The scarcity lies in the ability to create the stuff, not the stuff once it's created.
This is what RMS is overlooking. Not all the software that could be written has been written, thus there is scarcity. The laws of physics exitsted long before there was any information about those laws that people could get. Once people started researching those laws, information was created, and was held by those people. That doesn't mean others can't do their own research and create their own information. Your confusing what the information is about with the information its self.
Copyright. How should copyright work? Well, you've begged the crap out of this question. Whether it's your property depends on whether the government grants you a monopoly on the information you've assembled into a finished work. I think the FSF folks are saying that locking up information and giving somoene a monopoly on it should be invalid because it creates an impermissible monopoly on information which is not scarce.
I don't know who told RMS that there was now scarcity in information, but they were are flat out wrong. I pay for information all the time, at school, watching the news, reading slashdot and seeing the ads. The economics of information, it's costs, and scarcity is well known and well written about. Start digging, and you'll find it. Of course you may have to pay for it....
At least give the users a little respect. After all, why create software, if not for the users? Oh yes... for the cash. I find that position distasteful indeed.
You find the idea that a person wants/needs to feed his/her family distateful? I find that offensive.
Property rights make some sense when they are attached to items that are scarce. Information, however, is not naturally scarce (although the ability to create it may be).
Who told you that information wasn't scarce? You are completely wrong, this is why you PAY for an education, this is why you PAY for software, newspapers, etc. Not all the software that could exist does exist, that is why there is scarcity in software ESR has no understanding of basic economics, and he often speaks out side of his own expertise.
And what do the providers do once they've spent their entire start up capital on their own gigabit connection (you know, something with more QoS than Ethernet and therefore a higher pricetag) just so people don't bitch about their service being slow?
You hit the nail on the head in part here. You can keep adding and adding bandwidth, but your still going to have some of the same old problems you always did because of IP. IP packets get sent along and bounce through routers in a way known as "best effort". Meaning that some packets may get there before others, or may not. What is really needed is mass implementation of some of the new Qos protocols like MPLS. Then we can actaully take advantage of the bandwidth.
As a techie, you will learn the basics of business, and economics. This will cover all areas like Marketing/sales, Finance and Accounting, operations, Human Resources, etc. Primarily though, what you will learn,is that despite what you have believed since becoming a techie, and despite what other techies have told you, the other people in the company are not all idiots. You will eventaully come to respect the level of knowledge and complexity that many other jobs in a company require. You will be able to then have a 10,000 foot view from which you can see techie jobs, as they relate to an organization, and even to the economy as a whole. I say go for it, it will change the way you think!
What, is Magic Fairy Ballmer suppose to tap public domain code with his Magic Wand XP and make it go *poof*?
Didn't the DOJ take that away from him?
Sure, any company can take the public domain code and use it in a closed source product. And any developer who wants to can fork the code and use the derivative in a GPL'd product, too, and the bright warm glow that is Free Software will shine on that fork, and keep it safe happily ever after. *grin*
I think that many people, mostly non programmers, and people who just plain don't understand what public domain is make this mistake. They think that a closed source programmer can take the code, and make a change, put their copyright on it and do a copyright -r (recursive copyright). Everyone wakes up and can't find the source, because someone closed all the source. I don't know if you have ever noticed, but it is nearly impossible to convince some people that the above scenario can't happen. Oh well.
You're exactly right. Microsoft seems to believe that the Linux community has some obligation to make the source code available to them for easy integration.
In the reverse, many believe that all source code should be available to the end user for easy integration. It's called the "Free software Movement".
This is simply irrational. Linux is a competitor to Microsoft, as they have stated countless times. Does Microsoft complain that IBM doesn't make the source of (current) versions of OS/2 avaible or Apple the proprietary bits. No, because they are twisting the facts.
Perhaps both groups are being irrational(microsoft, and the free software movement).
when we look back 100 years from now, we'll all know how the DMCA attempted to steal our rights and how a case (maybe not the 2600 one) stood up and challenged the unconstitutional aspects of the DMCA and won.
We need to remember that DVD's are just a product. If you don't like the product, and you don't buy it, the DMCA steals nothing. What happens if in the future we are allowed to copy DVD's with ease, and if then piracy runs rampant. Woudn't the industry abandon DVDs? Then we wouldn't get the movies at all.
Re:Broadcast TV generally isn't worth it anyways
on
Digital TV Approaches
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· Score: 1
TV pretty much sucks, I don't watch much TV to start with, and if the manufacturers want to restrict my use of the media further, I will watch even less. That's the beauty of this situation, no one has a gun to our heads, if you don't like it, don't buy it. Sometimes slashdot confuses me, regarding this issue, the attitude is that we all *have* to watch TV, so this really sucks. What the hell is wrong with people here. Just turn the TV off.
This is why the GPL is immoral, it believes that it can control the bits. Look if you want to go down this road, fine, you just have to be willing to live with the consequeces. If people can't make a living doing something, then you remove a heck of a wholle lot of incentives to create them. Like if all code released is public doamin, then many people wont make code who otherwise would.
That's a very modern outlook and discounts much of the history of art.
Well the Greeks understood the distinction, and maybe even the Egyptions. The Egyptions used to take liberty with the pictures of their rulers, thus implying certian things about the ruler in a "non-realistic" painting. The Chiniese also made the distinction. There is a difference between producing something for beatuy, and producing something that has meaning. This doesn't discount or diminish what the poeples of the world have created, it is just a classification. This is the classical view of art, and really isn't very modern.
Well, there is a further classification if you will in art. Artist and artisain. Art isn't something that is beautiful to look at, it must have "meaning" to be art Much art has no beauty, maybe it is even sickening, but it has a message for the viewer. An artisain is interested in conveying beauty/elegance. This is why art movements like abstract expressionism are art, and wildlife "art" isn't. So I would disagree that code could ever be art, maybe it's sometimes beautiful, but its not art. So if video game art has to have meaning to be art, are the people creating it artists? Probably not. They are artisians. This may seem like splitting hairs, but it is really an important distinction for society to have.
Java support being about the only thing keeping me using NS4.x. . .
Works better then NS4.x and yes i'm talking about the x86 Linux version. It uses the jkd1.3 jvm from sun. Just get the browser and go to a java site like java.sun.com, a popup will ask you if you wish to install the jdk plugin say yes, and your done. I use the nighly builds, and i'll never go back to Netscape 4x
Thank you so much for posting this. It's time people begin to realize that many who are involved in the "open source" movement not only do not endorse the GPL, but actaully despise it.
No, the GPL is concerned with forcing open other code. It is concerned with telling me that I can can't use GPL code unless I am willing to GPL my entire application. So I have a choice: release under GPL, or reinvent the wheel. I've done both, myself, but I really don't like the choice, either be forced to release GPL because I have no other option, or take the inefficient route of rewriting code I could have reused. (This is the viral nature that you deny; you claim it keeps software in the OSS community. What, if MS incorporates BSD code it will suddenly disappear from millions of computers? The difference between GPL and BSD is that GPL will infect other code, thus forcing the choice.)
My morality never lets me just take the easy way out and use the GPL. It is just better to rewrite it and remove the virus. I think people will sooner or later wake up to what the GPL is, and see that it is in fact slavery and not freedom at all.
Good points! However, for scenes like: Actor sits in front of a terminal and writes code while camera pans around, sitting someone down at a real terminal, opening up an editor (ok, if you used vim you'd have to hit "a" for them:) and having them look intense and type while the cameraman wanders around them wouldn't be too bad.
Oh man, I hope I never acutally pay to see a movie where I watch someone code. Oh crap, he didn't terminate his statement, the killer is going to get him now......
Ok, so then the trains, have piplines on them that hookup to the ah... Wait no the trains are actually giant piplines that aren't then trains... Or maybe what your saying can't possibly have derived from the article about trains in the first place.
Not really. If that were true, software companies would never go out of business. In fact I will charge as much as the market will bear, and if that covers my costs plus normal profit I stay in business, if not I go bust unless I have other revenue sources.
Software companies do go out of business producing software, because you are completly ignoring the fixed cost of producing that software. Software is scarce, not all software that can be produced has been produced.
The problem is that decisions are made on marginal profit. With free software, once the software is released under a free license the supply is infinitely price elastic - as much will be produced as anyone could please. What we have here is a kind of mirror to Ricardo's analysis of rent.
oh great now we can argue about Ricardo's theories. Not Now, and not here.
One other thing that you are doing, is taking a snapshot in time of software production, software looses it's value rather quickly, because of the alternatives to that software(linux 1.0 does in fact have an almost 0 market value). Linus is continously dumping his new software on the market below cost(his software does not reflect the costs of producing it), every time he releases a bug fix, or a new version. He is doing what microsoft did to netscape, he competes unfairly with his competition.
Even as a keynesian, you must admit that there is scarcity for software, since not all the software that could be made has been made.
Not all the software that could be made has been made, thus there is scarcity for software. If there were no scarcity in software, it would be free just like air. As in "yea i'll pay you to make me something that I can already get for free". Also, software prices are no less exempt from reflecting this scarcity then anything else. The cost of producing the software, is reflected in the price. If you get no payment/utility from making your software then you loose the oportunity cost value for that software. I have no idea were the hell your getting this sofware has no market value thing. The market value for something is determined by what people will pay for it. It I could and did sell bottled air for $100 then that's the market value.
Wow an explanation of the effecient market hypothesis on slashdot. Makes me want for my school days. The truth of the matter for me at least as a software engineer, is that as much as the new advances in computer science are very interesting, I still look back to my undergraduate days studying Econ as the most mind blowing. Of course I always then get a little chuckle when I hear open source as some how new and ground braking. I guess it just goes to show that the world of knowledge is so vast, that some things rather simple sometimes ideas have a hard tome breaking through to other disciplines.
Well, after you read slashdot for a while you realize that slashdoters seem to think that they are experts in everything. After all nothing can be more compicated then computers, and we understand them. After a while you just get used to the puffery, and see it as entertainment, and just humorous.
It explicitly, takes away your freedom to choose how you want to release your software that uses other GPL software. The GPL isn't really any different from any commercail license. Truly free software is released to the publlic domain. I don't think anyone could argue otherwise.
RMS views software in a moral and principled manner. This bothers you, because you don't do so, and you don't even want to be reminded of moral distinctions.
RMS doesn't view software in a moral and principal manner, or maybe he does and doesn't realize where he went wrong. The source for commercial software is available, you just have to be willing to reimburse it's owner for the value that the source has. RMS's doesn't know it, but his real problem isn't with "closed source", it's with pricing. In fact it can be said that RMS and the open source movement are waging an immoral economic war against those who wish to make a living producing software, all because RMS doesn't like the pricing structure of software. Make no mistake about it, free software competes unfarily with commercial products that reflect the price to produce it. This is an economic war of dumping, and is immoral. You see it can be just as easy to take an oposing view and the moral high ground from Mr. Stallman.
After looking at freshmeat, it is difficult to not accept the authors conclusions. There is a fundamental difference between oss and comercial software. Comercial software is made because other people want it. If no one wants the software, they don't buy it, and the whole thing ends.
Oss is made by one individual to scratch their itch. This means that the end product will be different, since the motivations are different. If I want to solve a problem that I see in a oss project, I want to solve it yes, but I also want to do the fun parts too. So why not start from scratch. Still if you take a look at all the software that is available, you can put a linux distribution together that will probably be "what people want" like Red Hat does, or Suse, or....
Slashdot Mirror
This is what RMS is overlooking. Not all the software that could be written has been written, thus there is scarcity. The laws of physics exitsted long before there was any information about those laws that people could get. Once people started researching those laws, information was created, and was held by those people. That doesn't mean others can't do their own research and create their own information. Your confusing what the information is about with the information its self.
I don't know who told RMS that there was now scarcity in information, but they were are flat out wrong. I pay for information all the time, at school, watching the news, reading slashdot and seeing the ads. The economics of information, it's costs, and scarcity is well known and well written about. Start digging, and you'll find it. Of course you may have to pay for it....
You find the idea that a person wants/needs to feed his/her family distateful? I find that offensive.
Who told you that information wasn't scarce? You are completely wrong, this is why you PAY for an education, this is why you PAY for software, newspapers, etc. Not all the software that could exist does exist, that is why there is scarcity in software ESR has no understanding of basic economics, and he often speaks out side of his own expertise.
You hit the nail on the head in part here. You can keep adding and adding bandwidth, but your still going to have some of the same old problems you always did because of IP. IP packets get sent along and bounce through routers in a way known as "best effort". Meaning that some packets may get there before others, or may not. What is really needed is mass implementation of some of the new Qos protocols like MPLS. Then we can actaully take advantage of the bandwidth.
As a techie, you will learn the basics of business, and economics. This will cover all areas like Marketing/sales, Finance and Accounting, operations, Human Resources, etc. Primarily though, what you will learn,is that despite what you have believed since becoming a techie, and despite what other techies have told you, the other people in the company are not all idiots. You will eventaully come to respect the level of knowledge and complexity that many other jobs in a company require. You will be able to then have a 10,000 foot view from which you can see techie jobs, as they relate to an organization, and even to the economy as a whole. I say go for it, it will change the way you think!
Didn't the DOJ take that away from him?
Sure, any company can take the public domain code and use it in a closed source product. And any developer who wants to can fork the code and use the derivative in a GPL'd product, too, and the bright warm glow that is Free Software will shine on that fork, and keep it safe happily ever after. *grin*
I think that many people, mostly non programmers, and people who just plain don't understand what public domain is make this mistake. They think that a closed source programmer can take the code, and make a change, put their copyright on it and do a copyright -r (recursive copyright). Everyone wakes up and can't find the source, because someone closed all the source. I don't know if you have ever noticed, but it is nearly impossible to convince some people that the above scenario can't happen. Oh well.
In the reverse, many believe that all source code should be available to the end user for easy integration. It's called the "Free software Movement".
This is simply irrational. Linux is a competitor to Microsoft, as they have stated countless times. Does Microsoft complain that IBM doesn't make the source of (current) versions of OS/2 avaible or Apple the proprietary bits. No, because they are twisting the facts.
Perhaps both groups are being irrational(microsoft, and the free software movement).
We need to remember that DVD's are just a product. If you don't like the product, and you don't buy it, the DMCA steals nothing. What happens if in the future we are allowed to copy DVD's with ease, and if then piracy runs rampant. Woudn't the industry abandon DVDs? Then we wouldn't get the movies at all.
TV pretty much sucks, I don't watch much TV to start with, and if the manufacturers want to restrict my use of the media further, I will watch even less. That's the beauty of this situation, no one has a gun to our heads, if you don't like it, don't buy it. Sometimes slashdot confuses me, regarding this issue, the attitude is that we all *have* to watch TV, so this really sucks. What the hell is wrong with people here. Just turn the TV off.
This is why the GPL is immoral, it believes that it can control the bits. Look if you want to go down this road, fine, you just have to be willing to live with the consequeces. If people can't make a living doing something, then you remove a heck of a wholle lot of incentives to create them. Like if all code released is public doamin, then many people wont make code who otherwise would.
Well the Greeks understood the distinction, and maybe even the Egyptions. The Egyptions used to take liberty with the pictures of their rulers, thus implying certian things about the ruler in a "non-realistic" painting. The Chiniese also made the distinction. There is a difference between producing something for beatuy, and producing something that has meaning. This doesn't discount or diminish what the poeples of the world have created, it is just a classification. This is the classical view of art, and really isn't very modern.
Well, there is a further classification if you will in art. Artist and artisain. Art isn't something that is beautiful to look at, it must have "meaning" to be art Much art has no beauty, maybe it is even sickening, but it has a message for the viewer. An artisain is interested in conveying beauty/elegance. This is why art movements like abstract expressionism are art, and wildlife "art" isn't. So I would disagree that code could ever be art, maybe it's sometimes beautiful, but its not art. So if video game art has to have meaning to be art, are the people creating it artists? Probably not. They are artisians. This may seem like splitting hairs, but it is really an important distinction for society to have.
Works better then NS4.x and yes i'm talking about the x86 Linux version. It uses the jkd1.3 jvm from sun. Just get the browser and go to a java site like java.sun.com, a popup will ask you if you wish to install the jdk plugin say yes, and your done. I use the nighly builds, and i'll never go back to Netscape 4x
No, the GPL is concerned with forcing open other code. It is concerned with telling me that I can can't use GPL code unless I am willing to GPL my entire application. So I have a choice: release under GPL, or reinvent the wheel. I've done both, myself, but I really don't like the choice, either be forced to release GPL because I have no other option, or take the inefficient route of rewriting code I could have reused. (This is the viral nature that you deny; you claim it keeps software in the OSS community. What, if MS incorporates BSD code it will suddenly disappear from millions of computers? The difference between GPL and BSD is that GPL will infect other code, thus forcing the choice.)
My morality never lets me just take the easy way out and use the GPL. It is just better to rewrite it and remove the virus. I think people will sooner or later wake up to what the GPL is, and see that it is in fact slavery and not freedom at all.
Oh man, I hope I never acutally pay to see a movie where I watch someone code. Oh crap, he didn't terminate his statement, the killer is going to get him now......
Ok, so then the trains, have piplines on them that hookup to the ah... Wait no the trains are actually giant piplines that aren't then trains... Or maybe what your saying can't possibly have derived from the article about trains in the first place.
Software companies do go out of business producing software, because you are completly ignoring the fixed cost of producing that software. Software is scarce, not all software that can be produced has been produced.
The problem is that decisions are made on marginal profit. With free software, once the software is released under a free license the supply is infinitely price elastic - as much will be produced as anyone could please. What we have here is a kind of mirror to Ricardo's analysis of rent.
oh great now we can argue about Ricardo's theories. Not Now, and not here.
One other thing that you are doing, is taking a snapshot in time of software production, software looses it's value rather quickly, because of the alternatives to that software(linux 1.0 does in fact have an almost 0 market value). Linus is continously dumping his new software on the market below cost(his software does not reflect the costs of producing it), every time he releases a bug fix, or a new version. He is doing what microsoft did to netscape, he competes unfairly with his competition.
Even as a keynesian, you must admit that there is scarcity for software, since not all the software that could be made has been made.
Not all the software that could be made has been made, thus there is scarcity for software. If there were no scarcity in software, it would be free just like air. As in "yea i'll pay you to make me something that I can already get for free". Also, software prices are no less exempt from reflecting this scarcity then anything else. The cost of producing the software, is reflected in the price. If you get no payment/utility from making your software then you loose the oportunity cost value for that software. I have no idea were the hell your getting this sofware has no market value thing. The market value for something is determined by what people will pay for it. It I could and did sell bottled air for $100 then that's the market value.
Wow an explanation of the effecient market hypothesis on slashdot. Makes me want for my school days. The truth of the matter for me at least as a software engineer, is that as much as the new advances in computer science are very interesting, I still look back to my undergraduate days studying Econ as the most mind blowing. Of course I always then get a little chuckle when I hear open source as some how new and ground braking. I guess it just goes to show that the world of knowledge is so vast, that some things rather simple sometimes ideas have a hard tome breaking through to other disciplines.
Well, after you read slashdot for a while you realize that slashdoters seem to think that they are experts in everything. After all nothing can be more compicated then computers, and we understand them. After a while you just get used to the puffery, and see it as entertainment, and just humorous.
It explicitly, takes away your freedom to choose how you want to release your software that uses other GPL software. The GPL isn't really any different from any commercail license. Truly free software is released to the publlic domain. I don't think anyone could argue otherwise.
RMS doesn't view software in a moral and principal manner, or maybe he does and doesn't realize where he went wrong. The source for commercial software is available, you just have to be willing to reimburse it's owner for the value that the source has. RMS's doesn't know it, but his real problem isn't with "closed source", it's with pricing. In fact it can be said that RMS and the open source movement are waging an immoral economic war against those who wish to make a living producing software, all because RMS doesn't like the pricing structure of software. Make no mistake about it, free software competes unfarily with commercial products that reflect the price to produce it. This is an economic war of dumping, and is immoral. You see it can be just as easy to take an oposing view and the moral high ground from Mr. Stallman.
I don't know what you mean. The reason that you don't see windows1.0 and 2.0 anymore, is because nobody wants it. So 1.0 and 2.0 ended.
After looking at freshmeat, it is difficult to not accept the authors conclusions. There is a fundamental difference between oss and comercial software. Comercial software is made because other people want it. If no one wants the software, they don't buy it, and the whole thing ends. Oss is made by one individual to scratch their itch. This means that the end product will be different, since the motivations are different. If I want to solve a problem that I see in a oss project, I want to solve it yes, but I also want to do the fun parts too. So why not start from scratch. Still if you take a look at all the software that is available, you can put a linux distribution together that will probably be "what people want" like Red Hat does, or Suse, or ....