After you tip your hand... [LWN.net]

After you tip your hand...

Posted Nov 20, 2003 5:03 UTC (Thu) by XERC (guest, #14626)
In reply to: After you tip your hand... by jhardin
Parent article: Thomas Bushnell is no longer Hurd maintainer

Oh, I'm "so motivated" to contribute to Your aplication, when I even don't have access to the product, eather because I can't afford to pay the license price or I don't want to sign the NDA or I just don't want to take the risk of being sued because of breaking the NDA or the software company finds some other rediculous excuse for sueing me.

I'm a fraid, that You have to own me as a slave, LITERALLY, to have me contribute to your system withought giving anything back. I don't want to be unpolite or unsocial, but please acquaint Yourself with the GNU philosophy, which is found in the GPL.

In addition to the free software's philosophy, please try to accept the following sentance:
"Business models should HELP THE HUMAN GENERATION TO ENJOY AS GOOD LIFE AS THE CURRENT KNOLEDGE AND RESOUCES OF THE HUMAN GENERATION PERMIT TO ENJOY, and therefore:

* THE BUSINESS MODELS SHOULD ACCELERATE THE CREATION OF GOOD, INNOVATIVE, TECHNOLOGIES AS MUCH AS THE CURRENT KNOLEDGE AND RESOUCES OF THE HUMAN GENERATION PERMIT TO ACCELERATE,

* PRODUCE THE KNOWLEDGE AS MUCH AS THE CURRENT KNOLEDGE AND RESOUCES OF THE HUMAN GENERATION PERMIT TO PRODUCE,

* CONTRIBUTE TO THE ADOPTION OF THE BEST TECHNOLOGIES, WHICH ARE KNOWN TO THE HUMAN GENERATION, AS MUCH AS THE CURRENT KNOLEDGE AND RESOUCES OF THE HUMAN GENERATION PERMIT TO CONTRIBUTE.

Now, how do the restrictions on the use of "copying technology", restrictions on the use of "modifying technology" and the restrictions on the use of "distribution technology" comply with the prestated statement??? I guess that the Linux community works for the good of the whole human generation and naturally we don't like the partys, who instead of giving a hand, just consume our work and at the same time try to throw log's int to our spokes.

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After you tip your hand...

Posted Nov 21, 2003 16:12 UTC (Fri) by jhardin (guest, #3297) [Link]

> Oh, I'm "so motivated" to contribute to Your aplication,

We're not asking you (or our clients) to contribute to our product. Many of our clients are not technically capable of contributing to the product - they just want a tool that helps them efficiently and profitably run their businesses, and, indeed, *don't want* to know all the nitty gritty details. We provide this to them.

> I'm afraid, that You have to own me as a slave, LITERALLY, to have me
> contribute to your system withought giving anything back. I don't want to
> be unpolite or unsocial, but please acquaint Yourself with the GNU
> philosophy, which is found in the GPL.

I am very familiar with it. I am a kernel contributor (2.0 and 2.2 at least). I believe in it fully, but I also do not believe it is the solution to *all* sitations or the proper license for all possible code.

I deeply hope that Linux will be able to take a large portion of the desktop market. But I do not believe that it is possible to do this in a "completely free" environment, except in the simplest of cases. For example, can you recommend to me a good open source U.S. Income Tax package? That's the only reason I still run Windows at home.

I believe the hostility to proprietary *applications* is unfounded, and interferes with the adoption of Linux as a desktop environment.

After you tip your hand...

Posted Nov 21, 2003 19:58 UTC (Fri) by XERC (guest, #14626) [Link]

OK, I'm sorry. May be I overreacted a little, but I still think, that the idea in my previous posting still holds and has a point. Well, actually, to be really honest, my job is also proprietary, closed source, software development. The software is actually a support software for a pretty special hardware and I think, that from innovation's point of view and from the view of considering the client's needs, my employer digs a grave for itself by keeping the software closed and proprietary, BUT, there is one huge advantage of keeping things closed and proprietary.

By keeping the software closed and proprietary, it's possible to support our clients in regions, which have software patents(USA,Japan). The problem is, that thow we don't violate the GPL or any other humain license, the patent system is such a mess, that practically it's impossible to make a program, that doesn't violate any patents. I relly don't understand, how does anyone ever dare to do any free software development in the U.S.A. and put it on the server, which located in the U.S.A.

If the software is closed and proprietary, nobody ever knows(and thanks to the "nice" patent system, we as the developers don't know eather) if we have violated any software patents or not. If there's no direct proof or code to watch, nobody can't blame us in almost anything, because they can't prove it and we are not obligated to show the code, just like the SCO is bullying with the legal system. So I guess, that one of the reasons, why some type of software is not GPL'd, but is kept closed and propritary, is the existance of software patents. Now, that was a clear example, where the patents support industrial sicrecy.

Who knows, may be if we could GPL our work, someone, who's writing something similar, could benefit from our software eather by code or by some nice, simple, idea. We could defenately benefit from other people's work instead of reinventing the weel. So, no wonder that most of the REAL INNOVATION is in the FREE SOFTWARE(GPL'd software). Let's all graduate the U.$.A.'s and Japan's patent systems for "supporting innovation"!!!!

After you tip your hand...

Posted Nov 23, 2003 11:01 UTC (Sun) by caf (subscriber, #7566) [Link]

> For example, can you recommend to me a good open source U.S. Income Tax
> package? That's the only reason I still run Windows at home.

If you mean Personal U.S. Income Tax package, a cross-platform solution
I've found is to access the web-based version of a well known package
using Mozilla. No more need for Windows, and it sidesteps the ritual
of installing each year's package (plus updates) on your own box.