The original work can't be privatised but derived works can be, and the original can be lost or made inaccessible.

Public domain doesn't guarantee access. For that you need a remixing license like cc-by-sa or GPL.

"most big companies avoid GPLv3 like the plague"... [citation needed]. This simply isn't true. A few very specific large firms do, Apple being one.

This is for the core engine, GNU/Linux and other platforms. I've used OpenShot and loved it, have pledged $250.

It's great to see KickStarter used for open source like this.

In a free market price of any product will drop by 50% every two years until it hits cabbage prices. Markets where the price remains high are being artificially constrained. Telecoms is a perfect example. Telcos go on about how expensive airspace is, but in fact it's patent pools that exclude competitors, and allow operators to charge their extortionate rates. If fuel cells got 4x cheaper in 10 years, they are in fact overpriced by 8 times (should have fallen 2^5 = 32 times in ten years). I'd be willing to bet any amount of money that it's patents that are doing the constraining here.

Yup. Don't know why your comment modded down. Whenever you see a promising area of technology stagnate and stop moving for 20 years, then pick up magically, it's patents.

The law is what Congress makes, and if they decide math is patentable, then it is.

Actually all patents are medieval hocus pocus. In no world does a monopoly on the market for an idea create wider value to society. Patents are, and have always been, a ruse to transfer wealth from the mass market to a few individuals.

There's only one solution, and that will come eventually, and that is to end all patents, period.

So much wrongness.

Let's start with your conclusion, "Canonical doesn't follow the arbitrary pattern I believe I've identified therefore I think it will fail". This isn't science, it's looking for evidence to support your (quite poor) theories.

You started by saying, "businesses that succeed using FOSS". This today covers 95% of successful businesses.

You've ignored the many FOSS-based businesses (those that make and distribute it, not just use it) such as IBM, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter, GitHub. None of these fit your "blessed three" yet they're the dominant model.

And you include "holding out a tin cup" as a successful business strategy. Name a single successful "business" that does this.

Let me explain how successful businesses *really* use FOSS. First, they find a market with incumbents paying too much for their software or spending too much making it. Then they build new FOSS stacks and products that attack these incumbents. They take their clients and charge them a fraction of the old prices. You can sell _anything_ like this, as long as the product has software as part of its critical supply chain.

They weren't selling the movies. They were putting them onto Bittorrent. This was more a political act than anything; certainly not a for-profit crime.

This is not what the patent system was intended to do, this is madness.

On the contrary, this is precisely the intended effect i.e. elevation of power and profits of the only group that really matters in this: the lawyers. You will take note that irrespective of what comes out of this (Apple loses, Samsung loses, whatever) the lawyers (and bankers - all that money has to get deposited somewhere - also just think of the magnitude of "transaction fees") get their money. A huge pile of money.

In a society run by lawyers the only people who really count are lawyers. Every other activity (such as producing something actually useful) must somehow benefit the true power holders. Thus "rules" are made, which from your perspective might appear "insane", which advertise themselves as "justice" or "promotion of this or that noble goal" to make them defensible to and palatable by the plebs, but simply say "you shall suck a lawyer's dick" once you decipher all the implications of the lawyerly priesthood's "legalise" code in which these "rules" were written.

And since most Western societies are overrun with a whole pyramid of classes of parasites such as lawyers or "financial industry" creatures the pooch is pretty much screwed - at least until the next Great Fuckup (probably an economic collapse the way things are going but its anyone's guess really).

SVN repo for project is empty. Site has no contact address. Reported site for abuse.

Hmm, that article suggests that our ancestors started in Asia and then continued evolving in Africa. So yes, we're all African, and also all Asian, and presumably all Pangean at the end of the day.

Actually it's a shame he cancelled because (a) any publicity can be good and (b) this now sets up the stage for hysterical attacks on the tech scene in general and (c) this is worse, not better, for 'diverse' speakers. What does it mean now to be a non-white or female speaker at a conference? That you're there because the organizers wanted some token diversity? Insurance?

"Hi, I'm the diversity insurance speaker. Name's Token. Here's my card."

To map "diversity" to skin color is superficial and reflects the bias of the viewer more than anything. As a white male programmer I've more in common with other male programmers, no matter what their color, than with male football players, male drug dealers, male prostitutes, male athletes. Skin color has literally nothing to do with it. It's cosmetics.

Gender arguably is more relevant but seriously... there is no bias against women participating in free software projects. It's literally a sport open to anyone, with as few barriers as you can imagine. Age, gender, skin color, origin, perhaps the only filter that reduces diversity is the need for reasonably fluent English.

And still, the number of women in our communities is extremely low. That means the detailed technical world of software appeals to fewer women than it does to men. That's not a problem, it's just a fact, and easily observable. It would be offensive to choose women speakers just for their gender. Tokenism is a nasty form of discrimination. At the same time it would be offensive to refuse people on any basis except their work. I don't think that was the accusation here.

Diversity simply means, different points of view, perspectives, and opinions within the group. It does not mean creating a Star Trek experience.

Then again speaking as a white male it's quite likely that my perception of this is totally biased.

Perhaps his notes are of the form, "this passage works effectively on visiting missionaries if read in an thick Irish accent", or "never use this argument with a Jesuit unless you are prepared to (see pp 575.576)".