Stallman leads the GPL off a cliff (ZDNet)

Posted Jan 27, 2006 17:20 UTC (Fri) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link]

Umm... how exactly does free software "erode value"? It seems to me that having the source code would make the value of a package much greater to a lot of people. Oh, you mean people couldn't sit back and make lots of unearned income from something? Well... tough. Time to get a refrigerator and stop sawing up the pond every winter.

Posted Jan 28, 2006 2:46 UTC (Sat) by zotz (guest, #26117) [Link]

"Heck, I'd like free hamburgers, free cars, and the latest novels from modern writers for free, too."

Someone do me a favour and send him here:

http://www.ourmedia.org/node/111123

for one I wrote last year. Hey, it is just a first draft so far, but I have hopes for it. I have my one from the year before that being edited now as well and as soon as I can figure out how to BY-SA it I will be putting that up too. (The issue I have is with quotes from many songs (normally a line or two) as that one is set in the mid 70s.)

"But why are DEVELOPERS, the people who MAKE THEIR LIVING from this stuff, supposed to welcome the erosion of value in their industry?"

Perhaps becuase it REDUCES the costs and INCREASES the quality of our raw materials and our production equiptment? That could be one of the reasons.

all the best,

drew

Posted Jan 27, 2006 20:38 UTC (Fri) by gvy (guest, #11981) [Link]

Well MS seems to have a kind of corporate schizophrenia -- they'd bash something with one hand and embrace, or whatever, with another.

Hm, interesting where is it going to take them tomorrow.

Posted Jan 27, 2006 19:00 UTC (Fri) by jreiser (subscriber, #11027) [Link]

In what world do most users want DRM?

In a world in which most users are also software creators and wouldn't mind some profit from that activity. Such a world will be awash in software, of course, and the trick will be monetizing the value of your creation(s) [money is fungible, software is not] given the likelyhood that only a few hundred people in the world will care about any particular one of them.

That world will be similar in spirit to the present cable television in the US, where there are more than 600 channels, only a few of which have an audience of more than a few hundred thousand viewers. That world is also much the same as the world seen by today's authors of books. The most common press run is only a few thousand copies, and the vast majority of titles never have a second printing.

Posted Jan 27, 2006 21:31 UTC (Fri) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]

That statement is not compatible with reality as I know it.

The entire article exists in a space outside of reality. Anytime someone boldly declares what "most people" will or will not want 10 years into the future, I know that I'm listening to someone who has either limited life experience, or an inflated view of their own opinion, or both.

Posted Jan 28, 2006 8:58 UTC (Sat) by leonbrooks (guest, #1494) [Link]

...to finally FOAD.

I'd rather see my income trashed and have to start doing something else from cold for a living than to handicap the world's IT infrastructure as badly as the DRM fanboiz evidently want to.

Posted Jan 28, 2006 2:18 UTC (Sat) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

It's already happenning with more technical minded folks.

For isntance Mythtv versus Windows XP Media Center...

Now mind you most people will buy the media center because it's 'newer' or 'more' then Windows XP, but doesn't cost extra.

But with people making a decision to go 'I want to do Tivo with my computer' they can generally choose between Mythtv and MCE. If they haven't made up their mind previously and have a bit of existing experiance in Linux they'll ask about it..

So I'll say:
MCE works with more hardware encoding cards.. Linux your restricted to using WinPVR or the external USB2 Plextor stuff, but with Linux you can use your existing just-capturing card with software encoding as long as it's not a ATI all-in-wonder combo card.

They are like 'hrmmm'.

Then I'll say:
Windows MCE is limited in scope.. With Mythtv you can many multiple capture cards with different inputs from media sources. You can have many multiple front ends (displays) and many multiple backends for storage and capture. If your running Linux on the desktop you can display a front end in a window. With MCE you can use certain media extenders or a xbox to show output on your tv or on a seperate device, but your going to be limited to one or two capture cards pretty much.

They are like 'hrmmm'.. (don't generally plan on running more then 2 cards)

Then the final bit;
With Mythtv you can play front end for Xmame and other emulators. You can rip cds, manage song libraries, rip dvds, transcode and use other Linux utilities to prepare media for use on other devices. You can then use something like vlc to stream or all sorts of other stuff.

With MCE you have to deal with DRM.

then they are like 'bingo!'

(then after that I tell them how difficult it is to install sometimes)

But you get the point.

As time goes on I notice more and more of this sort of thing happenning.

Nobody WANTS to deal with DRM as a end user, but people are going to put up with a certain amount if they desire the content. I don't think I'll ever see it go away, but it'll end up being pretty mild.

Posted Jan 28, 2006 10:08 UTC (Sat) by erwbgy (subscriber, #4104) [Link]

Copyleft works by maximizing the freedom of the end users, by restricting the freedom of the licensors to add additional restrictions.

Nice! That's possibly the best summary of Copyleft I have seen.

Posted Jan 30, 2006 5:40 UTC (Mon) by pjm (subscriber, #2080) [Link]

The argument that Hollywood etc. will offer is that without DRM, not enough people will pay the original studio/creators, making it less economically viable to create good films/music/software. They will point at the number of songs that people download without the copyright owners' permission/license, and will imply that every one of those downloads corresponds to a lost sale. They will point at the huge production costs of some films, and assume that these “costs” are independent of available film revenue: e.g. assuming that big-name actors really do “cost” $1M, independent of market.

Evidently movie-goers do want special effects; it might then be argued that consumers want DRM in the same sense that citizens want taxes: i.e. they want everyone to pay taxes / pay creators, so that we get high-quality schools / creative works.

I suggest that we not discuss the merits of DRM here in reader comments, but rather read and then consider modifying http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Rights_Management, where the arguments are more likely to be read by people who can influence the use of DRM.

Posted Jan 30, 2006 17:43 UTC (Mon) by AJWM (guest, #15888) [Link]

Developers (at least, those of us who have been around for a while) recognize that there is a far higher demand for quality software of all kinds than the supply of (competent) developers can ever hope to meet, and that (a) we'd just as soon stop reinventing proprietary wheels and -- perhaps more importantly -- (b) if IT departments weren't wasting so much money on proprietary software, they might have more to devote to interesting new projects that need doing.

Those that are worried about "erosion of value" are more worried about offshoring development to places like Bangalore than they're worried about free software.