South African Minister Locks Horns With Microsoft 325
naheiw writes "The South African minister of public service and administration on Monday addressed the opening of the Idlelo 3 free software conference in Dakar, Senegal, saying that software patents posed a considerable threat to the growth of the African software sector (video). Microsoft responded aggressively, saying that 'there is no such thing as free software. Nobody develops software for charity.'"
freshmeat.net? sourceforge anybody? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Technically true though (Score:5, Insightful)
the 2 things MS is terrified of having to compet on.
Re:Technically true though (Score:5, Insightful)
They aren't capable of admitting, or possibly even acknowledging this any more.
They came to my uni in 2002, and the main speaker, their head of whatever they call their hiring department (he did introduce himself, but I was only there for the pizza) went on what I can only describe as a polite tirade against 'hackers', meaning the proper meaning, not the criminal one. They didn't want them, they wanted people who thought like microsoft did, and were able to do things the microsoft way. A way we were assured was nothing like open source, and far superior.
Their problems quite obviously run deep, and to be frank it was obvious from that one meeting, I was not alone in coming away with that impression (note, not one person at that meeting went to work for them). They want to distance themselves from their hacker origins, but those very same people are what's driving the real innovation in the industry.
Re:Technically true though (Score:5, Funny)
"It looks like you are trying to innovate! Maybe I can help you
A.) Wade through mountains of bureaucratic paperwork.
B.) Convince your technically conservative superiors of the merits of your plans.
C.) Steal someone else's idea and market it better.
You've chosen to steal someone else's idea. Good choice!"
Yes folks, it's Clippy's bigger brother, Hangy the wire coat hanger. He helps you abort innovation before it causes real problems AND put the new cover on your TPS reports!
Re:Technically true though (Score:5, Insightful)
so how do they fail to be technological leaders ? don't get me wrong i think MS makes a lot of good products, sql server and .net are great products. And i think in many ways them being market leader has them in a damned if they do damned if they don't position - think if they REALLY altered windows vista how many compatability issues there would be?
all that aside though there needs to be a fundamental corperate culture shift at MS. they have consistantly failed to engage their customers, there is no grass roots movement on the ms platform anymore. instead of relying on people wanting to use their platform, they try to trap them into it, which hardly endears anyone to them.
Re:Technically true though (Score:5, Interesting)
Otherwise your software becomes bogged down and very inflexible.
It occurs in open source software occasionally. Look at KDE 4.
They are taking the opportunity to break compatibility in the name of progress.
Any old dusty and hackish code can be thrown away and be replaced with shiny new code.
This is Window's primary problem. Microsoft is scared shitless at breaking compatibility.
However they will need to do so very soon to survive.
Windows Vista is already filled to the brim with hacks and really odd behaviors due to backwards compatibility.
Want to see a really good example of how it should be done? Look at Apple.
They went from PPC to x86 and it was relatively smooth.
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At this point their best bet is, as you say, a clean break. I'm not convinced it would have to be all that painful though.
They COULD just mark the existing API as depricated and make the new API available in a transitional version (or 2). The depricated API could be handled by anything from a virtualized copy of XP to a thin shim layer. After all, Wine more or less manages it when shimming up with an entirely different OS and doesn't even have the advantage of being able to incorporate or even look at the
Re:Technically true though (Score:5, Insightful)
Ugh -- MSO 2007 == :-( (Score:4, Informative)
I can only assume you're trolling, and I *know* I shouldn't feed the trolls, but I have a personal beef against Office 2007 thanks to one "just ride the gravy train and do / know jack" schmuck of an IT guy...
Maybe, on high-end hardware. My wife's school has a bunch of old Dells, and Office 2003 was sluggish, but acceptable on them. The school's IT guy decided in the middle of the school year to install Office 2007 school-wide, without telling anyone. Nice. So the software is slower than a dying dog, and now the UI's so different that all the teachers who had only finally figured out where everything was under the old Office paradigm are crippled in their productivity by this weird "ribbon" garbage. Which, incidentally, is quite the hog in terms of screen real estate when you've only got 1024x768 or less to play with.
Based on what? If it's slower to load, and includes things you don't need, that would seem to be bloat...?
No more so than Office 2000, which, while no winner of any beauty awards, at least we were used to. And see my comment above about the unusability of the ribbon interface on smaller monitors.
This New! Improved! And Innovative! interface resulted in numerous half-bald teachers at my wife's school. Due to tearing their hair out trying to get things done, I mean.
I hesitate to even get into this one much, but the troubles with MSO 2007 file incompatibility with older installations, or the problems with "compatibility" mode using older file formats within MSO 2007, has been documented to some length elsewhere on the web.
So there. Food for the troll, maybe, but at least I've gotten some things off my chest. :)
Cheers,
Re:Technically true though (Score:4, Insightful)
And then a clever hacker will reverse engineer the algorithm and leak it to the world. Short of DMCA-type problems (which is an entirely different mess), there's nothing the companies can do since there are no more software patents, and if the prevalence of cracks show anything, it's that any program can be reverse-engineered.
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Code is code. It runs on a known hardware and has a fixed set of rules for execution. Binary or not, the logic is crackable.
I suppose with proper tools and 15 years of experience, you can figure out how to decompile stripped code. Although, I can't quite think of how it would do it... maybe by having a tool that runs the code and decompiles it as it runs? Otherwise, you can't tell the different between data and instructions, so... well, I don't know. I'll take your word for it. Although games are not a good example. All you need from them is small snippets of data that allow you to change their crucial behavior (more reso
Re:Technically true though (Score:5, Insightful)
Ultimately, the best idea is to eliminate software patents entirely. Our software industry grew hugely profitable without them, so there is no demonstrable need for software patents (unless, of course, you have some anticompetitive ideas in mind.) Fact is, they are not helping, and so far as the United States is concerned they're not fulfilling their Constitutional mandate (admittedly, not much of anything Congress passes lately does.) However, if you must have them, give the USPTO the funding it needs to be critical about what truly is worthy of protection (I agree with you there) and shorten the term.
Without patents, the result will be predictable: most people will keep their algorithms a closely guarded secret.
So what? If it's secret, I can't use it, and if it's patented I can't use it. If I make a derivative work based upon your disclosed, patented algorithm odds are you'll still sue me. Without software patents, companies which understand that the only real way to maintain a competitive edge is to keep investing in R&D will simply be encouraged to maintain that investment. Maybe then they'll starting hiring fewer IP lawyers and more scientists, engineers and programmers. I'd say the country would be a whole lot better off if that were to happen. Hell, if you want an argument against software patents (indeed, excessive IP law in general) just look at Asia's high-tech economies. They don't have draconian Intellectual Property laws and they're doing just fine, employing a hell of a lot of people manufacturing a lot of products.
When it comes to software, the reality is this: if there's a way of doing something, there's probably a better way and sooner or later someone will figure it out. Furthermore, if something is protected by trade secret law, it's only secret until someone figures it out. And, if they figure it out independently (or do come up with a better approach) there's no patent system getting the way of that technology being commercialized. Software patents have proven to be a millstone around the U.S. software industry's neck and the Patent Office is utterly incapable of managing them effectively. Given those facts, we're better off without them.
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Without patents, the result will be predictable: most people will keep their algorithms a closely guarded secret.
You can't keep an algorithm secret since it's so simple to disassemble code.
In the same way that patents don't help in pharmaceuticals these days either since mass spectroscopy makes it (relatively) simple to work out what a drug is composed of.
The idea that patents protect us against those who would keep recipes secret belongs in the age of the alchemist.
Rich.
Re:Technically true though (Score:4, Interesting)
a) people will always have new problems to overcome which will require creative solutions. b) if someone makes a cheap knock off it will only be that - a cheap knock off, and no where near the quality of the product i make. it will also lag way behind my product as i develop it and lack compatability with future features (see point a)
Uh... (Score:3)
Re:Uh... (Score:5, Interesting)
MS Says:
Nonsense. Neither the commercial urge nor the recognition grabbing need have spread to cover 100% of those people producing software. Here [ideaspike.com] is a database system in python that I wrote for my own reasons, and give away for free. No "GPL" or other pseudo-free restrictions, just free. PD. Take it. Do anything you like with it. Or not. Don't care. Not looking for money, not looking for recognition, not looking to promote free stuff over commercial stuff or vice versa, no requirements of any kind. Repost it anywhere, take my name off it, whatever you like. It's just... free. What do I get out of it? It works for me, that's all. Doesn't hurt me or compromise me in any way to give it away, so I do.
What Microsoft - and the GPL-fans, for that matter - have oh-so-conveniently forgotten is the mechanism of PD software. Write it, share it, go on with your life. The more people do that, the more useful things will get created. Personally, I find the GPL just as corrosive as software patents, and for very similar reasons. I try to stay away from both. But that's just me.
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I think consistent, reliable, updated software is rare. Your database you speak of sounds like a one-off thing. What if someone finds a security hole? Or wants an additional feature? You'll either ignore the request, tell them to fix it, or be annoyed but fix it yourself. For free. What if there are 100 features/bugs that need to be worked on? Unless you have a lot of loose time,
Re:Uh... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Uh... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Technically true though (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Technically true though (Score:4, Informative)
I agree today its not often, but id not say patents are ONLY to support the big legal departments for harassment purposes.
I agree, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree, that is the original intent of patents.
But has anyone heard of a little guy using a patent to stave off a large corporation from stealing his ideas in the last decade or so? It only works if the little guy has lawyers good enough to go to bat against the megacorporations likely to steal his patent. Which, of course, means he's not a little guy.
The patent game is a game played by companies with teams of lawyers on the payroll. IMHO, the little guy was bounced out of this arena sometime around 1950 or so. I know I haven't seen it be otherwise in my lifetime.
Re:I agree, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Encouraging innovation by restricting the spread & use of information seems highly counterintuitive to me.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, the fundamental problem with all forms of "intellectual property" is that they attempt to perform a form of social engineering (encouraging innovation) through the violation of free market principles.
It's not a free market if you can't negotiate the price at which you wish to sell your own creations.
It's no more social engineering than keeping people from coming to your house and sleeping in your living room because you are not using it. Social engineering is any attempt to pro-actively change behavior. Preventing behavior which is undesirable is not social engineering -- it is protection. Ie, encouraging you to work by beating you on the day you don't work is social engineering while encouraging
Re:I agree, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
If you can't sell your own creation for a particular price, then it isn't worth that amount, no matter how much you think it is. Getting special laws passed to have your own business model enforced by the government doesn't count as free market, no matter how much you pretend it does. Although you were very polite about it and your post was well-written, the contents of your response was incorrect in almost every way.
There is no such thing as a "marketplace of ideas". This is a fantasy which can only be created by using government enforcement to create an artificial scarcity of "ideas".
I'll hazard a guess that because your choice of vocation revolves around concepts & ideas, your desire to control those concepts & ideas is distorting your viewpoint of what constitutes a free market.
I'm a programmer, so I work with concepts & ideas too, but I make the assumption that people are paying me for my service. If I want to keep getting paid, then I have to keep providing service. I don't expect to create a piece of software once, then be paid every time that software is used even when I don't do any more work. That would be greedy, but that's exactly what intellectual property proponents want to be able to force people to do.
Setting up artificial control of the flow of ideas through government enforcement for the purpose of "encouraging" innovation IS, by definition, using government enforcement to manipulate free market dynamics for the purpose of a social goal. How can you not call that social engineering?
This is also incorrect. Monopolies are not harmful only when they don't use their monopoly status to prevent competition. If the time period of their existence is short enough, then perhaps they cause very little harm - but that harm still exists.
That's why I added the "& use" in my statement, since patents definitely prevent you from USING ideas (at least not without paying someone something). Copyrights are definitely about restricting the spread of information.
As far as patents are concerned, if I come up with an idea independently (which happens a lot), why should I be forced to pay someone because they happened to file something similar with the Patent Office a little earlier?
As I stated at the beginning, in a free market, a product or service is only worth what people are willing to pay you for it. You don't get to decide the value of your product or service: the market does. And if you have to depend on government enforcement of a bad business model make your good or service artificially more valuable, then your business model has nothing to do with a free market.
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If you can't sell your own creation for a particular price, then it isn't worth that amount, no matter how much you think it is. Getting special laws passed to have your own business model enforced by the government doesn't count as free market, no matter how much you pretend it does. Although you were very polite about it and your post was well-written, the contents of your response was incorrect in almost every way.
First, tone down the rhetoric. I can reply by saying that "your response misses points (a),(b),(c), etc". Or I can simply state my argument. Ad hominems do nothing by validate the opposing view point.
Having said that, I didn't say that I wanted to sell my creation for a particular price. I simply said that I would want to be able to say no when a particular price is offered. Without IP, I would have no such ability. I don't want laws that would enforce my business model. I want laws that enforce
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No one is restricting you to say no. And IP does not guarantee the right to say yes or no, is simply defines who's the owner.
The only thing that ownership give you is the right to refuse utility to others. And, pray tell, how I can say, "no, you can't use my idea." If there is no legal means of stopping you, you can just ignore me. So the only option I have is to hide my ideas. This is precisely how people behave when a government does not provide protection for property. You might (or might not) be interested to know that in the modern-day Russia, there is a concept of (roughly translated) not-flasing. It exists because t
Re:Technically true though (Score:5, Insightful)
That's called a non sequitur.
Most people who receive money in exchange for their work do so without having monopoly rights. There is no evidence that monopoly rights are necessary for monetizing software development; in fact, there's a vast array of evidence suggesting it's not at all necessary.
That evidence ranges from open source companies on one end to the vast majority of programmers hired for coding specific purpose software which is never released and for which copyright or patents is irrelevant.
On the other side is, eh, Microsoft. Claiming that they need software to cost money or they have no business model.
No shit. Wonder what makes them say that then.
Re: (Score:2)
Finally, some program for free just to learn more or have fun. Not necessarilly saying that any or all of the above reasons are bad, only that there are few, if any, programmers who write free software for charity. Most expect to get some sort of benefit out of it. The thing the Africans need to realize is that most programmers prefer to get money in exchange for their coding, and if you don't allow patents, and therefore don't allow programmers to get money in exchange for coding, you have cut off about 98% of your source of new code. You can get some people to work for ego stroking, but most have mortgages to pay and lives to live, and they need money like everyone else. In general, Microsoft is very correct that software costs money, and you aren't going to get it for free.
WHAT? 98%? Did you pull those figures out of your own ass?
98% of the source of new code does not come from software patents and I can prove it:
Mac OS X
The code in Mac OS X did not come to be because of software patents, it came to be because Apple paid their programmers to code a kick butt OS so they could sell hardware, and they do, and they sell a lot of hardware. Plus a lot of the code came from NeXT, which Apple bought, and from BSD. And their market share is big. (No, I use Linux, but I bought my mom
Re:Technically true though (Score:4, Insightful)
Mac OS X"
And MS-DOS, and Windows, and Word, and Excel, and... MS wouldn't exist in its current form if Digital Research had software patents on CP/M, or Apple had them on the original Mac and QuickTime, or Dan Bricklyn had patented the concepts in VisiCalc, or MicroPro had patented various WP concepts, or Borland had patented the IDE, or software patents had been present on any of the legion of other programs and associated software technologies that Microsoft have blatantly ripped off over the years.
To paraphrase Alastair Crowley: "Do as I say and not as I do shall be the whole of the law".
Re:Technically true though (Score:4, Informative)
While you're certainly correct that most free software isn't written for charitable reasons, there certainly is plenty of free software that is. Look at the OLPC; that's not for profit, or for ego, it's a charity, unless you want to clame that every single charity out there, from ones that fight hunger to AIDS to teaching in developing nations, is just around to "have their ego stroked." Or, to give you a particularly striking example, here is an excerpt from the SQLite source code:
Crazy Taco:
The thing the Africans need to realize is that most programmers prefer to get money in exchange for their coding, and if you don't allow patents, and therefore don't allow programmers to get money in exchange for coding, you have cut off about 98% of your source of new code.
That's absolutely false. 99% of programmers don't make their money from software patents; in fact, most of them would have an easier time doing their jobs and making money if software patents didn't exist. Software copyrights certainly help protect their software and allow them to make money, but the vast majority of software patents are held by patent trolls who haven't written a line of useful software in their lives, or big companies that just patent everything they think they can to use defensively against other companies in case of patent lawsuits.
The problem with software patents is that pretty much every piece of software written is a novel invention, because if it wasn't, then you should have reused code that already existed since it already does what you need. If people patented every new idea they had while coding, they'd be in an out of the patent office 10 times a day, and wouldn't be able to get their work done (credit to Phil Greenspun for that argument). The only people who get patents are, as I mentioned, greedy patent trolls who just want to make an easy buck (it's pretty damn simple to come up with a new, patented idea in code, and then just sue anyone else who happens to think of that and implement it later), and companies that usually get big patent portfolios so when other big companies try to hit them up for money, they can just do a patent cross-licensing agreement and not have to actually fight it out in court.
As a professional, paid programmer, I must say that patent issues are second only to cryptographic regulation issues in terms of laws that have interfered with me actually getting my job done.
Re:Technically true though (Score:4, Insightful)
There's another camp---indeed, the largest camp of all---the people who code because it solves a problem they have. In the absence of it being a competitive advantage for a corporation, there's no good reason not to share that with others so that it will help solve their problems, too. Lord knows I've done that quite often. Sure, I like name recognition, but I'd still do it even if nobody ever heard of me.
Similarly, when I run into a problem that prevents me from getting stuff done, I fix it and submit patches. They don't always get accepted, but at the very least, they are out there for other people who run into the same problems to use if they need them, and they make the original developer aware that people want a particular enhancement.
That said, there's still a payback. I'm getting useful functionality out of the code---functionality that I would not get without writing it. So pedantically speaking, the Microsoft rep is technically right. That said, since I had to write it anyway, from the perspective of the system as a whole, the existence of the software as a public resource is as close to "free" as you can get; if you don't consider that "free", then there's no such thing as "free" at all, and I would argue that this is a silly way to look at the world. If something occurs for no additional cost (or negligible cost) as a result of a process that you have to do anyway, that something is, by definition, free. Now the act of giving it away isn't free, mind you; there's a possible opportunity cost because perhaps you could have sold it and made money. However, this is lost potential revenue, and the effort that you would have to spend trying to obtain that income usually won't pay for itself anyway. As such, releasing it as open source often truly is free....
Re:Technically true though (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, there are many developers who write code for no money, but at the same time, I don't know anyone who does it entirely for selfless, charitable reasons.
Vim is explicitly produced as a way to promote a charity for Uganda.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Some people do things for the pleasure or challenge, some do it for the indirect pleasure (money, prestige or good vibes from helping people), and when stuck between a rock and a hard place, you decide which decision you like most of the options present.
As for patents? I think there's little doubt th
Re:Technically true though (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Depends on how you define "free", doesn't it?
If I donate goods to charity, they get those goods without paying me money in return. If I give a gift to a friend, they also get goods without giving money in return. Those goods may have been paid for with my money, which was given to me by my employers, which comes from my employers' profits from their customers. I may be repaid with friendship or a good feeling in my heart. But that doesn't make the gift non-free at the point of donation. Similarly, when
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Now, Microsoft is using this argu
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Nobody (Score:5, Funny)
Hello, my name is Nobody. You know, the one that's prefect. Same dude.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
It's a BIG bubble, a THICK bubble, and it doesn't show signs of bursting just yet. I am, however, attempting to make Bill Gates's head explode with the powers of my mind... which also shows no sign of bursting.
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I would be willing to bet the vast majority of FOSS developers are working on stuff they actually use, so it's not entirely for charity.
I guess it's just worded with enough wiggle room that they can back out of it later and claim that's not what they meant. It really is stupid for them to say something like this, when there are thousands of people who develop great free software for Windows. I wouldn't be suprised if some people developing cross-platform stop releasing Wi
Re:Nobody (Score:4, Insightful)
The Minister slammed software patents. Microsoft is slamming FOSS. While MS's slam, in and of itself, is flawed, it's also somewhat irrelevant. A piece of software that isn't patented isn't necessarily FOSS.
Consider the one-click buying patent, a favourite whipping boy(rightly so). This could be implemented with
The MS exec is trying to make a flawed implication(that absence of software patents == FOSS), because they think it helps their argument. That it doesn't help their argument is part and parcel to MS's failure to understand the FOSS movement.
In other words, MS is doubly wrong, and Linux pwns Steve Ballmer in the ear.
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In other words, it's a straw man, and given the nature of the majority of responses here, it's succeeded admirably in getting lots of geeks beating at it with their FOSS sticks.
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A point? The title says they have horns!
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It really is stupid for them to say something like this, when there are thousands of people who develop great free software for Windows
And even more people (like me and everyone at my company) who USE that software.
Lets see:
Our webserver runs OpenBSD.
Our proxy runs Squid on top of Gentoo
Our FTP is VsFTPd on top of Gentoo
Our mailserver will be (I'm still building/testing) Unison on top of Centos (hey, people that write the centos install script, will you please let me install it manually...your install flames out *every* *single* *time*)
Our VPN is OpenVPN on Gentoo
All of our office Applications are OpenOffice stuff (microsoft...don't f*cki
Charity is an odd word (Score:4, Insightful)
The answer, to me, is that F/L/OSS is charity, a charity that produces information the same way the above charity donating to a library produces information, and is a charity that turns a bunch of metals and chemicals into a finely-honed computing tool, the same as the above charity created a park. What we do is indeed charitable, not because we deprive ourselves, but because we enrich others. The cost to ourselves is zero, because we would have scratched our itches anyway. You can't rationally add as a cost of sharing the cost of pleasing ourselves.
Charity obviously allows for return on investment, it just means that others also get a return on your investment. But it doesn't require that others give any kind of feedback at all. If you make a public park and only you visit, it's still public, it was still an act of charity, but it's an act of charity you get exclusive benefit from.
Microsoft's statement, then, is a dark one indeed. No charity, of any kind? It says that they gain no pleasure in the results of their labour, that they suffer with every release, that every enhancement and refinement is a source of pain. Quality must be endless torment (which would explain some things). It is a bleak future when everything is misery and there is an apparent determination to spread that misery.
If they wanted to spread even just contentment, through their freely-donated hot-fixes, patches and service packs, freely-donated Microsoft Research products and freely-donated e-mail service and instant messenger, they'd be guilty of charity. Since they have denounced the charitable and all their works, these things cannot be given for the use of others. But, if they are not usable, even in theory, what are they? Microsoft's comments deride and slander all who would offer service to others, so the only conclusion is that these things are intended to cause suffering and misery, which - to judge by Vista service pack 1 - is indeed what they cause.
Re:Nobody (Score:5, Funny)
I thought that was Ford
Well, they're right, and wrong, I guess (Score:5, Insightful)
Free Software (GPL/LGPL) is definitely not a charity, it's a give and take trading system. You put in, and you get out, and it largely self-improves through feedback, patches, bug reports, etc.
BSD comes closer, but still required attribution in the past, and of course, the developers were (back in the day) originally producing it as part of various university projects (ie, they get status in return), and more recently, are developing it as for-profit work, but are releasing it. Again, not charity.
That said, whether the argument's been taken out of context, or is accurate in other ways is another matter.
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Re:Well, they're right, and wrong, I guess (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed. Just because people don't see it doesn't mean it's not happening.
Do a quick Google for 'ICT4D' - Information and Communications Technologies for Development. You'll be surprised how much work is being done by organisations big and small, and by individuals, too.
I work almost exclusively with FOSS in Vanuatu [wikipedia.org]. Small linux servers running on ancient hardware was the only way we could conceivably have brought small organisations and NGOs online when I arrived some years ago.
The server OS we use is SME Server [smeserver.org]. I worked for the company that created this software starting back in 2000. I went to work for them specifically because of this software's suitability for use in the developing world. After I left these guys, I worked for 3 years as a volunteer using the same software (and a lot of other FOSS as well) to help people communicate electronically, often for the first time.
FOSS is critical to development work. I've written extensively about ICT and Development. This essay [imagicity.com] explains in layman's terms why FOSS is often the right tool for the job.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
BSD comes closer, but still required attribution in the past
It still does require attribution, the first and second clauses of the current BSD license [opensource.org] state exactly that. The only change in the history of the BSD license has been the removal of what rms referred to as the "obnoxious advertising clause [gnu.org]", making it GPL-compatible.
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Heck, even charity is not really charity (Score:2)
Everything is give and take, no matter how you look at it. A good system keeps the wheels running, a bad system does not.
Equivocation (Score:3, Interesting)
In Microsoft's case I'm inclined to think they're being equivocal on purpose, implying "free as in beer" when the real topic "free as speech."
To fight back, I think we should be calling it "freedomware" rather than "free software."
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Just wait (Score:5, Funny)
You damned dirty liar! (Score:5, Funny)
Quick, someone tell these people they don't exist!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLPC_XO-1#Software [wikipedia.org]
Couldn't believe it, had to RTFA (Score:2)
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Look, businesses sell their products. Or more precisely, businessmen have salesmen who sell their products. Salesmen are people who are good at sleight of hand, blurring fine distinctions and confusing issues. It's OK, because things are set up because it's their duty to do what it takes, short of fraud, to maximize sales. Everybody knows this.
Can you imagine what things would be like if companies sent engineers out to sell. Of course engineers can learn to be discreet. You can
Disgusting (Score:5, Interesting)
PS: What is the chance that the person who said that at Microsoft will be looking for a job very shortly? Having your upper management assert that they are moving toward a more open model and then having some bozo say something like this must look terrible even to the Microsoft Marketing Department (tm).
Re:Disgusting (Score:4, Insightful)
List two software innovations (i.e. something not copied) done by the linux/hobbyist community please.
List two software innovations done by Microsoft, done by not bought by Microsoft.
FalconRe: (Score:3, Insightful)
List two software innovations (i.e. something not copied) done by the linux/hobbyist community please.
Easy (as long as you remember that the hobbyist/academic Free software community existed long before Linux did).
For what it's worth, on a day to day basis I use the following applications regularly:
"Nobody develops software for charity" (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, wait, I am a nobody. At least so far as Microsoft is concerned. It's not that I didn't make enough money to "put food on my family", it's just that I didn't make enough to matter and I never will.
However, the feeling is mutual. If I didn't have clients who need products delivered on MS platforms, I'd happily never touch a piece of MS software again. It's not that I'm ideologically against them, but Microsoft doesn't cater to people like me; we're not a profitable market for them. In fact, we're nobody as far as they're concerned.
That's OK with me; the Gap doesn't offer a line of clothing for people like me; the local Evangelical church doesn't have special Sunday services for people like me either. I'm perfectly happy for each of these organizations to provide their services and wares for people who for whatever reason think they fulfill a need. We just move in orbits that, for the most part intersect.
I think the mutual indifference thing breaks down because Microsoft wants to be everything to everybody. They want to have the one important operating system and the one important file format "standard". Since they don't intend to cater to me, the only way for that to happen is for me to have to use products that were not designed with the things I value in mind. The file format thing is a great example. What I want out of office file formats is not at all what Microsoft is prepared to give me.
Re: (Score:2)
Some people just don't get it ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Like the people in the RIAA, Microsoft just doesn't get it. The fundamental issue is not about whether software development is a charity (although sometimes I think that is a motivation), but about Economics 101 and prices in a competitive market. If they had paid attention in class, they would remember that, in a competitive market, the equilibrium price is found where price = marginal cost. The marginal cost of an additional unit of any digital work is very close to zero. So MS, the RIAA, and many others are engaged in an attempt (futile in the long run, IMO) to construct an economic perpetual motion machine by legal schemes and other rent-seeking behavior.
Re:Some people just don't get it ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, but the cost of the first unit is a doozy. I think your model is a little bit flawed.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Unable to grasp the issues (Score:5, Insightful)
Software is not a charity, nobody is discussing it as such.
Software is, however, a written tool, in the end. Control of that tool is the key to empowerment. South Africa, actually all of Africa was held under oppression for many centuries by corporate interests such as microsoft, who held the keys for livelihood out of the masses hands in order to force the yoke.
Microsoft cannot understand why people with such a memory would not jump at the option of putting a new yoke on their necks, to work themselves to death in order to enrich a new foreign master.
No such thing as free software? (Score:2, Interesting)
p.s. It made me giggle a little to search for ubuntu, free software, and sourceforge on msn.com using firefox on a linux box.
Nobody develops software for charity (Score:5, Insightful)
Even since the days before Stallman, the reason people shared software (that is, they gave it away for free), is because it is practically cost-free to reproduce. A community of hackers use the same OS and tools. In my life, it's been DEC TOPS-10, then UNIX, then Linux, but no matter. We all run into the same bugs. Better for one of us to fix and share, than for each of us to find and fix the same bug. Better for each of us to write a tool and share with all, than for each of us to have to write the same tool, most of us doing it poorly. It seems so obvious.
Why did Bill Gates become fabulously wealthy? Because he produces a great product? I think not. Because he produces (and markets) an ok product that he can reproduce for pennies and sell for hundreds of dollars each. And he has managed to lock people into using his products.
The point is that economically speaking, there is a strong argument for sharing (and thereby dividing up) the cost of production of tools if you can reproduce the tools for no cost and with no restrictions. Microsoft may not like this, but a developing nation should understand the point.
Yes but... (Score:5, Funny)
Yes but, were they long horns?
charity case (Score:4, Funny)
NISTAFS (Score:2)
Slavery, anyone?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Helping Microsoft with Analogies (Score:4, Insightful)
If that's Microsoft's position, than clearly this organization [gatesfoundation.org] is just another profiteer.
Microsoft Open License Charity program (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, the irony! Or is it hypocrisy?
Re: (Score:2)
Redmond is right (Score:2)
In a sense, Microsoft is right (Score:2)
False dichotomy (Score:2, Insightful)
The horns (Score:2)
We all know Microsoft has them, but I was surprised to learn that South African
ministers possess horns as well.
Someone hit MS with the irony stick (Score:2)
In the proper context? (Score:2)
FYI, copyrights and patents are corporate welfare (Score:4, Insightful)
Developing for charity (Score:4, Informative)
Especially not Bram Moolenaar [vim.org].
Re: (Score:2)
Is this mostly about employment? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm willing to speculate that if you look at market entrance for the (lower) continent SA is likely the gateway. Is Shuttleworth a large employer there? Is it a veiled threat WRT employment possibilities?
It's a tried and tested method used by corporations to get their way, use (potential and actual) employment as bargaining chips to get the government pork.
My, how times haven't changed. (Score:5, Informative)
I hear echoes of a letter written by a certain William Gates over 30 years ago:
http://www.blinkenlights.com/classiccmp/gateswhine.html [blinkenlights.com]
"What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free? "
Free Software (Score:5, Insightful)
Incentivises? Incentivizes? (Score:2)
False Doichotomy (Score:2)
There is an awful lot of Baby left in that Bathwater when you go from "Software Patents Threaten Africa's Software Sector" to "Free software, as the only available alternative to Software Patents, is non-existent charity." Hello, all of the eighties and most of the nineties are on the