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On January 14th, Windows 7 reached its official "end-of-life," bringing an end to its updates as well as its ten years of poisoning education, invading privacy, and threatening user security. The end of Windows 7's lifecycle gives Microsoft the perfect opportunity to undo past wrongs, and to upcycle it instead.
We call on them to release it as free software, and give it to the community to study and improve. As there is already a precedent for releasing some core Windows utilities as free software, Microsoft has nothing to lose by liberating a version of their operating system that they themselves say has "reached its end."
Also at The Register and Wccftech.
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Free Software Foundation Demands That Microsoft Release Windows 7 as Free Software
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It's raisins that make Post Raisin Bran so raisiny ...
(Score: -1, Troll) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 30 2020, @02:14AM (161 children)
While we're at it, why not allow business to use gpl code without releasing the source to their mods? After all they're both equally idiotic ideas that ignore copyright laws and intellectual property rights. What's good for the goose should be good for the gamder.
The only reason the GPL works is copyright law. You don't get to pick and choose whose rights aren't worth enforcing.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Thursday January 30 2020, @02:22AM (75 children)
The FSF isn't asking anyone to ignore copyright law here, or for copyright law to be changed even. They're just asking MS to open-source what's claimed to be an obsolete, end-of-life operating system.
(Score: 1, Troll) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 30 2020, @02:38AM (68 children)
It still has far more value than, for example, gnu HURD. And it still is generating more in support revenue than most Linux distros.
There are plenty of people who still want Windows 7 - far more than all Linux distros combined. So why should they give away an OS that people would install beside or instead of their current OS?
If Microsoft were to offer OEMs the chance to continue offering Win7 with support or Win10, we all know that Win10 would disappear.
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by Gaaark on Thursday January 30 2020, @02:54AM (17 children)
"End of life doesn't mean useless."
When you're talking Windows, what with telemetry, forced upgrades at the worst possible moment, 'cozying up' with open source....etc etc etc.....
Any Windows is, actually, pretty useless and REALLY, if people were smarter, COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY.
Good thing for Microsoft that there are still A LOT of stupid people around.
"far more than all Linux distros combined."
Gee.... could that be because of all the different ways they force computer dealers to keep Linux off their computers?
Could it be because of shit like SecureBoot that fecks with Linux installs (it used to be so easy to install Linux...now you have to feck with UEFI etc.)
We know you work for Microsoft and need to pay your bills, but stop shoving the crap around in here, okay?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1, Troll) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 30 2020, @03:19AM (5 children)
People who only browse the web would not care, but most people have both other software that won't run under Linux, software that doesn't exist except for Microsoft and Apple, and peripherals that either don't work are are missing functions under Linux.
Linux has it's place, but not on desktops in business or the home or schools. I tried in the 90s to get people to switch. It was what I used at work even after I gave up getting others to switch mid-00s. Nobody wants Linux. Those who gave up on Windows are quite happy with Apple, and apples TCO is lower than Windows. They will never switch, even if you offered them a free Linux computer. Or even a free Windows computer.
And they're right - if it meets their needs, why change for an OS that is lacking major chunks of the software ecosystem? People but computers to run software, not operating systems. They really just want the operating system to get out of their way.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @06:12AM
Which is why my district has spent seven figures on Chromebooks. It runs all the software we want, is easy to administrate, and when it stops working we can just replace it with the next $80 machine. In this Web/App based world, the actual OS matters less and less as basically anything will run the software you need.
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Thursday January 30 2020, @06:47AM
Higher support costs
Translation: not subsidised by malware merchants.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 30 2020, @06:21PM
People don't know the difference. I literally had a director tell me "we're already paying for MS Word licensing in our product" when our product was using Windows embedded OS and the only user facing app was our in-house developed GUI.
I'd bet more people can locate Laos on a globe than know anything about the distinction between an OS and an application.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @08:32PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 31 2020, @01:33AM
First hit for "tco windows vs osx" was this [ttps].
Apple is cheaper for businesses. One big factor is lowered time wasted on supporting users. Widnows doesn't "just work", at least not for long.
Now it's true you can buy a dirt-cheap Windows PC, but that's because the specs are shit in comparison to the cheapest Macs. When linus explained why he used a Mac, he gave the cost breakdown for his laptop, decently specced, compared with a Windows PC with the same specs. The Mac was slightly cheaper. Go figure.
And then there's Window's forced upgrade to Windows 10. When's the last time you heard of anyone losing data or being left with an unbootable machine because OSX updated despite all their attempts, including registry hacks, to prevent it?
And with Windows moving to a subscription-only model after Windows 10 goes EOL, you'll need to have an always-on internet connection and a current subscription or "your" computer becomes a brick.
A subscription for Windows, a subscription for Office, a few other subscriptions, it adds up.
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(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Thursday January 30 2020, @07:30AM (3 children)
Correction: it's completely unnecessary for what you want to do with computers.
Unfortunately the past several years, many newer programs that depend on .NET refuse to function under Wine, and often there's no fully-functional alternative, either for Linux or without .NET.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @07:34AM (1 child)
Isn't .NET open source and the CLI compiles on Linux, or am I not recalling the situation correctly?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @06:48PM
name change was. Xamaran maybe?
Anyway they now own both the closed source and open source DotNet ecosystem. As a result they've slowly added questionably licensed libraries into mono since either late 2.x versions or 3.x, have started pushing the Visual Studio Lite dotnet version as the cross platform development studio instead of Mono, and started pushing nuget to download (prebuilt?) packages from the internet. It's all turned into a pretty nasty little clusterfuck with nant falling by the wayside as everything standardizes on msbuild.
I haven't paid attention to it in a while as I now consider all forms of DotNet toxic, but your mileage may vary.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 31 2020, @08:07PM
unfortunately my ass. how about completely predictably? what kind of dumbass uses programs that depend on .net?
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Thursday January 30 2020, @01:26PM (6 children)
I'll switch to Linux when they release a SolidWorks build. Because that's how I make my living.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday January 30 2020, @02:57PM
Email/phone the company and tell them that's what you want!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @04:33PM (2 children)
If you call that living.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @07:15PM (1 child)
All you seem to do is shitpost from a basement.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @08:40PM
I don't have a basement.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @06:07PM
Similar for me, when Libre/Open Office can deal with documents (technical reports) that have Matlab plots embedded. These plots have thousands of points on them and MS-Word deals with them just fine. Libre/Open might take 30 seconds to render the next page (or in the worst cases scramble the screen and lock up).
The docs come from my big customer so I'm stuck to open them...
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Thursday January 30 2020, @09:45PM
For $3,995 a license I don't know why they wouldn't release it for every OS they possibly could.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @03:00AM (9 children)
Sad to see the troll mod being used for "disagree" more than usual.
The truth is Windows dominated the software market and most people aren't interested in learning another OS which wouldn't run half of their favorite programs.
I'm a linux/bsd fan myself, but I won't deny reality just cause I don't like it.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 30 2020, @03:34AM (7 children)
We can't even agree as to what Linux is any more, most distros come with software that hasn't changed much in a decade (except for games - make that two decades). The eagerly anticipated and much heralded unleashing of creativity in open source didn't happen. Everything is a bad copy of proprietary software. And some of the UIs are just SO fugly (gnome, I'm looking at you! Wish nobody had to).
The trend is changing slowly. People are realizing that free software isn't financially viable for developers unless it's incorporated into the surveillance economy, which is ethically compromising.
Now if the FSF actually gave a shit about improving the lives of developers, they would work to come up with solutions to the financial model. But no, they don't really care about the future of software, not beyond getting donations to keep their own paycheque coming. Want proof? What new models have they come up with? The "well, set up a foundation for your project and beg for donations " doesn't count. Even the SPCA has prior art. And the Heart Foundation, the Diabetes Foundation, the NRA ...
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(Score: 2) by Pav on Friday January 31 2020, @06:37AM (6 children)
Isn't that what heretics such as Roberto Mangabiera Unger [youtube.com] are about? Much more free software gets developed in Europe (although that's changing as Europe becomes more neoliberal), and large successful US-based free software projects such as VistA (ie. the hospital management software used by the VA) is being discontinued in favour of proprietary software owned by certain political donors. VistA is a good example of how US free software projects come into being ie. free software allows workers to implement solutions without being as controlled by budgets. VistAs death could not be arranged financially, only politically... but utimately politics is for sale. Even insurgent health employees won't be able to keep it alive. Free Software can't become mainstream in a neoliberal economy... but neoliberalism itself doesn't seem long-term-stable in itself, so perhaps things may change, and perhaps in the not so distant future.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 31 2020, @05:58PM (5 children)
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(Score: 2) by Pav on Sunday February 02 2020, @10:08PM (4 children)
That's the nature of the economy, and it's hardly just software developers... it's doctors, lawyers, and practically everyone else in the same trap... you're screwing over your fellow citizen, yourself, or often both. It's the golden rule (ie. those that have the gold make the rules). All the FSF does is arrange the software world so the average citizen requires less "gold" to have influence in the world.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Sunday February 02 2020, @11:38PM (3 children)
Nonsense AND bullshit. Anyone with a computer can create software that is closed source as easily as open source - just that if they create closed source, they have a greater chance of influencing their own personal world by making some $$$.
The big users of FOSS have all the gold. Google. Facebook. Amazon. So it's funny how that worked out, taking FOSS and locking it away on servers so it's no longer open?
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(Score: 2) by Pav on Monday February 03 2020, @07:48AM (2 children)
Really? I know more open source than closed source developers, and if closed source developers are better paid on average I'm not seeing the evidence - only a few are well paid. I even think Bernie Sanders helped people at both IBM and Google at different times engage in industrial action for better wages and conditions. I think you're blaming the FSF for a society-wide problem. Tomas Piketty got his Nobel Prize by collating centuries of data, and finding the deep mathematical truth that the capital class's return on investment is ALWAYS is greater than one (on average), and that this means that it's a mathematical certainty for capital to own everything and for the rest of the economy to always be in extreme poverty. (Fun side-fact - the old game of Monopoly was originally invented to teach how this ALWAYS happens). Europeans for centuries escaped from the centres of advanced civilization to the wilds of the New World for exactly that reason. Things were different for a time only because after WWII governments took extreme measures to make things different (ie. 90% top marginal tax rate, ~45% company tax rate), but now under neoliberalism we're sinking back to the norm (and blaming it on automation, kids today etc...).
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday February 03 2020, @12:05PM (1 child)
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(Score: 2) by Pav on Monday February 03 2020, @04:13PM
Don't blame the FSF - the AGPL bans SaaS. People make good livings from genuinely free software. Just because eg. the US government has been given enough incentive to allow corporate spying hardly means the blame lays at the FSFs feet. The same with monopolistic behavior, and on down the line.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @03:41PM
He's repetitive to the point of trolling.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Thursday January 30 2020, @04:46AM (13 children)
Who said Windows 7 was useless? Not the FSF.
The real problem isn't that Windows 7 doesn't have value, but rather that it'd be an effective competitor to future generation Windows. A lot of businesses held on to Windows 7 as long as they could. Releasing it so that it can be supported forever means a lot of lost business for Microsoft.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @03:57PM
MS did... But you forgot to put on the "corporate filter goggles".
Once you put on the "corporate filter goggles" you realize that MS's definition of "useless" is not what you think.
Their definition of "useless" is "does not bring in revenue by spying on users to sell their data to advertisers".
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 30 2020, @04:16PM (11 children)
Again, the FSF is being a hypocrite. They aren't even in the business of producing software, and they want to tell software makers to release something for free that still generates money.
Looking at the FSF financials, I don't see them working for free. In fact, their "job" seems to be raising funds to keep their jobs. Sort of like "we have to keep the toll booths running to pay the toll booth attendants."
So this is just more free advertising for them. They know it won't happen, they know it's a bad business deal, they know that if Windows 7 became freeware that linux would disappear from most of the few home computers that use it ...
I mean, seriously, if free software can't even compete with paid software now, how much less will it be able to compete when people can ditch linux and have all their games, peripherals, and other software just work?
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @04:19PM (10 children)
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 30 2020, @04:36PM (9 children)
So how did the HURD work out again?
And why did gcc basically have to be abandoned whole and replaced with egcs, which was then renamed gcc?
In other words, they didn't do a whole hell of a lot. Tried and failed to make an operating system. Tossed their failed compiler for someone else's. Realized that they couldn't do software, so changed direction. Spent some time having Stallman representing them, eating toe cheese and making misogynistic and transphobic comments.
The FSF could disappear tomorrow, nobody would notice except the people collecting a paycheck from them. It's not like they actually ever did any of the grunt work.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @06:55PM (1 child)
egcs didn't REPLACE gcc.
What happened was gcc, which was focused only on being a GNU C Compiler wasn't moving fast enough in development for the rest of the open source community (I blame it on questionably leadership or lack thereof when Stallman handed it off...) The schism that lead to the fork of gcc into egcs also involved adding other compiler frontends into gcc to turn it into a suite. Instead of g++ having to be compiled against an existing source of gcc, along with gfortran, gchill, etc the majority of the community decided to integrate them together, turning the gnu c compiler into the gnu compiler collection (a retronym when egcs was remerged as the 'true' gcc fork, with leadership duties in part/whole being taken over by the egcs team.) The result of the egcs schism was much improved features in gcc, but at the expense of maintainability and ease of understanding, many bugs and regressions (above and beyond the vanilla compiler) and leadership which eventually became as inept as the initial gnu projects.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 30 2020, @07:19PM
In other words, gcc was scrapped for egcs. So what's your point again?
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 31 2020, @12:27AM (6 children)
Because egcs was better. I see you neglected to mention that egcs was a gcc fork and also open source.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 31 2020, @02:49AM (5 children)
Doesn't change the facts. gcc was dumped for a fork, egcs, that was better, because (if you dig into the email correspondence) Stallman couldn't even incorporate parts of egcs that he wanted into gcc. So basically, he had to throw in the towel.
He kept making demands to the egcs maintainer to do his (Stallman's) work for him. That didn't help things. If you keep telling another developer exactly how you want something implemented, eventually they'll tell you to go fuck yourself and do it yourself.
And this isn't limited to open source. People who micromanage coders but can't code themselves usually get told off at some point. It's very cathartic, and based on personal experience I can highly recommend it. At some point you have to inject some reality into the process.
What has Stallman done except flap his gums and eat toe jam and defame a sexual assault victim and couch surf in the last two decades? The world didn't suddenly change when he was forced by his own stupidity to drop out of sight.
Nobody really misses him. Shows how inconsequential he really was. And why, even though he's not dead, we can refer to him in the past tense. He might not be dead, but he's gone.
And he's not going to ever make a comeback.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 31 2020, @03:49AM (4 children)
Nor would I see a need to change those facts. In particular, think about that last phrase, "he had to throw in the towel". A poor development process was short-circuited by that fork. You can't do that with closed source.
Telling off doesn't force them to change. Building a better product that is a plug in replacement for their project does. Closed source is a great way to prevent change of that sort. You can tell them off as much as you'd like, they still the code in the end.
Why do you care? I find it bizarre how much of your diatribes against open source veer into these dead ends. Here, Stallman's toe jam, earlier FSF's imaginary hypocrisy, or the replacement of an open source gcc with a closely related fork. None of that shows the problems with open source, particularly the problems inherent to open source.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 31 2020, @04:17PM (3 children)
Then you don't know very much about closed source development. There's always tension between development teams and inside development teams that leads to forks, where one group says "fuck this shit, we're going to do it differently."
Again, you don't know very much about closed development. Open source is resistant to change from criticism - "don't like it, fork it," "RTFM", "$NOT_A_BUG", "$WONT_FIX."
Closed source, on the other hand, has very well defined stages of escalation. Telling off the boss is one such stage. Ignoring the boss and doing what's right instead is the next step (usually followed by "See, I told you so. Now let me do my work my way."), followed by "I told you NOT to try to "improve" it. I wrote it that way for a reason, and now you've just DOS'ed the server", followed by "Buh-bye - I quit." There are other intermediate stages, but you get the gist. Closed source is a meritocracy in that developers can prove that their solution is right. Open source, the developers don't give two shits about critics. It's their itch, they'll scratch it how they please.
Management never wants it to get to the last stage, because THEY sure can't do the work. Open source software, what management? Seriously, if you followed the gcc-egcs process, what management? RMS didn't know what he was doing, tried to impose his will on volunteers, and they finally told him to fuck off.
I'm going to assume you mean "they still get the code in the end." As I pointed out, not if you quit. There are plenty of projects, both closed and open source, that die because people get fed up and quit.
I've been quite specific about the problems with open source. But let's get to your claim that the FSF is a side issue. Au contraire, the FSF could disappear tomorrow and nothing would change. The FSF is irrelevant. A distraction. The current article is just another example of their stupidity in trying to generate attention and donations to keep their own paycheques going, because they don't have any solutions to the problems of open source development.
As for RMS, his knee-jerk response for complaints about the lack of a proper funding mechanism was always "give away the software and sell support." He's part of the problem. That model is doomed to perma-fail because nobody wants to buy a product that's so clunky it needs constant support. Which would you rather use - a closed-source product that has almost no need for support because it just works, or an open source product that needs constant support, interrupting what you're doing at all the wrong times.
A product that depends on support revenue to survive is going to be motivated to require more support. Which is why we don't see very much innovation, just 1,000 distros, all containing the same software packages, many of which haven't really changed since the end of the previous century.
And as I've also pointed out multiple times, open source has as many bugs as closed source. Companies that specialize in this area have found that "open source means all bugs are shallow" is both a lie and deceiving.
You'd think with the slow pace of improvements in open source software that distros would have improved over the last two decades. They haven't. You STILL can't give them away.
I still use it, so I'm acutely aware of the lack of improvements since the '90s. But I agree with others who have taken their projects closed - it's the only way to go, because open can't compete with closed in the marketplace.
Now if you're doing it as a hobby, that's another thing, but some people want to actually earn a living at their profession.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 01 2020, @04:03AM (2 children)
Except of course, when that doesn't happen. Closed source is notorious for this not happening. It's only one company. They routinely don't have the resources to fund multiple development teams for the same thing (really who does this even they can afford it?), nor the interest in doing so. After all, where's the competing product with better software going to come from when it's all in house under your control?
And I find it hard to believe that your life experience hasn't exposed you to dozens of closed source products that do worse the very things you criticize open source for: WONT_FIX, dependence on support revenue, more bugs, no innovation for years, etc. It's absurd that we've even discussing these supposed faults of open source while ignoring that closed source doesn't naturally do it better.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday February 01 2020, @04:44AM (1 child)
Not doing this just means you're building up huge technical debt that you won't be able to fix later. In other words, Agile ain't.
If you can't go this route in house you need to look for another house, because you're doomed. Open source doesn't have the same pressure to deliver the best product with the fewest bugs. You can always let release dates slide, and bugs will get fixed whenever because it's open source - don't like it, fix it yourself and submit a patch or stfu.
Dependence on support revenue? Are you kidding? If it doesn't work it doesn't get used in the first place. Support revenue is only for new features, not bug fixes, and new features are a new version of the product, not the same product. No reason not to offer both to customers and let them pick their price point.
Products that don't produce get you laid off. Open source product doesn't satisfy the user? So what, it's free, there's other users out there, it's open source, let the user community improve it. Can't ask that for closed source. YOU have to deliver, not foist it off on the community and curate the results. But that's why so many open source projects try to develop a community - it's easier to curate other people's work than to actually do the work yourself.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 01 2020, @06:03AM
Unless, of course, you don't do that. Sigh.
This is very different from the competing high level forks you described in your last post:
which is still bullshit. Just because there's a little intra-team rivalry doesn't mean the code will get forked when it needs to.
Notice your misleading use of the phrases "even on a small project" and "even small teams" as if the active and competitive dynamics you described were also true for large, scoliolic teams without initiative or drive. And of course, your appeal to imaginary authority of the "ladder". How high up the ladder are you now?
Unless, of course, your purpose in work is to collect a paycheck and little else.
I take it you've never looked at the software industry before, being no doubt, a complete neophyte to this reality thing. /sarc Crazy as it sounds, there really are huge firms whose business model is centered on providing service for closed source software. Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, HP, and SAP come to mind for a few examples.
I take it you don't get what "produce" means. A large part of the business world can produce shit as long as nobody gets fired for buying it. It's a very minimal definition of "produce". I can see how that would be attractive to be on the profitable end of that. But being on the other side sucks.
For a glaring, enormous example of that, we have Microsoft and its basic products, Windows and Office. They don't improve the product except by breaking backwards compatibility, forcing a lot of customers to upgrade for no gain.
And this curating work that open source communities do? Sounds pretty useful to me.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Thursday January 30 2020, @05:03AM (4 children)
End of life doesn't mean useless.
End of life needs to mean end of copyright. Either support it or lose it. Simple
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 30 2020, @04:10PM (3 children)
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(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday January 30 2020, @04:17PM (2 children)
You know, back in the day before Disney, this is in fact what happened...remember that thing called the Public Domain?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 30 2020, @04:39PM (1 child)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday January 30 2020, @08:06PM
Copyright got its' start in 1710, before Disney even existed.
Yes, with an acceptably short duration, not the insanity we have today. Disney's law [those are the people that wrote it along with Sonny Bono, then rubber stamped by our elected officials] is a contemptuous ass. Rodney Dangerfield deserves far more respect.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Thursday January 30 2020, @06:49AM
End of life doesn't mean useless.
No. Microsoft means useless.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 4, Informative) by DannyB on Thursday January 30 2020, @03:14PM (17 children)
THAT right there is why the FSF's position exposes a truth that people dance around.
Microsoft manipulates people into "choices" that they would never voluntarily chose.
Windows 10 Upgrade Available!
Choose one of the following options by your own free will and informed choice:
* Click Yes! to have Windows 10 installed!
* Click No! to have Windows 10 installed anyway!
* Or click the X to close this window, and still have Windows 10 be installed.
* Or immediately pull the computer's electrical power cord from the outlet to have Windows 10 start up the next time you boot! (The system startup code has already been upgraded to install Windows 10 for your convenience.)
Or . .
This computer has been Upgraded to Windows 10!
To have this computer restored to a usable condition,
please send 3 Bitcoin to Microsoft.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 30 2020, @03:48PM (16 children)
Nobody is being manipulated. Try getting friends to install linux. I did. They all either went back to Windows or bout a Mac. Linux is shit for the average user.
Try fielding "this won't work." calls. "How do I do this" questions. "Why won't my old software run?" "How come I can't buy a program that does "X" for linux but I can for Apple and Microsoft?" "Why doesn't my printer scan any more?" "How come my printer won't print in colour any more?" "Why won't my printer print in high resolution any more?" "How come sound still doesn't work?" "My kid is driving me crazy because he just bought a game and it doesn't run." "My computer is driving me crazy because I just bought a game and it won't run." "I sent a spreadsheet to my boss and they can't open it." "I sent a word processing document to my coworker and they can't open it."
The only people being manipulated were us, the ones who bought into the lie that the cornucopia of amazing software was about to be liberated by the free software model. We bought into it, not because it ever made sense, but because we wanted to. Because we were idealists more than we were cynics.
We got played. We got suckered. We were schmucks, useful idiots for people like the folks running the FSF, who are more interested in their paychecks than in finding financial models for free software that works, because they know that there is no financial model for free software that works.
"We'll create foundations, and collect paycheques running those foundations." That's the FSF model in a nutshell. They don't actually produce anything of value to the average user.
As for the forced upgrades, if your computer was damaged or left unbootable or lost data, you should have gone to small claims court. Microsoft ended up paying $10,090 to one woman [theregister.co.uk]. If you didn't sue after a forced upgrade, you only have yourself to blame.
The argument is simple, after a forced upgrade, Windows 7 no longer works -it's gone. You didn't ask for Windows 10, it damaged your Windows 7 install, you want to be compensated. Sue. Collect. Buy a Mac. Your Windows problems are history.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @04:36PM
I believe that you completely misunderstood the comment you replied to.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday January 30 2020, @04:54PM (11 children)
As I said, but I'll say it differently, is CHOICES.
Or rather, lack of them. Microsoft can force people to "choose" things because there IS NO CHOICE.
In the 1980s when MS-DOS was the thing, there were other better alternatives. Microsoft would only allow OEMs to sell MS-DOS if they paid for MS-DOS for every PC they sold, whether that PC has MS-DOS or not.
Naturally, this put all competing better alternatives out of business. There already were multitasking OSes. Some of them CP/M like. Some Unix like. Crude by today's standards, but remember this is a time when PCs had maybe 128K or lucky ones 256 K of memory.
Today, Linux is better. But as IBM learned in the 1960s, "software lock in" is a real thing. And it's a catch-22. Users can't take their software to Linux. Developers won't build for Linux until there is a substantial user base. There won't be a substantial user base without all that software.
Microsoft's world of "lack of choice" is under threat today. Chromebooks. (eg, the real "year of the Linux desktop") By the time Google has finished with "crostini", an ordinary unsophisticated user, like my mother in law, will be able to pick curated Linux applications (eg GIMP, Inkscape, LibreOffice, etc) and install them on a chromebook. They will run in a container within a secured VM, but that is all invisible to the end user. Just an integrated desktop experience. I personally think this could be a killer feature if Google doesn't screw it up.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 30 2020, @05:14PM (10 children)
And yet the Chromebook is a walled garden. So much for choice. Even Windows doesn't go that far, and it isn't run by an advertising company looking for more ways to mine your data.
Chromebooks are part of the problem, not part of the solution. Unless you're into surveillance capitalism.
And why should Google get to curate anything? Do you trust them that much? Even Apple and Microsoft are now seen as less evil. WAY less evil.
Also, back in the 80s, people mostly bought computers and operating systems separately. I know my first 3 computers were without a disk operating system - I bought those separately, and only one was from Microsoft. There was no restriction on what you could buy at retail, and most people bought from retailers.
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(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday January 30 2020, @06:45PM (9 children)
By the very early 1990s, DOS, then later Windows was bundled with the hardware and preinstalled for your convenience. By 1993 for sure. By 1995 you got a CD tailored to the OEM. By about 2000 you didn't even get a CD anymore.
Chromebooks are a
prison campwalled garden, but not as bad as an iPad.You can root your chromebook, with Google's blessing. Even install different firmware to boot non UEFI and unsigned boot loaders, if you really want to go that far.
Granny's (my mother in law's) first computer in 2006 was an old Win 95 machine loaded with Ubuntu. That worked fine for years. Later we got her a Dell mini tower PC that had Ubuntu pre-installed from the factory. When that was too old, we tried out a chromebook. She loves it.
Some people love their iPads. Even make love their Windows 10 some people do.
A chromebook that offered turnkey install of Linux applications strikes me as a toe-in-the-door way to introduce people to applications that are native to Linux. I'm not sure why that would be a bad thing. It's a pretty easy upgrade from such a chromebook to a Linux distribution with a Chrome browser and the same Linux apps. (but minus Android -- modern chromebooks also run android apps)
Of course "crostini" is not a released feature for chromebooks yet.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 30 2020, @07:01PM (8 children)
Nope. Most people in the early 90s bought their computers from local retailers, not OEMs. I was buying bare-bones PCs until the mid-2000s, when I just bought laptops with Widnows pre-installed. So no, retailers (unless you went to a big box store) weren't selling the OS with the PC unless you asked for it. They still don't.
And you most certainly could buy retail CDs of Windows with a new computer in the XP era. Bought a copy in the mid-2000s for some video hardware that required it at work. If you bought it at the same time as the computer, you got the OEM disk; if you bought it after, you got the retail disk, but it was most definitely available on CD in the 2000s.
You could still order a disk set from HP for Vista computers, and this started in 2007, so your memory is either faulty, or you only frequented Best Buy and Dell.
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(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday January 30 2020, @10:44PM (7 children)
I won't disagree. I was a Mac-only guy until 1993.
In 1993, our PCs came with MS-DOS, and floppies so you could re-install it. In that time frame, I noticed that Windows was beginning to come preinstalled on PCs that our customers purchased. By Windows 95, as I recall, all PCs came with it preinstalled. Nobody installed Win 95, at least not consumers.
But I would be happy to learn of any information about this which is missing in my knowledge. I never got into PCs. They were just furnished for me at work, and I wrote code for them, as well as for Macs.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 31 2020, @12:21AM (6 children)
Even in the Win95 era, most people didn't buy their PCs from big box stores with Windows pre-installed. There was a thriving local 3rd party computer assembler industry that sold bare-bones PCs so you could install whatever you wanted. They were hundreds of dollars cheaper than the big box retailers, could be ordered with whatever parts you preferred, and you then installed whatever you wanted in it.
Even today there's a store chain that sells PCs without Windows installed. It's not a law. They offer 12 different pre-assembled barebones systems, or you can custom order what you want without an OS, or you can order a computer with Windows OEM.
Just that most retailers don't want the hassle of selling anything that isn't simple that a sales droid can sell off a shelf without knowing what works well together.
If you live in a decent-sized town you should be able to find a place selling barebones systems and computer parts so you can build your own.
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(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday January 31 2020, @04:49PM (5 children)
Gateway 2000 is maybe an example of what you are describing. But these gradually declined and pre-installed systems gradually arose. There wasn't one magical day when everything flipped. It was a gradual process. By 95 that process was underway.
Also, a bit of friendly advice. Just FYI. It turns out, it is not a good idea to use peanut butter as a substitute on the heat sink for cpu thermal paste. Who knew?
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 31 2020, @06:16PM (4 children)
We ordered a Thunderbird cpu, along with motherboard, etc., and the machines always arrived DOA. For the 6th, just give me the CPU and I'll assemble it. Turns out they didn't know that you needed to have the heat sink attached even if you powered it up for just a few seconds.
Showed them how to use very fine silicon sandpaper to remove any oxide on the heatsink, then spread some heat sink goop on it with a business card, then remove all but the smallest visible trace with the business card. Thing worked just fine.
Guy assembled computers as a sideline, powered up without a heat sink, then called me to ask me what to do because Windows wouldn't boot. I explained that the newer parts of the chip were really heat sensitive, but it would run DOS games all day really really fast - that he had turned his chip into an 8086.
Now in theory peanut butter (smooth) might be able to work - if you put the whole motherboard in oil. Run it hot enough and you can fry donuts and still not fry the cpu. It's the nasty hot spot that kills it. A lower temperature, distributed evenly, isn't so bad, but the sharp expansion of just one area ... not so good.
Back when Matrox was starting out, I stopped by their early production "facility". Lots of video cards undergoing a nasty heat bake to make sure they wouldn't fail in use. The shipping doors were open to keep the rest of the place kind of tolerable on a summer day.
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(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday January 31 2020, @07:16PM (3 children)
If you put it in oil, you won't be rewarded with the smell of peanut butter cookies prior to the meltdown.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 31 2020, @08:31PM (2 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday January 31 2020, @10:40PM (1 child)
I seem to remember that from long, loooooong ago on the green site. Like early 2000s. Styrofoam cooler. Mineral oil. The cold side of air conditioner coils and the motherboard both went into the mineral oil. It seemed to work. Or so they said. But for how long, or how well, who knows.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 31 2020, @11:05PM
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 31 2020, @01:25AM (2 children)
You seem mad.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday January 31 2020, @04:50PM
I sometimes get that impression as well.
But I try to be cheerful in my reply.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 31 2020, @08:57PM
If you read her post history and journals, you'll quickly discover that her life sucks or she believes it sucks at a minimum. Not a surprise that she then starts to get angry at the world for her plight. And once that death spiral starts, it can be hard to pull out of it. Everything else seems to ultimately stem from that. She has the right to feel how she feels, but I hope she decides to get the help she deserves eventually.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday January 31 2020, @05:42AM (1 child)
>End of life doesn't mean useless. It still has plenty of value, and they know it, so their position is hypocritical.
Wrong. EOL *does* mean useless. End-of-life means exactly what the words say: the lifespan is at an end; it's dead. If it's dead, it's useless. So what harm is there in open-sourcing something that's dead and useless?
If it still has value (which it does, because MS is extracting money from companies for continued support), then it isn't really EOL, and MS is simply lying.
The FSF is calling MS out on their hypocrisy and lying.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 31 2020, @05:25PM
EOL means that regular support is at an end. Everyone knows that. It's like a human - it's old, it's dead, unless you're willing to pay for advanced life support to extend life for a while longer.
It's the same as in real life - some will opt for life support, others will say DNR. Still others will say "fuck this shit" and opt for euthanasia.
The FSF is just attention-whoring. Everyone knows it. Why should they stop making money off an older OS? They'd rather everyone just change to W10, because it's easier to support just one OS, but if they are going to have to pay to support W7 for those who don't want to upgrade, they're well within their rights to ask for money.
Same as if one of my old bosses asks me to work on software I haven't touched in a decade. Show me the money. I'm not going to fix it for free if it's non-trivial (trivial, sure I'll do it as a freebee, why not, just for the heck of it?)
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @08:08AM (5 children)
Asking is fine and one thing. The headline here hyped it up to "demand". MS will laugh this off, there's still money in Win7 and they will bleed every last cent from it.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday January 30 2020, @04:15PM (3 children)
Asking and demanding are the same thing when you can't enforce them.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 31 2020, @03:54AM (2 children)
What does one "enforce" by asking? For example, what am I attempting to enforce on you by asking that previous question? What would be the equivalent demand?
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday January 31 2020, @03:57PM (1 child)
Asking implies you never intend to enforce it. Demanding implies you do. But when you can't or won't, it doesn't matter.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 01 2020, @06:24AM
Asking implies you won't enforce it. So you're claiming that any asking is automatically equivalent to impotently demanding. But there's one important difference. You're being relatively polite - the saying about catching more flies with sugar than vinegar comes to mind.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday January 31 2020, @05:40AM
This is probably why the FSF asked in the first place. They're pointing out how hypocritical MS is for continuing to bleed customers for money for an "end of life" OS. If it's *really* EOL, then they need to just stop supporting it altogether, and that means it's useless, and they should just open-source it. But of course, no, they won't do that, because they can still extract money from customers for supporting it. But if they're continuing to support it, then it's obviously not really EOL, is it?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday January 30 2020, @02:23AM (21 children)
I don't agree with your general thesis.
I contend the only reason we need the GPL is because of the terrible copyright laws we have had foisted on us.
(Score: 3, Informative) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 30 2020, @02:42AM (20 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday January 30 2020, @06:12AM (19 children)
Software should not be able to be copyrighted at all.
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Thursday January 30 2020, @01:28PM (3 children)
If that were the case then the GPL would effectively become the BSD license.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @02:46PM (2 children)
That is true.
But, is that bad?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @07:00PM
The whole reason he started the GPL was because his LISP(and maybe emacs?) project got usurped by a commercial entity who then caused trouble for him when he tried to re-implement features they had produced atop HIS own code. Long story short it radicalized him to start fighting for software freedom, from the perspective of the user-developer who needed the ability to modify, expand and bugfix his own code, as academia had been doing for many years prior with mostly isolated exceptions (although quite bad ones.)
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Thursday January 30 2020, @10:20PM
Not bad at all, because the primary driver for the GPL will have gone away. Mission accomplished.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday January 30 2020, @03:29PM (4 children)
I'm not sure I agree that software should not be eligible for copyright protection.
But if it were not, I can see the arguments coming out that software should be eligible for patent protection. Which would be far worse.
The current situation where we can have open source licenses seems to be working fine. Open source software seems to be taking over the world. Yes, Microsoft still afflicts people with broken Windows. But that is by their own (or their employer's) choice.
Open source is used in everything around us -- not Windows.
(some) people do get actual work done using, for example iPads or Chromebooks.
The continued gradual rise of open source is unstoppable. Even Microsoft has had to adapt to the reality.
So the current copyright/licensing situation, while not perfect, is also much better than some possible alternatives.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday January 30 2020, @08:14PM (3 children)
Right now, software patents might be better than copyright. A patent still only lasts 20 years.
And everybody has it backwards. We only need GPL because of copyright. Without copyright GPL is just paperwork. Without copyright, everything is available for distribution as the users and coders see fit. There is no "taking without giving back". We just take it back.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday January 30 2020, @10:41PM (2 children)
I agree with you that GPL is only because of copyright.
I think software patents are worse. Even 20 years is a long time. Especially for patents on amazingly trivial things that a jury or even patent examiner can be bamboozled about.
With copyright, I don't care about someone's proprietary stuff. I can, or a team can, build our own. Just like all open source now. Copyright doesn't stop you from building your own "photoshop-like" or "office-like" application. But patents stop you dead in your tracks for 20 years. Longer if they can keep coming up with trivial patents covering trivial improvements. 20 years is several generations of software. 20 years covers MS-DOS 1.0 to Windows 2000. 20 years covers Apple II to Macintosh, to the beginnings of OS X. 20 years covers shoulder bag cell phones to iPhones. 20 years is entirely too long to not be able to build your own.
I very much believe the current situation with software copyrights is much better. I don't WANT microsoft's code. Any of it. I want open source code. I don't want Adobe's products. I want open source. They can have their copyright. They're welcome to it. But I get the benefit of copyright law keeping open source code free.
Let me acquaint you with how patents are granted . . .
The patent examination process is not well understood by most people.
Once a patent is received, the patent examiner carefully places the application into a room full of other patent applications.
Then kittens are released into the room with PATENT GRANTED stamps affixed to their feet.
The kittens are then returned to their holding area to await the next round of patent examination.
The patent examiners collect the applications from the floor and look to see which patent applications were granted.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday January 30 2020, @11:18PM (1 child)
Don't know. Patents didn't stop General Motors from competing with Ford. And there was that famous fight between the Wright Bros and Glenn Curtiss [ipwatchdog.com] [very interesting take].
Patents cover a specific method of doing the job, not the job itself. My "PictureGarage" program can hit the market without stepping on potential Adobe patents. I understand how they play "trivial pursuit" with the small changes, but that's just a loophole we have to close.
And I doubt the government patent office is using anything faster than snails. That's the thing about power, "Make 'em wait"
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday January 31 2020, @04:45PM
But litigation is expensive. An open source developer doesn't want to get into a patent fight. Especially over writing software. Even a company doesn't want that for their contributions to open source. Thank God that software is not patentable.
I'm sure GM and Ford can afford an expensive litigation. This sounds like two direct competitors trying to gain some kind of exclusive advantage. A lot of patent litigation is patent trolling.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 30 2020, @04:00PM (9 children)
So then how can you pay developers? Or do you just settle for the shitty free games that the free software movement has put together? And the dysfunctional operating systems that you need to switch from one distro to another as they each in turn develop the clap?
It's not like Gnome 3 was an improvement over Gnome 2. Or that systemd was an improvement over non-systemd systems. Or that ubuntu is any better than it ever was (though I'll give you that they finally got rid of the Halloween colour scheme and the fungus infection colour scheme, but that's merely cosmetic improvements that were obviously needed even to a child).
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday January 30 2020, @07:16PM (8 children)
Copyright is not needed to pay people.
I am also unsure what your point about Gnome 3 or Systemd is. Their problems have nothing to do with copyright.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 30 2020, @07:41PM (7 children)
It is if you want to generate revenue from selling copies of the product. How else do you plan to pay people? The beggar bowl doesn't work any too well, the "Foundation" model isn't working too well either, the "we'll sell out to our corporate overlords" is working well for IBM and RedHat, but that's about it. Selling out only works once, then you've got to invent something new to sell out.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Thursday January 30 2020, @08:22PM (6 children)
You generate revenue by selling and supporting the product, not the copies. Copies are advertisement, promotional material.
Your bitterness about open source because of your personal bad luck [thought you had a journal about it] is very revealing.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @10:12PM (3 children)
If support is the only thing that's monetized, the product is going to need a lot of support. :(.
We've had intellectual property without copyright before. Music copyrights weren't terribly important until mass sheet-music printing, and they weren't really important until recording. Prior to printing and recording, music had royal courts and churches for patrons. If you take away copyright, we're back to patrons. Any corporation or wealthy person who desires software will get it, made to their order. A system without copyright is objectively pro-oligarch. You don't get the upward mobility of Gates, or better yet Jobs and Wozniak who were of more modest means when they started tinkering. If you want to keep the upper class in power, then by all means abolish copyright.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Thursday January 30 2020, @10:25PM
Any corporation or wealthy person who desires software will get it, made to their order.
And they won't be able to prevent anyone else from getting and using it. Goes both ways.
You have it so backwards. It is copyright that is keeping the "upper" class in power. They use it to control access to everything we have.
There is nothing wrong with work for hire, it serves the general population much better than copyright rent seeking.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday January 30 2020, @10:54PM
Prior to printing and recording everyone made music, and that actually hasn't changed.
If you want to get rich from recording music, copyright helps (hence the life plus lots of years copyright nonsense), but let's not pretend copyright has anything to do with the actual people who create the work, because it doesn't.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 31 2020, @03:57AM
What user of a complex product doesn't need support?
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 31 2020, @02:03AM (1 child)
Well, the free advertising model isn't working, because you can't even give it away.
I've been saying for a decade that free software is dying. I warned that fragmentation would continue to erode quality by diverting attention away from real development. A decade later the stats back it up. Has nothing to do with my personal experience, just cynical observations after I realized that I too had been duped by a liar claiming that open source would release an unprecedented deluge of creativity.
All it did was release a bunch of poorly written copies of existing software. and a few bright spots. Gnome was certainly not one of them.
Open source is just not viable any more. People don't want an operating system that requires support. If it requires too much support, they'll abandon it for one that doesn't, so the "give away the software and sell support" model was dead before it was even fully born.
But back to your claim that giving away the product and selling support is a valid model. Can you imagine a TV that requires a support contract? A microwave? Products that need continual support, tweaks, and adjusting are defective.
RMS was pushing just that model, but he hasn't grown out of the era when cars needed an oil change and lube every 3 months, a tune-up every 6 months, new distributor cap, condenser, rotor, wires, and spark plugs every 2 years. People don't put up with any of that crap any more, because technology advanced. His ideas didn't.
But feel free to try making and giving away software and selling support. Go hire some programmers and come up with something that you can give away and sell support for. If you're right, you'll get rich. But we both know that won't happen.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday January 31 2020, @02:17AM
Sorry, you're just exhibiting personal hurt.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @02:28AM (10 children)
Actually, this could be a great PR move for Microsoft. For just one example, think about all the medical equipment that still runs on Win 7 and will not run on anything newer (can't have the radiation treatment machine pausing for an update). If MS opened up the code, these machines (which last much longer than typical computer hardware) would have another lease on life.
MS gets a big PR boost (possibly a tax writeoff too) and at the same time they can quit spending money on supporting a diminishing (and demanding) bunch of users for Win 7. Instead they can dedicate resources to tracking the crap out of all the Win 10 users, where the big money is.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 30 2020, @02:51AM (8 children)
This is a roundabout way of admitting that open source operating systems can't compete. Most people would rather pay Microsoft than use a free OS, because free still comes with plenty of hidden costs, from the need to switch distros on a regular basis because no distr has been able to satisfy everyone, and most eventually turn to crap, software that won't work, peripherals that won't work, and developers that don't want to write the same software for both a paying market and one that wants everything for free.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @03:10AM (3 children)
"This is a roundabout way of admitting that open source operating systems can't compete."
Nah, it is the FSF pushing for software rights. There are plenty of programs that will eventually be unsupported on Win10, and there are many many people who would benefit from open source Win 7. I applaud the FSF for not being evangelical fanatics who won't stand up for users just because they need software created by a greedy evil corporation.
I personally detest the trend of deprecating entire operating systems for no good reason. Software updates can force people into upgrading their OS because there is no method of regression. It is just a matter of time until the gap closes, linux distros have already achieved massive success compared to what anyone thought they could do.
If it wasn't for the desperate attempts at locking users into an ecosystem that gap would be much smaller.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 30 2020, @03:41AM
They won't admit there's a problem, because that would mean admitting that RMS was ultimately a bohemian anti capitalist nut bar factor 6. I have yet to see anyone proposing a solution. Close source software doesn't seem to have the same problem. Guess the market has spoken.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Thursday January 30 2020, @04:13PM
Microsoft ending support for a 10-year-old OS isn't so different from e.g. Ubuntu ending support for an old LTS (in fact, it's 2 years longer than 16.04 was supported). The difference is, technically you could keep supporting it yourself, I guess...but let me know how well that goes, when all your packages stop working one by one over time due to dependency issues you have to manually fix yourself.
Or are you arguing the "for no good reason" angle of this statement?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1, Troll) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 30 2020, @04:30PM
Come off it. That has to be the biggest lie I've heard today, and I've heard quite a few. Remember when IBM was running ads on TV touting linux as the future. The future is here, and linux is, if anything, crappier than it was at the beginning of the century.
How many years did it take for people to stop saying "maybe THIS is the year of linux on the desktop?" Without a viable financial model for independent developers, it will ever be so. And since there is no viable financial model, so sad, too bad, we're fscked almost as much as RMS is.
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(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Thursday January 30 2020, @04:54AM (3 children)
And you are admitting that Microsoft couldn't compete against its own older products! That's a very dysfunctional state to be in where the closed software vendor deliberately forces its customers to worse software. Open source can't be in that state because people would simply stay with the old software, if the new isn't better.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 30 2020, @04:22PM
Of course they can't compete with their own products. Have you been living under a rock? Look how long XP lasted.
Or go back further. It took until Windows 3.1 for it to gain significant market share over plain old MS-DOS, and even Windows 9x ran atop MS-DOS 7x. Most Windows 9x games were really launchers for Dos4g games running in a dos extender. You could run them fine directly from DOS.
They finally sort-of killed DOS in XP, but it still had to be there for some things to work. I thought it was hilarious when I got a DOS error box in XP running an XP application that made a system call that XP didn't like.
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(Score: 2) by jasassin on Thursday January 30 2020, @09:00PM (1 child)
Cue the systemd comments.
Sorry, I couldn't resist.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Friday January 31 2020, @01:01AM
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday January 30 2020, @04:53AM
WIN7 did not stop working, did it?
Microsoft sees no reason to keep supporting it.
I have a 25 year old van too. I don't think anyone at the dealership knows how it works. No computer, no OBD port. Purely mechanical Diesel. My neighbor's Mustang is 25 years older than my van. Still using it as a daily driver
My beef would be if they played copyright and patent games with Rock Auto, Whitney, Dorman, and other aftermarket suppliers of replacement parts. I'd hate to have to throw this machine away for the want of an alternator.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 4, Informative) by c0lo on Thursday January 30 2020, @03:18AM (21 children)
I have some very old news for you: everyone can actually use gpled software with their custom modifications without distributing the code. What they cannot is distribute binaries with those modifications without the source code.
It takes the Affero GPL to guard against Application Service Providers which just give the customers the access to the application, without distributing the modded code.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Troll) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 30 2020, @04:25PM (18 children)
If you can't sell the changes without giving away your source, what's the point? Oh, right - developers should just continue passing the begging bowl because organizations like the FSF don't actually have a clue as to how to make free software financially viable unless it's locked behind software-as-as-spyware-service.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @04:57PM
The hacker community is very pleased to have you defending our monetary interests. Thank you very much.
(Score: 4, Touché) by c0lo on Thursday January 30 2020, @08:07PM (16 children)
If you don't like it, don't use it. Nothing unfair, you knew the conditions from the start.
Otherwise, many (including me) are happy to have a software that works and grows by the effort of many like-minded and we don't like the idea to have our work taken and monetized for the profit of few that don't want to contribute back in kind.
If you think your modifications/enhancements are more valuable than the rest of the code, feel free to have that rest re-implemented in "clean room" conditions from scratch and, by all means, sell your enhancements this way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Troll) by barbara hudson on Friday January 31 2020, @02:08AM (15 children)
Facebook. Google. Twitter. All those software-as-a-spyware-service companies are making huge profits with open source that has been modified and not contributed back. So why do you defend them? Why aren't you talking against Android? Or Chromebooks?
We've been played. I woke up. RMS was delusional with his ideas, as proven by the inability to even give away open source software. You can't sell support for something that people don't want even if it's free.
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(Score: 3, Touché) by c0lo on Friday January 31 2020, @03:04AM (13 children)
So what? Good for them.
Can I still use the open-source GPL-ed programs under the same conditions, right? Then the GPL works as intended. GPL was never about the money, so I'm not going to move the goal posts only because some are better prepared than me to take commercial advantage of the license.
Nope, the fact that you had unreasonable expectations from GPL is not the GPL's problem.
There was no promise from RMS or GPL that you will be able to make money from open source or even that the people will want to use open source.
The itch that GPL scratched is "If the people want to use an open-source software, they must keep the software open source". No more, no less.
In fact, others realized the expectations mismatch, they expected more and so they asked for more - with the note that the freedom of whether to accept a license (and abide by it) or not accept it (and refrain to use that code) is still... well... free, fair and legal:
1. Affero GPL [wikipedia.org] asks ASP to provide the code whenever they distribute the use of the code to public (you can still use the code, modified or not, for your internal purposes)
2. Sybase Open Watcom Public License [wikipedia.org] - which asks the publishing of your modifications even if you use it internally
Git repositories on android [googlesource.com]
Chromium source code [github.com]
Anything else is running on top of the open-source ecosystem and makes use of it, but does not modify the open-source in such a way that the copyleft provisos are triggered.
You are free to write closed source software running on Linux and offer it for sale even today! This is a list of entities that do so [wikipedia.org], this even letting aside closed source games that run on Linux (natively or via the open-source Wine). Really, feel free to join their ranks (or join them as an employee) and earn your living.
BTW:
1. Linux Kernel is, to this day, GPL2-ed [kernel.org]. By a deliberate choice of its main author - waaay back in 2006 [lkml.org] and in spite of what RMS was wishing.
2. GPL3 itself was not against "make money" - but against restrictions on software liberties by the use of patents and the use of hardware locks (DRM included).
So, fair is still fair, right?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 31 2020, @03:17AM (12 children)
BTW - linus can't change the license even if he wants to - he doesn't control all the copyrights. He can't even offer a dual-licensing scheme. That kind of cripples it.
There are plenty of ways to legally work around the gpl, but why bother? You can't even give it away for free.
And those who have tried to develop commercial software for the linux market have failed. See Loki Software, who had the rights to some big-name games. People running linux won't pay for software. Look at how much more profitable Apple's app store is for devs, despite it being only a fraction of the size of Android.
Linux only works when it's locked away, either on servers or under an environment that prevents direct user interaction while sucking your personal data.
Developers have other options, options where they have a reasonable expectation that if they give the user what they want, they can make a living. And that's what's happening, and why free software is stagnant. And worse, IT'S BORING! Who wants to scratch an itch under such conditions?
For software development where all you want is to be able to edit source, compile, run, debug, repeat, it's okay. But that is not most people's scenarios.
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(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday January 31 2020, @04:00AM (11 children)
BTW - neither the others can manage the license with his accord.
This was a matter that was discussed in 2006 - today it would be even harder.
Personal point of view? I don't care about how the GPL serve the interests of others
I'm happy with how Linux and LXDE and Kicad and all the software underneath serve my interest.
I can only hope that my position doesn't upset you (more than you are), but if it does, apologies, I stole nothing from you and I owe nothing to you (except the general level of respect I offer to any human being, no "earn it" or any other strings attached).
It works for me just fine. I can offer only my sympathies if you can't derive the usefulness you expect from it.
With the risk of repeating myself, casting a value judgement on how well it works for others - as a particular case of "serving the interest of others" - is a thing I refuse to myself.
A consideration that is truly not addressed by the open-source software. It may sound rough, but that's the reality.
Again, I see a good amount of subjectivism here. Stagnant by what measures?
Irrelevant from my point of view - software development is orthogonal on the "excitement" axis
Some (including me) would say "many enough".
Others would say "too many. 'Cause fragmentation and infighting and ..."
You seem to say "not enough. It evolves too slowly".
I can agree with this one.
With the note that this only demonstrates that software development is not for "most of the people" - nothing special here, neither "crunching statistics" or "fixing water pipes" is for most of the people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 31 2020, @04:27PM (10 children)
So why all the hate for pointing out that open source has a shitty financial model? I must have set a record for down-mods yesterday (stopped counting at 50-something). And for pointing out that RMS was full of shit when he kept insisting that the "give the software away and sell support" model was viable? His thinking is from back in the days when people accepted that your car had to go to the corner garage 4-6 times a year for oil changes, tune-ups, etc. We don't make cars with those deficiencies any more, we shouldn't be making software that depends on being deficient to be financially viable.
Closed-source companies understood that pre-internet. You bought a piece of software, if the company had to mail out patch disks to every user every time there was a bug, they'd go broke, so for-profit companies spent money on testing.
Open source - "the users are our testers. We'll patch it over the internet." That's the same el-cheapo thinking that got Microsoft into an eternal "patch Tuesday" cycle, which has ended up costing them more than if they did it right in the first place.
The slow pace of change in open source, with way too many resources being devoted to repackaging the same old software in yet another distro, is going to mean that it will continue to be stuck at the turn of the century.
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(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday February 01 2020, @01:17AM (8 children)
I don't know, wasn't me.
I can make the hypothesis of ill-definition of the problem: like saying that feathers make a bad hammer and expressing bitterness about it.
First, you seem to say that there was a time when it worked, so perhaps RMS wasn't so wrong at the time? You can't say "Sony was full of shit with its walkman, today everybody listens on MP3-s streamed from your mobile phone", can you?
Second, RMS can make mistakes as any human. I don't see how you can pretend that RMS lied to you or conned you into open-source, the "full of shit" carries those connotation.
Third, there are entities that manage to earn good money from selling support for open-source. Not many and mainly not individuals, a sign that it isn't easy. But it does show it's not impossible.
And last but not least, you can earn a good living from and/or because of open-source. As an employee in a company that consumes open-source. And, oh boy, aren't they the majority? Think at MySQL/Postgress, Docker, Jenkins, xUnit/Cucumber-and-related, compiles/linkers/interpreters, Apache, JBoss/MVC, Hybernate/EF, etc. I don't know your professional age but I needed to pirate development tools just to learn enough for my profession - otherwise there was no chance in hell to buy them. You see today that the job market requires certain technologies/toolsets? Big chances are that you go and download them (or something similar) and practice them, all because the almost ubiquitous open-source ethos made it very likely someone had an itch and scratched it open-source style.
One on top of the other, that "full of shit" addressed to RMS and open-source does sound so undeserved that I can't blame others suspecting you of trolling
You're wrong in so many ways here that it would require much more time just to point why it's wrong.
The problem is aggravated that you mixed right (yes, spending on quality does reduce the cost of defects) in between those wrongs (no, you can not honestly blame open-source for Agile and Agile-done-wrong, heaps of commercial companies do it as well). No, "earn from support" doesn't mean "remove bugs and get paid". Etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday February 01 2020, @02:09AM (6 children)
The razor blade model has never worked for software. Stallman wouldn't know - he never met a razor blade he liked (bada-BOOM!)
50 years ago people tried to sell subscription plans for meat and groceries. Didn't work, because it was always cheaper just to go to the local grocery store and load up on specials. we're seeing the same thing today with meal subscriptions - burning through lots of OPM but ultimately not sustainable.
It has NEVER worked with the PC, except dubious leasing programs that sold you a really low end PC for three times what you would pay if you paid cash, but that's a leasing model. Nobody is leasing linux, and the leasing companies all offered DOS and Windows only.
His ideas were full of shit - whether he realized it or not. So, either he was dishonest, or deluded. Given that his lifestyle depended on maintaining the delusion, you can pick either.
Back in the 70s I scrounged to pay for both hardware (non ibm, obviously) and software. I continued to do the same in the 80s and 90s when I started making money. I valued the manuals.
Piracy was never necessary. You worked at whatever job you needed to so you could buy the tools of the trade. And computers were a LOT more expensive than today, and jobs paid a LOT less. There were plenty of opportunities to pirate, but it rang my "hypocrite" alarm pirating software when my job is making software.
Would you trust a mechanic who stole their socket sets, wrenches, etc.? Or a carpenter who stole their table saw, radial arm saw, and air gun nailer? How about if they stole their truck? How about if they stole YOUR truck, because what goes around comes around, and if you're willing to benefit from stealing, well, as I said, what goes around comes around.
And Agile still sucks. What you call "Agile" I call "releasing software without proper development and testing and throwing shit over the wall and seeing what sticks." Because that's exactly what it is. Boeing tried that with the 737 MAX. Tried to transform themselves from an airplane manufacturer to an integrator of components and software made by others, engineered by others, and put together by others. Last I heard, they're now officially into their first loss in 20 years or more. $19 billion and counting.
But the same lax attitude towards refusing to "pay your dues" by buying the tools of the trade shows with the whole "throw shit over the wall and let the customer do the final testing". I've never bitched about paying for an operating system, for a compiler, for an RDBMS, for a spreadsheet or flow chart program, or a game. I respect the work that went into making them into finished products, and I continue to believe it should be rewarded.
I also refuse to work any more for any business involved in the surveillance capitalism economy. That shit has to end.
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(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday February 01 2020, @04:45AM (5 children)
The way you come across sounds like you are decrying the commoditization of software development, longing for the time when programming had a high barrier of entry and you are blaming RMS for the inability to command high income in software.
Well mate, it is what it is. Software is now a commodity, long gone the times where "working on computers" was sorta badge of honor., today making software is more like an agribusiness. And no, there's no turning back to the "good ol' times"
As "commodity provider", one has the "good, fast and cheap" question to answer to; can't have all 3, so how you choose to answer to that will have outcomes in your ability to adapt.
The risk you are running is wasting time casting blame and feeling miserable on the expense of adapting to the current environ (o just having a good time over a beer with your friends).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday February 01 2020, @05:07AM (4 children)
Someone didn't need a spell checker, no problem, ithey can buy it without and add a component from anyone at a later date.
We were on that road. The Delphi community has plenty of component vendors . And there were other initiatives. But then we screwed it up with software as a service. Give away the product and spy the shit out of everyone, everywhere, even listening in their bedrooms.
We're all poorer and less secure now, and the network effects of online communities resulted in social network monopolies. P2P software built out of components with no central server and everyone, even non programmers, able to build or buy exactly what they want, with the degree of interoperability they want, and the ability to keep it varied because of competition for money from component sales resulting in competitors making improvements all the time ... we lost it for at least the next generation.
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(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday February 01 2020, @07:39AM (1 child)
But they did. As open source.
Letting aside the headless components that you find in all sort of repositories (nuget, maven, nmp, you name it), you have heaps of widget frameworks/toolkits - at least some on cross-platform. You want them for commercial apps? Go buy Qt [www.qt.io], only $5k/y. Otherwise you can use its full power for open-source projects.
Meh, happens. Personally, I never liked Pascal and Borland (as commercial software provider) barely and only temporarily had the reach of MS - so if I had to swallow shit for a living, I picked the most common shit (incidentally, this is why I learned Java when it started. At least I had the cross-platform addressed)
Who exactly is the "we" that screwed up? 'Cause it's not me and I fail to see how is the open-source's fault that the Vulture Capitalists in Sillyvalley decided that unicorn are worth hunting.
Ok mate, maybe true. But again... how is OSS or RMS to blame for, say, Facebook's monopoly?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday February 01 2020, @02:04PM
It's like the code I was working on when my eyes went, where if you wanted a colour dialog box to change an objects colour, you just dragged it on top of it and it worked. No compiling a "program ", no linking software routines. Same with a web browser component - drag it onto a window, it works, type in your URL and go. No recompiling anything. With building blocks, just lay them out and they work. Or package them up and you have a complete application, without compiling.
So no, open source never did that. Never even tried to do that. Maybe one day after I finish my current project I'll resume work on it, or maybe I won't. What I won't do is release the code so dummies who are unclear of the basic concept can try to build "programs " out of it. That goes against the whole concept of autonomous precompiled building blocks that can interact without compiling or even run-time linking.
I liked the concept when I read about it in the 90s, and every once in a while I'd kick it around in the back of my mind to see how it could be done , then one day sat down and started cutting code, and and the building block worked with each other, no compiling, no linking, no extra programming to glue them together. Show me ANY FOSS that does that. But no, it's all just source code that programmers have to glue together into programs and if you modify it you can break it. The same shitty way we've always made software. Where's the innovation ? M
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(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday February 06 2020, @01:15AM (1 child)
Snapping together -- no. that didn't work well, though I have used emacs over an ssh connection, and it works just fine. Using a browser over ssh isn't as successful. Browsers seem to assume their display is local, and do things like animated scrolling, which take forever because they do it by sending multiple entire pixel maps to their (remote) display.
But I have heard rumours about browser components, that could be used (*with* soe real programming) to assemble custom browsers for specific purposes. And that are documented to make it clear what and how the components will do for you and how to use them together.
Anyone know anything about such browser components?
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday February 06 2020, @01:51AM
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by hendrikboom on Thursday February 06 2020, @01:01AM
There are itinerant system administrators whose jobs are to go around to various businesses that use Linux to do routine backups, security upgrades, and the like, and listen to the users' problems and address them.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 01 2020, @06:34AM
This is the motte and bailey fallacy. Before you were waxing poetic about how open source software sucks compared to closed source (the bailey). Now, you've retreated to the more defensible position that the financial model for open source is shitty (the motte). All the "hate" is for your more indefensible positions. At least, when you complain about the poor financial model for open source, you're on more secure grounds. We might not respect you for it, since after all, there's no expectation that you should be able to make a living from open source (or for that matter, closed source) so why should we care that you're complaining?
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday February 06 2020, @01:46AM
The first open-source software I encountered was in the 1960's. It was the library of user-contributed software for the IBM 1620.
Users wrote software they wanted to use, and handed it over to IBM to distribute for free to other users.
In fact, when Amdahl started making IBM 360 clones, they used the operating system that IBM had written.
Commercial software came later, once people realized that software could be copyrighted. It became widespread in the 1980's.
But the fundamental nature of free, open-source software back then was that it was written *by its users*.
That is its greatest strength and its weakness.
So with the advent of FSF and GPL and the free software movement, its original authors and users were developers. And they wrote software that they needed. Editors and compilers were the start. Then an operating system kernel -- Linux. The actual Linux operating systems were put together by what's now called distros.
Then, well, we got gradual emergence of everything else.
Being written by developers for developers meant that if there's, say, a problem, it often remains unfixed if it's more work to fix it than adapt to it. But if enough developers encounter the problem, there's a good chance that it *will* get fixed.
Among the developer community it is a matter of pride and honour to fix problems in software they release. Even more a matter of pride not to need fixes in the first place.
When the user base spreads beyond developers, this is where free software starts to meet its limits. Problems become more of a problem. These new users can't fix them. They may not even understand that the problem *can* be fixed. So unless he developer hears about it and it's a matter of pride for her, it remains unfixed.
So then free software ends up in the hands of the corporations. About a decade ago I heard that IBM had invested about a billion dollars in developing and contributing to Linux and other free software. Why? Because it met the needs of their users. And the GPL made sure it had to remain free.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday February 03 2020, @03:36AM (1 child)
Anybody know what that "Affero" meant before it got glued onto "GPL"?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday February 03 2020, @03:48AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affero_General_Public_License#History [wikipedia.org]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday January 30 2020, @05:00AM (1 child)
Your view is extremely biased. What you don't understand is that their use of GPL precludes any copyright protection for them. So we can take what they don't release and disassemble it ourselves. Copyright law is too corrupt at this point to deserve any respect.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Thursday January 30 2020, @03:55PM
When anyone uses the GPL, they are not "precluded" from copyright protection. In fact, the copyright protection, which they actually have, is the only legal force of power to enforce the GPL.
Now maybe you interpret "preclude copyright protection" to mean "preclude certain business models". But that is NOT what copyright protection means.
When you create a creative work fixed in tangible form, you automatically have copyright protection. Copyright law gives you certain exclusive rights over your work and the ability to recover civil damages against anyone unauthorized who exercises any of your exclusive rights -- such as copying, distribution, performing, sale, etc. To initiate a lawsuit you do need to register your copyright.
While I have little love for copyright law, and what it has become, I very much love the ingenious hack which the GPL represents. It uses the full force of law to ensure the GPL's goals.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Arik on Thursday January 30 2020, @05:52AM (27 children)
True, but flip the coin.
The other side says, the only reason the GPL is needed is copyright law. It was an impediment to progress when RMS tried to get the docs to solve that fateful printer problem, but it's gone positively berserk since that time.
"You don't get to pick and choose whose rights aren't worth enforcing."
Well, that's certainly one way to look at it. Let's explore the implications of it.
Copyrights are not actually rights. They're privileges, granted by the government. This is why the Constitution needed a specific clause to authorise their grant. There's no clause for granting actual rights in the Constitution. Particularly in the Bill of Rights, there are clauses forbidding government from violating them, but they pre-exist the government. As the Declaration of Independence proclaimed, they are granted by an authority greater than the Constitution itself.
Copyrights are privileges, granted by the government for the purported purpose of encouraging the arts and sciences. Their effect is to infringe on real rights, though particularly in earlier days they might have been characterised as relatively minor infringements that affected few and were for the purpose of the greater good.
So, if we take your maxim to heart, we don't get to choose, we just enforce rights - then we should amend the Constitution to strike Article I Section 8 Clause 8.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1, Troll) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 30 2020, @04:03PM (22 children)
The "printer problem" wasn't that hard to solve. Over the subsequent years, devs became quite good at getting printers to do all sorts of things. Not because copyright law prevented them - it doesn't. The whole printer story is bullshit wrapped in a lie.
But that's what most myths are based on.
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(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @04:07PM (21 children)
Please explain. RMS from accounts is a very earnest and straightforward person, you think he based his entire life around a lie?
(Score: 0, Troll) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 30 2020, @05:07PM (20 children)
Forced to resign [splinternews.com]
The fat fuck hasn't got a clue about consent. Never did. No wonder he defended Epstein. And here [boston.com]:
Stallman doesn't get the power imbalances involved in statutory rape, or in sexual relationships with people in positions of authority. For someone who claims to be so smart, he's one dumb fuck. And has been since at least 2003, based on his own writings.
Remember when he wrote, after Steve Jobs death, how "I'm not happy that he's dead, but I'm happy that he's gone." There are plenty of people who are happy he's finally gone too. He's been an embarrassment long enough.
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(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @06:26PM (5 children)
No problem with the big issues about assault you discussed in parent.
However, you seem to have missed the comment by an eyewitness at the time, can't find the reference just now, but I think it was a physicist who was also at "the Island" and said bluntly, "Minsky turned down the girl's overtures."
Knowing Minsky (I worked on projects that he was also part of), this is exactly in keeping with his personality--he might have been amused (he usually had a real twinkle in his eyes), but would never agree to this kind of encounter with a young girl. This (I believe) is what RMS was trying to say in his (widely misconstrued) comments.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 30 2020, @07:13PM (3 children)
Stallman's statements were quite clear. He claimed that the girl most likely was a willing participant. A lot of us immediately condemned him, and the knee-jerk reaction from the "community" just reinforced the huge bloc of misogynists in the linux/free software community.
There is no "misconstruing" of "most likely a willing participant" possible.
Same as there is no misconstruing possible of some of his other comments. That a guy "misreads the situation" is not a defence of rape, but this is the exact position Stallman takes. Same as "she said No but she really meant Yes", "she didn't say no often enough", "she didn't say no", "she changed her mind but I couldn't stop myself", "she was drunk and she didn't say no, so I just assumed ...", "She said no but I knew she really wanted it."
All of these are actual defences that people try to use in court to justify rape and sexual assault. Imagine if I walked into your place and you were passed out drunk and I said "hey, can I borrow your car?" and walked out with the keys, and when I'm arrested for theft saying "I asked, and they didn't say no ..."
As for any witness, we'll see what happens in court. My bet is there is no witness. The thing is, Epstein's place was a "safe space" for predators, who could get away with things they couldn't elsewhere, so they could give in to their appetites without fear. Any witness is going to have an "interesting" time explaining their presence. Just look at Randy Andy. He thought he could "explain away" everything, didn't work out that way.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @09:04PM (2 children)
Let's go back to school and analyze the paragraph.
Try approaching the sentence as a puzzle to see if you can figure out where your interpretation of the words were wrong.
Stallman objected to the phrasing that Minsky sexually assaulted someone, because assault implied the use of force, while what really happened was that Epstein and his wife used young girls to seduce and blackmail influential people.
This relate very well to the news item about perception of reality because, it baffles me how people don't care about the truth, but blindly gossip away unverified bullshit as if it was reality.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 31 2020, @01:04AM (1 child)
The facts were already out. Stallman, being the bloviated idiot that he his, chose to not bother even asking questions before making up shit. And that's exactly what he did - made up shit in direct contradiction to the facts that were already available at the time.
There is no excuse. There is no "logic puzzle" to solve here. He fucked up, like he always does.
Sexual assault doesn't "imply" anything about force. It's sex without proper consent. No need to use force if someone is unable to consent because they're passed out drunk, or afraid to resist.
Many victims just freeze up. I know I did when I was sexually assaulted in broad daylight in the subway. It's a reflex, and in my case it worked because the guy loosened his grip and I was able to get away. This is a VERY common reaction, but it leaves the impression that because you didn't resist, you consented, which is total bullshit.
Stallman didn't give a shit about the truth. He just acted like he always does, ignoring the facts. There is no defence possible for his actions. And the defence of Minsky ignores everything we know about Epstein and the way he operated. Minsky operated "safe havens" where females felt that they didn't really have a choice. You're on an airplane and you're told to "be nice" to someone ... what are you going to do, jump out without a parachute? Say no and not have any way to get off the private island?
The men hanging around Epstein knew what was going on. Just look at how Randy Andy keeps ducking police interviews, and his denials of ever meeting one of his alleged victims are contradicted by pictures. Sounds very Trumpian.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 31 2020, @06:23AM
You don't care about facts. You just talk and talk and talk.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @09:08PM
Greg Benford.
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/339725/ [pjmedia.com]
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday January 30 2020, @08:32PM (13 children)
So, open source software is bad because you feel personally slighted and don't like what Stallman says?
You trying to start a new "temperance movement" or something?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 31 2020, @01:40AM (12 children)
No, the facts are clear - the open source model has failed in terms of end users, in terms of developer jobs, and in terms of innovation and support.
The software ecosystem available from open source is pitiful. Really pitiful. And without a thriving software ecosystem, who gives a shit about even looking at using the operating system?
You'd expect to find plenty of geeks and nerds running linux on steam, but only 1 in 300 users are running any version of linux. Even OSX has almost 10x as many users on steam. And of course, more than 95% are running Windows.
Linux on the desktop has dropped since the turn of the century. That says it all. Nobody wants it, even if it's free. I gave up giving it away a decade ago, because everyone who tried it went back to Windows or bought a Mac.
It's pretty bad when you can't even give it away. The market has spoken, and there is no viable software market for linux, because everyone wants everything for free. So you get what you pay for. And you don't get what you don't pay for.
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(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday January 31 2020, @01:50AM
They are clear for you. For other people it works just fine. Maybe you're using the wrong metric. You are expressing strong personal feelings more than anything else.
And who gives a damn about the market??
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Saturday February 01 2020, @01:11AM (10 children)
Really? So that's why hardly any servers run Linux. And nobody uses Apache, nobody uses Wordpress to build their website. No software is ever written in Python or Perl or Go or whatever the kids use today, and no one would ever compile their source code with tools like clang. And no one would ever use git to store their source code either. No one would trust their data in an open source database like PostgreSQL or MySQL. Nobody use LaTeX to render documents in a publishable format. All the major web browsers are, of course, completely closed source propriety software. No major movie studio would use Blender on a major Hollywood release. I could go on and on.
Maybe you better open your eyes and look more closely at all the open source software you are most certainly using every day. And of course all the open source software you are interacting with anytime you do just about anything online. And you better chuck that iPhone and all that shiny Apple gear, with its BSD roots, right into the trash with all that other open source software you like to bash belongs.
You like to complain about how bad printing is on Linux for some reason. But most what Linux distributions use for printing is....CUPS! An open source printing system, distributed under the Apache license, which is primarily developed by.... Apple! And is used as the printing system in OSX! Imagine that!
Yes, Linux on the desktop is still a fairly small percentage. But to use that to paint a broad brush over all of open source software really shows how completely ignorant you really are. Or maybe you are just trolling, in which case you really shouldn't be surprised at all the down mods you are getting.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday February 01 2020, @01:41AM (9 children)
Users don't give two shits what OS a server runs. That's the whole point of running crap on a server - they don't have to worry about the stuff working - if it stuffs up, not their problem.
Also, I never said that FreeBSD was crap because it's licensing scheme, unlike linux, encourages use. Hence OSX. If linux had used a more permissive license, it might have been the #2 consumer desktop and laptop operating system. But nope, the GPL screwed that up.
Apple contributes on a regular basis to open source projects - last time I checked it was something like 200. So, contrary to the crybabies who say Apple takes and doesn't give back, they do. And linux users benefit from it. All because FreeBSD isn't GPL.
You probably were so enraged that anyone could poke fun at RMS that it prevented you from seeing what I was saying.
The GPL caused a market failure with linux and FOSS in general. People like to have choices. Both Microsoft and Apple have no problems with people using FOSS. But FOSS variants that use the GPL have a BIG problem with proprietary software.
Stallman keeps saying that people should have the freedom to use the software any way they want, but the GPL prevents that. The BSD license doesn't. Look at all the commercial software available for both Windows and OSX. Now look at how little is available for linux. Some of us have no moral or ethical problem using both. Proprietary software supports jobs, same as drinking milk supports dairy farmers and taking the bus supports bus drivers. Is taking public transit evil because it isn't free? Because I can't take it just when and where I want, but have to follow the schedules? Because I can't use it to haul 20 tons of gravel? Of course not. Proprietary software is not evil; it's based on the same sort of transactions as we've been doing since before money was invented - I give someone something they want, I get something I want. Or is barter evil now?
At least with Windows and OSX people have a multitude of choices, both free and proprietary. Linux users, because of market failure due to licensing, don't have that range of choices. It's a walled garden. Same as Android. Same as Chromebooks.
20 years from now we'll look at 2,000 linux distributions and you'll be saying "see, twice as many choices." I'll be saying "all with the same old software bundles, just more of them unmaintained."
People want to run software, not operating systems. It's like I said before, it's like toilet paper. It needs to meet 100% of my needs. If it only gets 90% of the poop, and leaves the other 10% on my hand, it's 100% a failure and I need to find an alternative that actually works 100% of the time.
Linux is that cheap 1-ply that doesn't do everything most people need done. Try giving it away, like I did. People don't want it, and I can't blame them. It's like adopting a dog with 3 legs - you do it out of pity, not because you expect it to do everything a 4-legged dog can do. And you know ahead of time that there will be issues.
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(Score: 1) by toddestan on Saturday February 01 2020, @06:25AM (8 children)
Lets see, you were just trashing "open source" software. Yet open source is very successful on the server. And users use open source (based) web browsers, and web sites and services powered by open source software, and so on.
Your ignorance is showing. The BSD license is open source, so yes you did.
There's plenty to make fun of RMS for. I mean, he created emacs for god's sake *ducks*.
I guess by some standards GPL software can be considered a market failure, I mean the cost of the software is free so it's not like you can count sales. It's just not something that free software (GPL, BSD, etc.) competes in. I'm not going to argue that there aren't zealots that have problems with propriety software, a lot of GPL proponents and users have no problem with propriety software either. Unless you mean that by choosing to use free and open source software instead of buying Windows or OSX as "having a problem".
Once again, your ignorance is showing. The GPL has absolutely no restrictions whatsoever on how you use the software. Do whatever you want with GPL software. But if you distribute your changes, you have to distribute the source. That's all. BSD doesn't have that restriction. So yes, that means that BSD code shows up in closed source software - Apple does it, so does Microsoft, and GPL code doesn't. Well, sometimes propriety software vendors do it anyway, and sometimes they get caught. Sure, a problem for them, but easily avoided by not doing stupid shit like that.
When did I say propriety software was evil? I use both, I don't have a problem with propriety software, I use Windows, I buy games, I pay for NOD32, I use a bunch of freeware, closed source utilities and programs. I don't buy a lot of software because I don't see the need because often there's a free alternative that'll work, just like I don't see the need for a Windows license for most of my computers either. I don't see how that makes me a bad person because I don't shower propriety software vendors with money, but if you want to create propriety software and if I deem it worth the money to buy it, I will.
and unlike you, I don't have a problem with open source software either.
Haha, what? With Windows, your choice is.... Windows. You can use Windows 10 with it's telemetry and forced updates, or Windows 8.1 for a few more years if Microsoft will even license you a copy, or continue unsupported with an older version with a license you already have (Microsoft won't sell you a new license for unsupported Windows versions). OSX is the much same, except with a very limited choice of supported hardware.
With Linux you have all sorts of choices, choices of different hardware and architecture, choice of distributions, choice of desktop environments (if you even want one), choice of packages, no restrictions on what you can install, no one telling what you can and can't install it on, or what you can or can't do with it. Do you even know what a walled garden is? Linux is way more than Android and Chromebooks, though you can choose to use those too.
As if Windows and OSX don't have their problems? At least with open source software, I can do something about it. With propriety software I don't have a lot of choice. Don't like the direction that Microsoft is taking Windows with their forced updates and telemetry? Tough, either deal with it or don't use Windows. Don't like the limited selection of overpriced Apple hardware that can run OSX? Tough, either suck it up or don't use OSX. For some reason people put up with this. The situation is even worse on mobile where it's either iOS or Android, or not a smartphone. Apple and Google know you don't have a lot of choice, and it shows. And for some reason people put with this too.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday February 01 2020, @03:59PM (7 children)
That's my point. You say that there are "absolutely NO restrictions" - your words - "Do whatever you want with GPL software", then cite something you CAN'T do, which is a restriction. You can't distribute modified GPL software without distributing the modified source. That is a HUGE restriction. And that's the point, isn't it?
BSD is a free license, the GPL is a restrictive license. And that's why BSD, not Linux, is the #2 desktop OS. And why most linux distributions contain the same old limited variety of software. The same shitty games, many of which no longer even work with newer graphics chips.
FreeBSD does all this as well, except that you're wrong with your last sentence. The GPL limits what you can or can't do with it.
Yep, I'm going to go to Home Hardware and complain that they only sell hardware, not a Whopper and Fries. We can turn your example on its head - why doesn't FOSS supply Windows and OSX? So the FOSS choices are also limited.
And plenty of people have older versions of Windows with licences floating around. They don't care if it's unsupported, it's the same level of support as "RTFM or fix it yourself and submit a patch" that FOSS falls back to often.
And therein lies the problem. Most people would rather pay to have Microsoft or Apple "do something about it" for their software needs, because FOSS doesn't meet all their needs. Like I said before, crappy toilet paper that only gets 90% of the shit when you wipe is not "good enough". People would rather pay more and not have to be getting their hands dirty all the time. Or having to maintain two computers, because their FOSS one doesn't do all the jobs they want. Easier to just have one computer that does it all.
FOSS hasn't really advanced much in 2 decades in terms of software. Back in 2000 the future looked bright. Linux on every desktop. Tons of new programs, both free and paid. Twenty years later, none of that happened. 20 years from now none of that will happen. The same FOSS that runs today's surveillance-as-a-service crap enabled that situation, and sowed the seeds of its senescence. Because FOSS is now like a doddering old'un, looking back on what could have been, reliving their fantasies of future greatness in their minds, ignoring what is and where it's heading.
There's a market for someone else to take FreeBSD and make another proprietary OS. Shuttleworth was too stupid to recognize that FOSS is not the way to go, even though he had the examples of 1,000 struggling distros on the one hand, and OSX on the other, to learn from.
Maybe someone else will take up the ball and either make billions in sales or make billions in a buy-out.
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(Score: 2) by toddestan on Saturday February 01 2020, @07:03PM (6 children)
The GPL is a distribution license. Much like the right of first sale, you can do whatever you want with something like a physical book, except for distributing copies of it. Except with Linux, you can distribute copies of it. You just have to make the source available. By your standards, BSD also has restrictions. You can't just use BSD code in your software without providing attribution and a copy of the license.
Compared to most proprietary software, you have tons of freedom with Linux. Have you ever bothered to try to read the EULA that comes with most any propriety software packages? EULAs (attempt to) take away your rights and add restrictions. Most of it is bullshit and they know it, but they try anyway. The GPL allows you to do things. I find it utterly amazing that you call the GPL restrictive, but seem to be all for mile-long legalese EULA's that come with propriety software. Are you really so dense as to not see the difference?
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday February 01 2020, @08:04PM (4 children)
Read the license. You don't even have to say that parts of the source are copyright by the copyright owners unless the user asks by taking a specific action while running the program . You can redistribute without providing source, or redistribute without providing a copy of your modifications. Can't do that with the GPL. You don't even have to show the copyright at any time of your program running, just in the documentation.
Try getting away with that with the GpL. Normally you'd include their and your copyright notices and disclaimers of warranty together, because you would be stupid not to include your copyright and disclaimer, so you just ad your name to the list of copyright holders. A lot easier than devising your own license and copyright - though you can place any restrictions you want on binaries, including not allowing redistribution, if it contains some of your own code and you don't distribute source, in which case you just say "portions copyright bad, you, redistribution without permission of the program without permission from all copyright holders is forbidden. Somewhere in the reader or license.txt or an about box. Can't do that with the GPL, which is as restrictive as many other licenses in that respect.
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(Score: 2) by toddestan on Sunday February 02 2020, @08:02PM (1 child)
Yet your argument is that Linux and free software has failed in comparison to propriety software due to how restrictive the GPL is, yet there is absolutely nothing that can do with most any propriety software that you can't do with GPL software. The GPL only comes into effect when you redistribute it, and you can't redistribute software like Windows or OSX. Even for propriety software you can redistribute, shareware and closed source freeware and the like, you're only allowed to redistribute unmodified copies - whereas the GPL allows you to also distribute modified versions. Basically, you can dance around it all you want, but your argument is completely nonsensical.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Sunday February 02 2020, @11:23PM
You fail to notice the point I made about how shitty the selection of open source software is. What good is being able to give away software nobody wants because it doesn't do the job people want it to do?
Compare that to the wide selection of software available for $$$ that is closed-source.
Your argument might as well be about shit sandwiches - doesn't matter if they're free, nobody wants them when they can get something that tastes good for a few bucks.
But I guess you think everyone should be a copraphiliac - "Eat shit - 1-0 trillion flies can't be wrong."
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(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday February 06 2020, @02:08PM (1 child)
Which is exactly why Apple based OS X on BSD instead of Linux.
-- hendrik
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday February 06 2020, @04:31PM
I'm not going to count closed spyware systems like Chromebooks and Android, because, well, for most people they're closed systems, same as the iPhone.
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(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday February 01 2020, @08:11PM
Or even sell it under those conditions. I could also sell them add-one I created without giving them the source for them. How is this unreasonable? The answer is that it's not.
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(Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday January 30 2020, @04:22PM (3 children)
If the clause "for limited times" were sharply curtailed in duration, a lot of the problems of copyright and patent would go away. There would be a period where a commercial provider could take advantage of an early exclusive market. But would not be half a lifetime.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @10:04PM (2 children)
Copyright is 70 years after the death of the author or if there is no author (work for hire, anonymous works, etc.), the first of 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication. I'd like to know what miracle of science you are aware of where the minimum of 70 years + 1 day is half a lifetime, let alone the possible 120 years or longer.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Friday January 31 2020, @05:03AM (1 child)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 31 2020, @09:02PM
I understand that. I was trying to convey that the current situation is more than half a lifetime. It is much longer than that, by at least treble.