Microsoft's Lobbying Priorities: Limiting Open Source 592
MonkeyDev writes "In the story on cio.com, 'Mr. Gates Goes to Washington', the author says...'Microsoft cared little for politics until the Department of Justice called it a monopoly. Now the company approaches lobbying the way it approaches everything- aggressively-and consequently it dominates the technology policy agenda.' The article outlines Microsoft's power, provides several examples of legislative decisions heavily influenced by the company, and talks about where they are aiming their newly found political clout. 'Microsoft's policy agenda includes issues that many CIOs agree with, notably more government funding for research and development, stronger copyright protection, and free trade in offshore products and services. However, two of Microsoft's policy priorities, limiting the adoption of open-source software and inoculating technology companies from spam liability, stand out as areas wherein what's good for Microsoft may not be good for all CIOs.' Further, 'Microsoft has lobbied particularly hard against open source, helping kill state bills that advocate for open source in Oregon and Texas. Microsoft argues that open source freezes innovation, and Krumholtz says that commercial software alone spurs economic growth and creates jobs.'"
Oh No... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh No... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh No... (Score:3, Insightful)
Think of the money that would get allocated to IT projects (not all Microsoft) and think of the change of emphasis to education instead of military might.
IMO, at least, it seems like a good idea.
Re:Oh No... (Score:4, Funny)
more like... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:more like... (Score:5, Funny)
If you've ever used Windows for more than a year, be careful. One view of Bill in public and you'll find yourself saying "Good Morning, Mr. Gates. Where do you want to go today?"
I'm pretty sure it says that in the changelog somewhere....
President (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry, but, why would Mr. Gate want to take such a large cut in his polical influence and pay?
Re:President (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Oh No... (Score:5, Funny)
"Monopoly is a fucking game, Senator, I'm trying to take over the world. First we had Information Technology, 'IT'. Next is Total Information Technology. 'TIT'. Cause when you are sucking on my TIT, I've got you by the motherboard."
Robin Williams rocks.
Re:Oh No... (Score:3, Funny)
Soviet Russia!!!
Re:Oh No... (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually it was an interesting event all round, as it provided me with an excellent illustration of precisely why Jeremy Paxman gets so uptight about the honours system. Until
arg (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:arg (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not even that. Neither M$ nor "open source" are particularly innovative. In fact, the most innovative thing about "open source" is the model itself, not any results from it. Too much is taking what everyone else has done and trying to do it better, sometimes succeeding and sometimes not.
Re:arg (Score:5, Insightful)
And this is called "Good Engineering," kinda like what's happened with wheels.
The number of truly novel good ideas is actually rather limited and often relies on a technological advance to impliment. Once that technological advance is made the good ideas come thick and fast for a short time, then settle down to evolutionary development again.
Take the wheel. First a solid disk, then spoked, then tension spoked, each phase a dramatic leap over the previous method, and yet, if you look at the world today most wheels are solid disks. Why? Because of advances in materials. To the first builders of wheels the stamped steel wheel would have been a more logical development than the spoked wheel, except, of course, that they didn't have steel or the tools for forming it.
Now, with the even greater advances in materials, such as plastics and composites, the solid spoked wheel is making a comeback.
Philology recapitulates ontology and most "new and innovative" ideas turn out to be old ideas reimplimented with new technologies.
It's simply a shame that most people haven't got the background to know the negative reasons why some ideas were dropped in the first place, thus wasting time recapitualating the wrong old idea.
KFG
Re:arg (Score:4, Insightful)
Example: Why does the KDE team invest in their own browser and office suite, instead of concentrating those efforts on Mozilla and OpenOffice.org? It seems that most any OSS "peg" could be modified to fit into any hole, round or square, while capatializing on the continued free development of the peg.
So why do BMW and Toyota use their own controls and switchgear, rather than just standardizing on GM stuff? Sure, the GM stuff is ugly and crappy, but wouldn't it be better if every car had the same way of turning on the headlights and wipers?
Sorry, but I happen to like the way my car's controls are arranged, and the quality they have. I'd be really pissed off if everyone just standardized on crappy GM (or whatever) equipment in their cars, and all had a GM look-and-feel. If some moron can't quickly adapt to the headlights being on a stalk instead of a switch, then maybe they shouldn't be operating a motor vehicle.
OSS and the Free Market (Score:4, Insightful)
For OSS to really excel, there simply has to be a mechanism that allows people to get paid for their contributions to innovation.
Open source has the potential of bringing more developers into the software development process...but there needs to be a way for people to protect their investment in the development of the code. Without that piece, politicos like Gates will always be able to come down on it as being anti market.
The idea that people only get paid for installation and not development and that sysadmins will live a dual life installing software during the day for pay and writing code at night is really not tenable. Nor is the idea that software developers will live for extremely sporadic donations. If OSS came with a strong system of structured property rights, then OSS developers would make more money and it would be more exceptible to business types.
Re:OSS and the Free Market (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you're missing the point of open source. It doesn't take a huge investment to create software anymore. You can take bits and pieces of other people's work, and cobble something together that does whatever you need. Development by companies shouldn't be done under this model to try to make money selling the software product, thats the old way. There's other reasons to develop software than selling
Re:OSS and the Free Market (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:OSS and the Free Market (Score:3, Insightful)
Whats funny about that is, that FOSS is on the rise, and the closed software model is fighting to stay alive. Go ahead and compete with with free software, but in most cases that software also doesn't cost any money like you say.
I think this goes completely against most people's feelings about open source
That doesn't change anything either. My feelings are that we shouldn't ha
Re:OSS and the Free Market (Score:5, Informative)
You also misunderstand the "anti-property rights corner"'s position. Their point is that creative works aren't property, but have been given certain property-like qualities for a limited time.
Re:OSS and the Free Market (Score:5, Insightful)
You'll have to ask Jordan Henderson about that. Or Apple. Or Microsoft... they use a lot of Open Source software too... NT is full of it.
See, there's a lot of Open Source software that's not playing the FSF's GNU game. You don't hear as much about it, because it's not controversial, and it's widely used by all the big players.
It's not a matter of "Open Source against Closed Source", except when someone with a bully pulpit says it is. Don't buy in to Microsoft's game, or Richard Stallman's. They thrive on opposition and obstruction for different reasons. The rest of us just want the best tools we can get for our money... and sometimes that's closed source, sometimes it's open, mostly it's Open Systems, though, because open systems let us mix and match the best tools regardless of where they come from...
Re:OSS and the Free Market (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it's kind of a shame. TenDRA (tcc), in particular, could have done everything Java and
But let me hasten to add that this isn't a proof that open source inhibits innovation. It's proof that letting ANY software dominate a market inhibits innovation. Microsoft does a wonderful job of that. There was a lovely GDI-X11 termote terminal system called NTerprise that gave as good response time to networked Windows applications as to networked X11 apps, but because Microsoft went with Citrix' "screen-scraper" technology it died out.
Re:OSS and the Free Market (Score:3, Interesting)
Fair enough, you couldn't use ANDF for web applets. so, TenDRA could have done everything other than web applets that Java is used for, and everything that I would actually trust
Neither the JVM nor
Re:OSS and the Free Market (Score:3, Informative)
You're mixing up all kinds of different issues here. I started out talking about alternatives to GCC, and in that context I suggested tcc as an alternative. Then you argued that ANDF didn't provide type-safety.
Well, damn, you can't use a type-safe runtime for a general purpose C or C++ compiler. Burroughs demonstrated that something like twenty years ago. So the fact that you don't get a type-sa
Re:OSS and the Free Market (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm genuinely interested to learn more about the community or communities in which software was freely shared in the form of source code (with some kind of, perhaps unspoken, understanding that the recipient would be
So near and yet so far. (Score:3, Interesting)
But... I believe that competition is essential to the continued development of software systems, and that the open source model doesn't automatically lead to better software in all areas. Also, he seems to
Re:OSS and the Free Market (Score:3, Insightful)
The idea that people only get paid for installation and not development is not at all borne out by the current stats; most of t
Re:OSS and the Free Market (Score:3, Interesting)
The list can go on as long as you like.
Personally, I care a great deal more for the small firm with a great idea that does have a support on hand to pay their development costs.
Re:OSS and the Free Market (Score:4, Insightful)
These poor companies would also have us believe it is the end of innovation if they cannot make obscene profit margins. Baloney. The money saved by not buying Slick Willy's OS does not disappear into the ether-- it is available for investment elsewhere. It can be used to hire other programmers and quality support, that was previously unaffordable (this is why I am currently employed as a software engineer, on Linux). Without Linux, there is no way my company could afford to develop our products in house.
FOSS is the ultimate economy of scale, and this is what scares the bejeepers out of Sun and Microsoft. If it takes over ten times more cash to produce the same product as your competitor- then you are doomed. It is like the local general store trying to compete with Wall Mart. And now that the same corporate free-trade, merciless efficiency is being used against these big cushy companies, am I supposed to fear sorry for them? Hell no. They say they are "capitalists" who want to innovate-- so let them innovate a process efficiency, or let them die.
As for a solution to paying developers, for having business give back to the system instead of just trying to mooch a free lunch, that is a cultural change that has to occur in management. Management needs to realize that they really do not want the "code". They want the system designed to meet their needs and to have support for it, and that they still have to pay something for that-- albiet less as they are sharing the load with other interested parties. As the support structure continues to improve for FOSS, more money will continue to come in.
Re:OSS and the Free Market (Score:3, Informative)
OS supports innovation: examples that prove it (Score:5, Insightful)
Example 1:For my sins, I am the maintainer of the YAFFS file system which is used extensively in Linux-based mobile and embedded devices. People have often take YAFFS and add stuff or use it in ways that would not happen if YAFFS was closed. Having people play with and extend YAFFS in ways that I would not have done myself has improved it. YAFFS is designed for NAND flash, when somebody said they want to use it for NOR flash I said "Dumb idea", but the person went ahead anyway and achieved great results. Now a few products are shipping using YAFFS on NOR. In a closed source model that could not have happened.
Example 2: The RML preemptable kernel stuff. RML went and played with preemptable kernel stuff that many people said waas a waste of time (including, if I recall, Linus). When he was done, and could show that it worked, it got included back into the mainstream and the Linux kernel is vastly improved because of this. In a closed source model Linus would have said "Dumb idea, fsck off" and RML would have not been able to "scratch thaat itch" and would not have been able to get past having a cool idea.
Code improves by having different people try out different things. Some are dumb ideas and go nowhere and some are good. Until tried, it is difficult to tell the good from the bad ideas. In closed source, a pre-selection filter prevents people trying ideas. In open source anyone can scratch an itch and try things out, hence open source is more likely to experience breakthroughs than closed source.
Re:OS supports innovation: examples that prove it (Score:3, Insightful)
Just to add to your comment, OSS does more than just innovate by ourselves. By being the cheapest competitor, one that is impossible to undercut, and one that will eventually be better, we "encourage" software companies to better themselves. If they fail to do so, they will lose, until yet another company appears and sparks some i
Re:OS supports innovation: examples that prove it (Score:3, Funny)
because the average
Re:OS supports innovation: examples that prove it (Score:4, Insightful)
Most new ideas are dumb ideas and don't work.
Some dumb ideas can be made to work, and very slowly we get some idea of what the right ideas really are. What it take to make a dumb idea work can easily be more important than the idea itself.
The critical difference is the required probability of success that is required to try out something different and probably dumb. Because it's so easy to fork, the main line gets the benefit without sustaining the risk.
IF YAFFS was a commercial product and if there was a way for the company to make money on NOR, they would have ported it to NOR.
If there was a perceived way for the company to make money on NOR. Assuming EmbeddedJanitor knows what he's talking about, that would not be the perception. One way to quickly go out of business is to try out all sorts of wild ideas.
wrong again (Score:2, Insightful)
Innovation stifles Microsoft.
I mean; think about all the work Microsoft has to put into 'new features' everytime Apple/*nix/ect shows some innovation.
Come on guys, let's be a little bit more sympathetic to Microsoft from now on and not come up with fresh ideas as often.
That's Capitalism (Score:5, Interesting)
Cb..
Re:That's Capitalism (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That's Capitalism (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should they do this? Their high profit margins will disappear because they sell software not services. They can't compete with wide spread open source and maintain their profits. Ultimately, they've decided that the best manipulation of open source is to hinder it as a competitor from as many markets as possible. Personally, I think it's a losing battle in the long term, but merely delaying open source can mean billions more of revenue for Microsoft.
Re:That's Capitalism (Score:2)
Re:That's Capitalism (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That's Capitalism (Score:3, Interesting)
The problems we face today is that we have so many laws in the books, anyone could be nailed for anything. And most of it is an outgrowth of the above laws I named. For some odd reason, politicians feel a need to create new and strange laws, or to redefine the old in news ways, as a justification of their liveliehood: this pro
Re:That's Capitalism (Score:3, Insightful)
In Soviet Russia, many bad or stupid things were explained "we need this for sake of purity of our Communism" (and no, this is not a yet another "In Soviet Russia" joke). I have spent a large part of my live in that system and I took one good lesson: never accept this kind of explanation. Bad or stupid things are, well, bad or stupid things, as simple as that. It's irrelevant whether they are pure Whateverism or not.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:That's Capitalism (Score:3, Interesting)
Second, maximizing shareholders value has a little if something to do with the lobbying. For example, IBM also maximizes its shareholders value but AFAIK its policy forbids financial support of politicians.
Third, the convergence of corporate power with the Government is not called Capitalism, it is called Fascism. See, for example, 14 defining characterist [couplescompany.com]
Re:That's Capitalism (Score:3, Insightful)
Hmmm. Honestly, your statements are so ignorant of basic economics and wrong in so many dimensions that I don't know where to begin.
Nice ad hominem. I know a lot more about economics than you appear to believe.
[Can I repeat my call that economics should be taught ALL FOUR YEARS of high school and should be a fundamental subject drilled into people? That would solve so many problems in the world. But I digress.]
Typical zealot mantra. If everybody was educated (i.e. blinkered) like me then the world
Microsoft's Lobbying Priorities: Limiting Open Sou (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft's Lobbying Priorities: Limiting Open (Score:4, Interesting)
wth??? (Score:3, Insightful)
Some day... (Score:5, Interesting)
Wow... Does Microsoft plan on entering EVERY market some day? Can't you just see them lobby for or against some legislation for cloning because they may "one day enter the cloning market?"
Re:Some day... (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft has a Price/Earnings ratio over thirty and their primary revenue generators Windows and MS Office have basically finished growing. Microsoft is taking a good hard look at entering all sorts of markets.
Being a Microsoft partner is going to be an especially precarious position to be in over the next couple of years as Microsoft looks for ways to "get rid of the middleman" between Microsoft and the end user.
Not commercial ? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think redhat might argue that open source software can be commercial too.
Closed Source (Score:3, Insightful)
Ultimately, it is our responsibility to vote into office representatives that respond to our wishes rather than lobbies. If you aren't registered to vote and you are over 18 years old in the US, PLEASE register to vote [fec.gov] before the November election. I don't care who you vote for; just VOTE!!!
If you are registered to vote and you don't, you suck.
If you are registered and know people who either aren't registered or don't vote, get them to. A democracy only works when people exercise their ability to effect a change.
Chris
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Closed Source (Score:3, Insightful)
People say "Why do you vote Libertarian [lp.org] when you know they aren't going to win?". My response is: "If everyone continues to think that, then of course they will never win. The two party system is a result of the fact that most people won't vote for anything outside of it because they "won't win" or they'll "waste their vote". It's a catch 22 that I don't subscribe to.
Chris
Legislation advocating tech decisions are wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but I fail to see how any bill (Gates or proposed legislation) that advocates in favor of either open or closed source is a good thing. Legislators ought to stick their noses somewhere else then making technology decisions.
Re:Legislation advocating tech decisions are wrong (Score:3, Informative)
I can't speak to these particular bills, but most "pro-open source" bills boil down to requiring that government agencies consider open source solutions when doing purchasing.
jf
Oh yeah, thank god for Microsoft (Score:5, Funny)
There's something I don't get... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why no one with relevant authority even tries to consider a similar deal with Microsoft? The case of AT&T proves that dealing with monopolists does not have to be necessarily a binary option, either we consider you a monopolist and forcibly split or we give you carte blanche. You can tolerate a monopolist corporation if you strike a good deal for common good - like in this case, for example, "OK, keep on your monopoly on MS Windows, but open the bloody source code so people can write their own security patches, give copies freely to education & research, do something to ensure cross-platform compatibility of data files and while we are at it, what about a good Age Of Empires sequel?".
Re:There's something I don't get... (Score:5, Informative)
AT&T did exercise strong monopoly powers. I remember when it was illegal to hook up anything to the phone system. You had to lease your phone from AT&T. The phone device and all the wiring belonged to AT&T. To tamper with the phone or the wiring was illegal. This of course sounds awfully similar to some of the DRM legislation being pushed in Congress to forbid tampering with DVDs and other multimedia.
AT&T had the telecommunications strangelhold as a government regulated monopoly with at least a publically stated quid pro quo. It seems that Microsoft wants the benefits of monopoly power without any of that pesky government interference.
I hope legislators see through a lot of Microsoft's FUD and understand that a truly competitive playing field which includes FOSS software is the best environment for software innovation.
I would oppose any deal with Microsoft that limits competition. I do not think such a deal would serve the public interest.
Re:There's something I don't get... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm glad, we are not doing this again. May be, we'd have the phones on every desk a few years later, but the cell-phones could've arrived a decade earlier...
Similarly, our splurging on roads (well beyond the strategic highways of Eisenhower's vision) saddens me. Without it, we could well have had usable and affordable
Re:There's something I don't get... (Score:3, Insightful)
And look at our splurging on the Internet. Without it, we could have direct brain to brain connects.
It takes energy to lift an object off the ground, energy that a car doesn't take. There's reasons why most of our shipping is by land, not air; because it's a lot cheaper to load it on a train or truck than a plane.
Besides the cost issue, a car that stops working rolls on, usually letting you stop someplace saf
Follow the money (Score:5, Interesting)
The trick is to have the politicians with the power to set the rules having to bear the cost of the rules that they create.
If we can make our politicians feel more responsible for the cost of commercial licenses that the government has to buy, then we will see much greater uptake of open source by governments. In Europe the politicians are juggling software patents vs. the cost of paying Microsoft. If it weren't for Ireland (a Microsoft client state), software patents would be dead in Europe.
The bottom line: Make the politicians responsible for the damage they create.
Keep up the PR/FUD Microsoft ! (Score:5, Interesting)
If this is the case then why such a big PR/FUD Campaign against opensource? If microsoft products are so "innovative" then then will out sell the free alternatives that don't "innovate" won't they???
It getting rather funny microsoft running the "innovative" comment all the time when in my experience (10years ish) the open-source community has been far more innovative. (Hey I hear that I will be able to turn on/off computers using Shorthorn when it is eventually released. I wish linux had a feature like that.. oh..)
Anyway the one good thing about Microsofts FUD campaign against opensource/linux is that it has enabled me to show a number of clients how good Linux is! After all why else would microsoft spend so much trying to convince everyone that microsoft is better. TCO Studies funded by microsoft. Get the facts website with blatently biased results.
So microsoft keep up the fud as it is making me loads of $$$ !
Pretty much everything (Score:3)
Let's see.... the internet, the web, email, chat, network-aware windowing systems, DNS, NTP, security systems (like kerberos), and a slew of other network stuff that we take for granted these days.
More recently:
CODA [cmu.edu], GNOME Storage [gnome.org] (RDBMS-based filesystem), Dashboard [nat.org] (which Microsoft bit off of and calls "implicit query"), Wiki, . .
A *lot* of true software innovation starts in the free software world. Often it's taken, usurped, and out-marketted by commercial vendors (like the case of
And you really wonder (Score:2)
Wake up USA. Your system has broken down. You live in a mediocracy, where the news control what you should know.
Thanks Slashdot, for staying independent.
No innovation with opensource? (Score:4, Interesting)
What is truely sad.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that these actions by Microsoft fundementally affect everyone. Open Source makes perfect sense for certain types of infrastructure applications, the Operating System being the best example. Everyone who uses the OS can contribute to its growth in capabilities and maturity. Everyone benefits except the vendors of Operating Systems.
Open Source make especially good sense for governments as well, since they all have similar needs and limited budgets. Contrary to what Microsoft believes, my tax dollars are not intented as a hand out for Bill Gates. I want them used wisely. If Bill Gates wants my money, he can get it by producing software that I purchase willingly, not software that I am forced to pay for by Micrsoft's creative marketing "agreements" with computer vendors.
Now, for all those who are going to scream about how we should all just watch quietly as Microsoft goes about it's business of squeezing us for money... MS is a convicted monopolist. I personally believe that there is no place for a monopoly in a free market economy. It will always result in the devistation of the marketplace, just as MS has. Capital for software development didn't dry up just because of the Dotcom meltdown. It has vanished because no one wants to invest in developing a software product that MS might decide to compete against.
Those of you who are unemployed software engineers, think about this very carefully. MS is part of the reason you are out of work. MS has become the impediment to innovation in our industry, not Open Source.
If you want a good example, just look at Firefox vs. IE. MS stopped development work on IE after they "won" the browser wars. Firefox is quietly taking over the market now by being better, faster, and far more secure. This could only be done by an Open Source project, because we saw what happened to Netscape when they tried to compete against the company that controlled the operating system.
MS should have been broken up. It would have been the healthiest thing for both the stock holders and the software market. The new companies created out of the old Microsoft would eventually be worth far more than the current company is and we'd all see better software being developed as competition heated up again.
Seldom has a quote seemed more fitting (Score:3, Interesting)
"Even if you can deceive people about a product through misleading statements, sooner or later the product will speak for itself." - Hajime Karatsu
outlaw lobbyists (Score:3, Insightful)
Using money to influence government in this way is, in its end result, bribery. But it is different than bribery in that it does not require corrupt politicians.
It requires only politicians who are not all-knowing. Even intelligent, well-intentioned people can be convinced of something if only one side of an argument is heard. This is especially true for a topic as complex as government policy.
Professional lobbying, because it is effectively bribery, needs to be outlawed-- it should be illegal to pay someone to speak to a government representative on your behalf. Instead of hiring lobbyists, companies can ask their employees and shareholders to contact, in their spare time, their representatives. If that is not sufficient, companies can, through advertisement, raise public awareness of their concerns. In this way, the influence of money will move one more step away from government.
Public interests groups, such as environmental and anti-software patent groups will have little problem recruiting volunteer lobbysists, as many of them already do. Such lobbyists, since they are unpaid, would be perfectly legal. Not only will public interest groups be able to lobby almost as effectively as before, but they will also no longer have to compete with highly paid professional lobbying firms.
How many MS programmers does it take to... (Score:3, Insightful)
None, as its a hardware problem. But it requires a room full of MS programmers to figure that out.
So how many MS hardware engineers does it take to Change a light bulb?
None, as it is a environment specialist problem. But it takes a building full of hardware engineers to figure that out.
How many environment specialist does it take to change a light bulb?
None as it is a maintance problem, but it takes a complex full of environment specialist to figure that out.
So how many maintance personel does it take to change a light bulb?
One and Shes polish, but first she has to get purchasing to order a light bulb.
How hard is it for her to get purchasing to order a light bulb?
harder than it is to just take a light buld from some hotel room or other business and use it instead.
Now thats innovation and job creation.
Point being, MS does not innovate, so how whould they know what innovation is?
Correction, what is their definition of innovation?
The light bulb in someone elses building.
Kill the Vacuum, and Kill MSFT Lobbies. (Score:3, Insightful)
If you become aware of a particular technological issue that your congresscritters are discussing, WRITE THEM A LETTER, STUPID. If MSFT-centric policies are getting pushed through "in a vacuum," it's because citizens who know better aren't providing the opposing ideas.
As that philosopher guy once said: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil (or silly corporate lobbyists) is that good men do nothing."
Oh please. (Score:3, Interesting)
Fact is, these "jobs" are ones that do not need doing.
If "open source" provides needed software at lower cost, everyone (and I am looking at you, large wasteful government) should be using it.
The "jobs" and "economic growth" should be used to create software which is not available thru "open source"
Society is not better off when people do un-needed work, or pay more then necessary for goods and service.
"But it's *my* job at risk" I hear you whine.
Too farking bad. Do you remember when ball point pens first came out, and they cost $25? Do you think the craftsmen who made those are still getting paid the same amount to make pens today that wholsale for 20 cents? Where were you when buggy whip makers went bust because people drove cars?
You are buying only made in USA computer parts, right? I mean, you would never buy parts made in other countries, because that would mean that US workers would lose their jobs just so you can buy a PC for less than $6000.
And that would just be UNFAIR!
Open source stifles innovation? (Score:4, Interesting)
1. launched a massive security sweep of all existing code.
2. released XP service pack2 that defaulted most security settings to reasonably high levels, including turning on the built in firewall.
3. Has resumed actively developing Internet Explorer, even released a popup blocker (about 2 years too late on that one Bill)
Those are the only three things I can think of now but it sounds to me like open source is stimulating innovation here. If Open source is providing MS with tough competition, hence pushing both sides to attempt to innovate more and create high quality products, how is this bad? Are the people in our government that fucking stupid? I mean, they can't be that dumb if they got elected....well, actually (bush...cough bush)
I've read a lot of posts from people who believe innovation in software is dead, I say, don't listen to them, they are not programmers. Simply because the product is the same, doesn't mean there isn't innovation all over the place. Someone might have found a way to make the application 10% faster using some new technique never used before, you never know. Open source is full of these kinds of breakthoughs and our development model ensures that they don't die with the company who created them, they live on through the GPL, being used and reused in many applications until something even better comes along.
Open source is not only innovative in and of itself, it also creates innovative code and makes sure that everyone can get ahold of it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Innovation? (Score:3, Insightful)
MS is currently one step ahead of linux (yes flame all you want, but if linux were ahead more people would use it). They are ahead because windows is easy, and there is a whole bunch of software that doesnt run on linux.
If MS was so worried about OSS then if all they did was make sure they delivered what their customers wanted first, at a fair price, they wouldnt need to worry. OSS would simply never be a justifiable option (when looking from a CIOs perspective).
But MS is often late, at a higher price. If nothing else, OSS keeps MS in check. I would hate to think about a return to the day when MS is the only game in town, and can act accordingly (think of 1999 minus the
Freezes innovation? (Score:3, Insightful)
Excuse me? This from the company who is "appropriating" features from Firefox into the next version of IE?
It seems to me that open source developers are the only ones concerned with innovation, because most of the time innovation and profit are mutually exclusive (i.e., upholding the status quo means less work, less dev time, and hence fewer expenses for closed-source operations, especially in the more 'feature-oriented' areas that customers feel they can live without).
Closed source doesn't necessarily create jobs (Score:3, Interesting)
If it had been Open Source there still would have been developers working on it, but it would still exist. When the company went under those developers could have taken this and went elsewhere to show what they had. It could have at least been released to the public so that other companies could take it and adapt it to their needs, hiring programmers in the process.
You mean off shore right? (Score:3, Insightful)
You mean after the success of free trade with off shoring there will be many jobs out side right? Glad to see Bill cares about the country more than he does his dinasty==I mean legacy==I mean share holders....ah darn....ssdjh349dg
Broken window fallacy? (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, surely they can't be serious. The govt have the choice bewteen paying a lot of money for commercial software, or much much less for free/open source software. The opponent of FOSS says that since they pay more, and people working for companies are earning money and got a job, it spurs the economic growth as opposed to FOSS who supports some people in their basement given nothing back to the economy.
Isn't this bullshit? I mean, if they pay MUCH less for the needed system/software, they have MORE money left afterward, money that can be INJECTED back in the economy in different ways. So, the govt fulfilled their needs PLUS they have more money for the economy, and can spend it anyway they want.
It's WIN/WIN isn't it? With commercial, they get their software at an overinflated price and they inject money ONLY in a specific part of economy and don't have the luxury to choose how to spend it.
It's the data and protocols that really matter (Score:4, Insightful)
closed source does help keep software jobs (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:closed source does help keep software jobs (Score:3, Informative)
Creating jobs for Doctors (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, in the same way that shooting yourself in the foot creates jobs for doctors.
PS, why do some many people insist on framing the debate in terms of commercial softwre versus free software?
It really is proprietary versus Free. Redhat is commercial, SuSE is commercial, the list of Free and commercial software is quite extensive.
Ironic, isn't it? (Score:5, Insightful)
They pretty much minded their own business government-wise until their enemies wined and dined the folks in the beltway and got the feds to go after microsoft for antitrust. So now Sun and Netscape have taught Microsoft that if you spread the wealth around washington you can get things via governmental force that you couldn't normally get in a an open market economy.
It's stark irony that an open source project such as mozilla could suffer thanks to a lesson about lobbying that Microsoft learned from Netscape.
-- Greg
Just two thoughts (Score:5, Interesting)
The first is when taxes pay for research and programming the code should be public domain. Microsoft, apple, GNU, everyone should be able to take the code and put it in their work, claim copyrights and license it as they like. From there let the various models compete. I dont want to get into trying to legislate licenses.
The second is states should not be able to say you can or can not buy commercial software or open source. I'm not even for favoring one or the other. Let them compete. However, they should be able to say they will only be able to buy software that adhears to standards needed for interoperability between vendor products. So unless the
One thing is for sure. If you start playing politics with Microsoft, you better be ready for the big fight. Its one thing to push for standards which is going to cause enough conflict, but dictating vendors or rejecting vendors based on their biz model is getting into dangerous ground.
Re:Just two thoughts (Score:3, Insightful)
States base contract distribution all the time on many factors having nothing to do with price...and they love to award non-software contracts to companies run by women, minorities, etc. to spread the wealth around so that the same "rich old white men" don't simply get richer off state money.
Now that MS is a convicted monopoly, states SHOULD be following their purchasing policies [for every other commodity] and seek other sources that have
Microsoft to Share Office Software Code (Score:3, Funny)
SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. said on Sunday that it would share the underlying software code for its Office program as part of its efforts to make governments more confident in the security and compatibility of the world's largest software maker's products.[snip]
So I guess the government should limit Office use? (Not that MS is promising open source by any means.)
Microsoft and "Innovation" (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft wouldn't know innovation if it bit them in the nose. Bill Gates famous line "this whole internet thing is a fad" is one example.. The quote "Microsoft argues that open source freezes innovation" - is a joke.
Put simply, one of the greatest problems facing the USA this decade has been the fact that we are rewarding the "duplicator" (Microsoft) more than the true "innovators".
Name ONE innovation Microsoft has introduced...
The OS.. NO (UNIX.. even DOS was stolen)
The windowing system.. NO (Amiga/Xerox/Apple)
Microsoft "Bob".. YES!
Multi-platform/Network based programming language.. NO (Sun Java)
The Webbrowser.. NO (Mozilla/Lynx/Netscape)
Streaming media?.. NO (Real Networks)
The office suite.. NO (Lotus/Word Perfect/etc)
The virus..YES!
The worm.. YES!
Networking.. NO
TCP/IP.. NO
NetBUI.. YES! (yikes!)
Stability and Security.. NO
The BSOD.. YES!
Obscurity.. YES!
hrmm.. not much innovation there... I hope most people realize the emperor has no clothes when it comes to Microsoft speaking about innovation.
As far as money from Open Source.. well, the internet is the single greatest new market this decade.
Gah (Score:3, Insightful)
{sigh} this has reached the point where one wonders how even a professional politician could believe this stuff. Microsoft has done more to hold back the computing industry as a whole than any other single entity, including the Federal Government. Over the past twenty years, I've lost track of the number of way-cool innovative products that I used for a while until suddenly they were gone, because the vendor either a. became a Microsoft "Partner" (euphemism for "death knell") or b. was simply bought out or sued out of existence.
Honestly, I look back almost three decades, to the beginning of the personal computer revolution, and think about the promise the industry held and how excited we all were to be a part of it. Everything we did was new (yes
MS Killed Virginia Bill (Score:5, Interesting)
It...uh...ended badly [readthehook.com]. Microsoft sent out six lobbyists (only one officially from Microsoft, with the rest from Microsoft shell agencies with Bushian names like "Organization for Software Freedom") and shut it down.
We'll try again this year.
-Waldo Jaquith
it's the hardware, stupid. (Score:3, Interesting)
To combat this eventuality Microsoft and the entertainment industry push to build DRM into the hardware - CPUs, motherboards, sound systems, all of it. This is really what Longhorn is all about. There will be a thicket of patents walling off the technology, and of course the licenses will not be compatible with free software. Naturally it will be difficult to impossible to get this hardware to be fully operational without access to the specs.
Obviously, most people in the industry will understand what Microsoft is up to and many will not want to go along. So there'll be attempts to sponsor legislation mandating the use of these technologies. I'm sure you can imagine all the FUD from the {RI,MP}AA and their many front groups.
Will Microsoft get away with closing the PC hardware platform? I don't know. But this will be the final showdown between free and proprietary software.
For the record, I think this would be very bad for America.
nothing new (Score:3, Interesting)
Influencing govt is nothing new. One just needs to look at how some of the historically large corporations in USA (eg. oil companies), such as ExonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Halliburton (aka KBR), and others, have influenced US govt to the point of controlling their military.
As the computer industry, and consequently the corporations, increase in size, theiry lobbying power will increase...
I have summed up why this is bad (Score:3, Interesting)
"Open source freezes innovation" (Score:3, Informative)
"Bashing" is not the problem. Lack of thought is. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Bashing" Microsoft is like "bashing" the present U.S. government administration. Unless they have spent many hours studying them, those who complain probably don't know one-one-hundredth of the abusiveness.
I've been trying to understand the underlying causes of organizational abusiveness. Partly it seems that rich people often begin to think of themselves as above everyone else. The begin to have a subtle kind of mental breakdown. For them, continuing to think of themselves as superior is like drugs to a crack addict.
The article Windows XP Shows the Direction Microsoft is Going [futurepower.org] shows a little of the inability of Microsoft to be a good world citizen. It's old now and needs updating, but it does give a small idea of the breadth and depth of Microsoft abusiveness.
Three movies and 35 books say that the present administration of the U.S. government is extremely corrupt. See the article Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government [futurepower.org].
At present vice-president Dick Cheney is visiting all the states with many undecided voters to tell them that the U.S. is constantly at war, and he and George W. Bush are the best people to lead a war. The U.S. government has engaged in 24 wars [hevanet.com] since World War 2. The system works by creating fear so rich [hevanet.com] people [hevanet.com] can profit.
As former U.S. President and Supreme Commander of Allied Forces General Dwight D. Eisenhower said in a famous speech [yale.edu], beware of the "military-industrial complex". Here's a quote:
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
"We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes."
Another quote:
"The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present - and is gravely to be regarded."
If you love the U.S. as much as I do, you will stop worrying about bashing, and you will begin trying to understand the conflicts and begin trying to help the world out of the mess it gets itself in when people don't think deeply.
At present, those who complain about Microsoft are often attacked by people who are uninformed. This delays needed improvements inside Microsoft.
Really, really caring makes you strong.
Re:"Bashing" is not the problem. Lack of thought i (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know exactly what Futurepower meant by that comment, but I will point out that merely having a command prompt is not the same as having a proper CLI environment. While cmd.exe may be slowly gaining some of the serious features of Bash or KSH, that still doesn't make a CLI. Under Unix/Linux, bash (or whatever shell you want to use) is really just a "glue" language. The real power comes from the dozens of filter-type tools in /bin and /usr/bin and being able to combine them in useful ways. Add in hun
Re:This is not MS's fault... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Linux is Innovative? (Score:3, Informative)
The Apple Macintosh is generally considered the easiest desktop computer to use... even Bill Gates has said as much. But it's got about the same market share as Linux, and it's built on an open-source OS.
So whatever your alleged point is, that should be enough to render it clearly nonsense.
Microsoft's market share is the result of cross-promotion and the ap
Re:What a load of crap (Score:4, Interesting)
* Open source projects have trouble innovating, because they don't pay. That means the people who work on them have to make money somewhere else, which means they can't devote 100% of their energy to innovating the open source.
* Commercial projects have just as much trouble innovating, because they HAVE to pay, which means they have to sell. Since the vast majority of users are "alright jack" with the existing functionality of their computer, innovative apps are a hard sell.
It's a kicker. Want to write an innovative art package? You either Open Source it and have it sit idle on SourceForge because it has no prestige and no-one wants to put in the time, or you make it commercial and watch as it fails to sell because everyone already has their copy of Photoshop.
Re:Microsoft is right (Score:4, Insightful)
What you don't see is the thousands of small utilities used inside companies that come from open-source. These utilities are not distributed to the public, so they are not affected by the GPL, but this cannot be done with closed source.
Also I can't think of anything that Microsoft made that was innovative, that they didn't steal and use their monopoly power to kill the original, that was usually better.
I'm running gnome and have lots of utilities that I don't have on MS. Some of these are available from third parties, but the quality is not as good. One main example is the multiple desktop. I use six different desktops to bounce around different projects that I work on in one day. This has helped me tremendously. Grant you, that this is old, but I first saw this with fvwm and that was opensource. Maybe it was copied from something else but that was not were I've seen it. I've found many utilities more easy to use in the opensource arena than the closed source.
Also where do you think IE came from? the same place as Mozilla, which is derived from Netscape which was derived from Mosaic [uiuc.edu] which is another innovative opensource product. If all you look at is Word, Powerpoint, Excel and Photoshop, I can see you having this view, but there is a lot more out there that comes from opensource, but since it doesn't have a logo on it, you just don't see it.
Open your eyes.