The entire notion that the users and creators of GPLed software constitute a "community" is, alas, a myth. Most users of Linux and other GPLed software do not know a single developer of that software, nor do the developers, by and large, know one another.
The notion of a putative "community" has long been used by politicians, ideologues, and others to advance their causes at the expense of those who can be deceived into believing it.
The fact is that there is no one "free software community." There are many individuals out there who make use of, and create, open source software -- all for different reasons. The claim that re-using code which the author has intentionally given to the world, to use as it will, is somehow "theft" from this mythical community is an outright lie which feeds upon spite and jealousy.
Alas, the GPL itself was motivated by the spite and jealousy of one person -- Richard Stallman -- who lived in a sheltered academic world. Stallman refused to recognize that in order for such a world to exist, those outside that world had to be able to benefit from the work that was done inside. Spiteful and jealous about the notion that someone might -- heaven forbid! -- make money by furthering the work of the MIT AI Lab, he set out to "monkey wrench" their endeavors.
The GPL's "poison pill" license was the result. This license does nothing to harm large players, such as Microsoft, which have plenty of development resources and need not use freely availble code. However, it poisons new endeavors -- the "little guys" who might grow businesses that could challenge the big ones. The harm that has already been wrought by this dangerous approach is immeasurable.
--Brett Glass
Re:I think that what Maxtor did is great.
on
FreeBSD at COMDEX
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· Score: 2
If you are forced to reveal the source code of an embedded system such as a file server, you have forfeited all of its unique value. That's why even Cygnus' eCOS license does not demand that. Only the GPL -- whose purpose is to destroy programmers' livelihoods and whose motivation is spite -- does that.
The aims of the GPL are unethical, and ethical programmers should not endorse or further them.
--Brett Glass
I think that what Maxtor did is great.
on
FreeBSD at COMDEX
·
· Score: 2
They built upon a freely available code base and added significant value of their own, creating a good product. This is analogous to an engineer taking a new scientific discovery and reducing it to practice.
It'd be nice if they gave away their SMB implementation, but it certainly would be unreasonable to insist that they do so. After all, they wrote it and deserve to make a living from their efforts. It'd be destructive and spiteful to insist, as Richard Stallman would, that they give up the ability to profit from their hard work.
As for being "left wondering what kernel enhancements were made that provided for faster SMB serving:" why lose sleep over that? All of the most likely approaches are pretty obvious; after all, similar ones were implemented for NFS.
Your above posting is unfair to me and is also incorrect on several points. Our queries to vendors were all polite and tactful. No, we did not use the term "lobotomodem" (a term which they probably would not have understood) when speaking to them, though in house we do prefer the term to "WinModem." Instead, we carefully asked if the products were known to work with any version of UNIX or any UNIX-like operating system. If they did not know, we asked if they could identify the controller chip used to perform the given function. The answer to the second question -- at least in the case of modems -- often revealed the answer to the first.
As for the isolation of open source companies in the Linux Business Expo: According to the staff of one very prominent open source publisher, they were told by the COMDEX staff that they could not have space on the main floor. If they were selling anything related to Linux or open source, it was the "Linux Business Expo" or nothing. So, your assertion that "Anyone who wanted to be in mainland could have chosen to do so" is not correct. Sad, but true.
The new lawsuits have originated from the same source as the one against Toshiba. Giddy from their $2B settlement (to which Toshiba never should have agreed), and now equipped with a vast war chest, they're out to sue EVERYONE who has made a product that incorporates an NEC floppy disk controller. Including NEC itself, which took action to fix the minor glitch.
This suit is an example of opportunistic extortion by greedy lawyers at its worst. The bug has not been shown to have caused a single byte of data loss, EVER. (Most OSes verify writes to floppy disks by reading back what they wrote, and so would catch errors even if they did occur.) However, the suit may lead to a new trend: lawyers poring over the errata published by chip makers, looking for fodder for lawsuits. Which, in turn, could cause vendors such as Intel to quit publishing them. This could make computers and operating systems far less reliable, because programmers won't be ABLE to work around bugs. And the development of open source software will be hobbled, because chip makers won't agree to the publication of source code which shows workarounds for errata.
Let's hope that this next crop of defendants does not knuckle under, as Toshiba unwisely did.
While the home page suggests that the code might be licensed under some other open source license, such as BSD, licensing under the GPL potentially excludes the code permanently from commercial use. All that is sufficient for this to happen is for one developer to submit code which he or she insists can ONLY be released under the GPL, and the code is consigned to the GPL exclusively and forever.
Which is a shame. It means that innovations in this OS (which I hear incorporates some novel ideas) will never become industry standards, because publishers of commercial operating systems cannot adopt them. The same would not be true if a business-friendly license such as the BSD license were used. (The ability of developers to reuse BSD licensed code without "giving away the farm" is responsible for the standardization of the TCP/IP protocol -- and, in turn, for the success of the Internet.)
As developers, we must consider the long term results of our actions and the effects they have in the real world (in which, whether we like it or not, self-interest has an important role to play). If we remain sheltered, we will make bad decisions. Sad to say, I think that stamping the GPL on yet another major work is exactly this sort of bad decision.
There is probably still a short period of time in which the leaders of the project can save the day by licensing the code under a BSD-style license rather than the GPL, and I would urge them to do that. If they would like to see their ideas propagate, become standard, and benefit the largest possible number of people, this is by far the best course of action. There is no downside; projects with BSD-like licenses, including Apache and FreeBSD, have ample numbers of developers. And the upside is fantastic. If the developers of EROS are reading this list, and care about the future of their code and of the software world in general, I urge them to make it so.
I could answer that nobody is forced to be a programmer. Most of us cannot manage to get any money for standing on the street and making faces. But we are not, as a result, condemned to spend our lives standing on the street making faces, and starving. We do something else.
But that is the wrong answer because it accepts the questioner's implicit assumption: that without ownership of software, programmers cannot possibly be paid a cent. Supposedly it is all or nothing.
The real reason programmers will not starve is that it will still be possible for them to get paid for programming; just not paid as much as now.
Restricting copying is not the only basis for business in software. It is the most common basis because it brings in the most money. If it were prohibited, or rejected by the customer, software business would move to other bases of organization which are now used less often. There are always numerous ways to organize any kind of business.
Probably programming will not be as lucrative on the new basis as it is now. But that is not an argument against the change. It is not considered an injustice that sales clerks make the salaries that they now do. If programmers made the same, that would not be an injustice either. (In practice they would still make considerably more than that.)
In truth, the situation could become even more dire than Stallman predicts. If the GPL makes it impossible for programmers to build on existing software and profit from their work, programmers will naturally be unemployed. The few that are left will do "grunt work" such as making minor tweaks to GPLed code. And, yes, they'll be young, cheap, or foreign labor.
It's time to change direction now. Open source is a good thing, but the GPL -- which attacks programmers' livelihoods -- is not.
Again, the errors (e.g. the use of "illusive" instead of "elusive") aren't mine; they were introduced by the magazine during copy editing.
As for the Guardian Angels: What would you propose instead? Certainly there must be some accountability for irresponsible actions taken on the Net. Would you rather that we, as Netizens, self-police -- or have the government do it for us?
"Occurrence" is not spelled with an "a," if you want to be nit-picky about it.
As for the movie title: it was in italics in my original text. But copy editors often change things; in this case, it was mapped to quotes. Not strictly correct, but perfectly clear.
Yes, it is easier to hide a back door in a closed source program than in an open source program.
But think of the challenge of trying to hide a potential exploit in plain sight! This is exactly the sort of challenge (and glory) that "eleet" hackers -- particularly the type who like to grandstand -- crave.
Also, what better way to get people to trust your backdoored code? You can say, "See? I'm not hiding anything; it's open source!" And many naive folks, who thought they were sooo clever not to use the closed source version, will believe, and will be suckered into using the program. I hope you can see how utterly delicious such a notion would be to certain hackers.
As for the CIH incident: While I'd like to think it was an accident, it would be (again!) an incredibly tempting prank for those bent on mischief.
Slashdot Mirror
The notion of a putative "community" has long been used by politicians, ideologues, and others to advance their causes at the expense of those who can be deceived into believing it.
The fact is that there is no one "free software community." There are many individuals out there who make use of, and create, open source software -- all for different reasons. The claim that re-using code which the author has intentionally given to the world, to use as it will, is somehow "theft" from this mythical community is an outright lie which feeds upon spite and jealousy.
Alas, the GPL itself was motivated by the spite and jealousy of one person -- Richard Stallman -- who lived in a sheltered academic world. Stallman refused to recognize that in order for such a world to exist, those outside that world had to be able to benefit from the work that was done inside. Spiteful and jealous about the notion that someone might -- heaven forbid! -- make money by furthering the work of the MIT AI Lab, he set out to "monkey wrench" their endeavors.
The GPL's "poison pill" license was the result. This license does nothing to harm large players, such as Microsoft, which have plenty of development resources and need not use freely availble code. However, it poisons new endeavors -- the "little guys" who might grow businesses that could challenge the big ones. The harm that has already been wrought by this dangerous approach is immeasurable.
--Brett Glass
The aims of the GPL are unethical, and ethical programmers should not endorse or further them.
--Brett Glass
It'd be nice if they gave away their SMB implementation, but it certainly would be unreasonable to insist that they do so. After all, they wrote it and deserve to make a living from their efforts. It'd be destructive and spiteful to insist, as Richard Stallman would, that they give up the ability to profit from their hard work.
As for being "left wondering what kernel enhancements were made that provided for faster SMB serving:" why lose sleep over that? All of the most likely approaches are pretty obvious; after all, similar ones were implemented for NFS.
--Brett Glass
Your above posting is unfair to me and is also incorrect on several points. Our queries to vendors were all polite and tactful. No, we did not use the term "lobotomodem" (a term which they probably would not have understood) when speaking to them, though in house we do prefer the term to "WinModem." Instead, we carefully asked if the products were known to work with any version of UNIX or any UNIX-like operating system. If they did not know, we asked if they could identify the controller chip used to perform the given function. The answer to the second question -- at least in the case of modems -- often revealed the answer to the first.
As for the isolation of open source companies in the Linux Business Expo: According to the staff of one very prominent open source publisher, they were told by the COMDEX staff that they could not have space on the main floor. If they were selling anything related to Linux or open source, it was the "Linux Business Expo" or nothing. So, your assertion that "Anyone who wanted to be in mainland could have chosen to do so" is not correct. Sad, but true.
--Brett Glass
I have never done any such thing, nor would I ever do so. No wonder you are posting as "Anonymous Coward."
This suit is an example of opportunistic extortion by greedy lawyers at its worst. The bug has not been shown to have caused a single byte of data loss, EVER. (Most OSes verify writes to floppy disks by reading back what they wrote, and so would catch errors even if they did occur.) However, the suit may lead to a new trend: lawyers poring over the errata published by chip makers, looking for fodder for lawsuits. Which, in turn, could cause vendors such as Intel to quit publishing them. This could make computers and operating systems far less reliable, because programmers won't be ABLE to work around bugs. And the development of open source software will be hobbled, because chip makers won't agree to the publication of source code which shows workarounds for errata.
Let's hope that this next crop of defendants does not knuckle under, as Toshiba unwisely did.
--Brett Glass
Which is a shame. It means that innovations in this OS (which I hear incorporates some novel ideas) will never become industry standards, because publishers of commercial operating systems cannot adopt them. The same would not be true if a business-friendly license such as the BSD license were used. (The ability of developers to reuse BSD licensed code without "giving away the farm" is responsible for the standardization of the TCP/IP protocol -- and, in turn, for the success of the Internet.)
As developers, we must consider the long term results of our actions and the effects they have in the real world (in which, whether we like it or not, self-interest has an important role to play). If we remain sheltered, we will make bad decisions. Sad to say, I think that stamping the GPL on yet another major work is exactly this sort of bad decision.
There is probably still a short period of time in which the leaders of the project can save the day by licensing the code under a BSD-style license rather than the GPL, and I would urge them to do that. If they would like to see their ideas propagate, become standard, and benefit the largest possible number of people, this is by far the best course of action. There is no downside; projects with BSD-like licenses, including Apache and FreeBSD, have ample numbers of developers. And the upside is fantastic. If the developers of EROS are reading this list, and care about the future of their code and of the software world in general, I urge them to make it so.
--Brett Glass
"Won't programmers starve?"
I could answer that nobody is forced to be a programmer. Most of us cannot manage to get any money for standing on the street and making faces. But we are not, as a result, condemned to spend our lives standing on the street making faces, and starving. We do something else.
But that is the wrong answer because it accepts the questioner's implicit assumption: that without ownership of software, programmers cannot possibly be paid a cent. Supposedly it is all or nothing.
The real reason programmers will not starve is that it will still be possible for them to get paid for programming; just not paid as much as now.
Restricting copying is not the only basis for business in software. It is the most common basis because it brings in the most money. If it were prohibited, or rejected by the customer, software business would move to other bases of organization which are now used less often. There are always numerous ways to organize any kind of business.
Probably programming will not be as lucrative on the new basis as it is now. But that is not an argument against the change. It is not considered an injustice that sales clerks make the salaries that they now do. If programmers made the same, that would not be an injustice either. (In practice they would still make considerably more than that.)
In truth, the situation could become even more dire than Stallman predicts. If the GPL makes it impossible for programmers to build on existing software and profit from their work, programmers will naturally be unemployed. The few that are left will do "grunt work" such as making minor tweaks to GPLed code. And, yes, they'll be young, cheap, or foreign labor.
It's time to change direction now. Open source is a good thing, but the GPL -- which attacks programmers' livelihoods -- is not.
-- Brett
As for the Guardian Angels: What would you propose instead? Certainly there must be some accountability for irresponsible actions taken on the Net. Would you rather that we, as Netizens, self-police -- or have the government do it for us?
--Brett
As for the movie title: it was in italics in my original text. But copy editors often change things; in this case, it was mapped to quotes. Not strictly correct, but perfectly clear.
--Brett
But think of the challenge of trying to hide a potential exploit in plain sight! This is exactly the sort of challenge (and glory) that "eleet" hackers -- particularly the type who like to grandstand -- crave.
Also, what better way to get people to trust your backdoored code? You can say, "See? I'm not hiding anything; it's open source!" And many naive folks, who thought they were sooo clever not to use the closed source version, will believe, and will be suckered into using the program. I hope you can see how utterly delicious such a notion would be to certain hackers.
As for the CIH incident: While I'd like to think it was an accident, it would be (again!) an incredibly tempting prank for those bent on mischief.
--Brett