This, alas, is exactly what Richard Stallman envisioned when he wrote the GPL: Programmers banding together to prevent their colleagues from making a decent living off of valuable products. (The book "Hackers," by Steven Levy, describes the beginnings of Stallman's vendetta and is required reading for anyone who is interested in the true origins of the FSF and the GPL.) Leave them alone! The programmers at Linksys should not be forced to give away all of their hard work simply because one crazy programmer, 20 years ago, wrote a questionable and probably unenforceable "license" intended to destroy programmers' livelihoods.
thinking GCC is a good thing is about as far from agreeing with Brett's views as it's possible to get.
No, it would be quite possible for me to believe that GCC was a good thing. However, for it to be truly beneficial it would have to be ethically licensed (that is, not licensed under the viral, deceptive, and intentionally destructive GPL) and also of better quality. GCC, alas, has driven superior compilers out of the marketplace because so many people will go for something that's available at no cost rather than paying for something better. This is one of the biggest problems with the GPL: It causes mediocre software to drive out truly good software. It destroys the incentive to publish a better product (by destroying the market) and likewise denies authors any reward for making an incremental improvement to the technology. As a result, the technology stagnates. Compiler technology hasn't improved in a decade, and you can thank the GPL and GCC. I'd willingly pay for better compilers like the ones I used 10 to 20 years ago, but they're gone. The mediocre has displaced the good.
I might add, by the way, that the GPL will also prevent commercial developers from programming for the environment. It appears that all of the required libraries, etc. are GPLed, so that any program created for the environment must likewise be GPLed. Few programmers can afford to write a serious application without having some means of being rewarded financially for their work. Again, the license must be changed or the project, regardless of its merits, is destined to go nowhere.
I've written several papers explaining how to block spam, as well as some software that does. Another fellow I know writes software that removes "defangs" HTML spam (that is, it removes active content, image links, and other tags which can cause your computer to contact the spammer or run code) and blocks malware.
Since the Swen worm came out, we've both been receiving GIGABYTES of worms. Literally. (I haven't done a dissassembly yet, but I do suspect that our addresses are either hard-coded into the worm or being harvested by it from the archives of the anti-spam or anti-malware mailing lists in which we both participate.) Nothing to do except block the messages, which we are. But I'm upgrading my server, because the strain of filtering several gigabytes of extra mail a day is making it thrash like a sonofagun. And since the messages are coming from all over, it's impossible to tell if they're worms without receiving enough of each to match a pattern.
Just looked, and -- tragically -- the code is GPLed. So long as it has a viral, anti-commercial license, this code will not gain the support of commercial software vendors, and will not be able to make the inroads that X has under the MIT license. If the author wants it to go anywhere besides Linux (if it even becomes popular there), he must reconsider the licensing of the code.
Today is the anniversary of the start of a tragedy. Through the use of misleading rhetoric, Stallman has brought all too many programmers to turn on their colleagues (and, in fact, hurt themselves, their career prospects, and their profession) using the weapon known as the GPL.
I remember when it happened. At the time, I was sure that programmers would have the insight to see through Stallman's deception. But too many haven't. There's still time to turn the tide, but we don't have long.
Having to give away your hard work for free (which you don't have to do with either the Microsoft stuff or BSD UNIX) is the biggest product killer and company killer one could possibly imagine. Just try to differentiate your product from your competitor's when he can see and copy lots (maybe all) of what you've done... for free!
The study should have included, among other options, embedded NetBSD. (And, no, I have no business association with Wasabi Systems; I just admire what they do.)
It's Microsoft that would have turned the Internet into TV.... In which it controlled the remote and the content on all of the channels. It's only because TCP/IP gained so much momentum -- which, in turn, it did because it was licensed under the BSD license -- that this did not happen.
Had the BSD TCP/IP stack been GPLed, it'd be the Microsoft Web.
I realize that this stance might not be popular with the rabid "intellectual property is evil" crowd, but the best course for government to take is to promote truly free software (i.e. software that's licensed under the MIT, BSD, and similar licenses) while prohibiting government use of software that's GPLed. (In fact, it'd be a great idea to explicitly state that the GPL and other viral licenses are invalid and unenforceable.) This would best serve citizens' interests, because it would forestall the negative effects of the GPL on businesses and on citizens' livelihoods.
Remember, folks, what the GPL is about. It was explicitly intended, as stated in Stallman's "GNU Manifesto," to see to it that good-paying jobs for programmers are "banned" (his own word) and that software companies are destroyed. And, as we've seen from the experiences of companies which have been wiped out by the GPL, this strategy works if the GPL is allowed to stand. This is hardly what these nations and the programmers who live there need. The answer? Insist that "free" software be truly free, without the GPL's nasty, anti-programmer "poison pill" which prevents programmers from being rewarded for the incremental improvements they make to software. I'd like to see every nation adopt such a policy.
Instead of respecting Apple's right to license its intellectual property in a way that protects its business, Kuhn is petulantly insisting that Apple license its products in such a way that they promote his organization's agenda. Which just happens to include the destruction of all commercial software and commercial software companies.
Now, as we all know, the only thing that sets Apple systems apart from the rest of the pack is the software. The hardware is different from generic stuff, yes, but this is done more to prevent piracy of the software than because Apple's PPC-based hardware is any better than, say, Intel hardware. (MacOS X might well run quite well on Intel hardware if it were ported, in fact. But Apple would have no luck getting it preloaded... and so would face piracy problems that Microsoft doesn't face. What's more, Microsoft could exert strong pressure on hardware vendors not to publish drivers for MacOS.)
If Apple can't sell its software, it's dead. Of course, this matters not to the FSF, one of whose fundamental tenets is that all licensing of software for money is evil and must be stopped by the spread of GPLed code.
So, ignore Kuhn's ravings. Apple won't (and shouldn't!) commit suicide just because he wants them to. MacOS X is the only truly usable, solid GUI for any UNIX-like operating system, and the only one that's not GPLed. Since I don't use GPLed software unless my back's to the wall (as a programmer, I do not want to promote the FSF's anti-programmer agenda), I'm glad I have that alternative.
When it installs -- even as an upgrade -- Mozilla 1.4 forces the browser to a specific page on the mozilla.org site on startup, effectively "phoning home." This is exactly the sort of spying against which users should expect a project like Mozilla to defend them. What gives?
The use of ethically licensed open source code by government is a good thing. However, the use of so-called "open source" code which is licensed under unethical licenses (such as the GPL), and/or licenses whose purpose is to destroy businesses and/or deprive people of reasonable rewards for their work (an explicit goal of the GPL), is not appropriate for government. In short, government should insist on licensing such as that of Python, X, and the BSDs, and should shun viral, anti-business licenses such as the GPL.
The article misses the point: The reason patents exist is to create incentives for inventors to publish their ideas. Yes, they may be implemented by someone else. So? Very few big tasks are accomplished alone, but without the germ of an idea, they'll never get started.
I guess the overall point is that Stallman is in the somewhat bizarre position of claiming that copyright law is stronger than it actually is, in order to plug potential leaks in the GPL.
This ironically plays right into the hands of commercial software firms like Microsoft who see to use copyright to remove use rights from users.
What this highlights is that, ironically, Stallman and Microsoft are birds of a feather. Each wants to remove rights from users; they just want to remove different ones! Microsoft wants to collect money every time someone uses software. Stallman wants to make sure that developers don't have the right (or the ability) to make money from their work. (He's also seeking control over the use of software; witness the FSF's RIAA-like proposal to go after companies that provide Web services using GPLed software, saying that they're "performing" the work for profit and can therefore be restricted in various ways by future versions of the license.) Both Microsoft and the FSF lust after power and control.
Corel's situation worsened to the point where it was forced to suffer the humiliation of accepting bailout money from Microsoft (a direct competitor). Why? Because it sunk so many resources into Linux... and then could not get a positive return on its investment due to the GPL. Corel competes with Microsoft in many, many markets -- to accept money from Gates was the ultimate capitulation. It only took Microsoft's blood money because it would have failed completely if it did not.
Corel's embrace of Linux was a key factor in the company's decline. It couldn't differentiate Linux itself from competitors' offerings due to the GPL, which required it to give its work away. So, it floundered. Had it based a product on NetBSD, OpenBSD (which would have been a great choice since it's also Canadian), or FreeBSD, it would have done much better.
The GPL harms yet another business
on
What if SCO is Right?
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
Yes, it is indeed possible that the GPL will prove to have hurt SCO badly. As it did Corel (which found itself unable to differentiate its Linux distribution from others) and VA Linux (which likewise couldn't differentiate its products with special software, better drivers, etc.).
We all must remember that the purpose -- and, in fact, the raison d'être -- of the GPL is to destroy software companies. Richard Stallman, in The GNU Manifesto, specifically stated that the purpose of the GNU Project, and the GPL, was to "ban" high-paying jobs for programmers and successful software businesses. And it has been quite effective in doing so -- recent history is literally littered with the corpses of failed companies that attempted to deal in GPLed software. The MIT X License and the BSD License do not have within them the business-destroying "poison pill" that's built into the GPL, but the pointy-haired bosses and ideologically minded, young employees of these companies did not recognize this. Hence, Stallman's dream is coming true: software companies are failing and job prospects for programmers are drying up. (Many of the jobs that remain are being exported to countries where programmers are paid a pittance for their work.)
SCO is flailing, trying to save itself by attacking IBM and others. But it may be too late.
One of the issues not often discussed by the cheerleaders for community wireless networks is how to make them viable. I founded the first wireless community network, in 1994, and we're still going strong; however, our policies are very different than that of the Johnny-come-latelies. In particular, we require accountability (to avoid drive-by spamming, which could in turn cause our upstream link to be cut off) and have dues (bandwidth and equipment are not free, and we want to be a going concern). We're thus a "cheapnet," not a "freenet." But our model works, and the members appreciate the fact that we'll be there tomorrow. I don't get the sense, from the Web site, that many of the people who are doing these projects are thinking about many of the issues we've faced....
All of the brouhaha over Linux seems to have overshadowed the fact that it was actually NetBSD that was the first UNIX-like operating system to boot on the AMD64 architecture (under simulation, several years ago, long before there was silicon). If FreeBSD and OpenBSD leverage this work, they won't be far behind. (OpenBSD has diverged from NetBSD, but not so much that they can't bring in the architecture-dependent stuff from NetBSD very quickly if they want to.)
One sure way to turn off the businesspeople is to use GPLed software. One look at the GPL and the GNU Manifesto, and the bosses will go running for the hills due to the blatant anti-business nature of the license and the organization that promotes it. Instead, promote BSD, Apache, and other truly open source products that have business-friendly licenses. You'll get much farther.
Requiring attribution is OK; GRABBING credit isn't
on
Credit and Free Software
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
For example, Richard Stallman's attempts to claim Linux as his own ("It's GNOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Linux! It's mine, all mine, I say!) are obnoxious and betray his lust for power and control.
Slashdot Mirror
This, alas, is exactly what Richard Stallman envisioned when he wrote the GPL: Programmers banding together to prevent their colleagues from making a decent living off of valuable products. (The book "Hackers," by Steven Levy, describes the beginnings of Stallman's vendetta and is required reading for anyone who is interested in the true origins of the FSF and the GPL.) Leave them alone! The programmers at Linksys should not be forced to give away all of their hard work simply because one crazy programmer, 20 years ago, wrote a questionable and probably unenforceable "license" intended to destroy programmers' livelihoods.
No, it would be quite possible for me to believe that GCC was a good thing. However, for it to be truly beneficial it would have to be ethically licensed (that is, not licensed under the viral, deceptive, and intentionally destructive GPL) and also of better quality. GCC, alas, has driven superior compilers out of the marketplace because so many people will go for something that's available at no cost rather than paying for something better. This is one of the biggest problems with the GPL: It causes mediocre software to drive out truly good software. It destroys the incentive to publish a better product (by destroying the market) and likewise denies authors any reward for making an incremental improvement to the technology. As a result, the technology stagnates. Compiler technology hasn't improved in a decade, and you can thank the GPL and GCC. I'd willingly pay for better compilers like the ones I used 10 to 20 years ago, but they're gone. The mediocre has displaced the good.
I might add, by the way, that the GPL will also prevent commercial developers from programming for the environment. It appears that all of the required libraries, etc. are GPLed, so that any program created for the environment must likewise be GPLed. Few programmers can afford to write a serious application without having some means of being rewarded financially for their work. Again, the license must be changed or the project, regardless of its merits, is destined to go nowhere.
Since the Swen worm came out, we've both been receiving GIGABYTES of worms. Literally. (I haven't done a dissassembly yet, but I do suspect that our addresses are either hard-coded into the worm or being harvested by it from the archives of the anti-spam or anti-malware mailing lists in which we both participate.) Nothing to do except block the messages, which we are. But I'm upgrading my server, because the strain of filtering several gigabytes of extra mail a day is making it thrash like a sonofagun. And since the messages are coming from all over, it's impossible to tell if they're worms without receiving enough of each to match a pattern.
Wrong. Many of the utilities were cribbed directly from BSD. Look at syslogd, for example; it's almost an exact copy of Eric Allman's code.
Just looked, and -- tragically -- the code is GPLed. So long as it has a viral, anti-commercial license, this code will not gain the support of commercial software vendors, and will not be able to make the inroads that X has under the MIT license. If the author wants it to go anywhere besides Linux (if it even becomes popular there), he must reconsider the licensing of the code.
I remember when it happened. At the time, I was sure that programmers would have the insight to see through Stallman's deception. But too many haven't. There's still time to turn the tide, but we don't have long.
Verisign is providing a "service" to Internet users in much the same way.
Or use it to register a domain name. The moment it gets into the WHOIS database, you'll be inundated.
The study should have included, among other options, embedded NetBSD. (And, no, I have no business association with Wasabi Systems; I just admire what they do.)
Had the BSD TCP/IP stack been GPLed, it'd be the Microsoft Web.
Remember, folks, what the GPL is about. It was explicitly intended, as stated in Stallman's "GNU Manifesto," to see to it that good-paying jobs for programmers are "banned" (his own word) and that software companies are destroyed. And, as we've seen from the experiences of companies which have been wiped out by the GPL, this strategy works if the GPL is allowed to stand. This is hardly what these nations and the programmers who live there need. The answer? Insist that "free" software be truly free, without the GPL's nasty, anti-programmer "poison pill" which prevents programmers from being rewarded for the incremental improvements they make to software. I'd like to see every nation adopt such a policy.
Now, as we all know, the only thing that sets Apple systems apart from the rest of the pack is the software. The hardware is different from generic stuff, yes, but this is done more to prevent piracy of the software than because Apple's PPC-based hardware is any better than, say, Intel hardware. (MacOS X might well run quite well on Intel hardware if it were ported, in fact. But Apple would have no luck getting it preloaded... and so would face piracy problems that Microsoft doesn't face. What's more, Microsoft could exert strong pressure on hardware vendors not to publish drivers for MacOS.)
If Apple can't sell its software, it's dead. Of course, this matters not to the FSF, one of whose fundamental tenets is that all licensing of software for money is evil and must be stopped by the spread of GPLed code.
So, ignore Kuhn's ravings. Apple won't (and shouldn't!) commit suicide just because he wants them to. MacOS X is the only truly usable, solid GUI for any UNIX-like operating system, and the only one that's not GPLed. Since I don't use GPLed software unless my back's to the wall (as a programmer, I do not want to promote the FSF's anti-programmer agenda), I'm glad I have that alternative.
When it installs -- even as an upgrade -- Mozilla 1.4 forces the browser to a specific page on the mozilla.org site on startup, effectively "phoning home." This is exactly the sort of spying against which users should expect a project like Mozilla to defend them. What gives?
The use of ethically licensed open source code by government is a good thing. However, the use of so-called "open source" code which is licensed under unethical licenses (such as the GPL), and/or licenses whose purpose is to destroy businesses and/or deprive people of reasonable rewards for their work (an explicit goal of the GPL), is not appropriate for government. In short, government should insist on licensing such as that of Python, X, and the BSDs, and should shun viral, anti-business licenses such as the GPL.
The article misses the point: The reason patents exist is to create incentives for inventors to publish their ideas. Yes, they may be implemented by someone else. So? Very few big tasks are accomplished alone, but without the germ of an idea, they'll never get started.
We'd be glad to become a reseller if you offer a non-GPLed operating system. NetBSD, perhaps?
It runs on several PPC platforms already and would provide a non-GPLed option for those so inclined.
This ironically plays right into the hands of commercial software firms like Microsoft who see to use copyright to remove use rights from users.
What this highlights is that, ironically, Stallman and Microsoft are birds of a feather. Each wants to remove rights from users; they just want to remove different ones! Microsoft wants to collect money every time someone uses software. Stallman wants to make sure that developers don't have the right (or the ability) to make money from their work. (He's also seeking control over the use of software; witness the FSF's RIAA-like proposal to go after companies that provide Web services using GPLed software, saying that they're "performing" the work for profit and can therefore be restricted in various ways by future versions of the license.) Both Microsoft and the FSF lust after power and control.
In other wirds: "Pot. Kettle. Black."
Corel's situation worsened to the point where it was forced to suffer the humiliation of accepting bailout money from Microsoft (a direct competitor). Why? Because it sunk so many resources into Linux... and then could not get a positive return on its investment due to the GPL. Corel competes with Microsoft in many, many markets -- to accept money from Gates was the ultimate capitulation. It only took Microsoft's blood money because it would have failed completely if it did not.
Corel's embrace of Linux was a key factor in the company's decline. It couldn't differentiate Linux itself from competitors' offerings due to the GPL, which required it to give its work away. So, it floundered. Had it based a product on NetBSD, OpenBSD (which would have been a great choice since it's also Canadian), or FreeBSD, it would have done much better.
We all must remember that the purpose -- and, in fact, the raison d'être -- of the GPL is to destroy software companies. Richard Stallman, in The GNU Manifesto, specifically stated that the purpose of the GNU Project, and the GPL, was to "ban" high-paying jobs for programmers and successful software businesses. And it has been quite effective in doing so -- recent history is literally littered with the corpses of failed companies that attempted to deal in GPLed software. The MIT X License and the BSD License do not have within them the business-destroying "poison pill" that's built into the GPL, but the pointy-haired bosses and ideologically minded, young employees of these companies did not recognize this. Hence, Stallman's dream is coming true: software companies are failing and job prospects for programmers are drying up. (Many of the jobs that remain are being exported to countries where programmers are paid a pittance for their work.)
SCO is flailing, trying to save itself by attacking IBM and others. But it may be too late.
One of the issues not often discussed by the cheerleaders for community wireless networks is how to make them viable. I founded the first wireless community network, in 1994, and we're still going strong; however, our policies are very different than that of the Johnny-come-latelies. In particular, we require accountability (to avoid drive-by spamming, which could in turn cause our upstream link to be cut off) and have dues (bandwidth and equipment are not free, and we want to be a going concern). We're thus a "cheapnet," not a "freenet." But our model works, and the members appreciate the fact that we'll be there tomorrow. I don't get the sense, from the Web site, that many of the people who are doing these projects are thinking about many of the issues we've faced....
All of the brouhaha over Linux seems to have overshadowed the fact that it was actually NetBSD that was the first UNIX-like operating system to boot on the AMD64 architecture (under simulation, several years ago, long before there was silicon). If FreeBSD and OpenBSD leverage this work, they won't be far behind. (OpenBSD has diverged from NetBSD, but not so much that they can't bring in the architecture-dependent stuff from NetBSD very quickly if they want to.)
One sure way to turn off the businesspeople is to use GPLed software. One look at the GPL and the GNU Manifesto, and the bosses will go running for the hills due to the blatant anti-business nature of the license and the organization that promotes it. Instead, promote BSD, Apache, and other truly open source products that have business-friendly licenses. You'll get much farther.
For example, Richard Stallman's attempts to claim Linux as his own ("It's GNOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Linux! It's mine, all mine, I say!) are obnoxious and betray his lust for power and control.