Has cash corrupted open source? (The Register)

Posted Aug 24, 2012 17:44 UTC (Fri) by n8willis (subscriber, #43041)
In reply to: Has cash corrupted open source? (The Register) by cmccabe
Parent article: Has cash corrupted open source? (The Register)

To play devil's advocate for a moment, are "individuals" the only entities that utilize technology other than "corporations"?

Nate

Has cash corrupted open source? (The Register)

Posted Aug 24, 2012 18:16 UTC (Fri) by cmccabe (guest, #60281) [Link]

If you're going to manage a large number of servers, you probably should at least create a non-profit corporation to handle the tax aspects. "Corporation" and "open source community" are not mutually exclusive terms either: the Apache Software foundation is a non-profit corporation. Many clubs and churches have non-profits associated with them.

I suppose for some projects, a small loosely organized community can use and develop the technology. Certainly that's the impression I get of Linux in the early days. I also feel that a lot of other projects can do well with this strategy. However, when you talk about CloudStack, OpenStack, or Hadoop, you're talking about lots of servers, and lots of data. So the community has to start with larger organizations. I think it just comes down to different projects needing different strategies for development.

Has cash corrupted open source? (The Register)

Posted Aug 24, 2012 21:19 UTC (Fri) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (9 responses)

> To play devil's advocate for a moment, are "individuals" the only entities that utilize technology other than "corporations"?

Ha.

In reality corporations are nothing but collections of individuals and thus the only thing that CAN ever utilize servers are individuals. The only thing that can ever utilize anything are individuals, period.

'Utilized' as defined as a 'purposeful action on a object for the purposes of fulfilling some other goal'. Some animal behavior may fall into that definition, but for the most part it's useful for this discussion to only consider human activity.

Has cash corrupted open source? (The Register)

Posted Aug 24, 2012 23:39 UTC (Fri) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link] (2 responses)

Do animals run server farms? How would we know?

Has cash corrupted open source? (The Register)

Posted Aug 25, 2012 1:16 UTC (Sat) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]

You wouldn't know, because no one can distinguish the pigs from the men.

Has cash corrupted open source? (The Register)

Posted Aug 25, 2012 4:55 UTC (Sat) by frazier (guest, #3060) [Link]

Orwell Animal Server Farm: "Four cores good, two cores bad."

Has cash corrupted open source? (The Register)

Posted Aug 25, 2012 0:07 UTC (Sat) by cmccabe (guest, #60281) [Link] (3 responses)

<troll>
Well, according to the Supreme Court, corporations ARE individuals.
</troll>

Has cash corrupted open source? (The Register)

Posted Aug 25, 2012 4:52 UTC (Sat) by butlerm (subscriber, #13312) [Link]

Actually, the court stated that a corporation is "an association with a corporate form".

Has cash corrupted open source? (The Register)

Posted Aug 25, 2012 16:06 UTC (Sat) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (1 responses)

The SCOTUS ruling in the 'Citizens United' only established that because you work for a corporation you do not lose your rights to free speech. That's it. If the government had the right to regulate the speech of people that belong to corporations they would have the same rights to control the speech of people that belong to unions, political parties, or protest groups or any other such organization.

The claim that the 'supreme court ruled corporation is a person' misrepresentation of the worst kind and was done purely for propaganda purposes. It really needs to go away.

Has cash corrupted open source? (The Register)

Posted Aug 25, 2012 23:01 UTC (Sat) by cmccabe (guest, #60281) [Link]

I wasn't actually referring to Citizen United, I was referring to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood. It's an old concept that goes back to at least the 19th century.

Personally I think the Citizens United ruling was a good thing, because the campaign finance system was hopelessly broken. It was another case of good intentions, but bad results in the real world. Anyone with enough money could easily abuse the system; only the small grassroots guys might run afoul of it. So kind of like the patent system-- great in theory, terrible in practice.

Has cash corrupted open source? (The Register)

Posted Aug 26, 2012 1:56 UTC (Sun) by cas (guest, #52554) [Link] (1 responses)

and individuals are nothing but collections of cells thus the only thing that CAN ever utilize servers are cells.

Thanks for the smile

Posted Aug 26, 2012 14:48 UTC (Sun) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

In the end, you will notice lots of fermions doing all the hard work. I would bet that cash has not corrupted the Exclusion principle, but these days it is hard to be sure of anything.