No one said they were. But as the OSI definition is the longest standing and it is a definition that really has ever been challenged except by proponents of close software, the attempt to redefine results in confusion as the the real meaning of open source and foss and the GPL. It is like working away at the chink in the armor. Sooner or later it'll bust unless you have knowledgeable folks repairing it.
OSI is not some random organization that popped up and created a website. Proponents of open source are not fascists. There's no religious ferver here. The individuals are simply protecting their homes. This is where they live when it comes to their community spirit. Soon you'll be redefining their definitions of terroristic toward Microsoft. It is insanely stupid to do so but once you attack and the open source folks defend sooner or later the battle will get much more heated and we'll begin to see terms like terrorism used in software because one party wants to ensure that their homeland is safe.
This is not an open source project and doesn't meet the established definition, one which has been long standing for years and has not been challenged except by a company that has stated they are hell bent on destroying "open source" and is a convicted monopolist. We aren't going to get a court ruling on the term "open source" and those that established it are the ones to define it. Just as I write the book I have the right to name it. BTW, did the court give Websters the right to define words? Or Blacks? I think it is that these were the first entrants and they have been accepted for years. They didn't form some world wide standards organization to create their dictionaries (legal the Blacks law dictionary, or Websters for the English language).
You can't redefine it because you disagree with the meaning given to it by those that invented it.
What it actually means is that the term has been used for a very long time, and in being so, has a well established meaning. It is so established that the term "open source" has been written down in order to better establish for others precisely what it means. This is not the only organization that essentially supports their definition. In fact, up till your posts (and it is your posts that have been repeatedly made in this thread) the true ownership of the term and its meaning even by opensource.org has not been challenged. So, for years this definition has stood without challenge and today we have you attempting to help Microsoft redefine the true meaning of the word.
I think I'll take the opensource.org definition of the term over you and over Microsoft (which has a long history of "embrace, estend, extinguish"), and of being a convicted monopolist. To top that off, if anyone from any other organization that has been involved in "open source" were to give a better definition we could examine and debate its true meaning. But as we well know that Open Source is not a new term, and this term and definition has been accepted for years, and no other entity has attempted to supplant the definition of the term (except for the company that claims they are going to kill open source and has a history of "embrace, extend, extinguish", and is a convicted monopolist) one can only conclude that upon reflection the term as it is defined by the opensource.org is the only correct (and true) definition.
You are saying you can come in and redefine a term that has long been established and defined. There is little to no evidence that anyone else has challenged that opensource.org term definition.
Because of the fact that Microsoft stated last year that they were going to kill open source. Following this was the fact that they attempted to redefine with Open Source meant in hopes of confusing business and taking over the concept for themselves. If they get Business believing that their use of the term is the proper one then busienss will believe in Microsoft's and the true open source will be obfuscated. Not only that, there are other Kernels with the appropriate source code that these individuals can look at and learn from. The Linux is just one of them. BEOS? BSD? Others? So, to introduce their training kernel is sort of crazy.
Linus Torvald already dumped on Microsoft's kernel model a couple of months ago. He essentially stated in the past that the concepts regarding kernel development had been sufficiently fleshed out and defined 40+ years ago. He also stated that Microsoft's implementation was insufficient and monolithic in that it tied developers to multiple APIs (as each one is modified down the road you have to retain the old API too or you break lots of things from 3rd party developers).
What is being said here is that their offering is meaningless. It is an attempt to do nothing more than to get people looking at their code for reasons not entirely obvious to everyone today. I'm saying that there are other Kernel source code projects that are tight and secure that these individuals could learn from instead of potentially putting themselves into the "Microsoft" mode of development.
We don't want a company known to threaten others associated with Open source because their offerings could do nothing but taint the waters.
I tend to conclude that he is some shill of Microsoft and he's attempting to redefine what has long been established--the meaning of open source in the true sense of open source. The term Open Source was not coined yesterday or last year by Microsoft. It has been a term in long standing use without challenge for years.
Microsoft will soon say that they own the trade mark "open source" and challenge everyone on the issue in the years to come.
Honestly, all this bantering about is actually in support of "Open Source" as it will show a prior history, a long standing us of the term, and of course the ideas being it. There's no reason not to debate but to put out butt ugly confusion in order to further the convicted monopolist is just wrong.
If people want to learn about modern secure kernels they can look at the real thing. The Linux kernel's source is freely available, can be freely modified, and distributed.
Microsoft's offering is meaningless in that context. As has been said in prior posts here in this thread, it is possible that just looking at the source and learning form it and then using it in a competing product could cause situations where the legal scumbags use it against any true attempt at open source.
I don't agree, this is Opened Source, not Open Source. The definition is the one used by those that created it to begin with.
Microsoft stated last year that they'd be killing Open Source. This is an attempt by them to redefine the term. We had this discussion last year about how Microsoft's use of the term hurt the definition and how business would react to those terms. Our discussions mean nothing to Microsoft, so they have simply continued in hopes that the legions of ill informed could further their redefinition. History is written by those who win the war. This is an attempt by Microsoft to win the war.
Open Source is precisely what the Opensource.org says it is.
Microsoft has simply opened the source. It is not Open Source in any remote way.
That doesn't even remotely resemble open source. It is NOT open source.
This is Microsoft's attempt to redefine what Open Source means. It is an aberration of their "embrace, extend, extinguish". They are trying to confuse the market into a non-understanding of what open source means.
That license is not even close to the GPL. People who develop for open source need to understand and spread the word that this is simply a matter of intentional obfuscation of the ideals behind open source and what it attempts to achieve. Giving up is giving in, so don't give up on spreading word.
You are absolutely correct, except for your last sentence. My post described what was happening and how the abuse was causing the demise of companies with great ideas that were being brought to market. Their demise didn't help us and give us cooler things. Often the ideas were dead-ended on purpose by Microsoft. Microsoft wanted to kill Pen Computing because they were an OS other than Microsoft that was directly competing. They killed Pen to kill a competing OS. They never came out with pen windows. Today we have similar touch based OSes and the hand held market that relies on touch input but in reality that's a far cry from what Pen Computing was trying to accomplish.
Another example of how your last sentence fails is Sun's Java and the idea of "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish". Java was a cross platform modular development system that would technically work in any OS on any browser. Back in the late 80s and early 90s there was talk that this object oriented pluggable apps would completely eliminate the need for an OS. Things could be snapped together and your services could be pick and choose. You wouldn't technically need a computer, just a dumb terminal. This was a direct threat to Microsoft's OS offerings. Microsoft responded accordingly. Even though the legal agreement between Sun and Microsoft dictated that Microsoft could not extend JAVA to be platform specific they still did it. Since Windows was the dominant OS at the time the extensions were gaining all the development attention. The cost was that the java applets were not useable on any platform other than Windows. This was completely contrary to what Sun wanted. It was part of Microsoft's "embrace, extend, extinguish" philosophy that we have all heard of. Sun sued Microsoft and Sun won. Microsoft was ordered by the court to remove the Microsoft specific Java VM from all windows installs. This is just one case where Microsoft's copying didn't benefit everyone by doing it their way. Instead we have what Sun wanted and though some debate the quality of Java others believe it is doing what it was intended. Even tho, Microsoft hasn't suffered as Java hasn't usurped the OS as they believed.
My post did touch on the concept that some ideas are obvious and thus you can't help but influence across platforms (closed and open). A computer needs the ability to type into it. Hence the editor/word processor. It is the epitome of calculation so thus we'd expect to see spreadsheet type applications. It is capable of storing, indexing, and retrieving large amounts of data in the fraction of the time a human could do it, thus we need a database. We'd need menus, dialog boxes, the ability to move things around, sound, video, etc. All of that is obvious. How it is done and how well it is done is another matter, but the ideas are the same.
When we consider IP lawsuits that are rife today we can see that these, in the long run, will (and do) stifle innovation, creativity and progress. A closed source company with IP hurts the industry. An open source company with IP is sort of an oxymoron (though probably not unheard of). In order to slow down and keep ideas from being "borrowed, begged, or stolen" the closed source world pushes for IP while those that are interested in just making product for everyone without (or with little cost) tend to stay away from IP. IP is being used to kill the "open". You can't be open if you have to license someone's IP. The patent trolls are taking advantage of this. Look at how the company that was recently in the news that consists of several ex-Microsoft employees from their IP legal department are buying IP in order to sue. They are after the quick extortion buck in hopes of suing you into compliance so you pay them money for something they didn't even create and potentially is so obvious as to be incredibly offensive to most techs. The multiple desktop features in the OS is one example of the patent trolls trying to kill open source.
Consider also that DOS was a derivative of the QDO
Lol, dude. You have a document created that you simply just do a search and replace of the name and then paste that into the reply section of the sites you visit?
Of course, none of it makes sense. It reminds me of when the weak AI programs were released in the early 80s where you would enter a question into a command line DOS program that program would respond with something that seemed to make sense. I remember buddies stating that if you couldn't tell it wasn't a human it was real AI. Anyone with a little spare time could query enough to realize it wasn't a human.
Microsoft used to contact companies during the 80s that were developing products. The ideas that were coming out were quite incredible. Pen computing was one of them. It was reported over and over again that Microsoft would ask for a presentation of the ideas of a given company's product and then a few months later announce that they were adding this or that feature into Windows. Why would anyone who was going after venture capital to bring a product to market survive with the dominant criminal monopolist announcing competing technologies to be incorporated into the OS? In the 80s this scenario played out endlessly.
This is what Microsoft did to pen computing. Do we have pen computing today? No. Because Microsoft announced pen windows. Pen computing died. Then so went pen windows.
Were some of these companies responsible for their actions? Absolutely. They helped their own demise. The lesson learned from Microsoft is not to demonstrate your product to them for they will steal the ideas, just as they are stealing the ideas of the open source community under the guise of learning from them and teaching back. Microsoft will not do anything for free.
Apple showed Microsoft their version of the Mac prior to the official release. They wanted Microsoft to develop their word processor and spreadsheet for it. Microsoft did that, but they also took all the ideas and made Windows. When confronted Gates simply slapped Jobs in the face telling him to grow up. What was Jobs to do? His product demanded applications and Microsoft was a leading developer, even though they'd purchased their Macintosh word and excel programs from other companies.
With open source it is still subject to the stealing of technological ideas from a closed source vendor but that's part of the benefit. Open Source benefits by the exposure of companies such as Microsoft stealing other's ideas instead of developing them themselves, which they seem nearly incapable of doing.
Essentially, Microsoft has created over the past 2 decades the air of distrust due to outright theft and manipulative practices that ultimately were deemed illegal by the court system.
What is best is that the open source community continue it's uninfluenced progress toward the time when all software is developed in the same manner.
Bottom line is that the OSS model will surpass the closed source model in time. It has no choice but to do that. Open cooperative community development has no choice but to meet and exceed that of the closed source model due primarily in that it is very evolutionary. The OSS industry will update faster (bug fixes and new features) than the closed source with the typical 18 month to 5 year product cycle of the closed source. Given time the OSS industry will create more useful features and modify those features over and over long before equivalent features will be available in the closed source market. It is like an organism that evolves more rapidly vs an organism that evolves in huge spurts with larger time intervals in-between. The organism with the shorter evolutionary steps has a greater possibility of finding flaws, correcting them, and creating new features and testing those.
Open source by its very nature will overcome monolithic development cycles of closed source, given enough time. Closed source doesn't have the time and can't experiment much. Open source has all the time in the world.
Let's also keep in mind that 1) Microsoft is a finite entity with limited number of developers and thus a limited number of ideas, where only so many of those limited ideas will pay off (this is why they steal everyone else's ideas). 2) The Open Source community has the resources of the community as it exists "world-wide" and thus has a significantly greater chance of coming up with new and unique ideas. 3) Some ideas are just obvious and that is why you see duplicity of ideas in each platform. These ideas tho can be extended and modified faster due to Open Source's ability to have more minds looking at the product and submitting coding ideas.
If any of you read the blogs of the ex-Microsofties that left just prior to or just after the Vista release you can see clearly that each developer in the Microsoft community is a microbe that has limited access to the brain and does what they are told even if the process is to redo and undo and redo the same thing again and again. This is certain to result in significant slow downs and even failures (as we have seen with Vista).
The Open Source model will succeed because it is designed to succeed whereas closed source practices dictated by a criminal monopolist to developers using their platform tools, etc., will result in systemic failure and their ultimate demise. How long will it take? It doesn't matter because the open source community has the time and the manpower.
Your comments are very educational. I would ask that you please not feed the Vole. We don't want to educate them. Let them falter and fall on their own. Why put more money into the hands of an abusive convicted monopolist? Don't put any more money in their hands by telling them where they are wrong. Sometimes it is just best to not say anything and let them falter and fall. They certainly won't point out what you don't understand, based on those same principles. They won't educate you, at least not for free, so don't feed the Vole.
Open Source has learned how a company can abuse their position, how a company can be a monopoly and make billions and then influence those who are elected into office to protect us. Those billions go a long way to influencing the lawmakers to push aside any attempt to make a better cheaper product.
It is ludicrous to think that a product that can be made cheaper and better should be put asunder because some powerful monopoly can influence the powers that be. There's no socialistic tendencies there. No communistic tendencies. It is pure capitalism that is being thwarted by Microsoft's practices. Microsoft is a bully, an entity that has one goal and that is to rake in all the money while destroying the competition and they are doing that with their monopoly.
Your privacy is being violated hundreds of millions of times a day by Microsoft with WGA/WGN and Vista's equivalent. They are able to get away with it because they don't take competition seriously because they don't have to. Would you go out and pay $2000 for a TV from Best Buy and then allow Best Buy to enter your home to verify that you didn't actually receive stolen property? What if they want to do that every week or every month (inspect your home for stolen goods)? What if they say that they'll do this with a hidden camera? Would you permit it? Say you buy frequently form Walmart. Would you permit Walmart to enter your home to inspect your property to prove you didn't steal it from the store? I think not. You wouldn't let your neighbor enter your home upon accusations that you stole something from him. You wouldn't let the police enter your home even if the neighbor filed a complaint.
What the open source community practices has learned is that Microsoft is the type of entity that uses "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" tactic to kill solid technology and those companies trying to bring them to market. The open source community has learned that Microsoft has threatened every Linux user with 235 alleged patents claiming everyone will have a price to pay to Microsoft, without Microsoft stating specifically what is being violated. This is like an oil company stating that they are going to sue car owners for using gasoline from one of their competitors because their competitor may have allegedly use some of the IP in the gas refining process. Then they threaten the car manufacturers or large companies that use that same gasoline with lawsuits if they don't stop using the competitors gasoline. Then they refuse to say which competitors and they refuse to say which IP has been violated. BTW, that IP was probably stolen by them to begin with.
We've learned from Microsoft that they will steal IP from small entities and when caught will ignore those companies request to have Microsoft pay up. Z4 Technologies is one of those companies. In this case Microsoft was contacted about their use of the IP developed by this firm for the purpose of over the internet product activation. According to the final ruling which went in favor of Z4 Microsoft knew they were in violation of the IP of Z4 and they continued to use it. During the trial they flooded the court and Z4 with paperwork in hopes of covering it up. The day before the trial began Z4 found the evidence. Z4 won the trial and were granted approximately $100 million. In the ruling the Judge noted numerous acts of misconduct on Microsoft's part and though he could have awarded 3 times the amount he only awarded an additional $25 million in special damages (which is no small amount by any measure). The Judge also noted that Microsoft had participated in these acts because they believe that Z4 was to small and to weak to defend their own IP. Upon appeal Microsoft lost with the Judge also noting the numerous acts of misconduct. With the latest appeal of this Microsoft lost that as well with all awards in tact.
But what you must understand from this is that Microsoft stole the IP of Z4 which Microsoft used to keep you from stealing their IP. So, they stole the technology
Just looking at gimp and the organizational misdirection I'd say that unless GIMP changes direction and attempts to be more user oriented it isn't worthy of more funding. For instance, I copied a simple picture from a web page into the cliboard and then attempted to paste it into gimp. GIMP says nothing in the clipboard. So, I go into open office and paste it in there without a hitch.
GIMP is confusing to me and seems non-standard. We got away from DOS due to the fact that all programs seemed to want to redesign the user interface. This was very inefficient. Granted windowed applications need to be redesigned every few years, such as the redesign elements found in photoshop (done by real design artists for design artists), it's not all bad. GIMP is providing a service and all and some of its redesign in terms of interface are good, but in reality to gain high public opinion it has to have a good user friendly design and work.
I did get some work done with gimp that Adobe elements couldn't handle and I was able to do it with very little extra work other than downloading some filters, so there are true advantages to an open source product.
All I'm really saying is that their direction just isn't good enough and maybe not far looking in order to predict what we will want in the future so why would we want to fund it?
I think a tremendous boon for Linux would be a full fledged version of Adobe photoshop products for Linux. It would add an air of legitimacy to commercial development on the platform if that were to occur.
I despise google's attempt to make google earth and picasa run on Linux via Wine. They shouldn't be out trying to support locking technologies from Microsoft, they should be out preparing equal products for both platforms native to each.
We can't live with Windows dominating us forever. There's no reason to give Microsoft this huge market forever. We will, if competition is true, see better products. Even if people are set in their ways there's really very little validity to your logic that we should just accept Widnows because it is the best way to hone our skills, to sell ourselves, and to make a living.
It may be true now, but in the long run it is fatalistic.
Tho he has given it some thought and at first glance it seems interesting, in reality it is an extremely sophomoric assessment.
The reason it hasn't picked up steam to become the most popular desktop OS is due to many factors, the least of which is what he states. One issue that OSS has to overcome is the free as in beer. The vast majority of people have no idea of ever bringing the beer to the party. They'll never ever participate in expanding Linux and no one wants to have to constantly go back to the trough to feed the linux guru's for support. I use Linux every day all day, and I can tell you that it isn't stable enough yet. Software updates break software at a uch faster rate than under Windows. This is due to software being updated much more frequently, but also due to the constant feeding at the trough. An example is this: in the last 2 weeks Ubuntu updated the xserver core 2 times and each time it broke the ability to log into your workstation. Then after that, within the same 2 week period, they updated the kernel which then broke the video for those using the nvidia provided drivers. You don't see this happen under Windows. NO it isn't windows but you don't expect to have to go back to the trough 3 times in 2 weeks to get your problems resolved. This happened to an older retired guy that hates Microsoft and wanted to give Linux a try. How do you think he felt about the situation? He was queesy about giving it a try as is, but when 3 problems that disabled his OS in 2 weeks occured, he was understandably reluctant.
When giving feedback to Canonical about it there's absolutely no guarantee they won't do it again.
Each time they update my kernel I have to modify my/boot/grub menu.lst file.
In the case of the older retired guy he had his/boo/grub/menu.lst file also modified inappropriately.
This is recent stuff. Other stuff over time is worse. But the idea is that though it is still good for a desktop user one must not do much modification from the default or the system become intolerant and the system fails when updates are available.
In the past, for instance, with mandrake (now mandriva) people paid a yearly subscription of $60.00. XP Home cost $99 as an upgrade. It has been in use by many for over 5 years. If someone paid the yearly fee for mandrake of $60.00 x 5 it would have cost them $300 to maintain their Linux. But XP Home would have cost them $99, less than 1/3 the cost.
For me, a small business owner, I use Linux all the time so my customers get a demo of what Linux can do on the desktop. They think it is just fantastic when they see it. So, why would they not adopt it? One reason is because they don't know it exists. Most people don't know that Linux exists. The second reason is that they already paid for Windows, so why would they want to abandon what they paid for when Linux, to them, is unproven and they won't be able to run their old software.
The author is very immature in his reasoning. He doesn't understand about the complexity of using FOSS where some of the zealots are still "all free or nothing" in their attitude. In every environment we can have commercial mixed with free. I expect that the games that come out, such as ET:QW (which has a native Linux client), I will pay for that. I don't expect the commercial organization to make software for me for free.
The software industry (as well as the hardware) commercial or not has the perception that the FOSS guys will write the drivers, etc, so there's no need to put any effort into it. You see this all the time. Why would they be willing to put effort into something when the foss boys are saying "all free or nothing" and then they write drivers (even if those drivers are only partial implementations)?
One can see the issue is very complex and not easily understood, and that it has very little to do with the perception that software that costs money is perceived to have greater value. The factor of it coming fro
He wasn't noticing smell from outer space. He was noticing something permeating the environment that might have come from a gas floating in space. Since there is no air in space there's no odor. Odor is just molecules of matter floating in some form of gas. He was smelling a blob of gas.
Since there is no air in outer space there is no sound either.
It is best that people know. It is important that the average person gets the word of alternatives, of the fact that Microsoft is essentially spying on them, and that Vista is full of all sorts of vulnerabilities. The best choice is the alternative. By having it entrenched into our minds we can more likely speak more fluidly to our family members and business associates about the alternatives. The 47 programs that monitor you, collect data about you, and send that back to Microsoft is important to know. To let open the blinds so people can more clearly see how Microsoft is spying in through the window.
The RIAA folks are infantile in their comprehension. Filters and encryption can be broken so fast it'll make their heads spin. They are spending so much money trying to kill off piracy that they lost track of the idea of providing us something that is a benefit above and beyond piracy.
These guys are total infantile dorks. They have no idea what they are up against. How could anyone get into a position of authority with absolutely no clue as to what is going on and be able to give such a suggestion in the face of odds that they are not likely to win against. They can't win this way. They need to win another way. Give everyone something above and beyond the basic song. And, how about paying the artists and the song writers their true due. Stop stealing from the artists and song writers and stop suing people and maybe you'll overcome some of your woes. I personally would start buying music again (I stopped when I heard they were suing people). Now that I know they aren't compensating the artists properly and are trying to steal from the song writers, I have no choice but to stand by my decision not to put any more money into their hands.
This was my question also. It will essentially kill this product. Microsoft is not going to take this product and sell it. They will forcefully convert any customer to Microsoft's offering and they will kill the product, period.
They aren't paying $44 billion for zimbra, it's just an added nicety to make the pill go down a bit easier. The end of Zimbra is the end of one product capable of competing on that front.
If we view this form Google's perspective (if they were to buy it) we'd see an advancement of the product. As I suspect, a lot of what Yahoo uses that's open source will be abandoned in favor of using Microsoft's stuff. This will be a rather big blow to open source because Yahoo uses more open source than just Zimbra.
Someone want to answer why this gets any press? Microsoft will do anything and say anything to get their way. Everyone should understand the way Microsoft is. They have damaged our industry and stifled the advancements for the past decade. Why should anyone care how they feel or what they lose? We all need to grow up and come to grips with the fact that there are other operating systems out there and other standards that we should be supporting. We should be staying away from Microsoft. They are like the Bush presidency. We don't need their ideas or direction any longer. We will advance farther and do more if we can get competitive companies all working on new technologies instead of sitting at Microsoft's feet.
Compared to KDE this is a non-update. It is almost irrelevant. One need not even look at it. I'm a gnome user and that's my opinion. There are tons of features they could add but mostly they could seriously fix the issues they have with it.
That question is irrelevant. The vast majority of individuals have no idea that the software is installed. Of those that bought the computer from a pre-fab organization such as Dell or HP, most have no idea that the software is on their computer collecting the information and sending it back. Of those that purchased the upgrade to XP they also have very little idea that the software was installed.
Why would the question of who installed the software be relevant? The question is who built it into the operating system in an effort to spy on the users, control the users, and correct the user.
Any monitoring activity should be done under warrant. Any access to the information outside the warrant should be done by subpoena. The information on our computers regardless of who installed it is ours. What we do is our business. If we steal it is up to the proper authorities to intercede and take action with due process. It is not up to some private entity become the police in such a way as to violate our privacy.
The EU is in the process of enforcing the idea that the IP is private personal information and should not be maintained. This will somewhat put an end to Microsoft's attempts in Europe but it will hardly help the Americans.
Suffice it to say it is wrong of them to have the software running our our computers without even knowing it is illegal and becoming more so in various other countries. People should be working hard to protect their privacy and the privacy of their family and friends. We should not let a convicted monopolist enter our homes to monitor our use and in some cases interfere with our use of the computer and the information on it.
So, 47 programs to monitor us is wrong. To collect information and send it back is wrong. To do so without the users knowledge is illegal. No to mention immoral. Our privacy is much more important than Microsoft's profit. Period!
And this is why he has installed 47 programs under Vista that spy on you and report back data to Microsoft? He's seeing the world more clearly?
You would let Walmart come into your home and monitor you to ensure that you aren't stealing store goods? You would let them do this with hidden cameras? You would let the government put a monitor in your car to allow them to watch whether you are speeding and to have the police roam through your neighborhood to collect (remotely) the data about your speeding and to send you a bill, revoke your license, or lock your car down permanently?
How is any of this different than Microsoft's using their WGA program to monitor you on a regular basis to determine if you are stealing from them? Your computer is an extension of your home and it is just as entitled to the protection of the laws which govern your privacy as any other. Yet, you buy and support software from a man that derided the early users groups as thieves because they copied the paper tapes that were used to input the code to make basic run on early computers, all the while he illegally used the Harvard computers (along with giving non-student access to Paul Allen) to make that product, which really was just a copy/knock off of the product developed by two professors at another university.
You say he's changed yet your privacy and the accusations are wider and louder than ever before, all the while the majority of people in the US are still at poverty level and the economy is nosediving.
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No one said they were. But as the OSI definition is the longest standing and it is a definition that really has ever been challenged except by proponents of close software, the attempt to redefine results in confusion as the the real meaning of open source and foss and the GPL. It is like working away at the chink in the armor. Sooner or later it'll bust unless you have knowledgeable folks repairing it.
OSI is not some random organization that popped up and created a website. Proponents of open source are not fascists. There's no religious ferver here. The individuals are simply protecting their homes. This is where they live when it comes to their community spirit. Soon you'll be redefining their definitions of terroristic toward Microsoft. It is insanely stupid to do so but once you attack and the open source folks defend sooner or later the battle will get much more heated and we'll begin to see terms like terrorism used in software because one party wants to ensure that their homeland is safe.
This is not an open source project and doesn't meet the established definition, one which has been long standing for years and has not been challenged except by a company that has stated they are hell bent on destroying "open source" and is a convicted monopolist. We aren't going to get a court ruling on the term "open source" and those that established it are the ones to define it. Just as I write the book I have the right to name it. BTW, did the court give Websters the right to define words? Or Blacks? I think it is that these were the first entrants and they have been accepted for years. They didn't form some world wide standards organization to create their dictionaries (legal the Blacks law dictionary, or Websters for the English language).
You can't redefine it because you disagree with the meaning given to it by those that invented it.
What it actually means is that the term has been used for a very long time, and in being so, has a well established meaning. It is so established that the term "open source" has been written down in order to better establish for others precisely what it means. This is not the only organization that essentially supports their definition. In fact, up till your posts (and it is your posts that have been repeatedly made in this thread) the true ownership of the term and its meaning even by opensource.org has not been challenged. So, for years this definition has stood without challenge and today we have you attempting to help Microsoft redefine the true meaning of the word.
I think I'll take the opensource.org definition of the term over you and over Microsoft (which has a long history of "embrace, estend, extinguish"), and of being a convicted monopolist. To top that off, if anyone from any other organization that has been involved in "open source" were to give a better definition we could examine and debate its true meaning. But as we well know that Open Source is not a new term, and this term and definition has been accepted for years, and no other entity has attempted to supplant the definition of the term (except for the company that claims they are going to kill open source and has a history of "embrace, extend, extinguish", and is a convicted monopolist) one can only conclude that upon reflection the term as it is defined by the opensource.org is the only correct (and true) definition.
You are saying you can come in and redefine a term that has long been established and defined. There is little to no evidence that anyone else has challenged that opensource.org term definition.
Because of the fact that Microsoft stated last year that they were going to kill open source. Following this was the fact that they attempted to redefine with Open Source meant in hopes of confusing business and taking over the concept for themselves. If they get Business believing that their use of the term is the proper one then busienss will believe in Microsoft's and the true open source will be obfuscated. Not only that, there are other Kernels with the appropriate source code that these individuals can look at and learn from. The Linux is just one of them. BEOS? BSD? Others? So, to introduce their training kernel is sort of crazy.
Linus Torvald already dumped on Microsoft's kernel model a couple of months ago. He essentially stated in the past that the concepts regarding kernel development had been sufficiently fleshed out and defined 40+ years ago. He also stated that Microsoft's implementation was insufficient and monolithic in that it tied developers to multiple APIs (as each one is modified down the road you have to retain the old API too or you break lots of things from 3rd party developers).
What is being said here is that their offering is meaningless. It is an attempt to do nothing more than to get people looking at their code for reasons not entirely obvious to everyone today. I'm saying that there are other Kernel source code projects that are tight and secure that these individuals could learn from instead of potentially putting themselves into the "Microsoft" mode of development.
We don't want a company known to threaten others associated with Open source because their offerings could do nothing but taint the waters.
I tend to conclude that he is some shill of Microsoft and he's attempting to redefine what has long been established--the meaning of open source in the true sense of open source. The term Open Source was not coined yesterday or last year by Microsoft. It has been a term in long standing use without challenge for years.
Microsoft will soon say that they own the trade mark "open source" and challenge everyone on the issue in the years to come.
Honestly, all this bantering about is actually in support of "Open Source" as it will show a prior history, a long standing us of the term, and of course the ideas being it. There's no reason not to debate but to put out butt ugly confusion in order to further the convicted monopolist is just wrong.
If people want to learn about modern secure kernels they can look at the real thing. The Linux kernel's source is freely available, can be freely modified, and distributed.
Microsoft's offering is meaningless in that context. As has been said in prior posts here in this thread, it is possible that just looking at the source and learning form it and then using it in a competing product could cause situations where the legal scumbags use it against any true attempt at open source.
I don't agree, this is Opened Source, not Open Source. The definition is the one used by those that created it to begin with.
Microsoft stated last year that they'd be killing Open Source. This is an attempt by them to redefine the term. We had this discussion last year about how Microsoft's use of the term hurt the definition and how business would react to those terms. Our discussions mean nothing to Microsoft, so they have simply continued in hopes that the legions of ill informed could further their redefinition. History is written by those who win the war. This is an attempt by Microsoft to win the war.
Open Source is precisely what the Opensource.org says it is.
Microsoft has simply opened the source. It is not Open Source in any remote way.
The definition blew your whole argument out of the water. It is obvious you hadn't an iota of understanding of what Open Source means.
That doesn't even remotely resemble open source. It is NOT open source.
This is Microsoft's attempt to redefine what Open Source means. It is an aberration of their "embrace, extend, extinguish". They are trying to confuse the market into a non-understanding of what open source means.
That license is not even close to the GPL. People who develop for open source need to understand and spread the word that this is simply a matter of intentional obfuscation of the ideals behind open source and what it attempts to achieve. Giving up is giving in, so don't give up on spreading word.
You are absolutely correct, except for your last sentence. My post described what was happening and how the abuse was causing the demise of companies with great ideas that were being brought to market. Their demise didn't help us and give us cooler things. Often the ideas were dead-ended on purpose by Microsoft. Microsoft wanted to kill Pen Computing because they were an OS other than Microsoft that was directly competing. They killed Pen to kill a competing OS. They never came out with pen windows. Today we have similar touch based OSes and the hand held market that relies on touch input but in reality that's a far cry from what Pen Computing was trying to accomplish.
Another example of how your last sentence fails is Sun's Java and the idea of "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish". Java was a cross platform modular development system that would technically work in any OS on any browser. Back in the late 80s and early 90s there was talk that this object oriented pluggable apps would completely eliminate the need for an OS. Things could be snapped together and your services could be pick and choose. You wouldn't technically need a computer, just a dumb terminal. This was a direct threat to Microsoft's OS offerings. Microsoft responded accordingly. Even though the legal agreement between Sun and Microsoft dictated that Microsoft could not extend JAVA to be platform specific they still did it. Since Windows was the dominant OS at the time the extensions were gaining all the development attention. The cost was that the java applets were not useable on any platform other than Windows. This was completely contrary to what Sun wanted. It was part of Microsoft's "embrace, extend, extinguish" philosophy that we have all heard of. Sun sued Microsoft and Sun won. Microsoft was ordered by the court to remove the Microsoft specific Java VM from all windows installs. This is just one case where Microsoft's copying didn't benefit everyone by doing it their way. Instead we have what Sun wanted and though some debate the quality of Java others believe it is doing what it was intended. Even tho, Microsoft hasn't suffered as Java hasn't usurped the OS as they believed.
My post did touch on the concept that some ideas are obvious and thus you can't help but influence across platforms (closed and open). A computer needs the ability to type into it. Hence the editor/word processor. It is the epitome of calculation so thus we'd expect to see spreadsheet type applications. It is capable of storing, indexing, and retrieving large amounts of data in the fraction of the time a human could do it, thus we need a database. We'd need menus, dialog boxes, the ability to move things around, sound, video, etc. All of that is obvious. How it is done and how well it is done is another matter, but the ideas are the same.
When we consider IP lawsuits that are rife today we can see that these, in the long run, will (and do) stifle innovation, creativity and progress. A closed source company with IP hurts the industry. An open source company with IP is sort of an oxymoron (though probably not unheard of). In order to slow down and keep ideas from being "borrowed, begged, or stolen" the closed source world pushes for IP while those that are interested in just making product for everyone without (or with little cost) tend to stay away from IP. IP is being used to kill the "open". You can't be open if you have to license someone's IP. The patent trolls are taking advantage of this. Look at how the company that was recently in the news that consists of several ex-Microsoft employees from their IP legal department are buying IP in order to sue. They are after the quick extortion buck in hopes of suing you into compliance so you pay them money for something they didn't even create and potentially is so obvious as to be incredibly offensive to most techs. The multiple desktop features in the OS is one example of the patent trolls trying to kill open source.
Consider also that DOS was a derivative of the QDO
Lol, dude. You have a document created that you simply just do a search and replace of the name and then paste that into the reply section of the sites you visit?
Of course, none of it makes sense. It reminds me of when the weak AI programs were released in the early 80s where you would enter a question into a command line DOS program that program would respond with something that seemed to make sense. I remember buddies stating that if you couldn't tell it wasn't a human it was real AI. Anyone with a little spare time could query enough to realize it wasn't a human.
Are you human?
Microsoft used to contact companies during the 80s that were developing products. The ideas that were coming out were quite incredible. Pen computing was one of them. It was reported over and over again that Microsoft would ask for a presentation of the ideas of a given company's product and then a few months later announce that they were adding this or that feature into Windows. Why would anyone who was going after venture capital to bring a product to market survive with the dominant criminal monopolist announcing competing technologies to be incorporated into the OS? In the 80s this scenario played out endlessly.
This is what Microsoft did to pen computing. Do we have pen computing today? No. Because Microsoft announced pen windows. Pen computing died. Then so went pen windows.
Were some of these companies responsible for their actions? Absolutely. They helped their own demise. The lesson learned from Microsoft is not to demonstrate your product to them for they will steal the ideas, just as they are stealing the ideas of the open source community under the guise of learning from them and teaching back. Microsoft will not do anything for free.
Apple showed Microsoft their version of the Mac prior to the official release. They wanted Microsoft to develop their word processor and spreadsheet for it. Microsoft did that, but they also took all the ideas and made Windows. When confronted Gates simply slapped Jobs in the face telling him to grow up. What was Jobs to do? His product demanded applications and Microsoft was a leading developer, even though they'd purchased their Macintosh word and excel programs from other companies.
With open source it is still subject to the stealing of technological ideas from a closed source vendor but that's part of the benefit. Open Source benefits by the exposure of companies such as Microsoft stealing other's ideas instead of developing them themselves, which they seem nearly incapable of doing.
Essentially, Microsoft has created over the past 2 decades the air of distrust due to outright theft and manipulative practices that ultimately were deemed illegal by the court system.
What is best is that the open source community continue it's uninfluenced progress toward the time when all software is developed in the same manner.
Bottom line is that the OSS model will surpass the closed source model in time. It has no choice but to do that. Open cooperative community development has no choice but to meet and exceed that of the closed source model due primarily in that it is very evolutionary. The OSS industry will update faster (bug fixes and new features) than the closed source with the typical 18 month to 5 year product cycle of the closed source. Given time the OSS industry will create more useful features and modify those features over and over long before equivalent features will be available in the closed source market. It is like an organism that evolves more rapidly vs an organism that evolves in huge spurts with larger time intervals in-between. The organism with the shorter evolutionary steps has a greater possibility of finding flaws, correcting them, and creating new features and testing those.
Open source by its very nature will overcome monolithic development cycles of closed source, given enough time. Closed source doesn't have the time and can't experiment much. Open source has all the time in the world.
Let's also keep in mind that 1) Microsoft is a finite entity with limited number of developers and thus a limited number of ideas, where only so many of those limited ideas will pay off (this is why they steal everyone else's ideas). 2) The Open Source community has the resources of the community as it exists "world-wide" and thus has a significantly greater chance of coming up with new and unique ideas. 3) Some ideas are just obvious and that is why you see duplicity of ideas in each platform. These ideas tho can be extended and modified faster due to Open Source's ability to have more minds looking at the product and submitting coding ideas.
If any of you read the blogs of the ex-Microsofties that left just prior to or just after the Vista release you can see clearly that each developer in the Microsoft community is a microbe that has limited access to the brain and does what they are told even if the process is to redo and undo and redo the same thing again and again. This is certain to result in significant slow downs and even failures (as we have seen with Vista).
The Open Source model will succeed because it is designed to succeed whereas closed source practices dictated by a criminal monopolist to developers using their platform tools, etc., will result in systemic failure and their ultimate demise. How long will it take? It doesn't matter because the open source community has the time and the manpower.
Your comments are very educational. I would ask that you please not feed the Vole. We don't want to educate them. Let them falter and fall on their own. Why put more money into the hands of an abusive convicted monopolist? Don't put any more money in their hands by telling them where they are wrong. Sometimes it is just best to not say anything and let them falter and fall. They certainly won't point out what you don't understand, based on those same principles. They won't educate you, at least not for free, so don't feed the Vole.
Open Source has learned how a company can abuse their position, how a company can be a monopoly and make billions and then influence those who are elected into office to protect us. Those billions go a long way to influencing the lawmakers to push aside any attempt to make a better cheaper product.
It is ludicrous to think that a product that can be made cheaper and better should be put asunder because some powerful monopoly can influence the powers that be. There's no socialistic tendencies there. No communistic tendencies. It is pure capitalism that is being thwarted by Microsoft's practices. Microsoft is a bully, an entity that has one goal and that is to rake in all the money while destroying the competition and they are doing that with their monopoly.
Your privacy is being violated hundreds of millions of times a day by Microsoft with WGA/WGN and Vista's equivalent. They are able to get away with it because they don't take competition seriously because they don't have to. Would you go out and pay $2000 for a TV from Best Buy and then allow Best Buy to enter your home to verify that you didn't actually receive stolen property? What if they want to do that every week or every month (inspect your home for stolen goods)? What if they say that they'll do this with a hidden camera? Would you permit it? Say you buy frequently form Walmart. Would you permit Walmart to enter your home to inspect your property to prove you didn't steal it from the store? I think not. You wouldn't let your neighbor enter your home upon accusations that you stole something from him. You wouldn't let the police enter your home even if the neighbor filed a complaint.
What the open source community practices has learned is that Microsoft is the type of entity that uses "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" tactic to kill solid technology and those companies trying to bring them to market. The open source community has learned that Microsoft has threatened every Linux user with 235 alleged patents claiming everyone will have a price to pay to Microsoft, without Microsoft stating specifically what is being violated. This is like an oil company stating that they are going to sue car owners for using gasoline from one of their competitors because their competitor may have allegedly use some of the IP in the gas refining process. Then they threaten the car manufacturers or large companies that use that same gasoline with lawsuits if they don't stop using the competitors gasoline. Then they refuse to say which competitors and they refuse to say which IP has been violated. BTW, that IP was probably stolen by them to begin with.
We've learned from Microsoft that they will steal IP from small entities and when caught will ignore those companies request to have Microsoft pay up. Z4 Technologies is one of those companies. In this case Microsoft was contacted about their use of the IP developed by this firm for the purpose of over the internet product activation. According to the final ruling which went in favor of Z4 Microsoft knew they were in violation of the IP of Z4 and they continued to use it. During the trial they flooded the court and Z4 with paperwork in hopes of covering it up. The day before the trial began Z4 found the evidence. Z4 won the trial and were granted approximately $100 million. In the ruling the Judge noted numerous acts of misconduct on Microsoft's part and though he could have awarded 3 times the amount he only awarded an additional $25 million in special damages (which is no small amount by any measure). The Judge also noted that Microsoft had participated in these acts because they believe that Z4 was to small and to weak to defend their own IP. Upon appeal Microsoft lost with the Judge also noting the numerous acts of misconduct. With the latest appeal of this Microsoft lost that as well with all awards in tact.
But what you must understand from this is that Microsoft stole the IP of Z4 which Microsoft used to keep you from stealing their IP. So, they stole the technology
Just looking at gimp and the organizational misdirection I'd say that unless GIMP changes direction and attempts to be more user oriented it isn't worthy of more funding. For instance, I copied a simple picture from a web page into the cliboard and then attempted to paste it into gimp. GIMP says nothing in the clipboard. So, I go into open office and paste it in there without a hitch.
GIMP is confusing to me and seems non-standard. We got away from DOS due to the fact that all programs seemed to want to redesign the user interface. This was very inefficient. Granted windowed applications need to be redesigned every few years, such as the redesign elements found in photoshop (done by real design artists for design artists), it's not all bad. GIMP is providing a service and all and some of its redesign in terms of interface are good, but in reality to gain high public opinion it has to have a good user friendly design and work.
I did get some work done with gimp that Adobe elements couldn't handle and I was able to do it with very little extra work other than downloading some filters, so there are true advantages to an open source product.
All I'm really saying is that their direction just isn't good enough and maybe not far looking in order to predict what we will want in the future so why would we want to fund it?
I think a tremendous boon for Linux would be a full fledged version of Adobe photoshop products for Linux. It would add an air of legitimacy to commercial development on the platform if that were to occur.
I despise google's attempt to make google earth and picasa run on Linux via Wine. They shouldn't be out trying to support locking technologies from Microsoft, they should be out preparing equal products for both platforms native to each.
We can't live with Windows dominating us forever. There's no reason to give Microsoft this huge market forever. We will, if competition is true, see better products. Even if people are set in their ways there's really very little validity to your logic that we should just accept Widnows because it is the best way to hone our skills, to sell ourselves, and to make a living.
It may be true now, but in the long run it is fatalistic.
Tho he has given it some thought and at first glance it seems interesting, in reality it is an extremely sophomoric assessment.
/boot/grub menu.lst file.
/boo/grub/menu.lst file also modified inappropriately.
The reason it hasn't picked up steam to become the most popular desktop OS is due to many factors, the least of which is what he states. One issue that OSS has to overcome is the free as in beer. The vast majority of people have no idea of ever bringing the beer to the party. They'll never ever participate in expanding Linux and no one wants to have to constantly go back to the trough to feed the linux guru's for support. I use Linux every day all day, and I can tell you that it isn't stable enough yet. Software updates break software at a uch faster rate than under Windows. This is due to software being updated much more frequently, but also due to the constant feeding at the trough. An example is this: in the last 2 weeks Ubuntu updated the xserver core 2 times and each time it broke the ability to log into your workstation. Then after that, within the same 2 week period, they updated the kernel which then broke the video for those using the nvidia provided drivers. You don't see this happen under Windows. NO it isn't windows but you don't expect to have to go back to the trough 3 times in 2 weeks to get your problems resolved. This happened to an older retired guy that hates Microsoft and wanted to give Linux a try. How do you think he felt about the situation? He was queesy about giving it a try as is, but when 3 problems that disabled his OS in 2 weeks occured, he was understandably reluctant.
When giving feedback to Canonical about it there's absolutely no guarantee they won't do it again.
Each time they update my kernel I have to modify my
In the case of the older retired guy he had his
This is recent stuff. Other stuff over time is worse. But the idea is that though it is still good for a desktop user one must not do much modification from the default or the system become intolerant and the system fails when updates are available.
In the past, for instance, with mandrake (now mandriva) people paid a yearly subscription of $60.00. XP Home cost $99 as an upgrade. It has been in use by many for over 5 years. If someone paid the yearly fee for mandrake of $60.00 x 5 it would have cost them $300 to maintain their Linux. But XP Home would have cost them $99, less than 1/3 the cost.
For me, a small business owner, I use Linux all the time so my customers get a demo of what Linux can do on the desktop. They think it is just fantastic when they see it. So, why would they not adopt it? One reason is because they don't know it exists. Most people don't know that Linux exists. The second reason is that they already paid for Windows, so why would they want to abandon what they paid for when Linux, to them, is unproven and they won't be able to run their old software.
The author is very immature in his reasoning. He doesn't understand about the complexity of using FOSS where some of the zealots are still "all free or nothing" in their attitude. In every environment we can have commercial mixed with free. I expect that the games that come out, such as ET:QW (which has a native Linux client), I will pay for that. I don't expect the commercial organization to make software for me for free.
The software industry (as well as the hardware) commercial or not has the perception that the FOSS guys will write the drivers, etc, so there's no need to put any effort into it. You see this all the time. Why would they be willing to put effort into something when the foss boys are saying "all free or nothing" and then they write drivers (even if those drivers are only partial implementations)?
One can see the issue is very complex and not easily understood, and that it has very little to do with the perception that software that costs money is perceived to have greater value. The factor of it coming fro
He wasn't noticing smell from outer space. He was noticing something permeating the environment that might have come from a gas floating in space. Since there is no air in space there's no odor. Odor is just molecules of matter floating in some form of gas. He was smelling a blob of gas.
Since there is no air in outer space there is no sound either.
It is best that people know. It is important that the average person gets the word of alternatives, of the fact that Microsoft is essentially spying on them, and that Vista is full of all sorts of vulnerabilities. The best choice is the alternative. By having it entrenched into our minds we can more likely speak more fluidly to our family members and business associates about the alternatives. The 47 programs that monitor you, collect data about you, and send that back to Microsoft is important to know. To let open the blinds so people can more clearly see how Microsoft is spying in through the window.
The RIAA folks are infantile in their comprehension. Filters and encryption can be broken so fast it'll make their heads spin. They are spending so much money trying to kill off piracy that they lost track of the idea of providing us something that is a benefit above and beyond piracy.
These guys are total infantile dorks. They have no idea what they are up against. How could anyone get into a position of authority with absolutely no clue as to what is going on and be able to give such a suggestion in the face of odds that they are not likely to win against. They can't win this way. They need to win another way. Give everyone something above and beyond the basic song. And, how about paying the artists and the song writers their true due. Stop stealing from the artists and song writers and stop suing people and maybe you'll overcome some of your woes. I personally would start buying music again (I stopped when I heard they were suing people). Now that I know they aren't compensating the artists properly and are trying to steal from the song writers, I have no choice but to stand by my decision not to put any more money into their hands.
This was my question also. It will essentially kill this product. Microsoft is not going to take this product and sell it. They will forcefully convert any customer to Microsoft's offering and they will kill the product, period.
They aren't paying $44 billion for zimbra, it's just an added nicety to make the pill go down a bit easier. The end of Zimbra is the end of one product capable of competing on that front.
If we view this form Google's perspective (if they were to buy it) we'd see an advancement of the product. As I suspect, a lot of what Yahoo uses that's open source will be abandoned in favor of using Microsoft's stuff. This will be a rather big blow to open source because Yahoo uses more open source than just Zimbra.
Someone want to answer why this gets any press? Microsoft will do anything and say anything to get their way. Everyone should understand the way Microsoft is. They have damaged our industry and stifled the advancements for the past decade. Why should anyone care how they feel or what they lose? We all need to grow up and come to grips with the fact that there are other operating systems out there and other standards that we should be supporting. We should be staying away from Microsoft. They are like the Bush presidency. We don't need their ideas or direction any longer. We will advance farther and do more if we can get competitive companies all working on new technologies instead of sitting at Microsoft's feet.
Compared to KDE this is a non-update. It is almost irrelevant. One need not even look at it. I'm a gnome user and that's my opinion. There are tons of features they could add but mostly they could seriously fix the issues they have with it.
That question is irrelevant. The vast majority of individuals have no idea that the software is installed. Of those that bought the computer from a pre-fab organization such as Dell or HP, most have no idea that the software is on their computer collecting the information and sending it back. Of those that purchased the upgrade to XP they also have very little idea that the software was installed.
Why would the question of who installed the software be relevant? The question is who built it into the operating system in an effort to spy on the users, control the users, and correct the user.
Any monitoring activity should be done under warrant. Any access to the information outside the warrant should be done by subpoena. The information on our computers regardless of who installed it is ours. What we do is our business. If we steal it is up to the proper authorities to intercede and take action with due process. It is not up to some private entity become the police in such a way as to violate our privacy.
The EU is in the process of enforcing the idea that the IP is private personal information and should not be maintained. This will somewhat put an end to Microsoft's attempts in Europe but it will hardly help the Americans.
Suffice it to say it is wrong of them to have the software running our our computers without even knowing it is illegal and becoming more so in various other countries. People should be working hard to protect their privacy and the privacy of their family and friends. We should not let a convicted monopolist enter our homes to monitor our use and in some cases interfere with our use of the computer and the information on it.
So, 47 programs to monitor us is wrong. To collect information and send it back is wrong. To do so without the users knowledge is illegal. No to mention immoral. Our privacy is much more important than Microsoft's profit. Period!
And this is why he has installed 47 programs under Vista that spy on you and report back data to Microsoft? He's seeing the world more clearly?
You would let Walmart come into your home and monitor you to ensure that you aren't stealing store goods? You would let them do this with hidden cameras? You would let the government put a monitor in your car to allow them to watch whether you are speeding and to have the police roam through your neighborhood to collect (remotely) the data about your speeding and to send you a bill, revoke your license, or lock your car down permanently?
How is any of this different than Microsoft's using their WGA program to monitor you on a regular basis to determine if you are stealing from them? Your computer is an extension of your home and it is just as entitled to the protection of the laws which govern your privacy as any other. Yet, you buy and support software from a man that derided the early users groups as thieves because they copied the paper tapes that were used to input the code to make basic run on early computers, all the while he illegally used the Harvard computers (along with giving non-student access to Paul Allen) to make that product, which really was just a copy/knock off of the product developed by two professors at another university.
You say he's changed yet your privacy and the accusations are wider and louder than ever before, all the while the majority of people in the US are still at poverty level and the economy is nosediving.