I know how you feel but I actually hope option #4 will exist if that's what it takes to make Linux cheaper than the Windows crapplet version. I think it may also be good in sparking more commercial interest in Linux. The more companies getting involved in making things for Linux, the better, IMO. Even if it's crap software, at least it will help create buzz that companies should start thinking about development for Linux.
Option #3 of course *should* be cheaper than #2, since MS charged money for Windows. =P If it will be in reality remains to be seen. That would really hurt MS, along with if Dell actually allowed selection of Windows or Linux in the customization screens and not as a separate desktop/notebook model. If they do offer Linux as being cheaper and it's sitting right next to Windows, and OOo right next to MS Works or Office, ouch. That will hurt MS BIG time.
If we see that happen, we will see a dramatic increase in Linux adoption, which will push much more heavily for Linux versions of upcoming games and other software, which will push right back with an increased demand for Linux, etc etc etc. In other words, would Dell offering Linux really finally get us over that last big hill?
I think more and more people will just stop trying to access media that tries to force them to use specific players. DRM is annoying for consumers. I think that force will keep MS's crap, and the crap coming from other companies, a nitch market. We can only hope.
The BSD license allows for what you describe, it's "truly free", in a sense, to my knowledge. It still exists, so OSS would not be dead. Now, would it be more or less dead? I'm not sure, but I think people would have been upset all the same, so would they have formed groups that upheld the "lets keep everything free and open" attitude, or would they have found some other solution? Using the law to enforce an anti-monopolistic idea seems to be a good thing, though. In the real world, Capitalism seems to require anti-monopoly laws to keep things in check, otherwise it seems to me it is a failed system. Software is much harder to destroy/control/monopolize though, so it would do much better than material businesses in a completely open economy. It's really hard to think about what life would be like in such an open system, and where we'd be at in terms of technology and software. Perhaps people would have found some interesting ways to fight back under such a system in order to keep things more open and competitive and pro-consumer.
I know many consumers out there who hate something about Windows, be it the cost, the crashing, or the underhanded business tactics of Microsoft. It's not just geeks, there are many in the main stream, the "normal Windows users", who are tired of Microsoft. If you offered Ubuntu or another very user-friendly Linux distro, and showed them what they would get, showed them the comparison between the two OSes, and that it would be cheaper, MUCH cheaper when you include everything you get, and much easier, or that they could have both on the same machine so they can choose, I think you'd see LOTS of people jumping onto the Linux bandwagon. Most people are in complete shock when they hear there is a free alternative to Windows. Dell could help turn the tide, and Microsoft knows it. I will be very surprised if Dell actually uses any of the pro-Linux ideas from the Ideastorm site. Dell will only anger the giant if they feel that is the way the industry is headed, that the giant is falling, basically only if it was a smart business decision and one that would bring money. It'd help lots of people learn that there is an alternative, and I think you'd see widespread Linux adoption. That's not how it is *now* though, so I think that unfortunately at first it wouldn't increase sales, it would decrease them, because I'm relatively sure M$ pays them to offer Windows, and advertise it all over their site. It's a catch22, so there needs to be more pressure and adoption by Linux first. People need to spread the word further that there is an alternative which can fulfill many of their needs. Until word of mouth spreads Linux much further, I doubt you will see any big vendors ungluing themselves from Microsoft's grip.
Because Microsoft has become so proprietary that their own programs can't cooperate with each other. But seriously, it actually has happened before, lollerskates. Actually, come to think of it, it happens a lot. You'd think they'd have their own proprietary standards at the very least but they don't even do that. Oh that's right, forcing people to upgrade, forgot about that.
Well, OK, it's more like choosing between having KKK painted on the sides, a picture of Hitler on the hood, no windows and no steering wheel, or that plus a ducky flotation device to wear while driving it, ball and chains dragging behind it, and an autopilot system controlled by Bill himself.
Just kidding Windows users, I do use XP...but only because I have to at work. I play all my Windows games on Linux too. ^^
At least Dell customers can still choose XP over Vista. Like a car salesman asking if they want yellow or pink Hello Kitty logos on the side of their new Lexus LS460. Hmm, poor comparison, that's actually not a bad idea.
"...the existence of DRM is a fantastic chance for new distribution to reveal new bands."
No, DRM (RESTRICTIONS) do not do anything AT ALL to HELP "reveal new bands". Bands are perfectly capable of, and always have been able to, reveal themselves without DRM.
Oh, and one more thing, the ONLY EVIDENCE you need to see that *software* patents in particular are bad is look at the advancement of OSS. Oh but no, maybe they are right, ideas would never progress if it weren't for the "ability" to "protect" them from others who might want to "steal" them.:P Gotta love the FUD coming out of the patent office.
The patent office is one of if not Microsoft's best friends and that of any other monopoly here in the US. All the patent office does is create monopolies and discourages improving upon existing ideas. It smothers innovation and forces consumers to put up with crappy merchandise for years until *competition* comes in to improve things. The entire basis for the success of capitalism is competition, and the patent system is the complete opposite. There are other ways in which inventors would be rewarded, and companies would be reimbursed for research, or would find alternate ways of researching, if the US patent system didn't exist or was changed to an entirely different system. The industrial strength of the US was better and stronger without patents to hamper progress, and the success of the US as a powerful nation was in no way due to it's patent laws but it's resources among other things instead.
Please share with the poor who will never see this stuff any way.
Copying isn't stealing, it's sharing ideas.
Don't let these dying businesses try for force their old ways upon you. Make them get with the digital age and employ different business practices if they want to continue to have a business.
Of course, even with sharing, as we all see, they will still continue to make millions of dollars from their crappy uncomfortable ad-ridden theaters. Don't let their greed fool you.
So the only reason Dell actually started all this crap to begin with wasn't because they were starting to listen to the demand and trying to sneak around the racketeering agreements that M$ and Dell made to only push Windows, it was because now since M$ thinks they have patent control over Linux (and thus effectively can monopolize/proprietize/control it) that it's OK for Dell to push it out.
But only Suse, of course. All other distros are evil "intellectual property" violators, shame on them for STEALING M$'s ideas!
MS spends lots of money to keep it's monopoly using every legal, and some illegal, tactics in the book. There's nothing to be surprised about. They've given Dell millions of dollars to promote their OS with ads and availability (though I think that's too nice a word for being FORCED to buy Windows or shop elsewhere). At least now you can actually FIND a machine with no OS on it somewhat easily on Dell's site, but not in the "home user" section unfortunately, which is I'm sure Dell's biggest market.
Another factor that contributes to it not being available for home users is Linux's lack of user-friendliness, until somewhat recently. It is expanding on the desktop quite a bit now, so I wouldn't be too surprised to see it offered under the home computer category within a year or so. Of course, that part doesn't explain the lack of computers with no OS as an option.
Yeah, anyone can come up with new ideas, what's your point? Someone thinks up something useful for everyone and everyone benefits, oh no! It's people like you who think "it's MY IDEA, MINE, no one can use it but ME, give me MONEY!" who should go to hell. No offense.:) You've been sadly drilled with the "intellectual property" concept, one that monopolies love to tout as being ethically important. No, being ethical would be not throwing a fit if someone uses your idea and does it better. That's called advancement of technology. You must have been living under a rock, because the big monopolies get that way from buying up patents and competition. If no idea was "owned", EVERYONE would have equal opportunity to compete and technology would advance much more rapidly instead of being held in a legal death grip until the law expires.
Consumers like you: "Oh big monopolies, please continue to control all new technology so that we have to pay a fortune for it and people can't actually use it or develop upon it until much later. Thank you for slowly sucking our bank accounts dry and slowing the advancement of technology." It's sad that most consumers are blind to this, all they can see are the prices in front of their face and not the much lower prices that *could* be there, the new technology that *could* exist, all that is invisible to them yet they continue to bend over for big corporations. It's time to take back our technology and get out of this stone age of monopolistic corporate rule and I'm trying to help it happen.;)
I think I'll launch a campaign called that, aimed at teaching that sharing ideas, while giving competition (oh noes!) to large corporations, is good for the world and especially the poor. You aren't forced to pay for the use of math, and neither should you be for ideas which can be freely shared. Greed is what makes people not want to share that which is freely shareable. It may be difficult to share REAL property, but it is not difficult to share ideas which should be no ones property! Fuck patents and fuck copyrights. Let the space age begin already!! Patents hold the world back from advancing in technology. The industrial revolution was set back at least 20 years because of the steam engine patent! FUCK THAT, where's my holodeck! Let pure competition occur and free the ideas! Make companies have to come up with NEW technology to stay ahead of competition!
Share information with your friends and family, don't let monopolies stay that way, ideas should be free, help improve technology not only for the rich but for the poor too (which means FOSS, but still, pirate for the sake of the poor)!:)
The argument that it costs them money to not add the OS is BS. They could easily leave some hard drives blank, and it would save consumers money, the only reason they've tried to force it on consumers is because of Microsoft's agreement with them. You can, as one slashdotter pointed out, order a Dell with Linux, but I still don't see an option for no OS whatsoever. Also, they make you select either Linux or Windows via a "customize it" button, then you select what you want inside of that. The reason for this is it makes it harder for consumers to see they are saving money by having Linux. What Microsoft would REALLY hate is for them to do what they should do and include Linux and no OS inside the customization, so customers will see the money they will save upfront. As it is now, the Linux desktops are buried on Dell's site and customers have to know what to look for in order to find it. So it seems Dell has finally gotten enough pressure to make Linux available, but not enough to actually give their customers real freedom to choose.
Companies that are first to market with an idea make a lot of money, more than enough to compensate them for coming up with the idea, and even after generic versions come out. The idea that all advancement in ideas would come to a screeching hault if copyrights and patents were done away with is BS. Innovation would move forward as ppl would be free to build upon existing ideas and make even better products. Competition would focus on making things better to outpace competition, instead of hiring lawyers to try to enforce your monopolies.[br][br]Basically, copyrights and patents are anti-competitive, and competition is what drives innovation. The concepts of both those laws are ones in which extremely wealthy people try to convince people like you that that's the way things need to be so they can sit there with their monopoly on the economy, raping consumers with their low-tech expensive toys while many people think "Yay! Life is great! I love paying too much!" and countries that are truely progressive surpass the U.S. in technological innovations.
This book, for an example, claims that because of this patent, the industrial revolution was set back by "a decade or two". While I'm no historian, I agree on the general principal. If you don't let society use ideas, they can't build further inventions upon them, improving them, advancing technology, and ultimately improving everyone's lives. I also think that even the poor should have access to technology. It shouldn't just be for those rich enough to pay the inventor's fee and because there hasn't been true competition using the idea to drive down the prices. http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual /against.htm
Yes, since there was no copyright law at the time, so it certainly wasn't that that made Beethoven write music. Hmm, maybe it was his love for music? Naah, couldn't be. Why do anything if it's not for money? Of course, back then, there was no internet. The internet allows sharing like never before, so you'd think any organization trying to make money off "idea creation" would have a difficult time, right? In some cases sure, with the current business models that they use. But Shakespeare put on plays, and people came to see them perform. Storytellers read stories aloud and people came to listen, and would sometimes leave tips. They would often hear the stories from others, but might make modifications to them. Technology lets us experience many of these things to a degree without actually having to be there. A wonderful invention, huh?:) Quite simply, ideas have always been shared, and consumers still DO want new products, people who have no intention of doing stuff for money still DO think, companies still have needs, everyone has needs, and many people like to create. If these creations take work to make, whoever wants them will have to do work, either directly, or by paying others to do the work for them. Taking away everyone's ability to share ideas and grow together as a universal team isn't the way though, IMO, obviously, since I'm the one writing this. =P
Just because the invention of the automobile largely destroyed the carriage market doesn't mean we should outlaw the automobile to save the carriage makers and horse raisers. The same is true with information producers and the internet. Just because you can get money if you make it illegal for everyone to get their drinking water from anyone else but you doesn't mean it's how things should be. If someone invents the cure for cancer, everyone should have access to that. Guess what? The inventor probably worked in a lab for a company, he probably got paid, so there you go, he already was "rewarded" in that way. I'm sure he/she would also be rewarded in other ways too, including the most important way: Knowing he saved lives. It's cold-hearted capitalists like you who would think it was shameful there wasn't a law forcing people to pay outrageous amounts to get their cancer cured.;) Oh wait, if he was able to "patent" the cure for cancer, then there would be if he wanted to be selfish. Damn.
Yay for moral comparison! ^^ Nothing you said I haven't already heard before. I still believe things would be better if there was no copyright law forcing people to not share. There are many other systems which would evolve to get the jobs done that people want and need. I'm working on one of those systems right now myself. www.opendevelopmentnetwork.org =)
P.S. Thanks, I think your statement is stupid too. Aww, the love! But not really, I respect everyone's opinions since they are based on preferences which are based on emotions, and emotions aren't dumb, just sometimes not placed very well. Since we largely live in a world where most people seem to think about wanting more money, your thoughts are understandable.
You could make the licence more free by removing these clauses. That would enable others to limit your freedom. Linus seems to tend towards offering more freedom to make Linux less free.
Linus thinks that you still will have the freedom to not download software that isn't legally free, and you do. Even if someone did make a completely non-free Linux version and all the code was converted into "non-free" code legally (god I hate our laws), the free version will still be there, and people could still use it instead of the "non-free" version. There are several other licenses to choose from if you feel that the GPL is being overbearing somehow in the way it tries to keep software free.
Or we could solve the problem by getting rid of copyright law altogether. Then, if people wanted to share, they could, and if they didn't want to share but someone saw them doing something and wanted to "copy" them, they could, just like you can do with anything else and should be allowed to do. True freedom is having laws that don't steal freedoms, that's the real heart of the matter. Our governments are pro-monopoly though, so they love preventing society from using technology so that the few can much more easily benefit the many. Instead of giving freedoms, they're bent on adding more and more restrictions until they incite another revolution.
BTW, the power of open source communities shows you how many ideas there are out there. Imagine if all those ideas were completely unfettered by copyright and patent law, and everyone was free to build upon existing ideas. The world would be so much further along technologically than it is now, IMO.
No, they used it. You can't steal ideas, only copy them. It's copyright law and patents that prevent the so-called original "inventor" (even thought they got their idea from other places, too) from being able to use their idea that causes the problem after the copier gets a copyright or patent on it them self. Copyright and patent laws have helped create the concept of the "stolen idea". Case in point, I'm VERY sure Simpsons wasn't the original "inventor" of that idea.
Sorry, just had to give an appropriate Slashdot reply.:)
Slashdot Mirror
I know how you feel but I actually hope option #4 will exist if that's what it takes to make Linux cheaper than the Windows crapplet version. I think it may also be good in sparking more commercial interest in Linux. The more companies getting involved in making things for Linux, the better, IMO. Even if it's crap software, at least it will help create buzz that companies should start thinking about development for Linux. Option #3 of course *should* be cheaper than #2, since MS charged money for Windows. =P If it will be in reality remains to be seen. That would really hurt MS, along with if Dell actually allowed selection of Windows or Linux in the customization screens and not as a separate desktop/notebook model. If they do offer Linux as being cheaper and it's sitting right next to Windows, and OOo right next to MS Works or Office, ouch. That will hurt MS BIG time. If we see that happen, we will see a dramatic increase in Linux adoption, which will push much more heavily for Linux versions of upcoming games and other software, which will push right back with an increased demand for Linux, etc etc etc. In other words, would Dell offering Linux really finally get us over that last big hill?
I think more and more people will just stop trying to access media that tries to force them to use specific players. DRM is annoying for consumers. I think that force will keep MS's crap, and the crap coming from other companies, a nitch market. We can only hope.
The BSD license allows for what you describe, it's "truly free", in a sense, to my knowledge. It still exists, so OSS would not be dead. Now, would it be more or less dead? I'm not sure, but I think people would have been upset all the same, so would they have formed groups that upheld the "lets keep everything free and open" attitude, or would they have found some other solution? Using the law to enforce an anti-monopolistic idea seems to be a good thing, though. In the real world, Capitalism seems to require anti-monopoly laws to keep things in check, otherwise it seems to me it is a failed system. Software is much harder to destroy/control/monopolize though, so it would do much better than material businesses in a completely open economy. It's really hard to think about what life would be like in such an open system, and where we'd be at in terms of technology and software. Perhaps people would have found some interesting ways to fight back under such a system in order to keep things more open and competitive and pro-consumer.
I know many consumers out there who hate something about Windows, be it the cost, the crashing, or the underhanded business tactics of Microsoft. It's not just geeks, there are many in the main stream, the "normal Windows users", who are tired of Microsoft. If you offered Ubuntu or another very user-friendly Linux distro, and showed them what they would get, showed them the comparison between the two OSes, and that it would be cheaper, MUCH cheaper when you include everything you get, and much easier, or that they could have both on the same machine so they can choose, I think you'd see LOTS of people jumping onto the Linux bandwagon. Most people are in complete shock when they hear there is a free alternative to Windows. Dell could help turn the tide, and Microsoft knows it. I will be very surprised if Dell actually uses any of the pro-Linux ideas from the Ideastorm site. Dell will only anger the giant if they feel that is the way the industry is headed, that the giant is falling, basically only if it was a smart business decision and one that would bring money. It'd help lots of people learn that there is an alternative, and I think you'd see widespread Linux adoption. That's not how it is *now* though, so I think that unfortunately at first it wouldn't increase sales, it would decrease them, because I'm relatively sure M$ pays them to offer Windows, and advertise it all over their site. It's a catch22, so there needs to be more pressure and adoption by Linux first. People need to spread the word further that there is an alternative which can fulfill many of their needs. Until word of mouth spreads Linux much further, I doubt you will see any big vendors ungluing themselves from Microsoft's grip.
Because Microsoft has become so proprietary that their own programs can't cooperate with each other. But seriously, it actually has happened before, lollerskates. Actually, come to think of it, it happens a lot. You'd think they'd have their own proprietary standards at the very least but they don't even do that. Oh that's right, forcing people to upgrade, forgot about that.
Well, OK, it's more like choosing between having KKK painted on the sides, a picture of Hitler on the hood, no windows and no steering wheel, or that plus a ducky flotation device to wear while driving it, ball and chains dragging behind it, and an autopilot system controlled by Bill himself.
Just kidding Windows users, I do use XP...but only because I have to at work. I play all my Windows games on Linux too. ^^
At least Dell customers can still choose XP over Vista. Like a car salesman asking if they want yellow or pink Hello Kitty logos on the side of their new Lexus LS460. Hmm, poor comparison, that's actually not a bad idea.
"...the existence of DRM is a fantastic chance for new distribution to reveal new bands." No, DRM (RESTRICTIONS) do not do anything AT ALL to HELP "reveal new bands". Bands are perfectly capable of, and always have been able to, reveal themselves without DRM.
Oh, and one more thing, the ONLY EVIDENCE you need to see that *software* patents in particular are bad is look at the advancement of OSS. Oh but no, maybe they are right, ideas would never progress if it weren't for the "ability" to "protect" them from others who might want to "steal" them. :P Gotta love the FUD coming out of the patent office.
The patent office is one of if not Microsoft's best friends and that of any other monopoly here in the US. All the patent office does is create monopolies and discourages improving upon existing ideas. It smothers innovation and forces consumers to put up with crappy merchandise for years until *competition* comes in to improve things. The entire basis for the success of capitalism is competition, and the patent system is the complete opposite. There are other ways in which inventors would be rewarded, and companies would be reimbursed for research, or would find alternate ways of researching, if the US patent system didn't exist or was changed to an entirely different system. The industrial strength of the US was better and stronger without patents to hamper progress, and the success of the US as a powerful nation was in no way due to it's patent laws but it's resources among other things instead.
Please share with the poor who will never see this stuff any way. Copying isn't stealing, it's sharing ideas. Don't let these dying businesses try for force their old ways upon you. Make them get with the digital age and employ different business practices if they want to continue to have a business. Of course, even with sharing, as we all see, they will still continue to make millions of dollars from their crappy uncomfortable ad-ridden theaters. Don't let their greed fool you.
Anything you install, whether it's Gnome, KDE, XFCE, Windowmaker, or whatever, will be available as a session selection before you log in.
So the only reason Dell actually started all this crap to begin with wasn't because they were starting to listen to the demand and trying to sneak around the racketeering agreements that M$ and Dell made to only push Windows, it was because now since M$ thinks they have patent control over Linux (and thus effectively can monopolize/proprietize/control it) that it's OK for Dell to push it out. But only Suse, of course. All other distros are evil "intellectual property" violators, shame on them for STEALING M$'s ideas!
MS spends lots of money to keep it's monopoly using every legal, and some illegal, tactics in the book. There's nothing to be surprised about. They've given Dell millions of dollars to promote their OS with ads and availability (though I think that's too nice a word for being FORCED to buy Windows or shop elsewhere). At least now you can actually FIND a machine with no OS on it somewhat easily on Dell's site, but not in the "home user" section unfortunately, which is I'm sure Dell's biggest market.
Another factor that contributes to it not being available for home users is Linux's lack of user-friendliness, until somewhat recently. It is expanding on the desktop quite a bit now, so I wouldn't be too surprised to see it offered under the home computer category within a year or so. Of course, that part doesn't explain the lack of computers with no OS as an option.
Agreed, but copyrights and patents should still go to hell. :)
Yeah, anyone can come up with new ideas, what's your point? Someone thinks up something useful for everyone and everyone benefits, oh no! It's people like you who think "it's MY IDEA, MINE, no one can use it but ME, give me MONEY!" who should go to hell. No offense. :) You've been sadly drilled with the "intellectual property" concept, one that monopolies love to tout as being ethically important. No, being ethical would be not throwing a fit if someone uses your idea and does it better. That's called advancement of technology. You must have been living under a rock, because the big monopolies get that way from buying up patents and competition. If no idea was "owned", EVERYONE would have equal opportunity to compete and technology would advance much more rapidly instead of being held in a legal death grip until the law expires.
;)
Consumers like you: "Oh big monopolies, please continue to control all new technology so that we have to pay a fortune for it and people can't actually use it or develop upon it until much later. Thank you for slowly sucking our bank accounts dry and slowing the advancement of technology." It's sad that most consumers are blind to this, all they can see are the prices in front of their face and not the much lower prices that *could* be there, the new technology that *could* exist, all that is invisible to them yet they continue to bend over for big corporations. It's time to take back our technology and get out of this stone age of monopolistic corporate rule and I'm trying to help it happen.
I think I'll launch a campaign called that, aimed at teaching that sharing ideas, while giving competition (oh noes!) to large corporations, is good for the world and especially the poor. You aren't forced to pay for the use of math, and neither should you be for ideas which can be freely shared. Greed is what makes people not want to share that which is freely shareable. It may be difficult to share REAL property, but it is not difficult to share ideas which should be no ones property! Fuck patents and fuck copyrights. Let the space age begin already!! Patents hold the world back from advancing in technology. The industrial revolution was set back at least 20 years because of the steam engine patent! FUCK THAT, where's my holodeck! Let pure competition occur and free the ideas! Make companies have to come up with NEW technology to stay ahead of competition!
Share information with your friends and family, don't let monopolies stay that way, ideas should be free, help improve technology not only for the rich but for the poor too (which means FOSS, but still, pirate for the sake of the poor)! :)
The argument that it costs them money to not add the OS is BS. They could easily leave some hard drives blank, and it would save consumers money, the only reason they've tried to force it on consumers is because of Microsoft's agreement with them. You can, as one slashdotter pointed out, order a Dell with Linux, but I still don't see an option for no OS whatsoever. Also, they make you select either Linux or Windows via a "customize it" button, then you select what you want inside of that. The reason for this is it makes it harder for consumers to see they are saving money by having Linux. What Microsoft would REALLY hate is for them to do what they should do and include Linux and no OS inside the customization, so customers will see the money they will save upfront. As it is now, the Linux desktops are buried on Dell's site and customers have to know what to look for in order to find it. So it seems Dell has finally gotten enough pressure to make Linux available, but not enough to actually give their customers real freedom to choose.
Companies that are first to market with an idea make a lot of money, more than enough to compensate them for coming up with the idea, and even after generic versions come out. The idea that all advancement in ideas would come to a screeching hault if copyrights and patents were done away with is BS. Innovation would move forward as ppl would be free to build upon existing ideas and make even better products. Competition would focus on making things better to outpace competition, instead of hiring lawyers to try to enforce your monopolies.[br][br]Basically, copyrights and patents are anti-competitive, and competition is what drives innovation. The concepts of both those laws are ones in which extremely wealthy people try to convince people like you that that's the way things need to be so they can sit there with their monopoly on the economy, raping consumers with their low-tech expensive toys while many people think "Yay! Life is great! I love paying too much!" and countries that are truely progressive surpass the U.S. in technological innovations.
This book, for an example, claims that because of this patent, the industrial revolution was set back by "a decade or two". While I'm no historian, I agree on the general principal. If you don't let society use ideas, they can't build further inventions upon them, improving them, advancing technology, and ultimately improving everyone's lives. I also think that even the poor should have access to technology. It shouldn't just be for those rich enough to pay the inventor's fee and because there hasn't been true competition using the idea to drive down the prices.l /against.htm
http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectua
Yes, since there was no copyright law at the time, so it certainly wasn't that that made Beethoven write music. Hmm, maybe it was his love for music? Naah, couldn't be. Why do anything if it's not for money? Of course, back then, there was no internet. The internet allows sharing like never before, so you'd think any organization trying to make money off "idea creation" would have a difficult time, right? In some cases sure, with the current business models that they use. But Shakespeare put on plays, and people came to see them perform. Storytellers read stories aloud and people came to listen, and would sometimes leave tips. They would often hear the stories from others, but might make modifications to them. Technology lets us experience many of these things to a degree without actually having to be there. A wonderful invention, huh? :) Quite simply, ideas have always been shared, and consumers still DO want new products, people who have no intention of doing stuff for money still DO think, companies still have needs, everyone has needs, and many people like to create. If these creations take work to make, whoever wants them will have to do work, either directly, or by paying others to do the work for them. Taking away everyone's ability to share ideas and grow together as a universal team isn't the way though, IMO, obviously, since I'm the one writing this. =P
Just because the invention of the automobile largely destroyed the carriage market doesn't mean we should outlaw the automobile to save the carriage makers and horse raisers. The same is true with information producers and the internet. Just because you can get money if you make it illegal for everyone to get their drinking water from anyone else but you doesn't mean it's how things should be. If someone invents the cure for cancer, everyone should have access to that. Guess what? The inventor probably worked in a lab for a company, he probably got paid, so there you go, he already was "rewarded" in that way. I'm sure he/she would also be rewarded in other ways too, including the most important way: Knowing he saved lives. It's cold-hearted capitalists like you who would think it was shameful there wasn't a law forcing people to pay outrageous amounts to get their cancer cured. ;) Oh wait, if he was able to "patent" the cure for cancer, then there would be if he wanted to be selfish. Damn.
Yay for moral comparison! ^^ Nothing you said I haven't already heard before. I still believe things would be better if there was no copyright law forcing people to not share. There are many other systems which would evolve to get the jobs done that people want and need. I'm working on one of those systems right now myself. www.opendevelopmentnetwork.org =)
P.S. Thanks, I think your statement is stupid too. Aww, the love! But not really, I respect everyone's opinions since they are based on preferences which are based on emotions, and emotions aren't dumb, just sometimes not placed very well. Since we largely live in a world where most people seem to think about wanting more money, your thoughts are understandable.
The few can benefit OFF the many, I meant. I should have proofread that. =P
You could make the licence more free by removing these clauses. That would enable others to limit your freedom. Linus seems to tend towards offering more freedom to make Linux less free.
Linus thinks that you still will have the freedom to not download software that isn't legally free, and you do. Even if someone did make a completely non-free Linux version and all the code was converted into "non-free" code legally (god I hate our laws), the free version will still be there, and people could still use it instead of the "non-free" version. There are several other licenses to choose from if you feel that the GPL is being overbearing somehow in the way it tries to keep software free.
Or we could solve the problem by getting rid of copyright law altogether. Then, if people wanted to share, they could, and if they didn't want to share but someone saw them doing something and wanted to "copy" them, they could, just like you can do with anything else and should be allowed to do. True freedom is having laws that don't steal freedoms, that's the real heart of the matter. Our governments are pro-monopoly though, so they love preventing society from using technology so that the few can much more easily benefit the many. Instead of giving freedoms, they're bent on adding more and more restrictions until they incite another revolution.
BTW, the power of open source communities shows you how many ideas there are out there. Imagine if all those ideas were completely unfettered by copyright and patent law, and everyone was free to build upon existing ideas. The world would be so much further along technologically than it is now, IMO.
No, they used it. You can't steal ideas, only copy them. It's copyright law and patents that prevent the so-called original "inventor" (even thought they got their idea from other places, too) from being able to use their idea that causes the problem after the copier gets a copyright or patent on it them self. Copyright and patent laws have helped create the concept of the "stolen idea". Case in point, I'm VERY sure Simpsons wasn't the original "inventor" of that idea.
:)
Sorry, just had to give an appropriate Slashdot reply.