"These people need more ports, either accept their perfectly workable ad-hoc solution or come up with something better. "No" is not an option."
Sorry, but this is a "No" per definition. I'll surely accept their request for "six people need to be connected to Internet by tomorrow at 6AM", even if it's 8PM now, as long as I know there's a fair chance they really couldn't tell me any sooner. But I'll never NEVER will accept an "I will plug a network switch here". *I* am the one that takes the technical decisions (since *I* will be the one at stake by the results of such decisions no matter if I did them or not). It might seem rude and when talking to a polite person when we both have enough time (a very rare concatenation of events) I'll certainly will explain where the policy comes from (which is from experience, politeness, hurryness, risk control and money) but the end result will just stand as hard as in the very beginning: I might ask accountancy for more founds if I feel I need them but I'd never dare to tell them (even worse: to *impose* them) how the accountability book should be managed; I'd might talk to a marketing guy and offer my opinion about how to focus his work when it implies technical aspects (or I even will ask for counsel about how to market my work onto a given internal target) but I wouldn't dare to tell them (even worse: to *impose* them) how our products should be marketed... and the same stays true for the rest of the company; I respect their work and I know the symbiose of our different abilities and strenghs is what makes the company go beyond the mere aggregation of people numbers.
Is it *really* so difficult to understand that the same holds true for the "IT guys" (desktop, servers, applications, networking...) too? That *maybe* there's a no less motivated reason for our behaviour regarding our professional abilities and responsibilites than their very own regarding theirs? That *maybe* even if they are as technically aware on my responsibility realm as myself (which is by itself quite a brave opinion) *I* will know better than them the peculiarities of our environment if only because I expend my duty hours on that just as they expend their hours on theirs? It's so hard to understand that just like they don't explain to me all the boring and excruciating details about their own jobs I *might* be not telling them all the boring and excruciating details about mine in order to not wasting both their time and mine and not boring them but that doesn't mean those excruciating and boring details don't exist? Specifically, aren't they able to understand that since the company pay me some good dollars for my work, managing an IT corporate environment *might* hide some dificulties not found on their home PC and their home network that maybe they didn't consider or else, probably, the company wouldn't extend me all those checks?
Food for mind. Just as Aretha Franklin said, it all goes down to RESPECT.
"In a way, this is going back to the Soviet economic system."
Bullshit.
The education ministry is a software consumer just as any other entity not devoted to software production. They are just stating their conditions for a product from the market, just as any other private held company would do in any free market.
I can't see how the Russian education ministry asking the market (Microsoft, Red Hat, Oracle, Canonical...) for open source software is any more "communist" than NY Yellow Cab Co. asking the market (Ford, GM, Honda, BMW...) for yellow cars.
"That was the French "truth". The German "truth" was..."
The German truth was exactly the same as the French truth. That was not the problem. The problem was (as it is so usually) to *understand* the implications of the truth. The French *knew* the Maginot Line couldn't be trespassed (for reasonable ammounts of "know" and "trespass") and from this fact they *deduced* no enemy beyond the line would enter France. The German *knew* the Maginot Line couldn't be trespassed (for reasonable ammounts of "know" and "trespass"), so they *deduced* that in order to get into France they should find a different path... through Belgium, for instance.
"I would argue that you need a RAID solution regardless. Assuming you use the bulk of that drive, backing up ~1TB of data in event of drive failure can be a pain."
And here comes Chabil Ha' summing to the vast multitude that confuses avaliability with recoverability.
"The DragonFly project (...) We will maintain our central repository either by having it pull from the individual developer's repositories or by having the developers push into it. I'm still not quite sure what the best methodology is."
DragonFly is a cathedral-kind of project. It doesn't seem to make so much sense 'per se' allowing distributed development: "DragonFly" won't be what "lives" on Joe's repo nor on Matt's, but what "lives" in the central, blessed, copy so from a conceptual point of view only, it seems a centrally based SCM (CVS, Subversion, Perforce, etc.) is the way to go.
On the other hand, a distributed SCM, if any, has the advantage that individual developers can work on their own, tracking their own changes (and, eventually, those of others "pegging" to their local branches) and decide when they are ready to commit to the blessed central repo (think of, say, that new experimental virtual memory manager that may or may not be accepted but it still will be quite a hard work or that petty "subproject" from a developer that is still on the "will see where does it end" stage). That means, I think, developers have the key for the "when", so they should push to the central copy whenever they are ready instead of being the cathedral the one to pull from them (pull... what?).
I don't think so. And semantics surely don't. That a word can have many connotative meanings doesn't mean any of them are applicable within context. Within this context Linux is priceless because you can't apply a price tag to it (it holds value not money related), certainly not because it has a price tag and it says "infinite"
Water is colorless; does it mean "water has infinite colour"? Snails are footless; does it mean they have an infinite number of feet?
Priceless means "without a price tag"; nothing more, nothing less. If anything, putting a price tag on something that can't have one (not that I'm saying Linux belongs to such category or not) is a nonsense, not a devaluation.
"Panini's grammar, the Ashtadhyayi, is quite different from the European grammars mentioned."
On one side, the point was that "It wasn't until the Europeans discovered Sanskrit in the 18th century until European languages had any formal grammar.". Well, it isn't: almost as soon as there were printed books and as soon as the XV-XVI there's an obvious interest on formalize those recently created latin derivatives talked in Europe. But even regarding the pure intellectual effort about formalizing -not just exposing, language rules, you can see for example, 1587's work from Francisco Sánchez de las Brozas who genuinely studies the internal formal rules of sentence generation. If your point is that a work from the XVIII is more deeper and advanced than one from the XVI, well, news at eleven but that we have to wait to it for an interest on formalizing European languages, sorry but no.
"It wasn't until the Europeans discovered Sanskrit in the 18th century until European languages had any formal grammar."
Well, sure... It's only that the first printed greek grammar is from 1453; the first modern grammar, the Spanish one from Nebrija, dates from 1492; the first Italian one, that of Trissino, is from 1529, the Portuguesse one from Fernando de Oliveira is from 1536 and the French one from Louis Meigret was published on 1550.
You can install the "server" kernel on an "Ubuntu desktop edition" and you can install the desktop kernel on an "Ubuntu server edition". Well, in fact you can install *any* package you'll find on a server edition in a desktop edition and viceversa. Do you know why? Because the difference between the server and desktop editions are just which packages get installed by default.
"Debian 4.0 Etch users want Debian 4.1, not 5.0, because a.1 release can come out much more quickly and with less potential for bugs than a.0 release. What I would like to have is a 4.1 release, followed by a 4.2 and 4.3, and potentially a 4.4 release, which will all make small incremental improvements and risk-free popular package updates within short timeframes, and only then a 5.0 release with lots of new but more riskier package updates and maybe also architectural changes if any."
So you know personally all "Debian 4.0 Etch users" to know what they want? *I* am a "Debian 4.0 Etch user"; do you really dare say what I want?
Buy I can accept that *you* want a Debian 4.1 then 4.2 then 4.3 prior to Debian 5.0. Well, do you why Lenny is not on date? Because it is not ready. Do you know why is not ready? Because not enough qualified hands.
Now: are you continuing telling what people want (without backing up data, by the way) or will you do something to get what you want?
"Please, Debian, give us a stable 4.1 now, a "mini-lenny""
You do know there's already an "Etch'n half", do you?
"But the state or endowment funds that go to run the things needs to be spent first and foremost on teaching students."
Of course yes!
And I challenge you to find a better (and cheaper) way to teach your IT/CS students about large environments and the nitty-gritties that really makes the damn thing work than providing value services for your own on the tens of thousand users university (of course, you can *seem* to be doing your work and save your face telling you are saving money by outsourcing services that were developed in-house first once there's the chance to get a benefit out of them -as I told you, quite a familiar story lately: socialize the costs, privatize the benefits).
"This year we estimated the cost of increasing our default inbox quota from a paltry 60 MB to 1 GB (a long-overdue upgrade). The total came in at about US$500,000, which is fiscally untenable at this point." (...) We just launched Google-hosted email for all students, which is projected to save $250,000 annually (or more if TCO is considered)."
I think you are having two account books here. I will accept your numbers (why I shouldn't?) but I can't accept your conclussion: even if your higher quota costs US$500.000, that's a one shoot cost for (probably) between three and five fiscal years; that's peanuts.
"It was fun being the guinea-pig for scaling up Cyrus, but by partnering with Google..."
Even accepting that you will save 250.000US$/year (which I have problems to accept without see the detailed numbers) that's not a for-profit company, that's a f* University. If it's all just a short time cost trade off, just close the whole damned thing down! Going to University (and maintaining them) is more expensive that not going or having them, at least on the short term, isn't it? While not the main point, one of the very points of having universities (and/or technical colleges) is in order to "try to scale Cyrus"; it's not per chance that Cyrus itself comes from a University.
Or what is this? Another version of the 700.000M US$ story? socialice the costs (a university founding Cyrus early development) and privatice the benefits (now the big bucks going to a private company which will take the delta knowledge of your big environment to themselves and themselves only)?
"As well as our mail system was Exchange and grew too large"
Too large for you admins, I bet. I like to hate Microsoft as much as anybody else, but specially talking about a school is quite questionable that "Exchange grew too large". Are you really in the high tens of thousand users?
I should admit that still it's the blame of Microsoft (I already said I like to hate Microsoft as much as anybody else, didn't I?) since they explicitly focus on making sysadmins as dumb as possible and then a bit more, but that I consider to be disgressing...
"This is exactly what BSD is aboutno legalite. Just because BSD allows you to act as sociopath, doesn't mean you should."
That's a story old at least as much as Plato, so I don't think this is the place to start it again anew. But, well, just to the point...
A law doesn't say what I *should* do, but it certainly states what I *can* do. This is just the same for a contract or -as this is the case, an usage/distribution license. The BSD as used by a developer, states what a third party can and can't do. What's the surprise when somebody just decides to do what you already stated -written down, no less, you allowed to be done?
Did you not only accepted but even explicitly wrote down what could be done with you code and still feel dismayed because somebody took your word for it and did what he was allowed to do? Then it is *you* the one being mentally challenged or a sociopath since you think people should understand your written down words not by their very meaning but by something that it's only on your mind.
""Mary in accounting" might be a bookkeeper with 20 years of experience with a company's processes and workflows, may manage the relationships with vendors (and by extension impact cash flow) etc. etc. etc. "
Even then, too many times your charming "Mary in accounting" is more a liability than a value for the company; it's only she is a hidden liability. If she really is so inflexible, what when the company shifts direction? (and that's not an "if" but a "when"). If she really holds so much company knowledge within her head and only in her head, what will happen when the mithycal bus goes over her? Too many times it happens even that a company won't try new valuable paths because of that "Mary", and the company won't even know of the lost revenues.
""Free" software often costs more money when you factor in the costs of lost productivity and training when "Mary in accounting" has to learn a new UI and new application."
Like when moving from XP to Vista, and IE6 to IE7, you mean?
"YES I can google. YES, oddly enough, I even know what your phrase means, where it's from, what it implies, historical context, and all that."
I know your race. You're akin to those that say "what Linux really needs..." and they even add "not me, I'm surely a Linux expert, but..." You understood what I meant; by your own account that single sentence involved implications due to historical context "and all that", thus being a very comfortable way to say quite a lot with very few words, so it seems what I said was both convenient for me and not a problem to *you* but still -without backing data, you dare say what *others* surely need (or think, or feel, or whatever). Think I'm a pompous ass all you want but *please* stop talking for others that didn't ask you for it.
On my regard, now I'm sure about what previously only suspected: *you* act like a pompous ass.
"but without translation it comes across as (a) not helpful, and (b) somewhat pompous."
Yeah, well, whatever (by the way, try to get literal sense from the preceding sentence, will you need translation too?). I'm not citing some obscure text from Leon Codiceus but a very famous sentence from the 'Digesta Iustiniani' quite expected to be known by anyone with even the varnish of a culture. On this informal forum I wouldn't take the time to point out who said the famous "I have a dream..." or translate Terminator's "hasta luego, baby". If that means djh101010 will lose my point, well, shit happens.
Anyway, this is Slashdot, maybe I can't expect readers here to be versed on latin classics but I certainly can expect they know what Google is and Google returns about 381.000 references for "dura lex, sed lex" so (a) I don't think the meaning to be lost by the expected audience and (b) I point my finger on you for trying to be pompous by telling somebody to be pompous out of nothing.
"t's just as immoral to screw over the community on a BSD project for one greedy bastard's financial gain as it is to do so on a GPL project."
*THAT'S* where you are wrong. On the BSD case, those producing code knew from the very beginnig these kind of things may happen (it is not that the boy has been catched by a subtle legaleese on the BSD: it is all there and quite clear) and, by providing their code to the project, accepting that to be the case. Thus, there's nothing immoral for somebody doing the expectable and reasonable (it *IS* reasonable: if developers didn't like the BSD they could easily chose a different license).
On the other hand, there are some other developers that want things to be a different manner. They choose the GPL so somebody taking apart derivatives for distribution on their sole part won't be something about moral, but upright illegal.
On a civilized society there's nothing "just legal, not moral" since legality is nothing but the written down ethics for such a society. Remember the old roman saying: 'dura lex, sed lex'. Of course, our society is not a perfect one, and there are in fact deviations between the legal system and our ethics. But certainly this is not the case.
"What happened in the US financial system was hardly an example of unfettered capitalism."
Sorry to say you are utterly wrong. What happened in the US financial system is in fact pure capitalism in action.
"It was government interference run amok"
Wrong! it was big corporations making use of the power money brings to them (and money is the pure means of power on a pure capitalist society) to do whatever had to be done in order to attract more power to them. Government was just the tool at hand.
If anything, government is what refrained them to go to the extent to own armies to achieve their goals by brute force (on countries where government lacks even that power they'll do use brute force too -example: Irak/Blackwaters).
"Free market my ass."
Free market your ass? What's free market then? How is it the ability to buy even a government not part of the free market?
As soon as you say "pure" about something on politics, economy or sociology you sentence immediatly becomes pure shit.
Capitalism worked better than comunism just for the fact that it better coped with the fact that we are arrogant, mischievious, egotistic rats. And even then -better said, *because* of it, capitalism works.
But then, even capitalism can't cope with the whole shit of it, so other parts of the system must do it. People tend not to hire some people only "because" (because they are black, because they are women... "because"). On an statistical level all contractors are people and all contractors move like people, so it's good there are laws to counterballance this unavoidable fact: that people don't like minorities, or that greedy people will no hesitate about destroying the system because of some short term benefits for them (and we like it, since greed is the very engine of capitalism). That's why we need laws about minorities or about looking after financial banks. CEOs making millions after trashing the economy or RIAA and other big corp lobbies forcing laws in their favour being passed is not a flaw in our implementation of capitalism but the very and only expectable output for capitalism in action.
Just as a doctor will provide a strong drug for a cancer treatment because he knows it has the best overall net effect *but* knowing about its ill secondary effects will treat you against them, we accept capitalism as the best economic model for our social development we know of *but* we must not forget about all its negative effects and we must protect of them too. Being the best system we know makes it not perfect.
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"These people need more ports, either accept their perfectly workable ad-hoc solution or come up with something better. "No" is not an option."
Sorry, but this is a "No" per definition. I'll surely accept their request for "six people need to be connected to Internet by tomorrow at 6AM", even if it's 8PM now, as long as I know there's a fair chance they really couldn't tell me any sooner. But I'll never NEVER will accept an "I will plug a network switch here". *I* am the one that takes the technical decisions (since *I* will be the one at stake by the results of such decisions no matter if I did them or not). It might seem rude and when talking to a polite person when we both have enough time (a very rare concatenation of events) I'll certainly will explain where the policy comes from (which is from experience, politeness, hurryness, risk control and money) but the end result will just stand as hard as in the very beginning: I might ask accountancy for more founds if I feel I need them but I'd never dare to tell them (even worse: to *impose* them) how the accountability book should be managed; I'd might talk to a marketing guy and offer my opinion about how to focus his work when it implies technical aspects (or I even will ask for counsel about how to market my work onto a given internal target) but I wouldn't dare to tell them (even worse: to *impose* them) how our products should be marketed... and the same stays true for the rest of the company; I respect their work and I know the symbiose of our different abilities and strenghs is what makes the company go beyond the mere aggregation of people numbers.
Is it *really* so difficult to understand that the same holds true for the "IT guys" (desktop, servers, applications, networking...) too? That *maybe* there's a no less motivated reason for our behaviour regarding our professional abilities and responsibilites than their very own regarding theirs? That *maybe* even if they are as technically aware on my responsibility realm as myself (which is by itself quite a brave opinion) *I* will know better than them the peculiarities of our environment if only because I expend my duty hours on that just as they expend their hours on theirs? It's so hard to understand that just like they don't explain to me all the boring and excruciating details about their own jobs I *might* be not telling them all the boring and excruciating details about mine in order to not wasting both their time and mine and not boring them but that doesn't mean those excruciating and boring details don't exist? Specifically, aren't they able to understand that since the company pay me some good dollars for my work, managing an IT corporate environment *might* hide some dificulties not found on their home PC and their home network that maybe they didn't consider or else, probably, the company wouldn't extend me all those checks?
Food for mind. Just as Aretha Franklin said, it all goes down to RESPECT.
"In a way, this is going back to the Soviet economic system."
Bullshit.
The education ministry is a software consumer just as any other entity not devoted to software production. They are just stating their conditions for a product from the market, just as any other private held company would do in any free market.
I can't see how the Russian education ministry asking the market (Microsoft, Red Hat, Oracle, Canonical...) for open source software is any more "communist" than NY Yellow Cab Co. asking the market (Ford, GM, Honda, BMW...) for yellow cars.
"That was the French "truth". The German "truth" was..."
The German truth was exactly the same as the French truth. That was not the problem. The problem was (as it is so usually) to *understand* the implications of the truth. The French *knew* the Maginot Line couldn't be trespassed (for reasonable ammounts of "know" and "trespass") and from this fact they *deduced* no enemy beyond the line would enter France. The German *knew* the Maginot Line couldn't be trespassed (for reasonable ammounts of "know" and "trespass"), so they *deduced* that in order to get into France they should find a different path... through Belgium, for instance.
"I would argue that you need a RAID solution regardless. Assuming you use the bulk of that drive, backing up ~1TB of data in event of drive failure can be a pain."
And here comes Chabil Ha' summing to the vast multitude that confuses avaliability with recoverability.
"The DragonFly project (...) We will maintain our central repository either by having it pull from the individual developer's repositories or by having the developers push into it. I'm still not quite sure what the best methodology is."
DragonFly is a cathedral-kind of project. It doesn't seem to make so much sense 'per se' allowing distributed development: "DragonFly" won't be what "lives" on Joe's repo nor on Matt's, but what "lives" in the central, blessed, copy so from a conceptual point of view only, it seems a centrally based SCM (CVS, Subversion, Perforce, etc.) is the way to go.
On the other hand, a distributed SCM, if any, has the advantage that individual developers can work on their own, tracking their own changes (and, eventually, those of others "pegging" to their local branches) and decide when they are ready to commit to the blessed central repo (think of, say, that new experimental virtual memory manager that may or may not be accepted but it still will be quite a hard work or that petty "subproject" from a developer that is still on the "will see where does it end" stage). That means, I think, developers have the key for the "when", so they should push to the central copy whenever they are ready instead of being the cathedral the one to pull from them (pull... what?).
"The dictionary disagrees with you."
I don't think so. And semantics surely don't. That a word can have many connotative meanings doesn't mean any of them are applicable within context. Within this context Linux is priceless because you can't apply a price tag to it (it holds value not money related), certainly not because it has a price tag and it says "infinite"
""Priceless" means it has infinite value"
Your argumentation being?
Water is colorless; does it mean "water has infinite colour"? Snails are footless; does it mean they have an infinite number of feet?
Priceless means "without a price tag"; nothing more, nothing less. If anything, putting a price tag on something that can't have one (not that I'm saying Linux belongs to such category or not) is a nonsense, not a devaluation.
"Panini's grammar, the Ashtadhyayi, is quite different from the European grammars mentioned."
On one side, the point was that "It wasn't until the Europeans discovered Sanskrit in the 18th century until European languages had any formal grammar.". Well, it isn't: almost as soon as there were printed books and as soon as the XV-XVI there's an obvious interest on formalize those recently created latin derivatives talked in Europe. But even regarding the pure intellectual effort about formalizing -not just exposing, language rules, you can see for example, 1587's work from Francisco Sánchez de las Brozas who genuinely studies the internal formal rules of sentence generation. If your point is that a work from the XVIII is more deeper and advanced than one from the XVI, well, news at eleven but that we have to wait to it for an interest on formalizing European languages, sorry but no.
"Good point. But just because marketing needs a machine capable of running Adobe Flash Player doesn't mean everyone has to have one."
The question was not if everybody needed Flash, but what's the bussiness case for not blocking YouTube, and I provided one.
"It wasn't until the Europeans discovered Sanskrit in the 18th century until European languages had any formal grammar."
Well, sure... It's only that the first printed greek grammar is from 1453; the first modern grammar, the Spanish one from Nebrija, dates from 1492; the first Italian one, that of Trissino, is from 1529, the Portuguesse one from Fernando de Oliveira is from 1536 and the French one from Louis Meigret was published on 1550.
"What is the business case for not blocking YouTube and Google Video at the office terminal server's web proxy?"
At the very least marketing guys need to know "what's going on".
"This isn't entirely true."
You can install the "server" kernel on an "Ubuntu desktop edition" and you can install the desktop kernel on an "Ubuntu server edition". Well, in fact you can install *any* package you'll find on a server edition in a desktop edition and viceversa. Do you know why? Because the difference between the server and desktop editions are just which packages get installed by default.
"Debian 4.0 Etch users want Debian 4.1, not 5.0, because a .1 release can come out much more quickly and with less potential for bugs than a .0 release. What I would like to have is a 4.1 release, followed by a 4.2 and 4.3, and potentially a 4.4 release, which will all make small incremental improvements and risk-free popular package updates within short timeframes, and only then a 5.0 release with lots of new but more riskier package updates and maybe also architectural changes if any."
So you know personally all "Debian 4.0 Etch users" to know what they want? *I* am a "Debian 4.0 Etch user"; do you really dare say what I want?
Buy I can accept that *you* want a Debian 4.1 then 4.2 then 4.3 prior to Debian 5.0. Well, do you why Lenny is not on date? Because it is not ready. Do you know why is not ready? Because not enough qualified hands.
Now: are you continuing telling what people want (without backing up data, by the way) or will you do something to get what you want?
"Please, Debian, give us a stable 4.1 now, a "mini-lenny""
You do know there's already an "Etch'n half", do you?
"But the state or endowment funds that go to run the things needs to be spent first and foremost on teaching students."
Of course yes!
And I challenge you to find a better (and cheaper) way to teach your IT/CS students about large environments and the nitty-gritties that really makes the damn thing work than providing value services for your own on the tens of thousand users university (of course, you can *seem* to be doing your work and save your face telling you are saving money by outsourcing services that were developed in-house first once there's the chance to get a benefit out of them -as I told you, quite a familiar story lately: socialize the costs, privatize the benefits).
"This year we estimated the cost of increasing our default inbox quota from a paltry 60 MB to 1 GB (a long-overdue upgrade). The total came in at about US$500,000, which is fiscally untenable at this point."
(...)
We just launched Google-hosted email for all students, which is projected to save $250,000 annually (or more if TCO is considered)."
I think you are having two account books here. I will accept your numbers (why I shouldn't?) but I can't accept your conclussion: even if your higher quota costs US$500.000, that's a one shoot cost for (probably) between three and five fiscal years; that's peanuts.
"It was fun being the guinea-pig for scaling up Cyrus, but by partnering with Google..."
Even accepting that you will save 250.000US$/year (which I have problems to accept without see the detailed numbers) that's not a for-profit company, that's a f* University. If it's all just a short time cost trade off, just close the whole damned thing down! Going to University (and maintaining them) is more expensive that not going or having them, at least on the short term, isn't it? While not the main point, one of the very points of having universities (and/or technical colleges) is in order to "try to scale Cyrus"; it's not per chance that Cyrus itself comes from a University.
Or what is this? Another version of the 700.000M US$ story? socialice the costs (a university founding Cyrus early development) and privatice the benefits (now the big bucks going to a private company which will take the delta knowledge of your big environment to themselves and themselves only)?
"As well as our mail system was Exchange and grew too large"
Too large for you admins, I bet. I like to hate Microsoft as much as anybody else, but specially talking about a school is quite questionable that "Exchange grew too large". Are you really in the high tens of thousand users?
I should admit that still it's the blame of Microsoft (I already said I like to hate Microsoft as much as anybody else, didn't I?) since they explicitly focus on making sysadmins as dumb as possible and then a bit more, but that I consider to be disgressing...
"This is exactly what BSD is aboutno legalite. Just because BSD allows you to act as sociopath, doesn't mean you should."
That's a story old at least as much as Plato, so I don't think this is the place to start it again anew. But, well, just to the point...
A law doesn't say what I *should* do, but it certainly states what I *can* do. This is just the same for a contract or -as this is the case, an usage/distribution license. The BSD as used by a developer, states what a third party can and can't do. What's the surprise when somebody just decides to do what you already stated -written down, no less, you allowed to be done?
Did you not only accepted but even explicitly wrote down what could be done with you code and still feel dismayed because somebody took your word for it and did what he was allowed to do? Then it is *you* the one being mentally challenged or a sociopath since you think people should understand your written down words not by their very meaning but by something that it's only on your mind.
""Mary in accounting" might be a bookkeeper with 20 years of experience with a company's processes and workflows, may manage the relationships with vendors (and by extension impact cash flow) etc. etc. etc. "
Even then, too many times your charming "Mary in accounting" is more a liability than a value for the company; it's only she is a hidden liability. If she really is so inflexible, what when the company shifts direction? (and that's not an "if" but a "when"). If she really holds so much company knowledge within her head and only in her head, what will happen when the mithycal bus goes over her? Too many times it happens even that a company won't try new valuable paths because of that "Mary", and the company won't even know of the lost revenues.
""Free" software often costs more money when you factor in the costs of lost productivity and training when "Mary in accounting" has to learn a new UI and new application."
Like when moving from XP to Vista, and IE6 to IE7, you mean?
"YES I can google. YES, oddly enough, I even know what your phrase means, where it's from, what it implies, historical context, and all that."
I know your race. You're akin to those that say "what Linux really needs..." and they even add "not me, I'm surely a Linux expert, but..." You understood what I meant; by your own account that single sentence involved implications due to historical context "and all that", thus being a very comfortable way to say quite a lot with very few words, so it seems what I said was both convenient for me and not a problem to *you* but still -without backing data, you dare say what *others* surely need (or think, or feel, or whatever). Think I'm a pompous ass all you want but *please* stop talking for others that didn't ask you for it.
On my regard, now I'm sure about what previously only suspected: *you* act like a pompous ass.
"but without translation it comes across as (a) not helpful, and (b) somewhat pompous."
Yeah, well, whatever (by the way, try to get literal sense from the preceding sentence, will you need translation too?). I'm not citing some obscure text from Leon Codiceus but a very famous sentence from the 'Digesta Iustiniani' quite expected to be known by anyone with even the varnish of a culture. On this informal forum I wouldn't take the time to point out who said the famous "I have a dream..." or translate Terminator's "hasta luego, baby". If that means djh101010 will lose my point, well, shit happens.
Anyway, this is Slashdot, maybe I can't expect readers here to be versed on latin classics but I certainly can expect they know what Google is and Google returns about 381.000 references for "dura lex, sed lex" so (a) I don't think the meaning to be lost by the expected audience and (b) I point my finger on you for trying to be pompous by telling somebody to be pompous out of nothing.
"The difference is a LEGAL one, not a moral one."
Sorry, but you are wrong.
"t's just as immoral to screw over the community on a BSD project for one greedy bastard's financial gain as it is to do so on a GPL project."
*THAT'S* where you are wrong. On the BSD case, those producing code knew from the very beginnig these kind of things may happen (it is not that the boy has been catched by a subtle legaleese on the BSD: it is all there and quite clear) and, by providing their code to the project, accepting that to be the case. Thus, there's nothing immoral for somebody doing the expectable and reasonable (it *IS* reasonable: if developers didn't like the BSD they could easily chose a different license).
On the other hand, there are some other developers that want things to be a different manner. They choose the GPL so somebody taking apart derivatives for distribution on their sole part won't be something about moral, but upright illegal.
On a civilized society there's nothing "just legal, not moral" since legality is nothing but the written down ethics for such a society. Remember the old roman saying: 'dura lex, sed lex'. Of course, our society is not a perfect one, and there are in fact deviations between the legal system and our ethics. But certainly this is not the case.
"Do you guys really have any idea what you are doing?"
Your post might have been of any interest if you included any hint about your tested alternatives.
Sorrily, you didn't.
"What happened in the US financial system was hardly an example of unfettered capitalism."
Sorry to say you are utterly wrong. What happened in the US financial system is in fact pure capitalism in action.
"It was government interference run amok"
Wrong! it was big corporations making use of the power money brings to them (and money is the pure means of power on a pure capitalist society) to do whatever had to be done in order to attract more power to them. Government was just the tool at hand.
If anything, government is what refrained them to go to the extent to own armies to achieve their goals by brute force (on countries where government lacks even that power they'll do use brute force too -example: Irak/Blackwaters).
"Free market my ass."
Free market your ass? What's free market then? How is it the ability to buy even a government not part of the free market?
"Pure capitalism..."
As soon as you say "pure" about something on politics, economy or sociology you sentence immediatly becomes pure shit.
Capitalism worked better than comunism just for the fact that it better coped with the fact that we are arrogant, mischievious, egotistic rats. And even then -better said, *because* of it, capitalism works.
But then, even capitalism can't cope with the whole shit of it, so other parts of the system must do it. People tend not to hire some people only "because" (because they are black, because they are women... "because"). On an statistical level all contractors are people and all contractors move like people, so it's good there are laws to counterballance this unavoidable fact: that people don't like minorities, or that greedy people will no hesitate about destroying the system because of some short term benefits for them (and we like it, since greed is the very engine of capitalism). That's why we need laws about minorities or about looking after financial banks. CEOs making millions after trashing the economy or RIAA and other big corp lobbies forcing laws in their favour being passed is not a flaw in our implementation of capitalism but the very and only expectable output for capitalism in action.
Just as a doctor will provide a strong drug for a cancer treatment because he knows it has the best overall net effect *but* knowing about its ill secondary effects will treat you against them, we accept capitalism as the best economic model for our social development we know of *but* we must not forget about all its negative effects and we must protect of them too. Being the best system we know makes it not perfect.