ANN: Microsoft goes Open Source

[Robert M. Riches Jr.]

This is stealing. And I don't give a shit if it's deemed legal
or not. This is outright theft.

Nonsense! Who do you think wrote most of that source code?
It wasn't HatRed!

A bunch of other people wrote the code and released it under
GPL and/or other FOSS licenses. The authors of the code
_WANTED_ the code to be redistributable. That's why they
used the GPL (or similar license). The terms of the GPL
(and similar licenses) are what gives HatRed the right to
distribute the stuff, _A_N_D_ said terms give anyone else
the right to redistribute and/or do multiple installation of
source or binary. Please go read the GPL.

HatRed's attempt to prohibit redistribution and multiple
installation of GPLed software written by other people is at
least arguably a violation of the GPL. That's the major
reason I'm boycotting HatRed.

 

[Anton Erasmus]

Which is why Paul is saying he caries now weight?


Which values the software and the programmer at Zero. Seems like
suicide for programmers.

No, it helps in the long run because people do not have to re-invent
the wheel or some other device because someone (Very likely not the
actual person who invented it) patented it, and prevents anyone else
from using it. Closed source prevents people to a very large degree on
building on top of what others have done before.
In the long run, most of the software used by people on general
purpose computing machines will be open source. What percentage
of closed source software written in the 70s are used today compared
to open source software ?
Your statement is the equivalent of saying people who provide
instructions in written form do not value the information. We should
go back to the days of the guilds where all information was guarded
and only the select few were allowed to share the secrets.

Regards
Anton Erasmus

 

[Jonathan Kirwan]

Which values the software and the programmer at Zero. Seems like
suicide for programmers.

I think snipping the fuller comment was perhaps disingenuous. It was:

: We need to promote free software not open source because if people
: don't understand how and why we got the community and why proprietary
: software is bad for the free software community then its future won't
: be guaranteed.

I don't agree with its reasoning. But I don't think it's right to
snip it -- it was short and provides some context.

On your point about 'suicide', Chris, I cannot agree that it does this
or was intended to. For one thing, I don't believe that Richard
Stallman's approach (which, since I was following it from the first
day of fanfare, has succeeded far better than anyone imagined at the
time) was about valuing programmer time at zero. It had quite a
different and valuable purpose, really. And for those of us working
to build embedded products, after some time took place for the
movement to accomodate the legitimate parts of our concerns (library
use, for example), the movement has had largely good impacts for those
developing products. I suppose it has put some pressures on those
writing Windows products that cross-compile to our targets, but I'll
let those vendors speak for themselves about what it has meant to
them. I tend to feel that the largest part of the pressure has been
to control excessively expensive products, but not at all to limit or
injure those offering reasonable prices for products and services.
Especially service is unimpacted, isn't it? One can always offer good
service, without worrying about some copyleft taking the food out of
their mouths. Perhaps the opposite, in fact.

In any case, it seems to me that the world hasn't come to an end over
this and is, in some ways, better for all of Stallman's initiatives.
One of the earliest parts that excited me (outside of a C compiler and
editor effort), a result I think in part due to the fanfare of
Stallman's efforts, was BSD Unix being invigorated by the removal of
proprietary code and its release first as 386BSD and the attendant
articles. Of course, Linux was a fantastic later addition, if not
quite as well designed kernel.

It's affected my life positively, anyway. I am much better off, with
20/20 hindsight.

Jon

 

[Frank McCoy]

No, it helps in the long run because people do not have to re-invent
the wheel or some other device because someone (Very likely not the
actual person who invented it) patented it, and prevents anyone else
from using it. Closed source prevents people to a very large degree on
building on top of what others have done before.
In the long run, most of the software used by people on general
purpose computing machines will be open source. What percentage
of closed source software written in the 70s are used today compared
to open source software ?
Your statement is the equivalent of saying people who provide
instructions in written form do not value the information. We should
go back to the days of the guilds where all information was guarded
and only the select few were allowed to share the secrets.

THAT being the very reason the US government issues *patents* and
*copyrights* in the first place: To get the *knowledge* out there where
everybody can use it, instead of being secret or restricted knowledge
owned by guilds. By giving rights (and protecting those rights *for*
the copyright holder and patent holder) to make and distribute ideas and
words for *limited* times only, they ensure that the methods and ideas
become available to all ... eventually ... at a "reasonable" price.

Only those in business these days are all busy trying to bring the
guilds back ... not just by getting Congress to extend, re-extend, and
even make permanent "rights" that were deliberately designed and
intended to expire within a normal person's lifetime, but by "licensing"
everything from repairing a computer to artistic talent.

The main aim of guilds being (of course) to protect the jobs and incomes
of those already in the guilds or their offspring. Which fits right in
with the main aims of the Wealthy, of making *their* children into a
modern nobility, treated differently under the law from the peasants.

Sadly, such a slide into that kind of society is inevitable, with the
end-result eventually (after centuries, of course) with a completely
stable and ironbound society where everybody is born into a job, caste,
and position in life; and cannot move more than a half-step at most up
or down in a lifetime.

 

[Richard Heathfield]

Robert M. Riches Jr. said:

HatRed's attempt to prohibit redistribution and multiple
installation of GPLed software written by other people is at
least arguably a violation of the GPL. That's the major
reason I'm boycotting HatRed.

I have a very different reason for not using RedHat, which is that in my
experience it isn't very good. Okay, okay, so it's a little better than
Windows, but it still isn't very good.

SuSE, on the other hand, works just fine. So I use that instead. Guess
how much money RedHat makes out of me? That's right - not a red cent.
And that's about the same amount that MS makes out of me nowadays -
i.e. zero red cents. So - how much do I pay SuSE for using their OS?
Well, as it turns out, no red cents at all. I acquired a legal, free
copy of SuSE some years ago, and I'm still using it now, because it
does all that I require of it (except talk to my printer, which is my
fault for being lazy, and listen to my camera, which is *probably* my
fault for being lazy). On the rare occasions when I've needed
"support", I've found it within the community. It turns out that some
of the people I've helped with C in the past are themselves Linux
experts who are only too willing to return a few favours.

This whole concept of "paying for Linux" is just weird to me. Why would
anyone be daft enough to pay for something they can get for free? I can
understand why you might want to pay for support, and I can even
understand why you might want to pay for closed-source software that
gives you something you can't otherwise get - but paying for free
software itself (instead of shunning anyone who wants to charge for it
or re-shroud it) is just beyond my ken.

 

[J. J. Farrell]

This is stealing. And I don't give a shit if it's deemed legal
or not. This is outright theft.

Interesting. So if you put a box of stuff outside your house with a
notice on saying "free to anyone who wants it, please take it if you
want", you'd consider than anyone who took it had stolen it?

 

[Anthony Irwin]

I think snipping the fuller comment was perhaps disingenuous. It was:


I don't agree with its reasoning. But I don't think it's right to
snip it -- it was short and provides some context.

I don't fully understand you here. If people are not educated to how
their free system and tools came to be and don't understand that their
is a free software community building a free system for all to use,
modify and redistribute then they are not going to be able to
contribute because they are unaware that it exists.

If they don't understand the philosophy behind what the free software
community is doing then they could go create their own software and
not contribute it back to the community.

I have some proprietary software on my computer like the flash plugin
and in the past nvidia drivers and sun java because I wanted things
that they offered but I try to minimize proprietary software and now
can say I only have the flash plugin but if we don't value the freedom
that has been given to us by the gnu project and continue to expect
our software to be free as in freedom not necessarily price then we
will slowly loose it as more and more proprietary software like flash
become must haves.

And as for developers not getting paid for work I think you will find
that the majority of regular contributers to the linux kernel are paid
to work on it by companies I read an article about that recently of
someone who looked at the git i think it was and looked at the emails
of the contributers and a majority of them had company email addresses.

Also think of mysql they pay developers to create free software also
troll tech with the qt qui library and many others that slip my mind
right now.

I guess I have strong beliefs about it and am a bit one sided on the
topic but I have been using a free operating system for about 7 years
now and have seen how quickly the free software community moves and
have been a paying member of the free software foundation for about a
year so I like to think that I pay for my software by financially
supporting the gnu project and also helping new people with linux
questions and promoting free software etc.

--
Kind Regards,
Anthony Irwin

http://www.irwinresources.com
email: anthony at the above domain, - www.

 

[CBFalconer]

.... snip ...

This whole concept of "paying for Linux" is just weird to me. Why
would anyone be daft enough to pay for something they can get for
free? I can understand why you might want to pay for support, and
I can even understand why you might want to pay for closed-source
software that gives you something you can't otherwise get - but
paying for free software itself (instead of shunning anyone who
wants to charge for it or re-shroud it) is just beyond my ken.

There is an active market for bridges and towers, such as Brooklyn,
Golden Gate, London, Tower, Eiffel. You just have to be selective
in your clientele. Some have even bought Vista!

--
<http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt>
<http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/423>
<http://www.aaxnet.com/editor/edit043.html>

"A man who is right every time is not likely to do very much."
-- Francis Crick, co-discover of DNA
"There is nothing more amazing than stupidity in action."
-- Thomas Matthews

 

[Grant Edwards]

This whole concept of "paying for Linux" is just weird to me. Why would
anyone be daft enough to pay for something they can get for free?

1) To insure it's continued availability and development.

2) Because you want to reward people for doing something
"good" -- which is arguably just restating 1)

I can understand why you might want to pay for support, and I
can even understand why you might want to pay for
closed-source software that gives you something you can't
otherwise get - but paying for free software itself (instead
of shunning anyone who wants to charge for it or re-shroud it)
is just beyond my ken.

How sad.

 

[Richard Heathfield]

Grant Edwards said:

1) To insure it's continued availability and development.

2) Because you want to reward people for doing something
"good" -- which is arguably just restating 1)

Each of those is a good reason to make a donation to organisations or
individuals producing free software. Neither is a good reason for
paying for something that is described as "free".

 

[Grant Edwards]

Each of those is a good reason to make a donation to organisations or
individuals producing free software. Neither is a good reason for
paying for something that is described as "free".

How is making a donation any different than paying for
something that's free?

 

[Richard Heathfield]

Grant Edwards said:

How is making a donation any different than paying for
something that's free?

Because you get the choice of whether to donate, and how much to donate.
If you are *required* to pay, it is no longer free.

 

[Grant Edwards]

Because you get the choice of whether to donate, and how much to donate.
If you are *required* to pay, it is no longer free.

I'm not sure what you're talking about where you're required to
pay. I wasn't required to pay. I paid for both Mandrake and
RedHat, but you could download them for free or order CDs from
somebody else for a couple dollars.

 

[Richard Heathfield]

Grant Edwards said:

I'm not sure what you're talking about where you're required to
pay. I wasn't required to pay. I paid for both Mandrake and
RedHat, but you could download them for free or order CDs from
somebody else for a couple dollars.

Now I'm puzzled. At least one of us has lost the plot. It could be me.

 

[Frank McCoy]

There is an active market for bridges and towers, such as Brooklyn,
Golden Gate, London, Tower, Eiffel. You just have to be selective
in your clientele. Some have even bought Vista!

<Snork!>
Good point.
;-}

 

[Phlip]

Hah! Who would want Vista, a city in Southern California with a population

 

[Joe Pfeiffer]

This is stealing. And I don't give a shit if it's deemed legal
or not. This is outright theft.

No, it's not. First, while Red Hat has been good to Free Software,
the bulk of the software they distribute was developed by others.
They are fully aware that they are essentially giving away software
that they themselves copied and that can be copied by others, and that
their business model is based on providing support for that software.

 

[Spehro Pefhany]

How is making a donation any different than paying for
something that's free?

I'm sure there's some kind of hooker analogy that would fit in here..

 

[jmfbahciv]

No it isn't. The various pieces are still copyright by their
original owners (unless they have specifically ceded that) and are
only being used under the conditions they were licensed in the
first place. The owners still retain the right to do anything they
wish with it, for example halve its running time while reducing the
codespace used, and then hawk it under any conditions they wish. I
can license my own GPL released code to someone allowing them to
NOT publish their attached code for whatever I can persuade them to
pay. Nobody else has that particular right, because it isn't
included in the GPL license.

However, IANAL.

The post said "change all references to Redhat trademarks...".
You do not replace your name for the name of the person who
did the real work. Period. Please note that I'm talking
about my personal morality and not anything about legality.

/BAH

 

[jmfbahciv]

I used the word stealing, not theft.

RH allows it. If you give something to somebody, their taking
it isn't theft.

They allow people who take their work and change the English ASCII
"Redhat" in sources to somebody else's name?

Presumably you take money from your employer and spend it.
That is stealing. You belong in prison.

I'm talking about moral principle here--not legalities.

/BAH