Linux & Microsoft as a Cold War? 443
I confirm writes "The BBC's Bill Thompson summarises the GNU/Linux vs. Microsoft struggle as a "cold war", and in one choice quote says:"It is rather ironic that Microsoft and other closed model companies rather resemble the Stalinist or Maoist model of a command economy with complete centralised control."
I'm not sure I accept Thompson's conclusions, however: "So now would be a good time to start thinking about how we persuade governments that market in software may eventually need to be regulated, just as the market in electricity, water and food is, and that that regulation may well include a statutory duty to disclose source code and allow it to be used elsewhere." "
No such thing as a free lunch (Score:4, Insightful)
Keep politics out of it! (Score:5, Insightful)
Calling for legislation to step in, is almost always a bad idea. We may be dreaming of an open source friendly regulation, but this is unlikely to happen. We simply don't have the purchasing power that Microsoft and others have with our politicians, so we'll end up having a heavily regulated market with anti-competitive, pro closed-source rules. Remember DMCA?
analogies suck (Score:3, Insightful)
goes. sure, you could fork your own state, but the food (developers) and land (users) is limited, and you're likely to be screw
ed over by another state (sco).
yeah, cause analogies are always correct.
btw is slashdot broken, i post like once per week and keep getting 'call it a night cowboy!'
Re:No such thing as a free lunch (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No such thing as a free lunch (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason power and water are regulated is that they are industries wherein the cash flows and flows after an initial huge investment in infrastructure, and little else is needed. Also, they are industries wherein a monopoly is very easily attained, as 3 or 4 sets of power lines and water mains for an area from various companies is just asinine. This is called a natural monopoly. So, the government steps in to keep these natural monopolies from strangling customers and holding power hostage for exorbitant fees.
Software is so totally different though. Multiple versions of software are far from redundant, and actual R&D is necessary in order to stay current. Software is not a NATURAL monopoly business.
Re:No such thing as a free lunch (Score:3, Insightful)
For instance, imagine that they mandate open source, but then throw in a requirement that the programmer assume responsibility for its performance, or become liable in other ways. To some extent I agree but I disagree at the same time. I think it is the responsibility of the programmer/corp/* to ensure proper patching, fixes should something happen. That's something that should be common sense. What you're stating from what I'm reading is you want to be able to throw out whatever program you like without responsibility. Sure you should be able to throw out whatever you like, but you as a developer/coder/corp.* whatever other title you wanna throw out, should be responsible for certain things such as fixes when needed.
Then, the only people who would be able to participate would be companies with deep pockets. False, IBM has taken a huge leap within the past few years into the Linux market moving away from MS, look at Redhat once upon a time. Eventually after all is said and done with the whole "I'd like to teach the world to sing..." free free free rant... Know what? Tell your landlord you want to live rent free. Sad reality is sometimes money does have to come into the equation you can't have your cake and eat it too.
Re:No such thing as a free lunch (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No such thing as a free lunch (Score:5, Insightful)
The worst part of government regulation is when the regulators have to "have something for the report" - that is when they start creeping past the scope of what they're supposed to be trying to do.
For example, with the Year 2000 deal, the government thought that it would be a good idea to mandate that all banks be ready, and then to regulate them as such. For our small bank, my project was more than 50% work for the government in documenting stuff instead of working to make sure that everything was good to go.
Your hatred of Microsoft blinds you (Score:5, Insightful)
And this committee for patriotic software, should it ever be enacted, will be the downfall of open source. It will be just another control point for power and allow the morality police a central point of control. It will become a do-nothing political body like all the rest.
Re:Possible regulation (Score:3, Insightful)
I am not entirely opposed to regulating software for government use.
See FIPS requirements.
Governments do not relinquish their powers. They always and only expand them.
Sad, but true. And that's exactly the reason why we need to be extra careful when we call for Government's "help."
Frankly, I believe that software is also a way to express opinions, both technical and political. Government control of software would be in direct contradiction of free speech, wouldn't it?
Re:Government Requlation? (Score:4, Insightful)
This of course does not apply to software, where competition is a good thing and is necessary for growth. There is no real R&D in the utilities industry, but just imagine if MS hadn't done R&D since Windows 3.1... they'd be left in the dust by Linux. Not that they haven't been anyhow, though
Re:No such thing as a free lunch (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not like I'm getting paid to do this, and if you choose to run my buggy software that I released rather than just sit on, thats your choice. Not my responsibility.
Re:Just change copyright laws (Score:4, Insightful)
Are copyright laws really a good idea for software? Remember, copyright protection lasts for at least 70 (but up to 95) years after the death of the author. Moreover, copyright renewals would extend this period even more. Now tell me any kind of software that would not be utterly obsoleted in, say, 100 to 150 years from now! Software-Copyrights effectively eliminate public dissemination forever. Is this the purpose of copyright, as intended when it was invented?
Re:To fight the Staninist and Maoist model... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Cold War Parallels (Score:3, Insightful)
The OS community and those who contribute to it are simply the natural evolution of software (or works) in the arena of the marketplace. This allows for innovation and invention which are not limited to the scope of dedicated control of the product but rather the drive for sucess with the solutions that further the drive.
Why regulation would be good (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No such thing as a free lunch (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want some kind of liability, that's fine by me, but you will have to pay me an amount that reasonably covers my expenses with regard to this liability. So if you get a program from me for free, or even for a small fee, don't expect me to fix problems that require much time or cost money to fix (I might do so anyway, but that's a different matter).
And if you need me to be liable for problems, why are you using software that does not come with a warranty?
Fix copyright first. (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, for this to work, copyright terms need to be returned to something reasonable, but that's a different problem.
Command Economies are everywhere (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with OSS, like the free market, is that it it requires inefficiencies. In a free market we may have 10 companies producing a product that only requires 2, or things being produced that are of no value at all. Sure, eventually the free market will sort out the inefficiencies, but the command economy tends to not have them at all. We see this now with companies refusing to hire anyone. New employees are sort of needed, but they would still represent an inefficiency. So no one is hiring. With MS and SCO, they can control development and focus efforts and consumer attention on a single product. Closed source companies do not have four competing GUIs and three competing APIs.
I personally find the free market, and by extension OSS, to be exciting and wonderfully innovative. However, it is easy to see how the Mr. Tators of the corporations would find such a free for all of ideas and strategies to be as disturbing as a bunch of upstart, uneducated, uncultured colonialist believing they were anything other than agents to be used a the King wished.
A little political science would be nice (Score:3, Insightful)
Centralized control is not so unique to communist political structures. Fascism has a pyramidal hierarchy. And when legislators listen to corporations first, that is also a command economy.
So it is not ironic at all.
Re:Keep politics out of it! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cold War Parallels (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure Microsoft has the monopolistic dictatorship qualities. They don't care about the people, only about themselves. Security is an afterthought and they run things. No one is going to take them down. However, they are capitolistic in some sense because they are a company providing a service. However, if you look at their practices, they are anything but competitive. If someone releases a better product, they release theirs as free and tightly integrate it into their OS. They then send some goons to muscle suppliers (like dell, compaq, etc...) to not install the competitors product. This is very anti-competitive.
Now let's look at linux. Aside from being free (as in speech... something this country was founded upon) it is all about choice. It is also all about producing a better product. It's also about choices. If you don't like the way a product is going, you can take the source and code it the way you want. (or hire someone to do it for you) There are also many companies that use linux to make money (in a very capitolistic sense). RedHat is the perfect example of this. They use their reputation and hard work to get where they are.
However the biggest fact is that software developers have no control over what you do in terms of religion, and every other aspect of life. Americans have it ingrained in them that communism is a bad thing so everyone tried to relate what they don't like to communism. In fact most people that say this, don't even know what communism is. I'm also not supporting communism... I don't think it would ever work and it's more of a throwback to a dictatorship but that's besides the point. I don't think communism is necessarily "evil" but rather what people choose to do with is could be evil.
I'm just tired of people trying to use the "all (linux|Microsoft) users are just like communists." I think there is room for both to survive. I've been a Linux user for about 9-10 years now so I know how to use it. I haven't used a M$ product in about 2-3 years now. (Not word, office, that crappy media player, etc...) So I must be against closed source right? Wrong... I have an apple PowerBook G4 with OS X. Sure it's got an open source component (and I have open office, emacs and a bunch of otherr free GNU tools from fink) but it also has a very closed proprietary part which is definately not free.
Should all software be open source? It doesn't matter because it never will. There will always be a niche that needs customized software for their needs and people always like choice and if you can offer something better than open source can offer, you stand to make a lot of money. I think they can live side by side but M$ needs to stop their anti-competitive practices!
Re:No such thing as a free lunch (Score:4, Insightful)
Free Software != Communism (Score:5, Insightful)
I utterly hate the analogy that FOSS is communistic. First of all, last time I checked, FOSS hadn't killed hundreds of millions of people as communism had. Second, it doesn't work on a philosophical level.
Communism is based on a centralized command system in which the state controls the means of production in the name of the people. Of course, this never works out as only a fool would automatically presume the interests of the state and the interests of the people are exactly the same.
In software development, this is closer to the closed source model - the state (ie Microsoft) orders that a task be done and the apparatchiks do it. Granted, Microsoft doesn't kill those that fail, and Microsoft is nowhere near as corrupt as the former Soviet Union, but the overal concept of centralization remains the same.
FOSS development is more like anarchocapitalism than anyone else. No one is forced to open their code, but programmers like myself do so because that's how we rationally get the most benefits. Granted, I could sell my products and perhaps make some money, but I couldn't recoup the costs of development without putting as much time into marketing as I do programming - and I don't care to do that.
The essence of capitalism is free exchange - which is why capitalism requires a free society in order to function well. Without the concept of the right of property, the GPL or other FOSS licenses would be meaningless. If I can't "own" my code, I can't dictate the license terms, and we're back to the state of nature. In the state of nature, everything is free for the taking - so long as you're cunning enough to take it. The whole reason government exists is to prevent that from happening by creating the social contract. (Which is why the statement that sacrificing liberty for security is wrong - that's the whole point of government itself, but I digress.)
FOSS devlopers give out their code because it provides them with the greatest rational benefit, not because some centralized authority tells them they must. That isn't communism, that's capitalism, and that's why the FOSS development model is doing exactly what capitalist economies do to state-planned economies - dynamically growing faster and more agile with each passing day.
Re:No such thing as a free lunch (Score:5, Insightful)
--
I basically agree that regulation would not be a good thing in this field. Just wanted to point out that this argument is not a good one.
There are, in fact, excellent reasons to regulate software for safety reasons in some fields; medicine and process control are two of the obvious ones. The problem is that unlike pharmaceuticals, for instance, software is not in fact one field, and so you can not regulate it as if it was.
Software is a medical technology (and should be regulated as such); it is a accounting mechanism (and should be regulated as such); it is a childrens toy; it is a power plant safety implementation; it is an artists tool. Software is by its very nature everything to everybody. You can't regulate it as software.
What you can (and probably should) do is to regulate its use in any of these fields as that field seees fit (or not regulate at all, as the case may be). When it is to be used in medicine, regulate it as a medical technology. When it is used for process control, demand the same the same level of testing and validation as you do of the pressure valves and pipe fittings.
So, yes, regulation of software is not only necessary, it is a benefit. Trying to regulate all software just as software, on the other hand, is a nonstarter.
Re:Just change copyright laws (Score:3, Insightful)
Copyrights are meant to be an incentive to authors, etc to create more works. Tell me - if I (somehow) manage to create a wildly popular work, and am able to live comfortably on the royalties for as long as it is protected by copyright, what incentive is there to me to produce more if that protection extends beyond my death? Yes, I realise that that's a somewhat (okay, very) unlikely situation, but hopefully you see my point.
Software-Copyrights effectively eliminate public dissemination forever
They also underpin the GPL and similar licences. Abolish copyright on software, and there's nothing to stop people and companies from taking source and incorporating it into closed source products. Sure, you could do that with closed source stuff too, to an extent, but decompiling a binary to produce meaningful source code is somewhat harder than just downloading the source in the first place.
Re:No such thing as a free lunch (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No such thing as a free lunch (Score:2, Insightful)
In software, that is usually NOT the case. If the software is designed to be life-critical, or can affect the health and safety of someone, then you have traditional product liability laws protecting you.
What's the worst that can happen - let's take Slammer for instance. A good performing machine with fast ethernet cards can take out an entire network with slammer. It can cripple some ISP's completely, crap out some of the biggest CISCO switches around.
Whose fault is that? The computer, or the switch manufacturer. A sane engineer would say, "Excess data on one port should not crap out the network, switches should properly throttle to avoid this kind of crap." What if it wasn't slammer, but a dev's test program that went wrong, or a server hitting a race condition, or just someone being a prick.
If you market your system for health and safety critical use, (such as medical equipment software, or car-engine software, etc.) then you have to take responsibility. Otherwise it becomes tough to point the blame because so many systems are involved in the failure process.
Think of it this way - the last Microsoft round of bugs (past two years) have had patches out weeks/months before the actual viruses/exploits came to be. That's like saying "Ford told us two months ago pinto's exploded, and sent us a certificate to have them fix it, but we never got around to it, so ford you're liable." Where do we place the blame now?
Re:No such thing as a free lunch (Score:2, Insightful)
In the 80's there was a lot of different computer and OS. Now there is PC and Mac. Look at Microsoft... Software seems to be a natural monopoly business
Immunity to Open Source applications? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Free Software != Communism (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:No such thing as a free lunch (Score:5, Insightful)
> being fined/sued/thrown in jail. OSS would trickle to almost a halt.
Just like all the car companies have closed down because of safety standards, right ? Bah...
The test for liability of a manufacturer is simply, were they negligent ? There's more than enough wiggle room there to allow manufacturers to safely innovate while clamping down on those that are grossly dismissive of safety concerns.
Re:Cold War Parallels (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No such thing as a free lunch (Score:2, Insightful)
Software development (esp OS development) IS a natural monopoly... It costs thousnds of man hours to develop and maintain this. I dont have a thousand hours spare at the mo...
The problem is that economics doesnt account for people giving their time for free. OSS is developing new economics theories, essentially OSS is reducing the value of Microsofts investment in Windows, since they are paying for something that everyone else can now get for free.
Bye bye Microsoft...wont miss you
Re:This is not the cold war (Score:1, Insightful)
It actually implies that MS is the one that parallels the Communists, while
Linux parallels the American system.
Honestly, RTFA would be a good thing to do before calling something irrational.
Re:Communism is a good thing??? (Score:0, Insightful)
Communism is a subset of totalitarism, just like Coca-Cola is a subset of soft drinks.
Re:No such thing as a free lunch (Score:5, Insightful)
You want to incur obligation on developers then be prepared to pay us.
You want software for free and you want to incur obligation on the developer, then yes, on behalf of Open Source developers everywhere, you can go fuck yourself.
You can try to turn this around on the developers all you want, but you're just being unbelievably selfish to believe you can obligate us in any way by downloading our free software.
Since you don't seem to be willing to accept the no warantee provisions in Open Source software, in the event you are still using some, please consider yourself in violation of the licenses and stop right away. You can't claim ignorance any more.
And again, fuck you. People like you make me wonder why we bother releasing software for free.
trade deficit concerns (Score:5, Insightful)
Essentially, US exports of tangible goods are in decline, and it seems ludicrous to think that providing a management layer for organizations that actually exist overseas can last forever. Do we actually believe that workers in India will not someday discover that if they managed their own companies, then they would not need the US at all? Perhaps this is a bit of an oversimplification, but I think that the point resonates in the hearts and minds of people concerned about economic sustainability for the US. So we're going to support Microsoft, dammit, because OSS is the way to seal America's fate as the country that contributes only intellectual property to the world and gets essentially no compensation in return.
As a supporter of OSS, this notion frightens me. But I have yet to hear an argument that this is not as serious as I fear.
command economy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Clearly written by someone who doesn't work in the industry. While there is control from the top and heirarchy, it definitely is not always a "command economy". In my experience and reading, many companies have project teams that come up with ideas, that are then built into products via a competetive process, not a "command" process.
Seems to me someone had their OSS hat on too tight--there are certainly benefits and advantages of OSS, but statements like this take it too far and destroy any credibility you might have to talk about the real issues.
Re:Communism is a good thing??? (Score:3, Insightful)
Nope. Cola is subset of drinks.
A dirty ugly mug is subset of drink containers.
Communism is about economy.
Totalitarism is about politics.
If you drink Cola from a dirty mug, with hairs and dirt and pieces of pasta, it's sure you will dislike it. That's about what totalitarian governments were serving by forcing people to accept communism.
Dedicated to the socialists of all parties (Score:3, Insightful)
But.... IP law, even though it's perceived as "pro-business," is a broadly socialist concept; the government grants arbirary privileges that a copyright owner could not enforce by themselves. In this sense, government already regulates the software market. The failures of the current scheme should not be used to justify extending government control.
The emergence of Free Software is a market response to overpriced proprietary software, to API's designed to generate consumer and developer lock-in, and to the anti-consumer license provisions that it leads to.
Free Software and proprietary between them cover the market well, and it's probably the best compromise we can come up with. In other words, don't expect commercial software to ever be as nice as you want it to be. Just make sure that Free remains Free.
Re:No such thing as a free lunch (Score:3, Insightful)
You should also get a better appreciation for contract relationships. If you have a contract with me saying I need to write software X and support it for Y years, you are fully in your right to demand I stick to that arrangement (and you can expect to pay for it). On the other hand, if the agreement is no more than "you pay nothing and get a (potentially extremely valuable) piece of software, in its current state, without guarantees, for free" than that is exactly what you get. You shouldn't come whining for more. What you _can_ do, if you want more, is approach the developer or another interested party for a real contract (you know, involving signatures, money, etc.).
Re:No such thing as a free lunch (Score:2, Insightful)
That regulation was necessary because the spectrum is a limited natural resource. It's a bit hard for me to see how it could be made into an analogy to support regulating software development.
Re:No such thing as a free lunch (Score:4, Insightful)
For me to design and code software is cheap and easy. And if it fucks up... wtf cares? people won't use it, no ones hurt (physically), and if they relied on it oh well, their fault for not backing up their data or whatever.
That is the WOSRT comparison you could have made, why not just compare it to the rules for the space shuttle...
A better comparision would have been software Vs home electronics, there are a few rules in home electronics, but pretty much anyone can build and design home electronics and sell them.
Regulation in software has no place, computers cannot kill or injure people. cars can (and do)
Seems pretty clear to me.. (Score:3, Insightful)
The FSF position is far more concerned with money. "Is my code being exploited for money?" My code is free, and anything containing it must be free as well.
Take a look at any discussion here where it comes up. The two positions are quite clear. I don't get why the two sides seem to have such a probelm with the others position. They are not incompatible, just different.
Re:Communism is a good thing??? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No such thing as a free lunch (Score:3, Insightful)
Similarly if I, as a hobby, were to create some trinket, perhaps a watch, which I then gave to you as a gift, it would be highly unreasonable of you to demand that I improve it if it doesn't keep accurate enough time for you.
If you want guarantees, you have to form a contract with someone and be prepared to pay for the service that you desire. With Free Software, you are free to choose someone other than the original developer to provide you with such support. This is one of the great benefits of Free Software - you are not tied to the original vendor. However, unless you pay the original author, you have absolutely no right whatsoever to demand *anything* of them. To demand that someone update a gift to be more satisfactory to you is to demonstrate an incredible degree of ingratitude.
Re:Communism is a good thing??? (Score:3, Insightful)
It was never attempted by evolutionary ways... before FSF.
Lead by example, not by force. "Join us, follow us, if you want - leave, share your goods freely and don't try to steal others' free goods for your own".
Firstly it succeeded because it's about software. Easy to copy, once you have one, everyone can have one at marginal cost. Implementing communism in this environment is very easy - you give a cake but you don't lose a cake. Nobody else tried to introduce communism slowly, gently, in a responsible, reasonable way yet.
Re:No such thing as a free lunch (Score:5, Insightful)
If a company deploys critical software without having arranged suitable support (internal or external) for it, and with no contingency plans in place, they deserve everything they get.
That is true whether the software comes from Microsoft, IBM or the bloke in the pub round the corner. The difference is that companies can (perhaps) be more confident that vendors such as Microsoft and IBM will still be around in 10 years when they need to call on the help which they have paid for in their support contract. But this is not a weakness of free software. It just means that there is a new opportunity for well-established companies to offer support for products over which they do not have exclusive distribution rights.
Re:Free Software != Communism (Score:2, Insightful)
Communism per-se hasn't killed anyone. Totalitarian regimes claiming to be communist have, on the other hand, killed lots of people.
Re:No such thing as a free lunch (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No such thing as a free lunch (Score:5, Insightful)
They have dumbass. They have either closed, or development became so expensive and unprofitable that they've been bought out by larger manufacturers.
Next time you use an analogy, try to get your facts straight.
Kaiser, AMC, Nash, International Harvester, Studebaker... The list goes on.
Re:No such thing as a free lunch (Score:5, Insightful)
I suppose you missed the word 'all' in the post you were responding to?
The remaining larger manufacturers still design and develop new cars. Innovation still happens (e.g. hybrids). I'd love to see you try to show that innovation in the auto industry is slower now than it was 50 years ago.
Further, you've cited not one scrap of evidence that it is specifically regulation that has caused the industry consolidation. There are lots of reasons why the barriers to entry are high in the automotive industry, and why it's hard for smaller players to stay afloat. Regulation is only one, and not a very large one.
Regulating Cars vs Software (Score:5, Insightful)
Emissions were regulated. Most people do not want a cloud of black smoke, but it required legislation to make a difference. The States made it as a profit center by charging for extra stesting and stickers. Citizens were aware of the issue because of the extra stickers, and because they were responsible for more money if their car did not pass. So the manufacturers had to satisfy the buyers.
Regulating software would need to be done the same way. It is not enough to penalize the manufacturers; the users must feel the penalties. The laws would need to penalize a user for having a PC that spams or is used for a DOS attack. Unfortunately, it is difficult to verify the packets originated at a specific IP Address. What if you happened to check sco.com on the day of a DOS? Were you part of the attack, or just wondering if the website survived?
Once these issues are resolved, and the users feel the penalties, then they will demand that their software protects them. Software like MSWindows, where it is impossible to load a firewall before loading the network drivers, would disappear.
BS (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:No such thing as a free lunch (Score:5, Insightful)
Spoken like a true loser/script kiddie/whatever -- completely unprofessional. Software developers should take pride in their work, and shouldn't release things that they aren't proud to claim. And the "and if they relied on it oh well, their fault...". What kind of an attitude is this? Is this the basic open-source "it's free software, so don't complain if it doesn't work" attitude? Or is this guy just a bigger loser than most?
If this idiot's opinions are indicative of how the open source community views their work, then the world is right to avoid it as much as possible -- and it should be shunned by true professionals that do care about the quality of their work...
computers cannot kill or injure people
Have you no sense of history? Do a search on the Therac-25, and let me know when you want to retract your statement...
Re:No such thing as a free lunch (Score:4, Insightful)
Only when standards allow for true interoperability (e.g., TCP/IP). Microsoft exploited people who are technically ignorant to achieve a true monopoly with their shitty proprietary technology. I can't plug my 110V two-prong toaster plug into a moron-purchased Microsoft-branded outlet that has 55 prongs and operates at 5, 12, 60, 100, and 440 volts with DMCA-protected PCM data channels just so their uber-toaster can have fancy automatic LED designs on its side.
However, the software industry is so immature that I have to argue that regulation is terribly bad, as even good widely-used standards are rare and volatile. We need to let the industry flesh itself out further before the government steps in and screws everything up. Regulating now would simply codify the totally craptastic state of affairs in the industry right now.
Re:No such thing as a free lunch (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, computers in control of serious things shouldn't have a general network connection and shouldn't be able (through signing binaries or whatever) run unapproved software.
Re:I never liked the idea of regulation. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No such thing as a free lunch (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's a hint - not everyone is professional at everything they want to do. Professionals get paid.
"Software developers should take pride in their work, and shouldn't release things that they aren't proud to claim."
Again, a proper attitude for the commercial world - NOT the hobby world.
"And the "and if they relied on it oh well, their fault...". What kind of an attitude is this? Is this the basic open-source "it's free software, so don't complain if it doesn't work" attitude? Or is this guy just a bigger loser than most?"
Excuse me - why should you have any guarantee of quality if you haven't paid me for my work? If you use free software you accept as your part of the deal that the software is not bound by commercial standards. That may or may not mean anything - some free software is very, very good - but it does mean you have no right to complain. You PAY for the right to complain. Please feel free to buy commercial software and complain about it's quality AFTER YOU HAVE PAID FOR THE PRIVILAGE. But don't use someone's hard work without compensation and then complain about the quality of the work. You have no right.
"If this idiot's opinions are indicative of how the open source community views their work, then the world is right to avoid it as much as possible"
If the world has your attitude, I hope it does. The open source community seems to be doing just fine on its own.
OSS=socialism; proprietary=capitalism (Score:3, Insightful)
--Socialism--
Egalitarian
Communal
Sharing/common good
--Capitalism--
Elitist
Driven by profits
No such thing as a common good
If you look at these traits, you would find that open-source software is closer to socialism and proprietary software is closer to capitalism. That's economics.
If you look at the political dimension, you would find that both open-source software and proprietary software are libertarian (to a large degree).
So to sum up, open-source software would be libertarian+socialism** while proprietary software (as exemplified by Microsoft) would be libertarian+capitalism. This basically means that, under the political compass [politicalcompass.org] two dimensional system, open-source software would be near the bottom left, while the proprietary one would be the bottom right.
(* The confusion over proprietary software and capitalism arises because Microsoft is thought to be a monopoly by some. Because of that, some people (namely capitalists) don't consider MS to be capitalist. These capitalists would argue that capitalism needs free markets and perfect competition. My theory is that free markets lead to monopolies or oligopolies and if this is true then these capitalists' reasoning is baseless. This is exactly what happened in the case of MS. MS was a small company competing under perfect competition at one time. It simply monopolized the market like all businesses attempt to. Therefore, one CAN consider MS to be capitalist, even though it has monopolize many of its markets)).
(** When I say libertarian+socialism, I'm not talking about libertarian socialism (which is anarchism), although it is close. Open-source software is not anarchist because there are rules (the existence of copyrights means that the person who wrote the software has more power than someone who did not. Under anarchism, you wouldn't have this situation because copyrights do not generally exist under many anarchist systems. If open-source software had no copyrights (i.e. author who wrote it has no more rights than someone who did not write it), then open-source software can be considered anarchist. From my view, public domain software is basically anarchist)).
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Re:OSS=socialism; proprietary=capitalism (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:WTF (Score:4, Insightful)
It's nice to see that you're such a big defender of your buddy Bill's individual rights. It's a shame he doesn't appear to agree with your philosophies [slashdot.org].
Re:Communism is a good thing??? (Score:3, Insightful)
It will, in other words, abolish competition and replace it with association.
Moreover, since the management of industry by individuals necessarily implies private property, and since competition is in reality merely the manner and form in which the control of industry by private property owners expresses itself, it follows that private property cannot be separated from competition and the individual management of industry. Private property must, therefore, be abolished and in its place must come the common utilization of all instruments of production and the distribution of all products according to common agreement -- in a word, what is called the communal ownership of goods.
In fact, the abolition of private property is, doubtless, the shortest and most significant way to characterize the revolution in the whole social order which has been made necessary by the development of industry -- and for this reason it is rightly advanced by communists as their main demand."
The Principles of Communism
Frederick Engels
October-November 1847
Now maybe you have a clue about what Communism is, so tell me how you can have this kind of control without a totalitarian group backing it up.
Just How are you going to do this witjout power?
Re:No such thing as a free lunch (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a distinction that can no longer be made, especially as cars are starting to become computer controlled.
In addition there are only so many ways that a car can kill or injure you: there are far more ways that computer failure/insecurity can negatively impact your life, even to the point of death.
You can't try and limit the realm of computer software to the home PC or to the workstation: both OSS and MS extend far beyond these. If you want to use software in a *serious* capacity (which, um, well, I'm afraid people do) regulation can and does have a place in software development. As software controls more and more things in our lives, this regulation will become more and more important. Maybe it will come in the form of self regulation: people not using insecure/inferior software. Regulation it remains.
To try and say that computers have no influence to kill/injure people and that buggy/insecure software is of no consequence, is a n inadequate reflection of software use in the world today.