Re: [ox-en] Germ of a new form of society or germ of a new form of business?
- From: "Niall Douglas" <s_fsfeurope2 nedprod.com>
- Date: Wed, 04 Feb 2004 01:20:06 -0000
On 3 Feb 2004 at 2:23, Rich Walker wrote:
If the FSF and GNU really had the best interests of software in
mind, they would not act like they do.
Software doesn't have interests. Software runs on computers for the
use of humans. Humans have interests. The FSF wants software to be as
effective in the pursuit of those interests as possible. "information
wants to be free" is not an FSF slogan, is it?
That is not fair. The fact that the FSF doesn't agree with you about
the ideal license in all cases doesn't mean that they don't have the
best interests of software in mind.
SOFTWARE IS NOT A PERSON.
Intangible things can have interests. For example, it is in the
interests of world hunger that we end western financial hegemony.
What's good for software (in my opinion) is to maximise its rate of
step-change innovation. What's bad for software is to let Microsoft
continue to sell most of it as crappy closed source software is
usually more profitable than good closed source software.
1. A certain RISC microprocessor manufacturer wanted to develop a
C++ compiler for their processors. G++ was already available
complete with back-end for their instruction set. However they
still had to employ fifteen engineers over two years to write
another from scratch because of the GPL forcing early disclosure of
trade secrets from which this company derives most of its profits.
Without more details of the precise trade secrets this is a
non-example. Why didn't they re-hire those Cam. Prof. who wrote the
original C compiler to improve the optimisation phase of GCC so it
optimised the code for their CPU?
Hmm, you seem to know what I was referring to despite me not giving
any clues. Unfortunately I think I'm still bound by contractual
reasons that I can't say, but I can tell you that in my opinion it
was a stupid move to make, indeed their entire development suite
should have gone a different direction. Making it just like their
competitors offers no product differentiation and therefore little
reason to choose between them except upon cost.
All of these are based on the idea of selling software licenses and
restricting access to software as the only way to make money from
software and to make development profitable enough to support. I
think this is just uncreative.
No, it's exploitative. It's the "money-lending" model - one that can
be backed up by thuggery if required.
You have it in one. Motivational and exploitative are the two ways in
which capitalism works.
Can I link GPL code in with my open source product and sell that
product? No. Why? Because the GPL guarantees the freedom to
distribute your product to others without paying you.
And patents protect the rights of small innovators.
Patents are quite a different matter Mr. Walker! Personally I'd have
no problem with software patents if they patented only the
implementation, not the theory.
It's pointless doing work unless the work is worth it. Since KHTML
was designed, yet another free HTML renderer seems foolish. Still,
people are free to waste their time if they choose.
You think KHTML is a good renderer? You think XFS prevents ext3 or
Reiser? You think Coda, InterMezzzo, GFS and ClusterFS inter-prevent?
Would you want NFSv2 for the rest of eternity?
To me, software doesn't need to be perfect - just good enough to
enable new orders to emerge. To reiterate the same thing too much is
inefficient and is slowing step-change innovation.
Cheers,
Niall
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