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." "
Just change copyright laws (Score:5, Interesting)
Cold War Parallels (Score:5, Interesting)
ok so how will... (Score:2, Interesting)
MAD = Mutually Assured Destruction [nuclearfiles.org]
I personally don't want to run BSD, do you?
Shut Up And Show Them The Code! (Score:5, Interesting)
He's right. We do avoid that. But not because we don't care about "freedom", "principle" or "rights". Speaking for myself, I trust that anybody who's ever heard me speak or read my writings on the First or Second Amendments knows that I am quite passionate and vocal about freedom and rights; like RMS, I defend them even when they are unpopular with my audience. Other Open Source advocates don't seem to me to be any slower than I to speak the language of "freedom" and "rights" when they judge it is appropriate.
But "when they judge it is appropriate" is a very important qualifier. There are two different kinds of reasons an open-source advocate might avoid speaking about RMS's `freedom'; either disagreement with his goals, or a judgment that doing so is ineffective, is bad tactics.
The difference is important, and this is where RMS misrepresents what we are about. He would have you believe that the FSF and OSI have diverged over vast matters of principle, when in fact the OSI (and the Open Source movement as a whole) is carefully designed to be able to include people with beliefs like RMS's.
The Open Source Initiative does not have a position for or against RMS's goals. Please don't take my word for this; go look at our advocacy materials on the Open Source website, especially the part in the FAQ where it says "Open Source is a marketing program for free software".
Now it is true that some individuals associated with OSI occasionally argue with some of RMS's goals and principles (and one of those individuals is me). But the OSI is a big-tent organization; we have never condemned RMS's principles, and never will -- because we don't need to!
The real disagreement between OSI and FSF, the real axis of discord between those who speak of "open source" and "free software", is not over principles. It's over tactics and rhetoric. The open-source movement is largely composed not of people who reject RMS's ideals, but rather of people who reject his rhetoric.
Is this justified? Well -- consider the 180-degree turnaround in press and mainstream perception that has taken place in the last fourteen months, since many people in our tribe started pushing the same licenses and the same code we used to call "free software" under the "open source" banner.
Where we used to be ignored and dismissed, we are now praised and respected. The same press that used to dismiss "free software" as a crackpot idea now falls over itself writing laudatory articles about "open source". And the same corporate titans who dismissed RMS as a `communist' are lining up to pour money and effort into open-source development. Our market share and mind share have both zoomed to a level that would have seemed the stuff of delirious fancy as recently as January of last year.
Have all the opinion leaders and executives who have turned around suddenly seen the pure light of the GNU manifesto? No; instead, they point to the work of Open Source advocates to explain their conversion.
OSI's tactics work. That's the easy part of the lesson. The hard part is that the FSF's tactics don't work, and never did. If RMS's rhetoric had been effective outside the hacker community, we'd have gotten where we are now five or ten years sooner and OSI would have been completely unnecessary (and I could be writing code, which I'd much rather be doing than this...).
None of this takes anything away from RMS's prowess as a programmer or his remarkable effectiveness at mobilizing other hackers to do good work. Emacs and gcc and the GNU code base are an absolutely essential part of our toolkit and our cultural inheritance, for which RMS deserves every praise (which is why I led a standing ovation to him at last LinuxWorld after observing that "without RMS, none of us would be here today"). But as an evangelist to the mainstr
Yeah, simple confusion. (Score:3, Interesting)
US is capitalism in economy, democracy in politics.
Microsoft is capitalism in economy, totalitarism in politics.
Free Software is communism in economy, democracy in politics.
Communism is a good thing, unfortunately it appears way too often accompanied by totalitarism which wastes all profit communism could provide, and gives otherwise very good ideals a really bad name.
Possible regulation (Score:3, Interesting)
However, I am not entirely opposed to regulating software for government use. This makes a lot of sense to me, actually. If you want to get the government contract, you should have to meet certain standards, especially security standards. A business could do this, so there's no reason the government couldn't. The possible advantages would be an optional but well recognized standard that companies could meet if they wanted but are capable of declining if they so choose. I do think a open-source clause could be a good thing.
The drawback here is that powerful (read "rich") parties would probably be able to write the regulations so that they are biased towards particular kinds of software, if not particular brands. They could also probably prevent an OSS clause from being adopted, if not actually requiring close source.
Any time we experiment with giving the government more control over anything, we need to be very careful. Governments do not relinquish their powers. They always and only expand them. Regulating software, even in a limited capacity, sounds to me a lot like the proverbial foot in the door.
Excellent article (Score:5, Interesting)
But it's not really a war between opposing sides. It's a war between the furture and the past. And the past is doomed to failure, simply because the technology curve has progressed to the point where large chunks of the software ecology are essentially free. Microsoft and Oracle unhappily sit right in the middle of this territory. Apple, IBM do not. I wrote about this in an editorial last year. [imatix.com]
Re:Just change copyright laws (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Yeah, simple confusion. (Score:3, Interesting)
US is [b]supposed to be[/b] capitalism in economy, democracy in politics.
What it really is, due to all patent issues, corporate influences, lobbies, hidden powers etc is beyond me. Certainly not democracy or capitalism as dictionaries defines them.
Open-Source 0wns (Score:2, Interesting)
Just as he said; it's still possible to sell your software and have it open-source. It's actually better for business... because there is always just someone out there who is better than you -- Even if you're God.
"But once we see an open source alternative to Quark Express running on those Linux boxes, or Postgres databases replacing Oracle, and an open source digital music store that challenges iTunes, we can expect to see Adobe, Apple and the rest of the software industry piling in too."
What? iTunes is free. Maybe we can't mess with the code for it, but I don't think a lot of people care. And if it's free music, we have KaZaA of course.
Limited Capitalism is Key... (Score:5, Interesting)
Frankly, if open sourcing is going to be key for economic viability in the marketplace, the correct capitalist response would be to let market pressure bury those companies that don't do it, not to impose regulation. I can see regulation protecting open-source companies from FUD assaults, which are inherantly detrimental to a free and open marketplace... but not regulating the production and distribution of software.
Utilities like water and power require regulation because they are infrastructural supplies that aren't optional, nor does there exist (or can there, really) much of a competitive market in them to control excesses. With software, this is not really the case. Even for fundamental software like word processors and database tools, there is a robust marketplace with tons of options.
Fundamentally, Marx's critique of unconstrained capitalism wasn't wholly off base. But America isn't unconstrained... consumer protection laws and so forth counter the excesses of capitalism here. The government's role here should be protection laws that preserve an open marketplace (no FUD attacks) and regulation where infrastructure is privatized.
This is what I think, anyway.
Re:No such thing as a free lunch (Score:5, Interesting)
Being held liable for how secure your software is would ruin everybody.
Well, all the developers, anyway. Users would benefit from such a regulation, and if handled properly, this could work. Whether it's a "cap" or just related to disclaimers about intended uses of products, limits could be placed on the liability. There are problems to be solved (how do you handle the case of an individual developer vs. someone like Computer Associates?), but claiming that requiring developers to be liable for damages caused by flaws in their products is the same sort of protectionism we decry in large corporations in other industries. No one seriously suggests that automobile manufacturers shouldn't be liable for certain flaws in their products it may cost them a bundle but the result is safer cars.
That said, a source code disclosure requirement is not that distant from current copyright regulation. Currently, rights holders are legally required to deposit two copies with the Library of Congress. Note that this is not a requirement to have a copyright on your works in general, there are just penalties associated. Interpreting or amending the law to include source code is not that far of a reach.
Regulation Obsession (Score:5, Interesting)
It is a widely-held British viewpoint. Whenever there is some new perceived problem with the internet (a global network), politicans here start publicly calling for new government regulations. They know how pointless it is but want to be seen aligning themselves with the popular stance.
- Brian.
Where did the "right to source" come from? (Score:2, Interesting)
Where does this assumption that anyone has a right to source code come from? If somebody doesn't provide source code, your right is to not use it, don't buy it! It's as simple as that. If open source can't win economically, then using goverment power to force a win is no win at all. (Using OSS to create closed source in violation of licence is a seperate issue.)
Because the DoJ has been so effective before... (Score:5, Interesting)
Quite frankly, right now this is just a war of attrition, and I think Microsoft realizes they can't win with their current market strategies. If Linux was run by a single company responsible to shareholders, then Microsoft would probably have things back to business as usual, but I still don't think Bill & Steve have figured out just how to really deal with Linux as a competitive force.
The Open Source community has shown the ability to organize and get things done (yes, I know, this isn't the case in all projects, but it has gotten substantially better). And as long as the Open Source movement stays on the current track that it's on it's only a matter of time before the average consumer begins to recognize projects as Mozilla, Open Office, and the Linux OS as something they should look into using over Windows.
The fact that I can get my Mom to recognize how cool Mozilla is compared to IE/Outlook is and that she can get everything done on an install of Mandrake 9.2 is proof that progress is being made.
I think it is already being practiced in the US (Score:5, Interesting)
This not only affects Linux, but any Open Source application. The last Government contract I worked on, we wanted to deploy an Open Source monitoring agent since the deployment of a "major vendor" product was not going to happen for some time. The response from IA (Information Assurance) basically was "has it passed Common Criteria evaluation and can you show us proof?" The answer was no, so the app was not deployed. We even provided the source code for "review".
I think the tools are already in place within segments of the US Government to stop the deployment of OSS by simply pointing to http://niap.nist.gov and saying "It's not on the Approved List". Most OSS does not have the deep pockets of IBM and Oracle to afford CC evaluation (SuSe and RedHat respectively). Now whether Microsoft had anything to do with this I cannot say, but I think it is not simply a matter of development models, but security models as well. And even in the case of a OSS product sucessfully passing CC evaluation, some agencies are not happy. Read the latest version of the DISA Unix STIG and see what they say about SuSe Linux (they complained that no US (NSA) Protection Profiles were used in the evaluation. So does that mean it is less secure and should not be used?
Some Governments could simply point to the US and say "we won't adopt OSS because the US doesn't". Just a thought
analogy (Score:1, Interesting)
"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."
yet
Allchin has previously stated the opposite analogy about linux and other open source software. That open source is somehow anti-american, anti-capitalistic and in general a socialist form of software.
The conflict.
It's as if you can't have capitalism and democracy at the same time. The conflict arises because capitalism relies on "property", in this case, intellectual property. Democracy relies on free speech. So what happens when free speech is at the same time intellectual property? Then its not really free, nor is it really someone elses property. So how can you have free speech and intellectual property at the same time? Ingeniously, by making the owners of the free speech the public.
Re:No such thing as a free lunch (Score:5, Interesting)
So maybe a little regulation might help. Maybe not. Who really knows?
yours
Re:No such thing as a free lunch (Score:5, Interesting)
Developpers would slowly but surely stop developping new ideas for fear of being fined/sued/thrown in jail. OSS would trickle to almost a halt.
Microsoft would be hurt as well, but as someone above said, with its connections and deep pockets, it could more than sustain and ignore the slap on the wrist it would get with each violation.
In the end, users would get fewer choices without substantially more secure software.
Thanks but no thanks
Cold War issues (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Regulation Obsession (Score:5, Interesting)
He is so clearly out of touch with any realistic view of how governments and other powerful organistions actually behave that his writings deserve very little attention IMHO, whether they support open source or not.
First rule of freedom: you don't give anybody an inch more power than they absolutely require to do the job entrusted to them.
K
Re:Regulation Obsession (Score:5, Interesting)
As the links you provide show, Bill Thompson is an idiot and clearly has little understanding of information technology. Which is why he is an ideal demagogue for the Blair Broadcasting Corporation.
Re:Yeah, simple confusion. (Score:3, Interesting)
Economics systems:
Communism
Socialism
Capitalism
Feuda
Political systems:
Democracy
Nasism
Fascism
(the two being some of kinds of Totalitarism)
Monarchy
Every country needs both. Some combinations are impossible or cause awful twists of connected systems.
Microsoft funding of SCO (Score:1, Interesting)
I was thinking about recent relevations along this front.
1) A legitimate memo surfaces that links MS to SCO funding.
2) SCO and MS state that MS only funded the publicly known 10 mil for licensing purposes and the memo is false.
3) SCO and MS state that the memo is false because the person that wrote it was mistaken.
From the above evidence, my guess is that
(1) is correct - It was a legitimate memo
(2) is correct (sort of) - MS only directly funded the publicly known 10 mil
(3) is incorrect - The person who wrote the memo (a) is no dummy (b) was intimately involved in the proceedings (c) was unlikely to be mistaken concerning goings on.
All of which point to the possibility of MS leaning on others to fund SCO.
Who would the "others" be?
Look at the top handful of institutions that get MS's investment/financial services business.
My guess is that connections to one/several of those institutions were the impetus in providing the funding mentioned in the memo.
Re:No such thing as a free lunch (Score:2, Interesting)
You know that, I know that, probably everyone else here knows that, but Bill Thompson appears to have such a naive trust in government regulation that a concussed duckling would appear paranoid by comparison. His solution to everything is government regulation, even to the point of supporting government mandated "trusted computing" systems to enforce geolocation and legal identification. He appears to live in some utopian world where politicians are actually honest, laws aren't bought by large corporations and the government really does support the individual.
Maybe he does see himself as some kind of technology visionary. Everyone else I've run into seems to put him in the same class as Kevin "Captain Cyborg" Warwick - an embarrassment to the computing industy who has unfortunately managed to persuade the media that he has a blind clue about what he's talking about.
Re:Keep politics out of it! (Score:3, Interesting)
First of all, the parent is modden +5, insightful. OK, fair enough, even though interesting would have been better.
The replies get a 0; troll and just plain 0. So, what are they saying? The first one (from me) is trying to be humorous about the fact that "purchasing power" with politicians is slightly ironic, and that it looks like fascism.
The other is a more sober response, with valid arguments.
But it looks like Slashdot also has become a place where criticism of the United States is unpatriotic. I would like to remind all moderators that you aren't moderating to strengthen your own viewpoint, but to make it easier to distinguish which comments are relevant, and which are not.
It's OK that my comment was modded down, but the other one? Get serious. Spend your moderator points on making slashdot serious, not on bashing governments.
Re:No such thing as a free lunch (Score:3, Interesting)
Imagine if there was regulation that said that buildings had to at least X stable. Fly by night architects would be screwed.
Think of all the innovative architectural designs that are being stifled as we speak by those bizarre regulations that require buildings to not fall down.
Jedidiah.
Regulation is required (Score:2, Interesting)
Sorry to play devils advocate here, but regulation is needed. My argument lay on a fundamental concept of communications. There is a reason, no matter what phone you purchase, you are able to call any other phone in the world. There's also a reason for federal regulation on phone companies enforcing that their service may at the least have enough bandwidth to carry voice across the lines. Basically, avoiding legal speak, in the event of an emergency, a civilian must be able to contact authorities or medical assistance, via 911 for example, provided they have a phone. Be it a satellite phone, cell phone, AT&T built land-line phone, GSM phone etc.
I argue that any application that can even be used as a form of communications, to imply a listener, be public and open. Such as document formats, which have the intent to be displayed on other computers is a form of communication. Network protocols, all of them need to be open and standard. Web services are especially communications and conformance to standards should be regulated and enforced. Hypothetically, when your local police station may start accepting emergency pleas via their web-page, is it right that their web-page is only supported with Microsoft Internet Explorer?
If the government is to regulate any part of the IT industry, I feel it's crucial they regulate the communications concepts therein. Such regulation shall be restricted to only apply to compatibility and the assurance that all computing devices are able to accurately parse and rely the ideas and intent of said communications.
I don't want the government regulating much of anything else I do want the government to demand that any form for communications, file formats, protocols, specs shall be open and free for all to inspect and implement on any computing device. Further, all forms of communication must be designed for the ability to be implemented on all computing devices and their logical environments. (This will take care of Microsoft saying "OK, We'll do that, but we'll wrap our implementation so deep into our OS that you can't implement it unless you are using Microsoft products.)
Just my feeling on it. Lots seem to fear government regulation. The government isn't that bad, and those that do not trust the government turns a blind eye towards the corruption, abuse and illegal behavious of international corporations. Corporations sole intent is to profit, at any expence, the government is supposed to protect the people. If it weren't for government leglislation we'd all be working 24x7 and with no benefits for 25 cents a day in the most dangerous conditions imaginable.
Re:No such thing as a free lunch (Score:2, Interesting)
Home electronics have to go through some testing to make sure that they do not electrocute the user.
What if you or I write a screen saver that somehow goes wild and stomps on the video card, giving illegal signals to the CRT, making it overheat and catch fire? Home fires while the family is asleep, which would be the case with a screen saver running, will kill. Even Microsoft, with its "you can't blame us" EULA would have a hard time in the courts with that one.
In general, today you are correct, but that is just because there has not been enough motivation to press the issue.
Re:Cold War Parallels (Score:3, Interesting)
Neither of these is communism. Go read Marx. Communism is a system where private capital is abolished, where the entire economy is managed by the government and is essentially based on continual redistribution of wealth downwards. Private property beyond a subsistence level is outlawed. Dictatorship and totalitarianism are not explicitly part and parcel of communism, but in practice they're always necessary, and based on my reading of "The Communist Manifesto" I don't believe that such a system can be constructed without totalitarian government. People always desire upward economic mobility, which communism essentially prohibits. (I don't believe communism can be sustained either, but that's another issue entirely.)
Ancient Greece was not communist in any sense of the word. In fact, most states were probably much closer to free-market economies than any modern nation. The requirement for greater citizen involvement in government has nothing to do with economic systems. You could also have a direct democracy without the requirement for participation; this might be a libertarian dream state.
Re:Your hatred of Microsoft blinds you (Score:1, Interesting)
No, just go and buy a magazine costing less than 10 Euros and install from the cover CDs. How hard is that? Plus there's an article in the magazine covering installation.
>> As for choice. Go to Dell (or most other PC suppliers) and try and get a home pc with Linux pre-installed.
Agreed, at the moment this is difficult. Go to Wal-Mart and get a PC pre-installed with L---ows?
>> Being the pre-installed default system is a HUGE competitive (possibly un-competitive) advantage.
Yes.
>> That's why Explorer succeeded over Netscape, and that's why the Windows Media vs RealPlayer battle is so important.
I agree. That is why promotion, which is so thin on the ground for most open-source applications (e.g. Firefox) is so important, to unseat these pre-installed applications.
If you know what you are doing and can suggest open-source alternatives to IE, Outlook Express, Office and so on, help your friends and family and the open-source movement by evangelising - install them for your friends and help them to make the transition. I love Mozilla and couldn't go back to IE now.
Bill Thompson is an idiot (Score:4, Interesting)
It's the Documents Stupid! (Score:1, Interesting)
Only two things are needed to enable true competition...
1) Software patent reform - Software patents will destroy innovation (in the US anyway). These offer nothing more than weapons for megacorporations with deep-pockets like MS and IBM to use against smaller ISVs and OSS.
2) Require all common business document formats including word-processors, spreadsheets, presentations and all media formats to be fully documented and in the public domain - NO CLOSED DOCUMENT FORMATS!!!
Microsoft should be free to keep their OS and application software closed-source if they so choose. Who cares! What Microsoft must be forced to do is compete based on the quality of their software products, not because they own the formats of the files their monopoly software reads and writes.
The OpenOffice project, for example, could produce a much better product if they weren't forced to reverse-engineer MS's document formats. Opening the formats will enable OpenOffice to fully compete with MS Office, and it ultimately will enable Linux to compete with Windows on the desktop.
Computers still are primarily document production tools for business and education. Document formats are the primary lock-in mechanism for Microsoft. Remove this monopolistic, anti-competitive, mechanism and barriers to competition and to freedom of choice fall as well.
Mr Gates! Tear down that wall!
Re:No such thing as a free lunch (Score:2, Interesting)
But you are missing the point i was makeing, software, plain old software doesn't need to be regulated at all. Look further down and you'll see someone else say my point better.
Now about my point about thigns not working and who cares:
If some random software solution doesn't work, fails, is undocumented, and doesn't have any support, isn't updates ect, no ones going to use it. They will use an alternitive that does have these things, or someone will most likly write something that does work, is documented and maybe even supported. Might be free, might not be.
Now to opensource (witch you braught up btw) if all open source applications where like that (and some are) no one would be switching to it, most aren't like that so people are switching. And with opensource YOU can either fix it yourself or hire someone to.
look at all the little applications, small things you can find all over the place, apps that do random (sometimes stupid and pointless) things. students playing around. People experimenting. There is fair bit of software where people just write it for fun and then forget about it. If something like that screws up and doesn't work, oh well. Thres no reason for the author to go back and fix something he did years back.
If it does damage the computer in anyway (wipes HD or OS) its a horrible program and probally won't be used long or often either, would be calssified as a virus.
i was very vauge with " their fault for not backing up their data", by that i was talking about if you use some editor and save to a file and it wipes the file and you lose all your work, shame on you for not keeping backups. I find applications that screw up thigns all the time. Alot of them are commercial closed source to (not to say opensource ones are anybetter or worse).
My point was regulateing software industry on a whole for whatever reason is BAD and is NOT needed. Nothing else. I may have done it in a very bad way, see the other guys post who did a much better job of it.
Oh and i'd have to say YOUR the ones whos being completely unprofessional.
Spoken like a true loser/script kiddie/whatever
Or is this guy just a bigger loser than most?
If this idiot's opinions
You seem to have a very high and mighty opinion of yourself at that.
And when did i EVER say ANYTHING about opensource??
Re:No such thing as a free lunch (Score:3, Interesting)
You see?
That Sword Cuts Both Ways (Score:4, Interesting)
Governments have already taken many steps backwards using the power of regulation. Witness extended copyrights, lengthy patent protections, DMCA prohibitions reverse-engineering.
Many of us who believe free and open source software could provide efficiency and productivity increases world wide are becoming cynical of government regulation as it has been as much a force for encumbering as it has for freeing.