> I was not making a moral analysis or a philosophical analysis.
> I was saying the very definition of "good" in an environment of > living things is "what attracts mates". All else is secondary. I > was not talking about whether it gives them artereosclerosis in the > process. I was simply observing that there are mating entities and > these are the kinds of characteristics they choose for finding a > good mate. That's why I qualified it with "You might wish..."; it's > not relevant. I wasn't even saying I agreed with it. I was just > making an observation about what happens and why. Companies DO > perceive that certain countries have attractive modes of doing > business. Countries that offer "better upper bound on profits" are > attractive.
Yah, I did misunderstand your use of the term "good". I understood "good" as meaning "beneficial to the general population of the country". I was making an observation about what happens to the economic situation of the people in certain of those countries, living things that are trying to attract mates. I agree with your observation.
The purpose of my mentioning the globalization of finance is that it's becoming a major vector for the enforcement of intellectual property law. In order to qualify for loans, countries are pressured to make domestic changes, one of which is bringing their local IP law in line with WIPO and other reccomendations. Also, the amount of direct foreign investment in technology and other markets is influenced by the IP regime at hand. In many ways, these influences on IP law are more direct and powerful than the evolutionary force of "mating", particularly when the issue for IP is predominantly opening and safegaurding new markets. I was attempting to make the over-simplified analogy of the article a little more useful for a discussion of copyright and other IP regimes in our present condition.
> > I don't think it defends the little guy more than it defends the big > > guy, > That it is even-handed in its protection, and doesn't merely redistribute > wealth downward does not make it less powerful or good.
Ok, I read the "mostly defends the little guy" in a way that implied the amount it could defend was limited, so if it mostly defended the little guy, it defended the big guy less. In retrospect, my reading was predetermined by the questions I've been asking myself about copyright and is not a very good understanding of the way copyright "defends" authors.
> > but I agree with you that it's safe for the short term.
> Weird use of the connective "but", to conjoin two unrelated statements.
That conjuction was "conversational" in the way one might address their disagreement with a minor point made by another person, and then return to agree with their main point. It did not mean to imply a logical connection.
> I will decline to expand the debate on this. We've been through this before.
Me too. I'm happy for the clarification.
-- Craig Brozefsky <cr...@red-bean.com> http://www.red-bean.com/~craig "Indifference is the dead weight of history." -- Antonio Gramsci
Craig Brozefsky <cr...@red-bean.com> writes: > The purpose of my mentioning the globalization of finance is that it's > becoming a major vector for the enforcement of intellectual property > law. In order to qualify for loans, countries are pressured to make > domestic changes, one of which is bringing their local IP law in line > with WIPO and other reccomendations.
Well, I'm quite concerned about WIPO. I don't see that it really has accountability to anyone. By the time it does something, even the countries that are accountable to their people have little power to undo what might have been done. If the decisions get reviewed at all.
So I guess I'd chalk this up under "life forms outside of country-level control", too.
It's a curious thing that "life/intelligence" seems to be able to occupy spaces at various meta-levels and yet not be able to communicate across meta-levels. We think of people as intelligent, but countries really are not... or to the extent they are, they are not an obvious function of the intelligence of the populace making them up. (In particular, the intelligence does not seem to grow with the size of the population, nor even the size of the government.)
> Also, the amount of direct foreign investment in technology and > other markets is influenced by the IP regime at hand. In many ways, > these influences on IP law are more direct and powerful than the > evolutionary force of "mating", particularly when the issue for IP > is predominantly opening and safegaurding new markets.
Yes, that could be.
> I was attempting to make the over-simplified analogy of the article > a little more useful for a discussion of copyright and other IP > regimes in our present condition.
(The article was pretty extensive, and was discussed quite a lot publicly at the time. I think I picked it up on Late Night with Charlie Rose on CBS, before he moved to PBS. I was fascinated and wrote the LA TIMES for a copy, something I've done only a couple of times in my life. I could probably get a proper cite if you or anyone cared. I hate to not do justice to someone else's thoughts.)
> It's arguable wether it's good for the country, state or township. > That largely depends on which operations are situated in which > country, and the flow of capital into or out of the company via those > oeprations. In third-world countries the usual result is a minor > influx of wage capital, with considerable outflow of profits to other > countries and depletion of natural resources.
"Depletion of natural resources" is fairly industrial age. Today, it tends to divert "noble savage" labor into something that we'd call sweatshops, something that the "savages" strongly prefer to THEIR alternatives.
When Nike comes to town, it doesn't enslave people who would otherwise be going to Harvard Law. Unlike their previous trade, Nike sweatshops put them on the industrialization track so that their great-grandchildren have a hope of attending either Harvard Law or the local equivalent that will spring up. (That is, after all, how Harvard Law came to be.)
Yes, Nike makes a lot of money. If that offends, feel free to set up your own company, pay more, and sell for less. You'll do good, drive out evil, and have some spare nickles to do more good. That's as close as you'll find to a moral obligation. (Or, maybe you'll find that the economics don't work the way the end-price vs labor comparisons suggest.)
Also, one might reasonably argue that it's better to pick berries than negotiate merger deals. However, it's better still to have the choice. (Picking berries is a lot more fun when it isn't the only thing between you and starvation, and picking berries doesn't get you to that position.)
-andy's done farm labor and is grateful for the chance to do otherwise
ana...@earthlink.net (Andy Freeman) writes: > > It's arguable wether it's good for the country, state or township. > > That largely depends on which operations are situated in which > > country, and the flow of capital into or out of the company via those > > oeprations. In third-world countries the usual result is a minor > > influx of wage capital, with considerable outflow of profits to other > > countries and depletion of natural resources.
> "Depletion of natural resources" is fairly industrial age.
Yes it is. However, what we have in these situations is a colonial exploitation of the natural resources of a country with the cost of infrastructure for that exploitation being put onto the public's head, and the profits being almost entirely taken out of the country. Indeed this has gone on for quite some time, as it is a basic function of imperialism.
> Today, it tends to divert "noble savage" labor into something that > we'd call sweatshops, something that the "savages" strongly prefer > to THEIR alternatives.
This is a very common argument, but I have never seen anything but anecdotal evidence to "support" it. For one, everyone outside the first-world is not a subsistence farmer. There is not this decision between borderline starvation thru farming and scavenging and working in a sweatshop where suddenly starvation is not a problem. Secondly, the 10k that get the sweatshop jobs may appreciate their increased earnings over their countrymen (money works that way, it's how much you have in RELATION to others in the market that determines it's value) but that doesn't address the effects it has on the population as a whole. Lastly, why should they, or anyone for that matter, be satisfied with subsistence labor?
We're getting quite off-topic now.
-- Craig Brozefsky <cr...@red-bean.com> http://www.red-bean.com/~craig "Indifference is the dead weight of history." -- Antonio Gramsci
> Today, it tends to divert "noble savage" labor into something that > we'd call sweatshops, something that the "savages" strongly prefer > to THEIR alternatives.
* Craig Brozefsky
> This is a very common argument, but I have never seen anything but > anecdotal evidence to "support" it.
Are they forced somehow to work in the sweatshops? If you can demonstrate that they are, you may have a point. If you cannot, and those who work there _could_ go back to whatever they came from, what kind of evidence do you need? If you imply that they "have" to work there because they would otherwise starve, which is the usual stupid argument against child labor and sweatshops and other forms of "we think of this as slavery, seen from the other side of the world on TV, only", please let it occur to you that being saved from starvation is pretty good, even if the alternative to death by starvation is some other form of misery, as seen with Western comfort standard.
It is rather obvious to me, but maybe it needs to be said: Those who have the option of better work than that in sweatshops would have to be forced to work in them. There has never been any evidence of such force. Those who are provided with a miserable standard of living that differs from a miserable standard of dying by a lot more than most Western do-gooders are willing to think about, somehow conjure up a fantasy world in which these people would _not_ die if the sweatshop disappeared.
> Lastly, why should they, or anyone for that matter, be satisfied with > subsistence labor?
Well, it sure works wonder to be dissatisfied with the only better choice you have. That sure makes people elsewhere interested in giving them even _better_ choices. It also certainly makes the population happier about the improvement they have seen in their lives and therefore willing to _invest_ in their own future. If they are _satisfied_ with the fact that this is a step in the right direction, they will take another. If they are dissatisfied with that step, they will take no more of the same kind. This does not only happen in those foreign countries where the contrasts are so stark that any unthinking couch potato can be hurled into emotional engagement in such matters, it also applies to single parent families that subside on social security and who are discouraged from getting a job because the net disposable time*income is much lower. In such cases, a job is step _down_, with which people are dissatisifed, hence nothing ever happens.
Those who make those sweatshops look so awful to the people who may have forgotten what other options they [do not] have, destroy not only their financial livelihood now, but their psychological livelihood for most of their future, too.
> We're getting quite off-topic now.
Not really. This is all about why some people "prefer" C++. :)
> You're right - but it is a bit more difficult to do that with software. If > Person A writes a little library that does nothing special but contains a > bug and some other developer B uses (besides of much much more other parts > this small library in the software of an aircraft - who should be > responsible? > I'm rather sure you'll now say A is responsible because he caused the bug, > but this means that you have to do _all_ work as if you would code for an > aircraft or a Space Shuttle because you never know if someone uses it later > for something like this.
Clearly, B is responsible for ensuring that he uses appropriate components, and that he tests his components (Either himself, or by paying for components which are guaranteed, and indemnify the purchaser).
> Presently, lots of software is offered with "no warranty of any kind". > That practice is gradually changing in subtle ways, but it's only by > consumers refusing to buy it that way that it's likely to change much. > Geez, if you can sell it with no warranty, why NOT? Offering a > warranty will drive up the price and maybe the market doesn't want the > price driven up. Maybe it does trust the product and prefers the > price. Nothing wrong with that. Just don't let them talk out of both > sides of their mouth, saying they trust it but suing after the fact > anyway because an overactive legal system lets them.
No other product may be sold without warranty (In the UK, AFAIK) - It certainly isn't common practice to do so, and definitely not in markets where significant loss is possible from use of the product. Given how crucial software is in our society, crap products are unacceptable.
>>>>> "Craig" == Craig Brozefsky <cr...@red-bean.com> writes: >> Today, it tends to divert "noble savage" labor into something that >> we'd call sweatshops, something that the "savages" strongly prefer >> to THEIR alternatives.
Craig> This is a very common argument, but I have never seen anything Craig> but anecdotal evidence to "support" it. For one, everyone Craig> outside the first-world is not a subsistence farmer. There is Craig> not this decision between borderline starvation thru farming Craig> and scavenging and working in a sweatshop where suddenly Craig> starvation is not a problem.
As I understand it, one common source of cheap labor comes from forcing open agricultural commodity markets in developing countries and then flooding the local markets with cheaper imports. This destroys the local agricultural markets and turns people who were doing okay farming into lots of unskilled labor which can be hired cheaply. Whatever the benefits of global trade, I think food and agricultural productive capacity are important enough to allow each country to protect and stabilize their local agricultural economies, something the rich industrialized nations have never really stopped doing.
-- Russell Senior ``The two chiefs turned to each other. seni...@aracnet.com Bellison uncorked a flood of horrible profanity, which, translated meant, `This is extremely unusual.' ''
> them up. (In particular, the intelligence does not seem to grow with > the size of the population, nor even the size of the government.)
How are you measuring and observing the former and why would you expect the latter?
Populations consist of largely independent beings. However, increasing the odds that <thing 1> occurs at least once by increasing the number of opportunities for it to happen (that is, more people makes it more likely that someone will stumble upon it through dumb luck or smarts) also makes it harder to see when/where it happens. (If <thing 1> catches on, it will become observable.)
However, govts are not largely independent beings. They grow in size by getting more spheres of control and by doing more within a given sphere. In the latter case, the odds that the smart person in the organization is in the right place can go down as the size of the organization increases. Since their spheres tend not to overlap, and tend to push out other sources of influence, the net effect is that you're less likely to get the right person on the job. The only hope of counter-acting this is if the selection process somehow works. Since success at problem isn't decisive in that process....
"Marcin Tustin" <Marc...@GUeswhatthisbitisfor.mindless.com> writes: > Kent M Pitman <pit...@world.std.com> wrote in message > news:sfw4rt4ieq5.fsf@world.std.com...
> > Presently, lots of software is offered with "no warranty of any kind". > > That practice is gradually changing in subtle ways, but it's only by > > consumers refusing to buy it that way that it's likely to change much. > > Geez, if you can sell it with no warranty, why NOT? Offering a > > warranty will drive up the price and maybe the market doesn't want the > > price driven up. Maybe it does trust the product and prefers the > > price. Nothing wrong with that. Just don't let them talk out of both > > sides of their mouth, saying they trust it but suing after the fact > > anyway because an overactive legal system lets them.
> No other product may be sold without warranty (In the UK, AFAIK) > - It certainly isn't common practice to do so, and definitely not in markets > where significant loss is possible from use of the product. Given how > crucial software is in our society, crap products are unacceptable.
The discussion wasn't originally about SELLING software. It was about MAKING software. It was about the idea that I could be sued for making someting in my kitchen and leaving it laying around and having someone else use it and claim there was a warranty made just by its CREATION.
I do think it is wrong for there to be an implied warranty upon sale, but that's very different and less threatening than one created upon creation or upon giving as a gift.
> But, even if this does promote 'the useful arts', is it a good thing > for a society in general to promote a 'win a lottery', 'get rich > quick' mindset? What is so desirable about a frezied pursuit of > innovation and novelty at any cost?
"At any cost" is a straw man. Being innovative/novel is worth exactly the same as being non-innovative/novel - they both bring in the price multiplied by the number of sales. (With the innovative/novel, both, and their product, tend to be somewhat volatile.)
There is a pursuit to supply innovation and novelty because there is a significant demand for innovation and novelty. Moreover, you (mostly, the exceptions are largely govt driven although the concerns are mostly about biz) get to decide which innovation/novelty that you reward.
The problem is that the rest of you don't have my good sense, so you reward the wrong things. (I sat out disco and rap, yet they are/were rewarded.) Any suggestions on how to deal with your failures?
> So you have a law that is unenforceble.
What's an enforceable law? Are there any examples? (I know what a profitable law is, one where the realized benefits exceed the incurred expenses. Interestingly enough, we don't put bankrupt laws out of our misery - we'll stick with things that haven't, and never have, delivered any actual benefits, and we'll incur the costs of jailing people who violate them.)
> (Disclaimer: I am an open-source advocate, but not a fanatic. > I do believe that there have got to be better ways to finance > the making of high-quality software, but I haven't found any > compatible with the way the economy works today. I make no > promises about the future.)
> I do think it is wrong for there to be an implied warranty upon sale, but > that's very different and less threatening than one created upon creation > or upon giving as a gift.
Later reading made this clear. However, I do think it wrong that (to take an extreme example) MS can sell Windows without warranty - there is no way that they can claim that their packaging and advertising does not imply that it is an OS; I also think that one can expect certain things from an OS, like a process, once started, will not terminate unpredictably, as long as the OS is used correctly.
> * Andy Freeman > > Today, it tends to divert "noble savage" labor into something that > > we'd call sweatshops, something that the "savages" strongly prefer > > to THEIR alternatives.
> * Craig Brozefsky > > This is a very common argument, but I have never seen anything but > > anecdotal evidence to "support" it.
> Are they forced somehow to work in the sweatshops? If you can > demonstrate that they are, you may have a point. If you cannot, and > those who work there _could_ go back to whatever they came from, what > kind of evidence do you need? If you imply that they "have" to work > there because they would otherwise starve, which is the usual stupid > argument against child labor and sweatshops and other forms of "we think > of this as slavery, seen from the other side of the world on TV, only", > please let it occur to you that being saved from starvation is pretty > good, even if the alternative to death by starvation is some other form > of misery, as seen with Western comfort standard.
Now you're getting into the issue of to what extent are people free to do something, or not do that. Earning that money may satisfy a need other than survival, a need that we may not even understand. Just because you can use the fact that someone desires something to persuade them to serve your purposes, does not mean that you are not exploiting them - you may know that if they held out, you would pay them more, for instance, and that you are exploiting their desparation, so that they will not question what you have to offer. The fact is that one can always produce objections that people are not free to not do something. Therefore you will have to take a stand and accept some fairly arbitrary criteria. Not everyone will make the same choice.
> Not really. This is all about why some people "prefer" C++. :)
Ignorance. I have a friend who ridicules the idea of using Lisp "Because it's an AI/Neural net/blah blah language" while Pascal (Or rather delphi) is clearly fantastic - not that he offers any reason. Such reasons might be that it was designed for use in projects that could be well designed, and mathematically verified - a reason why he doesn't is that he is deeply opposed to formal methods and any kind of software engineering - this includes such things as a formal process to follow (at all), or the creation of documentation. (Yes, we are students).
> > ana...@earthlink.net (Andy Freeman) writes: > Considering how few people care about the source code that they can't see > now, I don't see that significant numbers will care in the future.
I agree - it's likely to be the same people who need to see the source now. That is, those purchasing an encryption product (Where access to the source is not important because I need to understand it, but rather because I need to know that there are going to be quite a few people out there who can independantly scrutinise that code and cry foul); and those who are investing in a product that is going to become central to their business, and is going to become a legacy component - these people like open source, because if the supplier and supporter disappears, they don't have to re-engineer their whole system. Of course, the other choice is to buy from someone huge and reliable, who will happily maintain this stuff, and if no-one else wants it, will sell it dirt cheap.
> What's an enforceable law? Are there any examples? (I know what a > profitable law is, one where the realized benefits exceed the incurred > expenses. Interestingly enough, we don't put bankrupt laws out of our > misery - we'll stick with things that haven't, and never have, delivered > any actual benefits, and we'll incur the costs of jailing people who > violate them.)
Actually, I doubt this - for instance drug laws. They benefit the ordinary citizen not one bit, but they do allow the state to massively increase their power, and to co-opt existing institutions which (at least ostensibly) serve a purpose to place more people very directly in their (absolute) power.
> >> Today, it tends to divert "noble savage" labor into something that > >> we'd call sweatshops, something that the "savages" strongly prefer > >> to THEIR alternatives.
> Craig> This is a very common argument, but I have never seen anything > Craig> but anecdotal evidence to "support" it. For one, everyone > Craig> outside the first-world is not a subsistence farmer. There is > Craig> not this decision between borderline starvation thru farming > Craig> and scavenging and working in a sweatshop where suddenly > Craig> starvation is not a problem.
> As I understand it, one common source of cheap labor comes from > forcing open agricultural commodity markets in developing countries > and then flooding the local markets with cheaper imports. This > destroys the local agricultural markets and turns people who were > doing okay farming into lots of unskilled labor which can be hired > cheaply. Whatever the benefits of global trade, I think food and > agricultural productive capacity are important enough to allow each > country to protect and stabilize their local agricultural economies, > something the rich industrialized nations have never really stopped > doing.
Clearly, it would be massively wrong for ghana (or wherever) to protect agriculture; meanwhile it is excellent for the industrialised nations to massively subsidise farmers' production, then when they produce so much that it is worth next to nothing at sale, the state (or states, as in the EU) to buy lots of it and burn it, or dump it on the world agricultural market. Bear in mind that although almost worthless at sale, the farmers have already been paid for it (through subsidy). Also, if they sell outside their trade community, they get paid more by the state. Selling it on the world markets then massively depresses the price (because the farmers can give it away and be guaranteed of income), so that farmers not massively subsidised can't compete, no matter how efficient they are. Liquidate the Western farmer! Make him sink or swim on his own feet (and hands, and other major bits applicable in swimming).
> In article <sfwk81s2hog....@world.std.com>, > Kent M Pitman <pit...@world.std.com> wrote: > >ana...@earthlink.net (Andy Freeman) writes: > It winds up in the same sort of thing as internal use of GPLed > software. Suppose you rewrite part of gcc to make it work better > for you, and don't distribute the compiler. You don't have to share > it. If you do, of course, you must supply source code and must > release it under the GPL. I haven't heard RMS complaining excessively > about that (although I will not warrant that I've heard all of > his excessive complaints).
On the one hand, the GPL really bugs me - you can't make bits of a gpl work better, then use the whole, improved work, packaged up in some way so that you can only distribute the code to the gpl work, and use that (modified, open) work as part of work including closed source. Hence, you can only use non-gpl and closed together if you write some libraries, and make the GPL work call your libraries. This seems wrong. (Obviously, LGPL addresses this). By contrast, I fully understand that having written something and given it away, one might not want to allow someone to make large amounts of money from merely writing a thin layer atop your work (Although only where your work is significantly innovative - if I write a hello world implementation, protecting it with the gpl seems smallminded; if I write a successful AI core, I might want to see a significant benefit from any commercial application.)
"Marcin Tustin" <Marc...@GUeswhatthisbitisfor.mindless.com> writes: > Kent M Pitman <pit...@world.std.com> wrote in message > news:sfwd77cljxg.fsf@world.std.com...
> > I do think it is wrong for there to be an implied warranty upon sale, but > > that's very different and less threatening than one created upon creation > > or upon giving as a gift.
> Later reading made this clear. However, I do think it wrong that > (to take an extreme example) MS can sell Windows without > warranty - there is no way that they can claim that their packaging > and advertising does not imply that it is an OS; I also think that one > can expect certain things from an OS, like a process, once started, > will not terminate unpredictably, as long as the OS is used correctly.
I don't know. "Using an OS correctly" is remarkably hard to define. I'm willing to be a little forgiving on this point. I'd get out of the OS market if someone was going to hold me to a warranty like that. I might be willing to warranty that I'd help look for the bug if it came up, and that I'd try to have this as a goal, but I would not want lawsuits if someone found a problem.
I think it injures the space of available options by scaring of good people to require them to warranty any more than they want to offer. I think the consumer should read the warranty and say "I don't like the price" if they don't like what's warrantied. The contract of sale is already adequate to deal with this. I think it is undue government interference for there to be anything else.
I *don't* mind the government making certain modifying terms that they regulate. Saying I market a "grade A safe" operating system, for example, where maybe the government monitors various grades of safety. But that shouldn't keep me from selling an "operating system", unqualified, to whomever might buy it and not care.
"Marcin Tustin" <Marc...@GUeswhatthisbitisfor.mindless.com> writes: > David Thornley <thorn...@visi.com> wrote in message > news:K2p17.9904$B7.1805575@ruti.visi.com... > > In article <sfwk81s2hog....@world.std.com>, > > Kent M Pitman <pit...@world.std.com> wrote:
My name is quoted here but the text being replied to is not mine, in spite of the mixed up levels of anglebrackets. I think it's andy talking.
> > It winds up in the same sort of thing as internal use of GPLed > > software. Suppose you rewrite part of gcc to make it work better > > for you, and don't distribute the compiler. You don't have to share > > it. If you do, of course, you must supply source code and must > > release it under the GPL. I haven't heard RMS complaining excessively > > about that (although I will not warrant that I've heard all of > > his excessive complaints).
> On the one hand, the GPL really bugs me - you can't make bits of a gpl > work better, then use the whole, improved work, packaged up in some way so > that you can only distribute the code to the gpl work, and use that > (modified, open) work as part of work including closed source. Hence, you > can only use non-gpl and closed together if you write some libraries, and > make the GPL work call your libraries. This seems wrong. (Obviously, LGPL > addresses this). By contrast, I fully understand that having written > something and given it away, one might not want to allow someone to make > large amounts of money from merely writing a thin layer atop your work > (Although only where your work is significantly innovative - if I write a > hello world implementation, protecting it with the gpl seems smallminded; if > I write a successful AI core, I might want to see a significant benefit from > any commercial application.)
I think LGPL is for what you want.
But regardless, you always have the option ont to use the GPL'd stuff.
I personally don't like the GPL. But that doesn't mean it injures me that it exists. I use GPL'd software sometimes even. I just wouldn't attach that agreement to my own software. And it keeps me from using GPL'd software in some things I do. Such is life. I can live with it. It's the job of the person who makes the software to dictate acceptable use; that's the irony of the GPL. It wants to talk about freedom, while at the same time strongly dictating modes of use... Oh well. Again, being somewhat internally contradictory philosophically doesn't mean its not legally binding nor that it's immoral.
> I personally don't like the GPL. But that doesn't mean it injures me that > it exists. I use GPL'd software sometimes even. I just wouldn't attach > that agreement to my own software. And it keeps me from using GPL'd > software in some things I do. Such is life. I can live with it. It's the > job of the person who makes the software to dictate acceptable use; that's > the irony of the GPL. It wants to talk about freedom, while at the same > time strongly dictating modes of use... Oh well. Again, being somewhat > internally contradictory philosophically doesn't mean its not legally binding > nor that it's immoral.
I don't know that it's really contradictory. It's a really clear expression of a certain strain of petty-bourgeois values-about-freedom / interests. It sits in the world view of the competant ocmputer user who can modify his/her software, and may be an author from time to time, but who doesn't need to derive his/her income from that authorship. It's an attempt to maximize the liberties of that user. Of course there are trade-offs, but there are trade-offs in everything in life. I think most people's problems with the GPL come from one of two sources:
1. They are in a different class of computer user than that for which the GPL was written. These people tend to object to it to the extent that their perception of their own interests diverge from that of the intended beneficiary of the GPL. For example, especially small-time software authors who rely on this for their income (I think I'm looking in the direction of KMP here) have quite different interests than what the GPL is trying to protect (eg, a university student). (This is why I said the GPL is a clear expression of a *certain* strain of petty-gourgeois interests -- this would be a different strain here)
2. They are idealists. This cuts both ways, of course. Some users whose interests are well expressed by the GPL object to it on an ideological basis. And some users whose interests are contradicted by the GPL favor it on an ideological basis. I think it's funny when people accuse the GPL of being ideological. Certainly it wraps itself in a certain rhetoric, but it's a very clear expression of a certain class interest. Not good nor bad, no more no less.
> My name is quoted here but the text being replied to is not mine, in spite > of the mixed up levels of anglebrackets. I think it's andy talking.
Whoever, much of the articles posted by me at the same time (as indeed this was) were more along the lines of ranting monologues than contributions to discussion or argument.
> I think LGPL is for what you want.
> But regardless, you always have the option ont to use the GPL'd stuff.
> I personally don't like the GPL. But that doesn't mean it injures me that > it exists. I use GPL'd software sometimes even. I just wouldn't attach > that agreement to my own software. And it keeps me from using GPL'd > software in some things I do. Such is life. I can live with it. It's the > job of the person who makes the software to dictate acceptable use; that's > the irony of the GPL. It wants to talk about freedom, while at the same > time strongly dictating modes of use... Oh well. Again, being somewhat > internally contradictory philosophically doesn't mean its not legally binding > nor that it's immoral.
I use GPL'd stuff all the time - Linux is my primary operating system. (Before anyone goes looking at the X- headers: say winmodem). The stuff itself is great - it's being used in the "bazaar" development model, which harnesses many more people than would be with any other extant model. As you say, it is the owner's prerogative to dictate use of his work, and I fully applaud this (as I said I was ranting somewhat). To the extent that there was a point, it was that I believe that the LGPL would encourage commercial companies to use free software, improve them as necessary, and make those improvements publicly available. At the very least, we'd get well designed systems, if many people wanted to modify or extend them.
> I don't know. "Using an OS correctly" is remarkably hard to define. > I'm willing to be a little forgiving on this point. I'd get out of the > OS market if someone was going to hold me to a warranty like that. > I might be willing to warranty that I'd help look for the bug if it came > up, and that I'd try to have this as a goal, but I would not want lawsuits > if someone found a problem.
Correct and reasonable use would be running the manufacturers default setup, plus one user process, and have several hours of using that program consistently kill the os to the point where it spontaneously reboots, and have that problem go away when doing the same thing under the industrial version of that OS (assuming that the program in question wasn't memory leaking, or doing anything else foolish. My suspicion is that win9x memory management is so poor that all processes are liable to leak memory, however well they're written, if they allocate and deallocate enough of it.).
> I think it injures the space of available options by scaring of good people > to require them to warranty any more than they want to offer. I think the > consumer should read the warranty and say "I don't like the price" if they > don't like what's warrantied. The contract of sale is already adequate to > deal with this. I think it is undue government interference for there to be > anything else.
I'm sympathetic to this, but it goes a little too close to caveat emptor in a market where most purchasers totally unqualified and lacking in confidence. The purchaser often doesn't actually know what they want to buy. Of course, in this case, they shouldn't be doing anything with the kit where they might suffer substantial loss, and hence want to sue anyone. I do think that having used the software, and finding it to be unsuitable, the customer should be able to get their money back, or a fixed version (in that case). Of course, even if that were the case, MS has never sold it's 9x OS as being suitable for much other than word processing, games etc.. Essentially I support the status quo in the UK - if advertising could lead a reasonable person to believe something to be true about a product, then that is implicitly included in the contract of sale. I also don't believe that this should be disclaimable in any smallprint on the packaging or inside the packaging - any disclaimer should be unmissable to the average customer (eg it's up to the blind to ask to have anything unusual on the box described to them), and easily comprehensible (eg not entirely written in a foreign language, transcribed in a script totally unlike that used for that language, and employing strange colloquialisms from a culture unrelated to the country of sale, language, and script.)
Certification, of course, does not require the state - and involvement of institutions like the state is to be reduced wherever sensible alternatives are provided.
> I > think it's funny when people accuse the GPL of being ideological. > Certainly it wraps itself in a certain rhetoric, but it's a very > clear expression of a certain class interest. Not good nor bad, > no more no less.
Although I do agree with the class-interest point, I do think that the GPL embodies a certain ideology that all software should be both monetarily free and intellectually free, a sort of softhippy idealism. This is of course doomed to fail for the same reason that musical recordings can't be free until everything is free(ly given) - both are valuable, and the specialists who make them need an income.
Erik Naggum <e...@naggum.net> writes: > * Craig Brozefsky > > This is a very common argument, but I have never seen anything but > > anecdotal evidence to "support" it.
> Are they forced somehow to work in the sweatshops? If you can > demonstrate that they are, you may have a point. If you cannot, > and those who work there _could_ go back to whatever they came > from, what kind of evidence do you need?
Do they have a gun to their head? Most likely not, although in a number of cases they do. When you look at the historical context, yes, I would call it force. The economic situations in these countries did not spontaneously appear, we did not just discover them the other day. They have been systematically exploited thru various means of imperialism for the last hundred years, some going back centuries.
The economic conditions have been created and cultivated by the same people who are now benefitting from the cheap labor. This used to be done thru military occupation and partnerships between trade companies and occupying governments (Indian, Belgian Congo, L.A.) it's now done thru WTO "structural reforms" and the "liberalization of markets". The goal remains the same, enable access to the natural resources of these countries and keep their labor pool manageable and cheap and producing goods which are exported and not used for subsistence, and keep them heavily dependent upon imports (ranging from food to oil).
We gain no understanding of the situation, perhaps only giving ourselves a bit of ethical salve, by looking at it in an ahistorical context. Such consideration does not look at how the condition allowing that low cost labor arrived. It is indeed a willful decision, work or starve, or work and starve for some, that from a political-economic standpoint is fair and ethical, noone was pointing a gun at them. But unless we understand their historical condition, we understand nothing.
> It is rather obvious to me, but maybe it needs to be said: Those > who have the option of better work than that in sweatshops would > have to be forced to work in them. There has never been any > evidence of such force.
Actually there has been evidence of forced labor on every continent. Burma, China, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Brazil, Ghana to name a few. The work ranges from manufacturing to mining to prostitution.
> Well, it sure works wonder to be dissatisfied with the only better > choice you have.
Oh that's right, there is no alternative. My fault for taking off my panglossian shades. I'm glad us white-men are here to fulfill our divine imperative of industrializing and employing those hapless uncivilized savages. It would obviously make me a less productive citizen to consider the extent to which my well-being and my ability to make it thru the day and afford my various consumer goods is predicated upon the suffering of others, but since there is no other choice for them, or me, there is no need to get worked up about it. I know! I'll rationalize it as completely ethical transaction with some schoolboy political-economics.
> Those who make those sweatshops look so awful to the people who may have > forgotten what other options they [do not] have, destroy not only their > financial livelihood now, but their psychological livelihood for most of > their future, too.
How did they get into a position where they had no alternative?
-- Craig Brozefsky <cr...@red-bean.com> http://www.red-bean.com/~craig "Indifference is the dead weight of history." -- Antonio Gramsci
