LWN: Comments on "Stallman leads the GPL off a cliff (ZDNet)"

Stallman leads the GPL off a cliff (ZDNet)

zerothis — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 07:03:30 +0000

**** DRM! Businesses and customers might think they want it. They fail to see the damage its doing far out weighs the supposed benefits. If GM could remotely keep a car from starting if customers put dodge part in, customers would be pissed. Why the hell do people tolerate this kind of crap with their software?

In what world

ekj — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 12:15:58 +0000

Most software is actually sold in 1 copy.

Shelfware is the exception, not the rule in software-development. Most programming work is done for one company, which is then going to use the result, not sell it.

Of the ~100 programmers I personally know, atleast 3/4 are paid to, in some way or other, write software. Of all that software, I know only 3 people who have contributed to software that is made primarily to be sold, over the shelf as a finished product. 1 game, and 2 people working on an accounting-package (Rubicon), and even the latter is software of the type where services cost a large multiple of the software-price, and you pay pro-year for using the software rather than per copy.

schizo?

hughmerz — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 05:01:36 +0000

watch The Corporation.

Stallman leads the GPL off a cliff (ZDNet)

AJWM — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 17:43:28 +0000

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.

Stallman leads the GPL off a cliff (ZDNet)

nurhussein — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 12:53:30 +0000

The reason ZDNet has these kind of people posting trollish blog entries on their site is because they just want the banner ad revenue. There really isn't anything to read there except the usual things you'd expect from a Microsoft fellow.

Stallman leads the GPL off a cliff (ZDNet)

a.spengler — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 11:00:18 +0000

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

Why are so many people in IT thinking, that some piece of code only has a value, if that code can be transformed into some shrink-wrap off-the-shelf product?

Oh, I forgot, the guy works at Redmond...

Could consumers want DRM?

pjm — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 05:40:04 +0000

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.

Stallman leads the GPL off a cliff (ZDNet)

burdicda — Sun, 29 Jan 2006 12:30:04 +0000

Give me any single example where I as an average working stiff could ever
under any circumstances desire or have a use for DRM personally....

That's like land management to the American Indian....back when all the
land here in America already belonged to them.....

What kind of mental haze does a person have to be in to be brainwashed
into thinking what freedoms they still have need to be managed and by who...

I'm 52
A programmer
and as we used to say in the military

"NOT ON MY WATCH"

No just against GPLv3

nix — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 22:13:04 +0000

Also, if pay is saner, the only people writing software will be people doing it for love of it --- and the sooner the people who write software just to make money stop writing any, the better the field will be.

(What's especially bad is in companies, when these people cause immense damage to the software written by the dedicated with half-baked just-good-enough unmaintainable crud...)

The anti-DRM stance

erwbgy — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 10:08:54 +0000

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.

Well, I want DRM...

leonbrooks — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 08:58:06 +0000

...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.

No just against GPLv3

zotz — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 02:46:12 +0000

"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

The anti-DRM stance

drag — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 02:18:47 +0000

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.

schizo?

njhurst — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 01:29:05 +0000

That seems a common affliction in large companies.

Stallman leads the GPL off a cliff (ZDNet)

pheldens — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 00:19:24 +0000

Hurrah for Stallman, especially in these times where civil liberties are under heavy fire.

The anti-DRM stance

jpick — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 00:13:31 +0000

Can a little action like the GPLv3 stance against DRM actually make a difference?

I think it might actually make a big difference. When the mainstream big companies keep trying to paint their ever-screwed-up DRM schemes as value for the consumer, eventually the consumers are going to get fed up and flee.

In the meantime, there will be a pretty substantial non-DRM ecosystem building up centered around GPLv3 licensed software. People will have somewhere to go when they get fed up with all the DRM crap.

People who choose the non-DRM ecosystem will have a plethora of legal content available to them via the LightNet (Creative Commons, Internet Archive, podcasting, etc.), and they'll also still have the option to bend the rules, rip their CDs, DVDs, and trade via their DarkNets.

The FSF knows what they are doing with CopyLeft. Copyleft works by maximizing the freedom of the end users, by restricting the freedom of the licensors to add additional restrictions. The anti-DRM stance of the GPLv3 is entirely consistent with that approach, and necessary.

I believe that the GPLv3 will succeed as a license for the same reason the GPLv2 succeeded.

In what world

tjc — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 21:31:41 +0000

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.

In what world

dvdeug — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 20:42:00 +0000

If only a few hundred people in the world will care about any particular program, you don't need DRM. Such programs sell a few copies at high prices and the users have little motivation to make them available for free. At that cost, you can usually afford to write up a good old fashion contract. The stuff that gets widely pirated is stuff that's widely popular.

and too add...

gvy — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 20:41:21 +0000

...there's a difference between something materialistic, like books, and something less hefty -- like code. Or, well, TV channels.

schizo?

gvy — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 20:38:06 +0000

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.

In what world

stevenj — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 19:39:31 +0000

There seem to be a few problems with your argument.

First, most software developers are employed to write custom applications that are never used outside a single company, so enforcement of copyright law (and beyond) is irrelevant to their personal income. Second, companies have made money selling software for many years now without widespread DRM. Third, one doesn't get the impression that many developers support DRM; the impetus seems to come largely from major media corporations.

In what world

jreiser — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 19:00:20 +0000

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.

In what world

Ross — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 17:47:15 +0000

... do most users want DRM?

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

No just against GPLv3

allesfresser — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 17:20:54 +0000

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.

Stallman leads the GPL off a cliff (ZDNet)

dmarti — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 17:06:02 +0000

More fuzzy DRM promotion. I'm surprised that MSFT, which got started making sense out of real-world user demands, is falling for sky-based pie solutions for the enterprise on this "technology".

How to sell DRM:

1. Describe anything bad that happens on or because of a computer.

2. Say that you're writing MAGIC SOFTWARE that would prevent that thing without breaking anything else.

3. Call the MAGIC SOFTWARE "DRM".

4. When a real-world DRM system messes up someone's computer, or a legit activity the person wanted to do, return to step 1.

Stallman leads the GPL off a cliff (ZDNet)

davidm — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 16:40:08 +0000

Clearly John Carroll has been drinking someones koolaid, the question is who's? Since he is now a Microsoft employee, is it theirs or the RIAA or both? I don't know. Given how negative it is towards the GPL in general I'm guessing Microsoft's.

No just against GPLv3

proski — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 16:35:54 +0000

Actually, the story is very anti-GPL in general. It doesn't just trash GPLv3, it trashes the whole idea of free software. From the story:

Either way, I can see why gardeners, employees at Wal-Mart, and professional athletes might think it's great to get free (as in cost) code. Heck, I'd like free hamburgers, free cars, and the latest novels from modern writers for free, too. But why are DEVELOPERS, the people who MAKE THEIR LIVING from this stuff, supposed to welcome the erosion of value in their industry?

OK, if so, why does the author cares about GPLv3 so much? Didn't free software developers get extinct like dinosaurs?

LWN: Comments on "Stallman leads the GPL off a cliff (ZDNet)"

Stallman leads the GPL off a cliff (ZDNet)

In what world

schizo?

Stallman leads the GPL off a cliff (ZDNet)

Stallman leads the GPL off a cliff (ZDNet)

Stallman leads the GPL off a cliff (ZDNet)

Could consumers want DRM?

Stallman leads the GPL off a cliff (ZDNet)

No just against GPLv3

The anti-DRM stance

Well, *I* want DRM...

No just against GPLv3

The anti-DRM stance

schizo?

Stallman leads the GPL off a cliff (ZDNet)

The anti-DRM stance

In what world

In what world

and too add...

schizo?

In what world

In what world

In what world

No just against GPLv3

Stallman leads the GPL off a cliff (ZDNet)

Stallman leads the GPL off a cliff (ZDNet)

No just against GPLv3

Well, I want DRM...