It is easy to be creative when you don't have customers.
While we're throwing around truisms, how about "necessity is the mother of invention"? These days, "money" is often a proxy for "necessity".
Creativity is possible under both models. There is a lot of competitive pressure in the commercial world, which drives companies to produce better and more innovative solutions.
Take digital cameras, for example. Would they have been adopted as quickly as they did without the rising costs of film? Would they have been adopted so quickly if not out of a desire for hardware manufacturers to take a bigger stake of the imaging market? Would a camera hobbyist have been able to come up with those cameras without commercial incentive?
But the difference in the GIMP interface is not the result of creativity. If the GIMP interface used some sort of amazing new interface paradigm, then you might have a point. But it doesn't. In fact, if it did have a creative (and good) interface, it might become more popular than Photoshop. Instead, they made a bad copy of Photoshop.
I think the GIMP is actually the perfect example of failure and lack of creativity. It lacks originality, and fails to even imitate what it is copying, much less improve on it.
Okay, let's put things in a different light: open applications tend to lower boundaries to broad adoption,
If that's so, then why are so few FOSS applications widely adopted? And what type of boundaries are you talking about - just money? Because FOSS has boundaries of its own, that some might consider more important than money.
You'd better tell that to all the people using Second Life, of all the astronauts and pilots trained in flight simulators. Or hell, all the people who play Quake or Unreal Tournament (or even World of Warcraft for that matter). Or the thousands of panoramic VR, stereoscopic, and digitized 3D photographers around the globe. All those 3D animators in Hollywood. To those IMAX cinemas.
How can something be pie-in-the-sky when it's been around for so long, and is so widely used?
Sometimes commercial software got there first, and sometimes it didn't.
Sometimes?
How about most of the time? All you have done is listed the exceptions that prove the rule, and some of those are pretty poor examples, as they have gone nowhere. Look, FOSS is great - but what are you achieving by being in denial over this? FOSS will improve a lot more if its supporters are willing to accept the truth, and not invent some fantasy that everything good in the world originated with FOSS.
The F/OSS software I tend to use differentiates itself by simply doing what I need it to do and nothing else. It doesn't "phone home", sacrifice performance for bling, limit important features to a higher-cost "pro" version, store data in undocumented formats, or require re-activation every X months. THAT certainly differentiates F/OSS to me.
I don't see how that differentiates FOSS. I use plenty of proprietary software that fits that description perfectly. And there's plenty of FOSS that doesn't do even the minimum that I need, forget about the "more" part.
Again, it's not healthy to make up these fantasies as a way of validating yourself. Not all proprietary software is full of spyware and bling. Hardly any of it requires re-activation at all, let alone every few months. Heck, plenty of proprietary titles use open file formats. I'm not sure why you need the entire commmercial software worl to be some kind of cartoonish super-villain. Most experienced users know that the image you paint only really applies to the worst software, and there's plenty of good stuff in both the FOSS and commercial worlds.
I'd like to know though - do you seriously believe what you are saying, or are you aware that it is propaganda? Because if you seriously believe it, you musn't have much experience with commercial software at all. Have you simply been using FOSS for so long, that you believe the worst stereotypes perpetrated by slashdot, and haven't actually used commercial software?
I'd say it mostly happens for a couple of reasons:
A programmers wants status/prestige in the community, so decides to copy a popular program.
Related to the first point, the community wants a free (as in beer) version of the program
Much rarer, you have the FSF crowd, who might want a free (as in liberty) version of the program. But there are very few of those people around, and few of them care about things such as productivity or features, it's an ideological thing.
If you just wanted a feature added, it would be easier to get in touch with the developer and make a feature request.
The older software is, the more mature it is and the fewer bugs it has.
By this logic, most proprietary software is better as it has been around for longer?
but 9 times out of 10 if you're implementing something in closed source, you're duplicating something that's already available in open source and more mature to boot.
WTF? Do you have any evidence for this? I'd say that most of the time it's the other way around. Especially when it comes to productivity software. Sure, FOSS, has some old things like compilers, BSD components, emacs and vi. But on the whole closed source application software came before the FOSS versions and are more mature. Take Photoshop for example, or MacPaint. Radically influential and innovative software - not based on any way on FOSS. Yet there are plenty of FOSS clones that are not nearly as good.
Well, you said "value invert", not the rest of that stuff. I'm not sure why the GIMP filter calles that "value invert", since that would imply inverting all the values, including luminosity.
You seem to be missing the point. Why does it matter if it is a piece of shit if it is selling well? The company doesn't say "oh, we'll give all those profits back because our product isn't as good as some guy on slashdot wants it to be." It's totally irelevant. If people want this thing, then it will gain marketshare from other vendors.
Enterprise class software isn't a good example. Neither are most Windows apps. Probably the best examples are the (usually) PDFs or online HTML manuals that are provided by many independent Mac software developers. They often write documentation that is easy to read and helpful. And I don't think dead-tree manuals are better than PDFs or online manuals. They get dated too quickly, take up too much shelf space, add cost to the software.
That's a very bad idea. By the time a driver is on a CD, it's usually out of date. Sometimes this is not a problem. But often it's catastrophic. I've had more problems with bad and out-of-date drivers delivered on CD than from any other cause.
More RAM? Why can't you just buy more RAM? The iMac still comes out cheaper. Plus, the iMac has a higher maximum RAM capacity than the Dell. Better CPU? Do you really think that 200 MHz is going to make any signficant difference?
The TV tuner has to be the most hilarious reaason I've ever seen for choosing a different machine. Not to mention that you could buy a better one, for the iMac, and still come out ahead - with the advantage that it is external, so you can use it on any future machine, or move it between existing machines.
However, if I'm buying a machine that's hard to upgrade because it's all built into a monitor, it better have a keyboard and battery built in.
If that's what you're into. I'd rather not screw around with using a laptop keyboard and plugging in an external monitor at my desk - I'd rather use the full-size keyboard, and also not have a "tower" or other bulky CPU taking up space and making noise. Desk space and ergonomics is very important. Hardly seems worth compromising that, just to cling to a monitor which is probably worthless by the time you upgrade the machine. You'd probably come out ahead buying the Mac, as they have very high resale values, you could just sell the whole thing and get a new one.
But other people have different priorities. Nothing wrong with that, but I do think that some people stick to romantic notions such as "the ever-upgradeable computer", no matter how impractical it might be.
Are you talking about the software package, which most people are forced to use with their Ipods,
You said "iTunes" - so presumably that's what you were talking about. But anyway, how are people "forced" to use iTunes with their iPods? There are alternatives available on every platform. Is there some kind of conspiracy of Apple Ninjas attacking people who don't use iTunes?
Most people don't use the Itunes music service, they rip or download MP3 files themselves.
Sure, but of the people that do buy from the iTunes store, they come from all demographics, around the world. Hardly a "narrow" market, it's actually quite diverse.
As is well evidenced by the mere ten songs per customer calculation I made.
Which probably isn't accurate. Do you have the latest sales figures from Apple? Did you merely calculate on the basis of number of iPods sold? Because people replace their iPods, or own more than one - and they don't throw away their purchased tunes just because they got a new one.
What the hell? Nearly 15 years ago, we had a Mac network at school, and everything was done from the network drive, and we never had any problems like this. Hell, before that, we had a network of BBC micros, and there was no local storage - everything was done on the server. In fact, that was the typical model in those days. Funny how it's nearly 2008 and Microsoft can't even manage something that's been standard practice for decades.
Religion is actually very boring compared to science. It's like a daytime soap opera. Seen one, you've seen them all. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
"Intellectual Property" exists nowhere but in the lawbooks. There is no physicality there.
Actually, the term "Intellectual Property" exists in many other places than law books. You proved that yourself. As far as I know, slashdot is not a law book.
Another concept that "has no physicality" is murder. It exists in law books and written in other places. But phjysically speaking, there is no such thing as "murder." I guess it must not exist as a concept, then.
Since when is opensource about running Linux binaries on a proprietary platform?
Since when was open source about running binaries at all? Open Source is about source code, making it possible to run on just about any platform, proprietary or otherwise.
Slashdot Mirror
While we're throwing around truisms, how about "necessity is the mother of invention"? These days, "money" is often a proxy for "necessity".
Creativity is possible under both models. There is a lot of competitive pressure in the commercial world, which drives companies to produce better and more innovative solutions.
Take digital cameras, for example. Would they have been adopted as quickly as they did without the rising costs of film? Would they have been adopted so quickly if not out of a desire for hardware manufacturers to take a bigger stake of the imaging market? Would a camera hobbyist have been able to come up with those cameras without commercial incentive?
But the difference in the GIMP interface is not the result of creativity. If the GIMP interface used some sort of amazing new interface paradigm, then you might have a point. But it doesn't. In fact, if it did have a creative (and good) interface, it might become more popular than Photoshop. Instead, they made a bad copy of Photoshop.
I think the GIMP is actually the perfect example of failure and lack of creativity. It lacks originality, and fails to even imitate what it is copying, much less improve on it.
If that's so, then why are so few FOSS applications widely adopted? And what type of boundaries are you talking about - just money? Because FOSS has boundaries of its own, that some might consider more important than money.
VR is pie-in-the-sky?
You'd better tell that to all the people using Second Life, of all the astronauts and pilots trained in flight simulators. Or hell, all the people who play Quake or Unreal Tournament (or even World of Warcraft for that matter). Or the thousands of panoramic VR, stereoscopic, and digitized 3D photographers around the globe. All those 3D animators in Hollywood. To those IMAX cinemas.
How can something be pie-in-the-sky when it's been around for so long, and is so widely used?
Sometimes?
How about most of the time? All you have done is listed the exceptions that prove the rule, and some of those are pretty poor examples, as they have gone nowhere. Look, FOSS is great - but what are you achieving by being in denial over this? FOSS will improve a lot more if its supporters are willing to accept the truth, and not invent some fantasy that everything good in the world originated with FOSS.
The F/OSS software I tend to use differentiates itself by simply doing what I need it to do and nothing else. It doesn't "phone home", sacrifice performance for bling, limit important features to a higher-cost "pro" version, store data in undocumented formats, or require re-activation every X months. THAT certainly differentiates F/OSS to me.I don't see how that differentiates FOSS. I use plenty of proprietary software that fits that description perfectly. And there's plenty of FOSS that doesn't do even the minimum that I need, forget about the "more" part.
Again, it's not healthy to make up these fantasies as a way of validating yourself. Not all proprietary software is full of spyware and bling. Hardly any of it requires re-activation at all, let alone every few months. Heck, plenty of proprietary titles use open file formats. I'm not sure why you need the entire commmercial software worl to be some kind of cartoonish super-villain. Most experienced users know that the image you paint only really applies to the worst software, and there's plenty of good stuff in both the FOSS and commercial worlds.
I'd like to know though - do you seriously believe what you are saying, or are you aware that it is propaganda? Because if you seriously believe it, you musn't have much experience with commercial software at all. Have you simply been using FOSS for so long, that you believe the worst stereotypes perpetrated by slashdot, and haven't actually used commercial software?
I'd say it mostly happens for a couple of reasons:
If you just wanted a feature added, it would be easier to get in touch with the developer and make a feature request.
By this logic, most proprietary software is better as it has been around for longer?
but 9 times out of 10 if you're implementing something in closed source, you're duplicating something that's already available in open source and more mature to boot.WTF? Do you have any evidence for this? I'd say that most of the time it's the other way around. Especially when it comes to productivity software. Sure, FOSS, has some old things like compilers, BSD components, emacs and vi. But on the whole closed source application software came before the FOSS versions and are more mature. Take Photoshop for example, or MacPaint. Radically influential and innovative software - not based on any way on FOSS. Yet there are plenty of FOSS clones that are not nearly as good.
Well, you said "value invert", not the rest of that stuff. I'm not sure why the GIMP filter calles that "value invert", since that would imply inverting all the values, including luminosity.
You seem to be missing the point. Why does it matter if it is a piece of shit if it is selling well? The company doesn't say "oh, we'll give all those profits back because our product isn't as good as some guy on slashdot wants it to be." It's totally irelevant. If people want this thing, then it will gain marketshare from other vendors.
What? Invert values is CMD-I on Photoshop. A single keyboard shortcut!
Enterprise class software isn't a good example. Neither are most Windows apps. Probably the best examples are the (usually) PDFs or online HTML manuals that are provided by many independent Mac software developers. They often write documentation that is easy to read and helpful. And I don't think dead-tree manuals are better than PDFs or online manuals. They get dated too quickly, take up too much shelf space, add cost to the software.
That's a very bad idea. By the time a driver is on a CD, it's usually out of date. Sometimes this is not a problem. But often it's catastrophic. I've had more problems with bad and out-of-date drivers delivered on CD than from any other cause.
They'll get sued by an obsolete programming language???
Slashdot doesn't think. It just rips your beating heart from your chest and shows it to you before you die. No wait, that's Bruce Schneier.
Interesting. I didn't know there were so many people named "Satanic Puppy."
Of course, one would expect trouble trying to bring a drug mule onto a flight.
Except that this is not about editing files saved to your backup system. Where did you get that idea?
More RAM? Why can't you just buy more RAM? The iMac still comes out cheaper. Plus, the iMac has a higher maximum RAM capacity than the Dell. Better CPU? Do you really think that 200 MHz is going to make any signficant difference?
The TV tuner has to be the most hilarious reaason I've ever seen for choosing a different machine. Not to mention that you could buy a better one, for the iMac, and still come out ahead - with the advantage that it is external, so you can use it on any future machine, or move it between existing machines.
However, if I'm buying a machine that's hard to upgrade because it's all built into a monitor, it better have a keyboard and battery built in.If that's what you're into. I'd rather not screw around with using a laptop keyboard and plugging in an external monitor at my desk - I'd rather use the full-size keyboard, and also not have a "tower" or other bulky CPU taking up space and making noise. Desk space and ergonomics is very important. Hardly seems worth compromising that, just to cling to a monitor which is probably worthless by the time you upgrade the machine. You'd probably come out ahead buying the Mac, as they have very high resale values, you could just sell the whole thing and get a new one.
But other people have different priorities. Nothing wrong with that, but I do think that some people stick to romantic notions such as "the ever-upgradeable computer", no matter how impractical it might be.
You said "iTunes" - so presumably that's what you were talking about. But anyway, how are people "forced" to use iTunes with their iPods? There are alternatives available on every platform. Is there some kind of conspiracy of Apple Ninjas attacking people who don't use iTunes?
Most people don't use the Itunes music service, they rip or download MP3 files themselves.Sure, but of the people that do buy from the iTunes store, they come from all demographics, around the world. Hardly a "narrow" market, it's actually quite diverse.
As is well evidenced by the mere ten songs per customer calculation I made.Which probably isn't accurate. Do you have the latest sales figures from Apple? Did you merely calculate on the basis of number of iPods sold? Because people replace their iPods, or own more than one - and they don't throw away their purchased tunes just because they got a new one.
What the hell? Nearly 15 years ago, we had a Mac network at school, and everything was done from the network drive, and we never had any problems like this. Hell, before that, we had a network of BBC micros, and there was no local storage - everything was done on the server. In fact, that was the typical model in those days. Funny how it's nearly 2008 and Microsoft can't even manage something that's been standard practice for decades.
No, it's not about editing files that are in the backup store. It corrupts files simply if you edit them from a shared directory on the server.
Religion is actually very boring compared to science. It's like a daytime soap opera. Seen one, you've seen them all. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Since whenever. What the hell do you think "free trade" means, anyway?
Actually, the term "Intellectual Property" exists in many other places than law books. You proved that yourself. As far as I know, slashdot is not a law book.
Another concept that "has no physicality" is murder. It exists in law books and written in other places. But phjysically speaking, there is no such thing as "murder." I guess it must not exist as a concept, then.
Since when was open source about running binaries at all? Open Source is about source code, making it possible to run on just about any platform, proprietary or otherwise.