I didn't realise software piracy was some kind of fundamental right.
You realise of course that you have practically no rights when you buy most software? You don't actually even buy the software- you only buy a license to use the software. And it is a license that can just about be revoked at will. Read your End User License Agreement (EULA). The EULA that you agree to in the act if installing software makes it illegal to modify the software to make it work better for your purposes, to circumvent any aspect of the software even if it happens to interfere with your fair use, or in some cases to resell it or give it away if it doesn't suit your needs. It may be illegal to develop software that will read a proprietary file format. If you install a copy on your Mom's computer, both you and she are now criminals.
Arguably the current situation is an abuse of the public, and Bill Gates is at the forefront. His personal wealth and the profitability of Microsoft are indications of how much they have engaged in price gouging and monopolistic practices. They have been succesful because the public is ill-informed and lacks a rational basis fromwhich to examine the situation. The fact that potentially millions of Americans are criminals under the existing EULAs and copyright/patent/anti-"piracy" laws shows that they do have soem intitive understanding that it is they- not Microsoft- who are being ripped off.
There is no boo hoo. I'm privileged to do what I do, fascinated by it, and enjoy every working day. That a fair amount of my time is unpaid doesn't bother me at all. I don't have an expectation to get paid so much as a practical need to get paid. When I don't get paid I roll with it and don't get worked up about it. Getting pissed off and feeling ripped off is optional.
If someone else ran over to your healthcare customers and offered them a swell price them for everything you did that week, and actually collected most of the cash those customers would be willing to put out for what they received (instead of you), I don't think you'd be too pleased, either.
I suppose not, although 42.5% of my gross collections do go to paying business overhead such as office rent, support staff, utilities, taxes, health care, etc. That's just the nature of being in business.
On the other hand, I am not looking to control the actions of others, to force them to pay me even if they don't use my services (e.g., the Microsoft Tax), nor do I treat my customers as presumed criminals and use doublespeak to hide that fact. Billy the G. (and many others) do exactly those things. Frankly if you're that paranoid about what you do, you need a different career- one that doesn't involve "intellectual property."
A few years ago in a thread on Usenet, before I had thought much about these issues, I tried taking the stance that intellectual property should be inviolate- and that copyright and patents should be absolute. I discovered, much to my surprise, that it is an untenable stance. Private good cannot be feasibly held superior to public good- instead a balance must be struck between public and private goods, and public goods must ultimately be protected from private ownership for a social structure to be ultimately beneficial (there is ample historical precedent on the political side, as well as in science and medicine Read Lawrence Lessig for starters, as well as any decent history of England). Billy G and his ilk fail to understand this, and this failure will ultimately collapse their house of cards under its own weight. The copyright and patent battles being waged now are just a taste of the future.
Do you feel that way after you do work?
I'm a health care provider. About half of my work hours go unpaid because that's the nature of the business. For every payable hour I incur about an unpaid hour of my time getting prior authorizations, doing documentation, communicating with other providers, and the time my business office staff spends sending out bills. I have no control over what I get paid for my time, either. The insurance companies, Medicare and Medicaid tell me what theywill pay be, and I can accept it or find a different line of work. About 10% of my patient services end up being done for free. Last year I made $34000 so I ain't getting rich, but it's enough to comfortably keep my mortgage, health insurance, my ISP bill and DSL, groceries, etc., paid.
Do I worry about getting paid for everything I do? Not a bit. I figure it all works out in the end. I benefit tremendously from the works of programmers creating software under the GPL. I hope that someone benefits from my pro bono work. I wrote some stuff in my field and made it available under the GFDL because I believe in the freedom of information (even though the GFDL is not really suited to that purpose. Maybe we need a GNU Free Science License). Lots of people do pro bono work- lawyers, tax accountants, people who volunteer for their churches, etc. Maybe you do the same. IMHO that makes the world go 'round more than commerce. As a wise man pointed out, competition isn't what improves the breed- cooperation is what makes for real improvements.
I've got little sympathy for Bill Gates, who has indulged in monopolistic practices and has arguably broken the law in doing so. In this letter we see the seeds of that attitude (and possibly of taking $40000 worth of computer time from someone- did he pay for that time?). That you or someone else thinks he's justified in that attitude contributes to rapacious business behavior and helps make the world a worse place.
There you have Bill Gates's basic view of the world: "I've done all this work and you owe me." Maybe he still thinks that way; I've never met him so I dunno. Well, he's been paid back a few times over for his investment. I am always struck by his line "The value of the computer time we have used exceeds $40,000." Note that he doesn't say that it *cost* him $40,000, only that the value of the time exceeded that amount. What's up with that? Where'd he get that computer time and who paid for it?
I've used Macs since 1986 and I think we are far too smug about virus, trojans and other malware. We think that we are invulnerable, and someone is going to write up a nasty little piece of software that's gonna get us. No doubt about it, and it could even be today. Who knows? There are a number of proprietary antivirus packages (Virex, etc) but there is also a free tool- clamXav which has a Cocoa wrapper around the clamav package. It's not fully integrated yet, e.g., AFAIK you can't automatically pipe e-mail through it from Mail.app, but it's a start.
It's been a while since I read an apologia for Microsoft and the assertion that it is not a monopoly. Despite the author's claims, Microsoft still engages in monopolistic practices- including one that is erroneously described as a non-monopolistic practice, which is undercutting the competition whenever possible. The original article uses a too-narrow definition of "monopoly" and then mischaracterizes classic monopolistic practices as non-monopolistic practices. The only reason to do this is to distort reality into a shape mroe to Bill Gates's liking.
From the reports on VersionTracker, the OS X version seems to be badly broken. Whether that's a problem with the Yahoo! programming team's work or with Apple's implementation of Java, I don't know.
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I didn't realise software piracy was some kind of fundamental right.
You realise of course that you have practically no rights when you buy most software? You don't actually even buy the software- you only buy a license to use the software. And it is a license that can just about be revoked at will. Read your End User License Agreement (EULA). The EULA that you agree to in the act if installing software makes it illegal to modify the software to make it work better for your purposes, to circumvent any aspect of the software even if it happens to interfere with your fair use, or in some cases to resell it or give it away if it doesn't suit your needs. It may be illegal to develop software that will read a proprietary file format. If you install a copy on your Mom's computer, both you and she are now criminals.
Arguably the current situation is an abuse of the public, and Bill Gates is at the forefront. His personal wealth and the profitability of Microsoft are indications of how much they have engaged in price gouging and monopolistic practices. They have been succesful because the public is ill-informed and lacks a rational basis fromwhich to examine the situation. The fact that potentially millions of Americans are criminals under the existing EULAs and copyright/patent/anti-"piracy" laws shows that they do have soem intitive understanding that it is they- not Microsoft- who are being ripped off.
Oh, boo hoo.
There is no boo hoo. I'm privileged to do what I do, fascinated by it, and enjoy every working day. That a fair amount of my time is unpaid doesn't bother me at all. I don't have an expectation to get paid so much as a practical need to get paid. When I don't get paid I roll with it and don't get worked up about it. Getting pissed off and feeling ripped off is optional.
If someone else ran over to your healthcare customers and offered them a swell price them for everything you did that week, and actually collected most of the cash those customers would be willing to put out for what they received (instead of you), I don't think you'd be too pleased, either.
I suppose not, although 42.5% of my gross collections do go to paying business overhead such as office rent, support staff, utilities, taxes, health care, etc. That's just the nature of being in business.
On the other hand, I am not looking to control the actions of others, to force them to pay me even if they don't use my services (e.g., the Microsoft Tax), nor do I treat my customers as presumed criminals and use doublespeak to hide that fact. Billy the G. (and many others) do exactly those things. Frankly if you're that paranoid about what you do, you need a different career- one that doesn't involve "intellectual property."
A few years ago in a thread on Usenet, before I had thought much about these issues, I tried taking the stance that intellectual property should be inviolate- and that copyright and patents should be absolute. I discovered, much to my surprise, that it is an untenable stance. Private good cannot be feasibly held superior to public good- instead a balance must be struck between public and private goods, and public goods must ultimately be protected from private ownership for a social structure to be ultimately beneficial (there is ample historical precedent on the political side, as well as in science and medicine Read Lawrence Lessig for starters, as well as any decent history of England). Billy G and his ilk fail to understand this, and this failure will ultimately collapse their house of cards under its own weight. The copyright and patent battles being waged now are just a taste of the future.
Do you feel that way after you do work? I'm a health care provider. About half of my work hours go unpaid because that's the nature of the business. For every payable hour I incur about an unpaid hour of my time getting prior authorizations, doing documentation, communicating with other providers, and the time my business office staff spends sending out bills. I have no control over what I get paid for my time, either. The insurance companies, Medicare and Medicaid tell me what theywill pay be, and I can accept it or find a different line of work. About 10% of my patient services end up being done for free. Last year I made $34000 so I ain't getting rich, but it's enough to comfortably keep my mortgage, health insurance, my ISP bill and DSL, groceries, etc., paid. Do I worry about getting paid for everything I do? Not a bit. I figure it all works out in the end. I benefit tremendously from the works of programmers creating software under the GPL. I hope that someone benefits from my pro bono work. I wrote some stuff in my field and made it available under the GFDL because I believe in the freedom of information (even though the GFDL is not really suited to that purpose. Maybe we need a GNU Free Science License). Lots of people do pro bono work- lawyers, tax accountants, people who volunteer for their churches, etc. Maybe you do the same. IMHO that makes the world go 'round more than commerce. As a wise man pointed out, competition isn't what improves the breed- cooperation is what makes for real improvements. I've got little sympathy for Bill Gates, who has indulged in monopolistic practices and has arguably broken the law in doing so. In this letter we see the seeds of that attitude (and possibly of taking $40000 worth of computer time from someone- did he pay for that time?). That you or someone else thinks he's justified in that attitude contributes to rapacious business behavior and helps make the world a worse place.
There you have Bill Gates's basic view of the world: "I've done all this work and you owe me." Maybe he still thinks that way; I've never met him so I dunno. Well, he's been paid back a few times over for his investment. I am always struck by his line "The value of the computer time we have used exceeds $40,000." Note that he doesn't say that it *cost* him $40,000, only that the value of the time exceeded that amount. What's up with that? Where'd he get that computer time and who paid for it?
I've used Macs since 1986 and I think we are far too smug about virus, trojans and other malware. We think that we are invulnerable, and someone is going to write up a nasty little piece of software that's gonna get us. No doubt about it, and it could even be today. Who knows? There are a number of proprietary antivirus packages (Virex, etc) but there is also a free tool- clamXav which has a Cocoa wrapper around the clamav package. It's not fully integrated yet, e.g., AFAIK you can't automatically pipe e-mail through it from Mail.app, but it's a start.
It's been a while since I read an apologia for Microsoft and the assertion that it is not a monopoly. Despite the author's claims, Microsoft still engages in monopolistic practices- including one that is erroneously described as a non-monopolistic practice, which is undercutting the competition whenever possible. The original article uses a too-narrow definition of "monopoly" and then mischaracterizes classic monopolistic practices as non-monopolistic practices. The only reason to do this is to distort reality into a shape mroe to Bill Gates's liking.
From the reports on VersionTracker, the OS X version seems to be badly broken. Whether that's a problem with the Yahoo! programming team's work or with Apple's implementation of Java, I don't know.