I haven't seen any actual evidence of these allegations. As far as I'm concerned, it's on the same page with Area 51 and the second guy on the grassy knoll.
Personally, I don't find it hard to believe that twenty people independently wanted the standard approved and weren't bribed, coerced, or influenced by anyone except themselves. I don't see why you find it hard to believe, except that you simply can't imagine anyone might actually like Microsoft of their own free will.
> I highly doubt that the license has anything to do with the quality of developers.
And that's why I'm glad we have this situation. Because it does, and I've been saying it for years, and the only argument anyone's ever been able to mount is that we don't have an apples to apples comparison.
Well, now we do. Patience; I know I'm right, and deep down YOU know it, too. It's just a matter of time.
> I feel like I'm explaining ethics to one of my children.
Since when is it unethical to join an organisation for the purpose of voting on a matter you deem important? Isn't that why most people join the ISO in the first place?
Face it, sitting in the ISO while standards are reviewed gives you an inside track on implementing them. If you need more time, you hold it up in committee until you get the bugs worked out, and then you let it go through. Companies do this all the time on standards tracks. Then they get an advantage over the competition because they've already become experts on the standard before it was approved. So why, exactly, is it unethical for partners to join that body and push the standard through before the competition is ready?
> It's a pretty pathetic thing to do, cutting off the source > from any usefull changes, but perfectly legal nonetheless.
As a pro-BSD and anti-GPL guy, I don't like this either, but I think it's instructive.
First, I think it demonstrates the double standard going on in the license battle. The BSD license is explicitly supposed to allow this, and their reaction simply shows that they aren't so dedicated to the spirit of the license as they like to pretend.
Second, I think it ultimately demonstrates the failures of the GPL. Now that the driver is under GPL, enhancements made to the BSD-licensed version don't automatically propagate to it; they have to be manually incorporated. The converse applies; the GPL modifications don't propagate to the BSD version without manual incorporation, and since that incorporation would carry the GPL, it won't happen. This is effectively a code fork, and as ESR has quite rightly pointed out (thought not in so few words) "code forks are bad". Clearly, the GPL community has not historically done so well on a wireless driver, so I'd bet the BSD version is eventually going to eclipse the GPL version. This evidences the simple fact that the GPL doesn't attract high-quality developers as readily as a BSD licensed project does.
I don't think the code is cut off from useful changes; I think it's actually a good idea to do this kind of apples and apples comparison of the two licenses. Which version ultimately wins and why? I'm betting on BSD, because I think experienced professional developers - the kind most qualified to enhance and extend a wireless driver - dislike the GPL and will avoid it when possible.
> I am interested to see you point out what you consider high-quality code.
Apache is a good example. It just works. Millions of people use it every day with little to no idea how it works; they just type "make install" and "apachectl start" and there it is. It's like magic. Beyond that, it's just a few lines in a config file and "apachectl restart" and hey presto. Look at all the people asking excessively basic questions on the local LUG Apache forum who say they've been running it for years; sure, on the one hand it's pretty sad when someone doesn't know how to make rewrite rules, but on the other - isn't it amazing that they've been running this software for years and never needed to know that? That may not be the world's best user, but it sure as hell is some great software.
PHP is a little iffy. Most of it isn't that great, and the installation is certainly rather precarious, but the genius of it is in the way Zend made it so easy to extend the language and attach external libraries. That core is massively high-quality. The peripherals, often contributed by less-than-expert developers, maybe not so much. But you have to admit it's gotten more people to write "real" programs than anything else.
But let's find something GPL, shall we? You know what really rules? GNU make. It's fucking amazing. Come on, we ALL use it. You can't get away from it. The only thing that even comes close is autoconfigure. That's the build dance -./configure,./make, done. It's the closest thing to setup.exe the UNIX world has ever had, and it's ever so much more powerful.
The lack of Microsoft products in this list is a consideration of the audience. I see a lot of high-quality products coming out of Microsoft, but if I named them, we'd just argue forever about what "quality" means. I think we can all agree that the things I HAVE named meet just about every rational definition of quality. (MySQL almost made the list, but it has too many detractors who claim it's not a "real" database server. I don't agree, but they have some valid points.)
> Microsoft did something reprehensible in messing with ISO in this way
Suppose for a moment that Microsoft did nothing - that the partners, of their own free will, saw the situation and decided of their own accord to join the committee and cast their votes for what they themselves wanted.
Does that change the way you view it?
Because fundamentally, we don't have any clear indication otherwise. If my business stood to make $50,000 next year alone in projects supporting a particular format - Microsoft or otherwise - and I saw a significant likelihood that the format was going to be rejected in committee, I'd spend $2,500 to cast another vote in my direction. That's just good business sense.
And what if the opposite happened? What if Microsoft was about to get a standard approved, and suddenly twenty new members popped up to vote against it? Would you be complaining about that, or would you be laughing about how Microsoft deserves it?
I think you'd be laughing. I think this thread would be full of "ha ha, that's what you get, stupid Microsoft - the people have spoken!" Because when Microsoft loses, the people are speaking, but when they WIN it's because they're nasty corrupt bastards who want to rule the world. Is it so hard to believe that some people LIKE Microsoft and WANT them to win? Because my portfolio value sort of depends on that.
Now, I do agree that the process is flawed. I shouldn't be able to write a check and cast a vote. That damages the integrity of the process. But if I can do it, why would you complain that I did it? Complain about the rule, sure. But what I did isn't against the rules. It's legal. Not only didn't anyone stop me, they couldn't - everything I did was by the book.
And at this point, there's nothing fair you can do to stop it. Sure, you could say the vote doesn't count, and then change the rules so all the new guys can't vote, and then do a recount... but that's not fair. What happened was fair; anyone could have done it. Both sides of the debate had the same opportunity. Indeed, I'd bet that if you go back over the historical record, you'll find this isn't the first time it's happened.
> I don't see how the GPL reduces the value of that code to > experienced developers (who shouldn't be using it, being > mediocre code in the first place).
Mediocre code itself is better than nothing.
Mediocre code with onerous restrictions may be worse than nothing.
Thus, reduced value. ECON 101.
> As I said, the GPLv3 is only applied if the authors change > the code to it
Are they guaranteed to notify all of their distributors and distributor partners when they do so?
No. And RMS knows it. And the GPLv3 attempts to saddle them with liabilities and obligations without their consent or knowledge. And that's unethical.
> Your example is flawed since the GPLv3 only applies if one > distributes the code, fully knowing that there is GPLv3 code > in there.
Show me where in the GPLv3 it says the license doesn't apply if you don't know about it.
See, that's a loophole that could be easily exploited. So which is it? Unethical, or irrelevant?
> It's your right to view the body of work under the GPL > today - including GNU/Linux, but not limited by it - as > bad code made by mediocre developers
That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying the average code WRITTEN today (GPL or not) is bad code written by mediocre developers, and the GPL reduces the value of that code to experienced developers.
> But that was always an integral part of the GPL - and of > any license.
As was the bond of trust that what was permissible under the license today would not expose one to legal liability tomorrow. GPLv3 violates that trust.
> I see no reason for the GPL to be viewed as invalid
You can't change the license behind someone's back. I can't say "I reserve the right to alter my license", get your signature, and then post a new license that says "all licensees must pay $500 a month". No court in the world would uphold that. The GPLv3, however, expects to sneak in and demand distributors' interest in related source code - as if intellectual property rights are somehow different. It's theft, pure and simple, and all nobility aside Robin Hood was still just a thief.
1. All the things you always said management should do, start doing. 2. All the things you always said management shouldn't do, don't do. 3. If you find yourself to be wrong about any of these things, fix it.
That simple. Management is all about using good sense and standing by your decisions.
You'll do well. Anyone who honestly tries to do well at management does.
> You should be smart enough to infer that by that I meant > that I think your blanket statement is wishful thinking.
And, clearly, I disagree. The GPL primarily benefits people who TAKE more code than they GIVE. Those with more to give rapidly start to get the short end of the stick, and with the exception of a few truly altruistic folks, they begin to migrate away from the GPL. This defeats the entire purpose of open source development: to attract high-quality volunteer coders who can meet or exceed the quality of commercial offerings.
> I do not see how the GPLv3 changes anything in what regards forcing anyone.
By altering the license in your next release, you can bring a company distributing your code under the GPLv3 for doing what was perfectly legitimate and permissible under the GPLv2.
I do not believe this is an oversight. I believe this is exactly what RMS and the FSF want. And I believe it is a scummy thing to do.
I also believe it won't stand up in court, and will be primarily used as an extortion technique against companies who can't afford to fight it. And I believe RMS knows that, too.
Yes. You should be smart enough to infer the associated disclaimer. If you're not, you're undoubtedly not smart enough to understand my argument anyway.
> So, you're objections are not only against the GPLv3, but to the GPL as a whole.
Not precisely. The GPLv2 was a bad license, but it could be avoided. It was easy to tell whether you fell under the terms of the GPLv2.
My primary objection to the GPLv3 is that it is actively attempts to trick companies into falling under its restrictions, by extending its reach across things people are currently doing to stay out from under the GPLv2.
The clear intent is to provide an avenue where a company can be forced under GPLv3 without their knowledge. This is the most obscenely unacceptable business practice I have ever seen, and I'm an ex-defense contractor who now works at Microsoft. If I can smile about that, just think how bad it has to get before I start shaking my head and muttering about ethics.
The GPL basically means "if you use this body of code, whatever you contribute must be given out freely".
This is a great deal when what you contribute is of negligible value compared to the original codebase.
But when you look around and see a vast teeming community of ignorant retards who can't write decent software to save their lives, this deal sucks.
The internet isn't the elite anymore. It's a vast teeming community of ignorant retards. That may do wonders toward making RMS feel like some sort of deity, but it sure as hell doesn't do much for producing high-quality code. What ought to scare the FSF is not that people are mad about the GPLv3 - if nobody's mad about it, you're probably not accomplishing anything - but that an awful lot of the people who are mad about it are highly competent and productive developers. These are exactly the kind of people you want to keep in your community. If what you're doing is driving them away, you really need to step back and think about whether this crusade against Microsoft is worth it.
Of course, I work for the enemy, so don't listen to me. But you probably ought to listen to your most competent and productive developers.
Look, face facts: $2500 is roughly dick to the average large company. That's about the salary and benefits of one senior programmer for one week. When you set it up so I can invest that little piddling amount of money and cast my vote, I'm going to vote when it really matters.
The real question here isn't why Microsoft did it - it worked, so it was a perfectly smart and sensible thing to do - but why the opposition couldn't mount a defense. What, you couldn't find fifty people willing to spend $2500 to stop Microsoft? Why not?
Microsoft's partners will not hesitate to lay money on the table so their side wins. Microsoft doesn't have to bribe anyone, or pay anyone, or even encourage anyone. The story right here on Slashdot got to plenty of folks in the partner program who could volunteer $2500 and support the source of their bread's butter. Most of them didn't do it, because they just couldn't be arsed. But across all the media outlets, more than enough of them did.
So where are all the free software people? Surely SOME of you have $2500. After all, it's not the money, it's the PRINCIPLE of the thing - right?
The free software community needs to stop whining about what's fair and start thinking about how to win. Sure, I sit in an office on the Redmond campus, but having more than 40% of the market is bad for everyone - it's bad for the consumer, it's bad for the market, and it's bad for the market leader. I want to see Apple and Linux take a big-ass bite out of this market and give us some competition. But before they can do that, they have to stop all the damn whining and do something that matters.
If a community whines about competition, the very least they can do is to compete.
Certain channels may not really have much of an audience. If you bundle such a channel with a channel that does have an audience, some of that audience may discover the otherwise uninteresting channel.
This is basically a way to defray the massive cost of introducing a new channel. Those of us who like reasonably obscure channels greatly prefer a bundled-pricing scheme where the twenty people in the state who watch the "Classic Disco" channel can do so because they're getting a share of the subscription fees paid by people who like "Comedy Central".
But we do manufacture things to sell for profit. Sure, we brought most of our goods from overseas, but the profits realised at the point of sale usually ended up in an American company's coffers. Who cares what country did the work? I care who got the money.
I used to run a moderately sized VX (virus exchange) board. There are three main reasons people write viruses.
1. Because they're fascinating. It was interesting to see what kind of things you could make a virus do. For people like this - which included me - the game was to write a virus that more effectively reproduced, evolved, and evaded detection in a smaller space. You can spot viruses written for this reason because THERE IS NO PAYLOAD. It doesn't break anything. It's an academic exercise. We DON'T CARE what it does. That's not the point.
2. Because they want money. This was a tiny little minority on my board, and to my knowledge none of them ever actually implemented anything; we just talked about "what if" scenarios. At the time, since the internet was not really a big thing for most people, there was very little a virus could do to deliver information elsewhere. Today, the world has changed, and everything is networked. We can talk to anyone anywhere at any time. And that means this group has simply exploded out of the criminal underworld.
3. Revenge/status. The vast majority of people on my board were people who wanted to give a virus to their ex-wife or to some guy in school who was mean yesterday. They think that if they give someone a virus it will "show them who's boss" or "everyone will think I'm so cool". This is childish and stupid.
The author of this virus is probably in the latter group.
No, I don't ever wonder if my coworkers will sexually harass me.
But I wonder if asking my coworker out for dinner will get me fired.
After all, it might make her uncomfortable, and then she might be completely unable to focus on her work because she's constantly wondering whether I agreed with her idea because it was a good idea or because I want to bone her. If she says no, maybe I won't pull my weight on the team anymore, and it will make her look bad. If she says yes, exactly how much do I expect of her to contiue treating her fairly? Does she have to sleep with me? What if she doesn't? What if she does once, and it's bad, and then she won't do it anymore? Will I tell everyone in the office? Will other guys think they can proposition her, too?
And if she turns into a complete wreck trying to figure out how to do her job when I think she's desirable, somehow this is *my* fault, and *I* don't get to work there anymore.
In fact, if she just decides she wants to break up, she can avoid the discomfort of working with me by lodging a complaint and getting me fired. Nobody will believe me if I say it's a lie.
So pardon me if I don't have a whole hell of a lot of sympathy for someone who got a few threatening comments and photoshopped pictures from some random loser on the internet.
"An examination of his home PC revealed a previously unclassified malware executable. It appeared to have been installed surreptitiously via a remote exploit on December 13, 2006."
Go ahead. Call me a shill. But this is a massive handwave - what evidence is there that this executable was installed by a remote exploit? Is that evidence in any way bigger or more reliable than the usual "I don't know where that came from! I didn't download it!" from the machine's owner?
"Hey, Bob. All of your problems seem to have come from this executable here. Did you download random shit from the internet and run it on your computer, in such blatant violation of company policy and good security practices that it essentially makes you one of the world's biggest retards?"
Please choose your response wisely.
A) "I thought it was pictures of Britney Spears naked." (the truth) B) "I thought Bob sent it to me." (also the truth) C) "No." (keeps your retarded ass out of trouble)
Your selection? ___
> it makes sense to introduce some sort of > security that never ever lets anything but > the browser's code access the interfaces to > these libraries
Okay, let me see if I understand you.
You want us to put code on your computer that you are not allowed to run unless you use IE to do it.
Is that an accurate statement of your security enhancement? Forbid the user to use the program of his choice to access the useful libraries that Microsoft is using to provide access to internet services?
Isn't that... I don't know, anticompetitive, or something?
> projects with existing account makes up the > vast majority of a sales persons quota
Yes, and you don't really have to sell it. The customer has been sold. You address his questions and concerns, and as long as his bullshit detectors don't go off, he continues what he's already doing.
> Besides, who else does MS have to sell to?
Start-ups. That's why we have SBS - because the SBM market is massive, and has little direction.
> Again, I'm not arguing that the points they > give are fair or valid
But that's my entire point. If you train a sales force with unfair and invalid information - which Microsoft has historically done while competing with Linux - that sales force cannot do its job effectively. The Linux camp is winning as much as they win because their sales force is technically astute and does not lie. They don't really have salesmen. They have engineers trained in sales. And an engineer inherently has more credibility than a salesman, so we're already fighting an uphill battle. Our edge is that salesmen are better at selling than engineers, but that doesn't win in the long term.
The approach is wrong. We need to take a different approach, and Microsoft aren't doing that. They keep treating Linux like a product in the market, and they're only just starting to get an inkling of how wrong that is. Linux is not a product, it's a political philosophy, and you can't fight philosophy on the grounds of technical merit.
Perhaps the field of sales has changed since my day, but I was under the impression that once you've sold ME, you go sell someone ELSE.
Now, you still have to fight to keep the 85% you've sold me on. But you are not going to do it by saying "hey, that other 15%, you've really done a bad job there". That's not a good sales technique, and that's really what it boils down to. "You use Linux? Why, you must be either ignorant or evil. Which is it?" Gee, I don't know. Have you stopped beating your wife yet?
You can, of course, ask me how it's going. That's just smart sales. Maybe I hate GoldMine - everyone does, really - and simply haven't thought of switching to Microsoft CRM, which really kicks ass. Besides, it looks like you really care: "Hey, how do you like that Linux server?" It's great. "Have you thought about switching to Windows?" Well, no, because it's great. "Do you want to know what Windows could do for you?" No, we're fine.
And that's when you STFU and take the license renewal on our 85% Select agreement and go sell someone else. Because if you push me for that 100%, I'm going to tell you where you can stick your agreement, and you might actually lose some or all of that 85%.
> the best and most successful become that way by > selling a better refrigerator, not by selling junk.
This is true. However, when you work in the sales department of company X, you have to sell products made by company X. No matter what. So if company X makes fifty great products and one piece of crap, you don't just get to sell fifty great products - you also have to sell a piece of crap. It may be worth it if you get to sell fifty great products, but it's still going to be a lie somewhere down the line.
> But that has to be the message. There is no other > message that they can put out
There are a great many messages you can put out that aren't "use my products and only my products". The 100% approach is simply not realistic. Is every appliance in your kitchen from the same company? Every tool in your toolbox? Every book on your bookshelf? Of course not. The very idea is ridiculous. So when you come up and say "100% mine" is the best solution, nobody believes you, because you cannot possibly be right.
Microsoft is one of the few companies that will gain more from the positive PR of saying "you know what, this is a good place to use Linux" than they would from the two or three thousand dollars a client might pay for Windows licenses. We suffer every single time we say "this is a great solution" and someone comes along to observe that it not only isn't a great solution, it's a REALLY BAD solution compared to the alternatives. It's not money we need, it's credibility, and the stockholders ought to be able to grasp that.
Sales is just an established system of lying that shares certain commonalities regardless of what you're selling.
It falls down because it's not true. The truth is almost never overwhelmingly in favor of one product over another. I've been disappointed by Microsoft's Linux-competition campaigns, not because they're inaccurate (all sales campaigns are inaccurate), but because there really are a lot of good arguments for using Windows. It's just that you have to start by admitting and accepting that Linux is going to be in your customer's enterprise doing SOMETHING, and you can't completely eliminate it from the picture. Even if their Linux box can run Windows Server, which isn't certain at all, it represents an investment of time and money that most businesses are unwilling to trash over an ideal. It's cheaper and safer to add a new box with Windows server on it. And if the Linux box is still there anyway, why should it stop doing what it's been doing? It works; why fix it?
The single biggest failure in the marketing message has been the "100% Microsoft" idea. Remember "100% Pure Java"? 100% anything is stupid and never really works, because it requires selecting a solution before you know the problem. Next year, your business will face a new challenge, and you don't want to be committed to using the same tool that solved your last challenge. That's a recipe for failure, and any serious business owner knows it. I don't buy a new screwdriver and throw out my old one; I put the new one in my toolbox right next to the old one.
My experience has been that if you use the firewall as your boundary, things go really well. Windows inside, Linux outside. That makes it really easy to segment things off - your sysadmins only need to know one architecture, never really need to cross paths, and will argue platforms for fun instead of political advantage. I've seen a major drop in productivity when I've mixed server types on the same side of the firewall, and I encounter problems with Linux inside or Windows outside. These problems are completely unrelated to the platform, and are primarily caused by community and admin stupidity.
This is my personal experience running my business, of course. Your mileage may vary. But regardless of whether you're shouting "100% Microsoft" (been there, done that, doesn't work) or "100% open source" (been there, done that, doesn't work), you're wrong. 100% is never the right answer.
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I haven't seen any actual evidence of these allegations. As far as I'm concerned, it's on the same page with Area 51 and the second guy on the grassy knoll.
Personally, I don't find it hard to believe that twenty people independently wanted the standard approved and weren't bribed, coerced, or influenced by anyone except themselves. I don't see why you find it hard to believe, except that you simply can't imagine anyone might actually like Microsoft of their own free will.
> I highly doubt that the license has anything to do with the quality of developers.
And that's why I'm glad we have this situation. Because it does, and I've been saying it for years, and the only argument anyone's ever been able to mount is that we don't have an apples to apples comparison.
Well, now we do. Patience; I know I'm right, and deep down YOU know it, too. It's just a matter of time.
> I feel like I'm explaining ethics to one of my children.
Since when is it unethical to join an organisation for the purpose of voting on a matter you deem important? Isn't that why most people join the ISO in the first place?
Face it, sitting in the ISO while standards are reviewed gives you an inside track on implementing them. If you need more time, you hold it up in committee until you get the bugs worked out, and then you let it go through. Companies do this all the time on standards tracks. Then they get an advantage over the competition because they've already become experts on the standard before it was approved. So why, exactly, is it unethical for partners to join that body and push the standard through before the competition is ready?
> It's a pretty pathetic thing to do, cutting off the source
> from any usefull changes, but perfectly legal nonetheless.
As a pro-BSD and anti-GPL guy, I don't like this either, but I think it's instructive.
First, I think it demonstrates the double standard going on in the license battle. The BSD license is explicitly supposed to allow this, and their reaction simply shows that they aren't so dedicated to the spirit of the license as they like to pretend.
Second, I think it ultimately demonstrates the failures of the GPL. Now that the driver is under GPL, enhancements made to the BSD-licensed version don't automatically propagate to it; they have to be manually incorporated. The converse applies; the GPL modifications don't propagate to the BSD version without manual incorporation, and since that incorporation would carry the GPL, it won't happen. This is effectively a code fork, and as ESR has quite rightly pointed out (thought not in so few words) "code forks are bad". Clearly, the GPL community has not historically done so well on a wireless driver, so I'd bet the BSD version is eventually going to eclipse the GPL version. This evidences the simple fact that the GPL doesn't attract high-quality developers as readily as a BSD licensed project does.
I don't think the code is cut off from useful changes; I think it's actually a good idea to do this kind of apples and apples comparison of the two licenses. Which version ultimately wins and why? I'm betting on BSD, because I think experienced professional developers - the kind most qualified to enhance and extend a wireless driver - dislike the GPL and will avoid it when possible.
> I am interested to see you point out what you consider high-quality code.
./configure, ./make, done. It's the closest thing to setup.exe the UNIX world has ever had, and it's ever so much more powerful.
Apache is a good example. It just works. Millions of people use it every day with little to no idea how it works; they just type "make install" and "apachectl start" and there it is. It's like magic. Beyond that, it's just a few lines in a config file and "apachectl restart" and hey presto. Look at all the people asking excessively basic questions on the local LUG Apache forum who say they've been running it for years; sure, on the one hand it's pretty sad when someone doesn't know how to make rewrite rules, but on the other - isn't it amazing that they've been running this software for years and never needed to know that? That may not be the world's best user, but it sure as hell is some great software.
PHP is a little iffy. Most of it isn't that great, and the installation is certainly rather precarious, but the genius of it is in the way Zend made it so easy to extend the language and attach external libraries. That core is massively high-quality. The peripherals, often contributed by less-than-expert developers, maybe not so much. But you have to admit it's gotten more people to write "real" programs than anything else.
But let's find something GPL, shall we? You know what really rules? GNU make. It's fucking amazing. Come on, we ALL use it. You can't get away from it. The only thing that even comes close is autoconfigure. That's the build dance -
The lack of Microsoft products in this list is a consideration of the audience. I see a lot of high-quality products coming out of Microsoft, but if I named them, we'd just argue forever about what "quality" means. I think we can all agree that the things I HAVE named meet just about every rational definition of quality. (MySQL almost made the list, but it has too many detractors who claim it's not a "real" database server. I don't agree, but they have some valid points.)
> Microsoft did something reprehensible in messing with ISO in this way
Suppose for a moment that Microsoft did nothing - that the partners, of their own free will, saw the situation and decided of their own accord to join the committee and cast their votes for what they themselves wanted.
Does that change the way you view it?
Because fundamentally, we don't have any clear indication otherwise. If my business stood to make $50,000 next year alone in projects supporting a particular format - Microsoft or otherwise - and I saw a significant likelihood that the format was going to be rejected in committee, I'd spend $2,500 to cast another vote in my direction. That's just good business sense.
And what if the opposite happened? What if Microsoft was about to get a standard approved, and suddenly twenty new members popped up to vote against it? Would you be complaining about that, or would you be laughing about how Microsoft deserves it?
I think you'd be laughing. I think this thread would be full of "ha ha, that's what you get, stupid Microsoft - the people have spoken!" Because when Microsoft loses, the people are speaking, but when they WIN it's because they're nasty corrupt bastards who want to rule the world. Is it so hard to believe that some people LIKE Microsoft and WANT them to win? Because my portfolio value sort of depends on that.
Now, I do agree that the process is flawed. I shouldn't be able to write a check and cast a vote. That damages the integrity of the process. But if I can do it, why would you complain that I did it? Complain about the rule, sure. But what I did isn't against the rules. It's legal. Not only didn't anyone stop me, they couldn't - everything I did was by the book.
And at this point, there's nothing fair you can do to stop it. Sure, you could say the vote doesn't count, and then change the rules so all the new guys can't vote, and then do a recount... but that's not fair. What happened was fair; anyone could have done it. Both sides of the debate had the same opportunity. Indeed, I'd bet that if you go back over the historical record, you'll find this isn't the first time it's happened.
> I don't see how the GPL reduces the value of that code to
> experienced developers (who shouldn't be using it, being
> mediocre code in the first place).
Mediocre code itself is better than nothing.
Mediocre code with onerous restrictions may be worse than nothing.
Thus, reduced value. ECON 101.
> As I said, the GPLv3 is only applied if the authors change
> the code to it
Are they guaranteed to notify all of their distributors and distributor partners when they do so?
No. And RMS knows it. And the GPLv3 attempts to saddle them with liabilities and obligations without their consent or knowledge. And that's unethical.
> Your example is flawed since the GPLv3 only applies if one
> distributes the code, fully knowing that there is GPLv3 code
> in there.
Show me where in the GPLv3 it says the license doesn't apply if you don't know about it.
See, that's a loophole that could be easily exploited. So which is it? Unethical, or irrelevant?
> It's your right to view the body of work under the GPL
> today - including GNU/Linux, but not limited by it - as
> bad code made by mediocre developers
That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying the average code WRITTEN today (GPL or not) is bad code written by mediocre developers, and the GPL reduces the value of that code to experienced developers.
> But that was always an integral part of the GPL - and of
> any license.
As was the bond of trust that what was permissible under the license today would not expose one to legal liability tomorrow. GPLv3 violates that trust.
> I see no reason for the GPL to be viewed as invalid
You can't change the license behind someone's back. I can't say "I reserve the right to alter my license", get your signature, and then post a new license that says "all licensees must pay $500 a month". No court in the world would uphold that. The GPLv3, however, expects to sneak in and demand distributors' interest in related source code - as if intellectual property rights are somehow different. It's theft, pure and simple, and all nobility aside Robin Hood was still just a thief.
Three rules.
1. All the things you always said management should do, start doing.
2. All the things you always said management shouldn't do, don't do.
3. If you find yourself to be wrong about any of these things, fix it.
That simple. Management is all about using good sense and standing by your decisions.
You'll do well. Anyone who honestly tries to do well at management does.
> You should be smart enough to infer that by that I meant
> that I think your blanket statement is wishful thinking.
And, clearly, I disagree. The GPL primarily benefits people who TAKE more code than they GIVE. Those with more to give rapidly start to get the short end of the stick, and with the exception of a few truly altruistic folks, they begin to migrate away from the GPL. This defeats the entire purpose of open source development: to attract high-quality volunteer coders who can meet or exceed the quality of commercial offerings.
> I do not see how the GPLv3 changes anything in what regards forcing anyone.
By altering the license in your next release, you can bring a company distributing your code under the GPLv3 for doing what was perfectly legitimate and permissible under the GPLv2.
I do not believe this is an oversight. I believe this is exactly what RMS and the FSF want. And I believe it is a scummy thing to do.
I also believe it won't stand up in court, and will be primarily used as an extortion technique against companies who can't afford to fight it. And I believe RMS knows that, too.
> Quite a vast generalization don't you think?
Yes. You should be smart enough to infer the associated disclaimer. If you're not, you're undoubtedly not smart enough to understand my argument anyway.
> So, you're objections are not only against the GPLv3, but to the GPL as a whole.
Not precisely. The GPLv2 was a bad license, but it could be avoided. It was easy to tell whether you fell under the terms of the GPLv2.
My primary objection to the GPLv3 is that it is actively attempts to trick companies into falling under its restrictions, by extending its reach across things people are currently doing to stay out from under the GPLv2.
The clear intent is to provide an avenue where a company can be forced under GPLv3 without their knowledge. This is the most obscenely unacceptable business practice I have ever seen, and I'm an ex-defense contractor who now works at Microsoft. If I can smile about that, just think how bad it has to get before I start shaking my head and muttering about ethics.
What Microsoft did isn't against the rules. If it's wrong, then the rules are bad.
So change the rules. If the rules let you do bad things, fix it.
And if you're not going to change the rules, don't bitch about it.
The GPLv3 is a steaming pile.
Nobody who writes anything worthwhile likes it.
The GPL basically means "if you use this body of code, whatever you contribute must be given out freely".
This is a great deal when what you contribute is of negligible value compared to the original codebase.
But when you look around and see a vast teeming community of ignorant retards who can't write decent software to save their lives, this deal sucks.
The internet isn't the elite anymore. It's a vast teeming community of ignorant retards. That may do wonders toward making RMS feel like some sort of deity, but it sure as hell doesn't do much for producing high-quality code. What ought to scare the FSF is not that people are mad about the GPLv3 - if nobody's mad about it, you're probably not accomplishing anything - but that an awful lot of the people who are mad about it are highly competent and productive developers. These are exactly the kind of people you want to keep in your community. If what you're doing is driving them away, you really need to step back and think about whether this crusade against Microsoft is worth it.
Of course, I work for the enemy, so don't listen to me. But you probably ought to listen to your most competent and productive developers.
Buying the outcome is just another game.
Look, face facts: $2500 is roughly dick to the average large company. That's about the salary and benefits of one senior programmer for one week. When you set it up so I can invest that little piddling amount of money and cast my vote, I'm going to vote when it really matters.
The real question here isn't why Microsoft did it - it worked, so it was a perfectly smart and sensible thing to do - but why the opposition couldn't mount a defense. What, you couldn't find fifty people willing to spend $2500 to stop Microsoft? Why not?
Microsoft's partners will not hesitate to lay money on the table so their side wins. Microsoft doesn't have to bribe anyone, or pay anyone, or even encourage anyone. The story right here on Slashdot got to plenty of folks in the partner program who could volunteer $2500 and support the source of their bread's butter. Most of them didn't do it, because they just couldn't be arsed. But across all the media outlets, more than enough of them did.
So where are all the free software people? Surely SOME of you have $2500. After all, it's not the money, it's the PRINCIPLE of the thing - right?
The free software community needs to stop whining about what's fair and start thinking about how to win. Sure, I sit in an office on the Redmond campus, but having more than 40% of the market is bad for everyone - it's bad for the consumer, it's bad for the market, and it's bad for the market leader. I want to see Apple and Linux take a big-ass bite out of this market and give us some competition. But before they can do that, they have to stop all the damn whining and do something that matters.
If a community whines about competition, the very least they can do is to compete.
There's another effect here.
Certain channels may not really have much of an audience. If you bundle such a channel with a channel that does have an audience, some of that audience may discover the otherwise uninteresting channel.
This is basically a way to defray the massive cost of introducing a new channel. Those of us who like reasonably obscure channels greatly prefer a bundled-pricing scheme where the twenty people in the state who watch the "Classic Disco" channel can do so because they're getting a share of the subscription fees paid by people who like "Comedy Central".
But we do manufacture things to sell for profit. Sure, we brought most of our goods from overseas, but the profits realised at the point of sale usually ended up in an American company's coffers. Who cares what country did the work? I care who got the money.
What else would you be running on a Beowulf cluster? OSX?
Actually, a lot of us here read Slashdot. It's just that only a tiny minority have the flame resistance to post on it.
I used to run a moderately sized VX (virus exchange) board. There are three main reasons people write viruses.
1. Because they're fascinating. It was interesting to see what kind of things you could make a virus do. For people like this - which included me - the game was to write a virus that more effectively reproduced, evolved, and evaded detection in a smaller space. You can spot viruses written for this reason because THERE IS NO PAYLOAD. It doesn't break anything. It's an academic exercise. We DON'T CARE what it does. That's not the point.
2. Because they want money. This was a tiny little minority on my board, and to my knowledge none of them ever actually implemented anything; we just talked about "what if" scenarios. At the time, since the internet was not really a big thing for most people, there was very little a virus could do to deliver information elsewhere. Today, the world has changed, and everything is networked. We can talk to anyone anywhere at any time. And that means this group has simply exploded out of the criminal underworld.
3. Revenge/status. The vast majority of people on my board were people who wanted to give a virus to their ex-wife or to some guy in school who was mean yesterday. They think that if they give someone a virus it will "show them who's boss" or "everyone will think I'm so cool". This is childish and stupid.
The author of this virus is probably in the latter group.
No, I don't ever wonder if my coworkers will sexually harass me.
But I wonder if asking my coworker out for dinner will get me fired.
After all, it might make her uncomfortable, and then she might be completely unable to focus on her work because she's constantly wondering whether I agreed with her idea because it was a good idea or because I want to bone her. If she says no, maybe I won't pull my weight on the team anymore, and it will make her look bad. If she says yes, exactly how much do I expect of her to contiue treating her fairly? Does she have to sleep with me? What if she doesn't? What if she does once, and it's bad, and then she won't do it anymore? Will I tell everyone in the office? Will other guys think they can proposition her, too?
And if she turns into a complete wreck trying to figure out how to do her job when I think she's desirable, somehow this is *my* fault, and *I* don't get to work there anymore.
In fact, if she just decides she wants to break up, she can avoid the discomfort of working with me by lodging a complaint and getting me fired. Nobody will believe me if I say it's a lie.
So pardon me if I don't have a whole hell of a lot of sympathy for someone who got a few threatening comments and photoshopped pictures from some random loser on the internet.
"An examination of his home PC revealed a previously unclassified malware executable. It appeared to have been installed surreptitiously via a remote exploit on December 13, 2006."
Go ahead. Call me a shill. But this is a massive handwave - what evidence is there that this executable was installed by a remote exploit? Is that evidence in any way bigger or more reliable than the usual "I don't know where that came from! I didn't download it!" from the machine's owner?
"Hey, Bob. All of your problems seem to have come from this executable here. Did you download random shit from the internet and run it on your computer, in such blatant violation of company policy and good security practices that it essentially makes you one of the world's biggest retards?"
Please choose your response wisely.
A) "I thought it was pictures of Britney Spears naked." (the truth)
B) "I thought Bob sent it to me." (also the truth)
C) "No." (keeps your retarded ass out of trouble)
Your selection? ___
> it makes sense to introduce some sort of
> security that never ever lets anything but
> the browser's code access the interfaces to
> these libraries
Okay, let me see if I understand you.
You want us to put code on your computer that you are not allowed to run unless you use IE to do it.
Is that an accurate statement of your security enhancement? Forbid the user to use the program of his choice to access the useful libraries that Microsoft is using to provide access to internet services?
Isn't that... I don't know, anticompetitive, or something?
No. Silver. Bullet.
> projects with existing account makes up the
> vast majority of a sales persons quota
Yes, and you don't really have to sell it. The customer has been sold. You address his questions and concerns, and as long as his bullshit detectors don't go off, he continues what he's already doing.
> Besides, who else does MS have to sell to?
Start-ups. That's why we have SBS - because the SBM market is massive, and has little direction.
> Again, I'm not arguing that the points they
> give are fair or valid
But that's my entire point. If you train a sales force with unfair and invalid information - which Microsoft has historically done while competing with Linux - that sales force cannot do its job effectively. The Linux camp is winning as much as they win because their sales force is technically astute and does not lie. They don't really have salesmen. They have engineers trained in sales. And an engineer inherently has more credibility than a salesman, so we're already fighting an uphill battle. Our edge is that salesmen are better at selling than engineers, but that doesn't win in the long term.
The approach is wrong. We need to take a different approach, and Microsoft aren't doing that. They keep treating Linux like a product in the market, and they're only just starting to get an inkling of how wrong that is. Linux is not a product, it's a political philosophy, and you can't fight philosophy on the grounds of technical merit.
> they've already sold you on the 85%++.
Perhaps the field of sales has changed since my day, but I was under the impression that once you've sold ME, you go sell someone ELSE.
Now, you still have to fight to keep the 85% you've sold me on. But you are not going to do it by saying "hey, that other 15%, you've really done a bad job there". That's not a good sales technique, and that's really what it boils down to. "You use Linux? Why, you must be either ignorant or evil. Which is it?" Gee, I don't know. Have you stopped beating your wife yet?
You can, of course, ask me how it's going. That's just smart sales. Maybe I hate GoldMine - everyone does, really - and simply haven't thought of switching to Microsoft CRM, which really kicks ass. Besides, it looks like you really care: "Hey, how do you like that Linux server?" It's great. "Have you thought about switching to Windows?" Well, no, because it's great. "Do you want to know what Windows could do for you?" No, we're fine.
And that's when you STFU and take the license renewal on our 85% Select agreement and go sell someone else. Because if you push me for that 100%, I'm going to tell you where you can stick your agreement, and you might actually lose some or all of that 85%.
> the best and most successful become that way by
> selling a better refrigerator, not by selling junk.
This is true. However, when you work in the sales department of company X, you have to sell products made by company X. No matter what. So if company X makes fifty great products and one piece of crap, you don't just get to sell fifty great products - you also have to sell a piece of crap. It may be worth it if you get to sell fifty great products, but it's still going to be a lie somewhere down the line.
> But that has to be the message. There is no other
> message that they can put out
There are a great many messages you can put out that aren't "use my products and only my products". The 100% approach is simply not realistic. Is every appliance in your kitchen from the same company? Every tool in your toolbox? Every book on your bookshelf? Of course not. The very idea is ridiculous. So when you come up and say "100% mine" is the best solution, nobody believes you, because you cannot possibly be right.
Microsoft is one of the few companies that will gain more from the positive PR of saying "you know what, this is a good place to use Linux" than they would from the two or three thousand dollars a client might pay for Windows licenses. We suffer every single time we say "this is a great solution" and someone comes along to observe that it not only isn't a great solution, it's a REALLY BAD solution compared to the alternatives. It's not money we need, it's credibility, and the stockholders ought to be able to grasp that.
Sales is just an established system of lying that shares certain commonalities regardless of what you're selling.
It falls down because it's not true. The truth is almost never overwhelmingly in favor of one product over another. I've been disappointed by Microsoft's Linux-competition campaigns, not because they're inaccurate (all sales campaigns are inaccurate), but because there really are a lot of good arguments for using Windows. It's just that you have to start by admitting and accepting that Linux is going to be in your customer's enterprise doing SOMETHING, and you can't completely eliminate it from the picture. Even if their Linux box can run Windows Server, which isn't certain at all, it represents an investment of time and money that most businesses are unwilling to trash over an ideal. It's cheaper and safer to add a new box with Windows server on it. And if the Linux box is still there anyway, why should it stop doing what it's been doing? It works; why fix it?
The single biggest failure in the marketing message has been the "100% Microsoft" idea. Remember "100% Pure Java"? 100% anything is stupid and never really works, because it requires selecting a solution before you know the problem. Next year, your business will face a new challenge, and you don't want to be committed to using the same tool that solved your last challenge. That's a recipe for failure, and any serious business owner knows it. I don't buy a new screwdriver and throw out my old one; I put the new one in my toolbox right next to the old one.
My experience has been that if you use the firewall as your boundary, things go really well. Windows inside, Linux outside. That makes it really easy to segment things off - your sysadmins only need to know one architecture, never really need to cross paths, and will argue platforms for fun instead of political advantage. I've seen a major drop in productivity when I've mixed server types on the same side of the firewall, and I encounter problems with Linux inside or Windows outside. These problems are completely unrelated to the platform, and are primarily caused by community and admin stupidity.
This is my personal experience running my business, of course. Your mileage may vary. But regardless of whether you're shouting "100% Microsoft" (been there, done that, doesn't work) or "100% open source" (been there, done that, doesn't work), you're wrong. 100% is never the right answer.