Is there still updates/plans for Firefox OS in the next year or two? I would definitely still love to see a Mozilla OS. They seemed pretty good at keeping their OS open and in user control (no weird technologies, etc.).

I believe that's a misunderstanding of the GPL. You must only provide code to someone that gets your software -- you could sell the software and only give the code to those that buy it, for example, and meet the requirements.

But let's say that's true. If they can package and sell and support it, great for them. I would bet that unless they are deeply involved in the software, they wouldn't be able to support it -- meaning their customers will ultimately call me to fix it. So I get money and exposure.

The other possibility is that the company does know my software very well and at a deep level, and can support it and modify it. Then the GPL requires their updates be released as well, and so I would get access to their changes to integrate into my product. In this case, its a win-win.

Maybe not everyone is a fan of this idea, but I do not think it is as dire as you claim (and I have in fact started a business using this concept for the software aspect of the work; it is not very old yet, so I will admit the jury is out on it so far, but this isn't me just talking in theory but rather something I think makes sense for my situation).

I'm not really convinced "investors" are the smartest people in the world, at least in general. I'm not sure I buy the argument. There are plenty of community-minded people that contribute to things. Why can't the business be a little more non-profit? (Or at least a B-corporation, where you prioritize helping the community even though you are for-profit). Sure, maybe not everyone is keen on it, but I bet you can find a few investors. Or, save up for yourself or take a loan out and skip the businessmen that will insist you run your company into the ground for their profit entirely. That's my approach, though I also agree that this depends largely on what type of business it is (some fields require much more start up money than others).

My original post was in regards to for-profit private business use of open source code. Government-backed free-to-the-public software is a different beast, and in that case, it may actually be best for a more BSD-type license to allow larger usages. But I am still not entirely-convinced; if the public paid for it, and you use it, why should you be able to keep ALL of the profit? In this case, every citizen has invested in it, and should get something for it. Maybe simply paying a tax to fund further development of any software would be better than requiring every change to be open? What would be your idea?

I think it is important to be clear here (a) who contributed the code and (b) who the audience is. If it is tax-payer funded open source, businesses that use it owe something to the initial investment of the citizens, and that can be in the form of GPL open sourced changes, or maybe just paying an extra tax to refund the citizens. If it was a donation to public domain by private citizens, then BSD/GPL makes sense if the private citizens are fine with what that means.

I think Red Hat has shown closed source is not the only path to income. Considering they support Fedora and now CentOS, I think they made the strategic decision that being open helps their bottom line. It very well might depend on the type of business whether being open makes sense, but I do not think business requires being completely closed. Property rights are important, but I think that's a different question from whether to be open or not, and in what manner. You still own the copyright to the software, for example, with GPL, so its not like property rights are being totally thrown at the window.

There was perhaps a bit of a confusing conflation of ideas there, I apologize. But I did end that sentence with exactly that concern: "even worse, prevent you from doing what you want with THEIR copy of your work! It needs to be a 2-way street.".

RMS in the past has said he has no problem with people making money off free software, and in fact encourages it, as long as the 2-way street is open for people to use each others' work. This was the point I was trying to make.

My original comment did acknowledge that some might be perfectly fine with providing something for all to use no matter what. Just to achieve something and get it out there. There is nothing wrong with that philosophy, just a different one.

My attitude is that companies make plenty enough money off of people by charging ridiculous amounts for incredibly buggy software. Why should they be able to develop that software easily using my open source library without any return to the person or community that provided it? I don't need a specific acknowledgement or payment to satisfy my ego -- that isn't what I am after -- but rather that something I contribute to the community, I expect to stay in the community. There is nothing more insulting to me than someone that takes the ball and goes home, and that is how I view the situation. WORST CASE SCENARIO, of course. I also understand that perhaps many companies keep the communities in the loop and contribute when they can, and only keep some aspects proprietary. But this isn't what I'm talking about; my concern is, what is necessary to prevent a company from taking community property for their own profit, and not sharing anything with the people that worked hard to provide it?

Without getting too political, it is in my view an odd extension of this income inequality debate. People have different views, see different problems and have different ideas for solutions, and that's fine. But there is room for discussion (not angry debate, but friendly discussion) on what are our most important priorities, and this post (and the original) are my contribution to that discussion. I look forward to seeing other ideas!

I like to think of it as, why are you doing FREE work for a proprietary company that has no obligation to you other than to possibly hide your name at the bottom of a long list of credits buried in the help menu? This is what the BSD license allows.

If they aren't going to pay me, then I want them to have to contribute back anything they do with my software, which is what GPL requires. THAT is their way of paying me for my time -- that down the road I can save some time by getting help back from them. And not just me, but the entire community gets that help.

If you are ok with that, then who am I to judge? But I don't think it is as simple as "anything other than his way is bad" -- it is more of a question of, does it bother you to do free work for people, or do you not care just because you think its cool? RMS's concern is that it bothers him to put effort in to let lazy people take it with absolutely no acknowledgement and pay, and even worse, prevent you from doing what you want with THEIR copy of your work! It needs to be a 2-way street.

I think it is important to point out that effectively this was the work of a commercial company. It was contracted out, and the contractor subcontracted and did whatever it wanted at that point. (Sounds like relatively little government oversight of the project was had, considering the massive cleanup effort when it came to light).

I think it would be fair to argue that the government should have been more involved and had more oversight of the project. I actually wish it was developed "in-house" so to speak, and open source (as I think all publicly funded software should be). The government can do great things. Look at NASA. We have(had?) plenty of smart people with the goal to do something awesome. I wish we hired a software/computing/cryptography group like NASA to just go in there and get it done in an awesome manner. I think the government work could have been magnitudes better if it was done this way.

This was a failure on both sides really -- too many government officials that insist the best way to do things is like a private contractor do it (either for ideology or money), and commercial companies more interested in the paycheck than anything else.

Just imagine: you go out for a drive, and your car starts communicating with other cars in the next lane and suddenly its a beowulf cluster of them...

I think that's it exactly. I have tried a few of these MOOC classes on a couple different websites (I am primarily a teacher, so not only do I like learning new things and refreshing myself, but I also enjoy seeing different teaching styles to try to integrate into my own).

I have taken a few that were very delightful -- it seems some of the computer science theory classes are the best MOOCs, possibly because they are the most used to working with computers and through the internet?

But many treat the online MOOCs EXACTLY as they would a university course. I have an interest in physics and engineering, for example, so I signed up for a class about photovoltaics, hoping to learn enough to maybe make better decisions in the future about a PV system for my house. Instead, what I got was a few rambly lectures about how photovoltaics are the future, and then straight into a homework assignment requiring some calculations and formulas never elucidated anywhere in the material. Luckily I am comfortable with integrals and was able to complete the first assignment, but I simply gave up after this as it was not a good first impression. Perhaps it was better in later weeks? Who knows. And I think this is the point -- the Lecture-then-let-the-students-struggle-to-solve-homework-problems-never-discussed-in-class model is INCREDIBLY frustrating to begin with, but then to do it completely online without much of a place to turn to? (No solid connections with students or faculty). Its a model for disaster.

MOOCs I think can succeed, but only if we actually take the opportunity to re-think how we present knowledge and check understanding. The university system is, IMHO, beginning to unravel and show itself as not being sustainable. Simply thinking universities can continue on exactly as-is but "in the cloud" is stupid, and this is why many MOOCs are failing to keep their students.

While the financial savings is great, let's also not forget that it is partially about freedom -- no forced upgrades from vendors, no special expensive proprietary software to read what should be public record, etc. I am more excited about the latter -- an openly accessible government and public records is important no matter how much it costs, but it's especially nice that we can have that AND save some cash.

I've often wondered lately if there are enough dissatisfied PhD-dropouts and overworked junior professors that if we got together, we could start a new college and directly compete against these attitudes (both the problems with professors and research, and the problems with the student curriculum and lack of teaching enthusiasm in general). I am quite seriously interested in doing exactly this if I could build up a coalition and some funding.

Wasn't this basically Plato's argument a long time ago? The best theoretical form of government is to have a "philosopher king" that has a lot of power but always acts in the interests of the people, this way things get done efficiently and even if the uneducated people think its not correct to do. But of course the problem is making sure the king is a philosopher -- most of the time, these type of people are not the ones that even want to be king. Otherwise, you end up with a very bad situation. Democracy is not perfect but it tends to smooth out the problem of not having philosophers as leaders, but we don't always know what is best for ourselves.

Some of the professors/scientists I worked with before were great at doing this. Technically you are correct, but these people really knew how to come up with crazy narratives about how important the research is and how it can lead to advances in defense, generate more money, etc. (this was how I originally came to work with them, I fell for the marketing in my more idealistic days; when I couldn't work on what I thought I would because the push was more on doing some research that could be tied to the marketing, I ultimately left).

The unfortunate side of this legislation is that it will cause an opposite effect. The things that will get funding are the BS more-marketing-than-legit-research proposals made by people that don't have a unique thoughtful idea at all (just looking at getting grants and tenure), and the actual true research proposals where someone has a legitimate interest to study and cannot predict its ultimate value will get thrown in the gutter.

It's very sad, let's try not to let this happen. But I guess to do so, not only do you need to stop this type of legislation, but you need good people in general reading the proposals...

I have not tried to contribute to wikipedia yet (though I have thought about it, I have been unsure whether I want to try given the currently climate described), but it occurred to me: how does one become an editor?

I am wondering, if current editors are appointed and have permanent control and this is causing problems, what if Wikipedia switched to something akin to slashdot's moderation (and metamoderation) tool? Let random people vote on if they think the change was warranted. They don't need to be experts on the topic, just answer yes or no as to whether the change was significant and properly documented with references. If so, then vote ok, and overrule the mods that may be blocking it. Is that not possible?

Maybe the particles entangled with the ones that make up my body form my doppelganger. I see that guy everywhere. He even has the same car I do!

You know, I remember a world wide web where random people ran their own websites giving away free everything -- knowledge, stories, tutorials, programs, whatever -- and no one gave a shit about monetizing everything. I actually miss those days and would love to go back to the internet being a community where people shared their passions for free because it was something to do, rather than a way for suits to make even more ridiculously larger amounts of money.