Slashdotters could easily start by lettering MPs, Congressman, MEPs etc to voice their concerns.
They do.
Anyone who attempts to profile a typical "slashdotter" is doomed to fail miserably. As with any group with a membership greater than one, there will always be many points of view. This should go without saying. Nevertheless, when luminaries such as Lawrence start making such generalizations, it's worth taking the time to overstate the obvious.
But that will require something more than a life of quibbling on Slashdot. And so far, you've not shown you're up to very much more.
And just what does the high and mighty honorable Lessig think he's doing cavorting with the unwashed masses? Here's a clue, Larry: if it weren't for us, you wouldn't have a leg to stand on. You think all of your bright ideas enter your dreams from the ether? There's a lot to be desired of Slashdot. And of Slashdotters, myself included. But if you're going to tell me that the "quibbles" on Slashdot are irrelevant, I'm going to tell you to pull your head out of your ass. These discussions, prosaic as they may be, are read by thousands. Like the lowly cattle we are, we regurgitate our food, chew on it some more, and swallow. And repeat.
Is your mode of operation any different? I think not. The only difference is one of specialization. So before you condescend to the audience who's point of view you deign to represent, get a little humility. Or go suck eggs.
It is possible to build labyrinths of internal directories that eventually become too deep to navigate via the mouse. The feeling of such spiral filing systems is of endless depth, requiring great effort to retrieve a piece of information.
Here we go again, the "too many clicks" theory of useability. Which might have some validity, if it's proponents would support the notion with scenarios that actually made sense.
Shallow directory trees are a terrible way for humans to navigate large amounts of information. This theory ignores the effort involved in scanning the correspondingly huge numbers of entries in each directory to find what you want. The American Scientist has a relevant article which relates to this very subject, which was previously discussed on Slashdot. Look for the bit about telephone menu systems, right after figure 2.
This is not to say that filesystem hiearchies should be strictly ternary, just that the reasoning these so called "useability experts" use to come to their conclusions is suspect, at best.
Now we have three open-source/free software doc projects: The featured project, LDP, and OSWG.
Open source and free software are not the same thing. They are very similar, but they do in fact have different points of view and differing objectives. Licenses are one of the more powerful tools these organizations can use to advance thier position.
Your point seems to be that you don't really care about all this balony, you just want the documentation. If that's all you care about, then these organizations are truly redundant. But there's more to it than that.From the preamble of the GNU Free Documentation License:
The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other written document "free" in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this License preserves for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for modifications made by others.
To some people, these things matter - a lot. There are issues to consider besides just making the documentation "available". Like ensuring that it will remain available. It makes perfect sense that groups would organize in support of these principles.
Debian wants to "impose" a license on documents contributed by volunteer authors to a completely independent organization?!
I don't understand how they can do this. They can only impose restrictions on what they find acceptable in their own organization. Isn't it their right to do so?
If you find their requirements unacceptable, then your documentation won't be distributed by Debian. If that bothers you, you'll have to deal with them. If it doesn't, why all the fuss?
To correct your restaurant analogy, it sounds like you're upset that a vegetarian restaurant won't serve you chicken.
Is there something in particular about Debian's requirements that upset you? Or are you just upset that they would impose standards at all? How tough is it, really, to change a license?
I'm curious. Is there something in particular about the licensing terms that Debian would like to impose that bothers you? What do you mean when you say their "ideological purity is going too far"? Or are you simply finding it annoying and burdensome that they would do this post facto?
Yes, let the market decide. But the market is not supposed to involve coercion.
My thoughts exactly. Which is why I am against software patents and copyrights.
Are going to tell me that those institutions don't constitute coercion? Do you must believe that you have a natural right of ownership to the output of your brain's machinations? I.E. - that these laws simply institutionalize what we all know is good and holy?
BTW, don't quote me. These words belong to me.
Re:Perpetuating the use of Windows software on Lin
on
What's up with Lindows?
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Proprietary software has a right to exist and people deserve to get paid for their work.
Fiat doesn't make it so. Sorry, but pick any economic theory you like; none of them say you "deserve" to get paid for your work. If I collect a bunch of sticks and buy a bunch of yarn and busy myself making god's eyes twelve hourse a day, do I "deserve" to get paid for it? Of course that's nonsense.
Personally, I prefer the capitalist take on this issue. I'd like to let the market decide what the effort that goes into programming is worth. And I'd like the market to decide what the value of mass producing digital content is worth. But we don't get to see that happen, because these industries are propped up by government regulations that circumvent the proper operation of the market.
If people want free software, they'll choose it on its merits.
Not necessarily, given the current anti-competitive market in which it has to compete. Moreover, if you consider freedom in and of itself the most important "merit", your statement evaporates in a tautology.
I would love to see the "market dictate succcess or failure of a piece of software". Not the US patent office. Not the monopoly owners of copyrighted proprietary de-facto standards.
Given the sordid state of the software industry, it's about time we do away with notion that proprietary software deserves a seat at the table. The only reason it has a seat at all is because we, as a society, invited it. It's time for the boot.
And let's never stop having this "endless debate on freedom".
Re:Perpetuating the use of Windows software on Lin
on
What's up with Lindows?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
The problem with some of these anti-MS advocats is that they think they can take over the market in one fell swoop.
You're forgetting, or failing to mention, that people advocate GNU/Linux for other reasons than toppling Microsoft. If software freedom is your goal, then migrating proprietary software from one OS to another doesn't really accomplish a thing.
Why would any government want to manage its affairs using computers over which a third party maintained complete control?
To sum, this OS plus secure hardware implementation can hide, make invisible, one process from another. To hear them speak of it, it sounds like they are (oh so generously) only assisting the financially beleagured content industry (music, et al) from the rampages of brutish hacker pirate outlaws. That's a deserves a rant of it's own. But think about this. They are talking about this like their simply protecting data. Well, as we all know, there's a special form of data called a program. I.E. - such an OS could completely obscure the very existance of this or that program. You could never really know what your OS was up to.
Now couple this with a secure network communication protocol. Kind of gives spyware a whole new meaning now, doesn't it?
And the United States government should pass some laws to help make this all possible. Will someone up on the hill, a lot of someones, please get clued in about this shit?!
You can find the Project Gutenberg version of Marx's Communist Manifesto here.
The trouble with referencing Marx - well, one of the troubling things - is that you implicitly invoke an association with any number of unsavory ideas he had, in addition to anything valid he may have said. For example, I'll quote a bit:
Our bourgeois, not content with having the wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other's wives.
Bourgeois marriage is in reality a system of wives in common and thus, at the most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with,
is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalised community of women. For the rest, it is self-evident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of the community of women springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution both public and private.
There are plenty of other interesting tidbids to be had as well. In other words, it might just be best to let the old boy Marx rest in peace.
I've asked a lot of people and it seems to me that most people who evangelize and use OSS are using it because OSS projects are usually (but not always) free software (as in free beer not free-dom)
You may be right. But the article asks:
Have [we] moved into a post-scarcity gift culture or is the report correct that open source uses and needs the subsidy of public investment to grow within traditional industrial capitalism?
The question is not about why people use open source software, it's about why people develop open source software.
You don't really want to know Microsoft API's, unless you are writing code to interoperate with Microsoft software. This is detrimental to Microsoft in the same way compelling Microsoft to install their software at thousands of elementary schools is detrimental to Microsoft. It just encourages people to use more Microsoft products.
Better to demand they publish their file formats and networking protocols.
In the story, Ellison is quoted as saying: "There is cooperation (among government agencies). But there's a lot of data fragmentation."
It follows that Larry believes the answer is to consolodate all this data into one massive system.
There's an expression "don't put all of your eggs in one basket". It applies well to this and any other situation where people say "there are too many competing ways of doing X". Sure, this "fragmentation" Larry abhors can be a pain in the ass sometimes. But I'd certainly rather have a little chaos here and there, than one massive central point of failure. Remember what happened to the centrally controlled economy of the former Soviet Union?
Excuse me, but does anyone on slashdot/not/ work in a romper room?
It doesn't do much for linux advocacy to ignore valid problems and hope they'll just go away. You're not going to find your brain by sticking your head up your ass. On the other hand, maybe you will.
When you're finally old enough to think about a job interview, try telling your prospective employers that you don't think secure user-level security for shared file space on their corporate network matters. Explain your linux-only implementation, please. I'd really like to hear about it. Really.
Sometimes I really am a troll. But in this case, the only thing I'm trolling for is someone to disabuse me. Not abuse, disabuse. It's in the dictionary.
I'm a linux bigot, for sure. But one hurdle that has to be overcome before anyone who's not insane sells this idea to their boss is the utter lack of secure filesharing for a multi-user office. Usernames and passwords, in plain text, in an automount config file is not an option. Experimental filesystems are not an option. NFS is not an option (got root on the client (install cd) you've got access to anything.). OpenAFS maybe, but not exactly a widely discussed or supported system.
NFS4 sounds like the ticket, but the two available open implementations (umich and samba team) are in their infancy.
Until this problem is solved, this whole discussion is moot, as far as I'm concerned.
Software doesn't work that way. You pay a consultant $1,000 for a program and without some notion of software ownership, everyone in the world can get that program for free.
Well, I'm a free software bigot, but if I could, I'd mod you up for this. This is one of the few cogent opposing viewpoints that I've seen today. Makes me scratch my head...
I'm not sure that the GPL can prohibit an NDA. The GPL itself is not a contract, it's a license. You only accept it's terms by implication, when you redistribute the software. From the GPL:
5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it.
An NDA, by definition, would prohibit distribution. So therefore, you would never be accepting the terms of the license. (!) Also, the copyright holder would/could be the client.
An NDA would also have validity in a world without software patents or copyrights.
The upshot may be, that should all software be required to be GPL'd, or if software could not be patented or copyrighted, that the developers/owners, to protect their interests, would never distribute anything.
Someone suggested to me a few days ago that the original purpose of patents and copyrights were, ironically, to encourage closed guild systems to be more open about their techniques. Now that is an argument worth considering. I have to chew on that a bit...
Re:O'Reilley : RMS :: Libertarianism : Socialism
on
Freedom or Power Redux
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Property is defined by scarcity. Information itself is not scarce, it is the ability to create information that is scarce. Hence, in a truly free market, information would cost nearly nothing but the scarce commodity, the ability to create useful software, would be highly prized and sought after, and coders would refuse to deliver the goods unless they were paid in advance
Just to elaborate on your thoughtful words with a bit of incoherent rambling...
Interesting to note that RMS is careful to mention that he is speaking about software, not books, not music, etc. As a programmer, of course, I'm sure software freedom has more direct personal relevance to him. It's also an issue he can speak to with the confidence of someone who's "been there", so to speak.
Perhaps there is a real qualitative difference between software and music that warrants maintaining a distinction, however. Just to take a stab at it... bits and pieces of software can be readily combined, for example. A pinch of LDAP and a dash of TLS. What is the economic benefit of umpteen people all implementing a proprietary IP stack from scratch? How much time and effort needs to be wasted trying to keep up with Microsoft's ever-changing file formats and protocols?
Of course the same might be said of music (when is a sample more than a sample?), and to a lesser degree, literature. In literature, we have the practice of using other people's words, but in quotes, and giving attribution. I don't know that I feel as comfortable saying that "all music should be free" as I do saying "all software should be free", though. Kind of hard to put my finger on it. I just really haven't given it the same amount of thought.
I've got no problem with people wanting to give their work away. I've got a problem with people being FORCED to give their work away, which is what the GPL says
No, the GPL says nothing about what you might charge for your work. It simply abridges a developer's right to dictate the terms of use.
So why do you support capitalism again? Or do you?
I should start by saying I don't (or shouldn't;) speak for the FSF, but anyway...
In a few short posts, we've created a conversation that encompasses democracy, socialism, communism, capitalism, and copyright and patent law. I'm not going to even attempt to tie all of this together.
But to answer your question: personally, I don't see any contradiction between the goals of the FSF and those of the free market. Do you? Copyright and patent protections might benefit a particular manefestation of a market for software, but I really can't see that's it's the only way, or the best way, to promote either social progress, or progress in the art of writing good software.
In a different slashdot discussion, someone made a comparison between math theorems and software. I don't know that there are any mathematicians hawking theorems for cash, but they seem to be produced in great quantity nonetheless. Like math theorems, if we are to make any progress in the field of software, we must build on the work of others. It seems to me that a system that values financial reward above all else can only get so far. In a system where everyone hoards their knowledge, everyone must always be reinventing the wheel.
People may not get paid for selling math theorems directly, but they can be compensated in other ways. Tenure comes to mind. Likewise, there are reasons people write software other than because they want to be in the business of selling it directly to consumers for profit. Donald Becker is a salaried employee of NASA and wants to network his Linux PC's so he writes NIC drivers. And shares them. I'm sure NASA is delighted to have such a resource at their disposal. How many copies of the linux kernel has Linus sold now?...
In short, we don't need our government to create an artificial shortage of programming knowledge in order to advance the market for good software.
values the needs of the Free Software world over the rights of the individual
That's an interesting perspective, but it's wrong. What is this "Free Software world" you're talking about?
The goal of the FSF is very much to increase individual rights, by calling into question the validity of a system that allows a few individuals to limit the rights of many individuals.
Sometimes, instead of saying 'many individuals', one might say 'society'. From this, the word association football rampant in this forum jumps to 'socialism', and from there to 'RMS is a communist'. This doesn't even make a lick of sense. Remember, it's the beneficiaries of copyright and patent law who are asking for state-sponsored support, not the other way around.
theorems are not capital goods in and of themselves because there is no market for them
There certainly are markets for theorems. Your point is that there are no capital markets. A tautology. But anyway..
If the only reason there is a capital market for programs is that copyright and patent law allow for the creation of artificial shortages, then perhaps programs are not truly capital goods either. Devoid of government sponsorsip, we might consider programs capital goods of negligible value.
So the question is, should government be in the business of creating capital markets for software?
When I write something, _I_ should have control under the provisions it is licensed under.
The question isn't really so much whether you should control the terms of the license, as whether being able to 'license' software has any validity, period. The question is whether society should reserve the right for developers to control how members of that society use the software they write and distribute. And yes, this 'right' to which you lay claim is not a law of nature, but a social construct.
It's very easy to understand why developers might prefer to retain control. What is not clear is whether and why society should prefer this arrangement. If society should give you this right, what does society gain in return?
Or is social progress irrelevant? Is there some legal precept paramount to the greater social good?
Slashdot Mirror
Slashdotters could easily start by lettering MPs, Congressman, MEPs etc to voice their concerns.
They do.
Anyone who attempts to profile a typical "slashdotter" is doomed to fail miserably. As with any group with a membership greater than one, there will always be many points of view. This should go without saying. Nevertheless, when luminaries such as Lawrence start making such generalizations, it's worth taking the time to overstate the obvious.
But that will require something more than a life of quibbling on Slashdot. And so far, you've not shown you're up to very much more.
And just what does the high and mighty honorable Lessig think he's doing cavorting with the unwashed masses? Here's a clue, Larry: if it weren't for us, you wouldn't have a leg to stand on. You think all of your bright ideas enter your dreams from the ether? There's a lot to be desired of Slashdot. And of Slashdotters, myself included. But if you're going to tell me that the "quibbles" on Slashdot are irrelevant, I'm going to tell you to pull your head out of your ass. These discussions, prosaic as they may be, are read by thousands. Like the lowly cattle we are, we regurgitate our food, chew on it some more, and swallow. And repeat.
Is your mode of operation any different? I think not. The only difference is one of specialization. So before you condescend to the audience who's point of view you deign to represent, get a little humility. Or go suck eggs.
It looks pretty broad and clear
Yes, I'm afraid so.
The $64 question is: does anyone feel like this result makes the world a better place? I sure don't.
If you think software patents should be eliminated, sign the Petition Against Software Patents.
It is possible to build labyrinths of internal directories that eventually become too deep to navigate via the mouse. The feeling of such spiral filing systems is of endless depth, requiring great effort to retrieve a piece of information.
Here we go again, the "too many clicks" theory of useability. Which might have some validity, if it's proponents would support the notion with scenarios that actually made sense.
Shallow directory trees are a terrible way for humans to navigate large amounts of information. This theory ignores the effort involved in scanning the correspondingly huge numbers of entries in each directory to find what you want. The American Scientist has a relevant article which relates to this very subject, which was previously discussed on Slashdot. Look for the bit about telephone menu systems, right after figure 2.
This is not to say that filesystem hiearchies should be strictly ternary, just that the reasoning these so called "useability experts" use to come to their conclusions is suspect, at best.
Now we have three open-source/free software doc projects: The featured project, LDP, and OSWG.
Open source and free software are not the same thing. They are very similar, but they do in fact have different points of view and differing objectives. Licenses are one of the more powerful tools these organizations can use to advance thier position.
Your point seems to be that you don't really care about all this balony, you just want the documentation. If that's all you care about, then these organizations are truly redundant. But there's more to it than that.From the preamble of the GNU Free Documentation License:
The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other written document "free" in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this License preserves for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for modifications made by others.
To some people, these things matter - a lot. There are issues to consider besides just making the documentation "available". Like ensuring that it will remain available. It makes perfect sense that groups would organize in support of these principles.
Debian wants to "impose" a license on documents contributed by volunteer authors to a completely independent organization?!
I don't understand how they can do this. They can only impose restrictions on what they find acceptable in their own organization. Isn't it their right to do so?
If you find their requirements unacceptable, then your documentation won't be distributed by Debian. If that bothers you, you'll have to deal with them. If it doesn't, why all the fuss?
To correct your restaurant analogy, it sounds like you're upset that a vegetarian restaurant won't serve you chicken.
Is there something in particular about Debian's requirements that upset you? Or are you just upset that they would impose standards at all? How tough is it, really, to change a license?
I'm curious. Is there something in particular about the licensing terms that Debian would like to impose that bothers you? What do you mean when you say their "ideological purity is going too far"? Or are you simply finding it annoying and burdensome that they would do this post facto?
Yes, let the market decide. But the market is not supposed to involve coercion.
My thoughts exactly. Which is why I am against software patents and copyrights.
Are going to tell me that those institutions don't constitute coercion? Do you must believe that you have a natural right of ownership to the output of your brain's machinations? I.E. - that these laws simply institutionalize what we all know is good and holy?
BTW, don't quote me. These words belong to me.
Proprietary software has a right to exist and people deserve to get paid for their work.
Fiat doesn't make it so. Sorry, but pick any economic theory you like; none of them say you "deserve" to get paid for your work. If I collect a bunch of sticks and buy a bunch of yarn and busy myself making god's eyes twelve hourse a day, do I "deserve" to get paid for it? Of course that's nonsense.
Personally, I prefer the capitalist take on this issue. I'd like to let the market decide what the effort that goes into programming is worth. And I'd like the market to decide what the value of mass producing digital content is worth. But we don't get to see that happen, because these industries are propped up by government regulations that circumvent the proper operation of the market.
If people want free software, they'll choose it on its merits.
Not necessarily, given the current anti-competitive market in which it has to compete. Moreover, if you consider freedom in and of itself the most important "merit", your statement evaporates in a tautology.
I would love to see the "market dictate succcess or failure of a piece of software". Not the US patent office. Not the monopoly owners of copyrighted proprietary de-facto standards.
Given the sordid state of the software industry, it's about time we do away with notion that proprietary software deserves a seat at the table. The only reason it has a seat at all is because we, as a society, invited it. It's time for the boot.
And let's never stop having this "endless debate on freedom".
The problem with some of these anti-MS advocats is that they think they can take over the market in one fell swoop.
You're forgetting, or failing to mention, that people advocate GNU/Linux for other reasons than toppling Microsoft. If software freedom is your goal, then migrating proprietary software from one OS to another doesn't really accomplish a thing.
Why would any government want to manage its affairs using computers over which a third party maintained complete control?
To sum, this OS plus secure hardware implementation can hide, make invisible, one process from another. To hear them speak of it, it sounds like they are (oh so generously) only assisting the financially beleagured content industry (music, et al) from the rampages of brutish hacker pirate outlaws. That's a deserves a rant of it's own. But think about this. They are talking about this like their simply protecting data. Well, as we all know, there's a special form of data called a program. I.E. - such an OS could completely obscure the very existance of this or that program. You could never really know what your OS was up to.
Now couple this with a secure network communication protocol. Kind of gives spyware a whole new meaning now, doesn't it?
And the United States government should pass some laws to help make this all possible. Will someone up on the hill, a lot of someones, please get clued in about this shit?!
You can find the Project Gutenberg version of Marx's Communist Manifesto here.
The trouble with referencing Marx - well, one of the troubling things - is that you implicitly invoke an association with any number of unsavory ideas he had, in addition to anything valid he may have said. For example, I'll quote a bit:
Our bourgeois, not content with having the wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other's wives.
Bourgeois marriage is in reality a system of wives in common and thus, at the most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with,
is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalised community of women. For the rest, it is self-evident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of the community of women springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution both public and private.
There are plenty of other interesting tidbids to be had as well. In other words, it might just be best to let the old boy Marx rest in peace.
I've asked a lot of people and it seems to me that most people who evangelize and use OSS are using it because OSS projects are usually (but not always) free software (as in free beer not free-dom)
You may be right. But the article asks:
Have [we] moved into a post-scarcity gift culture or is the report correct that open source uses and needs the subsidy of public investment to grow within traditional industrial capitalism?
The question is not about why people use open source software, it's about why people develop open source software.
You don't really want to know Microsoft API's, unless you are writing code to interoperate with Microsoft software. This is detrimental to Microsoft in the same way compelling Microsoft to install their software at thousands of elementary schools is detrimental to Microsoft. It just encourages people to use more Microsoft products.
Better to demand they publish their file formats and networking protocols.
In the story, Ellison is quoted as saying: "There is cooperation (among government agencies). But there's a lot of data fragmentation."
It follows that Larry believes the answer is to consolodate all this data into one massive system.
There's an expression "don't put all of your eggs in one basket". It applies well to this and any other situation where people say "there are too many competing ways of doing X". Sure, this "fragmentation" Larry abhors can be a pain in the ass sometimes. But I'd certainly rather have a little chaos here and there, than one massive central point of failure. Remember what happened to the centrally controlled economy of the former Soviet Union?
A Troll?!
/not/ work in a romper room?
Excuse me, but does anyone on slashdot
It doesn't do much for linux advocacy to ignore valid problems and hope they'll just go away. You're not going to find your brain by sticking your head up your ass. On the other hand, maybe you will.
When you're finally old enough to think about a job interview, try telling your prospective employers that you don't think secure user-level security for shared file space on their corporate network matters. Explain your linux-only implementation, please. I'd really like to hear about it. Really.
Sometimes I really am a troll. But in this case, the only thing I'm trolling for is someone to disabuse me. Not abuse, disabuse. It's in the dictionary.
I'm a linux bigot, for sure. But one hurdle that has to be overcome before anyone who's not insane sells this idea to their boss is the utter lack of secure filesharing for a multi-user office. Usernames and passwords, in plain text, in an automount config file is not an option. Experimental filesystems are not an option. NFS is not an option (got root on the client (install cd) you've got access to anything.). OpenAFS maybe, but not exactly a widely discussed or supported system.
NFS4 sounds like the ticket, but the two available open implementations (umich and samba team) are in their infancy.
Until this problem is solved, this whole discussion is moot, as far as I'm concerned.
Software doesn't work that way. You pay a consultant $1,000 for a program and without some notion of software ownership, everyone in the world can get that program for free.
Well, I'm a free software bigot, but if I could, I'd mod you up for this. This is one of the few cogent opposing viewpoints that I've seen today. Makes me scratch my head...
I'm not sure that the GPL can prohibit an NDA. The GPL itself is not a contract, it's a license. You only accept it's terms by implication, when you redistribute the software. From the GPL:
5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it.
An NDA, by definition, would prohibit distribution. So therefore, you would never be accepting the terms of the license. (!) Also, the copyright holder would/could be the client.
An NDA would also have validity in a world without software patents or copyrights.
The upshot may be, that should all software be required to be GPL'd, or if software could not be patented or copyrighted, that the developers/owners, to protect their interests, would never distribute anything.
Someone suggested to me a few days ago that the original purpose of patents and copyrights were, ironically, to encourage closed guild systems to be more open about their techniques. Now that is an argument worth considering. I have to chew on that a bit...
Property is defined by scarcity. Information itself is not scarce, it is the ability to create information that is scarce. Hence, in a truly free market, information would cost nearly nothing but the scarce commodity, the ability to create useful software, would be highly prized and sought after, and coders would refuse to deliver the goods unless they were paid in advance
... bits and pieces of software can be readily combined, for example. A pinch of LDAP and a dash of TLS. What is the economic benefit of umpteen people all implementing a proprietary IP stack from scratch? How much time and effort needs to be wasted trying to keep up with Microsoft's ever-changing file formats and protocols?
Just to elaborate on your thoughtful words with a bit of incoherent rambling...
Interesting to note that RMS is careful to mention that he is speaking about software, not books, not music, etc. As a programmer, of course, I'm sure software freedom has more direct personal relevance to him. It's also an issue he can speak to with the confidence of someone who's "been there", so to speak.
Perhaps there is a real qualitative difference between software and music that warrants maintaining a distinction, however. Just to take a stab at it
Of course the same might be said of music (when is a sample more than a sample?), and to a lesser degree, literature. In literature, we have the practice of using other people's words, but in quotes, and giving attribution. I don't know that I feel as comfortable saying that "all music should be free" as I do saying "all software should be free", though. Kind of hard to put my finger on it. I just really haven't given it the same amount of thought.
I've got no problem with people wanting to give their work away. I've got a problem with people being FORCED to give their work away, which is what the GPL says
No, the GPL says nothing about what you might charge for your work. It simply abridges a developer's right to dictate the terms of use.
So why do you support capitalism again? Or do you?
;) speak for the FSF, but anyway...
I should start by saying I don't (or shouldn't
In a few short posts, we've created a conversation that encompasses democracy, socialism, communism, capitalism, and copyright and patent law. I'm not going to even attempt to tie all of this together.
But to answer your question: personally, I don't see any contradiction between the goals of the FSF and those of the free market. Do you? Copyright and patent protections might benefit a particular manefestation of a market for software, but I really can't see that's it's the only way, or the best way, to promote either social progress, or progress in the art of writing good software.
In a different slashdot discussion, someone made a comparison between math theorems and software. I don't know that there are any mathematicians hawking theorems for cash, but they seem to be produced in great quantity nonetheless. Like math theorems, if we are to make any progress in the field of software, we must build on the work of others. It seems to me that a system that values financial reward above all else can only get so far. In a system where everyone hoards their knowledge, everyone must always be reinventing the wheel.
People may not get paid for selling math theorems directly, but they can be compensated in other ways. Tenure comes to mind. Likewise, there are reasons people write software other than because they want to be in the business of selling it directly to consumers for profit. Donald Becker is a salaried employee of NASA and wants to network his Linux PC's so he writes NIC drivers. And shares them. I'm sure NASA is delighted to have such a resource at their disposal. How many copies of the linux kernel has Linus sold now?...
In short, we don't need our government to create an artificial shortage of programming knowledge in order to advance the market for good software.
values the needs of the Free Software world over the rights of the individual
That's an interesting perspective, but it's wrong. What is this "Free Software world" you're talking about?
The goal of the FSF is very much to increase individual rights, by calling into question the validity of a system that allows a few individuals to limit the rights of many individuals.
Sometimes, instead of saying 'many individuals', one might say 'society'. From this, the word association football rampant in this forum jumps to 'socialism', and from there to 'RMS is a communist'. This doesn't even make a lick of sense. Remember, it's the beneficiaries of copyright and patent law who are asking for state-sponsored support, not the other way around.
Having porn related work on your resume might help you avoid working for places run by uptight ninnies. That might not be a bad thing.
Good luck - that means a major overhaul of our system of government.
;)
Yep. Thanks for your support.
Actually, it mostly means reforming copyright and patent law. Which is what we're talking about.
theorems are not capital goods in and of themselves because there is no market for them
There certainly are markets for theorems. Your point is that there are no capital markets. A tautology. But anyway..
If the only reason there is a capital market for programs is that copyright and patent law allow for the creation of artificial shortages, then perhaps programs are not truly capital goods either. Devoid of government sponsorsip, we might consider programs capital goods of negligible value.
So the question is, should government be in the business of creating capital markets for software?
When I write something, _I_ should have control under the provisions it is licensed under.
The question isn't really so much whether you should control the terms of the license, as whether being able to 'license' software has any validity, period. The question is whether society should reserve the right for developers to control how members of that society use the software they write and distribute. And yes, this 'right' to which you lay claim is not a law of nature, but a social construct.
It's very easy to understand why developers might prefer to retain control. What is not clear is whether and why society should prefer this arrangement. If society should give you this right, what does society gain in return?
Or is social progress irrelevant? Is there some legal precept paramount to the greater social good?