On Research Institutions and Corporate Interests 99
The following is an Editorial which appeared in the Jan. 20 issue of Nature Journal. Reprinted here with permission:
In Praise of Open Source Software
"Imagine how the Web might look today had it been invented by Microsoft and made proprietary, rather than at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN), where it was made available free. Scientists tinkering with computers to create tools for their research for no profit have underpinned the computer revolution. The bounds of supercomputing are being pushed back by hugely demanding challenges, such as protein folding and the cosmos; many of the pioneers of the Internet are not Internet millionaires, but are still labouring in their laboratories.
The profit motive, and the investments that go with it, are often essential. The scrappy, early 'Mosaic' browser designed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois only took off when some of the scientists who invented it went on to set up Netscape. But the abuse of commercial monopolies is also too evident, with much of the world having been held hostage to the dismal operating system DOS for more than a decade.
This issue -- providing equitable access to all scientists and not just the richest -- is about to become critical as companies rush to build bioinformatic tools for genomics. Tools that add value to genome data are to be welcomed, but as the licensing strategy being adopted by Celera Genomics becomes clear, it gives new grounds for wariness. Unfortunately, restrictive material-transfer agreements are also becoming the rule even in publicly funded institutions. While academic research centres are an important cradle for industrial development, it is crucial that the not-for-profit motive should be respected when the needs of research communities are best served in this way.
The high cost of some journals has attracted enormous attention over the past few years, whereas the high cost of software and the often exorbitant licence charges have not. Most scientific software is proprietary, and beyond the reach of many poorer parts of the scientific community worldwide. All the more reason to be grateful, therefore, for the continuation of the open spirit in the tradition of Internet pioneers. Witness the group of Californian scientists developing sophisticated 'freeware' for DNA chip technology. The software, which users say compares favourably with costly commercial software, can be downloaded from the Web. Another example: scientists at the Max Planck Institute in Potsdam have made freely available a vast suite of plug-and-play tools, 'Cactus', that allows scientists from any discipline to use supercomputers without needing to know advanced computing techniques. A Japanese scientist is giving away E-Cell, a package that simulates basic cell processes. And so on.
The open-source movement has found its apogee in the Linux operating system developed by Linus Benedict Torvalds (see http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/~torvalds) as a 'hobby' -- which IBM last week decided to put at the core of its hardware plans. Because the code is not proprietary, it is being built on and debugged by an army of amateur developers worldwide, many of them academic scientists.
In short, amateur software developers are playing a key role in keeping systems open. But such activities need to be encouraged and professionalized by academic institutions; plans in France to create a research centre to provide bioinformatic tools for industrial and academic researchers build on the tradition of the Centre d'Etude du Polymorphisme Humain, the U.S. National Center for Biotechnology Information and the European Bioinformatics Institute. At a time when Microsoft looks as if it may be broken up (shades of AT&T) into 'Baby Bills', it would be ironic if science, and biology in particular, became a victim of new monopolies.
Nature © Macmillan Publishers Ltd 2000 Registered No. 785998 England.
The Funniest Line :) (Score:4)
decade.
DOS = Dismal Operating System *LMFAO* I love it....any bets on that being done intentionally?
Sgt Pepper
Lame Sig Shamelessly Ripped from
Fortune:
A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a unicorn.
Free Science (Score:1)
IMO, the biggest problem is going to be research funding: much of this comes from the commercial sector, therefore any software developed for such programmes is likely to be the property of the funding corporate and unless they are particularly public spirited, no for free release, never mind open-source. As the article stated - most of the software released was from academic sources, so I suppose we need to hope for a massive increase in government / charity funding of scientific research (and can ignore all the problems that brings.)
Patent issues in science .... (same old same old) (Score:3)
The main difference is that it's getting in the way of us making a living while in their case it's getting in the way of them doing basic research - like finding the cure for fatal diseases ....
Re:The Funniest Line :) (Score:1)
Though most(all?) of the compatible ones were licensed from Microsoft, right? A-la IBM's dos...which I found an unopened, shrinkwrapped v3.03 box today
Correct me if Im a blithering idiot, as the case may well be
Open source was the norm before Gates. Its time.. (Score:1)
Gates has done more to stifle creativity that the education system.
We have lost or lost access to millions of lines of code that didn't make it because they or the management team around a project we're quite good enough or the timing was wrong or a bee farted in Ireland.
In trying to think of a single original contribution that Microsoft has ever made, all I come up with Bob! Isn't that pathetic? We would all be using MS Dos 3.3, CLIs only and computers would be strictly for penny-pinchers in accounting.
Its time to return to open source and stop the financial and intellectual hemmorage.
I'm no Susan Powter but lets "Stop The Insanity!"
A rather straightforward answer (Score:4)
Intellectual property did not become a major issue until the first half of this century. It is not an accident that this coincident with the first shift of brainpower out of traditional academia and into for-profit corporations. Intellectual property did not become a top-priority issue until the past 2 decades, which coincided with a much greater shift of the same nature, due to the blooming of computer technology. For centuries before all this, science was concentrated in academia, where people pursued knowledge for the sake of knowledge, not for the sake of profit. The modern capitalist state discourages that to a large extent. While I don't advocate communism per se, it may be worthwhile to note that a disproportionate part of advances in science made in this century came from communist nations, where science did not have to depend on, or be subservient to, corporate interests. This goes for science in general just as well for any subset thereof.
I am not asking for a revolution. If there's one thing this century has taught us, it is that those are largely pointless. And that a free-market society is the best we have. What I ask for is that the free-market philosophy be limited when it comes to pursuit of knowledge. As long as universities prosper, we will see good research, which doesn't get hogged by some corporation, and which remains in the public domain for the good of mankind. If current trends continue, we'll see increasing brain drains, such as Microsoft's infamous raid on Carnegie Mellon's OS faculty (for those of you who haven't heard, they came, offered huge salaries, and basically left the CMU CS dept without any OS specialists), which will transfer brain power in the hands of those who cannot use it ethically simply because their primary goal is profit.
Unfortunately, academia requires a huge investment to maintain, since it does not naturally flourish under market forces; it is that investment that is needed to keep "intellectual property" out of the hands of those who want to "own" it. And it is that investment that needs to be made continually for research as we know it to survive.
In the end (Score:3)
A researcher's first priority has to be to their own well-being, and that of their family. So long as research is seen as a second-rate hobby, rather than as a serious occupation, it will remain extremely hard to find any entity, be it a University, a Research Lab, or whatever, that will pay for purely speculative work, whatever the field.
Second, there is the popular saying that "those who can, do, and those who can't, teach". This may have some truth to it, but researchers and lecturers are often the same people, simply because Universities tend to be the organisations best able to do open research. However, by being seen as one of those who can't, a researcher is going to have a much harder time trying to be taken seriously, unless they are -very- well-known and are working with a University that has a strong history of working with large corporations.
If society wants to preserve the notion of free and open research, genuine co-operation, and free exchanges of ideas, it HAS to find the cash to pay for it. Not only within Universities, but within privately-run, amateur research labs. I would like to see federal grants EQUAL to the pay normally given to mid-grade high-tech workers, given to all researchers not operating in the commercial sector.
IMHO, if information wants to be free for all, then all must be willing to chip in and make it so.
Re:The Funniest Line :) (Score:1)
The issue is compensation (Score:4)
What can we do to keep people in research? Make them feel worthwhile and deserved. Compensate them fairly with respect to their peers in private industry. If it can't be cash, improve their working environment or just plain treat them better. Understand the sacrifices we make to do what we love, and try and make it so we don't regret choosing to work in research.
OPEN ENERGY (Score:1)
Public funding (Score:5)
From that perspective, giving it all away makes a great deal of sense.
Now, governments are pushing universities and other research institutions to seek private funding and cut deals with profit-seeking companies for whom prestige is inevitably secondary to the bottom line. With the advent of the "dot-com" boom, researchers in biotech and anything related to computing or cognitive science have the potential to make a fortune quickly by keeping their knowledge secret; and as long as they cut their bosses in for even a small piece of the action, most universities and research institutes are glad to let them.
The traditional culture of science and research is breaking down, and without a return to substantially publicly funded research, open source ideas will stop coming out of those places. This has an impact far beyond mere software. Science can't function in secret and in the long run there is a real risk that the technological revolution of the past 300 years will slow down or come to an end.
I know that open source as a movement relies on all sorts of volunteers. It's likely that Linux and the GNU packages we've come to know and love can survive without a flow of new ideas from researchers, but there will be a lot of suffering without them.
Re:In the end (Score:1)
I completely agree, however, that the best way to get more open-source software out of researchers is to pay for the research. As a biology graduate student interested in programming and bioinformatics, I seem myself as one of the people who will have to make the choice between academia and free software (and no money, and nasty academic politics) and industry and closed software (and lots of money). It's a tough choice for me, and if someone wants me to make the right one (academia), well, they're going to have to send a decent salary my way. Sorry, but that's how it works.
DNA as IP (Score:2)
What I find disturbing is the trend in biology where biotech companies are treating DNA more and more as a media for storing information rather than complex molecules. (I.E. copyrighting, patienting, and otherwise threating DNA as IP.) I'm wondering if this is unprecidented...
I'm also wondering if this is a problem of an engineering/science overlap. A company that builds a new kind of bridge can patient the bridge's design, but not the physics that make the structure work. I'm wondering if the patienting of DNA is analogous to patienting bridges (as far as the companies involved are concerned), or if this is stretch.
George Lee
Advantage to research (Score:1)
It gets better :) (Score:1)
Actually, MS-DOS was derived from QDOS, which Bill Gates bought whilst he was in college.
QDOS stood for Quick and Dirty Operating System.
Aren't human beings silly animals sometimes ;)
Re:A rather straightforward answer (Score:3)
However, this is not the same as not making a profit. Rather, companies need to let the basic research over the long term be done by people who don't have to profit. Then, after the groundwork is laid, the company can begin putting together products to sell. Does anyone believe that we would have given up ARPAnet if MS had invented and controlled the Web? Of course not, so MS, and everyone else who likes to embrace and extend research should not even bother.
Walt
P.S. 30 million people died of famine and disease in the nationalization of soviet farms. Please do not try to tell me that communism led to the same level of innovation shown by, say, Monsanto.
A Call To University Hackers! (Score:2)
In any case, you might be asked to develop software or other significant technologies that will be *hidden* from the public use, and made proprietary. It will be copyrighted, patented, and taken away. Your freedom will be banished; our freedom will be destroyed.
I invite all of you to review your purpose at University. Have you not come to make a scientific contribution to the people? Of course, you might be pursuing a proud career; and cannot wait for the day you will be cleared to arrive at the land of monetary rewards. The question is, will you give up the *faint* issue of freedom for a banana?
Talk to your supervisor, your instructor, your project manager and whom you must if it has to be dealt with. Tell them that you demand the project to be given away to the people which it was meant for. If it's software, put it on the net with a free license; if it's something else, work out a way to prevent it from being compromised. Advise them thoroughly the use and correctness of keeping things open and free. Give examples from the software world. There are lots of resources on how to conduct such advocacy.
When I asked RMS what students working on proprietary projects should do, he told strictly (along the lines of) "Ask your project manager to put it under GPL. Tell them that you will stop working if they don't." If you care about your freedoms as much as RMS does, do so. When necessary, take every measure you can.
Doing such will prove how much you are committed to the true spirit of University. I freed the project I worked on, (a medical comms&imaging lib) and so can you.
Happy Hacking!
Thoughts about scientific programming (Score:1)
As a scienitist writing programs for solving the molecular structure of protiens (no, not one of the famous programs ;-( ) I would like to share my thoughts on the issue.
First of all, in protein crytallography the best know programs are free (CCP 4), almost free (O) or previously free (XPlor). CCP 4 is a collection of programs, donated by various researchers from all over the world, mainly written in Fortran. O is a protein viewing program, first written for SGI's, but now ported to Linux as well. XPlor was (is) a very powerful program that was developed at a university and made available for free. Later it was bought by MSI (if I am not mistaken) and now is commercial package.
The biggest problem is that the scientists who develop the methods for solving problems (in this case determining the molecular structure) are often quite adept at using computers but lack formal training as programmers. This usually leads to programs that work, but are hard to maintain, port or extend. My first programs are perfect illustrations of this. Furthermore a user friendly presentation is often the last thing on the programmers mind.
This gives commercial companies the chance to step in and use the ideas from other programs, which are usually publiced in the literature. This makes for easy to use, comfortable programs that add some extra value.
Conclusions? I'm not sure I have any, but it seems to me that transforming the ideas from the scientists to something that the general public can use, you either need a commercial input, for beter or for worse, or a big rethinking of the way the academics work. Off course a brilliant scientist who is also a great programmer wouldn't hurt either.
Your gene chip story... (Score:1)
Academa and Public Contact (Score:1)
*Sigh*. There was a day when companies often hired researchers to pursue topics "of interest", but gave them little oversight. A lot of great things came out of these labs. For example:
Academia has also produced a lot of interesting software and other products, but most academic research (at least the stuff I was involved in) didn't focus on "producing a product".
The days of companies hiring researchers and providing grants seems to be over. Companies now seem obsessed with getting results from current technology without funding other basic research efforts. There is just a lack of *patience* out there that has produced all this great stuff. (I don't think a Thompson/Ritchie would just be allowed to come up with a new operating system anymore. Their assignment would probably be something more like: "Just patch up Multics. We don't have the budget to pursue anything else."
I think the best axiom I've heard is "Genius happens on its own time." It's too bad that companies don't recognize this anymore.
Open Source Scientific software (Score:1)
I am a bioinformaticist who is involved with a number of projects (most peripherally). Our aim is to provide tools that work for those that need them, so we GPL or LGPL almost everything. One spinoff of the major package I am involved with is that instead of paying a huge per processor fee for a package that is closed and requires expensive hardware to run, I can now put out a better package that is modifyable and extensible on a larger number of machines, each of which is far cheaper. Happy? ask my users in six months.
Progress? Standing on the shoulders of giants is a good way to get to see further. Before we had the OS package (EMBOSS [sanger.ac.uk] for the interested) anyone wanting to write a new package had to start from scratch. Now, you just copy the bits that do what you want from the existing source, write a couple of new functions and have a new application in a day or two. With good design it is on the web based interface before the coding is even finished!!.
I expect a scientist saying 'I used this program' when they publish a paper to make that code available to other scientists to try to repeat the results and audit the accuracy of the work. It is understandable and acceptable to licence things to protect the original authors investment, but that does not mean closed source.
Enough ranting. Support your local open source scientists. EMBOSS, BioPerl, BioJava and so on.. That way we ALL get better tools to do better work. And the kudos go to the ones that dream up the best tools and ways to approach things.
Universities are getting more competitive (Score:2)
Re:In the end (Score:2)
The reason I'm thinking Government involvement is that they can cast a much wider net.
My thought would be for a system whereby you are given a, say, $70,000 (after tax) per year grant, no strings attached. All you'd need to do is produce a specification and a target userbase, with renewal of the grant subject to you providing a copy of the source, full documentation, an assessment as to how the target userbase has been affected, and a specification of what you plan to do next.
The idea would be to induce people to produce code which scratched an itch. If you can find an itch and scratch it, you'd get a livable grant. For people living in rural areas, or outside of the "technical hubs", this would provide a decent starting point to do a mix of pure and applied research, under conditions which -encourage-, rather than suppress, originality and creativity.
Re:The Funniest Line :) (Score:2)
Dos 3.x, Desqview, Turbo Debugger AND Borland Turbo Fscking C!!!!! All running on an 8 MHz Z-286 with an ENTIRE 768 Kbytes of RAM. Man, I could do ANYTHING (up to 640K of course). With overlays! Until along came Excel, like the angel with the flaming sword barring the gates to Eden. And, that was the end of all that. Oh well: head for the Penguin, it'll be better than it was, and free, all free...
"C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when you do it blows your whole leg off."
A researcher's perspective (Score:2)
But we don't - all our software is released under a Free (ais) license. Why not? First, because the aforementioned oil companies are the ones that provide for most of our funding in the first place; second, because just as I just finished integrating a GPL'd FFT package from another research institute into our codebase, other people elsewhere may as well find enough use for our software that they might modify it and improve it. In short, we all benefit from open scientific software. The same case can be made, I think, for open software in all other research fields. Maybe, in due time, these IP-friendly research corporations will understand this and adopt an open model as well, not only for software but for all other fruits of research.
(On a side note: right now the lab is still mostly a Sun/Solaris shop; we've got an old DEC box and a Big Mothahfuckah SGI, but we're progressively migrating to Linux. If the proposed law to enforce preferential use of Free Software in public institutions is passed, we'll probably end up as a Linux shop (except for the SGI, which still has at least a few years ahead of it). This shift is expected to save IMPA a six-digit figure in the next decade.)
The Answer... (Score:1)
The answer to the problem is out there - for 20 years.
It's the MIT "construction".
Professors at MIT were not only allowed, but URGED to spend up to 20% of their time in the commercial world.
That means consulting, money generating activities in commercial companies,
(are there non-comercial companies ? )
and even starting their own company.
So there was no need for Negroponte, Minsky [add more names here] to leave the university to make more bucks.
Same for a dozen people you ALL know by their names.
(There is however a need for ex-soviet nuclear scientists to get a payraise from whoever...)
> it is crucial that the not-for-profit motive should be respected
> when the needs of research communities are best served in this way.
First, what is this "not-for-profit motive" ?
You have the skills, tools and time to do something new.
You feel the need, that you should contribute something to this world.
Second, what are "the needs of research communities" ?
A scientist will see that need.
It sure is not "Instant Messaging".
It's gopher, archie, ftp, a browser, email.
Like Eudora.
Eudora was and still is written/maintained by someone at NASA.
My LAN uses an
ethernet driver
developed by D. Becker, again NASA.
My email-client is
PINE,
University of Washington.
Now do these folks have nothing better to do ? Nope.
But they spend time - often unpaid overtime - because they feel the need to contribute something.
It's fine, that at least someone else pointed out again,
that
"THE WEB"
is not a US thing, but the outcome of a Switzerland research team.
So it's not me again telling you that THE WEB is a child of CERN.
(I'm just telling you again, right ? )
> The scrappy, early 'Mosaic' browser designed
> at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of
> Illinois only took off when some of the scientists who invented it
> went on to set up Netscape.
That's not true.
Mosaic was up and running BEFORE there was Netscape.
I personally saw and used it in the early 90s.
What the author wants to tell us here,
is that without money, no real scientist would give something to the world (and not just to his company).
> the abuse of commercial monopolies is also too evident, with
> much of the world having been held hostage
> to the dismal operating system DOS for more than a decade.
That's offtopic.
DOS is not a scientific thing.
When Bill Gates bought the code for DOS from someone he knew, for a few bucks,
and sold it to IBM, he made it [for himself] forever.
If a company like MS has no competition, what's wrong with that ?
If APPLE would have had the bucks, Gates got from IBM, we might all use MAC boxes.
If no-one would have tried to bring up a car factory,
we would all drive FORD's. (Yeah, not the black T model, okay.)
That's life.
At least on your planet.
> the continuation of the open spirit in the tradition of Internet pioneers.
I'm one of them, but I will die sooner or later.
I see it here on Slashdot since I joined (not long ago),
there are very very few "Internet pioneers" here.
+++ Folks, these pioneers are 40 to 50+ years old. You tend not to bond with them. +++
So what I'm doing is to slowly quit, doing research on my own.
My new stuff won't get published.
+++ BECAUSE if I would, I'd receive emails telling me what to do better by folks who are into computing for some 5 years.
In the 80's and early 90's it was different.
> Linux operating system developed by Linus Benedict Torvalds
> [snip] as a 'hobby' -- which IBM last week decided to put at the core of its hardware
> plans.
> Because the code is not proprietary, it is being built on and debugged by
> an army of amateur developers worldwide, many of them academic scientists.
> In short, amateur software developers are playing a key role in keeping systems open.
+++++++++ WHAT ?????? +++++++++++
Unpaid developers are keeping systems open ?
IBM could do the same if they wanted to.
Who get's the money ???
IBM
Who worked on what IBM makes money with ???
Unpaid software developers.
> Because the code is not proprietary
it is abused by a comercial company.
Hands up Everybody,
who think that IBM will "pay back" and release their OS for FREE,
the same way these "army of amateur developers" did.
Thanks for your time reading this,
george./
Re:The issue is compensation (Score:2)
Unfortunately, there's a fundamental clash between money and research that usually ends up getting in the way. Most research costs quite a bit of money, which doesn't just come out of thin air. The public is more interested in seeing their hard earned tax dollars go to something more tangible (to them, at least) than scientific research, so government funding has declined over the years. Someone has to pony up the dough for researchers to do what they love, and the private sector's got loads of it.
There's also the internal politics of universities and such than can get in the way. They can be quite irratating, especially in a place that should ideally be apolitical. Having to put up with that AND a shrinking budget can be too much for many researchers to handle. At least in private industry they're likely to be paid well and have access to equipment they need to perform their research.
Anyways, I realized this while in school and decided to bail out of science. The prospect of working in private industry doesn't really appeal to me (as a researcher, anyways), and I don't want to end up stuck in a dull research position at some university where I have to scramble to get a measly few bucks for my research. Now I'm working for a software company, and though I know it's not what I really want to do, it is quite challenging, I enjoy it, and there's no ambiguity about what I'm here for: better cash for my trouble.
Dave
Symbiosis (Score:3)
Corporations spend millions to fund research programs which make scientific discoveries and develop new areas of knowledge. Why? Because, eventually, that knowledge will allow them to engineer products which make them money and benefit all of us.
To insist that corporations not use the fruits of that research is to destroy this carefully crafted win/win relationship. If this happens, corporations will form their own private research laboratories and pull their money out of academia. Education as well as research will suffer as a result.
Richard Stallman was ignorant of this delicate balance when he bridled against commercial spinoffs of the MIT AI Lab, such as Symbolics. (His two-year tantrum, in which he desperately tried to put Symbolics out of business by writing free equivalents of its software products, cost him the use of his hands; he developed RSI trying to keep up. The GPL, which Stallman designed to accomplish similar goals, is likewise ill-advised because it turns open source software into a weapon against commercial developers.)
Stallman's spite was, of course, misplaced. The very existence of the academic "sandbox" he enjoyed was due to funding from for-profit companies, and the AI Lab suffered and eventually died when its sponsors perceived that the relationship was no longer symbiotic.
Academic research labs are an artificial environment which is not self-sustaining. They are created explicitly to develop ideas, which means that rewards come from sharing information (publishing) rather than withholding it and from developing and proving the feasibility of new concepts. But they can't exist without support from the "real world" outside, in which intellectual property matters.
Instead of attempting to impose the values of one world upon the other (which hurts both), we must recognize the differences in the "rules" and the symbiosis that exists between the two. Open source is, in essence, an extension of the academic world. To begrudge the output of open source projects to commercial developers -- which is what the GPL does -- is ill advised and ultimately hurts both. The hostility expressed in the above article is destructive and stems from a narrow view which does not account for the existence of these two worlds.
--Brett Glass
Re:Nation of the Internet! (Score:1)
--
Re:OPEN ENERGY (Score:1)
1) Conserve Energy - car pool, walk/bike when possible, etc.
2) Go Electric - buy electric or hybrid cars when they become available; use electric heating instead of gas; and, do your research on your utility (deregulation across the nation, gotta love it). If you don't like your utility, find one you do like, even if it's a hole-in-the-wall operation, and be willing to pay a little more for the type of energy production you prefer.
Disclaimer: I work for a large utility that gets about 70% of its electricity from fossil fuels, though most of that is coal, not oil.
An interesting idea (Score:1)
You would then have a situation that would promote scientific research as companies develope new technology to stay just a little ahead of the competition.
Individuals could make a profit on patents but companies would contribute information to the public. Do the same thing with copyrights. If the artist that creates the material owns it, as opposed by a music/movie studio then he will be able to recieve more incentive.
The RIAA should be behind this since they claim that they are looking out for the best interest of the artits.
We need more money for education (Score:1)
WHY WE SHOULD HUG THE PRIVATE SECTOR (Score:1)
The first option is public funding. This can take several forms, all of which have one thing in common: no one reaps profit from the research, except the beneficiaries of its application. When you sit at home and write freeware or participate in an open-source project, you are publicly funding research in a sense. The project you are participating in costs money, even if you don't shell out a dime, because you are spending time that you could instead be spending holding down a second (or first) job.
A second type of public funding is charitable funding, from nonprofit foundations. Often, however, this money comes with strings attached. Researchers looking at aging might get gobs of cash from nonprofit foundations funded by the geriatric, but with the understanding that the conclusions will help improve some condition or point in a certain direction. In fact, many foundations that fund research select who to fund based on each project's previous results. That means a researcher trying to prove the mental inferiority of blacks (I'm thinking of J. Philippe Rushton [amazon.com] here) is likely to get funding from a foundation with a history of racism [pioneerfund.org] (as he did). Researchers trying to prove that there is a genetic cause for homosexuality will get funded by those with a vested interest in that debate. An organization trying to get funding to search for life beyond Earth [seti.org] will get funding from a group that belives [planetary.org] life is out there. But some dude who wants to figure out what makes a dead frog's legs twitch will probably never find a Deceased Paroxysm Society to fund his work. (This thought consciously echoes jd's thoughtful post [slashdot.org].)
That second type of public funding is, as you might imagine, a little tainted; you are expected to show results for your money. Occasionally, there are some foundations that will fund research without considering results necessary, but these organizations are rare - and for an understandable reason: It is not natural for people to give without expecting something in return. A few very altruistic groups will do so, but it is an unusual trait. Even the patrons and sponsors of history's greatest scientists, like the Medicis who poured rivers of cash into the coffers of Florentine researchers and artists, got paid back in a currency they highly valued: social prestige. What could be snazzier than letting the world know that you've got crazy ol' Leonardo downstairs writing backwards and drawing flying machines?
Our natural reticence for giving without expecting to receive is the reason for the third type of public funding: taxes. Taxes are a form of coercion, but often a forgiveable one. We all pay for things that will benefit all of us, or at least many of us. The mail and the military and Medicare.
But government - this should surprise no one - is not constituted of impartial wise men who are unfallible judges of the public good. Funding for research projects is the result of a treacherous process of application, rejection and (frankly) supplication. (Some of us have to use a similar process to get a date.)
The scientific projects that government chooses to fund are very selectively chosen, since government has limited funds. (It is good that government has limited funds, since that means we have kept more of our own money.) So the government will fund research that improves our collective national security - the Manhattan Project, the current missile defense projects, and even DARPANET all come to mind. The government will also fund research that improves the general welfare of the population - hence, the Genome Project and the work of the CDC. Some projects have switched between those two categories: the race to space was well-funded at first because it served national security interests; today, it only gets money because NASA points out the many mundane benefits of our space endeavors.
Do we really want government to do much more than that? Is is wise for us to allow government the power to fund whichever projects it wishes? Hasn't the long and sorry history of government abuse shown us that we should remove power from the hands of government whenever possible? And isn't this especially true in the arena of science and technology, because progress in those fields yield inordinate power - which government cannot be trusted to safeguard? Government's history of using new technologies to preserve and entrench its own power has led James Burke (among others) to describe the Internet's creation as fortuitous and accidental.
Government's appropriate role is to perform those tasks that we cannot perform ourselves. And as the innovations of private industry in the last century have shown, each day there are fewer things we cannot do ourselves; in many regards our need for government is diminishing.
And indeed, none of the three types of public funding I described above work well. Personal, sacrificial public funding leaves you with no food on your table. (Hence the completely understandable buyouts of Slashdot and l0pht.) Funding from foundations is too rare, and often tainted by bias. And government funding - which has admittedly led to many of our greatest scientific and technological triumphs - lends itself to abuse, so it should be spared as often as possible.
What about private funding, then? Strident private corporations often have the courage to tread where public foundations cannot - and for an obvious reason: while a foundation cannot hope to make serious profit from the research it funds, privately funded research can make some moolah. An side benefit of private research, then, is that it acts as a creator of wealth. If you need evidence of the positive effects of privately-funded research, all you need do is look around you. For that matter, look right in front of you: affordable and usable computers are preponderant today only because of the competition fostered by private innovation.
The last line of the article above clucks that we should despair if "science, and if biology in particular, became a victim of new monopolies." Quite right: but corporations are not all monopolies . That's one place where government's rod should not be spared; it should aggressively act to increase competition by refusing to suffer a monopolized marketplace.
We needn't sob when some inventor or innovator "caves in" to the "profit motive." We should cheer him on, since it means he has developed an idea which intrigues people enough that they are willing to pay for it. (And more importantly, he can afford to feed himself.)
I'd like to respond to a few arguments made by others in previous postings. First, Idrach wrote [slashdot.org] that "We know that proper scientific research can be done with free software - Seti At Home." Well that's simply not true; while the software is free on our end, it was created by the hard work of programmers who got paid, and their paychecks came from somewhere. (I already wrote about Seti above.)
zyqqh wrote [slashdot.org] that he would like to see "the free-market philosophy be limited when it comes to pursuit of knowledge. As long as universities prosper, we will see good research, which doesn't get hogged by some corporation, and which remains in the public domain for the good of mankind." Well, you have very little to worry about, because most universities are corporations and businesses funded by the cash flow of undergrad tuition and endowments paid for by benefactors. But even so, is it better to keep knowledge hermetically sealed in institutions of higher learning? Isn't it better to release that knowledge into the frothy and unpredictable arena of profiteering savages - who will fight over it and make it useful? Imagine if Google (or any of the other Internet start-ups that began in schools) had remained the profitless property of the universities that birthed them. What reason would Stanford have to continue operating Google after the first few years? But transition it into the marketplace, and it will be available for longer, and will be forced to improve.
I've already responded to a number of the assertions in vlax's well-considered post [slashdot.org], I'd just like to say a little more. First, it is false that science can't function in secret. Why do you say that? Even publicly funded research can happen in secret, like the Manhattan Project and any number of government endeavors of which we only hear snippets. As for the dig at Hawking, Gould and others getting rich from their research (or rather, its popularization), so what? Good for them. I don't see how their money decreases the legitimacy of their work. I may have missed your point.
Finally, I'd like to back-track a little bit. Despite everything I said, there are still instances where public funding is wholly appropriate. I strongly believe government funding should continue to go to projects which we cannot ourselves do - which is why I am disturbed by the current lack of interest in the space program. What's more, I believe that a mix of private and public funding has great potential, especially in the spectacular race to complete mapping the three billion human gene sequences.
And I am also extremely disturbed by the ability of companies to turn bits and pieces of nature into proprietary information. Not just Celera [bbc.co.uk] (as was mentioned in the parent article), but Human Genome Sciences [wired.com], Incyte [wired.com] and others are applying for patents on genes.
This is an echo of the same problem facing those involved in the copyright debate today: we have to strike a balance between protecting the public's right to have innovation and competition, and protecting the companies' right to make a buck off their work. There are no easy solutions here, except perhaps offering a special class of short-term patents that expire after a set number of years, allowing companies to deservedly profit from their work and investment.
The reckless granting of patents and copyrights, and the occasional monopolistic corporation, must not mislead us into believing corporate science is evil. Public funding is sparse, and occasionally dangerous. Far better to get our money from the deep pockets of investors willing to take a risk than to suckle at the teat of a possibly pernicious government.
I am interested in hearing your thoughts.
A. Keiper [mailto]
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society [tecsoc.org]
It's not corporate vs. university. (Score:2)
It is both universities and corporations that are holding on more tightly to intellectual property, in the belief that this is a way in which they can boost revenues. And the huge amounts of money that have been flowing into startups, plus the change in patent practices, are fueling the greed. (Sadly, the patent system is like the prisoner's dilemma: if every company stopped submitting software patents, most people would be better off, but if any particular company stops unilaterally, they'll lose big.)
The way to stem the tide is not to keep researchers out of companies, but to get open source friendly researchers into companies. Furthermore, the factors that have led to these kinds of changes need to be addressed; foremost, the patent system needs to be reformed, and the strongest arguments for reform can be made from a corporate environment.
Universities and government labs also need significant reform: increasingly, there seems to be an enmeshing of university business interests, commercial interests of professors, and students who get caught in the middle. Over the years, I have seen a tightening of regulations and enforcement, and if you are a student, you may well want to check your contract with the university: the open source project you are working on may well legally belong to them.
So, advocate open source and argue against software patents wherever you are. But don't shun working for corporations: if you do, all that you will accomplish is that the people with the money and connections are the ones that aren't interested in open source. As for startup money drawing people away from research careers, that's a big concern, but what can you do about it?
Re:In the end (Score:1)
SGI has a R&D group, who also focus on this, with things like HylaFax and the haberli imaging stuff coming from there. Witness the continued support of things like STL (thanks Alex Stepanov).
Yep, it's not perfect, but it's there, if you're willing to look for it
Enough with the famine routine! (Score:4)
The number of people who died under Stalin's rule has absolutely no relevance to public funding of universities. If you want to argue for the superiority of private funding, go ahead, but don't pull out this red herring of equating anything that could be described as "socialized" with Stalinist oligarchy. You may not like Canada's socialized medical insurance system (it is not "socialized medicine," as doctors are still more often than not in private practice), but it has demonstrably not led to widespread famine and forced labor camps. And, in practice, only the purest of libertarians complains about the government structures that help business in the United states, from sugar subsidies to below-market logging in national forests, from local "incentives" to companies and sports teams to the S&L bailout.
I know it's heretical to suggest in this day and age that public institutions, sometimes even in the form of (gasp) Big Government, can actually do some things better than companies can, but sometimes that's hard to dispute--you can go back to the railroads, and a little more recently to the analog phone system. These were public-private partnerships because there is little economic justification for companies to pursue plans that will not pay off for a decade (or more).
If innovation is effectively privatized, there wouldn't be things like the World Wide Web. And Monsanto was a much more chilling example to have picked than I suspect you intended. Perhaps the idea of companies patenting crops that indigenous farmers have been planting for thousands of years and then charging the farmers to keep planting those crops doesn't bother you. Maybe the idea of your own genes being patented by a company--giving them control over not only research but applications (like disease treatments) involving the genes they "own"--doesn't bother you, either. It bothers me, though. It bothers me a lot.
Re:Symbiosis (Score:1)
Your perceptions of Stallman, the GPL and history are warped. Symbolics and other companies didn't beging pulling out of academia because of anything Stallman did. They did it because they were greedy and thought they could get away with using the research without paying. It is this attitude that is responsible for destroying the balance of corporate and academic cooperation. This "profit-motive" without responsibility doesn't benefit anyone except the greedy and short-sighted shareholders of these companies.
The GPL does not deny corporations access to the software it covers, but it does attempt to restore that balance by forcing companies to play fair. Specifically, they can use and sell work they haven't done, but they must not restrict the rights of their customers, or hide their improvements from the rest of the community. This is the real win/win symbiosis, as companies like Cygnus, RedHat and VA/Linux have discovered. A true understanding of the "rules" should lead to respect for the GPL and the responsible business models it seeks to promote.
Sorry Brett (Score:2)
As soon as for-profit companies stepped in, the thriving community of hackers that existed in the MIT AI Lab was fragmented and eventually destroyed by the IP requirements of the for-profit companies, notably Symbolics which hired away most of the hackers and silenced them with NDAs.
Only after the MIT AI Lab was already destroyed did Stallman try to revenge himself on Symbolics. He did this through a burst of reverse engineering and singlehandedly kept pace with an entire team of the world's best hackers (at Symbolics), impressing the hell out of them. He succeeded in keeping up while reengineering everything Symbolics did, he didn't just 'try'. The products involved were LISP machines, which grew from concepts originally developed within the AI Lab, so it's not like Stallman had no experience with this- Symbolics had basically scorched the earth of _his_ turf, but everything they did was well within his experience and background. (EMACS is strongly LISP based)
The GPL prevents any such situation from recurring- it bars nobody from participating (despite many attempts to add 'except Microsoft can't use my code!' clauses) and the single condition it imposes is that the code licensed under the GPL remains forever open for discussion and exchange. It does nothing else, and can only be considered a weapon if you expect commercial developers to be allowed to take OTHER PEOPLE'S work away from them, which seems an unusual position.
There is no symbiosis between academia and the commercial world. The best that can be expected is armed truce- masters of this art, such as Nicholas Negroponte and his Media Lab, make it look easy, but practice a level of diplomacy as dangerous and tricky as full-on political diplomacy. Negroponte once explained his technique like this: when a company funded research it was made available to all. No companies like this, so Negroponte would say, "Okay, we'll do it your way. And when you come to see your research, we'll blindfold you and lead you right to it. There's 20 billion dollars of other research going on here that you could be seeing, but you won't see any of it. And then when you're done we'll blindfold you again and take you right back out. It's your choice."
That is 'symbiosis'? To me it sounds like power politics and the cunning balancing of totally incompatible interests. Calling it symbiosis is woefully understating the brilliance of the negotiating skills and determination of people like Negroponte, who truly understand the game they are playing- which is more than I can say for you.
Congratulations, Brett. I've never read a post so breathtakingly wrong! :)
Re:$120K a year isn't an incentive? (Score:2)
Most aren't. Which typical midwestern university pays over $100K for most of its profs?
A google search turns up:
Southwest Missouri State University at http://www.smsu.edu/OIR/factbook/faculty_and_staf
The average salary of all nine-month instructional staff for 1999-2000 was $48,889.
University of Nevada: http://www.unlv.edu/ssasc/st4dft.html
University: UNLV UNR
Professor: $78,700 $81,900
Associate Professor: $59,500 $60,500
Assistant Professor: $46,800 $49,000
About 1/3 of profs there are fully tenured - all others are associates or assistant profs.
Kansas State: http://collegian.ksu.edu/issues/v102/sp/n109/news
The average salary of a tenured professor is about $48,000 (...) According to the Office of Institutional Research at Iowa State University, the average salary of a full professor at ISU for the 1996-97 academic year was about $73,000. (...) Salaries at the University of Colorado-Boulder are also greater than those at K-State. UCB Office of Budget and Planning reported an average professor salary of $71,627 for the 1995-96 year.
Remember once again, few people get full tenure.
Northern Kentucky University:
http://www.nku.edu/~nku01/ngl9596e.html#avgsal
Average salary including the law school in 1995-6: $42,416/yr.
In fact, go to http://www.econ.umn.edu/~cswan/AAUP/Spring96.html and check out the 1996 pay scale for top research universities. A full prof at Stanford, Yale, Harvard and CalTech made just over $100,000 per year. At Stanford and CalTech, that's a comfortable middle class living. (Move out here if you don't believe me.) Adjuncts and Associates don't even get close to that.
Re:but how to put food on the table? (Score:1)
The model which has been followed by many has been that of selling services, not product. The service most companies tend to sell is support. So, when you have your packaged Widget, on the shelf - the $75.00 isn't $75.00 for the Widget product, but is instead, say 60 days of free telephone help/support calls - to get it installed/working/etc. Maybe you sell the Widget for $500.00, and include a training course (on video, or in a classroom setting) on how to install and use the widget.
Meantime, you Open Source the Widget under the GPL, and provide it to anyone who asks for it, by whatever means you can to get it to them (in other words, if they don't have an internet connection, maybe you mail them a CD or something). However, by getting it free, they won't get ANY support - at all. They would have to learn how to do it themselves, or seek out someone else and pay them.
Another "service" would be custom mods for individual customers - say a customer wanted you to add feature "x" to the Widget - well, they would have to pay you - oh, say, $25.00 to do that. You add it, and everyone else would get the new mod free. By the same token, that client could get other's mods - so they shouldn't feel indignent about paying you to make the mod.
On top of all this, you may even get free mods sent to you, or updates, or code fixes - since the code would be out there for those enterprising individuals to change, and give those mods back, under the GPL.
These are just a few ideas - I have heard of many more, just look around on the net for them!
Re:Nation of the Internet! (Score:1)
Business model unproven for software (Score:2)
Second, support is expensive. Minimum wage laws, overhead, mandatory benefits, training costs, and high turnover make it difficult to do technical support at a price consumers are willing to pay.
Third, remote support is difficult and time-consuming. As anyone who has done tech support knows, most computer users do not know the names of the items they see on their screens -- or even that they have names. Absent a remote control system (which may not work if the machine is disabled), even an expert technical support staffer can take hours to diagnose a simple problem on the phone with a customer.
Red Hat, the "poster child" for distributors of GPLed software, has lost millions of dollars per employee over its lifetime.
This is why Red Hat wrote, in its most recent Form 10-Q [sec.gov]:
OUR BUSINESS MAY NOT SUCCEED BECAUSE OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE BUSINESS MODELS ARE UNPROVEN
We have not demonstrated the success of our open source business model, which gives our customers the right freely to copy and distribute our software. No other company has built a successful open source business. Few open source software products have gained widespread commercial acceptance partly due to the lack of viable open source industry participants to offer adequate service and support on a long term basis. In addition, open source vendors are not able to provide industry standard warranties and indemnities for their products, since these products have been developed largely by independent parties over whom open source vendors exercise no control or supervision. If open source software should fail to gain widespread commercial acceptance, we would not be able to sustain our revenue growth and our business could fail.
This is not surprising. What's more, due to the GPL, Red Hat does not even own its own products free and clear! In fact, it has virtually no assets. No assets? No profits? This doesn't paint a very promising picture.
And what about the future? Again, let's hear the story straight from the horse's mouth. Red Hat says that it's not sure it will ever make money:
WE EXPECT TO INCUR SUBSTANTIAL LOSSES FOR THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE
We have incurred operating losses in four of our previous five fiscal years, including our most recent fiscal year ended February 28, 1999, as well as in the nine months ended November 30, 1999. We expect to incur significant losses for the foreseeable future, as we substantially increase our sales and marketing, research and development and administrative expenses. In addition, we are investing considerable resources in our web initiatives and to expand our professional services offerings. As a result, we cannot be certain when or if we will achieve sustained profitability. Failure to become and remain profitable may adversely affect the market price of our common stock and our ability to raise capital and continue operations. See "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations--Overview", "--Results of Operations" and "--Liquidity and Capital Resources".
None of this should be surprising. The purpose of the GPL is not to enable software businesses but to destroy them. This was its explicit intent, and this is what it's doing. If you hope to make any money, better make it by buying and selling stock and taking advantage of gullible investors. You won't make it on GPLed software.
--Brett Glass
My "well-considered" post (Score:2)
In the long run, science can't prosper without review by other scientists. It's far too easy for one research team to believe they are on the track of something that doesn't really exist. In the end, the process of peer review and disemmination is what prevents calamities like Lysenkoism.
The Manhattan project used physics that was already well-known. It sought techniques for the specific application of that physics. Uranium was first split in a public lab, and the physics of mass-energy conversion were as well-known to German physicists as to American ones. And lastly, the Manhattan project did not continue to produce new science for very long. It ended with the war and most of its participants went back to their labs to do science the old-fashioned way.
No classified lab has ever started a revolution in science, and only occaisionally in engineering, but frankly, I disagree with the high level of secrecy of DOE and DOD research. So does much of the DOE and DOD - ARPA projects are rarely secret, and the Defense department funds a great deal of public research because they know that there is more to gain in open science than there is to loose.
Closed science is the enemy, not corporations, or even corporate research. It is the culture of secrecy that springs up when science ceases to be about prestige and becomes a pursuit of short-term profit.
Re:$120K a year isn't an incentive? (Score:1)
My advisor is in Yale with 30+ years tenure. He earned only around $100 K and that's considered quite high in our school.
However, the problem is not the professors. It's those younger scientists. The chance of getting full tenure is very slim nowaday.. And your salary will remain below $40K for more than ten year after PhD graduation, with no job security. And if you don't get professorship after ten year, your whole future is almost basically gone. Most institutes have a tendency of biasing against older scientists when they are recruiting faculty.
$40 K is not that bad if you are comparing it with the majority of the society. But if you compare the salary and prospect with alternatives in industry, IT or some business consulting firms (who are activiely recruiting PhD graduate). Pure scientific research can really look like stupid career path.
Bzzzt. Wrong on MANY points. (Score:2)
Only partially. There was private funding as well. And that private funding increased when LMI and Symbolics were formed.
Government funding of research that can be commercially exploited is a good thing as well. The public has benefited greatly from spinoffs of NASA technology, for example.
The far worse situation occurs when companies do not form to bring the fruits of research to the rest of the world. Who is going to build the machines that the academics have been funded to conceive of? Not the schools, but private enterprise. It's an important part of the picture.
As soon as for-profit companies stepped in, the thriving community of hackers that existed in the MIT AI Lab was fragmented and eventually destroyed by the IP requirements of the for-profit companies, notably Symbolics which hired away most of the hackers and silenced them with NDAs.
And would you have had the hackers permanently indentured at the AI Lab? Stallman would have. In fact, the stated intent of the GPL was to destroy jobs that paid better than the slave wages earned by grad students in the MIT AI Lab.
When it came time for commercial development of the ideas which had been developed there, it was only natural that many of them would want to take part in that. Academics frequently hold jobs both in academia and in private companies, and/or go back and forth between the two. However, by attempting to sabotage the commercial endeavors, Stallman alienated the companies that might otherwise have supported continued research at the Lab. No wonder they weren't cooperative! Stallman was using MIT's money and facilities in an attempt to destroy their businesses.
Only after the MIT AI Lab was already destroyed did Stallman try to revenge himself on Symbolics.
According to the account he told to Steven Levy, who was researching the book "Hackers," he started exacting "revenge" on people who disagreed with him far earlier than that. Levy relates that Stallman refused to provide EMACS software -- which he was being paid by MIT to write! -- to users on the Computer Science department's systems. Why? Because they used passwords to keep their machines from being broken into from across the ARPANet. Yes, that's right; Stallman was so radically opposed to the notion of computer security that he committed "violence" (his own word!) against people who wanted to secure their systems against attacks from the outside.
He did this through a burst of reverse engineering and singlehandedly kept pace with an entire team of the world's best hackers (at Symbolics), impressing the hell out of them. He succeeded in keeping up while reengineering everything Symbolics did, he didn't just 'try'.
It's not clear that he actually succeeded, since of course it was not in the interest of the Symbolics employees to correct his mistakes or omissions.
What success Stallman did enjoy was likely due to the fact that reverse engineering is much easier than engineering a feature from scratch. Copying is always an order of magnitude easier than producing the original work. Being a crazed, totally obsessed individual with no life, it's no wonder that Stallman could reimplement much of that they'd done.
The GPL prevents any such situation from recurring-
Not so. It is very easy to do clean room reverse engineering on GPLed code. What the GPL does do, however, is sabotage young companies and programmers with promising ideas.
it bars nobody from participating
Not true. It prohibits commercial developers from making use of open source without giving away the farm.
(despite many attempts to add 'except Microsoft can't use my code!' clauses) and the single condition it imposes is that the code licensed under the GPL remains forever open for discussion and exchange. It does nothing else,
Bull. It ensures that programmers cannot make a living by licensing their work. Stallman says explicitly, in The GNU Manifesto, that this is what the GPL does and is designed to do.
and can only be considered a weapon if you expect commercial developers to be allowed to take OTHER PEOPLE'S work away from them,
Not so. It is a weapon because it undermines commercial developers' work. Anyone can use GPLed code in the way which most benefits him or her -- except commercial developers. Even though the author of GPLed code has forfeited any prospect of ever making a single penny from the code, and has in effect given the code away to everyone else in the world except those developers. This isn't ethical; it's a game of "keep-away."
There is no symbiosis between academia and the commercial world.
It's a good thing that universities and companies disagree with this stance. If they embraced it, a lot would be lost on both sides. Just as a treasure is lost whenever another a line of code falls under the vicious, viral, unethical GPL.
--Brett
Re:Sorry Brett (Score:1)
> recurring- it bars nobody from participating
> (despite many attempts to add 'except Microsoft
> can't use my code!' clauses) and the single
> condition it imposes is that the code licensed > under the GPL remains forever open for
> discussion and exchange.
If you think thats the single condition it imposes, I suggest you read it again. You forgot about the part where it infects every piece of code that comes near it with the same properties. What you're actually describing is the BSD license...a truely free license.
Re:Symbiosis (Score:2)
Not true. They paid MIT and give it free use of their software and equipment. However, by rights, the research should have been available to the world for free since it was largely government-funded.
The GPL does not deny corporations access to the software it covers,
Wrong. The GPL denies not only corporations but all developers access to the software for the purpose of building on it and making a reasonable living. The people most hurt by the GPL are not large corporations but smaller companies that might challenge them. I'm sure that Microsoft loves the GPL, because it is about to wipe out Be.
--Brett Glass
Re:My "well-considered" post (Score:1)
I also disagree with your major point about the value of a science based on prestige over a science based on profit. While your reference to Lysenkoism is appreciated, it is important to remember what Kuhn showed us: that the prestige-based practice of science has, on more than one occasion, led to a stifling of innovation. Certainly there are great incentives and enticements to achieve in science based on prestige - such as enthronement in the ranks of the Founders' Club, along with the Father of Electromagnetism (Faraday), the Father of Chemistry (Lavoisier), and the Father of the Information Superhighway (Gore). Or even imagine the prestige of having something named after you: like the Newtonian Era, Euclidean geometry, Boolean algebra, Brownian motion, the Richter scale, the coulomb, degrees Fahrenheit, the Rorschach test, the Hertzsprung-Russell (H-R) diagram, Avogadro's number, the Moho (Mohorovièiæ) discontinuity, and the Chandrasekhar limit.
But each of those names carries with it an aura of authority given by the scientific community that can become inappropriately sanctified, thereby undermining the insights of those who challenge scientific doctrine. That's why science is so conservative a practice; the power of prestige and priority makes radical departures unwelcome.
I wonder what you think of the proposal I ended my excessively long rant with: designating a special class of patent to allow temporary profit.
Yours,
A. Keiper [mailto]
My, my! (Score:2)
"In fact, the stated intent of the GPL was to destroy jobs that paid better than the slave wages earned by grad students in the MIT AI Lab."
How quaint! And to think that I believed the GPL was for taking coding ideas and forcibly preventing them from being filched and made proprietary by people like you. Shocked, I am, to learn that 'Saint Ignatius's only real interest is in destroying jobs! Could you have misheard him? Maybe he wants to destroy Wozniak instead ;)
"Levy relates that Stallman refused to provide EMACS software -- which he was being paid by MIT to write! -- to users on the Computer Science department's systems. Why? Because they used passwords to keep their machines from being broken into from across the ARPANet."
It may have escaped your attention, but at the time, the AI lab did not USE passwords. At the time, people were evolving ways of functioning in 'electronic society' without locks and passwords and barriers, and it actually worked, because people felt the obligation to behave civilly, given the freedom to do harm. The use of passwords you cite was not business as usual, but the imposition of a new set of regulations which assumed anyone with the freedom to do harm would obviously do it, and arranged matters so nobody had that freedom. I realise that you think this is the only way the world can work. We'll never know now, will we? Because RMS failed in his attempt to force the issue, and did not convince the world that establishing social expectations was the way to handle 'security'. (Also, it's interesting to note how you fulminate against anyone interfering with a business-employed coder's right to withhold their code from others if they wish, but won't accept RMS's academia-funded right to withhold EMACS from others as he wished. So if you are a business, you get to do whatever you want, but if you are academic or an OSS type you are obliged to be exploited and trod upon?)
"What the GPL does do, however, is sabotage young companies and programmers with promising ideas."
The _order_ you put that in is interesting, but the claim makes no sense whatsoever. Surely a young company with programmers and promising ideas is free to do whatever it wants, within reason? Do you think a good idea cannot compete against a GPLed implementation of 'cheap imitation' quality? Do you have that little faith in the marketplace that the mere existence of free things terrifies you so? Do you think little elves will sneak into the fine young company under cover of darkness and, cackling malignantly, GPL everything while nobody is looking? You've got some very strange ideas about what the GPL _means_ to a company that wants no part of it. Such as:
"It prohibits commercial developers from making use of open source without giving away the farm."
Why in God's name do you think commercial developers _should_ get to make use of open source? Being a commercial developer usually means proprietary code. Use that. If you must compete and not interact cooperatively with others, come up with your own damn ideas. For _years_ there wasn't a major, public open source movement, and no commercial developers complained about this at all. Nobody objected in the slightest to having to reinvent the wheel behind closed doors, it was a way of life to come up with your own code. Now all of a sudden, OSS is trendy, and suddenly access to other people's code is a _right_?
"Bull. It (the GPL) ensures that programmers cannot make a living by licensing their work."
Nice spin! *clap clap* But of course the key words here are 'BY LICENSING THEIR WORK', and it's most amusing to note how you avoid mentioning this effect only happens to programmers who license under the GPL themselves! You have a real talent for bullshit propaganda, do you work for Mindcraft? The implication of your statement is clearly 'that all programmers are deprived of making a living by the GPL'. The reality, of course, is that programmers can and do make a living by the service they provide (not by any concept of their resulting work as private property)- and that it is ALWAYS up to you the programmer to choose to GPL something or not, and if you don't, all the options of intellectual property licensing remain open to you. In fact they'd be open to you if you GPL, they are just toothless because anyone has the right to have the source of anything you've GPLed. For the programmers who don't GPL, it's even sillier to claim the GPL scorches their earth and ruins their lives and stock options. It has no effect on them at all. Or are all commercial programmers so pathetic that OSS programmers working for free can out-code, out-compete, out-market and out-distribute them? If so, what is your justification for coddling the commercial programmers? Let 'em die! But I am the owner of numerous commercial programs- for instance, I use Photoshop over the GIMP, because Photoshop is _way_ better in my opinion. I think you are being unduly alarmist, behaving like the GPL will kill programmers like the ones who did Photoshop. To compete you have to _compete_, not just own an idea and sit on your ass 'protecting' it...
"It is a weapon because it undermines commercial developers' work. Anyone can use GPLed code in the way which most benefits him or her -- except commercial developers."
Cry me a river. Commercial developers are paid to develop. They have resources which part-time people couldn't begin to dream of. They have extra clout with other commercial developers- when Microsoft talks, Apple listens. When Id talks, Microsoft listens. Interestingly, when the GPL talks, Id listens ;) it would appear that John Carmack can use GPLed code in the way which most benefits him: releasing disused engines so people can play with them and develop things from them, but in such a way that the engine itself cannot be taken and turned into a competing commercial engine to go up against Q3Arena. Bungie has also done this with the Marathon 2 source, recently, also using the GPL. The GPL is _ideal_ for protecting the interests of commercial developers who want to give away their old engines for people to enjoy, but don't want to be bothered supporting them and DON'T want to be seeding another commercial competitor. It's shocking you don't see this considering how common the situation is now.
"This isn't ethical; it's a game of "keep-away.""
This is different from proprietary code exactly how?
"Just as a treasure is lost whenever another a line of code falls under the vicious, viral, unethical GPL."
My. Words fail me. Aside from the fact that this is nonsense, why do you feel that you have any business saying this on Slashdot? I'll give you credit for not preaching to the choir here, but on the other hand you've got to be fscking crazy if you think this argument carries weight here. You're ranting and ignoring the logic of the situation and trying to scare people away from using the GPL, and again I say, why? What on earth about it could be so threatening to you? Are you really that incompetent that you can't compete on grounds of quality, marketing, distribution or trendiness with mere open source software? OSS is like a flood on the rise. It will work its way into all valleys, it will wash away lowlands. If you suck, OSS will bury you: if you make terrific code, it won't be able to touch you unless you want to use it for _your_ purposes like Carmack does. There is no "Can't I just suck in peace without having to compete? I own intellectual property!" option.
OSS is a flood. If you don't want to be part of it, then rise above it. If you won't bother to rise above it, then shut up and drown!
Open Source/Science and RedHat (Score:1)
"My, My!" indeed. (Score:2)
Ad hominem attacks weaken your argument.
I love how people say the GPL 'infects any code that comes near it',
I did not make that assertion. It is, however, true that GPLed code infects any work in which it is included or to which it is linked. This is true regardless of the quantity of GPLed code that is used. This represents an "unconscionable" provision which I believe renders the GPL unenforceable.
for values of 'come near it' that equal 'take GPLed code, read it, copy big chunks of it and use it as the basis of your own thing'.
A loaded and prejudicial interpretation which doesn't square with the arguments that others are making. See above.
Clearly the only ethical choice is to allow people to take everything you do and _not_ ask anything of them in return! furrfu.
In fact, this is the best way to publish open source because it does the maximum amount of good. Since one is forfeiting any opportunity to make money from the code when one publishes it as open source, it is unethical to arbitrarily deny to anyone else the chance to benefit from it. Especially when the intent is to do harm.
How quaint! And to think that I believed the GPL was for taking coding ideas and forcibly preventing them from being filched and made proprietary by people like you. Shocked, I am, to learn that 'Saint Ignatius's only real interest is in destroying jobs! Could you have misheard him? Maybe he wants to destroy Wozniak instead ;)
Apparently, you're not aware of the GPL's history or motivations. The stated purpose of the GPL is to destroy opportunities for programmers to make salaries better than they could make in academia. In The GNU Manifesto, Richard Stallman writes:
It may have escaped your attention, but at the time, the AI lab did not USE passwords.
I know. I visited at the time. However, MIT was putting more and more machines on the ARPANet, and passwords were becoming essential. To deny the need for them was, and is, sheer folly.
At the time, people were evolving ways of functioning in 'electronic society' without locks and passwords and barriers, and it actually worked, because people felt the obligation to behave civilly, given the freedom to do harm.
Unfortunately, as recent developments have shown, that perspective was naive. Allowing strangers even limited access to computers on the network paves the way for denial of service attacks -- such as the ones we've seen in recent weeks -- and worse. And now that important and sensitive communications are routinely sent by e-mail, I doubt that you'd be willing to allow all and sundry to have access to your mailbox.
The use of passwords you cite was not business as usual, but the imposition of a new set of regulations which assumed anyone with the freedom to do harm would obviously do it, and arranged matters so nobody had that freedom.
I see. By analogy, I suppose we should insist that no one should have a lock on his or her door either. Do you lock the door to your house? Do you take the keys out of your car when you park it? Do you lock your bicycle if you ride one? If you truly believe what you say above, you would be hypocritical if you did.
I realise that you think this is the only way the world can work. We'll never know now, will we?
I believe that last week's attacks, plus the recent rash of Web site defacements and credit card number thefts, have settled that question once and for all -- if it was ever a serious question to begin with.
Because RMS failed in his attempt to force the issue,
As he should have. By attempting to force the issue, he was guilty of gross insubordination. Had I been his supervisor, I would have fired him on the spot for endangering MIT's resources and the personal information of its staff, faculty, and students. He was, and is, a dangerous loony.
and did not convince the world that establishing social expectations was the way to handle 'security'.
Of course he didn't; it's a fool's errand. The notion is as absurd as expecting "social expectations" to prevent burglary and other crimes.
(Also, it's interesting to note how you fulminate against anyone interfering with a business-employed coder's right to withhold their code from others if they wish,
Again, an ad hominem attack. The fact is that if a coder is employed by a business, what he creates on the job is the property of that business. And, yes, the business has the right to release that code to the world or not. It's not the programmer's individual decision. By becoming an employee and doing the work on the job in return for a salary, the programmer has agreed willingly to this.
but won't accept RMS's academia-funded right to withhold EMACS from others as he wished. So if you are a business, you get to do whatever you want, but if you are academic or an OSS type you are obliged to be exploited and trod upon?)
RMS was an employee of MIT, and as such the code he created on the school's time and with its equipment was its property. When he agreed to be employed by the University, he agreed willingly to this. He did not have the right to withhold the code from his employer or from parts of the University whose policies he did not like.
The _order_ you put that in is interesting, but the claim makes no sense whatsoever. Surely a young company with programmers and promising ideas is free to do whatever it wants, within reason? Do you think a good idea cannot compete against a GPLed implementation of 'cheap imitation' quality?
Even if the free product is far inferior, it is difficult and sometimes impossible. Microsoft has demonstrated this with EMM386, DoubleSpace, and Internet Explorer.
Do you have that little faith in the marketplace that the mere existence of free things terrifies you so?
Again, an ad hominem attack. The truth has nothing to do with "faith" or with being "terrified." Nor is the existence of things which are available at no cost necessarily destructive. However, the GPL is intended to make it destructive.
Do you think little elves will sneak into the fine young company under cover of darkness and, cackling malignantly, GPL everything while nobody is looking?
Elves are not required. Those who follow the industry may recall that Be, Inc. had problems with GPL infection of its OS kernel not long ago. Richard Stallman in fact advocates the introduction of GPLed code into companies' programs as a way of coercing them to forfeit their intellectual property. (See his essay, Why Software Should Not Have Owners.)
You've got some very strange ideas about what the GPL _means_ to a company that wants no part of it.
Not so. Every assertion I've made is provable via empirical evidence. Even if a software company wants no part of the GPL, it is injured by the destruction of its markets.
Why in God's name do you think commercial developers _should_ get to make use of open source?
Because denying to them -- and them alone -- the use of open source code is an explicit attempt to hurt them. That's why the BSD license is ethical and the GPL is not.
Being a commercial developer usually means proprietary code. Use that.
This argument ignores the obvious: the GPL damages programmers and their livelihoods whether or not they use GPLed code themselves.
If you must compete and not interact cooperatively with others, come up with your own damn ideas.
You appear not to understand intellectual property law. Ideas are protected by patent, not copyright.
For _years_ there wasn't a major, public open source movement, and no commercial developers complained about this at all.
Not true. It was well known that open source code such as BIND, Sendmail, and the BSD TCP/IP stack were available for free to everyone -- including developers. It is the release of GPLed code -- which, actually, is not open source because the GPL discriminates against a field of endeavor -- which hurts developers.
Nobody objected in the slightest to having to reinvent the wheel behind closed doors, it was a way of life to come up with your own code.
Not true. Code reuse has always been an important concept.
Now all of a sudden, OSS is trendy, and suddenly access to other people's code is a _right_?
Stallman, and many of his more fanatic followers, would assert that anyone should have the right to access anyone's code. However, when programs are published as freely redistributable open source, it is unethical to deny the use of the code to developers.
[Several ad hominem attacks deleted here]
Commercial developers are paid to develop. They have resources which part-time people couldn't begin to dream of.
Not true. Many are individual programmers who hope to make a reasonable living -- despite efforts by large corporations such as Microsoft or the FSF to put them out of business via predatory practices. (And, yes, the FSF is a large corporation. It holds the exclusive rights to large amounts of extremely valuable intellectual property and engages in predatory practices routinely; in fact, that's its purpose.)
This is different from proprietary code exactly how?
You are being disingenuous here. In a game of "keep away," everyone can have access to an object except one person who needs and desires it. The object of the game is to gang up on, and hurt, that person.
Having private property is, of course, very different from engaging in that destructive and cruel game.
My. Words fail me. Aside from the fact that this is nonsense, why do you feel that you have any business saying this on Slashdot?
Perhaps it's because I believe that this view should be heard. Or that Slashdot isn't, and shouldn't be, a place where only views that conform to the FSF's "party line" may be expressed.
I'll give you credit for not preaching to the choir here, but on the other hand you've got to be fscking crazy if you think this argument carries weight here.
Again, an ad hominem attack. The analogy to religion is, however, apt.
OSS is a flood. If you don't want to be part of it, then rise above it. If you won't bother to rise above it, then shut up and drown!
In the above, you attempt to characterize me as being opposed to open source, which is not the case. I am opposed to the GPL, which attempts to turn open source into a weapon against commercial software developers and programmers in general. By voicing this opposition, I am indeed attempting to "rise above the flood" and prevent open source from being turned from a useful tool into a weapon of spite. Only those who are malicious would oppose this.
--Brett Glass
Re:Open Source Welfare? (Score:1)
Re:Symbiosis (Score:2)
It is scary that the person who wrote this nonsense makes part of his living as a journalist, as it is wrong in so many ways.
Stallman acted according to deeply held principles, not a "tantrum". You and I might not agree with those principles, but it discredits you to use such terms. He fought against Symbolics in much the same manner that FreeBSD is currently fighting against Sun: putting out non-copylefted free software. Symbolics could, and did, use RMS's work. If RMS's effort to compete against Symbolics was wrong, then you should, for consistency, attack the FreeBSD people for competing against Sun.
RMS did not "lose the use of his hands" in this effort; he's had some RSI problems, but your claim that he lost the use of his hands in the early 80s is ridiculous.
Symbolics was never in a position to provide a significant source of income to MIT, and in no alternative universe could they be.
RMS developed the GPL because he found that non-copylefted freeware was not effective in competing against Symbolics and others who could take the free base software and add a few proprietary enhancements.
It is true that academic research labs require support from the outside world. But that's no reason why research institutions shouldn't use licenses like the GPL; after all, the GPL is much more generous than the other popular model, which permits non-commercial or research use only and demands licensing for other use, even in cases where the taxpayers footed the bill for the original research (e.g. NCSA's handing of the original Mosaic).
Finally, you misuse the term "commercial developer". All companies and individuals who develop software for profit are commercial developers, no matter what licensing terms they choose to use for their software. Many commercial developers find the GPL superior to a BSD license for use in the code that they decide to release as freeware (whether it represents some or all of their output), as it avoids providing a subsidy to the competition.
People who put out GPLed software are competing in the free market. There are some whiners who don't like this competition; they hope that either their competitors will only sell their software for a high price, or they will license it under terms that allow relatively unskilled programmers to make small enhancements and sell those enhancements.
I get paid from writing proprietary software. I don't cry and wail because I can't grab other people's software and then sell it.
Re:Symbiosis (Score:2)
Be was doomed from the start. What were they thinking? If Linux didn't exist, they'd be just as dead (or you'd be saying that *BSD is wiping them out, except that you seem to like those guys). There is zero chance for a new company to overcome Microsoft on the desktop with the traditional proprietary model, not without a technological change similar to the switch from mainframes to minis or minis to PCs.
Quite a few people (thousands) are making a reasonable living building on GPLed software. Some are now quite wealthy. But even if that weren't so, Sun, HP, and Microsoft are denying us all access to their software for the purpose of building on it and making a reasonable living (yes, one can write applications for those platforms and sell them, but one can do the same with Linux).
GPLed software can even be built on by proprietary companies; you can't link to the application, but you can use it. GCC is the back end for the leading commerical hardware description language simulators, for example, and the companies in question manage to charge $10K per seat and sometimes more.
Your problem is that you think that the BSD subsidy is a natural state of affairs. Sometimes it's a good solution. But it is a subsidy, one someone has to pay for.
Re:"My, My!" indeed. (Score:2)
I have no sympathy or patience towards your opposition to the GPL. You will clearly spend hours trying to get it stamped out, write reams of argument trying to scare people away from using it, and all to support commercial companies. Now, I am not intrinsically opposed to commercial companies- as I said (which you ignored) I make heavy use of some commercial software like Photoshop, like the programming environment REALbasic. However, I'm increasingly of the opinion that the more rope I give commercial software, the more likely they are to hang _me_ with it, and you too.
You seem blithely unaware of UCITA, of a whole steady movement toward legislating and sanctifying the worst abuses of commercial software. These go beyond a company buying up brainpower and starving entire fields of endeavor from the ideas they need to progress- all the way toward having and using the right to sabotage my own computer in any way they like if they form the idea that I've violated their licensing in some way, and being fully supported by the law in this.
Naturally, the amoral capitalism you espouse will reward those who seize this opportunity quickest, and we can confidently expect the proliferation of this sort of abuse. In some ways your viewpoint is like this: for the users, the world is a battleground, an urban wasteland. But if you're a company, the world is supposedly like the small Vermont town I lived in 6 years or so ago, in which nobody really bothered to lock their cars and everybody knew everybody- stultifying but safe. The unspoken idea is that one _must_ support business and commercial software at all costs, because they are the seat of decency in the world, with a commercial morality that (unlike regular morality) can be reduced to dollars and cents: and that this results in Good Being Done and the accumulation of Profit.
I look out at the constant background of aggressive maneuvers done by closed-source software companies- not simply against each other, against _us_ the consumers- and can't understand why anyone would have more faith in them than in a pack of rabid rats- or why this state of affairs deserves protecting. Just because it results in salaries being paid is not a good enough reason to support it. Look at what happens as a result. You get Photoshop- but you also get Windows Me. You get Id- but you also get Blizzard. You get start-ups- but you also get UCITA. You get Microsoft, and you'll never get rid of them as long as you live. Is this worth protecting? What about the vocation of software coding is so special that guaranteeing its artificially high income is worth setting up this kind of mess?
RMS may well be a loony, but I'd say he was a loony for being twenty years too early. Look at his fanatical opposition to closed-source in the light of UCITA (which did not exist at the time he was forming his ideas). Perhaps it was only chance, or perhaps the reason his fanaticism becomes relevant now is that he really saw and acted on the _result_ of what he saw happening. It's dangerous to 'project' outcomes like that, you can end up totally wrong. RMS could have read the whole situation wrong, back then, and if he had, GNU would have languished basically unused and commercial software would have turned out to be a greatly liberating force with no drawbacks to it, requiring no alternative because all freedom and choice and security was available within it.
Welcome to the real world. It seems that there _was_ a need for GNU- look at all the GNU, the Linux, the GPL out there. It's never been _easy_ to use this stuff, it's geek-only so far, yet people are still forced to turn to it: look at the litany of security bugs, acts of sabotage and intentional incompatibility, the lossage of the commercial software industry. Look at the legislation being passed successfully to reduce their liability even more, scorning all concepts of consumer protection- look at the ideas, the total disregard for private property that leads a commercial software company to think they have a right to seize MY COMPUTER without due process if they think I might have done something wrong, that they have a right to grovel all over it assuming I am guilty of piracy or something until _they_ satisfy themselves that I am innocent- but if _I_ grovel all over their work with a decompiler, I can go to _jail_! Not cyber-jail, real concrete and steel jail for up to five years!
Brett, I did not ask them to behave in this manner. I would have been _quite_ happy to support software companies as you would insist I do, respecting their rights to earn a living. Their rights end, however, when they start arranging to have me thrown in jail, and begin crawling up my computer like IRS auditors looking for violations. I never agreed to their coming on my 'private property' (my computer and data _is_ my property. It's _my_ data) and behaving in such a manner.
It's possible that I'm letting a few bad apples spoil the barrel. However, that's what _happens_: the others end up mimicking the ones making the most money, and crime has always paid. In this case, the precedent is set, the legislation is already being passed, the die is cast.
If they're going to redefine the industry in this manner, I will wholeheartedly embrace the ideas that were (opinionatedly) put forth by RMS so many years ago, in a simpler time that probably didn't rate that sort of hysteria. Times have changed, and it appears that OSS people did not have to declare a war at all- war has been declared on us, by just these commercial software people, up to and including the intention to change the very open standards of the Net itself out from under us to destroy even our communications with each other.
If taking sides makes me malicious, I can only say that I feel justified in such malice, and that I didn't set out to be- my trust was broken. I side against you. I oppose you utterly- not because you are being intentionally malicious, but because you're a damned fool supporting something worse than you imagine. I side with the OSS people, RMS, and the GPL.
How do I take sides with the GPL? It's not by passing laws to outlaw commercial software, by breaking the kneecaps of commercial developers or burning down their office buildings, it's not by planning to develop special GPL-only net standards or writing software that scans your hard drive to see if you're using GPL code in some commercial project- in other words, it's not by malicious means or even the means of commercial software.
I USE IT! So far, I am still free to do so.
_Shame_ on you, Brett. You are a liar and a propagandist supporting a corrupt and abusive system. How do you sleep? I realise this gives you the ability to pull another debator move and cry 'ad hominem' yet again, but I am honestly wondering how you can justify your position to yourself. Is it that, to you, none of the on-record hostile acts of commercial software companies count? Is it that computers are not private property but actually belong to the vendors that make the hardware and software, and that we rent them/borrow them? Is it that you feel capitalism is so religiously important that it must be supported over consumer or even human rights? Is it that you cannot see human existence except in terms of how much a person earns, with no other values? What is it? State your faith if you insist on keeping on arguing like this. You are trying to harm something important, and I want to know why.
spirited rhetoric (Score:2)
Fund academia. It is that simple.
Whom are you asking to fund academia? Ah, silly question. It's clear what you want. You want governments to take people's money, and redistribute it.
If current trends continue, we'll see increasing brain drains, such as Microsoft's infamous raid on Carnegie Mellon's OS faculty (for those of you who haven't heard, they came, offered huge salaries, and basically left the CMU CS dept without any OS specialists), which will transfer brain power in the hands of those who cannot use it ethically simply because their primary goal is profit.
How will transferring the money from corporations, to government, fix this? You prefer that the nuclear physicists work at Los Alamos, the mathematicians work at the NSA, and the biologists work in the Army's super-ultra-very-very secret biological weapons labs?
Unless all the money goes to such government agencies, the financial competition as you describe will continue. If some Caltech chemical group lands a huge grant, it will be able to better attract the best minds. If some Stanford AI group receives government cash, it will be able to buy students and faculty from other schools.
The only reason such things don't happen now, is that the universities don't have enough money to do it. The motive of fame and glory is just as strong in academia, as the motive of stock prices is in coroporations. Increasing people's tax burden, and injecting government money into the fray, won't fix what you claim is wrong.
Unfortunately, academia requires a huge investment to maintain, since it does not naturally flourish under market forces; it is that investment that is needed to keep "intellectual property" out of the hands of those who want to "own" it. And it is that investment that needs to be made continually for research as we know it to survive.
Ah, now we see the real point: the typical slashdot "intellectual property is bad" POV. All it would take to fix the intellectual property legal tangle, would be to fix the patent office, and tweak the current federal law. There's no need for massive tax-and-spend, socialist politics for that to happen. Corporations won't suddenly stop R&D if patent laws change, because it'll still be necessary to survive. After all, there do exist trade secrets, and industrial espionage.
Oh, yes. One more thing. Do you have any evidence, that academic research "does not naturally flourish under market forces"? Note that you're complaining that pwople were recruited from Carnegie-Mellon University. And note earlier my mention of Stanford. Philanthropy is a natural thing. People try to make billions, not for the money, but for the fame and power. Giving money to Universities is a fine way for these people to prove to themselves that they have both. Always has been, always will.
Re:My "well-considered" post (Score:2)
I don't want to forbid commercial research, and I do realise that patents are part of the incentive system to turn new science into technologies that improve people's lives. I agree with the need for patent reform, although I have not yet seen an agenda for reform that I find convincing. But I still persist in believing that real science must be public in order to work, and the maintenance of publicly funded research is the only way I know of to do that. Considering the public benefits of science and the technology that derives from it, I consider my taxes spent to that end money well spent.
Yes, Hawking and Gould derive their fame and fortunes in large part to publishing well-written, well-read books, and being telegenic certainly doesn't hurt. However, had they been merely good writers and not high-prestige theorists in their respective fields, they would never have been able to command the audiences and some of money that their books command. No one has ever invited John Gribbin to do a walk-in on the USS Enterprise, and he is twice the writer Hawking is.
In short, the kind of fame and fortune enjoyed by the likes of Gould and Hawking is a perk of doing public research that leads to high prestige. No one whose most important work has been in closed corporate or military research has ever attained such fame. The knowledge that a handful of scientists can do what Hawking and Gould have done is an important motivating factor for young scientists. I know it was for me in my youth, and I still have dreams of attaining fame and fortune for my theories and getting TV appearances and book contracts (although I'm a bit more realistic about the odds that it will happen.) It beats the hell out of honest work.
Actually, I'm on the opposite side from Gould on most things, and I think it is only due to prejudices among scientists and Gould's excellent command of the English language that anyone pays attention to what he says at all.
I was trained in Hawking's line of work, but ended up in territory much closer to Gould's, so trust me, I understand about undeserved authority. I still belief in public science, because without it, widely accepted authorities like Gould will never be overcome.
Deep down, I'm a Popperite. I know, for a borderline Marxist that's a bit strange. (Actually, it's incredibly strange, but that's another posting.) Popper's description of how science functions is the only one I've ever found even vaguely convincing. For Popper, science was about making conjectures, little more than inductive guesses really, then exposing them to the community of scientists. There, the conjecture is subject to the most destructive criticism its proponents and opponents alike can think of. If it survives, it's eventually accepted (usually when those who oppose it die off.)
In principle, even the most venerated theory is always subject to the same scepticism and test by falsification as the latest thing out of CERN. It doesn't always work that way - you are absolutely right on that - but that is a problem of the sociology of science. Eventually, if a theory is wrong, the amount of evidence against it will make it impossible to hold. In science all false doctrines eventually die. This is a product of subjecting every hypothesis, no matter how well established, to public criticism. I don't see how closed commercial labs or any other environment of secrecy can do this.
Science is not an optimally efficient process. It is full of constant conflicts between theorists and schools of thought, not to mention the inevitable battle of the young and radical against the old and established. Peer review can be a tortuous matter when you are flying in the face of received knowledge. (Thomas Gold just wrote a book on the subject if you're interested.) Science is a battlefield of ideas. It's practitioners are egotistical, prejudiced and motivated by the same desire for prestige, fame and fortune as other men. So long as the route to those things is only available through publication and public criticism, this awkward system works.
Classical physics took a half century to die, long after the classical view became untenable. Indeed, there are still people who oppose relativity (look at James Hogan's website for an example) and quantum mechanics (too many of those to list.) This is not economically efficient, I don't doubt that, the only justification of the traditional culture of open science is that it works. It may work in fits and spurts, but it works. And I don't want it to stop working.
Re: Symbiosis (Score:1)
Please do not argue ad hominem. It diminishes your credibility and adds nothing to the discussion.
as it is wrong in so many ways.
Not so. Every point I made was carefully thought out and researched, and is supported by ample evidence.
Stallman acted according to deeply held principles, not a "tantrum".
Stallman may have some very deeply held and "religious" beliefs; however, his reactions to such things as basic security measures for MIT's machines can only be classified as tantrums. Did you know that Stallman -- who served as a system administrator and system programmer -- even refused to let users put passwords on their accounts?
Yes, 'tis true, and it's documented. People who were at MIT at the time report that Stallman decrypted password files and sent messages to users saying, "I see your password is X. I suggest that you switch to the password [carriage return]. It's much easier to type, and also stands up to the principle that there should be no passwords."
He also modified the system code so that it would echo users' passwords to a public system console and system log as they logged in -- perhaps the first documented case of "password sniffing." He did this despite users' reasonable desire to keep their e-mail and other personal information private.
Steven Levy's book "Hackers" describes other ways in which Stallman fought security measures. Levy writes:
Sorry, Joe, but anyone who considers password-protecting one's private e-mail to be committing "violence" -- and justification for retaliatory acts of "violence" -- isn't acting from any "higher" principle any more than a religious fanatic who blows up a school believing that it will get him into heaven. Rather, he's a dangerous loony.
He fought against Symbolics in much the same manner that FreeBSD is currently fighting against Sun: putting out non-copylefted free software.
FreeBSD is not, in any way, "fighting against" Sun. In fact, Sun is free and welcome to use any portion of FreeBSD in its own products if it sees fit to do so. As Jordan Hubbard writes in the FreeBSD Handbook:
FreeBSD likewise has a complementary and symbiotic relationship with BSDI. FreeBSD is improving on the code which was released to the public for all to use -- including businesses -- by the University of California at Berkeley and continuing to license it in a way which is friendly to businesses and software developers. Others should follow its example.
Symbolics could, and did, use RMS's work.
I do not believe that Symbolics used much of Stallman's work, if for no other reason than that he was using MIT's money and equipment in an attempt to sabotage their business. However, if the code was being given away for all to use, there would have been nothing wrong with their doing so.
If RMS's effort to compete against Symbolics was wrong, then you should, for consistency, attack the FreeBSD people for competing against Sun.
Not so. The key difference is that the GPL is designed to sabotage businesses by denying them access to the code, whereas the BSD license allows them to build upon it. The GPL turns open source -- otherwise a good thing -- into a weapon aimed at those against whom Richard Stallman bears a personal grudge.
RMS did not "lose the use of his hands" in this effort; he's had some RSI problems, but your claim that he lost the use of his hands in the early 80s is ridiculous.
It was in the mid- to late 80's that RMS began to complain that he could no longer code more than an hour or two a day because he had given himself a terrible case of RSI.
Symbolics was never in a position to provide a significant source of income to MIT, and in no alternative universe could they be.
Symbolics gave MIT the use of their code and machines, as well as some of the capital they'd raised. Had they been successful, they might well have done more.
RMS developed the GPL because he found that non-copylefted freeware was not effective in competing against Symbolics and others
In short, his first attempt to destroy businesses via predatory practices was not working, so he tried nastier tactics.
who could take the free base software and add a few proprietary enhancements.
The notion that one can add only "a few" enhancements to an open source program and make large amounts of money is a myth. Remember, when you release code to the world for free, the market value of that code and that functionality becomes zero. (After all, an informed consumer will not pay money for something that's available for free!) So, any money that the company does make is the result of value it adds. That's fair. And it has to add substantial value before customers will buy it rather than just using the free version. Microsoft demonstrated this repeatedly as it drove other companies out of business with free, inferior products.
It is true that academic research labs require support from the outside world. But that's no reason why research institutions shouldn't use licenses like the GPL;
Yes, there is. Research institutions should not embark upon a political agenda, nor should they engage themselves in a campaign whose purpose is to destroy livelihoods, businesses, and markets. This is what the GPL is for and what it does. The fruits of basic research have traditionally been available for all to use -- especially businesses which can develop them into useful products. This tradition should continue. To prevent commercial programmers from using the code is not only spiteful -- it ultimately hurts consumers by preventing the research from spawning products which will benefit them.
after all, the GPL is much more generous than the other popular model, which permits non-commercial or research use only and demands licensing for other use, even in cases where the taxpayers footed the bill for the original research (e.g. NCSA's handing of the original Mosaic).
Not so. The GPL is nastier. If one pays a price to license the technnology, at least one has it. GPLed code is generally not available for commercial licensing at any price; at the same time, it sabotages commercial endeavors. So it's worse in every way.
Finally, you misuse the term "commercial developer". All companies and individuals who develop software for profit are commercial developers, no matter what licensing terms they choose to use for their software.
Not so. GPLed software cannot be "commercial" according to the normal usage of the word -- or its dictionary definition. The word "commercial" means "used in commerce." But GPLed software cannot be licensed for money, and therefore cannot be commercial.
It is true that companies such as Red Hat can sell discs with the software on it. But it's the MEDIA that's commercial -- not the software on it. The distinction is important. Since it does not own the rights to the software itself, Red Hat cannot sell a license for it.
What about the original author of a piece of GPLed software? Alas, once the software has been released under the GPL, his chances of being able to license it for money are virtually nil. And once he's accepted a single GPLed contribution to the software, he can't license it for money at all.
Thus, GPLed software is not and cannot be commercial.
People who put out GPLed software are competing in the free market.
No, they're not. They're attempting to destroy markets. Stallman says so himself in his GNU Manifesto.
There are some whiners who don't like this competition;
The GPL is not competitive; it is anti-competitive. Just as Microsoft attempted to "cut off [Netscape's] air supply," Stallman has duped gullible programmers into doing the same to other software companies, and thus destroying the market for their own work!
I get paid from writing proprietary software.
In that case, Stallman would say that what you are doing is evil and wrong, and will do what he can to deprive you of that work.
I don't cry and wail because I can't grab other people's software and then sell it.
Well, good for you. Guess what: I don't either. However, I also do not attempt to destroy livelihoods or businesses out of spite. If I give code away, I give it away. I don't say, "I'll give it to everyone but you, so that no one will want what you sell and you won't be able to benefit from it." That's spiteful and malevolent. And it is, alas, exactly what the GPL is about.
--Brett Glass
Forget it. (Score:1)
If you'd bothered to check, you'd know that I oppose UCITA -- for pro-consumer reasons, not for the petty reasons for which Stallman opposes it. (Stallman routinely opposes anything which he perceives as helping commercial software developers in any way.) I will continue to oppose not only UCITA but also the GPL, since both are unethical, unfair, and hostile to the interests of consumers and small businesses.
--Brett Glass
Re:Symbiosis (Score:1)
They were thinking that they could create a better OS. And they did. They deserve credit.
If Linux didn't exist, they'd be just as dead (or you'd be saying that *BSD is wiping them out, except that you seem to like those guys).
Not so. BSD is not predatory; Be can (and does!) use BSD-licensed code to improve their own work. But Be is being crushed between a rock and a hard place -- between Microsoft and Linux, both of which are anti-competitive. It's sad to see.
Quite a few people (thousands) are making a reasonable living building on GPLed software.
Some of those people (hundreds, not thousands) are taking home decent paychecks -- for now. Some have stock which, if they cash out absolutely as soon as possible, might get them some money. But their companies are not making money, and the business model under which they're working is unproven and unsustainable. See the quotations I posted, earlier in this discussion, from Red Hat's own Form 10-Q.
What you are seeing is a transfer of money from speculative investors (who, in the long run, are likely to lose their shirts) to those who are willing to fool them.
--Brett Glass
Lesser GPL? (Score:1)
Re:Business model unproven for software (Score:1)
I have never seen or read anywhere, in the license or on the FSF website, that the intention of the GPL was to explicitly destroy the software business, nor have I seen anything of RMS saying that OS/GPL companies were parasites that he tolerated. However, if these statements are true, could you perhaps provide links to back them up?
Still, you are only looking at the one model - the selling of tech support as a service. There are many other services that could be provided by a company if they wanted to (the training aspect is one - how many training companies and/or books are there for Windows and associated products? Windows already provides enough information to use the system, so why do these resources exist?).
What about the service of data? This is one proposed model for game development companies - that they OS the engine, then sell the levels/music/sound - the data that the engine uses to create the game. Sure, other companies could do this with the same engine as well - however, the data is going to take just as long to come up with, with as much (or more) work.
I don't know if the selling of tech support is the best model for open source businesses to follow. There are, however, other models to be tried with open source, before declaring it unfit for business.
Re:Don't use the GPL, then. (Score:1)
Before I read your post I was merrily proceeding trying to license my Smalltalk packages under the GPL..
Now I guess I am looking for an alternative.
I wish that you would in detail outline your reasoning with links to your resources.
Also, it seems like to me that there may be a few ways to skin a cat that you are not recognising?/aware of?
Is it not the case that one can divide one's commercial app based on GPL code into two sections? One that is open source and one that is closed source. The code that calls or activates the GPL lib stuff must be made available to your customers. or is it that you do not need to open source the code that calls the GPL lib but you must distribute any changes you make to the lib?:As in directly modifying GPL subroutines? But subroutines that you add to the lib don't need to have source distributed? Anyway, assuming that you must distribute source on anything that calls or activates GPL code, you can still hide your proprietary stuff by making a seperate program B that works closely together with the GPL dependent program A. These programs can communicate via files at the very least. And because of Disk caches this shouldn't be too slow. Perhaps pipes and such could also be used just so long as program B does not call A and tell it to activate GPL code. I do this kind of thing in my own code using the Clipboard as the user simple means of communications between some methods where the user can jump in there if desired. The user can cobble functions together in different ways because they communicate via the Clipboard.
If I am not wrong the GPL doesn't bar this?
My idea was that companies who want to make commercial programs using my lib would have to ( under the GPL provide source code( or even better a special Smalltalk image ) to any methods that they make that call my GPLed code either directly or indirectly.
But code that doesn't call my lib methods can remain closed and be hidden in the image. Thus a user might be able to get the required copy of Dolphin Smalltalk load up the special image, and see and modify the code that calls my code. Thus they could add their own user interface to it and add their own custom addons. And since they would also know hopefully the data being set up for the hidden Program B part to consume they would also be able to customize it's functioning too.
If this is what the GPL provides then I guess I will go with the GPL( but I will try to read the others too. Maybe I like them better. ).
Also-: Just because you are required to distribute your source code doesn't mean that you have to distribute usable source code. You can put a scrambler on it that adds misleading variable names and comments that are wrong. In effect, if the code is big enough, it becomes completely unmaintainable. There were some Smalltalk open source progams like that. Why bother trying to modify them. You might as well start from scratch.
ALSO-: There is a completely open source( but restricted distribution ) futures trading program written in Quick Basic that I know of that uses nothing but two letter variable names. And not that many comments either. It is about 400 to 800 lines long. Totally useless. Don't even try it. Many have tried and failed. Hackers and "Software Engineering" types have looked at it to no avail. We all threw up our hands and said that we might as well make a new one from scratch. If only we knew how. Now, it could be that we are not true hackers who can unsnarl raw Assembler in their sleep that was written by 1000 gibbering apes, who were also in their sleep when they wrote it, at the time, but I sir, am not one of those. And I have never actually met any who were neither. Although I did hear of one. Who took an assembler code where every third line was a jump so when you mapped out all the jumps graphically, every inch of code looked like a really snarly hair do. But I am not one of those. And as far as I can tell, most coders are not one of those neither, fer nothin. And he only succeeded because he was an expert at what that driver thing was trying to do.
Anyway
Your help is really appreciated. The Smalltalk Open Source Investing Trading Platform effort thanks you in advance.
Are there any examples of GPLed Smalltalk source code?
-kego
links: Get free Dolphin Smalltalk 2.1 at-:
http://www.object-arts.com/Home.htm
PS-: ( I thought that a few of the responses to your posts down below were a bit shrill and vitriolic. Like screaming stuck liberals or something. Ahh youth. When you are young if you are not liberal: You have got no heart. When you are older if you are not conservative: You have got no brain. )
Re:Don't use the GPL, then. (Score:2)
As long as all of your libraries are LGPLed (and most of them out there are), you're fine, and you only have to distribute modifications to the libraries you're using.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine [nmsu.edu].
Alternatives to the GPL for OOP (Score:1)
Now I guess I am looking for an alternative.
There are a lot of reasons -- I think -- why most of the alternatives are better. I'd be glad to point you to some that might be suitable for your project.
I wish that you would in detail outline your reasoning with links to your resources.
Several people have now asked me to do so, and I am now editing together a series of Web pages which do this. The issue is big and complex, and some people try to turn any discussion of the GPL into a political fight or a flame war. So, I'm having the material reviewed by people who are especially sensitive to these things to be sure that they're as objective and fair as they can be.
Also, it seems like to me that there may be a few ways to skin a cat that you are not recognising?/aware of?
Maybe, though I have done my best to consider things as thoroughly as I can.
Is it not the case that one can divide one's commercial app based on GPL code into two sections? One that is open source and one that is closed source. The code that calls or activates the GPL lib stuff must be made available to your customers. or is it that you do not need to open source the code that calls the GPL lib but you must distribute any changes you make to the lib?
If a library is licensed under the GPL (rather than the LGPL), code that links to it is "infected" by the GPL and cannot be made closed source. Some people say that this applies to dynamic linking, too; others say it doesn't. But there is general agreement that it does apply to static linking.
As in directly modifying GPL subroutines? But subroutines that you add to the lib don't need to have source distributed?
If you modify the GPLed code and then distribute the modified version, you must distribute the source.
Anyway, assuming that you must distribute source on anything that calls or activates GPL code, you can still hide your proprietary stuff by making a seperate program B that works closely together with the GPL dependent program A. These programs can communicate via files at the very least. And because of Disk caches this shouldn't be too slow. Perhaps pipes and such could also be used just so long as program B does not call A and tell it to activate GPL code. I do this kind of thing in my own code using the Clipboard as the user simple means of communications between some methods where the user can jump in there if desired. The user can cobble functions together in different ways because they communicate via the Clipboard.
This is a workaround that has been used before. BeOS has used this technique so that it can make use of Linux device drivers. It makes the device drivers into "daemons" which communicate with the OS via inter-process communications. Many of the more radical supporters of the GPL believe this is a loophole that should be closed by modifying the GPL.
If I am not wrong the GPL doesn't bar this?
It is generally agreed that this is a workable loophole for some people today. But it may not be in the future!
My idea was that companies who want to make commercial programs using my lib would have to ( under the GPL provide source code( or even better a special Smalltalk image ) to any methods that they make that call my GPLed code either directly or indirectly.
But code that doesn't call my lib methods can remain closed and be hidden in the image. Thus a user might be able to get the required copy of Dolphin Smalltalk load up the special image, and see and modify the code that calls my code. Thus they could add their own user interface to it and add their own custom addons. And since they would also know hopefully the data being set up for the hidden Program B part to consume they would also be able to customize it's functioning too.
If this is what the GPL provides then I guess I will go with the GPL( but I will try to read the others too. Maybe I like them better. ).
The GPL, unfortunately, runs into really serious problems as far as OOP goes, because in OOP you are in effect modifying someone else's code when you subclass, override, etc. In effect, using something like the GPL would prevent the use of your Smalltalk to create anything commercial! I don't think that this is a good policy.
Once license that you might want to consider instead is the eCOS License [cygnus.com] -- the license used by Cygnus, Inc. for its embedded real time operating system. Under this sort of license, licensees are required to provide you with source for fixes or improvements to your code -- in the case of OOP, this would mean your base set of objects and methods. But if they create their own custom subclasses, they are not required to give them away. This helps you improve your product but does not burden the developer to the point where he or she will say, "Sorry, I just can't use your Smalltalk; the license forces me to give away all of my work." The developer can keep his or her own original work, which is fair.
Even if the code is licensed more liberally (e.g. under the BSD license) the developer would be smart to tell you what changes he made to your base objects and methods, because they would then enter the code base that you were maintaining and he or she wouldn't have to patch each new version. So, we tend to see the same behavior that's explicitly required by the eCOS license under the BSD or MIT X licenses too. And these latter licenses have the advantage of simplicity and clarity; they're much shorter than the eCOS license. So, chances are that they'd work too.
Also-: Just because you are required to distribute your source code doesn't mean that you have to distribute usable source code. You can put a scrambler on it that adds misleading variable names and comments that are wrong. In effect, if the code is big enough, it becomes completely unmaintainable. There were some Smalltalk open source progams like that. Why bother trying to modify them. You might as well start from scratch.
ALSO-: There is a completely open source( but restricted distribution ) futures trading program written in Quick Basic that I know of that uses nothing but two letter variable names. And not that many comments either. It is about 400 to 800 lines long. Totally useless. Don't even try it. Many have tried and failed. Hackers and "Software Engineering" types have looked at it to no avail. We all threw up our hands and said that we might as well make a new one from scratch. If only we knew how. Now, it could be that we are not true hackers who can unsnarl raw Assembler in their sleep that was written by 1000 gibbering apes, who were also in their sleep when they wrote it, at the time, but I sir, am not one of those. And I have never actually met any who were neither. Although I did hear of one. Who took an assembler code where every third line was a jump so when you mapped out all the jumps graphically, every inch of code looked like a really snarly hair do. But I am not one of those. And as far as I can tell, most coders are not one of those neither, fer nothin. And he only succeeded because he was an expert at what that driver thing was trying to do.
The GPL doesn't permit this. It demands that the source code be readable and usable and not "shrouded."
In any event, I would say that for your application there are several licenses to choose from that might be better than the GPL. eCOS is one; the Artistic License is another; the MIT X license (the most liberal of all) is the third. As I've mentioned above, even under the MIT X license it is in developers' interest to send you information on improvements they have made to the classes and methods you supply, so you will probably be just fine with this very simple and least problematic license.
PS-: ( I thought that a few of the responses to your posts down below were a bit shrill and vitriolic. Like screaming stuck liberals or something. Ahh youth. When you are young if you are not liberal: You have got no heart. When you are older if you are not conservative: You have got no brain. )
Well, it seems in your case if the situation is not one of politics but rather of pragmatism. You want people to help you improve your product, which is a fair and reasonable thing to ask. But because you are not trying to engage in a political vendetta, using the GPL would be going too far. I think that one of the three licenses mentioned above would be about right. Myself, I'd just use the MIT X license because it is simplest and seems to produce the behavior you want via enlightened self interest.
--Brett Glass
Re:Business model unproven for software (Score:1)
See the quotes from RMS in some of my earlier messages in this discussion; they have pointers to documents where he has stated his intention to reduce all programmers to the level of starving graduate students.
RMS explicitly called Tim O'Reilly (who publishes books about open source products) and John Ousterhout "parasites" in public forums last summer (see http://www.nettime.org/nettime.w3archive/199809/ms g00159.html for one account of this).
As for your idea of selling content: this is problematic because it only works in a few specialized cases (e.g. games and books). Some content (e.g. "levels" for games) is so easy to pirate -- especially if the program that uses it is open source -- that it might well be hard to make money from it. And books can be undercut by free documentation, which Stallman advocates publishing under the GPL. (In fact, he already does publish some manuals under the GPL.) So, I doubt that these are viable options either.
--Brett Glass
Stehpen Hawking (Score:2)
only people in science who do get rich are high-prestige scientists who get book contracts, do the lecture circuit, and for the really lucky, get bit parts in TV shows like the Simpsons and Star Trek.
Actually, Stephen Hawking isn't all that wealtly. I watched the Larry King Interview with him on CNN on 12/25 (best hour I EVER spent watching the tube). It is actually exceedingly lucky for him, and us of course, that he is still able to write books and such, as most of that has allowed him to afford the medical care that he needs.
However, you do get a bit of money for doing the lecture circuit, TV shows, and books. This money will allow you to live comfortably, but it really won't make you rich, per se.
A wealthy eccentric who marches to the beat of a different drum. But you may call me "Noodle Noggin."
Re:My "well-considered" post (Score:1)
I'm very much a Popperite, too, even though I'm quite far from the border of Marxism. I appreciate your thoughts - this is the kind of exchange I see less and less of on Slashdot.
Yours,
A. Keiper [mailto]
Washington, D.C.
Re:Business model unproven for software (Score:1)
"Stallman's very presence makes some in the free software communties uncomfortable. He's like an old cousin that shows up at the wrong time, is a
little too loud and says things that other people think but that no one else will come out and say. Foremost amongst the traits that make the denizens of Silicon Valley uncomfortable is Stallman's contempt for the merely commercial. Stallman is, indeed, full of contempt for the merely commercial, for profit for profits sake, especially when that profit comes at the expense of the the free circulation of ideas and software. That contempt for profit for profit's sake is what contemporary executives, hip though they may be, find so consternating and odd."
Hmmm - it sounds like Stallman called the person a parasite, because he thought (rightfully so? I dunno, I wasn't there) that the individual was going to take a piece of GPL'd code and try to make a forked proprietary version, without giving the code back to the community. This would be the definition of a parasite. If the company was going to create thier own version, without the use of ANY GPL or other OS/free code, RMS would probably be fine with that (IOW, he wouldn't attack it with the same amount of vigor - it would be just like any other proprietary software dev house's products).
You seem to be of the position of the befuddled businessman who doesn't understand the reasoning behind the GPL, the FSF, and RMS. I don't understand the need to to profit for profit sake, nor do I understand the drive to "have it all" - all too often I encounter business people who have a lot of money, yet still remain unhappy with their position in life.
I go on, knowing that by me giving my software away (the little I have given), with the expectation that if it is good, others will improve and give those improvements back, I know that I have done my little part to make the programming community better. It gives me pride to know that my code has helped others in their projects and in learning something tricky or obscure. These are feelings that money could never buy (although these feelings will never pay the bills, though I think one day I might be able to make a living off of GPL'd open source code)...
Call me an idealist...!
Re:Business model unproven for software (Score:1)
Well, it "sounds like" you don't know what you're talking about.
John Ousterhout is the creator of Tcl and the CEO of Scriptics. Tcl is open source; in fact, it's licensed under a BSD-style license, not the mean-spritied GPL.
Stallman branded Ousterhout a "parasite" despite his generosity and openness because he dares (horrors!) to sell Tcl books, development tools, and other related products.
This would be the definition of a parasite.
To Stallman, a "parasite" is anyone who does not give Stallman what he wants.
You seem to be of the position of the befuddled businessman who doesn't understand the reasoning behind the GPL, the FSF, and RMS.
You obviously have no idea who I am -- and, again, are completely off base. From the above, it appears that you may not understand these things. Their purpose is to attack and hurt programmers, or in fact anyone who wants to make a living via the creation of intellectual property.
I don't understand the need to to profit for profit sake, nor do I understand the drive to "have it all" -
Well, Stallman's drive appears to be to wipe out all commercial software vendors while the FSF controls all of the software that remains -- that is, to "have it all."
--Brett Glass
Re:Business model unproven for software (Score:1)
I don't know how you see that the FSF would control all of the software - the only software that the FSF would "control" woud be any GPL'd software that they created, or any of thier GPL'd source that went into another product. The only control they would be exerting, would be that of keeping another company from closing the source for their own gain. Once under the GPL, the source used by another company or individual must stay open. Only the original author may fork the code.
This is what I understand - when I GPL a piece of my code and release it, I don't have worries about never seeing that code again - I don't worry about another company swooping in and stealing ideas. I rejoice at knowing that someone can come along, and see my code, and use it, learn from it, and pass it on to others, so they may do the same. Why do I like this? Because this was the way (or close to it) it used to be.
Rememeber, about 15-20 years ago you used to be able to pick up a magazine and get code - to use and to learn from. That is where I first learned to code - not in some stuffy classroom. Over time, working with employers and others, I have refined my style of coding and skills to be better than that, but I look back now, and I don't see the same opportunities for kids (like I was) today - compilers are expensive, and there isn't much code available on the stands. I look at the open source revolution, and I can see that today, kids still have a way. Seeing this let's me know there is hope for innovative code - not same old, same old code from the classroom and cube farms, but code from the heart - from people who "don't know better".
Like I said before, I am an idealist - I am a dreamer, and a romantic in many respects. Business may yet stomp on me, but in the end one arm will be thrust skyward as that foot comes down, middle finger proudly extended!
Reality (Score:1)
The fact is that the FSF is an empire. It's not selfless; in fact, it's extremely greedy. And deceptive. Not only has it claimed millions of dollars' worth of code as its own (while at the same time calling itself a "charity"), but it is not truthful about its goals. The FSF is, in fact, one of the businesses seeking to "stomp" on you as a programmer.
You mention in your message above that you believe that you can license code under the GPL and also make money by relicensing the same code for commercial use. The FSF says this as a way of persuading the gullible to stamp the GPL onto their code. But once they do so, they find that they can no longer make any money from their work! Here's why.
First, when the GPLed code is released, the author will doubtless receive suggested changes and improvements -- often in the form of code. The problem is that, since the initial code was licensed under the GPL, the code which is contributed back is generally licensed under the GPL.
This creates problems for the original author. If he accepts a single contribution which is not signed over to him so that he may license it commercially, his whole work is irrevocably licensed ONLY under the GPL and his ability to legally dual-license goes away.
What if the author refuses to accept the changes to avoid this? In this case, a second mechanism kicks in. The contributor -- or anyone else -- can fork the project to create a GPL-only work that competes directly with the author's and drives him out of business.
Finally, dual licensing does not work because only a very un-savvy businessman would license code for money when there's a GPLed version available. This is true for two reasons. First, the existence of the GPLed version effectively reduces the market value of its functionality to zero; anyone can get that functionality for free! Thus, if one pays money to license GPLed code, one is paying for something which has no market value to end users. This puts the commercial developer "in the hole" from the start. Second, the GPL provides for a few "loopholes" which allow the author's potential licensees to use the code without licensing it. (For example, some vendors of print drivers for UNIX invoke GNU Ghostscript but then post-process the output through their own software after that. They don't change GhostScript itself.) So, in many cases, they have no need to license the GPLed code, and the author loses.
In your message above, you also mention that you remember with fondness the days when you could use code from magazines in your own work. It's unfortunate that you can't do this with GPLed code, because it would force you to forfeit the fruits of your own labor. But luckily, there's another rich source of code that isn't encumbered by the GPL: NetBSD, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and many other BSD-licensed and MIT X-licensed programs. If you truly wish to realize your ideals, you should be contributing to this base of software, which is REALLY free, rather than adding to the FSF's arsenal.
--Brett Glass
Microsoft RULES (Score:1)
Hmm... (Score:1)
*ding* A light went on...
Why the author can't fork with the new mods - because the new mods may be GPL'd by the new author, and a closed version couldn't be created, unless the new closed version didn't contain that code.
Ok, I accept that - but I still believe in the GPL - because it doesn't allow me - or anyone else - to fork the code and/or take over the work. This is good - because it means the code stays out there, and no one has to worry what happens to me or my company - whether I live or die, the code remains, and people can continue to learn from it and use it. This is a good thing - this is something that makes me feel good. My payment is knowing that what I contributed is out there, and will always be out there. Not as good as a statue, but pretty good nonetheless!
Regarding your idea about "loopholes" - if someone invokes Ghostscript, but doesn't actually link the code in (dynamic linking is OK under the LGPL, you just can't statically link the code in, nor can you use the code cut-and-paste style under the GPL, without GPL'ing the whole thing), that is a perfectly acceptable use. If the code was statically linked in any way, or cut-and-pasted in, then those authors/vendors of the print-drivers you mention are violating the GPL. If not, then they should be perfectly fine.
Lastly, in your last paragraph, you come back around to treating the code being produced as a product. The GPL came about to get around the problems inherent in copyright - in that IP is hoarded (more and more, for longer periods of time) by companies, which can stagnate knowledge via legal means. By forcing you to give up the fruits of IP, as a developer you are forced to find different ways to make a living from the code, by becoming service oriented rather than product oriented.
I think it is possible to make money while having GPL'd code. I think it will take some time before businesses see how this is possible (maybe the ways proposed so far won't work - so find new ways). Maybe business and the GPL can't work - it may be too early to really tell. But I am willing to give it a chance. Anythings better than massive EULA's that force you to give your rights away to look at and use a piece of IP, and have no support when the company dies at some point in the future...
I will look into the BSD and X licenses, and see how they compare with the GPL - maybe a new license might spring from a combo of the both?
Massive EULAs (Score:1)
--Brett Glass