing in favor of using OO for everything, just pointing out that "objects" can be more broadly defined that the typical C++ intro depicts them.
The GNU Scientific Library is a relatively recent addition to the catalog of GNU software. It looks to be very impressive.
Although not foolproof, BIOS/FIRMWARE password to prevent floppy/CD booting is key.
;) reasons people would want at the information therein. It really doesn't take a lot of effort to get it, if you're using NFS.
I should have been more clear. The problem isn't the client, it's the protocol. NFS is inherently insecure. Sure, you can BIOS protect your workstations. But you can't bios protect my laptop. You can't stop me from spoofing my mac address, my ip address, etc.
Now you're right, of course, that most people can't/won't do this. On the other hand, what are you trying to protect? When your boss asks "is this secure?", what do you say? Remember too, that you don't have be much of a whiz to do a google search.
Are you going to export your accounting folder? How about HR stuff? There are good (well, maybe 'good' isn't the right word...
Any decent admin worried about security will disable booting from CD (and floppy) and password-protect the BIOS configuration screen.
Except that you don't always have control of all of the workstations. University personally owned computers, for example. What you're suggesting will only work in a rigidly controlled environment. Better to have a more secure filesharing methodology. NFS4, for example. Or I understand AFS to be more secure. However, this would seem to be a difficult system to use in an evironment that must also cooperate with, say, Windows clients.
I hate to say it, but as things stand today, you'll end up with a much more secure shared filesystem if you use samba + windows clients. Unless you use a system like AFS that doesn't play nice with others. This is definitely a chink in the *nix armor.
Maybe I just don't understand AFS well enough. I've been pinning my hopes on NFSv4, but this certainly looks discouraging. Maybe umich will save us. By June 30th, they say... Here's to William, Jim, Kendrick, and Jake!
Use NFS tunneled over SSH for file distribution.
If you have linux clients, what's to prevent me from mounting any user's data that I want? I pop in a Linux boot CD, become root, read the necessary ssh private/public key data. Then I become any user I like, and mount away.
>What we don't have is a system to compell the process. That's a good thing.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by this. Do you not think paid free software developers would be a good thing?
Sure. What I mean is that the bottom-up machinations of a free market will devise better solutions than top-down planning. This requires that we purge the software industry of regulations, such as patent law, copyright, the DMCA, etc. that interfere with the proper operation of the marketplace. I'm not saying that donation systems are the only or best way to promote free software development. Nor am I knocking any of your ideas. I was just making a minor correction, and using that as an excuse to rant a bit...
Now, I do think that if the market were truly free to operate, that the software economy would likely deflate. But there's a big difference between 'deflate' and 'disappear'. Image there are no software patents. Image that all software is free. Are people going to stop wanting new types of software? Are people going to stop wanting newer, faster, different hardware architectures? Nope. And I have no fear whatever that a truly free market would fail to fulfill these needs.
There is no reason free software developers shouldn't get paid. The problem is that we have no system in place to conduct the process.
Umm, all of those links you see in the article are to locations that inform you how to make financial contributions to support various projects. So there is a system in place. Maybe it doesn't work as well as people would like, but it certainly exists.
What we don't have is a system to compell the process. That's a good thing.
Are you thinking about something like the GPL Farm? Someone else just posted the link (so redundify me if you like) - I never heard of this before.
Free software (or open source, if you prefer) is a philosophy, not a business model. Paying someone to write software that you would like to have, however, is a business model as old as the software industry itself. Connecting talented developers with unmet business requirements sounds like a money tree to me. Easier said than done...
Yay for selling good software for a fair price.
I think everybody agrees with this. The disagreement revolves around what should be considered "fair". Is it fair to 'license' software to users, thereby depriving them of rights that consumers who purchase other products expect to have? Is it fair for monopolists to leverage their power to screw consumers into perpetually upgrading to maintain compatibility with the rest of the world? Is it fair for the U.S. Patent Office to pick winners and losers in the marketplace? Is it fair that de-facto proprietary standards compell people to use software with serious security flaws and innumerable other defects? Defects that they cannot fix themselves.
I agree with your sentiments completely, but I think the marketplace you refer to is badly broken. The competitive marketplace for software that you speak of exists, but not where you think it does.
There's no irony to speak of selling free software. The irony is that people are willing subsidize multi-billion dollar multi-national corporations to temporarily acquire limited rights to software that sucks.
I completely agree that we can achieve the values of end-to-end without there being, technically, an end-to-end network.
/. I apologize for my acerbic tone here and elsewhere.
Oh.
And uhg. I tipped a couple too many last night and then decided to post to
Best wishes.
Or as LL likes to say "end to end".
Larry, you're a lawyer. Not a geek. You wannabe, but you're not. Appreciate your help, but let's get a couple of things clear here.
Yes, the IP protocol is designed to enable unfettered best effort communication between two endpoints.
Sometimes that's not good enough. Existing Internet protocols do not handle streaming media gracefully, because of their content agnostism. You call that an ethical coup. I call that a flaw. Handling streaming media gracefully requires the cooperation of intermediaries. You may call that unfortunate, but it's true.
All I'm saying here is let's base our objectives on facts, not pie-in-the-sky idealism. Your job is to make sure that the people who do, who must, have control of the pipelines are unable to abuse their privileged position. There's nothing wrong with privilege, just abuse of privilege.