Once again, you are bringing your own biases into play here. Social justice does not necessarily include the forced redistribution of wealth, although some people do make that connection. Moglen very explicitly does not -- he mentions several times that we don't need a revolutionary re-ordering of society.
He's advocating a model of social justice that focuses on giving everyone equal access to community resources, in this case Free software. Not all software, just that produced by the Free software community. He doesn't demand the code for IE7, rather he starts from the premise that Firefox makes IE7 irrelevant. The promise of Free software is that it provides a way to give everyone access to community software products, as well as information more generally. With the one laptop per child project and the growth of open publishing, the kid in Soweto will have access to a lot of material that until very recently was available to only the privileged few in the west. It's a leveling of the playing field, and it costs us nothing.
Nothing Moglen said suggests he wants to take from the rich and give to the poor. That's the point. It costs us nothing to share these resources. Maybe that kid in Soweto will use her knowledge to build the next Google and make a billion dollars. Maybe she won't. It's up to her, and Moglen never suggests that we should be doing anything more than taking down barriers. The point is she can have access to these common resources without taking anything away from the rest of us.
This is social justice, just like universal suffrage and pay equity. It does not have to conflict with capitalist economics, the two can coexist. The social justice offered by Free software comes from the provision of a set of tools that are not encumbered by traditional concepts of ownership. You can still use them to create wealth for yourself, and you still get to decide how to use your wealth.
Every time he said 'Social Justice' he fed the perception that Free Software is a communist plot.
Only among those who are already predisposed to do so. Social justice != communism. Moglen can't prevent you from bringing your biases to the table, but he can hope that you will judge his presentation on its merits, and not on the values you attach to words he is using.
No mechanisms for figuring out how many ids are associated with an account... no mechanism for verifying that someone gave you the id that was actually used in the final counts.
...and no mechanism for verifying that the vote you entered was counted correctly, which is what started this discussion. A paper trail is critical, regardless.
No, you can't link an individual ballot to a particular individual. That's a feature, not a bug. If you could identify individuals you would enable coercion before the election and reprisals afterwards, hardly favourable conditions for a democratic society.
But while you can't follow your particular ballot through the system, you can do that as a group. If 100 people vote at your polling station and more or less than 100 votes are tallied then there has been some tampering. It is possible that someone could go in and switch ballots, but not without the cooperation of the staff and observers from all the parties contesting the election.
A paper trail provides a means to verify an election. It's not foolproof, but it is definitely better than nothing, which is what you've got in 5 states already.
This is a bit of American civic theory that I've never understood. You claim that free speech and the right to bear arms are necessary to enable you to violently overthrow your government. But doesn't violently overthrowing your government also fall under the definition of treason and/or terrorism? How do you tell the difference?
It's an honest question. I'm not American, and this has never made sense to me. That may also be partly due to the fact that it often seems that the people most vocal in defense of their right to bear arms are also very vocal about support for the president, at least the one currently in office.
Actually, I think the real difference is in the conditions behind the offers.
Exactly my point. We'll help you out, but only if you help us out by shutting out competing viewpoints. Whether or not the oil companies actually make the threat is beside the point. The critical issue is that the education system has been slashed so hard that teachers feel they need to pander to industry in order to get badly needed dollars for their work.
The agenda of a corporation and a school are fundamentally different. The corporation is ultimately about profit for shareholders, while the school is about preparing students for full participation in society, both economically and socially. Those two agendas may coincide in some areas, but if we leave it to industry to police itself conflict is inevitable.
It would be great, though, if there was a way for them to contribute without even the appearance of using the contributions to influence the beliefs of those students
There is. It's called taxes. If the government had the resolve to collect enough taxes to cover the needs of the education system, and the wisdom not to waste it, then we wouldn't find ourselves in this situation to begin with. But then, responsible government depends on informed and engaged citizens, which in turn depends on solid education. Which is very difficult to provide if the curriculum is set by corporations.
How in the hell can anyone be stupid enough to think that there is a political motive behind "Big Oil" giving to science education?
How can anyone be stupid enough to think that there isn't? Sure, they want to support the education of future engineers and geologists. But do you honestly think they are equally interested in the training of ecologists, climatologists, and environmental scientists? I'm sure McDonalds employs a lot of food scientists, and Monsanto employs a lot of biotech scientists, but do you think that means they sign a lot of blank checks for "science"? Or is it possible, maybe, that they direct their support towards the kind of research and 'education' that serves their interest, and away from the sort of research that might question the value of their products?
I think you're missing the bigger issue here. There is not necessarily any problem with the oil industry doing their own research, and disseminating that research to teachers. It becomes a problem when they are allowed to buy access that other groups don't have. In this case they've been treated as loving benefactors, and the teachers have willingly accepted their message along with their cash. But when another group tries to offer a different viewpoint, they are labeled special interest and shut out of the process.
What's the real difference between what the offerings of the oil companies and the film-makers? Both have a vested interest in the issue, and both have done substantial research on the subject, research that merits careful consideration. But one is welcomed and the other is marginalized. The only difference, obviously, is cash.
It would be different if this were a fringe environmental group advocating a return to the stone-age or something, but it's not. It's a very conscientious group trying to advance a carefully researched opinion. They're not even asking for equal time. They just want to make their material available, presumably allowing individual teachers to decide how to present the information.
Underlying the whole issue, as the author points out, is that the teachers aren't really bad guys here. They've been forced into a corner by dwindling budgets, and its now so bad that corporate sponsorship trumps curriculum content. That's frightening.
No. Debian still has proprietary firmware bundled into the kernel. This may change, but not before Etch is released as the next stable. This is one of the things distinguishing Gnusense, which has no non-free code, from Ubuntu and Debian, which in all versions have this firmware.
I don't get it. I can and do use a proprietary driver on my Debian laptop. Yes, the kernel is flagged tainted. How has that impinged on my freedom to use non-free software when I choose to?
If the software were really "free" as in "freedom", there would not be restrictions other than those to protect the same freedom that you received.
What are the additional restrictions imposed by GPL, beyond the license remaining GPL so that all future users have the same freedoms as you do right now?
Well, if you consider that even the kernel provided by Debian includes non-free firmware, and those few distros that satisfy RMS's free standards are currently marginal (Utoto and Gnewsense), I'd guess most users of GNU/Linux are in fact using mostly free systems, not 100% free.
You can, with some effort and supported hardware, run a distro that satisfies the Debian Free Software Guidelines, but that will still include non-free firmware.
I run Debian, so I don't know if other distros provide completely free kernels. My limited understanding is that they don't, but correct me if I'm wrong. Judging from a quick poke around your website you might be the sort of person to build their own kernel and/or distro, but I don't think that is true of most users.
You bastard. Not only do you read TFA, but the supporting links as well? You leave me no choice but to escalate.
I have now, in fact, read the actual publication in Science. While the Losos lab has indeed investigated phenotypic plasticity in these animals in other studies, the subject of the national geographic article is not one of those studies. It deals only with directional selection via the experimental introduction of a predator. The abstract may clarify this:
As the environment changes, will species be able to adapt? By conducting experiments in natural environments, biologists can study how evolutionary processes such as natural selection operate through time. We predicted that the introduction of a terrestrial predator would first select for longer-legged lizards, which are faster, but as the lizards shifted onto high twigs to avoid the predator, selection would reverse toward favoring the shorter-legged individuals better able to locomote there. Our experimental studies on 12 islets confirmed these predictions within a single generation, thus demonstrating the rapidity with which evolutionary forces can change during times of environmental flux.
If you are still not convinced, you'll have to read it yourself.
There is no controversy around a link between behaviour and evolution. That's pretty mainstream in evolutionary biology.
You don't understand the study itself, either. It's a fairly standard example of rapid evolution: predator kills more long-legged anoles than short-legged anoles, therefore more short-legged anoles reproduce, subsequently the proportion of short-legged anoles in the population goes up, which is the definition of evolution. Sure, the reason the short-legged anoles are more successful has a behavioral link, but you're way off mark to suggest that they subconsciously directed their gonads to produce gametes coding for shorter legs. That kind of thinking went out of style a century and a half ago, with good reason.
I haven't read the article itself, only the NatGeo summary you linked to. Maybe there's more to it, but I suspect it's going to be published in Science because Losos has already had similar stuff published there -- some of which is truly earth-shaking in evolutionary biology. Once you break into the ranks of Science and Nature, getting more stuff published there is somewhat easier. There is some interest in seeing how your work is progressing, even if any particular study might on its own merits only warrant publication in a lower-prestige journal.
Actually, now that I think about it some more, in this case he has experimentally induced evolution by introducing a predator. That probably DOES warrant a top-tier publication, although it may be somewhat suspect ethically.
I think your comment is wildly inaccurate. The study is suggesting that the anole population is demonstrating rapid evolution of shorter leg lengths. Nowhere does it suggest that leg lengths are being influenced directly by environment, as if the act of climbing, or the presence of predators, lead to the legs of a particular individual being shorter. What it does suggest is that individuals with shorter legs get predated less often, and leave more short-legged offspring than their leggier relatives. That's evolution, not phenotypic plasticity.
yp.
I'd guess that Debian, Ubuntu, and any other distro striving to be truly free
If this was really a freedom issue, why does Debian adhere to the same sort of trademarking policy that they consider a DFSG violation when others use it?
From the Debian Logo page:
Although Debian can be obtained for free and will always remain that way, events such as the problem with the ownership of the term "Linux" have shown that Debian needs to protect its property from any use which could hurt its reputation.
They offer two sets of logos, an open set and a closed set. The closed set is subject to the following restrictions:
1. This logo may only be used if:
* the product it is used for is made using a documented procedure as published on www.debian.org (for example official CD-creation)
* official approval is given by Debian for its use in this purpose
2. May be used if an official part of debian (decided using the rules in I) is part of the complete product, if it is made clear that only this part is officially approved
3. We reserve the right to revoke a license for a product
Permission has been given to use the official logo on clothing (shirts, hats, etc) as long as they are made by a Debian developer and not sold for profit.
These restrictions are just as much a violation of the DFSG as the ones imposed by Mozilla. I think they are entirely appropriate in both cases however. The real problem is that Debian insists on applying the DFSG to absolutely everything, including documentation and artwork, as well as program code. On this point I think the FSF has the saner approach, with separate licenses for qualitatively different categories of digital information (ie. documentation and programs).
I don't think money would cause those being payed to work less
That is not the point of the argument. Rather, as I understand it, the concern is that once you introduce money into the reward scheme it serves as a disincentive to the vast majority of developers who are not paid. It effectively introduces a two-tiered system. Without money, everyone can believe that they are contributing equally, or at least according to their effort and ability. With money, the unpaid volunteers might be left feeling that their work is not valued as much as their paid peers. The resulting loss of morale may tip the balance in favour of other projects for some.
Whether this will come to pass or not I can't say, but it's definitely worth considering.
That said, I have a passing familiarity with the Israeli daycare study, and it is not a good analogy for the Debian developer community. It was an attempt to measure the effect of dis-incentives on the members of a client group, rather than the impact of incentives on a team of volunteers. The underlying principles may be related, but it's a bit of a stretch to compare the two directly.
I stand corrected. I did misread you, although I prefer to think that it was because the initial post might have been clearer, rather than my aspirations to zealot-hood. I'll have to think about this some more, but the idea that anything that is government funded should be released public domain does make sense.
I read your post. Obviously I did, if even you agree, but for one word, with my synopsis of your argument. And I still think your argument is misdirected. You place the GPL in opposition to the BSD license, and argue that it reduces users freedoms by comparison. I think, especially where Microsoft is concerned, it is more accurate to place the GPL in opposition to the status quo proprietary software license. The great majority of software in use today is closed source, and the GPL is a response to that. It certainly wasn't a response to the lack of freedoms associated with public domain code.
I think it is also important to note that the GPL isn't just about licensing individual programs. It provides a system for enabling the free exchange of ideas, at least in the realm of software. You may think that's hooey, or anti-business, or whatever. Fine. Don't use GPL code then. But don't pretend that it is being imposed on you.
If a developer chooses to release their code under the GPL that is their choice, and we have to respect it, by respecting the terms of the license. Just as we are free to respect the rights of closed source developers, or choose not to use their product.
I think you're still missing the point. If the government were to support the development of GPL software, the product would be available for use by everyone. Microsoft would have just as much access as anyone else. If they wanted to modify and redistribute the software, they'd be obliged to release the code just like everyone else.
But no-one is forcing them to do that. They are still free to develop closed-source code and charge what they like for it. The only thing they aren't allowed to do is modify the government-sponsored GPL code and then sell it back to the people who have already paid for the initial development. Actually, they could even do that, but they'd have to provide the source code as well.
These arguments always confuse me. The GPL gives everyone more access to software, not less. Microsoft hasn't been forced to open the code to Windows just because GNOME exists. If the government sponsored some close-source software development, not only would Microsoft not be able to incorporate it into their own productes, they couldn't even see the source. GPL is no more restrictive for MS than any other software. It's actually less restrictive, since they can see exactly what the code does, should they wish to make their own products compatible.
The whole argument boils down to: no freedoms good (the status quo), some freedoms bad (the GPL), all freedoms good (unrestricted use of FOSS code, even to the point of taking it out of the FOSS realm by closing your source). This is silly.
Did you read RMS' latest interview? He's trying to clear up something about GPLv3 and...
ARRGH! No more hero worship!! he's not a GOD!!
Kind of puts a damper on a discussion when the mention of someone's name in any context provokes you to to start questioning his entire life work.
Chill out. We know he's a bit nuts, but the GNU and the GPL are an important part of the community, even if some of you wish that it wasn't. I am entirely capable of respecting the man's work and what he's trying to accomplish without having to worship his every word.
'envy': a feeling of discontented or resentful longing aroused by another's better fortune.
It's not a synonym for appreciate. You can appreciate what they've done without envying the tricky situation they are now in with respect to the balance between open access and vandalism. I don't think the poster was saying anything negative about wikipedia.
True, but they are only calling the installer a beta. Etch as a whole is not beta. It is already ready for use by modestly experienced users for general use, anything other than absolutely 'mission-critical' application. I'm running it now on my desktop and laptop, and find it more stable than any of the more 'user-friendly' distros I've tried.
Calling this a beta is misleading. Etch is currently the Debian 'testing' distro, which means it is undergoing constant, incremental updating. All the people that complain about the slow release cycle, or expect the packages included in this 'beta' review to be the same as what you'll download tomorrow, don't understand how Debian works.
The time between stable releases is indeed quite long, but when a new app version is released by the upstream developers it often appears in Debian unstable within a day or two, and from there into testing in the space of a few weeks. Which means you can have a (slightly) unstable Debian system that is at most days behind the most cutting edge distro, or an almost rock-solid Debian 'testing' system that is rarely more than a month behind. You're only stuck with the two year release cycle if you cannot tolerate any problems whatsoever. And if you are working on something that critical, you shouldn't be going anywhere near applications with less than 10 days of field-testing (the minimum to pass from unstable to testing) anyways, regardless of which distro you run.
Sure, some of the toolset does most definitely make its way back to Debian. But why should it have to? If Ubuntu was a project within Debian then any tools they develop would be available to the larger community immediately. The current Debian install includes an option list, where you select which package groups you want: laptop, server, desktop etc. If you moved that up in the process and included a few more options like "Ubuntu desktop", then all that work could be integrated together without making any additional demands on the user. Newbies could be directed to the more automated Ubuntu install, while the rest of us can work our way through the standard Debian process.
To be honest, I don't know if the problem is with Debian or the derivatives, but it seems like they could be working in a more coordinated fashion. And Ubuntu appears to do a better job of contributing back upstream than the others. As I understand it, all the Ubuntu code is GPL, whereas the Mepis-specific tools are closed source.
Slashdot Mirror
Once again, you are bringing your own biases into play here. Social justice does not necessarily include the forced redistribution of wealth, although some people do make that connection. Moglen very explicitly does not -- he mentions several times that we don't need a revolutionary re-ordering of society.
He's advocating a model of social justice that focuses on giving everyone equal access to community resources, in this case Free software. Not all software, just that produced by the Free software community. He doesn't demand the code for IE7, rather he starts from the premise that Firefox makes IE7 irrelevant. The promise of Free software is that it provides a way to give everyone access to community software products, as well as information more generally. With the one laptop per child project and the growth of open publishing, the kid in Soweto will have access to a lot of material that until very recently was available to only the privileged few in the west. It's a leveling of the playing field, and it costs us nothing.
Nothing Moglen said suggests he wants to take from the rich and give to the poor. That's the point. It costs us nothing to share these resources. Maybe that kid in Soweto will use her knowledge to build the next Google and make a billion dollars. Maybe she won't. It's up to her, and Moglen never suggests that we should be doing anything more than taking down barriers. The point is she can have access to these common resources without taking anything away from the rest of us.
This is social justice, just like universal suffrage and pay equity. It does not have to conflict with capitalist economics, the two can coexist. The social justice offered by Free software comes from the provision of a set of tools that are not encumbered by traditional concepts of ownership. You can still use them to create wealth for yourself, and you still get to decide how to use your wealth.
yp.
Every time he said 'Social Justice' he fed the perception that Free Software is a communist plot.
Only among those who are already predisposed to do so. Social justice != communism. Moglen can't prevent you from bringing your biases to the table, but he can hope that you will judge his presentation on its merits, and not on the values you attach to words he is using.
yp.
No mechanisms for figuring out how many ids are associated with an account... no mechanism for verifying that someone gave you the id that was actually used in the final counts.
...and no mechanism for verifying that the vote you entered was counted correctly, which is what started this discussion. A paper trail is critical, regardless.
yp
It is used. Whenever there's a recount.
No, you can't link an individual ballot to a particular individual. That's a feature, not a bug. If you could identify individuals you would enable coercion before the election and reprisals afterwards, hardly favourable conditions for a democratic society.
But while you can't follow your particular ballot through the system, you can do that as a group. If 100 people vote at your polling station and more or less than 100 votes are tallied then there has been some tampering. It is possible that someone could go in and switch ballots, but not without the cooperation of the staff and observers from all the parties contesting the election.
A paper trail provides a means to verify an election. It's not foolproof, but it is definitely better than nothing, which is what you've got in 5 states already.
yp.
This is a bit of American civic theory that I've never understood. You claim that free speech and the right to bear arms are necessary to enable you to violently overthrow your government. But doesn't violently overthrowing your government also fall under the definition of treason and/or terrorism? How do you tell the difference?
It's an honest question. I'm not American, and this has never made sense to me. That may also be partly due to the fact that it often seems that the people most vocal in defense of their right to bear arms are also very vocal about support for the president, at least the one currently in office.
yp.
Actually, I think the real difference is in the conditions behind the offers.
Exactly my point. We'll help you out, but only if you help us out by shutting out competing viewpoints. Whether or not the oil companies actually make the threat is beside the point. The critical issue is that the education system has been slashed so hard that teachers feel they need to pander to industry in order to get badly needed dollars for their work.
The agenda of a corporation and a school are fundamentally different. The corporation is ultimately about profit for shareholders, while the school is about preparing students for full participation in society, both economically and socially. Those two agendas may coincide in some areas, but if we leave it to industry to police itself conflict is inevitable.
It would be great, though, if there was a way for them to contribute without even the appearance of using the contributions to influence the beliefs of those students
There is. It's called taxes. If the government had the resolve to collect enough taxes to cover the needs of the education system, and the wisdom not to waste it, then we wouldn't find ourselves in this situation to begin with. But then, responsible government depends on informed and engaged citizens, which in turn depends on solid education. Which is very difficult to provide if the curriculum is set by corporations.
yp.
How in the hell can anyone be stupid enough to think that there is a political motive behind "Big Oil" giving to science education?
How can anyone be stupid enough to think that there isn't? Sure, they want to support the education of future engineers and geologists. But do you honestly think they are equally interested in the training of ecologists, climatologists, and environmental scientists? I'm sure McDonalds employs a lot of food scientists, and Monsanto employs a lot of biotech scientists, but do you think that means they sign a lot of blank checks for "science"? Or is it possible, maybe, that they direct their support towards the kind of research and 'education' that serves their interest, and away from the sort of research that might question the value of their products?
yp.
I think you're missing the bigger issue here. There is not necessarily any problem with the oil industry doing their own research, and disseminating that research to teachers. It becomes a problem when they are allowed to buy access that other groups don't have. In this case they've been treated as loving benefactors, and the teachers have willingly accepted their message along with their cash. But when another group tries to offer a different viewpoint, they are labeled special interest and shut out of the process.
What's the real difference between what the offerings of the oil companies and the film-makers? Both have a vested interest in the issue, and both have done substantial research on the subject, research that merits careful consideration. But one is welcomed and the other is marginalized. The only difference, obviously, is cash.
It would be different if this were a fringe environmental group advocating a return to the stone-age or something, but it's not. It's a very conscientious group trying to advance a carefully researched opinion. They're not even asking for equal time. They just want to make their material available, presumably allowing individual teachers to decide how to present the information.
Underlying the whole issue, as the author points out, is that the teachers aren't really bad guys here. They've been forced into a corner by dwindling budgets, and its now so bad that corporate sponsorship trumps curriculum content. That's frightening.
yp.
No. Debian still has proprietary firmware bundled into the kernel. This may change, but not before Etch is released as the next stable. This is one of the things distinguishing Gnusense, which has no non-free code, from Ubuntu and Debian, which in all versions have this firmware.
yp.
I don't get it. I can and do use a proprietary driver on my Debian laptop. Yes, the kernel is flagged tainted. How has that impinged on my freedom to use non-free software when I choose to?
If the software were really "free" as in "freedom", there would not be restrictions other than those to protect the same freedom that you received.
What are the additional restrictions imposed by GPL, beyond the license remaining GPL so that all future users have the same freedoms as you do right now?
yp
Well, if you consider that even the kernel provided by Debian includes non-free firmware, and those few distros that satisfy RMS's free standards are currently marginal (Utoto and Gnewsense), I'd guess most users of GNU/Linux are in fact using mostly free systems, not 100% free.
You can, with some effort and supported hardware, run a distro that satisfies the Debian Free Software Guidelines, but that will still include non-free firmware.
I run Debian, so I don't know if other distros provide completely free kernels. My limited understanding is that they don't, but correct me if I'm wrong. Judging from a quick poke around your website you might be the sort of person to build their own kernel and/or distro, but I don't think that is true of most users.
yp
You bastard. Not only do you read TFA, but the supporting links as well? You leave me no choice but to escalate.
I have now, in fact, read the actual publication in Science. While the Losos lab has indeed investigated phenotypic plasticity in these animals in other studies, the subject of the national geographic article is not one of those studies. It deals only with directional selection via the experimental introduction of a predator. The abstract may clarify this:
If you are still not convinced, you'll have to read it yourself.
cordially,
yp.
There is no controversy around a link between behaviour and evolution. That's pretty mainstream in evolutionary biology.
You don't understand the study itself, either. It's a fairly standard example of rapid evolution: predator kills more long-legged anoles than short-legged anoles, therefore more short-legged anoles reproduce, subsequently the proportion of short-legged anoles in the population goes up, which is the definition of evolution. Sure, the reason the short-legged anoles are more successful has a behavioral link, but you're way off mark to suggest that they subconsciously directed their gonads to produce gametes coding for shorter legs. That kind of thinking went out of style a century and a half ago, with good reason.
I haven't read the article itself, only the NatGeo summary you linked to. Maybe there's more to it, but I suspect it's going to be published in Science because Losos has already had similar stuff published there -- some of which is truly earth-shaking in evolutionary biology. Once you break into the ranks of Science and Nature, getting more stuff published there is somewhat easier. There is some interest in seeing how your work is progressing, even if any particular study might on its own merits only warrant publication in a lower-prestige journal.
Actually, now that I think about it some more, in this case he has experimentally induced evolution by introducing a predator. That probably DOES warrant a top-tier publication, although it may be somewhat suspect ethically.
yp.
I think your comment is wildly inaccurate. The study is suggesting that the anole population is demonstrating rapid evolution of shorter leg lengths. Nowhere does it suggest that leg lengths are being influenced directly by environment, as if the act of climbing, or the presence of predators, lead to the legs of a particular individual being shorter. What it does suggest is that individuals with shorter legs get predated less often, and leave more short-legged offspring than their leggier relatives. That's evolution, not phenotypic plasticity. yp.
I'd guess that Debian, Ubuntu, and any other distro striving to be truly free
If this was really a freedom issue, why does Debian adhere to the same sort of trademarking policy that they consider a DFSG violation when others use it?
From the Debian Logo page:
They offer two sets of logos, an open set and a closed set. The closed set is subject to the following restrictions:
These restrictions are just as much a violation of the DFSG as the ones imposed by Mozilla. I think they are entirely appropriate in both cases however. The real problem is that Debian insists on applying the DFSG to absolutely everything, including documentation and artwork, as well as program code. On this point I think the FSF has the saner approach, with separate licenses for qualitatively different categories of digital information (ie. documentation and programs).
yp.
That is not the point of the argument. Rather, as I understand it, the concern is that once you introduce money into the reward scheme it serves as a disincentive to the vast majority of developers who are not paid. It effectively introduces a two-tiered system. Without money, everyone can believe that they are contributing equally, or at least according to their effort and ability. With money, the unpaid volunteers might be left feeling that their work is not valued as much as their paid peers. The resulting loss of morale may tip the balance in favour of other projects for some.
Whether this will come to pass or not I can't say, but it's definitely worth considering.
That said, I have a passing familiarity with the Israeli daycare study, and it is not a good analogy for the Debian developer community. It was an attempt to measure the effect of dis-incentives on the members of a client group, rather than the impact of incentives on a team of volunteers. The underlying principles may be related, but it's a bit of a stretch to compare the two directly.
yp
I stand corrected. I did misread you, although I prefer to think that it was because the initial post might have been clearer, rather than my aspirations to zealot-hood. I'll have to think about this some more, but the idea that anything that is government funded should be released public domain does make sense.
Cheers,
yp.
I read your post. Obviously I did, if even you agree, but for one word, with my synopsis of your argument. And I still think your argument is misdirected. You place the GPL in opposition to the BSD license, and argue that it reduces users freedoms by comparison. I think, especially where Microsoft is concerned, it is more accurate to place the GPL in opposition to the status quo proprietary software license. The great majority of software in use today is closed source, and the GPL is a response to that. It certainly wasn't a response to the lack of freedoms associated with public domain code.
I think it is also important to note that the GPL isn't just about licensing individual programs. It provides a system for enabling the free exchange of ideas, at least in the realm of software. You may think that's hooey, or anti-business, or whatever. Fine. Don't use GPL code then. But don't pretend that it is being imposed on you.
If a developer chooses to release their code under the GPL that is their choice, and we have to respect it, by respecting the terms of the license. Just as we are free to respect the rights of closed source developers, or choose not to use their product.
yp.
I think you're still missing the point. If the government were to support the development of GPL software, the product would be available for use by everyone. Microsoft would have just as much access as anyone else. If they wanted to modify and redistribute the software, they'd be obliged to release the code just like everyone else.
But no-one is forcing them to do that. They are still free to develop closed-source code and charge what they like for it. The only thing they aren't allowed to do is modify the government-sponsored GPL code and then sell it back to the people who have already paid for the initial development. Actually, they could even do that, but they'd have to provide the source code as well.
These arguments always confuse me. The GPL gives everyone more access to software, not less. Microsoft hasn't been forced to open the code to Windows just because GNOME exists. If the government sponsored some close-source software development, not only would Microsoft not be able to incorporate it into their own productes, they couldn't even see the source. GPL is no more restrictive for MS than any other software. It's actually less restrictive, since they can see exactly what the code does, should they wish to make their own products compatible.
The whole argument boils down to: no freedoms good (the status quo), some freedoms bad (the GPL), all freedoms good (unrestricted use of FOSS code, even to the point of taking it out of the FOSS realm by closing your source). This is silly.
yp.
Lemme see if I am following this thread:
Kind of puts a damper on a discussion when the mention of someone's name in any context provokes you to to start questioning his entire life work.
Chill out. We know he's a bit nuts, but the GNU and the GPL are an important part of the community, even if some of you wish that it wasn't. I am entirely capable of respecting the man's work and what he's trying to accomplish without having to worship his every word.
yp.
'envy': a feeling of discontented or resentful longing aroused by another's better fortune.
It's not a synonym for appreciate. You can appreciate what they've done without envying the tricky situation they are now in with respect to the balance between open access and vandalism. I don't think the poster was saying anything negative about wikipedia.
yp.
True, but they are only calling the installer a beta. Etch as a whole is not beta. It is already ready for use by modestly experienced users for general use, anything other than absolutely 'mission-critical' application. I'm running it now on my desktop and laptop, and find it more stable than any of the more 'user-friendly' distros I've tried.
yp.
Calling this a beta is misleading. Etch is currently the Debian 'testing' distro, which means it is undergoing constant, incremental updating. All the people that complain about the slow release cycle, or expect the packages included in this 'beta' review to be the same as what you'll download tomorrow, don't understand how Debian works.
The time between stable releases is indeed quite long, but when a new app version is released by the upstream developers it often appears in Debian unstable within a day or two, and from there into testing in the space of a few weeks. Which means you can have a (slightly) unstable Debian system that is at most days behind the most cutting edge distro, or an almost rock-solid Debian 'testing' system that is rarely more than a month behind. You're only stuck with the two year release cycle if you cannot tolerate any problems whatsoever. And if you are working on something that critical, you shouldn't be going anywhere near applications with less than 10 days of field-testing (the minimum to pass from unstable to testing) anyways, regardless of which distro you run.
yp.
Damn socialists, they even pay their volunteers. It's downright un-American!
yp.
Sure, some of the toolset does most definitely make its way back to Debian. But why should it have to? If Ubuntu was a project within Debian then any tools they develop would be available to the larger community immediately. The current Debian install includes an option list, where you select which package groups you want: laptop, server, desktop etc. If you moved that up in the process and included a few more options like "Ubuntu desktop", then all that work could be integrated together without making any additional demands on the user. Newbies could be directed to the more automated Ubuntu install, while the rest of us can work our way through the standard Debian process.
To be honest, I don't know if the problem is with Debian or the derivatives, but it seems like they could be working in a more coordinated fashion. And Ubuntu appears to do a better job of contributing back upstream than the others. As I understand it, all the Ubuntu code is GPL, whereas the Mepis-specific tools are closed source.
yp.