Re: Open Source (was Re: [newbie] Recommended office suites? Now OT)
On Fri, 28 Dec 2001, Doug Lerner wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Friday, December 28, 2001): Tech support? Free downloads, but boxed packages that you pay for if you choose? Heh...sound familiar? Just a thought... The company I work for actually doesn't sell boxed sets. The total download is just about 15 MB and we provide updates practically weekly, so they would get out of date too quickly. doug I'm sure, however, that you see my point. I was just mentioning a couple possible revenue stream. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: Open Source (was Re: [newbie] Recommended office suites? Now OT)
If software were free how could the employees of the software company be paid to begin with? Lots (most?) non-profit organizations' employees draw salaries. Someone mentioned internet development as an example of free software helping us all. I saw the guy that wrote the mailer program that the majority of isps use on TechTV a couple of months back. He didn't seem to mind that his free software was being used by millions. Although if he had charged $5-$10 for each copy in existance he would surely be a millionaire. Of course there are probbably other programs that do the same thing for hundreds of dollars. I for one am glad that they aren't the only option, as I live in a small town with dialup only and I can see how we could have been severly restricted in internet isps if everything that was available for free... ...Wasn't Red Hat has posted small (and growing) profits over the past few quarters. MandrakeSoft is apparently on target to post a profit next year or in 2003. Considering that the current economic climate is not conducive to profit making, these are not trivial feats. I think the key staff know what the GNU/Linux distribution market is like, and they won't be expecting too much from their share prices. MandrakeSoft is listed on the Marche Libre exchange, which was chosen (AFAICT) for its stability and lack of over-speculation, which is the main problem with the NYSE and OTC (AKA Nasdaq). Investors here generally tend to be more forgiving and don't expect quick, unsustainable profits. How can one (in the United States) purchase a token amount of Mandrake shares (just a couple I am afraid) without going to a stock broker? But, as you have said, the verdict is still out on that. :) It seems that a lot of the big (for profit) software companies (I'm thinking along the lines of Microsoft and Apple here) are like chiropractors. Their entire existance is based on taking people's money to just get them by until the next visit (verion). If they got it right the first time they would all go out of business. Someone said to me, You don't buy a new car and expect to get a free upgrade when the next version comes out, do you? But if I bought a new car and it stalled at least once a day and I had to restart, well, sure I would expect a free upgrade - to a properly working version which is what I would have paid for in the first place. I mean c'mon, why pay a hundred dollars (or more) just to be what amounts to a beta (gamma?) tester?!? Linux, on the other hand, IS free. If I do find a bug, it probbably wouldn't anger me that much to download a newer version. And since the minute you do there are probbably three newer versions out there, it isn't like there is a long wait for bugfixes/upgrades. Microsoft, I hate your OS's (well, I actually LIKED Windows 3.11, and its File Manager (don't like to see my files as icons, y'see) - but I really like your hardware (mice/keyboards are outstanding and cheap if you don't need the absolute newest versions) and games (Flight Simulator, I think I have one of the original DOS versions). It's a shame buying one of their products doesn't give you a voice in the direction of development of their company. Or maybe its just a shame their stockholders (Hmm, Bill?) don't have to use their OS (exclusively). And BTW, WTF is Windows ME for, anyway? Just venting/rambliing, Wes Gregg [EMAIL PROTECTED] Registered Linux User # 252649 Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: Open Source (was Re: [newbie] Recommended office suites? Now OT)
On Friday 28 December 2001 09:49 am, you wrote: This list like to MS-bash. A lot. Be careful in your MS-bashing, though; they made most of the tech revolution possible. Without MS the tech industry as we know it would be much smaller (most of us wouldn't have jobs in tech), we would probably all be using OS/2 version 2, and MacOS 6 or 7 would likely be a new product. I don't have a job in the tech industry. Maybe that would change my perspective. I never got to try OS/2 but I heard that it was well-liked by its users. MacOS only runs on Macs (AFAICT) so that isn't something to help me either (mainly because the macs are WAY out of my price range, maybe if I could just write a check for a new G4 my perspective would change. Mac users sure seem to like being Mac users). Not only that, but processor development would have been slower. We would all be using 486/Pentium processors right now. There would be no such thing as desktop 3D-acceleration. SGI and Sun would still be major forces in the computer industry. The Internet boom would never have happened. Linux would never have been developed. At least, not to the point it is now. It would have simply been considered a Unix variant (at best) or an entertaining graduate school project (at worst). I was a fan of MS-DOS. Even (more or less) liked Win 3.11. I like a GUI desktop, I just don't like icons only. I guess I like to pretend I know what is going on. And when it comes down to it I miss my Commodore 128. And the sound on my Commodore 64 wasn't too shabby (midi type I guess). And I could turn it on and it was all set to go. We owe Bill a great deal. Does that mean I like the way his company does business? No. But I still respect him for doing something that most of us are very jealous at (whether we admit it or not), and that's becoming the richest man alive by creating demand for something that the rest of us decided we couldn't live without: computers. How many of you actually remember the pre-MS computer days? And not just Windows; pre-MS-DOS, too. Okay, stop it with the siezures and the coughing and the unpleasant memory-faces. *You* know what I'm talking about. Ok. _I_miss_my_Commodore_128. I think if we were using them ( computers of that era) we would still know Spam as that meat-like food and our time on the internet wouldn't be spent closing pop-up ad windows. Years ago my friend had an account at our local college on their Vax/VMS(?) computer and I learned a little about email/gopher, etc. How many people know gopher as anything but the little rodent today? And all the busy signals I get and slowdowns? If half of the internet users really ARE just downloading porn and such - that wasn't a problem at 320*200*16 colors. And I can't really see the me-too! AOL users rushing to sign up for such a service on a unix-based system. (Note: There are lots (_maybe_ even the majority) of useful human beings that use aol. But) And I wouldn't have to throw away approx. 3 AOL cd's a week. At least when they sent the floppies you could tape over the write-protect hole and reformat it. I wish they would send their crap on cd-rw's - but I ramble. Personally, If I ever met Mr. Gates (or Ballmer or anyone else high-up at Microsoft) I would smile, shake hands, and thank them for what they've done for the world of computers. After all, if they had never shown up I wouldn't have the job I have. And I'm betting that a decent number of you wouldn't either. :) I hear he is actually a nice man if you don't get in his way. But if you get in MY way you will not get run over. But like I said, I only have a problem with his OS's ( the last several at that). I like the hardware and some of the games. And as for unfair business practices(sic): If someone like me could see this situation developing years ago, surely the companies crying foul today could have. Brings to mind Darwin's Theory of Evolution. Not even a gazelle climbs into the lion's mouth. And I suppose if he wanted to he could have squashed/bought/sent to Davy Jone's Locker the developers of free software if he wanted to. And not being a fool, he probbably looks at it as good for the industry. After all, if there really WAS no competition, then we would all be in bad shape. As it is, well, it doesn't bother me. I don't expect to delete my Win98SE partition anytime soon. I just don't see any reason to go any farther than that. I saw a show on WinXP talking about all the problems (from Win98) that had been fixed, they ought to give it away as a bugfix. But this is a Linux forum! We should I suppose not even be discussing these things. For that I apologize to the group and will keep silent on non-linux issues. May God stand between you and harm in all the empty places through which you must walk. -- ancient Egyptian blessing
Re: Open Source (was Re: [newbie] Recommended office suites? Now OT)
True, but there is also another side to the story. What about the end users, who will _save_ money by using free software. Corporations spend massive amounts of money on buggy, insecure software. If the software was free, all this money could be saved, and the employees could be paid more (or more could be hired). I am not rabidly against charging for software, but in many cases free software can make a lot of sense. If a company chose to write a decent OS (BeOS and OS/2 come to mind) with decent software, I would consider using them. Microsoft on the other hand does not compete on quality, it competes on marketing and lock-in. On Thu, 27 Dec 2001 10:57:25 +0900, Doug Lerner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On a day-to-day basis, if you want to have a working economy, where people can support themselves then, for sure, it makes more sense to compensate labor and effort which can be attributed. In other words, pay the programmers who create programs. The compensation to society for providing the environment is paid in taxes. doug [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Thursday, December 27, 2001): Doug Lerner wrote: There is a huge difference between an idea and an instance of putting the idea to use. And which is more valuable, or more worthy of being compensated (for)? Randy Kramer Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com -- Sridhar Dhanapalan I've always liked penguins, and when I was in Canberra a few years ago we went to the local zoo with Andrew Tridgell (of samba fame). There they had a ferocious penguin that bit me and infected me with a little known disease called penguinitis. Penguinitis makes you stay awake at nights just thinking about penguins and feeling great love towards them. So when Linux needed a mascot, the first thing that came into my mind was this picture of the majestic penguin, and the rest is history. -- Linus Torvalds Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: Open Source (was Re: [newbie] Recommended office suites? Now OT)
If software were free how could the employees of the software company be paid to begin with? I'm sorry, but by this logic you could say, Instead of spending all that money on a down payment and mortgage, think of all the money I could save by just moving into the first house I see. doug [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Thursday, December 27, 2001): True, but there is also another side to the story. What about the end users, who will _save_ money by using free software. Corporations spend massive amounts of money on buggy, insecure software. If the software was free, all this money could be saved, and the employees could be paid more (or more could be hired). I am not rabidly against charging for software, but in many cases free software can make a lot of sense. If a company chose to write a decent OS (BeOS and OS/2 come to mind) with decent software, I would consider using them. Microsoft on the other hand does not compete on quality, it competes on marketing and lock-in. On Thu, 27 Dec 2001 10:57:25 +0900, Doug Lerner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On a day-to-day basis, if you want to have a working economy, where people can support themselves then, for sure, it makes more sense to compensate labor and effort which can be attributed. In other words, pay the programmers who create programs. The compensation to society for providing the environment is paid in taxes. doug [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Thursday, December 27, 2001): Doug Lerner wrote: There is a huge difference between an idea and an instance of putting the idea to use. And which is more valuable, or more worthy of being compensated (for)? Randy Kramer Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com -- Sridhar Dhanapalan I've always liked penguins, and when I was in Canberra a few years ago we went to the local zoo with Andrew Tridgell (of samba fame). There they had a ferocious penguin that bit me and infected me with a little known disease called penguinitis. Penguinitis makes you stay awake at nights just thinking about penguins and feeling great love towards them. So when Linux needed a mascot, the first thing that came into my mind was this picture of the majestic penguin, and the rest is history. -- Linus Torvalds Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: Open Source (was Re: [newbie] Recommended office suites? Now OT)
Maybe we don´t need enormous software companies to do the job, just idealistic men like the ones moving the opensource world. And if someone offers free houses (and better than the one i'm paying for) wouldn`t you move?? Gonzalo From: Doug Lerner [EMAIL PROTECTED] If software were free how could the employees of the software company be paid to begin with? I'm sorry, but by this logic you could say, Instead of spending all that money on a down payment and mortgage, think of all the money I could save by just moving into the first house I see. doug Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: Open Source (was Re: [newbie] Recommended office suites? Now OT)
On Thu, 27 Dec 2001 21:33:06 +0900, Doug Lerner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If software were free how could the employees of the software company be paid to begin with? I am not arguing that all software should be free. I am simply stating that in some cases I believe that the free software model is better. Let the market decide. Most free software is developed outside of corporations, and much of it is developed simply as a hobby by the coders (not as a revenue earner). I'm sorry, but by this logic you could say, Instead of spending all that money on a down payment and mortgage, think of all the money I could save by just moving into the first house I see. Ummm... no. The free software model requires a different way of thinking in order to be properly comprehended. It doesn't work as the capitalist model does, and you will never understand it properly if you persist in viewing it in that way. I am not saying that it is incompatible with the capitalist model -- it is simply different. Indeed, companies like Mandrakesoft and Red Hat have proven that they _are_ compatible. doug [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Thursday, December 27, 2001): True, but there is also another side to the story. What about the end users, who will _save_ money by using free software. Corporations spend massive amounts of money on buggy, insecure software. If the software was free, all this money could be saved, and the employees could be paid more (or more could be hired). I am not rabidly against charging for software, but in many cases free software can make a lot of sense. If a company chose to write a decent OS (BeOS and OS/2 come to mind) with decent software, I would consider using them. Microsoft on the other hand does not compete on quality, it competes on marketing and lock-in. On Thu, 27 Dec 2001 10:57:25 +0900, Doug Lerner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On a day-to-day basis, if you want to have a working economy, where people can support themselves then, for sure, it makes more sense to compensate labor and effort which can be attributed. In other words, pay the programmers who create programs. The compensation to society for providing the environment is paid in taxes. doug [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Thursday, December 27, 2001): Doug Lerner wrote: There is a huge difference between an idea and an instance of putting the idea to use. And which is more valuable, or more worthy of being compensated (for)? Randy Kramer -- Sridhar Dhanapalan We are Microsoft of Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is- Fatal Exception Error in MSBORG32.DLL Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: Open Source (was Re: [newbie] Recommended office suites? Now OT)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Thursday, December 27, 2001): On Thu, 27 Dec 2001 21:33:06 +0900, Doug Lerner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If software were free how could the employees of the software company be paid to begin with? I am not arguing that all software should be free. I am simply stating that in some cases I believe that the free software model is better. Let the market decide. Most free software is developed outside of corporations, and much of it is developed simply as a hobby by the coders (not as a revenue earner). I'm sorry, but by this logic you could say, Instead of spending all that money on a down payment and mortgage, think of all the money I could save by just moving into the first house I see. Ummm... no. The free software model requires a different way of thinking in order to be properly comprehended. It doesn't work as the capitalist model does, and you will never understand it properly if you persist in viewing it in that way. I am not saying that it is incompatible with the capitalist model -- it is simply different. Indeed, companies like Mandrakesoft and Red Hat have proven that they _are_ compatible. Well, I would say the verdict is still out on that. As both Mandrake and Red Hat will admit, neither have made profit for their investors yet. Both companies you mention are trading stock in their companies. Presumably the people who buy their stock want to make money on it at some point. And the employees too. I bet key staff have stock options and want to see the value of the stock rise. You can't so easily violate conservation of money. :-) doug Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: Open Source (was Re: [newbie] Recommended office suites? Now OT)
On Thu, 27 Dec 2001, Doug Lerner wrote: If software were free how could the employees of the software company be paid to begin with? Tech support? Free downloads, but boxed packages that you pay for if you choose? Heh...sound familiar? Just a thought... I'm sorry, but by this logic you could say, Instead of spending all that money on a down payment and mortgage, think of all the money I could save by just moving into the first house I see. You could say that, but it wouldn't really be analogous. doug [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Thursday, December 27, 2001): True, but there is also another side to the story. What about the end users, who will _save_ money by using free software. Corporations spend massive amounts of money on buggy, insecure software. If the software was free, all this money could be saved, and the employees could be paid more (or more could be hired). I am not rabidly against charging for software, but in many cases free software can make a lot of sense. If a company chose to write a decent OS (BeOS and OS/2 come to mind) with decent software, I would consider using them. Microsoft on the other hand does not compete on quality, it competes on marketing and lock-in. On Thu, 27 Dec 2001 10:57:25 +0900, Doug Lerner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On a day-to-day basis, if you want to have a working economy, where people can support themselves then, for sure, it makes more sense to compensate labor and effort which can be attributed. In other words, pay the programmers who create programs. The compensation to society for providing the environment is paid in taxes. doug [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Thursday, December 27, 2001): Doug Lerner wrote: There is a huge difference between an idea and an instance of putting the idea to use. And which is more valuable, or more worthy of being compensated (for)? Randy Kramer Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com -- Sridhar Dhanapalan I've always liked penguins, and when I was in Canberra a few years ago we went to the local zoo with Andrew Tridgell (of samba fame). There they had a ferocious penguin that bit me and infected me with a little known disease called penguinitis. Penguinitis makes you stay awake at nights just thinking about penguins and feeling great love towards them. So when Linux needed a mascot, the first thing that came into my mind was this picture of the majestic penguin, and the rest is history. -- Linus Torvalds Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: Open Source (was Re: [newbie] Recommended office suites? Now OT)
On Fri, 28 Dec 2001 09:23:45 +0900, Doug Lerner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Thursday, December 27, 2001): On Thu, 27 Dec 2001 21:33:06 +0900, Doug Lerner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If software were free how could the employees of the software company be paid to begin with? I am not arguing that all software should be free. I am simply stating that in some cases I believe that the free software model is better. Let the market decide. Most free software is developed outside of corporations, and much of it is developed simply as a hobby by the coders (not as a revenue earner). I'm sorry, but by this logic you could say, Instead of spending all that money on a down payment and mortgage, think of all the money I could save by just moving into the first house I see. Ummm... no. The free software model requires a different way of thinking in order to be properly comprehended. It doesn't work as the capitalist model does, and you will never understand it properly if you persist in viewing it in that way. I am not saying that it is incompatible with the capitalist model -- it is simply different. Indeed, companies like Mandrakesoft and Red Hat have proven that they _are_ compatible. Well, I would say the verdict is still out on that. As both Mandrake and Red Hat will admit, neither have made profit for their investors yet. Both companies you mention are trading stock in their companies. Presumably the people who buy their stock want to make money on it at some point. And the employees too. I bet key staff have stock options and want to see the value of the stock rise. You can't so easily violate conservation of money. :-) doug Red Hat has posted small (and growing) profits over the past few quarters. MandrakeSoft is apparently on target to post a profit next year or in 2003. Considering that the current economic climate is not conducive to profit making, these are not trivial feats. I think the key staff know what the GNU/Linux distribution market is like, and they won't be expecting too much from their share prices. MandrakeSoft is listed on the Marche Libre exchange, which was chosen (AFAICT) for its stability and lack of over-speculation, which is the main problem with the NYSE and OTC (AKA Nasdaq). Investors here generally tend to be more forgiving and don't expect quick, unsustainable profits. But, as you have said, the verdict is still out on that. :) -- Sridhar Dhanapalan ... _no_ major software project that has been successful in a general marketplace (as opposed to niches) has ever gone through those nice lifecycles they tell you about in CompSci classes. Have you _ever_ heard of a project that actually started off with trying to figure out what it should do, a rigorous design phase, and a implementation phase? -- Linus Torvalds Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: Open Source (was Re: [newbie] Recommended office suites? Now OT)
Doug Lerner wrote: A little common sense can apply here. Certainly there are some examples that are obvious. For example, the letter a is obviously public domain. But C code that actually does something useful and was created with the effort of a developer - that is obviously different, isn't it? Dirt anybody can find in the ground. It doesn't mean that a beautiful clay pot that somebody creates then belongs to everybody, does it? OK, I'm getting way off topic here, so feel free to tell me to shut up. The problem, IMHO, is philosophical, and lies in the concept of property itself. Societies based on a more-or-less Western, more-or-less capitalist, more-or-less industrial model tend to regard prototypical property as manufactured exchangable physical objects. Intellectual property is a metaphorical extension of that notion, so we own an idea in the same way that we own a pot. One reaction, popular in Free Software circles, is to say that this analogy is false - you can own a pot but you can't own an idea. I believe this reaction is also based on false premises. If what makes a pot yours is your labour (as Locke claimed) then the labour you have put into a computer program should also make it yours - more so, in fact, since it does not rely on appropriation of common property (the dirt Doug mentions). Or does it? Ideas come from other ideas which are common property in much the same way as dirt is. A pot cannot be _wholly_ someone's property because it contains common property, not only in the form of dirt (or rather clay, which is not as common or worthless) but also in terms of ideas accumulated over thousands of years of ceramics. All this goes to show that property as an absolute concept is unworkable. A society _may_ choose to give certain people exclusive use of certain objects or ideas, and to give them the right to exchange these things, but only if this works for the benefit of all concerned. Ownership is no more than a convenient fiction. Robin Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: Open Source (was Re: [newbie] Recommended office suites? Now OT)
Whether a pot is the result of thousands of years of accumulated knowledge about ceramics shouldn't matter. Somebody has to still decide to put forth the labor required to make an instance of the pot. After he or she does so it is the maker's thing to profit from. doug [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Wednesday, December 26, 2001): Doug Lerner wrote: A little common sense can apply here. Certainly there are some examples that are obvious. For example, the letter a is obviously public domain. But C code that actually does something useful and was created with the effort of a developer - that is obviously different, isn't it? Dirt anybody can find in the ground. It doesn't mean that a beautiful clay pot that somebody creates then belongs to everybody, does it? OK, I'm getting way off topic here, so feel free to tell me to shut up. The problem, IMHO, is philosophical, and lies in the concept of property itself. Societies based on a more-or-less Western, more-or-less capitalist, more-or-less industrial model tend to regard prototypical property as manufactured exchangable physical objects. Intellectual property is a metaphorical extension of that notion, so we own an idea in the same way that we own a pot. One reaction, popular in Free Software circles, is to say that this analogy is false - you can own a pot but you can't own an idea. I believe this reaction is also based on false premises. If what makes a pot yours is your labour (as Locke claimed) then the labour you have put into a computer program should also make it yours - more so, in fact, since it does not rely on appropriation of common property (the dirt Doug mentions). Or does it? Ideas come from other ideas which are common property in much the same way as dirt is. A pot cannot be _wholly_ someone's property because it contains common property, not only in the form of dirt (or rather clay, which is not as common or worthless) but also in terms of ideas accumulated over thousands of years of ceramics. All this goes to show that property as an absolute concept is unworkable. A society _may_ choose to give certain people exclusive use of certain objects or ideas, and to give them the right to exchange these things, but only if this works for the benefit of all concerned. Ownership is no more than a convenient fiction. Robin Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: Open Source (was Re: [newbie] Recommended office suites? Now OT)
On a day-to-day basis, if you want to have a working economy, where people can support themselves then, for sure, it makes more sense to compensate labor and effort which can be attributed. In other words, pay the programmers who create programs. The compensation to society for providing the environment is paid in taxes. doug [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Thursday, December 27, 2001): Doug Lerner wrote: There is a huge difference between an idea and an instance of putting the idea to use. And which is more valuable, or more worthy of being compensated (for)? Randy Kramer Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Recommended office suites? Now OT
On Tuesday 25 December 2001 19:17, you wrote: What do people think about free vs commercial software in general? I myself don't object to commercial software. In fact, I work for a company that makes very high-quality commercial software with a great, loyal customer base. Surely there is nothing wrong with paying to have software supported and updated? doug [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Wednesday, December 26, 2001): MAndrakesoft is committed to free software. All the Mandrake Tools are licensed under the GNU GEneral Public License and source is available. Find another major distro that does that! Nothing wrong with it until it becomes the only game in town, or you have to update at an exorbitant fee every other year. With the open source programs you can see what's going on under the hood, tinker with it , fix it, or if your like me, break it. And you don't have to pay to reinstall it. The argument has always been that you can't make money with free software. What is software? It is a string of letters and symbols that in effect write a formula for a machine to operate from. I submit that folks have been making a comfortable living by selling their services using the formulas necessary to make air conditioning work, heating systems, internal combustion engines and on and on. All these things are based on public domain mathematics and formulas, but they are packaged and sold to people who want the benefits but don't have the time, knowledge or skills, or all three to make use of the formulas in a useful or productive manner. Intellectual content is ludicrous because, what the mind of one man can concieve of another can too. Case in point Edison and Tesla. Money and deciet won out. The more intelegent person was Tesla IMHO, but the formulas for the electron flows that were developed are used world wide and are free, and a lot of people make a living using them. Closed source is fine because it gives an edge to someone as a starter, but patent laws and copyright laws need to change, because the closed source community is willing to sue at the drop of a hat when someone comes out with a program or process that looks even remotely like what they do even though the thoughts behind the new process may be totally original to the individual presenting them. So you get a multimillion dollar company suing Joe Schmo and guess who will win, the money every time. You've stolen my property! Bah Humbug, ideas are no man's property. MandrakeSoft and some of the others are making a pretty fair run at making money on freesoftware because they are packaging it and presenting it in a manner that someone like me can relate to and finds useful, and they are not charging make me and my company officers filthy rich prices. $100 for an upgrade! Fixing something that should never have been broken in the first place! Thievery I call it. This is my own opinion and totally unsolicited by anyone, : ) -- Dennis M. registered linux user # 180842 Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Open Source (was Re: [newbie] Recommended office suites? Now OT)
This is an interesting discussion. I agree with some of your points, but am not convinced by others. For example, if a company hires a dozen programmers and they spend a year creating and tweaking and debugging code, even if you think the company has no right to the *idea* (I am not convinced of that though), surely they have the right to the code itself, if they so choose? Otherwise somebody could just repackage it with much less effort and no development costs and make profit on the other company's investments. As far as $100 for an upgrade being expensive or not - I guess it depends on what the upgrade is... doug [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Wednesday, December 26, 2001): On Tuesday 25 December 2001 19:17, you wrote: What do people think about free vs commercial software in general? I myself don't object to commercial software. In fact, I work for a company that makes very high-quality commercial software with a great, loyal customer base. Surely there is nothing wrong with paying to have software supported and updated? doug [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Wednesday, December 26, 2001): MAndrakesoft is committed to free software. All the Mandrake Tools are licensed under the GNU GEneral Public License and source is available. Find another major distro that does that! Nothing wrong with it until it becomes the only game in town, or you have to update at an exorbitant fee every other year. With the open source programs you can see what's going on under the hood, tinker with it , fix it, or if your like me, break it. And you don't have to pay to reinstall it. The argument has always been that you can't make money with free software. What is software? It is a string of letters and symbols that in effect write a formula for a machine to operate from. I submit that folks have been making a comfortable living by selling their services using the formulas necessary to make air conditioning work, heating systems, internal combustion engines and on and on. All these things are based on public domain mathematics and formulas, but they are packaged and sold to people who want the benefits but don't have the time, knowledge or skills, or all three to make use of the formulas in a useful or productive manner. Intellectual content is ludicrous because, what the mind of one man can concieve of another can too. Case in point Edison and Tesla. Money and deciet won out. The more intelegent person was Tesla IMHO, but the formulas for the electron flows that were developed are used world wide and are free, and a lot of people make a living using them. Closed source is fine because it gives an edge to someone as a starter, but patent laws and copyright laws need to change, because the closed source community is willing to sue at the drop of a hat when someone comes out with a program or process that looks even remotely like what they do even though the thoughts behind the new process may be totally original to the individual presenting them. So you get a multimillion dollar company suing Joe Schmo and guess who will win, the money every time. You've stolen my property! Bah Humbug, ideas are no man's property. MandrakeSoft and some of the others are making a pretty fair run at making money on freesoftware because they are packaging it and presenting it in a manner that someone like me can relate to and finds useful, and they are not charging make me and my company officers filthy rich prices. $100 for an upgrade! Fixing something that should never have been broken in the first place! Thievery I call it. This is my own opinion and totally unsolicited by anyone, : ) -- Dennis M. registered linux user # 180842 Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: Open Source (was Re: [newbie] Recommended office suites? Now OT)
On Tuesday 25 December 2001 20:08, you wrote: This is an interesting discussion. I agree with some of your points, but am not convinced by others. For example, if a company hires a dozen programmers and they spend a year creating and tweaking and debugging code, even if you think the company has no right to the *idea* (I am not convinced of that though), surely they have the right to the code itself, if they so choose? Otherwise somebody could just repackage it with much less effort and no development costs and make profit on the other company's investments. As far as $100 for an upgrade being expensive or not - I guess it depends on what the upgrade is... doug [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Wednesday, December 26, 2001): On Tuesday 25 December 2001 19:17, you wrote: What do people think about free vs commercial software in general? I myself don't object to commercial software. In fact, I work for a company that makes very high-quality commercial software with a great, loyal customer base. Surely there is nothing wrong with paying to have software supported and updated? doug [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Wednesday, December 26, 2001): MAndrakesoft is committed to free software. All the Mandrake Tools are licensed under the GNU GEneral Public License and source is available. Find another major distro that does that! Nothing wrong with it until it becomes the only game in town, or you have to update at an exorbitant fee every other year. With the open source programs you can see what's going on under the hood, tinker with it , fix it, or if your like me, break it. And you don't have to pay to reinstall it. The argument has always been that you can't make money with free software. What is software? It is a string of letters and symbols that in effect write a formula for a machine to operate from. I submit that folks have been making a comfortable living by selling their services using the formulas necessary to make air conditioning work, heating systems, internal combustion engines and on and on. All these things are based on public domain mathematics and formulas, but they are packaged and sold to people who want the benefits but don't have the time, knowledge or skills, or all three to make use of the formulas in a useful or productive manner. Intellectual content is ludicrous because, what the mind of one man can concieve of another can too. Case in point Edison and Tesla. Money and deciet won out. The more intelegent person was Tesla IMHO, but the formulas for the electron flows that were developed are used world wide and are free, and a lot of people make a living using them. Closed source is fine because it gives an edge to someone as a starter, but patent laws and copyright laws need to change, because the closed source community is willing to sue at the drop of a hat when someone comes out with a program or process that looks even remotely like what they do even though the thoughts behind the new process may be totally original to the individual presenting them. So you get a multimillion dollar company suing Joe Schmo and guess who will win, the money every time. You've stolen my property! Bah Humbug, ideas are no man's property. MandrakeSoft and some of the others are making a pretty fair run at making money on freesoftware because they are packaging it and presenting it in a manner that someone like me can relate to and finds useful, and they are not charging make me and my company officers filthy rich prices. $100 for an upgrade! Fixing something that should never have been broken in the first place! Thievery I call it. This is my own opinion and totally unsolicited by anyone, : ) -- Dennis M. registered linux user # 180842 Just to add my $1000 worth . . . In my stupider days, I needed an OCR package to convert faxes and submitted articles for my international publication. I was using win 3.1. Well, I bought my first OCR Professional package for a cool grand a) because I needed it and b) because all the reviews raved about it. I installed the package, and it didn't work as advertised. There was no recourse: buyer beware! Within a month, an upgrade became available for only $199! Well, I snapped that one up fast! It didn't work much better. So, I learned how to type -- it was faster and much more accurate than these professional packages. So it went for most of the software I bought for Win, including a very famous relational database package. The support, if you could afford it, basically told me It's your problem: you bought it. I solved my own problems with workarounds, including encrypting passwords as fake dll's . . . sigh! Thievery? Too polite a word! Extortion -- a little too harsh. (Btw: If you're interested in how copyright came about, check back into the book industry's history. It's no wonder why England's Penguin Books would not allow their books to
Re: Open Source (was Re: [newbie] Recommended office suites? Now OT)
On Wed, 26 Dec 2001 11:30:18 +0900 Doug Lerner [EMAIL PROTECTED] studiouisly spake these words to ponder: A little common sense can apply here. Certainly there are some examples that are obvious. For example, the letter a is obviously public domain. But C code that actually does something useful and was created with the effort of a developer - that is obviously different, isn't it? Dirt anybody can find in the ground. It doesn't mean that a beautiful clay pot that somebody creates then belongs to everybody, does it? doug Ed! I think he just called your code dirt!! -- daRcmaTTeR - If at first you don't succeed do what your wife told you to do the first time! Registered Linux User 182496 Mandrake 8.1 - 11:05pm up 9 days, 14:54, 1 user, load average: 0.02, 0.09, 0.08 Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
