The world is slowly and surely going crazy. I’m sure of it now. The US copyright lobby has officially gone totally and utterly nuts. Get this: they are trying to lobby the US government to equate encouraging the use of Free and open source software to undermining intellectual property rights, and to weakening the software industry. I wish I was making this stuff up.
The International Intellectual Property Alliance is an umbrella group for organisations like the RIAA and the MPAA, but it also covers publishing, television, and software. It’s one of those organisations you don’t hear about often, who operate rather silently in the background, lobbying for their poisonous cause to the US government.
What the IIPA is currently lobbying for defies all logic. They want the US Trade Representative to place countries like Brazil, India, and Indonesia on the Special 301 list, which is a list of countries that do not, according to mostly the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America and the IIPA, do enough to protect intellectual property rights.
Now, why should these countries be placed on this Special 301 list? Hold on to your Debian t-shirt, because it’s all about Free and open source software. The governments of the countries the IIPA wants to add have one thing in common: they’ve used or are encouraging the adoption of Free and open source software, which, according to the IIPA, “weakens the software industry” and “fails to build respect for intellectual property rights”.
“The Indonesian government’s policy […] simply weakens the software industry and undermines its long-term competitiveness by creating an artificial preference for companies offering open source software and related services, even as it denies many legitimate companies access to the government market,” the IIPA states, “Rather than fostering a system that will allow users to benefit from the best solution available in the market, irrespective of the development model, it encourages a mindset that does not give due consideration to the value to intellectual creations.”
So, there you have it. Encouraging the use of Free and open source software is apparently akin to undermining intellectual property rights; in fact, they consider it anti-capitalistic. You’d think these organisations would one day run out of stupid, but they just keep on handing it out.
.. directly from the artist. Or buy stuff that is CC licensed.
DO NOT buy CDs, DVDs, BDs other stuff from the industry. The artist gets next to nothing and you support their exploitation and this twisted agenda (http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/)
Rapidshare et al provide most of the stuff you want with no risk anyways. Look at rlslog.net for updates.
dude, stealing is not taking the moral high ground, boycott is. If you don’t like the rules these people play by, then don’t play the game. Anything else makes you just as bad as them.
You would have a point if there was REAL property involved here. I do agree that the best thing is to avoid using things that are traded at enormously inflated prices due to artifical scarcity.
However, consider this question: is it “stealing” if you overhear a concert performance?
In reality, how can one steal anything that has a marginal cost of production of zero or near zero? What exactly has been taken? If one obtains a CD, then one actually has some marks laid out in a spiral pattern on a piece of plastic. If one downloads something, then as long as one pays for the electricity and for the communications bandwidth, what else is really involved? What other party afterwards has less than they had before that download?
How can one steal nothing? How can one really steal Imaginary Property (IP)?
So it is not exactly stealing (because, as you said, there is no loss), but at the same time it is still benefiting from others hard work without giving anything as compensation. Doing that is wrong, and at least to me, immoral. Arguing about semantics all you like, you will not convince me that you are entitled to the fruits of others hard work, unless they choose to give it to you.
I could equally well argue that charging someone $200 for a piece of plastic is immoral, even if the piece of plastic does convey some kind of Imaginary Property, especially if all of the producer’s costs for making that piece of plastic have already been met many times over.
However, it is really a philosphical question, and an economic one, and not really a question of morality at all. I notice that you haven’t taken on the topic of exactly why society should pay for artifical scarcity, and why it should suffer the economic deadweight loss that artifical scarcity induces. Where is the morality there?
Here is another aspect of the same question for you to ponder … first read this article as background:
http://www.miller-mccune.com/culture-society/triumph-of-the-cyborg-…
So how much should people be asked to pay per copy of an “Emily Howell” track?
What is it really worth? How is society going to pay Emily Howell? Why should society pay Emily Howell (considering that Emily Howell is actually a computer program)?
Edited 2010-02-25 04:18 UTC
You don’t have the right to distribute another person’s copyrighted work without their permission. We can all make plenty of arguments about whether copyright law should apply to plastic or bytes or paper, but ultimately the media on which the material is imprinted is irrelevant; similarly, it doesn’t matter whether you or I believe that copying a song or a movie or a book is a victimless act that doesn’t deprive the creator of any revenue. Because the copyright holder alone has the right to decide — not you, me, or anyone else — how the creation gets distributed. People seem to get all tangled up in the meaningless details and excuses (“I’m not hurting anybody”, “I wouldn’t have bought it, so they didn’t lose any money”, “They don’t have a right to charge so much money”, etc, etc). But that’s what they are: excuses.
I’m not after excuses, I don’t need to excuse myself, I haven’t partaken in any violation of copyrights.
That is not my question.
What is a “right”? Who determines what “rights” are? Who gets to hand out “rights”? Who gets to receive “rights”? Why is one line of typing text supposed to be worth thousands, in perpetuity, over and over again, and other lines of typing text (such as in a letter, perhaps, so it does contain semantic intelligence in its composition) are worth nothing?
I repeat, this is a philosophical question, and an economic one, not a moral one.
PS: I note also, once again, that still no-one has taken on the topic of exactly why society should pay for artificial scarcity, and why it should suffer the economic deadweight loss that artificial scarcity induces. Where is the morality there?
Edited 2010-02-25 04:48 UTC
Well, here in the US, our founding fathers would have told you over 200 years ago, that man is given certain inalienable rights by our Creator. Governments don’t grant rights. What they do is protect them. Copyright law is premised on the notion that what you create belongs to you, and government codified laws to ensure that there’s a legal framework to protect your rights.
Well, technically speaking, any expressive work that you create is implicitly copyrighted. You aren’t required to post a copyright notice to retain such rights. Obviously, there are limitations. For example, if you post a message on OSAlert, it would be difficult (if not impossible) for you to later assert that you didn’t intend for your writings to be distributed, because the means of distribution is so public. People tend to distribute their works with explicit copyright language because it makes their intent more clear.
Edited 2010-02-25 06:23 UTC
You are sidestepping the question. Event though the founding fathers said that the rights are given by our creator, doesn’t change the fact that it is the government which is essentially given a right or not.
It is also a valid question if copyright violation is illegitimate (not illegal what all of you have been answering).
If you have a record contract with Big Music, then you don’t own what you create, they do.
So your argument is that there is no value in works of art? That art of any kind should not cost more then the cost of distribution? Or just that people who create things do not deserve compensation beyond that cost? Morality comes into play when you are benefiting from the work of others without their consent, and the only way that illegally copying music and movies is not a moral issue is if you don’t believe there was any effort or work involved.
As for the Emily Howell thing, of course, the guy who wrote the program owns the content it generates. Suggesting anything different is absolutely insane.
If you don’t like artificial scarcity as a business model for something, nobody is stopping you from creating a competing product with a different model. If you are able to meet market needs, you will become the dominant product. Thats the way our society works. As a consumer, it is your right to vote with your dollar. If you feel hollywood movies are a ripoff, you are free to not buy them. If enough people do the same, they will go out of business.
An artist provides a service, and of course there is value in that service. There is value in all services, and everyone should be fairly compensated for their effort. Where did I say otherwise? Your argument is a strawman.
My point is, articficial scarcity, Imaginary Property, deadweight loss, criminalising acts of distribution of zero-marginal-cost items, ACTA, EULAs/licenses, software patents et al are not good economic models for compensating artists, authors or software programmers for their efforts.
A more appropriate model would be something like the way other providers of services in the community are paid, such as doctors, teachers, lawyers perhaps. Why not? What is special about artists that a very few of them make millions and all the rest must starve?
Edited 2010-02-25 06:14 UTC
I was directly responding to your statement that illegally copying content is not a question of morality, it is a question of a difference of philosophical opinion, and it was mostly because I had no idea where you were coming from.
I still think it is a question of morality, because just because you don’t agree with how someone chooses to sell something doesn’t change how they are expecting to be compensated. You can say that musicians should be paid for performances, but if a musician spends most of his time in the studio, because performances don’t make him anywhere near as much money, isn’t it still immoral to take advantage of his work while offering nothing as compensation?
You can make that argument fairly well for music, where live performances is possible. How about for something like writing a book? How about something like making a game? Neither of those fit in the service model at all.
Some artists appeal more to more people then others. If you have a very broad audience, of course you are going to make loads more money. Its like asking why QNX doesn’t sell as much as windows, one is highly focused, the other is wildly general purpose, even though they are technically the same type of thing.
I actually agree with you about some things, like music for example. I also think we are seeing the market pressuring the current businesses to radically change their model, or move over for someone who will. However, I don’t agree with you on movies for example. If anything, we are seeing the opposite. Sales around everything home theater are going up, while cinemas just can’t seem to turn a profit any more. If anything, there is market pressure for even more of a productized model.
But that’s exactly the point, you’re saying that the person has something that they are selling. Nobody except for “artists” (in the broadest of senses) can create something and sell it over and over even for 70 years after their death. The point is copyright is entirely virtual, it is there because governments say it is. I think the point Lemur is trying to make is that the “potential” copyright holders are being given is totally disproportionate to what any other creators get and the question is, is that legitimate?
If you mean computer software that is a game, I bet Blizzard’s income statements would disagree.
The article is about an orgranization trying to do just that.
You could but it’s not illegal to do and if you don’t like the price don’t buy it. It’s not for you to decide what pricing others should use.
What scarcity?
Nothing, obviously, but that’s not the point. If someone creates something it’s their right to ask for compensation for it and it is not for you violate their copyright. If you think Emily makes better music then go ahead and listen to it but that doesnt make it ok for you to pirate others work.
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=define%3A+scarcity&ie=utf-8&o…
– a small and inadequate amount
– the condition of something being scarce or deficient; an inadequate amount of something; a shortage
An artificial scarcity, then, is an artificially small and inadequate amount.
It applies perfectly to items that have very small or zero marginal cost to produce (where the marginal cost to produce is the cost to produce an extra one, given that there are already a large number previously produced).
Scarce means … not everyone who wants one has one. There is a shortage.
It applies then to CDs, CDROMS and DVDs, all of which, after all, are just small flat round bits of plastic. It also applies to a copied or downloaded file. If any of these things are scarce, but also generally valued, then they are artificially scarce.
Edited 2010-02-25 12:39 UTC
Then how do you explain the fact that in many European countries, downloading is legal, even if the upload was illegal? Are we that different from the US?
I download a heck of a lot material. Am I a thief, accordig to you?
Edited 2010-02-25 06:56 UTC
“This world has spent so much time defining Legal and Illegal, but not Moral and Immoral.”
You know what we did before we had the Internet when we couldn^aEURTMt afford something? We just went without. Imagine that.
No, we copied it from friends, recorded it from radio or TV or just shared it with friends.
Now we do that digitally.
And copyright infringement is a small price to pay if you can hurt this anti-social global agenda. Don’t feel ashamed or guilty.
Nobody is obeying broken laws, people just don’t do it. Singing “Happy birthday” in public in the US is a copyright infringement.
Edited 2010-02-25 10:51 UTC
No and technically you’re probably not even breaking copyright law. Unless downloading counts as making a copy, which I guess it does in certain jurisdictions.
Downloading in Europe is legal since consumer might accidentally download illegal content without knowing. Downloading something you don’t own is still illegal, downloading something you own is legal. Whole law is complete mess but so is most of copyright laws since they were originally designed for material world.
You are wrong. Even downloading something I do NOT own is fully legal here.
There is no “Europe” with regards to copyright law. Every country is different. The Netherlands are cooler than Germany, where downloading is now a infringement and uploading a crime (like breaking CSS on DVDs).
But does it matter? Would you stop if it were a infringement in your country?
In Canada (where I live), it is the same way. Here, we have a tariff on blank media that content producers get a cut of, and in exchange, fair use is extended so that it is legal to make a copy of an original, but it is illegal to make a copy of a copy.
That law needs to be updated, because while it makes great sense pre digital distribution, nowadays that tariff doesn’t even remotely how far reaching one copy can get to.
Anyways, I don’t think you are a thief (theft sort of implies depriving the original owner of something, which you aren’t).
Everybody has a different sense of ethics and morals.
For me, I have no problem downloading an album and giving it a listen before I buy it. What I do is if I haven’t deleted it in a few weeks, I figure its a keeper, and will shell out the cash to buy it. There are a few exceptions to that, if it is a band I know I will see each time they are in town, I will wait till then to pick up the album, since more of the money goes to them.
Ditto with TV. I don’t have a TV or cable. A few shows I will watch from on demand websites that have commercials, and have no problem with that since the creators are still getting paid. Other shows don’t, and I have no problem downloading those shows. But again, if it goes beyond just “checking it out”, I will be sure to pick up the season when it becomes available on DVD. I don’t really care about the DVDs themselves, I just want to give them money for something I enjoy.
As a society, the only thing that tends to keep people doing the right thing is fear of getting caught. I believe there is such as thing as right and wrong, and try my best to live my life in the way I think is right. One of those beliefs is that just because you won’t get in trouble for it doesn’t nessicarily make something right.
That is a ridiculous argument.
Imagine I own a bank and you have $100,000 invested in an interest bearing account.
What if I take the annual interest due to you before it is deposited into your account? As you say ‘What other party afterwards has less than they had before?’
You still have your $100,000, and I have your interest so everyone is happy right?
Wrong. I have stolen your potential income. My actions deprived you of your rightful income, just as downloading a movie/song deprives the artist of income they would have received had you bought it instead.
I’d just like to add that I have been known to pirate stuff. I’m just not hypocritical about it.
Apples and oranges.
The economic cost of the interest on my $100,000 is not zero. There is an opportunity cost to me … I could have had that $100,000 somewhere other than the bank. The scenario you raise is actual, real stealing.
Taking a copy of something is not stealing, because the original remains, exactly as intact and functional as it ever was. There is no economic cost, be it opportunity cost or otherwise.
Edited 2010-02-25 04:22 UTC
No it’s actually the same thing. It is simply a question of the value that copy has. The copy has value because people (including you, if you had no other alternative) are willing to pay for it.
If you weren’t able to download the song/movie/app you would pay for it. That action in itself imparts the copy with a dollar value. Once anything has a value, if you procure it without permission, you’ve stolen it.
It is irrelevent whether we are talking about an object or even a concept. If someone is willing to pay $5 for it, then it is worth $5.
Consider another analogy: You photocopy the designs for some building or car, from the designer without his consent. Then release that exact same design to market. Is this theft? According to your logic it isn’t. The original design is still intact and functional.
Consider another analogy: You photocopy the designs for some building or car, from the designer without his consent. Then release that exact same design to market. Is this theft? According to your logic it isn’t. The original design is still intact and functional.
Correct, that wouldn’t be stealing.
No it’s actually the same thing. It is simply a question of the value that copy has. The copy has value because people (including you, if you had no other alternative) are willing to pay for it.
Which is clearly wrong, because if people were really willing to pay for it, they wouldn’t download it. If downloading/recording became impossible tomorrow, do you really think there would be lines waiting in front of the music stores?
Once anything has a value, if you procure it without permission, you’ve stolen it. … It is irrelevent whether we are talking about an object or even a concept.
Did murder just become a simple case of theft?
Consider another analogy: You photocopy the designs for some building or car, from the designer without his consent. Then release that exact same design to market. Is this theft? According to your logic it isn’t. The original design is still intact and functional.
No it is copyright infringement. People should stop trying to attach physical property rights to intangible ideas. Intangibles are all in your head and without a goverment granted virtual monopoly, they wouldn’t be protectable at all.
I think the balance for protecting brainfarts (how amusing or useful they may be) has tipped to far towards the producers. There is also something called the public and their interests and rights.
Isn’t it funny that if I produce an intangible but copyrightable and saleable thing once just using my skills gained through education and some time, I’ll be payed for the continuous sale of that thing years after my physical body has rotted away. when I create a physical thing like a generic cabinet, I can only sell that thing once and hope to recoup my expenses and make a modest profit.
Janis Joplin is dead, but we still need to pay royalties on her intangible creations. I’ll be dead once it finally falls into the public domain. (If ever with all the crazy extension laws passed).
Copyright is an artificial monopoly granted in the hopes of generating an incentive to have people produce and publish brainfarts for the general public. Copyright should be fifty years max and automatically terminate on death of the creator. We need to give an author a chance to make a living, but dead people don’t need money. Simple formula. An author becomes productive at twenty, dies at seventy (average lifespan) and that makes fifty years protection enough. If he doesn’t make it in that time, the brainfarts weren’t that good to begin with.
Why should stuff be protected seventy years after death of the author? If I die, my estate is what I was able to collect during my lifetime. Why should the estate of a dead copyrightholder keep bringing in additional royalties? Let the kids get of their arse and work like everybody else instead of relying on their dead parents overinflated rights.
When it comes to sold copyrights to corporations, also fifty years max from date of purchase.Sale of the copyight should be within five years of creation. I don’t want publishers circling the deathbeds of authors and overextending the copyrights that way. I don’t see why we need to give artificial beings more rights than a living one. I’m against providing a virtual money press.
Before anybody tries to claim that artists are special. No they are not. They live, they eat, have sex, defecate, they die, just like everybody else. For every great name artist in history, there are a million faceless ones, dead and forgotten and nobody gives a rats ass that they were even alive at one point in time.
Sorry for the rant, but it feels good to blow of steam every now and then.
Of course there would be lines. There were before the internet, why not now? You have a short memory. People are willing to pay for any number of things but if they can get them for free they will. I can’t believe I have to spell that out.
That doesn’t mean the object has no value, it just means people don’t like paying money!
Yes, murder is a type of theft. You have taken a persons life. In fact lots of our laws are indirectly forms of theft.
Edit: There are a lot of post with comments along the lines of “it’s not theft, it’s copyright infringement/breach of contract”. To me, that’s just arguing over semantics.
At the end of the day, person A has less money as a result of the illegal actions of person B. To me, that’s theft no matter the label.
Edited 2010-02-26 02:06 UTC
That is the whole fallacy of your logic. Not everyone can or would.
Illegally downloading a movie or music is not stealing or theft. It is copyright infringement. That is, it is a civil matter.
(however it may in some cases become a federal matter).
Edited 2010-02-25 08:07 UTC
Stealing and Copyright infringement are different acts, and have different economic consequences.
http://www.infoanarchy.org/en/Copyright_Economics
No, you haven’t stolen anything. If we had a contractually agreed interest rate, you would be in material breach for failing to deliver, and I would have grounds to sue.
OTOH, if we had no agreement on the interest, I would have no recourse, other than withdrawing my money and looking for another bank.
Because it is not theft and it is best to avoid the term theft when talking about copyright matters. That doesn’t mean it’s not against the law though.
It’s not stealing, it’s copyright infringement. The two are not the same, no matter how much certain groups want you to think they are.
There are – even nowadays – alternative music companies that don’t only concentrate on maximizing profits and turning everyything into disgusting commercial music video products, but actually see some value in supporting the artists and good music too. Magnatune is one example: http://magnatune.com/ Magnatune musicians always get 50% of the profits.
I don’t know about you, and musical tastes are a very personal thing, of course, but when I browse Magnatune’s music (there are many styles available, and you can actually listen to that music there before buying), most music there sounds many times better and more innovative and creative than the average music that the big music industry players push out of their factories and try to force us to listen to nowadays.
It’s actually very simple.
We have these companies that make software that sell it for money. This is how they make money in general and pay their workers.
Suppose that for every paid product, a free product became available with better and more options than the paid version. Nobody would use the paid software anymore and go 100% free.
Result: companies that sell software for money go bankrupt.
Result of that: government doesn’t get tax-money from them anymore, plus the employees don’t have a source of income anymore.
The workers can’t apply to other “paid software” companies, because they’re all gone. And if all these companies are gone, they(the companies) can’t donate money to free-software organizations anymore, which is how they usually survive if they’re kinda big.
And if it’s not that, it’s donations from the masses. But that’ll shrink too, since many people who donate to free-software organizations are programmers themselves.
So those run out of money too.
And the government gets less taxes, so they can spend less on the economy. And all those programmers don’t get paid anymore and need to be re-schooled, so they spend less for the time being. And after the reschooling, it’s not gonna be much better.
So yeah, free software will destroy the economy. All it takes to realize that is taking a basic economics course.
Your outrage at this article doesn’t stem from facts, but from you not liking the idea of your ideals being called bad.
Edited 2010-02-24 22:44 UTC
The cat is out of the bag, there is no going back.
It reminds me of the electronics industry. At one time, technicians played around with resistors, capacitors, etc. Eventually, things became commoditized, and now you either just buy a new board and pop it in. In fact, hardware is becoming so cheap it is almost disposible!
Well, the same things is happening in the software world. The days of selling $200 boxes of software is almost over. Instead, if you are a developer, get used to swapping components in and out, or maintaining components. We really don’t need big warehouses of developers anymore.
So we can whine and moan, point the finger at the commies, or grow up and move with the industry.
Some companies, and some individuals will not be able to make the change. Instead, they will have to plead with the government for “software bailouts”.
Sad.
EDIT: Darn, I wish I could mod up the person I responded to. His argument was good, even if I differ. People should not mod that kind of stuff down.
Edited 2010-02-24 22:56 UTC
There, I did it for you. Like you, I don’t agree with him but he did state his opinion and made me think about what he was saying. This is the kind of discussion we need here on OSAlert. Without hearing the other side of issues we will get an unbalanced reporting of the news.
BS
Tell that to Red Hat, they are likely to have 1 billion in revenue this year.(with 100% open source software)
Sure MS won’t be making 6.66 billion a quarter, but who cares?
There are exactly 3 REAL FOSS companies: Redhat, Ubuntu, Novell. The rest of them have no IP to sell.
Now compared to that how many Windows or Apple software companies are there?
There is some truth that FOSS has erased IP in the software business. There is NO innovation going on in software anymore. The innovation is now in free software integrated into custom hardware that is absolutely impossible to clone/hack.
small linux developers have not struck it big like their windows and mac counterparts.
This is a good thing. Writing software is a service. The economic arrangements for delivery of that service should be like delivery of any other service, for example it should be like provision of teaching services to schools. The idea of software as property is bunk, given that there is no marginal real cost of production of extra copies of software.
Of course there is. KDE4 is ground-breaking new desktop software, for example.
Efforts to make software cost something per copy are economically counter-productive.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_scarcity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadweight_loss
Society is not better off through increasing costs, it is better off through reducing costs and increasing production. Society is better off through copying software freely, reducing costs, and thereby empowering the users of said freely-distributed software to be more productive.
Edited 2010-02-25 02:51 UTC
That is purely due to scale. You can’t “strike gold” while catering to a small market. Let alone, Linux ecosystem is not very positive towards non-FOSS software but more geared towards services.
And both Apple and Microsoft user and release a lot of open source software.
Apple uses Webkit, CUPS, Darwin, GCC/LLVM, BSD tools etc. I know that MS uses some small pieces of Open source software, and also supports other Open Source Software themselves like Moonlight.
FOSS is not necessarily no-cost software. Indeed, the cost of maintaining FOSS is non-negligible.
It’s about free/open-source software. Copyright law still applies to open-source software and protects the developer.
Umm… so how does “Red Hat” fit into this scenario?
They sell Linux (which is also available for free).
They also sell services (support and development).
They seem to be doing pretty well too.
So, Red Hat would seem to show that your supposition (that free software will “destroy the economy”) is nonsense.
Free software also creates *competition*. Without free software, there would be *a lot less competition*.
Oh, and btw, there are those little companies called “Microsoft” and “Apple” that *started* from a free software base. They seem to be doing fine as well.
Apple uses FreeBSD in its OS kernel. Free software harming Apple? I don’t think so.
Then there is Google with their “Summer of Code” project. Would they support such a thing if it “destroyed the economy”?
Oh, and what about *IBM*? They make extensive use of free software so that they can sell more hardware.
They also used to release some of their software (OS/360, 370?) as “public domain”. Free software doesn’t seem to be harming *them*.
So, I’ve shown conclusively that free software can be *beneficial* to companies, and I haven’t even mentioned the lower costs, better robustness, better security and so on.
Edited 2010-02-24 23:17 UTC
The claim that Apple and Microsoft started from free software is rather dubious, if not downright false. For one, FreeBSD itself is based on Unix.
And what GCC is based on? What about CUPS, llvm, apache or webkit? I don’t think MS based anything significant on open source base but Apple surely did.
Neither MS or Apple started from Free Software. MS started by selling Basic Interpreters for computers. Apple started by building the Apple 1 and putting one of MS’ interpreters on it.
Later on, both companies borrowed from FreeBSD, MS in it’s networking stack for win3.1/Win95, and Apple later with most of the underlying stack for OS X.
I’m not sure this is a great example to bring up. Back in ’77, Apple, Tandy, and Commodore did not pay Microsoft any price per unit for their BASIC interpreter — they each paid a single lump sum (of less than $50,000 in each case) to put it on as any of their computers as they pleased.
I was just responding to the comment about MS and Apple starting with Free Software.
If retail only software companies provide a competitive product then they will survive. If they do not, natural market forces will take effect. Promoting FOSS is also not promoting no cost software. Many FOSS companies derive profits from proprietary addons or services. Based on the information here, it sounds like they let the person with the most brain-damage decide the new political campaign for the year.
Here’s the real kicker; FOSS folks tend to be far more respecting of licenses and copyright than most. Copyright is the very basis of many FOSS licenses.
Essentially, FOSS is bad and destroying copyright because Microsoft can’t shovel as much software out the door?
Trust me, teh better product will still win even if lobby groups fail at getting rid of the Red(hat) menace.
Now, I’m willing to consider the organizations reasoning behind this. I’ll give them a chance to explain there side of it. But, they’d better have something more solid than the information in the article here.
lol… if that is what economics classes tell you, then that certainly explains why all the economics people are so braindead retarded..
paid employees write a great deal of free software, there will ALWAYS be atleast the same need for software to be written, no matter what it costs to acquire the software AFTER its written.. therefore, if everyone suddenly switches to free software, the exact same amount of software will be comissioned, since people wont be working for free obviously.
The only thing that changes is that it will be a 100% consumer demand that drives the action.. companies will need to hire third party developers, or have inhouse developers to write on the software, quite possibly large customization/development companies will open up, since its gonna be cheaper for everyone to pool together to have the software written.
All it takes to realize this is apparantly not a “simple economics course”, but rather a tiny tiny bit of sense, which seemingly economics courses do not provide.
Sure, the days of adobe-like companies that writes zero good software, and just sits like fatcats spewing out garbage for money will end, but that is hardly a bad thing.
Economics is NOT more important than liberty. The freedom to choose as a consumer or the freedom to choose as a developer. Your arguments that free software will destroy the industry are based on the fear of losing the money train. Its the same arguments that the insurance co’s, governments and other large organizations that continue to bleed the population dry use. Its complete crap its a modern day necrophilia. You keep holding on to that dead idea.. Darwin will prove you wrong. There will always be a need for developers and anyone with a brain can see through your fear mongering. Someday if the likes of you keep f*cking with our freedom there will be blood.
I would like to beat you down with more common sense but I have work to do..
Economics is more important than liberty. If people can’t eat, they won’t give a crap about lofty ideals and “freedom”. Basic needs come first. Stability comes first. Only after that is all met can the fancy ideas be addressed.
Let’s rephrase that: A given economic model is not more important than liberty.
That I can buy.
Terg says:
We have these companies that make software that sell it for money. This is how they make money in general and pay their workers.
Suppose that for every paid product, a free product became available with better and more options than the paid version. Nobody would use the paid software anymore and go 100% free.
Result: companies that sell software for money go bankrupt.
Absolutely correct! That’s why Linux enjoys a 98% market share while Microsoft and Apple are bankrupt. Microsoft used to have this great operating system called “Windows” but nowadays young people have not even heard of it. There also used to be this office suite called “Microsoft Office” but nowadays it’s a distant memory. Similarly, Apple had this product called a “Macintosh” which ran “OSX” but if you want to see one now, you’ll have to look in a museum.
seriously? a basic economics class?
Actually, the kind of economics demonstrated in your argument may indeed be what is taught in a “basic economics course”, but that doesn’t mean it approximates reality, even in the slightest.
Lets just start where you start … the logic is faulty from the beginning so there is no point in going into the later errors …
“Suppose that for every paid product, a free product became available with better and more options than the paid version. Nobody would use the paid software anymore and go 100% free.”
This is a highly improbably scenario, but lets just suppose it happened.
You’re conclusion is:
“Result: companies that sell software for money go bankrupt.”
This blanket statement is wrong.
Perhaps some of the companies that sold software would go out of business, but many other exiting companies, and new ones that would enter the market, would start producing software that adds value beyond what already exists for free.
Even if, overnight, “for every paid product, a free product became available with better and more options than the paid version”, there are still person millennia of new software to be created. Indeed, in the long run, and for all but a select few in the short run, we’d all be better off since the cost of doing business would go down significantly.
OSS doesn’t hurt the economy, it makes possible a whole bunch of economic activity that was previously prohibitively costly to start. While some companies, like those in this lobby group, may be hurt by OSS, just as they are hurt by any new competitor, the overall economy benefits from having high quality software freely available.
It is the barriers to trade that are being lobbied for that will hurt the overall economy.
Like all lobbying I have ever heard of, the goal is to extract a little from each member of society and redirect it to those funding the lobby group (with a little commission for the politicians).
I strongly recommend Henry Hazlitt’s “Economics in One Lesson”:
http://jim.com/econ/
This will happen the day nobody can dream up a desirable piece of software/functionality that isn’t yet (freely) available.
That day will never come.
There will *always* be more to wish for, and as long as there’s things to wish for, there will be companies providing it and making money from that.
Perhaps the model will change. Perhaps instead of paying $200 for the next version of Product X, people will be contributing $200 to make sure their favorite new feature will be built into an open-source project. Perhaps a whole new model will emerge. Who knows. But as long as there’s things to wish for, there’s money to be made in ICT – and that won’t stop.
Sure, some companies will fail to adapt and go bankrupt. But the economy as a whole will not collapse: there will always be demand for faster, better, smarter, shinier, more integrated, more buzzword-compliant software – and where’s demand, there will be supply.
You are underestimating the flexibility of the free market. Your assumption is all softare companies will go bankrupt – and that is simply not true.
Free software provides competition to the non-free software, and in fact I came to liking free software and trust free software more.
Just think of the recent story in Infoworld blogger who put the bogus information on memory usage by Windows 7 just to promote his company’s software (not free of course). I can’t imagine developers of a free software doing anything like that.
In fact in many instances I came to liking free software products more than the non-free counterparts. Free software tends to focus on functionality and fixing the bugs. The non-free software tends to focus on creeping futerism, that is, putting more and more unnecessary but fancy looking features and charging for them. I know it sounds like generalizing a bit too much, but that has been my experience so far.
So the free software gives the run for their money. Well, that’s the competition, isn’t it? We live in capitalist society after all. And if I develop something better and want to give it away from free, that’s competition. My competitors must deserve the right to sell the equivalent product, by making the product substantially better. Cheers.
Finish the pattern..
Less paid programming jobs leads to fewer people entering the software development field.
Fewer developers leads to competition for their services.
Fewer developers means unable to meet all software requirements, which means commercial opportunites for companies.
And the cycle continues.
Is this really that much different than sending manual labour jobs to other countries? The difference is on what level and who is it protecting. Shipping jobs over seas has dramatically altered US ecomonics, but execs are still making money. With open source movements actual execs could end of being affected if they can’t compete so we need to legislate protection for big business, typical.
You’ll probably be one of the people that will complain about the robots taking people’s jobs away, while what they’ll really be doing is making it so that we don’t have to work as hard.
And apparently you missed something called progress. By your same logic we should not have built combine harvesters, because that eliminated a lot of jobs in agriculture – therefore loss in collected taxes.
Future of software is not in proprietary software, it’s in services. Custom software development and related services already accounts for more revenue than actual software sales.
There are some sectors that can’t just go to service based models. Entertainment and games is a good example, though it’s already being proved to be wrong. Bilzzard makes more on the WoW subscriptions(a service) more than on the actual software.
Funny how many of these commercial companies there are that use a lot of OSS in their products, eh?
What happen when your competitor makes a better, cheaper product than you? Maybe we should force all companies to have the same pricing so that nothing bad ever happened? Oh right, we tried that. I heard it worked out great in the old USSR.
Nonsense. This is nothing but fear mongering from companies who see diminished sales of their already hilariously overpriced and substandard products.
Both commercial and Open Source software is part of the computing landscape now and neither will go away any time soon. OSS will not make commercial software go away and commercial software will not make OSS go away.
I guess competition is only good when you yourself is not threatened by it. Then all of a sudden it is the governments job to protect you from those bad people who are competing with you.
have you ever actually tried to use any of this software? Odds of it taking over are slim indeed.
You should read up on the broken window fallacy. It goes something like this.
A boy throws brick through a shopkeeper’s window. Shopkeeper then has to pay the window repair guy to fix his window. Window repair guy now has money to buy a pair of shoes. Shoemaker get money to do whatever he wants and so on.
So basically, one might argue that not breaking the window is a bad thing because without the broken window, perhaps all the extra economic activity would not have been undertaken.
The fallacy comes from the fact that the shopkeeper could spend money on other things besides fixing the window, so the argument that the broken window is a good thing is bunk.
In your post, you claim that the falling revenue to the government because of the lower earnings from software is a bad thing. No, it isn’t. Companies having to spend less on software have more money to spend on other things, for example, wages, better computers, other investment, and so government revenues should be, by and large, unaffected by the ‘demise’ of the software industry, just like they were largely unaffected by the demise of the buggy whip manufacturing industry, or the electronic valve manufacture industry.
Falling prices are a good thing. It means buyers are wealthier because their money goes further.
That doesn’t make sense.
If a commercial product made by full time employees can’t manage to be better than a free product made by hobbyists, then that company doesn’t deserve success.
On the other hand, if the free product is made by paid employees working for some companie(s), then it represent an investment for that company. If they manage to still earn money despite pouring resource into the development of a free product, then it means that they have a better business model and the non open-source competitor doesn’t deserve to be more successful either.
Edited 2010-02-25 10:27 UTC
So where, in your opinion, is the problem? In giving stuff away for free? Or could it be in the underlying system?
It’s almost the same effect capitalism had on industrialisation, instead of machines making everyone’s life easier, they made some people amazingly rich, and other people die of hunger.
Morality != capitalism, if they don’t meet, morality isn’t the problem, capitalism is.
Just look at how many startups and new technologies are actually feasible with open source software. FOSS lowers the entry threshold for so many smaller companies. IPR today isn’t as valuable as it was decades ago, business doesn’t need to own IPR to generate revenue anymore.
And there you’ve found exactly the reason why a lobby of big companies is using copyright as a cynical stick to defend it’s turf. Innovation is a chance for those having little to lose, but a risk for those having everything to lose.
Dude, you’re missing the point. Those small companies are both small and quite frequently not from the U.S. Where would we be if every country had their own successful software industry and didn’t buy from U.S companies?
Soulbender said:
Those small companies are both small and quite frequently not from the U.S. Where would we be if every country had their own successful software industry and didn’t buy from U.S companies?
Where would we be? In my case, I be in Taiwan, and would love it if there was a successful FOSS software industry here to feed local demand. It would be great for our economy. Rather than paying billion$ in royalties to Microsoft, we could be employing young Taiwanese fresh out of university.
Unfortunately, it hasn’t happened. Microsoft has a stranglehold on this country, like they do in most of the world. To most Taiwanese, “free software” means pirated copies of Windows XP and MS Office.
Edited 2010-02-25 05:25 UTC
A hell of a lot better off?
Actually, the quote you supply puts their action in a less unfavorable light:
So their fundamental objection appear to be that the Indonesian government is discriminating against certain companies merely because their development model is not open source. Other quality considerations, such as performance, convenience, user-friendliness, etc., are being excluded.
I think there are legitimate arguments supporting this objection, but they have nothing to do with copyright infringement. Whether the Indonesian government’s memo actually does this is another matter (as I read it in the Guardian article, it sounded more like a recommendation than a requirement). And whether the IIPA has a clue about what they’re talking about is so unclear that either the article has grossly oversimplified the argument, or they’ve been subverted by some companies to become a bullying tool (and not a very good one, I’d say).
I agree with this. On one hand, I think that governments should be using open formats so that its citizens aren’t locked into a specific piece of software in order to view/interract with government documents. In other words, it’s all about accessibility.
On the other hand, there is nothing wrong with a proprietary piece of software that produces/reads open formats, IMHO. Therefore, I believe that government should be stressing open formats, and not specifically open source.
Edited 2010-02-24 23:39 UTC
Assuming I’m the government of XYZ; look at both closed and open options. Both have to read and write open file formats but the applications can be closed source. If the final two options are open and closed but equal in functionality; go with the open one. If the closed source option exceeds the other options while supporting the requirnment of open data formats; go with that one. I wouldn’t ban a solution outright based on it’s development method or copyright.
The real irony here is that FOSS has for years been discriminated against purely because it’s “free” (in which ever way the management wants to spin that word). Suddenly it’s not ok to discriminate against proprietary software but yet; now desirable, not just ok, but desirable to discriminate against FOSS and anyone who uses it. hm… follow the money lads.
Agreed. Open source code is a good thing, nice to have. But open formats for content should be a bottom line for any government organisation looking for new software.
It’s not only about ensuring format interoperabililty between citizen and their governement services. It’s also about a governement being able to get as much as he may want in control of the software they use. Something that closed development model don’t allow them.
And, sorry the market, but a governement is absolutely free to have whatever he want as software selection criteria. It’s up to closed development model to find a way to offer the higher level of control a governement may want these days on their IT departments.
Stop whinning about the demand and start working on a better offer matching it.
So why are they not taking a stand against other governments demanding use of a certain document format, that effectively bars all other software from being used?
The thing is that the root problem has nothing to do with IP or OSS, it’s about government policies. The fact that they have to bring IP and OSS into the picture hints pretty severely that they have ulterior motives that are not about the actual problem at all.
If you consider that the general US point of view is that only corporate control matters – screw individual opportunity, or that of small business – then this statement does make perfect sense.
OSS is great for individual developers and many small businesses that can take advantage of it quite nimbly. Larger corporations need control, and vender lock in to generate the levels of runaway success their masters all desire.
So yeah, according to the standard operating procedure in the US, this is just right. And it’s sad, because America isn’t supposed to be about this.
Edit: Also, capitalism in the US really means, government backed corporate control. True capitalism really has nothing to do with US policy at this point.
Edited 2010-02-24 23:13 UTC
“Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.”
~Ambrose Bierce
Edited 2010-02-24 23:48 UTC
10,000$ for a Windows server including hardware/os.
15,000$ for an Exchange server including hardware/software/os
04,000$ for a Debian server including hardware/software/os.
04,000$ for a Debian groupware server including hardware/software/os.
And this is initial costs without ongoing maintenance, version upgrades, additional CALs (thank you for purchasing Exchange, would you like to also purchase a license for 50 or fewer users or will it be just you and one other using it sir). It’s a huge advantage for smaller businesses or bigger ones that have areas not trapped by vendor lock-in.
We’ve been able to put four *nix servers into use for what one server’s initial cost would have been with with a different OS choice. They protect themselves even outside the company firewall. Maintenance has been next to nothing since the machines just run once setup. (update vetting and application doesn’t take much time)
Where in hell did you get those prices? They are much more expensive than real life, at least here in Canada.
I was to lazy to go back at the time and check or able to hand out specifics. Having gone back to my records now, I actually guessed low.
If your getting hardware+Windows+Exchange+CALS for noticeably lesser, I’d be very interested in approximate costs if not the vendor you buy from. (again, only to the degree that your information can be made public)
Remember the desperate attempts to label GPL/Linux as communist a while back …
Trying to put brazil in this list is not big news, every year US uses this to get something from us. But for our luck, and their lack of, Brazil have a diplomatic law of reprocity. Meaning, if US does something Brazil considers unfair, we can do the same for US. It was used when US started to get fingerprints form brazilians (as all arabic and other not-so-friendly-aka-hand-kisses-countries), so all north american citiziens that entered in Brazil were filled with fingerprints. It was very funny, because US citizens were just outraged by this, meaning, they can, we can’t do the same, ok? Because they are the bosses of the world, accept this fact
So, this year US used this again, and brazilian government, getting tired of just doing more and more things to accomplish US ever-changing-policies, just told: go ahead, we’ll do the sabe for you. In the end, nothing happened, much like in the old cold-war days. his was just.. pathetic, from both sides
So, have in mind tha US usually uses this as a way to get things they want from other countries, this is not a new event. Just that, now, resolves around open-source too.
Edited 2010-02-24 23:32 UTC
Well, sometimes open source software benefits large corporations, i.e. many people contribute to it for free and those corporations make all the money!
Say you’re a small software development company and you come up with a really good product that people (i.e. enterprises) want to buy. If you release your product under open source license, it is very easy for any big competitor (Red Hat, Google, etc) to take your code, integrate it into their brand and muscle you out of the market. And this will happen, because they are much bigger than you, have more developers and have a huge customer base and distribution channels. How are you supposed to compete with those people?
Open source only makes sense to those who develop software as a hobby and don’t want to build a business around it, or big companies that already have support contracts and business infrastructure and want to offload some of the software testing and development costs on to others.
Personally, if I had a choice between a pile of undocumented open source code (as it usually happens in open source world), or documentation detailing software design and specification, I would pick documentation and develop what I need from that.
You can’t learn just from reading (deciphering) someone elses code. As the saying goes – give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
I like Marx’s more cynical version of that, which seems particularly topical: “Sell a man a fish, he eats for a day, teach a man how to fish, you ruin a wonderful business opportunity.”
Or how things go in Africa due to western intervention:
“Give a man a fish, bankrupt his neighbor who used to sell fish for a living and ruin the local economy.”
In marx’s world there aren’t enough fish to go around. Only the members of the governing party get to eat.
Except this rarely happens. More often than not especially if you are using a GPl license companies like RedHat will hire you because they know you are the most familiar with the code and have a good idea where its going and want to at least have a say in what direction it goes. A company like RedHat won’t usually strong arm an individual developer. Usually its the other way around, a company will release some software and the community will do as they wish with if they feel the original company is not meeting their needs. Compiz in its infancy is a good example, it all worked out in the end.
\
I see. That surely explains all those start-ups that base their products on OSS and it sure didn’t work out for MySQL AB….
This does not actually apply to this situation at all.
Coding isn’t EVERYTHING.
In normal business you need: development, marketing, sales and support. Normal agreements generally end up allocating something between 40-50% for development + support while marketing and sales end up with the other 50-60%. As a product matures the percentage development takes goes down.
Marketing and selling a product generally requires very different skill sets and most development projects wont’ go very far without taking it to this “next level”.
Granted, employment isn’t really the “40-50% take” although developers would be wise negotiate some type of revenue sharing with a redhat or whoever when they’re hired on to support a project.
Let’s start off with a simple fact we don’t live in a free-market. We just don’t. Half of our economy is by the government, professional monopolies…
We live in a managed capitalist mixed market society.
Our governments want to keep the flow of money going… that is what keeps our economies going and people spending.
What do we do when people stop spending? We try and get them to spend via tax credits, cash for clunkers, mortgage interest deduct ability, home renovation tax credits, low interest rates…
All to get you to spend… on things you might not otherwise have spent on.
Then what to do when people just won’t spend?
Then we make government spend.
I’m not saying I agree with this kind of capitalism … but it is what we have.
Given this as our basis for society, open source is a problem because people and companies spend less money… some even spend no money. Open Source does not keep the industry churning. There are no forced license renewals…
Do “they” realize just how much of the economy is built on FOSS? Half of the internet runs on open source apache web servers, In addition to many using GNU/Linux as well.
Hell, the New York Stock Exchange(!) as well as many banks use GNU/Linux based servers to process most or all of the financial transactions.
Video of the NYSE CIO talking about the their switch
http://www.redhat.com/v/magazine/ogg/NYSE_FINAL.ogg
Edited 2010-02-25 02:48 UTC
… they aren’t equating “encouraging the use of Free and open source software to undermining intellectual property rights”. Reread the statement (CAREFULLY, this time):
“The Indonesian government’s policy… simply weakens the software industry and undermines its long-term competitiveness by CREATING AN ARTIFICIAL PREFERENCE FOR COMPANIES OFFERING OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE AND RELATED SERVICES, EVEN AS IT DENIES MANY LEGITIMATE COMPANIES ACCESS TO THE GOVERNMENT MARKET.”
It’s not that difficult, and you don’t have to be a lawyer to understand it. They’re opposed to giving ARTIFICIAL PREFERENCES to open source software by governments. We’ve seen this time after time, where open source advocates lobby governments to enact legislation or create rules which favor open source software, rather than allow the government to fairly evaluate both open and commercial software solutions on an equal basis.
You and the Guardian suggest that mere advocacy of open source software gets you on their list. Not so. It’s about active discrimination against commercial solutions that gets you on the list.
There is a reason why FOSS advocates lobby their governments. It’s because the same proprietary software industry has lobbied the same governments for ARTIFICIAL PREFERENCES towards certain productivity software and operating systems.
So basically I call their statements hypocritical B/S.
I disagree with your assertion, but you have a right to your opinion. Except, that isn’t the issue here. What’s at issue is a mischaracterization by Thom and the Guardian paper of the copyright lobby’s statements. They aren’t asking for PREFERENTIAL treatment. They’re asking for FAIR treatment.
Those governments have chosen – as happens in free societies – to encourage FOSS adoption. What’s unfair about that? Isn’t that what free market economy is all about? The government is a software customer, and their choice is FOSS.
Seems like everything is working as it should. Proprietary vendors will have to compete.
In effect, they are asking for US to force other countries in keeping their preferred status.
PS: Do you really think that the same proprietary software industry does not lobby most governments? And in only handful they are loosing.
PPS: These guys will never ask for FAIR. They will and have always asked for protected and preferred statuses. It’s their B/S that looks like talk about fairness.
I’m pretty sure Indonesia is a sovereign nation so they can put up whatever criteria they want for their government purchases and they do not have to answer to the U.S. Saying that this has anything to do with intellectual property or even OSS is nonsense, it’s about government policies.
It’s not like the U.S government doesn’t have artificial constraints for foreign software companies.
I guess when you feel that your empire’s time in the sun is fading you do get a bit desperate…
Sure, but adopting what amounts to protectionist policies does have trade ramifications.
True.
Such as…?
That’s a bit oversimplified. Are you really of the opinion that trade lobbying is only trotted out when somebody is losing?
Yes, indeed. Although I’m sure your companies does not at all mind the protectionist measures they’re getting advantages from.
Every country has protectionist policies that some way or the other favors it’s own companies and the U.S is not exception.
My comment was a little more wide ranging than than but yes, that’s quite common.
Still, this has absolutely nothing to do with OSS or IP which makes pointing the finger at OSS very suspicious.
To expand on this, I’m sure the U.S government has recommendations regarding which one of several different standards that should be used. Is that protectionist against companies that only makes product that conforms to other standards? This is essentially the same; a recommendation has been made with regards to what software should be used.
I don’t see any evidence that the commercial companies are asking for preferential treatment. They simply want the playing field to be even. What could possibly wrong with that? Evaluate the products on their own merits, not on some artificial constraint imposed by government law or regulation. It may well be that some of the evaluation criteria are support for open document formats, standard protocols, interop, etc. But simply gaming the system toward FOSS — regardless of the suitability of the FOSS solution — is just wrong.
Edited 2010-02-25 16:45 UTC
Do they? Or are they just unhappy with the fact that it is not favoring them and their products?
And how do we know this isn’t exactly what these countries have done? Maybe these companies just don’t like the criteria used since it isn’t favoring them?
Sure, but I see no proof that this is what has happened. And who’s definition of “suitability” are we talking about here?
Edited 2010-02-25 18:29 UTC
Well, as I said, they’re not asking for preference.
No, the problem is bigger than just FOSS. Indonesia apparently has a historical problem with respecting IP produced by other people. They were downgraded by the USTR to the Priority Watch List last year because government agencies were illegally installing pirated software on their computers in violation of international copyright law.
http://thejakartaglobe.com/news/indonesia-to-erase-pirated-software…
Wrong. There’s plenty of proof.
http://thejakartaglobe.com/home/indonesian-government-urged-to-move…
So? Obviously they are now recommending OSS in order to actually STOP the IP and copyright infringements. What’s the problem here? Certainly not with IP or copyright. Judging from all the lawsuits going on between commercial entities accusing each other of IP and copyright infringement, you could argue that OSS have more respect for this than the commercial sector.
“Significantly reduce government spending” is a perfectly valid reason for recommending OSS in the government and so is using OSS to curb the piracy and wanting to spur domestic development. Heck, if the copyright lobby’s plea was actually about IP and copyright infringement they would be happy about this. Makes you wonder why they arent, huh?
No, it is quite obvious what is actually going on. These companies are severely threatened by the competition from OSS and companies basing their products on OSS and now they’ve run to daddy to have him beat up the bad boys.
It goes beyond recommendation. They are actively giving preference to OSS; meaning, when there is a OSS solution in any particular space, they aren’t even considering the commercial solution — even if it’s better.
Sure, it’s a valid reason. But these folks are asking for a level playing field, which seems reasonable.
Well, there will be a price to pay, either way. If Indonesia decides that it wants to stop buying commercial products from other countries, then it may pay higher prices for other goods.
It’s not up to you or your companies to decide what the criteria for “better” is.
The government serves the people, not foreign companies. A recommendation has been made based on valid criteria. If it doesn’t fit certain companies then that’s their problem.
That’s their decision to make, it is not up to the U.S.
(Double post. Mobile broadband sucks hard)
Edited 2010-02-28 15:31 UTC
As far as a government is concerned, a closed solution can never be “better”.
It is a question of Sovereignty. It is a question of governments being in control of their own data, and their own IT.
http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/documents/show/63
Quite a number of sovereign states have begun to realise this, and are opting for open solutions in order to be in control of their own data.
Here is but one example of the trend:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument_adoption
BTW: If all these countries are adopting and sometimes mandating open solutions, why is Indonesia being singled out in this instance?
Proprietary software requiring reliance on a sole-source foreign software vendor, along with closed, exclusive formats, cannot, by its very nature, compete at all in this regard.
Another area where closed formats and proprietary software cannot compete at all is in the arena of digital document archiving. Closed formats are designed to be obscure, and resistant to deciphering by any software other than the original creator software running on the original platform. That is not a good starting point for ensuring that the document when stored in a long-term archive will still be readable far into the future.
Edited 2010-03-01 01:04 UTC
Well, asking for a level playing field is fair indeed, but they screw it when trying to get the “it encourages a mindset that does not give due consideration to the value to intellectual creations. as such, it fails to build respect for intellectual propertiy rights” into the mix.
Then again one could argue that if the IIPA actually meant to stand for fairness they should also bring to attention countries where government regulations favor proprietary software companies, as in Microsoft’s contract in Switzerland.
This move by the International Intellectual Property Alliance just might convince me to by a Free Software Foundation membership.
Yes, this move is a declaration of WAR, we should start funding our champions.
It is very simple: yes, FLOSS, devalues IP. But it is also fully legal. The economics have changed, and the IP industry should live with it. Either make your software so much better than the FLOSS alternative that people still buy it, or move to other pastures. The new kids on the block (Google, Facebook, etc.) understood that money is now in web applications, social networking, etc.
The web would not be the place it is if not for Open Source Software.
Just imagine if Yahoo, Google, Twitter, 37 signals, and thousands of other companies that got started on the web did not have open source software. They would never have been able to afford the high prices for commercial server software, and likely never would have gotten started.
Open Source software allowed them to start and now they enrich the web, and employ hundreds of thousands of companies.
They’re totally crazy. So opensource is anticapitalistic?
Why? Redhat SELLS opensource software and makes big bucks from it.
Oh, the last time I watched to the code of linux I have seen a lot of copyright XYZ notices. This means that afterall gpl and opensource value intellectual property.
Ok, it is official, they’re totally out of mind.
This smells like a saint alliance between Microsoft and the capos from the riaa mpaa
Your comment smells paranoid, and not a little bit reactionary.
It’s like arguing that cookbooks undermine the restaurant industry.
Most countries that went for FOSS for government use was to ensure use of open format that allow competition. Only if the formats are known, you can shop for the best software, and break the monopoly that suck the money out of government already on the edge of bankruptcy.
The government is not there to subsidize corporations, if they cannot survive w/o government contracts, that would be a sign they are not doing a good job.
But, be not afraid, MS added support for open formats at the exact same time as government were threatening to change software
I think this is perfect example of competition at its best.
FUD on the other hand like that of this news is not.
There. I said it. If that makes us rebels, then BRING IT ON, BABY!!
http://www.fossbazaar.org/
http://freeopensourcesoftware.org/
http://www.gnu.org/
The IIPA and everyone under them are a bunch of Hypocritical Mafia SNOBS that FEAR competition whenever they feel unappreciated or beat. Stupid is, as Stupid does. }:p
Unfortunately, the US government is already terminally stupid, has a knee-jerk reaction to unfounded allegations on everything, and is slowly becoming more undemocratic every year.
I hate when US starts to act as a global cop – the country that it’s involved in so many wars …
Now, the OSS doesn’t seem to harm anyone – see Red Hat, Novell, Apple, IBM, Sun with OpenSolaris, and finally Nokia and Symbian – the most recent case. But I guess some people will be always greedy.
About the US Copyright Lobby: BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
What the F**CK are these people smoking? FOSS is not the problem, it’s the solution! Copyright law is pure communism, pure intellectual monopoly. Copyrights are anti-capitalistic, and harm our economy far more than they help.
Were I president, the first thing I would do would be to completely repeal and eliminate 99% of all copyright law (and 100% of DCMA). It is an anchor which is holding the country back from true innovation and true greatness.
I promote FOSS to all my clients. Granted, for most of them Windows/Office is still the best solution, but I just make sure they are running with Firefox, Thunderbird, and all the other FOSS goodness that runs on that platform.
Edited 2010-02-26 04:13 UTC