I'd say you lack ethics for accusing Microsoft of every little fantasy of yours.
And I'd say you lack ethics for accusing me of that when it's flat-out wrong.
I also note, from your Web site, that you're a Windows developer, which may be the reason why you're so fast to jump in and deny Microsoft's rather transparent strategy.
Another motivation for Microsoft's "Palladium" scheme could be Fritz Hollings' SSSCA -- the bill, now in the Senate, which would require copy protection to be built into every product. What if the SSSCA passed... and Microsoft was, conveniently, the only entity whose operating system met its requirements (perhaps because no other company would stoop so low)? This announcement sets the stage for Microsoft to turn on consumers and computer users everywhere as never before, supporting legislation that would make it illegal for them to use products that did not have built-in handcuffs. Sad, but not out of the question given Microsoft's total lack of ethics.
The MSNBC article also mentions the possibility of disappearing e-mail. Who do you thing would want this the most? An ordinary citizen who tracks his correspondence with friends and family? Or a corporate executive (such as Bill Gates) who wishes that the sort of paper trail that was brought out in the Microsoft-DoJ case had somehow conveniently evaporated? Or the executives at Arthur Andersen, Enron, Qwest, Global Crossing, Waste Management, Rite-Aid, and other companies that were engaged in criminal activity, market manipulation, and shady accounting practices? Hmmmm.
According to legend, the ancient city of Troy fell because its guardian, Athena, got into a squabble over a beauty contest. (A pretty petty thing for a goddess to do, but then, the Greek gods were more human-like than god-like.) It seems to me that this "Palladium" scheme is likely to be awful for us mere mortals (consumers) for similar reasons -- and primarily due to Microsoft's pettiness.
The information in this article suggests that "Pallaidium" really isn't about security for computer users at all. Rather, it's about the security of the income streams of Microsoft and large content providers, who will be able to lock up content and make it self destruct unless you pay big bucks. Microsoft has already made Microsoft Office and Windows XP stop working if you don't surrender your personal information to them for inclusion in their massive databases. And XP nags you to death to give up still more of your private information to Microsoft's Passport system, which has already been shown to be insecure and puts all of your eggs in one basket. (If the account is cracked, anyone can use your credit card numbers, etc.; you're in big trouble.) And all of this is under the control of a company that has been convicted of unscrupulous business practices. (The current hearings are about the penalty.... The courts have already affirmed that Microsoft is guilty.) How much do you want to bet that developers will have to pay money, sign a contract, and promise that they won't develop for other platforms before their software will be "authorized" to run on this system?
Microsoft has shown that it can't make a product that provides security to users. Its Outhou... I mean Outlook and Internet Exploder are the main vectors for viruses and worms. All of its efforts have been concentrated on locking up content, for example with new locks in Windows Media Player. Please tell me: Why should consumers trust Microsoft even one little bit?
Stan's "astonishing" new revelations, just like his other writings, are bought and paid for by Microsoft. Liebowitz, in his position at UT Austin, was responsible for setting up business school courses whose curricula taught students only how to use Microsoft tools and no others. I pointed out, in an online forum, that his prototype course Web site -- which was offered to other schools -- left out vital information about non-Microsoft options and about industry standards, he blocked access to it from my IP address. (Fortunately, this move was laughably ineffective because I had multiple Internet accounts.)
Liebowitz continued, after that, to produce supposedly "scholarly" papers that just happened to echo the Microsoft party line -- whatever that happened to be at the moment.
Now comes Liebowitz' paper on file sharing, once again "inspired" purely by Microsoft's interests. Microsoft doesn't want users to stop buying its software, or to be forced by legislation to design its software in a particular way. And, in the long term, it wants any DRM solution that is used to be its own technology and no other. How convenient, then, that Liebowitz' paper argues against the pending Hollings legislation, which would force Microsoft to dance to the record companies' tune.
In short, don't mistake Liebowitz for an advocate of file sharing or of Libertarianism. Stan Liebowitz is, and has been for many years, solely an advocate of whatever Microsoft pays him or his organization to promote.
It has voiced its support for BSD UNIX and other software that's licensed under truly free licenses. What it does not support is viral, anti-business licenses such as the GPL. And this is quite reasonable, since the stated purpose of the GPL (see Stallman's "GNU Manifesto") is to destroy commercial software vendors and hurt programmers' livelihoods.
In short, Microsoft has no problem with open source. It does, however, have a problem with licensing schemes whose purpose is to attack and kill it. Wouldn't you?
The author of the article appears to be unclear on intellectual property concepts. It has long been established that items that are "utilitarian" -- such as printed forms -- cannot be copyrighted. File formats are also utilitarian, and likewise cannot be copyrighted. This is why Microsoft has never filed suit against any company that has created a program which reads or writes its file formats.
It's possible for patents to cover certain algorithms required by a file format. GIF files, for example, use LZW encryption, which was patented by Sperry-Univac. But this patent really was not on the file format itself, which was trivial. Rather, it covered a process used to compress data. The specification for the file format just happened to require that the data be compressed via that process. (Had it allowed different compression methods, as does TIFF, the patent wouldn't have been an issue.) When the unknown CompuServe programmer who created the GIF format wrote the original specification, he probably would have chosen a different compression algorithm if he had realized that the patented algorithm would cause so many problems both for CompuServe and for its users. Alas, like many programmers, he was concerned with results, not with legal or business issues. By the time Sperry-Univac (which by then had become Unisys) became litigious and began to enforce the patent, the standard was ubiquitous. But, again, the problem here was caused not by the nature of the file format but by the algorithm used to prepare data for storage and transmission in that format.
The only situation I know of in which a company has attempted to patent the file format itself is when Coda Music Software patented certain aspects of the file formats used by its music software. No one knows whether these patents were very strong, because there was never a test case. Coda's software never dominated the market, and so competitors did not find a compelling need to support their file formats. The patent was never challenged, so we can only speculate as to its strength.
I fail to see how the "strength" which Moglen claims for the GPL is really a strength at all.
ALL software licenses grant people the right to do things which are otherwise illegal. So do many other contracts. A lease, for example, grants you the right to live on someone else's property when you would otherwise be guilty of criminal trespass.
However, the law invalidates many terms that commonly appear in leases, contracts, and software licenses. For example, the New York State Attorney General has declared license terms that prohibit the publishing of reviews to be "copyright abuse" and hence invalid. (Moglen makes no argument that the GPL's "turning copyright on its head" -- to use Stallman's own words -- is any more valid.)
Thus, the main point of Moglen's article, which claims strength for the GPL, is itself weak.
Also interesting is the fact that none of the assertions made in the article are supported by legal authorities or even by references. Nor does Moglen address directly any of the many arguments against the validity of the GPL. He merely says, "The GPL is strong because we've successfully threatened people with it!" This is, as I'm sure most people will agree, not much of an argument.... Especially since the FSF chooses its battles carefully and has only threatened small companies which would be unable to afford to defend a lawsuit.
In short, Moglen's article is a pep talk with little substance. It would indeed be worthwhile to examine some of the strongest claims against the GPL's validity in light of both statute and case law, but Moglen -- despite his position as a law professor -- doesn't do that here. For this reason, the article is a disappointment.
The "Free" (not!) Software Foundation -- as well as Bruce Perens, who is allied with it -- have betrayed their true motives: to destroy any and all businesses.
In this case, it's especially ironic because they're attacking a company that could do a great deal to popularize Linux on the desktop. The fact that they're doing it anyway shows not only that they want to hurt software businesses but that it's their first priority. Providing an alternative to Microsoft isn't as important. Making things easier for users isn't as important. What matters to them is what mattered to Richard Stallman when he attempted to destroy Symbolics many years ago (cf the book "Hackers" by Steven Levy): to destroy businesses, big or small, that make money by writing software, and to prevent programmers from being able to make a livelihood that way. (Stallman, incidentally, states that specific goal for the GNU Project in his essay "The GNU Manifesto.")
The FSF has become as Draconian as the RIAA: It is d attempting to use legal threats to destroy software businesses in the same way that the RIAA used them to destroy Napster. Who's next?
I don't see that GNU (the OS) has much in common with the Lisp environments that those companies were working on.
You are correct that, from a technological standpoint, they actually had very little in common. But they did have one thing in common that, to Stallman, was of overwhelming importance. Both the software that drove the LISP machines and UNIX were commercial software.
Stallman had declared war on all commercial software and its creators when the founders of the two LISP machine companies departed the AI Lab.
Can you provide a quote that backs this point?
Sure. See Stallman's GNU Manifesto, where he interleaves statements about the AI Lab -- and how he wants to destroy programmers' prospects of getting good jobs outside academia so that they won't leave -- with ones about why he "must write GNU."
They didn't "take" anything. The code they used was still available for free to anyone. This is not taking, and it is perfectly equitable.
community source
It was not "community source." It was code developed at government expense for the benefit of any and all members of the public to use. There was no closed "community" at all.
to profit without giving anything back.
Because the code was available to anyone for free, its market value was zero. Any profit that arose was due to value which was added by those developers. Because the profit arose entirely from their own work, they deserved the profit. To attempt to take it from them is mean-spirited and confiscatory.
Since none of the source that those companies that raided the MIT AI Lab was GPLd, he clearly didn't do it to destroy those companies.
You're intentionally distorting history, or are perhaps ignorant of it. Stallman attempted to destroy those companies by creating equivalents of their products and giving them away -- in the same way Microsoft attempted to destroy Netscape. When he found that he could not do this alone, he wrote the GPL as a way of recruiting more people to join his vendetta. See Steven Levy's excellent book "Hackers" for background.
(Remember, RMS first wrote it as part of his effort to destroy software companies whose founders had left the MIT AI Lab, leaving him all alone.) Why shouldn't those companies fight back? Their license doesn't preclude the creation of open source, since the BSD License, the Apache License, or the X11 license could be use on the code. It merely prevents the use of licenses which are, esentially, guns aimed at software developers' heads. Nor does it mandate your choice of license, as does the GPL. What's wrong with that?
--Brett Glass
I'm sorry, but an OS that can crash for seemingly no apparent reason, can barely be fixed, and
requires a bunch of preparation just to prepare is too complicated for me.
And you run Windows?
--Brett GLass
IBM shares blame with MS for the demise of OS/2
on
The Sad Parable of OS/2
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I was an OS/2 developer and aficionado from Day -1.... That's right, I had OS/2 0.9 running (under NDA) before it was available to the general public. And I can tell you with certainty that it was not just Microsoft that killed OS/2 (though it certainly played a role); it was IBM itself. Many bugs that I discovered in the OS were never fixed, even though I and others reported them many times. Speed and memory issues weren't adequately addressed. IBM shifted its OS/2 operation from Boca Raton to Austin, causing key developers to quit. Support was terrible. And hardware evangelism was even worse.... There were painfully few drivers available.
IBM's biggest mistake, though, was implementing Windows compatibility. This killed the application market. Why write for OS/2 when you could write for Windows (and OS/2 could then run your product under emulation)? Because of this, OS/2 could never, ever have had a "killer app."
RIP, OS/2. I wasted a lot of brain cells, time, and money on you. If IBM were smart, it would release all of your code under a BSD license, thus giving every one of Microsoft's competitors -- commercial or not -- a leg up. But, alas, I don't think it's that smart.
Interesting, this. Even Slashdot, which decries censorship in mainstream media outlets, is not immune to marginalization. Many moderators on Slashdot -- and even the editors -- often attempt to marginalize some points of view -- for example, any criticism of the GPL or the FSF's actions or agenda. No, Slashdot is not immune to these tactics. It just practices them against different targets.
Why not talk about specifically why his ideas are not realistic instead of attacking him for being successful (which is kind of weird anyway, I mean you make being successful and kind seem like it's a bad thing).
My purpose here was not to refute Barlow's many questionable assertions (only a few of which appeared in the interview; he's made many more in other venues such as Wired). Finding the many inconsistencies and flaws in Barlow's arguments isn't difficult; they've already been covered in many other messages here. (I've tried to discuss them with Barlow himself, but he rarely deigns to answer e-mail even when he promises that he'll do so.)
The purpose of my posting was to describe, in general terms, where Barlow's many odd and flawed arguments are coming from. I'm not attacking Barlow for being "successful" (if, indeed, he can be considered to be successful. He didn't have to try to get where he is today. The world -- together with an inexhaustible supply of adoring groupies -- was handed to him on a silver platter). Rather, I'm pointing out that people should not accept Barlow's odd viewpoints as holy writ handed down from on high by a demigod. Instead, they should instead see them as the byproducts of his extremely unusual experience of the world.
I've encountered Mr. Barlow many times over the years, and his rhetoric is, alas, long on sound bites but lacking in practicality. His call for populism certainly fits with the Zeitgeist as we enter a new Gilded Age. However, most of the measures which Barlow proposes to stop a "corporatocracy" -- e.g. the total elimination of copyright -- would in fact hurt the little guy far more than they would corporations. While inflicting minor wounds on the giants, his proposals would wipe out the small artist, programmer, and author. In short, he (like others) has identified some real threats, but is aiming his blunderbuss so badly that his ideas threaten to kill, via friendly fire, those whom he claims to be defending.
In my conversations with Barlow, I've found it difficult -- in fact, impossible -- to break through and explain to him that reality, for ordinary, mortal non-celebrities, isn't at all like what he experiences. Barlow is able to champion the abrogation of intellectual property because -- having been the exponent of a wealthy ranching family and graced by the sheer good luck of falling in with the Grateful Dead via a high school acquaintance -- he has never had to struggle to earn a living. He hobnobs with "big names" (such as the Kennedy family) to whom few others have access. And he has never wanted for attention, popularity or adulation.... Wherever he goes, Deadheads fall at his feet, begging him to autograph T-shirts and other objects. He is thus utterly unable to understand the artist who struggles mightily -- and perhaps produces much better work that Barlow ever has or will -- but was not struck by fortuitous lightning. Barlow has plenty of money in the bank, and is paid outrageous sums to write articles and give speeches which are barely original (most merely repeat the same things he's said before, and/or borrow shamelessly, and often without attribution, from the work of others). Never having truly worked in his life, he finds it easy to say that artists should work for "tips." In short, he's out of touch with reality, and probably wouldn't find it pleasant if he had to contend with it.
John Perry Barlow is at times entertaining. But his sweeping, ex cathedra pronouncements should be interpreted with these things in mind, and taken -- by the critical reader -- with a few tons of NaCl.
"Closing the code" usually refers to a switch to a non-OSS license. I presume (and hope) that's not on the table....
Neither the LGPL or the GPL is an open source license. Richard Stallman and Bradley Kuhn of the FSF have both said so, recently, in public forums, and the FSF has published literature to this effect.
And, in fact, they're right. Both licenses violate two points of the Open Source Definition: they discriminate against a group of people (developers of commercial software) and against a field of endeavor (the creation of commercial software). Thus, despite the desire of some people to call them "open source," they simply do not qualify. They can't, because they are discriminatory.
Licensing WINE under the GPL or the LGPL would completely close the source to professional programmers who write commercial software. Such a programmer could not look at it, or fix a bug, without seriously endangering his or her livelihood and career. Why? Because (as explained in an earlier message) any software that the programmer wrote which performed a similar function, or even used one of the same algorithms, could be claimed to be a "derivative work." The programmer would then have to give the work away.
In short, putting WINE under the (L)GPL would be closing the code.
Alas, I spoke to Jeremy White only yesterday, and he told me that he and Alexandre wanted to close the code. Thus, the discussion is not at all over. I hope that they will reconsider. Users and developers should be able to free themselves from the grip of Microsoft without falling into the grip of the equally megalomaniacal FSF.
So why do people still choose the GPL over BSD license?
Most don't choose; the project chooses the license for them.
Others do not know that there's more than one license for open source.
Still others are deceived by the propaganda that accompanies the GPL. They see the claim that the GPL makes software "free" at the top (even though it is a bald-faced lie) and never read the pages of legalese that follow.
Still others believe that by embracing the GPL they are attacking large corporations such as Microsoft. In fact, those corporations have the ability to hire programmers to implement equivalents of anything they choose. It's small companies that want to compete with big guys like Microsoft that are most badly hurt by the GPL, because the GPL denies them access to code and they're forced to reimplement. (It's ironic that
the GPL is so beneficial to Microsoft, but it is. It kills Microsoft's potential competition in the cradle.)
In NO case is the GPL actually a good choice. It is an onerous and unconscionable license that will hopefully be ruled illegal sometime in the near future.
One of the purposes of the GPL is to poison the well, driving out all other software so that there is no alternative. A good example of a GPLed program that is well on the way to accomplishing this is GCC. It's inferior to commercial alternatives, but (as Microsoft demonstrated with Netscape) even a superior product can't compete when another in the same category is being given away for free as part of a predatory strategy.
OpenBSD's code, like all BSD-licensed code, cannot be "taken" or "stolen." It's already been given to everyone, freely, to use as they will. No matter what anyone does with it, the code will always be available and free. That's true freedom. It's GPL that's sucker bait. Use it, and your work is confiscated.
...any more than Linux is being "jacked" by Red Hat. Both are trying to add value -- something which they must do in order to sell product, because the code is available at no cost.
This entire issue is reminiscent of the well known Dr. Seuss story Horton Hatches the Egg.
In the story, a bird lays an egg and then convinces a kindly elephant named Horton to sit on it. Horton braves all manner of hardships -- heat, hold, even the indignity of being captured and displayed as a freak in a circus -- to remain with his charge until it hatches.
Whereupon, the bird immediately demands that Horton return the fruits of his labor to her.
Were she a modern Richard Stallman, she might have declared that it was a GPLed egg.
Writing a program -- like laying an egg -- isn't necessarily an easy task. However, bringing it to the marketplace and successfully selling it as a product -- especially in the presence of a free alternative -- is a much more difficult and dangerous one. The company that hopes to sell a product that's an improved derivative of one that's available for free is taking a big risk and must make a truly Hortonian (if I may coin the phrase) effort to be successful.
What Mr. Stallman and the GPL would ask is that the person who manages to do this -- against all odds -- get nothing.
CodeWeavers appears to believe that the emergence of products such as Lindows is a threat to it and/or to WINE. Nothing could be further from the truth. If the creators of such projects act in their own best interests, they will return all but the most strategically important code from their implementations to the WINE project, reserving for themselves only what is necessary to differentiate their product from what another vendor (e.g. Red Hat) might produce. This minimizes their maintenance costs, and may -- there's no sure thing here -- provide them with sufficient value added to survive in the presence of a free alternative.
To (L)GPL WINE, on the other hand, prevents such worthy products from ever seeing the light of day. It is, in essence, snatching back the egg from poor Horton after all of his hard work. And it won't benefit WINE or CodeWeavers. The companies' potential contributions will be lost, and CodeWeavers and WINE will gain them a reputation for being hostile to business. This will cause the consulting business from which CodeWeavers hopes to make money to dry up.
In short, the move is shortsighted and bad for all concerned.
CodeWeavers should look instead to the model of Wasabi Systems (http://www.wasabisystems.com/), which just received a round of venture capital funding worth more than $1M to port, publish, promote, and consult on NetBSD. NetBSD is truly free; it's published not under the restrictive GPL or LGPL but under the BSD License. And Wasabi is going strong; they just published a desktop package (consisting of NetBSD plus GUIs and applications) that is competitive with the best of the Linux distributions.
The BSD License was ruled to be valid -- and enforced! -- during the lawsuit between AT&T's (later Novell's) Unix System Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley over the distribution of BSD. The University successfully claimed that AT&T had violated the BSD License by failing to credit the contributors to the BSD code . The claim carried such weight that it forced a court-approved settlement in which USL capitulated.
Slashdot Mirror
And I'd say you lack ethics for accusing me of that when it's flat-out wrong.
I also note, from your Web site, that you're a Windows developer, which may be the reason why you're so fast to jump in and deny Microsoft's rather transparent strategy.
Another motivation for Microsoft's "Palladium" scheme could be Fritz Hollings' SSSCA -- the bill, now in the Senate, which would require copy protection to be built into every product. What if the SSSCA passed... and Microsoft was, conveniently, the only entity whose operating system met its requirements (perhaps because no other company would stoop so low)? This announcement sets the stage for Microsoft to turn on consumers and computer users everywhere as never before, supporting legislation that would make it illegal for them to use products that did not have built-in handcuffs. Sad, but not out of the question given Microsoft's total lack of ethics.
The MSNBC article also mentions the possibility of disappearing e-mail. Who do you thing would want this the most? An ordinary citizen who tracks his correspondence with friends and family? Or a corporate executive (such as Bill Gates) who wishes that the sort of paper trail that was brought out in the Microsoft-DoJ case had somehow conveniently evaporated? Or the executives at Arthur Andersen, Enron, Qwest, Global Crossing, Waste Management, Rite-Aid, and other companies that were engaged in criminal activity, market manipulation, and shady accounting practices? Hmmmm.
The information in this article suggests that "Pallaidium" really isn't about security for computer users at all. Rather, it's about the security of the income streams of Microsoft and large content providers, who will be able to lock up content and make it self destruct unless you pay big bucks. Microsoft has already made Microsoft Office and Windows XP stop working if you don't surrender your personal information to them for inclusion in their massive databases. And XP nags you to death to give up still more of your private information to Microsoft's Passport system, which has already been shown to be insecure and puts all of your eggs in one basket. (If the account is cracked, anyone can use your credit card numbers, etc.; you're in big trouble.) And all of this is under the control of a company that has been convicted of unscrupulous business practices. (The current hearings are about the penalty.... The courts have already affirmed that Microsoft is guilty.) How much do you want to bet that developers will have to pay money, sign a contract, and promise that they won't develop for other platforms before their software will be "authorized" to run on this system?
Microsoft has shown that it can't make a product that provides security to users. Its Outhou... I mean Outlook and Internet Exploder are the main vectors for viruses and worms. All of its efforts have been concentrated on locking up content, for example with new locks in Windows Media Player. Please tell me: Why should consumers trust Microsoft even one little bit?
Liebowitz continued, after that, to produce supposedly "scholarly" papers that just happened to echo the Microsoft party line -- whatever that happened to be at the moment.
Now comes Liebowitz' paper on file sharing, once again "inspired" purely by Microsoft's interests. Microsoft doesn't want users to stop buying its software, or to be forced by legislation to design its software in a particular way. And, in the long term, it wants any DRM solution that is used to be its own technology and no other. How convenient, then, that Liebowitz' paper argues against the pending Hollings legislation, which would force Microsoft to dance to the record companies' tune.
In short, don't mistake Liebowitz for an advocate of file sharing or of Libertarianism. Stan Liebowitz is, and has been for many years, solely an advocate of whatever Microsoft pays him or his organization to promote.
In short, Microsoft has no problem with open source. It does, however, have a problem with licensing schemes whose purpose is to attack and kill it. Wouldn't you?
It's possible for patents to cover certain algorithms required by a file format. GIF files, for example, use LZW encryption, which was patented by Sperry-Univac. But this patent really was not on the file format itself, which was trivial. Rather, it covered a process used to compress data. The specification for the file format just happened to require that the data be compressed via that process. (Had it allowed different compression methods, as does TIFF, the patent wouldn't have been an issue.) When the unknown CompuServe programmer who created the GIF format wrote the original specification, he probably would have chosen a different compression algorithm if he had realized that the patented algorithm would cause so many problems both for CompuServe and for its users. Alas, like many programmers, he was concerned with results, not with legal or business issues. By the time Sperry-Univac (which by then had become Unisys) became litigious and began to enforce the patent, the standard was ubiquitous. But, again, the problem here was caused not by the nature of the file format but by the algorithm used to prepare data for storage and transmission in that format.
The only situation I know of in which a company has attempted to patent the file format itself is when Coda Music Software patented certain aspects of the file formats used by its music software. No one knows whether these patents were very strong, because there was never a test case. Coda's software never dominated the market, and so competitors did not find a compelling need to support their file formats. The patent was never challenged, so we can only speculate as to its strength.
I fail to see how the "strength" which Moglen claims for the GPL is really a strength at all. ALL software licenses grant people the right to do things which are otherwise illegal. So do many other contracts. A lease, for example, grants you the right to live on someone else's property when you would otherwise be guilty of criminal trespass. However, the law invalidates many terms that commonly appear in leases, contracts, and software licenses. For example, the New York State Attorney General has declared license terms that prohibit the publishing of reviews to be "copyright abuse" and hence invalid. (Moglen makes no argument that the GPL's "turning copyright on its head" -- to use Stallman's own words -- is any more valid.) Thus, the main point of Moglen's article, which claims strength for the GPL, is itself weak. Also interesting is the fact that none of the assertions made in the article are supported by legal authorities or even by references. Nor does Moglen address directly any of the many arguments against the validity of the GPL. He merely says, "The GPL is strong because we've successfully threatened people with it!" This is, as I'm sure most people will agree, not much of an argument.... Especially since the FSF chooses its battles carefully and has only threatened small companies which would be unable to afford to defend a lawsuit. In short, Moglen's article is a pep talk with little substance. It would indeed be worthwhile to examine some of the strongest claims against the GPL's validity in light of both statute and case law, but Moglen -- despite his position as a law professor -- doesn't do that here. For this reason, the article is a disappointment.
In this case, it's especially ironic because they're attacking a company that could do a great deal to popularize Linux on the desktop. The fact that they're doing it anyway shows not only that they want to hurt software businesses but that it's their first priority. Providing an alternative to Microsoft isn't as important. Making things easier for users isn't as important. What matters to them is what mattered to Richard Stallman when he attempted to destroy Symbolics many years ago (cf the book "Hackers" by Steven Levy): to destroy businesses, big or small, that make money by writing software, and to prevent programmers from being able to make a livelihood that way. (Stallman, incidentally, states that specific goal for the GNU Project in his essay "The GNU Manifesto.")
The FSF has become as Draconian as the RIAA: It is d attempting to use legal threats to destroy software businesses in the same way that the RIAA used them to destroy Napster. Who's next?
--Brett Glass
I don't see that GNU (the OS) has much in common with the Lisp environments that those companies were working on.
You are correct that, from a technological standpoint, they actually had very little in common. But they did have one thing in common that, to Stallman, was of overwhelming importance. Both the software that drove the LISP machines and UNIX were commercial software.
Stallman had declared war on all commercial software and its creators when the founders of the two LISP machine companies departed the AI Lab.
Can you provide a quote that backs this point?
Sure. See Stallman's GNU Manifesto, where he interleaves statements about the AI Lab -- and how he wants to destroy programmers' prospects of getting good jobs outside academia so that they won't leave -- with ones about why he "must write GNU."
--Brett Glass
RMS saw an inequity in those who took
They didn't "take" anything. The code they used was still available for free to anyone. This is not taking, and it is perfectly equitable.
community source
It was not "community source." It was code developed at government expense for the benefit of any and all members of the public to use. There was no closed "community" at all.
to profit without giving anything back.
Because the code was available to anyone for free, its market value was zero. Any profit that arose was due to value which was added by those developers. Because the profit arose entirely from their own work, they deserved the profit. To attempt to take it from them is mean-spirited and confiscatory.
Since none of the source that those companies that raided the MIT AI Lab was GPLd, he clearly didn't do it to destroy those companies.
You're intentionally distorting history, or are perhaps ignorant of it. Stallman attempted to destroy those companies by creating equivalents of their products and giving them away -- in the same way Microsoft attempted to destroy Netscape. When he found that he could not do this alone, he wrote the GPL as a way of recruiting more people to join his vendetta. See Steven Levy's excellent book "Hackers" for background.
--Brett Glass
(Remember, RMS first wrote it as part of his effort to destroy software companies whose founders had left the MIT AI Lab, leaving him all alone.) Why shouldn't those companies fight back? Their license doesn't preclude the creation of open source, since the BSD License, the Apache License, or the X11 license could be use on the code. It merely prevents the use of licenses which are, esentially, guns aimed at software developers' heads. Nor does it mandate your choice of license, as does the GPL. What's wrong with that? --Brett Glass
And you run Windows?
--Brett GLass
IBM's biggest mistake, though, was implementing Windows compatibility. This killed the application market. Why write for OS/2 when you could write for Windows (and OS/2 could then run your product under emulation)? Because of this, OS/2 could never, ever have had a "killer app."
RIP, OS/2. I wasted a lot of brain cells, time, and money on you. If IBM were smart, it would release all of your code under a BSD license, thus giving every one of Microsoft's competitors -- commercial or not -- a leg up. But, alas, I don't think it's that smart.
--Brett Glass
Interesting, this. Even Slashdot, which decries censorship in mainstream media outlets, is not immune to marginalization. Many moderators on Slashdot -- and even the editors -- often attempt to marginalize some points of view -- for example, any criticism of the GPL or the FSF's actions or agenda. No, Slashdot is not immune to these tactics. It just practices them against different targets.
Why not talk about specifically why his ideas are not realistic instead of attacking him for being successful (which is kind of weird anyway, I mean you make being successful and kind seem like it's a bad thing).
My purpose here was not to refute Barlow's many questionable assertions (only a few of which appeared in the interview; he's made many more in other venues such as Wired). Finding the many inconsistencies and flaws in Barlow's arguments isn't difficult; they've already been covered in many other messages here. (I've tried to discuss them with Barlow himself, but he rarely deigns to answer e-mail even when he promises that he'll do so.)
The purpose of my posting was to describe, in general terms, where Barlow's many odd and flawed arguments are coming from. I'm not attacking Barlow for being "successful" (if, indeed, he can be considered to be successful. He didn't have to try to get where he is today. The world -- together with an inexhaustible supply of adoring groupies -- was handed to him on a silver platter). Rather, I'm pointing out that people should not accept Barlow's odd viewpoints as holy writ handed down from on high by a demigod. Instead, they should instead see them as the byproducts of his extremely unusual experience of the world.
--Brett Glass
In my conversations with Barlow, I've found it difficult -- in fact, impossible -- to break through and explain to him that reality, for ordinary, mortal non-celebrities, isn't at all like what he experiences. Barlow is able to champion the abrogation of intellectual property because -- having been the exponent of a wealthy ranching family and graced by the sheer good luck of falling in with the Grateful Dead via a high school acquaintance -- he has never had to struggle to earn a living. He hobnobs with "big names" (such as the Kennedy family) to whom few others have access. And he has never wanted for attention, popularity or adulation.... Wherever he goes, Deadheads fall at his feet, begging him to autograph T-shirts and other objects. He is thus utterly unable to understand the artist who struggles mightily -- and perhaps produces much better work that Barlow ever has or will -- but was not struck by fortuitous lightning. Barlow has plenty of money in the bank, and is paid outrageous sums to write articles and give speeches which are barely original (most merely repeat the same things he's said before, and/or borrow shamelessly, and often without attribution, from the work of others). Never having truly worked in his life, he finds it easy to say that artists should work for "tips." In short, he's out of touch with reality, and probably wouldn't find it pleasant if he had to contend with it.
John Perry Barlow is at times entertaining. But his sweeping, ex cathedra pronouncements should be interpreted with these things in mind, and taken -- by the critical reader -- with a few tons of NaCl.
--Brett Glass
"Closing the code" usually refers to a switch to a non-OSS license. I presume (and hope) that's not on the table....
Neither the LGPL or the GPL is an open source license. Richard Stallman and Bradley Kuhn of the FSF have both said so, recently, in public forums, and the FSF has published literature to this effect.
And, in fact, they're right. Both licenses violate two points of the Open Source Definition: they discriminate against a group of people (developers of commercial software) and against a field of endeavor (the creation of commercial software). Thus, despite the desire of some people to call them "open source," they simply do not qualify. They can't, because they are discriminatory.
Licensing WINE under the GPL or the LGPL would completely close the source to professional programmers who write commercial software. Such a programmer could not look at it, or fix a bug, without seriously endangering his or her livelihood and career. Why? Because (as explained in an earlier message) any software that the programmer wrote which performed a similar function, or even used one of the same algorithms, could be claimed to be a "derivative work." The programmer would then have to give the work away.
In short, putting WINE under the (L)GPL would be closing the code.
Alas, I spoke to Jeremy White only yesterday, and he told me that he and Alexandre wanted to close the code. Thus, the discussion is not at all over. I hope that they will reconsider. Users and developers should be able to free themselves from the grip of Microsoft without falling into the grip of the equally megalomaniacal FSF.
So why do people still choose the GPL over BSD license?
Most don't choose; the project chooses the license for them.
Others do not know that there's more than one license for open source.
Still others are deceived by the propaganda that accompanies the GPL. They see the claim that the GPL makes software "free" at the top (even though it is a bald-faced lie) and never read the pages of legalese that follow.
Still others believe that by embracing the GPL they are attacking large corporations such as Microsoft. In fact, those corporations have the ability to hire programmers to implement equivalents of anything they choose. It's small companies that want to compete with big guys like Microsoft that are most badly hurt by the GPL, because the GPL denies them access to code and they're forced to reimplement. (It's ironic that the GPL is so beneficial to Microsoft, but it is. It kills Microsoft's potential competition in the cradle.)
In NO case is the GPL actually a good choice. It is an onerous and unconscionable license that will hopefully be ruled illegal sometime in the near future.
Don't like it then FIND ANOTHER WELL.
One of the purposes of the GPL is to poison the well, driving out all other software so that there is no alternative. A good example of a GPLed program that is well on the way to accomplishing this is GCC. It's inferior to commercial alternatives, but (as Microsoft demonstrated with Netscape) even a superior product can't compete when another in the same category is being given away for free as part of a predatory strategy.
OpenBSD's code, like all BSD-licensed code, cannot be "taken" or "stolen." It's already been given to everyone, freely, to use as they will. No matter what anyone does with it, the code will always be available and free. That's true freedom. It's GPL that's sucker bait. Use it, and your work is confiscated.
...any more than Linux is being "jacked" by Red Hat. Both are trying to add value -- something which they must do in order to sell product, because the code is available at no cost.
In the story, a bird lays an egg and then convinces a kindly elephant named Horton to sit on it. Horton braves all manner of hardships -- heat, hold, even the indignity of being captured and displayed as a freak in a circus -- to remain with his charge until it hatches.
Whereupon, the bird immediately demands that Horton return the fruits of his labor to her.
Were she a modern Richard Stallman, she might have declared that it was a GPLed egg.
Writing a program -- like laying an egg -- isn't necessarily an easy task. However, bringing it to the marketplace and successfully selling it as a product -- especially in the presence of a free alternative -- is a much more difficult and dangerous one. The company that hopes to sell a product that's an improved derivative of one that's available for free is taking a big risk and must make a truly Hortonian (if I may coin the phrase) effort to be successful.
What Mr. Stallman and the GPL would ask is that the person who manages to do this -- against all odds -- get nothing.
CodeWeavers appears to believe that the emergence of products such as Lindows is a threat to it and/or to WINE. Nothing could be further from the truth. If the creators of such projects act in their own best interests, they will return all but the most strategically important code from their implementations to the WINE project, reserving for themselves only what is necessary to differentiate their product from what another vendor (e.g. Red Hat) might produce. This minimizes their maintenance costs, and may -- there's no sure thing here -- provide them with sufficient value added to survive in the presence of a free alternative.
To (L)GPL WINE, on the other hand, prevents such worthy products from ever seeing the light of day. It is, in essence, snatching back the egg from poor Horton after all of his hard work. And it won't benefit WINE or CodeWeavers. The companies' potential contributions will be lost, and CodeWeavers and WINE will gain them a reputation for being hostile to business. This will cause the consulting business from which CodeWeavers hopes to make money to dry up.
In short, the move is shortsighted and bad for all concerned.
CodeWeavers should look instead to the model of Wasabi Systems (http://www.wasabisystems.com/), which just received a round of venture capital funding worth more than $1M to port, publish, promote, and consult on NetBSD. NetBSD is truly free; it's published not under the restrictive GPL or LGPL but under the BSD License. And Wasabi is going strong; they just published a desktop package (consisting of NetBSD plus GUIs and applications) that is competitive with the best of the Linux distributions.
The BSD License was ruled to be valid -- and enforced! -- during the lawsuit between AT&T's (later Novell's) Unix System Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley over the distribution of BSD. The University successfully claimed that AT&T had violated the BSD License by failing to credit the contributors to the BSD code . The claim carried such weight that it forced a court-approved settlement in which USL capitulated.