Bruce Perens on the Status of Open Source

Lars Lehtonen writes to tell us that Bruce Perens has posted the text of his LinuxWorld press conference. In his talk he takes a look at many of the hot topics surrounding the open source community including ODF, NTP vs RIM, and GPLv3. From the article: "It's interesting to note that Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist implicated in scandal with Republican Tom Delay, was employed by Bill Gates' dad's law firm "Preston Gates", a political proxy for Microsoft. Microsoft succeeded in lobbying both Republicans and Democrats to oppose ODF."

is this really necessary?

[v1]

Do we really need a "status of open source" article every 2 weeks? Can't they just say "yup, two weeks later, not much'as changed..."

(now watch me get modded Troll)

No It's Not Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's interesting to note that Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist implicated in scandal with Republican Tom Delay, was employed by Bill Gates' dad's law firm "Preston Gates", a political proxy for Microsoft. Microsoft succeeded in lobbying both Republicans and Democrats to oppose ODF."

And this means what, exactly? Abramoff pleaded guilty to a variety of charges, but didn't have much of anything to do with Microsoft or ODF.

This seem to be a nice set of coincidences, but nothing more. If you are going to allege something sinister, please do it with evidence or proof. Throwing a bunch of random things out doesn't really mean much to anybody but gullible leftist slashbot.

Re:Conspiracy Theory 101

[LaurenBC]

He was the leader of the Debian Project from 1996-1997 and founder of various other projects such as The Open Source Initiative ( http://opensource.org/ [opensource.org] ) and Software in the Public Interest ( http://www.spi-inc.org/ [spi-inc.org] )

Yeah, this is interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's interesting to note that Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist implicated in scandal with Republican Tom Delay, was employed by Bill Gates' dad's law firm "Preston Gates", a political proxy for Microsoft. Microsoft succeeded in lobbying both Republicans and Democrats to oppose ODF."

What is interesting about it is the fact that it is lobbying. Lobbying is only organized, legalized bribery! Microsoft lobbies both Republicans and Democrats because it really doesn't care who is in power as long as they can buy the legislation they want. The fact that it was found illegal is something they will probably take care of with the next round of legislation (and partly paid for by Microsoft along with all other companies looking for a special favor).

Republican, Democrat, who cares? What we must get rid of is the entire idea of "pay for legislation"!

Re:Conspiracy Theory 101

[MustardMan]

Oh yeah, just like any other slashdotter - who happened to co-found the open source initiative and found the linux standard base. Exactly like any other random slashdotter who's written 20 books on open source, under open source licenses, published by prentice hall.

Really, why is this troll modded up? How many slashdotters were project head of Debian or the first open source evangelist to work in top management at a multi-billion dollar company? You might not like perens' views, but he's a whole fuckload more qualified to make these kinds of statements than the average living-in-mom's-basement slashdotter.

Re:Conspiracy Theory 101

[pilkul]

he's a whole fuckload more qualified to make these kinds of statements than the average living-in-mom's-basement slashdotter.

So he's qualified to make statements about open source because... he has a long history of making statements about open source?

Re:STFU Bruce and write some code ......

[kimvette]

Speak for yourself. Many of us DO want to read Microsoft news. I may choose Linux for my personal computers (unless hardware is an issue such as ATI tuner/AiW cards) and more and more so for the office, but I don't deny that Microsoft does produce some great products.

I run Linux for four primary reasons:

1. I disagree with Microsoft's anti-customer policies as of late, including no de-activation, their suing of customers, and their DRM-infested media player
2. I believe Microsoft has been abusing their monopoly status, especially since SmartSuite and WordPerfect have been rendered impotent in the marketplace
3. because I like the KDE desktop far more than I like Explorer (tabbed file browsing is great. *nix shell scripting is undeniably superior to scripting on Windows and konsole is a wonderful console manager)
4. Everything, and I mean everything can be automated on Linux/Unix/UNIX where maintenance is concerned. and nearly all maintenance can be performed live. Unix doesn't have to play the "let's redefine the term 'downtime'" game

With that said, I'm interested in what Microsoft is doing with their Linux lab. I'd be interested to see whether they release Visual Studio (Kdevelop is great, but it's no comparison to Microsoft's IDE) and Microsoft Office for Linux. I'm interested in watching the price of Microsoft Office now that OpenOffice is nipping at Microsoft Office's heels in terms of usability/functionality. I'm interested in whether or not Microsoft adjusts their marketing to indicate true TCO of each environment. I'm interested in what Monad has to offer. I'm interested in whether or not I'll be able to watch HD-DVD and Blu-Ray media at FULL resolution on my 2048x1536 CRT displays, or if I will have to downgrade to lower-resolution LCD screens.

Believe me, although some of us hate Microsoft's current actions, we actually view software products as tools, and Linux is not the BFH that is right for all problems.

Re:Conspiracy Theory 101

[MustardMan]

Because he helped START the open source movement, and has had many significant contributions which have helped advance open source. He didn't just talk about it, he made things happen - both by talking and by doing.

Big cheese, fatly melting

[FishandChips]

There isn't much to be learned from this.

We are given some rather improbable conspiracy theory around the ODF affair, a long wail about software patents, a few digs at Microsoft, some very tentative ideas about DRM and a slapdown of Linus Torvalds, something that now seems almost obligatory every time the big cheeses of the Linux world open their mouth. I wonder why they feel they have to run Torvalds down. Are they worried they won't be seen as following the correct right-on line and might be made to stand on their own in the playground? Frightened, perhaps, that Big Richard Stallman will say they are sissies and chuck them out of his gang? Whatever the reason it comes over as pretty darn unedifying.

Articles about how awful the patent system is are ten a penny. What is very hard to find are folks who have thought this one through, have some cogent and realistic proposals, and who are prepared to build support for change among those in a position to change things. Anyway, it doesn't sound as if Mr Perens will be one. Big cheese massage sounds more his gig.

Abramoff

[Catbeller]

Abramoff worked for ANYBODY that would give him cash. His buddies of old, Ralph Reed, Norquist, would often take the opposing sides. And they made millions, unprecedented wealth, in using DeLay as an on/off switch for introducing or burying legislation. It was government for sale.

And NO, kids, it was not business as usual. This is what happens when one party takes over everything, and that party only represents moneyed interests.

Re:No It's Not Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

In exchange for only having to endure being sodomized for three or four years, Mr. Sleaze agrees to hand the prosecutor the ends of all the webs he's been holding.

It never ceases to bewilder me that the USA, supposedly the beacon of freedom and democracy, remains so backward in regards to its treatment of criminals. The USA is the only Western democracy which persists in retaining barbaric punishments such as execution (even of minors and the mentally ill), where the highest court in the land has decided that life imprisonment for petty theft is not "cruel and unusual", and where prison rape is not only tolerated but apparently encouraged.

Why so backwards, America? Why so reluctant to join the rest of the civilised world in recognising that prisoners are humans with rights too, and that treating them humanely does not, in fact, lead to the collapse of society? Why are you still involved in torture and execution, along with such despicable nations as China and Egypt? Why are your prisons the horror of the world, considered preferable only to the hell-pits of Turkey? And why is prison rape so common in your jails that it's even a popular subject for comedians to laugh about?

Frankly, I look at the US preaching to other nations about how they should respect human rights, and I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Re:No It's Not Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the point of that was to elucidate just how politically well connected MSFT is, not to allege that MSFT was bribing people. Abramoff has come to symbolize not just the unmitigated corruption of some politicians (eg DeLay, Cunningham), but also the culture in Washington where insiders influence our elected officials in directions that are less beneficial to society as a whole than to a select group who have the money to pay these lobbyists and/or make hefty campaign contributions, be they legal or otherwise.

Re:STFU Bruce and write some code ......

[kimvette]

Nice troll, but what the heck does that have to do with a business plan?

Let's run through it:

  - We used to run asp.net - it is slower/less reponsive and more memory intensive than LAMP
  - Licensing - we spent money on exchange and SQL server but will be saving the money on upgrades. We develop solutions for SQL Server for clients who want Windows, but since we've removed SQL Server from production and now use it only for development, future upgrades (MySQL and Postgres) will be - yep, the cost of a download and CD-R or DVD-R. If clients are so inclined to pay thousands for SQL Server licensing, let them. It's THEIR choice. We will be saving money, lowering our overhead. As we need upgrades for development, that will be covered by MSDN subscriptions.
  - Exchange - in order to maintain it properly, "Maintenance windows" must be scheduled to bring down the information store (EVEN if we were to cluster it). Not so with Postfix (which is email-only), Zimbra, Open-Xchange, or Scalix. So, very soon we will be punting Exchange, and while an investment was made future upgrades for other solutions will be either free (Postfix, Open-Xchange, or Zimbra) or inexpensive - PLUS all maintenance can be automated. Not only that, the user experience is transparent since Outlook or Thunderbird can still be used by Windows users, and any number of clients may be used by Linux users.

  In other words, what impact does this have on our business plan? None. It does affect our bottom line in a positive way, however, and our uptime is steadily increasing as we move more services off of Windows and on to Linux.

Again, nice attempt at a troll though. Isn't AC a nice feature? ;)

Re:No It's Not Interesting

[Doc Ruby]

The biggest Republican lobbyist of the current generation, Abramoff, worked into his power position at the law firm of the father of the richest man in the world, Bill Gates. Gates was a certified monopolist, but the incoming Republican administration let him keep operating his monopoly. That takes a lot of lobbying and money. Abramoff has pleaded guilty to bribing Republican politicians for his corporate clients.

Those aren't random facts. That's not a coincidence. Those are leads. When we talk about them more, we work together to connect the dots by finding more evidence and logical connections.

What is sinister is an Anonymous Coward insisting we ignore such closely related facts as random, that they're a "coincidence", that they're important only to a "gullible leftist". An Anonymous Coward coincidence theorist. Just another soldier in the vast rightwing zombie army. Take a bow - and exit.

Re:is this really necessary?

[Bruce Perens]

I found enough interesting things to talk for 50 minutes :-)

Re:No It's Not Interesting

[mspohr]

What this means is that Microsoft is using the same corrupt Republican lobby mechanism that many other big businesses use. They are buying favors in Congress...

Re:No It's Not Interesting

[Doc Ruby]

When the Republican Party astroturfs, they call it >ratfucking [wikipedia.org]: Nixonian "dirty tricks". Especially when it's astrolling, like calling people who are interested in the links from Gates to Bush through Abramoff "gullible leftists". What's next is reverse astrolling: an organized campaign posting impossible rightwing conspiracy trolls, to paint any deduction of Republican fascism with a dismissable troll brush.

The Watergate crowd seems to have only recently gotten the hang of exploiting Christianity. We're watching them learn the ropes of the Internet. Maybe we can throw them a Kibology anvil and slow them down for a while.

Re:No It's Not Interesting

[Bruce Perens]

Well, they're doing that rat thing here on Slashdot, and so on. I guess we need to trust the moderators to deal with the substance-free objection-for-its-sake postings, to correct over-moderation when necessary, to correct badly-motivated down-mods, and so on.

It was nice when we could just have a discussion.

Bruce

Re:Conspiracy theory

[Bruce Perens]

Even if Linux kernel violated SCO's patent, could anyone really stop Linux kernel development?

Well, they could do a pretty decent job of stopping you from distributing it or using it anywhere that is publicly visible. Now, the law doesn't stop meth labs, but I don't want those who choose to develop or use Free Software to have to operate like a meth lab.

It used to be that people thought that the law had no real mechanism that could touch the Internet. Enough people like Skylarov have gone to jail for writing the wrong software or have had their net worth made negative through the need to mount a legal defense against an unjust civil or criminal claim. I don't want Tridge or Jeremy Allison to go to jail for reverse-engineering Windows file and printer sharing or infringing on some improperly-granted patent. I don't want to go to jail for using it.

Bruce

Re:No It's Not Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, of course facts counts for more than suspicion. Does that mean we can't discuss our suspicions?

Re:No It's Not Interesting

[man_of_mr_e]

Hm, do we have no discovery process since Abramoff plead guilty? In that case we may never know what he was talking about. But he was working for Gates. Did he take a bullet for his boss by pleaing guilty?

It seems to me that, based on the amount of money spent on lobbying by Microsoft (some $360,000) they didn't hire abramhoff for much. They're well below average for abramhoff's clients, even though they were the #1 contributor to campaign funds.

Microsoft learned back in the 90's that if you don't contribute to politicians funds, you have almost no voice on capital hill. Since then, they've been pretty strong in contributing to various campaigns, but of a largely bi-partison nature.

Given the small amount of money spent on abramhoff, it seems unlikely that they hired him for much of anything serious.

Another example, better than meth labs.

[twitter]

I don't want to go to jail for watching a DVD on Linux. Bad laws can and do make normal and harmless activity very difficult. Honest people should be able to do honest things in the open.

Re:Big cheese, fatly melting

[jambarama]

Articles about how awful the patent system is are ten a penny.

Yep, everyone has one. Here is mine - copied from my blog http://jambarama.blogspot.com./ [jambarama.blogspot.com] As a warning it is long (really long) but I really put a lot of thought into this and I think I've proposed some good realistic solutions (not the "eliminate all patents" bull that gets posted to /. so often).

What is a patent supposed to be?

A patent is supposed to be a well defined property right that gives an owner (not necessarily inventor) a monopoly, or significant competitive advantage, on a device. It should be clear what the patent covers, enforceable, innovative and temporary.

Why give monopoly power?

Innovation has positive externalities. Meaning it benefits more than just the creator. A negative externality means that it is under-produced. To get around this problem, we give away temporary monopolies so that creators capture more (not all) of the benefits they produce for others. The temporary monopoly with the new invention makes people better off than not having the invention would.

The trade off is that the workings of the invention must be public. Any expert in the field should be able to use your patent application to recreate your invention. That way, when the invention falls into the public domain, everyone may benefit. This is why the government offers patents.

What are patents currently?

Patents today are the right to TRY to exclude others from using a property right granted exclusively to you. They are not often innovative (prior art issues)1, often held invalid and most of the time not very well defined.

Why do we care?

This is actually a great question to always ask. So patents aren't doing what they were designed to do. So what? I argue there are many problems. Patents are designed to incent innovation. They may in fact discourage it (as we'll see later). Legitimate patents may be invalidated and the uncertainty with not knowing the validity of a patent has negative externalities (so it causes harm to many, so we have too much of it). Patents may deter entry into markets, so monopolies can be extended. Patents may harm consumer welfare. All these things are bad.

Why are we so far off?

In brief, because of a poor incentive system. It was designed just fine, but some problems crept up, weren't fixed and it has gotten worse. Don't believe me? Here are some statistics. In the United States there are 350,000 patents filed each year, and 200,000 accepted. That isn't to say that 150,000 are rejected, there is a backlog of about 750,000 patents as of 2004. Does anyone think there is that much innovation going on in the United States?

Over-Patenting

One of the biggest problems is over patenting. As the previous statistics should show, we are filing and receiving way too many patents. I don't know what the right number is, but we'll see that 350,000 a year must be too high.

Over patenting is bad for a lot of reasons. Worthless patents swamp valuable ones in the examination process. Which patents are worth carefully examining? Patents on non-innovative ideas are terribly harmful to competition. The value of a patent (and enforceability) is diluted with frivolous patents.

Problems with Filing a Patent

Because patents are first come first receive, there is the incentive to file early to beat out competitors. Many patents are filed just in case a discovery turns out to matter in the future. If the inventor (usually a firm) doesn't know the value of a patent, there really is no way the PTO can know.

The PTO bears the burden of proof. Meaning your application is considered valid until proven invalid. Patents are relatively inexpensive to file for (the fees differ on a number of factors) but since the PTO spends an average of 18 hours on each patent, they are relatively expensive to handle fo

Re:No It's Not Interesting

[SeeMyNuts!]

"Microsoft and the Gates family may be on the other end of one of those threads. Or they may not..."

Schrodinger's Sleaze?

Re:No It's Not Interesting

[Eunuchswear]

Killing other humans generally requires some psychological problem.

Which is why it's rather worrysome to see a state killing people.

Re:bipartisan scandal

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be deliberately obtuse. The Indian casinos in question gave money to Harry Reid because he was their district's representative. That they were clients of Abramoff is no reason to go pretending they were funnelling money from Abramoff to Democrats, especially since Abramoff needed no "funnel" to pass money straight to Republicans, Democrats have little chance of getting national legislation passed for crooked parties when they are out of power, and most importantly, ABRAMOFF WAS TAKING MONEY FROM THESE SAME INDIANS. It should also be mentioned that donations to democrats were discouraged by Abramoff, and these donations were smaller in the years that the tribes retained Abramoff than in years before.
  Can we just put this Fox News legend to rest already? Every time Abramoff is mentioned, wingers jump up and down shouting "Democrats too! Democrats too!" like deranged parrots.How do they think that helps your side anyway? "Oh look, some Democrats are so slimy they get in bed with US!" is a winning argument?