The quote you responded to was:"[...] the iPad represents the first new change in computer interfaces in my lifetime. If there is something which is even similar, I'm unaware of it." Your response was : "No, Apple neither revolutionised anything nor introduced an interface change to the market."
I contend that Apple has introduced a significant interface change to the market successfully.
Maybe we have a different understanding of "introduce"... If I interpret you correctly, you'd say that Microsoft introduced the GUI (which Apple had before them, mind you) and IBM introduced mice to the market? As I see it, not being the most successful company with a certain product doesn't mean you haven't introduced it to the market.
The poster above talks about the iPad's interface. You listed devices that have a touchscreen which were introduced much earlier than the iPad. (and you acknowledged that there's a question of how similar you want to get.)
I was acknowledging that if you drop certain requirements, there'd be dozens of devices. With everything the iPad has, there's merely a few... though there might be some I've missed.
Yes, touchscreen devices have existed for a long time as you've mentioned. I'm just highlighting that he's not talking about having a touchscreen in a tablet sized form factor, but that the software platform be written around the hardware in a way that doesn't feel like it's just pieces bolted together. Simply listing off devices which have similar hardware doesn't negate his opinion that the iPad represents a significant shift in computer interfaces in recent history.
Again, simply listing off touchscreen devices that are flat and roughly paper size will give you hundreds of examples (various readers, media players, etc). Touch screen interfaces on hardware-restrained devices have been around for a very long time.
You're building a strawman there. The applications would have come like they have come to Maemo, iOS, Android,... I don't see any reason why there wouldn't have been a wealth of applications perfectly fitting the form factor if the marketing and developer baiting were comparable with Apple's.
Perhaps they would have. Perhaps marketing and developer baiting is what we needed more than the hardware.
Which is why Apple has made a difference, IMO of course.
But given that the tablet form factor and touch screens dates back to the 1990s and that even Microsoft had failed at popularizing a tablet platform, it's kinda hard to avoid the question of "why did it take so long?"
I knew tons of people who wanted a Tablet PC when they first came out, both normal folks and software developers. I also see plenty of slashdot posters who think that because Maemo can use Ubuntu repositories, that there's already software for it. This completely disregards why iPad is successful and Maemo probably won't be.
I'm not sure about that. You may say that having tens of thousands of applications that don't fit the form factor already available for a device when it launches (as opposed the iPhone's zero) will hinder the development of optimised versions. But why is "I could install this usable yet not exactly fitting program at launch day on my tablet device, while you can install nothing" bad? There is no reason (except for better marketing) why the iPhone* should have a tailored word processor x weeks after launch but a device that already has the full Ubuntu repositories shouldn't. The worst that can happen is that the suboptimal experience might tarnish the image of the product for a few weeks, before the application's developers get up to speed with the form factor. But that's marketing again. And noone's forcing you to install OpenOffice on the N800, it's just an option.
No, Apple neither revolutionised anything nor introduced an interface change to the market.
Really? The Archos, the N800, and the CrunchPad are completely different from the iPad.
Except for a few details, they're the same IMO. The newest one is clearly the best executed, but let's not split hairs...
The Archos doesn't do apps out of the box. And the FOSS repos for the N800 and CrunchPad would result in desktop apps on a tablet. Sure, you'd have a ton of apps. All of which would have poor usability since they're not designed to work on a tablet form factor. Would I really care about using OpenOffice on a tablet? That'd be frustrating.
You're building a strawman there. The applications would have come like they have come to Maemo, iOS, Android,... I don't see any reason why there wouldn't have been a wealth of applications perfectly fitting the form factor if the marketing and developer baiting were comparable with Apple's.
The point isn't who did it first. The point isn't who has more apps. The point isn't who's cheaper and who's marketing fluff.
I thought that was the point we were talking about, but if you want to change directions, feel free.
The point is which device makes it easier to do stuff on the go than other devices of similar form factors and price ranges.
I never said it wasn't easy to use Apple devices. The topic I'm talking about is the rampant overattribution of "revolutionary" and "innovative"...
Want to know where I think Apple made the most brilliant move ever? Shipping a product and then an SDK which encouraged people to make apps tailored to a capacitive touchscreen form factor with just enough computing power to do the job (original iPhone and iPhone 3G) , and then hold off until people got used to working in that constrained environment to release stuff with bigger screens, more memory, and faster processors. (iPhone 3GS and iPad)
Look, Apple executed their business plan extremely well, noone's debating that. But the fact that you have to go out of your way to highlight what they did differently shows that there isn't much innovation, just a nice business plan. Our discussion reminds me a bit of this: You: Firefox is so great! They invented tabs! Me: No, Opera had that innovation long before. You: Yes, but they invented having tabs together with their plugin system, the Firefox logo, and their open codebase which enabled people to write useful extensions to the tabs which in turn made them more functional than the one on Opera...
You see what I mean? I'm talking about the "innovation of tabbed browsing" equivalent: of having internet enabled touch screen tablet devices coupled with a store/repository. And that has been already done before. Why Apple has succeeded where others have failed? Well, the last paragraph of my comment above certainly has some truth to it.
The end result? You now have developers trained to consider the limits of mobile hardware and optimize accordingly. Why does that matter? The quality of apps improve, therefore the quality of the experience improves overall.
Yes, a true observation. But IMO you're just lauding Apple's greatness here, not discussing on topic.
[...] the iPad represents the first new change in computer interfaces in my lifetime. If there is something which is even similar, I'm unaware of it.
Depending on how similar you are aiming for, there were dozens of devices before the iPad. But off the top of my head, how about internet-enabled, keyboardless, flat touchscreen computers from Archos in 2006? Apple even copied the lack of flash;)
There were also severaltablets by Nokia, starting as early as 2005.
Then we have the CrunchPad, a project which started in 2008 but failed because they were screwed over by investors. The device was more or less the same as the iPad if you adapt the hardware +2 years, except that it used Ubuntu with the repositories instead of iOS with the AppStore.
No, Apple neither revolutionised anything nor introduced an interface change to the market. Yes, they took existing ideas and technology and made them successful through marketing, a shiny package and unparalleled hype. They did great in helping popularise tablets, and that's a good thing. I'm just trying to explain that rampant over-attribution happening in Apple's case: just because it has a nice looking exterior this doesn't mean that it functions flawlessly. Apples hardware isn't any higher quality than for example HP's. I know first hand, I own a MBP:)
I wonder if you can take any widget, give it a nice hull and push it through Apple's marketing machinery (which is clearly one of the world's finest). I assume they would sell millions of devices of whatever.
... the lack of support for SVG is one of the reasons why the GNU/Linux distro timeline keeps PNGs in addition to SVGs even though they are inferior (file size and hyperlinks).
I hope you don't assume that you would have made any money if said someone wouldn't copy the program in question. Because in the vast majority of cases, I assert that you wouldn't:)
Nevermind, you have a point there, I'm a programmer myself.
What we get out of this is: depending on how you see it, trespassing is more or less bad than copyright infringement. It is however not analogous, which is my first point in the posting above.
Crossposting from another branch because this got linked there. You make well reasoned points, but I think your analogy fails because of the difference between physical goods and virtual concepts.
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If a "hobo" sleeps on your lawn, you can not: use the part where he sleeps on, mow over that spot, sell your lawn (has to be "presentable"), etc. If someone makes a copy of a song you've created, you can still: sell copies of that song, sell the song (rights), change it in whatever way you wish, etc.
I'm not saying that downloading the song is not bad or not illegal, but isn't it obvious that someone sleeping on your lawn constitutes an order of magnitude more "damage" to you than someone copying a song?
One more analogy that fails because of the difference of physical goods and virtual concepts.
If a "hobo" sleeps on your lawn, you can not: use the part where he sleeps on, mow over that spot, sell your lawn (has to be "presentable"), etc. If someone makes a copy of a song you've created, you can still: sell copies of that song, sell the song (rights), change it in whatever way you wish, etc.
I'm not saying that downloading the song is not bad or not illegal, but isn't it obvious that someone sleeping on your lawn constitutes an order of magnitude more "damage" to you than someone copying a song?
While there are zealots on both sides, you're applying way too broad a brush.
Most people who stand against GPL violations are going out of their way to distinguish between copyright infringement and theft. Most people who are actually bashing the composer here are doing so because he treats copyright infringement as theft.
Those who fight GPL violations know that it only works because copyright works. They also know that if copyright didn't work (as in, there is none), the GPL wouldn't be needed as it's goals would have been accomplished (free sharing, etc). Because if you can take my creations and embed it into yours, not giving credit back, then I can do the same with yours:)
After all, it's currently illegal to violate copyright law (copying restricted music sheets or proprietarising GPL'd code), but the question our generation faces is: to which degree it's immoral? You have to accept that there are many people who view the current copyright law as an abomination. And in democracy, law follows the people's morale.
He was discussing HIS property that was being taken without recompense.
It is not his property. Let's go step by step. If we're in a flood and I discover a way (idea) of keeping my house dry, how should you not be allowed to do the same after seeing it? If I say something smart/funny (art), there is no natural mechanism that prevents you from tell it to others in order to get them to like you (~profit). If I conceive a cool tune (music), you don't have any natural right to control how people think and communicate about it (one person singing it to another).
We have instead created an artificial one (which is a good idea really), allowing you a limited, government-granted licence to be the sole distributor of this work. But keep in mind, this has absolutely nothing to do with property. Copyright, patent and trademark laws behave orthogonal to property laws (buying, stealing, lending, etc.), they are treated differently in the courts and in day-to-day life. You simply cannot unify them.
Music, art and ideas are, despite what the "big corps" want to make you believe, explicitly non-property.
Now it's obvious that many regard the copyright system (after all that "big corp" lobbying) as broken, bad and rotten. And with the notion that democracy is supposed to follow the will of the people, I'll leave you with a few quotes to ponder.
"An unjust law is no law at all" - St Augustine
"One who breaks an unjust law must do it openly, lovingly...I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the very highest respect for law." - Martin Luther King
If the government had just stayed the hell out, we wouldn't be having this discussion today as the Internet would likely already be far more built-out and with way more players in the market, each of them significantly smaller than the giant megacorps we have involved right now.
Uhh, history teaches us the opposite... not with earlier internets of course, but with roads, plumbing and all kinds of infrastructure that suffers if forced to pay off quickly. The situation is greatly improved if there is an organisation willing to invest huge sums _for the good of the people_ without monetary return in prospect. This has always been a government in the past. Building for profit from ground up doesn't get equal access to everyone, but equal and neutral access is something our society, you and me _extremely_ profit from in hindsight.
With an internet built on private money only, we'd have a fragmented mess of incompatibility.
For a somewhat related example, just look at the OS platform market today. The OS is just infrastructure, the applications are what matters. Now we might not see the long term benefit of everyone having the "same" OS to run the applications form. But if this happened "magically"*** today, people in twenty years would say how silly we were back then not to realise this obvious improvement. Has happened with currency (you know, when each city had it's own coinage), rail track standardisation, trading tolls, etc.
*** I don't care which OS, just that it enables everyone to run all applications. Obviously this is not realistic anyway because of very practical reasons, i.e. multibillion dollar companies having some objections there.
I'd bet quite some money on all of your three options *not* happening. None of them is anywhere near realistic.
The first one is utopia and highly unlikely because of human ambition and greed.
The second one makes no sense. Piracy still hasn't hurt the industry in any significant way (people claiming this are about as right as those claiming that it helped it tremendously by advertising the music/movies). None of the labels/studios will go bankrupt if we don't pass ACTA. Look, grandparent isn't proposing to turn "everyone" against the big media (which is hardly possible) but just a enough people so that "everyone else" gets a clue about their business practises. Then, those companies will use common sense and change some of their policies/PR (and the consumer wins), not close shop and go home. And for those, for the lack of a better word, stupid ones that do, other companies will jump the opportunity just like it's supposed to work in capitalism. Point is, if the entertainment industry has to adapt to new rules, it will simply adapt, not go away or die. Ambition, enterprenourship and the greed for profit will take care of that.
The third option... well, unless there is a major dictatorial overturn on the horizon, there is little point in expecting such a distopia.
What point are you trying to make by presenting three improbable choices?
To elaborate a bit on gbutler69's point: copyright is not a natural law. If I hurt you or steal something tangible from you, you have a natural and moral right to prevent this, retribute or get me to compensate. If you wear a blue hat today and I want to do the same, there is no "natural mechanism" you can leverage to prevent me from doing so. If you sing a song and I hear it, I can sing it too, etc.
Now introduce society and monetary reward (commerce). People want to get money from their ideas and works of mind, so they agree upon an artificial law that once someone creates something, others should not be allowed to create the same thing. Details vary, and most countries have sensible rules for Fair Use and non-commercial reproduction but don't allow commercial distribution (without permission) of something someone else has already created.
Point is, the very government you don't want to meddle with "your" copyright rights is the only reason there is any copyright at all. And since we're supposed to live in a democracy, the government ultimately represents the will of the people (yeah, having a hard time trying not to laugh myself;) ). Why should the people be against non-commercial copying and Fair Use?
By failing to implement a standard driver model Linux hurts the broader free-software ecosystem for no greater cause than its own domination.
I don't think the Linux kernel devs even consider the welfare of other FOSS operating systems when deciding on architectural details. Nor should they. And even if there were a connection, that's like saying "If you refuse to do some work for me (for free, mind you), you're hurting my ecosystem".
In which case, we have to believe that Linux values world domination more than free software.
From my perspective, the Linux devs value having a Free OS more than "world domination", or else they would have compromised (there were occasions for that) the openness of the kernel in order to achieve the latter. They also value the welfare of their own project more than the welfare of other FOSS projects... that is, they're not going to do things hardware corporations want them to do but conflict with their ideals, just so the resulting drivers might be useful to some third project. Is anything wrong with this?
In that case, why hasn't it implemented its own standard driver model to gain more market share?
Good question... maybe because of lack of resources, maybe because people couldn't agree on the implementation details. I honestly don't know, but it would be interesting to find out. At the same time I really don't think the main motive for the lack of a standard driver model is to hurt some other projects. That notion sounds slightly paranoid.
The Linux kernel developers are behaving like schizophrenics, using both the ideals of free software and world domination alternately as excuses not to implement a standard for driver source-compatibility from version to version of the kernel.
I'm not aware of any "world domination ideals" that were used for not implementing a driver model. Could you point out a case?
If they did so, including by inventing their own, it would strike a blow both for Linux market share and for the free-software ecosystem as a whole.
Could you please elaborate on that argument a bit? I'm honestly having trouble understanding the point you're trying to bring across.
Because it's not zero gain and Linux isn't the only operating system in the free world. Why do you think Linux doesn't face competition from systems like AROS, Haiku, or ReactOS,
ReactOS and Haiku are simple: because they came too late. If they started in 1991, I dare say we might as well be using Ubuntu ReactOS instead of Ubuntu Linux. Similar to *BSD and the copyright infringement FUD that sent people to GNU.
[...]or because it's the only free operating system with the driver support to work on most people's machines?
So we have two facts: GNU/Linux is widespread and ReactOS etc are not. GNU/Linux doesn't have a standardised driver interface but still grows nicely.
Well... I'm not arguing that having a standardised driver interface is a bad thing. It would be quite nice actually, but the priority of having an open system rates higher;)
Implement a driver standard and you may sacrifice the religious purity of a running Linux kernel instance but you give other free operating systems the driver base they need to really take off!
Hmm, I'm not sure I understand you correctly here. Should the Linux developers make architectural&political changes for the only reason that other free OSs might at some point benefit?
Why have those proposed standards gone unnoticed? If there's no other reason than lack of publicity, you might want to do something... start a petition for example.
About the ideology thing: what you call a "problem" I call the "goal". What do you want Linux to achieve? World domination? I want a legally-hassle-free, open operating system. There's no point if it has to become closed/non-free (by injecting more and more proprietary parts) in order to get the majority of the market... we already have such a system, so why go through all the pain for _zero_ gain?
Anyway, Linux adoption is steadily rising. We get more third party hardware support every year, RedHat is growing nicely, Ubuntu is becoming a well-known alternative. Where I live we can already get Ubuntu PCs at retail stores (just 2 models between ~50 Windows machines, but that's infinitely better than only 3 years ago;) ). True, we'd have better hardware support by now if were to softsoap hardware vendors, but we'd lose more than it's worth. On the other hand, the hardware vendors _will_ come to us. They're doing so at an increasing rate. Obviousy there are still lacking areas, but I'm pretty convinced that time will solve this. Things are going very well as it is.
"What if Count Chocula and the Cookie Monster teamed up kidnapped the Keibler Elves? What if monkey's flew out of Cowboy Neil's butt? What is Megan Fox showed up naked at my front door with Natalie Portman covered in grits?"
I find your thoughts intriguing and wish to subscribe to your newsletter!
Just a small addition to what the commenters above me have said:
If the BSD license implies more contributions from companies, how do you explain the current state of the BSD projects compared to GPL projects?
FreeBSD gets a few contributions from Apple, GPL'd stuff is constantly improved by IBM, Intel, Oracle, etc and even by Apple!. There are probably more companies that incorporate BSD'd stuff into their own code than GPL'd... and don't contribute back. But that's the point of the GPL.
Do you really think all of FreeBSD get's more corporate contributions than just even the Linux kernel? Take a look around... BSDL'ing your code gives you way less contributions (both corporate and non-corporate) than releasing under the GPL.
Your point is valid, except for the reference to the "comments above"...
When I was reading through this page, more than once it went trough my head: woah, Slashdot sometimes really feels like the intellectual gutter of the internet. Who would take all these comments to prove any kind of point?
I heard about this guy the first time right now, but to me, the remarks from above just seem like gutless mockery from behind a computer. You know, that "judging people over the internet" stuff...
Software is just tool, and it's usage just the end to a means for _you_, but why do you think it's the same for everyone?
You're like that (fictional, though there probably were some of those) Indian slave worker who says to Ghandi: "Why should I care about freedom or sovereignty? I just want to do my work, receive my poor pay and try to get as little beating from my overlords as possible".
I think that analogy fits quite well, especially since we're talking about "spiritual" leaders here...
Point is, there are people who think freedom is important enough to be the main focus, not just an attribute to something which "gets the work done". Why not let them do their work and benefit later, instead of demanding that they stop? I think quite a bunch of modern democracies were founded on that "freedom is crucial" premise;) Of course, virtual bits and bytes don't have the same level of importance as your personal "real life" liberties, but it's just about the same topic.
So you're shocked? Why? As far as I can tell, by far the most comments are about the ethics and/or politics of DRM in general, followed by several postings about how the summary is crap (which it is, journalistically at least).
There's not even a handfull of people promoting Linux to this point. Why the overreaction? Do you have some personal grudge against Linux?
I can't believe this was modded insightful. When I was a lad, he'd have got a good kicking for being inflammatory at best (and a naive dimly ironical rant at worst).
Shall I complete this for you? 4. How long does it take to get full access to the source code? 5. How long does it take to get your reported bug fixed by the devs (for me recently: 4 days with WICD, 1 day with Dillo)? 6. How long does it take to open.odt files on a fresh install?
Sure, you don't want source code, don't want your bugs fixed quickly and don't want open standardized documents... but then again, I don't care about gaming (I'm out of that age), and what the hell should I want Visual Studio for?
The startup speed for MS Word is a fair point, and it takes a bit longer on Linux because of wine. I guess OO.o takes roughly the same on both systems... but then again, do you consider this more significant than, let's say, the file I/O test made in the benchmark?
Slashdot Mirror
The quote you responded to was :"[...] the iPad represents the first new change in computer interfaces in my lifetime. If there is something which is even similar, I'm unaware of it."
Your response was : "No, Apple neither revolutionised anything nor introduced an interface change to the market."
I contend that Apple has introduced a significant interface change to the market successfully.
Maybe we have a different understanding of "introduce"...
If I interpret you correctly, you'd say that Microsoft introduced the GUI (which Apple had before them, mind you) and IBM introduced mice to the market?
As I see it, not being the most successful company with a certain product doesn't mean you haven't introduced it to the market.
The poster above talks about the iPad's interface. You listed devices that have a touchscreen which were introduced much earlier than the iPad. (and you acknowledged that there's a question of how similar you want to get.)
I was acknowledging that if you drop certain requirements, there'd be dozens of devices. With everything the iPad has, there's merely a few... though there might be some I've missed.
Yes, touchscreen devices have existed for a long time as you've mentioned. I'm just highlighting that he's not talking about having a touchscreen in a tablet sized form factor, but that the software platform be written around the hardware in a way that doesn't feel like it's just pieces bolted together. Simply listing off devices which have similar hardware doesn't negate his opinion that the iPad represents a significant shift in computer interfaces in recent history.
Again, simply listing off touchscreen devices that are flat and roughly paper size will give you hundreds of examples (various readers, media players, etc). Touch screen interfaces on hardware-restrained devices have been around for a very long time.
Perhaps they would have. Perhaps marketing and developer baiting is what we needed more than the hardware.
Which is why Apple has made a difference, IMO of course.
But given that the tablet form factor and touch screens dates back to the 1990s and that even Microsoft had failed at popularizing a tablet platform, it's kinda hard to avoid the question of "why did it take so long?"
I knew tons of people who wanted a Tablet PC when they first came out, both normal folks and software developers.
I also see plenty of slashdot posters who think that because Maemo can use Ubuntu repositories, that there's already software for it. This completely disregards why iPad is successful and Maemo probably won't be.
I'm not sure about that. You may say that having tens of thousands of applications that don't fit the form factor already available for a device when it launches (as opposed the iPhone's zero) will hinder the development of optimised versions. But why is "I could install this usable yet not exactly fitting program at launch day on my tablet device, while you can install nothing" bad? There is no reason (except for better marketing) why the iPhone* should have a tailored word processor x weeks after launch but a device that already has the full Ubuntu repositories shouldn't.
The worst that can happen is that the suboptimal experience might tarnish the image of the product for a few weeks, before the application's developers get up to speed with the form factor. But that's marketing again. And noone's forcing you to install OpenOffice on the N800, it's just an option.
* Yes, I'm switching to the iPhone here
Really? The Archos, the N800, and the CrunchPad are completely different from the iPad.
Except for a few details, they're the same IMO. The newest one is clearly the best executed, but let's not split hairs...
The Archos doesn't do apps out of the box.
And the FOSS repos for the N800 and CrunchPad would result in desktop apps on a tablet. Sure, you'd have a ton of apps. All of which would have poor usability since they're not designed to work on a tablet form factor. Would I really care about using OpenOffice on a tablet? That'd be frustrating.
You're building a strawman there. The applications would have come like they have come to Maemo, iOS, Android, ...
I don't see any reason why there wouldn't have been a wealth of applications perfectly fitting the form factor if the marketing and developer baiting were comparable with Apple's.
The point isn't who did it first. The point isn't who has more apps. The point isn't who's cheaper and who's marketing fluff.
I thought that was the point we were talking about, but if you want to change directions, feel free.
The point is which device makes it easier to do stuff on the go than other devices of similar form factors and price ranges.
I never said it wasn't easy to use Apple devices. The topic I'm talking about is the rampant overattribution of "revolutionary" and "innovative"...
Want to know where I think Apple made the most brilliant move ever? Shipping a product and then an SDK which encouraged people to make apps tailored to a capacitive touchscreen form factor with just enough computing power to do the job (original iPhone and iPhone 3G) , and then hold off until people got used to working in that constrained environment to release stuff with bigger screens, more memory, and faster processors. (iPhone 3GS and iPad)
Look, Apple executed their business plan extremely well, noone's debating that.
But the fact that you have to go out of your way to highlight what they did differently shows that there isn't much innovation, just a nice business plan.
Our discussion reminds me a bit of this:
You: Firefox is so great! They invented tabs!
Me: No, Opera had that innovation long before.
You: Yes, but they invented having tabs together with their plugin system, the Firefox logo, and their open codebase which enabled people to write useful extensions to the tabs which in turn made them more functional than the one on Opera...
You see what I mean? I'm talking about the "innovation of tabbed browsing" equivalent: of having internet enabled touch screen tablet devices coupled with a store/repository. And that has been already done before.
Why Apple has succeeded where others have failed? Well, the last paragraph of my comment above certainly has some truth to it.
The end result? You now have developers trained to consider the limits of mobile hardware and optimize accordingly. Why does that matter? The quality of apps improve, therefore the quality of the experience improves overall.
Yes, a true observation. But IMO you're just lauding Apple's greatness here, not discussing on topic.
[...] the iPad represents the first new change in computer interfaces in my lifetime. If there is something which is even similar, I'm unaware of it.
Depending on how similar you are aiming for, there were dozens of devices before the iPad. ;)
But off the top of my head, how about internet-enabled, keyboardless, flat touchscreen computers from Archos in 2006? Apple even copied the lack of flash
There were also several tablets by Nokia, starting as early as 2005.
Then we have the CrunchPad, a project which started in 2008 but failed because they were screwed over by investors. The device was more or less the same as the iPad if you adapt the hardware +2 years, except that it used Ubuntu with the repositories instead of iOS with the AppStore.
No, Apple neither revolutionised anything nor introduced an interface change to the market. :)
Yes, they took existing ideas and technology and made them successful through marketing, a shiny package and unparalleled hype.
They did great in helping popularise tablets, and that's a good thing. I'm just trying to explain that rampant over-attribution happening in Apple's case: just because it has a nice looking exterior this doesn't mean that it functions flawlessly.
Apples hardware isn't any higher quality than for example HP's. I know first hand, I own a MBP
I wonder if you can take any widget, give it a nice hull and push it through Apple's marketing machinery (which is clearly one of the world's finest). I assume they would sell millions of devices of whatever.
I just went out of mod points, so... Thank you for this highly insightful comment :)
Of course, by your right to free speech, you can call it whatever you want!
... the lack of support for SVG is one of the reasons why the GNU/Linux distro timeline keeps PNGs in addition to SVGs even though they are inferior (file size and hyperlinks).
The same applies to backups as well.
Almost all of the backups you make are never actually needed, but that's a weak argument to forgo them.
The devil is in the details.
I hope you don't assume that you would have made any money if said someone wouldn't copy the program in question. Because in the vast majority of cases, I assert that you wouldn't :)
Nevermind, you have a point there, I'm a programmer myself.
What we get out of this is: depending on how you see it, trespassing is more or less bad than copyright infringement. It is however not analogous, which is my first point in the posting above.
Crossposting from another branch because this got linked there. You make well reasoned points, but I think your analogy fails because of the difference between physical goods and virtual concepts.
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If a "hobo" sleeps on your lawn, you can not: use the part where he sleeps on, mow over that spot, sell your lawn (has to be "presentable"), etc.
If someone makes a copy of a song you've created, you can still: sell copies of that song, sell the song (rights), change it in whatever way you wish, etc.
I'm not saying that downloading the song is not bad or not illegal, but isn't it obvious that someone sleeping on your lawn constitutes an order of magnitude more "damage" to you than someone copying a song?
One more analogy that fails because of the difference of physical goods and virtual concepts.
If a "hobo" sleeps on your lawn, you can not: use the part where he sleeps on, mow over that spot, sell your lawn (has to be "presentable"), etc.
If someone makes a copy of a song you've created, you can still: sell copies of that song, sell the song (rights), change it in whatever way you wish, etc.
I'm not saying that downloading the song is not bad or not illegal, but isn't it obvious that someone sleeping on your lawn constitutes an order of magnitude more "damage" to you than someone copying a song?
While there are zealots on both sides, you're applying way too broad a brush.
Most people who stand against GPL violations are going out of their way to distinguish between copyright infringement and theft.
Most people who are actually bashing the composer here are doing so because he treats copyright infringement as theft.
Those who fight GPL violations know that it only works because copyright works. :)
They also know that if copyright didn't work (as in, there is none), the GPL wouldn't be needed as it's goals would have been accomplished (free sharing, etc). Because if you can take my creations and embed it into yours, not giving credit back, then I can do the same with yours
After all, it's currently illegal to violate copyright law (copying restricted music sheets or proprietarising GPL'd code), but the question our generation faces is: to which degree it's immoral?
You have to accept that there are many people who view the current copyright law as an abomination. And in democracy, law follows the people's morale.
He was discussing HIS property that was being taken without recompense.
It is not his property.
Let's go step by step.
If we're in a flood and I discover a way (idea) of keeping my house dry, how should you not be allowed to do the same after seeing it?
If I say something smart/funny (art), there is no natural mechanism that prevents you from tell it to others in order to get them to like you (~profit).
If I conceive a cool tune (music), you don't have any natural right to control how people think and communicate about it (one person singing it to another).
We have instead created an artificial one (which is a good idea really), allowing you a limited, government-granted licence to be the sole distributor of this work. But keep in mind, this has absolutely nothing to do with property. Copyright, patent and trademark laws behave orthogonal to property laws (buying, stealing, lending, etc.), they are treated differently in the courts and in day-to-day life. You simply cannot unify them.
Music, art and ideas are, despite what the "big corps" want to make you believe, explicitly non-property.
Now it's obvious that many regard the copyright system (after all that "big corp" lobbying) as broken, bad and rotten.
And with the notion that democracy is supposed to follow the will of the people, I'll leave you with a few quotes to ponder.
"An unjust law is no law at all" - St Augustine
"One who breaks an unjust law must do it openly, lovingly...I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the very highest respect for law." - Martin Luther King
If the government had just stayed the hell out, we wouldn't be having this discussion today as the Internet would likely already be far more built-out and with way more players in the market, each of them significantly smaller than the giant megacorps we have involved right now.
Uhh, history teaches us the opposite... not with earlier internets of course, but with roads, plumbing and all kinds of infrastructure that suffers if forced to pay off quickly. The situation is greatly improved if there is an organisation willing to invest huge sums _for the good of the people_ without monetary return in prospect. This has always been a government in the past.
Building for profit from ground up doesn't get equal access to everyone, but equal and neutral access is something our society, you and me _extremely_ profit from in hindsight.
With an internet built on private money only, we'd have a fragmented mess of incompatibility.
For a somewhat related example, just look at the OS platform market today. The OS is just infrastructure, the applications are what matters.
Now we might not see the long term benefit of everyone having the "same" OS to run the applications form. But if this happened "magically"*** today, people in twenty years would say how silly we were back then not to realise this obvious improvement.
Has happened with currency (you know, when each city had it's own coinage), rail track standardisation, trading tolls, etc.
*** I don't care which OS, just that it enables everyone to run all applications. Obviously this is not realistic anyway because of very practical reasons, i.e. multibillion dollar companies having some objections there.
I'd bet quite some money on all of your three options *not* happening.
None of them is anywhere near realistic.
The first one is utopia and highly unlikely because of human ambition and greed.
The second one makes no sense. Piracy still hasn't hurt the industry in any significant way (people claiming this are about as right as those claiming that it helped it tremendously by advertising the music/movies). None of the labels/studios will go bankrupt if we don't pass ACTA.
Look, grandparent isn't proposing to turn "everyone" against the big media (which is hardly possible) but just a enough people so that "everyone else" gets a clue about their business practises. Then, those companies will use common sense and change some of their policies/PR (and the consumer wins), not close shop and go home. And for those, for the lack of a better word, stupid ones that do, other companies will jump the opportunity just like it's supposed to work in capitalism.
Point is, if the entertainment industry has to adapt to new rules, it will simply adapt, not go away or die. Ambition, enterprenourship and the greed for profit will take care of that.
The third option... well, unless there is a major dictatorial overturn on the horizon, there is little point in expecting such a distopia.
What point are you trying to make by presenting three improbable choices?
And many RH devs are the upstream.
There, fixed that for you.
To elaborate a bit on gbutler69's point: copyright is not a natural law.
If I hurt you or steal something tangible from you, you have a natural and moral right to prevent this, retribute or get me to compensate.
If you wear a blue hat today and I want to do the same, there is no "natural mechanism" you can leverage to prevent me from doing so.
If you sing a song and I hear it, I can sing it too, etc.
Now introduce society and monetary reward (commerce). People want to get money from their ideas and works of mind, so they agree upon an artificial law that once someone creates something, others should not be allowed to create the same thing. Details vary, and most countries have sensible rules for Fair Use and non-commercial reproduction but don't allow commercial distribution (without permission) of something someone else has already created.
Point is, the very government you don't want to meddle with "your" copyright rights is the only reason there is any copyright at all. And since we're supposed to live in a democracy, the government ultimately represents the will of the people (yeah, having a hard time trying not to laugh myself ;) ).
Why should the people be against non-commercial copying and Fair Use?
By failing to implement a standard driver model Linux hurts the broader free-software ecosystem for no greater cause than its own domination.
I don't think the Linux kernel devs even consider the welfare of other FOSS operating systems when deciding on architectural details. Nor should they.
And even if there were a connection, that's like saying "If you refuse to do some work for me (for free, mind you), you're hurting my ecosystem".
In which case, we have to believe that Linux values world domination more than free software.
From my perspective, the Linux devs value having a Free OS more than "world domination", or else they would have compromised (there were occasions for that) the openness of the kernel in order to achieve the latter.
They also value the welfare of their own project more than the welfare of other FOSS projects... that is, they're not going to do things hardware corporations want them to do but conflict with their ideals, just so the resulting drivers might be useful to some third project.
Is anything wrong with this?
In that case, why hasn't it implemented its own standard driver model to gain more market share?
Good question... maybe because of lack of resources, maybe because people couldn't agree on the implementation details. I honestly don't know, but it would be interesting to find out.
At the same time I really don't think the main motive for the lack of a standard driver model is to hurt some other projects. That notion sounds slightly paranoid.
The Linux kernel developers are behaving like schizophrenics, using both the ideals of free software and world domination alternately as excuses not to implement a standard for driver source-compatibility from version to version of the kernel.
I'm not aware of any "world domination ideals" that were used for not implementing a driver model. Could you point out a case?
If they did so, including by inventing their own, it would strike a blow both for Linux market share and for the free-software ecosystem as a whole.
Could you please elaborate on that argument a bit? I'm honestly having trouble understanding the point you're trying to bring across.
Because it's not zero gain and Linux isn't the only operating system in the free world. Why do you think Linux doesn't face competition from systems like AROS, Haiku, or ReactOS,
ReactOS and Haiku are simple: because they came too late. If they started in 1991, I dare say we might as well be using Ubuntu ReactOS instead of Ubuntu Linux. Similar to *BSD and the copyright infringement FUD that sent people to GNU.
[...]or because it's the only free operating system with the driver support to work on most people's machines?
So we have two facts:
GNU/Linux is widespread and ReactOS etc are not.
GNU/Linux doesn't have a standardised driver interface but still grows nicely.
Well... I'm not arguing that having a standardised driver interface is a bad thing. ;)
It would be quite nice actually, but the priority of having an open system rates higher
Implement a driver standard and you may sacrifice the religious purity of a running Linux kernel instance but you give other free operating systems the driver base they need to really take off!
Hmm, I'm not sure I understand you correctly here. Should the Linux developers make architectural&political changes for the only reason that other free OSs might at some point benefit?
Why have those proposed standards gone unnoticed? If there's no other reason than lack of publicity, you might want to do something... start a petition for example.
About the ideology thing: what you call a "problem" I call the "goal".
What do you want Linux to achieve? World domination?
I want a legally-hassle-free, open operating system. There's no point if it has to become closed/non-free (by injecting more and more proprietary parts) in order to get the majority of the market... we already have such a system, so why go through all the pain for _zero_ gain?
Anyway, Linux adoption is steadily rising. We get more third party hardware support every year, RedHat is growing nicely, Ubuntu is becoming a well-known alternative. ;) ).
Where I live we can already get Ubuntu PCs at retail stores (just 2 models between ~50 Windows machines, but that's infinitely better than only 3 years ago
True, we'd have better hardware support by now if were to softsoap hardware vendors, but we'd lose more than it's worth. On the other hand, the hardware vendors _will_ come to us. They're doing so at an increasing rate.
Obviousy there are still lacking areas, but I'm pretty convinced that time will solve this. Things are going very well as it is.
"What if Count Chocula and the Cookie Monster teamed up kidnapped the Keibler Elves? What if monkey's flew out of Cowboy Neil's butt? What is Megan Fox showed up naked at my front door with Natalie Portman covered in grits?"
I find your thoughts intriguing and wish to subscribe to your newsletter!
Feeding the troll...
Just a small addition to what the commenters above me have said:
If the BSD license implies more contributions from companies, how do you explain the current state of the BSD projects compared to GPL projects?
FreeBSD gets a few contributions from Apple, GPL'd stuff is constantly improved by IBM, Intel, Oracle, etc and even by Apple!.
There are probably more companies that incorporate BSD'd stuff into their own code than GPL'd... and don't contribute back. But that's the point of the GPL.
Do you really think all of FreeBSD get's more corporate contributions than just even the Linux kernel?
Take a look around... BSDL'ing your code gives you way less contributions (both corporate and non-corporate) than releasing under the GPL.
Your point is valid, except for the reference to the "comments above"...
When I was reading through this page, more than once it went trough my head: woah, Slashdot sometimes really feels like the intellectual gutter of the internet. Who would take all these comments to prove any kind of point?
I heard about this guy the first time right now, but to me, the remarks from above just seem like gutless mockery from behind a computer. You know, that "judging people over the internet" stuff...
Ah nevermind... let's burn somebody!
Software is just tool, and it's usage just the end to a means for _you_, but why do you think it's the same for everyone?
You're like that (fictional, though there probably were some of those) Indian slave worker who says to Ghandi: "Why should I care about freedom or sovereignty? I just want to do my work, receive my poor pay and try to get as little beating from my overlords as possible".
I think that analogy fits quite well, especially since we're talking about "spiritual" leaders here...
Point is, there are people who think freedom is important enough to be the main focus, not just an attribute to something which "gets the work done". Why not let them do their work and benefit later, instead of demanding that they stop? ;)
I think quite a bunch of modern democracies were founded on that "freedom is crucial" premise
Of course, virtual bits and bytes don't have the same level of importance as your personal "real life" liberties, but it's just about the same topic.
So you're shocked? Why?
As far as I can tell, by far the most comments are about the ethics and/or politics of DRM in general, followed by several postings about how the summary is crap (which it is, journalistically at least).
There's not even a handfull of people promoting Linux to this point. Why the overreaction?
Do you have some personal grudge against Linux?
I can't believe this was modded insightful.
When I was a lad, he'd have got a good kicking for being inflammatory at best (and a naive dimly ironical rant at worst).
Shall I complete this for you? .odt files on a fresh install?
4. How long does it take to get full access to the source code?
5. How long does it take to get your reported bug fixed by the devs (for me recently: 4 days with WICD, 1 day with Dillo)?
6. How long does it take to open
Sure, you don't want source code, don't want your bugs fixed quickly and don't want open standardized documents... but then again, I don't care about gaming (I'm out of that age), and what the hell should I want Visual Studio for?
The startup speed for MS Word is a fair point, and it takes a bit longer on Linux because of wine. I guess OO.o takes roughly the same on both systems... but then again, do you consider this more significant than, let's say, the file I/O test made in the benchmark?