People are willing to pay for content in certain areas, particularly finance sources such as the WSJ or Economist, for three reasons... (1) such sources are based on a lot of exclusive research, and so much of their information can't easily be found elsewhere. (2) the nature of finance makes it worthwhile... if you're trading thousands to millions of dollars in securities or bonds, dropping $2 a week on useful information is awfully cost-effective. (3) the target market is pretty affluent and highbrow and thus less likely to blink over this sort of thing (the fact that you're not giving it away for free actually makes it look more prestigious and attractive).

However, these considerations fall apart when you turn to non-niche mainstream news. Looking at the "free" content aggregated by Google News... it's about 50% celebrity gossip, and 50% partisan political bickering with no insightful analysis behind anything. Thanks but no thanks... I'm not paying for any of that, and I doubt many others would either.

THAT is the main problem with newspapers' business models in the current climate. They are trying to compete with online sources by racing to the bottom, and dumbing down their content in hopes of reaching a wider audience. However, their main competitive advantage is in the highbrow market... which is increasingly alienated by this dumbing-down. Produce exclusive highbrow content that can't easily be found elsewhere, and you'll absolutely be in a position to charge. Write endlessly about Anna Nicole's "baby-daddy" and Britney Spears' breakdowns, and you shouldn't expect any revenue beyond advertising because you can find that trash anywhere.

Not to diminish your issue, but public-policy organizations (whether it's the ACLU or the EFF) only have the resources to handle specifically chosen cases, with the intent to draw publicity and influence wider policy. You shouldn't expect the ACLU to swoop in every time a cop finds weed in your car, or have the EFF drop everything and write a amicus brief when your landlord eavesdrops on a phone conversation.

You might try calling your local Legal Aid society, which DOES have the primary goal of helping individuals rather than making broader social statements. Better yet, you could drop your sense of entitlement, stop being such an insufferable freeloader, and pick up the phone to call an actual private attorney. You can almost always get a consulation on whether or not there's a legal action there before you pay anything.

Sigh... in the not-so-distant past, when the Slashdot community was oriented around open vs. proprietary discussions, Microsoft and Apple very much WAS considered to occupy the same basic space.

These days Slashdot is all about piracy, fads and rumors in social networking sites, and discussions about marketing. The occasional GPL vs. BSD/MIT/Apache flamewar still sprouts up, but mostly it's just fanboys praising or bad-mouthing various shiny objects on the basis of how "sexy" they are.

Apple sells "better" stuff, Microsoft sells "more" stuff. Other than that, yeah... they are pretty much the same thing.

The business model for making money off support doesn't really change all that much when you use the GPL vs. whatever. If anything, you MIGHT get more business if your code uses a permissive license... because more companies are willing to adopt permissively-licensed products. I haven't really seen that play out anecdotally, though. I still think it's neither here nor there.

As for your claim that the GPL is "better" for standards and protocols... better for whom? It may be "better" for the creator in terms of giving him power to block proprietary derivative works. However, it will have less adoption in derived works precisely because it limits that flexibility (which, for a protocol or standard, is not better). This is the age-old heart of the GPL-vs-permissive debate... how to balance "freedom" for end-users vs. freedom for derivative works.

For an example of licensing a "standard", look at GTK vs. Qt. The Qt library follows your advice and uses the full-blown GPL, while the GNU-backed GTK library uses the more permissive LGPL. I note with irony that GTK is FAR more widely adopted, in both open and proprietary products, than the Qt library which follows RMS to the letter. The thing is, if you build your application around Qt you lose the flexibility to someday sell the thing without having to buy a commercial license. This reveals an unpleasant reality: that underneath all the Che Guevara and V for Vandetta ranting, many free software guys simply don't want to pay for stuff... yet they want to retain the right to get paid themselves.

Human nature is human nature... and even on free software's home turf, people are more reluctant to adopt a GPL'ed library or protocol than a permissive-licensed one.

If you're trying to get a protocol or "standard" of some kind as widely adopted as possible, then you should use a more permissive license (e.g. BSD, MIT, Apache). If you want people to embrace your product, yet then have to buy a license from you if they want to modify it in any proprietary way, you use the GPL.

It's basically a business question of whether you plan to make money DIRECTLY from the code (i.e. GPL), or whether you have ulterior motives for making money elsewhere (i.e. Apache). For examples of the latter, most of the largest permissive-licensed projects (Apache, Firefox, etc) are bankrolled by Microsoft competitors as a means to block Microsoft from having full monopoly power in a particular niche.

This really is a TIRED and boring flamewar. There simply is no "one license to rule them all". It depends on what you're trying to accomplish.

Why do geeks buy XBoxes and try to turn them into Linux PC's or media devices? Why do people jailbreak smart phones? It's because geeks are geeks, and the challenge is fun. As George Mallory would say, it's because they're THERE.

Secondly, even on a more practical note, the iPod is just a nice piece of hardware. I've dropped mine a thousand times and abused it repeatedly (err, non-sexually!)... and you just can't break the thing. I simply haven't found that kind of quality in competing devices, and I am certainly NOT an Apple fanboy by any stretch.

I put the RockBox operating system on my iPod (which still leaves you the ability to dual-boot into Apple's OS if you need to)... and now my iPod functions as a typical mass-storage player. I don't need iTunes, can just copy music files on and off like a USB stick, and have support for any format I'd want (e.g. OGG, Flac, etc). Combine that with the sheer quality of the hardware (my iPod has lasted three times longer than any previous player I've had), and I'm a happy geek. If other people want to port other OS's to the device, then that's awesome and more power to them.

Sheesh... I can't imagine people's behavior online seriously being influenced by some silly "rating" system.

Oh, and by the way... copyright is evil, I support socialism, Microsoft sucks, just kidding I support libertarianism, and OMG ponies!

You've made two posts in this thread, and the replies you've gotten for your effort in both cases are mostly, "Stop using monospace font... it cases me to completely ignore the content of what you just posted".

I don't think you understand how annoying and stupid this is. I don't know about other environments, but on Firefox under Ubuntu your font is too tiny to read even if I DID feel like it. The fact that you had to go out of your way in applying tags to get this result is insane. Just take the defaults.

The whole point of being a contractor is that "permanent" employees trade a ~25% pay cut for the illusion of job security. As a contractor, you make more money for doing the exact same job... so long as you're willing to keep your skillset competitive, and endure being looked down upon by the legacy-maintenance guys who are too lazy to keep their skillsets competitive.

If a company pays you extra money for 10 years, AND you're not having to look for new gigs, then who exactly is the chump?