Don't expect your customers to give you freebies unless you're giving them something *good* in return
Look at it this way: in return for using your bandwidth to distribute files, you get peers doing the same thing for you.
It's true that in this sense you and your peers are "providing a service" for Microsoft/Red Hat/whoever, but that company is providing a service to you by letting you have the file in the first place. Do you have the right to demand that the company provides you with the file in any other way? If you don't agree with the distribution system, you can opt out by not receiving it.
Since the details for actual services aren't fixed, it's too soon to know, but maybe P2P distribution would be voluntary; in other words, you could configure your P2P to leech and not distribute, if you really wanted.
Akso, someone pays for your internet connection, and so in a way you are paying costs indirectly for your downloaded file anyway. If P2P is more efficient, it may reduce download times and also reduce traffic between providers, thus lowering costs for ISPs and reducing the pressure on them to raise prices, giving you a cheaper internet connection.
If and when companies use a P2P system to save costs, make massive profits, and don't return the benefits to consumers, they will leave themselves open to complaints. But it doesn't seem reasonable to dismiss the system yet, when it could benefit everyone.
But the definition of "open standard" in the framework document is:
that the standard was created through an process of open participation, and practical details have been published to a degree that allows anyone to implement what it describes
that anyone can make use of it
that there are several products on the market which implement it.
Music storage services: Storage usage is copyright infringement - Tokyo District Court
In a judgement on a lawsuit based on a dispute as to whether a service allowing users to store data, such as their own CDs, in "storage" on the internet, so that they can download it to their mobile phones and listen to it whenever they like, constitutes copyright infringement, the Tokyo District Count (Makiko Takabe presiding) ruled that the service does constitute copyright infringement.
The service in question is "MYUTA", started in November 2005 by the information communications company "Image City" (Taito Ward, Tokyo). Users save music data from their home computers on the company's server, and only the user who saved the data can access it.
The Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (JASRAC) indicated that this service was an infringement of copyright. Image City first halted the service, and brought a lawsuit against JASRAC, seeking confirmation that the service did not infringe copyright.
In the lawsuit, Image City asserted that "In effect, the party copying and transmitting data is the user himself/herself. There is no transmission to an unspecified number of third parties, and no copyright infringement." However, the judgement found that "The server, which is the backbone of the system, is owned and managed by Image City, and from the point of view of Image City, the user is an unspecified party. The party carrying out the acts of copying data and transmitting it to the public (an unspecified number of persons) is the company Image City." It was determined that unless JASRAC gives permission for the service, it constitutes copyright infringement. (Kazumi Kitamura)
Mainichi Shimbun, May 25, 2007 20:22 updated 21:00
I agree it's unfair. In the end, though, phone companies doing this hurt themselves more than they hurt their customers.
Look at this story. Verizon got a one-off payment of $1100 from one customer, and maybe similar payments for a few more. However, by charging this money, they have alienated these customers, and worse, generated extremely negative publicity for themselves.
Even on technology-loving Slashdot, there have been many responses like these:
Kids shouldn't be sending so many text messages
I blame the parents for not controlling kids' use of their phones
I don't like text messages anyway
The whole story is in effect a big advertisement for cutting down on your use of text messages.
Verizon and other phone companies should switch customers who overspend like this to an unlimited price plan, retrospectively for that month - so that the customer never pays that high bill. They would lose money on this deal, but in return they would gain the gratitude of their customers, who are more likely to stay with them, bringing in a steady flow of income from their unlimited-messaging plans every month.
What's more, these customers on unlimited plans are going to send more messages, encouraging those around them to reply, and increasing the overall use of text messaging. Even if their friends or family are using different providers, the increased volume of text messages will increase dependence on mobile phones, creating a culture in which mobile phone use is accepted, and benefiting the industry as a whole.
Even criminals extorting money via kidnapping or blackmail are careful to consider what their victim is able and willing to pay when deciding on their charges. Being careful not to surprise customers with expensive charges is simply good business.
The difference is that a police officer can't try to fine you before bringing charges.
If Microsoft collects money via patent licenses, it will never need to give details of the alleged infringements.
To extend the analogy, it's as if the police officer says "We have evidence that you may have broken 235 traffic laws, so we might have to arrest you... but for a small fee, we can forget the whole thing."
than putting an empty case on the shelf, and having the shop assistant put the DVD in the case/exchange it for a full case at the register? Is that too difficult for stores to do?
Great idea! To get a wider review, I suggest putting it up on the internet, and then maybe submitting it to a news-gathering site so more people can debate it.
Thank you for replying, but sorry, I don't think a list on its own addresses the point I was making.
I can agree with you that maybe the world doesn't need six different Java web development frameworks. However, my point was that the article doesn't state clearly why the existence of multiple software tools is a problem, which means that its argument isn't convincing.
To go over the article again: the author says he had the difficult choice of either XFire or AXIS for his project. He picked AXIS only to find out a week later that in his case XFire was the better option. (Presumably AXIS is better for other things too - otherwise the developers of AXIS are wasting their time on it.) So what if there was a monoculture? He wouldn't have to make the choice, but instead he'd be stuck with one or the other. Or does a monoculture automatically mean having the best of all possible worlds?
I admit that I'm not familiar with the Java Frameworks in your example, but since you say they're for web development, I assume they're each intended to cover the same broad area. On the other hand, it's a fair bet that because of various design choices, they each have different strengths and weaknesses. Perhaps if I'm working on task A, Struts 2 has a function that lets me do it right away, but with Tapestry, I'd have to do more work by hand. And for task B, maybe the other way around.
So what should happen in this situation? I'd say: do your research and choose the best one for you. Or to shift the burden to the framework developers: they should write good documentation telling you what the strengths of their own framework are, and how they compare with the others. As well as helping their users, this should help each of them iron out the weaknesses in their frameworks, and make things better for everyone.
How would a monoculture help here? You wouldn't have to choose any more, but if you found that the standard framework wasn't up to the task, you'd be stuck with it. And if you really want a monoculture, why not just pick whatever framework Sun likes to use, and pretend the others don't exist? There's your monoculture.
Or maybe there's no real difference between all those different frameworks, and it's only the developers' pride that stops them being combined together into a single one. But if they're all the same, it doesn't matter which one you pick for your project. How can you go wrong?
In short, the questions I have about the article are: (1) why is having a choice of tools so bad? and (2) is a monoculture really so much better?
Maybe there are good answers to these questions, but I didn't find them in the article.
The author of the article shoots himself in the foot here:
Should I use iBatis or Hibernate? XFire or AXIS? Perl, PHP or Ruby? Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu or Suse? Make the wrong decision, and you can waste a ton of time, as we found out on a recent project when we wasted a week try to make AXIS2 work for a web service project, only to find out that XFire was the right choice.
So by his own admission, XFire and AXIS don't compete with each other directly - they're different tools for different jobs.
The solution to his problem is not to get rid of one of them, but to put something in the documentation for AXIS saying "If you're working on a web service project, you may be better off using XFire." The fact that an open source project is able to recommend another solution like this is a strength. In contrast, a company (in this case Microsoft) with a vested interest in promoting its own monoculture is unlikely to tell potential customers to go elsewhere.
Conversely, if you have a choice of near-identical tools, any of which would be acceptable, why not just pick the one which is most popular at the time? This leaves you at the mercy of programming fads, but if you want a monoculture, you should expect that anyway.
The "patchwork of state laws" is our guarantee against a tyrannical central government.
You mean, that's why in the United States there's no such thing as country-wide federal la... oh, wait, I mean why there's no central government or powerful head of stat... or at least, why the central government always has popular support, and no-one ever accuses it of being tyrannic... um, what was the point again?
But anyway, even if the variation in state laws is intentional, isn't it a good idea to have unified federal laws sometimes, to deal with problems in a consistent way?
After all, MS can argue in court that your acceptance of the prior deal was basically an admission that you wouldn't have been allowed to distribute Linux without their blessing.
It'd be interesting to see Microsoft try and sue anyone without actually citing an infringing patent, on the basis of "you must have thought you were infringing or you wouldn't have signed that contract". I suspect that the courts require more specific evidence than that.
If Microsoft isn't actually suing anyone over Linux, it's probably because suing is not a good move for MS, possibly because (taking some ideas from posts various people have made about related stories):
a) MS has no applicable patents, and would lose b) MS has patents affecting Linux, but only because major software companies have been allowed to patent many obvious things, and if everyone sued MS wouldn't come out on top c) MS has patents affecting Linux, but if it sued the affected code would quickly be cleaned out of the Linux codebase, leaving Linux unassailable again
Probably the reason for these deals and comments about Linux is the one suggested in the article: not because it will help in any future lawsuit, but as a FUD tactic to create the impression that Linux may have patent problems without having to supply hard evidence, and so dissuade other companies from using it.
Strictly speaking "public domain" is not a license, but everyone mentioning it above is obviously using the term "public domain" as shorthand for a license consisting entirely of the following statement:
Yes, this is good... but I'd be even happier if there were more definite plans about support for other scripts (like Japanese?) But that's probably a lot of work for something that's not a top priority. Maybe in a few years...
Captchas are a good thing, but taking a long-term view, isn't it a better thing that technology is progressing? I'm sure the positive uses of OCR outweigh the problem of spamming, and it'd be a shame if no-one wanted to work on OCR just because of captchas.
By the way, won't you agree that Peter Moldave (their contact) looks a bit like Bill Gates?;)
Ouch. Posting very late on this topic, but for the record...
Yes, the thought that it might be an evil Microsoft astroturfing site occurred to me, but maybe that's because I've been reading Slashdot too much. When I've seen reports about Microsoft using other groups to advertise its point of view, it's always been more obvious - "an industry group that has Microsoft among its members" - so maybe it's not a serious possibility.
But even if it's not MS, I still think the site is weird, because the author took the trouble to write it, but omitted to say why he bothered. While the reason may not be a dark and sinister one, finding out what it is is still a worthwhile exercise, in my opinion, and so I feel justified in commenting. Three well-deserved mod points./me goes off to take long, refreshing bath...
I don't know what to make of the opensourcelegal.org site linked to in the story.
Generally sites talking about open source tend to be keen to advocate the open source philosophy, but the tone of this site is mostly neutral and lacking any overtly expressed opinion. If anything, the page titled Why Open Source? seems more negative than positive.
So perhaps the legal firm running the site is playing up the difficulties and uncertainties surrounding open source as a way of promoting its legal help on the subject? But I can't see anything on the (rather small) site advertising legal services at all. It doesn't really have enough content to get many visits for its news or information. I wonder why it was set up...
Slashdot Mirror
How about the reverse? If Wikipedia went ad-based, maybe someone would want to mirror it without the ads. I wonder what would happen then...
It's true that in this sense you and your peers are "providing a service" for Microsoft/Red Hat/whoever, but that company is providing a service to you by letting you have the file in the first place. Do you have the right to demand that the company provides you with the file in any other way? If you don't agree with the distribution system, you can opt out by not receiving it.
Since the details for actual services aren't fixed, it's too soon to know, but maybe P2P distribution would be voluntary; in other words, you could configure your P2P to leech and not distribute, if you really wanted.
Akso, someone pays for your internet connection, and so in a way you are paying costs indirectly for your downloaded file anyway. If P2P is more efficient, it may reduce download times and also reduce traffic between providers, thus lowering costs for ISPs and reducing the pressure on them to raise prices, giving you a cheaper internet connection.
If and when companies use a P2P system to save costs, make massive profits, and don't return the benefits to consumers, they will leave themselves open to complaints. But it doesn't seem reasonable to dismiss the system yet, when it could benefit everyone.
Oops, the letter actually says he read them all.
You don't have to read something to write a reply to it.
You should know that - you're reading Slashdot.
GGP post only asked "Why are they complaining?" That link gives plenty of reasons. Whether they are justified in their complaints is another question.
Music storage services: Storage usage is copyright infringement - Tokyo District Court
In a judgement on a lawsuit based on a dispute as to whether a service allowing users to store data, such as their own CDs, in "storage" on the internet, so that they can download it to their mobile phones and listen to it whenever they like, constitutes copyright infringement, the Tokyo District Count (Makiko Takabe presiding) ruled that the service does constitute copyright infringement.
The service in question is "MYUTA", started in November 2005 by the information communications company "Image City" (Taito Ward, Tokyo). Users save music data from their home computers on the company's server, and only the user who saved the data can access it.
The Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (JASRAC) indicated that this service was an infringement of copyright. Image City first halted the service, and brought a lawsuit against JASRAC, seeking confirmation that the service did not infringe copyright.
In the lawsuit, Image City asserted that "In effect, the party copying and transmitting data is the user himself/herself. There is no transmission to an unspecified number of third parties, and no copyright infringement." However, the judgement found that "The server, which is the backbone of the system, is owned and managed by Image City, and from the point of view of Image City, the user is an unspecified party. The party carrying out the acts of copying data and transmitting it to the public (an unspecified number of persons) is the company Image City." It was determined that unless JASRAC gives permission for the service, it constitutes copyright infringement. (Kazumi Kitamura)
Mainichi Shimbun, May 25, 2007 20:22 updated 21:00
Look at this story. Verizon got a one-off payment of $1100 from one customer, and maybe similar payments for a few more. However, by charging this money, they have alienated these customers, and worse, generated extremely negative publicity for themselves.
Even on technology-loving Slashdot, there have been many responses like these:
- Kids shouldn't be sending so many text messages
- I blame the parents for not controlling kids' use of their phones
- I don't like text messages anyway
The whole story is in effect a big advertisement for cutting down on your use of text messages.Verizon and other phone companies should switch customers who overspend like this to an unlimited price plan, retrospectively for that month - so that the customer never pays that high bill. They would lose money on this deal, but in return they would gain the gratitude of their customers, who are more likely to stay with them, bringing in a steady flow of income from their unlimited-messaging plans every month.
What's more, these customers on unlimited plans are going to send more messages, encouraging those around them to reply, and increasing the overall use of text messaging. Even if their friends or family are using different providers, the increased volume of text messages will increase dependence on mobile phones, creating a culture in which mobile phone use is accepted, and benefiting the industry as a whole.
Even criminals extorting money via kidnapping or blackmail are careful to consider what their victim is able and willing to pay when deciding on their charges. Being careful not to surprise customers with expensive charges is simply good business.
Yes... but at the moment no-one is going to court. There is a difference between litigating and merely making accusations.
The difference is that a police officer can't try to fine you before bringing charges.
If Microsoft collects money via patent licenses, it will never need to give details of the alleged infringements.
To extend the analogy, it's as if the police officer says "We have evidence that you may have broken 235 traffic laws, so we might have to arrest you... but for a small fee, we can forget the whole thing."
than putting an empty case on the shelf, and having the shop assistant put the DVD in the case/exchange it for a full case at the register? Is that too difficult for stores to do?
Great idea! To get a wider review, I suggest putting it up on the internet, and then maybe submitting it to a news-gathering site so more people can debate it.
What do you think?
Thank you for replying, but sorry, I don't think a list on its own addresses the point I was making.
I can agree with you that maybe the world doesn't need six different Java web development frameworks. However, my point was that the article doesn't state clearly why the existence of multiple software tools is a problem, which means that its argument isn't convincing.
To go over the article again: the author says he had the difficult choice of either XFire or AXIS for his project. He picked AXIS only to find out a week later that in his case XFire was the better option. (Presumably AXIS is better for other things too - otherwise the developers of AXIS are wasting their time on it.) So what if there was a monoculture? He wouldn't have to make the choice, but instead he'd be stuck with one or the other. Or does a monoculture automatically mean having the best of all possible worlds?
I admit that I'm not familiar with the Java Frameworks in your example, but since you say they're for web development, I assume they're each intended to cover the same broad area. On the other hand, it's a fair bet that because of various design choices, they each have different strengths and weaknesses. Perhaps if I'm working on task A, Struts 2 has a function that lets me do it right away, but with Tapestry, I'd have to do more work by hand. And for task B, maybe the other way around.
So what should happen in this situation? I'd say: do your research and choose the best one for you. Or to shift the burden to the framework developers: they should write good documentation telling you what the strengths of their own framework are, and how they compare with the others. As well as helping their users, this should help each of them iron out the weaknesses in their frameworks, and make things better for everyone.
How would a monoculture help here? You wouldn't have to choose any more, but if you found that the standard framework wasn't up to the task, you'd be stuck with it. And if you really want a monoculture, why not just pick whatever framework Sun likes to use, and pretend the others don't exist? There's your monoculture.
Or maybe there's no real difference between all those different frameworks, and it's only the developers' pride that stops them being combined together into a single one. But if they're all the same, it doesn't matter which one you pick for your project. How can you go wrong?
In short, the questions I have about the article are: (1) why is having a choice of tools so bad? and (2) is a monoculture really so much better?
Maybe there are good answers to these questions, but I didn't find them in the article.
The solution to his problem is not to get rid of one of them, but to put something in the documentation for AXIS saying "If you're working on a web service project, you may be better off using XFire." The fact that an open source project is able to recommend another solution like this is a strength. In contrast, a company (in this case Microsoft) with a vested interest in promoting its own monoculture is unlikely to tell potential customers to go elsewhere.
Conversely, if you have a choice of near-identical tools, any of which would be acceptable, why not just pick the one which is most popular at the time? This leaves you at the mercy of programming fads, but if you want a monoculture, you should expect that anyway.
But anyway, even if the variation in state laws is intentional, isn't it a good idea to have unified federal laws sometimes, to deal with problems in a consistent way?
If Microsoft isn't actually suing anyone over Linux, it's probably because suing is not a good move for MS, possibly because (taking some ideas from posts various people have made about related stories):
a) MS has no applicable patents, and would lose
b) MS has patents affecting Linux, but only because major software companies have been allowed to patent many obvious things, and if everyone sued MS wouldn't come out on top
c) MS has patents affecting Linux, but if it sued the affected code would quickly be cleaned out of the Linux codebase, leaving Linux unassailable again
Probably the reason for these deals and comments about Linux is the one suggested in the article: not because it will help in any future lawsuit, but as a FUD tactic to create the impression that Linux may have patent problems without having to supply hard evidence, and so dissuade other companies from using it.
Strictly speaking "public domain" is not a license, but everyone mentioning it above is obviously using the term "public domain" as shorthand for a license consisting entirely of the following statement:
I hereby place this code in the public domain.
Wait a minute, I think it's this article.
The Chinese site referenced by the Japanese article appears to be this one. I don't know where within the site the article is.
Yes, this is good... but I'd be even happier if there were more definite plans about support for other scripts (like Japanese?) But that's probably a lot of work for something that's not a top priority. Maybe in a few years...
Captchas are a good thing, but taking a long-term view, isn't it a better thing that technology is progressing? I'm sure the positive uses of OCR outweigh the problem of spamming, and it'd be a shame if no-one wanted to work on OCR just because of captchas.
How about eight April Fool's stories, and two hard-to-believe but true ones?
Ouch. Posting very late on this topic, but for the record...
Yes, the thought that it might be an evil Microsoft astroturfing site occurred to me, but maybe that's because I've been reading Slashdot too much. When I've seen reports about Microsoft using other groups to advertise its point of view, it's always been more obvious - "an industry group that has Microsoft among its members" - so maybe it's not a serious possibility.
But even if it's not MS, I still think the site is weird, because the author took the trouble to write it, but omitted to say why he bothered. While the reason may not be a dark and sinister one, finding out what it is is still a worthwhile exercise, in my opinion, and so I feel justified in commenting. Three well-deserved mod points.
I don't know what to make of the opensourcelegal.org site linked to in the story.
Generally sites talking about open source tend to be keen to advocate the open source philosophy, but the tone of this site is mostly neutral and lacking any overtly expressed opinion. If anything, the page titled Why Open Source? seems more negative than positive.
So perhaps the legal firm running the site is playing up the difficulties and uncertainties surrounding open source as a way of promoting its legal help on the subject? But I can't see anything on the (rather small) site advertising legal services at all. It doesn't really have enough content to get many visits for its news or information. I wonder why it was set up...