Trademarks and their limits [LWN.net]

Trademarks and their limits

Posted Feb 8, 2013 9:15 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: Trademarks and their limits by dlang
Parent article: Trademarks and their limits

Perfection is impossible, but there are large difference between these two approaches. In Windows world and even in iOS world the right to present your creation to user is, well... developer's right. Sure, it's not unconditional right (in Windows world you need to convince people to download and install your creation and in iOS world there are a gatekeeper which is sometimes exceedingly picky), but it's still a right.

In Linux world it's treated as a privilege which can be conditionally given to you if you are lucky. And to earn this privilege you need to start with something absolutely unacceptable to most developers: you must publish source for your application (you can sometimes earn this privilege without publishing source - see nVidia drivers, for example, but these are rare exceptions, not rule).

You may rave about moral wrongness of closed-source software all you want (and you will even be correct), but fact of life remains: most desktop software is closed-source, Joe Average accepts it and as consequence demands it (Joe Average does not care about source availability at all but s/he does care about latest fashionable software creation which invariably happens to be closed-source - see Windows Phone RT woes: Windows Phone is much less picky then Linux distributions yet it still hurts from lack of fashionable software) thus without support from closed-source software developers you can not win battle for desktop.

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Trademarks and their limits

Posted Feb 8, 2013 22:22 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

plus the user/developer has the option of bypassing the distro

User yes, developer no. It's extremely hard to create binary package for Linux (the most you can usually hope for is few different packages for a few popular distributions... and even then there are no guarantee that said packages will be forward-compatible because libraries come and go in Linux distributions willy-nilly.

show me a quote _anywhere_ where I "rave about moral wrongness of closed-source software" That is not something I do, because it reflects a stance I do not believe in.

In the very next sentence, basically. Actions speak louder than words.

distro systems have their set of requirements (which boil down to "it must be freely redistributable as source, not too hard to build, and someone must volunteer to do the work")

Right. And since it's the only way to make your software easily available for the distribution user it basically means it's an ultimatum "create FOSS-software only, or else we'll punish you".

iOS has their set of requirements (which boil down to "it must not be deemed offensive in any way, and must not compete with Apple in any way"), and the user/developer has no option for bypassing Apple (except on the developers device)

Sure. It's a problem. But
1. The carrot is much, much bigger (there are hundreds of millions of iOS users compared to may be few millions for Linux).
2. Stick is also much smaller (you can be punished if you create some Apple-competing product, but most developers don't do that).

There are no pure black nor pure white in our world, it's all shades of gray and iOS is much, much, MUCH more developer-friendly shade.

It's hard to see how Apple's stance is better than the others.

Really? It's very easy to measure: how many developers find Apple's stance unacceptable vs how many developers find Linux distributions stance unacceptable. Sure, Apple are not saints, but they:
1. Provide stable platform for application development
and
2. Reject relatively few applications.
while Linux distributions:
1. Start with a demand which 90% of developers find totally unacceptable.
or
2. Offer "as-is platform" where "great deal of the day" can be summarized as "you can do whatever you want but we offer no promises and it's your responsibility to chase changes in our ABI".

Note that I'm not saying that Linux distributions must support commercial developers. They are mostly volunteer organizations and they can do whatever they want. But they can't simultaneously talk about "desktop for Joe Average" and ignore needs of developers who create software for said "Joe Average".

Trademarks and their limits

Posted Feb 8, 2013 23:49 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]

if you take this as me ranting about how closed source is unethical you are hopeless to talk to, goodby

Trademarks and their limits

Posted Feb 9, 2013 22:32 UTC (Sat) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]

that's what the Open Build Service is for (openbuildservice.org or in action (for free, yes, and supporting 7 architectures and 15+ distro's) on build.opensuse.org)

Otherwise, I disagree with you argument on other counts as well. It's not about gatekeeping, it is about money. The target group is too small on the Linux Desktop and yeah, we don't make it particularly easy to make $$$. But even when we do (on Ubuntu, for example) it doesn't happen to a great extend.

Trademarks and their limits

Posted Feb 9, 2013 23:42 UTC (Sat) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

that's what the Open Build Service is for (openbuildservice.org or in action (for free, yes, and supporting 7 architectures and 15+ distro's) on build.opensuse.org)

This is cool, but it does not solve the underlying problem: you still need to build bazillion packages to support tiny portion of [potential] users.

It's not about gatekeeping, it is about money.

Aren't they the same things? Most developers out there are commercial developers. They want to create and sell things. A lot of applications are created for a single buyer - and while it's not clear how well Linux does for these I don't think it's a big deal. But for desktop shrinkwrapped software matters, too. And this is where gatekeepers matter: they may raise investment needed to reach the audience (Linux distributions case) or they can reject your creation out of hand (Apple). When you hit this stage we are talking ROI - and ROI for Linux software is incredibly poor. Both because it's hard to distribute Linux software and because there are so few potential users.

But even when we do (on Ubuntu, for example) it doesn't happen to a great extend.

Why do you say so? Because there are no 500'000 applications? That's wrong measure to take.

Let's not talk about "big boys" (Windows, Android, etc). Let's take a look on small players. You know, webOS (less then 5 million users, 5000 applications), Chrome web store (30 millions users, about 6000 applications), Samsung's Bada (around 4 million users, around 2400 applications).

Ubuntu boasts 12 million users which means that we should expect about 3-5 thousand applications. And there are about 4000 of them, which sounds more-of-less fine. But these are Ubuntu apps, not Linux apps (all the links for RC Mini Racers will send you to the Ubuntu Software Center). Are we Ok with creation of Apple-style directory? If yes, then everything is fine: looks like Canonical knows what it does. If not, then well, we need to think about Linux's desktop future.