why open source software is better
phil hunt
Consider:
1. proprietary software must capture a market and get revenue from it; the
more revenue it gets, the more successful it will be, from a proprietary
software company's point of view
2. it can make more profits if it has no competition, because if there
is competition, the per-item sales price can reduce to near zero
3. one effective way of preventing competition is to stop competitors
from making competing software, by commodifying protocols, e.g. by
obfuscating or patent-encumbering them
4. therefore, commercially successful proprietary software will always
tend to harm users' interests in ways that open source won't
This is my paraphrase of an argument is given in more detail by Ralph
Levien in his essay "The decommoditization of protocols".
<http://levien.com/free/decommoditizing.html>
--
*****[ Phil Hunt ***** ph...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk ]*****
"Mommy, make the nasty penguin go away." -- Jim Allchin, MS head
of OS development, regarding open source software (paraphrased).
Gary Reichlinger
hunt) wrote:
>
>Consider:
>
>
>1. proprietary software must capture a market and get revenue from it; the
>more revenue it gets, the more successful it will be, from a proprietary
>software company's point of view
>
>2. it can make more profits if it has no competition, because if there
>is competition, the per-item sales price can reduce to near zero
>
>3. one effective way of preventing competition is to stop competitors
>from making competing software, by commodifying protocols, e.g. by
>obfuscating or patent-encumbering them
>
>4. therefore, commercially successful proprietary software will always
>tend to harm users' interests in ways that open source won't
Something that is free always seems better than something you
have to pay for. What do you do when the provider goes broke or
decides he is tired of working for nothing and leaves the industry?
Chris Morgan
> Something that is free always seems better than something you
> have to pay for. What do you do when the provider goes broke or
> decides he is tired of working for nothing and leaves the industry?
The same thing you do when a commercial provider goes broke or leaves
the industry, with the extra options of fixing it yourself or paying
some third party to do so.
--
Chris Morgan <cm at mihalis.net> http://www.mihalis.net
Temp sig. - Enquire within
Edward Rosten
<rei...@navix.net> wrote:
If the provider of a closed source solution goes broke, there is nothing
you can do.
If the free software developer leaves the project, you can continue it
yourself, or someone else may continue it, so either way free software
(tm) is better.
-Ed
--
| u98ejr
| @
Share, and enjoy. | eng.ox
| .ac.uk
John Hasler
> Something that is free always seems better than something you have to pay
> for.
If you want a maintenance contract on free software you'll pay for it. Of
course, you _will_ have a choice as to who you pay.
> What do you do when the provider goes broke or decides he is tired of
> working for nothing and leaves the industry?
You wish you had used free software and were therefor able to either hire
someone to maintain the code for you or start doing it yourself.
--
John Hasler
jo...@dhh.gt.org (John Hasler)
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, WI
George of the jungle
Personally, I am in favor of open source BMWs.
Too bad, BMW is not.
--
"If once a man indulges himself in Murder, very soon he comes to think
little of Robbing, and
from Robbing he comes next to Drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from
that to Incivility and
Procrastination." T. De Quincy (1785-1859) "Murder Considered As One
of the Fine Arts"
Jeffrey Siegal
the complexity of successful proprietary software. In particular, it is
always extremely complex, usually more so than is optimal from the point
of view of customers/users, because this is necessary to escape death by
cloning.
jtnews
it tends not to get cluttered by creeping
featurism, the adding of superfluous
and mostly unused features. Therefore,
you can understand it a lot
easier and are more likely to be able
to fix it yourself.
If the original author starts going in a
direction that doesn't satisfy the needs
of the users, the source tree can simply
be replicated and a new author can take over.
In this sense, open source software is
one of the purest forms of competition.
John Hasler
> So, what open source software have you written?
Pppconfig, gpppon, a small part of gnucash, patches for a few other
things. You?
> Personally, I am in favor of open source BMWs.
So write one.
> Too bad, BMW is not.
Microsoft is not in favor of open source operating systems. We have
several, though.
--
John Hasler
jo...@dhh.gt.org
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, Wisconsin
Chris Morgan
> Personally, I am in favor of open source BMWs.
>
> Too bad, BMW is not.
You can't really take it away from BMW, they really do a lot of metal
bending, painting, die-casting etc to build a car. If you had a
complete technical readout of the Death^H^H^H^H^HBMW 850i it still
wouldn't help you much in getting your own.
If you have a complete technical readout of software, then you have
that software, unless the software has been altered to refuse to work
in certain cases, say the absence of a license key.
Big difference.
vrml3d.com
A: Yes.
--Steve
Brent Pathakis
> George writes:
> > So, what open source software have you written?
>
> Pppconfig, gpppon, a small part of gnucash, patches for a few other
> things. You?
>
> > Personally, I am in favor of open source BMWs.
>
> So write one.
>
> > Too bad, BMW is not.
>
> Microsoft is not in favor of open source operating systems. We have
> several, though.
---snip
Something that is free always seems better than something you
have to pay for. What do you do when the provider goes broke or
decides he is tired of working for nothing and leaves the industry?
---
I don't know who this proivider your talk about is....With the Linux
kernel, it's produced by a large team of people, as is most oss software.
It alreay has a good leadership, so if linus stepped down or couldn't
continue the product, someone else on the team would.
As for the "value in something free" ... I've used Linux for over six
years...here's the value...It does everything I need and want it to do.
That value enough.
Alan Coopersmith
|I like open source software because
|it tends not to get cluttered by creeping
|featurism, the adding of superfluous
|and mostly unused features.
I would argue that open source software tends to encourage adding
features - each user can add the features most important to them.
emacs is just one counterexample - I use it every day at work, but doubt
I use even half the modules provided or have any need for them.
However, they're useful (or at least amusing in some cases) to someone
out there, so I put up with them, while somewhere out there some other
emacs user puts up with the C-mode, perl-mode, & version-control modules
that I am constantly using and they could care less about.
--
________________________________________________________________________
Alan Coopersmith al...@alum.calberkeley.org
http://soar.Berkeley.EDU/~alanc/ aka: Alan.Coo...@Sun.COM
Working for, but definitely not speaking for, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
jtnews
the actual core of emacs is relatively
simple. It's controlled creeping featurism
versus uncontrolled where everything but
the kitchen sink gets thrown in, and it's
impossible to sort out all the dependencies.
Emacs Lisp would be nice if it had a hierarchical
namespace.
Florian Weimer
> Personally, I am in favour of open source Beatles music.
Visit Germany. It seems that some Beatles songs have entered the
public domain here.
OTOH, it is pointless to say 'I want an open source XXX', where XXX is
an already existing product which is not software. 'I want free
software which does XXX' is a more reasonable claim (especially if you
start implementation afterwards ;-).
Per Abrahamsen
George of the jungle <nos...@isp.com> writes:
> So, what open source software have you written?
Lots of Emacs stuff, minor contributions to other projects.
> Personally, I am in favor of open source BMWs.
If BWM decided to "open source" their cars, they would still be
expensive to build. You would probably be able to buy cheaper BMW
clones manufactured in Taiwan, but my guess is that most people would
continue to buy them at BWM for the perceived quality and the name.
> Too bad, BMW is not.
Nope, it would help their competitors improve their car models.
An "open source" car would probably mostly appeal to the hobbyist
market of people who want to build their own cars. The established
car manufactures can build cheaper closed source cars for the consumer
market.
That's why it work better for software, the manufacturing cost is
close to zero.
Per Abrahamsen
> Personally, I am in favour of open source Beatles music.
There are lots of free music, get it legally from www.mp3.com. I
presume there are some in the same genre as Beatles.
> Too bad Paul, George, Ringo and the demon lady want to get paid and
> increasingly so.
Yes, if copyright for pop music expired 5 years after publication,
that would still leave plenty of time to cash in on the music. And
neither Paul, George or Ringo would be starving.
phil hunt
>On Sun, 25 Feb 2001 20:21:41 +0000, ph...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil
>hunt) wrote:
>
>>
>>Consider:
>>
>>
>>1. proprietary software must capture a market and get revenue from it; the
>>more revenue it gets, the more successful it will be, from a proprietary
>>software company's point of view
>>
>>2. it can make more profits if it has no competition, because if there
>>is competition, the per-item sales price can reduce to near zero
>>
>>3. one effective way of preventing competition is to stop competitors
>>from making competing software, by commodifying protocols, e.g. by
>>obfuscating or patent-encumbering them
>>
>>4. therefore, commercially successful proprietary software will always
>>tend to harm users' interests in ways that open source won't
>
> Something that is free always seems better than something you
>have to pay for.
That's true, but beside the point. The good thing about open source
software isn't reduced purchase cost, it's that *you* are in control
and not some greedy rapacious corporation who sees you only as something
to extract money out of, by fair means or foul.
> What do you do when the provider goes broke
Irrelevant
>or
>decides he is tired of working for nothing and leaves the industry?
If the maintainer of a valuable open source program stops maintaining
it, someone else will pick up the task.
Ernest Schaal
abr...@dina.kvl.dk wrote on 2/26/01 3:56 AM:
> Craven Moorehead <n...@thanks.com> writes:
>
>> Personally, I am in favour of open source Beatles music.
>
> There are lots of free music, get it legally from www.mp3.com. I
> presume there are some in the same genre as Beatles.
This implies that musicians are a commodity, and that there is nothing
special about certain artists that make them a much more valuable product
than other artists. This is not the case.
I know that this is a sore point with some frustrated musicians on the
misc.int-property newsgroup, but some artists have a better draw than other
artists. Compared to engineers, lawyers, and software developers, there is a
much greater income disparity between the generic musician and the
superstar. Part of this is because of branding and marketing, and part of
this is because, often times, the product is better.
For those who love to rant and rave against the star system, remember that
this system was created by the public. In the early days of the movies, the
movie trust refused to give out the names of its players, partly because it
wished to standardized the business, and partly because they feared that
stars could be more costly. (To meet public demand in England, nickelodeon
operators made up names for American actors.) This policy was reversed only
when the independents started publicizing the names of their stars.
>> Too bad Paul, George, Ringo and the demon lady want to get paid and
>> increasingly so.
>
> Yes, if copyright for pop music expired 5 years after publication,
> that would still leave plenty of time to cash in on the music. And
> neither Paul, George or Ringo would be starving.
The same argument could be made that if they gave away 95% of their money to
the poor they still wouldn't be starving. Whether or not they would be
starving is not the point.
BACK ON TOPIC:
While I would agree that there are advantages to open source software if you
are a programmer, those advantages don't apply for the computer user.
When I started using computers (1962), computer programmers and computer
users were synonymous because we had to write the programs we ran. For
instance, I started out with Fortran, and later moved to BASIC, Pascal, etc.
Nowadays, it doesn't make sense to write all your programs, or to spend time
modifying them.
For instance, I use Microsoft Word a lot. When I started with the earlier
versions of Word (late 1080s), I also needed PageMaker in order to do
newsletters and brochures. Since that time, Word has improved to the point
that I do significant desktop publishing with it.
I have seen Word grow in size and features, from a simple program that
allowed be to do simple word processing to a complex program that allows be
to do so much more. While I don't like complexity for its own sake, I do
enjoy the ability to do my work more productively by using full-featured
software.
Spam.be.damn
<nos...@isp.com> wrote (in part):
>So, what open source software have you written?
>
>Personally, I am in favor of open source BMWs.
>
>Too bad, BMW is not.
George misses the point as does most of the posters.
Why are u equating open source with a freebie?
Open source is a way of building a program using technique
that is visible. The user will enjoy the programmers
ingenuity and workmanship and will pay for it. Either
directly or indirectly and will be happy to do so.
There is not secret to metallurgy or mechanical engineering
yet someone is ingenious enough to apply these known
principles and create a BMW.
No contriving, not underhandedness, no leveraging; just
plain good workmanship and resultant reputation for it.
Current copyright laws are protection enough.
Open source is the future. Down with Microshit.
Andreas Spengler
> So, what open source software have you written?
>
> Personally, I am in favor of open source BMWs.
>
> Too bad, BMW is not.
Why? Does BMW sell cars only with the hood wielded shut?
Andreas
--
Microsoft's Product Strategy: "It compiles, let's ship it!"
Craig Kelley
> Well emacs is kind of modular
> the actual core of emacs is relatively
> simple. It's controlled creeping featurism
> versus uncontrolled where everything but
> the kitchen sink gets thrown in, and it's
> impossible to sort out all the dependencies.
>
> Emacs Lisp would be nice if it had a hierarchical
> namespace.
It does:
gnus-message-*
gnus-group-*
gnus-*
mail-*
compose-*
etc.
They aren't enforced, but then neither are the Java libraries. It's
all by convention, and you can find inconsistencies in most any
heirarchy (look at the AWT -> SWING mess in Java, you can't ever tell
which depends on what).
--
The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead.
Craig Kelley -- kell...@isu.edu
http://www.isu.edu/~kellcrai finger i...@inconnu.isu.edu for PGP block
Lance Purple
>increasingly so.
Actually, Beatles music is somewhat "open". You're allowed to record
and sell 'cover' versions of any song they've put out, so long as you
pay the compulsory licence fee. They can't withhold permission, even
on awful covers like William Shatner's "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds".
Moreover, when we talk of "Open Source" software, we're not talking
about ripping somebody else's warez and trading it on Napster. We're
talking about the AUTHOR him/herself agreeing to give out the source.
You do agree they can give away their own property, yes?
--
,---------------------------------------,
/ Lance Purple (lpurple at io dot com) /
'---------------------------------------'
jtnews
as in java. In java, I can
use the import statement,
import java.util.*;
and not have to use any qualifying
prefix on a name
Vector symbols = new Vector();
versus
java.util.Vector symbols = new java.util.Vector();
This is important if you want the
ability to move whole sections of
code from one module (package) to another
without having to do a lot of error prone
editing.
Also with java, you have the choice
of importing individual classes within
packages instead of all of the names
in the package.
import java.util.Vector;
This makes name space management a lot
easier and makes unintended collisions
between namespaces less likely.
phil hunt
>So, what open source software have you written?
See <http://www.vision25.demon.co.uk/oss/oss.html>
>Personally, I am in favor of open source BMWs.
I'm not particularly; but I would be in favour of an open source
car *design*.
phil hunt
>
>If the original author starts going in a
>direction that doesn't satisfy the needs
>of the users, the source tree can simply
>be replicated and a new author can take over.
>In this sense, open source software is
>one of the purest forms of competition.
I agree; I've written an essay on competition as applied to open source;
it's at <http://www.vision25.demon.co.uk/ip/oss-better.html>. The
2nd section deals with competition.
I didn't include your point that anyone else can take over; I will
do, though.
David Masterson
> Gary Reichlinger writes:
>> Something that is free always seems better than something you have
>> to pay for.
> If you want a maintenance contract on free software you'll pay for
> it. Of course, you _will_ have a choice as to who you pay.
As well as how much you pay. The only problem is that, in the past,
the maintenance fee for free software is (more often than not) $0.
IIRC, in 1998, Linux was rated as better supported than MS-Windows
because of all the people on the Internet providing fixes at no cost
(excluding download costs).
--
David Masterson (dmas...@rational.com)
Rational Software (but I don't speak for them)
David Masterson
> Consider:
> 1. proprietary software must capture a market and get revenue from
> it; the more revenue it gets, the more successful it will be, from a
> proprietary software company's point of view
> 2. it can make more profits if it has no competition, because if
> there is competition, the per-item sales price can reduce to near
> zero
> 3. one effective way of preventing competition is to stop
> competitors from making competing software, by commodifying
> protocols, e.g. by obfuscating or patent-encumbering them
> 4. therefore, commercially successful proprietary software will
> always tend to harm users' interests in ways that open source won't
> This is my paraphrase of an argument is given in more detail by
> Ralph Levien in his essay "The decommoditization of protocols".
> <http://levien.com/free/decommoditizing.html>
The subject line for this message should be "why open source software
is better for the *customer*".
Per Abrahamsen
gnu.misc.discuss as the least inappropriate group.
[ FUT: gnu.misc.discuss ]
At least drop the MS and Linux advocacy groups.
Ernest Schaal <esc...@earthlink.net> writes:
> in article rjwvadr...@ssv2.dina.kvl.dk, Per Abrahamsen at
> abr...@dina.kvl.dk wrote on 2/26/01 3:56 AM:
>
> > Craven Moorehead <n...@thanks.com> writes:
> >
> >> Personally, I am in favour of open source Beatles music.
> >
> > There are lots of free music, get it legally from www.mp3.com. I
> > presume there are some in the same genre as Beatles.
>
> This implies that musicians are a commodity, and that there is nothing
> special about certain artists that make them a much more valuable product
> than other artists. This is not the case.
It implies that if Mr. Moorehead prefer free music, he can find it.
The concept is not ridiculous. If he want to pay more for Beatles
music, that is his own choice.
> >> Too bad Paul, George, Ringo and the demon lady want to get paid and
> >> increasingly so.
> >
> > Yes, if copyright for pop music expired 5 years after publication,
> > that would still leave plenty of time to cash in on the music. And
> > neither Paul, George or Ringo would be starving.
>
> The same argument could be made that if they gave away 95% of their money to
> the poor they still wouldn't be starving. Whether or not they would be
> starving is not the point.
Yes it is, at least in the US the purpose of copyright is to give an
economic incitement for promoting science and art, in the case of pop
music, a 5 year copyright would provide plenty of incitement.
> While I would agree that there are advantages to open source software if you
> are a programmer, those advantages don't apply for the computer user.
Programmers are computer users too. And there are plenty of
advantages for non-programmer users too, price is only the most
obvious. Not being at the mercy of strategy and survival of a single
commercial entity is the most important, and makes me wonder why
anyone would use proprietary software for critical tasks.
> Nowadays, it doesn't make sense to write all your programs, or to
> spend time modifying them.
That is another reason using free software make sense, free software
exists and evolve to meet the demands of the market, not the business
strategy of a company.
> For instance, I use Microsoft Word a lot. When I started with the earlier
> versions of Word (late 1080s), I also needed PageMaker in order to do
> newsletters and brochures. Since that time, Word has improved to the point
> that I do significant desktop publishing with it.
You could have done serious desktop publishing using free software in
the late 80'ties, and it would have the advantage that the file
formats would have been backward compatible, so your new software
would still be able to process your old documents.
dubin david scott
[...]
> While I would agree that there are advantages to open source
> software if you are a programmer, those advantages don't apply for
> the computer user.
Mr. Schaal, I believe that open source software affords direct
benefits to users, not just programmers, and that your example of
desktop publishing offers a good illustration for my points.
> When I started using computers (1962), computer programmers and
> computer users were synonymous because we had to write the programs
> we ran. For instance, I started out with Fortran, and later moved to
> BASIC, Pascal, etc. Nowadays, it doesn't make sense to write all
> your programs, or to spend time modifying them.
Proprietary software has traditionally offered you two choices: write
an application entirely on your own, or pay to use a complete
application that has been written for you. With free and open source
source software, it's possible to build on components and resources
written by others. This is a different perspective on progress since
1962: a person with modest programming capability can accomplish so
much more than they used to. One can obtain, for example, the major
components of a desktop publishing system (advanced editor,
high-quality typesetting engine, print previewer, SGML/XML parser,
revision control, etc.) all under the terms of liberal, open source
licenses, and link them together with very simple scripts or utility
programs.
You may well ask why users should do even a little programming when
monolithic, integrated packages (like MS Word) are available. Indeed,
what about users who can't program at all? Before answering, I'd like
to point out that even proprietary software publishers like Microsoft
are moving to component-based development, now that it's possible to
distribute services without releasing source code.
You wrote:
> For instance, I use Microsoft Word a lot. When I started with the earlier
> versions of Word (late 1080s), I also needed PageMaker in order to do
> newsletters and brochures. Since that time, Word has improved to the point
> that I do significant desktop publishing with it.
I'm a member of an international scholarly society, and part of my
participation involves helping to distribute their newsletter, which
is prepared using an extremely popular and ubiquitous commercial word
processing program that I won't name. The nature of the publication,
its contributors, audience, and distribution methods subject the
document to stresses that your publishing projects may not face (or
maybe they do -- I can only speak from my own experience).
Although the document is written in English, the names of many persons
and places are written in non-Latin alphabets. The same goes for
titles of books and papers that are referenced or cited. The
publication's audience accesses it over the web using many different
kinds of hardware and software, customized for a variety of locales.
Converting the document between different file formats is important
if everyone in the society is going to be able to read the newsletter.
For all the advanced features this word processing software offers,
the robustness we need for our newsletter seems difficult to achieve:
some design, editorial, or content expression inevitably breaks when
the file is shared or converted. I think reasonable people can
disagree on the extent to which this is the fault of the software or
the users. But wherever you come down on that issue, I think
robustness under all kinds of stress is one of the main advantages of
open source software over proprietary software (for reasons I'll
describe in further detail below). I think users benefit from that
robustness in a very direct way.
The SGML-based publishing system that I use for my own projects gives me
none of the problems I cited. Extended character sets and graceful format
translation are handled with little hassle. I attribute this to several
factors:
1) The open source components from which I assembled the system
were written for general-purpose use, not just the needs of one
application.
2) The maintainers of those components enjoy a more direct feedback
relationship with their user base than the authors of
proprietary software. And since the user base itself is more
sophisticated, the feedback they can offer is more constructive.
3) The components have to have good support for standardized
interchange formats and protocols, since open source developers
obviously can't rely on proprietary protocols.
4) Releasing your source code invites people to stress it in ways
you wouldn't think anyone would want to. As a result bugs get
discovered and corrected quickly.
5) As a user of the system, I have to be a *little* more educated
about the underlying representation of my documents, even if I'm
not a software engineer. I have to understand the relationship
between the character set standard I'm using and its encoding
as a stream of bytes. I have to understand how the logical and
structural elements of the document are mapped to formatting and
design elements. This is not to say my software isn't as "fully-
featured" as MS Word. But the sophistication is invested in
more flexible editing, more advanced typography, and better
project management features, rather than hiding details behind
the illusion of seamless integration. I think that's
representative of different priorities in the open source
community: user-empowering and user-educating, instead of merely
user-friendly.
> I have seen Word grow in size and features, from a simple program
> that allowed be to do simple word processing to a complex program
> that allows be to do so much more. While I don't like complexity for
> its own sake, I do enjoy the ability to do my work more productively
> by using full-featured software.
Sure. And I'll concede that proprietary software publishers have had
great success in writing and marketing applications for productive
non-programmers. In the open source community, software for capable
programmers comes first, software for casual programmers comes later,
and software for non-programmers comes last of all. But the vehicles
by which open source programmers arrive at that point bring their own
built-in advantages.
Dave Dubin
GSLIS, UIUC
John Hasler
> As well as how much you pay. The only problem is that, in the past, the
> maintenance fee for free software is (more often than not) $0.
The suits want someone to be contractually obligated to maintain the
software. They need the paperwork to cover their asses with. That will
cost you money.
David Masterson
> David Masterson writes:
>> As well as how much you pay. The only problem is that, in the
>> past, the maintenance fee for free software is (more often than
>> not) $0.
> The suits want someone to be contractually obligated to maintain the
> software. They need the paperwork to cover their asses with. That
> will cost you money.
Two problems with this statement:
* Suits are not dummies -- they can learn new ways of doing things and
so may not require "contractual obligation" on any but a few pieces
of software.
* Some pieces of software are such that no one wants to step up and be
"contractually obligated" for it. Many pieces of software become
useful to a company due to "internal" add-ons that people within the
company make. External entities may not want to support this.
phil hunt
Why?
phil hunt
>BACK ON TOPIC:
>
>While I would agree that there are advantages to open source software if you
>are a programmer, those advantages don't apply for the computer user.
Some do, for example the reduced cost, reduced vendor lock-in, and
increased reliability.
>When I started using computers (1962), computer programmers and computer
>users were synonymous because we had to write the programs we ran. For
>instance, I started out with Fortran, and later moved to BASIC, Pascal, etc.
>Nowadays, it doesn't make sense to write all your programs, or to spend time
>modifying them.
>
>For instance, I use Microsoft Word a lot. When I started with the earlier
>versions of Word (late 1080s), I also needed PageMaker in order to do
>newsletters and brochures. Since that time, Word has improved to the point
>that I do significant desktop publishing with it.
IMO Word improved up to about 1995. Since then it's got worse.
phil hunt
>it tends not to get cluttered by creeping
>featurism, the adding of superfluous
>you can understand it a lot
>easier and are more likely to be able
>to fix it yourself.
>
>If the original author starts going in a
>direction that doesn't satisfy the needs
>of the users, the source tree can simply
>be replicated and a new author can take over.
>In this sense, open source software is
>one of the purest forms of competition.
I've added this comment to my website at
<http://www.vision25.demon.co.uk/ip/oss-better.html>
John Hasler
> Suits are not dummies -- they can learn new ways of doing things and so
> may not require "contractual obligation" on any but a few pieces of
> software.
Let's hope so.
> Some pieces of software are such that no one wants to step up and be
> "contractually obligated" for it. Many pieces of software become useful
> to a company due to "internal" add-ons that people within the company
> make. External entities may not want to support this.
This is less of a problem with free software as you can shop around for
support and, all else failing, hire a programmer and do it yourself.
Tim Hanson
>
> >>>>> "John" == John Hasler <jo...@dhh.gt.org> writes:
>
> > Gary Reichlinger writes:
>
> >> Something that is free always seems better than something you have
> >> to pay for.
>
> > If you want a maintenance contract on free software you'll pay for
> > it. Of course, you _will_ have a choice as to who you pay.
>
> As well as how much you pay.
...as well as the option (but not the obligation) to dive into it
yourself, if it suits you.
> The only problem is that, in the past,
> the maintenance fee for free software is (more often than not) $0.
> IIRC, in 1998, Linux was rated as better supported than MS-Windows
> because of all the people on the Internet providing fixes at no cost
> (excluding download costs).
>
> --
> David Masterson (dmas...@rational.com)
> Rational Software (but I don't speak for them)
--
There is no realizable power that man cannot, in time, fashion the
tools to attain, nor any power so secure that the naked ape will not
abuse it. So it is written in the genetic cards -- only physics and
war hold him in check. And also the wife who wants him home by five,
of course.
-- Encyclopedia Apocryphia, 1990 ed.
phil hunt
>> You can crap on about the "AUTHOR him/herself agreeing to give out the
>> source" rubbish. If everyone had to pay for Linux and the price was the
>> same or more then Windows (the price of Windows could be very elastic if
>> MS wants) it would be as dead as a Dodo from a popularity perspective.
>
>If it was not open source, Linux would be nowhere now. It's because of
>the open source nature that it is where it is.
This is true. Consider all the proprietary Unices on x86 that got
nowhere: Xenix, SCO, Minix, Coherent...
>> The only really bad thing about Windows is that it costs money. If it
>> was free Linux would not even be heard from.
>
>If Windows were free, I would not run it.
The only thing i use Windows for is playing games. I will only use
it for programming when someone pays me to do so at my normal
consulting rates.
phil hunt
>In article <slrn99nc84...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>,
> ph...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt) writes:
>>
>> You really are a contemptable piece of slime, aren't you?
>>
>Hey Phil, what's happening to your usually reliable
>good manners?
Some people annoy me... I guess it showed though in my post.
vrml3d.com
> The subject line for this message should be "why open source software
> is better for the *customer*".
No, it should be "why open source software is better for the customer in the
short run". Anything that drives producers out of the market in the long
run is bad for consumers in the long run, business cycles not withstanding.
Anecdotal evidence suggests a serious decline in shareware applications,
with open source an obvious culprit. Fewer apps, fewer choices. Sorry I
don't have numbers to back it up. That's why it's only anecdotal.
--Steve
Donovan Rebbechi
>
>> The subject line for this message should be "why open source software
>> is better for the *customer*".
>
>No, it should be "why open source software is better for the customer in the
>short run". Anything that drives producers out of the market in the long
>run is bad for consumers in the long run, business cycles not withstanding.
I don't think it's clear than open source software drives anyone out of
the market.
>Anecdotal evidence suggests a serious decline in shareware applications,
>with open source an obvious culprit.
Doubtful. One of the obvious problems with this line is that the shareware
apps and the open source software usually don't run on the same platform.
Also, to make this argument, you'd need to show that the decline in
shareware did not meet with a corresponding increase in open source.
A decline in the number of shareware apps is not necessarily a bad
thing if it's met with a corresponding increase in open source
applications.
--
Donovan Rebbechi * http://pegasus.rutgers.edu/~elflord/ *
elflord at panix dot com
Ian Davey
>On Tue, 27 Feb 2001 20:58:03 +0000, ph...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil
>hunt) wrote:
>
>>The only thing i use Windows for is playing games. I will only use
>>it for programming when someone pays me to do so at my normal
>>consulting rates.
>
>least give you all his source code. Good one, Do you live in a trailer
>park ?
Do you completely misunderstand the concept of a community? You get the source
code, and can acquire the OS for free (though can easily pay for it if you
want a nice box and extra documentation), but can contribute back to the
community by coding (or paying for the software, or writing documentation, or
providing help/support to others). The internet was built on free software,
and without it you wouldn't be sitting here typing now.
However this is mute as a lot of people do get paid to work on the OS.
>People should be rewarded for their work and intellectual property
>should be protected. Why should I give people my fancy highy optimised
>code ? What's in it for me, a warm feeling in my loins ?
People should have the right to do what they want with their "intellectual
property", including giving it away. There are lots of different reasons why
people want to do this. Because they agree with the free software philosophy,
want to contribute back to the community, want to start a open project that
they feel they'll need help completing, because it's a hobby or to gain
experience. Too many to list here, and the reasons can either be selfless,
selfish or somewhere in between.
> You can get the same effect by pissing in your pants.
If that's what you prefer...
ian.
\ /
(@_@) http://www.eclipse.co.uk/sweetdespise/ (dark literature)
/(&)\ http://www.eclipse.co.uk/sweetdespise/libertycaptions/ (art)
| |
Sam Holden
>On Tue, 27 Feb 2001 20:58:03 +0000, ph...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil
>hunt) wrote:
>
>>it for programming when someone pays me to do so at my normal
>>consulting rates.
>
>least give you all his source code. Good one, Do you live in a trailer
>park ?
Maybe he would only use it for programming when being paid is because he
doesn't like using it and thus needs compensation in order to do so. Just
like I won't paint your house unless you pay me, since I don't enjoy it.
Saying he will use it for programming if being paid seems to indicate the
decision to not use it for programming is based on the usability of the
platform and not on ideological grounds.
>People should be rewarded for their work and intellectual property
>should be protected. Why should I give people my fancy highy optimised
>code ? What's in it for me, a warm feeling in my loins ? You can get
>the same effect by pissing in your pants.
What does that have to do with anything. I saw no mention of IP or demanding
something from others.
People are rewarded for their work (in the computer industry anyway) and
IP is protected. What planet are you from if you think it is any other way?
If you have no sense of the common good, community, and helping your fellow
man, and doing something for other than financial reasons that is your loss.
--
Sam Holden
Nick Condon
<oo0k9t8m085s1rqg9...@4ax.com>:
>On Mon, 26 Feb 2001 04:11:47 GMT, Chris Morgan <c...@mihalis.net> wrote:
>
>>George of the jungle <nos...@isp.com> writes:
>>
>>> Personally, I am in favor of open source BMWs.
>>>
>>> Too bad, BMW is not.
>>
>>You can't really take it away from BMW, they really do a lot of metal
>>bending, painting, die-casting etc to build a car. If you had a
>>complete technical readout of the Death^H^H^H^H^HBMW 850i it still
>>wouldn't help you much in getting your own.
>>
>>If you have a complete technical readout of software, then you have
>>that software, unless the software has been altered to refuse to work
>>in certain cases, say the absence of a license key.
>>
>>Big difference.
>
>Personally, I am in favour of open source Beatles music.
>
>Too bad Paul, George, Ringo and the demon lady want to get paid and
>increasingly so.
>
>Craven
Michael Jackson owns all the Beatles copyright, IIRC.
--
Nick
Nick Condon
>I find this thread curious. Open source is better the closed ?
>
>What it REALLY means to most people is free is better then paying for
>something.
Are going to argue the opposite?
Must open wallet ... must hand over ... hard-earned ...
--
Nick
Nick Condon
>You suggest a situation where 0.01% do the work and the rest enjoy the
>fruits of the labour. BTW that didn't work in Russia even when 100%
>did the work or at least pretended too.
>
>We no longer live in the 19th century, you want something, you buy it.
>No-one makes their own ketch anymore. We buy it.
There is an old joke that an economist looks at a system working in
practice, and then tries to figure out if works in theory.
>Maybe they do it when they are young and out to change the world. Then
>they get married, have kids and suddenly find there is no free lunch,
But there are such things as free speech, free countries, free movement and
free software.
>especially in the US.
98% of people don't live in the US.
--
Nick
Nick Condon
<97i0t4$4tb$1...@bob.news.rcn.net>:
How about the rise of the Internet, more or less in line with the rise of
open source?
The Internet is built on free software.
--
Nick
Ian Davey
>On Wed, 28 Feb 2001 10:11:23 GMT, ida...@my-dejanews.com (Ian Davey)
>wrote:
>>Do you completely misunderstand the concept of a community? You get the source
>
>>code, and can acquire the OS for free (though can easily pay for it if you
>>want a nice box and extra documentation), but can contribute back to the
>>community by coding (or paying for the software, or writing documentation, or
>>providing help/support to others). The internet was built on free software,
>>and without it you wouldn't be sitting here typing now.
>
>free, But that is what it is associated with it most of the time.
I know perfectly well what Open Source is, and the differences between it and
Free Software.
>As for community, 99.99% of the population can't or wont do the
>contributing you suggest. Why should I do work for my OS when I get it
>free with my next PC ? Even if I had to pay directly it would be
>preferable for me.
You can pay for Linux and lots of people do. Walk into a shop and buy Red Hat,
Mandrake, SuSe, or another packaged distribution.
>You suggest a situation where 0.01% do the work and the rest enjoy the
>fruits of the labour. BTW that didn't work in Russia even when 100%
>did the work or at least pretended too.
This has nothing to do with Communism, it's about freedom of information.
Software is after all just information. If people want to create and share
software then who's to stop them? If someone creates something they have every
right to do what they want with it.
>We no longer live in the 19th century, you want something, you buy it.
>No-one makes their own ketch anymore. We buy it.
You can buy Linux so what are you complaining about. Just because it's
available for free, and comes with lots of freedoms, doesn't mean you can't go
out and buy it.
>>However this is mute as a lot of people do get paid to work on the OS.
>
>The vast majority work for MS and if they started in the 80's are now
>retired and sitting pretty.
I didn't mention MS, I was talking about Linux. There are people that get paid
to develop for Linux and to write the OS.
>>People should have the right to do what they want with their "intellectual
>>property", including giving it away. There are lots of different reasons why
>>people want to do this. Because they agree with the free software philosophy,
>>want to contribute back to the community, want to start a open project that
>>they feel they'll need help completing, because it's a hobby or to gain
>>experience. Too many to list here, and the reasons can either be selfless,
>>selfish or somewhere in between.
>
>Maybe they do it when they are young and out to change the world. Then
>they get married, have kids and suddenly find there is no free lunch,
>especially in the US.
Then get paid to do it. Plenty of people do.
Nick Condon
>My system of software development is proven, sustainable and creates a
>good living for everyone involved.
Code-sharing is much older development model than closing it up and keeping
it all secret. That didn't happen until the late 70s - Microsoft was one of
the pioneers. Up until that point everybody shared their code. They were
mainly scientists and sharing your ideas is a corner stone of the
scientific method.
>Yours is unproven, has no business model, is creating a bunch of
>companies existing on hype alone.
Open source software doesn't require a business model. I hope the
businesses do well, but really they are irrelevant. If every Linux company
disappeared overnight, there would still be Debian, the would still be the
GNU project, and there would still be Linus.
>Who would you rather be Bill or Linus ? One is wealthy,the other has
>to take a second job in the real world to make a living.
I don't want to disagree over every single point, but honestly? I have no
doubt I'd rather be Linus. Gates is a spoiled bully who is over-accustomed
to getting his own way. I have zero respect for him.
>The most successful Linux company Redhat is derided by most hardcore
>Unix guys as a heap of crap. The AOLer of Linuxes. It is the most
>successful and is still an economic basket case.
I am beginning to see a pattern in your thinking:
Making money == success
Success == making money
Fortunately not everybody sees the world in those terms.
--
Nick
phil hunt
>
>The most successful Linux company Redhat is derided by most hardcore
>Unix guys as a heap of crap. The AOLer of Linuxes. It is the most
>successful and is still an economic basket case.
Red Hat recently bought out another company for $47,000,000 in RH stock.
It could do this because the market values RH high enough for the
stock to be valuable. Note, the opinion of people *putting their
money where their mouth is* is that RH is a valuable company.
If you think it isn't valuable, I suggest you buy RH put options,
of other instruments that imply you are betting the share price will
go down.
phil hunt
>In article <qlfp9tkdeq9abgg18...@4ax.com>, Craven Moorehead <n...@thanks.com> wrote:
>>On Tue, 27 Feb 2001 20:58:03 +0000, ph...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil
>>hunt) wrote:
>>
>>>The only thing i use Windows for is playing games. I will only use
>>>it for programming when someone pays me to do so at my normal
>>>consulting rates.
>>
>>You expect someone to write your OS for free though. Or at the very
>>least give you all his source code. Good one, Do you live in a trailer
>>park ?
>
>Do you completely misunderstand the concept of a community?
I expect so. Mr Craven Coward thinks that writing open source software is
the same as urinating in one's trousers.
>However this is mute as a lot of people do get paid to work on the OS.
ITYM "moot".
phil hunt
>On Wed, 28 Feb 2001 10:11:23 GMT, ida...@my-dejanews.com (Ian Davey)
>wrote:
>
>>>>The only thing i use Windows for is playing games. I will only use
>>>>it for programming when someone pays me to do so at my normal
>>>>consulting rates.
>>>
>>>You expect someone to write your OS for free though. Or at the very
>>>least give you all his source code. Good one, Do you live in a trailer
>>>park ?
>>
>>Do you completely misunderstand the concept of a community? You get the source
>>code, and can acquire the OS for free (though can easily pay for it if you
>>want a nice box and extra documentation), but can contribute back to the
>>community by coding (or paying for the software, or writing documentation, or
>>providing help/support to others). The internet was built on free software,
>>and without it you wouldn't be sitting here typing now.
>
>free,
It meas free as in speech, but not necessarily as in beer.
>As for community, 99.99% of the population can't or wont do the
>contributing you suggest.
It is estimated there are about 100,000 people who have
contributed to open source software. This is a considerable
proportion of all programmers, and an even higher proportion of
good programmers.
>Why should I do work for my OS when I get it
>free with my next PC ?
No-one's saying you should if you don't want to. I wrote Leafwa because it
was useful *for me*. Since I find it useful, I thought others might do
too, so I publish it on my website. Do you understand the concept of
"helping others"?
>You suggest a situation where 0.01% do the work and the rest enjoy the
>fruits of the labour. BTW that didn't work in Russia even when 100%
>did the work or at least pretended too.
You are a troll and I claim my ten pounds.
BTW, what worked in Russia is irrelevant.
OSS does work. It runs most web servers. It runs the machines that
run the Internet. It is daily getting more users. There are an
estimated 40 million Linux users today, and it's the fasteest
growing operating system in the world, and it's flexible enough to
run on anything from an MP3 player or PDA to a supercomputer. It
has wiped a quarter of a trillion dollars from Microsoft's share
price, which is why Ballmer calls it the "number 1 threat" and
Allchin say's it's "un-American".
With all this Linux and OSS have going for them, don't you think
it's time you considered trying it too?
>We no longer live in the 19th century, you want something, you buy it.
>No-one makes their own ketch anymore. We buy it.
ITYM "ketchup"; A ketch is a kind of boat.
>Maybe they do it when they are young and out to change the world. Then
>they get married, have kids and suddenly find there is no free lunch,
>especially in the US.
Let's test that scenario, shall we? Linus is married with kids...
guess what, he's still developing Liunx.
phil hunt
>
>Read the originator of this tread he quoted Ralph
>Levien. I read one line then stopped
>
>"Background: free software and proprietary software"
>
>"Free software, by contrast, is written for lots of different reasons,
>including a simple desire for the software on the part of the author,
>education, and being part of the free software community. However,
>getting the job done expediently is almost always an overriding
>concern. Thus, free software tends not to be much more complex than
>necessary, and making use of existing modules and protocols is often
>more appealing than reinventing things from scratch."
>
>He is confused too.
Why? What's confused about the above?
>>Napster isn't open source. Napster has *nothing* to do with open source.
>
>Same principle by the same rabble.
You are added libel to willful stupidity, now.
The Napster software is *not* open source.
>>>All Linux has got really going for it is that it is free.
>>
>>I've bought several boxed sets of Linux, costing GBP 20 to 50 each.
>>Have you ever tried downloading several CDs worth on a phone line?
>
>That is all the (few)
40 million is "few", is it?
>None of them like paying and don't, I have never seen a Linux boxed
>set.
Then you haven't looked very hard.
>>3. the cost of Linux or Windows is typically a lot less than the cost
>>of the computer that it runs on
>
>Eh ?
E.g. Suse boxed set = GBP 30. Computer = GBP 700.
>My system of software development is proven, sustainable and creates a
>good living for everyone involved.
What is your "system"?
>Yours is unproven, has no business model, is creating a bunch of
>companies existing on hype alone.
Mine? I didn't invent OSS, you know.
>Who would you rather be Bill or Linus ? One is wealthy,the other has
>to take a second job in the real world to make a living.
I expect Linus is happier than Bill.
>The most successful Linux company Redhat is derided by most hardcore
>Unix guys as a heap of crap.
Rubbish.
phil hunt
>
>>You suggest a situation where 0.01% do the work and the rest enjoy the
>>fruits of the labour. BTW that didn't work in Russia even when 100%
>>did the work or at least pretended too.
>
>This has nothing to do with Communism, it's about freedom of information.
Indeed, as I point out in <http://www.vision25.demon.co.uk/ip/oss-better.html>,
OSS is beating Microsoft *because* MS is more like communism than OSS
is.
phil hunt
>On Tue, 27 Feb 2001 20:58:03 +0000, ph...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil
>hunt) wrote:
>
>>it for programming when someone pays me to do so at my normal
>>consulting rates.
>
I don't "expect" anyone to do anything for me. As it happens, there is
a very good free kernel, Linux, that I use daily. If Linux wasn't
around, I would probably be using BSD or Hurd, other free kernels.
> Or at the very least give you all his source code.
It is apparent that many people *do* want to give me (and everyone
else) their source code, judging from the source CD that comes
with SuSE, or the contents of Freshmeat and Appwatch.
In return, I'm happy to give others my source code. (See
http://www.vision25.demon.co.uk/oss/oss.html).
If people don't want to give me it, that's fine by me. Just don't expect
me to use the resulting software, unless you pay me to do so.
> Good one, Do you live in a trailer
>park ?
No. Do you?
>People should be rewarded for their work
So, if I want to spend all day polishing stones, I should somehow
magically get money for that, should I? What if no-one wants to
pay me for my work? What if I don't particularly want to get paid
for it?
> and intellectual property should be protected.
I agree. Everyone should be entitled to creative works that they
produce, and they should be allowed to decide for themselves how
(or if) they are distributed. Which is why it should be legal
for me to distribute DeCSS if the authors of that program want
to allow me to.
> Why should I give people my fancy highy optimised code ?
It's entirely up to you whether you do so or not. BTW, what does
your "fancy highy optimised" program do? What langauge is it
written in?
>What's in it for me, a warm feeling in my loins ?
I don't know what's in it for you, I can't speak for you.
> You can get
>the same effect by pissing in your pants.
Really? You know this from personal experience, I take it?
phil hunt
>On Wed, 28 Feb 2001 20:37:31 +1100, Craven Moorehead <n...@thanks.com> wrote:
>>On Tue, 27 Feb 2001 20:58:03 +0000, ph...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil
>>hunt) wrote:
>>
>>>The only thing i use Windows for is playing games. I will only use
>>>it for programming when someone pays me to do so at my normal
>>>consulting rates.
>>
>>You expect someone to write your OS for free though. Or at the very
>>least give you all his source code. Good one, Do you live in a trailer
>>park ?
>
>Maybe he would only use it for programming when being paid is because he
>doesn't like using it and thus needs compensation in order to do so.
That is precisely the reason. Winodws is a pile of shite, and I find
it unpleasant to use.
Note I am happy to work with proprietary Unices.
>Saying he will use it for programming if being paid seems to indicate the
>decision to not use it for programming is based on the usability of the
>platform and not on ideological grounds.
Indeed.
I *am* ideologically in favour of OSS, but that's not the main reason I
dislike Windows.
>If you have no sense of the common good, community, and helping your fellow
>man, and doing something for other than financial reasons that is your loss.
Indeed.
Les Mikesell
"vrml3d.com" <comm...@vrml3d.com> wrote in message
news:97i0t4$4tb$1...@bob.news.rcn.net...
>
> > The subject line for this message should be "why open source software
> > is better for the *customer*".
>
> No, it should be "why open source software is better for the customer in
the
> short run". Anything that drives producers out of the market in the long
> run is bad for consumers in the long run, business cycles not
withstanding.
The only producers that open source can drive out of the market are the
ones who do not have a better product or service or are charging more
than it is worth. There is no evidence for any illegal anti-competitive
activity by any open source producer and no illegal bundling of
products.
> Anecdotal evidence suggests a serious decline in shareware applications,
> with open source an obvious culprit. Fewer apps, fewer choices. Sorry I
> don't have numbers to back it up. That's why it's only anecdotal.
If anything, that is evidence that these products had no particular value
compared to the alternatives.
Les Mikesell
lesmi...@home.com
phil hunt
>
>> The subject line for this message should be "why open source software
>> is better for the *customer*".
>
>No, it should be "why open source software is better for the customer in the
>short run". Anything that drives producers out of the market in the long
>run is bad for consumers in the long run, business cycles not withstanding.
OSS will only drive proprietary out if it is perceived as better.
For example, if OpenOffice drives out MS Office, it will be because users
consider that it better suits their needs. This IMO would be a good thing;
computer users don't benefit from upgrade treadmills and other MS tactics.
>Anecdotal evidence suggests a serious decline in shareware applications,
>with open source an obvious culprit. Fewer apps, fewer choices. Sorry I
>don't have numbers to back it up.
Then how do you know you aren't mistaken?
Tucows has about 80,000 shareware programs, mostly for Windows.
Freshmeat has about 13,000 open source porgams mostly for Linux/Unix.
If OSS is crowding out shareware, these figures don't indicate it.
Peter Seebach
Craven Moorehead <n...@thanks.com> wrote:
>Windows 2000 is crude ? In what way ?
I recently saw someone posting to a number of newsgroups asking for help.
He'd upgraded his computer, and it would no longer boot, because Windows 2000
couldn't survive switching from one SCSI controller to another. The only
"solution" was to do a fresh install.
Every Unix system I have used in my life has been able to adapt to changes
of that sort. Typically, the first SCSI disk found gets called "sd0", and it
doesn't matter that sd0 was on a Symbios Logic controller yesterday, and is
on an Adaptec controller today.
Windows is the only system I am aware of that CANNOT BOOT if you replace one
supported piece of hardware with another. Macs get this right. Amigas get
this right. All Unixes, including free ones, get this right. Windows, and
Windows *ALONE*, can't handle it.
That's crude, and it's a particularly stupid kind of crude.
-s
--
Copyright 2001, all wrongs reversed. Peter Seebach / se...@plethora.net
C/Unix wizard, Pro-commerce radical, Spam fighter. Boycott Spamazon!
Consulting & Computers: http://www.plethora.net/
Edward Rosten
>>
>>I don't know. I got in to it in 1998.
>
> Well if you started using computers recently then Linux may be just the
I started using computers a long time ago. I have used Win3.0, Win3.1,
Win3.11, Win95 Win98 and NT a lot (and associated DOS versions where
applicable). None of them are particularly good.
> shot if you don't need to use common commercial and consumer software.
I don't use much commercial software (with the exception of Matlab),
especially as the alternatives are in many cases better.
> But I have been using MS products since 1982 and they have always served
> me well.
Well, they served me, but not as well as Linux does.
>>> Well ....you can say the same thing now :)
>>
>>Compared to what. For what I want, windows is crude.
>
> Windows 2000 is crude ? In what way ? Not in the interface, not in the
Yes in the interface. The GUI and commandline are both crude.
The command line is a horrible abortive thing, and doesn't have a
fraction of the ability and power of UNIX command lines. Installing
cygwin is an absolute must on any windows computer.
I don't like the GUI either, the window manager, especially is truly
horrible. There are no virtual screens, one focus model, very limited
customization.
And furthermore, there are no virtual consoles avaliable. The consoles
you can get from "maximizing" a DOS box are pretty poor, since they can
still only manage 80x50, where as here, I'm running at 160x64 with a 16
pixel font.
So, in brief, I don't like the interface.
I use FVWM2, btw.
> applications and not in it's capabilities.
Most of the applications I use under Linux, I can get for Windows but
they work better under Linux.
And what do you mean by its capabilities? For what I do, Linux is far
more capable than windows.
I make quite heavy use of the remote GUI abilities of Linux/UNIX. Windows
is not nearly as capable in this respect.
> I have used various Unixs and Linux, for the desktop, they are
> unbelievably crude
For what I do, they beat the hell out of windows on the desktop. The
really poor window management is one thing (you can't move a crashed
application's window amongst other things).
> sure they are good servers.. I don't need an OS that
Yep they do that too.
> lasts a year between reboots, that is all Linux has got going for it
> (apart from being free) for the desktop.
All that Linux has going for it on the desktop is that it is absoloutely
first class.
-Ed
--
| u98ejr
| @
Share, and enjoy. | eng.ox
| .ac.uk
Edward Rosten
>>>something.
>>
>>
>>You have totally missed the point of the argument.
>
> Technically yes.
>
> Read the originator of this tread he quoted Ralph Levien. I read one
> line then stopped
>
> "Background: free software and proprietary software"
>
> "Free software, by contrast, is written for lots of different reasons,
> including a simple desire for the software on the part of the author,
> education, and being part of the free software community. However,
> getting the job done expediently is almost always an overriding concern.
> Thus, free software tends not to be much more complex than necessary,
> and making use of existing modules and protocols is often more appealing
> than reinventing things from scratch."
>
> He is confused too.
How so?
>>>50 million people use Napster, how many would if they had to pay
>>>commercial rates for the songs ? 1-2 million MAYBE and they would be
>>>very choosy in what they downloaded.
>>
>>Napster isn't open source. Napster has *nothing* to do with open source.
>
> Same principle by the same rabble.
Incorrect. Napster isn't about freedom of information, it's about free
music. Read some of RMS' essays at www.gnu.org about Free Software (tm).
I didn't get in to Linux because it cost me nothing (it cost me £30), I
got in to it because it is high quality and _OPEN_.
>>>What do you hear all the time ? Linux guys downloading the latest ISO
>>>of Linux, clogging up the net with downloads.
>>>
>>>Would they do it if they had to pay a fee ? No, most would not.
I paid for it. I only have braodband access for 30 weeks each year, so
downloading everything isn't an optio (or a very expensive one).
>>It just goes "thud" very loudly.
>>
>>>All Linux has got really going for it is that it is free.
>>
>>I've bought several boxed sets of Linux, costing GBP 20 to 50 each. Have
>>you ever tried downloading several CDs worth on a phone line?
>
> That is all the (few) Linux guys I know talk about. "The next one will
> kill MS" "The next one will kill MS"
What has downloading CDs have to do with killing MS.
> None of them like paying and don't, I have never seen a Linux boxed set.
Then you've never looked. The bookstore nearest to me has 4 different
brands of boxes sets on sale. I, personally have paid for a boxed set. I
would happily have paid 10 times the amount, since it came with so much
useful stuff. For the quality of upgrade it gave my computer, £300 would
not have been a bad price.
>>> If everyone had to pay for Linux and the price was
>>>the same or more then Windows (the price of Windows could be very
>>>elastic if MS wants) it would be as dead as a Dodo from a popularity
>>>perspective.
>>
>>1. Red Hat, Suse, etc, sell many boxed sets.
>
> Not *anywhere* near enough to be sustainable.
Do you have eny evidence for this? And they sell service too.
>>2. because of the "Microsoft tax", Linux often does cost the same as
>>windows, if you have a laptop for example
>
> Linux costs more and Redhat still is a basket case.
No it costs the same. Look up some prices. And what do you mean about
RedHat?
>>3. the cost of Linux or Windows is typically a lot less than the cost
>>of the computer that it runs on
>
> Eh ?
Computer £1000, Window £100?, Linux £0-£50.
>>So, your argument is complete and utter bollocks.
>>
>>The only question that remains, is why are you talking so much crap. Is
>>it:
>
> My system of software development is proven, sustainable and creates a
> good living for everyone involved.
>
> Yours is unproven, has no business model, is creating a bunch of
> companies existing on hype alone.
Open source development is as old as computers and has lasted up till
now. Since its been arouind longer, its more proven than closed source
development. Anyway, who cares about the companies existing on hype.
whatever happens to them, we will always have Debian GNU/Linux.
> Who would you rather be Bill or Linus ? One is wealthy,the other has to
> take a second job in the real world to make a living.
I would personally rather be me (hey, its nice to have self-esteem:).
Failing that, I'd rather be Linus, since I hahe neither a criminal nor
vindictive mind.
You seem to think that money is the only worthwhile thing and that it
should be obtained at all costs. I value other things as well.
> The most successful Linux company Redhat is derided by most hardcore
> Unix guys as a heap of crap.
It has some issues, but none are insurmountable. If you listen to the
really hardcore UNIX gurus, they deride _everything_ as a heap of crap.
> The AOLer of Linuxes. It is the most
That's more like Corel.
> successful and is still an economic basket case.
>
> Craven
Edward Rosten
Hmm. What are all those shareware programmers doing now? Mabey they are
writing open source programs?
Also, the number of OSS programs has gone up. Has the total number
avaliable gone down or up. If its gone up, then so has choice.
Ian Davey
>>However this is mute as a lot of people do get paid to work on the OS.
>
>ITYM "moot".
>
Yup. It's been a long day...
Edward Rosten
>
> It's entirely up to you whether you do so or not. BTW, what does your
> "fancy highy optimised" program do? What langauge is it written in?
Visual Basic.
-Ed
David Masterson
> On Wed, 28 Feb 2001 00:07:16 -0500, vrml3d.com <comm...@vrml3d.com> wrote:
I wrote:
>>> The subject line for this message should be "why open source
>>> software is better for the *customer*".
>> No, it should be "why open source software is better for the
>> customer in the short run". Anything that drives producers out of
>> the market in the long run is bad for consumers in the long run,
>> business cycles not withstanding.
> OSS will only drive proprietary out if it is perceived as better.
Not true. OSS will drive proprietary out of the market if the maker
of the proprietary product feels that it cannot pour the investment
necessary into the product to compete with all the "free" development
the OSS product is getting.
> For example, if OpenOffice drives out MS Office, it will be because
> users consider that it better suits their needs. This IMO would be a
> good thing; computer users don't benefit from upgrade treadmills and
> other MS tactics.
You obviously have a loathing for M$ (who doesn't ;-), but that colors
your statement above. What if it was OpenQuicken and Intuit Quicken?
Or Linux and Sun Solaris? Or Emacs and Wordstar (well...)?
--
David Masterson (dmas...@rational.com)
Rational Software (but I don't speak for them)
David Masterson
> On Wed, 28 Feb 2001 22:07:52 +1100, Craven Moorehead <n...@thanks.com> wrote:
>> The most successful Linux company Redhat is derided by most hardcore
>> Unix guys as a heap of crap. The AOLer of Linuxes. It is the most
>> successful and is still an economic basket case.
> Red Hat recently bought out another company for $47,000,000 in RH
> stock.
What's the PT Barnum line...?
> It could do this because the market values RH high enough for the
> stock to be valuable. Note, the opinion of people *putting their
> money where their mouth is* is that RH is a valuable company.
> If you think it isn't valuable, I suggest you buy RH put options,
> of other instruments that imply you are betting the share price will
> go down.
Red Hat's 52-week high is 79 9/16. It's price today is ~6. Seems a
lot of people have become dis-enamored with Red Hat.
Quantum Leaper
"Nick Condon" <nic...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:90567C9CC...@132.146.16.23...
4% of the people live in the US, since the population of the world is over
6 billion and the population of the US is over 250 Million.
phil hunt
>
>> For example, if OpenOffice drives out MS Office, it will be because
>> users consider that it better suits their needs. This IMO would be a
>> good thing; computer users don't benefit from upgrade treadmills and
>> other MS tactics.
>
>You obviously have a loathing for M$ (who doesn't ;-), but that colors
>your statement above. What if it was OpenQuicken and Intuit Quicken?
I've not used Quicken or GNUCash, so I can't really comment.
>Or Linux and Sun Solaris?
I've used both of these.
Solaris will probably stay on in the short to medium term. In the
long term, Sun might replace it with Linux in order to save the
costs of developing their own kernel. Frankly, it doesn't bother
me much one way or the other, it's only a kernel.
Note that Sun are standardising on the OSS Gnome GUI. So a Solaris
system running Gnome will look and behaver much the same as a
Linux system running Gnome.
> Or Emacs and Wordstar (well...)?
Neither are particularly my cup of tea.
Quantum Leaper
"phil hunt" <ph...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
news:slrn99q1jp...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk...
> On Wed, 28 Feb 2001 22:07:52 +1100, Craven Moorehead <n...@thanks.com>
wrote:
> >
> >The most successful Linux company Redhat is derided by most hardcore
> >Unix guys as a heap of crap. The AOLer of Linuxes. It is the most
> >successful and is still an economic basket case.
>
> Red Hat recently bought out another company for $47,000,000 in RH stock.
>
near their high.-
> It could do this because the market values RH high enough for the
> stock to be valuable. Note, the opinion of people *putting their
> money where their mouth is* is that RH is a valuable company.
>
Red Hat valuable? High of 136 and now valued at 6.50 at 2:00pm ET.
> If you think it isn't valuable, I suggest you buy RH put options,
> of other instruments that imply you are betting the share price will
> go down.
Price did go down today, just like it has for over a year, high was back
in December 1999. I wonder how long it will take before RH is a penny
stock?
vrml3d.com
Les Mikesell <lesmi...@home.com> wrote in message
news:Lo8n6.4637$DY.21...@news1.mntp1.il.home.com...
>
> "vrml3d.com" <comm...@vrml3d.com> wrote in message
> news:97i0t4$4tb$1...@bob.news.rcn.net...
> >
> > > The subject line for this message should be "why open source software
> > > is better for the *customer*".
> >
> > No, it should be "why open source software is better for the customer in
> the
> > short run". Anything that drives producers out of the market in the
long
> > run is bad for consumers in the long run, business cycles not
> withstanding.
>
> The only producers that open source can drive out of the market are the
> ones who do not have a better product or service or are charging more
> than it is worth.
Not true (see below)
There is no evidence for any illegal anti-competitive
> activity by any open source producer
Ahem... government employees who produce software in the course of their
daily work are *legally* obligated to place that work in the public domain.
Any government employee who contributes to a GPL'd project is technicly
violating the law. That's anticompetitive in my book. I don't think it
will be too hard to find *somebody* to testify that this is happening.
and no illegal bundling of
> products.
>
> > Anecdotal evidence suggests a serious decline in shareware applications,
> > with open source an obvious culprit. Fewer apps, fewer choices. Sorry
I
> > don't have numbers to back it up. That's why it's only anecdotal.
>
> If anything, that is evidence that these products had no particular value
> compared to the alternatives.
There are at least two ways for producers to be driven out of the market.
1. their product is inferior, or had no value as you imply. 2. those who
would enter the market look at the conditions and decide it is not worth
enterring.
If you go back to Win3.x days, with OSS generally unknown to just about
everybody, there were strong incentives to enter the market, and many did.
If you look at the market now, I can't think of many compelling reasons to
enter and OSS is a primary factor. Even established vendors like Oracle are
struggling now, and I don't think you can blame this on Oracle being an
inferior product. The pressure is partly from the economy, but PostGre and
MySQL are certainly playing a part.
From an economic standpoint, give me one good reason why I would want to
write a DB server (as a pure software sales play, none of this "we sell
support" BS) under these market conditions.
As the Clinton administration demonstrated, socialists can coast for quite
some time on the works done in previous years, but it eventually catches up
to them. Raiding the rich is always an attractive prospect in the short
run, but then eventually there are no more rich left to raid and people get
disgusted. It took Russia about 70 years to get to that point, VietNam 25
years, and North Korea still hasn't figured it out.
I give the OSS fad about 20 years to get to the point where the lack of
fresh new applications becomes such a burden to consumers that they begin to
thumb their noses at free software. You'll see articles in the tech mags
saying things like "the shrink-wrapped box is back".
--Steve
Stefaan A Eeckels
And those with a valuable commodity (remember Stack, Quarterdeck, etc?)
got the short chop from the people's friend MS, who thought it'd be a
good idea to incorporate an inferior version of their program in the
next release of DOS. Yeah, I remember those days.
> If you look at the market now, I can't think of many compelling reasons to
> enter and OSS is a primary factor. Even established vendors like Oracle are
> struggling now, and I don't think you can blame this on Oracle being an
> inferior product. The pressure is partly from the economy, but PostGre and
> MySQL are certainly playing a part.
MySQL, funny you'd mention that. Mind you, what happened was that
many people discovered that writing an RDBMS was not beyond their
reach, and they wrote one. MySQL tried to sell licenses for a while,
as did Solid, but they found no takers, because those with money
would buy Oracle, or (maybe) Sybase and its twin brother SQL Server.
So, instead of throwing their code in the bin, the MySQL guys tried
to make money licensing it as OSS, and now those without lots of
money can use it, find it's OK, and it hurts Oracle (but not much;
those who use MySQL would never have used Oracle anyway).
> From an economic standpoint, give me one good reason why I would want to
> write a DB server (as a pure software sales play, none of this "we sell
> support" BS) under these market conditions.
MySQL discovered that it wasn't a lucrative idea because of the
market dominance of Oracle.
>
> As the Clinton administration demonstrated, socialists can coast for quite
> some time on the works done in previous years, but it eventually catches up
> to them.
Interesting you'd call Bill a socialist.
> Raiding the rich is always an attractive prospect in the short
> run, but then eventually there are no more rich left to raid and people get
> disgusted. It took Russia about 70 years to get to that point, VietNam 25
> years, and North Korea still hasn't figured it out.
>
> I give the OSS fad about 20 years to get to the point where the lack of
> fresh new applications becomes such a burden to consumers that they begin to
> thumb their noses at free software. You'll see articles in the tech mags
> saying things like "the shrink-wrapped box is back".
Wierd. I don't do games, and notice the educational market on Windows
is doing OK, but with Corel dying, Lotus no longer keen on spending
money on their office suite, there seems to be a dearth of
"fresh new applications" in the MS-dominated Windows world. Would _you_
write a new word processor today? Or a new desktop OS (remember Be)?
These days, people start a software business with the hope of
being bought out by MS. That's innovative, I admit.
--
Stefaan
--
How's it supposed to get the respect of management if you've got just
one guy working on the project? It's much more impressive to have a
battery of programmers slaving away. -- Jeffrey Hobbs (comp.lang.tcl)
John Hasler
> Ahem... government employees who produce software in the course of their
> daily work are *legally* obligated to place that work in the public domain.
This is not true. The US government is forbidden by statute to enforce its
copyright on works produced by its employees in the course of their duties,
but nothing requires that the works be released under any particular terms:
they need not be released at all. It's just that if you do somehow get
ahold of them, you can do with them whatever you wish. Including
incorporating them into GPL'd works.
> Any government employee who contributes to a GPL'd project is technicly
> violating the law.
Wrong. Since those contributions are effectively in the public domain, it is
perfectly legal to incorporate them into GPL works. Or proprietary works.
--
John Hasler
jo...@dhh.gt.org
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, Wisconsin
David Masterson
> vrml3d.com writes:
Hmmm. What he said is that a government employee who releases
software developed with government monies must release it to the
public domain. This public domain software can then be incorporated
into anything (GPL'd or proprietary or ...). In his last statement, I
think he meant that a government created piece of software could not
be released with a GPL copyright on it.
Edward Rosten
> fresh new applications becomes such a burden to consumers that they
> begin to thumb their noses at free software. You'll see articles in the
> tech mags saying things like "the shrink-wrapped box is back".
Compared to OSS, closed software is a fad, since it hasn't been around as
long.
Peter Seebach
David Masterson <dmas...@rational.com> wrote:
>> For example, if OpenOffice drives out MS Office, it will be because
>> users consider that it better suits their needs. This IMO would be a
>> good thing; computer users don't benefit from upgrade treadmills and
>> other MS tactics.
>You obviously have a loathing for M$ (who doesn't ;-), but that colors
>your statement above.
You can safely expect any thread crossposted to a .advocacy group to have
a bit of coloration.
>What if it was OpenQuicken and Intuit Quicken?
I would be full of joy. Intuit has spammed me a few times. They have
"helpful" little pop-up windows in Quicken which remind me that my life
can't be complete unless I buy TurboTax from them - and you *CAN'T TURN
THIS OFF*. They won't stop advertising at me. I would use a stable
alternative in the blink of an eye; all I want is something that can import
my existing data, reconciles okay, and doesn't corrupt data. (The last
clause rules out Quicken 2001 for Mac, which apparently occasionally corrupts
a file such that all you can do is go to an older copy and hope it's not bad
too.)
>Or Linux and Sun Solaris? Or Emacs and Wordstar (well...)?
Same deal. If Sun can keep Solaris valuable, more power to them. If they
can't, I think the resources will end up better allocated elsewhere.
phil hunt
>
>"phil hunt" <ph...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
>news:slrn99q1jp...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk...
>> On Wed, 28 Feb 2001 22:07:52 +1100, Craven Moorehead <n...@thanks.com>
>wrote:
>> >
>> >The most successful Linux company Redhat is derided by most hardcore
>> >Unix guys as a heap of crap. The AOLer of Linuxes. It is the most
>> >successful and is still an economic basket case.
>>
>> Red Hat recently bought out another company for $47,000,000 in RH stock.
>>
>Over 6,000,000 shares of stock, compare with 350,000 share when they were
>near their high.-
>
>> It could do this because the market values RH high enough for the
>> stock to be valuable. Note, the opinion of people *putting their
>> money where their mouth is* is that RH is a valuable company.
>>
>Red Hat valuable? High of 136 and now valued at 6.50 at 2:00pm ET.
OK, it used to be more valuable. IMO it was way overpriced.
John Hasler
> What he said is that a government employee who releases software
> developed with government monies must release it to the public domain.
But that isn't true. Instead, the fact is that works of government
employees effectively _are_ in the public domain, released or not. Ever
wonder why the government doesn't sue for copyright infringement when
newspapers publish the full text of leaked government documents?
> In his last statement, I think he meant that a government created piece
> of software could not be released with a GPL copyright on it.
I think that the government can release its works under any license it
chooses. It just can't sue those who ignore the terms of the license for
copyright infringement.
In any case, what he wrote was:
> Any government employee who contributes to a GPL'd project is technicly
> violating the law.
This implies that it would be illegal for a government employee to write a
patch for Gnucash on company time and have it incorporated into Gnucash.
This not true. His patch, being a work of the US government, is
effectively in the public domain and can be incorporated into Gnucash (or
Quicken, or Microsoft Money...) with complete impunity.
--
John Hasler
jo...@dhh.gt.org (John Hasler)
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, WI
Bob Hauck
> all I want is something that can import my existing data, reconciles
> okay, and doesn't corrupt data. (The last clause rules out Quicken
> 2001 for Mac,
The only bad part is that it is written in Java, so it isn't the fastest
thing in the world. Runs ok on my K6-400 with 96 MB, was a bit sluggish
on the P-120/48 MB laptop.
--
-| Bob Hauck
-| To Whom You Are Speaking
-| http://www.haucks.org/
vrml3d.com
John Hasler <jo...@dhh.gt.org> wrote in message
news:87zof6f...@toncho.dhh.gt.org...
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/casecode/uscodes/17/chapters/1/sections/sectio
n_105.html
is the law in question.
If the government does it, it can't be copyrighted (meaning you can do just
about anything with it, except you probably can't claim you wrote it).
OTOH, this law does not put the government under any obligation to *inform*
people of their rights. So, if they wanted to be sneaky they could patch
Gnucash and not tell anybody. If I happened to know that the patch came
from the government however, I would be within my rights to incorporate any
code in the patch into proprietary software.
IMHO, the law is poorly written. There should be some requirement that the
government make known the status of the work if it is published.
Notice also that there is nothing to prevent someone from assigning
copyright to the government with the proviso that they continue to publish
it under GPL. In other words, there be loopholes! Of course, IANAL...
--Steve
Peter Seebach
Bob Hauck <bobh = haucks dot org> wrote:
>On 01 Mar 2001 02:31:40 GMT, Peter Seebach <se...@plethora.net> wrote:
>> all I want is something that can import my existing data, reconciles
>> okay, and doesn't corrupt data. (The last clause rules out Quicken
>> 2001 for Mac,
I looked into this, but the version I tried crashed the moment I tried
to start it on my Mac. :(
Les Mikesell
>
> Les Mikesell <lesmi...@home.com> wrote in message
> news:Lo8n6.4637$DY.21...@news1.mntp1.il.home.com...
> > >
software
> > > > is better for the *customer*".
> > >
> > > No, it should be "why open source software is better for the customer
in
> > the
> > > short run". Anything that drives producers out of the market in the
> long
> > > run is bad for consumers in the long run, business cycles not
> > withstanding.
> >
> > The only producers that open source can drive out of the market are the
> > ones who do not have a better product or service or are charging more
> > than it is worth.
>
> Not true (see below)
Of course it is true. If you create a product that fills a need at a price
less
than the value it provides above similar products you aren't going to be
driven out of any market that allows competition.
> There is no evidence for any illegal anti-competitive
> > activity by any open source producer
>
> Ahem... government employees who produce software in the course of their
> daily work are *legally* obligated to place that work in the public
domain.
How odd then, that NCSA Mosaic source code didn't enter the public
domain but was instead brokered through a third party on its way
to becoming Internet Explorer so another company could make loud
noises about innovation...
> Any government employee who contributes to a GPL'd project is technicly
> violating the law. That's anticompetitive in my book. I don't think it
> will be too hard to find *somebody* to testify that this is happening.
I don't see how that follows. There is no restriction against incorporating
public domain code into GPL'd projects. The whole concept of public
domain implies a lack of any such restrictions.
> and no illegal bundling of
> > products.
> >
> > > Anecdotal evidence suggests a serious decline in shareware
applications,
> > > with open source an obvious culprit. Fewer apps, fewer choices.
Sorry
> I
> > > don't have numbers to back it up. That's why it's only anecdotal.
> >
> > If anything, that is evidence that these products had no particular
value
> > compared to the alternatives.
>
> There are at least two ways for producers to be driven out of the market.
> 1. their product is inferior, or had no value as you imply. 2. those
who
> would enter the market look at the conditions and decide it is not worth
> enterring.
Yes, if you can't add value above what is already available or deliver
it at a lower price, you probably should be doing something else.
> If you go back to Win3.x days, with OSS generally unknown to just about
> everybody, there were strong incentives to enter the market, and many did.
Now wait a minute. You can't make a case about anything based on the
ignorance of Windows users. There was in fact plenty of OSS around
long before any MS Windows product.
> If you look at the market now, I can't think of many compelling reasons to
> enter and OSS is a primary factor.
Windows had a market because it undercut the price on the unix
workstations of the time. Why was that OK, if the reverse
isn't?
> Even established vendors like Oracle are
> struggling now, and I don't think you can blame this on Oracle being an
> inferior product. The pressure is partly from the economy, but PostGre
and
> MySQL are certainly playing a part.
The added value must be more than the selling price. There are things
PostgresSQL and MySQL don't do well, but not everyone needs them.
> From an economic standpoint, give me one good reason why I would want to
> write a DB server (as a pure software sales play, none of this "we sell
> support" BS) under these market conditions.
Give me a good reason why you think writing yet another DB server would
be an innovation now, or why it would provide added value compared
to the existing ones. If you can't, then why do you think it would be
good for anyone for you to write one regardless of the price of the
competition?
> As the Clinton administration demonstrated, socialists can coast for quite
> some time on the works done in previous years, but it eventually catches
up
> to them. Raiding the rich is always an attractive prospect in the short
> run, but then eventually there are no more rich left to raid and people
get
> disgusted. It took Russia about 70 years to get to that point, VietNam 25
> years, and North Korea still hasn't figured it out.
Is this supposed to imply that you think there is no current work being
done in OSS? If so, you must be living in some other universe. Watch
http://www.freshmeat.net for a few days, or poke around
http://www.sourceforge.net.
> I give the OSS fad about 20 years to get to the point where the lack of
> fresh new applications becomes such a burden to consumers that they begin
to
> thumb their noses at free software. You'll see articles in the tech mags
> saying things like "the shrink-wrapped box is back".
Shrink-wrapped software hasn't gone away, and it won't in any case where
it provides something that no one is willing to do for free. But, if
hardware prices keep dropping you will see many more bundled
'appliances' where the software is specialized and bundled for
a specific task instead of paying separately for software as an
item on its own.
Les Mikesell
lesmi...@home.com
Nick Condon
>If you go back to Win3.x days, with OSS generally unknown to just about
>everybody, there were strong incentives to enter the market, and many
>did. If you look at the market now, I can't think of many compelling
>reasons to enter and OSS is a primary factor. Even established vendors
>like Oracle are struggling now, and I don't think you can blame this on
>Oracle being an inferior product. The pressure is partly from the
>economy, but PostGre and MySQL are certainly playing a part.
>
>From an economic standpoint, give me one good reason why I would want to
>write a DB server (as a pure software sales play, none of this "we sell
>support" BS) under these market conditions.
How many reasons for writing a DB server? OK here goes:
1 - You work for a large corporation that wants an in-house DB server, and
they ask you to do it.
2 - You're interested in learning about DB servers, so you do it by writing
one.
3 - You need a DB server for one of your own pet projects, and don't like
what's available.
4 - You enjoy writing software, so you come up with a DB server because
it's *fun*.
Your assumptions contain 2 fundamental errors.
(1) Most software is created for its resale value. It isn't. Take a look at
any publication that advertises vacancies for developers. How many of those
vacancies are with companies that sell software? Maybe 1 in 20. Most
software is created for it's *use* value. That value is undiminished if you
give it away.
(2) People are only motivated if they can make money at it. This is so
obviously false I don't think I need to say anymore.
--
Nick
dubin david scott
> Have you read the article today at ZDNet by Richard Smallman ?
[...]
> The fact that 99% of the computer literate society regard Linux
> incorrectly as Linus's baby must really bug him.
Whoopee, let's all speculate on what irritates RMS. My turn: there's
the fact that nobody else in computing is as careful to document
*precisely* what he objects to, and what the goals of his project
are. And yet boneheads still ignore what he actually says, and make
stuff up instead.
[...]
> Finally to nail him down to being a communist, this comment at the end
> "Whenever there is a conflict between human rights and property
> rights, human rights must prevail."
Quoting that radical communist Abraham Lincoln who (just like RMS)
wore an even larger beard than Vladimir Lenin.
Dave Dubin
GSLIS, UIUC
Dr. Ram Samudrala
>C'mon !! Abe was probably talking about slavery. I also do not
>recognise the right of one person to own another person. (Admittedly
>it was a much more radical thought a couple of centuries ago)
>Richard dos not recognise the right of one person to keep his code
>private/proprietary. This is much less honourable, in fact, I find it
>deplorable.
I do not recognise the right of one person to tell another person what
to do with their photocopier, their CD-burner, making the contents of
their hard disk available to everyone, etc.
And of course, I consider the exercise of this government-granted
"right" to control what and how people copy just as dishonourable,
deplorable, and unethical as the government-granted "right" that
allowed people to control the freedom of slaves (with only a slight
tongue in cheek here).
--Ram
--
email@urls || http://www.ram.org || http://www.twisted-helices.com/th
"Nice jobs finish last."
Peter Seebach
Les Mikesell <lesmi...@home.com> wrote:
>How odd then, that NCSA Mosaic source code didn't enter the public
>domain but was instead brokered through a third party on its way
>to becoming Internet Explorer so another company could make loud
>noises about innovation...
I am pretty sure there was, for quite a while, a free project derived from
that code, too.
Roberto Alsina
> On Wed, 28 Feb 2001 13:53:43 +0000, ph...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil
> hunt) wrote:
>
>>>Aren't you getting confused now? Open source does not necessarily mean
>>>free,
>>
>>It meas free as in speech, but not necessarily as in beer.
>
> Have you read the article today at ZDNet by Richard Smallman ?
>
> http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/comment/0,5859,2690949,00.html
>
> Man, what a tosser !!
>
> He seems to have a real chip on his shoulder about Linux. He goes out
> of his way to call Linux GNU/Linux (technically correct) and adds that
> the majority of code in Linux is GNU (again correct).
Actually, I seriously doubt that is correct at all, at least not in many
systems. For example, If you install OpenOffice, it's 9MLOC that is not GNU.
The kernel is not GNU.
X is not GNU.
TeX is not GNU [1].
KDE is not GNU.
The only GNU software I really use is bash, fileutils, textutils and gcc.
Last time I saw someone actually check, GNU software was not the majority,
only the largest minority, and that was checking the Yggdrasil source tree,
that is largely biased for free software, and thus for GNU software.
And that was some 3 years ago, and the GNU piece of the pie sure has not
gotten BIGGER.
[1] No, it's not GNU, no matter how much RMS an his cohorts like to say
it's part of the GNU system. If it's just a matter of labeling things other
people developed, I hereby label GNU "RobertOS" and claim leadership of the
RobertOS/GNU/Linux system.
--
Roberto Alsina
phil hunt
>On Wed, 28 Feb 2001 13:53:43 +0000, ph...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil
>hunt) wrote:
>
>Have you read the article today at ZDNet by Richard Smallman ?
>
>http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/comment/0,5859,2690949,00.html
>
>Man, what a tosser !!
>
>He seems to have a real chip on his shoulder about Linux. He goes out
>of his way to call Linux GNU/Linux (technically correct) and adds that
>the majority of code in Linux is GNU (again correct).
Wrong. About 30% is GNU.
>Now down to "Free as in speech not as in beer". The man is a rabid
>communist. He says people can charge for GNU software but why would
>you do so ?
To get money, perhaps. It worked for him, after all.
>As soon as you use GNU software you have to GPL your
>software as well.
Wrong, idiot.
> So anyone can come along, get your code, add a tiny
>enhancement, compile it and give it away. There is nothing you can do.
What's wrong with the principle "I'll share with you if you share
with me"?
>Finally to nail him down to being a communist, this comment at the end
>"Whenever there is a conflict between human rights and property
>rights, human rights must prevail." What he is saying is that if your
>software becomes important (successful) the public should be able to
>just take it for free.
No he isn't.
He's saying that laws prohibiting secondary copyright infringement
shouldn't impinge on human rights. So I should be allowed to write
an open source program to view a DVD that I have legally aquired,
for example.
phil hunt
>
>(2) People are only motivated if they can make money at it. This is so
>obviously false I don't think I need to say anymore.
Unfortunately some people believe it to be true. This is sad,
because it means they have never appreciated the pleasure of doing
good workmanship.
phil hunt
>
>> There is no evidence for any illegal anti-competitive
>> activity by any open source producer
>
>Ahem... government employees who produce software in the course of their
>daily work are *legally* obligated to place that work in the public domain.
>Any government employee who contributes to a GPL'd project is technicly
>violating the law.
If this is true, why haven't Microsoft sued over it?
> That's anticompetitive in my book.
Why? What's anticompetitive about it?
>There are at least two ways for producers to be driven out of the market.
>1. their product is inferior, or had no value as you imply. 2. those who
>would enter the market look at the conditions and decide it is not worth
>enterring.
Not entering a market isn't the same as being driven out of it.
Or did you mean that a company, in the market, might decide not to continue
developing it's products?
>If you go back to Win3.x days, with OSS generally unknown to just about
>everybody, there were strong incentives to enter the market, and many did.
>If you look at the market now, I can't think of many compelling reasons to
>enter and OSS is a primary factor. Even established vendors like Oracle are
>struggling now, and I don't think you can blame this on Oracle being an
>inferior product. The pressure is partly from the economy, but PostGre and
>MySQL are certainly playing a part.
Regarding Orcale, I think you can blame their prices. Last year i
had an Oracle salesman try to sell me their database for GBP
5,000. Given that I could get MySQL for nothing, and it was up to
doing the job (back end for a web server), I declined Oracle's
offer. Oracle are going to have to lower their prices if they want
to stay competitve. This is a *good* thing for the economy,
because it means that people can set up web sites more cheaply.
>From an economic standpoint, give me one good reason why I would want to
>write a DB server (as a pure software sales play, none of this "we sell
>support" BS)
Is it bullshit? Digital Creations (makers of Zope) don't think so.
> under these market conditions.
I don't know why you should do anything. I do know that several firms
are creating innovative database products. For example Zope, or Suneido.
Incidently, both of these are open source, which gives the lie to the
claim that OSS kills innovation.
>I give the OSS fad about 20 years to get to the point where the lack of
>fresh new applications becomes such a burden to consumers
Is there any evidence this would happen? Lots of innovative
programs have been open source, including:
emacs, one of the first applications with a built-in application
programming language
X Windows, the first ever distributed windowing system
CERN httpd, the first ever web server
Python, a very capable RAD language
Perl, a very-widely-used "duct tape" language
Linux, the first kernel to run on everything from a handheld to
a supercomputer
why should open source innovation dry up in a mostly open source world?
If open source does supercede proprietary (which it probably will
to some extent, but won't ever completely), it'll be because the
open source arena is full of new developments. Check out freshmeat
and appwatch if you don't believe me.
> that they begin to
>thumb their noses at free software. You'll see articles in the tech mags
>saying things like "the shrink-wrapped box is back".
If the market (i.e. consumers) decides they want proprietary software,
then let them have it. Similarly, if they prefer open source, then let
them have that.
Les Mikesell
"Peter Seebach" <se...@plethora.net> wrote in message
news:3a9e5b44$0$26818$3c09...@news.plethora.net...
> In article <NQln6.4972$DY.23...@news1.mntp1.il.home.com>,
> Les Mikesell <lesmi...@home.com> wrote:
> >How odd then, that NCSA Mosaic source code didn't enter the public
> >domain but was instead brokered through a third party on its way
> >to becoming Internet Explorer so another company could make loud
> >noises about innovation...
>
> I am pretty sure there was, for quite a while, a free project derived from
> that code, too.
>
Mosiac source code was available, but I don't recall every seeing any
of it without restrictive copyright notices. Was there another spinoff?
Also, there was a big issue about Netscape having to prove that it did
not contain any of the code written by the same author for mosaic. How
could that have been a problem?
Les Mikesell
lesmi...@home.com
Edward Rosten
>>>free,
>>
>>It meas free as in speech, but not necessarily as in beer.
>
>
> http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/comment/0,5859,2690949,00.html
>
> Man, what a tosser !!
Sopken from you, this is funny. remember you are talking about a guy who
has the drive and ability to make a big difference in the area he feels
isimportant. You're some random who whinges on C.O.L.A. So, who is the
tosser?#
> He seems to have a real chip on his shoulder about Linux. He goes out of
> his way to call Linux GNU/Linux (technically correct) and adds that the
Linux is a kernel. The OS is GNU/Linux. I try to call it that when I
remember.
> majority of code in Linux is GNU (again correct). This is not the first
> time I have seen him do this. The fact that 99% of the computer literate
> society regard Linux incorrectly as Linus's baby must really bug him.
I'll try to avoid too much speculation, but it could be a bit irritating
especially as without RMS, Linux would be nowhere to be seen at the
moment.
> He had a little dig at Linus "when GNU was almost finished, the kernel
> Linux written by Linus Torvalds filled the last gap"
I wouldn't call that a dig, it is historically accurate. The kernel was
the missing pice of the jigsaw required for a free(tm) OS. Hurd was
proving very difficult to make work.
> He must hate that
> guy. He must be pissed that he does all the work and little old Linus
> comes along and gets all the glory.
I wouldn't speculate on who he likes and doesn't. Linus has certainly
done a lot to forward RMS' movement in a practical way.
> Now down to "Free as in speech not as in beer". The man is a rabid
It's written in your constitution (I assume you're from the US) that you
have a right to free speech. Are you going to throw away that constution
because it is communist?
> communist. He says people can charge for GNU software but why would you
RedHat charged for it and I paid.
> do so ? As soon as you use GNU software you have to GPL your software as
You're talking out of your arse again. You have to GPL any of your code
which includes GPL'd code. That is all.
> well. So anyone can come along, get your code, add a tiny enhancement,
> compile it and give it away. There is nothing you can do.
If its GPL'd they can give it away anyway, enhancements or not. If people
don't want their code to be igven away, they don't GPL it.
> Finally to nail him down to being a communist, this comment at the end
> "Whenever there is a conflict between human rights and property
> rights, human rights must prevail."
I beileve your constitution has a strong focus on the rights of _people_.
What a communist document that must be.
> What he is saying is that if your
> software becomes important (successful) the public should be able to
> just take it for free.
He didn't say that.
-ed
Jay Maynard
>He seems to have a real chip on his shoulder about Linux. He goes out
>of his way to call Linux GNU/Linux (technically correct) and adds that
>first time I have seen him do this. The fact that 99% of the computer
>literate society regard Linux incorrectly as Linus's baby must really
>bug him.
Indeed. Personally, if the GNU OS was finished in 1991 when Linux first hit
the street, why the hell did it take until 2000 to complete? That makes it
even more vaporous than any M$ product.
I agree with Linus's take on that: "The midwife doesn't get to name the
baby." The system is Linux, dammit, and RMS is trying to hog some of the
fame that Linus rightfully deserves.
Edward Rosten
>>his way to call Linux GNU/Linux (technically correct) and adds that the
>>majority of code in Linux is GNU (again correct).
>
> Wrong. About 30% is GNU.
No, of the operating system, well over 50% is GNU.
The operating system is the kernel + OS tools (such as ls, rm, sh etc)
needed to run it. Applications don't count as part of the operating
system, but the distinction between the two does get a little blurred.
-Ed
Edward Rosten
>>his way to call Linux GNU/Linux (technically correct) and adds that the
>>majority of code in Linux is GNU (again correct). This is not the first
>>time I have seen him do this. The fact that 99% of the computer literate
>>society regard Linux incorrectly as Linus's baby must really bug him.
>
> Indeed. Personally, if the GNU OS was finished in 1991 when Linux first
> hit the street, why the hell did it take until 2000 to complete? That
> makes it even more vaporous than any M$ product.
It didn't take until 2000 to hit the street. Slackware started selling it
in 1993 IIRC and it was avaliable for download before then.
> I agree with Linus's take on that: "The midwife doesn't get to name the
> baby." The system is Linux, dammit, and RMS is trying to hog some of the
> fame that Linus rightfully deserves.
Well, I disagree. Without GNU, Linux would be nowhere. A kernel on its
own is not an operating system. How do you think Linux suddenly went from
baing a kernel to an operating system? It did that because 90% of the
operating system had already been written by GNU. All the components are
essential. Claiming that one is somehow more deserving than the others is
silly.
Jay Maynard
>> Indeed. Personally, if the GNU OS was finished in 1991 when Linux first
>> hit the street, why the hell did it take until 2000 to complete? That
>> makes it even more vaporous than any M$ product.
>It didn't take until 2000 to hit the street. Slackware started selling it
>in 1993 IIRC and it was avaliable for download before then.
You could buy a copy of Hurd in 1993?
The GNU OS is NOT Linux. The GNU OS is Hurd. Hurd had been vaporware for many
years until it finally hit the street in 2000.
Maybe RMS' jealousy is based on the fact that Linus showed him to be the
blowhard has-been that he really is. What has RMS *done* lately besides
pontificate? He's not doing gcc any more (thank $DEITY)...what else?
Tinkering with EMACS? Big fat hairy deal.
>Well, I disagree. Without GNU, Linux would be nowhere. A kernel on its
>own is not an operating system. How do you think Linux suddenly went from
>baing a kernel to an operating system? It did that because 90% of the
>operating system had already been written by GNU. All the components are
>essential. Claiming that one is somehow more deserving than the others is
>silly.
By your logic, then, it should be called Intel/Linux...after all, without
the i386, Linux would be nowhere, too.
Besides, there's nothing that says that Linus couldn't have used the BSD
toolchain and utilities to build the system to start with. The GNU utilities
were handy. Further, even now, well under half the OS is GUNish, unless you
creatively define the line to only include the GNU stuff.
Drazen Kacar
> were handy. Further, even now, well under half the OS is GUNish, unless you
> creatively define the line to only include the GNU stuff.
If it wasn't called GNU, then one could draw the line at Single Unix
Specification and say that the base OS contains of kernel, interfaces and
utilities described in SUS. Just for the purpose of counting. But since
GNU is not Unix, SUS doesn't apply.
--
.-. .-. Sarcasm is just one more service we offer.
(_ \ / _)
| da...@arsdigita.com
|
David Masterson
> "vrml3d.com" <comm...@vrml3d.com> wrote in message
> news:97joc1$t53$1...@bob.news.rcn.net...
>> Les Mikesell <lesmi...@home.com> wrote in message
>> news:Lo8n6.4637$DY.21...@news1.mntp1.il.home.com...
I wrote:
>>>>> The subject line for this message should be "why open source
>>>>> software is better for the *customer*".
>>>> No, it should be "why open source software is better for the
>>>> customer in the short run". Anything that drives producers out
>>>> of the market in the long run is bad for consumers in the long
>>>> run, business cycles not withstanding.
>>> The only producers that open source can drive out of the market
>>> are the ones who do not have a better product or service or are
>>> charging more than it is worth.
>> Not true (see below)
> Of course it is true. If you create a product that fills a need at
> a price less than the value it provides above similar products you
> aren't going to be driven out of any market that allows competition.
Huh? If all similar products are "free" (cost, not freedom) as "free"
(freedom, not cost) software is, then your value equation becomes very
skewed against any product that tries to compete with it for a price.
As an example, any company that wanted to develop a proprietary next
generation Emacs (let's say one that was fully multi-tasking and
allowed any programming language to be plugged into it in the way
Elisp is along with other bells and whistles) couldn't possibly hope
to compete with the "free" (cost, not freedom) Emacs. While such a
product might be successful in the long run, it would probably require
several iterations before all the features were "in there" and, so,
the company would not survive against Emacs in the short run.
> Shrink-wrapped software hasn't gone away, and it won't in any case
> where it provides something that no one is willing to do for free.
Niche markets are always an option (this is how the current Emacs
wannabees survive). However, as M$ has shown, it is easier for the
leader in the general market to take over the niche market than it is
for the niche leader to take over the general market.
> But, if hardware prices keep dropping you will see many more bundled
> 'appliances' where the software is specialized and bundled for a
> specific task instead of paying separately for software as an item
> on its own.
There is already beginning to be a backlash against this. People are
getting tired of having so many specialized appliances. Look at the
universal remote -- people were tired of one remote for each of the
TVs, VCRs, stereos, DVDs, etc., so they needed to adopt (some)
standards such that a universal remote could do the job of many
specialized remotes.
Edward Rosten
>>> first hit the street, why the hell did it take until 2000 to complete?
>>> That makes it even more vaporous than any M$ product.
>>It didn't take until 2000 to hit the street. Slackware started selling
>>it in 1993 IIRC and it was avaliable for download before then.
>
> You could buy a copy of Hurd in 1993?
I was talking about GNU/Linux.
> The GNU OS is NOT Linux. The GNU OS is Hurd. Hurd had been vaporware for
> many years until it finally hit the street in 2000.
Nope, that's the GNU Kernel. Read the GNU website. They seem to have
adopted Linux happily.
> Maybe RMS' jealousy is based on the fact that Linus showed him to be the
How do you know he's jealous?
> blowhard has-been that he really is. What has RMS *done* lately besides
I don't know off hand, but he's done more than enough up to this date.
> pontificate? He's not doing gcc any more (thank $DEITY)...what else?
> Tinkering with EMACS? Big fat hairy deal.
>>Well, I disagree. Without GNU, Linux would be nowhere. A kernel on its
>>own is not an operating system. How do you think Linux suddenly went
>>from baing a kernel to an operating system? It did that because 90% of
>>the operating system had already been written by GNU. All the components
>>are essential. Claiming that one is somehow more deserving than the
>>others is silly.
>
> By your logic, then, it should be called Intel/Linux...after all,
> without the i386, Linux would be nowhere, too.
GNU is an integral part off the operarting system. Don't twist my words
like that.
> Besides, there's nothing that says that Linus couldn't have used the BSD
> toolchain and utilities to build the system to start with. The GNU
> utilities were handy. Further, even now, well under half the OS is
> GUNish, unless you creatively define the line to only include the GNU
> stuff.
Seems like you're creatively define the OS to include all applications as
well.
Pat McCann
> >>his way to call Linux GNU/Linux (technically correct) and adds that the
> >>majority of code in Linux is GNU (again correct).
> >
> > Wrong. About 30% is GNU.
No, none of Linux is GNU. More than that of "the GNU system with the
Linux kernel". (At least that's the way it should be said in His presence.)
Edward Rosten
<thi...@bboogguusss.org> wrote:
Plenty of GNU/Linux is GNU, though :-)