Hello,
I'm thinking on getting a Symbolics lisp machine for me and my friend to
play with it at home. I have searched the newsgropus and the internet but
I didn't find many precise information on these machines. Therefore I
want to ask the experts here.
We think about the XL1200, a 3620 and the 3630 machines but I will like
to gather all the answers and generate a little FAQ on the topic. You are
encourage to comment also on all the other Symbolics machines that you
know about.
The questions are:
- How loud and hot are they really? We only have a little "computer
study" and don't want to make it a sauna or go deaf :-)
- Would they run on 220V/50Hz electricity or do they need a transformer?
- What about ordinary IDE or SCSI HDs, CD-ROM and tapes? Would these work
on the bare machines or do they need extra hardware to work?
- How good are the machines networked? Do they understand TCP/IP, FTP,
NFS, ...?
- How much do they weigh? How tall, wide, depth are they?
- How much memory, HDs, ... support each machine?
- Which other cards would you recommend to install on the machines (like
FrameThrower, ...)? What will these cards do?
- Would the machines only work with an original Symbolics console,
keyboard, mouse? (I think the original consoles are pretty sensitive and
get broken fast?).
- Another questions?
I think another FAQ can/should be about the first installation
respectively maintenance of Genera on the machines. I found a page with a
little report on a MacIvory installation and I think for us first users
suche advices/hints are always very welcome.
At least: if you have any Genera (8.3), MacIvory or Symbolics
documentation that you would give away without too much pain, please send
me an email. If you know of a free or cheap machine, preferably in
Germany, you can write about it too :-)
Please feel free to write me on german, spanish or english [and if
necessary on french: more traduction work for a friend of mine :-)]
Thanks,
Nelson
Andy <···@smi.de> wrote in ······················@smi.de:
> <!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en">
> <html>
> Hi,
> <br>that's not an answer to your questions but what do you plan to do.
> As far as i know the symbolics is quite slow (i know a company that
> replaced them by sun's with
> <br>Golden CL beacause it was faster & cheaper) ?
> <br>Best
> <br>AHz
Hi Andy,
please if possible no html postings. It is hard to read with a "plain"
newsreader.
I know that the Symbolics machines are old and slow but you have Genera
on it. Since many years I have heard of Genera as THE development
platform and now I want to try it. I'm also fascinated with the idea of a
machine (hardware) build on Lisp. I love also such older "personal"
hardware more than todays "soulless" PCs :-)
I'm a system administrator and Lisp programming is a hobby of mine. There
is no need for speed for me at home :-)
Chao,
Nelson
From: Andy
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <3C9A3300.BB465FA1@smi.de>
Ok, i see.
BTW: i hope you can read that better. Netscape had HTML edit as default
;-(. Sorry.
Best
AHz
Nelson Rodriguez wrote:
>
> Andy <···@smi.de> wrote in ······················@smi.de:
>
> > <!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en">
> > <html>
> > Hi,
> > <br>that's not an answer to your questions but what do you plan to do.
> > As far as i know the symbolics is quite slow (i know a company that
> > replaced them by sun's with
> > <br>Golden CL beacause it was faster & cheaper) ?
> > <br>Best
> > <br>AHz
>
> Hi Andy,
>
> please if possible no html postings. It is hard to read with a "plain"
> newsreader.
>
> I know that the Symbolics machines are old and slow but you have Genera
> on it. Since many years I have heard of Genera as THE development
> platform and now I want to try it. I'm also fascinated with the idea of a
> machine (hardware) build on Lisp. I love also such older "personal"
> hardware more than todays "soulless" PCs :-)
> I'm a system administrator and Lisp programming is a hobby of mine. There
> is no need for speed for me at home :-)
>
> Chao,
>
> Nelson
Genera's programming environment is still incomparable.
It might look archaic, but nothing has yet come close.
Getting an old Symbolics box to play with Genera is a
fine thing to do. The Lisp environments sold by other
vendors are a total joke, in my humble opinion; only MCL
even makes a credible try, and its scope is a fraction of
what is on the Lisp machine.
An XL1200 ran fine in my office at Symbolics off of a normal
wall socket. The monitors are indeed fragile, but a burned-in
one will stay working indefinitely. They speak TCP/IP. The
more hardware you plug in, the more likely you are to find
something that breaks.
> "Andy" <···@smi.de> wrote in message ······················@smi.de...
> that's not an answer to your questions but what do you plan to do. As far
as i know the symbolics is quite slow (i know a company that
> replaced them by sun's with
> Golden CL beacause it was faster & cheaper) ?
> Best
> AHz
"Scott McKay" <···@attbi.com> writes:
> An XL1200 ran fine in my office at Symbolics off of a normal
> wall socket.
In my experiance, an XL1200 with a framethrower and an external SCSI
disk will pull close 8 amps, which should be just fine for home use.
However, it is a real challenge to find a UPS that will not get
overloaded as soon as you turn the machine on!
Carl Shapiro <·············@panix.com> wrote in message news:<···············@panix3.panix.com>...
> "Scott McKay" <···@attbi.com> writes:
>
> > An XL1200 ran fine in my office at Symbolics off of a normal
> > wall socket.
>
> In my experiance, an XL1200 with a framethrower and an external SCSI
> disk will pull close 8 amps, which should be just fine for home use.
> However, it is a real challenge to find a UPS that will not get
> overloaded as soon as you turn the machine on!
Mine doesn't have the framethrower, but the APC Back-UPS Pro 1400 seems
to work ok (knock on wood).
"Scott McKay" <···@attbi.com> wrote in message news:<·····················@typhoon.ne.ipsvc.net>...
> Genera's programming environment is still incomparable.
> It might look archaic, but nothing has yet come close.
> Getting an old Symbolics box to play with Genera is a
> fine thing to do. The Lisp environments sold by other
> vendors are a total joke, in my humble opinion; only MCL
> even makes a credible try, and its scope is a fraction of
> what is on the Lisp machine.
This statement piqued my curiosity. I've not used MCL, but
after playing on my wife's new iMac, I have recently found
myself considering switching camps. What sorts of things
does MCL have that Lispworks and ACL are missing?
Mainly that the environment is well "self-integrated". That just
seems to make a lot of difference.
Disclaimer: I am not an, nor ever have been, an MCL developer.
MCL is now open-source, I believe.
"Michael Parker" <··········@hotmail.com> wrote in message
·································@posting.google.com...
> "Scott McKay" <···@attbi.com> wrote in message
news:<·····················@typhoon.ne.ipsvc.net>...
> > Genera's programming environment is still incomparable.
> > It might look archaic, but nothing has yet come close.
> > Getting an old Symbolics box to play with Genera is a
> > fine thing to do. The Lisp environments sold by other
> > vendors are a total joke, in my humble opinion; only MCL
> > even makes a credible try, and its scope is a fraction of
> > what is on the Lisp machine.
>
> This statement piqued my curiosity. I've not used MCL, but
> after playing on my wife's new iMac, I have recently found
> myself considering switching camps. What sorts of things
> does MCL have that Lispworks and ACL are missing?
On Sat, 23 Mar 2002 23:51:00 GMT, "Scott McKay" <···@attbi.com> wrote:
> MCL is now open-source, I believe.
Only the kernel/compiler, not the environment:
OpenMCL
http://openmcl.clozure.com
Paolo
--
EncyCMUCLopedia * Extensive collection of CMU Common Lisp documentation
http://www.paoloamoroso.it/ency/README
[http://cvs2.cons.org:8000/cmucl/doc/EncyCMUCLopedia/]
"Scott McKay" <···@attbi.com> writes:
> Genera's programming environment is still incomparable. It might
> look archaic, but nothing has yet come close. Getting an old
> Symbolics box to play with Genera is a fine thing to do. The Lisp
> environments sold by other vendors are a total joke, in my humble
> opinion;
This is not the first time I heard that opinion, and I'd like to know
what made Lisp Machines so different from the current Lisp
environments - unfortunately, I don't have access to one. Could you
provide a few examples? Also, why do you think the current
implementations are so much behind? Is it that certain things simply
aren't feasible without an OS that supports them? Is the Open Genera
environment that ran[*] on Alpha machines comparable to the LispM
environment or is it also lacking something?
> only MCL even makes a credible try, and its scope is a
> fraction of what is on the Lisp machine.
I've installed the trial version of MCL on my wife's PowerBook and I
couldn't see any significant advantage over, say, LispWorks. But I
only played with it for about an hour so I probably missed a lot of
things. Could you elaborate how MCL differs from the
Windows/Linux/Unix implementations currently available?
Thanks in advance for satifying my curiosity,
Edi.
[*] Or does it still run, meaning it's still available and works with
current Alpha machines?
--
Dr. Edmund Weitz
Hamburg
Germany
The Common Lisp Cookbook
<http://cl-cookbook.sourceforge.net/>
···@agharta.de (Dr. Edmund Weitz) writes:
> "Scott McKay" <···@attbi.com> writes:
>
> > Genera's programming environment is still incomparable. It might
> > look archaic, but nothing has yet come close. Getting an old
> > Symbolics box to play with Genera is a fine thing to do. The Lisp
> > environments sold by other vendors are a total joke, in my humble
> > opinion;
>
> This is not the first time I heard that opinion, and I'd like to know
> what made Lisp Machines so different from the current Lisp
> environments - unfortunately, I don't have access to one. Could you
> provide a few examples?
Try:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&selm=sfwpu5b5224.fsf%40shell01.TheWorld.com
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&selm=sfwyalstyq7.fsf%40world.std.com
[The references in this:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&selm=joswig-1312981610100001%40194.163.195.67
seem to have moved. It would be nice if Rainer Joswig could post a new
set of homes.]
> Also, why do you think the current
> implementations are so much behind?
Budgets were a lot more free back then, and Lisp Machines had the luxury
of programming for the future instead of for the current month's budget.
They could afford to be visionary.
> Is it that certain things simply
> aren't feasible without an OS that supports them?
Technically? No.
In the current marketplace? Hard to tell. The Lisp Machine got
tremendous advantage from having a coordinated set of products instead
of a heterogeneous market of uncoordinated products. Then again, I'm pretty
sure that this is not a fatal issue--a number of software environments
(gnu in the free software domain, java in the commercial software domain)
have done semi-coordinated activities. The issue is "direction".
> Is the Open Genera
> environment that ran[*] on Alpha machines comparable to the LispM
> environment or is it also lacking something?
>
> > only MCL even makes a credible try, and its scope is a
> > fraction of what is on the Lisp machine.
>
> I've installed the trial version of MCL on my wife's PowerBook and I
> couldn't see any significant advantage over, say, LispWorks.
I suspect the issue SWM meant is "environmental interconnect", not
"raw power". That's probably hard to see at first glance.
> But I
> only played with it for about an hour so I probably missed a lot of
> things. Could you elaborate how MCL differs from the
> Windows/Linux/Unix implementations currently available?
>
> Thanks in advance for satifying my curiosity,
> Edi.
>
> [*] Or does it still run, meaning it's still available and works with
> current Alpha machines?
"current" Alpha machines is an odd term, but yes, it does work.
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> Try:
> http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&selm=sfwpu5b5224.fsf%40shell01.TheWorld.com
>
> http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&selm=sfwyalstyq7.fsf%40world.std.com
Thanks for the pointers, that sounds very interesting and indeed
one-of-a-kind. The first one I should have read myself because I was
already a c.l.l regular at that time but I must have somehow missed it
in a pre-Christmas hurry... :)
> "current" Alpha machines is an odd term, but yes, it does work.
I suppose you're referring to the fact that the whole Alpha platform
looks doomed, but last time I looked you could still buy Alpha
workstations from Compaq. (I've never used them, though. Maybe these
are the same machines they sold five years ago and there is no active
development anymore.)
Thanks again,
Edi.
--
Dr. Edmund Weitz
Hamburg
Germany
The Common Lisp Cookbook
<http://cl-cookbook.sourceforge.net/>
···@agharta.de (Dr. Edmund Weitz) writes:
> I suppose you're referring to the fact that the whole Alpha platform
> looks doomed, but last time I looked you could still buy Alpha
> workstations from Compaq. (I've never used them, though. Maybe these
> are the same machines they sold five years ago and there is no active
> development anymore.)
Compaq has killed the EV8, but the EV7 will still be released, or at
least that's their latest promise.
--
-> -/ - Rahul Jain - \- <-
-> -\ http://linux.rice.edu/~rahul -=- ············@techie.com /- <-
-> -/ "Structure is nothing if it is all you got. Skeletons spook \- <-
-> -\ people if [they] try to walk around on their own. I really /- <-
-> -/ wonder why XML does not." -- Erik Naggum, comp.lang.lisp \- <-
|--|--------|--------------|----|-------------|------|---------|-----|-|
(c)1996-2002, All rights reserved. Disclaimer available upon request.
>I suppose you're referring to the fact that the whole Alpha platform
>looks doomed, but last time I looked you could still buy Alpha
FWIW, I chatted with the OpenGenera folks, and they are taking votes on
what platform to port it to. PowerPC/OSX is one, and I'm sure there are
others--what those might be is anyone's guess. ;)
Eric
From: Bill Clementson
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <wksn6qoqt0.fsf@attbi.com>
···@agharta.de (Dr. Edmund Weitz) writes:
> Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
>
> > Try:
> > http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&selm=sfwpu5b5224.fsf%40shell01.TheWorld.com
> >
> > http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&selm=sfwyalstyq7.fsf%40world.std.com
>
> Thanks for the pointers, that sounds very interesting and indeed
> one-of-a-kind. The first one I should have read myself because I was
> already a c.l.l regular at that time but I must have somehow missed it
> in a pre-Christmas hurry... :)
I've also been intrigued by the comments on c.l.l about LispMs and have
tried to find out how they differ from current lisp implementations. Unfortunately,
there isn't a lot of generally available information. Some internet sites that I
have found useful are:
http://fare.tunes.org/LispM.html
http://www.abstractscience.freeserve.co.uk/symbolics/
http://www.cbbrowne.com/info/lisposes.html
http://kogs-www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/~moeller/symbolics-info/symbolics.html
Also, there is a (rather pricey) summary of Symbolics documentation available called
_Lisp Lore : A Guide to Programming the Lisp Machine_
It is available from Amazon but you might be able to pick up a used copy as well:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0898382289/qid=1016922531/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/103-2126716-9830203
To date however, Kent's comments on this list have shed more light on why the LispMs
were unique (and better in some ways from current lisp implementations) than the other
sources that I have looked at.
--
Bill Clementson
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> If free software is such a harmful dangerous thing, Kent, then why do
> you use it to read and post news?
Isn't that a rather ad hominem line of discussion?
--
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
·····@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <·····@gnus.org> writes:
> ·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
>
> > If free software is such a harmful dangerous thing, Kent, then why do
> > you use it to read and post news?
>
> Isn't that a rather ad hominem line of discussion?
It would be ad hominem if it were offered to prove that Kent's ideas
are wrong.
Actually, I suspect Kent of (minor) hypocrisy, telling us that we
should all pay for software we use, that if we don't, it's valueless,
and the like. I don't think he really believes that.
Thomas
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <·····@gnus.org> writes:
>
> > ·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> >
> > > If free software is such a harmful dangerous thing, Kent, then why do
> > > you use it to read and post news?
> >
> > Isn't that a rather ad hominem line of discussion?
>
> It would be ad hominem if it were offered to prove that Kent's ideas
> are wrong.
>
> Actually, I suspect Kent of (minor) hypocrisy, telling us that we
> should all pay for software we use, that if we don't, it's valueless,
> and the like. I don't think he really believes that.
I suspect that Kent wants us to think before claiming that others
should produce Free (as in libre) Software or Free (as in beer)
Software and carefully consider the choice we make. Also that we
should not claim that anyone else should act according to what we
want.
This is, however, blatant extrapolation and I expect Kent to correct
me if I am badly wrong, say I am correct if I am or just ignore me as
he sees fit.
//Ingvar
--
Self-referencing
Five, seven, five syllables
This haiku contains
* Thomas Bushnell, BSG
> If free software is such a harmful dangerous thing, Kent, then why do
> you use it to read and post news?
* Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
> Isn't that a rather ad hominem line of discussion?
* Thomas Bushnell, BSG
| It would be ad hominem if it were offered to prove that Kent's ideas are
| wrong.
|
| Actually, I suspect Kent of (minor) hypocrisy, telling us that we
| should all pay for software we use, that if we don't, it's valueless,
| and the like. I don't think he really believes that.
And what is "suspect Kent of (minor) hypocrisy" if not ad hominem?
You are intellectually dishonest, Thomas Bushnell. I have said so
before. This _is_ an ad hominem argument because what you say is
strongly reduced in value when you display such flagrant inability to
think clearly and stay clear of your amazingly dirty tricks, the above
being one of them. I am actually deeply saddened that you choose to
attack Kent with this crap -- he has shown us that he is much more
sensitive to such treatment than I am, whom you have attacked with
similar vitriol in the past, but that at least seems to have abated.
But at the very least, be honest about your choise of ad hominem attacks
-- or the "hypocrisy" label is a lot closer to home.
Incidentally, that someone can find some "hypocrisy" in the _person_ of
somebody else is not only an ad hominem argument, it is useless as such.
It is impossible to avoid all forms of hypocrisy as seen by others, for
several reasons: some other person may "see things" because of his mental
state, which makes him seek hypocrisy because he is himself a hypocrite,
and to a hypocrite, the hypocrisy of others is _really_ bad; some nutjob
may well misconstrue an argument that something is undesirable or harmful
and completely ignore the issue of proportion to its desirability and go
environmentalist on an issue; some nutjob may also well misconstrue an
argument against something to be against something else which everybody
would think is good, and therefore attack the person for hypocrisy based
on his own lack of thinking skills; even otherwise reasonable people may
fail to grasp the argument if they _first_ look for hypocrisy. Moreover,
if you "establish" that somebody is a hypocrite, what do you do with this
new information -- if _not_ to use it to ignore what somebody says, or to
make them feel bad, or some other destructive purposes? If you want to
ignore what somebody says, at the very least, have the decency to accept
responsibility for this stupidity on your own -- do not try to blame your
victim. But then again, if you are not into blaming your victim, chances
are you would also be smart enough to figure out that an argument that
someone makes about the harmfulness of something does not mean that the
person who makes the argument is not trying to get out of it, has chosen
the best of all possible alternatives, has more values that needs
attention, so the choice between Windows-bad and Linux-bad is that Linux
is the least bad. Calling this "hypocrisy" is such an idiotic thing to
do that I would argue that anyone who brings up hypocrisy to attack
someone has failed to grasp what a public forum is about and has also
made it clear that he no longer first listens and then judges, he only
judges. In other words, make an hypocrisy argument and be doomed.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> And what is "suspect Kent of (minor) hypocrisy" if not ad hominem?
It's an attack on the person, but not an attack on the person intended
to disprove what he has said. Is that worded the way you want?
The fallacy of "ad hominem" argument is where one attempts to disprove
P by attacking the character of the persons who assert P.
In this case, while I certainly did intend that (mild) attack on
Kent's character, I did not venture it as a way to disprove what he
was saying, which must also be addressed on its own terms.
So, when Kent says that free software is a big nasty harmful thing, I
think he's probably lying to us. I think he really believes that
*other* people should avoid free software and pay software hoarders
tolls, but that it's perfectly fine for him to use free software.
But the propositions he advocates certainly require their own
response. Even if Kent is lying when he asserts them, they still
stand on their own, and deserve a direct answer as well---as indeed,
they have gotten.
An attack on the person is sometimes appropriate--as you certainly
seem to relish. It does not replace an attack on the person's ideas
(which would be to use a fallacious ad hominem argument), but it is
still independently valuable.
And then you launch into another amazingly unreadable tirade. Ah
well, my newsreader had edged your rating up, and then suddenly it
just plummets again.
Thomas
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> In this case, while I certainly did intend that (mild) attack on
> Kent's character, I did not venture it as a way to disprove what he
> was saying, which must also be addressed on its own terms.
I could respond to the substance of what you've said, but to be honest
I'm declining because I'm enjoying watching you dig yourself in deeper
and deeper without a full set of facts about what I do and don't or
would and wouldn't spend money on.
It's really just fine if you conclude that I am a hypocrite. Who
among us doesn't have some hypocrisy somewhere in us? It would
probably be hypocritical to say we didn't. I'm not going to fall into
that trap. It happens that I think you've not picked the right thing
to harp on me about, but that's just a detail. It seems inconceivable
to me that the statement "I'm not a hypocrite" could be right, so I'll
just avoid saying it and let you conclude what you will.
If making me a hypocrite diminishes the value of my arguments on this
matter, then (decf (value-of *kents-arguments*)). Then again, I expect
you'll be dolisting that same operation over everyone's arguments, so
I don't expect it's going to set me back much. In the end, we'll all
be up or down the same number of points, I bet. Sort of like, if you'll
pardon the analogy, if we did
(map-over-everyone
(lambda (who)
(incf (value-of (tools-controlled-by who))
(value-of (all-free-software-everywhere)))))
From a commercial standpoint, what diminishes us all diminishes none of
us.... and what enhances us all enhances none of us.
Of course, by saying that my hypocrisy is only mild, you could be
trying to praise me and be saying that my personal argument value
should not be diminished as much as that of some others. If we
renormalize such a statement to have the zeros where they belong, that
works out to, relatively speaking, a compliment. (Sort of a variation
on "damning with faint praise". We'll call it "praising with faint
damnation". Heh.) So if that's what you meant, then I suppose I even
owe you a thank you...
But none of this was the real reason I posted. The real thing I posted for
was the same as I've said when you've gone after Erik. PLEASE PLEASE,
say what you will about me or others, but don't raise it to the point of
making it be a thread topic, because that compounds the off-topic-ness and
makes it look like this is a forum about people not topics. I don't care
if you write something saying "Thank you Paul Graham for writing a book
on CL" since that's at least on-topic. But please don't say things about
people in thread topics that aren't about Lisp. It is just bad form. Say
it tucked away in another thread, say it in private mail, or perhaps--novel
idea here--just don't say it at all.
> So, when Kent says that free software is a big nasty harmful thing, I
> think he's probably lying to us. I think he really believes that
> *other* people should avoid free software and pay software hoarders
> tolls, but that it's perfectly fine for him to use free software.
I don't think you've heard me say not to use free software. If
anything, you've heard me say that people often can't afford not to
use free software, and that's a problem in itself.
I've said to think before making it. The truth is that I'm not 100%
sure it's always bad. But I am 100% sure that it is sometimes bad.
Like most things in the world, there's probably a middle ground.
And all I've really asked is that people think hard about what the
effects on society are of doing it, and not just buy blindly into the
claptrap that says that it's an automatic mitzvah ("good thing") to
make free software.
I've evolved a personal theory of wisdom that says that wisdom is about the
responsibility to think, and that wisdom is not accomplished by deciding
you know the answers. Wisdom is about knowing the questions.
My goal is not to have people say "Kent's right, free software is bad."
My goal is to have them say "Kent's right, we should give this matter of
free software vs commercial software continued ongoing scrutiny."
Heck, they say can "Kent's wrong, we should give this matter of
free software vs commercial software continued ongoing scrutiny."
Heck, Bulent Murtezaoglu is closer to the truth on the hypocrisy thing
when he points out that sometimes I give away things for free, too.
If you're looking for hypocrisy in me, maybe that's a more productive
avenue to pursue. But what lets me sleep comfortably at night about
this is that I don't always sleep comfortably at night about this, if
you get my meaning. I bet I spend a lot more time thinking about the
problems of commercial software than most free software advocates
spend thinking about the problems of free software. But the more
people push back on me and tell me that free software is without sin,
the more I become its opponent in order to keep the overall balance.
> But the propositions he advocates certainly require their own
> response. Even if Kent is lying when he asserts them, they still
> stand on their own, and deserve a direct answer as well---as indeed,
> they have gotten.
This is a curious use of "lying", by the way. You haven't previously
used this term out of this weird hypothetical. I find myself wondering
if you have meant to. Not that I would reply to that either, by the way,
so knock yourself out. But do understand that saying that someone was
lying is very much more complicated than showing they are in error or
even hypocritical, since one can be hypocritical without intent, but one
cannot lie without intent. Personally, though I'm not a lawyer and you
should probably therefore not trust me on legal advice, but I'll go out
on a limb and guess that a lawyer would say that accusing people of
being liars in situation like this is not as good as using words you could
probably defend better. I wouldn't want you to get in trouble is all.
> An attack on the person is sometimes appropriate--as you certainly
> seem to relish. It does not replace an attack on the person's ideas
> (which would be to use a fallacious ad hominem argument), but it is
> still independently valuable.
Ah, that word value again. Since I don't really understand your value
system, it certainly helps to see you offering examples in context.
> And then you launch into another amazingly unreadable tirade. Ah
> well, my newsreader had edged your rating up, and then suddenly it
> just plummets again.
Darn. I wish I had the time to learn how to do that rating stuff.
Maybe I'll find the time in the next few days while I'm off the air.
I feel like Mr. Mxyzptlk from Superman, tricked into saying the magic
words that send me away...
Here I am contributing to a thread that I've said is bad.
I told you I was probably a hypocrite. But at least I'm one with a
conscience. I've been posting too much lately, and now I'm posting
in threads I don't approve of either.
But I do have a conscience about these things. In penance I'll be
declining to post until April 1. I'll still be reading though...
Thinking of replying to this? How about not? Let this thread die.
If it had a point, the point's made. If it didn't, we needn't belabor
it. There are plenty of other posts that need replying to. You've
even got a few days to make your free software point without worrying
I'll jump all over fyou if that's how you want to spend the time, just
please, as a personal favor, do it with a different subject line that
isn't personal--not about me, not about anyone. Thanks.
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> I've said to think before making it. The truth is that I'm not 100%
> sure it's always bad. But I am 100% sure that it is sometimes bad.
Ok, can you give some examples of where it's bad to use free software,
but using a non-free program with the same technical capabilities
would be ok?
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) wrote in message news:<··············@becket.becket.net>...
> Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
>
> > I've said to think before making it. The truth is that I'm not 100%
> > sure it's always bad. But I am 100% sure that it is sometimes bad.
>
> Ok, can you give some examples of where it's bad to use free software,
> but using a non-free program with the same technical capabilities
> would be ok?
I'll assume a setting where things are funded...not worried about the
home front for the time being. I sure as hell ain't gonna poke around
someones house. ;)
How about the possible Karmic Hit of putting tool venders on the
street? If everyone went to clisp or gcl or <insert your favorite
Free Lisp Here> then vendors such as Franz or <insert your favorite
Commercial Lisp Here> will simply fade away...
Economic Darwinism at play here? Most probably...
It's conforting to me, as a developer, to know that I have a chain of
assistance that I can follow all the way back to the vendor (which
doesn't nessecarily mean it's a good thing -- we've all hit 1st line
support I suspect). In a commercial setting I'm not afraid to pay for
this service.
Damond
·······@syncreticsoft.com (Damond Walker) writes:
> How about the possible Karmic Hit of putting tool venders on the
> street? If everyone went to clisp or gcl or <insert your favorite
> Free Lisp Here> then vendors such as Franz or <insert your favorite
> Commercial Lisp Here> will simply fade away...
Why is this bad? When Henry Ford put buggy whip makers out of work,
was that bad?
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) wrote in message news:<··············@becket.becket.net>...
> Why is this bad? When Henry Ford put buggy whip makers out of work,
> was that bad?
Because it reduces the number of options available to professional
developers...and that's always a bad thing.
Damond
·······@syncreticsoft.com (Damond Walker) writes:
> ·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) wrote in message news:<··············@becket.becket.net>...
>
> > Why is this bad? When Henry Ford put buggy whip makers out of work,
> > was that bad?
>
> Because it reduces the number of options available to professional
> developers...and that's always a bad thing.
Why should I care about professional developers that much? Do you
have any clue how much the monopoly rents on copies of software cost
the average American company? How many bankrupcies would have been
avoided if they didn't have to pay monopoly rents on software?
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) wrote in message news:<··············@becket.becket.net>...
> Why should I care about professional developers that much? Do you
> have any clue how much the monopoly rents on copies of software cost
> the average American company? How many bankrupcies would have been
> avoided if they didn't have to pay monopoly rents on software?
I want to say "Am I speaking to an academic or someone who actually
has to work for a living?" but I won't. I'm trying to understand
where you're coming from but I can't.
It's true that software costs can be tremendous but hey -- that's the
price of doing business. If you want to work with the big boys you
have to use the big boy tools. Big boy tools cost big boy bucks. If
you can't afford to play in the arena don't poo-poo the software,
poo-poo yourself for not being in the game.
In the end, if you choose to remove yourself from the game then do so
quietly and with a bit of dignity -- don't dribble on about "...why
should I care..."
People should care...after all, it's us people against all the PHB of
the world.
Damond
·······@syncreticsoft.com (Damond Walker) writes:
> I want to say "Am I speaking to an academic or someone who actually
> has to work for a living?" but I won't. I'm trying to understand
> where you're coming from but I can't.
Well, I'm both. I've been employed in many different places doing
many different jobs. But that sounds, um, ad hominem?
> It's true that software costs can be tremendous but hey -- that's the
> price of doing business.
However, the costs of using free software are much, much lower,
because one does not need to pay software rents. And--perhaps even
more importantly--one has a free market for support. Instead of
needing to get support from the one-and-only producer of the software,
or a tiny minority, you can get customized support from any competent
programmer.
Thomas
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) wrote in message news:<··············@becket.becket.net>...
> ·······@syncreticsoft.com (Damond Walker) writes:
>
> > I want to say "Am I speaking to an academic or someone who actually
> > has to work for a living?" but I won't. I'm trying to understand
> > where you're coming from but I can't.
>
> Well, I'm both. I've been employed in many different places doing
> many different jobs. But that sounds, um, ad hominem?
>
It's not ad hominem if I didn't say it. See above. ;)
>
> However, the costs of using free software are much, much lower,
> because one does not need to pay software rents. And--perhaps even
> more importantly--one has a free market for support. Instead of
> needing to get support from the one-and-only producer of the software,
> or a tiny minority, you can get customized support from any competent
> programmer.
>
True, true. The problems here are "free market" and "competent
programmer."
It's conceivable that in a free market costs of supporting free
software *could* shoot through the roof. Unlikely but possible.
The second is finding a competent programmer. That's not exactly easy
to do -- and expensive if you screw it up. Customized support
(changes to a base project) can put you in a weird position also --
you finance changes to v1.5 and suddenly a v2.0 is released. It *can*
get messy.
But then again, if the organization did the Right Thing they'd push
the changes back to the original developers -- hopefully making the
2.0 push a bit easier to handle.
Which, somehow, brings us back to the point that software, in general,
sucks. ;)
Damond
·······@syncreticsoft.com (Damond Walker) writes:
> ·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) wrote in message news:<··············@becket.becket.net>...
>
> > ·······@syncreticsoft.com (Damond Walker) writes:
> >
> > > I want to say "Am I speaking to an academic or someone who actually
> > > has to work for a living?" but I won't. I'm trying to understand
> > > where you're coming from but I can't.
> >
> > Well, I'm both. I've been employed in many different places doing
> > many different jobs. But that sounds, um, ad hominem?
> >
>
> It's not ad hominem if I didn't say it. See above. ;)
i could ask you when you stopped beating your wife but i won't.
please don't hide behind a rhetorical facade.
--
J o h a n K u l l s t a m
[········@ne.mediaone.net]
sysengr
Johan Kullstam <········@ne.mediaone.net> wrote in message news:<··············@sysengr.res.ray.com>...
> i could ask you when you stopped beating your wife but i won't.
> please don't hide behind a rhetorical facade.
Who's hiding? In any event maybe you should be asking my wife that question.
She hands out the beat-downs in this family mister.
Damond
* Thomas Bushnell, BSG
| Why should I care about professional developers that much? Do you have
| any clue how much the monopoly rents on copies of software cost the
| average American company? How many bankrupcies would have been avoided
| if they didn't have to pay monopoly rents on software?
I do not think anybody can reasonably be expected to know this just to
make the kinds of arguments we have around here, so why do you not just
tell us, since you appear to know these things. Please also let us know
you found out or who you trust, because such arguments are, frankly,
quite ludicrious and very hostile.
There appears to be a great divide between two kinds of people: those who
observe the world and then think about it, and those who invent stuff and
think it is real.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Erik Naggum wrote:
>
> * Thomas Bushnell, BSG
> | Why should I care about professional developers that much? Do you have
> | any clue how much the monopoly rents on copies of software cost the
> | average American company? How many bankrupcies would have been avoided
> | if they didn't have to pay monopoly rents on software?
>
> I do not think anybody can reasonably be expected to know this just to
> make the kinds of arguments we have around here,
true... true... OTOH, I did hear one bright IT guy say Oracle had been
the death of the most companies since the Great Depression. Hyperbole,
sure, but I have heard that crud is insanely expensive (both to license
and to live with since you need their $$$$$ people just to get it to
work).
--
kenny tilton
clinisys, inc
---------------------------------------------------------------
"Don't you just hate it when you run out of ice?"
Arthur
* Kenny Tilton
| true... true... OTOH, I did hear one bright IT guy say Oracle had been
| the death of the most companies since the Great Depression. Hyperbole,
| sure, but I have heard that crud is insanely expensive (both to license
| and to live with since you need their $$$$$ people just to get it to
| work).
People seem to have a problem, in general, to see more than what stands
out the most, and then they think that what they do not see is just an
extrapolation of that to which they have paid attention, although the
opposite is generally true -- if something stands out, it is because it
is in contrast to something else -- so when I hear that Oracle is the
cause of these deaths, I think it is a case of a large amount of money
and a clearly visible cost center that makes it stand out, but all of us
know that we are less careful with many small amounts than few large, so
when you run out of money, it is probably not because of your large
expenditures but the sum of the small wastes. Rest assured that people
who enjoy accounting work very hard to make many small amounts just as
visible as few large amounts, but still, when it comes to reducing costs,
money people always look at the largest amounts first because they offer
the most savings with the least amount of effort, or so humans seem to
think, which would seem to give credibility to the argument that if you
were heading for a financial problem, you would get rid of the most
expensive things first, which means that the choice to continue to pay
licenses to Oracle will be reviewed every single time anyone needs to
save money, if it is such a huge factor as you claim it is. If you
cannot cut that cost, what it pays for either is necessary to your
business to run at all and it costs more to use any other solution that
are within reach at any time.
I find it utterly unlikely that any operation would fold because of such
a highly visible cost. I would be much more sympathetic to a suggestion
that many much smaller licenses, such as those for Microsoft's crud,
would eat up everything in small bits rather than going down with one big
chunk. People have been known to use smaller database servers to reduce
licensing costs, but if you have such a large operation that you cannot
scale down, the only possible interpretation is that you sell your goods
or services at insufficient profit. It is not like this comes as a shock
to anyone, though. I mean, Oracle are quite up-front about their license
agreements and you do not have to go through a lengthy lawyer-enriching
process to figure out what they want, right? So factoring this into the
prices of your goods and services should be simple and doable. This in
contrast to such variable and unpredictable costs as taxation, which, at
least in this country, regularly ruins companies with random changes and
interpretations and an aggressiveness in their predatory collection that
is unparalleled in the entire animal kingdom. So I kind of doubt that
Oracle is worse than the IRS.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> I would be much more sympathetic to a suggestion
> that many much smaller licenses, such as those for Microsoft's crud,
> would eat up everything in small bits rather than going down with one big
> chunk.
Such small costs eating things up in small bits is precisely what I
meant by companies that have probably failed due (in part) to the
necessity to pay a Microsoft tax.
Whenever the Congress thinks about raising the minimum wage, there is
a predictable chorus claiming that increasing minimum wage labor costs
by 1% will throw some significant number of folks out of business.
If such increases really have that kind of effect on some businesses,
then they surely can have it whatever the budget line under which the
cost is labelled. Paying $100,000 more for labor and paying $100,000
more for software taxes have a very similar effect.
Thomas
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> Whenever the Congress thinks about raising the minimum wage,
> there is a predictable chorus claiming that increasing minimum
> wage labor costs by 1% will throw some significant number of
> folks out of business.
I hope you know that this ``chorus'' is in fact right.
> If such increases really have that kind of effect on some
> businesses, then they surely can have it whatever the budget
> line under which the cost is labelled.
Absolutely not. Sure, if everything else fails, sometimes the
only way to prevent going out of business is firing people, but
there is no direct connection.
> Paying $100,000 more for labor and paying $100,000 more for
> software taxes have a very similar effect.
Only incidentally.
Actually, I didn't know that there are still ``minimum wages'' in
the USA. I had hoped that your great president Ronald Reagan had
put an end to this nonsense, but apparently not. You've said
before that you thought it was important to /listen/ to poor
people. Well, I can tell you a much better way to understand
them: *Be* poor and *hate* it! That's what I did for the first
couple decades in my life. I have nothing but /disgust/ for
people who think about raising minimum wages or anything like
that that purportedly makes life easier for the poor but /in
fact/ makes it much harder for them to even earn a single /dime/,
because nobody can afford to hire them anymore! Sure, this
effect is much more visible in Germany, but it works just the
same everywhere. And our evil government still hasn't understood
this and continues to make life even worse a nightmare for poor
people, and still has the *chuzpa* of claiming that what they do
is supposedly good for the poor, whereas all they really want is
to fill up the accounts of our minister of finance.
Regards,
--
Nils Goesche
Ask not for whom the <CONTROL-G> tolls.
PGP key ID 0xC66D6E6F
Nils Goesche <···@cartan.de> writes:
> ·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
>
> > Whenever the Congress thinks about raising the minimum wage,
> > there is a predictable chorus claiming that increasing minimum
> > wage labor costs by 1% will throw some significant number of
> > folks out of business.
>
> I hope you know that this ``chorus'' is in fact right.
Well, it believe actually hasn't happened in the most recent changes
to the minumum wage law in the United States. Which is not to say
that it can't happen...
Macroeconomics is tricky--much trickier than microeconomics.
One discovery of businesses in the 20th century was that increasing
wages (within certain limits) across the board is actually to the
benefit of business, because it increases the general spending power.
The idea is that if all the *other* employers raise wages, then their
employees will have more money to buy *my* stuff; and that in fact
this holds true reciprocally. One reason is that the very wealthy
spend a much smaller proportion of their income on "consumer goods",
so if consumer goods drive a major portion of the economy, you get
more money moving if that money is in the hands of the people who
spend a great percentage of it on consumer goods.
So anyway, it does come about that in normal circumstances, if
business all pay their employees more, it can be good for all the
businesses and their owners--it's not a zero sum game.
However, there's a reverse tragedy of the commons here. If all the
other businesses raise wages, then my business can reap the benefits
without raising wages itself--my business can be a free loader.
Free-loading is a standard problem, however, in many areas, with a
standard solution. There is a common referee that can guarantee that
all the businesses raise wages, thus providing the hedge against free
loaders that is necessary to make things work.
In the United States, it was industrial trades unions that were the
primary engine for preventing free-loaders. Later came minimum wage
laws, which secured the same result for those harder-to-unionize
sectors of the economy.
I would caution Europeans from applying their experiences against the
current American system. The minimum wage in the United States is
roughly $6/hr, if I recall correctly. It comes with no vacation,
health, or pension benefits of any kind. It is fantastically lower
than the equivalent wage guarantee systems in place in Europe, and if
you find the European systems oppressive, it's not at all likely that
you would similarly find the American one so.
Thomas
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> Nils Goesche <···@cartan.de> writes:
>
> > ·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> >
> > > Whenever the Congress thinks about raising the minimum wage,
> > > there is a predictable chorus claiming that increasing minimum
> > > wage labor costs by 1% will throw some significant number of
> > > folks out of business.
> >
> > I hope you know that this ``chorus'' is in fact right.
[snip]
> However, there's a reverse tragedy of the commons here. If all the
> other businesses raise wages, then my business can reap the benefits
> without raising wages itself--my business can be a free loader.
The mere idea of there being anything like a ``free loader'' in a
free market already reveals a socialistically distorted mindset.
> Free-loading is a standard problem, however, in many areas, with a
> standard solution. There is a common referee that can guarantee that
> all the businesses raise wages, thus providing the hedge against free
> loaders that is necessary to make things work.
I am beginning to see that my initial suspicion about your
economical heritage was right.
> In the United States, it was industrial trades unions that were the
> primary engine for preventing free-loaders. Later came minimum wage
> laws, which secured the same result for those harder-to-unionize
> sectors of the economy.
The only purpose of unions is to keep non-members out of
business, preferrably workless.
> I would caution Europeans from applying their experiences against the
> current American system. The minimum wage in the United States is
> roughly $6/hr, if I recall correctly. It comes with no vacation,
> health, or pension benefits of any kind.
That is quite a lot of money for someone who is hungry and could
buy a huge hamburger from that. I am sure you've never been in
such a situation. I have. But this is typical -- that is not of
interest for rich, ``progressive'' thinkers - they prefer to
rather have the poor not eat at all than accept anything below
union wages.
Regards,
--
Nils Goesche
Ask not for whom the <CONTROL-G> tolls.
PGP key ID 0xC66D6E6F
Nils Goesche <···@cartan.de> writes:
> ·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
...
> > current American system. The minimum wage in the United States is
> > roughly $6/hr, if I recall correctly. It comes with no vacation,
> > health, or pension benefits of any kind.
>
> That is quite a lot of money for someone who is hungry and could
> buy a huge hamburger from that. I am sure you've never been in
> such a situation. I have. But this is typical -- that is not of
> interest for rich, ``progressive'' thinkers - they prefer to
> rather have the poor not eat at all than accept anything below
> union wages.
>
Reading the book "False Dawn" by Mr. Gray (a former advisor of Mrs
Thatcher) may be a food for thought in this discussion. "Nickel'd and
Dimed" by Ms. Erhenrich is also a very good book to read in this case.
Cheers
--
Marco Antoniotti ========================================================
NYU Courant Bioinformatics Group tel. +1 - 212 - 998 3488
719 Broadway 12th Floor fax +1 - 212 - 995 4122
New York, NY 10003, USA http://bioinformatics.cat.nyu.edu
"Hello New York! We'll do what we can!"
Bill Murray in `Ghostbusters'.
Marco Antoniotti <·······@cs.nyu.edu> writes:
> Reading the book "False Dawn" by Mr. Gray (a former advisor of Mrs
> Thatcher) may be a food for thought in this discussion. "Nickel'd and
> Dimed" by Ms. Erhenrich is also a very good book to read in this case.
Hehe, I recently ordered a video of Margaret Thatcher speeches
with the funny title ``No, No, NO!''; I hope it'll arrive soon.
Can you tell a bit more about those books? I might well order
them. Is ``Erhenrich'' correctly spelled? Or is it
``Ehrenreich''?
Regards,
--
Nils Goesche
Ask not for whom the <CONTROL-G> tolls.
PGP key ID 0xC66D6E6F
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> ... The minimum wage in the United States is
> roughly $6/hr, if I recall correctly. It comes with no vacation,
> health, or pension benefits of any kind.
Nils Goesche <···@cartan.de> writes:
> That is quite a lot of money for someone who is hungry and could
> buy a huge hamburger from that.
Marco Antoniotti <·······@cs.nyu.edu> writes:
> Reading the book "False Dawn" by Mr. Gray (a former advisor of Mrs
> Thatcher) may be a food for thought in this discussion. "Nickel'd and
> Dimed" by Ms. Erhenrich is also a very good book to read in this case.
I fear /this/ case is hopeless.
The book is: Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
--
"Das Auto hat keine Zukunft. Ich setze aufs Pferd." Wilhelm II. (1859-1941)
"Thomas Bushnell, BSG" <·········@becket.net> wrote in message
···················@becket.becket.net...
> ·······@syncreticsoft.com (Damond Walker) writes:
>
> How many bankrupcies would have been avoided if they didn't
> have to pay monopoly rents on software?
>
As far as I know: none. The only times I've seen companies
hurt by software purchases is when the purchase was completely
mismanaged, buying a system designed and priced for managing
1000+ units when their totals will never exceed 100, for example.
It slowed them down, they lost business, but they're happily
paying the yearly service contract because the bosses get colour
charts of the day's business during that day (not that they have
ever acted on the information, but it's in colour!). They are
still in business, by the way.
It's also rare to find a license that costs more per employee
than the cost of the employee using it, at least in North
America, so it's hard to argue that it is the software
supplier's fault for charging so much that it forced them to
close their doors.
The only main case for this argument that I can come up with
is when a company is just keeping it's head above water and
any form of cost increase will sink them, software, rent,
wages, and the software just came first at the finish line.
------------
Geoff
·······@syncreticsoft.com (Damond Walker) writes:
> street? If everyone went to clisp or gcl or <insert your favorite
> Free Lisp Here> then vendors such as Franz or <insert your favorite
> Commercial Lisp Here> will simply fade away...
If they aren't able to produce something better than a group of
volunteers then they don't deserve to stay in business.
> Economic Darwinism at play here? Most probably...
ITYM capitalism. Works fine.
> It's conforting to me, as a developer, to know that I have a chain of
> assistance that I can follow all the way back to the vendor (which
> doesn't nessecarily mean it's a good thing -- we've all hit 1st line
> support I suspect). In a commercial setting I'm not afraid to pay for
> this service.
Sorry, I don't understand you. With Open Source software you can either
fix the problem yourself _or_ pay someone to fix it for you. With
proprietary software you are the hostage of the vendor. If they change
directions or fill for Chapter 11, you are in big trouble. When you've
been hurt often enough by tool vendors, you will understand why many
developers prefer Open Source tools.
Nils Kassube wrote:
> ·······@syncreticsoft.com (Damond Walker) writes:
>
> > street? If everyone went to clisp or gcl or <insert your favorite
> > Free Lisp Here> then vendors such as Franz or <insert your favorite
> > Commercial Lisp Here> will simply fade away...
>
> If they aren't able to produce something better than a group of
> volunteers then they don't deserve to stay in business.
They could fail even if they are producing something better
than that group of volunteers, if it isn't *enough* better
that enough people are willing to pay for it. That would be
sad. It would also be sad if there were no decent free CL
implementations (in any sense of "free").
--
Gareth McCaughan ················@pobox.com
.sig under construc
* Nils Kassube <····@kassube.de>
| If they aren't able to produce something better than a group of
| volunteers then they don't deserve to stay in business.
I wish it were that simple. Many software products are much better than
any commercial entitty has produced in the same category, for instance
GNU Emacs, because you have had so many volunteers over such a long time.
| Sorry, I don't understand you. With Open Source software you can either
| fix the problem yourself _or_ pay someone to fix it for you. With
| proprietary software you are the hostage of the vendor.
This is a curious way to look at the customer/vendor relationship. I
keep seeing from people who favor open source of free software, but not
so much from those who pay for their software. It is not proprietary
software that holds you hostage, it is your own attitude towards it, and
it is a rather curious attitude that just because you feel a certain way,
all others must feel the same way about the same things.
| If they change directions or fill for Chapter 11, you are in big trouble.
Why? What part of the software you have purchased self-destructs when
that happens?
| When you've been hurt often enough by tool vendors, you will understand
| why many developers prefer Open Source tools.
It appears that many people have a problem learning from pain -- they
tend to learn the wrong thing and are satisifed with any change that they
think _should_ reduce pain, even if it does not, and even if it is not
specific about what it prevents. Avoding pain is so important to some
people that they even avoid clearly reasonable and good things, too,
because they refuse to look into the exact cause of the pain. "Once
bitten, twice shy" is such an understatement. If you get hurt the same
way several times, there is something wrong with your ability to learn
from experience. I therefore consider it extremely unreasonable and not
particularly intelligent to "learn" to avoid something _completely_ just
because it can be painful in some respects. I mean, some people have a
such a fear of being perforated by needles and injected with things that
they do not just stay short of heroin, but also medical treatment for
serious illnesses, avoid vaccinations to prevent them, etc. This is not
smart. Preferring Open Source because you have been hurt is the wrong
reason. As has been attempted explained here, you cut yourself off from
your own future if you avoid making money on your own work simply because
you have been screwed by others who failed in their attempts.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> I wish it were that simple. Many software products are much better than
> any commercial entitty has produced in the same category, for instance
> GNU Emacs, because you have had so many volunteers over such a long time.
I think this is a near *automatic* benefit of copylefted software.
(Note to the unwary: copyleft is one special subcategory of free
software.)
Emacs didn't start out massively superior to Unipress Emacs, but it
did quickly enough overtake it, and one key reason is the enforced
sharing that the copyleft requires.
Similar effects have happened with GCC. It's not the best compiler
out there for many cases, but it's pretty damn good, and it is
certainly the most widely ported compiler ever.
Free software in general, but especially copylefted free software,
tends to have a very long lifetime. I've long been convinced that
free software has a much longer time horizon than commercial software,
and any particular copyleft project need not worry about who will win
next year's profit battle, but can simply get better and better over
time and eventually take off.
The attitude of competition that is so natural to humans is also much
lower-key, absent some of the destructive elements that are so
prominent in other areas of life. KDE vs Gnome? Red Hat vs Debian?
These are questions that people have opinions about, but it's almost
like trying to decide whether cr�me br�l�e or lemon torte is the best
dessert ever. Who cares?! They're both great!
Thomas
>Emacs didn't start out massively superior to Unipress Emacs, but it
>did quickly enough overtake it, and one key reason is the enforced
>sharing that the copyleft requires.
On the surface, at least, it *seems* to me that open (at least GPL'd?)
software survives or doesn't based purely on quality. That's not to say
that all popular code is good or all good code is popular. BUT... if
someone--anyone, thinks some code is good enough to use, they will try to
use it, and more importantly for the discussion, they *can* use it and
improve on it for the benefit of (that ill-defined) "everyone".
With commercialism, there seem to be so many factors other than quality
that determine lifetime. I think Windows blows, but it survives based
(IMO) on market clout and managerial shallowness. By contrast, I thought
Opentep was great, in many ways nicer than the cute-but-heavy OSX. Yet it
is effectively no more, because of commercial concerns.
Pardon the digression, but something someone said here didn't sound quite
right. They equated giving software away with giving bread away and
destroying the livelihood of bakers, or something like that. I have a hard
time equating the individual donations of many volunteers with the
centralized, coerced extraction of tax money to distribute a single, bland
product. Maybe I missed the point of the story, but it seems as though the
GNU movement has produced a staggering variety of tools (and a staggering
variety of quality levels :P). All this was done (apparently) with the
only coercion being that noone who agreed to participate would coerce
others to contribute for free to their own profit-making.
It hardly seems like the harsh rule of centralized state-directed economy.
For all its differences, this setup seems closer to the ideal of many small
vendors competing in a marketplace of ideas than what we get from the
increasingly centralized pushers of "product".
FWIW,
Eric
* Eric Moss
| Pardon the digression, but something someone said here didn't sound quite
| right. They equated giving software away with giving bread away and
| destroying the livelihood of bakers, or something like that. I have a
| hard time equating the individual donations of many volunteers with the
| centralized, coerced extraction of tax money to distribute a single,
| bland product.
Where did "centralized, coerced extraction of tax money" come from?
| Maybe I missed the point of the story
Looks very much like you got hung up in something unrelated to the story.
| All this was done (apparently) with the only coercion being that noone
| who agreed to participate would coerce others to contribute for free to
| their own profit-making.
Coercion is _so_ not the point.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
> Looks very much like you got hung up in something unrelated to the story.
OK. The tone of the post seemed to be that some central bureucrat took tax
money and spent it in a stupid way--"emulating" market forces without
actually doing so.
> Coercion is _so_ not the point.
OK again. I guess, after the zillions of posts here, I am not sure what
"the" point, if there is just one, is, or who is trying to make it.
Back to something that gets me somewhere...
Eric
* Erik Naggum
> Coercion is _so_ not the point.
* Eric Moss
| OK again. I guess, after the zillions of posts here, I am not sure what
| "the" point, if there is just one, is, or who is trying to make it.
It is about economics, of course. Seeing coercion everywhere is not
conducive to getting anywhere.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Eric Moss <········@alltel.net> writes:
> Pardon the digression, but something someone said here didn't sound quite
> right. They equated giving software away with giving bread away and
> destroying the livelihood of bakers, or something like that. I have a hard
> time equating the individual donations of many volunteers with the
> centralized, coerced extraction of tax money to distribute a single, bland
> product. Maybe I missed the point of the story [...]
You missed the point of the story. By "giving bread away" I do not
mean "taking tax money and buying bread and giving that away". I mean
simply people with bread (presumably because they bought or made it
themselves) and giving it away to those who could use it.
My point was that if it's somehow *wrong* to voluntarily work on free
software, then isn't it also wrong to voluntarily give bread to
people? (It doesn't have to be bread--it could be just about any gift
that you give to a stranger.)
Thomas
>You missed the point of the story.
Actually, I got it, as the paragraph you copied shows. My point in that
paragraph was that Erik's story seemed irrelevant in that it compared your
concept (volunteers giving on individual bases) to a gov't. program he
despised.
Whatever. I don't want to say any more given the risk of incurring wrath.
Eric
* Eric Moss <········@alltel.net>
| Actually, I got it, as the paragraph you copied shows. My point in that
| paragraph was that Erik's story seemed irrelevant in that it compared
| your concept (volunteers giving on individual bases) to a gov't. program
| he despised.
There was no mention of any government programs anywhere. Sheesh.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Erik Naggum wrote:
>* Eric Moss <········@alltel.net>
>| Actually, I got it, as the paragraph you copied shows. My point in that
>| paragraph was that Erik's story seemed irrelevant in that it compared
>| your concept (volunteers giving on individual bases) to a gov't. program
>| he despised.
> There was no mention of any government programs anywhere. Sheesh.
OK. I probably read your post at bottom incorrectly then (pardon the
elided text--I'm trying to conserve bits, and don't think I messed up the
meaning of the original post). For those who want perfect accuracy, I've
included the date and thread so you don't have to take my word for it.
FWIW, I agree that the Oslo cab fiasco is exactly that. I also see that
whatever its source, downward price pressures can make it harder for the
guy trying to make money from his skill. I can also see that your intended
point may have not been about the coercion aspect of taxes being used to
create artificial 'competition'.
But when I see a stupid gov't program story being used to demonstrate the
problems of a distributed volunteer effort, I tend to wonder whether the
problem is truly the free-ness or the centralized coercion.
For example, what if Oslovians (is that a word?) just gave drunk
politicians (and whoever else) rides when it looked like they needed it? I
don't propose this as a solution to traffic problems, but to ask if the
problem is still the same: in one case a dumb program screws people trying
to make a living apparently just to get drunk politicians home (where they
can do less damage--unless they breed).
In another, people are volunteering their efforts and the combined effect
is to get drunk politicians home and to (also) put pressure on people
trying to make a living. In this case, though, some people will
always want a cab for privacy's sake and will pay for it. Here, better
cabbies are still better and *can* be recognized and rewarded for it. Plus
there's less waste overall, the saved taxes could help the lesser,
unemployed cabbies find good jobs rather than make fake jobs, etc. Would
all the good parts of this actually occur and outweigh the "bad"? I don't
know, but there is still a difference between the two situations, which
*may* be relevant.
The Oslo saga would seem (to my naive mind) a better analogy if we were
comparing it to a big gov't program to create software with tax money and
give it away. Are the results the same or different? I don't know, but it
still seems a valid question.
Back to homework,
Eric
PS. Sheesh. ;)
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Date: 2002-03-27 23:41:52 PST
In the city of Oslo, [...] some politician got upset when he did not get
his cab ride home from a late-night party one weekend, and concluded that
more cabs where necessary. [... So] these brilliant politicians decided
to use tax money to support the competition, just for the sake of having
some "competition".
[...] because of this competition charade, which could never have been
sustained without government grants and support, is that the contender is
facing competition from people who are not risking their own money, who
can go under without much loss, and the contender thus has a serious
problem: Their ability to make money is artificiall curtailed by a
political decision to install a "competition" for which there was no need
or grounds [...]
This artificial competition was constructed by politicians who
had a political agenda to force it to exist, but they were so stupid that
they undercut the market by injecting it with free money which could be
wasted away while the main contender lost its ability to manage the set
of cab driver licenses in operation. All in all, it is a total failure
with no redeeming qualities [...]
Free software has the same effect: It skews the return on investment for
some people to the point where they decide to spend their mental energy
and their labor elsewhere, where it is more rewarding. This leads, in
turn, to the inability of the moderately competent to get well paid, so
they leave, and the average competence level drops, which hurts the
ability to build safe and useful infrastructure, as well as hurting the
* Eric Moss <········@alltel.net>
| OK. I probably read your post at bottom incorrectly then (pardon the
| elided text--I'm trying to conserve bits, and don't think I messed up the
| meaning of the original post). For those who want perfect accuracy, I've
| included the date and thread so you don't have to take my word for it.
Oh, you confuse the free bread with the Oslo Taxi fiasco. That explains
why you think there would be a coercive government program for free food
paid for by taxes. But really, these are two very different arguments.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
* Erik Naggum
> I wish it were that simple. Many software products are much better than
> any commercial entitty has produced in the same category, for instance
> GNU Emacs, because you have had so many volunteers over such a long time.
* Thomas Bushnell, BSG
| I think this is a near *automatic* benefit of copylefted software.
Copyleft alone does not make a large group of volunteers nor make them
hang around in numbers for a long time. Something else does that.
| The attitude of competition that is so natural to humans is also much
| lower-key, absent some of the destructive elements that are so prominent
| in other areas of life.
That must explain all the people who lose focus on what they want to get
dona and instead fight other people and post lots of lies about them in
order to feel better than them when they really are just the same or even
worse. Competitiveness is good for animals that benefit greatly from
winning each a single fight and whose life is over if they lose. It is
generally a really bad thing for people who have to live on after a loss,
which is why we form higher units within which we do not compete in order
to engage another such higher unit. Free software is basically all one
such higher unit, but it is nonetheless competing just as much as those
who compete at a smaller unit level: those who argue that Free Software
should take over, like you do, are probably even more competitive than
those who are satisfied to become better at what they do and better than
their direct competition, but do not consider beating everybody a goal or
even worth their while. Such competitiveness is no better than that of
the arch-enemy of quality software and _actual_ innovation and decent
business practices everywhere: William H Gates III, and he is so paranoid
about his "competition" that he has become a threat to all of mankind.
There is an important distinction between being single-minded and being
ultra-competitive. Richard Stallman seems to be the former, but many of
his followers are no better people than Bill Gates, and therefore turn
just as bad when they do not "win". This is actually really sad.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> * Erik Naggum
> > I wish it were that simple. Many software products are much better than
> > any commercial entitty has produced in the same category, for instance
> > GNU Emacs, because you have had so many volunteers over such a long time.
>
> * Thomas Bushnell, BSG
> | I think this is a near *automatic* benefit of copylefted software.
>
> Copyleft alone does not make a large group of volunteers nor make them
> hang around in numbers for a long time. Something else does that.
No, certainly copyleft works together with other forces. It's not
sufficient by itself. By "automatic" I meant that the other forces
are (usually) sort of omnipresent and not very remarkable in
themselves.
Thomas
* Thomas Bushnell, BSG
| No, certainly copyleft works together with other forces. It's not
| sufficient by itself. By "automatic" I meant that the other forces are
| (usually) sort of omnipresent and not very remarkable in themselves.
It appears to me that the whole Free Software thing is about making the
whole world of programmers employees of one giant company. Because, and
this probably does not make sense to you with your prefrences and your
background, a company or group of companies who work together, offer the
same kind of mutual access and rights that copyleft does for people who
have no obligiation whatsoever to return anything of value for that
right. I consider it much more valuable to grant access in exchange for
something, not just give it away to any stray comer. I believe that the
exchange of values in return increases when the access is something you
get because of some trust in your ability to contribute to it. To trust
everyone to be able to do this is to trust no one.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> It appears to me that the whole Free Software thing is about making the
> whole world of programmers employees of one giant company.
How do you reconcile this with the actual world of free software which
goes along quite nicely with a rich variety of economic arrangements?
Is there any free software advocate who has said they want all
programmers to be employees of one giant company? I've never heard
that, though some suspect Microsoft of such goals.
Thomas
* Erik Naggum
> It appears to me that the whole Free Software thing is about making the
> whole world of programmers employees of one giant company.
* Thomas Bushnell, BSG
| How do you reconcile this with the actual world of free software which
| goes along quite nicely with a rich variety of economic arrangements?
METAPHOR, Thomas Bushnell. Look it up. Geez, you are so _stupid_.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
Y> * Erik Naggum
> > It appears to me that the whole Free Software thing is about making the
> > whole world of programmers employees of one giant company.
>
> * Thomas Bushnell, BSG
> | How do you reconcile this with the actual world of free software which
> | goes along quite nicely with a rich variety of economic arrangements?
>
> METAPHOR, Thomas Bushnell. Look it up. Geez, you are so _stupid_.
Metaphor for what? Everybody getting money from a central source?
Losing the ability to freely decide what to work on? Centralized
control of development and new trends? None of these are
characteristic of any free software project I know about.
But I didn't give an exact list...can you make the metaphor more
explicit, please?
Thomas
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> something, not just give it away to any stray comer. I believe
> that the exchange of values in return increases when the access is
> something you get because of some trust in your ability to
> contribute to it. To trust everyone to be able to do this is to
> trust no one.
There are plenty of other mechanisms for showing trust in a particular
contributor or possible contributor and thus gaining the increase in
exchange value, including but not limited too granting CVS write
access, giving some level of ownership over a part of the project,
recognition in public of their contributions, or spending time to
carry out a productive conversation with them, even direct payment.
Also, I don't know how I am supposed to make a decision about how much
I trust someone's ability to contribute to a project without seeing
patches, which essentially requires source access. I could rely on
reputation or sample code review or some other mechanism, but those
all seem iffy to me.
Finally, I don't think that my personal vision for the source base is
the one that should dominate, so while I may indeed grant write access
to someone I trust to carry out my vision, I would not want to have my
trust be a requirement for someone who has another vision for the
work. If there is a conflict between our visions I would rather work
it out politically, thru discussion and cooperation, than by fiat,
refusing access to my code.
--
Craig Brozefsky <·····@red-bean.com>
Free Software Sociopath(tm) http://www.red-bean.com/~craig
Ask me about Common Lisp Enterprise Eggplants at Red Bean!
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> those who argue that Free Software should take over, like you do
> [...]
I should say that this is not quite what I argue.
I do not say that Free Software *should* take over. I think it is
likely that it will, and I hope that it does, But that's not quite
the same thing as saying that it should take over, in my opinion.
Thomas
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> | If they change directions or fill for Chapter 11, you are in big trouble.
>
> Why? What part of the software you have purchased self-destructs when
> that happens?
Among other things, ongoing maintenance is still necessary for
software since the rest of the world continues to move on. Image
processors have to deal with new formats, mail processors with
evolving standards, and so forth.
The software continues to work in general (though there are
automatically-expiring crippleware things out there), but as the world
moves on, it becomes more and more irrelevant without ongoing
maintenance. Orphaned commercial software is in bad straits when this
happens. Orphaned free software at least has hope.
Thomas
* Thomas Bushnell, BSG
| Among other things, ongoing maintenance is still necessary for software
| since the rest of the world continues to move on. Image processors have
| to deal with new formats, mail processors with evolving standards, and so
| forth.
But if you no longer have to pay maintenance fees, you have money to pool
into purchasing the assets of the company with the other customers who
are out on a limb -- and probably to re-hire at least some of the
maintainers, too. If the software was free, you have to start paying for
support with money you did not previously have to pay for anything.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
And Erik Naggum writes:
-
- | If they change directions or fill for Chapter 11, you are in big trouble.
-
- Why? What part of the software you have purchased self-destructs when
- that happens?
The part that needs its license renewed every few months (or MIPS,
depending on the platform). Most software in that category has
sufficient backing not to disappear overnight, however. And anyone
who buys such a license from an untrustworthy vendor, well, your
point on pain applies wonderfully.
And to the previous poster (sorry, gotta take care of the rising
brioche), chapter 7 of the US bankruptcy code is liquidation (in the
US). Chapter 11 is reorganization. IIRC, many businesses' operations
proceed during reorganization, though they cannot rely on credit as
much.
Jason
--
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
>
> | If they change directions or fill for Chapter 11, you are in big trouble.
>
> Why? What part of the software you have purchased self-destructs when
> that happens?
>
Pretty much all of it. This used to be easy to verify at
Egghead software (do they still exist?): there were bins full
of software made by manufacturers out of business. They were
being sold at 95% discount, yet nobody would buy them. Why not?
The disks were OK, the software would run fine.
The obvious answer is that you want not only an executable, but
_support_ for your business in years to come.
Sometimes, this support comes at at incredibly high cost; e.g.
being hostage to Microsoft/Oracle/Sun/whomever.
Sometimes it comes at a different incredibly high cost: the risk
associated with no open source volunteer being willing to fix your
bug.
Sometimes it comes at yet another different incredibly high cost:
maintaining your _own_ software (typically a slow, buggy
re-implementation of something you could get from categories 1 and 2).
All 3 choices are being made by different companies, and in each
particular case, that choice may indeed be the best choice.
I don't think it's really a bad choice having choice 2, where
10 years ago you only really had choices 1 and 3.
--
It would be difficult to construe Larry Wall, in article
this as a feature. <·····················@netlabs.com>
I changed the subject line to something that at least invites on-topic
discussion rather than being an ad hominem bit of randomness.
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> I do not say that Free Software *should* take over. I think it is
> likely that it will, and I hope that it does, But that's not quite
> the same thing as saying that it should take over, in my opinion.
The problems here are several:
First, there is some illusion here that we are a community. To the
extent that it's meaningful to indulge that community, one thing
that's worthwhile is to acknowledge the legitimate positions of those
in the community. I don't see a lot of that going on from the free
software community. It's ironic because the free software movement
seems to be founded in a lot of words about idealistic things like
freedoms and rights, which presumably are intended to serve both
individuals and communities. Yet when people raise legitimate issues
that concern both individuals and communities, the free software
people are the first to hide behind mechanism and say that anyone not
living up to their mechanism "deserves" to lose. I think such
dismissive words are very injurious to any sense of community.
Second, let's take this particular statement by you. You say you
don't think Free Software should take over, but that you hope it does.
Now I don't know about anyone else, but my understanding of "should"
in the context you offer is "by some sort of right of decency and
honor", and you acknowledge here that there isn't such a guiding
theory which dictates that free software "should" take over. Yet, for
some reason, you hold out a hope in spite of the lack of such a
theory, that it will happen. If I had said something like "I don't
think people in the third world should starve to death, but I hope
they do." I don't think there are too many people would find a very
forgiving reading in this. I don't think that's a way to build
community with either that community nor with many members of the
communities standing on the outside.
I personally spend a lot of time enumerating problems with free
software not because I think free software is "automatically wrong" or
perhaps even "stoppable", but rather because I think it's a mistake
for a society to just create a system, any system, and then proceed
ahead with it without analyzing whether ultimately it is causing good
or bad effects. I think even most capitalists reject the theory that
"pure capitalism" is good, since most believe that you can't allow
hospitals to charge a "market rate" for lifesaving drugs, most agree
that you can't allow a monopoly, etc. There are a number of checks
and balances required to make the system achieve its societal goal,
which is not to "show that capitalism is right" but to "do well by the
world, both collectively and individually". Likewise, it's plain to
me that "free software" as a theory of the whole enjoys not a lessened
but greater degree of scrutiny than as a "part of capitalism", since
it would be responsible for achieving effects that it is not
responsible for doing as "part of capitalism". But even when you view
it in the subcontext of capitalism, you have to examine its negative
effects just as one must examine other "edge effects" of capitalism,
such as monopolies and dumping. And it is simply not reasonable to
reduce every such analysis that shows a problem in free software to
"well, that's what the rules allow" because the rules were designed in
the absence of a theory of what "free software" would do and the whole
point of doing the analysis is to step outside of frame and to ask
whether the executing mechanism is correctly achieving a certain
societal goal.
Do vendors "deserve" to go out of business if they can't compete? I
really don't think so. I think this about as much as I think people
deserve to die when they get sick. That's not to say there isn't a
good effect of sickness in pruning the weak; one can certainly build
such an argument. But that argument does not extend to saying that
any individual so stricken deserves to be pruned. Morever, it is
likewise easy to say that if dolphins can't learn to breath the
poisons we dump into the oceans, they deserve to die. Or if the
elephants can't learn to cope with a shrinking supply of grass and
water, they perhaps are eating too much and deserve to die. I don't
like this theory of "deserve". Evolution in its purest form is harsh,
for which we can perhaps forgive it, but is also short-sighted. It's
as good a process as any for an undesigned system ... but it is
subject to definite problems of uncoordinated planning known to any
researcher in the science of planning. Things like hill-climbing or
problems of non-coordinated thinking (such as was a problem with
perceptrons) are shortfalls of the evolutionary process. The
question, therefore, is whether pure evolution is good for us as a
society.
It seems to me pretty clear that what started this discussion is that
some remarkably innovative tools have died due to specific problems
that are directly traceable both to aspects of capitalism (failure to
deal with monopolies) and free software (failure to deal with price
shortfalls that cannot sustain a reasonably priced organization). I
don't think any of these are good, and I don't see any reason that we
should be attacking each other over these facts as if a statement of
fact on these matters was an attack on someone's person.
Moving forward involves being able to honestly confront the truth.
But being part of a community moving forward involves being able to
honestly confront the fact that sometimes people matter, and that
their investment matters, and that as much as possible, we don't want
to find people and their products as roadkill along the way. Free
software tends to guarantee that the roadkill is easily collectable,
but it doesn't guarantee that investment will not be lost, and that's
a shame.
In some sense, the free software community doesn't seem to mind that
certain people are not motivated without profit. It seems to view
those who are motivated by profit as either "lower forms of life" or,
at least, "people whose efforts are better duplicated by those more
willin to share". This ignores the possibility of anyone's
contribution to the world ever being unique, of course.
At the same time, there's what some might regard as a certain symmetry
in the fact that the commercial community doesn't mind leaving out the
efforts of some who have not got the money to contribute. Perhaps
they have a unique contribution to make as well, but don't have the
money.
So maybe both groups exclude some people accidentally. Here's my
problem with the debate:
The fact is that there _is_ presently a community of people making
commercial software. Perhaps if there were not, we'd have people
inventing "paid software" as an alternative in order to add balance
instead of vice versa. But we have the world we have now. And
whatever world we propose, I thin it is antisocial PER SE to not care
what happens to the people who have invested their time and energy in
good faith under the existing system.
When I was young, I used to hear a lot of glee from people who had
seen other businesses go out of business or who saw this or that
person laid off, as if this just made the world better. But as time
went on, we all had been laid off, and I see a lot less glee in it
than I used to, because most of my friends have been on both sides. I
still see a bunch of glee in the free software advocates and the
companies it drives out of business. I suspect many of those showing
that glee are college age and simply have not "been there yet". At
least, I hope that's what it is. Because I'd like to think that with
the free software movement does not come an attitude that "people
don't matter" or that "the investment of a person's life" is somehow
less valuable just because someone comes out with something better.
If we're going to be a community, and not just a set of sharks
swimming in a common pool of blood, we have to learn to care about
each other as individuals. And that means hoping that each others'
communities are killed has to be considered antisocial.
I personally don't like the role of being the voice of "no free software"
but I feel forced into it out of a need to establish balance against
the "no commercial software" forces. I think it's fair to point out
problems in commercial software schemes, but I think we should be allowed
to fix those points at the level of granularity of the problem, not by
merely declaring the system bankrupt. I'm willing to point out problems
in free software at a similar level if someone will commit to fixing those
problems in kind, or even to pay lip service to the fact that there might
be such a need. I see a _lot_ more work in practice going on to fixing
the problems with commercial software than for fixing the problems with
free software. The commercial software community really cares about
issues that put vendors out of business or that cause customers not to get
reasonable products at a reasonable price; these issues are debated
every day in congress. Who in the free software community spends any time
addressing a similar set of issues?
Not that I really want to get involved with this, but:
I would like to point out that "commercial software" is not the opposite
of "Free software" (that is to say, open source software under the GPL, not
zero-price software. GPL people often bemoan the fact that
the english language conflates free-as-in-speech and free-as-in-beer,
and some even suggest using Libre and Gratis in english speech
to distinguish.)
People can and do pay authors of Free software to maintain and
upgrade that software, and for rights to use the software in their own
products - and if they don't want to release the source for those products,
they can often negotiate a different, for-monetary-reward licensing
agreement with the copyright holder of the software the wish to use (this
business model is used by Aladdin, makers of ghostscript, for example.)
"Free Software" may not have a monetary price - it does have a price
though, and one which economists recognise - "payment in kind" - in
exchange for the right to redistribute and modify the source code obtained
from the "Free Software Pool", one "pays" by granting the same rights on
your derived work back to the "Free Software Pool" - or one goes and
arranges alternate licensing. If one were to put a monetary price on this
"payment in kind", it would likely be very high, given the bulk and quality
of the code in the "Free Software Pool".
Thus, using commercial software as an opposite to free software
as "free software advocates" understand the term is wrong. The correct
opposite would be "proprietary software". Free (Libre) software is the
opposite to proprietary software.
While you may worry about vendors "getting sick" and whether they
should be allowed survive, one must understand that the significant
proprietary software vendors preach pure free-market capitalism when they
are "winning" and look for free-market interference protection when they
are "losing" - Microsoft, for example, are all for free markets in their
rhetoric, but are busily paying corrupt politicians to produce laws that
unlevel the playing field and effectively make it illegal to give things
away.
Things are only worth what people will pay for them.
Do you mourn the scribe in the age of the printing press, or the buggy
manufacturer in the age of the automobile?
Ultimately, I hope that we are headed for a society somewhat like
Ian Banks' "Culture" novels - where all forms of petty scarcity that so
screw up our world are effectively eliminated. Will we enforce artificial
scarcity of meterial goofs when/if nanotech renders thousands of factories
(and factory-worker's jobs) obsolete? History has shown that such
approaches are doomed to fail in the long term.
--
Don't eat yellow snow.
David Golden <············@bprnaserr.arg> writes:
> "Free Software" may not have a monetary price - it does have a price
> though, and one which economists recognise - "payment in kind" - in
> exchange for the right to redistribute and modify the source code obtained
> from the "Free Software Pool", one "pays" by granting the same rights on
> your derived work back to the "Free Software Pool" - or one goes and
> arranges alternate licensing.
This is a much narrower definition of "free software" than is generally
used. Many of the licenses in the FSF's list
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html
have no requirement resembling what you described.
The GPL does have a requirement resembling what you described, but it's
important to stress that you aren't required to give copies of your
derived work to anybody. The GPL requirement is that if you *do* give
copies to anybody, it must be under the exact same terms as the GPL.
> While you may worry about vendors "getting sick" and whether they
> should be allowed survive, one must understand that the significant
> proprietary software vendors preach pure free-market capitalism when they
> are "winning" and look for free-market interference protection when they
> are "losing" - Microsoft, for example
To remain on topic for this newsgroup, I think you should choose a CL
vendor as an example. What anti-competitive practices are they guilty
of?
> Do you mourn the scribe in the age of the printing press, or the buggy
> manufacturer in the age of the automobile?
Have free-software CL implementations surpassed proprietary
implementations to such an extent as to make these analogies
appropriate?
--
<·······@[(if (brl-related? message) ; Bruce R. Lewis
"users.sourceforge.net" ; http://brl.sourceforge.net/
"alum.mit.edu")]>
Bruce Lewis wrote:
> This is a much narrower definition of "free software" than is generally
> used.
Well, "Free Software" and "free software" are often taken to mean
slightly different things in the Free Software community, although I think
I'm going to become an advocate of using the libre/gratis wording in
english prose.
>
> The GPL does have a requirement resembling what you described, but it's
> important to stress that you aren't required to give copies of your
> derived work to anybody. The GPL requirement is that if you *do* give
> copies to anybody, it must be under the exact same terms as the GPL.
>
Indeed - I should have been clearer. the GPL is a license for
redistribution, not use.
>
> To remain on topic for this newsgroup, I think you should choose a CL
> vendor as an example. What anti-competitive practices are they guilty
> of?
I don't particularly think the thread is on-topic, and thus picking any
CL vendor would be inappropriate, particularly since in the great scheme
of things, they don't seem to fit the bill as "significant proprietary
software vendors" such as Microsoft and IBM. (which I now realise
might have been the insult E.N. was talking about in his reply)
>
>> Do you mourn the scribe in the age of the printing press, or the buggy
>> manufacturer in the age of the automobile?
>
> Have free-software CL implementations surpassed proprietary
> implementations to such an extent as to make these analogies
> appropriate?
>
Not yet in technical terms, as far as I know, in other ways, definitely -
primarily in terms of lower-cost-to-do-the-same-thing.
It's "good enough" all over again. That should set alarm bells ringing
with Lisp veterans.
--
Don't eat yellow snow.
David Golden <············@bprnaserr.arg> writes:
> I don't particularly think the thread is on-topic,
Of course it's on-topic since one of the things that many people will
do with their creations is try to figure out how to package and
promote them. It is surely the failure to have addressed this
question during certain years when other languages were popping up
complete with such answers that has held Lisp back in at least some
ways.
Further, whether people want to talk about it or not, the fact is that
every person's decision to either offer their code as a proprietary
solution or a free software solution or anything in between affects
which communities that code will be seen by and probably whether or
not their will be a commercial success to talk about. Without regard
to the question of who benefits and who doesn't, at least for this
paragraph, it's plain that the fact of the choice one way or the other
does make a difference. Failing to discuss it doesn't mean it will
suddenly not make a difference any more than failing to discuss birth
control will keep you from getting pregnant.
The savvy Lisp programmer should be properly armed with necessary
information about how they are affecting the market by making their
choice of how to deploy.
I personally see a lot of people graduating thinking contributing to
the free software cause is an automatic good. It may not be
automatically bad, but it is far from automatically good.
Maybe the same is true of proprietary software.
I'm comfortable with the middle ground of "there is no easy answer".
Hungry for societal acceptance, the average college graduate is
too-easy bait for those who would say they are heroes for contributing
to the cause. Which is why it is important for me to say: this is not
my model of hero. If you have something of value, sell it to me. If
you can't sell it, don't hide behind the convenient shield that you're
being more moral by giving it away or that money doesn't matter or
that it would be hoarding to keep it to yourself. Selling it is not
hoarding. A "struggling software writer" is not a "budding
monopolist". Ha! We should have such problems in the Lisp community
than beating back the large number of industry controlling monopolists
we've produced.... Earn some money and you'll both learn something
about what others really value (which often differs from what they say
they value), and you'll also have money that you can use to affect
what others do... or maybe just to contribute to legitimate charities...
the kind that aren't putting hard-working commercial interests out of
business.
Kent M Pitman wrote:
> If you have something of value, sell it to me.
Fine. What if my asking price is not money, it's a right to use any derived
work of that thing you distribute under the same conditions as I sold the
work to you. i.e. GPL.. ? <ducks> We're both, as people, getting
increased value from the transaction, it's just money's not involved.
> Earn some money and you'll both learn something
> about what others really value (which often differs from what they say
> they value),
I agree wholeheartedly - personally, I've been earning money for several
years now, and it has given me great insight into what's really important -
and it's not money.
Many a pampered graduate could do with going through the experience of
losing a job with a failing company in London and have to choose between
paying the rent or eating, but at the same time, one must realise that not
everyone values money above all else. Money is a human construct to
simplify trade. It's not real like air or water, and in "civilised"
societies (warning: opinion of what consitutes civilised varies
significantly). a lack of earning power does not equate to death, or even
lack of effect - in fact, if someone is penniless but engaged in charitable
work, the community is quite likely to consider him worth supporting and
even listen to him. Please note - I'm European (Irish) so this might be a
cultural thing (and should illustrate that the power of the religious
orders over here is a little more firmly grounded than some people would
have you believe...these days, there are many people who are simultaneously
atheists and regular donators to religious organisations... I realise that
may be incomprehensible to some.)
(warning: near-worthless biased, even offensive, generalisation!) I've
noticed USians often consider money far more "real" than other people,
perhaps because of their singularly harsh socioeconomic
system.
> the kind that aren't putting hard-working commercial interests out of
> business.
>
Well there's the thing - I simply don't think that that's a good idea.
If a commercial company cannot keep up with a solution produced
by volunteers, then I'm not convenced that company deserves to stay in
business. The individuals within the company could easily find new jobs,
often more highly paid, providing the service of code-customisation and
field-specific applications using the free software. Many companies, in
fact, have successfully made the transition to a services/solutions based
model, and are busily putting the old model to death.
--
Don't eat yellow snow.
David Golden wrote:
> meterial goofs
Or even material goods... Though "meterial goofs" has a nice
ring to it - those who are crazy about measuring everything?
--
Don't eat yellow snow.
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <3226667081452710@naggum.net>
* David Golden <············@bprnaserr.arg>
| I would like to point out that "commercial software" is not the opposite
| of "Free software" (that is to say, open source software under the GPL,
| not zero-price software.
This may be somewhat misleading. "Commercial software" is usually
understood to be software for commercial unit sale such that the vendor
can recover his costs from the profits of each unit sold, where copying
of said unit is illegal. This is cleanly contradictory to free software.
| People can and do pay authors of Free software to maintain and upgrade
| that software, and for rights to use the software in their own products -
| and if they don't want to release the source for those products, they can
| often negotiate a different, for-monetary-reward licensing agreement with
| the copyright holder of the software the wish to use (this business model
| is used by Aladdin, makers of ghostscript, for example.)
The only problem is that Aladdin is also competing with anyone else who
picks up their source and can offer Aladdin customers enhancements that
exceed Aladdin's ability. This is really hard to get around.
| Thus, using commercial software as an opposite to free software as "free
| software advocates" understand the term is wrong. The correct opposite
| would be "proprietary software".
It would not matter if the source were free if the ability to sell
shrink-wrapped binaries were restricted to one vendor. This would allow
hackers to hack and users to use while making money for the owners. I
wonder what you would call this. It is not proprietary, it is
commercial, and it is not entirely un-"free",either.
| While you may worry about vendors "getting sick" and whether they should
| be allowed survive, one must understand that the significant proprietary
| software vendors preach pure free-market capitalism when they are
| "winning" and look for free-market interference protection when they are
| "losing"
Are you aware of the _unbelievable_ insult you serve here?
| Microsoft, for example, are all for free markets in their rhetoric, but
| are busily paying corrupt politicians to produce laws that unlevel the
| playing field and effectively make it illegal to give things away.
Microsoft has never, _ever_ been for a free market, nor for innovation.
They use that rhetoric to fool easily fooled people into believing they
are part of the American Dream, that William H. Gates III is some third
millennium version of Thomas A. Edison. This is all marketing and no
substance. If you believe Microsoft's propaganda, you have to be paid to
have shut down your critical thinking ability. A company that has been
ruled in violation of good business practice and abuse of their monopoly
power is not participating in the free market, it is a predator in it.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Erik Naggum wrote:
> This may be somewhat misleading. "Commercial software" is usually
> understood to be software for commercial unit sale such that the vendor
> can recover his costs from the profits of each unit sold, where copying
> of said unit is illegal. This is cleanly contradictory to free
> software.
>
Well, there's the rub - you have free software people defining "commercial"
and "free" to mean one thing, and proprietary software people defining
"commercial" and "free" to mean another thing. It'll probably be a cold
day in hell before the twain meet.
>
> The only problem is that Aladdin is also competing with anyone else who
> picks up their source and can offer Aladdin customers enhancements that
> exceed Aladdin's ability. This is really hard to get around.
>
Well, this is true of competing against other open-source forked projects,
but not true of competing against anyone else who wants to make a
monetary profit - because Ghostscript is GPL. Thus, only Aladdin can
_sell_ alternate licenses to third parties who want to keep _their_ product
closed. Everyone else has to abide by the GPL (and thus make it rather
easy for aladdin to fold any changes back), or pay aladdin. This is also
why GPL projects are considered more "fork resistant" than most.
I personally think this is the fairest model - if someone else is trying
to use your work without monetary profit, then let them, if they try
to profit by closing their derived work and not making their extensions
available, then you get a cut. That's one of the things a dual
GPL/proprietary license scheme gets you. See also Trolltech (unfortunate
name), makers of the Qt toolkit.
That's why MS loves BSD and hates GPL - they can take BSD stuff
as they like, and not be obliged to either (a) pay the original
developer for alternate licensing arrangements or (b) open their source
code, whereas with the GPL, they either have to participate in the community
(as if!) or track down the copyright holder for the code they want to use
and pay him lots of money (assuming he can be bought...)
> | Thus, using commercial software as an opposite to free software as "free
> | software advocates" understand the term is wrong. The correct opposite
> | would be "proprietary software".
>
> It would not matter if the source were free if the ability to sell
> shrink-wrapped binaries were restricted to one vendor. This would allow
> hackers to hack and users to use while making money for the owners. I
> wonder what you would call this. It is not proprietary, it is
> commercial, and it is not entirely un-"free",either.
That's an interesting idea - except of course that the distinction
between "user" and "hacker" is, in general, rather blurred. MS and Apple
have done their damnedest to turn computers into toasters, but one cannot
rule out a "hacker" writing EZ-Compile-2000 that automatically compiles
binaries out of source code tarballs, turning users into pseudohackers,
unless you also use a thoroughly proprietary source language too... which
becomes a circular argument, with the ring broken by the existence of free
language compilers for all major popular languages on all major popular
platforms. Effectively, who decides when a user becomes a hacker?
>
> | Microsoft, for example, are all for free markets in their rhetoric, but
> | are busily paying corrupt politicians to produce laws that unlevel the
> | playing field and effectively make it illegal to give things away.
>
> Microsoft has never, _ever_ been for a free market, nor for innovation.
> They use that rhetoric to fool easily fooled people into believing they
> are part of the American Dream, that William H. Gates III is some third
> millennium version of Thomas A. Edison. This is all marketing and no
> substance. If you believe Microsoft's propaganda, you have to be paid
> to
> have shut down your critical thinking ability. A company that has been
> ruled in violation of good business practice and abuse of their monopoly
> power is not participating in the free market, it is a predator in it.
>
We're in definite agreement there, all right.
--
Don't eat yellow snow.
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <3226681774306924@naggum.net>
* David Golden <············@bprnaserr.arg>
| Well, there's the rub - you have free software people defining
| "commercial" and "free" to mean one thing, and proprietary software
| people defining "commercial" and "free" to mean another thing. It'll
| probably be a cold day in hell before the twain meet.
Well, they are still talking about the same real world out there, so it
might be worth one's while drop the emotionally laden terminology and
talk about the things that they are intended to stand for. The political
connotations are usually not worth dragging into a real discussion.
| Well, this is true of competing against other open-source forked
| projects, but not true of competing against anyone else who wants to make
| a monetary profit - because Ghostscript is GPL. Thus, only Aladdin can
| _sell_ alternate licenses to third parties who want to keep _their_
| product closed. Everyone else has to abide by the GPL (and thus make it
| rather easy for aladdin to fold any changes back), or pay aladdin. This
| is also why GPL projects are considered more "fork resistant" than most.
The GPL only works well when the copyright to the modifications is
transferred to the original source owner. Otherwise, all rights to the
modifications not so transferred remain with their author, and may be
sold for profit to a customers who applies them to his purchased product,
or the right to use them by the original source owner may be retracted.
The Luxcid/XEmacs fork from GNU Emacs was long considered a very serious
problem and a cause of much duplication of effort and "competition" of
the same stupid kind we find in the proprietary world. That happened
well within the GPL. When you make some changes that the original source
owner does not want, what do you do?
This actually leads me to a different line of questioning the free
sofrware movement: What do you do with the bad guys? Considering that
bad guys run the world, being able to control them is important, and that
means controlling the ability of various people to contribute "patches".
In order to keep a lid on this, people are asked to provide patches for
free, which may not be adopted, to a central repository where some
dictator controls whether they will become official or not. Some people
seem to like this, others do not. E.g., when the MULE crowd started to
screw up Emacs so much it became impossible to use it, and they broke
patches to fix their incompetent hacking again and again, several people
left Eamcs development in disgust. I published a MultiByte Survival Kit,
which got adopted by RedHat, that removed the most serious braindamage
and let people use the _good_ new features Emacs 20. It took several
releases before Emacs with MULE became usable. Various versions of the
Linux kernel even in the supposedly "safe" 2.4 tree have been rotten and
dangerous. The quality control that people expect from commercial
software are simply not in place for free software -- if it has higher
quality, it is a voluntary issue. Sometimes, that is not enough.
| I personally think this is the fairest model - if someone else is trying
| to use your work without monetary profit, then let them, if they try to
| profit by closing their derived work and not making their extensions
| available, then you get a cut. That's one of the things a dual
| GPL/proprietary license scheme gets you.
How does this actually work in practice? You only get paid for those
patches that are accepted, right? Most real programming involves many
non-working attempts, for which people get paid when they are employed or
under contract. Having to work a lot only to see your successful patch
ignored is a very strong de-motivator for future work. Therefore, a
project leader feels morally obliged to include an offered patch. This
is bad. If people could be paid for the work regardless, this would not
be such a disincentive.
| See also Trolltech (unfortunate name), makers of the Qt toolkit.
Nah, a troll is a usually powerful mythological create in Norwegian folk
lore. They are not particularly _nice_, but nothing like what we have on
USENET, where "a troll" is a back-formation from the verb "to troll", for
which Norwegian has a long "aw" sound, not a short. It is unfortunate
that English lacks this distinction. :)
| That's an interesting idea - except of course that the distinction
| between "user" and "hacker" is, in general, rather blurred.
This might be the crux of the contention between the communities.
| Effectively, who decides when a user becomes a hacker?
Effectively, breaking the warranty seal. (Except that the "appliance"
vendors have managed to chicken out of the whole warranty thing, so this
has to be understood metaphorically and abstractly.)
| We're in definite agreement there, all right.
Good. :)
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Erik Naggum wrote:
> The political connotations are usually not worth dragging into a real
> discussion.
No, but unfortunately, no-one's come out with really "politically neutral"
terms (it may be impossible, due to the dynamic politicizability (???) of
words...)
I'd say the open source software community has slightly more
neutral terms, but I am, of course, not free of bias.
classical example:
OS "copyright infringement" instead of PS "piracy" (what, they pillaged
your coastal settlement, slaughtered your menfolk and raped your womenfolk,
oh, and they made copies of your software, too ?)
It's like "pro-life" and "pro-choice".
> The GPL only works well when the copyright to the modifications is
> transferred to the original source owner. Otherwise, all rights to the
> modifications not so transferred remain with their author, and may be
> sold for profit to a customers who applies them to his purchased
> product, or the right to use them by the original source owner may be
> retracted.
This is quite true - except that the right to use them cannot normally
be retracted subsequent to public release under the GPL (barring total
idiocy like frivolous software patents.)
That's why a lot of commercially-backed free software projects make such a
fuss over copyright assignment these days. It's intensely irritating for
the average developer to comply with, but a necessary fact of life in this
litigious age.
Some projects go the other way, and delibrately make sure no one person
can "own" the code - but this can leave them open to "attack" whereby
unscrupulous people can use portions of the code, and there's no one entity
to take action against them. Typically, this pattern is used when the
codebase is of more value compatible than forked e.g. Linux, which
as a platform is acheiving its wide spread partly through an effect that
does boost windows - wide OS level compatibility.
> In order to keep a lid on this, people are asked to provide
> patches for free, which may not be adopted, to a central repository
> where some dictator controls whether they will become official or not.
> Some people seem to like this, others do not.
Yes - the canned response to this is "well, you can always fork and set up
your own tree", but it illustrates that open source software is
vulnerable to petty squabbles and human failings just like most things
in life.
I would contend that it's better on the whole to be able to fork + patch
than not patch at all.
> If people could be paid for the work regardless, this would not
> be such a disincentive.
>
Well, that's why services/solutions vendors seem to be taking off -
they employ the programmers, who maintain and customise the
free software.
> It is unfortunate
> that English lacks this distinction. :)
Mmph. British English distinguishes - verb: trawl is the common
spelling, verb: troll would probably be understood by a naive
british or irish english speaker to mean "to act like a troll" - every
child over here tends to be thoroughly indoctrinated with fairy tales
involving trolls living under bridges...
thus I always thought of "to troll" to be a bit like
"acting like a troll", hostile & agressive, with connotations of "to trawl"
- i.e. fish for responses.
Actually, I just checked dictionary.com -
seems americans often spell "trawl"...
"troll".
There you go... funny old world...
>
> | That's an interesting idea - except of course that the distinction
> | between "user" and "hacker" is, in general, rather blurred.
>
> This might be the crux of the contention between the communities.
>
Yes, proprietary software vendors often encourage a nice, clear distinction
(of course, CL compiler vendors and compiler vendors in general are
different, catering to a somewhat specialised market... developers...) -
while the line is very blurred with typical open source systems.
That may be really why I like open source systems - I can tinker to
my heart's content, and use my computer to compute, not as a TV.
> | Effectively, who decides when a user becomes a hacker?
>
> Effectively, breaking the warranty seal. (Except that the "appliance"
> vendors have managed to chicken out of the whole warranty thing, so this
> has to be understood metaphorically and abstractly.)
>
As the GPL says - "NO WARRANTY" - if you use the source code under that
license - but presumably a vendor could offer a with-warranty product if
they also use a different license, potentially charging lots of money for
it if it involves warranty and support...
Thus, companies for which support matters would still be paying the
vendor, joe user wouldn't.
This is a little akin to proprietary vendors turning a blind eye to
"piracy", since they've realised the network effects of college students
and otherwise poor people using their software far outweigh the lack
of (purely hypothetical - they probably wouldn't by the product in the
first place) revenue - if those people get paying jobs
at a company, they'll be most comfortable with those products, and
the company has to have everything above-board and with-support.
Autodesk and Microsoft are fairly well known to turn a blind eye
on individuals copying their stuff (unless the individual is really loud
and stupid about it) - they go after the corps first and foremost.
--
Don't eat yellow snow.
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <3226689525423911@naggum.net>
* David Golden <············@bprnaserr.arg>
| classical example:
| OS "copyright infringement" instead of PS "piracy" (what, they pillaged
| your coastal settlement, slaughtered your menfolk and raped your womenfolk,
| oh, and they made copies of your software, too ?)
I think this is a really bad example. Who are the people who talk about
"piracy" but the criminals? Unreasonable people talk about "hoarding"
and "piracy". Reasonable people talk about copyright and infringement.
> The GPL only works well when the copyright to the modifications is
> transferred to the original source owner. Otherwise, all rights to the
> modifications not so transferred remain with their author, and may be
> sold for profit to a customers who applies them to his purchased product,
> or the right to use them by the original source owner may be retracted.
| This is quite true - except that the right to use them cannot normally be
| retracted subsequent to public release under the GPL (barring total
| idiocy like frivolous software patents.)
This means that all patches must be published with GPL, but said patches
need not be adopted. That means that the author cannot take them back
and incorporate them in financially viable ways when the work was not
valued by the Free Software community. This is _really_ bad.
| That's why a lot of commercially-backed free software projects make such
| a fuss over copyright assignment these days. It's intensely irritating
| for the average developer to comply with, but a necessary fact of life in
| this litigious age.
So what the software developers need in this free software and open
source age is a good lawyer. A few years hence, that could be me making
much more money on the Free Software/Open Source thing than any of the
software developers. Ah, such irnoy.
| Yes - the canned response to this is "well, you can always fork and set
| up your own tree",
This has often been stated, but it is not true, because you cannot make
up a new license for the fork -- only the original owner controls that,
right? In other words, there is a significant amount of _hoarding_ going
on in the GPL world. (Sorry, but I had to.)
| every child over here tends to be thoroughly indoctrinated with fairy
| tales involving trolls living under bridges...
You mean they don't?
| That may be really why I like open source systems - I can tinker to
| my heart's content, and use my computer to compute, not as a TV.
For a really long time, I was an Emacs hacker. I loved to make local
changes and dump my own Emacs. However, as Emacs evolved without my
patches, it became an increasingly bothersome hassle to keep my patches
up to date relative to the current source release. This bored me in the
end. Now I am just a regular user (although I load and dump with all the
crap I would load anyway) and I have decided against making modifications.
I talked about this with an old friend of mine you used to hack on the
TOPS-10 sources at the U of Oslo while I was enjoying the machine from a
programmer's perspective. There were so many local patches that they
had to defer upgrades and sometimes skip entire revisions due to the hard
and boring work of reintegrating their patches. I experienced the same
thing with Allegro CL 5.0 -- after having made a number of local fixes,
Allegro CL 6.0 came out, with many of my suggestions, but done slightly
differently, and I spent a month of real time to figure out which of my
patches to apply. There is a morale to this story: Do not patch locally
-- it will hurt you in upgrades and bug fixes.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
* Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> makes an excellent point:
>
> There is a morale to this story: Do not patch locally -- it will
> hurt you in upgrades and bug fixes.
This is *exactly* why I don't compile Perl from source any more on
my Linux boxes. It's too much trouble to remove the distro-provided
version of Perl if I want to use the distro's upgrades, and I don't
want to waste the disk space.
Of course, this has, presumably, always been an issue. But the
more frequently updates come out, the less time there is to amortize
the effort over, which makes the cost of integrating higher.
Working with early releases as a developer or beta tester is
something that I engage in regularly. However, I do that by making
a conscious choice. For things that I don't have the time, energy
or interest in developing, I stick with stable releases that have
[relatively] long release cycles.
Erik, you give an example where a collection of non-open-source
patches were not accepted verbatim by the vendor. Clearly, this
could happen just as well with an open source product. Presumably,
one benefit of the open source model is that even if the local
patches are not accepted by the vendor [project lead], you still may
be able to find other people who can assist you in the integration
process, thereby assisting you in amortizing the cost.
Is that something that you could have (did?) do with your ACL
patches?
If you couldn't have, would it have been helpful to you if you
would have been able to?
Would you have continued to make local modifications to Gnu Emacs
if someone else were to track Gnu Emacs development and do the
integration work for you?
How much would such a service be worth to you?
Thanks for bringing up this example.
-jon
--
------------------
Jon Allen Boone
········@delamancha.org
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <3226718615031492@naggum.net>
* Jon Allen Boone <········@delamancha.org>
| Erik, you give an example where a collection of non-open-source patches
| were not accepted verbatim by the vendor.
Well, they took the form of requests for future enhancement, and some
have been adopted verbatim, but most have been taken more seriously than
I expected and led to more fundamental changes, such that my local
patches would still apply, but have a destructive effect, instead.
| Presumably, one benefit of the open source model is that even if the
| local patches are not accepted by the vendor [project lead], you still
| may be able to find other people who can assist you in the integration
| process, thereby assisting you in amortizing the cost.
|
| Is that something that you could have (did?) do with your ACL patches?
Well, I had the freedom to be that integrator for others. Basically,
they are still at 5.0.1.
| If you couldn't have, would it have been helpful to you if you would have
| been able to?
I think Franz Inc believes that anyone who builds an application on top
of Allegro CL is actually providing their product to third-party
customers with some "local patches" (a.k.a. "application") applied. The
whole vocabulary (like Value-Added Reseller) indicates that they do not
just sell you a binary-producing system.
| Would you have continued to make local modifications to Gnu Emacs if
| someone else were to track Gnu Emacs development and do the integration
| work for you?
That is a very good question. This would, in my view, constitute a
"fork" with some particular features. A project called emacs-dl, which
allowed Emacs to dynamically load foreign code, did just that for some
particular needs. It is still at Emacs-20.7, even though Emacs 21.2 was
just released. Here is the Debian package system description:
emacs20-dl - The GNU Emacs editor. (Dynamic Loading supported)
GNU Emacs is the extensible self-documenting text editor. This binary
supports the Dynamic Loading architecture(dl). If you want to use dynamic
loadable modules, you should use this instead of pure emacs20
package. Dynamic Loadable Module examples are Canna/Wnn input method
support. (emacs-dl-canna/emacs-dl-wnn package)
And some dirty patch applied. Dirty means such as,
Rejected by upstream authors (difficult for merge),
Code from other emacsen, like XEmacs/Meadow/obsolete Mule2.3,
or backported.
| How much would such a service be worth to you?
Well, right now, I am working with a new completion algorithm for Emacs
(and readline, in time). Instead of expanding to stop before the first
disambiguating character, I want to see the best attempt with various
portions of the completed string highlighted in various colors. E.g., if
I wrote m-s--s TAB, I would get make-string-input-stream with "ake",
"tring", "put", and "tream" in green (only completion) and "in" in red
(more alternatives), and then a new TAB would replace "in" with "out". I
would want point (the cursor) to be behind the completed word, so I could
just keep writing, but "i" and "o" would choose "in" or "out" and turn
all the completed text green. There are design issues to work out here,
but I am tired of completion that (1) pops up windows, and (2) does not
learn what I really want in context.
Should I complete this work (pun intended), I am not sure I want to give
it away under GPL conditions. Suppose I invent something really clever
as part of this development process. I may not know that myself for a
while, but if I did, I want to be able to recover more than time and cost
in developing it. Suppose I write a paper about it and make a binary
available -- people could conceivably want to pay me for this feature. I
would have closed that door to opportunity if I had published the code.
Worse, if I am not particular good at marketing to idiots, and somebody
else is, just having the code in the open would allow someone to take the
ideas it contains and reimplement them in a clean-room setting such that
none of my code remained. This is why patents are good -- they both
encourage people to try to do better, _and_ protect you from competitors
who do not succeed in that.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Erik Naggum wrote:
> * David Golden <············@bprnaserr.arg>
> | classical example:
> | OS "copyright infringement" instead of PS "piracy" (what, they pillaged
> | your coastal settlement, slaughtered your menfolk and raped your
> | womenfolk, oh, and they made copies of your software, too ?)
>
> I think this is a really bad example. Who are the people who talk about
> "piracy" but the criminals? Unreasonable people talk about "hoarding"
> and "piracy". Reasonable people talk about copyright and infringement.
>
Um? See BSA and Microsoft - oh wait. Yes, they are the criminals :-).
>
> This means that all patches must be published with GPL, but said patches
> need not be adopted. That means that the author cannot take them back
> and incorporate them in financially viable ways when the work was not
> valued by the Free Software community. This is _really_ bad.
>
Cannot "take them back? - no, he cannot arbitarily decide to stop
anyone using the patch he released, but at the same time, he can
certainly, as the original copyright holder, use a new license
for all subsequent versions of the code comprising the patch. Generally,
this is construed as a feature rather than a bug with the GPL - othewise,
the user would be hostage to the vendor's whims, just like the proprietary
world.
> | Yes - the canned response to this is "well, you can always fork and set
> | up your own tree",
>
> This has often been stated, but it is not true, because you cannot make
> up a new license for the fork -- only the original owner controls that,
> right?
Well,yes - but you wouldn't have the code at all if you hadn't
agreed to the license - think about it "I just got the source for
SQL Server from Microsoft, and now the big meanies won't let me
change the license for my tree and resell it" - sounds silly, doesn't it?
The GPL is NOT public domain. You can still set up your own tree, but,
without negotiating alternate terms with the original copyright holder,
it'll be GPL... Again, this is usually thought to be a feature, rather
than a bug.
> | every child over here tends to be thoroughly indoctrinated with fairy
> | tales involving trolls living under bridges...
>
> You mean they don't?
Dunno - never seen one...
Some alternate-history/fantasy fiction novel I read had Trolls being the
folk-memories of Neanderthals wiped out by Cro Magnons as they
expanded into Europe, which is quite poetic, if completely
unprovable. :-)
--
Don't eat yellow snow.
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <3226716366054217@naggum.net>
* David Golden
| Cannot "take them back? - no, he cannot arbitarily decide to stop anyone
| using the patch he released, but at the same time, he can certainly, as
| the original copyright holder, use a new license for all subsequent
| versions of the code comprising the patch.
The kwyword is "published". Once published, some expression or idea is
"out there" and cannot be taken back to be used as an "edge" elsewhere.
If you are at all creative, you will see that you do things better than
other people. If you intend to make a reasonable living, your uniqueness
comes with a price tag higher than the competitors in the labor market
who are not as creative. If you just give away your "edge", nobody has
any reason to higher you at a better rate than your competitors or to
hire you at all, because they can get a monkey to ask you questions and
use your code, or look at all the patches you post and scavange them.
Who is to tell whether something is a copyright infringement? Just doing
something wrong is not enough -- somebody needs to discover it before
they can get reparations. This is the hardest part of all of this.
| Well,yes
Thank you for at least acknowledging the point.
| - but you wouldn't have the code at all if you hadn't agreed to the
| license - think about it "I just got the source for SQL Server from
| Microsoft, and now the big meanies won't let me change the license for my
| tree and resell it" - sounds silly, doesn't it?
Please note that I have not used _anything_ from Microsoft since the
Altos computer I got with Xenix back in 1985. I have _never_ bought a
license from Microsoft for any of their DOS-based crap. Saying X is good
by pointing out how great it is relative to Microsoft's crap does exactly
_nothing_ for me -- I am _already_ free of their evil control.
For a long time, I have argued that the _only_ purpose of the Open Source
and Free Software movement _today_ is to fight Microsoft, and that this
is an against-fight, such that the whole movement would disperse into
nothingness if they actually won. Regardless, I have found other ways to
fight Microsoft than to give away my livelihood. So that is no longer
the only solution. Productive thinking about the impact of free software
has to return to a state of "unsolved problem", because I am no longer
interested in any "better than pure evil" argument, and I think offering
this argument over and over is deeply insulting to those who at least try
to take you seriously and at least _try_ listen to your arguments.
Microsoft is _completely_ irrelevant. They have no more power over you
than you give them. Just do not give them any.
| The GPL is NOT public domain.
Since you have to tell people this, you cannot have paid much attention.
Please do not restate the obvious -- it tells people that you think they
are idiots who missed it or that you are.
| You can still set up your own tree, but, without negotiating alternate
| terms with the original copyright holder, it'll be GPL... Again, this is
| usually thought to be a feature, rather than a bug.
Would you _mind_ trying to think about the issue? We all know all the
propaganda from the Free Software side. This is about when and how it is
_not_ a feature.
You strike me as one of those recent converts who gets tricked into
walking the streets offering people "personality tests", which is great
for the "cause" you work for, but what is at stake here is not whether
someone believes it is "beneficial" in some absolute sense, but the
_relative_ beneficialness of some political ideal to all alternatives.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
On Tue, 02 Apr 2002 06:05:50 GMT, Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> wrote:
> Please note that I have not used _anything_ from Microsoft since the
> Altos computer I got with Xenix back in 1985. I have _never_ bought a
Do you mean the Altos (Aalto?) workstations by Xerox?
Paolo
--
EncyCMUCLopedia * Extensive collection of CMU Common Lisp documentation
http://www.paoloamoroso.it/ency/README
[http://cvs2.cons.org:8000/cmucl/doc/EncyCMUCLopedia/]
Paolo Amoroso <·······@mclink.it> writes:
> On Tue, 02 Apr 2002 06:05:50 GMT, Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> wrote:
>
> > Please note that I have not used _anything_ from Microsoft since the
> > Altos computer I got with Xenix back in 1985. I have _never_ bought a
>
> Do you mean the Altos (Aalto?) workstations by Xerox?
Altos != Alto
Altos Computer Systems manufactured (among other things) x86-based
machines sold with Xenix.
Erik Naggum wrote:
>
> | - but you wouldn't have the code at all if you hadn't agreed to the
> | license - think about it "I just got the source for SQL Server from
> | Microsoft, and now the big meanies won't let me change the license for
> | my tree and resell it" - sounds silly, doesn't it?
>
> Please note that I have not used _anything_ from Microsoft since the
> Altos computer I got with Xenix back in 1985. I have _never_ bought a
> license from Microsoft for any of their DOS-based crap. Saying X is
> good by pointing out how great it is relative to Microsoft's crap does
> exactly _nothing_ for me -- I am _already_ free of their evil control.
>
Argh. At least try to form an abstract concept, why don't you? - that was
an example. - here's another : "I just got the AutoCAD source from
Autodesk, now they won't let me change the license for my tree
and resell it?" - sounds silly, doesn't it.
You proceed to go on about MS. That was not my argument, and
you hardly score debate points for demolishing a straw man of your
own construction. Whatever, I'm thoroughly bored with this
thread now.
> For a long time, I have argued that the _only_ purpose of the Open
> Source and Free Software movement _today_ is to fight Microsoft, and
> that this is an against-fight, such that the whole movement would
> disperse into
> nothingness if they actually won.
I doubt it, personally. Though a large enemy does tend to serve
to temporarily unify people, granted, I, for one will continue
releasing what little code I currently write off my own bat
under open source licenses. Heck, somewhere on the web
is code I released back when I thought proprietary software
was a good idea (up until about 1994-1995, probably...)
So, unless you are prepared to assert that I am nothing
(which isn't very nice, not that I'd care overmuch), then
I have personal reason to doubt the idea that in the absence
of a common foe Free Software would disappear -
Free Software like EROS is a long way from competing
against MS, yet it happily trundles on....
> Since you have to tell people this, you cannot have paid much attention.
> Please do not restate the obvious -- it tells people that you think they
> are idiots who missed it or that you are.
>
Sigh. normal newsgroup etiquette is to assume people other than
the person you replied to directly are reading your post. "Restating the
obvious" when it is a core part of your argument is not necessarily bad,
it means those 3rd-party readers can follow your argument.
--
Don't eat yellow snow.
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <3226835428500037@naggum.net>
* David Golden
| Argh. At least try to form an abstract concept, why don't you?
What an amazingly stupid way to react. The "abstract concept" you want
to hide here is that you think "X is not so bad! Look, it is better than
pure evil!", which is what people who want to hide their relativistic
thinking very commonly do. Perhaps you are not used to forming other
abstract concepts than those you already have? Many people suffer that.
| - that was an example. - here's another : "I just got the AutoCAD source
| from Autodesk, now they won't let me change the license for my tree and
| resell it?" - sounds silly, doesn't it.
Yes, you do sound silly. How about not sounding silly, so "discussion"
with you would not be so boring?
| You proceed to go on about MS. That was not my argument, and you hardly
| score debate points for demolishing a straw man of your own construction.
At least try to form an abstract concept, will you? _You_ wanted to
bring in Microsoft and wanted to make something look less vile in
comparison to a monstrosity. Now you regret it. How stupid is that?
| Whatever, I'm thoroughly bored with this thread now.
Of course you are.
| I doubt it, personally. Though a large enemy does tend to serve to
| temporarily unify people, granted, I, for one will continue releasing
| what little code I currently write off my own bat under open source
| licenses.
Of course you will. Get back to me in 10 years, though.
| Heck, somewhere on the web is code I released back when I thought
| proprietary software was a good idea (up until about 1994-1995,
| probably...)
Most of us think both proprietary and free software are good ideas, for
certain uses. If you think one is not a good idea, it looks like that
kind of fanaticism that gets people killed.
| So, unless you are prepared to assert that I am nothing (which isn't very
| nice, not that I'd care overmuch), then I have personal reason to doubt
| the idea that in the absence of a common foe Free Software would
| disappear -
Yeah, and one man makes an economy.
The reason people can make so much non-commercial software today is that
they are employed by companies that make enough money from something else
that they (think they) can afford to make their software a non-product,
and who think that making a business out of their in-house software
production is worthless, but this also means that purchasing software for
the same purposes is out of the question. I happen to have consulted for
three different companies who wanted to take their in-house software and
productize it because they found that the value of that software began to
be noticeable and marketable. If they had just squandered it away as
open source, they would have lost out on enormous values. To recap a
previous analogy: It is not bad to give food to the starving, but an
entire economy of "free food" is really, really bad. We already see that
many people are actually unwilling to pay for support for non-commercial
software and are unwilling to pay for system administration tools for
Linux, but somehow books on the topic sell like hotcakes, which implies
that people are more than willing to spend money on fairly incompetent
people working on stuff from example-style books, but not pay for a
product from a competent vendor. This puzzles me somewhat.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
From: Martti Halminen
Subject: OT: Trawling vs. trolling (was:Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp)
Date:
Message-ID: <3CA8F47D.2BDED034@kolumbus.fi>
David Golden wrote:
> > It is unfortunate
> > that English lacks this distinction. :)
>
> Mmph. British English distinguishes - verb: trawl is the common
> spelling, verb: troll would probably be understood by a naive
> british or irish english speaker to mean "to act like a troll" - every
> child over here tends to be thoroughly indoctrinated with fairy tales
> involving trolls living under bridges...
>
> thus I always thought of "to troll" to be a bit like
> "acting like a troll", hostile & agressive, with connotations of "to trawl"
> - i.e. fish for responses.
>
> Actually, I just checked dictionary.com -
> seems americans often spell "trawl"...
> "troll".
>
> There you go... funny old world...
On a further look, trawling and trolling are totally separate ways of
fishing.
Trawling means dragging a special kind of net through water, often along
the bottom.
http://www.sakl.fi/professionalfishing/trawling.html
Jargon file:(re trolling)
Derives from the phrase "trolling for newbies" which in turn comes from
mainstream "trolling", a style of fishing in which one
trails bait through a likely spot hoping for a bite.
http://www.bigjon.com/tips/tips.asp
http://www.trawl.org/wcfish.htm
- Searching for trawling with Google brings more hits about the
environmental damage caused by trawling than about the actual technology
used.
--
From: David Golden
Subject: Re: OT: Trawling vs. trolling (was:Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp)
Date:
Message-ID: <GP6q8.2454$04.7714@news.iol.ie>
Martti Halminen wrote:
>
> On a further look, trawling and trolling are totally separate ways of
> fishing.
>
Ack. That's even more confusing :-)
--
Don't eat yellow snow.
From: Jon Ericson
Subject: Re: OT: Trawling vs. trolling (was:Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp)
Date:
Message-ID: <86bsd27vd2.fsf@jon_ericson.jpl.nasa.gov>
David Golden <············@bprnaserr.arg> writes:
> Martti Halminen wrote:
>
>> On a further look, trawling and trolling are totally separate ways
>> of fishing.
>
> Ack. That's even more confusing :-)
Not to someone already familiar with the terminology. (It's a happy
coincidence that the fishing term and the image of a mythical creature
converge in the Usenet world.)
Jon
--
Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their
work: If one falls down, his friend can help him up... Though one
may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three
strands is not quickly broken. -- Ecclesiastes 4:9,12 (NIV)
David Golden <············@bprnaserr.arg> writes:
> I would like to point out that "commercial software" is not the opposite
> of "Free software"
The point is that it's virally designed to kill commercial software by
(a) not allowing itself to benefit certain classes of commercial software
and (b) undercutting commercial software in a way that drives its
market price point to zero, at which point such commercial software cannot
survive. So we can quibble about "opposite" in some theoretical sense,
but in the comic book sense of heroes and villains, free software appears
to necessarily posture itself against commercial software in any given
sub-marketplace that it arises. "Bacteria" is not the opposite of
"Human life" either, but the co-existence of certain bacteria and certain
people are similarly antithetical, at least without a level of careful
engineering comparable to what is needed to allow free and commercial
software to gracefully coexist.
> (that is to say, open source software under the GPL, not
> zero-price software. GPL people often bemoan the fact that
> the english language conflates free-as-in-speech and free-as-in-beer,
> and some even suggest using Libre and Gratis in english speech
> to distinguish.)
They got themselves into the terminological problem, and could correct
the term at any point. They could as easily have called or could
still it an arbitrary name ("sigma software") or made-up name
("xyzkrmqzz software") and not had this confusion. The number of
meanings of "free" in the dictionary was a well-known fact at the time
they started. The term seems designed to passive aggressively provoke
a certain argument and I can only bemoan the argument it provokes to a
certain degree. I guess the best I can say is that not everyone in
the movement meant to provoke the argument its leaders appear to enjoy
provoking; then again, if it's really not characteristic of the larger
group of people who've taken it on, that group could work to adopt a
new name rather than engage this fight on an ongoing basis. That they
don't leads me to feel they feel this sparring to be either enjoyable
or a necessary part of the struggle.
> People can and do pay authors of Free software to maintain and
> upgrade that software, and for rights to use the software in their own
> products - and if they don't want to release the source for those products,
> they can often negotiate a different, for-monetary-reward licensing
> agreement with the copyright holder of the software the wish to use (this
> business model is used by Aladdin, makers of ghostscript, for example.)
But the amount that the vendor can afford to pay is limited not by their
on hand funds per se, but in fact by the market. No vendor can afford to
pay much in a license because they can't pass through the cost to users.
To do so would render their product non-competitive with free alternatives.
> "Free Software" may not have a monetary price - it does have a price
> though, and one which economists recognise - "payment in kind" - in
> exchange for the right to redistribute and modify the source code obtained
> from the "Free Software Pool", one "pays" by granting the same rights on
> your derived work back to the "Free Software Pool" - or one goes and
> arranges alternate licensing.
This addresses whether there is fuel enough to cause more free software to
get created. I assume this is an internal matter among free software folks,
and not really material to the issue to the discussion between free software
supporters and commercial software supporters.
I certainly don't think the issue of whether people "deserve" free use is
in issue. If it turned out free-users didn't pay free-producers, that is
not a problem to me per se; it only becomes a problem to me if free-users
are potential commercal-users, and then it affects their sense of what
they might be willing to pay, just as napster is in the process of crushing
the record industry, a change that may not per se bug a lot of people (who
are presently happy for free music) but that may come to bug people more
if it means that new music does not follow with no funding to pay people...
> If one were to put a monetary price on this
> "payment in kind", it would likely be very high, given the bulk and quality
> of the code in the "Free Software Pool".
>
> Thus, using commercial software as an opposite to free software
> as "free software advocates" understand the term is wrong. The correct
> opposite would be "proprietary software". Free (Libre) software is the
> opposite to proprietary software.
Well, I don't think it's just proprietary software. The commercial use of
free software is still affected, as I've mentioned above.
> While you may worry about vendors "getting sick" and whether they
> should be allowed survive, one must understand that the significant
> proprietary software vendors preach pure free-market capitalism when they
> are "winning" and look for free-market interference protection when they
> are "losing" - Microsoft, for example, are all for free markets in their
> rhetoric,
Of course they do. All people "in the game" tend to rationalize.
It's been pointed out that the US Constitution (including the Bill of
Rights) probably couldn't get written now that everyone has a stake.
It was written in a dreamy time before people knew who would be
affected in various ways by the specific rules it created. A "Second
Constitutional Convention" which is suggested from time to time would
probably not be a repeat of the first, but rather instead be a petty
exercise in power grabbing.
But that's not to say Microsoft is right.
My personal feeling though is that Microsoft is not wrong for the "want"
but for the fact that the system lets them carry through on the want.
If it were me running things, I would fix a maximum corporate size and
say if you go above that size (which Microsoft would be taken as an example
of being above), you must split your company in parts. And, because it's
essential to the paradigm, I would also say a single human being can only
own majority share in one company. [Other minor patches are required,
since I note almost by accident that I now own 2 corporations myself, since
getting a retirement plan for HyperMeta Inc. required creating a trust
that is itself also a corporation... but that inner trust isn't selling
anything, so I'm sure could be accomodated...]
> but are busily paying corrupt politicians to produce laws that
> unlevel the playing field and effectively make it illegal to give things
> away.
Corruptness will not be solved by choice of commercial paradigm.
People will find ways to be commercially corrupt even with free software.
> Things are only worth what people will pay for them.
>
> Do you mourn the scribe in the age of the printing press, or the buggy
> manufacturer in the age of the automobile?
The problem with the first of these is that what people will pay changes
day to day. I'm reminded of the situation in the play "Fiddler on the Roof"
where the tailor gets a sewing machine and vows that he will only make
machine-made stuff any more, as if this were an improvement. And for him it
was. But the killing off of hand-made stuff is not universally regarded as
a step up.
Likewise, one doesn't have to be a luddite to see the value of the buggy
in a pollution-conscious society. It's easy to see the buggy put out of
business, but it's harder to justify that this was the best thing for
society.
And Google may put librarians out of business, indeed, computers and robots
may put a lot of low-end labor out of business, but whether the world will
be better with those people having no jobs is quite open to question.
If there's one thing more than any other that troubles me ethically about
computer science today it's the degree to which it is losing people jobs.
And if it doesn't trouble you, it should.
Society should value job creation, but automation that does not "design in"
people does not value people. And risks destabilizing society by breeding a
small number of haves and a large number of have-nots.
But also, the sense of worth can change with time, and relying
entirely on processes that value "price of the moment" will cause a
problem. Commercial ventures can guard against this by raising price
and buffering dollars to get through a tough time they forsee. Free
software takes away the ability to do this commercially, and leaves it
up to society to design other protective shells around the thing of
value, which structures may indeed protect it, but which structures
also have no relevance to the item they are trying to protect. And
the failure to design such structures means that the thing you wanted
to protect may die for reasons unrelated to its commercial viability.
And who is even to judge commercial importance. If nothing costs,
then the other problem is that there is no resource for doing advocacy
other than word of mouth. If you simply believe in something, that
doesn't sell the thing. And there can be a great many things that
just end up on the junk heap of Google "free and waiting to be
discovered" but never reached because buried in too many other things
that are also "free and waiting to be discovered". At some point, the
problem of excavating such free stuff becomes as hard as the problem
of making it anew, and so the fact of its freeness does not mean it
was, in point of practice, rescued by the paradigmatic shift from the
proprietary to the open/free/whathaveyou.
> Ultimately, I hope that we are headed for a society somewhat like
> Ian Banks' "Culture" novels - where all forms of petty scarcity that so
> screw up our world are effectively eliminated. Will we enforce artificial
> scarcity of meterial goods when/if nanotech renders thousands of factories
> (and factory-worker's jobs) obsolete? History has shown that such
> approaches are doomed to fail in the long term.
I don't think history shows any examples of people just being universally
brought up and no one having to work and everyone being happy. So something
has to give.
History shows no paucity of selfish people who don't like seeing
others succeed without trying. Those people will hog resources
somehow. And much though this may sound awful, there is even some
reason to suppose that if resources are not hogged, they will not be
valued by those who would have them. And if they are ever freely
distributed to all evenly in a way they feel no need to work for them,
the need to work and remember will be lost, and you won't succeed either.
The three laws of thermodynamics would seem to apply: you can't win.
you can't break even. you can't get out of the game.
very interesting notes from kent pitman, but i wish the discussion and
reflection would include more lisp (as was in the subject line): i wonder
about the open-source impact on the lisp industry these days, if any. one
keeps hearing that the industry had a lot to gain from the earlier sharing
culture around lisp (with symbolics being a particular fork that created
the free sofware movement and so on) how about the interaction between the
two cultures (o/s vs commercial)? do lisp companies fail because of strong
open-source advocacy and code? are the larger issues between the open
source people and commercial software played out the same way in the
lisp arena?
oz
---
minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carbonatum descendum pantorum.
From: Duane Rettig
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <4it7b15ag.fsf@beta.franz.com>
ozan s yigit <··@blue.cs.yorku.ca> writes:
> very interesting notes from kent pitman, but i wish the discussion and
> reflection would include more lisp (as was in the subject line): i wonder
> about the open-source impact on the lisp industry these days, if any. one
> keeps hearing that the industry had a lot to gain from the earlier sharing
> culture around lisp (with symbolics being a particular fork that created
> the free sofware movement and so on) how about the interaction between the
> two cultures (o/s vs commercial)?
You speak of two cultures as if they are diametrically opposed. And
perhaps as a model of the "commercial" companies, you may be thinking
Microsoft, but please do not mistake other commercial companies as
little Microsofts. OpenSource software and commercial software can
coexist, if the balance is kept. See http://opensource.franz.com for
an example of a commercial company which sponsors and encourages
open/free software.
> do lisp companies fail because of strong open-source advocacy and code?
I know of not one Common Lisp vendor which has failed due to competition
from free software of any kind. In my opinion:
- The Lisp machine companies failed because they failed to recognize
the manpower leverage that GP (general purpose) hardware vendors would
provide, riding the Moore's Law wave. I think that Symbolics recognized
this eventually, but too late to allow their GP hardware offerings to
become profitable.
- Lucid failed due to VC contractual obligations that they had gotten
themsleves into over a C++ based product. Their CL business at that
time was still profitable.
- Harlequin failed because their main business, a postscript based
product, had its bottom drop out. I don't know for sure, but I think
their CL business was still making money at the time. I think that they
were also spread pretty thin trying to bring their Dylan product to
market.
> are the larger issues between the open
> source people and commercial software played out the same way in the
> lisp arena?
I don't deny that there are issues and balances between selling software
and giving it away. Kent has touched on many aspects of this in many
of his posts. What I do deny is that there is only one way (or even one
set of ways) to look at the tradeoffs between the selling and giving away
of software. And if you try to apply these "larger issues" from other
areas to the Lisp realm, I think you might find that they don't fit.
--
Duane Rettig Franz Inc. http://www.franz.com/ (www)
1995 University Ave Suite 275 Berkeley, CA 94704
Phone: (510) 548-3600; FAX: (510) 548-8253 ·····@Franz.COM (internet)
From: Thomas Bushnell, BSG
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <87g02e6ctm.fsf@becket.becket.net>
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> The point is that it's virally designed to kill commercial software by
> (a) not allowing itself to benefit certain classes of commercial software
> and (b) undercutting commercial software in a way that drives its
> market price point to zero, at which point such commercial software cannot
> survive.
Number (a) is also true of commercial software.
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
>
> > The point is that it's virally designed to kill commercial software by
> > (a) not allowing itself to benefit certain classes of commercial software
> > and (b) undercutting commercial software in a way that drives its
> > market price point to zero, at which point such commercial software cannot
> > survive.
>
> Number (a) is also true of commercial software.
Certainly. But the negative effect of the and'd second condition is what
creates the "viral effect" I have cited. If it only had a negative effect
but still had to compete on price, then it would be at risk of losing too
many customers by being political. You see a few products that are targeted
only to a particular religion, but not many, because most vendors know they
can't afford not to sell to the whole market. But people who don't have to
worry about income can afford to do strange things that lock out market
segments in ways that others cannot. And this creates a weird competitive
bias that seems unhealthy to me.
Kent M Pitman wrote:
> But people who don't have to
> worry about income can afford to do strange things that lock out market
> segments in ways that others cannot. And this creates a weird competitive
> bias that seems unhealthy to me.
Didn't Alladin have a commercial scheme where old versions of the
software were made available for free? Perhaps you could use something
like that to have the best of both worlds -- the older versions suppress
competition (free or otherwise) while the newer version makes the money.
Paul
Eric E Moore <·········@sheffield.ac.uk> writes:
> Perhaps. But generally, at least in economics, the presumption is
> that if 2 people exchange goods and services and both prefer what they
> get, that this transaction is beneficial.
Certainly. The same argument has been made by Gates for situations that
others have questioned both whether it was a breach of law or should be
a breach of law. Both are reasonable questions.
In none of this discussion am I saying that free software per se
breaches existing law. If it did, it would be a simple matter of
suing people. All of this discussion is predicated on the issue that
law should constantly be under scrutiny for situations where it
creates bad individual and societal effects that could be corrected in
such a way as to overall improve either the position of society or the
affected individuals or both.
> GPL'ed software does fall
> into this category, I receive a copy of emacs (and certain rights to
> redistribute it, or prepare derivative works), in return for agreeing
> to distribute copies or derivative works under the GPL).=20
[Please turn off that awful MIME linebreak quoting in your newsreader.
It has no place in newsgroups.]
> Certainly it is possible that there are externalities involved in this
> transaction that make it a net loss to society, but I think it's fair
> to ask that people demonstrate their existence before arguing that
> free software is bad.
I'm just trying to engage people in a dialog on the subject.
The reaction is as if it is bad to raise this as an issue.
> I can come up with theoretical reasons
> proprietary software might be harmful as well,
Well, I assume the entire free software movement is predicated on such.
And I haven't stopped you from enumerating them.
> or theoretical reasons
> that AIDS drugs, or probably, even the existence of superior
> programming languages like lisp *might* be harmful to society. Until
> they've been shown to actually apply, I tend to assume voluntary
> transactions (both the sale of proprietary software, and the
> distribution of GPL'ed software) are beneficial to society.
I don't think proof is an acceptable prerequisite for free discussion.
Most other discussions that occur on this newsgroup are of the form
"Hey, I heard about x. What do others think?" or "Hey, this happened
to me and I'm trying to make sense of it." No one asks for google
cites or formal logical proofs before entertaining any of those
discussions. I see no reason to demand it here either. The
prerequisite here is relevance, and I've made a case that this is
relevance. I observe problems. I think others do too, and I am
interested to hear people chime in with what they have observed. I
regard the matter with "brainstorming" rules, and I find it
inappropriate for someone to try to diminish the contribution of
another by saying "I haven't seen it therefore it doesn't apply".
From: Thomas Bushnell, BSG
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <87bsd26cp6.fsf@becket.becket.net>
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> In none of this discussion am I saying that free software per se
> breaches existing law. If it did, it would be a simple matter of
> suing people. All of this discussion is predicated on the issue that
> law should constantly be under scrutiny for situations where it
> creates bad individual and societal effects that could be corrected in
> such a way as to overall improve either the position of society or the
> affected individuals or both.
What you say here suggests that maybe you think the law should be
changed (perhaps) in a way to make free software less successful. Is
that true? In other words, if we are investigating "what the law
should be", rather than "what the law is", do you have anything
concrete to suggest?
Usually it's the free software people who are accused of wanting a
massive overhaul of the existing copyright regime (and of course there
are some people who do want that). But it sounds like you want some
significant change to be made yourself...
Am I misreading here?
Thomas
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
>
> > In none of this discussion am I saying that free software per se
> > breaches existing law. If it did, it would be a simple matter of
> > suing people. All of this discussion is predicated on the issue that
> > law should constantly be under scrutiny for situations where it
> > creates bad individual and societal effects that could be corrected in
> > such a way as to overall improve either the position of society or the
> > affected individuals or both.
>
> What you say here suggests that maybe you think the law should be
> changed (perhaps) in a way to make free software less successful. Is
> that true? In other words, if we are investigating "what the law
> should be", rather than "what the law is", do you have anything
> concrete to suggest?
>
> Usually it's the free software people who are accused of wanting a
> massive overhaul of the existing copyright regime (and of course there
> are some people who do want that). But it sounds like you want some
> significant change to be made yourself...
>
> Am I misreading here?
Not entirely. I'm not actively advocating but it's within the realm
of possibility that a change of law could be in order. I'm really
trying to get honest communication going about the issues before
trying to leap to a conclusion.
But if you want an example of something to discuss in this area, I do
think the issue of "intent" is pretty darned subtle as a defense to
use in saying free software is never dumping. Stripped of the issue
of intent, free software and dumping look very similar to me. I'm
willing to hear coherent arguments as to why, in practice, they are
not, and so why the issues of market effect that apply to dumping
don't at least potentially apply to free software.
Certainly in practice I do not fear competition for people planning to
recover their software investment costs in the manner I'm doing so. I
only fear people who can afford to give away free stuff because I
can't afford to do that... and I can't figure out how anyone ever could.
This is the reason I fear that free software will take over, and why I
keep worrying prices will be driven to zero.
From: Thomas Bushnell, BSG
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <87vgba3g8e.fsf@becket.becket.net>
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> But if you want an example of something to discuss in this area, I do
> think the issue of "intent" is pretty darned subtle as a defense to
> use in saying free software is never dumping. Stripped of the issue
> of intent, free software and dumping look very similar to me. I'm
> willing to hear coherent arguments as to why, in practice, they are
> not, and so why the issues of market effect that apply to dumping
> don't at least potentially apply to free software.
Oh, it's easy. My look at intent was a weaker argument than the one I
should have given. (Though I do think it's still pretty important in
understanding the moral criteria, for which intent are usually very
important.)
If company A undercuts company B's price, we call this dumping when A
is selling below cost. If A is not selling below cost, or not much
below cost, it's just a price war--something that is a normal
mechanism of competition. Usually the only motives for this are to
gain market share or other secondary effects, in order to get more
profit than before A was sharing the marked with B, which is why I
focused on intent in my earlier post. As with all things in
microeconomics here, we of course are looking at marginal cost and
marginal price.
The marginal cost of a new copy of some software package is very low;
maybe at most a dollar or two. If it costs $100 or $100,000 to buy a
copy, however, for some commercial package, then it is being sold
*way* above cost. The person who sells for $10 a copy of a similar
piece of software (something that fills a similar niche) is not
dumping; he's simply getting a smaller profit.
Or, we can ask about selling the software itself rather than
individual copies. I don't know how much it would cost to buy
Microsoft Windows, perhaps you'd have to just buy Microsoft. In any
case, it's a pretty steep price. However, for most free software,
ownership and control is not actually for sale at all. If you want to
buy all the rights to GNU Emacs, you simply cannot--economically I
think we say the price is infinite.
Perhaps you want to ask about the *first* copy rather than the
marginal cost of the Nth copy. The marginal cost of the first copy of
some package software is certainly very large. But here *everyone* is
selling way below cost.
> Certainly in practice I do not fear competition for people planning to
> recover their software investment costs in the manner I'm doing so. I
> only fear people who can afford to give away free stuff because I
> can't afford to do that... and I can't figure out how anyone ever could.
> This is the reason I fear that free software will take over, and why I
> keep worrying prices will be driven to zero.
This is really surprising! When I was last looking for a programming
job, I got a pretty good one and only looked at free software shops.
There were some casually poked at firms, and then Cygnus and MIT. I
got decent offers from both, and chose MIT. In both cases I made it
clear that I wanted to work on free software, but I would do small
amounts of non-free software maintenance, and that it was very
important to me that whatever code I produce would be free software.
For Cygnus, this was all a given; for MIT it was a very common
attitude among developers at IS and I found ready agreement and no
serious obstacles.
Now most of these jobs don't make as much money--but they still
offered gobs more than the median US income and had a gajillion
ancillary intangible benefits to boot. And your statement was about
what you could afford, not about what would make you the maximum
amount of money conceivable for your line of work.
Thomas
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> Perhaps you want to ask about the *first* copy rather than the
> marginal cost of the Nth copy. The marginal cost of the first copy
> of some package software is certainly very large. But here
> *everyone* is selling way below cost.
Actually, many open source advocates recommend a business practice
which involves charging the first customer the entire cost of
development and then giving it away free afterward, with the main
benefit being that you get [presumably gratis] maintenance. This is
the net effect of charing my time to Company A in order to create or
modify some open-source software which is then subsequently
distributed under a GPL(like) license.
Most commercial organizations take the cost of development and
amortize across the total projected ship volume. If they don't
think that they will ship enough to at least break even, they drop
development and pursue more financially rewarding products.
So, it is not necessarily the case that a product shipping for
$100,000 per copy is being sold for way over cost. It depends on
the number of copies projected to be sold.
It also appears that you're applying economics inappropriately.
It's true in the physical world where material costs outweight all
other component costs that marginal revenue per item versus marginal
cost per item are relevant metrics for determining whether or not to
produce another widget.
But, that doesn't apply to the software world since the cost of
materials is essentially zero. In order to retro-fit standard
economic models to the software industry, it's necessary to amortize
development costs across all projected ship units. Otherwise, the
initial unit cost of much software is high enough to be essentially
infinite and will not, therefore, be produced for a lack of market.
-jon
--
------------------
Jon Allen Boone
········@delamancha.org
From: Thomas Bushnell, BSG
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <87ofh2mzv4.fsf@becket.becket.net>
Jon Allen Boone <········@delamancha.org> writes:
> So, it is not necessarily the case that a product shipping for
> $100,000 per copy is being sold for way over cost. It depends on
> the number of copies projected to be sold.
*Marginal* cost.
> But, that doesn't apply to the software world since the cost of
> materials is essentially zero. In order to retro-fit standard
> economic models to the software industry, it's necessary to amortize
> development costs across all projected ship units. Otherwise, the
> initial unit cost of much software is high enough to be essentially
> infinite and will not, therefore, be produced for a lack of market.
You have asserted an interesting theorem, but in fact, lots of free
software is produced. What follows from this? Let's see:
I'm not pushing to get rid of the copyright system. So supposing the
copyright system remains the way it is, and supposing that your
theorem is correct, then there are two kinds of software:
A) software that does get produced by the free software system,
B) software that does not, because nobody will pay the first-unit
fixed costs of development.
Two observations:
First, there have been many pronouncements that such-and-such a
product category is surely in segment (B), but for which soon enough
an excellent free software implementation was produced, showing the
category to be in segment (A). But perhaps there are some things that
will never move to segment (A); still, this should give pause about
further pronouncements that such-and-such a product category is surely
in segment (B).
Second, your statement suggests that segment (A) is empty, when in
fact, segment (A) is an impressively large segment.
So I think you are missing an analysis of why some things are in (A)
and others in (B).
When you say "it's necessary to amortize...", what do you mean then?
That no free software will ever get written?
Thomas
Thomas,
Perhaps before you respond to my posts you should consider them in
toto. They are not simply individual statements aggregated on a
common medium like so many RPMs on a Linux distro CD. If you had
considered these remarks in context - which you apparently did not -
you would realize that I am of the opinion that you are mis-applying
economic theory to the software market place, not that you don't
comprehend how economic theory is commonly applied.
You *obviously* disagree, but simply reasserting your position
without even providing a context for the reassertion [other than
*emphasis*] isn't conducive to actual discourse. I don't mind you
responding point by point, but at least do me the courtesy of
reading the whole first.
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> Jon Allen Boone <········@delamancha.org> writes:
>
>> So, it is not necessarily the case that a product shipping for
>> $100,000 per copy is being sold for way over cost. It depends on
>> the number of copies projected to be sold.
>
> *Marginal* cost.
I'd much prefer to agree to disagree over whether or not you are
correct in your application of economic theory, but if you can't at
least agree to that, then I suggest we just let it drop and pursue
more constructive lines of conversation.
>> But, that doesn't apply to the software world since the cost of
>> materials is essentially zero. In order to retro-fit standard
>> economic models to the software industry, it's necessary to amortize
>> development costs across all projected ship units. Otherwise, the
>> initial unit cost of much software is high enough to be essentially
>> infinite and will not, therefore, be produced for a lack of market.
>
> You have asserted an interesting theorem, but in fact, lots of free
> software is produced. What follows from this?
My comments had nothing to do with open source software (either
GPL or otherwise) as a unique category. In fact, given that the
primary motivator behind these categories is *not* money, it is not
surprising that economic theory has little to say [accurately] about
them. This is why ESR had to invent socio-economic theories in
order to begin to analyze them [and not necessarily correctly so.]
But, new economic theory is needed, in my opinion, to properly
understand the dynamics of software development even in the
commercial world. In a world where economic theory applies, the
goal is to make $$$$ - not to serve a political agenda. To the
extent that making $$$$ is not relevant, economic theory is not
relevant.
In any case, what I said, exactly was "the initial unit cost of
much software is high enough to be essentially infinite and will
not, therefore, be produced for a lack of market." Given that
software as a category includes programs commercial and
non-commercial, theoretical and actualized, my statement is not
refuted by an existence proof of any particular category of
software. Indeed, to argue that *no* software would be produced is
ridiculous as obviously, I wouldn't be posting here if it weren't
for Gnus. So why assume I'm making a ridiculous argument?
> I'm not pushing to get rid of the copyright system. So supposing
> the copyright system remains the way it is, and supposing that your
> theorem is correct, then there are two kinds of software:
>
> A) software that does get produced by the free software system,
>
> B) software that does not, because nobody will pay the first-unit
> fixed costs of development.
Indeed, although a slight clarification is in order. Segment A
should be defined as:
A) software that does get produced
since it says nothing about whether or not the code is distributed
under any particular licensing arrangement. Not all open source
software is produced by the model I was referring to, nor do all
open source supporters advocate that model for software
development. Also, there is nothing about that segment that
precludes commercial software.
I have an existence proof of a non-open-source system which was
produced at the expense of the first customer and then re-sold with
minor modifications to other customers later [implying significant
profit for the vendor in question.] And, in case you haven't given
up yet, I advocated to the customer that they *at least* obtain
source rights so that they could later modify the system themselves
[or hire another contractor to do so] if they didn't outright cancel
the contract.
> Two observations:
>
> First, there have been many pronouncements that such-and-such a
> product category is surely in segment (B), but for which soon enough
> an excellent free software implementation was produced, showing the
> category to be in segment (A). But perhaps there are some things
> that will never move to segment (A); still, this should give pause
> about further pronouncements that such-and-such a product category
> is surely in segment (B).
I made no such claims. I'm not foolish enough to think that I can
predict the membership of sets which are infinite in size and not
well defined. Indeed, the primary differentiator is itself subject
to the ravages of time, Moore's law and the limitations of our
understanding of the problem spaces, meaning that any prediction in
either category beyond an existence proof for category A would be
very *unlikely* to be true.
> Second, your statement suggests that segment (A) is empty, when in
> fact, segment (A) is an impressively large segment.
On the contrary, your misunderstanding of what I wrote implies
that segment A is empty. As someone who has used both open source
and FSF-brand Free Software for over a decade, I'm quite aware of
it's existence.
You do yourself a disservice by not giving my thought more
consideration...
> So I think you are missing an analysis of why some things are in
> (A) and others in (B).
Even given your misunderstanding of what I wrote, the analysis was
contained in the portion you quoted. Some things are in segment A
because people are motivated to write open-source software. Some
things are in segment B because they cost too much [today] to
produce at initial unit cost prices. If the unit cost drops low
enough, they will potentially materialize as members of segment A.
Nothing I wrote implied or stated that these categories are static
for all time. Why did you assume it was so?
> When you say "it's necessary to amortize...", what do you mean then?
Given that economic theory is the study of how to make $$$ in the
existing [or potential] socio-political environment, economic theory
fails to address motivators beyond making $$$. Consequently, the
consideration that goes into producing software from an economic
perspective is how to recover the cost of development and make an
adequate profit to offset the opportunity cost of not investing your
$$$ into another, more lucrative venture.
Thus, the need for a market. Unless you can find a market of 1
willing to support the cost of developing the initial version of any
particular product, then economic theory indicates that it won't get
produced, as the $$$ necessary will get redistributed to another,
more economically worthy product.
> That no free software will ever get written?
Please. You're more intelligent than this. If you're going to
make up things to put in my mouth, at least try to make me look
smarter than I am, as you'll do yourself more credit by giving me
the benefit of the doubt. Or in Lisp:
(let ((idiot-boone (blathering-idiot-p 'boone)))
(when (condescending-p 'thomas)
(if (idiot-boone)
(increase-esteem 'thomas (random-plus-or-minus x))
(decrease-esteem 'thomas (* -1 (random x))))))
Understand? I'm still a CL newbie, so the above code may be poorly
written or even totally bogus...in any case, I deserve more respect
than you've given me in your response.
-jon
--
------------------
Jon Allen Boone
········@delamancha.org
From: Thomas Bushnell, BSG
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <87wuvqy2zp.fsf@becket.becket.net>
Jon Allen Boone <········@delamancha.org> writes:
> In any case, what I said, exactly was "the initial unit cost of
> much software is high enough to be essentially infinite and will
> not, therefore, be produced for a lack of market." Given that
> software as a category includes programs commercial and
> non-commercial, theoretical and actualized, my statement is not
> refuted by an existence proof of any particular category of
> software.
Right, so then *some* software-- "much software"?--is in category B,
permanently doomed to never be produced as free software.
In which case, Kent should be very happy! Because he can just spend
his time in that area, and be completely serenly confident that free
software will never make inroads.
> Even given your misunderstanding of what I wrote, the analysis was
> contained in the portion you quoted. Some things are in segment A
> because people are motivated to write open-source software. Some
> things are in segment B because they cost too much [today] to
> produce at initial unit cost prices. If the unit cost drops low
> enough, they will potentially materialize as members of segment A.
> Nothing I wrote implied or stated that these categories are static
> for all time. Why did you assume it was so?
Ok, then that's great! So what is the point of it, in the context of
the discussion with Kent?
> Given that economic theory is the study of how to make $$$ in the
> existing [or potential] socio-political environment, economic theory
> fails to address motivators beyond making $$$.
I believe you have confused the study of economics with the study of
business...
> Thus, the need for a market. Unless you can find a market of 1
> willing to support the cost of developing the initial version of any
> particular product, then economic theory indicates that it won't get
> produced, as the $$$ necessary will get redistributed to another,
> more economically worthy product.
Yes, but so? What interesting conclusions follow from this?
From: Hartmann Schaffer
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <3ca93b62@news.sentex.net>
In article <···············@shell01.theworld.com>,
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> ...
> And Google may put librarians out of business, indeed, computers and robots
> may put a lot of low-end labor out of business, but whether the world will
> be better with those people having no jobs is quite open to question.
> If there's one thing more than any other that troubles me ethically about
> computer science today it's the degree to which it is losing people jobs.
> And if it doesn't trouble you, it should.
i think you are looking at the problem the wrong way. essentially hat
you are saying is that computer science (or technology in general)
enables us to produce more with the same effort / cost or the same
with less effort / cost, something i would consider a benefit under
any circumstances. how the benefit is distributed is a plitical or
societal decision. but without making the technology available, the
society doesn't even have a choice.
would you be troubled by tool manufacturing (hammers, knives), because
some of the tools are misused to kill people?
> ...
hs
--
don't use malice as an explanation when stupidity suffices
From a slightly more practical perspective, the
presence of Free software Common Lisp implementations
means that those implementations may be included
in Linux distributions, and thus reach a very large audience.
Python and Perl (and to some extent, Scheme) derive most
of their popularity from the _fact_ they are just sitting there waiting
to be used by anyone who pays a few quid for a linux distro cd.
Arguably, lots of people write in C/C++ too (even when they really, really
shouldn't be :-) ) because they are just sitting there ready to use.
Recent distros now include clisp set up in a usable fashion - and lo, the
number of CL related posts on /., k5, etc, have noticeably increased
over the past while.
I suppose it depends on whether you are more concerned about
the perpetuation of common-lisp-the-language, or common lisp vendors.
The presence of free software cl implementations decouples the two
concerns.
--
Don't eat yellow snow.
I think that David made a few mistakes here. I /primarily/ [but
not exclusively] use CLISP for my CL development work, so please
keep that in mind.
David Golden <············@bprnaserr.arg> writes:
> From a slightly more practical perspective, the presence of Free
> software Common Lisp implementations means that those
> implementations may be included in Linux distributions, and thus
> reach a very large audience.
Many non-free programs (such as IBM's ViaVoice) are included on
Linux distributions from major vendors such as RedHat and Mandrake.
In some cases these programs *are* gratis [for personal use], even
though they are proprietary in nature. It seems likely that ACL or
LispWorks could be bundled with these distros w/out any changes to
their existing form...
Further, it would reach an even wider audience if Franz or Xanalys
were to bundle their software with each new WindowsXP machine sold
by the major PC vendors [Compaq, Dell, HP, IBM, etc.]. After all,
they already bundle tons of useless [to me] programs - why not
bundle a programming language?
> Python and Perl (and to some extent, Scheme) derive most of their
> popularity from the _fact_ they are just sitting there waiting to be
> used by anyone who pays a few quid for a linux distro cd. Arguably,
> lots of people write in C/C++ too (even when they really, really
> shouldn't be :-) ) because they are just sitting there ready to use.
Point 1: Perl's popularity has nothing to do with it "being there."
I've been using Perl since 1990 and I can assure you that only in
recent years [last 3 or so] have I used Perl "because it's there".
And by this what I mean is that I haven't gone to the trouble of
downloading the latest version and installing it. And you know why?
Because the distros make it too difficult to do w/out wasting disk
space, because *they* depend on their version for their various RPMs
and if I upgrade Perl, I don't *want* the older version on my
machine anymore.
In fact, my intuition [certainly not backed by any quantifiable
data] is that most Perl installations exist because someone went to
the trouble to ensure that it was installed - not because it
happened to be included in the distro. And it's existence on my
Windows machines doesn't have anything to do with it's having been
shipped that way.
Point 2: Python is often there, but un-used by anyone other than
the distro makers.
On the other hand, I don't use Python and it is only installed on
my system because the *distro* uses it for administrative purposes.
If I could avoid installing it, I would. And, of course, with the
distro vendors always being one release (or more) behind the latest
source, most people using Python on Linux distros probably aren't
even using Python2! *sigh*
Point 3: Windows ships with no programming languages.
It is highly likely that most programmers on the PC platform work
under Windows. Yet, this platform ships with *no* programming
languages. In fact, most of them appear to shell out non-trivial
amounts of $$$ to obtain the IDEs that they do use, despite the fact
that there are plenty of open source alternatives [including Perl].
Point 4: Popularity is a bad metric for determining whether or not
you are on the right track.
Unless your goal is to be popular, popularity is a poor measure of
success. There are better arguments for open source software.
Please use them.
> Recent distros now include clisp set up in a usable fashion - and
> lo, the number of CL related posts on /., k5, etc, have noticeably
> increased over the past while.
Ironically, I'm using RedHat 7.2 and I use clisp - but not because
it came with the distro. I went to the trouble of finding it,
downloading the source and installing it. Same for CMUCL, LispWorks
and ACL.
> I suppose it depends on whether you are more concerned about the
> perpetuation of common-lisp-the-language, or common lisp vendors.
> The presence of free software cl implementations decouples the two
> concerns.
Perpetuation of Common Lisp as a viable platform for general
purpose computing would appear to be in serious jeopardy. There are
many reasons for this, but the most important thing that you can do
ensure that it survives is to *use* Common Lisp for your programming
whenever you can. If enough people use it [i.e. if there is a
market for it], then it will continue to exist. Otherwise, it will
disappear.
Now, arguing that open source CL implementation are a necessary
pre-condition for perpetuating CL as a general purpose programming
language is the same thing as saying the following:
1. There is no longer a market for CL as a general purpose
programming platform
2. In order to create a market, we need a loss leader to generate
interest.
By all appearances [and I would not expect them to either deny or
confirm this speculation], it appears to me that the commercial
vendors agree with your two points above, which is why they both
offer gratis versions for Linux/Windows. But, notice that they've
addressed both of your points w/out using the open source model to
do so. And they could take a tip from you regarding pre-packaging
on Linux distros to do an even better job.
Why Do Programmers Choose A Language?
Not to beat this already made point to death, but programmers pick
languages to solve problems. This choice is *always* made within a
framework of constraints which include $$$, customer requirements,
education/experience of the programmer, community affiliations,
expressive power of the language, presence of an IDE, advanced tools
for development and debugging, etc. I'll give them the benefit of
the doubt and say that they always *try* to pick an optimal
solution. So, if they aren't picking CL it's because it doesn't
appear to be optimal.
Open Source CL implementations only address a few of these
concerns and seem to be particularly lacking in the areas of
tools for development including a graphical Type Browser and a
graphical Debugger.
Another issue that affects the current open source
implementations, in my opinion, is that there are too many of them.
In a small market that can barely support two commercial vendors,
how can there reasonably be room for 4 or more open source
implementation projects? How will these open source implementations
ever get enough developer mind-share to reach the current level of
the commercial vendors, let alone aspire to something Genera-like?
Why Open Source Software Might Hurt, Rather Than Help
There are those who claim that the existence of "good" open source
software solutions prevents the market from investing in "better"
software solutions. This is in tune with Kent's "enough better"
point from a previous post.
If you want to read about it ad nauseum, you can check your
nearest Linux Kernel Mailing List archive and follow the various and
sundry threads involving Larry McVoy and his BitKeeper product. His
claim is that the existing open source SCS "solutions" suck because
it's too hard to make a good one if you're not pulling down $$$ to
do so. The lack of a BitKeeper-quality open source SCS system is
his "proof of [lack of] existence."
Now, since the open source CL environments are no better than
second-best and there are already gratis implementations available
from the commercial vendors, one could reasonably conclude that
their existence is more of a hindrance than an assistance in
spreading the "Gut Spiel" of CL. This seems particularly true if
the first exposure programmers coming from a Microsoft C/C++/C#/Java
world have to CL are the open-source versions...
Personally, coming from a gcc/gdb/emacs background, I miss the
graphical tools for development / debugging more...
-jon
--
------------------
Jon Allen Boone
········@delamancha.org
IPmonger <········@delamancha.org> writes:
> Another issue that affects the current open source
> implementations, in my opinion, is that there are too many of them.
> In a small market that can barely support two commercial vendors,
> how can there reasonably be room for 4 or more open source
> implementation projects? How will these open source implementations
> ever get enough developer mind-share to reach the current level of
> the commercial vendors, let alone aspire to something Genera-like?
SBCL forked from the CMUCL project about three years ago. The present
SBCL developers - I think there are about four or five people who
regularly send patches or make commits - were mostly not previously
active CMUCL developers. In that particular case, another CL
implelentation seems to have actually _increased_ the developer pool.
There are also many people subscribed to the mailing lists of
both projects, so patches submitted for one implementation very often
end up on the other too.
-dan
--
http://ww.telent.net/cliki/ - Link farm for free CL-on-Unix resources
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> wrote in message news:<··················@shell01.TheWorld.com>...
> I changed the subject line to something that at least invites on-topic
> discussion rather than being an ad hominem bit of randomness.
>
> ·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> First, there is some illusion here that we are a community. To the
> extent that it's meaningful to indulge that community, one thing
> that's worthwhile is to acknowledge the legitimate positions of those
> in the community. I don't see a lot of that going on from the free
> software community. It's ironic because the free software movement
> seems to be founded in a lot of words about idealistic things like
> freedoms and rights, which presumably are intended to serve both
> individuals and communities. Yet when people raise legitimate issues
> that concern both individuals and communities, the free software
> people are the first to hide behind mechanism and say that anyone not
> living up to their mechanism "deserves" to lose. I think such
> dismissive words are very injurious to any sense of community.
It seems unfair to pick and choose offensive individual "free software
people" and then use their individual failings to criticize "free
software people" collectively. How would you respond to "they like to
say that they're producing value, but the commercial software people
are the first to try to use bogus patents to suppress legitimate
alternatives"? Or "awfully prone to using gratuitous nonstandardness
to lock in their customers?" (And in case anyone else misses the
point, I do realize that you've argued against bogus software patents
in this forum, and that your standardization work on ANSI CL was done
while you were working at a commercial software firm.)
(Also as long as I'm on the subject of unfairness in this extended
thread, I'd like to apologize for describing KMP's earlier remarks
about free software as "attacking free software". As he wrote in
e-mail, "to say 'ouch' is not to attack". I probably contributed to
the tension level, pointlessly, by using an inappropriate word. Oops.)
Also -- partly to KMP but mostly to the discussion in general -- I
still think that saying "free software" when you mean "GNU software"
is just weird. RMS is deservedly influential, but there are limits.
The word has preexisting meanings (like libre and gratis). Insisting
on an idiosyncratic definition which excludes libre-and-gratis
software like Perl, *BSD, CMU CL and SBCL, X, TeX, sendmail, and so
forth doesn't help communication.
> I think even most capitalists reject the theory that
> "pure capitalism" is good, since most believe that you can't allow
> hospitals to charge a "market rate" for lifesaving drugs, most agree
> that you can't allow a monopoly, etc.
Influential conservatives and liberals in practice tend to solemnly
support zoning and building code regulations forbidding trailer parks
and other minimal housing solutions (prefab, many residents in a small
building, etc.), the more thoroughly the better. Sometimes it seems as
though principles (property rights? opposition to policies which
disproportionately impact the poor?) aren't attached very firmly, or
at least aren't very carefully thought out and applied.
Also, even when people are confident of their principles, as in the
case of the legal restrictions on drug prices, their understanding of
the actual consequences of policies may be flawed. In other cases of
price controls, even people making decisions based on naked
self-interest, without too many principles to confuse the issue, have
supported them based on mistaken predictions of the consequences.
(E.g., rent controls in various times and places, and gas price
controls in the USA in the 1970s.) People who expected the price to be
effectively legislated down without thinking about the effects on
supply and demand were unrealistically enthusiastic. Of course, some
people were still enthusiastic even after seeing the actual effects --
but not as many as had been enthusiastic before.
> Do vendors "deserve" to go out of business if they can't compete? I
> really don't think so. I think this about as much as I think people
> deserve to die when they get sick.
Is a producer entitled to his customers after they've found an
alternative they prefer? When a vacuum tube manufacturer can't
compete, is switching over to some other kind of work -- with or
without going out of business -- really analogous to dying? What about
an honest laborer complaining about the cutthroat competition -- from
laborers poorer than him? If he lowers himself to their income level,
is that analogous to dying? (And if he finds a way to solve the
problem by stopping them from competing, where does that leave them,
and the customers who preferred them? Or does that matter? Are
transistor manufacturers, new immigrants, free software authors, and
customers properly analogous to the disease organisms which are
damaged when the patient is cured?)
Neither the vacuum tube situation nor the "it's unfair that those
immigrants work 70 hour weeks and there oughtta be a law" situation
justifies gloating by the competition, at least if the displaced
competition isn't somehow obnoxious. But I think the actual level of
gloating (whether by transistor manufacturers, by immigrant bakers
before 1900 or so, or by free software authors) is actually pretty
low. (and certainly low enough that it shouldn't affect policy
decisions!)
Meanwhile, even as you find the gloating disturbing, there's an
attitude on the anti-free-software side which I find to be perhaps
just as disturbing. You seem to be using the kind of language which is
generally used -- rather effectively! -- to support legal restrictions
on customers to the benefit of producers in general, or on some
classes of producers to the benefit of other classes of producers. I
agree that economic changes cause pain, but the analogies and analysis
you're using -- life is better than sickness! -- tend to support silly
results, like throwing enormous amounts of good money after bad to
keep vacuum tube manufacturers (hypothetically) or dairy farmers (in
reality) in business after their investment is no longer a good fit to
what their customers want.
Solemn appeals to the importance of ameliorating the harshness of the
market -- for the public good, of course! but in practice, somehow
focusing on special policies for special interests -- are correlated
with some pretty bogus policies. In most countries farm policy and
trade policy are full of classic examples. In both cases, you can make
ringing speeches or heartfelt editorials for policies to protect the
special interests of the producers. (Especially for trade policy,
where your listeners aren't sure how to compare the costs to the
benefits, but can reason that since your trade barriers harm other
countries, logically they must therefore benefit your country.:-) But
standard microeconomic theory suggests the public cost (to consumers)
is substantially greater than the special interest benefit to the
producers. (And standard public choice theory suggests that the bogus
policies tend to happen anyway, because producers tend to be a more
concentrated group than consumers, and organizing effective lobbying
for a concentrated special interest is easier than organizing
effective lobbying for a diffuse interest or the general interest.)
If you really want to argue the case, I wish you'd try harder to
differentiate yourself from classic good-money-after-bad
protect-the-producer lobbyist scams. If you don't, it should be
setting off mental alarm bells in anyone who knows something about
special interest policies. In particular, I wish you'd try to add up
the benefits *and* the costs. "Producers are being harmed!" Yes. "The
market is producing a suboptimal result!" Yes. But are producers being
harmed as much as the customers are benefitting? (Take your choice of
total dollar harm or some sort of estimated utilitarian harm, e.g.
where dollars tend to be worth more to people who have fewer of them.
But at least say enough about it that we can be convinced that this
isn't a case of transistors displacing vacuum tubes to great public
benefit.) And since historically non-market solutions *also* produce
suboptimal results, do we have a realistic hope of policy innovations
working better than letting the market continue on its unmerry
suboptimal way? (Take your choice again, either by appealing to the
historical public benefits actually observed in practice from
government bodies replacing market mechanisms with non-market
mechanisms (e.g. in telecomm, with non-market laws, discretionary
regulation, and special legal status for politically powerful
producers), or by making some concrete suggestions for how things
would be different this time.)
(Many would say that this already doesn't belong in comp.lang.lisp. If
it settles down to a disagreement about what policy consequences might
be, it might become clearer where it *does* belong. (sci.econ?
talk.politics.foo? some sort of free software forum?) But for now I'm
not sure where it does belong, so I'll just leave it here and see how
the discussion goes.)
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <3226724912887687@naggum.net>
* William Newman
| Also -- partly to KMP but mostly to the discussion in general -- I still
| think that saying "free software" when you mean "GNU software" is just
| weird. RMS is deservedly influential, but there are limits. The word has
| preexisting meanings (like libre and gratis). Insisting on an
| idiosyncratic definition which excludes libre-and-gratis software like
| Perl, *BSD, CMU CL and SBCL, X, TeX, sendmail, and so forth doesn't help
| communication.
This is actually quite important. The Free Software Foundation has
garned sufficient "mind share" that some wanted to counter-balance it
with "Open Source" and now we have sort of a lack of terminology for
stuff that is available in source form under various liberal and
draconian licenses.
| If you really want to argue the case, I wish you'd try harder to
| differentiate yourself from classic good-money-after-bad
| protect-the-producer lobbyist scams.
Please! Just because you want to pigeon-hole someone does not mean that
they are doing anything of their own to deserve it. This is just like
the annoying reaction to "free bread" that it somehow had to be a
coercively tax-funded government program. Sheehs, guys.
| If you don't, it should be setting off mental alarm bells in anyone who
| knows something about special interest policies.
Acting on alarm bells is different from hearing them.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
From: Tim Moore
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <a8acvb$ssv$0@216.39.145.192>
On Mon, 1 Apr 2002 11:42:14 GMT, Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> wrote:
>
>It seems to me pretty clear that what started this discussion is that
>some remarkably innovative tools have died due to specific problems
>that are directly traceable both to aspects of capitalism (failure to
>deal with monopolies) and free software (failure to deal with price
>shortfalls that cannot sustain a reasonably priced organization). I
>don't think any of these are good, and I don't see any reason that we
>should be attacking each other over these facts as if a statement of
>fact on these matters was an attack on someone's person.
Perhaps I'm revealing my laziness and encroaching old age, or perhaps
this thread has gone too long, but I can't recall what you're talking
about. Do you mean tools for Lisp or written in Lisp, or
some other software? I'm not attacking you over the facts, but if
we're going to stipulate to facts I'd like to be on the same page as you.
>So maybe both groups exclude some people accidentally. Here's my
>problem with the debate:
>
>The fact is that there _is_ presently a community of people making
>commercial software. Perhaps if there were not, we'd have people
>inventing "paid software" as an alternative in order to add balance
>instead of vice versa. But we have the world we have now. And
>whatever world we propose, I thin it is antisocial PER SE to not care
>what happens to the people who have invested their time and energy in
>good faith under the existing system.
Do you grant that free software producers have their own best
interests in mind? Should they subsume those to the interests of some
random other people who happen to "be there first?"
>
>When I was young, I used to hear a lot of glee from people who had
>seen other businesses go out of business or who saw this or that
>person laid off, as if this just made the world better. But as time
I agree that that attitude is rude.
>I personally don't like the role of being the voice of "no free software"
>but I feel forced into it out of a need to establish balance against
>the "no commercial software" forces. I think it's fair to point out
The problem I have with your anti-free software posts is the
assumption that presenting an unbalanced viewpoint leads to balance
when actually it just damages your own credibility. I know your
writing skill and I know that you're capable of presenting a reasonable
case for commercial vs. free software, but you don't do that; you
instead throw out assertions that are just off the wall. Of course
we're all "volunteers" here and I can't demand how you write or how
you spend your time, but I can't imagine that you enjoy protracted
flame wars.
Tim
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <3226683753575092@naggum.net>
* Tim Moore
| The problem I have with your anti-free software posts is the assumption
| that presenting an unbalanced viewpoint leads to balance when actually it
| just damages your own credibility. I know your writing skill and I know
| that you're capable of presenting a reasonable case for commercial
| vs. free software, but you don't do that; you instead throw out
| assertions that are just off the wall. Of course we're all "volunteers"
| here and I can't demand how you write or how you spend your time, but I
| can't imagine that you enjoy protracted flame wars.
At issue is a different mind-set. People who do not have the training to
work with multiple mind-sets, see everything from the only one they have,
and things fail to make sense to them. Being able to zoom out of your
own mind-set and see that you had to acquire it somehow, from somewhere,
means that you will be able to appreciate what other people see and how
they value it. Warning: if you _do_ get used to working with multiple
mind-sets, idiots will begin to _seriously_ annoy you, because you
suspend your own mind-set in order find out under which conditions what
some other person has said may make sense, and wasting your time on
people whose brainpower is so severely underutilized that there _are_ no
conditions under which all of their ignorant "opinions" and arrogant
attitudes to boo can make sense at the same time, and such waste is done
in good will in order to understand some moron who does not bother to use
his own brain, and thus is not worth the use of yours. It takes time to
figure this out. The morons _really_ hate it when you figure them out,
but the waste that you went through granting good-will and a desire to
understand the moron _could_ have been spent on thinking human beings.
To people who have only their own mind-set and are not conscious of how
they got to it, there is no waste of time, because they think "wrong"
long before they understand what is going on. Intelligence is usually a
great time-saver, but in this particular case, stupidity provides by far
the quickest short-cut from observation to conclusion.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
······@sea-tmoore-l.dotcast.com (Tim Moore) writes:
> On Mon, 1 Apr 2002 11:42:14 GMT, Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> wrote:
> >
> >It seems to me pretty clear that what started this discussion is that
> >some remarkably innovative tools have died due to specific problems
> >that are directly traceable both to aspects of capitalism (failure to
> >deal with monopolies) and free software (failure to deal with price
> >shortfalls that cannot sustain a reasonably priced organization). I
> >don't think any of these are good, and I don't see any reason that we
> >should be attacking each other over these facts as if a statement of
> >fact on these matters was an attack on someone's person.
>
> Perhaps I'm revealing my laziness and encroaching old age, or perhaps
> this thread has gone too long, but I can't recall what you're talking
> about. Do you mean tools for Lisp or written in Lisp, or
> some other software? I'm not attacking you over the facts, but if
> we're going to stipulate to facts I'd like to be on the same page as you.
Well, the discussion started with a discussion of Symbolics computers
and how they went away. They went away due to market forces. But then
later I see claims like "if a company can't be competitive, it
deserves to go out of business". There is maybe abstract economic theory
that says this, but it's the same economic theory that says "If an animal or
person can't produce for its respective society, it deserves to die."
All other things being equal, I'd like to see a world where no one even had
to compete to survive, but I don't see that coming soon. In the meantime,
we have occasional discussions of social engineering, but it would be a lot
more civil if people didn't get all crusty about it. So, for example, just
leaving all these charged words like "hoard" and "deserve" out of things
seems like a good way to start.
> Do you grant that free software producers have their own best
> interests in mind? Should they subsume those to the interests of some
> random other people who happen to "be there first?"
I have never questioned the good intent of free software producers. Just
to the contrary, it is my biggest fear that people of good intent will fail
to consider the consequences of their actions exactly because they think
good intent will carry the day.
Consider the "good intent" of the large number of people who sent all
manner of canned goods or gave all manner of blood to the 9/11 victims.
Much more than was needed. Vast quantities of blood were collected and
destroyed because there was no way to use it. Meanwhile other charities
went unattended to.
Intent does not play into my concern on this matter. (I do believe a few
people who are quite selfish in the matter, SURELY there must be selfish and
greedy people on both sides. My quest is not to stamp out bad intent. My
quest is to make sure most people are alert and thinking and caring and not
just on one big gigantic autopilot.)
> The problem I have with your anti-free software posts is the
> assumption that presenting an unbalanced viewpoint leads to balance
> when actually it just damages your own credibility.
I don't think I've made statements that I can't support in any proportion
greater than I do in any other domain I speak on. That is, we all misspeak
or exaggerate from time to time.
We all offer opinion. I don't object to opinion. I object to opinion
offered as fact. I came from a newspaper background, and in that
venue I was taught that analysis should be labeled analysis and news
labeled news. It's not a bad thing to have either, but it's a bad
thing to not know which you are reading.
In particular, I do not try to make such statements in support of my
arguments and will happily correct any impression that I have given that
fails to separate fact from analysis.
Your turn to be specific if you want to claim I've said something that
lessens my credibility other than mere analysis with which you might
not agree. Maybe I even have--I'm not trying to put you on the spot.
I just can't defend myself nor can I retract anything absent you being
specific.
I also sometimes personalize this. You are hurting "me" by your
actions. But I do not do this as if the community should make an
exception for me personally. I do this in order to put a face on
those actions, which seem all too easy to do if you don't know who you
are hurting. I also do this in order to establish a credential, that
is, that I have spent time trying to personally to determine what
would be a successful business in this arena and I know what obstacles
I have to consider, and "free software" is high on the list of
obstacles in a number of directions. I don't say this as an abstract,
I say this from the experience of having to figure out what products I
can make and how I should price them. I want not just me but "people
like I coincidentally happen to be being" to be able to survive in
business, and not because I happen to coincidentally be being such a
person... It's hard to defend that because it my involvement necessarily
taints it. But my involvement is also what happens to inform my opinion
that there is something amiss, and if no one with a direct experience were
to weigh in, it seems to me that we would be worse off for it. So I
speak partly out of a sense of obligation to endure the attacks that
seem inevitably come from people confusing my motive in that case.
Kent M Pitman wrote:
> I have spent time trying to personally to determine what
> would be a successful business in this arena and I know what obstacles
> I have to consider, and "free software" is high on the list of
> obstacles in a number of directions.
So, essentially, the existence of free software stops you using
a particular business model?
A better response would be "Tough luck, change your business model",
open source software is not going to go away (except, just maybe, in the
USA and possibly parts of Europe, if Microsoft manage to bribe enough
people...).
Either way. the beneficial effects of open-source software on the costs to
the user of computing in Europe, India, China and Brazil will not continue
to be ignored -
with my "society at large" hat on - who mourns, other than the proprietary
software vendors, if overpaid proprietary software vendors are no longer
overpaid? (remember that computer companies' image, with
fast cars and so on, is not usually condusive to garnering public sympathy)
Some users are becoming wise to the idea that buying closed-source
solutions is like buying a car with the bonnet welded shut, and that
argument alone, regardless of arguments based on costs, has been enough
to sway many people to open-source solutions in other fields.
--
Don't eat yellow snow.
From: Thomas Bushnell, BSG
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <877knq6ci9.fsf@becket.becket.net>
David Golden <············@bprnaserr.arg> writes:
> Some users are becoming wise to the idea that buying closed-source
> solutions is like buying a car with the bonnet welded shut, and that
> argument alone, regardless of arguments based on costs, has been enough
> to sway many people to open-source solutions in other fields.
One day (sometime in the early 1990s) the National Security Agency
called up Richard Stallman on the phone. Really! I kid you not.
They (whichever official called, apparently reasonbly high ranking)
wanted to know what they could do to help out the FSF. Unfortunately,
there are many restrictions and controls on their work (of course),
and there was little they could do beyond offering moral support.
But why did they call? Because free software is very attractive to
the "national security community". They know that security through
obscurity is awful, and they were impressed by the fact that the hood
of the free software car was wide open for the world to see.
Thomas
Thomas,
I appreciate the integrity you show for the facts by admitting:
> One day (sometime in the early 1990s) the National Security Agency
> called up Richard Stallman on the phone. Really! I kid you not.
> They (whichever official called, apparently reasonbly high ranking)
> wanted to know what they could do to help out the FSF.
> Unfortunately, there are many restrictions and controls on their
> work (of course), and there was little they could do beyond offering
> moral support.
>
> But why did they call? Because free software is very attractive to
> the "national security community". They know that security through
> obscurity is awful, and they were impressed by the fact that the
> hood of the free software car was wide open for the world to see.
However, I'm sure you appreciate the following facts:
1. NSA has public-face parts of the agency (Information Assurance
Research Office, National Computer Security Center) involved in
Computer Security issues.
2. NSA has a non-public-face part of the agency involved in
cryptanalysis.
3. Many people confuse these two faces.
It would be better to get a clarification from RMS regarding which
part of NSA the contact was from, as "moral support" from the
non-public-face part of NSA isn't always as resounding an
endorsement as one might think at first, especially given that the
contact was in the early 1990s [when NSA's non-public-face was
apparently fighting tooth and nail to prevent exportation of strong
crypto].
-jon
--
------------------
Jon Allen Boone
········@delamancha.org
From: Thomas Bushnell, BSG
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <87n0wm3few.fsf@becket.becket.net>
Jon Allen Boone <········@delamancha.org> writes:
> However, I'm sure you appreciate the following facts:
>
> 1. NSA has public-face parts of the agency (Information Assurance
> Research Office, National Computer Security Center) involved in
> Computer Security issues.
>
> 2. NSA has a non-public-face part of the agency involved in
> cryptanalysis.
>
> 3. Many people confuse these two faces.
>
> It would be better to get a clarification from RMS regarding which
> part of NSA the contact was from, as "moral support" from the
> non-public-face part of NSA isn't always as resounding an
> endorsement as one might think at first, especially given that the
> contact was in the early 1990s [when NSA's non-public-face was
> apparently fighting tooth and nail to prevent exportation of strong
> crypto].
I can't recall which, but I'm pretty sure it was camp (1). They were
interested in secure systems, not codes.
But it's a long time ago, and it didn't mean much in the large scheme
of things. I mentioned it only because it was a kind of ally in the
strangest places sort of story.
Thomas
From: Tim Moore
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <a8b1ol$bmr$0@216.39.145.192>
On Mon, 1 Apr 2002 23:42:18 GMT, Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> wrote:
>······@sea-tmoore-l.dotcast.com (Tim Moore) writes:
>
>> On Mon, 1 Apr 2002 11:42:14 GMT, Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >It seems to me pretty clear that what started this discussion is that
>> >some remarkably innovative tools have died due to specific problems
>> >that are directly traceable both to aspects of capitalism (failure to
>> >deal with monopolies) and free software (failure to deal with price
>> >shortfalls that cannot sustain a reasonably priced organization). I
>> Perhaps I'm revealing my laziness and encroaching old age, or perhaps
>> this thread has gone too long, but I can't recall what you're talking
>> about. Do you mean tools for Lisp or written in Lisp, or
>> some other software? I'm not attacking you over the facts, but if
>> we're going to stipulate to facts I'd like to be on the same page as you.
>
>Well, the discussion started with a discussion of Symbolics computers
>and how they went away. They went away due to market forces. But then
>later I see claims like "if a company can't be competitive, it
>deserves to go out of business". There is maybe abstract economic theory
I was wondering whether you were referring to Symbolics, but I
couldn't credit it given what I know about that company's demise. The
paragraph I quote above suggests that "innovative software" i.e.,
Symbolics', died due to "problems that are directably traceable both
to aspects of ... capitalism and ... free software", but there was no
free software alternative to Symbolics software at the time the
company headed south (can we agree that was in the early 90s?).
Perhaps one could make an extreme stretch and assert that GNU emacs,
gcc and gdb had a role, but gcc and gdb hadn't exactly come into its
own yet as replacements for the closed source Unix replacements, and a
text editor does not a development environment make. I think its
entirely accurate to say that Symbolics died due to the "aspect of
capitalism" known as competition, competition with Unix workstation
vendors and the stock hardware Lisp vendors, competition for customers
in a market that was saturated and rapidly collapsing.
It appears that you're trying to make a more general statement about
the bad things that result from a company dying and, lacking an
example of free software causing this, you've put forward an example caused
by conventional market pressure and are using it to illustrate the
dangers of free software because it causes price pressure too. I'd
file that under "cheap rhetorical trick." :)
>> Do you grant that free software producers have their own best
>> interests in mind? Should they subsume those to the interests of some
>> random other people who happen to "be there first?"
>
>I have never questioned the good intent of free software producers. Just
>to the contrary, it is my biggest fear that people of good intent will fail
>to consider the consequences of their actions exactly because they think
>good intent will carry the day.
Hmm, I'm not saying anything about "good intent;" quite the opposite.
I said "own best interests," which is often quite different from what
one would call "good intent."
>> The problem I have with your anti-free software posts is the
>> assumption that presenting an unbalanced viewpoint leads to balance
>> when actually it just damages your own credibility.
>
>I don't think I've made statements that I can't support in any proportion
>greater than I do in any other domain I speak on. That is, we all misspeak
>or exaggerate from time to time.
>
>We all offer opinion. I don't object to opinion. I object to opinion
>offered as fact. I came from a newspaper background, and in that
>venue I was taught that analysis should be labeled analysis and news
>labeled news. It's not a bad thing to have either, but it's a bad
>thing to not know which you are reading.
>
>In particular, I do not try to make such statements in support of my
>arguments and will happily correct any impression that I have given that
>fails to separate fact from analysis.
>
>Your turn to be specific if you want to claim I've said something that
>lessens my credibility other than mere analysis with which you might
>not agree. Maybe I even have--I'm not trying to put you on the spot.
>I just can't defend myself nor can I retract anything absent you being
>specific.
I'll cite two from the delightful thread that originated this
discussion, and leave it at that. If you don't think these are fair
representations of how you characterize free software in this group, then
I can only say that I feel they are, based on the interminable flames
in this group over the last couple of years.
> So, when I say "free software", I mean libre, not gratis,
Libre as in "it's free for everyone except the people who made it to decide
how it's used". That's not "free", that's "stolen". Like as in the term
that was used by some friends of mine when they used to go shoplifting:
"I think I'll 'liberate' this candy bar." I'm sure the candy bar felt good.
The people who ate it probably enjoyed its freedom. But the person who
made it wouldn't have bothered if they thought this was how it would end up.
You later explain that you're referring to a world where Free Software
has in effect taken over, but that's not clear from your original
posting, to put it mildly.
And this:
> But the producers of free software--who *ARE* producers--earn nothing
> but scorn. Why is that?
Because they offer nothing of value. Where "value" is defined by "something
above the baseline of what you can get for free".
This statement has some kind of internal consistency, I guess, if you
play games with the timing of the determination of value. That
doesn't change the insult I feel from it as a sometime producer of
free software.
Tim
······@sea-tmoore-l.dotcast.com (Tim Moore) writes:
> On Mon, 1 Apr 2002 23:42:18 GMT, Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> wrote:
> >······@sea-tmoore-l.dotcast.com (Tim Moore) writes:
> >
> >> On Mon, 1 Apr 2002 11:42:14 GMT, Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com>
> >> wrote:
> >> >
> >> >It seems to me pretty clear that what started this discussion is that
> >> >some remarkably innovative tools have died due to specific problems
> >> >that are directly traceable both to aspects of capitalism (failure to
> >> >deal with monopolies) and free software (failure to deal with price
> >> >shortfalls that cannot sustain a reasonably priced organization). I
>
> >> Perhaps I'm revealing my laziness and encroaching old age, or perhaps
> >> this thread has gone too long, but I can't recall what you're talking
> >> about. Do you mean tools for Lisp or written in Lisp, or
> >> some other software? I'm not attacking you over the facts, but if
> >> we're going to stipulate to facts I'd like to be on the same page as you.
> >
> >Well, the discussion started with a discussion of Symbolics computers
> >and how they went away. They went away due to market forces. But then
> >later I see claims like "if a company can't be competitive, it
> >deserves to go out of business". There is maybe abstract economic theory
>
> I was wondering whether you were referring to Symbolics, but I
> couldn't credit it given what I know about that company's demise. The
> paragraph I quote above suggests that "innovative software" i.e.,
> Symbolics', died due to "problems that are directably traceable both
> to aspects of ... capitalism and ... free software", but there was no
> free software alternative to Symbolics software at the time the
> company headed south (can we agree that was in the early 90s?).
> Perhaps one could make an extreme stretch and assert that GNU emacs,
> gcc and gdb had a role, but gcc and gdb hadn't exactly come into its
> own yet as replacements for the closed source Unix replacements, and a
> text editor does not a development environment make. I think its
> entirely accurate to say that Symbolics died due to the "aspect of
> capitalism" known as competition, competition with Unix workstation
> vendors and the stock hardware Lisp vendors, competition for customers
> in a market that was saturated and rapidly collapsing.
>
> It appears that you're trying to make a more general statement about
> the bad things that result from a company dying and, lacking an
> example of free software causing this, you've put forward an example caused
> by conventional market pressure and are using it to illustrate the
> dangers of free software because it causes price pressure too. I'd
> file that under "cheap rhetorical trick." :)
>
> >> Do you grant that free software producers have their own best
> >> interests in mind? Should they subsume those to the interests of some
> >> random other people who happen to "be there first?"
> >
> >I have never questioned the good intent of free software producers. Just
> >to the contrary, it is my biggest fear that people of good intent will fail
> >to consider the consequences of their actions exactly because they think
> >good intent will carry the day.
>
> Hmm, I'm not saying anything about "good intent;" quite the opposite.
> I said "own best interests," which is often quite different from what
> one would call "good intent."
Oh, I see what you mean. Yes, I think they have their best interests
in mind, but I'm not sure that's predictive. I don't happen to
believe (though I don't assert my opposing feeling as essential fact
either) that there are among the free software advocates examplars of
all the kinds of people that I think are or should be worried about
free software, such that the fact that there are free software people
acting in their own best interests is proof that others should see it
is in their own best interest too. As nearly as I can discern, the
people making money in free software arenas are doing a kind of
[alleged] symbiosis with other agencies; the three paradigms I've seen
work are [1] augmented hardware sales (Sun, IBM, HP ...), [2] support
(Cygnus, RedHat, ...), and [3] vertical markets (not sure of an
examplar, but am willing to believe there are such). This is fine for
people who just want money and are looking for a nearby area that will
make a business plan work. Paradigms liek this hit me as being like
saying to a musician left penniless by Napster, "all you have to do is
to learn to skateboard because people like to pay to watch
skateboarders and no one minds if you play music while you
skateboard". To me, this is not a reasonable answer to "musicians
will have no way to make money". It may be that skateboarding
musicians do this in their own best interest, but you can see at least
why I would think this was less powerful as proof than it might be.
I think musicians and writers who entertain the whole world should be
paid a lot just for that fact. Write one or two killer novels and I
think you should be set for life. I don't think you'll stop writing
in most cases, since most writers want to write. But I think if you
entertain the whole world, you deserve unequal economic power. Geez,
RMS got his MacArthur award which granted him the luxury of sitting
back and doing some stuff on his own terms if he wanted. He wasn't
obliged by that to do more than what he'd done already. This has
offered him great flexibility in pursuing his own interests. If he
thinks it's a bad idea for people to get that kind of result from
something they did, he can give back the award. But personally I
don't want him to give back the award because I like believing that if
one works for something important, one will be rewarded not only with
kudos but with money. And knowing that he did it means there's a
chance I could. But not that I can see under the free software model
because I don't find any of the money making paradigms that people
propose for free software to be very incentivizing personally. Oddly,
the dominant feel I have is that none of them offer me much
freedom... they make me hostage to what someone else immediately needs
in terms of software support, sales support, or vertical market
support. That doesn't look "free" to me. YMMV.
Again, all of these comments regard a world in which free software is
all there is. And again, I am seriously worried this will come to pass
if a whole generation of programmers graduate from college chanting the
free software dogma and not stopping to think and to act selectively.
Recent activities in the music industry inform my opinion on this. My
sense is that people are learning to disrespect copyright generally.
I think this is not ultimately for the good, though I'm sure people will
revel in it for a few euphoric years before the ill effects start to be
seen. I could be wrong in analyzing the trend, of course, but this is
at least my concern....
> >> The problem I have with your anti-free software posts is the
> >> assumption that presenting an unbalanced viewpoint leads to balance
> >> when actually it just damages your own credibility.
> >
> >I don't think I've made statements that I can't support in any proportion
> >greater than I do in any other domain I speak on. That is, we all misspeak
> >or exaggerate from time to time.
> >
> >We all offer opinion. I don't object to opinion. I object to opinion
> >offered as fact. I came from a newspaper background, and in that
> >venue I was taught that analysis should be labeled analysis and news
> >labeled news. It's not a bad thing to have either, but it's a bad
> >thing to not know which you are reading.
> >
> >In particular, I do not try to make such statements in support of my
> >arguments and will happily correct any impression that I have given that
> >fails to separate fact from analysis.
> >
> >Your turn to be specific if you want to claim I've said something that
> >lessens my credibility other than mere analysis with which you might
> >not agree. Maybe I even have--I'm not trying to put you on the spot.
> >I just can't defend myself nor can I retract anything absent you being
> >specific.
>
> I'll cite two from the delightful thread that originated this
> discussion, and leave it at that. If you don't think these are fair
> representations of how you characterize free software in this group, then
> I can only say that I feel they are, based on the interminable flames
> in this group over the last couple of years.
>
> > So, when I say "free software", I mean libre, not gratis,
>
> Libre as in "it's free for everyone except the people who made it
> to decide how it's used". That's not "free", that's "stolen".
> Like as in the term that was used by some friends of mine when
> they used to go shoplifting: "I think I'll 'liberate' this candy
> bar." I'm sure the candy bar felt good. The people who ate it
> probably enjoyed its freedom. But the person who made it
> wouldn't have bothered if they thought this was how it would end
> up.
>
> You later explain that you're referring to a world where Free Software
> has in effect taken over, but that's not clear from your original
> posting, to put it mildly.
For this I will say that the one aspect I find about free software
that is compelling is that it appears to me to have a kind of
contagion that makes me believe strongly that we are headed toward a
world that uses it exclusively. Indeed I was probably premature in my
statement, but not with the intent of deception--just worry about things
to come if what I perceive as the "free software agenda" is fulfilled.
Do I think there is reason for worry on the other side? Certainly. I
largely oppose software patents, though I'm open to discussion on the
idea of merely radically restricting them in nature and duration [that
is, I support certain changes in law]. I signed the amicus brief on
Lotus v Borland suggesting it was inappropriate to apply copyright
programming languages and interfaces [that is, I have taken postures
in some directions of interpreting existing law]. I worked quite hard
to make sure that the CL spec was not "accidentally" copyrighted by
ANSI (something their default policy would have tried to do) [that is,
I think sometimes self-restraint is in order]. And I have made
software myself that was in the "free" realm [some of which I have
mixed feelings about]. I consider my mind open to rational discussion
on this issue.
Maybe it's that I read too much of Slashdot, but I hear a lot of people
who seem to think that the world would be "just great" if there were a
de facto monopoly operating system tht was Linux. That is, that having
no choice would be fine as long as there was no one making any money.
To me, that is just as wrong as the Microsoft effect, and fixes nothing.
It puts fear in my heart to hear so many people lined up to chant that
chant and I'd like to think that at least here, in a forum that I consider
to be filled with smarter than average folks, people are more hesitant.
Do they have to eschew free software? Nope. I have some close friends
and business associates that are big advocates of free software. But among
those people, we freely discuss our concerns about ethical issues without
backstabbing because we know that the only rational approach to good
ethics is to be constantly questioning... it's the sense that you're sure
you're on the ethical good path and don't have to think or question any
more that I most distrust. And among those people, we don't assume that
discussing issues should degenerate to discussing individuals' personal
worth.
> And this:
>
> > But the producers of free software--who *ARE* producers--earn nothing
> > but scorn. Why is that?
>
> Because they offer nothing of value. Where "value" is defined by
> "something above the baseline of what you can get for free".
>
> This statement has some kind of internal consistency, I guess, if you
> play games with the timing of the determination of value. That
> doesn't change the insult I feel from it as a sometime producer of
> free software.
From webster.com (where, as with all dictionaries I know, order does not
matter in preference of interpreting meaning):
1 : a fair return or equivalent in goods, services, or money
for something exchanged
2 : the monetary worth of something : marketable price
As I understand it, #1 is your meaning. You should understand that #2
was my meaning. For what you call value, I might have said "utility".
I'm not formally trained in economics. It might not be bad for me to
pick some up and to adopt more formal vocabulary. But my vocabulary
is quite ordinary for regular folks. And knowing my vocabulary to be
potentially confusing, I included the "Where..." as a clarifying
remark, not as an attempt to lay claim to an exclusive right of
terminology -- just the opposite, to admit there are many meanings and
simply to identify mine locally to the context.
From: Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <m38z86x0dv.fsf@quimbies.gnus.org>
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> I think musicians and writers who entertain the whole world should be
> paid a lot just for that fact.
[...]
> Recent activities in the music industry inform my opinion on this. My
> sense is that people are learning to disrespect copyright generally.
> I think this is not ultimately for the good, though I'm sure people will
> revel in it for a few euphoric years before the ill effects start to be
> seen. I could be wrong in analyzing the trend, of course, but this is
> at least my concern....
Something will have to break in this area. On the one hand, you now
have essentially unlimited copyright in the US (with copyright being
extended for 20 years every 20 years), and the DMCA (and related
laws) removing absolutely all semblance of "fair use". On the other
hand, you have people not giving a single thought to copyright in
their daily behavior. I don't know what the outcome will be, but I'm
guessing that "ouch" will be a large part of it.
But that's not really what I wanted to comment on. :-)
I, too, want musicians (to take one example) to be paid a lot of money
for what they create. You're worried that musicians won't create
music if they aren't paid lots of money. I can put your worries to
rest: They aren't being paid lots of money today.
The vast majority of musicians publishing music today have day jobs,
and their CDs barely finance themselves. A teensy weensy fraction
actually does get paid lots of money for their music, but the volume
of music they contribute to the musical corpus is insignificant.
--
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
·····@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <·····@gnus.org> writes:
> Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
>
> Something will have to break in this area. On the one hand, you now
> have essentially unlimited copyright in the US (with copyright being
> extended for 20 years every 20 years), and the DMCA (and related
> laws) removing absolutely all semblance of "fair use".
I don't think fair use should be infringed and I agree a problem is
arising here. My solution to this, fwiw, is to borrow the real estate
notion of an "easement" and to claim the right to demand in places where
"fair use" is infringed that a "virtual easement" be constructed that
implements "fair use".
I do take note of the fact, as noted in Slashdot today,
http://overclockers.com/tips907/
that "fair use" is not a right. But that doesn't mean I can't advocate
that it should be codified as a right.
> I, too, want musicians (to take one example) to be paid a lot of money
> for what they create. You're worried that musicians won't create
> music if they aren't paid lots of money. I can put your worries to
> rest: They aren't being paid lots of money today.
>
> The vast majority of musicians publishing music today have day jobs,
> and their CDs barely finance themselves. A teensy weensy fraction
> actually does get paid lots of money for their music, but the volume
> of music they contribute to the musical corpus is insignificant.
It's a pity that at the verge of desktop music mixing and publishing
(where musicians could finally make and write their own CD's)
disrespect for ownership is in play as well. These logically
separable events didn't look to me like they had to happen together.
It looks like just plain bad luck. It would have been nice to see
just a few more years of private publishing of CD's before napster
came along, just to see what came of that. Probably something good...
Talk about bad timing.
Eric E Moore <·········@sheffield.ac.uk> writes:
> Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
>
> > I do take note of the fact, as noted in Slashdot today,
> > http://overclockers.com/tips907/
> > that "fair use" is not a right. But that doesn't mean I can't advocate
> > that it should be codified as a right.
>
> Actually, that article is a little misleading. Fair Use did not exist
> in the copyright act of 1906, it's inclusion in the copyright act was
> the legislature was recognizing a judicial doctrine for the first
> time.=20=20
[Please turn off the bogus MIME stuff.]
> From=20the house report on the copyright act of 1976 (House Report
> No. 94-1476):
>
> > General Background of the Problem. The judicial doctrine of fair use,
> > one of the most important and well-established limitations on the
> > exclusive right of copyright owners, would be given express statutory
> > recognition for the first time in section 107. The claim that a
> > defendant's acts constituted a fair use rather than an infringement
> > has been raised as a defense in innumerable copyright actions over
> > the years, and there is ample case law recognizing the existence of
> > the doctrine and applying it.
>
> [...]
>
> > Section 107 is intended to restate the present judicial doctrine of
> > fair use, not to change, narrow, or enlarge it in any way.
>
> Full text available at:
> http://www.title17.com/contentLegMat/houseReport/chpt01/sec107.html
But I thought the main point was that "fair use" is not in the Constitution
(unless in the elusive "penumbra" of the 9th amendment). Having one
piece of code restate either another or restate a body of case law doesn't
promote the status of the issue to a right.
Where right is defined [for purposes of this discussion and NOT exclusively
through this statement in all places for all time] by "a body of superlaw
created under special circumstances in such a way that a supermajority and
other strong actions are required to undo it, and which superlaw guides and
defines the boundary between legitimacy and illegitimacy in the ordinary
creation of laws and court rulings." [That is, I don't here mean "right"
to be one of those "inalienable" and "god given" things, since I don't
understand those concepts in any way I can reduce to procedure.]
As far as I can tell, what protects "fair use" is law, not rights. I
don't see anything in skimming and spot-reading the above text that
contradicts my understanding; correct me if I'm wrong.
Btw, my usual general reference for fair use is fairuse.stanford.edu, which
contains an even larger reservoir of analyses on this matter, for those who
like that kind of thing. Thanks for the report, though. I've added this
page you mentioned (apparently sponsored by the Loyola Law School) to
my page of misc law references at http://world.std.com/~pitman/law.html
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> [Please turn off the bogus MIME stuff.]
To the best of my ability to tell, it's not bogus MIME stuff (unless
you view all MIME as bogus), merely a proposed standard your
newsreader does not support. However, I have turned it off
regardless, as it seems to be annoying people, which is not my intent.
> But I thought the main point was that "fair use" is not in the Constitution
> (unless in the elusive "penumbra" of the 9th amendment).
Well, it goes a little further and implies that it exists entirely
through legislative will, and that congress could remove it at any
time, which is not the case, as the fair-use doctrine was in place by
1841 (Folsom v Marsh), but did not appear legislatively (at all) for
another 135 years, in 1976.
> Having one piece of code restate either another or restate a body of
> case law doesn't promote the status of the issue to a right.
As I understand it, it's constitutional in nature because of 2 things,
one, that published works fall under the 1st amendment as well,
publication is speech, and the second is that the copyright clause of
the constitution only grants congress the power "To promote the
progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to
authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings
and discoveries;", so if a court finds that some form of copying
(esp. publication, such as using excerpts in reviews) does not serve
the purpose of promoting the progress of the useful arts, then it is
permitted by the 1st amendment. Generally, anything that does not
reduce the commercial value of the work, will not erode the incentives
to create useful works, and thus is permitted.
On these grounds the courts hold that congress only has the right to
grant a limited monopoly to authors and inventors, and those things
that fall outside the limits of that monopoly are "fair use".
> Where right is defined [for purposes of this discussion and NOT
> exclusively through this statement in all places for all time] by "a
> body of superlaw created under special circumstances in such a way
> that a supermajority and other strong actions are required to undo
> it, and which superlaw guides and defines the boundary between
> legitimacy and illegitimacy in the ordinary creation of laws and
> court rulings." [That is, I don't here mean "right" to be one of
> those "inalienable" and "god given" things, since I don't understand
> those concepts in any way I can reduce to procedure.]
The limitations on to what purposes congress may grant authors
exclusive rights are written into the constitution, and would require
an amendment to it, which would thus require a supermajority and other
strong actions to undo it.
> As far as I can tell, what protects "fair use" is law, not rights. I
> don't see anything in skimming and spot-reading the above text that
> contradicts my understanding; correct me if I'm wrong.
I believe it does have constitutional origins (and thus would require
a supemajority to dispose of). Much is through case law, but so is
virtually all of constitutional law.
> Btw, my usual general reference for fair use is
> fairuse.stanford.edu, which contains an even larger reservoir of
> analyses on this matter, for those who like that kind of thing.
> Thanks for the report, though. I've added this page you mentioned
> (apparently sponsored by the Loyola Law School) to my page of misc
> law references at http://world.std.com/~pitman/law.html
--
Eric E. Moore
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <3226723552722156@naggum.net>
* Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <·····@gnus.org>
| I, too, want musicians (to take one example) to be paid a lot of money
| for what they create. You're worried that musicians won't create music
| if they aren't paid lots of money. I can put your worries to rest: They
| aren't being paid lots of money today.
While this is certainly true, the cost of discovering a new artist is
enormous, and relies on the ability to keep a truly huge number of
not-well-selling artists "on stock". If the publishers can no longer
make vast amounts of money on their successes, they will have that much
less money to spend on finding the next great artist. (For some value of
"great".)
| The vast majority of musicians publishing music today have day jobs, and
| their CDs barely finance themselves. A teensy weensy fraction actually
| does get paid lots of money for their music, but the volume of music they
| contribute to the musical corpus is insignificant.
The money the publisher makes on the vast successes, however, help make
them able to do "barely break-even" projects.
Without the huge wins, the likely outcome is even more commercialization
and even less real innovation. Not that anyone would notice for a long
time in the popular music genre, but other genres probably will.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
From: Thomas Bushnell, BSG
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <87d6xizf92.fsf@becket.becket.net>
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> While this is certainly true, the cost of discovering a new artist is
> enormous, and relies on the ability to keep a truly huge number of
> not-well-selling artists "on stock". If the publishers can no longer
> make vast amounts of money on their successes, they will have that much
> less money to spend on finding the next great artist. (For some value of
> "great".)
Ah, well, I don't miss them that much. The world did pretty darn well
discovering great artists without copyright all the way until modern
times.
Thomas
"Thomas Bushnell, BSG" <·········@becket.net> wrote in message
···················@becket.becket.net...
>
> Ah, well, I don't miss them that much. The world did pretty darn well
> discovering great artists without copyright all the way until modern
> times.
>
ROTFLMAO...Now that's funny!
From: Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <m3d6xi3435.fsf@quimbies.gnus.org>
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> The money the publisher makes on the vast successes, however, help make
> them able to do "barely break-even" projects.
That's true to a certain extent, but most� music is published by
independents who have no bread winners at all. Just projects that
barely break even.
Major labels do use CDs as poker chips.
-----
�) Made-up statistic. Most music I have, at least, comes from
independents, and a large number of these are run on a hobby basis
(i.e., even the label people have day jobs).
--
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
·····@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <3226966912441906@naggum.net>
* Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com>
| Maybe it's that I read too much of Slashdot, but I hear a lot of people
| who seem to think that the world would be "just great" if there were a de
| facto monopoly operating system tht was Linux. That is, that having no
| choice would be fine as long as there was no one making any money. To
| me, that is just as wrong as the Microsoft effect, and fixes nothing.
This is all very natural, really. Few people seem to be able to grasp
the notion of "alternative system" and manage to think about what things
would be like if some serious changes were made. So if Microsoft has
gained monopoly power, what is bad is not "monopoly power" but that
Microsoft has gained it and things would be better if some less evil,
possibly even "good", monopoly power could replace them. This is, of
course, evidence of the traditionally accepted human stupidity in action.
Microsoft is not a monopoly that just sprung up out of nothing. It is
based in a pathologically paranoid leader, Bill Gates, who is so insanely
competitive that he thinks someone will topple Microsoft any day. So the
only way _he_ can win is to topple other companies first. Since he and
his fellow Microsoft staff are the only ones who are so _nuts_ that they
think this way, they "win". Normal people do not consider _everybody_ a
threat to their existence and do not compulsively acquire and destroy
their "competition", nor do they seek to undermine _every_ other player
in the market by coercive tactics. There is simply something wrong with
the mental health of the Microsoft senior leadership when they manage to
instill this kind of fear in their own employees. Insane competitiveness
is contagious: everybody else have to prepare for it and work themselves
into a frenzy. The whole point with a civilzation and a legal system is
that people shall not have to fend off every possible predator on their
own, but the American legal system has seriously failed to protect people
(both businesses and customers) from predators in the market, so they
have to get into a predotory mind-set themselves. Microsoft has proven
that the old adage "dog-eat-dog" competition is not dead yet, and that in
order to fight this evil monstrosity, people now believe they have to
engage in similarly evil tactics. However bad the Microsoft people are,
the proper solution is not to become like them and fight them on their
own terms -- because whetever someone _thinks_ is "their terms" is most
likely _not_ their actual terms, and they just see them as attacks they
have a right to defend themselves against -- just increasing the amount
of violence the predator needs to use to "win". Just listen to that
psycho Steve Ballmer and his hysterical shrieks about Free Software! On
the other hand, maybe some of the anti-commercial software people here
have done just that, and almost hear the voice of that lunatic when they
read Kent Pitman's articles? In a twist of irony, paranoid people have a
tendency to create an environment in which their fears come true, and
that is just the case with the psychos who run Microsoft -- they have
single-handedly created an environment where other business people, their
own customers, and politicians want to see them dead and destroyed, and
so, too, with the Free Software people who are, and this is important,
not _wrong_ in wanting the death of Microsoft.
However, the only way to beat a tyrant at his own game is to be a worse
tyrant. Since the real evil is that tyrants can evolve in what was
supposed to be a free economy overseen by a powerful government that
would crush criminals in time, the government needs to crush the
criminals quickly and mercilessly when it is too late. When the United
States military forces can crush the Al Qaeda by carpet-bombing
Afghanistan and have hopefully destroyed some of the "pharmaceutical"
production of that country, and can stage wars on the "pharmaceutical"
production of Columbia, it can and should be used to carpet-bomb Redmond,
Washington.
Most good people do not want to fight, but some of them become bad when
they think they have to or are somehow "forced" to, instead of being
smart enough to figure out more precisely what they need to do. Since
bad people is a fact of life, being smart enough to counter-act them
intelligently is vital to the continued existence of civilization. What
we see in the software industry is that the sheer na�vit� of engineers,
who are generally far less assertive and aggressive socially than those
who want to "make it" as business leaders, retreat to the disciplines
they master, and _therefore_ become so fantastically hostile when they
think they are "wronged" and instead of having the decency to think long
enough to figure out what they experience, erect images of "enemies". Be
it in newsgroups or in the market, where the "worker" rebels against the
"forces" of a "market" he does not understand, or in Free Software, where
the same na�vit� idolizes the hobbyist and scorns the professional, the
pattern is the same: some experience of some form of pain causes a person
to stop thinking and to declare whatever appears to be the source this
"enemy" and that absolutely anything goes in fighting this "enemy". I
cannot imagine a less intelligent or less mature way to respond. (This
is one reason why I think the only real threat to human existence is the
failure to stamp out stupidity.)
For the current problem of Free Software, it has become a lot worse with
the increasing success in beating Microsoft, but, again, it has been a
highly emotional and personal fight, instead of the professional fight it
should have been. Microsoft "competes" by slaughtering the competition,
while most other companies tries to compete in good spirit by offering
better products. People who have been hurt by Microsoft, and I consider
the fact that a computer crashes on you so you lose your work as being
hurt by their willful incompetence, tend to hate them, and this is very
understandable, but it is precisely that hatred that has made the evil
monstrosity possible: People who hate are extremely predictable and very
easy to make _completely_ ineffectual, and some paranoid and competitive
psycho like Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer can easily and quickly tame this
hatred and even turn it into a force for his own purposes, and what would
be more beneficial for Microsoft than a huge war between programmers who
thought they had to fight Microsoft by giving away their works on the one
hand and the evil monopoly that could give the customers what they want.
Some have said that Microsoft cannot take GPL'ed source and just use it,
but they can: They break every other contract they enter if they think it
is to their competitive advantage to do so. And who would be able to sue
them? Besides, how do you find out that some source code in a closely
guarded secret-source system is ripped off from "free" code?
All in all, the Free Software is playing right into the hand of Microsoft
-- by legitimizing their tactics and their goals, by giving away their
own work, and by creating a business community where Microsoft can use
their "might is right" philosophy to crush competitors, which is what
everybody will expect when they start to compete with Microsoft, anyway.
| I'm not formally trained in economics.
I would recommend Aswath Demodaran's Investment Valuation to get a better
grip on economic value. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0471414883
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Post with compassion: http://home.chello.no/~xyzzy/kitten.jpg
From: Ed L Cashin
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <87y9g1bhzz.fsf@cs.uga.edu>
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
...
> Be it in newsgroups or in the market, where the "worker" rebels
> against the "forces" of a "market" he does not understand, or in
> Free Software, where the same na�vit� idolizes the hobbyist and
> scorns the professional, the pattern is the same: some experience
> of some form of pain causes a person to stop thinking and to
> declare whatever appears to be the source this "enemy" and that
> absolutely anything goes in fighting this "enemy". I cannot
> imagine a less intelligent or less mature way to respond. (This
> is one reason why I think the only real threat to human existence
> is the failure to stamp out stupidity.)
Do you think it's possible to "stamp out stupidity"? Destruction
works on some things, but not on negatives, and I've always considered
stupidity to be a lack. If it's a lack, building up intelligence
offers more promise.
--
--Ed L Cashin | PGP public key:
·······@uga.edu | http://noserose.net/e/pgp/
>> Be it in newsgroups or in the market, where the "worker" rebels
>> against the "forces" of a "market" he does not understand, or in
>> Free Software, where the same na�vit� idolizes the hobbyist and
>> scorns the professional, the pattern is the same: some experience
>> of some form of pain causes a person to stop thinking and to
>> declare whatever appears to be the source this "enemy" and that
>> absolutely anything goes in fighting this "enemy". I cannot
>> imagine a less intelligent or less mature way to respond. (This
>> is one reason why I think the only real threat to human existence
>> is the failure to stamp out stupidity.)
>
> Do you think it's possible to "stamp out stupidity"? Destruction
> works on some things, but not on negatives, and I've always considered
> stupidity to be a lack. If it's a lack, building up intelligence
> offers more promise.
>
maybe we can declare stupidity the enemy and do everything to fight
stupidity...
why don't we casterate all the stupid people and put them in work camps,
then after they have worked themselves out we send them to the showers...
maybe the camps can be manned by muscle dudes in bondage who are
myseriously in cages, so then the quote "and have a gay ol' time" really
applies... and they can be known for doing things to the prisoners as
well...
(take note I don't mean any offense by this, nor is this really what I
think).
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <3227071757713050@naggum.net>
* cr88192 <·······@hotmail.com>
| why don't we casterate all the stupid people and put them in work camps,
| then after they have worked themselves out we send them to the showers...
First, stupidity is curable. Low intelligence is not the issue.
Visit the link in my signature.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Post with compassion: http://home.chello.no/~xyzzy/kitten.jpg
Erik Naggum wrote:
> * cr88192 <·······@hotmail.com>
> | why don't we casterate all the stupid people and put them in work camps,
> | then after they have worked themselves out we send them to the
> | showers...
>
> First, stupidity is curable. Low intelligence is not the issue.
>
well by context I think it is more ignorance that is being referred to
then...
in my experience stupidity is usually more associated with low inteligenge
than with ignorance.
I was making a joke (and was expecting more harsh responses...).
it is funny, at school making nazi or other no pc jokes (ie: reference to
gays) usually will result in one being sent to the office if either: the
teacher hears it; or someone reports it to the teacher.
theoretically I should be able to make any jokes I wan't as long as they
are not intended as an attack, but I can't. maybe this goes to show that
school is a facism...
very well then...
cr88192 <·······@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> in my experience stupidity is usually more associated with low inteligenge
> than with ignorance.
>
How does one tell from the outside? They *appear* one and the same.
Damond
>
>> in my experience stupidity is usually more associated with low
>> inteligenge than with ignorance.
>>
>
> How does one tell from the outside? They *appear* one and the same.
>
well it can be difficult sometimes but usually I go on:
an ignorant person usually makes statements without much basis in the
details, and tends not to know the details;
whereas a person with low intelligence will more often know the details but
fails to come up with seemingly obvious answers relating to the details.
often I can more guess based on response time and response accuracy, along
with a guess of how much they know about the subject.
additionally one can notice, response to conditions and response to
patterns, this can be more useful when not really talking to someone.
but as stated, it can be hard to tell, especially not when dealing with the
person directly (along with that, a person who is drunk seems less
intelligent than one who is not, though there are ways of observing that as
well).
I might just be wrong though, as I have not gone through any tests to show
how accuratly I can measure people's intelligences. mostly it is based on
intuition, which is hardly a reliable source of judgements...
well, nevermind.
From: Thomas Bushnell, BSG
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <87hemn58ym.fsf@becket.becket.net>
cr88192 <·······@hotmail.com> writes:
> it is funny, at school making nazi or other no pc jokes (ie: reference to
> gays) usually will result in one being sent to the office if either: the
> teacher hears it; or someone reports it to the teacher.
The philosopher Cohen (a modern guy, nobody you've necessarily heard
of) makes the excellent point that it's possible to be funny *and*
wrong.
No matter how funny a joke may be, that does not excuse the offense
that may be involved in telling it.
I've heard straight people defend "fag jokes" in my presence, but
strangely they suddenly realize what's wrong with them when I start
remarking about "breeders".
Thomas
In article <··············@becket.becket.net>,
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) wrote:
> cr88192 <·······@hotmail.com> writes:
>
> > it is funny, at school making nazi or other no pc jokes (ie: reference to
> > gays) usually will result in one being sent to the office if either: the
> > teacher hears it; or someone reports it to the teacher.
>
> The philosopher Cohen (a modern guy, nobody you've necessarily heard
> of) makes the excellent point that it's possible to be funny *and*
> wrong.
Would that be the philosopher Sacha Baron Cohen? He's funny *and* wrong.
-- Bruce
From: Thomas Bushnell, BSG
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <877knj546j.fsf@becket.becket.net>
Bruce Hoult <·····@hoult.org> writes:
> In article <··············@becket.becket.net>,
> ·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) wrote:
>
> > cr88192 <·······@hotmail.com> writes:
> >
> > > it is funny, at school making nazi or other no pc jokes (ie: reference to
> > > gays) usually will result in one being sent to the office if either: the
> > > teacher hears it; or someone reports it to the teacher.
> >
> > The philosopher Cohen (a modern guy, nobody you've necessarily heard
> > of) makes the excellent point that it's possible to be funny *and*
> > wrong.
>
> Would that be the philosopher Sacha Baron Cohen? He's funny *and* wrong.
No, it's Ted Cohen. necessarily heard
> > of) makes the excellent point that it's possible to be funny *and*
> > wrong.
>
> Would that be the philosopher Sacha Baron Cohen? He's funny *and* wrong.
No, it's Ted Cohen.
"Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters".
It's about jokes in general, not just offensive ones (which are really
only a small subsidiary topic.)
Quite a fine book, IMO.
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> It's about jokes in general, not just offensive ones (which are really
> only a small subsidiary topic.)
Hmm, not in the US, at least historically. Of course, that doesn't
make it true about anywhere else in the world...
--
/|_ .-----------------------.
,' .\ / | No to Imperialist war |
,--' _,' | Wage class war! |
/ / `-----------------------'
( -. |
| ) |
(`-. '--.)
`. )----'
From: Thomas Bushnell, BSG
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <87elhqf7bw.fsf@becket.becket.net>
···@tempest.OCF.Berkeley.EDU (Thomas F. Burdick) writes:
> ·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
>
> > It's about jokes in general, not just offensive ones (which are really
> > only a small subsidiary topic.)
>
> Hmm, not in the US, at least historically. Of course, that doesn't
> make it true about anywhere else in the world...
I'm pretty darn sure the book's content is independent of where in the
world you are reading it.
"cr88192" <·······@hotmail.com> wrote in message
···················@corp.supernews.com...
> theoretically I should be able to make any jokes I wan't as long as they
> are not intended as an attack,
Intent is much less important than effect. You should not make jokes that
hurt people and there are many subtle ways that that can happen, even if
there are no "fags" in earshot.
> but I can't. maybe this goes to show that
> school is a facism...
I suppose you can look at it that way (though, your story is not evidence of
facsism.) I wouldn't change that underlying principle all at once though I
might remove some of the resident dictators!
--
Coby Beck
(remove #\Space "coby 101 @ bigpond . com")
Coby Beck wrote:
>
> "cr88192" <·······@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> ···················@corp.supernews.com...
>> theoretically I should be able to make any jokes I wan't as long as they
>> are not intended as an attack,
>
> Intent is much less important than effect. You should not make jokes that
> hurt people and there are many subtle ways that that can happen, even if
> there are no "fags" in earshot.
>
well, before I got in trouble pretty bad for a short story involving
getting it on with pigs and a dead dog (with a few spots describing a spray
of maggots out the dog's mouth...). the teacher got ahold of it and I guess
that was over the top...
I didn't consider it "offensive", but it was "disgusting". it seems that
the comedic factors were more lost to those who got ahold of it.
I considered it funny in about the same way the movie "happiness" was, but
I have heard comments that many people didn't consider that movie funny
(probably the petifilia or something...).
in any case I am a lot more careful now...
odly those that had read it *still* have not forgotten, and it has been 3
years...
>> but I can't. maybe this goes to show that
>> school is a facism...
>
> I suppose you can look at it that way (though, your story is not evidence
> of
> facsism.) I wouldn't change that underlying principle all at once though
> I might remove some of the resident dictators!
>
well, once a teacher sent a kid down to the office for making a comment the
teacher didn't agree with (about the 09/11 crap I think); the office dude
just sent the kid back as he couldn't really see the problem (I think).
ok, all the details are a little more subtle, but I think there is a little
"ingsoc" somewhere in school...
--
<·······@hotmail.com> <http://bgb1.hypermart.net/>
From: Thomas Bushnell, BSG
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <87it72f7cm.fsf@becket.becket.net>
cr88192 <·······@hotmail.com> writes:
> I didn't consider it "offensive", but it was "disgusting". it seems that
> the comedic factors were more lost to those who got ahold of it.
Comedy is not somehow the opposite of offense or disgust. It's
generally wrong to set out to disgust other people, and the fact that
something might also be funny doesn't mean that it isn't disgusting,
or that the normal social rules get suspended.
Thomas
Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote:
> cr88192 <·······@hotmail.com> writes:
>
>> I didn't consider it "offensive", but it was "disgusting". it seems that
>> the comedic factors were more lost to those who got ahold of it.
>
> Comedy is not somehow the opposite of offense or disgust. It's
> generally wrong to set out to disgust other people, and the fact that
> something might also be funny doesn't mean that it isn't disgusting,
> or that the normal social rules get suspended.
>
well, really I did not intend for the people to get ahold of it anyways,
more I as just writing on my own and they noticed it...
I find things to be both often, and I sort of like that style (in my mind
south park is really a weak example). I like many of the movies that tod
solondz made, but it seems that others have a problem with them.
john watters is more popular, but his movies are kind of lame, and his
newer ones just seem to suck (dispensing with the disgusting factor little
else remained)...
social rules: only recently have I really learned them...
what was acceptable in elementary school does not seem to be such in high
school, and I can't really keep up very well...
not to mention the language used has changed to a point where it is barely
recognizable (one would not think the language would change much within a
single generation...). I remember when people would speak in a surf
variant, and now it is ebonics, and quite frankly I have never learned
ebonics so I have a hard time understanding people when they use it...
you would think that the people when they are older would be the same as
when they were younger just older and more knowlegable, but instead they
change all the cosmetics and are just as ignorant about things (like hs
comes and they stop learning altogether...).
I had remembered being younger and for the most part equal to the people I
dealt with (except for the memories that I seemed to be about the only
person around who could do math... I think I remember impressing people
with my seemingly impressive arithmatic ability for the time).
I look at older pictures and realize that now I dress about the same and
have about the same haircut as when I was in middle school, and the only
really noticable difference was that now I don't use as much cussing (ie:
in source comments and documentation), and that my coding is better...
or maybe I have changed and just have not noticed.
--
<·······@hotmail.com> <http://bgb1.hypermart.net/>
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <3227071669107989@naggum.net>
* Ed L Cashin <·······@uga.edu>
| Do you think it's possible to "stamp out stupidity"?
Only the public acceptance of it.
| Destruction works on some things, but not on negatives, and I've always
| considered stupidity to be a lack.
I consider it to be _allowed_, like laziness and obesity and bugs in
software.
| If it's a lack, building up intelligence offers more promise.
Well, the moral obligation to be intelligent must be asserted. Thinking
is hard and must be required, not just encouraged. Less intelligent
people can compensate by working harder on it or not engage themselves in
tasks that require more than they can do. In our zeal to be an inclusive
society, massive amounts of stupidity is tolerated because it would be
"unfair" to lots of people not to, and we cannot have anyone feeling
stupid, can we? Feeling stupid is just like nausea, massively annoying
when it happens, but it has a cause, usually a very specific one, and can
be cured. _Fighting_ whatever causes either is about equally smart, and
just leads to more of same, but finding out how to adapt reduces both.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Post with compassion: http://home.chello.no/~xyzzy/kitten.jpg
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
>
> It seems to me pretty clear that what started this discussion is
> that some remarkably innovative tools have died due to specific
> problems that are directly traceable both to aspects of capitalism
> (failure to deal with monopolies) and free software (failure to deal
> with price shortfalls that cannot sustain a reasonably priced
> organization). I don't think any of these are good, and I don't see
> any reason that we should be attacking each other over these facts
> as if a statement of fact on these matters was an attack on
> someone's person.
I don't recall seeing any such tools described or any factual backing
that it was downward price pressure from Free Software that caused
those tools to die. The thread started with a discussion of
Symbolics, but to blame their failure on Free Software is laughable
and I have never seen evidence to support it. I have not seen any
analysis beyond heresay to support claims that Free Software has had
significant downward price pressure on those tools and resulted in
their failure. Can you please provide a reference or a substring to
Google on so I can find them?
What you are calling facts are not facts at all, but conclusions drawn
from facts. Other conclusions could be drawn from those facts. That
the dependence upon specialized hardware ruined those tools. That
their insistence upon a homogeneic environment isolated them. That a
poorly run business could not keep itself afloat without an influx of
capital and that because the rate of profit was not enticing in that
sector it the capital never came. I would not claim any of these as
fact, and if I was going to base an argument on them I would attempt
to find some supporting factual evidence.
Also, you are launching into this crusade against a straw man, the
blatantly anti-commercial Free Software advocate, the ignorant college
student taken in by his radical icons. You are constructing your
opponent to your liking and then pretending that the resulting rant is
relevant to a discussion with people who fit none of the attributes
you insist you are combatting. My adoption of the term 'Free Software
Sociopath' is in response to this straw man formed in posts by you and
Wade Humeniek<sp?> which presented specious conclusions as evidence
that those who contribute to Free Software damage their community.
I suggest that instead of continuing to beat the straw man you take a
look at the specific Free Software work people are doing and what can
be done to better integrate it with the commercial vendors who are
indeed an important part of this community.
--
Craig Brozefsky <·····@red-bean.com>
Free Software Sociopath(tm) http://www.red-bean.com/~craig
Ask me about Common Lisp Enterprise Eggplants at Red Bean!
Craig Brozefsky <·····@red-bean.com> writes:
> I don't recall seeing any such tools described or any factual backing
> that it was downward price pressure from Free Software that caused
> those tools to die.
Which is it that you doubt?
- That free software causes downward price pressure
- That downward price pressure causes some companies to go under
- That two indendent kinds of causality can be linked into a chain
> The thread started with a discussion of Symbolics,
Which was a discussion about problems of downward price pressure,
not a discussion of free software, that's right.
But there is ample independent evidence that free software causes
such pressure.
> but to blame their failure on Free Software is laughable
> and I have never seen evidence to support it.
I haven't done so. So I'm not sure what you're laughing at.
I don't find this to be much of a matter for laughter.
> I have not seen any
> analysis beyond heresay to support claims that Free Software has had
> significant downward price pressure on those tools
On those specific tools or on tools in general?
(Btw, the word you probably want is "hearsay". "heresay" looks
remarkably like "heresy", which I suspect is not your intent.)
> and resulted in their failure. Can you please provide a reference or
> a substring to Google on so I can find them?
If I said the sky were blue but could offer no Google reference, would
that make what I said false? I don't believe in this recent trend to
demand Google references for things as if somehow the failure of same
was a disproof...
I have seen corporate management say they will not pay more than a
token amount for lisp because we can get java or g++ for free. You
may dispute this, but that doesn't make it false, Google reference or
not.
> You are constructing your
> opponent to your liking and then pretending that the resulting rant is
> relevant to a discussion with people who fit none of the attributes
> you insist you are combatting. My adoption of the term 'Free Software
> Sociopath' is in response to this straw man formed in posts by you
Uh, while we're on the subject of arguing against straw men,
I have not used the term 'sociopath'.
From: Thomas Bushnell, BSG
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <873cye6ce5.fsf@becket.becket.net>
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> But there is ample independent evidence that free software causes
> such pressure.
Lots of things cause downward price pressure in all kinds of
industries.
Generally the effects of downward price pressure are good for almost
everybody in society, and a little negative for the people who make
the goods now going for less money.
There is, for example, ample evidence that electronic computers
produced downward price pressure for human computers. But nobody
really mourns the loss of that job category...
Thomas
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> There is, for example, ample evidence that electronic computers
> produced downward price pressure for human computers. But nobody
> really mourns the loss of that job category...
Perhaps more timely, there is ample evidence that downward price
pressure caused by competition [at various levels, among both chip
manufacturers and "integrators"] has eroded the profit base of COTS
PC systems, even when they include the Microsoft tax. This is given
as a justification for the recent Compaq/HP merger [*sigh*, HP
owning DEC! *sigh*]
Now there is an obvious social positive that comes out of this:
cheaper PCs means that consumers with lower incomes can afford
computers [or better ones if they could already afford them].
However, there is the risk of significant social negatives coming
out of this, especially in the Houston area [Compaq's headquarters].
With the merger of Compaq and HP, many people will get laid off and
the Houston economy isn't exactly robust given the recent failure of
Enron.
It's clearly not a win-win situation. But, there is a curious
fact:
Even in the fact of price pressure eradicating margins, neither
Compaq nor HP has decided to inflate their profit margin by using
Linux by default instead of Windows. This would seem to indicate
that the cost of the open source software [which includes a lack of
support for certain cheaper hardware components used - especially in
laptops] was higher than losing some $$$ to licensing Windows.
Further evidence of this is the curious waffling of Dell [the #1
PC integrator] regarding the support of Linux on their personal
desktop line [which is experiencing the most intense profit margin
squeeze.]
Now, if I were going to predict a free-software-only future, it's
in *exactly* this space that I'd look for it first, as the OS
provides the most general services and requires the least amount of
customization to serve the same variety of users / industries. [I
think that more customization -> slower acceptance of free
software.] What am I missing?
Disclaimer: I'm originally from Houston. Some of my family still
lives there. My brother-in-law works for Compaq [for
now.] I own no fewer than 4 Compaq systems [3
desktops, 1 laptop] and have 1 additional Compaq laptop
from my employer. But then, I also have a Toshiba
Libretto and a Sony VAIO, so I'm not *that* biased, my
fondness for DEC equipment [I used to own a PDP-11
34/a] notwithstanding.
-jon
--
------------------
Jon Allen Boone
········@delamancha.org
From: Thomas Bushnell, BSG
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <87it7a3ev5.fsf@becket.becket.net>
Jon Allen Boone <········@delamancha.org> writes:
> Now, if I were going to predict a free-software-only future, it's
> in *exactly* this space that I'd look for it first, as the OS
> provides the most general services and requires the least amount of
> customization to serve the same variety of users / industries. [I
> think that more customization -> slower acceptance of free
> software.] What am I missing?
Well, for many classes of users, there still isn't a GNU/Linux
distribution that does what they want from Microsoft. There are a
number of very popular things that don't work, etc., and most users
want to run random off-the-shelf Windoze-only programs, and can't do
that on a GNU/Linux system.
This is not particular to free software; it's a sort of network effect
that affects any "new" operating system trying to enter the market.
BeOS suffered a similar fate, and MacOS seems to be only barely big
enough to stave off disaster.
However, free software doesn't recoup development costs the same way,
so failing to get gobs of market share doesn't kill development the
way it did kill development of BeOS.
Thomas
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> ... I don't believe in this recent trend to
> demand Google references for things as if somehow the failure of same
> was a disproof...
i'd like to think that more often than not, a request for reference
is a genuine request for enlightement. no failure is implied, but there
has to be some factual burden on constructive discussions. [for example,
people talk endlessly about copyrights without ever having looked at the
actual text of, say berne convention or special provisions for various
countries. this is easy to find and easy to read. if someone claimed that
in italy nothing can ever be in the public domain, i would have to ask
for a reference. it doesn't sound right, does it?]
> I have seen corporate management say they will not pay more than a
> token amount for lisp because we can get java or g++ for free. [...]
this is an interesting example. is this really a general trend to push
software prices down, or just an excuse to get out of lisp? were there
many other unrelated management doing the same?
oz
---
you take a banana, you get a lunar landscape. -- j. van wijk
Kent M Pitman wrote:
>> I have not seen any
>> analysis beyond heresay to support claims that Free Software has had
>> significant downward price pressure on those tools
>
> On those specific tools or on tools in general?
>
Personally, I acknowledge the probable existence of downward price
pressure, but consider it a good thing. Your thesis that it necessarily
drives prices for commercial software to zero is a tad flawed, because any
company worth its salt would be comparing the cost of
(open source software + support contract)
to the cost of
(proprietary software + support contract - which usually constitutes
a vendor's "product")
Open source software will probably still "win" that comparison -
since the support contract is decoupled from the software and thus there's
competition in that space -e.g. choice of IBM or Redhat for professional
Linux support, unlike proprietary software, where typically it is the
software vendor as the sole support supplier. However, it does _not_ mean
that the proprietary software vendor can't make a profit - it just means
they may (or may not!) have to make do with a smaller one...
>
> I have seen corporate management say they will not pay more than a
> token amount for lisp because we can get java or g++ for free. You
> may dispute this, but that doesn't make it false, Google reference or
> not.
No, but it is anecdotal. The prefix "merely" is often prepended to that
word...
It's rather foolish of corporate management to say that, of course,
because
(a) java or g++ are not the same language as lisp...
and
(b) if you want proper commercial support for java or g++, one should be
prepared to pay Sun or Redhat (who bought cygnus) quite a bit of money,
which can definitely even out the cost comparison a fair bit.
--
Don't eat yellow snow.
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> Craig Brozefsky <·····@red-bean.com> writes:
>
> > I don't recall seeing any such tools described or any factual backing
> > that it was downward price pressure from Free Software that caused
> > those tools to die.
>
> Which is it that you doubt?
> - That free software causes downward price pressure
In a market model where we assume that a copy of the software is a
pure commodity, yes, since it has an exchange value approaching zero.
Otherwise we would need to examine the software's nature as a
commodity. The presence of both phenomena the same market is not
conclusive either, since FS can flood into collapsed markets when
unprofitable IP is released or anywhere some free software coders
write it. For this reason I asked for factual backing.
I think that Franz has downward price pressure from CMUCL as much as
from LW, but I think they get the most pressure from non CL
development environments which are sold dirt cheap in comparison, have
tons of integration support, buzzword compliance and third party
certification battallions. Erann Gatt understands this I think.
Perhaps I can get some feedback on this hypothesis.
I see this is the real threat to Our market, not other CL programmers
who want to share their work. Considering where the state is directing
funds these days I think that the remaining lisp market is going to be
flooded with competition and that means more downward price pressure
coming from forces much larger than free software. The encroachment of
commodity languages also shrinks the CL market in general thru
standardization and commodification of the entire development process.
Java, .Net etc... are our competition, not any of the free software
systems. I have seen nothing from vendors indicating they treat the
Free Software community around CL as a threat.
I understand that you see yourself as just bringing an opinion to bare
and asking people to consider a question. I hope you understand that
many people take that as divisive and unproductive considering the
competition we're all up against. I propose that we redirect our
discussion towards cooperation across commercial and free CL projects
in the face of the issues facing the CL community as a whole.
--
Craig Brozefsky <·····@red-bean.com>
Free Software Sociopath(tm) http://www.red-bean.com/~craig
Ask me about Common Lisp Enterprise Eggplants at Red Bean!
··············@airmail.net (William Newman) writes:
> Is a producer entitled to his customers after they've found an
> alternative they prefer? When a vacuum tube manufacturer can't
> compete, is switching over to some other kind of work -- with or
> without going out of business -- really analogous to dying? What about
> an honest laborer complaining about the cutthroat competition -- from
> laborers poorer than him? If he lowers himself to their income level,
> is that analogous to dying? (And if he finds a way to solve the
> problem by stopping them from competing, where does that leave them,
> and the customers who preferred them? Or does that matter? Are
> transistor manufacturers, new immigrants, free software authors, and
> customers properly analogous to the disease organisms which are
> damaged when the patient is cured?)
>
> Neither the vacuum tube situation nor the "it's unfair that those
> immigrants work 70 hour weeks and there oughtta be a law" situation
> justifies gloating by the competition, at least if the displaced
> competition isn't somehow obnoxious. But I think the actual level of
> gloating (whether by transistor manufacturers, by immigrant bakers
> before 1900 or so, or by free software authors) is actually pretty
> low. (and certainly low enough that it shouldn't affect policy
> decisions!)
These are reasonable questions to ask and I agree the situation is
complicated. The free market needs to be free to do some of these
things but we don't have to like it, and we sometimes have choices.
For example, let's say I see a community that is well-served by a set
of restaurants and I have some cool recipes that I know could trounce
those restaurants. I could, for the sheer thrill of it, go head to
head with that community just to see myself win. Or I could go to some
other community not served by restaurants at all and start up there.
In one case, someone is put out of work, in another case not.
I have considerable concern about rolling out various of my Lisp products
and here I'll just ask your advice:
I've spent about 1/2 of a year working on some Lisp tools. Ignoring small
numbers of tens of thousands, let's say a year of salary is $100K to me, so
let's say I'd have been paid $50K to produce that code. And not only have
I produced it but I have taken on risk by producing it which I would not
have taken on if I'd worked for someone else; I was always taught neve to
take on risk without asking $$ in return, but let's again ignore that advice.
So I have what we'll just call for argument $50K of software ready to release.
Now, who knows how many people want to buy that? And maybe some only
want the simple stuff while some want the obscure stuff. If I roll it out
as one big product, I have to either charge virtually nothing for it, and
hope to make it back on volume, or I have to charge a lot and lock people
out. Let's say I'm a good guy and I price it low because I actively want
to help people. Now here's the rub...
If I believe that interfaces are not copyrightable and I believe that
out in the world are many more supporters of free software than of
commercial software, then any ONE of those people with an axe to grind
is able to take me on as his personal quest and write ten or twenty of
the functions I wrote. And the next person can write ten or twenty
others. And pretty soon my effort is all duplicated and I'm undercut.
This climate argues, by the way, for me to release the thing only as a single
large package and not as individual, more affordable, small packages exactly
because each small package, attractively and modularly priced, becomes a
target for the overnight glee of someone. And, mind you, the important
investment of my having decided to spend A LOT of time debugging the spec
and deciding those were the right functions to offer is lost in there
somewhere.
What would I like instead? I would _like_ that we were training free
software people to seek out areas that are _not_ covered adequately
by software. Shouldn't it be a no-no for people to do like they did with
Motif and immmediately say "oh, here's a free version" (lesstif)? If not,
where do you draw the line? Who can spend years developing something only
to have it deployed and immediately copied?
After all, the reason why I wrote the software I wrote was because a
market area was uncovered. I didn't write it just for the money. I
wrote it because I had sat down to write a book on Lisp and I was
bugged that there was missing functionality that I wanted to be in the
book, and I felt a need to write that software. But I need
money. Otherwise I am never doing this stupid fool thing again and I
might as well give up on this industry as any way to make money.
So why don't I write the book and give the software away free? Well,
because the book either does or doesn't include software. If it does,
I might charge more. But not if the software is available free anyway.
And if I don't charge more, I don't recover the money as fast. So I can't
afford to give the software away for free as easily as if people were paying
for a more expensive book.
And should I sell support? Well, maybe. But honestly I've worked hard on
making the software of good quality and I hope people don't NEED a lot of
support. I guess you could say it's like selling insurance.
But you know, I feel like the whole support thing is a conflict of interest.
A company might get better reports on "support" if they went out with the
software known to be slightly buggy and just had to flip secret switches
to make it work. Then the word wouldn't get out that support wasn't needed,
and then the support staff would look prompt and helpful. If the software
just goes out working, support looks unnecessary after a while and who's
paying for the quality then, so who thinks good things about that stupid
support contract I did nothing with...
So you tell me--what should I be doing? Am I imagining that there is a
serious barrier here and that some of it is due to the belief that it
is reasonable to give software away?
I am not in the slightest worried about someone entering the market for pay
because for pay means their business image is on the line, and I know they
will have to invest what I had to invest or more in order to make an
equivalently good product. But people who have no business on the line can
maybe do 90% of what I did for maybe 10% of the cost because of the old 90-10
rule, that the last 10% takes another 90% of the cost... Certainly getting
the design right, the QA, the doc, etc. is a major aspect of my cost but
once out, my doc works as well as anyone's if they're writing to my spec.
I see only huge amounts of risk in all directions and all due to these recent
market trends. I've been more than candid about my business problem.
Your turn to ante up with some good suggestions about how to proceed in a
way that does not lose me money and still addresses the community needs
I sought to address.
I'd love it if what you said was "you're right. it's bad to go after and try
to sink proprietary software companies as soon as they deploy. we will police
our own and try to make them not do that." but I don't expect to hear that.
I'd love it if what yous aid was "rather than go after existing functionality,
free software people should work to fill OTHER gaps just as Kent has worked
to fill the gaps he saw, in order to complete the landscape of needed software
rather than doubling up on some areas and leaving other areas blank". But
I don't hink you're going to say that either. Surprise me.
> If you really want to argue the case, I wish you'd try harder to
> differentiate yourself from classic good-money-after-bad
> protect-the-producer lobbyist scams.
You tell me. Did I do it or not? I'm asking you to say that that's what
I've personally been doing or to admit that people with reasonable aims
are stuck in a legitimate quandary.
> (Many would say that this already doesn't belong in comp.lang.lisp. If
> it settles down to a disagreement about what policy consequences might
> be, it might become clearer where it *does* belong. (sci.econ?
> talk.politics.foo? some sort of free software forum?) But for now I'm
> not sure where it does belong, so I'll just leave it here and see how
> the discussion goes.)
I've just made this personal to comp.lang.lisp since it affects my
continued ability to have enough money that I can help this community.
Increasingly these arguments on free software are convincing me that my
error is in offering public advice to anyone and that perhaps I should
go private on my willingness to help anyone. I haven't yet decided to
do that, but I have to admit you guys make a compelling case on this point.
Certainly I have become recently aware that by posting here, and by not
restricting my help to those politically aligned to my cause (in the way
the GNU license restricts its help to those politically aligned with its
cause), I am helping others with conflicting political goals to succeed.
I used to think this did not matter. But increasingly, as I find my way
of life as threatened as I have heard Stallman claim his way of life once
was, I have to take these issues seriously.
From: Thomas Bushnell, BSG
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <874riu4vr8.fsf@becket.becket.net>
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> What would I like instead? I would _like_ that we were training free
> software people to seek out areas that are _not_ covered adequately
> by software. Shouldn't it be a no-no for people to do like they did with
> Motif and immmediately say "oh, here's a free version" (lesstif)? If not,
> where do you draw the line? Who can spend years developing something only
> to have it deployed and immediately copied?
That's a very telling example. Not only is Motif dead, so is
lesstif. Gnome and KDE have quite nicely fit the bill, far better,
and have produced a far more adequate desktop than anything the Unix
world had ever done before, despite *many* attempts by *many*
commercial outfits.
Even if lesstif had never happened, the OSF would still have gone
under, and Gnome and KDE would eventually have put it out of business
entirely whether lesstif happened or not. And that's a *good* thing,
because Gnome and KDE actually work well compared to the previously
existing options.
(I only say "adequate desktop" here, because of course they don't come
close to the kind of things that have run on various lispms.)
Thomas
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> Even if lesstif had never happened, the OSF would still have gone
> under
Idle speculation [because lesstif *did* happen and OSF *is* dead]
aside...
> and Gnome and KDE would eventually have put it out of business
> entirely whether lesstif happened or not.
Now this plainly ain't so.
Gnome/KDE only address the GUI aspects of what OSF had to offer,
which was hardly the whole pie. I *know* you know this, as the lead
developer of the HURD. OSF had problems - that much is sure - but
Gnome/KDE came on the horizon far too late to be effectively
anything other than an afterthought. For example, DFS was too
heavy-weight to work effectively in a world without ubiquitous
broadband.
And, of course, the politics of UNIX vendors in the 1990s is
enough to choke a horse. But then, they didn't see Microsoft as the
enemy [instead, it was IBM] and by the time they looked down upon
the lowly PC market with enough respect to recognize it for the
potential threat that it was, their lunch had already been eaten...
I'm sure Gosling had fun designing Java, but why was Sun even
researching embedded devices as a market space? Because they were
king of the hill and looking to grow into the next IBM? It doesn't
look that way from where I sit...
> And that's a *good* thing, because Gnome and KDE actually work
> well compared to the previously existing options.
I find your notion that advances in software [such as Gnome]
necessarily involve a winner-take-all end-game [visa-vie Motif] to
be disturbing. There's no particular reason - given 1000 or so
counter-factuals - that Motif couldn't have evolved into something
better like Gnome. So, given that it could have, why *shouldn't* it
have? And if it should have, how can it be *good* that it didn't?
Now, perhaps I'm just weird, but when *I* say things similar to
the thing you said above it isn't because I am truly happy with the
world because it's playing out the way that it ought to
[normative-sense]. Rather, it's because I disagree with the class
of outcomes in general and find it philosophically satisfying to see
advocates choke on their own vile point of view [i.e. the world is
playing out exactly the way that they described it]. But, even
then, I can't help feeling sorry for the misguided fools all the
same.
-jon
--
------------------
Jon Allen Boone
········@delamancha.org
From: Thomas Bushnell, BSG
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <87adsmof3r.fsf@becket.becket.net>
Jon Allen Boone <········@delamancha.org> writes:
> Gnome/KDE only address the GUI aspects of what OSF had to offer,
> which was hardly the whole pie. I *know* you know this, as the lead
> developer of the HURD.
My point is that if you attribute the death of the OSF to competition
of lesstif against motif, then Gnome/KDE would have killed it even
more effectively.
Of course the OSF had many products, and its demise is not
attributable to the loss of competitive success of any one of them,
I think.
Thomas
From: Thomas Bushnell, BSG
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <87663aoey5.fsf@becket.becket.net>
Jon Allen Boone <········@delamancha.org> writes:
> I find your notion that advances in software [such as Gnome]
> necessarily involve a winner-take-all end-game [visa-vie Motif] to
> be disturbing. There's no particular reason - given 1000 or so
> counter-factuals - that Motif couldn't have evolved into something
> better like Gnome. So, given that it could have, why *shouldn't* it
> have? And if it should have, how can it be *good* that it didn't?
I don't actually have a winner-take-all attitude. After all, both
Gnome and KDE are great, and I'm the first to say that successful free
software projects are pretty much always cooperators rather than
competitors. This is an oversimplification (there are things that are
competitive in the usual sense), but I think it's mostly true.
I was responding to what I took to be an implied supposition that
lesstif undercut motif and contributed materially to the demise of
OSF, so I was taking that as a presupposition for the sake of
argument, not advocating it in my own voice.
Kent M Pitman wrote:
> Certainly I have become recently aware that by posting here, and by not
> restricting my help to those politically aligned to my cause (in the way
> the GNU license restricts its help to those politically aligned with its
> cause), I am helping others with conflicting political goals to succeed.
> I used to think this did not matter. But increasingly, as I find my way
> of life as threatened as I have heard Stallman claim his way of life once
> was, I have to take these issues seriously.
I suggest, however, that the benefit that accrues to your reputation
(and to the popularity of Lisp, which indirectly helps you) by
posting advice outweighs any harm you may cause by assisting those
producing free software (most of whom are not in direct competition
with you.)
With one caveat: if some nasty free software zealots get sufficiently
peeved at you personally they may dump in your market niche. I think
you could find ways to avoid that while still posting here, though.
Paul
Not to pick on Kent, but since he wrote:
>
> I've spent about 1/2 of a year working on some Lisp tools. Ignoring
> small numbers of tens of thousands, let's say a year of salary is
> $100K to me, so let's say I'd have been paid $50K to produce that
> code. And not only have I produced it but I have taken on risk by
> producing it which I would not have taken on if I'd worked for
> someone else;
Let's assume that the extra small numbers of tens of thousands of
$$$ pay for Kent's risk.
So, who here makes a 6 figure salary and works primarily (or
exclusively) on open source software?
[Just in case anyone isn't aware, there is (today) a labor market
for people to work on closed-source software with 6+ figure salaries
attached.]
Even though I am sympathetic with Kent's plight, I do expect him
to do the economically rational thing, all other things being
equal. So, unless he can make a comparable salary working on open
source stuff, I don't actually expect him to spend any significant
time on it...
-jon
--
------------------
Jon Allen Boone
········@delamancha.org
From: Thomas Bushnell, BSG
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <87elhyzjn5.fsf@becket.becket.net>
Jon Allen Boone <········@delamancha.org> writes:
> So, who here makes a 6 figure salary and works primarily (or
> exclusively) on open source software?
Probably not many, that kind of money is not commonly found in the
free software world. But while I would have sympathy for Kent if he
were in danger of penury, being forced to settle for $90,000 per year
does not exactly strike me as a terrible shame.
Thomas
From: Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <m3u1qu37va.fsf@quimbies.gnus.org>
Jon Allen Boone <········@delamancha.org> writes:
> So, who here makes a 6 figure salary and works primarily (or
> exclusively) on open source software?
I don't know any personally, but I know people who makes 6 figure
salaries working for companies that wouldn't exist if it weren't for
free software.
--
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
·····@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
From: Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <m34riuwvew.fsf@quimbies.gnus.org>
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> I've spent about 1/2 of a year working on some Lisp tools. Ignoring
> small numbers of tens of thousands, let's say a year of salary is
> $100K to me, so let's say I'd have been paid $50K to produce that
> code.
[...]
You have produced something that you think is of value to people, but
you fear that the (inevitable) presence of free equivalents will make
people not pay you for it, making you wonder whether it was
worthwhile creating this stuff in the first place.
And I sympathize. It is a bit of a conundrum. Other industries use
patents to make their inventions proprietary. Would that be a useful
tool for you to use?
On the other hand -- why should anyone (but you) concern themselves
that you've chosen a method of making a living that, er, doesn't
work? You clearly have a great number of options available open for
you, but you seem to insist on making a living in this one area
(commodity software), that's probably not a viable area?
--
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
·····@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <·····@gnus.org> writes:
> On the other hand -- why should anyone (but you) concern themselves
> that you've chosen a method of making a living that, er, doesn't
> work? You clearly have a great number of options available open for
> you, but you seem to insist on making a living in this one area
> (commodity software), that's probably not a viable area?
Because it could happen to you too? [for sufficiently applicable
values of "you".]
What, other than custom programming, isn't eventually commodity
software?
If nothing, then the question becomes how to ascertain the Time To
Market of the open-source equivalents so that you can determine
whether or not you can recoup your costs before the gratis version
appears. Which means hiring Marketing people [ewwwww] and Business
planners and Lawyers... that's no way for a one-person development
shop to survive [as a one-person development shop]...
So, perhaps the independents need to band together...
-jon
--
------------------
Jon Allen Boone
········@delamancha.org
From: Thomas Bushnell, BSG
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <87it7azjql.fsf@becket.becket.net>
Jon Allen Boone <········@delamancha.org> writes:
> What, other than custom programming, isn't eventually commodity
> software?
Well, I made money working for the Free Software Foundation for a
number of years. I also did work for MIT on mostly free software. I
know people who are paid to develop subversions (an improved system to
replace CVS), people who work for Cygnus doing support and other
programming, and the like.
Thomas
From: Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <m3y9g63aff.fsf@quimbies.gnus.org>
Jon Allen Boone <········@delamancha.org> writes:
> What, other than custom programming, isn't eventually commodity
> software?
Nothing. The commodity software market isn't viable as a business
proposition.
Other people are depressed that their favorite area of business isn't
viable ("Oh, the bottom just fell out of the macram� market"), and I
sympathize. But that's just how it is.
--
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
·····@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <·····@gnus.org> writes:
> On the other hand -- why should anyone (but you) concern themselves
> that you've chosen a method of making a living that, er, doesn't
> work? You clearly have a great number of options available open for
> you, but you seem to insist on making a living in this one area
> (commodity software), that's probably not a viable area?
Perhaps they shouldn't care.
Perhaps you're right that we are not a community after all and that
people who have bad things happen to them are on their own.
Perhaps I am just roadkill.
Perhaps I should just expect to be kicked in the teeth and nothing more.
Perhaps I should apologize for having cared to try.
Thanks for clarifying these things for me.
From: Thomas Bushnell, BSG
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <871ydyoewp.fsf@becket.becket.net>
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> Perhaps they shouldn't care.
>
> Perhaps you're right that we are not a community after all and that
> people who have bad things happen to them are on their own.
>
> Perhaps I am just roadkill.
>
> Perhaps I should just expect to be kicked in the teeth and nothing more.
>
> Perhaps I should apologize for having cared to try.
What? Because method (1) of making money doesn't work, you think you
are being kicked in the teeth?
I'm not sure I get the connection.
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
>
> > Perhaps they shouldn't care.
> >
> > Perhaps you're right that we are not a community after all and that
> > people who have bad things happen to them are on their own.
> >
> > Perhaps I am just roadkill.
> >
> > Perhaps I should just expect to be kicked in the teeth and nothing more.
> >
> > Perhaps I should apologize for having cared to try.
>
> What? Because method (1) of making money doesn't work, you think you
> are being kicked in the teeth?
>
> I'm not sure I get the connection.
I proposed a variety of ways of making money and asked for commentary.
You chose to comment on Motif.
From: Thomas Bushnell, BSG
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <87it7amz8f.fsf@becket.becket.net>
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> I proposed a variety of ways of making money and asked for commentary.
Yeah, but you seemed to be saying "my favorite way of making money by
writing software is not as effective as I want it to be, when there is
free software competition, therefore I'm being kicked in the teeth".
I'm afraid you don't get that much sympathy that your favorite way of
making money doesn't work when people effectively compete against you.
But that doesn't mean that you are being deprived of the ability to
make a living. It doesn't mean that you are being deprived of the
ability to make a living by hacking Lisp. It might mean that you will
earn less than you otherwise would, but then, I'm pretty sure that
someone as smart as you can count on getting an income considerably
higher than the US median.
And even if your mode of making money were obsoleted, and you had to
find a totally different way to earn a living, that's not "forcing you
out of work", and it's certainly not kicking you in the teeth.
Buggy-whip and vacuum tube makers also had to find other lines of
work. And we're not talking here about obsoleting computer
programming as a way to make money, just about obsoleting one
particular economic model of doing so, with others staying around
quite happily earning their users plenty of cash.
And this is all assuming that free software will obsolete the dominant
commercial software money-making model, which is not at all clear to
me, even though it seems so obviously a danger to you.
Thomas
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
>
> > I proposed a variety of ways of making money and asked for commentary.
>
> Yeah, but you seemed to be saying "my favorite way of making money by
> writing software is not as effective as I want it to be, when there is
> free software competition, therefore I'm being kicked in the teeth".
> [more non-responsiveness elided]
So basically you're saying you have no suggestions.
I heard the joke about the buggy whip already. It's getting old.
I went to trouble to make the situation concrete so that you'd have a nice
clear situation to offer concrete suggestions about but you're jumping
immediately to flattery, as in
> I'm pretty sure that someone as smart as you can count
> on getting an income considerably higher than the US median.
perhaps to cover for having nothing really useful to suggest? I'm just
guessing of course. All I know for sure is that you're short on details
of how I'm supposed to do better. I've offered you details and you've
responded with nothing but off-topic remarks, veiled put-downs, and
casual dismissals.
I did, by the way, say that although we are talking about me, part of
the reason is just that I had data about me. I said I don't think
there are any really unique aspects of my situation, and so there are
others likely to be in the same dilemma. So even if I am as smart as
you find it suddenly convenient to acknowledge, what about others who
are not as intellectually well-endowed as I am told I am? If _even I_
can't understand how to turn a buck in this situation, what about the
mere commoner. Please have pity. They are lost without your guidance.
From: Thomas Bushnell, BSG
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <87adsmzjgy.fsf@becket.becket.net>
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> So basically you're saying you have no suggestions.
I have *plenty* of suggestions.
Sell support. Gather people to pay for work to do, the way Cygnus
organized the ELF and Sparc work in GCC and the toolchain. Do
"piecework" instead of "write a completed system work". Sell
consulting and customized solutions rather than prepackage software.
Sell training and education services--which you, as the author of the
software you teach about, would be much better placed to deliver.
I guess I know so many people making a healthy living doing free
software--and I find it incredible that you haven't heard of the
same--that I figure it's already clear.
But indeed, I think if free software takes over, there will be fewer
jobs for programmers doing plain programming. (Though quite possibly
there would be more jobs for handholders, customized modifications,
contract work, and the like, but it's hard to know for sure.)
But so what? Why is "fewer jobs for programmers" a disaster?
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> Sell support.
...
> But so what? Why is "fewer jobs for programmers" a disaster?
I want to program. Not as a night time hobby. As my day job.
I do not want to do support. Support is not programming.
Your response is as if I asked "What will musicians do?" and you had
responded "They will wait tables." This is a non-reply.
Some people just want a job and it doesn't matter what they do.
That is not the case for me. I suspect I'm not unique in this desire.
I find it weird that the same people that are telling me I have no
basis for believing there is any effect on me due to free software are
also telling me that if I want to make money, I should get a different
line of work. It used to be possible to make money as a programmer.
Something isn't clicking here.
From: Thomas Bushnell, BSG
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <871ydyzhqr.fsf@becket.becket.net>
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> Your response is as if I asked "What will musicians do?" and you had
> responded "They will wait tables." This is a non-reply.
No, it's as if someone asked "What will musicians do" and I said
"public performances" and you said "but I only want to make studio
recordings".
> Some people just want a job and it doesn't matter what they do.
> That is not the case for me. I suspect I'm not unique in this desire.
Sure, but many support jobs *are* programming. In the days when
Cygnus was called "Cygnus Support", nearly all the technical staff
spent nearly all their time doing programming.
But you skipped a list, picked the one you *don't* want to do, and
complain I have no suggestions but waiting tables?
> I find it weird that the same people that are telling me I have no
> basis for believing there is any effect on me due to free software are
> also telling me that if I want to make money, I should get a different
> line of work. It used to be possible to make money as a programmer.
> Something isn't clicking here.
I know *lots* of people who make money *as a programmer*, some of whom
do principally free software work, and some who do exclusively free
software work.
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
>
> > Your response is as if I asked "What will musicians do?" and you had
> > responded "They will wait tables." This is a non-reply.
>
> No, it's as if someone asked "What will musicians do" and I said
> "public performances" and you said "but I only want to make studio
> recordings".
And? This is still a very valid objection. There are just certain
things you can't do in a public performance, which are only viable in
studio recordings. And so, if the only way to get paid is to create
public performances, a very interesting category of music will cease
to exist, or will only be made by amateurs, as a hobby, at IMNSHO a
much lower level of quality, since high-quality does mean lots of
equipment and technicians, and they will not give their time for
free.
So not only does the maker of "studio" music loose out in this
scenario, the consumer also looses out.
Now you might say that if the consumer really wanted to have studio
recordings, he'd pay for records. But given the short-sightedness of
us humans, I'd tend to disagree. Unless we provide the legal _and_
social framework that makes paying for records the reasonable thing to
do, people will trade the long-term gain of having professional studio
recordings, for the short-term gain of getting free records.
Similar things apply for software IMNSHO.
Regs, Pierre.
--
Pierre R. Mai <····@acm.org> http://www.pmsf.de/pmai/
The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree,
is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals.
We cause accidents. -- Nathaniel Borenstein
"Pierre R. Mai" <····@acm.org> writes:
> Now you might say that if the consumer really wanted to have studio
> recordings, he'd pay for records. But given the short-sightedness
> of us humans, I'd tend to disagree.
Not to mention that the cost of a recording studio is significantly
higher than what we currently pay for a single CD (at most $25).
--
-> -/ - Rahul Jain - \- <-
-> -\ http://linux.rice.edu/~rahul -=- ············@techie.com /- <-
-> -/ "Structure is nothing if it is all you got. Skeletons spook \- <-
-> -\ people if [they] try to walk around on their own. I really /- <-
-> -/ wonder why XML does not." -- Erik Naggum, comp.lang.lisp \- <-
|--|--------|--------------|----|-------------|------|---------|-----|-|
(c)1996-2002, All rights reserved. Disclaimer available upon request.
* "Pierre R. Mai" <····@acm.org> writes:
> Now you might say that if the consumer really wanted to have studio
> recordings, he'd pay for records. But given the short-sightedness
> of us humans, I'd tend to disagree.
* Rahul Jain <·····@sid-1129.sid.rice.edu> writes:
> Not to mention that the cost of a recording studio is significantly
> higher than what we currently pay for a single CD (at most $25).
<humor>
But, then, you'll just charge the first customer the entire cost
of producing the album and only charge the 2nd+ customers the
marginal cost of making a copy onto CD for them.
If you can't find someone willing to foot the entire bill, that's
not a problem since all of the really great artists died by the
1700s.
</humor>
Since I own no more than 3 CDs/albumns/cassettes (out of 200+)
from artists who died before 1900, this, to me, pretty well
encapsulates how ridiculous it is to consider only marginal cost
when it comes to producing the 2nd+ unit. I'm willing to pay an
amortized cost of the production + markup for the nKth unit in order
to get the CD in question [as are nK other people...], so it's a
good thing that the music industry uses that sort of accounting...
In fact, since most of my music collection is from the 1970s -
long before I had discretionary income - I'd be S.O.L. if other
people hadn't put up the money to get the music produced. I mean,
I'd certainly pay now to get _Dark Side of The Moon_ produced, but,
then it'd belong to me and I'd charge an amortized proportion of the
cost to each other person I sold a copy to, etc., etc., etc.
Economists who advocate such a silly ideas should have their
licenses revoked if they can't come around to reason through
dialog. But it's a free market for economists? Well, if they
lose big for advocating nonsense, I guess they somehow "deserve" it.
Oh, wait, I get it - it's just their reward for being stubborn about
their foolishness. Perhaps we should start a collection going for
them, since Social Security appears to be in such jeopardy.
-jon
--
------------------
Jon Allen Boone
········@delamancha.org
From: Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <m3pu1i36z5.fsf@quimbies.gnus.org>
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> Your response is as if I asked "What will musicians do?" and you had
> responded "They will wait tables." This is a non-reply.
But musicians do wait tables. Almost no musicians are able to earn a
living doing music. And they have my sympathy.
> I find it weird that the same people that are telling me I have no
> basis for believing there is any effect on me due to free software are
> also telling me that if I want to make money, I should get a different
> line of work. It used to be possible to make money as a programmer.
> Something isn't clicking here.
Who is telling you that free software has no effect on you? It
obviously has, and that effect will continue to increase.
--
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
·····@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> I want to program. Not as a night time hobby. As my day job.
> I do not want to do support. Support is not programming.
> It used to be possible to make money as a programmer.
It still is, but perhaps there are fewer options then there used to be,
because of free software.
Your nightmare scenario was that you developed some new functionality,
you wanted to sell it, but you were worried that someone could take the
spec and fairly easily re-implement the functionality (and then give it away
for free).
There seems to be a similar threat even in the commercial world: if it's so
easy to re-implement, it's hard to sustain a competitive advantage. Is your
life really so much harder because of this free threat, than it was in the past
with a low-price cheap-knockoff threat? In either case, the folks who come
second get to save the huge development cost you had to put in to initially
work out the design.
There have been commercial responses to this kind of situation in the past.
On the legal side, you can try patents, trade secrets, etc. On the technical
side, you can try to implement functionality where the implementation itself
is very challenging. (E.g., just having the spec for PGP doesn't get me very
far into implementing RSA encryption.)
I'm curious how your fear of free software is so different in kind from
commercial copy-cats + pseudo-dumping. I'll agree that free software is a more
extreme version of the threat, but it looks like a type of threat that has been
there all along.
-- Don
_______________________________________________________________________________
Don Geddis http://don.geddis.org ···@geddis.org
Dear Mrs, Mr, Miss, or Mr and Mrs Daneeka: Words cannot express the deep
personal grief I experienced when your husband, son, father or brother was
killed, wounded, or reported missing in action. -- Joseph Heller, _Catch-22_
Don Geddis <···@geddis.org> writes:
> Your nightmare scenario was that you developed some new functionality,
> you wanted to sell it, but you were worried that someone could take the
> spec and fairly easily re-implement the functionality (and then give it away
> for free).
>
> There seems to be a similar threat even in the commercial world: if it's so
> easy to re-implement, it's hard to sustain a competitive advantage.
In the limit case of corporate turnaround, yes, this is a theoretical
threat. In practice, companies don't roll out product this fast.
There are legal, support, advertising, quality assurance, and
documentation issues that add time to the process. It's unusual that
a company can turn around and follow a product in 3 months. I'd say 6
months is more typical. That much time is plenty of margin for error.
Free software is done with no warranties, no requirements of
completeness, no documentation expectations, no quality expectations,
and yet in many cases the community accepts the result as adequate.
Indeed, the _only_ saving grace of free software is that sometimes the
GPL poisons it for use; but LGPL and other licenses mostly fix that, so
it's not enough practical protection. Further, in commerce, there is a
natural aversion to dealing with multiple vendors; in free software, there
is no vendor, so the cumulative/aggregated effects of distributed efforts
are more pronounced. All of these things come together, IMO, to say
that no, there is not really in any material way a similar commercial
threat.
> There have been commercial responses to this kind of situation in the past.
> On the legal side, you can try patents,
I don't like patents and will be sad if that's the answer.
> trade secrets, etc.
This is an option but a lousy one. I could sell the software under a
contract similar to NDA with a trade secret arrangement. Bleah. This
is much more restricted than I would like to have to. To me, the whole
function of commercial copyright is to allow sharing "in the open" without
being commercially killed off. But it requires protection of various
kinds from regulations on "marketplace" in order to fulfill this.
> On the technical
> side, you can try to implement functionality where the implementation itself
> is very challenging. (E.g., just having the spec for PGP doesn't get me very
> far into implementing RSA encryption.)
If I chose things to implement that were complex, yes. But I chose a natural
set of things that needed to be done next, and they were not these.
> I'm curious how your fear of free software is so different in kind from
> commercial copy-cats + pseudo-dumping.
I hope I've explained this clearly enough that even if you don't agree it
would affect you the same way, you at least understand where I'm coming from.
> I'll agree that free software is a more
> extreme version of the threat,
Not just more extreme, but orders of magnitude more extreme. And that is
the difference between merely "quantitative" and "qualitative". That is,
to quantify the difference between "quantitative" and "qualitative", I might
clumsily suggest that the difference between "9.5" and "10" (logarithmic
scales like for earthquakes aside) is merely quantitative. Not enough that
one invents new "names". But qualitative differences are those that are
big enough to be worth naming. "one", "two", "several", "many", "lots".
Absent context, these differ in that "many" might mean something different
for counting votes than for counting atoms, but given context, these terms
differ only in that there are step functions among them. And so in that
sense, when I'm saying there is a qualitative difference, yes, you can reduce
the difference to quantitative. But you will miss that the whole reason
people reason qualitatively and not quantitatively is that their brains
are fundamentally symbol processors not number processors, so you have
the directionality backwards. One is stuck forever at the gambling table
if all they say is, "well, I only lost .1, oh, i only lost anther .1" What
gets you away from the table is drawing a hard line and saying "it matters
if I fall below 17" because then I am in a different qualitative range that
I define as "having lost" rather than "about to lose", or that I define as
"too much risk" rather than "acceptable risk".
> but it looks like a type of threat that has been
> there all along.
This same observation was made about the reverse indexing of the yellow pages
when the internet went online. "Couldn't I always have just gone up and
down the columns in the pages of the yellow pages? wasn't that info always
just public information?" The answer is both yes and no. The words are true
but the qualitative effect is different. And the qualitative effect more
aptly captures the sense of gestalt we have about lost privacy than does the
quantitative effect, even if some degenerate argument can be given that
there was no real change.
Even the shift from 1 to 0 in the wave forms that make up electrical pathways
in a computer can be at some level called a mere quantitative shift and one
can just say "0 wasn't ever really zero, it was just kind of a small value,
and is 1 really that much bigger a value". But we draw lines and we say
at some ponit it does matter. Or else we have nothing to work with at all.
From: Thomas Bushnell, BSG
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <871ydxykw9.fsf@becket.becket.net>
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> Free software is done with no warranties, no requirements of
> completeness, no documentation expectations, no quality expectations,
> and yet in many cases the community accepts the result as adequate.
As a general rule, these are true of proprietary software as well.
Thomas
From: Duane Rettig
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <4hemtg8ha.fsf@beta.franz.com>
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
>
> > Free software is done with no warranties, no requirements of
> > completeness, no documentation expectations, no quality expectations,
> > and yet in many cases the community accepts the result as adequate.
>
> As a general rule, these are true of proprietary software as well.
That rule doesn't apply to supported software. The redress for
grievances is through the support channel, and to the extent that
the expectations Kent was referring to are not satisfied, the
company supporting the software will lose its reputation and thus
lose sales.
I consider commodity software to be unsupported software, whether it
is proprietary or not. When you buy a copy of commodity software,
you essentially get what you get, and little more. Perhaps you will
get a patch, or (in the case of software that comes with sources)
the right to fix the problem yourself, but mostly you are out of
luck if you don't have the time to fix it yourself.
I think that the biggest threat that free and commodity software presents
is the numbing effect it has on the consumer population. I've seen the
90/10 rule bantered about in these threads, and accepted as a natural
requirement for acceptance of software. But if one accepts a 90%
solution, and couples that with a 90% application, and runs that with
90% data, and perhaps a new version gets 90% of the older version right
(etc ...) - How long does it take to whittle the quality down to less
than half?
I'm not talking about free software projects like emacs, which has
been subjected to years and years of whittling that 10% down as much
as possible to bring the correctness closer and closer to 100%. I
am instead talking about hacks that people pass around that are
"good enough" for a particular job, but which weren't designed for
more general use. However, since such software has no support or
warranties, the tendency is to accept the failings of that software
as "the way it is" and to not demand that it be fixed. I believe that
this is the most dangerous aspect that both free software and commodity
software bring to the software industry.
A story (I may have told this before, so sorry if you've heard it):
At a previous company I worked for, our director of software services
liked to tell his people the story of a company which did both hardware
and software preojects. One project in particular was mostly software
based, and had a very small hardware component. The hardware people
saw this as a great opportunity to learn some software, so they aske
the software group if they could take on a piece of the software part
of the project. Reluctantly, the software people agreed, mostly because
the knew that the whole of the software effort was goingf to be too
much for them to do in the time constraints that they were given.
Each group went off to do their designs, and the time came for the
components of the system to be put together: the pure software, the
software written by the hardware group, and the hardware. Miraculously,
the hardware people's software performed flawlessly, with no bugs at
all. The sotware group were amazed, because the hardware group had had
no experience with software. So they asked them "How did you get your
software to perform without a single bug?" To which the hardware
people replied "Well ... we thought that bugs weren't allowed."
From an ex-hardware man who still doesn't really buy into the "worse is
better" philosophy...
--
Duane Rettig Franz Inc. http://www.franz.com/ (www)
1995 University Ave Suite 275 Berkeley, CA 94704
Phone: (510) 548-3600; FAX: (510) 548-8253 ·····@Franz.COM (internet)
From: Thomas Bushnell, BSG
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <874rit4pma.fsf@becket.becket.net>
Duane Rettig <·····@franz.com> writes:
> That rule doesn't apply to supported software. The redress for
> grievances is through the support channel, and to the extent that
> the expectations Kent was referring to are not satisfied, the
> company supporting the software will lose its reputation and thus
> lose sales.
Sure, but it doesn't apply to supported free software either.
Supported software has all kinds of nice guarantees to it; unsupported
software might not, and this has very little to do with what the
licensing terms are.
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> Free software is done with no warranties, no requirements of
> completeness, no documentation expectations, no quality expectations,
> and yet in many cases the community accepts the result as adequate.
I'm curious: you keep equating free software solutions with poor quality
(or at least not complete solutions). While perhaps that was true in the
cases you've experienced with competition to your own code, I've seen lots
of high-quality free software. Try to compare the Apache web server (free)
to, say, an Oracle RDMBS on almost any measure of "product quality". Or
even Linux vs. MS Windows, on metrics like bugs or propensity to crash.
But let's leave that aside. Even if initial free implementations are worse
than a well-thought out complete solution, this seems to be getting into a
"worse is better" territory. Do you simply not believe that argument for
(at least a partial explanation of) the Lisp vs. C/Perl/etc. war of the last
few decades?
Otherwise, if you accept that "worse is better" is a powerful force in
technology adoption, then it sounds like you have bigger battles than just
free software competition. Now you're also trying to win a well-designed-for-
building-on-in-the-future battle against good-enough-for-now-but-might-break-
later competitor.
Presumably, the Lisp community made a strategic error 20-30 years ago,
resulting in the Lisp language not becoming as popular as it "deserved" to be.
The benefits of fast, easy, ubiquitous delivery of a "good enough" solution
are tough to counter. Even absent the free software threat, do you have a
new approach to this issue?
-- Don
_______________________________________________________________________________
Don Geddis http://don.geddis.org ···@geddis.org
80 Southdown Court, Hillsborough CA 94010
Home: 650 685-0185 Fax: 650 685-0186 Cell: 650 218-8716
USENET: Post to exotic, distant machines. Meet exciting, unusual people.
And flame them. -- Dan Sorenson
From: Bulent Murtezaoglu
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <87elhwbas6.fsf@nkapi.internal>
>>>>> "DG" == Don Geddis <···@geddis.org> writes:
[...]
DG> But let's leave that aside. Even if initial free
DG> implementations are worse than a well-thought out complete
DG> solution, this seems to be getting into a "worse is better"
DG> territory. [...]
I was going to write a long thing in similar vein. I think you nailed it.
I think this holds without the free software/volunteer labor angle also.
One can imagine somebody competing with KMP only offering 80-90% of the
functionality and maybe 60% of the quality which can be gotten by cheap
labor pulling all-nighters coding things in a trial/error fashion.
DG> [...] Otherwise, if you accept that "worse is better" is a powerful
DG> force in technology adoption, then it sounds like you have
DG> bigger battles than just free software competition. Now
DG> you're also trying to win a well-designed-for-
DG> building-on-in-the-future battle against
DG> good-enough-for-now-but-might-break- later competitor. [...]
Oh the battle is bigger than that I thing. It is against "seems to
work now, we don't need perfection" (where perfection means taking the
time to understand why it didn't work 5 minutes ago), "works with IE,
good enough," and similar kinds of attitudes. So it is
works-good-enough-some-of-the-time-we-know-it-is-broken-we-do-not-care-how.
This is a mostly a cultural problem and it annoys me too, but most of
the time to cause the "right" decision to be made one needs to be able
to make the business case for it and communicate it effectively. So you
are correct, worse it better because worse isn't worse from all angles.
cheers,
BM
Don Geddis <···@geddis.org> writes:
> Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> > Free software is done with no warranties, no requirements of
> > completeness, no documentation expectations, no quality expectations,
> > and yet in many cases the community accepts the result as adequate.
>
> I'm curious: you keep equating free software solutions with poor quality
> (or at least not complete solutions). While perhaps that was true in the
> cases you've experienced with competition to your own code, I've seen lots
> of high-quality free software. Try to compare the Apache web server (free)
> to, say, an Oracle RDMBS on almost any measure of "product quality". Or
> even Linux vs. MS Windows, on metrics like bugs or propensity to crash.
Hi, Don. Thanks for the set of questions...
I finally understand what keeps snagging people when I say this. You're
assuming I'm thinking a _company_ based on free software is of concern.
Mostly I am not. I don't think RedHat happens to be much of a threat.
HOWEVER, although it is possible to sell one's software wares on the
street, it's mostly not done. While people _do_ encourage everyone to
join the cause of free software and make something to give away.
People graduate college hungry to have someone appreciate them, and
they know they can be "heroes" by simply writing any old thing and
slapping a GPL on it.
"Real" companies plan their products, but free software is a movement that
encourages people to be hobbyists and to feel "a part of the whole thing",
so you can't just hide behind big company names every time someone mentions
free software unless it's part of the free software paradigm to have to
_have_ a company in order to do it.
Because if someone talks to me about a company, the very first thing I
tell them is where to file for a trade name, how to get an employee ID
number for tax purposes, and so on. When someone says free software,
I don't see hurdles like this.
The US law of contracts, as I understand it, recognizes a difference
in contractual liability between entities that are companies and entities
that are not _whether or not_ the contracts are in the business area of
the person writing the contract. The assumption is that the burden of being
a company is so high that people who own or represent businesses are of a
more sophisticated kind, and bear a larger burden in contracts than those
who are not. It is as if having a business was a kind of rite of passage
into adulthood.
But free software bypasses all of this, while operating in the same
arena as a business. That doesn't mean there aren't free software
businesses, it means being free software doesn't require being a business.
It is like bikers riding in the middle of a street that was designed
for cars. It seems to be different in California than in most other
places, since people there are more serious about their bikes, but
around Boston it's routine to see people on bikes whiz through
intersections on bikes because they think they enjoy all of the rights
and none of the responsibilities of a car. There are bikers who are very
polite and law-abiding, but the bad name for bikers is still there from
the offenders.... at least in the case of bikers, the good ones are often
activist in reining in the bad ones...
I perceive an arm of the free sofwtare movement that really does want
the effect I'm complaining about. So it's an uphill battle...
> But let's leave that aside. Even if initial free implementations are worse
> than a well-thought out complete solution, this seems to be getting into a
> "worse is better" territory. Do you simply not believe that argument for
> (at least a partial explanation of) the Lisp vs. C/Perl/etc. war of the last
> few decades?
I think of this as orthogonal but I'll think more on it. I think a C
programmer would still build a worse-is-better thing that a Lisp person
wouldn't, but that that kind of solution is different than the question of
planning. Maybe there are multiple axes of worse/betterness.
> Otherwise, if you accept that "worse is better" is a powerful force
> in technology adoption, then it sounds like you have bigger battles
> than just free software competition. Now you're also trying to win
> a well-designed-for- building-on-in-the-future battle against
> good-enough-for-now-but-might-break- later competitor.
I don't mean any of the issues to be decided on this basis any more than I
think it's right to decide the Microsoft case on the basis of analyzing
what business areas it is or isn't in. I think there are definite problems
that are possible to describe as you have, or as you perceive I have, or
as people do when they say Microsoft shouldn't control both the platform and
a browser. But the solution for Microsoft isn't a law against controlling
both OS and browser, because the next problem of the same ilk will be
different. One has to study the places the system breaks down, but that
doesn't mean the fixes are of the same kind as the observed problems. I'm
wishing others would be contributing problem descriptions as well because
if they were, we could generalize better. But instead everyone sees me whine
about one problem, they see the grief I get, they say "geez, I don'tw any
any of that", it looks like mine is the only problem, and people say I'm
just whining and they don't understand where I'm going with this.
> Presumably, the Lisp community made a strategic error 20-30 years ago,
> resulting in the Lisp language not becoming as popular as it "deserved" to be.
> The benefits of fast, easy, ubiquitous delivery of a "good enough" solution
> are tough to counter. Even absent the free software threat, do you have a
> new approach to this issue?
Well, I did at one point. Perhaps I will again. I decided my
original plan's cost model didn't work and have had to dynamically
regroup where I was going with my company.
Free software has many faces.
THE NOBLE FACE
First let me talk about the noble face. Early in the history of
mathematics, new ideas in mathematical thought were guarded with extreme
secrecy. People were killed for revealing the mysteries of irrational
numbers. These ideas were not regarded so much as trade secrets as secret
religious beliefs. But later mathematical advances were jealously guarded
and milked for their practical benefit. It used to be that to get good
paying mathematical jobs in England one had to win competitions of
factoring quintics. The techniques mathematicians developed to win these
competitions were handed down through the generations, and were jealously
guarded secrets.
In modern times, most mathematicians do not keep their results hidden.
The whole point of modern mathematics is to develop new ideas and then
publish them for everyone to see. Are mathematicians doing this out of
the goodness of their hearts? Not really. The way to a successful career
as a mathematician is to publish results that lots of people read, use,
and cite. So of course everyone publishes their results for everyone else
to use!
Early in the history of computing (i.e. very recently!) programs were
published and distributed like academic papers. Programmers would find
clever techniques to do what they needed to do, and tell their colleagues
about it. Punch card decks or magnetic tapes were copied and traded
without a second thought. It was only after computing exploded into every
other area of life and escaped academia that programs started to be
distributed in compiled form, with copyrights and restrictions. This is
the natural progression of things from academia to industry.
But academic software is still here today! It hasn't vanished. There are
more and more people studying computer science and programming than ever
before. One should therefore expect to see more freely distributed
software. And we do see it. Go to the CS department pages of any .edu
site, and you will find all kinds of stuff to look at and download. Weird
programming languages, funny tools that analyze things you've never heard
of (and probably don't care about), weird libraries that implement
algorithms that seem to have no practical importance, you name it.
This is the noble face of free software; academic software that breaks new
ground, that communicates novel ideas. If you argue against free academic
software, you argue against the modern idea of research.
THE PRACTICAL FACE
Most free software is "new" but not particularly "novel". Linux is the
best example I can think of here. This is the category of "scratching an
itch" that people often talk about. The basic idea of what the software
should be already exists. In the case of Linux, Linus had already used
Unix and liked it. But for some reason or another, the software is not
available (or not suitable) for the environment the programmer uses. In
this case, Linus wanted Unix on his PC. So he made it himself. Once it
was working and usable, he decided that instead of selling a few copies
and making a little bit of money, he would let anyone use it. This way
more people would use it and benefit from it, and he would be more famous
but slightly poorer. This was a perfectly rational decision.
I think most free software falls in this category. Suppose I want an
emulator for an old computer system I used to own. I find that there are
none available. What do I do? Quit my job, start my own company, get
funding, write the emulator and sell it, possibly making money but more
likely going bankrupt? Do nothing? Or just write it for fun? Writing it
and releasing it for free is less work than the "make your own company"
approach, and makes you popular. The other solution of releasing it as
shareware makes some money, but generates less popularity for the author.
The more original the idea behind the software is, the more likely the
author will be to release the code freely. To just get the good idea out
into the open benefits humanity (in the same sense that publishing
mathematical results benefits humanity). More mundane things
(addressbooks) are more likely to be released as shareware. (At least
this is how I reason about things when I release my own software).
THE CHEAP FACE
People like free things. If something works and is free, people won't pay
for the slightly better solution. Mix this in with the practical side
above, and you get the cheap side of free software. Suppose I want to run
Motif applications on Linux. I can buy a license, or reinvent Motif (i.e.
Lesstiff). The motivation here for programmers is that they want a
software product that is available and works, but they don't want to pay
for it. So if many people get together, they can reinvent it and get the
benefits without the cost. This is the "bad" side of free software.
This is the part that is diametrically opposed to proprietary software.
Why spend time and money developing something good when people will just
copy it and give it away for free? This is what Kent Pitman is worried
about.
I guess my point for writing this is that I have heard many things said
about free software that I think are unfair. There are many faces to free
software, and to put them all in one category just doesn't work. To the
casual observer, it seems that all free software is just cheap knockoffs
of real commercial software. The reason you see this is because the most
used free programs are the ones that copy commercial programs (the "bad"
ones). These are the programs that a power user cannot live without.
But there is so much more to free software!
Look at it another way: how would you feel if McCarthy hadn't published
his paper on Lisp, but had kept it secret? That's almost what some of the
posters here seem to suggest they want.
--
Nathan Whitehead
Nathan Whitehead <········@math.uiuc.edu> writes:
> Look at it another way: how would you feel if McCarthy hadn't published
> his paper on Lisp, but had kept it secret? That's almost what some of the
> posters here seem to suggest they want.
Well, anyone who supports EITHER patents or free software wouldn't
want that, for sure. And there's a difference between software
research and commercial software. McCarthy was paid by Stanford and
MIT to publish his research, so that's what he did.
--
-> -/ - Rahul Jain - \- <-
-> -\ http://linux.rice.edu/~rahul -=- ············@techie.com /- <-
-> -/ "Structure is nothing if it is all you got. Skeletons spook \- <-
-> -\ people if [they] try to walk around on their own. I really /- <-
-> -/ wonder why XML does not." -- Erik Naggum, comp.lang.lisp \- <-
|--|--------|--------------|----|-------------|------|---------|-----|-|
(c)1996-2002, All rights reserved. Disclaimer available upon request.
> Don Geddis <···@geddis.org> writes:
> > I've seen lots of high-quality free software. Try to compare the Apache
> > web server (free) to, say, an Oracle RDMBS on almost any measure of
> > "product quality".
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> You're assuming I'm thinking a _company_ based on free software is of
> concern.
> Because if someone talks to me about a company, the very first thing I
> tell them is where to file for a trade name, how to get an employee ID
> number for tax purposes, and so on. When someone says free software,
> I don't see hurdles like this.
I guess I don't understand your focus on corporations. The Apache web server
looks to me like a shining success of the free software community. It's
high quality, well documented, etc. Most everything you might want from a
commercial product. And yet, it was produced with volunteer labor, outside
the structure of a corporation.
I had thought that one of your concerns was that free software projects
produced lower-quality output. And your explanation was that they didn't
have some of the responsibilities of corporations: documentation, support,
QA, etc.
I grant that there are some free software corporations, like RedHat, so those
don't need to concern us here. But what is your analysis of Apache? Isn't
it a non-corporation, high quality, free software effort?
Or perhaps I've misunderstood your position...
-- Don
_______________________________________________________________________________
Don Geddis http://don.geddis.org ···@geddis.org
I hope that after I die, people will say of me: "That guy sure owed me a lot of
money."
-- Deep Thoughts, by Jack Handey [1999]
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> I do not want to do support. Support is not programming.
support is programming people.
thi
From: Eduardo Muñoz
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <uadslwzg3.fsf@jet.es>
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> ·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
>
> > Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> >
> > > I proposed a variety of ways of making money and asked for commentary.
> >
> > Yeah, but you seemed to be saying "my favorite way of making money by
> > writing software is not as effective as I want it to be, when there is
> > free software competition, therefore I'm being kicked in the teeth".
That is what he said, and I feel that the
metaphor is perfectly clear. I feel his pain
also.
I would like to make a living coding in lisp (or
c++, or even fortran), but here I am, coding in
Visual Basic an app that processes almost-rotten
data to manufacture steel towers. The chain of
facts that took me here is decoupled from free
software, but here we are "being kicked in the
teeth".
> I went to trouble to make the situation concrete so that you'd have a nice
> clear situation to offer concrete suggestions about but ...
If you where to consider "cheap" suggestions, here
is mine:
Reduce your posting volume. Finish your book and
publish it. Show some tiny fraction of your
product on it. Wait some time (a couple of
months). Try to sell your product (the high price
range will do better imho). Keep your ears open to
feature requests and custom solutions. If the
money doesn't start to flow just sit down and plan
a career change. AFAIK Steel has been implied with
CL, Scheme and Java, so has done Norvig (CL and
Java). Naggum came from SGML to CL and said here
that maybe he will switch again.
I wish you good luck. Or maybe you don't need any
luck since you're so smart <grin>
>[...] If _even I_
> can't understand how to turn a buck in this situation, what about the
> mere commoner. Please have pity. They are lost without your guidance.
After reading most of the posts of this Thomas
Bushnell I can't ressist to say that they would be
lost on hell with his guidance.
--
Eduardo Mu�oz
"Eduardo Mu�oz" <···@jet.es> writes:
> After reading most of the posts of this [X] I can't ressist to
> say that they would be lost on hell with his guidance.
Hehe, and this might in fact indicate the solution to the whole
problem. Somehow I don't believe that Free Software ``wins'' in
the sense that it will become impossible to make reasonable money
out of designing and writing software. But once you don't
believe they'll ``win'', the whole discussion about ``what
/would/ happen if Free Software took over'' becomes
uninteresting.
Regards,
--
Nils Goesche
Ask not for whom the <CONTROL-G> tolls.
PGP key ID #xC66D6E6F
"Kent M Pitman" <······@world.std.com> wrote in message
····················@shell01.TheWorld.com...
> Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <·····@gnus.org> writes:
>
> > On the other hand -- why should anyone (but you) concern themselves
> > that you've chosen a method of making a living that, er, doesn't
> > work? You clearly have a great number of options available open for
> > you, but you seem to insist on making a living in this one area
> > (commodity software), that's probably not a viable area?
>
> Perhaps they shouldn't care.
>
> Perhaps you're right that we are not a community after all and that
> people who have bad things happen to them are on their own.
>
> Perhaps I am just roadkill.
>
> Perhaps I should just expect to be kicked in the teeth and nothing more.
>
> Perhaps I should apologize for having cared to try.
>
> Thanks for clarifying these things for me.
Perhaps this will help.
http://www.humankindness.org/fall96.html
Wade
From: Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <m3zo0mvfah.fsf@quimbies.gnus.org>
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> Perhaps I am just roadkill.
You seem to be equating "not being able to make money in the
commodity software market" with "death" a lot. Why is that?
--
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
·····@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
In article <···············@shell01.TheWorld.com>, Kent M Pitman wrote:
> Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <·····@gnus.org> writes:
>
>> On the other hand -- why should anyone (but you) concern themselves
>> that you've chosen a method of making a living that, er, doesn't
>> work? You clearly have a great number of options available open for
>> you, but you seem to insist on making a living in this one area
>> (commodity software), that's probably not a viable area?
>
> Perhaps they shouldn't care.
>
> Perhaps you're right that we are not a community after all and that
> people who have bad things happen to them are on their own.
>
> Perhaps I am just roadkill.
>
> Perhaps I should just expect to be kicked in the teeth and nothing more.
>
> Perhaps I should apologize for having cared to try.
>
> Thanks for clarifying these things for me.
That's what dealing with fanatics is like. They just don't want to
understand. Maybe those people have never been inside a dying
company. Don't know what it's like, how sad it is to watch,
not being able to do anything about it. Watching a highly developed
organism like a company dying from inside is a horrible experience
nobody can imagine who hasn't been there before. It even is if
you didn't like the company or its management very much, maybe
even if you actually hated it. Although you will have trouble
finding a more passionate anti-communist than myself, when I am in
Russia watching the ruins of the great evil empire makes me feel
very sad, too. I really don't get how somebody can be so
insensitive as not understanding this; either lack of experience
or just pure evilness, I guess.
Regards,
--
Nils Goesche
"Don't ask for whom the <CTRL-G> tolls."
PGP key ID 0x42B32FC9
Nils Goesche <······@cartan.de> writes:
> > Thanks for clarifying these things for me.
>
> That's what dealing with fanatics is like. They just don't want to
> understand. Maybe those people have never been inside a dying
> company. Don't know what it's like, how sad it is to watch, not
> being able to do anything about it. Watching a highly developed
> organism like a company dying from inside is a horrible experience
> nobody can imagine who hasn't been there before. It even is if you
> didn't like the company or its management very much, maybe even if
> you actually hated it.
That is a large blanket statement to apply to the diverse set of
people in this conversation. It also does nothing to solve the issues
being discussed. Might I suggest that instead of venting your spleen,
something I myself am certainly prone to do, you think about what you
are posting and how it will contribute to the discussion and benefit
others.
--
Craig Brozefsky <·····@red-bean.com>
Free Software Sociopath(tm) http://www.red-bean.com/~craig
Ask me about Common Lisp Enterprise Eggplants at Red Bean!
In article <··············@piracy.red-bean.com>, Craig Brozefsky wrote:
> Nils Goesche <······@cartan.de> writes:
>> Kent Pitman wrote:
>> > Thanks for clarifying these things for me.
>>
>> Maybe those people have never been inside a dying company.
[snip]
> That is a large blanket statement to apply to the diverse set of
> people in this conversation.
I wasn't addressing anybody directly, was I?
> It also does nothing to solve the issues being discussed.
Maybe it does. I am not sure. Some people seem to be deeply hurt
by certain statements made in this thread. I was suggesting that
those statements might have been made out of inconsideration,
rather than pure evilness. Is this such a bad thing to say?
Regards,
--
Nils Goesche
"Don't ask for whom the <CTRL-G> tolls."
PGP key ID 0x42B32FC9
From: Kenny Tilton
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <3CA953BE.8D6AE373@nyc.rr.com>
Kent M Pitman wrote:
> So you tell me--what should I be doing?
My two cents: Life is short. Right or wrong, FS is a given for now. Boon
or plague, doesn't matter, ya gotta take it as a given and do what you
can. Changing others is /really/ hard, basically a losing proposition.
I say publish the book. The tools can be FASLs for diff implementations,
yes? Or screw it, publish the source. The one thing the free crowd
cannot duplicate is being you. Continue to build your rep as a Lisp god,
reap the rewards in the coming Lisp renaissance by getting top salary
and options in some start-up.
Beat the free crowd by joining them. GPL the Great Kent Pitman Library.
(branding is key.) Others contrib, accepted only if they grant you equal
copyright. Leverage your Lisp friendships. License reasonably to the
commercial crowd so there is no infectiousness and of course for $$$.
Kick off points to contributors as you see fit to make it fun. Even if
licensing does not pay off, your reputation grows, with it your going
rate/stock-options.
If you have your heart set on being your own boss selling commercial
tools, this may not help unless the GKPL takes off. In which case the
words of Buddha come to mind. The root of all unhappiness is our wants
and desires.
--
kenny tilton
clinisys, inc
---------------------------------------------------------------
"Harvey has overcome not only time and space but any objections."
Elwood P. Dowd
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> wrote in message news:<···············@shell01.TheWorld.com>...
> ··············@airmail.net (William Newman) writes:
>
> > Is a producer entitled to his customers after they've found an
> > alternative they prefer? When a vacuum tube manufacturer can't
> > compete, is switching over to some other kind of work -- with or
> > without going out of business -- really analogous to dying? What about
> > an honest laborer complaining about the cutthroat competition -- from
> > laborers poorer than him? If he lowers himself to their income level,
> > is that analogous to dying? (And if he finds a way to solve the
> > problem by stopping them from competing, where does that leave them,
> > and the customers who preferred them? Or does that matter? Are
> > transistor manufacturers, new immigrants, free software authors, and
> > customers properly analogous to the disease organisms which are
> > damaged when the patient is cured?)
> >
> > Neither the vacuum tube situation nor the "it's unfair that those
> > immigrants work 70 hour weeks and there oughtta be a law" situation
> > justifies gloating by the competition, at least if the displaced
> > competition isn't somehow obnoxious. But I think the actual level of
> > gloating (whether by transistor manufacturers, by immigrant bakers
> > before 1900 or so, or by free software authors) is actually pretty
> > low. (and certainly low enough that it shouldn't affect policy
> > decisions!)
>
> These are reasonable questions to ask and I agree the situation is
> complicated. The free market needs to be free to do some of these
> things but we don't have to like it, and we sometimes have choices.
>
> For example, let's say I see a community that is well-served by a set
> of restaurants and I have some cool recipes that I know could trounce
> those restaurants. I could, for the sheer thrill of it, go head to
> head with that community just to see myself win. Or I could go to some
> other community not served by restaurants at all and start up there.
> In one case, someone is put out of work, in another case not.
Sometimes the market solution and the aim-for-the-gaps perspective are
the same. If there are two comparable markets, and one of them has
lots of alternative restaurants and the other doesn't, greed should
drive you to the one without alternative restaurants, because you can
get more customers and/or charge the customers more.
Sometimes the market solution and the the aim-for-the-gaps perspective
differ. But even then following the market incentives tends to
increase public good. It's rough on the other producers, but there are
customers in the world, too! When you sum over the effects on not only
the producers but also the consumers, serving an existing market
better than the existing producers do tends to be a net good thing.
There *are* destructive ways to compete, and I'm deeply troubled by
the way that people -- not only businessmen but also voters -- tend to
gravitate toward them. My remark in the earlier post about how
people's rejection of unilateral free trade follows "logically" from
the idea that our trade barriers hurt our trade partners and so "must"
help us was in fact serious. Sometimes it seems as though people are
hardwired to think of the world as a zero-sum place, and to feel
clever when they clobber other people without bothering to think
through whether it actually helps them. Sometimes this comes out in
people doing things which damage everyone. And there are other reasons
that people make stupid harmful decisions too. But I don't think your
restaurant example illustrates them, at least not without some extra
conditions. (Examples of extra conditions: limited information and
laziness, where the new restaurateur sees the existing restaurants in
one place and thinks it's a safe bet to open a restaurant there. Or,
getting closer to s/w, it's a cliche that venture capitalists act this
way when funding companies, being too prone to fund 28 different disk
drive companies because it's obvious that that it's possible to make
money in the disk drive market.)
> I have considerable concern about rolling out various of my Lisp products
> and here I'll just ask your advice:
>
> I've spent about 1/2 of a year working on some Lisp tools. Ignoring small
> numbers of tens of thousands, let's say a year of salary is $100K to me, so
> let's say I'd have been paid $50K to produce that code. And not only have
> I produced it but I have taken on risk by producing it which I would not
> have taken on if I'd worked for someone else; I was always taught neve to
> take on risk without asking $$ in return, but let's again ignore that advice.
> So I have what we'll just call for argument $50K of software ready to release.
>
> Now, who knows how many people want to buy that? And maybe some only
> want the simple stuff while some want the obscure stuff. If I roll it out
> as one big product, I have to either charge virtually nothing for it, and
> hope to make it back on volume, or I have to charge a lot and lock people
> out. Let's say I'm a good guy and I price it low because I actively want
> to help people. Now here's the rub...
>
> If I believe that interfaces are not copyrightable and I believe that
> out in the world are many more supporters of free software than of
> commercial software, then any ONE of those people with an axe to grind
> is able to take me on as his personal quest and write ten or twenty of
> the functions I wrote. And the next person can write ten or twenty
> others. And pretty soon my effort is all duplicated and I'm undercut.
> This climate argues, by the way, for me to release the thing only as a single
> large package and not as individual, more affordable, small packages exactly
> because each small package, attractively and modularly priced, becomes a
> target for the overnight glee of someone. And, mind you, the important
> investment of my having decided to spend A LOT of time debugging the spec
> and deciding those were the right functions to offer is lost in there
> somewhere.
"I don't have a solution, but I admire the problem.":-| (Or "Utopia is
not an option.")
I've spent over a full-time man-year, scattered over the last several
years, working on a program to play the Asian board game of Go, which
has historically been very hard for computers. I've made some progress
on overcoming some of the problems which have kept computers from
playing well. This is a risky venture, since I could easily be
overestimating my ability to solve the problems, or since someone else
could easily solve them first. But I'm seriously trying to do it, and
it's not free software: I'd like to see a real return on the project,
and if it succeeds technically but fails financially, I'm going to be
pretty upset.
So if it were to be successful, how to get paid for it?
* realistic solution I: license the program in Japan, which has
a large Go-playing market (larger than Chess is in the West:
maybe almost like golf in the USA) and reasonable copyright
protection, so my program remains valuable for a few years
before someone reverse engineers and rewrites it. (Other
Westerners have made six figure sums by doing this with
other Go-playing programs.)
* realistic solution II: like I, but patenting some of the
algorithms
* realistic solution III: Put the program on servers in an locked
room somewhere, and collect revenues from people anywhere
(including China) who want to use it, regardless of whether they
respect copyright
* the deus ex machina solution: someone writes me a retroactive
research grant and I publish the program and a couple of papers
I'm sufficiently unimpressed by software patents in the real world
that solution II doesn't seem very appealing. But a more fundamental
problems is that much of the market is in places that don't respect IP
anyway.
Solutions I and III are OK, but I'm concerned enough with maximizing
the welfare of the world, not just my personal welfare, that it's
really nagglingly annoying to me to contemplate having good algorithms
or other ideas and not being able to benefit from them without just
hoarding them so that I can collect some fraction of their total
value.
(Theoretically patents address a real problem. My biggest pragmatic
criticism of patents in practice is that it's bad public policy to
grant 17-year monopolies on the kinds of ideas which are spontaneously
reinvented many times in a decade. But if I'm right about the
algorithms in my program working for "life and death" problems in Go,
which have resisted computer analysis for decades, then they're
precisely the kind of ideas you could justify patents for, and decent
illustration of the ideal case for patents.)
(And having reviewed the problem, I still don't have a solution.
Except of course screwing up the technical end so I don't need to
worry about the commercial end. Writing lengthy screeds on
comp.lang.lisp instead of writing code is probably a good start.:-)
> What would I like instead? I would _like_ that we were training free
> software people to seek out areas that are _not_ covered adequately
> by software. Shouldn't it be a no-no for people to do like they did with
> Motif and immmediately say "oh, here's a free version" (lesstif)? If not,
> where do you draw the line? Who can spend years developing something only
> to have it deployed and immediately copied?
I'm completely sincere when I agree the market is imperfect, and this
is a good example. However, we part company when it sounds like a
syllogism that "therefore we should do something different", and I
don't think I'm off base by being alarmed by calls to "therefore do
something" without carefully considering the probable imperfections of
the alternative. A market for radio spectrum space in the USA would've
been an imperfect solution in all sorts of ways -- but it still could
very easily have allocated resources more nearly in the public
interest. (And LBJ might've had to get rich some other way, boo hoo.)
> After all, the reason why I wrote the software I wrote was because a
> market area was uncovered. I didn't write it just for the money. I
> wrote it because I had sat down to write a book on Lisp and I was
> bugged that there was missing functionality that I wanted to be in the
> book, and I felt a need to write that software. But I need
> money. Otherwise I am never doing this stupid fool thing again and I
> might as well give up on this industry as any way to make money.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
aside: As I and many others have observed, most of this industry is in
the production of s/w which don't have much competition, free or
otherwise, because it's tailored as a solution for individual
applications or small niches. A lot of it is really tedious, but
there's an enormous amount of money in it. There's also a large amount
of money in shrink-wrap software, and here some of the money is in
dramatic chunks which are big enough to be fascinating. Of course,
neither the typical underserved bespoke application niche nor the
typical underserved shrink-wrap niche is as satisfying to work on as
fundamental software tools. And there, if you think about it, is
another tangential connection to your restaurant analogy: One reason
the restaurant business is such a brutal place to try to make money is
that there are so many people who want to do it that they end up doing
it at a loss. (ditto the novel-writing business, and some kinds of
farming, and other things too) If your skills are in software and you
want to make money, consider doing software that other programmers
don't think is fun. (Or alternatively you can follow the example of
e.g. the veterinarians and the beauticians, who address the problem of
annoying hordes of other people wanting to do it by making it
artificially difficult to do it legally. But I'm trying to argue that
that's a bad thing.)
I've put a lot of work into SBCL, to some extent as a tool for me, but
mostly for the same sorts of altruistic and egoboo reasons that I
might do charity work or volunteer teaching. SBCBL isn't successful
enough to hurt commercial s/w providers in any significant way, but if
it were to become that successful, I'd be happy. I wouldn't be happy
*because* the commercial s/w providers were hurt, but because
ordinarily the damage is because their ex-customers aren't handing
over money, and the benefit to the customers strongly tends to add up
to more than the cost to producers.
Consider two low-tech analogies (both of which I believe are closer to
the mark than your "if someone [a commercial producer] is sick [with
free software producers and defecting customers] should we let him
die?"):
* If I organize a soup kitchen or some sort of charitable
housing solution, I'm sorry if the local restaurants or
landlords suffer, but my ordinary assumption is that it's
OK, because the customers benefit more. (This works as
long as I don't count my efforts to provide food or housing
as a cost, but instead say they're something I enjoy
providing. If instead the costs are paid by imposing
taxes on people, then it's still of course possible that
the total benefits exceed the total costs, but it's no
longer so overwhelmingly likely.)
* Wal-Mart, much more than the typical owner of large parking
lots, has had a policy of being friendly to the RV
("recreational vehicle") touring crowd in the US, in
particular letting them park overnight for free. Various
providers of competing services (like campgrounds and motels)
are angry about this low-price competition, and are agitating
to have it restricted. To the extent they're successful,
I don't expect that the result will be to the public benefit.
I'm sorry the competing services don't get as many customers
as they'd like, but I'm pretty sure that the total savings
to the customers exceed the lost profits to the producers.
Note that the last statement might sound trivially silly -- as in "any
idiot can see they're equal" -- but when you take into account the
admittedly painful process of cutting costs by shrinking your
uncompetitive business and putting the resources into something else,
it tends to work.
> So why don't I write the book and give the software away free? Well,
> because the book either does or doesn't include software. If it does,
> I might charge more. But not if the software is available free anyway.
> And if I don't charge more, I don't recover the money as fast. So I can't
> afford to give the software away for free as easily as if people were paying
> for a more expensive book.
>
> And should I sell support? Well, maybe. But honestly I've worked hard on
> making the software of good quality and I hope people don't NEED a lot of
> support. I guess you could say it's like selling insurance.
>
> But you know, I feel like the whole support thing is a conflict of interest.
> A company might get better reports on "support" if they went out with the
> software known to be slightly buggy and just had to flip secret switches
> to make it work. Then the word wouldn't get out that support wasn't needed,
> and then the support staff would look prompt and helpful. If the software
> just goes out working, support looks unnecessary after a while and who's
> paying for the quality then, so who thinks good things about that stupid
> support contract I did nothing with...
>
> So you tell me--what should I be doing? Am I imagining that there is a
> serious barrier here and that some of it is due to the belief that it
> is reasonable to give software away?
There are plenty of serious barriers to getting the software world to
work efficiently and productively. Free software actually helps with
some of them. To give some perspective on the problem (?) of giving
things away -- how much imperfection there is in the world -- I'll
list the ones which occur to me:
* imperfections of intellectual property protection,
discussed above. All known solutions have plenty of suckitude.
But I think the issues here are largely orthogonal to free
software. Low-cost commercial producers could've cloned Motif
AFAIK. Certainly they did clone or imitate lots of other UI
stuff, as well as little things like the IBM PC BIOS and
various Intel and IBM instruction sets.
* differing priorities between customers and producers
** what the producers like to do vs. what the customers need.
In most fields, free software "loses" here, or at least
makes itself irrelevant. There's no effective community
of free s/w developers for tax software or for flashy games
or for restaurant point-of-sale systems or for prompt
customization of 8-bit microcontrollers to automate the
next model of washing machines.
** differing incentives between customers and vendors ("locking
them in, sounds good...")
* transaction costs. Here free software tends to win big,
making it feasible (easy!) to distribute software components
for which customers would pay less than $10, and to deploy
software prototypes or incremental software improvements
which couldn't be sold for more than $1000. I don't know
any serious proposal to change the situation (short of
suppressing free software, of course). There's no market
for editing extensions comparable to the menagerie available
for emacs. I'd guess also that there's no commercial market
for scripting language libraries with as much functionality
as Perl's. (I could be wrong, since I've heard the market
for VB libraries is huge.) And I'm also pretty sure that
there's no market for drivers which provides as many as
Linux does. (Yes, there are more drivers for Windows than
for Linux. However, this isn't a complete victory for
"commercial software" because almost all those drivers are
free-as-in-beer, and that's not a coincidence.)
* unsolved technical problems both in free and commercial
s/w worlds, which impact everybody but which are
particularly daunting for people who want to pick and
choose from a smorgasbord of solution components, and
so distort the choices people would like to make
** various horrible problems with versioning things, and
trying to combine and update and maintain different
versions compatibly
** various horrible problems with trusting things, and
trying to combine components into a usefully secure
and reliable system
* horrible incomplete information problems, where the
customers don't really know what they want, the producers
don't really know what customers want, and the customers
have a lot of trouble evaluating the ability and integrity
of the producers, so much so that mind-boggling amounts
of effort are wasted
> I am not in the slightest worried about someone entering the market for pay
> because for pay means their business image is on the line, and I know they
> will have to invest what I had to invest or more in order to make an
> equivalently good product. But people who have no business on the line can
> maybe do 90% of what I did for maybe 10% of the cost because of the old 90-10
> rule, that the last 10% takes another 90% of the cost... Certainly getting
> the design right, the QA, the doc, etc. is a major aspect of my cost but
> once out, my doc works as well as anyone's if they're writing to my spec.
As above, I don't think this is a free s/w problem, I think it's an
intellectual property problem. Consider cloned BIOSes, etc., as above.
> I see only huge amounts of risk in all directions and all due to these recent
> market trends. I've been more than candid about my business problem.
> Your turn to ante up with some good suggestions about how to proceed in a
> way that does not lose me money and still addresses the community needs
> I sought to address.
I don't have a solution that's as producer-friendly as that. I wish I
did. As above, I've put several thousand hours into being an
innovative producer myself. I'm very aware that to the extent I'm
technically successful, there's going to be a large mismatch between
the value of what I produce and what I can receive for it. Besides
that, there will be big perverse incentives for me to keep useful
ideas secret instead of sharing them with people who'd benefit enough
from them that in an ideal world we'd be able to negotiate a mutually
beneficial trade.
I'm not kidding when I say the existing solution is really imperfect,
and I basically agree with you about the scale of the ongoing costs. I
disagree with you in two other ways.
(1a) In principle, I tend to believe people should be able
to do what they want, and "X shouldn't do that because it
provides something that Y wants, but Y is *my* customer"
is bad. I believe that in the same kind of way that I
believe restrictions on freedom of speech are bad, so
even when someone shows me a particularly hard case, I
tend to be stubborn about it.
(1b) Pragmatically, I observe that it's really easy and common
for proposals to fix these kinds of problems to end up
creating bigger problems. To return to the analogy, it's
like looking around at the way that restrictions on
free speech are actually applied. Lots of reasonable people
could believe that they -- especially limits on funding of
speech in political campaigns -- are pragmatically a net
public benefit within the English-speaking countries of the
world. Maybe. But I think if you average over the entire
world, it'd be hard to make that case. And jumping back
from the analogy to the actual principle I'm discussing,
when we look at the way that restrictions on customers
and alternate producers for the benefit of preferred
producers are applied (this time not necessarily averaging
over the entire world but even considering only whatever
country you think does it best) I think it's hard to
argue a net public benefit.
I think that's the root of our disagreement about basic manufacturing
activities like restaurants. But there's another disagreement, about
R&D activities and IP. You and I agree that it's highly unsatisfactory
for inventors of underinvented things (not "one-click shopping", and
perhaps not even sophisticated nonobvious things like the FFT, but
perhaps things like drugs that people only discover decades after
clear market demand exists, and only after expensive research; and
perhaps also grungy tedious things like library interfaces and user
interfaces) to have trouble getting paid for them, because most of the
beneficiaries just grab the ideas without paying. But though I march
with you that far, I diverge shortly thereafter:
(2a) How is this a free software problem? Cheap knockoffs
are not exactly unknown in the commercial world, either.
The floor is a little lower for free software, yes. But
if someone can produce 90% of the value of your product
for 10% of the effort, even if free software is punishable
by summary execution you're likely to have real problems
with low-price competition. (Failing that, it'll be because
you're lowering your prices in order to keep low-price
competitors from entering the market, which you mightn't
be comfortable doing. Proactively trampling another
producer's niche sounds like a double whammy sin: bad because
antitrust says you shouldn't monopolize the field, *and*
bad under the cozy cartel ideal of producers not interfering
with each other's customers.)
(2b) I'm basically saying "yes, it's bad -- but no, your
solution is not likely to be better." Basic copyright
looks like nearly a pure win, with benefits which far
exceed the costs. But anything beyond that -- patents,
trademarks, or extensions of the concept of copyright
to things like "look and feel" -- creates enough problems
that we need to look carefully at it before concluding
the benefits exceed the costs. In some cases, like patents
for ordinary drug discovery, I think there's a solid case
for the benefits outweighing the costs. But I'm not
convinced strict intellectual property is helpful in
all fields. And even in fields where it is helpful
in principle, it's a real danger that it will in practice
be perverted to be stupid, e.g. in the drug field granting
patents on naturally occurring genes which are virtually
guaranteed to be discovered and rediscovered many times.
(And every time I think about how often the FFT was
reinvented long before computation was as big a part
of the economy as it is now and long before software
patents existed, I renew my skepticism about whether patents
or other strong IP are likely to be helpful in software,
even in an ideal world where they were administered
reasonably fairly and wisely.)
> I'd love it if what you said was "you're right. it's bad to go after and try
> to sink proprietary software companies as soon as they deploy. we will police
> our own and try to make them not do that." but I don't expect to hear that.
> I'd love it if what yous aid was "rather than go after existing functionality,
> free software people should work to fill OTHER gaps just as Kent has worked
> to fill the gaps he saw, in order to complete the landscape of needed software
> rather than doubling up on some areas and leaving other areas blank". But
> I don't hink you're going to say that either. Surprise me.
>
> > If you really want to argue the case, I wish you'd try harder to
> > differentiate yourself from classic good-money-after-bad
> > protect-the-producer lobbyist scams.
>
> You tell me. Did I do it or not? I'm asking you to say that that's what
> I've personally been doing or to admit that people with reasonable aims
> are stuck in a legitimate quandary.
(quibble: "Try to sink proprietary software companies as soon as they
deploy" doesn't seem like a fair description of reality. Even if you
could find a noticeable number of free software developers who claimed
they like that, I don't believe it's a significant motivation in
reality, because in reality people write s/w they enjoy writing and
using. It would be interesting, in a perverse sort of way, if there
were an effective free s/w project to produce some otherwise
uninteresting piece of s/w in order to destroy some company by
competition. It doesn't happen. Granted, there are various real
motives which may have similar effects, which is why this is a
quibble, not an important disagreement. But IIRC you've from time to
time said some wise things about how it's a good thing to understand
the viewpoint of people even when you disagree with them. A project
with destructive competition as their primary motivation, with ten
developers on board, might if they chose their targets carefully be
able to sink a significant company (>$50M sales) every year or two.
Unless such projects exist -- perhaps unsuccessfully? -- and I'm
somehow unaware of them, I think you should back off on your
characterization of the free software community. Especially since the
cracker community is able to put together >1-man-year projects for the
purpose of showing off by illegally destroying things, I think the
absence of such efforts in the free s/w community -- where AFAIK
they'd be at least quasilegal -- is strong evidence that people in the
free s/w community aren't motivated this way.)
I'm not convinced about that your arguments that people -- free s/w
developers or producers of any sort, commercial or free -- should aim
for the gaps. See my discussion of restaurants above. I'm also not
sure you've thought it through all that carefully, for at least two
reasons.
reason 1: You seem to be pretty sympathetic to antitrust law. As far
as I can tell, you consider existing antitrust law to be bad mostly in
that it's insufficiently strict or insufficiently enforced. So:
consider that cozy arrangements between producers to aim for the gaps
are widely considered to occur spontaneously (as observed not only by
trustbusters but also by Adam Smith long before) and to be a
felony-level offense against the public good (by current US antitrust
law, not AFAIK Smith).
reason 2: I can't tell from anything you've written how you'd apply
the principle in practice, in particular where the limits are. Should
the transistor manufacturers have focused on things like semiconductor
lasers which wouldn't threaten the vacuum tube manufacturers? Or, to
stop wandering into analogies and consider some actual free -- in this
case "free as in GNU" -- software.
Emacs has been plenty hard on the commercial editor writers. It blew
away a lot of other existing editors, and has doubtless smothered
others at birth. But I'm pretty sure its first-order effect was more
of a total benefit to the editor users than its first-order effect was
a total cost to the editor producers. For its higher-order effects, I
don't know how anyone can say with confidence. Maybe some in a
different world where RMS had concentrated on filling a gap, some
commercial editor vendor would've been able to afford a 70-guru Editor
Lab and their happy intensive research synergy would've let to an
alternative so much better than emacs that we'd be happy about the
money we transferred to the commercial s/w vendors in the meantime
(and about the transfer costs). But in such a world we'd have tended
to lose some nice opportunities too (e.g. customizing and tweaking
emacs in less ambitious ways, and passing our work around). Is the
commercial Editor Lab worth more than a bunch of little tweaks? No one
seems to know how to accurately estimate the benefit of any kind of
R&D, so I don't know how to say.
Similarly Linux and GCC. Would the world be a better place if the
development work on those systems had been aimed for the gaps?
> > (Many would say that this already doesn't belong in comp.lang.lisp. If
> > it settles down to a disagreement about what policy consequences might
> > be, it might become clearer where it *does* belong. (sci.econ?
> > talk.politics.foo? some sort of free software forum?) But for now I'm
> > not sure where it does belong, so I'll just leave it here and see how
> > the discussion goes.)
>
> I've just made this personal to comp.lang.lisp since it affects my
> continued ability to have enough money that I can help this community.
I'm sorry, I actually wasn't trying to criticize you here. (One
special case of the "incomplete information" problems above is that
library science and cataloguing things is fundamentally hard. And it
doesn't help matters any that it's one of those AI-related problems
that people "know" intuitively to be simple!) I was just noticing that
it was natural to pull in lots of unrelated-to-Lisp examples and
disagreements, and feeling a little defensive myself.
> Increasingly these arguments on free software are convincing me that my
> error is in offering public advice to anyone and that perhaps I should
> go private on my willingness to help anyone. I haven't yet decided to
> do that, but I have to admit you guys make a compelling case on this point.
>
> Certainly I have become recently aware that by posting here, and by not
> restricting my help to those politically aligned to my cause (in the way
> the GNU license restricts its help to those politically aligned with its
> cause), I am helping others with conflicting political goals to succeed.
> I used to think this did not matter. But increasingly, as I find my way
> of life as threatened as I have heard Stallman claim his way of life once
> was, I have to take these issues seriously.
I suspect that offering help to free software people here makes about
as much sense as offering help to anyone else who doesn't work for
your company. There's pragmatic value in collaborating, spreading
knowledge and trying out ideas and building relationships, even
outside your company; but it probably isn't an effective way to keep
competition down (and might be illegal if it was:-). And there's
practical value in having a good reputation, and the quasi-selfish
satisfaction of satisfying the urge (which seems to be wired into
hominids and other pack animals) to have a better reputation, and the
altruistic satisfaction of making the world a better place.
(But I doubt you'll do it for the evil satisfaction of destroying the
market for commercial Lisp tutorials or commercial Lisp consulting!)
"William Newman" <··············@airmail.net> wrote in message
·································@posting.google.com...
>
> I've spent over a full-time man-year, scattered over the last several
> years, working on a program to play the Asian board game of Go, which
> has historically been very hard for computers. I've made some progress
> on overcoming some of the problems which have kept computers from
> playing well. This is a risky venture, since I could easily be
> overestimating my ability to solve the problems, or since someone else
> could easily solve them first. But I'm seriously trying to do it, and
> it's not free software: I'd like to see a real return on the project,
> and if it succeeds technically but fails financially, I'm going to be
> pretty upset.
>
Well, if you do succeed in writing an expert level Go playing program that
can win against a master, I have heard that there is a $1 million reward you
could claim! Hopefully that plus licensing would make it financially worth
while...I'm sure a cetain amount of famewould come with that, and fame is
always a very marketable commodity.
--
Coby Beck
(remove #\Space "coby 101 @ bigpond . com")
William Newman wrote:
> I've spent over a full-time man-year, scattered over the last several
> years, working on a program to play the Asian board game of Go, which
> has historically been very hard for computers. I've made some progress
> on overcoming some of the problems which have kept computers from
> playing well. This is a risky venture, since I could easily be
> overestimating my ability to solve the problems, or since someone else
> could easily solve them first. But I'm seriously trying to do it, and
> it's not free software: I'd like to see a real return on the project,
> and if it succeeds technically but fails financially, I'm going to be
> pretty upset.
...
[SNIP: options I (commercial software), II (ditto, but patent
some algorithms), III (run servers and don't expose software
at all, 0 (someone appears from nowhere and offers William a
research grant for the work he's been doing. All predicated on
his program turning out to work well.]
> Solutions I and III are OK, but I'm concerned enough with maximizing
> the welfare of the world, not just my personal welfare, that it's
> really nagglingly annoying to me to contemplate having good algorithms
> or other ideas and not being able to benefit from them without just
> hoarding them so that I can collect some fraction of their total
> value.
IV. License the program commercially, as in option I. Publish
some of the algorithms in 5 years' time, maybe some more in 10.
Take measures to ensure that if you die or go insane or something
then the algorithms get published.
V. Contact some Go organization in Japan and tell them you're
thinking about developing some Go-playing software and have
new ideas, and that you'd like them to pay you $X to develop
the software, with the understanding that when you're done
you'll publish the algorithms and that if it comes to nothing
they don't pay you. They might consider it worthwhile.
VI. Find people prepared to offer real prize money for
high-profile matches between your program and human Go
players.
VII. License your program, for a limited time, to a hardware
company, so that they can use it to advertise the speed of their
products. ("Go has always been a game where humans stood alone,
and computers couldn't come close. Until now. But with our
Super-Duper Z76000 Ultra Oxygen Star 5, the era of human dominance
is over..." Well, it might work for the Japanese market.)
--
Gareth McCaughan ················@pobox.com
.sig under construc
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> What would I like instead? I would _like_ that we were training free
> software people to seek out areas that are _not_ covered adequately
> by software. Shouldn't it be a no-no for people to do like they did with
> Motif and immmediately say "oh, here's a free version" (lesstif)? If not,
> where do you draw the line? Who can spend years developing something only
> to have it deployed and immediately copied?
I'm not about to argue that this isn't a concern. I do wonder whether
it's really as black as you paint it here, though. I have some fairly
handwavey comments:
1) There was a gap of many years between the release of Motif and a
usable Lesstif: in fact there was a reasonable gap between the release
of Motif and the _start_ of the lesstif project. My gut feeling is
that free software people are unlikely to clone a given unfree
interface just because it's there -- generally they'll wait until it's
widely used or somehow otherwise proven to be a good interface.
So you have time to market advantages, at least.
Mono (the Ximian .NET clone) is perhaps an exception to that rule, but
there are many differences of opinion in the free software community
about whether that's a good idea or going to work out.
2) Is interface cloning really such an unalloyed disaster? The upside
is that it encourages more people to use your interfaces even if they
cannot afford or are unable to use your software directly. instead of
some other interface to the same or similar functionality. Aside from
the probable general advantages of growing the market this way, this
can be worth something when you come to release new versions (users of
competing implementations can easily switch over to yours to gain the
advantages of the new features without having to do extensive
rewrites)
I'm not asserting that these considerations are completely overriding
and that your concerns are invalid, just pointing out that different
entities can legitimately have different outlooks on this. Franz, for
example, have not (as far as I know yet) exchanged blows with Jochen
Schmidt and the Portable Allegroserve people over the ACL interface
cloning in the ACL-COMPAT package. In fact, they've freed up their
URI parsing code and hierarchical package naming code altogether,
presumably in an attempt to make them into de-facto standard
interfaces. So, they seem to value this effect more than they worry
about it losing them sales of ACL.
(And in the non-Lisp world, MS are reportedly encouraging the Mono
.NET clone too, we guess for the same reason)
> and then the support staff would look prompt and helpful. If the software
> just goes out working, support looks unnecessary after a while and who's
> paying for the quality then, so who thinks good things about that stupid
> support contract I did nothing with...
I have the same feeling about my household contents insurance...
What kind of shift in attitudes would be required for people to start
regarding companies with no warranties for the software they use in
the same vein as they regard companies with no fire insurance for
their offices? Should we as IT professionals be attempting to push
for this shift, and if so how?
> I am not in the slightest worried about someone entering the market for pay
> because for pay means their business image is on the line, and I know they
> will have to invest what I had to invest or more in order to make an
> equivalently good product. But people who have no business on the line can
> maybe do 90% of what I did for maybe 10% of the cost because of the old 90-10
I'm curious about that, mind. If the hard work of design has been
done, they should be able to invest significantly less than you
invested to produce a comparable product. And the 90/10 rule applies
just as much to commercial entities as hobbyists: if there's a market
for 90% of your functionality, what's to stop anyone from selling a
product with 90% of your functionality? This is straightforward Worse
Is Better stuff, and we know that that effect is present independently
of the free stuff. Is it any better to be crushed by a commercial
competitor making a quick buck than by a free competitor making no
buck?
-dan
--
http://ww.telent.net/cliki/ - Link farm for free CL-on-Unix resources
Daniel Barlow <···@telent.net> writes:
> ... Franz, for
> example, have not (as far as I know yet) exchanged blows with Jochen
> Schmidt and the Portable Allegroserve people over the ACL interface
> cloning in the ACL-COMPAT package. In fact, they've freed up their
> URI parsing code and hierarchical package naming code altogether,
> presumably in an attempt to make them into de-facto standard
> interfaces. So, they seem to value this effect more than they worry
> about it losing them sales of ACL.
I've said many times that the only way to correctly understand both
the pricing and other behavior of Franz is to understand that they are
primarily selling service, not software. This isn't to detract from
their software product, which is fine product, but it wouldn't compete
if the main base of the revenue were relying on was the sale of the
base lisp because there are too many lisps priced below them. They
have effectively yielded the market space of "mere software" to the
others who are free or very low cost and not making much money per
copy.
All of this is just my projection, btw. I've never heard Franz
publicly admit to this business model. It's just that people
repeatedly gripe at the high price tag of the Lisp itself and they
don't rush to fix it. And neither do I accuse this of being a failing
strategy businesswise; I only observe that they don't mind and seem to
enjoy selling service.
But IMO the HIGH price of Franz Allegro is _also_ an effect of free
software because I bet they have found it necessary to differentiate
themselves and save themselves the nuisance of coping with calls from
customers who don't plan to order support and whose only goal is to
get a rationallly priced Lisp. The lower the price, the more people
are going to nitpick about price because it reaches people who are
more price sensitive. This eats up margins. (Franz isn't selling out
of CompUSA or Outpost.com, they are selling through real live sales
people. So every bit of bickering over price or features is done by a
human person and the salaries of those people comes out of a very
marginal profit.) I suspect Franz is unable and unwilling to say
something like "we don't care about the little guy" and it would
probably be misunderstood if they did. I don't think they have an evil
sense of non-caring about the little guy; I think they just think that
person is better served by the other options around.
But I mention all of this because I have a sense of deja vu about the
conversation we had on symbols, where Erann and others kept saying
"but if you just didn't use symbols you'd solve your problem" ... only
the question on the floor was not "how do I solve a computational
problem", it was "why does symbol processing work in cl but not
scheme". And you can't get rid of symbols and consider the "symbol
processing" issue to be "solved", except trivially by having changed
the subject. Likewise here, there are lots of businesses I could be
in, but if I want to sell _software_ because that is either my skill
or interest, then telling me I should sell support changes the subject
but does not answer the question.
If you want to say "do not write software", "software is bad", "no one
should write software", "software should not be designed, it should
just accidentally fall from trees", "people who design software
shouldn't appoint themselves, others should come and find them", then
say that. If I want to open a restaurant, no one says "go rent space
in the frozen food section of your grocer", they understand that I
want to have people walk in and out of my store and greet them and
offer them food that _I_ chose and cooked. I just don't understand
why it is so hard for people to see that while it's great that Franz
has repositioned itself as a service company, _I_ don't happen to want
to do that. Not me personally. I want to design software.
Why do I want to design software? Because it doesn't seem to fall off
the shelves the way I like it when I wait for it to happen itself.
Why don't I want to do other things too? Because that costs money,
and getting money means either (a) being rich [which I am not] and
funding myself or (b) convincing someone else who is a money person to
fund me and suffering the [high] risk that the person will be out to
make money and not to make software [thus defeating my purpose]. I
could, of course, do half-software and half-not-software, but then I
would be wasting away my life and my contribution on something I don't
want to do, just like an actor waiting tables. Yes, actors _do_ wait
tables. But if I were designing an economic system, I would want to
at least _listen_ to arguments that people are spending their life in
make-work just to spend a small amount of their time on what they are
good at. I'd like to hear ways to free them up to spend full time on
what they are good at.
I like to amuse myself by thinking that at least some of the people
waiting tables are there not because the world is unfair to artists,
but because some of the aspiring actors are being told "you are not a
good artist". But unfortunately, it's not so simple. Some _are_ good
actors but are not good self-promoters. That's a shame. It is sad
when the person is a good artist, and what they're being told is "the
system requires good artists to be good business people". It would be
fortunate for some if this were so because they could take some solace
in the knowledge that "well, I'm not a good business person, even if I
am a good actor/painter/..." At least then their "failure" to rise up
is not proof they are bad actors/painters/.... But it IS sad because
it says that ther are people who have thing to offer us beyond burgers
and fried eggs who are not getting to do that.
So suppose I am (or someone like me is) a good software designer but
not a good self-promoter. Then they are stuck, because if they do
only software, they lose. But if they take on an agent, the agent
will say "don't do what you want to do because I will not make money".
So the world doesn't get the benefit of the good designer except where
the world thinks it needs it. Which means the world is always
backward-chaining, not forward-chaining. It means people with new
things to offer for which there is no market have no way to build
their own market.
Bleah.
> > I am not in the slightest worried about someone entering the
> > market for pay because for pay means their business image is on
> > the line, and I know they will have to invest what I had to invest
> > or more in order to make an equivalently good product. But people
> > who have no business on the line can maybe do 90% of what I did
> > for maybe 10% of the cost because of the old 90-10
>
> I'm curious about that, mind. If the hard work of design has been
> done, they should be able to invest significantly less than you
> invested to produce a comparable product. And the 90/10 rule applies
> just as much to commercial entities as hobbyists: if there's a market
> for 90% of your functionality, what's to stop anyone from selling a
> product with 90% of your functionality? This is straightforward Worse
> Is Better stuff, and we know that that effect is present independently
> of the free stuff. Is it any better to be crushed by a commercial
> competitor making a quick buck than by a free competitor making no
> buck?
No, it's not like that. It's not 90% of the spec, it's 90% of what
looks like product. Free software can leave out qa (because there is
no one, they hope, to sue). Free software can leave out doc because
there is no one to demand a refund from. Linux is woefully lacking in
doc IMO and really offers me no software quality guarantees, and it's
on the HIGH end of free software. Tons of free software is offered
with much less. By contrast, people don't long buy a commercial
software product that doesn't come qa'd and with doc. They might at a
lower price point, but at the lower price point the other vendor won't
break even. And 90% of a functional spec would often involve
noticeable omissions, so one rarely leaves out that.
I'm sure it can happen that a commercial competitor can crush me, but
I feel the risk is predictable and manageable and something that I
understood when I entered the game.
Oddly, the first thing that alerted me to the risk of free software
was that after working for months on a web server for Lisp, Franz (of
all people) plonked a free web server onto the market place. If they
had charged for it, as I could have competed. But by not charging, I
have to compete with them in the service arena, not the software
arena. I doubt I can do that, frankly. Not as a startup. It was
like a huge nuclear explosion right in my business path. Let's say
that Franz had roled out the identical product but charged for it. I
_certainly_ could have offered mine at any rationally comparable price
(i.e., price that sought, on its own, to recover their development
costs, which must have been at least what mine were, perhaps more).
But if they don't plan to recover costs that way, I have no way to
compete.
I'm not mad at Franz for this because they didn't do it personally.
But exactly the fact that their intent was not at issue is what alerted
me to the commercial damage to others in our small community that could
be done by well-meaning people... or even worse, by people working
strategically who were not well-meaning, if such exist.
Moreover, the nature of my complaint is not the web server per se,
it's that the incident alerted me to the fact that there is _no_
software I can start work on and expect not to be blindsided. I want
to work in the area of things that are needed, and things needed are
conspicuous. So it's likely to happen again and again. This never
used to be a problem. In the days when new computers like PDP10's,
Vaxes, etc. would appear on the scene, people rushed to implement
languages and systems on those machines, and they _knew_ competition
would appear. But they did not expect that competition to be _free_.
When it finally became free, people no longer rushed to make
businesses out of those areas because they can't compete with free.
Now they just wait for the standard free things to appear. You can
argue this serves the world because no one pays. But I argue that it
loses because the world no longer has choices. It just settles for
what free people happen to offer. And even if there are different
things people offer, I don't think they are the same kidns of
different things that commercial people might have offered.
My apologies in advance to the Franz crowd here if they perceive any
negativism in any of the above. It seems like I've characterized them
in all kinds of ways that I'm sure would not be their choice of how
to be seen. But just as this isn't about me it also isn't about them.
We're just talking "processes at work" and we're using them and me as
examples. All in all, I would say I have a very cordial relationship
with Franz and that they have repeatedly exhibited a sense of caring
about the things they do, both intentional and not. But again, the
problem is that even well-intended things can go awry if the system
is flawed. And IMO, the present system _is_ flawed because it both
tolerates and perhaps encourages actions that I don't think should
be encouraged.
What I'd like to is to develop manners or ethics or rules of thumb or
laws or something that nudges people away from the bad effects and
toward the good... But it doesn't mean that the people who've done things
in the absence of such manners or ethics or [etc] are bad mannered,
unethical, etc. So please just because I use those words don't anyone
get all hot under the collar...
From: Thomas Bushnell, BSG
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <877knqko3s.fsf@becket.becket.net>
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> Likewise here, there are lots of businesses I could be in, but if I
> want to sell _software_ because that is either my skill or interest,
> then telling me I should sell support changes the subject but does
> not answer the question.
If you want to sell buggy whips, you're mostly out of business too.
But if you want to sell software, that's easy; Ximian sells software.
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
>
> > Likewise here, there are lots of businesses I could be in, but if I
> > want to sell _software_ because that is either my skill or interest,
> > then telling me I should sell support changes the subject but does
> > not answer the question.
>
> If you want to sell buggy whips, you're mostly out of business too.
>
> But if you want to sell software, that's easy; Ximian sells software.
Are you sure? I was pretty sure they sold "solutions". And I'm not
so sure they're actually profitable (yet?).
--
/|_ .-----------------------.
,' .\ / | No to Imperialist war |
,--' _,' | Wage class war! |
/ / `-----------------------'
( -. |
| ) |
(`-. '--.)
`. )----'
From: Thomas Bushnell, BSG
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <876639ykz1.fsf@becket.becket.net>
···@famine.OCF.Berkeley.EDU (Thomas F. Burdick) writes:
> Are you sure? I was pretty sure they sold "solutions". And I'm not
> so sure they're actually profitable (yet?).
They also just sell plain old ordinary copies of software. Red Hat
too. Even Austin Code Works.
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> Oddly, the first thing that alerted me to the risk of free software
> was that after working for months on a web server for Lisp, Franz (of
> all people) plonked a free web server onto the market place. If they
> had charged for it, as I could have competed. But by not charging, I
> have to compete with them in the service arena, not the software
> arena. I doubt I can do that, frankly. Not as a startup. It was
> like a huge nuclear explosion right in my business path. Let's say
> that Franz had roled out the identical product but charged for it. I
> _certainly_ could have offered mine at any rationally comparable price
> (i.e., price that sought, on its own, to recover their development
> costs, which must have been at least what mine were, perhaps more).
> But if they don't plan to recover costs that way, I have no way to
> compete.
>
> I'm not mad at Franz for this because they didn't do it personally.
> But exactly the fact that their intent was not at issue is what alerted
> me to the commercial damage to others in our small community that could
> be done by well-meaning people... or even worse, by people working
> strategically who were not well-meaning, if such exist.
I think what you're seeing is the artisan class being squeezed out of
the software business. It won't happen immediately, nor will it
happen completely, but it's happened to artisans in every other
industry as the industry matures. Even if you view free software as
the mechanism by which this is happening (a view with which I'd
disagree, although I can see it as a contributing factor), the
particular mechanism is incidental. This is the normal functioning of
capitalism.
I'm not sure what your best bet is to stay afloat as an artisan
software engineer. Maybe it's to release your software normally and
fight against free competators rhetorically; maybe it's to attack the
motivation to make a free clone by dual-releasing it somehow, with one
version being free for non-commercial use or academic use or GPL, and
another that's appropriate for ordinary, paying commercial use; or
maybe it's to not count on making enough money from the software
alone, and suppliment it with book income -- which might be worth it
as a means of staying in the industry you want to be in. I do hope
you and your class can figure out a way to stay in the industry (not
the least because I'd like to do the same eventually).
--
/|_ .-----------------------.
,' .\ / | No to Imperialist war |
,--' _,' | Wage class war! |
/ / `-----------------------'
( -. |
| ) |
(`-. '--.)
`. )----'
···@famine.OCF.Berkeley.EDU (Thomas F. Burdick) writes:
> I think what you're seeing is the artisan class being squeezed out of
> the software business. It won't happen immediately, nor will it
> happen completely, but it's happened to artisans in every other
> industry as the industry matures. Even if you view free software as
> the mechanism by which this is happening (a view with which I'd
> disagree, although I can see it as a contributing factor), the
> particular mechanism is incidental. This is the normal functioning of
> capitalism.
This, quite sadly, is a fairly eloquent summary of what I've been
trying to say. I'm sorry if it's not been as clearly put.
> I'm not sure what your best bet is to stay afloat as an artisan
> software engineer. Maybe it's to release your software normally and
> fight against free competators rhetorically; maybe it's to attack the
> motivation to make a free clone by dual-releasing it somehow, with one
> version being free for non-commercial use or academic use or GPL, and
> another that's appropriate for ordinary, paying commercial use; or
> maybe it's to not count on making enough money from the software
> alone, and suppliment it with book income -- which might be worth it
> as a means of staying in the industry you want to be in. I do hope
> you and your class can figure out a way to stay in the industry (not
> the least because I'd like to do the same eventually).
One main thing that makes me go on at length is that I feel sort of like
we could head off at least some of it by observing that there are some
lost values, just as there were lost values when we started making furniture
and clothing by machine. Instead of referring to people pejoratively as
makers of "buggy whips" in the presence of cars, I think we could find
better metaphors for understanding that what is being lost it not just
"the old fashioned" but some other things that we of a community value.
And we could create some sense of community will to embrace the issue
and constructively try to yield up solutions.
The solutions like "sell support" one is not a good solution any more than
it is for furniture. People are going to say "it's just a damned chair.
are you telling me it's going to break?" But that doesn't mean it's not
a beautiful chair.
The solutions like "write a book" are more in order, though not everyone
is cut out to be a book writer. At least it offers a platform for lost
thoughts to get recorded. But also, people whine about book prices and
try to get around paying for them, and we are here a place where new users
come into a community and we can tell them more clearly "buy books. support
authors. they generate thoughts and ideas we need." That's just one
example of many that can be integrated into society.
I hear a lot of "i don't want to pay for something i can get free" spoken
without embarrassment. We can't perhaps stop people from saying that, but
we can evolve a culture where we frown at people who shirk their
responsibility to support their sources of value.
It's been a while now but I remember getting a program for viewing images
on unix called xv, I think. It also let you edit images, and I liked it.
I got a license and when I found it only cost a few dollars, I bought a
second license because I thought the author was undercharging and I thought
I was getting more value than that. People need to have a sense that these
things will not be there if we don't support them, and that after they are
gone it's too late to care.
These solutions are not scientific and provable, but society is not that way.
Things like manners and compassion in society are not centrally administered,
they are the products of daily human heroic efforts that they don't have
to do but are raised to want to do. Rather than or in addition to
having a culture of "entitlement to free software", I'd like to see
a culture of "paying if you can afford to". I'd like to see people frowned
at for just taking and not giving. I don't see that happening, except in
the limited context of telling people to give their own free software.
But artisans need DOLLARS, not just free software. They cannot eat
software. They cannot hire others help implement a great vision using free
software. And the world will be poorer if the only great visions are
great visions of instant dollars. Ironically, only dollars themselves
stand between worlds that are run only by dollars and worlds that are not.
Because dollars are the only thing that buy real freedom.
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
>
> I hear a lot of "i don't want to pay for something i can get free"
> spoken without embarrassment. We can't perhaps stop people from
> saying that, but we can evolve a culture where we frown at people
> who shirk their responsibility to support their sources of value.
When I worked in the academic world, I often heard faculty/staff
express the notion that the University should get stuff for free (or
at least severely discounted) on the basis of being not-for-profit.
At first, I accepted that idea.
Later, I came to realize that if we valued the services we were
receiving from our vendors, then we ought to be *glad* to pay for
them so that we can ensure that there is a vendor there to provide
them.
Of course, accepting this latter idea doesn't mean that we can't
have open-source software. It just means that we can't have
*gratis* software. And, the most effective means I know of to
ensure that is make sure that each of us purchases open source
software from a vendor, rather than just grabbing it for free off of
the net.
It's funny, actually, because I *do* pay for Linux - over the past
3 years I've paid at least $250-300 for distributions. Now, in that
same time frame, I've only shelled out $99 for Windows 2000
Professional and that was because I needed to run an
internal-to-my-company Window-only app and Win98 wasn't cutting it.
I'm *way* more satisfied with Linux, even though I've spent 2.5 to
3 times the money on it that I spent on Windows.
> It's been a while now but I remember getting a program for viewing
> images on unix called xv, I think. It also let you edit images, and
> I liked it. I got a license and when I found it only cost a few
> dollars, I bought a second license because I thought the author was
> undercharging and I thought I was getting more value than that.
> People need to have a sense that these things will not be there if
> we don't support them, and that after they are gone it's too late to
> care.
xv was written by an acquaintance (and former co-worker) of mine,
J. Bradley. He wrote it as part of his "day job" working the GRASP
Lab at the University of Pennsylvania. Penn didn't value the work
enough to claim the copyright when Bradley asked to be able to
release it, so he was able to license it on his own terms. He made
a substantial (for the time) amount of money off of it, as it was
licensed for distribution by major commercial Unix vendors such as
DEC. He even bought himself a convertible with the license plate:
MR XV.
But, in this case, he clearly had only a time-to-market advantage
over competitors such as Electric Eyes and the GIMP. Now, since
they aimed way higher [PhotoShop quality], GIMP is way cooler than
xv was, although there's no inherent reason that xv couldn't have
grown into the GIMP. I'm sorry that it didn't, just as I'm sorry
that Linux distributions no longer seem to carry xv...
-jon
--
------------------
Jon Allen Boone
········@delamancha.org
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> the pricing and other behavior of Franz is to understand that they are
> primarily selling service, not software. This isn't to detract from
[...]
> All of this is just my projection, btw. I've never heard Franz
> publicly admit to this business model. It's just that people
I don't think you can completely dismiss their software sales: it's
not as far as I know possible to buy the support without the software,
or the software without the support (I've not tried talking to Franz
directly on this one, so I'm willing to be corrected)
I agree that support is a substantial part of their offering, however
- though I don't see that it necessarily follows that their efforts to
produce de-facto standard interfaces for extensible streams, package
naming, etc are a result of this. I could have used Xanalys as an
example of encouraging (or at least not actively discouraging)
independent implementations of their interfaces, too: UncommonSQL is
(intended to be) upward-comaptible with their CommonSQL package.
> No, it's not like that. It's not 90% of the spec, it's 90% of what
> looks like product. Free software can leave out qa (because there is
> no one, they hope, to sue). Free software can leave out doc because
> there is no one to demand a refund from.
So you're already not just selling software, you're selling software
plus documentation plus expectation of quality (if you like, a
warranty that reasonable skill and care was employed). That sounds to
me like it could be a competitive advantage over the otherwise
equivalent free software.
> Oddly, the first thing that alerted me to the risk of free software
> was that after working for months on a web server for Lisp, Franz (of
> all people) plonked a free web server onto the market place. If they
Actually, this really surprises me. Even without AllegroServe there
are about a zillion free or low-cost ways to serve web pages using
Common Lisp: you've got mod_lisp, araneida, cl-http, HTTP.LSP, IMHO,
Le Sursis, etc. Then you can consider using a standard server (say,
Apache) with a CGI interface, using a standard server with a
`traditional' web language like python or perl and using RPC over a
local socket to Lisp to do the complicated bits, or even using a
standard server and generating flat pages for it using Lisp (as Viaweb
did, for example).
Why do you consider none of these a threat (they've all been around
for more than six months, to the best of my recollection) yet
allegroserve is? I can speculate that (a) there's something special
that none of them can be made to do, but that allegroserve can (what?)
or (b) that they're mostly made by individuals or small companies, but
AllegroServe has the power of Franz behind it and that brand will be
harder to compete with (in which case, is the danger not free software
per se, but free software promoted by major players?). But that's
just speculation. What's the real answer?
> I'm not mad at Franz for this because they didn't do it personally.
> But exactly the fact that their intent was not at issue is what alerted
> me to the commercial damage to others in our small community that could
> be done by well-meaning people... or even worse, by people working
> strategically who were not well-meaning, if such exist.
I was actually moderately upset about Franz's release of their URI
code, because it seemed to have been done without reference to whether
anyone needed it, and after people had already reimplemented a good
chunk of it to make Portable Allegroserve work. I'd have welcomed the
release of a URI parsing test suite with open arms, as would I have
enjoyed some open debate about the best _interface_ for this stuff,
instead of it being provided as a fait accompli. But I personally was
not involved with any of that and I can't say I cried for long ;-)
> What I'd like to is to develop manners or ethics or rules of thumb or
> laws or something that nudges people away from the bad effects and
> toward the good...
I don't think anyone can possibly argue with that as stated. I do
think we need a much better idea of what 'bad' and 'good' actually
_are_, and where the difference between "has ill effects but is
unavoidable" and "people should be scorned for doing this" is. Is it
reasonable, for example, for people in employment to work 80 hour
weeks (often without extra pay for the overtime) when there are
qualified people out there who don't have jobs? It's making it
less likely that these other people can earn an income doing what they
want to do, but I think many people would argue that in today's
society it can't be avoided.
Please don't start reading into my response that I am diametrically
opposed to everything you say. I'm not. I don't see that free
software provides any mechanism to encourage or (financially) reward
interface design, and this is something that bothers me. On a
personal level, I also have bills to pay, and porting SBCL to more
platforms on which nobody else will ever use it is not currently
helping me to pay them.
I just don't think that we're going to get any further by asking people
to stop doing things that they enjoy (writing and releasing software)
and start doing things that they probably don't enjoy (setting up
corporations and selling the stuff) then we would by flaming them for
not doing qa and testing.
Oh, and for what it's worth: most of the free software people I know
stopped reading slashdot months or years ago. I occasionally go there
to read a particular article recommended elsewhere; the followup posts
have the sick attraction of a train wreck, but I would be generally
suprised to find any signal in among the noise there, and I
_certainly_ wouldn't take that bunch of ungrateful losing whingers as
representative of the people who are actually writing any kind of
useful free software. I doubt I'm alone in my opinion that they
should have waited to post their announcement of a subscription
service until yesterday (before midday)
-dan
--
http://ww.telent.net/cliki/ - Link farm for free CL-on-Unix resources
From: Tim Daly, Jr.
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <m34rir1eyg.fsf@ponder.intern>
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
[any context that would save you has been tastefully excised]
> there is no one to demand a refund from. Linux is woefully lacking in
> doc IMO and really offers me no software quality guarantees, and it's
Did you just slip into pointy-hair mode? You got that from a
trade journal, right? ;)
For the usenet record, I would like to voice my strong
counter-opinion. The linux kernel is one of the most profoundly
well documented and supported pieces of software that I've
ever used. I own three books on the subject, including
one with the complete annotated source code. I'm in direct
contact many of the primary contributors - and I'm just an
average putz! The existence of open, honest pieces of
software like the linux kernel, whose authors actually
stand behind what they've produced, has been a powerful
influence on my life.
You could've possibly meant a particular distribution, and not
just the kernel, when you said linux. That's okay. Please let
me know which one you're having a problem with. Perhaps you
ought to switch.
To fulfill my point, I offer my services as supporter and
documenter. If you ever have a problem with the kernel,
or need to know something about it, please send me an email.
I will forward you the documentation, put you in touch with
the correct developers, or fix the problem for you personally;
whichever is appropriate.
This entire thread has disturbed me. You want to make money
by programming - not from selling software, if I understand
correctly. There's a difference.
I'm a programmer. I earn a six figure salary. The company
I work for is called Artnology, located in Berlin. We allow
developers to open source the things that they write in the
normal course of work that could be of general interest to the
community. However, as in many commercial software houses,
the stuff that we write isn't of much interest to anybody but
our customers. We are currently hiring, so if you're honestly
interested in a programming job, and you're willing to relocate
to Berlin, please email me.
One thing, though.. We'll probably fire you if you spend all
your energy posting to c.l.l...
-Tim
--
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; umount; sleep
In article <··············@ponder.intern>, ··········@yahoo.com (Tim Daly, Jr.) wrote:
> counter-opinion. The linux kernel is one of the most profoundly
> well documented and supported pieces of software that I've
> ever used.
heh. My linux experience is dominated by google google google
google google google google......
--
"What we hear constantly is that after September 11th, everything changed.
There is a good rule of thumb: if something is repeated over and over as
obvious, the chances are that it is obviously false." -- Chomsky
<http://www.zmag.org/content/ForeignPolicy/chomsky_march26.cfm>
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> wrote in message news:<···············@shell01.TheWorld.com>...
> But I mention all of this because I have a sense of deja vu about the
> conversation we had on symbols, where Erann and others kept saying
> "but if you just didn't use symbols you'd solve your problem" ... only
> the question on the floor was not "how do I solve a computational
> problem", it was "why does symbol processing work in cl but not
> scheme".
Actually, the question on the floor was "why do you like packages?"
> And you can't get rid of symbols and consider the "symbol
> processing" issue to be "solved", except trivially by having changed
> the subject.
That would be true if the question was what you said, but it wasn't.
The question was "Why do you like packages?" The *answer* was,
"because it lets you do 'symbol processing'"
I mention this not because I want to reopen these issues, but merely
to point out that you have recast history to suit your worldview.
> I want to design software.
It seems to me you want more than that. You want to design software,
and you want to do it your way, and you want to be well paid for it,
and you want to live in New Hampshire... Three out of four doesn't
seem so bad.
> So suppose I am (or someone like me is) a good software designer but
> not a good self-promoter. Then they are stuck, because if they do
> only software, they lose. But if they take on an agent, the agent
> will say "don't do what you want to do because I will not make money".
I would think that would depend on the agent.
> So the world doesn't get the benefit of the good designer except where
> the world thinks it needs it.
No. Sometimes a good designer (like Woz) hooks up with a good
promoter (like Jobs) and the world gets good designs even when it
doesn't think it needs it.
Sometimes a good designer (like J.K. Rowling) keeps plugging away
until the world discovers her on its own without any promotion.
And sometimes good designs go by the wayside. And sometimes what
seemed to be good designs go by the wayside, and upon reflection it
turns out that the design really wasn't so good after all when all
factors were taken into account.
> Which means the world is always
> backward-chaining, not forward-chaining. It means people with new
> things to offer for which there is no market have no way to build
> their own market.
>
> Bleah.
Yeah. Life sucks, doesn't it?
E.
From: Tim Moore
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <a8cunj$n86$0@216.39.145.192>
You've got an overconstrained problem here, so let's throw out the
"I'm a good guy and I want to help people" part :)
You're trying to start a very conventional business: one that produces
goods and is the sole producer of such goods. New non-service
companies usually try to produce unique products that are hard to
copy. In software the "hard-to-copy" part comes about either by legal
means, such as patents and trade secrets, or from special expertise on
the part of the authors, or from a very novel product that catches
everyone flat-footed (think Viscalc or PhotoShop). With the nature of
your library being so vague, it's hard to know what your hook is,
exactly. You don't make it sound like it is particularly unique and
innovative (and I really don't mean to be insulting; that is my
impression of what you think of it, given the description below), just
well-engineered and sensible. The most unique thing about it is
probably the author, editor of The HyperSpec and acknowledged CL guru.
You shouldn't expect to, nor plan for, getting all your sunk costs
back in a year. 100% ROI would be nice, but it's not realistic. Plan
for a longer horizon.
If I were you, I'd look at these alternatives:
a) Sell the library at fairly high price under NDA. You may get some
bites, hell you might get a lot of bites, if you can demonstrate that
the library saves tons of development time. You'll have no worries about
copying. You might be able to team with a Lisp vendor.
b) Don't release the library, but use its advantages to write killer
applications that are either low-volume high-margin (perhaps write a
program that helps employers predict which employees will shoplift
from them; that'd raise your karma :) or low-cost, low expectation of
support, but clearly superior. The example I have in mind is Mike
Hamrick's VueScan piece of software, which duplicates functionality
that comes with every film scanner yet produces much better results,
is low cost ($40), and is very widely used.
c) Finish the book, release the software for free, use the software to
drive sales of the book. You could call it "A New Way Out: KMP's
personal approach to programming in Lisp" illustrated by your library
code; I'd buy a copy :)
I offer these suggests in good faith, but I acknowledge that all are
fairly high risk. I think you've put yourself in a difficult
situation and . If you were going to do this again, I'd suggest you
spend a week or two on documentation and a prototype, release it, then
let the happy hackers of the world find and fix bugs and implement
missing pieces while you do something else that's a bit more salable.
Tim
On Tue, 2 Apr 2002 03:25:26 GMT, Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> wrote:
>
>I have considerable concern about rolling out various of my Lisp products
>and here I'll just ask your advice:
>
>I've spent about 1/2 of a year working on some Lisp tools. Ignoring small
>numbers of tens of thousands, let's say a year of salary is $100K to me, so
>let's say I'd have been paid $50K to produce that code. And not only have
>I produced it but I have taken on risk by producing it which I would not
>have taken on if I'd worked for someone else; I was always taught neve to
>take on risk without asking $$ in return, but let's again ignore that advice.
>So I have what we'll just call for argument $50K of software ready to release.
>
>Now, who knows how many people want to buy that? And maybe some only
>want the simple stuff while some want the obscure stuff. If I roll it out
>as one big product, I have to either charge virtually nothing for it, and
>hope to make it back on volume, or I have to charge a lot and lock people
>out. Let's say I'm a good guy and I price it low because I actively want
>to help people. Now here's the rub...
>
>If I believe that interfaces are not copyrightable and I believe that
>out in the world are many more supporters of free software than of
>commercial software, then any ONE of those people with an axe to grind
>is able to take me on as his personal quest and write ten or twenty of
>the functions I wrote. And the next person can write ten or twenty
>others. And pretty soon my effort is all duplicated and I'm undercut.
>This climate argues, by the way, for me to release the thing only as a single
>large package and not as individual, more affordable, small packages exactly
>because each small package, attractively and modularly priced, becomes a
>target for the overnight glee of someone. And, mind you, the important
>investment of my having decided to spend A LOT of time debugging the spec
>and deciding those were the right functions to offer is lost in there
>somewhere.
>
>What would I like instead? I would _like_ that we were training free
>software people to seek out areas that are _not_ covered adequately
>by software. Shouldn't it be a no-no for people to do like they did with
>Motif and immmediately say "oh, here's a free version" (lesstif)? If not,
>where do you draw the line? Who can spend years developing something only
>to have it deployed and immediately copied?
>
>After all, the reason why I wrote the software I wrote was because a
>market area was uncovered. I didn't write it just for the money. I
>wrote it because I had sat down to write a book on Lisp and I was
>bugged that there was missing functionality that I wanted to be in the
>book, and I felt a need to write that software. But I need
>money. Otherwise I am never doing this stupid fool thing again and I
>might as well give up on this industry as any way to make money.
>
>So why don't I write the book and give the software away free? Well,
>because the book either does or doesn't include software. If it does,
>I might charge more. But not if the software is available free anyway.
>And if I don't charge more, I don't recover the money as fast. So I can't
>afford to give the software away for free as easily as if people were paying
>for a more expensive book.
>
>And should I sell support? Well, maybe. But honestly I've worked hard on
>making the software of good quality and I hope people don't NEED a lot of
>support. I guess you could say it's like selling insurance.
>
>But you know, I feel like the whole support thing is a conflict of interest.
>A company might get better reports on "support" if they went out with the
>software known to be slightly buggy and just had to flip secret switches
>to make it work. Then the word wouldn't get out that support wasn't needed,
>and then the support staff would look prompt and helpful. If the software
>just goes out working, support looks unnecessary after a while and who's
>paying for the quality then, so who thinks good things about that stupid
>support contract I did nothing with...
>
>So you tell me--what should I be doing? Am I imagining that there is a
>serious barrier here and that some of it is due to the belief that it
>is reasonable to give software away?
>
>I am not in the slightest worried about someone entering the market for pay
>because for pay means their business image is on the line, and I know they
>will have to invest what I had to invest or more in order to make an
>equivalently good product. But people who have no business on the line can
>maybe do 90% of what I did for maybe 10% of the cost because of the old 90-10
>rule, that the last 10% takes another 90% of the cost... Certainly getting
>the design right, the QA, the doc, etc. is a major aspect of my cost but
>once out, my doc works as well as anyone's if they're writing to my spec.
>
>I see only huge amounts of risk in all directions and all due to these recent
>market trends. I've been more than candid about my business problem.
>Your turn to ante up with some good suggestions about how to proceed in a
>way that does not lose me money and still addresses the community needs
>I sought to address.
>
>I'd love it if what you said was "you're right. it's bad to go after and try
>to sink proprietary software companies as soon as they deploy. we will police
>our own and try to make them not do that." but I don't expect to hear that.
>I'd love it if what yous aid was "rather than go after existing functionality,
>free software people should work to fill OTHER gaps just as Kent has worked
>to fill the gaps he saw, in order to complete the landscape of needed software
>rather than doubling up on some areas and leaving other areas blank". But
>I don't hink you're going to say that either. Surprise me.
······@sea-tmoore-l.dotcast.com (Tim Moore) suggestions reminded me:
there is also the sleepcat way of doing it. they started with one good
library (berkeley db) that is not trivial to rewrite; there is a book;
the library is available in open source form, but if the sources to the
application using the library is not distributed, than a paid license
is required. kent m pitman may wish to contact sleepycat people to find
out their experiences with their earlier (1.85) license and the later
version, and their current success; i suspect that may be more helpful
than than any amount of guesswork in this thread..
http://www.sleepycat.com/licensing.html.
oz
--
you take a banana, you get a lunar landscape. -- j. van wijk
······@sea-tmoore-l.dotcast.com (Tim Moore) writes:
> ... If you were going to do this again, I'd suggest you
> spend a week or two on documentation and a prototype, release it, then
> let the happy hackers of the world find and fix bugs and implement
> missing pieces while you do something else that's a bit more salable.
The problem is that the whole thing I have found wrong is the continued
trend of quick and dirty solutions. The value I'm providing is a coherent
solution that is based on drawing proper modularity boundaries so that
good code builds on other good code in proper layers. (The "Scheme" model.
Heh.) But in so doing, I create neat little stepping stones that are
easy targets. Moreover, I'm working backward from the hard problem,
each time I find a subproblem I'm going depth first to figure out why
there isn't appropriate substrate to build on. I can't just "solve" the
underlying problem until I write some applications that _use_ them to
find out if they are the right "first steps". It is a necessarily
iterative process. But when I roll it out, all of the effort it took
to figure out the Right Way will not matter. It's all just a waste.
It is again, the loss of the long term view. You are saying, adn you
may be right, but it will be sad if you are, that I should just go with
the short term view and not care about planning.
The modern world can't tolerate planning economically. But the modern
world is often junk as a result. I lament that.
No, if I had it to do again I wouldn't do it differently. I'd just not
do it. I'd get another line of work. Because I don't like where the
present economics is leading us.
Economics, it seems to me, is no different than language design. You make
your bed and then you sleep in it. As a language designer, I take heat
for the problems that arise as people try to write programs. I think the
economic designers should see it on record that the rules they made did
not make the "writers of companies" (by anology with "writers of programs")
happy. At least not this one. Nor am I happy as a consumer, because I'd
be happy to just _buy_ this stuff off the shelf if someone were making it,
but the modern free market isn't producing it. What has been made is a
mess, and the point of this conversation is to say that I think the mess
is directly attrributable to the rules of the economy themselves.
YMMV. (and probably does)
From: Tim Moore
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <a8d19e$v2g$0@216.39.145.192>
On Tue, 2 Apr 2002 19:14:53 GMT, Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> wrote:
>······@sea-tmoore-l.dotcast.com (Tim Moore) writes:
>
>> ... If you were going to do this again, I'd suggest you
>> spend a week or two on documentation and a prototype, release it, then
>> let the happy hackers of the world find and fix bugs and implement
>> missing pieces while you do something else that's a bit more salable.
>
>The problem is that the whole thing I have found wrong is the continued
>trend of quick and dirty solutions. The value I'm providing is a coherent
>solution that is based on drawing proper modularity boundaries so that
>good code builds on other good code in proper layers. (The "Scheme" model.
>Heh.) But in so doing, I create neat little stepping stones that are
...
>The modern world can't tolerate planning economically. But the modern
>world is often junk as a result. I lament that.
The real issue is that junk is often produced whether or not there is
planning, in fact planning is often the root cause of junk! See your
example of the Soviet Union from ages ago in this thread. Therefore
the planning is a waste of time if it's going to lead to the same
crappy result as no planning, and is at an economic disadvantage.
My suggestion doesn't necessarily lead to crap if you acknowledge, and
plan :) for, the need for iterative refinement up front.
Tim
From: Larry Clapp
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <323e8a.h77.ln@rabbit.ddts.net>
In article <···············@shell01.TheWorld.com>, Kent M Pitman wrote:
> I have considerable concern about rolling out various of my Lisp products
> and here I'll just ask your advice:
>
> I've spent about 1/2 of a year working on some Lisp tools. [...] So I have
> what we'll just call for argument $50K of software ready to release.
>
> Now, who knows how many people want to buy that? And maybe some only want
> the simple stuff while some want the obscure stuff. If I roll it out as one
> big product, I have to either charge virtually nothing for it, and hope to
> make it back on volume, or I have to charge a lot and lock people out.
> Let's say I'm a good guy and I price it low because I actively want to help
> people. Now here's the rub...
>
> If I believe that interfaces are not copyrightable and I believe that out in
> the world are many more supporters of free software than of commercial
> software, then any ONE of those people with an axe to grind is able to take
> me on as his personal quest and write ten or twenty of the functions I
> wrote. And the next person can write ten or twenty others. And pretty soon
> my effort is all duplicated and I'm undercut. This climate argues, by the
> way, for me to release the thing only as a single large package and not as
> individual, more affordable, small packages exactly because each small
> package, attractively and modularly priced, becomes a target for the
> overnight glee of someone. And, mind you, the important investment of my
> having decided to spend A LOT of time debugging the spec and deciding those
> were the right functions to offer is lost in there somewhere.
Could you sell it such that a) it would sell enough to turn a profit while at
the same time b) it would cost so little that people wouldn't see the point of
duplicating it and just pay for it?
Case in point: I would rather pay $20 to oss.com (I think) for a pre-packaged
sound system for my GNU/Linux-based laptop than fiddle with various other
solutions that I could probably eventually get to work, which work equally
well (maybe), and cost $0 -- but also cost a certain amount of time and a
certain amount of learning-curve-climbing in a subject that holds very little
interest for me. In point of fact, I have done this (paid the $$) for two
separate incarnations of my laptop, and once for my desktop. (Time may have
rendered the specifics of this example moot, but I hope you see the gist of my
question.)
Also note: I don't have lots of training in marketing or selling software.
Feel free to say "No, I don't think that would work" and move on. :)
> What would I like instead? I would _like_ that we were training free
> software people to seek out areas that are _not_ covered adequately by
> software. Shouldn't it be a no-no for people to do like they did with Motif
> and immmediately say "oh, here's a free version" (lesstif)? If not, where
> do you draw the line? Who can spend years developing something only to have
> it deployed and immediately copied?
Good question. Can patents fix this problem? (And, should they?) (I ask
these questions sort of rhetorically, in that I don't necessarily expect you,
Kent Pitman, to answer them.)
Similarly -- do you happen to know if the folks that developed mp3 encoding
had this problem? As I understand it, they spent quite a lot of time & money
on fast & efficient encoding of sounds, yet now I find lots of programs in
Debian's list of available packages that claim to make mp3 files.
Would making this a no-no cause more problems than it solved? Could we, the
Open Source community, enforce it (legally or socially) enough to do any good?
(I rather doubt it.)
And, to quibble slightly with your specific example, didn't lesstif go through
quite a long time where you really couldn't use it as a drop-in replacement
for Motif? Would a similar time-lag suffice to recoup your investment and
make a profit? Or would you consider this (at best) a Band-Aid or a
side-stepping of your original question (as I think I might in reversed
situations :) ?
> So why don't I write the book and give the software away free? Well,
> because the book either does or doesn't include software. If it does, I
> might charge more.
I've seen books that charged more for the version with the CD, even though the
publisher (or whomever) also made the source available online. I've even paid
the extra $10 for the version with the CD on occasion. Would this work for
you?
> And should I sell support? Well, maybe. But honestly I've worked hard on
> making the software of good quality and I hope people don't NEED a lot of
> support. I guess you could say it's like selling insurance.
>
> But you know, I feel like the whole support thing is a conflict of interest.
> A company might get better reports on "support" if they went out with the
> software known to be slightly buggy and just had to flip secret switches to
> make it work. Then the word wouldn't get out that support wasn't needed,
> and then the support staff would look prompt and helpful. If the software
> just goes out working, support looks unnecessary after a while and who's
> paying for the quality then, so who thinks good things about that stupid
> support contract I did nothing with...
I have the impression that people will more commonly clone software that they
use every day and that they feel strongly about (e.g. window managers) and
that they feel they can reasonably copy. Does e.g. AutoCAD have any Open
Source competition? Would your software fall into such a category (i.e., a
category such as AutoCAD which (AFAIK) has little/no "free" alternatives due
to its vast scope and functionality)? (I wouldn't think so, based on what
you've said, but this might help others in your situation.)
> I am not in the slightest worried about someone entering the market for pay
> because for pay means their business image is on the line, and I know they
> will have to invest what I had to invest or more in order to make an
> equivalently good product.
Would they? :( They could piggy-back on your (published, uncopyrighted)
interface just as easily as an Open Source programmer, yes?
> I'd love it if what you said was "you're right. it's bad to go after and try
> to sink proprietary software companies as soon as they deploy. we will
> police our own and try to make them not do that."
I can see no practical way to do that, especially given (my understanding of)
RMS and others' attitude that they consider proprietary software a bad thing
_in and of itself_.
>> If you really want to argue the case, I wish you'd try harder to
>> differentiate yourself from classic good-money-after-bad
>> protect-the-producer lobbyist scams.
>
> You tell me. Did I do it or not? I'm asking you to say that that's what
> I've personally been doing or to admit that people with reasonable aims
> are stuck in a legitimate quandary.
I think you made a good case.
Unfortunately, many people, including at least a few people in this forum,
seem content to tell you that wanting to write software and sell it for money
(and *keep* selling it for money) no longer counts as a "reasonable aim".
>> (Many would say that this already doesn't belong in comp.lang.lisp. If it
>> settles down to a disagreement about what policy consequences might be, it
>> might become clearer where it *does* belong. (sci.econ? talk.politics.foo?
>> some sort of free software forum?) But for now I'm not sure where it does
>> belong, so I'll just leave it here and see how the discussion goes.)
>
> I've just made this personal to comp.lang.lisp since it affects my continued
> ability to have enough money that I can help this community.
>
> Increasingly these arguments on free software are convincing me that my
> error is in offering public advice to anyone and that perhaps I should go
> private on my willingness to help anyone. I haven't yet decided to do that,
> but I have to admit you guys make a compelling case on this point.
Indeed they do. They say, "sell support". Some expound at some length on how
they know lots of people that make lots of money supporting Open Source
software. Apparently, they would have you charge for posting to c.l.l.
<deliberate-exaggeration-for-the-sake-of-humor>
More generally, they would have anyone anywhere charge for answering any
question at any time.
</deliberate-exaggeration>
Hopefully, posting on c.l.l. will continue to count as a "loss leader" for you
in your forthcoming consulting business. :-\
-- Larry
Nathan Whitehead <········@math.uiuc.edu> writes:
> Look at it another way: how would you feel if McCarthy hadn't published
> his paper on Lisp, but had kept it secret? That's almost what some of the
> posters here seem to suggest they want.
And, curiously, I'm sure BOTH the free software AND proprietary software
folks reading this message think that their way of doing things is most
likely to preserve Good and Truth and Honor and to allow the McCarthy's
of the world to freely share...
From: Bulent Murtezaoglu
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <87bsd0aqws.fsf@nkapi.internal>
[sorry about deep quoting]
>>>>> "KMP" == Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
KMP> Nathan Whitehead <········@math.uiuc.edu> writes:
>> Look at it another way: how would you feel if McCarthy hadn't
>> published his paper on Lisp, but had kept it secret? That's
>> almost what some of the posters here seem to suggest they want.
KMP> And, curiously, I'm sure BOTH the free software AND
KMP> proprietary software folks reading this message think that
KMP> their way of doing things is most likely to preserve Good and
KMP> Truth and Honor and to allow the McCarthy's of the world to
KMP> freely share...
The some of the former think McCarthy would do it as a moral
obligation. Some of the latter probably know that an odd sort of
flawed-but-workable meritocracy tying together taxation, gov't
procurement, marketing and education kept him sufficiently happy
fiancially to make it easier for him to fulfill this obligation.
Now if I were mischievous, I'd cook up stories that have McCarthy
doing all this at home and selling support afterwards, but I won't do
that. Nor will I have him patent the thing and stifle competition.
I have to give it to you Kent, you poked at this thing over and over
again in a non-offensive manner and drew almost everyone in. Surely
this also is a saleable skill?
cheers,
BM
Bulent Murtezaoglu <··@acm.org> writes:
> Nor will I have him patent the thing and stifle competition.
Patenting something should _increase_ competition, unless the
invention is so far advanced that no one else in the world can think
of any improvements to it. Patenting merely allows an inventor to
collect royalties from people who copy the technique that was patented
(made public). Therefore, an inventor can be at least somewhat sure
that he/she will get decent compensation from the commercialists
(sometimes called capitalists) and at the same time allow others to
invent better things based on his/her ideas.
--
-> -/ - Rahul Jain - \- <-
-> -\ http://linux.rice.edu/~rahul -=- ············@techie.com /- <-
-> -/ "Structure is nothing if it is all you got. Skeletons spook \- <-
-> -\ people if [they] try to walk around on their own. I really /- <-
-> -/ wonder why XML does not." -- Erik Naggum, comp.lang.lisp \- <-
|--|--------|--------------|----|-------------|------|---------|-----|-|
(c)1996-2002, All rights reserved. Disclaimer available upon request.
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <3226904609253326@naggum.net>
* Rahul Jain
| Patenting something should _increase_ competition, unless the
| invention is so far advanced that no one else in the world can think
| of any improvements to it.
Few people seem to understand that the purpose of a patent (which
actually means "open", much to some people's surprise) is to strike a
balance between making an invention public and protecting the commercial
value of said invention. The whole point is to grant he who publishes
the invention a reward for doing so.
All the (reasonable) opposition to the patent system is based in stupid
patent grants and the nearly impenetrable language in which claims are
written, which is everything but patent.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Post with compassion: http://home.chello.no/~xyzzy/kitten.jpg
From: Thomas Bushnell, BSG
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <87n0wjs3tt.fsf@becket.becket.net>
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> Few people seem to understand that the purpose of a patent (which
> actually means "open", much to some people's surprise) is to strike a
> balance between making an invention public and protecting the commercial
> value of said invention. The whole point is to grant he who publishes
> the invention a reward for doing so.
But this also means that when an invention would be made public
*anyway*, the public interest is getting screwed by granting the
patent.
In other words, the body politic makes a deal: "we'll give you a
monopoly for N years, if you promise to make this public". If the
person is going to make it public anyway, then it's foolish for the
body politic to make that deal.
Thomas
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
>
> > Few people seem to understand that the purpose of a patent (which
> > actually means "open", much to some people's surprise) is to strike a
> > balance between making an invention public and protecting the commercial
> > value of said invention. The whole point is to grant he who publishes
> > the invention a reward for doing so.
>
> But this also means that when an invention would be made public
> *anyway*, the public interest is getting screwed by granting the
> patent.
>
> In other words, the body politic makes a deal: "we'll give you a
> monopoly for N years, if you promise to make this public". If the
> person is going to make it public anyway, then it's foolish for the
> body politic to make that deal.
You misunderstand the basis of patent. The person doesn't have to _ever_
make his invention public.
He might just go to Bill Gates and say, "Sire, I invented the most
marvelous thing. I dare not reveal it to the world because they would
steal it, but you have enough money that if you would like to enjoy
the invention, you may pay me for its private use."
Also, if I have a competitive edge, I might build a factory that uses my
cool invention as a 'trade secret' and puts out goods cheaper or of better
quality than you do. Because if there were no patent, you would have the
same competitive edge as I and I would have no benefit of my cool invention.
By allowing patent, I can share my idea with you and we can reach a price
such that it's still worth it to both you and me to have you pay me. We
both get benefit, and the world gets benefit. If showing you my idea
means you can steal it, then there is no motivation for me to tell you.
Patent allows the common man to compete with the rich for access to
invention by saying "we promise not to confuse 'sharing' with
'giving'."
The common confusion about patent is that people would just give
things away when they can't sell them. But that is not their only
option.
I think the reason that mathemeticians and physicists are always used as
examples of people who freely share stuff is less to do with the fact that
sharing is natural in the absence of patent and more to do with the fact
that commercial applications of the information they trade in are scarce.
In the modern day and age where interesting math can have commercial
applications I don't think it would be the case that absent patent
protection, sharing would always occur.
The reason I think patent protection for computer science is not a good
idea right now is that there are too many cool things too densely packed
in this too-young space. A lot of them really are obvious. And since patent
precludes independent invention, and I'd venture a guess most people are
going for patent protection to "keep independent invention from happening"
not to "keep a unique idea that never would have been thought of protected",
I think it's wrong.
I also think that patent protection should be keyed to the timelines of the
businesses involved. Fortunes are made and lost overnight in CS. Patents
that last for 17 years are effectively infinite. I think 2-3 year patents
would sit a lot better with me. At least then in the case of gross error
by the patent office on the 'obviousness' issue, the industry could still
recover gracefully.
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> And since patent precludes independent invention, and I'd venture a guess
> most people are going for patent protection to "keep independent invention
> from happening" not to "keep a unique idea that never would have been thought
> of protected", I think it's wrong.
Absolutely right. Independent invention should be seen as evidence that
the patent office mis-judged "obviousness". Instead, it is used to collect
damages in lawsuits.
Moreover: the patent office is looking for "obvious to someone of _ordinary_
skill in the art". In CS, this is similar to having an undergraduate degree.
Even if thousands of CS professors thought the concept was obvious, and
tens of thousands of graduate students did too: the patent office would still
say that the invention was "non-obvious" if ordinary college students couldn't
figure it out in their heads.
> Fortunes are made and lost overnight in CS. Patents
> that last for 17 years are effectively infinite. I think 2-3 year patents
> would sit a lot better with me.
Another good idea. The exceptions to this (like the RSA patent) are very
rare. 17-year patents are causing CS much more harm than good.
-- Don
_______________________________________________________________________________
Don Geddis http://don.geddis.org ···@geddis.org
Sometimes I think you have to march right in and demand your rights, even if
you don't know what your rights are, or who the person is you're talking to.
Then, on the way out, slam the door. -- Deep Thoughts, by Jack Handey
From: Thomas Bushnell, BSG
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <87vgb7qiac.fsf@becket.becket.net>
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> You misunderstand the basis of patent. The person doesn't have to _ever_
> make his invention public.
Then you can't get a patent. Patents (unlke copyrights) may not be
secret.
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> Then you can't get a patent. Patents (unlke copyrights) may not be
> secret.
(Except for patents for inventions of military importance, which can
be declared secret and consequently not be published in most
jurisdictions.)
"Thomas Bushnell, BSG" <·········@becket.net> wrote in message
···················@becket.becket.net...
> Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
>
> > You misunderstand the basis of patent. The person doesn't have to
_ever_
> > make his invention public.
>
> Then you can't get a patent. Patents (unlke copyrights) may not be
> secret.
You're right, not secret, as the patent is a public process, but Kent
probably meant the person does not have to publicize his invention.
There is a very interesting example of a man, Jerome Lemelson, who filed
some 550+ patents in his life, patents that have earned more than $1 Billion
(!) yet he never actually created a thing! People argue about whether he
was a genius or a leech but he (and his lawyers) worked the patent system to
an extreme that is very hard to justify.
Read: http://www.business2.com/articles/mag/0,1640,11582,FF.html
it is quite an interesting story.
--
Coby Beck
(remove #\Space "coby 101 @ bigpond . com")
From: Bulent Murtezaoglu
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <873cybb6ha.fsf@nkapi.internal>
>>>>> "KMP" == Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
[...]
KMP> I also think that patent protection should be keyed to the
KMP> timelines of the businesses involved. Fortunes are made and
KMP> lost overnight in CS. Patents that last for 17 years are
KMP> effectively infinite. I think 2-3 year patents would sit a
KMP> lot better with me.
That depends on the invention. For something like the RSA patent, 2-3
years would have been too short and indeed might have induced the inventors
to sit on it until the market was ready for it -- defeating the porpose.
KMP> At least then in the case of gross error
KMP> by the patent office on the 'obviousness' issue, the industry
KMP> could still recover gracefully.
I understand the motivation but I doubt time limits alone will so what
you want. Maybe time limits in addition to revenue derived (a variant of
the limit idea you toy with) might work better, but I am unsure how and
what else it might hurt. It seems pretty clear one switch (patent-cs-p)
one knob to turn (length-of-term) will not cover the cases you care about,
though.
cheers,
BM
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <3226946480134694@naggum.net>
* Thomas Bushnell, BSG
| But this also means that when an invention would be made public *anyway*,
| the public interest is getting screwed by granting the patent.
How would the _invention_ be made public "anyway"? Why would someone
_want_ to make something public if the public just takes it and leaves
him with all his expenses and development cost? Considering the often
enormous costs of bringing something brilliantly simple to market, the
whole point of the patent system is to make it possible to make simple
and obvious inventions that are only simple and obvious after the fact.
The public does not "own" whatever people come up with, but I guess that
your basic attitude is precisely that the public has a _right_ to take
the inventions and the work of the individual, sort of in exchange for
free food or something.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Post with compassion: http://home.chello.no/~xyzzy/kitten.jpg
Centuries ago, Nostradamus foresaw when Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> would write:
> * Thomas Bushnell, BSG
> | But this also means that when an invention would be made public *anyway*,
> | the public interest is getting screwed by granting the patent.
>
> How would the _invention_ be made public "anyway"? Why would someone
> _want_ to make something public if the public just takes it and leaves
> him with all his expenses and development cost? Considering the often
> enormous costs of bringing something brilliantly simple to market, the
> whole point of the patent system is to make it possible to make simple
> and obvious inventions that are only simple and obvious after the fact.
>
> The public does not "own" whatever people come up with, but I guess that
> your basic attitude is precisely that the public has a _right_ to take
> the inventions and the work of the individual, sort of in exchange for
> free food or something.
Well, strangely enough, it seems that one of the conditions required
for governments (which presumably _do_ "belong to the people," to one
degree or another) to grant the legal instrument known as a "patent"
is that the invention must indeed be made public.
After the 17 or 20 years that the patent runs, rights to use the
invention do indeed get "given to the public."
There's certainly a whole lotta "public interest" involved...
--
(concatenate 'string "cbbrowne" ·@ntlug.org")
http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/nonrdbms.html
Rules of the Evil Overlord #130. "All members of my Legions of Terror
will have professionally tailored uniforms. If the hero knocks a
soldier unconscious and steals the uniform, the poor fit will give him
away." <http://www.eviloverlord.com/>
Christopher Browne <········@acm.org> wrote in message news:<··············@chvatal.cbbrowne.com>...
> Well, strangely enough, it seems that one of the conditions required
> for governments (which presumably _do_ "belong to the people," to one
> degree or another) to grant the legal instrument known as a "patent"
> is that the invention must indeed be made public.
>
> After the 17 or 20 years that the patent runs, rights to use the
> invention do indeed get "given to the public."
>
> There's certainly a whole lotta "public interest" involved...
Worth noting in this context that the word "patent" means "in plain
view." The idea is to promote the publication of inventions by
granting a time limited monopoly on the right to profit from said
inventions.
From: Thomas Bushnell, BSG
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <87k7rm3gsa.fsf@becket.becket.net>
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> * Thomas Bushnell, BSG
> | But this also means that when an invention would be made public *anyway*,
> | the public interest is getting screwed by granting the patent.
>
> How would the _invention_ be made public "anyway"?
Lots of ways. For some things, there's no way to market them without
the nature of the invention being obvious. Or one may have secondary
reasons to want to make it public.
Since the patent system is a *bargain* that the body politic strikes,
"we give you a monopoly, if you give us the details of how it works",
it's reasonable for both sides to bargain for the best deal they can
in that bargain.
Thomas
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <3226998907585314@naggum.net>
* Thomas Bushnell, BSG
| Since the patent system is a *bargain* that the body politic strikes, "we
| give you a monopoly, if you give us the details of how it works", it's
| reasonable for both sides to bargain for the best deal they can in that
| bargain.
The public gets the product at all.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Post with compassion: http://home.chello.no/~xyzzy/kitten.jpg
From: Thomas Bushnell, BSG
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <87wuvmc856.fsf@becket.becket.net>
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> * Thomas Bushnell, BSG
> | Since the patent system is a *bargain* that the body politic strikes, "we
> | give you a monopoly, if you give us the details of how it works", it's
> | reasonable for both sides to bargain for the best deal they can in that
> | bargain.
>
> The public gets the product at all.
The patent isn't for that. Patents are *not* like copyrights, and
they are founded on a different justification--one that you even
accurately stated a while back. That it's a bargain of publicity for
monopoly.
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <3227026459689232@naggum.net>
* Erik Naggum
> The public gets the product at all.
* Thomas Bushnell, BSG)
| The patent isn't for that.
Yes, it is.
You seem to have access to a lawyer because of this retarded libel crap
of yours, so ask him about intellectual property, or get a good book on
the topic. This is stuff you can just read about and learn. There is no
point in trying to communicate with someone who willfully ignores the
existing literature in this area because of his political opinions.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Post with compassion: http://home.chello.no/~xyzzy/kitten.jpg
From: Thomas Bushnell, BSG
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <87hempsxrq.fsf@becket.becket.net>
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> You seem to have access to a lawyer because of this retarded libel crap
> of yours, so ask him about intellectual property, or get a good book on
> the topic. This is stuff you can just read about and learn. There is no
> point in trying to communicate with someone who willfully ignores the
> existing literature in this area because of his political opinions.
Um, already done. And guess what: patents are uniformly described as
a solution to the problem of inventors keeping inventions secret. And
*thus* carefully distinguished from copyrights, which originated as a
means to promote diversity of creative works.
Thomas
From: Thomas Bushnell, BSG
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <878z81swu9.fsf@becket.becket.net>
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> Um, already done. And guess what: patents are uniformly described as
> a solution to the problem of inventors keeping inventions secret. And
> *thus* carefully distinguished from copyrights, which originated as a
> means to promote diversity of creative works.
So I fetched my nifty American Law textbook:
"Fundamentals of American Law", published by the NYU law school. The
chapter on "Intellectual Property Law" is by Rochelle Cooper
Dreyfuss.
Dreyfuss outlines five rationales often given for IP law:
* "natural rights theory", "that the creator has a moral right to the
fruits of his labor, including the benefits produced by his
intellect."
* "the exchange-for-secrecy rationale", "that, without a legal right
to prevent others from copying his invention, the creator may be
tempted to keep it secret".
* "the quality control principle", exclusive rights prevent, for
example, "others from distorting or mutilating his work".
* "prospecting theory", that exclusive rights keep the holder of the
exclusive right in control, who thus has "comprehensive knowledge
of how the field is unfolding and can help maintain an 'orderly
market' in its further development".
* "the profit-incentive theory", which we all know about pretty well.
Dreyfuss first points out that the natural rights theory is "largely
rejected" by American law, "although many nations' intellectual
property laws are at least partly premised on this rationale."
The profit-incentive theory is labelled by her as "the most dominant
influence" on American IP law, and she says that the copyright clause
of the US Constitution is "as a whole ... interpreted as reflecting
the profit-incentive theory".
The public interest rule in the copyright clause however controls, and
is part of the reason that the natural rights theory is rejected in
American law. "Profits are intended to encourage the creation of
works that enrich the public. Thus, when situations arise in which
the public's interest in access conflicts with the creator's interest
in profits, it is the public that usually wins. Furthermore, the
emphasis on profits means that the dignity interests encompassed by
some of the other rationales [that is, the natural rights, quality
control, and prospecting ones] receive only secondary recognition."
Now that's about IP in general. The notion that its a bargain is
already thus established, and that if the bargain is not in the
public's interest, the public has no reason to strike the bargain.
What about patents? Here is her introduction to the section on patent
law, which clearly advances the exchange-for-secrecy motive as the
primary one:
"Patent law protects what are commonly regarded as inventions. It
creates, for 20 years, exclusive rights against all who make, use,
offer to sell, or sell the protected invention, including independent
inventors. In exchange, the patent is published so that the ideas in
the invention go into the public domain immediately, where they can be
used to create other inventions."
Thomas
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> patents are uniformly described as a solution to the problem of
> inventors keeping inventions secret.
copyrights are a solution to the problem of book-makers keeping their
books secret.
> And *thus* carefully distinguished from copyrights, which originated
> as a means to promote diversity of creative works.
patents are a means to promote diversity of creative innovation.
The same forces act on the two, and the laws are very similar for the
two. Both allow the original creator rights over exact copies of the
product and both encourage him/her to publicly release the product so
that others can inspect it and improve and adapt it.
--
-> -/ - Rahul Jain - \- <-
-> -\ http://linux.rice.edu/~rahul -=- ············@techie.com /- <-
-> -/ "Structure is nothing if it is all you got. Skeletons spook \- <-
-> -\ people if [they] try to walk around on their own. I really /- <-
-> -/ wonder why XML does not." -- Erik Naggum, comp.lang.lisp \- <-
|--|--------|--------------|----|-------------|------|---------|-----|-|
(c)1996-2002, All rights reserved. Disclaimer available upon request.
From: Thomas Bushnell, BSG
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <87vgb5rfmj.fsf@becket.becket.net>
Rahul Jain <·····@sid-1129.sid.rice.edu> writes:
> ·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
>
> > patents are uniformly described as a solution to the problem of
> > inventors keeping inventions secret.
>
> copyrights are a solution to the problem of book-makers keeping their
> books secret.
You miss the point. You can't publish a book without making it
public. You *can* sell an invention without making how-it-works
public. (Which is pretty obvious for most process patents, and also
true for a very large number of product patents.)
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> You miss the point. You can't publish a book without making it
> public.
You could sell it only to people you trust to not give it to others,
given absense of copyright. In fact, this is what has been done in the
past.
> You *can* sell an invention without making how-it-works
> public. (Which is pretty obvious for most process patents, and also
> true for a very large number of product patents.)
Well... how-it-works IS the invention. There's a difference between
and inventor selling a process to an industrialist and an
industrialist making a billion-dollar plant to produce a specific
product. Bringing it full circle, this is similar to KMP's desire to
write software, not support/educate users of software.
Again, the same forces are at work. Either the creator hides his
creation from the public in order to control its distribution, and
thus, his compensation or the creator publishes his creation to the
public under the protection of the government, allowing others to
improve upon it or license it, giving the creator compensation
(probably much more than he could have gotten otherwise, since more
people are able to look at the creation and determine how they can
profit from the use of it). In the case of books, the text is the
product, so book reviews/recommendations would be how others determine
usefulness.
--
-> -/ - Rahul Jain - \- <-
-> -\ http://linux.rice.edu/~rahul -=- ············@techie.com /- <-
-> -/ "Structure is nothing if it is all you got. Skeletons spook \- <-
-> -\ people if [they] try to walk around on their own. I really /- <-
-> -/ wonder why XML does not." -- Erik Naggum, comp.lang.lisp \- <-
|--|--------|--------------|----|-------------|------|---------|-----|-|
(c)1996-2002, All rights reserved. Disclaimer available upon request.
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
>
> > You seem to have access to a lawyer because of this retarded libel crap
> > of yours, so ask him about intellectual property, or get a good book on
> > the topic. This is stuff you can just read about and learn. There is no
> > point in trying to communicate with someone who willfully ignores the
> > existing literature in this area because of his political opinions.
>
> Um, already done. And guess what: patents are uniformly described as
> a solution to the problem of inventors keeping inventions secret.
That's _exactly_ what Erik said:
| * Erik Naggum
| > The public gets the product at all.
|
| * Thomas Bushnell, BSG)
| | The patent isn't for that.
If you keep something secret, the public doesn't "get the product at all".
So if the public "gets the product at all", the inventor isn't "keeping
inventions secret".
You're agreeing with each other.
Stop.
From: Thomas Bushnell, BSG
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <87zo0hrhg4.fsf@becket.becket.net>
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> If you keep something secret, the public doesn't "get the product at all".
> So if the public "gets the product at all", the inventor isn't "keeping
> inventions secret".
That's conflating two different motives. There are many inventions
which *can* be sold to the public without disclosing how the invention
works.
The clearest example is a process patent. If I come up with a novel
process for refining aluminum, say, the patent system lets me get an
exclusive right to the process, in exchange for publishing the details
of how it works. It would be pretty easy for me to keep the process a
secret without patent protection for it, so the public gets a good
bargain: for a number of years of exclusivity, we get to learn more
chemical engineering.
The exchange-for-secrecy motive and the profit-incentive motive are
different motives. Insofar as the exchange for secrecy motive is
dominant, the public should only make the bargain when it gets
something out of the deal. Since in exchange-for-secrecy, the public
is trading an exclusive right for publicity, it should (in general)
not make that bargain when it's going to get publicity anyway.
Now, the profit-incentive motive is *also* a reason for the existence
of patents, but in the origin of patent law, it was *not* the reason.
Moreover, the profit-incentive motive is much less compelling in the
case of patents, because the marginal cost of new units of atoms are
normally not so cheap the way new units of bits (as protected by
copyright) are. That is, even without patent protection, there is
still substantial profit motive given the delays in time-to-market
that would otherwise exist.
Thomas
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> Since in exchange-for-secrecy, the public is trading an exclusive
> right for publicity, it should (in general) not make that bargain
> when it's going to get publicity anyway.
What causes the public to magically know what's going on in an
inventor's mind? The inventor would have to publish his work in order
for the public to know it...
--
-> -/ - Rahul Jain - \- <-
-> -\ http://linux.rice.edu/~rahul -=- ············@techie.com /- <-
-> -/ "Structure is nothing if it is all you got. Skeletons spook \- <-
-> -\ people if [they] try to walk around on their own. I really /- <-
-> -/ wonder why XML does not." -- Erik Naggum, comp.lang.lisp \- <-
|--|--------|--------------|----|-------------|------|---------|-----|-|
(c)1996-2002, All rights reserved. Disclaimer available upon request.
From: Thomas Bushnell, BSG
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <87r8ltrfki.fsf@becket.becket.net>
Rahul Jain <·····@sid-1129.sid.rice.edu> writes:
> ·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
>
> > Since in exchange-for-secrecy, the public is trading an exclusive
> > right for publicity, it should (in general) not make that bargain
> > when it's going to get publicity anyway.
>
> What causes the public to magically know what's going on in an
> inventor's mind? The inventor would have to publish his work in order
> for the public to know it...
*Some* inventions--that is, SOME inventions--are of the character so
that there is no way to sell units without making the details
explicit. For *those* inventions, the exchange-for-secrecy motive is
null. The financial-incentive motive is still of course operative.
Thomas
"Thomas Bushnell, BSG" wrote:
>
> *Some* inventions--that is, SOME inventions--are of the character so
> that there is no way to sell units without making the details
> explicit.
Case in point: Amazon's infamous "one-click" patent.
--
"Fixing a compile is not an accomplishment unless
you did it by actually fixing the bugs the compiler
was complaining about." --Chris Smith
// seth gordon // wi/mit ctr for genome research //
// ····@genome.wi.mit.edu // standard disclaimer //
Since my name and book _The Ontology of Cyberspace_ were invoked, I
figured I'd chime in here:
Thomas and Erik are indeed agreeing in a way, and both apparently
right.
Firstly, thanks Erik, for the kind words about the book...You might
want to write a review on Amazon !
Now, as for the incentive for patenting: the patent systems does
protect the public at large, to a degree, from the dangers of trade
secrets and secretiveness (dangers being mostly...the unavailability
of new tech). However, the term of patents continues to expand,
protecting inventors at the expense of the public, and new means are
being used to keep old patents from entering the public domain.
Moreover, if, as I suggest, we did away with all patents entirely, and
instituted a uniform IP scheme, we'd eliminate the economic dangers of
total monopoly (look, for instance at the pharmaceutical market) and
actually encourage innovation through a cheaper, less litigious
scheme. The details of this argument are, of course, laid out in the
book.
Patents make the tech known generally (once they are granted, but not
during the review process, which can be long) but then grant a very
strong and total monopoly which, I believe, discourages innovation in
the long run. There is a whole new industry among patent litigators
who buy up old patents, and then sue the pants off anyone who seems to
have any similar tech, and who is willing to settle just to get them
off their backs. This is going to become a great burden on the
system.
my .02 pfennigs
> Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
>
> > If you keep something secret, the public doesn't "get the product at all".
> > So if the public "gets the product at all", the inventor isn't "keeping
> > inventions secret".
>
> That's conflating two different motives. There are many inventions
> which *can* be sold to the public without disclosing how the invention
> works.
>
> The clearest example is a process patent. If I come up with a novel
> process for refining aluminum, say, the patent system lets me get an
> exclusive right to the process, in exchange for publishing the details
> of how it works. It would be pretty easy for me to keep the process a
> secret without patent protection for it, so the public gets a good
> bargain: for a number of years of exclusivity, we get to learn more
> chemical engineering.
>
> The exchange-for-secrecy motive and the profit-incentive motive are
> different motives. Insofar as the exchange for secrecy motive is
> dominant, the public should only make the bargain when it gets
> something out of the deal. Since in exchange-for-secrecy, the public
> is trading an exclusive right for publicity, it should (in general)
> not make that bargain when it's going to get publicity anyway.
>
> Now, the profit-incentive motive is *also* a reason for the existence
> of patents, but in the origin of patent law, it was *not* the reason.
> Moreover, the profit-incentive motive is much less compelling in the
> case of patents, because the marginal cost of new units of atoms are
> normally not so cheap the way new units of bits (as protected by
> copyright) are. That is, even without patent protection, there is
> still substantial profit motive given the delays in time-to-market
> that would otherwise exist.
>
> Thomas
·····@drkoepsell.com (David Koepsell) writes:
> Patents make the tech known generally (once they are granted, but not
> during the review process, which can be long) but then grant a very
> strong and total monopoly which, I believe, discourages innovation in
> the long run. There is a whole new industry among patent litigators
Just an FYI, which doesn't change your argument: The invention
is disclosed during the review period in Japan.
Chris
In article <··············@lackawana.kippona.com>,
Chris Beggy <······@kippona.com> wrote:
>·····@drkoepsell.com (David Koepsell) writes:
>
>> Patents make the tech known generally (once they are granted, but not
>> during the review process, which can be long) but then grant a very
>> strong and total monopoly which, I believe, discourages innovation in
>> the long run. There is a whole new industry among patent litigators
>
>Just an FYI, which doesn't change your argument: The invention
>is disclosed during the review period in Japan.
>
>Chris
I really know very little about the ins and outs of
patents -- but do remember reading not too long
ago about a recent and *very, very important*
change in U.S. patent law, something *like* the
above situation in Japan.
It might have to do with how long the patent lasts
for -- whether when the patent is *filed* or when
it is *granted*.
And maybe that's wrong.
But the change is *pollitical*, in that some huge
benefit was passed to the large corporations (aren't
those the ones who provide the large political
contributions?) at the expense of the little guy.
Maybe someone in this thread knows what I'm
trying to recall, and can explain it to us,
along with its big-corp vs little-guy effects.
David
·····@drkoepsell.com (David Koepsell) writes:
> Since my name and book _The Ontology of Cyberspace_ were invoked, I
> figured I'd chime in here:
>
> Thomas and Erik are indeed agreeing in a way, and both apparently
> right.
>
> Firstly, thanks Erik, for the kind words about the book...You might
> want to write a review on Amazon !
>
> Now, as for the incentive for patenting: the patent systems does
> protect the public at large, to a degree, from the dangers of trade
> secrets and secretiveness (dangers being mostly...the unavailability
> of new tech). However, the term of patents continues to expand,
> protecting inventors at the expense of the public, and new means are
> being used to keep old patents from entering the public domain.
> Moreover, if, as I suggest, we did away with all patents entirely, and
> instituted a uniform IP scheme, we'd eliminate the economic dangers of
> total monopoly (look, for instance at the pharmaceutical market) and
> actually encourage innovation through a cheaper, less litigious
> scheme. The details of this argument are, of course, laid out in the
> book.
>
> Patents make the tech known generally (once they are granted, but not
> during the review process, which can be long) but then grant a very
> strong and total monopoly which, I believe, discourages innovation in
> the long run. There is a whole new industry among patent litigators
> who buy up old patents, and then sue the pants off anyone who seems to
> have any similar tech, and who is willing to settle just to get them
> off their backs. This is going to become a great burden on the
> system.
What did Shakespeare said? :)
I must add that this is a problem more in the US than in Europe or
elsewhere. I just read (in "False Down" by John Gray) that the
proportion of lawyer in the US to those of the UK is something like 8
to 1. Isn't this a problem in itself? :)
Cheers
--
Marco Antoniotti ========================================================
NYU Courant Bioinformatics Group tel. +1 - 212 - 998 3488
719 Broadway 12th Floor fax +1 - 212 - 995 4122
New York, NY 10003, USA http://bioinformatics.cat.nyu.edu
"Hello New York! We'll do what we can!"
Bill Murray in `Ghostbusters'.
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <3227028469961507@naggum.net>
* Thomas Bushnell, BSG
| Um, already done. And guess what: patents are uniformly described as a
| solution to the problem of inventors keeping inventions secret.
That is just plain ridiculous nonsense. Patents are public documents,
and although a patent search is generally expensive, you should be able
to locate and read any patent if you have the patent number, very close
to free of charge. Of course, there are several million of them, but at
least IBM has a great patent search engine on the net.
I cannot imagine how you could become so confused. Read some books
written by legal experts, and fewer by clueless anti-patent activists.
I have already recommended David R. Koepsell: The Ontology of Cyberspace,
Law, Philosphy, and the Future of Intellectual Propery. It is a
remarkably intelligent exposition of both the current situation and the
problems we face. Only 130 pages long, it is packed with insight.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Post with compassion: http://home.chello.no/~xyzzy/kitten.jpg
From: Thomas Bushnell, BSG
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <874ripswbi.fsf@becket.becket.net>
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> * Thomas Bushnell, BSG
> | Um, already done. And guess what: patents are uniformly described as a
> | solution to the problem of inventors keeping inventions secret.
>
> That is just plain ridiculous nonsense. Patents are public documents,
> and although a patent search is generally expensive, you should be able
> to locate and read any patent if you have the patent number, very close
> to free of charge. Of course, there are several million of them, but at
> least IBM has a great patent search engine on the net.
Huh? Exactly right.
Patents are public documents. Patents are thus a *solution* to a
problem--without patents, inventors might keep their inventions
secret. Thus, by a patent system, we make sure that inventions are
publicized.
You are quite right that patents are public and (fairly) easily
accessible. This is why they are a solution to the problem that
(without them) inventors might try and keep inventions secret.
From: Bulent Murtezaoglu
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <876637bgwj.fsf@nkapi.internal>
>>>>> "RJ" == Rahul Jain <·····@sid-1129.sid.rice.edu> writes:
RJ> Bulent Murtezaoglu <··@acm.org> writes:
>> Nor will I have him patent the thing and stifle competition.
RJ> Patenting something should _increase_ competition, unless the
RJ> invention is so far advanced that no one else in the world can
RJ> think of any improvements to it. [...]
Hey, I thought my remark was patently tongue-in-cheek!
cheers,
BM
Bulent Murtezaoglu <··@acm.org> writes:
> >>>>> "RJ" == Rahul Jain <·····@sid-1129.sid.rice.edu> writes:
> RJ> Bulent Murtezaoglu <··@acm.org> writes:
> >> Nor will I have him patent the thing and stifle competition.
> RJ> Patenting something should _increase_ competition, [...]
> Hey, I thought my remark was patently tongue-in-cheek!
It's a common bit of FUD that is thrown about the "Free Software"
community as though it were true. There even people who believe that a
gene sequence is patentable...
Just wanted to make sure everyone understood the realities of patents.
--
-> -/ - Rahul Jain - \- <-
-> -\ http://linux.rice.edu/~rahul -=- ············@techie.com /- <-
-> -/ "Structure is nothing if it is all you got. Skeletons spook \- <-
-> -\ people if [they] try to walk around on their own. I really /- <-
-> -/ wonder why XML does not." -- Erik Naggum, comp.lang.lisp \- <-
|--|--------|--------------|----|-------------|------|---------|-----|-|
(c)1996-2002, All rights reserved. Disclaimer available upon request.
From: Thien-Thi Nguyen
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <kk9zo0i29dl.fsf@glug.org>
Rahul Jain <·····@sid-1129.sid.rice.edu> writes:
> Just wanted to make sure everyone understood the realities of patents.
the reality of patents is that they are an agreement between rulers and slaves.
thi
Bulent Murtezaoglu <··@acm.org> writes:
> I have to give it to you Kent, you poked at this thing over and over
> again in a non-offensive manner and drew almost everyone in. Surely
> this also is a saleable skill?
What were we drawn into again?
--
Craig Brozefsky <·····@red-bean.com>
Free Software Sociopath(tm) http://www.red-bean.com/~craig
Ask me about Common Lisp Enterprise Eggplants at Red Bean!
From: Bulent Murtezaoglu
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <878z83c2rv.fsf@nkapi.internal>
>>>>> "CB" == Craig Brozefsky <·····@red-bean.com> writes:
[on my being vague in complimenting KMP]
CB> What were we drawn into again?
Talking about ways of selling software the traditional way in the presence
of the considerable mindshare/followers/practicioners FSF-free software is
getting. In broader terms: talking and thinking about approaches of funding
IP creation and compensation of creators. I wouldn't have dreamt of
following following these threads in ccl a year ago, I am more interested
now. I am noticing also more and more people posting (accurate observation?).
cheers,
BM
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> wrote in message news:<··················@shell01.TheWorld.com>...
>The commercial software community really cares about
> issues that put vendors out of business or that cause customers not to get
> reasonable products at a reasonable price; these issues are debated
> every day in congress. Who in the free software community spends any time
> addressing a similar set of issues?
Since you are rightly concerned about balance, I think you should see
that, on balance, the commercial software world has favored precisely
those companies who do *not* care about customers getting reasonable
products at a reasonable price.
You say "these issues are debated every day in congress," but
congresspeople are *not* the commercial software community. Rather,
our representatives in congress have taken to discussing these issues
because there is rightly (IMHO) a perception that these issues have
been almost completely *ignored* by the commercial sofware community.
The Free Software movement is a truly grass roots movement that seeks
to redress this correctly (again, IMHO) perceived imbalance between
motives of profit v. quality and fair value for customers.
When the dominant commercial software companies begin to ship products
that show the same sort of care that, for example, automobiles do,
then there will be less of a clamor for Free Software, because people
will recognize the value of a quality professionally produced product.
However, since most shipping commercial software is shamefully
unstable, buggy, (often never fixed without the payment of *additional
charges* for "upgrades"), not to mention poorly documented, Free
Software will continue to gather support as a necessary corrective
balance to the billionaire-making juggernaut of shoddy commercial
software.
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <3226951865852814@naggum.net>
* Raffael Cavallaro
| Since you are rightly concerned about balance, I think you should see
| that, on balance, the commercial software world has favored precisely
| those companies who do *not* care about customers getting reasonable
| products at a reasonable price.
This sounds like "the commercial software world" is an entity of itself,
distrinct from the same customers who get screwed. I do not think this
is even possible. The customers _believe_ they have received reasonable
products at a reasonable price, and the companies care very much that
they believe this. If the facts are so different, how come they are so
_unable_ to destroy the belief? This is not sinister religion or cult,
it is simply business, right? That should mean that someone who can show
that the prices or the products are unreasonable should get a fair
hearing. When this does not happen, something is clearly wrong with at
least one party's perceptions of the situation. The computer world has a
long history of abandoning whole product classes when something else came
along. The death of CP/M, for instance. All the excellent hardware and
software that came from Digital Equipment Corporation, Hewlett Packard,
Honeywell Bull, etc, is all gone, in favor of Unix-like software that
takes more people to maintain and which some people argue cost more in
total ownership.
However, the almost religious belief in "the future" has made a lot of
people opt for things that are bad today but which has some "promise".
Microsoft has managed to capture that notion of delivering the "promised
land" and Windows was perhaps the best evidence yet -- it killed off so
many so much better "alternatives" because people believed that Windows
would be "the future". They have been willing to pay for entertaining
this belief, but that belief is under serious threat. At the very least,
there are now more futures, not just one.
| You say "these issues are debated every day in congress," but
| congresspeople are *not* the commercial software community.
I read "in [the] Congress" to mean politicians and "in congress" to mean
the community of business leaders.
| The Free Software movement is a truly grass roots movement that seeks to
| redress this correctly (again, IMHO) perceived imbalance between motives
| of profit v. quality and fair value for customers.
But the customers actually have a ver different take on all of this.
| When the dominant commercial software companies begin to ship products
| that show the same sort of care that, for example, automobiles do, then
| there will be less of a clamor for Free Software, because people will
| recognize the value of a quality professionally produced product.
If it were a grass roots movement, it would be concerned with the same
things that made the automobile industry concerned with quality and
safety. Richard Stallman is no Ralph Nader. Instead of realizing that
we need the software industry and then force it become responsible, the
Free Software movement aims to hurt the industry in ways that does not
teach it to be more responsible, since there is no guarantee that the
attack on the industry will stop if they _get_ more responsible. In
other words, Ralph Nader had a constructive purpose. Richard Stallman
has a destructive purpose.
| However, since most shipping commercial software is shamefully unstable,
| buggy, (often never fixed without the payment of *additional charges* for
| "upgrades"), not to mention poorly documented, Free Software will
| continue to gather support as a necessary corrective balance to the
| billionaire-making juggernaut of shoddy commercial software.
The only commercial software for which this is _really_ true, is the crap
that emanates from Microsoft. Other companies, having seen that this one
large company can become so rich by providing 80%-solutions, figure that
they do not have to make more than 80%-solutions themselves. This is one
of the major reasons for the massive number of software failures. It is
not particularly hard to write bug-free software, when you actually try,
but if you think it is "impossible" or that bugs are acceptable, it will
_seem_ very hard.
There are other software makers besides Microsoft. Do not believe _any_
of their propaganda. Microsoft is completely irrelevant. The people who
want Microsoft products are _not_ your market. Do not buy _any_ of their
stuff. Just do without it. This is not even difficult, much less hard.
What do you want crap for, anyway?
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Post with compassion: http://home.chello.no/~xyzzy/kitten.jpg
From: Hartmann Schaffer
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <3cad187c@news.sentex.net>
In article <················@naggum.net>,
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> ...
> However, the almost religious belief in "the future" has made a lot of
> people opt for things that are bad today but which has some "promise".
> Microsoft has managed to capture that notion of delivering the "promised
> land" and Windows was perhaps the best evidence yet -- it killed off so
> many so much better "alternatives" because people believed that Windows
> would be "the future". They have been willing to pay for entertaining
i think you attribute too much rationality to the buying decisions
that led to the dominance of MS. from what i remember it was more
like:
1. with the introduction of the PC computers became affordable to
quite a few people
2. many of those people did not have the faintest idea about
computers, but got convinced thatusing them would help them with
whatever they wanted or had to do
3. if they knew anything, they knew that IBM was the big name in
computers and going with IBM wouldn't be wrong
4. buying a PC got them DOS
5. the object code only system of program delivery removed any
possibility of recompiling your code for something else
6. this enabled microsoft to force system builders to offer MS
products almost exclusively
7. this led to a generation of "experts" who weren't (often still
aren't) aware that alternatives to MS even exist and on whom many
of the people who make purchasing decisions rely on
hs
--
don't use malice as an explanation when stupidity suffices
From: Bulent Murtezaoglu
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <87ofgyaije.fsf@nkapi.internal>
>>>>> "HS" == Hartmann Schaffer <··@heaven.nirvananet> writes:
HS> i think you attribute too much rationality to the buying
HS> decisions that led to the dominance of MS. from what i
HS> remember it was more like:
I remember this differently though part of that time I thought I was an
EE, so I might be wrong.
HS> 1. with the introduction of the PC computers became affordable
HS> to quite a few people
Actually the PC was quite expensive compared to other small computers
in the market but this goes with the credibility you mention in 3.
HS> 2. many of those people did not have the faintest idea about
HS> computers, but got convinced thatusing them would help them
HS> with whatever they wanted or had to do
My experience in the early to mid 80's was that they had all kinds of
expectations from the small computer: accounting, invoicing, and maybe
even word processing to an extent. Maybe we are talking about a different
crowd though.
HS> 3. if they knew anything, they knew that IBM was the big name
HS> in computers and going with IBM wouldn't be wrong
Yup.
HS> 4. buying a PC got them DOS
Yes, which MS could sell independently.
HS> 5. the object code only system of program delivery removed any
HS> possibility of recompiling your code for something else
At the time, even if you had the source, you couldn't do much with it
w/o the PC hardware. Most screen handling stuff went below the BIOS,
and some if not most sections of the code for popular apps were
written in assemebler. It wasn't like things were calling standard
lib and having screen control funneled through curses.
HS> 6. this enabled microsoft to force system builders to offer MS
HS> products almost exclusively
This would have been an advantage. MS did not stop there. They cooked up
an ingenious licencing scheme where they effectively forced vendors
to pay per machine shipped regradless of what OS it shipped with.
HS> 7. this led to a generation of "experts" who weren't (often
HS> still aren't) aware that alternatives to MS even exist and on
HS> whom many of the people who make purchasing decisions rely on
This is absolutely right. But you have to remember even up till the early
90's in the space you are describing there was Novell for servers and DOS
for PC's. Mac's were too expensive, Sun/Dec I will not even mention.
Even X-terminals were expensive. Xenix _might_ have been an option but
even then people were getting attached to little utilities that required
100% compatibility. I was a reasonably knowledgeable person who
did most of his coding on SunOS but when I was tasked with coming up with
office systems recommendations in 1991, I found out you just couldn't beat
clone 286's netbooting from 386 Novell servers. With custom apps written
by 4GL sweatshops. That was the reality when you set out to spend other
people's money. (My money? I think I had a Sun i386 back then).
cheers,
BM
From: Hartmann Schaffer
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <3cae5f9c@news.sentex.net>
In article <··············@nkapi.internal>,
Bulent Murtezaoglu <··@acm.org> writes:
>>>>>> "HS" == Hartmann Schaffer <··@heaven.nirvananet> writes:
> HS> i think you attribute too much rationality to the buying
> HS> decisions that led to the dominance of MS. from what i
> HS> remember it was more like:
>
> I remember this differently though part of that time I thought I was an
> EE, so I might be wrong.
maybe i oversimplified a bit
> HS> 1. with the introduction of the PC computers became affordable
> HS> to quite a few people
>
> Actually the PC was quite expensive compared to other small computers
> in the market but this goes with the credibility you mention in 3.
but it had the blessing of IBM, which made it acceptable it acceptable
for business use. the 8 bit micros were ususlly considered toys, more
for hobby use
> HS> 2. many of those people did not have the faintest idea about
> HS> computers, but got convinced thatusing them would help them
> HS> with whatever they wanted or had to do
>
> My experience in the early to mid 80's was that they had all kinds of
> expectations from the small computer: accounting, invoicing, and maybe
> even word processing to an extent. Maybe we are talking about a different
> crowd though.
no, we are talking about the same crowd (add spreadsheets)
> ...
> HS> 5. the object code only system of program delivery removed any
> HS> possibility of recompiling your code for something else
>
> At the time, even if you had the source, you couldn't do much with it
> w/o the PC hardware. Most screen handling stuff went below the BIOS,
> and some if not most sections of the code for popular apps were
> written in assemebler. It wasn't like things were calling standard
> lib and having screen control funneled through curses.
>
> HS> 6. this enabled microsoft to force system builders to offer MS
> HS> products almost exclusively
>
> This would have been an advantage. MS did not stop there. They cooked up
> an ingenious licencing scheme where they effectively forced vendors
> to pay per machine shipped regradless of what OS it shipped with.
apparently they used a few other tricks as well: the big pc builders
seem to have been offered the choice of either installing new
(untested and compared to the competition mediocer) MS products or pay
a considerable higher price for DOS (e.g. word instead of
wordperfect). with the majority of pc buyersat that time being
newbies, they tended to take whatever the vendor offered
hs
--
don't use malice as an explanation when stupidity suffices
From: Thien-Thi Nguyen
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <kk9vgb628b3.fsf@glug.org>
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> However, the almost religious belief in "the future" has made a lot of
> people opt for things that are bad today but which has some "promise".
> Microsoft has managed to capture that notion of delivering the "promised
> land" and Windows was perhaps the best evidence yet -- it killed off so
> many so much better "alternatives" because people believed that Windows
> would be "the future". They have been willing to pay for entertaining
> this belief, but that belief is under serious threat. At the very least,
> there are now more futures, not just one.
when you codify process into a program, you are predicting a precise subset of
the future. how valuable these predictions are is determined by the users.
if they have lost trust in your predictions they are more likely to try the
art of predicting, themselves. at some point, their skills match their
requirement -- if this point is after you share your skills w/ them there is
one less pronoun required wrt benefit. if before, they probably no longer
value your particular skills/code/process/attitude in the long term.
thi
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> Duane Rettig <·····@franz.com> writes:
>
> > That rule doesn't apply to supported software. The redress for
> > grievances is through the support channel, and to the extent that
> > the expectations Kent was referring to are not satisfied, the
> > company supporting the software will lose its reputation and thus
> > lose sales.
>
> Sure, but it doesn't apply to supported free software either.
> Supported software has all kinds of nice guarantees to it; unsupported
> software might not, and this has very little to do with what the
> licensing terms are.
You're missing the point.
Yes, there are mechanisms that cause _some_ free software not to turn around
quickly and turn out a quick and dirty product like this.
But, in general, for every software house offering service, there must be
hundreds, maybe thousands, of "helpful souls" turning out stuff under
less rigorous terms.
Hint: When debating a danger, showing an instance of something that is not
a danger does not disprove the danger. Dangers are rarely 100%. That's why
they are called "dangers" and not "certainties".
The original issue was whether there is a danger that people will put out
incomplete products. The fact is that statistically, it's just got to be
way more likely that someone donating stuff will do so than someone selling
stuff. Sure, there are a few donors whose reputation matters, but most donors
will just shrug and say "so don't use it". But they may still have done
damage to someone else's market, support or not.
From: Thomas Bushnell, BSG
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <87vgb939fb.fsf@becket.becket.net>
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> The original issue was whether there is a danger that people will
> put out incomplete products. The fact is that statistically, it's
> just got to be way more likely that someone donating stuff will do
> so than someone selling stuff. Sure, there are a few donors whose
> reputation matters, but most donors will just shrug and say "so
> don't use it". But they may still have done damage to someone
> else's market, support or not.
But this is also true for proprietary software. You said that free
software doesn't have support, but of course, you can buy support for
it. And proprietary software usually does *not* have support either,
but again, you can buy it.
You gave a good argument that supported software is better for people,
but I'm not sure why you think this has anything to do with what
license its distributed under.
Indeed, it seems to me that reputation matters a *lot* more to free
software authors. One reason for that is that for many, reputation is
all the reward they expect, so it's that much more important.
Thomas
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
>
> > The original issue was whether there is a danger that people will
> > put out incomplete products. The fact is that statistically, it's
> > just got to be way more likely that someone donating stuff will do
> > so than someone selling stuff. Sure, there are a few donors whose
> > reputation matters, but most donors will just shrug and say "so
> > don't use it". But they may still have done damage to someone
> > else's market, support or not.
>
> But this is also true for proprietary software. You said that free
> software doesn't have support, but of course, you can buy support for
> it. And proprietary software usually does *not* have support either,
> but again, you can buy it.
But even for unsupported commercial software products, people usually
care about their image, because it's still valuable commercially.
I don't think this is so for unsupported freeware, since it's often
done by people who don't _have_ an image, and since the mere fact that
it is _free_ appears to disclaim responsibility for it to have a level
of quality.
Look, I've made quite a bit of free stuff myself (not GPL-free, but stuff
that was cost-free that I've put out for people to use) and I have always
cared a great deal what kind of image of me it painted. I'm not saying
it never happens because I'm one of the many examplars you're talking
about.
But I know other people who don't--they just say, "Hey, I wrote this
thing. I'm not sure if it works or not, but you're welcome to use it
if you want." The reason people don't do that commercailly is they'll
get sued for fraud or breach of contract... I know commercial software
contracts often disclaim responsibility, but in most cases the
software at least starts and performs _some_ plausible action. That's
not always so for freeware.
Geez, even I often post buggy code on this very newsgroup when it's for
free. I just figure people will amuse themselves fixing it, and will see
enough other stuff from me that works that they won't think me incapable
of writing corect code. So I'm in reverse exemplar as well.
> You gave a good argument that supported software is better for people,
> but I'm not sure why you think this has anything to do with what
> license its distributed under.
>
> Indeed, it seems to me that reputation matters a *lot* more to free
> software authors. One reason for that is that for many, reputation is
> all the reward they expect, so it's that much more important.
If reputation is why they did it. Your neighbor may say "I think there's
a saw in my garage and you can use it if it seems to work" but it's just
not the same kind of thing as if a company says "give me $5 and I'll give
you a saw that might work..." The former happens a lot more than the latter.
From: Thomas Bushnell, BSG
Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <87wuvpnwn4.fsf@becket.becket.net>
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> I don't think this is so for unsupported freeware, since it's often
> done by people who don't _have_ an image, and since the mere fact that
> it is _free_ appears to disclaim responsibility for it to have a level
> of quality.
If your goal is to say that there is some crappy free software out
there, then sure, that's true. But if it's actually crappy, then how
on earth does it outcompete anything? It only could if customers
actually *don't care* about the fact that it's crappy. And why
should't the customers be allowed to buy a no-support product if there
is someone selling it to them at a price they want to pay?
But I suspect that the software that you see as threatening *your*
business is not the crappy stuff, but the good stuff.
Thomas
·······@mediaone.net (Raffael Cavallaro) writes:
> Since you are rightly concerned about balance, I think you should see
> that, on balance, the commercial software world has favored precisely
> those companies who do *not* care about customers getting reasonable
> products at a reasonable price.
>
> You say "these issues are debated every day in congress," but
> congresspeople are *not* the commercial software community. Rather,
> our representatives in congress have taken to discussing these issues
> because there is rightly (IMHO) a perception that these issues have
> been almost completely *ignored* by the commercial sofware community.
>
> The Free Software movement is a truly grass roots movement that seeks
> to redress this correctly (again, IMHO) perceived imbalance between
> motives of profit v. quality and fair value for customers.
>
> When the dominant commercial software companies begin to ship products
> that show the same sort of care that, for example, automobiles do,
> then there will be less of a clamor for Free Software, because people
> will recognize the value of a quality professionally produced product.
I was kinda sympathetic up to here.
I don't agree that this summarizes all of what's going on in the free
software movement. I'm not even sure that it's what started the movement.
It doesn't sound to me like Stallman sounded in the early days. But I'm
sure it does summarize the issues of some in the present movement.
My intent is not to denigrate the many good things that the movement
is seeking to do. The sensible environmentalist would not say that a
nuclear power plant is "obviously anti-environmental" just because it
grows carrots 8 feet high in the back yard, since nuclear power _does_
have the good effect of staving off a lot of coal burning; an
environmentalist and a nuclear advocate are in at least some ways
after the the same ends (the good of mankind and environmental
conservation) but they each have different ideas of how to get there
and what are the best risks to take along the way.
> However, since most shipping commercial software is shamefully
> unstable, buggy, (often never fixed without the payment of *additional
> charges* for "upgrades"), not to mention poorly documented, Free
> Software will continue to gather support as a necessary corrective
> balance to the billionaire-making juggernaut of shoddy commercial
> software.
I'm a little nervous about this one.
Someone once suggested to me that there's a little bit of a risk that the
vendors of virus protection software have some motive to also make viruses.
I sort of hope that's not true. But it scares me a little.
I'm equally worried about software that comes from a crew of people who
can't make money "creating" software but can make money "supporting"
software. I'm not saying they're all a bunch of charlatans by any means.
But there's a weird conflict of interest here that I find alarming as a
kind of "long run" thing.
Then again, maybe in a free software world although I can't charge you
for "creating" software I can just charge a modest "protection fee" up
front in order to "magically decrease the probability you'll need
support" ...? ;)
Hi Kent,
I just wanted to get back to your earlier request, you were looking
for suggestions. I've been trying to think of things to pass on, so I
hope that some of this is useful or makes some sense. (I'd also email
this privately, but I'm not sure that would be appropriate.)
To paraphrase part of the discussion:
Group: You don't just sell software. You sell support, services, and
training.
Kent: I'm a programmer. I want a situation where I can make a
reasonable living being a programmer.
I completely understand your situation and I am sympathetic. However,
I think that support and training have to be part of any software that
is really going to be sustainable. I don't think that means that you
have to do it though -- I do think it means that you have to partner
with some other folks that are interested in doing it. So, what does
that mean? It means becoming part of a larger group -- either forming
your own enterprise or joining an existing firm.
I think this would be good for another reason. Another concern was,
"Why should I spend six months writing software when someone else can
undercut me and give it away for free?" To me, the answer (at least
in part) is to add your work to the work of something larger and
stronger -- something that is well designed, well integrated, and well
supported. That type of product is impossible to undermine by simply
giving away code. (I'm specifically thinking of firms like The
Mathworks and The SAS Institute here.) I hear the title, "Kent
Pitman, Chief Scientist" in my head and it sounds like a good role for
you.
Suggestions. If you want to go it alone, then target your software at
at communities that already have well developed markets for small
third-party software components. What am I thinking of? It seems
like there are many small companies that are able to make a go of it
writing JavaBeans, ActiveX components, and even C/C++ libraries for a
variety of purposes. Look to the example of companies that produce
specialized add-ins for technical packages like Mathematica or Matlab.
If you really need to focus on Lisp -- think of niches that might
benefit from your approach, e.g. perhaps a system of processing the
CARs and CDRs of different strands of DNA. I'm afraid the web market
is just too crowded with people giving away code just to show that
their language of choice can 'do it.'
As you mentioned, I wish that some people could accept that Free
Software has not always been a win-win for everyone. I, for one, will
never be able to accomplish my life long dream of marketing my own
Apple II text adventures in 16K Integer BASIC. "KILL TROLL" :>)
Best regards to everyone on the list and thank you for your
consideration.
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> wrote in message news:<···············@shell01.TheWorld.com>...
> I don't agree that this summarizes all of what's going on in the free
> software movement. I'm not even sure that it's what started the movement.
> It doesn't sound to me like Stallman sounded in the early days. But I'm
> sure it does summarize the issues of some in the present movement.
Precisely. In the "early days" Free Software was essentially
invisible, outside of a very small academic/programmer community. What
drives the Free Software phenomenon now is the fact that *many* people
realize they can have the same quality software that they're asked to
pay $200.00 a copy for, for free.
The solution is equally simple - sell software that is truly superior
to both the typical Free Software and commercial software offerings.
If this is too tall an order (and it seems that doing so profitably is
beyond the reach of most large software organizations), then find a
way to write Free Software, and make money from an anciliary business
such as support, consulting, or training.
As another poster pointed out, you, Kent, don't need to do any of
these things personally - you just need to be part of an enterprise
where someone else handles that end of the business.
> I'm equally worried about software that comes from a crew of people who
> can't make money "creating" software but can make money "supporting"
> software. I'm not saying they're all a bunch of charlatans by any means.
> But there's a weird conflict of interest here that I find alarming as a
> kind of "long run" thing.
>
> Then again, maybe in a free software world although I can't charge you
> for "creating" software I can just charge a modest "protection fee" up
> front in order to "magically decrease the probability you'll need
> support" ...? ;)
Kent, if you sold hand holding support contracts for Free Software you
write to the IT departments of large enterprises, you would probably
spend less time fielding such calls than you do on Usenet, and unlike
c.l.l, it would pay your bills...
"Kent M Pitman" <······@world.std.com> wrote in message
····················@shell01.TheWorld.com...
> ·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
>
> > In this case, while I certainly did intend that (mild) attack on
> > Kent's character, I did not venture it as a way to disprove what he
> > was saying, which must also be addressed on its own terms.
>
> I could respond to the substance of what you've said, but to be honest
> I'm declining because I'm enjoying watching you dig yourself in deeper
> and deeper without a full set of facts about what I do and don't or
> would and wouldn't spend money on.
>
> It's really just fine if you conclude that I am a hypocrite. Who
> among us doesn't have some hypocrisy somewhere in us? It would
> probably be hypocritical to say we didn't. I'm not going to fall into
> that trap. It happens that I think you've not picked the right thing
> to harp on me about, but that's just a detail. It seems inconceivable
> to me that the statement "I'm not a hypocrite" could be right, so I'll
> just avoid saying it and let you conclude what you will.
Kent,
I am very sorry to see you have come under an attack for being honest. That
people use other's good sides against them is one of the worst things in
life. I find it admirable that you are wise enough to understand that none
of us has the answers and that there is no way to be consistent in one's
thought without it becoming dogmatic and sterile. It is a good thing that
you have kept a living hand.
Wade
>>>>> "KMP" == Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
[...]
KMP> Heck, Bulent Murtezaoglu is closer to the truth on the
KMP> hypocrisy thing when he points out that sometimes I give away
KMP> things for free, too. If you're looking for hypocrisy in me,
KMP> maybe that's a more productive avenue to pursue. [...]
Ah, I had no intention of implying hypocrisy when I pointed that out.
You have given me no reason at all to be suspicius of your intellectual
integrity. It is exactly for that reason that I was nudged into making
tiny noises earlier when I saw you make what I considered a flawed
analogy that went counter to your regular style.
I think this thread is in bad taste, but I am not top posting something
yet again.
cheers,
BM
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> wrote in message news:<···············@shell01.TheWorld.com>...
> But I do have a conscience about these things. In penance I'll be
> declining to post until April 1. I'll still be reading though...
If you *really* want to do penance, hang out on slashdot for the
duration...
* Thomas Bushnell, BSG
| It's an attack on the person, but not an attack on the person intended to
| disprove what he has said. Is that worded the way you want?
What other function does such an attack have? What path to absolution
have you provided? Criticism that does not have any built-in means of
going away is purely destructive. I see that you engage in this, while
you get really pissed a me for offering you a path to absolutuion that
you do not want to use. This is not particularly inspiring to watch.
| The fallacy of "ad hominem" argument is where one attempts to disprove P
| by attacking the character of the persons who assert P.
"Disprove"? Please return to Rhetorics 101 and figure out the difference
between "disprove" and "dismiss". It is quite crucial in this context,
but it seems that you do indeed think you can legitimately dismiss an
argument because of some personal flaw of the arguer, which you have most
certainly told _me_ with you disgusting behavior that you do and would,
yet you have not quite appreciated that I do not return that moronic mode
of dealing with people. When you make valid, interesting arguments, I
respond to them as such, ignoring for the moment that I think you are a
bad person, because it has nothing to do with your argument or question.
I think some of those who go completely nuts over my treatment of bad
actions really need a wake-up call about this, but I believe that bad
people do not differentiate between bad people and bad actions -- that is
what makes them bad people. Good people can do bad things, just as bad
people can do good things. In a professional forum where people exchange
information focused on and relevant to a particular topic, what matters
is what people do with the on-topic information exchange, but the rest
should effectively be ignored. It seems to me that you are less able to
do that than your own behavior and personality should warrant.
If you accuse someone of hypocrisy and they just ignore or accept the
charges and do nothing about it, will you continue to point it out or
lower your opinion of the arguments made by that person, or will it
matter to you in any way? If it matters to you in any way and you change
your behavior towards on-topic discussion, you are a bigoted asshole and
the argument was ad hominem. If you wanted to make someone change their
behavior in some constructive way in order to improve their argument,
that would be relevant to the on-topic information exchange. I cannot
imagine how an accusation of hypocrisy has any such constructive goal.
| In this case, while I certainly did intend that (mild) attack on Kent's
| character, I did not venture it as a way to disprove what he was saying,
| which must also be addressed on its own terms.
What for? Well, I think I know thw answer: you are a bad person.
| So, when Kent says that free software is a big nasty harmful thing, I
| think he's probably lying to us. I think he really believes that
| *other* people should avoid free software and pay software hoarders
| tolls, but that it's perfectly fine for him to use free software.
In other words, you have used the ad hominem attack as a means to dismiss
his argument because you think he is lying, which is another ad hominem
attack without merit. You are such a shitty character, Thomas, I think
you should not have _any_ problems accepting that others are better than
you even though they may be lying hypocrites.
The purpose of a public debate is not to figure out which single color to
paint some of the debaters, although you seem to think it is. The real
purpose is to find out if something is true or useful to the furtherance
of both individual and collective goals and values. For instance, I may
hold the view and argue that HTML is the very incarnation of idiocy and
propose a new language to solve all its problems, but in order to reach
people on the Net today, I have to publish that using HTML, and to be
read, I probably have to use several of the disgusting presentation tools
that the Web needs these days. Is this hypocritical in your view? Would
you think I am lying? Would you dismiss my arguments because you are
such a bad person that you look first for hypocrisy and only in its
absence at the arguments? What _else_ has higher priority than the truth
or usefulness of the argument to you?
| But the propositions he advocates certainly require their own response.
| Even if Kent is lying when he asserts them, they still stand on their
| own, and deserve a direct answer as well---as indeed, they have gotten.
|
| An attack on the person is sometimes appropriate--as you certainly
| seem to relish.
I think you have some serious mental blockage between reality and what
you think about it. You can do something about this: JUST THINK!
| It does not replace an attack on the person's ideas (which would be to
| use a fallacious ad hominem argument), but it is still independently
| valuable.
No, it is not. If you stink because you never shower, that is not
valuable to know about you in a discussion.
| And then you launch into another amazingly unreadable tirade. Ah well,
| my newsreader had edged your rating up, and then suddenly it just
| plummets again.
You seem to live by the ad hominem, Thomas Bushnell, and you have no
constructive purpose with your arguments whatsoever. That is what makes
you a bad person, even an evil person. However, as long as you manage to
keep yourself under control and just post on-topic material, this is
immaterial to me. When your evil personality rears its ugly head, you
will of course hear about it. Especially now that you have given me a
license to defame your character because it is "independently valuable".
Because, I gather, you also think hypocrisy is bad, and therefore what
you think is good for you is good against you, right? Or is hypocrisy
bad only when Kent does it and not when you do it? Either way, you lose.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
>>>>> "ThomasB" == Thomas Bushnell, BSG <·········@becket.net> writes:
ThomasB> If free software is such a harmful dangerous thing, Kent,
ThomasB> then why do you use it to read and post news?
I was wondering what pushed KMP to stretch his analogies. This wonderfully
clever top posting provides the answer. Thank you.
cheers,
BM
From: Friedrich Dominicus
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <87it7l2lab.fsf@fbigm.here>
···@agharta.de (Dr. Edmund Weitz) writes:
> "Scott McKay" <···@attbi.com> writes:
>
> > Genera's programming environment is still incomparable. It might
> > look archaic, but nothing has yet come close. Getting an old
> > Symbolics box to play with Genera is a fine thing to do. The Lisp
> > environments sold by other vendors are a total joke, in my humble
> > opinion;
>
> This is not the first time I heard that opinion, and I'd like to know
> what made Lisp Machines so different from the current Lisp
> environments - unfortunately, I don't have access to one. Could you
> provide a few examples?
Now what do you think about a desktop where everything can be
interactive? Where everthing can bear some information to browse?
An environment where date are not plain character files but structured
objects? Where really all tools are related and can be used from
anywhere?
> Also, why do you think the current
> implementations are so much behind? Is it that certain things simply
> aren't feasible without an OS that supports them? Is the Open Genera
> environment that ran[*] on Alpha machines comparable to the LispM
> environment or is it also lacking something?
According to the docs they are just missing the "low-level" stuff like
accessing SCSI deviced directly and the like. I would think OpenGenera
is still a LispOS.
> Dr. Edmund Weitz
> Hamburg
If it ever happened that you'll visit the south (somewhere around
Karlsruhe) just call me and come on a visit. You than can get your
hands on an LispOS system.
Regards
Friedrich
On Fri, 22 Mar 2002 13:38:53 GMT, "Scott McKay" <···@attbi.com> wrote:
> Genera's programming environment is still incomparable.
[...]
> fine thing to do. The Lisp environments sold by other
> vendors are a total joke, in my humble opinion; only MCL
> even makes a credible try, and its scope is a fraction of
How much of Genera's functionality can be implemented on contemporary, non
Lisp based machines and operating systems? I'd like to know whether the
lack of such functionality in current Lisp environments is "merely" due to
limited resources and commercial/marketing decisions, or to intrinsic
technical limitations of contemporary hardware/software.
Paolo
--
EncyCMUCLopedia * Extensive collection of CMU Common Lisp documentation
http://www.paoloamoroso.it/ency/README
[http://cvs2.cons.org:8000/cmucl/doc/EncyCMUCLopedia/]
Paolo Amoroso <·······@mclink.it> wrote in message news:<····························@4ax.com>...
> On Fri, 22 Mar 2002 13:38:53 GMT, "Scott McKay" <···@attbi.com> wrote:
>
> > Genera's programming environment is still incomparable.
> [...]
> > fine thing to do. The Lisp environments sold by other
> > vendors are a total joke, in my humble opinion; only MCL
> > even makes a credible try, and its scope is a fraction of
>
> How much of Genera's functionality can be implemented on contemporary, non
> Lisp based machines and operating systems? I'd like to know whether the
> lack of such functionality in current Lisp environments is "merely" due to
> limited resources and commercial/marketing decisions, or to intrinsic
> technical limitations of contemporary hardware/software.
Well, you're not likely to write an OS in CL on modern hardware
although I'm not sure that's really even desirable in today's
heterogeneous environment.
Keep in mind though, that as nice as Genera was, it didn't
interface to Oracle, didn't support CORBA or COM or a lot
of things that are frequently more critical in todays world,
and to which the non-Lispm vendors have devoted substantial
resources. Rightly so IMO, since they're still around and
the otherwise superior Lispms are a fading memory. The number
of applications for which a closed-world solution is sufficient
is pretty small nowadays.
From: Christopher C. Stacy
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <upu1tgsl6.fsf@theworld.com>
>>>>> On 24 Mar 2002 07:23:59 -0800, Michael Parker ("Michael") writes:
Michael> Keep in mind though, that as nice as Genera was, it didn't
Michael> interface to Oracle, didn't support CORBA or COM or a lot
Michael> of things that are frequently more critical in todays world,
Michael> and to which the non-Lispm vendors have devoted substantial
Michael> resources. Rightly so IMO, since they're still around and
Michael> the otherwise superior Lispms are a fading memory. The number
Michael> of applications for which a closed-world solution is sufficient
Michael> is pretty small nowadays.
Those things weren't significant (or extant) for most of the life of
Genera, and could have been very easily interfaced to. I whipped
up a database interface (like the Oracle network interface) very
quickly, at least once, and I am sure many others did that, also.
Genera was the paragon of network-based interoperability, until
Symbolics declined to the point where it no longer had resources
to expend on that sort of thing (sometime around the second time
that it laid off most of the staff). In that context, Lisp went
from being the most connected programming language to one of the
least well-connected.
I'm trying really hard to get a handle around this LISPm environment
issue. I really appreciate the time that folks take to educate people
like me. I probably briefly touched a LISPm once or twice (I did
spend 7 years at CMU), but was so totally ignorant of LISP at that
point that I can only evoke faint echos of possible "past lives"
involving such interaction by looking at the pictures of LISPms put up
on the web...
I've followed this topic as much as time allows [including threads
from years ago].
······@theworld.com (Christopher C. Stacy) writes:
>>>>>> On 24 Mar 2002 07:23:59 -0800, Michael Parker ("Michael") writes:
> Michael> Keep in mind though, that as nice as Genera was, ...
>
> Genera was the paragon of network-based interoperability, ...
From what I gather to this point, the consensus would seem to be the
following:
* LISPm environments were much better than anything available today
* Genera was the best of the LISPm environments
* It is not worthwhile to contemplate recreating a pure LISPm
environment. Instead LISP environments on current host operating
systems [Linux/MacOS/Solaris/Windows/&tc] should be extended...
My conclusion follows this brief interlude that isn't totally
off-topic:
When I first went to CMU in 1988, we often found it inconvenient to
use the Andrew Window Manager wm (or Computer Club version, cwm) due
to what we'd now call performance limitations of the machines in use
there [Sun 3s, MicroVax, IBM RTs, eventually DECStation 3100s]. So,
we'd work right on the console, as much as we could. Since some
consoles [at least DS 3100] didn't directly support terminal emulation
[such as vt100], a friend of mine wrote a terminal emulator called
niftyterm, which even supported different font sizes, &tc. Once we
had niftyterm, we just had to load up Gnu Emacs and we could do pretty
much anything [non-graphical] we wanted from within this environment.
All of which leads me to the conclusion that the "most worthwhile"
modern Lisp environment that would come close to Genera would be
somehow integrating the best ideas from the Franz and Xanalys
environments with something like {GNU|X}Emacs.
* {GNU|X}Emacs alone doesn't cut it because of the poor CL support
and the lack of things like class browsers, &tc.
* I'm experimenting with the no-$ version of ACL, using XEmacs as
the editor with the Franz-supplied Lisp-interaction modules. So,
perhaps this combination is the best..?
* I like the no-$ version of LispWorks Personal [running under
Linux], but, of course, I'd need to have the $900 version of
LispWorks Professional to avoid the 4-hour environment meltdown
issue, as well as the fact that their Editor [at least in the
Personal edition] isn't a total plug-in-replacement for
{GNU|X}Emacs.
So, it would seem that if I have understood correctly, the best
thing would be to:
* start with either ACL or LispWorks
* implement a better editor from within CL [likely ignoring ELisp
compatibility]
* provide equivalent functionality to major ELisp systems such as
Gnus, W3, &tc. but in Common Lisp rather than ELisp.
Would this be an environment worth putting together? Should I just
beg Symbolics Technologies to port OpenGenera to an Intel chipset?
Is there anyone anywhere near Philadelphia with a LISPm that
wouldn't mind having me drop by for a visit? I'd really love to spend
some small amount of time [maybe up to an hour] observing someone
interacting with a LISPm [even non-Symbolics systems...]
-jon
--
------------------
Jon Allen Boone
········@delamancha.org
Jon Allen Boone <········@delamancha.org> writes:
> So, it would seem that if I have understood correctly, the best
> thing would be to:
>
> * start with either ACL or LispWorks
>
> * implement a better editor from within CL [likely ignoring ELisp
> compatibility]
>
> * provide equivalent functionality to major ELisp systems such as
> Gnus, W3, &tc. but in Common Lisp rather than ELisp.
Another possibility would be to help us write McCLIM and use it with
CMUCL and/or SBCL to create such an environment. In the McCLIM CVS
tree there is an embryo of an implementation of Emacs in CL.
McCLIM could very well become the basis of the user interaction part
of an environment similar to Genera. It would then be interesting to
see whether a flat address space on a 64-bit machine could be used for
a multi-user Lisp environment.
As far as the rest of your list is concerned, Gilbert Baumann has a
(I think working) web browser in CL, which (if I remember correctly)
he is adapting to McCLIM. The Eclipse window manager is written
entirely in Common Lisp (with CLX) so there is another piece of the
puzzle.
> Would this be an environment worth putting together?
It would be a HUGE task, so it may not be "worth" it to you. But
certainly, if you do it, it would be a great service to the
community.
--
Robert Strandh
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Greenspun's Tenth Rule of Programming: any sufficiently complicated C
or Fortran program contains an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden
slow implementation of half of Common Lisp.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
······@theworld.com (Christopher C. Stacy) writes:
> >>>>> On 24 Mar 2002 07:23:59 -0800, Michael Parker ("Michael") writes:
> Michael> Keep in mind though, that as nice as Genera was, it didn't
> Michael> interface to Oracle, didn't support CORBA or COM or a lot
> Michael> of things that are frequently more critical in todays world,
> Michael> and to which the non-Lispm vendors have devoted substantial
> Michael> resources. Rightly so IMO, since they're still around and
> Michael> the otherwise superior Lispms are a fading memory. The number
> Michael> of applications for which a closed-world solution is sufficient
> Michael> is pretty small nowadays.
>
> Those things weren't significant (or extant) for most of the life of
> Genera, and could have been very easily interfaced to. I whipped
> up a database interface (like the Oracle network interface) very
> quickly, at least once, and I am sure many others did that, also.
Indeed, moreover it did connect to a great many things that were the
interfaces of choice from when the company was a going concern. To the
point that a number of companies bought Lisp Machines as, essentially,
"connectivity servers".
> Genera was the paragon of network-based interoperability, until
> Symbolics declined to the point where it no longer had resources
> to expend on that sort of thing (sometime around the second time
> that it laid off most of the staff). In that context, Lisp went
> from being the most connected programming language to one of the
> least well-connected.
······@theworld.com (Christopher C. Stacy) wrote in message news:<·············@theworld.com>...
> >>>>> On 24 Mar 2002 07:23:59 -0800, Michael Parker ("Michael") writes:
> Michael> Keep in mind though, that as nice as Genera was, it didn't
> Michael> interface to Oracle, didn't support CORBA or COM or a lot
> Michael> of things that are frequently more critical in todays world,
> Michael> and to which the non-Lispm vendors have devoted substantial
> Michael> resources. Rightly so IMO, since they're still around and
> Michael> the otherwise superior Lispms are a fading memory. The number
> Michael> of applications for which a closed-world solution is sufficient
> Michael> is pretty small nowadays.
>
> Those things weren't significant (or extant) for most of the life of
> Genera, and could have been very easily interfaced to. I whipped
> up a database interface (like the Oracle network interface) very
> quickly, at least once, and I am sure many others did that, also.
>
> Genera was the paragon of network-based interoperability, until
> Symbolics declined to the point where it no longer had resources
> to expend on that sort of thing (sometime around the second time
> that it laid off most of the staff). In that context, Lisp went
> from being the most connected programming language to one of the
> least well-connected.
My point is not that the lispms couldn't be hooked into the world, but
that
a vendor can spend it's resources on lispm-like coherency, or it can
sacrifice that in order to more closely track the rest of the world.
It can't
really do both (not even with wads of resources), because the rest of
the world is changing so quickly.
I'm not saying that the Lispms couldn't track the rest of the world,
but
that it was manifestly more difficult to do so than it is for a GP
lisp
implementation. Franz and Harlequin didn't have to write their own
window manager -- they used the existing ones. They didn't have to
"whip up" a database interface -- they just had to wrap the existing
interfaces up with FFI. They didn't have to reimplement COM from
scratch. On the Lispms you would have had to -- for every non-statice
database you wanted to talk to, and every time MS came up with its
newest great thing (.NET, SOAP, non-Kerberos, etc).
The gp vendors gave up the lispm's coherency, since they were having
to live on top of other companies' (frequently lousy) software rather
than
reimplement it in a manner consistent with their existing paradigm.
But staying current (or at least no more than a generation behind) did
more
for their survival than consistency would have.
··········@hotmail.com (Michael Parker) writes:
> My point is not that the lispms couldn't be hooked into the world,
> but that a vendor can spend it's resources on lispm-like coherency,
> or it can sacrifice that in order to more closely track the rest of
> the world. It can't really do both (not even with wads of
> resources), because the rest of the world is changing so quickly.
But, importantly, the lispm was not just about editing lisp code. It
was a whole way of life for computation. It was about text editing,
mail reading, program development, commercial quality graphics creation,
expert system shells, etc. It was a whole operating system and a whole
marketplace for products... just not a very big market because of how
expensive they were.
Lisp vendors of today can certainly make their lisp development programs
that are integrated among the lisp development tools, but they can't make
other non-lisp applications follow the same integration. So there is a
limit to what they can seek to do.
Paolo Amoroso <·······@mclink.it> writes:
> On Fri, 22 Mar 2002 13:38:53 GMT, "Scott McKay" <···@attbi.com> wrote:
>
> > Genera's programming environment is still incomparable.
> [...]
> > fine thing to do. The Lisp environments sold by other
> > vendors are a total joke, in my humble opinion; only MCL
> > even makes a credible try, and its scope is a fraction of
>
> How much of Genera's functionality can be implemented on contemporary, non
> Lisp based machines and operating systems? I'd like to know whether the
> lack of such functionality in current Lisp environments is "merely" due to
> limited resources and commercial/marketing decisions, or to intrinsic
> technical limitations of contemporary hardware/software.
Usually people use hardware/software as a kind of "I dont mean to quibble
over the detail here" but I would like to note my belief that it's nontrivial
that "/architecture/OS" perhaps belongs here.
By architecture, I mean it didn't hurt that the individual components were
written all to plug into a common architecture (which happened to be
Lisp-based, but where it was more important that it was of a common base).
[My understanding, though it's something I personally used only a little,
is that MIT Multics got similar power in some regards by being organized
around a common set of PL/1-based paradigms for control, memory management,
etc. I think this meant, for example, that cross-application error handlers
could run using a common protocol, not dissimilar to the one that CL uses
now. These ideas flowed into the LispM's "New Error System" (NES) and
from there to CL.]
By OS, I obviously mean that it didn't hurt that it was a Lisp-based OS.
The way many people learned about the Lisp Machine was literally to do this:
1. Find some application that did what you want, whether it was a
user application or even a text editor or a window system pop-up
dialog, and then press Control-Meta-Suspend, which forced entry to
the debugger. At this point, they could see the whole stack down
to the code that launched the executing process from the operating
system. (In all such stack frames was Lisp data that was subject
to the Lisp function INSPECT, by the way. That was helpful as
well.)
2. Find a stack frame that looked interesting and press Control-E
to edit the source code for the current stack frame. This
automatically knew where the source code was without you telling
it anything. You would then just read the source code to learn
how things worked. If any function or variable or class/flavor or
package in the source was unknown to the person reading the code,
they could just type Meta-. which would prompt for a function name
and then either type or click on the name in question.
or
1. You could also just go to a listener (shell) and type
:Show Herald to see a list of what's loaded; that output is
clickable so you can click a particular system name to see its
components, though you could always :Show System Components and
type a system name to see the compile script for the system if you
want to read its sources rooting that way instead of from source.
You could get to the editor with Meta-click on a filename in the
output of this command. If you didn't know this, the always-present
"mouse documentation line" would tell you this fact.
The reasons modern OS/architectures are already hampered are not due to
hardware/software per se, but due to lack of buy-in to these common
paradigms from each and every application, contributing to a coherent
sense of whole:
- The lack of a mouse-sensitive typeout area. It's not quite the same
to put it this way, and you'd have to see Dynamic Windows to understand,
and even then it does DW a massive disservice to sum it up this way,
but it's as if all interactions happened in HTML. That is, there's more
to what you see than what is typed on the screen. In HTML, what backs up
a link is a URL. (In DW, what backs up mouse-sensitivity is an internal
understanding of a hierarchy of reasons why various output occurred,
different parts of which become clickable depending on input syntax.)
- The lack of a keyboard with Control, Meta, Super, Hyper, Symbol, and Shift
[or minor variations thereof: in some architectures the Symbol key is
replaced by one or more shift keys named Top, Greek, Front] which can be
chorded with keys and mouse clicks to get an enormous number of actions
on a single click. For example, Super-Meta-mouse-Right might do something
quite different than mouse-Right.
- The lack of a dedicated "mouse doc line" to explain the enormously powerful
set of options for the mouse at any given moment. As you pressed shift
keys up and down, you'd see the key commands for that shift combination.
Super- commands tended to be meta-operations for inspecting the state of
the window system, Meta- were often commands for editing, etc. But the
mouse doc line helped you learn. It would say things like:
L: Select M: Inspect R: Menu
These were not fixed strings but were composed from smaller pieces of data
contributed in an object-oriented way by the input context of the process
with control of the keyboard.
- The lack of a dedicated "wholine" explaining the state of the machine.
From this line, one got not only the time but the input package, whether
the current process was executing or in a wait state (and what that state
was), whether a GC was happening and which of several GC phases was going
on, whether disk paging was occurring, whether a file was open or servers
were accessing the machine, and what percent done a file access or other
progress-monitored-actions were.
- That all executing software should carry around a full symbol table
that is cross-indexed with _correct_ source. This goes WELL BEYOND
the present and I-personally-find-utterly-useless claim that software
is "open source". 99.99% of the time, it might as well not be
"open source" to me because I have no idea if (a) the source is present,
(b) where the source is, (c) whether something that I find that looks
like the source _is_ the source, and (d) if it is the right general source,
whether it's the right version. If on the Lisp Machine the source
had been patched, Meta-. would tell you that there were multiple
sources in play and what the various source files were. The list
would end up in an editor buffer in Zmacs so you could see that a
certain source file was patched by later code loaded from certain
patch files.
- On Unix/Linux, sources vary in their home, find is syntactically
weird and hard to use for newbies as a "getting started" tool (and
is impeded by symbolic links), grep is hard to use across directory
levels, patches are mysterious, file conventions are not
primitively understood by the editor, commands do not exist to ask
what software is loaded and to browse source trees and patch files,
etc. And certainly none of such stuff is clickable beginning from a
user interface available to an utter newbie. In the Lisp Machine,
the initial herald (sort of its /etc/motd) is clickable to see all
this info, so a person with a curious mind and no experience would be
able to find all of this information with absolutely no knowledge
of command structure or file system organization -- not even the need
for file system syntax is presupposed.
- That the debugger should offer symbolically named stack frames to users
[and that the names of these stack frames should be meaningful; the
difference between EDITOR:MAKE-BUFFER and OPERATING-SYSTEM:MAKE-BUFFER
should be visually presented, no matter what people who dislike packages
think, since often only the "EDITOR:" or "OPERATING-SYSTEM:" is the point
of interest when one is getting started...]
- That restarts should be provided by any application on the stack and
visible across applications.
- The lack of common address space making the process of reaching into the
internals of another program and seeing its data a mere matter of
understanding a few relatively simple data structures in a way that
you're already used to managing other high-level data rather than a trip
to a bookstore, a licensing of a set of expensive foundation classes, and
a three month course for several thousand dollars taught either by
Microsoft or by a starving Free Software person who has to make his money
somehow since he can't make it on selling program.
I'm sure there are other elements. But maybe you can see by some of these
I've enumerated that the problem is more than is within power of a single
application writer to fix. It's about a whole community mindset and a
willingness of that entire community to contribute to the illusion.
The following two recursively arranged stories may help to see the problem
that confronts a community with a desire to do this; and, incidentally,
this story also probably makes it clear why it may not be an accident that
Scott McKay and others point to MCL as the closest contender to LispM-like
culture...
Someone once grumbled to me about a certain application that when it was
going to offer a submenu under a menu, the menu only said "Foo" and not
"Foo..." like on the Mac. Why don't you make it add "..." in the case of
a submenu. I explained that it couldn't know because it was just going to
call a function and it didn't know what the function was going to do.
"But on the Mac--" the person said, trailing off. I shook my head and
explained it this way: The Mac does not know either. Rather, an illusion
is maintained by the individual force of will of every menu writer for the
Mac, obeying a convention that they must wire the string "..." to the end
of menu items in certain cases just so people will _think_ that the Mac
actually does this. I then proceeded to tell the following story:
We often expect people to grow up with things like "common sense" and
"manners" and "ethics". The point has been made by some, though, that
these things don't come out of nowhere. They are the individual
product of parents everywhere, laboriously programming each and every
instance of "human being" with tons of stuff that we want to believe
is just "automatically there". But there is no mechanism for making
the download, recognition, and use of such stuff automatic. We are
just lucky when parents buy into this level of responsibility, and
such fragile illusions will survive only as long as parents, in the
aggregate, care. Society is the sum of these individual, unsung heroic
acts.
On Sun, 24 Mar 2002 07:10:34 -0500, Kent M Pitman wrote:
... A _gem_ of an article. Thanks Kent!!
It seems the main thing missing today is the culture (or
even the will) to construct, & then use, the appropriate
infractructure and paradigms.
I know you have certain reservations about the open source/free
software/whatever idea, and I'm not disagreeing with a lot of your
points. But it seems to me that in the current climate, that's
the only place there would be a chance (minimal though it may
be) of recreating the necessary infrastructure.
Both in terms of getting enough programming mindshare to implement
it, and enough user mindshare for it to matter.
One could imagine leveraging some sort of next generation
gcc/glibc/gtk (and/or kde stuff), package system, and (x)emacs
to achieve a lot of what the LispM had.
The technical details would be overwhelming enough, but the
politics would probably do it in.
Alas, the worst problem is that most people don't know what
they're missing!
bruce
In article <···································@md.prestige.net>,
Bruce Miller <······@md.prestige.net> wrote:
>On Sun, 24 Mar 2002 07:10:34 -0500, Kent M Pitman wrote:
>... A _gem_ of an article. Thanks Kent!!
>
>It seems the main thing missing today is the culture (or
>even the will) to construct, & then use, the appropriate
>infractructure and paradigms.
Right. It takes quite a bit of work to ensure that everything is
integrated. It's also much easier when there's a single organization doing
all the development.
Currently, the closest anyone sees to the kind of stuff I remember from my
LispM days is "web-enabled" applications, which allow you to click on links
in the application (e.g. mail/news readers, Acrobat reader, RealPlayer) and
automatically be transferred to the web browser for related information.
But this is just a small taste of how the LispM integrated things.
Practically everything on the screen was "live data", and they all had
associated context-based menus.
Take what you may be used to with plug-ins and web-enabled applications,
and multiply the convenience and integration by 100, and that's what Genera
is like.
Unfortunately, I think it may be close to infeasible to implement something
like this in conventional systems. LispM's have the benefit of everything
being in a single, shared address space, so it's easy to develop relatively
ad hoc mechanisms for accessing related applications and data. In a more
conventional OS, it's necessary to design interprocess communications
protocols to effect all of this. It's hard to ensure that these protocols
provide all the flexibility to support features that you haven't even
thought of yet. So basically, all we have are a handful of basic requests,
like "tell the browser to go to this URL", and "tell the plug-in to display
this data in the browser window".
--
Barry Margolin, ······@genuity.net
Genuity, Woburn, MA
*** DON'T SEND TECHNICAL QUESTIONS DIRECTLY TO ME, post them to newsgroups.
Please DON'T copy followups to me -- I'll assume it wasn't posted to the group.
Barry Margolin <······@genuity.net> writes:
> Take what you may be used to with plug-ins and web-enabled applications,
> and multiply the convenience and integration by 100, and that's what Genera
> is like.
>
> Unfortunately, I think it may be close to infeasible to implement something
> like this in conventional systems. LispM's have the benefit of everything
> being in a single, shared address space, so it's easy to develop relatively
> ad hoc mechanisms for accessing related applications and data. In a more
> conventional OS, it's necessary to design interprocess communications
> protocols to effect all of this. It's hard to ensure that these protocols
> provide all the flexibility to support features that you haven't even
> thought of yet. So basically, all we have are a handful of basic requests,
> like "tell the browser to go to this URL", and "tell the plug-in to display
> this data in the browser window".
Well, actually, what I find a more indicative pointer is that when COM
and CORBA and such thing came along, it seemed like there would
finally be an opportunity for people to publish protocols for
customization of applications by plugin. While a few limited places
did create "markets" (photoshop filters come to mind, or different
graphics editors for editing a picture seen in a text editor), there
wasn't a cultural excitement about doing this in a place where money
was not to be made. Users don't do this kind of thing in one-liners,
nor do they have personal choice to easily override the defaults in
most such applications, _especially_ not in a system-wide way and
_especially_ not in a source-code form that can be trivially shared
with a friend by saying "put this line of text in your init file".
I would have expected that I could have taken system dialogs and
notepad-like input windows and specified, in some general way, "I
prefer to use Emacs everywhere on my system that text editing is done"
and had makers of such tools suddenly be aware. That was what I
understood to be the dream of COM and CORBA. But instead what I got
as "If you have really a lot of money (substitute "time" and
"knowledge", equally scarce commodities, on a "free software system),
you can maybe compile up an interface that one or two applications
will grudgingly acknowledge.
I don't know if this was a failure of leadership or a cynical
realization on the part of commercial leadership that this much power
would make it easy to lock out a particular vendor at the touch of a
button. It certainly is something that couldn't have taken off if use
of the underlying connectivity substrate was something that had to be
licensed, and it certainly is something that wasn't easy to do if you
couldn't enforce that everyone used the _same_ connectivity substrate.
In the Lisp Machine, everyone didn't have to use the same
connectivity, but common substrates were there for people who wanted
to use them, and the leadership showed how use of those common
substrates would make everyone happier.
I have often called early Lisp the "socialist state", by which I mean
the time when mommy/daddy (vendors) took care of us children (users).
What has enabled the modern free market is the loss of
synchronization, which held a whole community back in order to make
sure we were all on the same page. The cost of being able to move as
fast as the modern world does is that we are no longer all on the same
page, and so any attempt to solve a problem that requires global
synchronization is a lost cause. Some would say, and I'd agree, that
it was inevitable that the socialist state would fall, at least on the
first round, to the capitalistic one that doesn't protect everyone
equally. And I think it's inevitable that we'd lose things like what
we had.
If you want something to hope for [and be careful what you do hope for]
it's probably that the capitalist market will so quickly outrun our
needs that it will drown us in things we have no desire or use for. As
it does, companies will go out of business because a great deal of their
base is left behind in a world where such products make no sense or where
they can't be afforded. In the end, this meltdown is likely to produce
monopolies (social or economic; linux is of the former kind and is not
exempt from this criticism), and monopolies are a lot like socialist
states. So the "we know better than you" effect, whether from Microsoft
(as the "single mind knowing better than the world") or from Linux
(as the "multiple minds making something so big that even though anyone
could in principle do it again, no one is willing to try"), is likely to
come again. And as we sit there in a computational glut that is not
controllable in either case (Microsoft because it doesn't need to care
what customers think and Linux because its advocates, in the aggregate,
don't believe in being told what to do, and don't have a way to be told
even if they wanted to be) that everything else will fall and there will
be again only one way. And in such a world, all other competition having
been killed, maybe there will be a chance for LispMs again. If anyone
cares to bother, or even remembers the dream, both doubtful.
In article <···············@shell01.TheWorld.com>,
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> wrote:
>In the Lisp Machine, everyone didn't have to use the same
>connectivity, but common substrates were there for people who wanted
>to use them, and the leadership showed how use of those common
>substrates would make everyone happier.
The articles I've read about Tim Berners-Lee's ideas for the "Semantic Web"
suggest that he thinks XML and HTTP can be used as the new substrate for
this. I'll believe it when I see it.
And that is still only the data storage substrate. It's still up to
individual applications to integrate with each other.
--
Barry Margolin, ······@genuity.net
Genuity, Woburn, MA
*** DON'T SEND TECHNICAL QUESTIONS DIRECTLY TO ME, post them to newsgroups.
Please DON'T copy followups to me -- I'll assume it wasn't posted to the group.
Barry Margolin <······@genuity.net> writes:
> In article <···············@shell01.TheWorld.com>,
> Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> wrote:
> >In the Lisp Machine, everyone didn't have to use the same
> >connectivity, but common substrates were there for people who wanted
> >to use them, and the leadership showed how use of those common
> >substrates would make everyone happier.
>
> The articles I've read about Tim Berners-Lee's ideas for the "Semantic Web"
> suggest that he thinks XML and HTTP can be used as the new substrate for
> this. I'll believe it when I see it.
I agree this is a stretch.
In the Lisp Machine, things like function calls and plists were intrinsic
to the representation. The notation offered direct access to power already
present.
XML and HTTP are 'marshalling' (to use the CORBA term) of functionality
and representations not necessarily present in the underlying representation.
This allows data hiding and is not without virtue, but in a sense, part of
the power of the Lisp Machine is about the inability to hide data. It would
not surprise me, btw, if the power of the brain works likewise; certainly it
would be an interesting factoid to know.
> And that is still only the data storage substrate. It's still up to
> individual applications to integrate with each other.
I'm not sure I understood where you were going with this remark.
I'm pretty sure I agree with the second sentence but am not sure why
the first is introducing it.
In article <···············@shell01.TheWorld.com>,
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> wrote:
>Barry Margolin <······@genuity.net> writes:
>> And that is still only the data storage substrate. It's still up to
>> individual applications to integrate with each other.
>
>I'm not sure I understood where you were going with this remark.
>I'm pretty sure I agree with the second sentence but am not sure why
>the first is introducing it.
Integrated applications require two things: a way to share data in a common
format (the single address space and CLOS/Flavors data representation on
the LispM, HTTP and XML in the Semantic Web), and ways for the applications
to tell each other to do things. On the LispM, presentation methods
provide the latter, but there isn't an analogous protocol for interaction
among applications on conventional systems.
--
Barry Margolin, ······@genuity.net
Genuity, Woburn, MA
*** DON'T SEND TECHNICAL QUESTIONS DIRECTLY TO ME, post them to newsgroups.
Please DON'T copy followups to me -- I'll assume it wasn't posted to the group.
Barry Margolin wrote:
> The articles I've read about Tim Berners-Lee's ideas for the "Semantic
> Web" suggest that he thinks XML and HTTP can be used as the new substrate
> for
> this. I'll believe it when I see it.
As well you should. At its heart, XML's DTD's provide only syntactic
commonality. Nothing in the standard talks about a shared ontology or
semantics. And, as much as Berners-Lee would like to find something to
provide an ontological specificaton (i.e., his "Semantic Web"), it seems
unlikely that this set of ontological specifications will work that much
better than KIF, CYC's meta-levels, or any of the dozens of similar
approaches that have been tried previously. I fear that disappointment
will be the likely outcome.
But we can always hope that this goal will once again focus researchers on
the "interesting" problems in knowledge representation and manipulation.
This might actually push symbolic computation forward to a state where Lisp
might become viable again (remember that XML is just S-exprs in disguise
and it's a lot simpler to manipulate S-exprs than XML strings). But with
our luck, we'll be stuck with manipulating XML strings in Perl and/or Java
and/or PHP and/or any of the other web monstrosities created lately. To
say I am less than hopeful would be overstating the case.
faa
Kent M Pitman schrieb:
>
> Barry Margolin <······@genuity.net> writes:
>
> > Take what you may be used to with plug-ins and web-enabled applications,
> > and multiply the convenience and integration by 100, and that's what Genera
> > is like.
> And as we sit there in a computational glut that is not
> controllable in either case (Microsoft because it doesn't need to care
> what customers think and Linux because its advocates, in the aggregate,
> don't believe in being told what to do, and don't have a way to be told
> even if they wanted to be) that everything else will fall and there will
> be again only one way. And in such a world, all other competition having
> been killed, maybe there will be a chance for LispMs again. If anyone
> cares to bother, or even remembers the dream, both doubtful.
What I ask myself is something like: Why not put a LispM on a PCI Card
and bring it to the market ?
In days where neural nets have their own chips and where a poor
pc-environment is available as a slot-card, this should be no big
problem. One can design a lisp specific chip and place some necessary
other chips around. Look at the hardware of some graphic-cards. So you
have not to produce a complete computer but use as much as useful of it
and I think, this way more people can get a modern LispM-Environment.
Even if some other components of a usual PC should be replaced, this
seems a cheap solution. Also lisp-software is so flexible, that there
are ways to make it.
stefan
lin8080 wrote:
>
> Kent M Pitman schrieb:
> >
> > Barry Margolin <······@genuity.net> writes:
> >
> > > Take what you may be used to with plug-ins and web-enabled applications,
> > > and multiply the convenience and integration by 100, and that's what Genera
> > > is like.
>
> > And as we sit there in a computational glut that is not
> > controllable in either case (Microsoft because it doesn't need to care
> > what customers think and Linux because its advocates, in the aggregate,
> > don't believe in being told what to do, and don't have a way to be told
> > even if they wanted to be) that everything else will fall and there will
> > be again only one way. And in such a world, all other competition having
> > been killed, maybe there will be a chance for LispMs again. If anyone
> > cares to bother, or even remembers the dream, both doubtful.
>
> What I ask myself is something like: Why not put a LispM on a PCI Card
> and bring it to the market ?
Because there is no market for such a thing. If there were then
Symbolics and LMI would be thriving.
The Lispm's magic came not from their hardware (well, a bit, but
only a bit). It came from the finely crafted environment and suite
of systems that were integrated to a degree that is hard to believe
if you haven't experienced it.
The hardware is really superfluous, it's the software that's
critical. If you could snap your fingers and *poof* get a cross-
platform Lispm environment that integrated in with .NET/MONO/
CORBA/whatever, you might have a winner.
You *could* get a bunch of lisp hackers together and whip one
up on PC hardware using an off-the-shelf lisp system -- but it'd
take awhile, and meanwhile the rest of the world would have passed
you by.
lin8080 <·······@freenet.de> wrote:
> Kent M Pitman schrieb:
>>
>> Barry Margolin <······@genuity.net> writes:
>>
>> > Take what you may be used to with plug-ins and web-enabled applications,
>> > and multiply the convenience and integration by 100, and that's what Genera
>> > is like.
>
>> And as we sit there in a computational glut that is not
>> controllable in either case (Microsoft because it doesn't need to
>> care what customers think and Linux because its advocates, in the
>> aggregate, don't believe in being told what to do, and don't have a
>> way to be told even if they wanted to be) that everything else will
>> fall and there will be again only one way. And in such a world,
>> all other competition having been killed, maybe there will be a
>> chance for LispMs again. If anyone cares to bother, or even
>> remembers the dream, both doubtful.
>
> What I ask myself is something like: Why not put a LispM on a PCI Card
> and bring it to the market ?
>
> In days where neural nets have their own chips and where a poor
> pc-environment is available as a slot-card, this should be no big
> problem. One can design a lisp specific chip and place some
> necessary other chips around. Look at the hardware of some
> graphic-cards. So you have not to produce a complete computer but
> use as much as useful of it and I think, this way more people can
> get a modern LispM-Environment. Even if some other components of a
> usual PC should be replaced, this seems a cheap solution. Also
> lisp-software is so flexible, that there are ways to make it.
This wouldn't really help that much.
The merits of the Lisp Machines were arguably _not_ in the hardware,
but rather in the integrated set of software.
Genera got ported over to the Alpha architecture, and is hosted on an
Alpha box; arguably, all you would thus need is to stick an Alpha chip
on a PCI card, and bring that to market. In fact, that probably
already exists.
The problem is that you need the $5K worth (hee, hee!) of Genera
software, and the problem is in making _that_ into a marketable
commodity.
It would be vastly easier to say "Who cares about hardware?", grab
Linux/FreeBSD/... to get a kernel, and then build a "user space"
almost totally in Lisp, on top of that. That approach would eliminate
the "First, we have to design some hardware..." stage.
--
(concatenate 'string "cbbrowne" ·@canada.com")
http://www3.sympatico.ca/cbbrowne/wp.html
Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.
In article <··············@chvatal.cbbrowne.com>,
Christopher Browne <········@acm.org> wrote:
>
>The merits of the Lisp Machines were arguably _not_ in the hardware,
>but rather in the integrated set of software.
>
>Genera got ported over to the Alpha architecture, and is hosted on an
>Alpha box; arguably, all you would thus need is to stick an Alpha chip
>on a PCI card, and bring that to market. In fact, that probably
>already exists.
>
>The problem is that you need the $5K worth (hee, hee!) of Genera
>software, and the problem is in making _that_ into a marketable
>commodity.
>
But if that Alpha on PCI card exists and runs OpenGenera, then
obviously if what is left of Symbolics wanted, they could just
package that board together with 1 or more DVDs for all the code
and documentation and sell this no-frills entry package for
$500-1000. That might *create* a market. Anybody remember
Borlands $99 TurboPascal success. That too created its own
market and success. And before anybody starts making points
about the economical viability of my suggested price: remember
that all development cost has already been paid off.
Bernhard
--
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Bernhard Pfahringer, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato
http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~bernhard +64 7 838 4041
---------------------------------------------------------------------
In an attempt to throw the authorities off his trail, ········@hummel.cs.waikato.ac.nz (Bernhard Pfahringer) transmitted:
> In article <··············@chvatal.cbbrowne.com>,
> Christopher Browne <········@acm.org> wrote:
>>
>>The merits of the Lisp Machines were arguably _not_ in the hardware,
>>but rather in the integrated set of software.
>>
>>Genera got ported over to the Alpha architecture, and is hosted on an
>>Alpha box; arguably, all you would thus need is to stick an Alpha chip
>>on a PCI card, and bring that to market. In fact, that probably
>>already exists.
>>
>>The problem is that you need the $5K worth (hee, hee!) of Genera
>>software, and the problem is in making _that_ into a marketable
>>commodity.
>>
>
> But if that Alpha on PCI card exists and runs OpenGenera, then
> obviously if what is left of Symbolics wanted, they could just
> package that board together with 1 or more DVDs for all the code
> and documentation and sell this no-frills entry package for
> $500-1000. That might *create* a market. Anybody remember
> Borlands $99 TurboPascal success. That too created its own
> market and success. And before anybody starts making points
> about the economical viability of my suggested price: remember
> that all development cost has already been paid off.
Take the "PCI card" out of your mind; OpenGenera runs on Alpha
systems, which are fairly readily available. There is no need, at
present to go into the hardware business.
If Symbolics really wanted, they could bundle together their software
and sell it for $99.
But apparently they don't consider that a good idea, for whatever
reasons they prefer.
--
(concatenate 'string "cbbrowne" ·@ntlug.org")
http://www3.sympatico.ca/cbbrowne/finances.html
I just got skylights put in my place. The people who live above me are
furious.
lin8080 <·······@freenet.de> writes:
> What I ask myself is something like: Why not put a LispM on a PCI
> Card and bring it to the market ?
Something similar existed - a LispM on a NuBus card for Macs:
<http://kogs-www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/~moeller/symbolics-info/ivory-3.html>
I guess it wouldn't be that cheap and easy to design and build such a
PCI card.
Edi.
--
Dr. Edmund Weitz
Hamburg
Germany
The Common Lisp Cookbook
<http://cl-cookbook.sourceforge.net/>
In article <··············@bird.agharta.de>, ···@agharta.de (Dr. Edmund
Weitz) wrote:
> lin8080 <·······@freenet.de> writes:
>
> > What I ask myself is something like: Why not put a LispM on a PCI
> > Card and bring it to the market ?
>
> Something similar existed - a LispM on a NuBus card for Macs:
>
>
<http://kogs-www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/~moeller/symbolics-info/ivory-3.html>
>
> I guess it wouldn't be that cheap and easy to design and build such a
> PCI card.
No, that's not the problem. The problem is there's no market for either one.
E.
lin8080 schrieb:
Oh - what a mess
There is a light in sight and all who know more than I do tell me :
impossible.
I mean, ignore it - do it. It brings movement to the computing world.
See the first 3d graphic card, and remember, all say: no one will buy
it, there are no applications (games) for this card, and see, what a pc
today is, without such a 3d-card.
stefan
von fern ich das Gebirge seh
auf dem ich wandeln k�nnen sollte
der Sumpf in dem ich aber steh
ist warm und weich und was ich wollte
>
> See the first 3d graphic card, and remember, all say: no one will buy
> it, there are no applications (games) for this card, and see, what a pc
> today is, without such a 3d-card.
>
before 3d cards took off there were games. people started making 3d cards
(first for cad I think) then they started being used for games, causing
what is now.
if one can promote wide-spead use of lisp (ie: a good lisp based os that
catches general attention for something), then maybe there will be demand
for such a card.
if one were to maket a lisp based card with a lisp based os (or vice
versa); and they were to prove it better than something else (or build up
some hype) then they would have a market.
ie: prove lisp better than java, to people in general...
I would buy such a card, but I am not everyone.
is there a good lispos allready available for x86, one that is not just a
lisp interpreter hacked on top of a more generic kernel?
as far as I can tell:
far off I see mountains
I should wander to them (?)
in the swamp I stand (?)
it was warm and squishy and for me (?)
ok, I don't know german...
cr88192 schrieb:
> > See the first 3d graphic card, and remember, all say: no one will buy
> > it, there are no applications (games) for this card, and see, what a pc
> > today is, without such a 3d-card.
> before 3d cards took off there were games. people started making 3d cards
> (first for cad I think) then they started being used for games, causing
> what is now.
> if one can promote wide-spead use of lisp (ie: a good lisp based os that
> catches general attention for something), then maybe there will be demand
> for such a card.
Hmm, should I say : think big ? I ask some questions instead:
What is a pc look like in one or two years ? Where could all that linux
c-hak lead to ? Is there part2 of this x-box or did the "rote-monde"
create their own computers ? What will / can big companies offer for the
end-user-market, what for developers ? What sort is a new kind of stuff
? Will unix (and co) dare to enter new terrain ?
So, what is made today, can rule tomorrow. And if it is *good-made* it
will rule. And I know nothing better than lisp ... (that sentence I can
truly speak in 198x)
> if one were to maket a lisp based card with a lisp based os (or vice
> versa); and they were to prove it better than something else (or build up
> some hype) then they would have a market.
> ie: prove lisp better than java, to people in general...
:) copy-companies allways are busy /:)
> I would buy such a card, but I am not everyone.
> is there a good lispos allready available for x86, one that is not just a
> lisp interpreter hacked on top of a more generic kernel?
I read online about a project called Explorer3.
stefan
..........................
> ok, I don't know german...
so is my english (but I learn), try01:
I can see the mountains on the horizon
where I could be able to walk on (~where I should be familiar with)
but the swamp in which I actually stand
is warm and soft and what I want (~really get, necessary to have)
on this thread it is supprising I noticed this...
>
> Hmm, should I say : think big ? I ask some questions instead:
> What is a pc look like in one or two years ? Where could all that linux
> c-hak lead to ? Is there part2 of this x-box or did the "rote-monde"
> create their own computers ? What will / can big companies offer for the
> end-user-market, what for developers ? What sort is a new kind of stuff
> ? Will unix (and co) dare to enter new terrain ?
> So, what is made today, can rule tomorrow. And if it is *good-made* it
> will rule. And I know nothing better than lisp ... (that sentence I can
> truly speak in 198x)
>
this is the only thing that can really justify why my projects are not just
a waste of time.
I would like it if lisp took off, just for right now it is a little
doubtful (as very few people even seem to know it exists, and those that do
think it is some slow arcane language that has died off... stigma is one of
those things...).
>
> :) copy-companies allways are busy /:)
>
if it were made and blatently coppied then all the better...
>
> I read online about a project called Explorer3.
>
I may need to take a look...
>> ok, I don't know german...
> so is my english (but I learn), try01:
> I can see the mountains on the horizon
> where I could be able to walk on (~where I should be familiar with)
> but the swamp in which I actually stand
> is warm and soft and what I want (~really get, necessary to have)
>
the syntax seemed a little odd, and I couldn't quite pick up on the meaning.
I can sort of read german, mostly tech writting as the semantics seem
easier for me to understand... I myself have not really gone through the
effort to really learn the language, mostly I start to pick it up from
occasional exposure...
>I know you have certain reservations about the open source/free
>software/whatever idea, and I'm not disagreeing with a lot of your
>points. But it seems to me that in the current climate, that's
>the only place there would be a chance (minimal though it may
>be) of recreating the necessary infrastructure.
>Both in terms of getting enough programming mindshare to implement
>it, and enough user mindshare for it to matter.
Wouldn't it be nice if when companies "gave up" on a product for whatever
reason, they opened the source? Maybe we should make that a rule of
incorporation--as long as you keep trying, the work is yours, but don't
hoard it if you can't or won't let it benefit the world. Or something like
that.
As it stands, we have to rely on the public conscience of owners, who often
lack the public conscience of the original authors. For example, I have
seen more than a few nice pieces of software get bought up by some company
who does nothing with them. The current users can't get support and their
investment is lost, even though they are willing to pay. This happens
because either the company bought the code to stifle it, or they got
sidetracked or couldn't sell enough to make it attractive for them, and
couldn't or wouldn't sell to someone to whom it was attractive.
I know I'd be frustrated to see my code not sell but be popular in the
open-source world, but it's got to be better for everyone to not have it
cease being.
Eric
Eric Moss <········@alltel.net> writes:
> As it stands, we have to rely on the public conscience of owners, who often
> lack the public conscience of the original authors.
This bleeds back into the public conscience of the original authors.
When they sell to the highest bidder, in disregard of what will happen
after they leave, they have weakened or abandoned their public
conscience too.
Eric Moss <········@alltel.net> writes:
> Wouldn't it be nice if when companies "gave up" on a product for
> whatever reason, they opened the source?
This would mean that the original author did not get the benefit.
> Maybe we should make that a rule of incorporation--as long as you
> keep trying, the work is yours, but don't hoard it if you can't or
> won't let it benefit the world. Or something like that.
It is overly simplistic to try to boil down all uses of intellectual
property to hoarding. I find the mere use of this term without
qualification as to what is going on just as offensive as one would
think if one substituted the word "murder" for all uses of "kill", or
the word "destroy" for all uses "edit".
Capitalism and intellectual property rights are not about benefiting
the world in the micro. It is about the idea that the sum of the
actions of a number of people people motivated by private gain will,
collectively, benefit the world more than people who have nothing to
gain.
You may have missed it, but an experiment was tried in the Soviet
Union in the last century where people didn't have anything personal
to gain and while it may be true that the things that got made
benefited people evenly, most analysts seem to find the evidence clear
that the sum total of things that anyone was motivated to make was
much smaller than would have been collectively made if there had been
an individual stake in it for the people making them.
> As it stands, we have to rely on the public conscience of owners,
> who often lack the public conscience of the original authors.
It isn't clear that this is bad. Even if a company stops doing
business, someone still owns those assets and is probably trying to
figure out how to make something out of it. Their situation will not
be improved by having the government involuntarily yank from them the
assets they have left. I hate seeing this picture painted as if the
rich were keeping things from the poor, and then having the solution
be to take from the very poor and give to those who don't plan to make
a profit anyway... What a weird kind of neo-Robin-Hood effect that is.
We don't take from the rich, but we notice that when people are laying
in a ditch with a broken leg that the gold in their wallet is not getting
used to benefit the economy, so we take it and have it shipped to a far
away land that uses gold not for economic power but for "Monopoly money"
(pardon the ironic name of this last metaphor--I mean for gaming).
Also, even if it was right to rob someone when they were economically down
for the good of others, what makes you think the original authors would
or should open source it? My second choice would be to have ownership
revert to the people who did the coding, still for their own personal gain.
If they want to give away their work, that's great. But they should not
be obliged to. They already put time into making this stuff. Why shouldn't
they get more benefit than the average person?
But neither of these solutions is good. Read on.
> For example, I have seen more than a few nice pieces of software get
> bought up by some company who does nothing with them.
Me, too. But maybe the loss of that software is the price of our collective
education in writing better contracts with employers. Nothing forbids you
from asking an employer to make such an agreement part of your contract.
> The current
> users can't get support and their investment is lost, even though
> they are willing to pay. This happens because either the company
> bought the code to stifle it, or they got sidetracked or couldn't
> sell enough to make it attractive for them, and couldn't or wouldn't
> sell to someone to whom it was attractive.
>
> I know I'd be frustrated to see my code not sell but be popular in the
> open-source world, but it's got to be better for everyone to not have it
> cease being.
I don't agree.
Suppose I do a big multi-year project that embodies a great deal of my
personal knowledge of how to do something. I can always get another job
with someone else to do the same thing over if there is no one out there
competing with it. But if someone open-sources what I did, then I am
competing with my own self. You may think I deserve this, but my point is
that it is not unambiguously better for me to be competing against two or
five or ten years of my own work. You might also think it allows me that
much of a head start on a new project, but that's irrelevant. Once it's
open-sourced, my competitors have the same head start. Open source does
nothing except raise the base against which progress is measured. It adds
to the world but not to the commercial world. For people who want to make
money on the game, it just makes them run very fast and denies the value of
all the running they have ever done in the past because they receive no
ongoing compensation for that. It's a good recipe to get sick and die and
have someone say to you "tough luck. we don't owe you for past work. we
paid you for that already. you have no entitlement to get sick, to go
on vacation, nor to retire".
I don't by any means lament that the work I put into Symbolics is privately
held. I hope someone figures out how to make some money from it.
Their figuring out how to make money on it will benefit me far more than
a bunch of hobbyists figuring out how to distribute it for free and further
driving down the amount I can charge for other things I make for pay.
Free software may be differently motivated, but it has the same commercial
effect as dumping. It puts legitimate investors at a commercial disadvantage
because they have to compete with people who didn't pay money to get the
value they are offering. What built things like Lisp Machines was the
extra capital that came from briefly succeeding wildly enough that it was
possible for a while to invest in the future. But the Lisp Machine also
disproves the central thesis of most free software rants--that capitalism
leads to people just having free money forever at the expense of the little
guy. The fact is that if you charge too much for something, you don't stay
in business. So the market already corrects itself against people who
overcharge... it didn't need free software to correct that. Free software
is having a completely different effect than it intends, which is to make
the computer business a non-business. There may still be computing if it
succeeds, but it won't be a place to make money. It will be more like
farming ... where anyone can buy the seeds needed to plant a garden, but no
one but a few big companies can find a way to make any money off of it.
The economy of scale won't be right.
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> [....] Open source does nothing except raise the base against which
> progress is measured. It adds to the world but not to the
> commercial world. For people who want to make money on the game, it
> just makes them run very fast and denies the value of all the
> running they have ever done in the past because they receive no
> ongoing compensation for that.
Why should software be exempt from the same rules as the rest of the
world? General Motors, for example, makes cars. Each car they
produce is (more or less) that much more value added to the world.
And their profit is (more or less) proportional to the number of cars
they sell.
But they get absolutely no ongoing profit for all the great cars they
sold in the 50s. They don't get to say "hey, you should keep paying
us for that great car you drove back in 1953!" Instead, they must
*keep running*, and do so *very fast*, because, macro-economically,
that makes for better/faster/cheaper cars for everyone.
> It's a good recipe to get sick and die and have someone say to you
> "tough luck. we don't owe you for past work. we paid you for that
> already. you have no entitlement to get sick, to go on vacation,
> nor to retire".
Which is *exactly* what *everyone* in *every* industry expects aside
from computer programmers. Steel workers have to bargain with their
employers to get things like sick leave, vacation, and retirement
benefits. If you want such things, in a capitalist economy, you need
to arrange for them from the profits you make. You are not owed for
past work, and if you want to be paid for past work, you have to
bargain for it *at the time* as a condition of doing the work.
> What built things like Lisp Machines was the
> extra capital that came from briefly succeeding wildly enough that it was
> possible for a while to invest in the future.
Naw, what built things like Lisp Machines was the free software
efforts of people in the MIT AI lab, until the day came that Symbolics
decided the owned all that collective work.
> Free software is having a completely different effect than it
> intends, which is to make the computer business a non-business.
> There may still be computing if it succeeds, but it won't be a place
> to make money.
Hogwash. It won't be a place to make billions, but why should
computer programmers make more than steel workers or building
contractors or the rest of the world that doesn't get to do the job
once and expect to keep getting paid for it?
You know, people told RMS way back when "this will kill computer
programmin as a profession". He said "hogwash". Well, Unipress went
under. But you know what? Unipress Emacs *sucked*. Meanwhile, there
are all kinds of programmers making happy comfortable livings doing
exclusively free software.
Your claim that "it won't be a place to make money" might have been
plausible fifteen years ago, but it turns out that you're just wrong.
Thomas
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <3226103902356257@naggum.net>
* Thomas Bushnell, BSG
| Why should software be exempt from the same rules as the rest of the
| world? General Motors, for example, makes cars.
No, they spend billions of dollars designing cars in a shroud of secrecy
that should frighten people, and then they sell instantiations of their
design to recover their design costs. Then they make a profit on the
sale of such instantiations after their cost has been recovered. Not all
of their designs pay off this way, and "profit" is simply a way to make
sure that you can afford mistakes, which is what innovation is all about.
If they had to give away the design to other competitors, new cars would
not be made, because there is no way anybody would spend 1 billion
dollars if they had to give away the means to produce 5 billion dollars
to people who had not spent that 1 billion to get those means.
| Each car they produce is (more or less) that much more value added to the
| world. And their profit is (more or less) proportional to the number of
| cars they sell.
What utter nonsense. Their costs are fairly fixed and there is not a
shadow of any profit until a really large number of cars have been sold.
After that, it is all profit. Pricing your products and selling enough
to break even with your development cost is damn hard.
| But they get absolutely no ongoing profit for all the great cars they
| sold in the 50s.
The cars are unimportant. The design is what counts. This is the same
as for the development of drugs. An astonishingly huge amount of money
goes into testing drugs, but if they could not protect their investments
with patents and secrecy, anybody could make more of the drug at
virtually no cost, which is precisely what happens when the patents
expire or some rinky-dink country with a lot of criminals in power and no
legal protection against theft of intellectual property reverse engineer
the drugs and make cheap knock-offs. It is not that the original drug
company does not make money on producing cheaper pills, but they do not
recover their research costs with cheaper pills, and thus cannot make
_more_ drugs. Requiring the drug companies to lower their profits to get
closer to "mass production cost" is the same as "give us your research".
| They don't get to say "hey, you should keep paying us for that great car
| you drove back in 1953!"
What do you think spare parts are? Why do you think original spare parts
cost so much more than cheap knock-offs? Why do you think that a car
manufacturer loses all interest in protecting you from harm if you do not
use original spare parts? They have invested in making things that they
know are safe to put together. They have no clue how safe it is to run a
car with unoriginal parts -- other things might break because that part
had different resonance characteristics, for instance.
> It's a good recipe to get sick and die and have someone say to you "tough
> luck. we don't owe you for past work. we paid you for that already. you
> have no entitlement to get sick, to go on vacation, nor to retire".
| Which is *exactly* what *everyone* in *every* industry expects aside from
| computer programmers.
That is because every other industry has _not_ conflated design and
production. I mean, an author gets paid for each book sold even though
he wrote it only once, but the guy who printed the book gets paid for
each book. Airing rights for TV shows pay the company that made it back
for its successful series so they can innovate and make things that do
not succeed. If all series or shows had to be succeesses on their own
and only recover their costs with no option of getting paid more after
the work had succeeded, we would have even less intelligent series and
shows on TV.
| You are not owed for past work, and if you want to be paid for past work,
| you have to bargain for it *at the time* as a condition of doing the
| work.
You know, in most industries, the designers of things are actually paid
for past work. It is called royalties. Industrial designers are paid in
large part by royalties. All kinds of inventors protect their inventions
so that they can, indeed, get paid for the use of that invention. This
is what the whole patent system is for. Copyright is about paying people
for past work. I marvel at the strangeness of the selective ignorance
that has managed to avoid learing about royalties in _all_ industries.
However, in most other industries, those who produce objects according to
a design are much more numerous than the designers. Mass production is
_such_ a wonderful thing, as it allows that many times more money to go
into research and development than hand-made individual objects where the
design work is even more miniscule compared to the production labor cost.
| Naw, what built things like Lisp Machines was the free software efforts
| of people in the MIT AI lab, until the day came that Symbolics decided
| the owned all that collective work.
What free software efforts? Were they "free" as in the billion-dollar
budgets of MIT, of building the environment that made it possible? As
far as I can tell, MIT has always been _extraordinarily_ good at making
money off of _their_ past work. In fact, they are so good at it that
they have remained a central and powerful research institution for a
_really_ long time, much longer than most of the commercial operations
that have spawned from their research. Why do you think this is?
| Hogwash. It won't be a place to make billions, but why should computer
| programmers make more than steel workers or building contractors or the
| rest of the world that doesn't get to do the job once and expect to keep
| getting paid for it?
Because they can use their intellect to get work that they keep getting
paid for. On other hand, the current crop of programmers are basically
steel workers and deserve even less money than unskilled labor because
they are, in fact, unskilled labor in an industry where people pay very
little for their production tools. That does not mean that everybody in
this industry is an unskilled worker.
| You know, people told RMS way back when "this will kill computer
| programmin as a profession". He said "hogwash". Well, Unipress went
| under. But you know what? Unipress Emacs *sucked*. Meanwhile, there
| are all kinds of programmers making happy comfortable livings doing
| exclusively free software.
But will they regret it later on? And what will they do when they get to
that point? Maybe some of us old farts already regret giving away our
work, or actively regret having to compete with people who have access to
our past intellectual investment. Not all that goes into research and
development end up visible in the products. E.g., what _not_ to use or
do never gets out there. Reverse engineering is generally not allowed
because it uncovers information not required to _use_ the object, but
instead is required to compete with the original designer on unfair
terms. The whole industrial world is chock full of these things.
| Your claim that "it won't be a place to make money" might have been
| plausible fifteen years ago, but it turns out that you're just wrong.
Kent is not wrong just because you are also right in some respects.
Acquire more bits.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
I'm not particularly interested in a lengthy flame war; I pretty much
said what I meant to say. Of course I disagree with some of Erik's
criticisms, but it's pretty off topic to continue further. Just a few
brief observations.
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> If all series or shows had to be succeesses on their own
> and only recover their costs with no option of getting paid more after
> the work had succeeded, we would have even less intelligent series and
> shows on TV.
It's very interesting that you say this. Once there was essentially
nothing like a copyright system in Europe, which had no shortage of
brilliant works of art being produced. Indeed, the "true artist", who
produces the best art, art for the sake of art, is likely to produce
great art under any system that gives him enough money to live on,
which the patronage/performance system did quite nicely for musicians,
and the commission system did for playwrights.
Indeed, even today, the finest television programming I get comes in
from PBS. (Well, the best comedy is on C-SPAN.)
So it's not so clear what you say. It seems to me that the copyright
motive doesn't so much encourage *brilliance*, per se.
> | Naw, what built things like Lisp Machines was the free software efforts
> | of people in the MIT AI lab, until the day came that Symbolics decided
> | the owned all that collective work.
>
> What free software efforts? Were they "free" as in the billion-dollar
> budgets of MIT, of building the environment that made it possible?
So, when I say "free software", I mean libre, not gratis, that is,
free as in "free speech", not as in "free beer". I'm surprised you're
apparently unfamiliar with that usage. I'm sorry for creating the
confusion. In case other people were similarly misled by my
terminology, you can read up on what I meant at
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy.
> | Your claim that "it won't be a place to make money" might have been
> | plausible fifteen years ago, but it turns out that you're just wrong.
>
> Kent is not wrong just because you are also right in some respects.
> Acquire more bits.
I meant only narrowly that he was wrong in saying that making bucks is
impossible or unlikely in a free software (again, libre, not gratis),
not that I had demonstrated that everything he said was incorrect.
Thomas
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> I'm not particularly interested in a lengthy flame war; I pretty much
> said what I meant to say. Of course I disagree with some of Erik's
> criticisms, but it's pretty off topic to continue further. Just a few
> brief observations.
Would that it were off topic. I don't think anything could be more central
to the discussion of Lisp than how to make a buck off of it. I would bet
that if you asked people what one choice more than any other motivates their
use of a language you wouldn't get "where they put their parens" but rather
"how quickly I can make enough money to pay my mortgage".
> Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
>
> > If all series or shows had to be succeesses on their own
> > and only recover their costs with no option of getting paid more after
> > the work had succeeded, we would have even less intelligent series and
> > shows on TV.
>
> It's very interesting that you say this. Once there was essentially
> nothing like a copyright system in Europe, which had no shortage of
> brilliant works of art being produced. Indeed, the "true artist", who
> produces the best art, art for the sake of art, is likely to produce
> great art under any system that gives him enough money to live on,
> which the patronage/performance system did quite nicely for musicians,
> and the commission system did for playwrights.
This statement is nonsense, by the way. It took forever for the snobs at
the Oscars to acknowledge that the enormous box office draw of many of
Spielberg's movies warranted any kind of award. There's a desire on the
part of some people to claim that "true art" cannot be "popular art". This
is rubbish. I'm fine with the pieces people call "true art" just so long
as they don't try to claim the _name_ "true art". Art is an individual
thing. And much of the art that I and others would trade our hard-earned
dollars for is not what you're calling "true art". That may be an unpleasant
truth, but it is a truth nonetheless. And that art, true or not, would not
be getting made if there were not lots of $$ available for having made it.
In many cases, only that large number of $$ is what has made it possible to
produce the cinematic techniques and to produce things Star Wars or Shrek
or (which I saw last night and enjoyed) Ice Age.
That doesn't mean other art wouldn't be made if you eliminated copyright.
It just means that a lot of things we're used to now would not get made.
> So, when I say "free software", I mean libre, not gratis,
Libre as in "it's free for everyone except the people who made it to decide
how it's used". That's not "free", that's "stolen". Like as in the term
that was used by some friends of mine when they used to go shoplifting:
"I think I'll 'liberate' this candy bar." I'm sure the candy bar felt good.
The people who ate it probably enjoyed its freedom. But the person who
made it wouldn't have bothered if they thought this was how it would end up.
> that is,
> free as in "free speech", not as in "free beer". I'm surprised you're
> apparently unfamiliar with that usage.
We just don't believe in this usage.
> I'm sorry for creating the
> confusion. In case other people were similarly misled by my
> terminology, you can read up on what I meant at
> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy.
It's been amply discussed.
> > | Your claim that "it won't be a place to make money" might have been
> > | plausible fifteen years ago, but it turns out that you're just wrong.
> >
> > Kent is not wrong just because you are also right in some respects.
> > Acquire more bits.
>
> I meant only narrowly that he was wrong in saying that making bucks is
> impossible or unlikely in a free software (again, libre, not gratis),
> not that I had demonstrated that everything he said was incorrect.
I did not say it was impossible to make bucks by doing OTHER things than
writing software.
I said that for those who want to make their business writing
software, free software injures their market and risks putting them
out of business. This seems to be a cost you're prepared to accept.
But then, you aren't in that kind of business. What's curious about
this kind of reasoning, in my experience, is that the usual motivation
for people going into free software is that they perceive some other
uncaring soul is out there making decisions they perceive to be
callously injuring the things _they_ care about. But I guess the
tactic of injuring without caring is ok when it's done for a noble
reason.
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> Would that it were off topic. I don't think anything could be more central
> to the discussion of Lisp than how to make a buck off of it.
If Symbolics' code were free software, people would still be making
bucks off of it now. As it is, it seems likely to be permanently
dead, and make nobody any more bucks.
> This statement is nonsense, by the way. It took forever for the snobs at
> the Oscars to acknowledge that the enormous box office draw of many of
> Spielberg's movies warranted any kind of award. There's a desire on the
> part of some people to claim that "true art" cannot be "popular art". This
> is rubbish. I'm fine with the pieces people call "true art" just so long
> as they don't try to claim the _name_ "true art".
The reason I put "true art" in square quotes is precisely because it's
not a term I place any stock in. I'm not holding to some highbrow
definition. My point is that many many people produce really good art
for entirely non-commercial reasons, and more to the point, that the
commercial motives provided by the commission, patronage, and
performance systems are pretty darn good motives.
> Libre as in "it's free for everyone except the people who made it to decide
> how it's used". That's not "free", that's "stolen".
There are two confusions in this sentence.
First, copyright does *NOT* give authors control over "how it's
used". Authors have, in general, no rights to determine how it's
used. They can control copying and public performance, and other than
that, it can be used however the owner of the copy chooses.
Second, libre software is libre *by the decision of the author*. It's
not "stolen". It's not "liberated". It's a gift of the author to the
world at large.
None of the free software out there is somehow "stolen", but you make
up some slander to make it look like somehow GCC (or, say, GNU Common
Lisp) is "stolen". Hardly.
> We just don't believe in this usage.
1) Who is this "we"?
2) You don't believe that's my usage? What is it to "believe in a
usage"?
> I did not say it was impossible to make bucks by doing OTHER things than
> writing software.
Um, it's possible to make money *BY* writing free software. Really.
I know all kind of people doing it.
> I said that for those who want to make their business writing
> software, free software injures their market and risks putting them
> out of business. This seems to be a cost you're prepared to accept.
Why should I particularly *care* if they go out of business? This is
like saying it's unfair for McDonalds to produce cheaper hamburgers
because it runs the risk of putting Burger King out of business.
Or that Henry Ford was unfairly putting lots of buggy-whip makers out
of business.
> But then, you aren't in that kind of business. What's curious about
> this kind of reasoning, in my experience, is that the usual motivation
> for people going into free software is that they perceive some other
> uncaring soul is out there making decisions they perceive to be
> callously injuring the things _they_ care about. But I guess the
> tactic of injuring without caring is ok when it's done for a noble
> reason.
Wait, I thought you were the advocate of free market capitalism here.
Suddenly competition is a bad thing?
But, really, what is it that you want? What I want to do is
encourage people to write free software, because in that way they are
helping their neighbors more than if they wrote non-free software.
I'm not trying to overturn the copyright system.
What is it that you want to do?
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> If Symbolics' code were free software, people would still be making
> bucks off of it now. As it is, it seems likely to be permanently
> dead, and make nobody any more bucks.
So, if those people would be making money with that software, they
could buy it? Or am I missing something?
--
Janis Dzerins
Eat shit -- billions of flies can't be wrong.
Janis Dzerins <·····@latnet.lv> writes:
> ·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
>
> > If Symbolics' code were free software, people would still be making
> > bucks off of it now. As it is, it seems likely to be permanently
> > dead, and make nobody any more bucks.
>
> So, if those people would be making money with that software, they
> could buy it? Or am I missing something?
There was a substantial industry of people teaching classes about
Symbolics software, selling books that taught you how to use it,
programmers getting paid to do interesting custom work with it, and
the like. Essentially none of that is happening now, because Genera
is essentially unavailable.
Thomas
From: Andreas Eder
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <m3zo0v80hc.fsf@elgin.eder.de>
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> My point is that many many people produce really good art
> for entirely non-commercial reasons, and more to the point, that the
> commercial motives provided by the commission, patronage, and
> performance systems are pretty darn good motives.
Well, I think that commerce and art haven't got much to do with one
another. They are more like orthogonal to each other. Look for example
at William Turner (a painter, I particularly like); he was quite aware
of the financial value of his works, and led a good life from the
income he earned form selling his paintings etc. He did some really
fine works of art! And then, there is e.g. Van Gogh who hardly earned
any money by selling his paintings - and he did also some very fine
works of art :-) So, it seems to me that commerce and money really
don't have anything to do with the fact that someting is a piece of
art or not. But I'm quit sure that money isn't one of the principal
reasons for creating works of art either.
Just my two cents (euro cents) worth.
Andreas
--
Wherever I lay my .emacs, there�s my $HOME.
From: Tim Moore
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <a7p5dp$bha$0@216.39.145.192>
On Tue, 26 Mar 2002 05:02:55 GMT, Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> wrote:
>·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
>> So, when I say "free software", I mean libre, not gratis,
>
>Libre as in "it's free for everyone except the people who made it to decide
>how it's used". That's not "free", that's "stolen". Like as in the term
Do you have an example of this?
>that was used by some friends of mine when they used to go shoplifting:
>"I think I'll 'liberate' this candy bar." I'm sure the candy bar felt good.
>The people who ate it probably enjoyed its freedom. But the person who
>made it wouldn't have bothered if they thought this was how it would end up.
>
>> that is,
>> free as in "free speech", not as in "free beer". I'm surprised you're
>> apparently unfamiliar with that usage.
>
>We just don't believe in this usage.
"We?"
Tim
······@sea-tmoore-l.dotcast.com (Tim Moore) writes:
> On Tue, 26 Mar 2002 05:02:55 GMT, Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> wrote:
> >·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
>
> >> So, when I say "free software", I mean libre, not gratis,
> >
> >Libre as in "it's free for everyone except the people who made it
> >to decide how it's used". That's not "free", that's "stolen".
> >Like as in the term
>
> Do you have an example of this?
There are several issues here.
First, I was speaking about the hypothetical (and apparently
aspired-to) world in which people have only free software as an
option. In that world, when a person creates a piece of software,
they cannot dictate its use but any other person can decide how to use
it. That seems odd to me since the one person who it would seem
should be favored in such a decision is the one who made it. The
intended function of copyright is to incentivize creation and sharing
by saying that some value goes to the creator for having graced the
world with their work, and further that some protection goes to the
creator in exchange for sharing.
But, presently, it is only the case that free software seeks to "take
down" other ventures that charge money. It does this by making it
expensive to compete because one has to recover startup costs that do
not need to be recovered in the free software market. But, on the
other hand, in order to be part of this "nice community of sharing", I
have to buy into rules that I do not politically agree with. It's a
kind of self-destructive extortion.
The following is not the only reason for my belief on this issue, but
it is a concrete example of how I've seen this play out in micro; it
parallels my belief about how these things work in society at large: I
lived for a while in a sort of communal home with some people where
there was a rule that said "if you put something down in a public
space, anyone may unconditionally use it". This didn't result in lots
of my things getting shared. It resulted in lots of things getting
locked in my room to avoid what I perceived as abuse. I was then
accused of being "stingy" and "antisocial", which also annoyed me. I
didn't mind sharing but wanted to share MY things on MY terms, not terms
dictated by others. To me, "antisocial" is thinking you can use my
property, those things that are the products of my labors, without
regard to how I want those things used. To me, "social" is about
caring about individuals. To me, it is "social" when picking up an
object to learn whose object that is and how they want it used. To me
it is "antisocial" to think you can go around thinking that it's your
divine right to use anything that's made in the world without regard
to who made it and what their needs are. It's amazing to me, but it
appears to be true, that there are people who have these words/concepts
in their head (socialness and antisocialness) but with the polarity
of the meaning reversed...
> >that was used by some friends of mine when they used to go shoplifting:
> >"I think I'll 'liberate' this candy bar." I'm sure the candy bar felt good.
> >The people who ate it probably enjoyed its freedom. But the person who
> >made it wouldn't have bothered if they thought this was how it would end up.
> >
> >> that is,
> >> free as in "free speech", not as in "free beer". I'm surprised you're
> >> apparently unfamiliar with that usage.
> >
> >We just don't believe in this usage.
> "We?"
Sorry. Not really a bid to be declared royalty. I was going out on
what I hoped was a fairly sturdy limb and believing at least Erik, who
was already involved in the discussion, was on the same side as me on
this issue. Perhaps even others who haven't spoken... But the use of
"We" doesn't require an army.
"Kent M Pitman" <······@world.std.com> wrote in message
····················@shell01.TheWorld.com...
> ······@sea-tmoore-l.dotcast.com (Tim Moore) writes:
> But, presently, it is only the case that free software seeks to "take
> down" other ventures that charge money. It does this by making it
> expensive to compete because one has to recover startup costs that do
> not need to be recovered in the free software market. But, on the
> other hand, in order to be part of this "nice community of sharing", I
> have to buy into rules that I do not politically agree with. It's a
> kind of self-destructive extortion.
>
Many of the free software users, though they say that there are other ways
to make money (support, distibutions, custom programming) when it comes down
to it will not themselves pay for those services. Many Linux Distros go
under because the free software community will not pay ANYTHING to people.
Consider a distro company like Caldera, say the have 30 people working full
time for them, ~$50,000 per person per year or $1,500,000 a year just in
salaries. Where does that money come from? Distro sales of course, (at $30
a CD, that is many many sales) but hardly any Linux people I know would pay
(on some kind of principle) for any Linux (maybe just $5.00 for someone else
burning the distro, or dowloading it instead). They take pride in not
spending anything. Meanwhile they burn their own supporters, like Caldera,
at the stake. The same attitude goes for CD ripping and MP3 music swapping.
Self destructive behaviour and an implicit belief that they should not have
to support anyone else.
> The following is not the only reason for my belief on this issue, but
> it is a concrete example of how I've seen this play out in micro; it
> parallels my belief about how these things work in society at large: I
> lived for a while in a sort of communal home with some people where
> there was a rule that said "if you put something down in a public
> space, anyone may unconditionally use it". This didn't result in lots
> of my things getting shared. It resulted in lots of things getting
> locked in my room to avoid what I perceived as abuse. I was then
> accused of being "stingy" and "antisocial", which also annoyed me. I
> didn't mind sharing but wanted to share MY things on MY terms, not terms
> dictated by others. To me, "antisocial" is thinking you can use my
> property, those things that are the products of my labors, without
> regard to how I want those things used. To me, "social" is about
> caring about individuals. To me, it is "social" when picking up an
> object to learn whose object that is and how they want it used. To me
> it is "antisocial" to think you can go around thinking that it's your
> divine right to use anything that's made in the world without regard
> to who made it and what their needs are. It's amazing to me, but it
> appears to be true, that there are people who have these words/concepts
> in their head (socialness and antisocialness) but with the polarity
> of the meaning reversed...
I have been doing yoga for 10 years and there is also a microcosm of the
real world in the limited setting of a class. Usually people have their own
mats in class. When the class is moving around there seems to be two types
of people, those who will walk and stand on other people's mats and those
that will walk around and avoid other people's mats. To step, walk, tample
other's people's mats is considered rude and inconsiderate. But there are
still people who do it. When you point out what they are doing, they do not
even know they are doing it, they are UNAWARE of what they are doing. The
even stranger thing is that keep with this type of behaviour until (usually)
they get kicked out of class or leave or replace their behaviour with what
is based on "following the letter" of the rules.
To not walk on other people's mats is acknowledging other people and that
they have a right to exist in the class (world). It is a sign of respect.
The mat walkers are self-absorbed.
Wade
"Wade Humeniuk" <········@cadvision.com> writes:
> Many of the free software users, though they say that there are
> other ways to make money (support, distibutions, custom programming)
> when it comes down to it will not themselves pay for those services.
> Many Linux Distros go under because the free software community will
> not pay ANYTHING to people.
This seems a bit poorly reasoned to me. There was a glut of Linux
distros in the last few years and the vast majority of them were
hardly worth the amount of plastic used in burning their CDs. Also,
they were very often poorly planned, under-funded, and added very
little value above and beyond what was available from cheaper and free
sources. To blame their failure on their customer base is misguided.
--
Craig Brozefsky <·····@red-bean.com>
http://www.red-bean.com/~craig
Ask me about Common Lisp Enterprise Eggplants at Red Bean!
From: Andreas Eder
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <m34rj39fr4.fsf@elgin.eder.de>
"Wade Humeniuk" <········@cadvision.com> writes:
> Many Linux Distros go
> under because the free software community will not pay ANYTHING to people.
> Consider a distro company like Caldera, say the have 30 people working full
> time for them, ~$50,000 per person per year or $1,500,000 a year just in
> salaries. Where does that money come from? Distro sales of course, (at $30
> a CD, that is many many sales) but hardly any Linux people I know would pay
> (on some kind of principle) for any Linux (maybe just $5.00 for someone else
> burning the distro, or dowloading it instead).
Well, I may not be a typical Linux user, but I buy a distro (SuSE)
about once a year. I know that I can do the update on my own without
paying, (and I do that for critical stuff - security issues for
example) but I value my time enough to pay someone for doing that and
also because I want to support the people doing that - good - stuff.
Andreas
--
Wherever I lay my .emacs, there�s my $HOME.
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> But, presently, it is only the case that free software seeks to "take
> down" other ventures that charge money. It does this by making it
> expensive to compete because one has to recover startup costs that do
> not need to be recovered in the free software market.
How is it that those costs are not equally present in the free
software market?
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <3226129821025405@naggum.net>
* Kent M Pitman
| It's amazing to me, but it appears to be true, that there are people who
| have these words/concepts in their head (socialness and antisocialness)
| but with the polarity of the meaning reversed...
My take on this is that it depends on whether you consider yourself an
(aspiring) member of the haves or the have-nots. If you think you will
never get a break and will always live on borrowed time, you want to make
the most of it. If you think you will you get the breaks you work hard
for and live on earned time, you want to make the most of it. The former
consider it rude not to share something someone has with you on your
terms. The latter considers it rude for someone not to share something
you have with them on your terms. Specifically, if you are an author,
you want to get the most out of publishing your work. But as a reader,
you want to get the most ouf ot reading that work, too. As an author,
you will not be thrilled if someone copies your work so you get no money
from it, but as a reader, you will not be thrilled if you are barred from
copying a work and giving it to a friend to "share" it. In other words,
if you consider yourself a producer, you have respect for producers and
consider their rights, but if you consider yourself a consumer, obtaining
that respect appears to be quite hard, probably because it means _not_
getting some stuff you want, while one who considers himself a producer
knows that he can get the stuff he wants only if he lets other producers
get their stuff, too.
Only those who are more likely to offer than to need, will understand
that one can not place any demand on other people to give them anything.
Those who only need, will not generally understand what it feels like to
offer something for others and have them thank you with more demands.
Money is an equalizer here that simply does not apply to the kind of
good-will that forms the currency of the source-sharing community.
| Sorry. Not really a bid to be declared royalty. I was going out on what
| I hoped was a fairly sturdy limb and believing at least Erik, who was
| already involved in the discussion, was on the same side as me on this
| issue. Perhaps even others who haven't spoken... But the use of "We"
| doesn't require an army.
Yup, count me in that "we". However, please note that I used to be quite
a fan of free software, but my goal was different from what I saw become
the prevalent goal. I have wanted to obtain and grant access to source
to those who wanted to learn from it, whether it would be helpful to the
development of that source code or not, just like good authoers have to
read a lot of good code to learn what you can simply not learn without
reading other people's works. I had no political agenda with this at
all, and I came to think it was a good idea on very different premises
than were touted. Also, the Open Source movement seems to be an anti-
movement, not a pro-movement, and specifically anti-Microsoft, which I
am, too, but Open Source is unfortunately able to destroy much more than
Microsoft if it succeeds. I have become highly critical of the focus and
the political agenda, not to mention the fact that selling anything in a
market where you compete with Open Source is so much harder, but this
change has been gradual. I consider free software to be a bad way to
lure innocent students and hobbyists to give away their work and time,
which is only a good idea if they consider it learning and marketing for
their future carreers, but that is not how these things usually work.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> It's amazing to me, but it appears to be true, that there are people
> who have these words/concepts in their head (socialness and
> antisocialness) but with the polarity of the meaning reversed...
Look up Proudhon's theories on property and be prepared to be amazed ;-)
--
Lieven Marchand <···@wyrd.be>
She says, "Honey, you're a Bastard of great proportion."
He says, "Darling, I plead guilty to that sin."
Cowboy Junkies -- A few simple words
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> My take on this is that it depends on whether you consider
> yourself an (aspiring) member of the haves or the have-nots. If
> you think you will never get a break and will always live on
> borrowed time, you want to make the most of it. If you think you
> will you get the breaks you work hard for and live on earned time,
> you want to make the most of it. The former consider it rude not
> to share something someone has with you on your terms. The latter
> considers it rude for someone not to share something you have with
> them on your terms. Specifically, if you are an author, you want
> to get the most out of publishing your work. But as a reader, you
> want to get the most ouf ot reading that work, too. As an author,
> you will not be thrilled if someone copies your work so you get no
> money from it, but as a reader, you will not be thrilled if you
> are barred from copying a work and giving it to a friend to
> "share" it. In other words, if you consider yourself a producer,
> you have respect for producers and consider their rights, but if
> you consider yourself a consumer, obtaining that respect appears
> to be quite hard, probably because it means _not_ getting some
> stuff you want, while one who considers himself a producer knows
> that he can get the stuff he wants only if he lets other producers
> get their stuff, too.
>
> Only those who are more likely to offer than to need, will
> understand that one can not place any demand on other people to
> give them anything. Those who only need, will not generally
> understand what it feels like to offer something for others and
> have them thank you with more demands. Money is an equalizer here
> that simply does not apply to the kind of good-will that forms the
> currency of the source-sharing community.
Well now, that's hitting the nail on the head now isn't it? :-)
And again, it shows the adjectives turned on their heads in a way I
would generally agree with. Because it's often the producers, the ones
who actively do the enriching of society, who get called the "stingy" and
"hoarder" and "self-serving". While the takers [I don't think "consumers"
is the right term, because there are "consumers" who are producers, and they
are not "takers"] are never examined for their public conscience. The
mere "buying into the Good Thought" is enough to label them "of good
conscience".
In Capitalism, the way you tell the consumers who are takers from the
consumers who are not is that they ones who are takers have no money,
because they never produced. But in Free-Software-Socialism, it's
more like the certain religions who tell you it's a sin(!) to practice
birth control and that having kids is always good ... and that the
only thing that matters is not how much money those people make or who
they help, but "do they believe". And I have to cynically wonder if
this is a recipe for a good society or a recipe for more votes at the
voting booth. I'm sure there are many people of very good intent who
subscribe to those religions, because they aren't into designing their
own and are just out there shopping for something pre-packaged. But
for the people who designed the religion, I have to wonder why they
didn't say "yes, some people die before they have a chance to
contribute so we'll give them a free pass to heaven because they
didn't have a chance, and some people are born with a legitimate
handicap and we'll give them a free pass too, if they just do the best
they can with what they have, but from the rest of you we need good
works, not just belief, to get you beyond the pearly gates". But for
some reason, it was more important to describe the goals of the group
as merely "being of the party faithful" and not actually "doing
something".
But I can hear the Free Software people saying, "oh, but that's what
we want". We want those people who are capable of creating us
wonderful things to be chained to a chair and to have to keep making
us more and more wondrous things because they are capable more than
us, and in our socialist society of "from each according to his
means", they owe us. No, they don't. You can see by the dollars
flowing into a company that the contributions of some are valued more
than the contributions of others. And that' where the _real_
political divide is.
Curious that the rest of the world has such
disdain for certain things of the US -- like the meltdown of its
school system -- and yet wants to import ideas -- like free software
-- that are driven by the same faulty idea. When I was in 5th grade
and first heard of "grading on the curve", which was new to me, it
seemed like a bad idea. "If everyone does badly, some of us will
still pass?" I asked. "Won't people eventually notice?" I was just
in 5th grade and figured adults must see some different perspective
that I would eventually grow into. But I think we (or, at least, I)
now know that from such little problems grow big problems...
And while there are many good things that the US has done, one of the
good things we done that are not good is to confuse terms like "pass"
and "fail" (everyone who tries should get to pass, some say) or
concept like "give" and "take" (Democrats push for big government to
offer social programs but then label as "takers" the Republicans who
think those plans don't always work, and not the people who abuse
those plans and make the Republicans want to cancel the plans;
Republicans push for small government saying that people of good heart
will given privately anyway, but then do not police their own to say
that those who do not give privately are being bad; in the end, both
parties say that you're a "giver" if you recite their script, and a
"taker" if you don't).
Free software talks of leveling the playing field, but that's just
what it doesn't do. Because equal opportunity is not to be had when
value is taken from those who contribute and given freely to everyone.
Value, in the sense of marketplace value, is _not_ a birthright. If
everyone had a Picasso or a Monet on their wall, it would not be
value, it would be Mickey Mouse, and you couldn't sell one for $10 at
K-Mart. Value is about scarcity. People value what they cannot have.
And if you give them everything, as has been tried with parents who
have too much money, you don't produce an idyllic world full of people
who do great things for people, you produce a world of couch potatoes,
drug addicts, and machine guns in schools, becuase no one can figure
out what their purpose is any more. The things they produce will not
be "valued" but will be shrugged at as the "birthrights" of others who
had nothing to do with their creation.
> | Sorry. Not really a bid to be declared royalty. I was going out on what
> | I hoped was a fairly sturdy limb and believing at least Erik, who was
> | already involved in the discussion, was on the same side as me on this
> | issue. Perhaps even others who haven't spoken... But the use of "We"
> | doesn't require an army.
>
> Yup, count me in that "we". However, please note that I used to be quite
> a fan of free software, but my goal was different from what I saw become
> the prevalent goal. I have wanted to obtain and grant access to source
> to those who wanted to learn from it, whether it would be helpful to the
> development of that source code or not, just like good authoers have to
> read a lot of good code to learn what you can simply not learn without
> reading other people's works. I had no political agenda with this at
> all, and I came to think it was a good idea on very different premises
> than were touted. Also, the Open Source movement seems to be an anti-
> movement, not a pro-movement, and specifically anti-Microsoft, which I
> am, too, but Open Source is unfortunately able to destroy much more than
> Microsoft if it succeeds. I have become highly critical of the focus and
> the political agenda, not to mention the fact that selling anything in a
> market where you compete with Open Source is so much harder, but this
> change has been gradual. I consider free software to be a bad way to
> lure innocent students and hobbyists to give away their work and time,
> which is only a good idea if they consider it learning and marketing for
> their future carreers, but that is not how these things usually work.
Yes, I too started out very differently. And this is why it disturbs
me to see that this movement appears to appeals so much more to young
people than older ones. I think they think they have a "better way",
but I also think they don't understand that some of us had that same
"better way" back then. They look at us like children look at adults,
not seeing the continuum, and thinking that "adults" and "children"
are fundamentally different kinds of stuff, and thinking that adults
could never possibly have once been children. I don't mean to use the
terms adult/children pejoratively here. But it does have the timeline
aspect of the metaphor, and I can't avoid that. I've been on the
other side. And when I woke up, as children all do one day, I was
angry that I had been allowed to flounder for so long.
I came out of the same environment at MIT that Stallman was in, though
I was a few years later. We all did things for each other then, and
none of us thought of money then. We were all very happy but we
served no one, really. And we used very expensive computers we didn't
have to account for, and most of us were on grants or money from
parents so time didn't count either. Our whole notion of cost models
was skewed badly. In exactly the same way as McDonald's notion of the
"disposable container" is skewed because they don't pay for collecting
litter, for landfill space, for pollution effects. If they were taxed
on these values, the equations would balance better and the notion of
giving away little cardboard boxes as if they were low-cost might
change.
If students owed an onerous duty to parents or research organizations,
they would think twice before giving away the fruits of their labors
on the grounds that "it cost them nothing to make". They would see
that what they were giving away free was costing them personally by
taking valuable time they'd already spent and turning it to no value.
I claim that the reason they give this stuff away is that they don't
realize that there are possible universes in which they might sell it,
and the reason they don't live in a world where they might sell it is
that they are surrounded by people intent on lessening the value of
what they do. The value they put in, their time, is no different than
the value put in by a struggling art student. But the art student
probably tries to sell what they can get away with selling, and it
wouldn't surprise me if the typical art student has a keener and more
personal understanding of marketplaces than many computer
scientists... maybe not formalized, but practical understanding.
Anyway, later, after I finished my time as a student, I saw people get
rich on things I'd done years before. As just one of several
examples, in about 1980, I had a nice database of all the restaurants
in Cambridge, MA, for example, indexed by price, quality, ethnicity,
hour they were open, geographical distance, etc. When we were hungry,
it was easy to make a choice of food--we just logged in and consulted
the program. Since then, people have made good money on such things.
Am I mad? Not at the people who made money, not if I'm honest. Ideas
aren't copyrightable, and no one stole the actual specific programs
I'd written. What they did was very legit. The simple truth is that
I had done the work to turn that idea into a program _already_, I
just didn't have the sense to sell it. So no one ever saw it. We'd
start it up, grin at it, and say "cool hack. now let's go eat before
that one closes too..." No reason to do otherwise, or so I thought.
No millions seemed ready to be made and the only restaurant we could
afford was about to close. The hint of money wouldn't have ruined
this mix, it would have gotten this idea to the market years faster
than it otherwise did.
Money isn't a bad thing. It's a good thing. It translates one
person's value system to another. When you give me dollars you may be
saying "it's worth it to me to give up my ability to purchase a
houseplant in order to buy your product" while I might say "I'm glad
to have the money for a new toaster". You and I may value different
things, yet you can still incentivize me. And, most importantly, it's the
way society tells you that you're onto something it cares about. Some
movies make money and others don't. That drives the creation of more
movies that people like. Do some that should be made get lost in the
wash? Probably. But not as many as get lost if there's no monetary
incentive to make movies....
Money, by the way, is like information. It can be freely copied, too.
It's just little pieces of paper ... or sometimes even just bits in a
computer. It's no more expensive for a bank to hold a lot of money
in your account than a small amount. But, nevertheless, it would lose
its commercial value if you did allow copying. Why do people understand
this fact about money but not about software?
And when there's no more money to be made on computer programming,
there's gonna be no more grant money except from people with specific
needs. Sure, there will still be the occasional corporation or
government with a specific market need they want you to service, but
that will be the "peasants in the field" metaphor. The chance for
computer scientists to direct where the world can go will last for as
long as computer scientists have money. And if the Free Software
people get their way, that won't be much longer.
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> And again, it shows the adjectives turned on their heads in a way I
> would generally agree with. Because it's often the producers, the ones
> who actively do the enriching of society, who get called the "stingy" and
> "hoarder" and "self-serving".
But the producers of free software--who *ARE* producers--earn nothing
but scorn. Why is that?
In article <··············@becket.becket.net>, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote:
> Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
>
>> And again, it shows the adjectives turned on their heads in a way I
>> would generally agree with. Because it's often the producers, the ones
>> who actively do the enriching of society, who get called the "stingy" and
>> "hoarder" and "self-serving".
>
> But the producers of free software--who *ARE* producers--earn nothing
> but scorn. Why is that?
It's not the producers per se, but rather the propagandists who
demand all software to be free. These groups have a non-empty
intersection but are not equal.
Regards,
--
Nils Goesche
"Don't ask for whom the <CTRL-G> tolls."
PGP key ID 0x42B32FC9
Nils Goesche <······@cartan.de> writes:
> In article <··············@becket.becket.net>, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote:
> > Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> >
> >> And again, it shows the adjectives turned on their heads in a way I
> >> would generally agree with. Because it's often the producers, the ones
> >> who actively do the enriching of society, who get called the "stingy" and
> >> "hoarder" and "self-serving".
> >
> > But the producers of free software--who *ARE* producers--earn nothing
> > but scorn. Why is that?
>
> It's not the producers per se, but rather the propagandists who
> demand all software to be free. These groups have a non-empty
> intersection but are not equal.
I'm happy to let free software quietly take over. We don't need to
change the laws.
But I will certainly be a propagandist if that means encouraging
people to write free software instead of non-free software.
Thomas
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <3226213471881050@naggum.net>
* Thomas Bushnell, BSG
| I'm happy to let free software quietly take over.
My view on this is a little differentiated: (1) I think operating systems
and systems software should be open source, but I also think that those
who want to take some piece of open source or free software and accept
accountability for it, should get paid well for that. There is no
support for this model in the current Open Source world, and especially
not in the Free Software world. This keeps much commercialization back,
in my view. (2) I think development tools should have trial editions,
but generally cost money and come with all source, and the vendors should
encourage responsible local changes and offer regression testing for a
fee, so that they can maintain accountability for the base product
towards end-users. (3) I think end-user applications should come with
(limited) source access for customers who want it, but not generally, and
that it is _wrong_ to give away end-user applications that users clearly
have commercial value for. I also think end-user applications should pay
a small fixed fee per unit sold back to the vendors of the tools they
have used to build it, in order to support the development of much better
development tools. (All other industries accept license fees and royalty
costs from patents and the like, but I think software patents are
currently badly implemented and should not be used at this time, so the
payment back to the developers and originators of good ideas should go
through fixed fees per unit sold of some application.) The wrong
solution to this problem is to have the operating system, environment and
development system come from the same vendor -- that only encourages a
payment of that "royalty" in the operating system deployment, instead.
I think free software and open source should take over in the operating
system and utility markets. (This was GNU's original purpose, if I read
it correctly back when I started to like this thing.) MS-DOS and the
shareware community that arose around it has meant nothing but harm to
the world of computing, including, but not limited to, the virus vehicles
that Microsoft refuse to fix, the virus creators that spring up because
of it, and the anti-virus industry that is necessary to fight it. The
main reason I want it to take over is so that we can have real choice and
real innovation. Applications can be changed at little cost (at least if
they are not holding the information the user has entrusted to their care
hostage), compared to the operating system, not only in the cost of
having to reboot a machine (which a certain "operating system" vendor has
made into a requirement to install applications, so one should be able to
change these "operating systems" just as easily), but if a computer is at
all useful to a person beyond a fancy typewriter, it runs more than one
application, holds a context for the user with all open windows, etc,
(and ironically, the least intelligent vendor of all has opted to "solve"
the problem of reestablishing this context _instead_ of not causing their
operating systems and applications to crash). If applications were
written to an abstract interface to the operating system, such as POSIX,
the only operating-system--dependent applications _should_ be those that
fall in the system utility category. Even games should be able to run on
many different operating systems since they take over and talk to the
various hardware directly, anyway.
In my view, Microsoft is not evil for their packaging browsers and window
systems (ha!) with the "operating system", but for having managed to make
the operating system able to both exclude and lock in their applications.
So if GNU's original intentions were met, and Microsoft's evil influence
over and even control of the operating system "market" came to an end,
they would still be allowed to peddle their virus-spreading crapware --
only there would be no incentive to produce crapware to lock people into
the bug-ridden operating systems. Letting Microosft get away with their
"operating system" jokes for so long has done the world so much harm that
it will probably never recover until the rotting ruins of Microsoft is
but an archeological curiosity.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> (3) I think end-user applications should come with
> (limited) source access for customers who want it, but not generally, and
> that it is _wrong_ to give away end-user applications that users clearly
> have commercial value for.
Would this be true for other commercial products? Is it *wrong* to
give away bread that people clearly have commercial value for?
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <3226280843254377@naggum.net>
* Thomas Bushnell, BSG
| Would this be true for other commercial products? Is it *wrong* to
| give away bread that people clearly have commercial value for?
As a general market mechanism? Of course! If bread were free, there
would be no point in making one type of bread taste better than another,
no point in having a large variety, no point in offering a means for
people to request special kinds, because all change and variety has high
costs and if you give something away for free, you strongly and actively
inhibit innovation. Also, you would have no way to control the amount of
bread that would be consumed, so somebody who, say, figured out that
using dried bread for fuel could just empty every grocery store of all
bread and let it dry naturally.
But would it be wrong to give your fmaily bread on the table? No.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> * Thomas Bushnell, BSG
> | Would this be true for other commercial products? Is it *wrong* to
> | give away bread that people clearly have commercial value for?
>
> As a general market mechanism? Of course! If bread were free, there
> would be no point in making one type of bread taste better than another,
> no point in having a large variety, no point in offering a means for
> people to request special kinds, because all change and variety has high
> costs and if you give something away for free, you strongly and actively
> inhibit innovation. Also, you would have no way to control the amount of
> bread that would be consumed, so somebody who, say, figured out that
> using dried bread for fuel could just empty every grocery store of all
> bread and let it dry naturally.
>
> But would it be wrong to give your fmaily bread on the table? No.
Nobody here has proposed removing the copyright statutes. But Kent
seemed to think that at least some people doing free software were
directly harming him in a way that was morally faulty. And you seemed
to agree, saying that it's *wrong* to write free application
software. (Forgive me if I've oversimplified; if I've misunderstood
and correct me--with politeness.)
So here's the question: if I wanted to spend my money on giving as
much bread away as I could, and I started a movement to do that along
with other people, would that be wrong?
Thomas
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <3226290124809690@naggum.net>
* Thomas Bushnell, BSG
| Nobody here has proposed removing the copyright statutes. But Kent
| seemed to think that at least some people doing free software were
| directly harming him in a way that was morally faulty. And you seemed to
| agree, saying that it's *wrong* to write free application software.
| (Forgive me if I've oversimplified; if I've misunderstood and correct
| me--with politeness.)
Please consider more carefullly the option of thinking more clearly about
what people say before you ask them to spend the time and effort you have
not to correct the consequences of what you have not done.
In the city of Oslo, we have a rather curious arrangement. We have a
fairly large number of taxicabs (1200) for our rather small population
(about 500 000 residents, about 800 000 people who use city facilities
daily). On weekend nights, between 03 and 04, the load on the taxis is
enormous, and since most of them have fairly long tours out of the city
center. So some politician got upset when he did not get his cab ride
home from a late-night party one weekend, and concluded that more cabs
where necessary. (Never mind that there are at least 800 unfilled cab
driver jobs vacant at any time. Never mind that the cab owners cannot
afford the generous sick leave that their employed drivers are entitled
to.) So this political genius wanted "competition" in the industry, as
opposed to the government-granted monopoly and the government-controlled
taxi fares that had sustained the cab-owner-owned taxicab company. Now,
there was a shortage of drivers, and the cooperative that allowed each
licensed cab driver to have only their main car in operation in non-peak
hours could no longer control the number of cars on the street. There
were some obvious disadvantages to this competition -- startup costs for
the new taxi centrals, for the new taxi owners, etc, so these brilliant
politicians decided to use tax money to support the competition, just for
the sake of having some "competition". Now one of these companies have,
entirely unexpectedly, run into serious financial trouble. Even though
the taxi fares have supposedly been liberated, they all charge exactly
the same, now. The only difference is that because of this competition
charade, which could never have been sustained without government grants
and support, is that the contender is facing competition from people who
are not risking their own money, who can go under without much loss, and
the contender thus has a serious problem: Their ability to make money is
artificiall curtailed by a political decision to install a "competition"
for which there was no need or grounds: the shortage of drivers, the
inability of owners to pay benefits for their employed drivers, the
government control of their fares, _and_ the government control of the
number of cab owner licenses to begin with. It should come as a surprise
to no one that the number of cab drivers has declined after a brief
increase (while the number of cab owners has increased), that those who
are left earn less per hour, even after an increase in their fares, and
that there are more cabs on the street competing for the same reduced
market. This artificial competition was constructed by politicians who
had a political agenda to force it to exist, but they were so stupid that
they undercut the market by injecting it with free money which could be
wasted away while the main contender lost its ability to manage the set
of cab driver licenses in operation. All in all, it is a total failure
with no redeeming qualities, and we have quickly become a city of first-
generation immigrant cab drivers who do not know their way around the
next corner who have driven the older cab drivers who had been driving a
cab for 40 years and provided a very stable, welcome service to the many
Oslovians who refuse to own cars in this country where 75% of the sale
price of a new car is taxes, where 75% of the price of gasoline is taxes
(while the diesel used by the taxicabs is way less expensive). The end
result is that more people buy cars, clogging the already clogged road
network of Oslo, more people drink and drive in weekends, fewer older
people use taxis with immigrant drivers who do not understand where they
want to go, nor are able to talk much with them, which was, to many older
people (who get taxi rides at the cost of public transport as part of
their benefits), provided a very welcome social contact. This stupid
"competition" has basically ruined an extremely well-functioning service
-- and what for? Some politician who believed "competition" as such
would cure his inability to get a cab on a weekend night, so he gave away
free money to people would not otherwise have gone into the business so
they could "compete". Understandably, older cab drivers have found other
ways to make money if they can, or have retired.
Free software has the same effect: It skews the return on investment for
some people to the point where they decide to spend their mental energy
and their labor elsewhere, where it is more rewarding. This leads, in
turn, to the inability of the moderately competent to get well paid, so
they leave, and the average competence level drops, which hurts the
ability to build safe and useful infrastructure, as well as hurting the
ability of maturer programmers to communicate their skills to the next
generation. The end result of this is the same kind of horizontal
communication that afflicts teenagers who only communicate with their own
age group and basically reinvent _everything_ they could have been told
about or learned from the experience of their elders. Free software is
already being produced by child labor, funded by many parents who have no
idea what their kids spend their time on, but at least it is not drugs.
| So here's the question: if I wanted to spend my money on giving as much
| bread away as I could, and I started a movement to do that along with
| other people, would that be wrong?
Yes, because it would most probably mean that I could no longer buy the
bread I want -- I already have to convince my grocer to stock it because
he does not sell a lot of it, and for a while, I had to special-order it.
It does not cost a lot more than the "standard" bread, but it tastes so
much better. I dislike the "standard" bread intensely -- at home I
always got freshly baked bread. Bread would become an irrelevant
nutrient that I most probably would no longer eat. Bread would be the
staple food of choice for the lower classes, and eating any bread would
be seen as a lower-class thing as such, much like cheap, greasy
hamburgers. Sweden has had such a damaging centralization of their bread
bakers that they basically offer only "standard" bread -- and the
consequence is that they have this dried, nearly flat bread called
"knekkebr�d", which, of course, is more expensive than bread, but which
people buy in large volumes. Denmark has a very different culture, in
which everybody drives out on Sunday morning to their baker to get fresh,
hot bread or other wondrous bakery products. In Norway, bakeries are
closed on Sundays. When I lived in Sunnyvale, CA, I found some variety,
but basically the same kind of boring bread as in Stockholm. The only
time I really enjoyed bread in the United States, was a brief stay with a
girlfriend in the Italian quarters in Boston. My stays in Denmark have
always been accompanied with excellent bakery products and friendly hosts
who really enjoy showing off this great custom. Now, excuse me, I have a
store-bought half-baked bread in the oven that should be ready. Would I
have been happy to get it for free? Sure -- provided nothing else would
change, but I know too much about how the world works to think that
nothing else would change if you change such an important factor as
price, and I do not want those changes to happen. I'd rather eat cake.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> Free software has the same effect: It skews the return on investment for
> some people to the point where they decide to spend their mental energy
> and their labor elsewhere, where it is more rewarding.
This is quite right.
> This leads, in turn, to the inability of the moderately competent
> to get well paid, so they leave, and the average competence level
> drops, which hurts the ability to build safe and useful
> infrastructure, as well as hurting the ability of maturer
> programmers to communicate their skills to the next generation.
I don't think this is true at all. The moderately competent leave,
and the minimally competent bolt too. But the very competent still
have no trouble getting jobs as consultants, contract programmers, and
the like. The result is a net *increase* in the quality of
programmers, but a decrease in the number getting paid for i
As for the giving away of bread, I think I now know where you stand.
Since I devote considerable energy of mine to food pantries and the
like, which do everything they can to give away as much free food as
possible, I guess we just have a different perception on that one.
Thomas
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <3226327500923265@naggum.net>
* Thomas Bushnell, BSG
| As for the giving away of bread, I think I now know where you stand.
| Since I devote considerable energy of mine to food pantries and the like,
| which do everything they can to give away as much free food as possible,
| I guess we just have a different perception on that one.
I wonder why you think that kind of world is the world we should all live
in and why, as either a premise or a consequence, you think this is
"normal". I tend to believe it is a premise to you, not a consequence,
but this ties right back to my position that how you look a lot of things
in life depends on whether you think you will become one of the "haves"
or one of the "have-nots", or associate with which groups. That simple
attitude shift may well set the tone for your entire outlook on life.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> * Thomas Bushnell, BSG
> | As for the giving away of bread, I think I now know where you stand.
> | Since I devote considerable energy of mine to food pantries and the like,
> | which do everything they can to give away as much free food as possible,
> | I guess we just have a different perception on that one.
>
> I wonder why you think that kind of world is the world we should all live
> in and why, as either a premise or a consequence, you think this is
> "normal". I tend to believe it is a premise to you, not a consequence,
> but this ties right back to my position that how you look a lot of things
> in life depends on whether you think you will become one of the "haves"
> or one of the "have-nots", or associate with which groups. That simple
> attitude shift may well set the tone for your entire outlook on life.
I'm one of the haves, right now, and I pretty much expect that I will
be for the rest of my life... I've been fortunate.
But my heart goes out to the poorest, not the richest.
The problem with your analysis is that it supposes everyone is
motivated by what the imagine will happen to themselves.
Thomas
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <3226334265378318@naggum.net>
* Thomas Bushnell, BSG
| The problem with your analysis is that it supposes everyone is
| motivated by what the imagine will happen to themselves.
The problem with this atitude is that those other than oneself tend to be
selected rather randomly, and if someone is not on that most favored
others list, they tend to be completely worthless. You have demonstrated
a serious lack of respect for those who are not on your most favored
others list, including your disloyalty to your boss that first made me
aware of your tendencies, and then your utter disrespect for those you
think do something wrong. Respect for others start with respect for
oneself, and I think it is impossible to acquire or maintain that value
if you are not _aware_ that you cannot escape originating your own
interests, including those for others. But then again, I tend to
distrust people who devote their efforts to "aid" the poor by means that
ensure that they cannot get back on their own two feet without such aid.
You have, for instance, shown us your interest in giving people food for
free, but this also means that there is no way the people who get it for
free could get a working market started where they could make a living
growing food on their own. Considering that the financial instruments of
modern society were all invented by farmers back when farming was the
most advanced thing we could do, what you do by giving away food is not
only to deprive them of a market, you deprive of all incentive to grasp
the concepts of economy. This will ensure that you will keep on giving
them food they could not have gotten on their own, and they will in turn
be very grateful to you. I have a very low opinion of people who base
the value they expect others to see in them on the gratefulness that they
receive from people they have forced into a situation they cannot escape.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> * Thomas Bushnell, BSG
> | The problem with your analysis is that it supposes everyone is
> | motivated by what the imagine will happen to themselves.
>
> The problem with this atitude is that those other than oneself tend to be
> selected rather randomly, and if someone is not on that most favored
> others list, they tend to be completely worthless.
Huh? Where is this coming from?
> You have demonstrated
> a serious lack of respect for those who are not on your most favored
> others list, including your disloyalty to your boss that first made me
> aware of your tendencies, and then your utter disrespect for those you
> think do something wrong.
Huh? What exactly do you mean by "disloyalty to [my] boss"? Is this
just your habit of slander or is there something more going on?
> But then again, I tend to distrust people who devote their efforts
> to "aid" the poor by means that ensure that they cannot get back
> on their own two feet without such aid.
Well, I distrust people who figure they know what's best for the poor
without ever talking to them. That's where I start; it's really
mind-opening. Kinda scary for a mind as firmly clamped shut as yours,
I imagine.
> I have a very low opinion of people who base the value they expect
> others to see in them on the gratefulness that they receive from
> people they have forced into a situation they cannot escape.
I don't work to help the poor because I expect gratefulness in
return. I work to help them because they are starving.
Thomas
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <3226336747374046@naggum.net>
* Thomas Bushnell, BSG
| Huh? Where is this coming from?
Think about it.
| Huh? What exactly do you mean by "disloyalty to [my] boss"? Is this
| just your habit of slander or is there something more going on?
You have argued in this very newsgroup for going behind your boss's back
to use Lisp. Do you not remember this? I do. Such comments tell me;
"Do _not_ hire this guy." I tend to remember such things.
| Well, I distrust people who figure they know what's best for the poor
| without ever talking to them. That's where I start; it's really
| mind-opening. Kinda scary for a mind as firmly clamped shut as yours, I
| imagine.
Yeah, you demonstrate that open-mindedness so eloquently there. And to
think that you are concerned with hypocrisy. I am actually amused.
| I don't work to help the poor because I expect gratefulness in return. I
| work to help them because they are starving.
And you give them free food so you take away their means of creating a
market for food. Brilliant. They will starve and need you tomorrow,
too. If you really wanted to help them, you would want to make yourself
superfluous, instead. Of course, that would make it harder to talk about
how great you are to people who are not here.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> | Huh? What exactly do you mean by "disloyalty to [my] boss"? Is this
> | just your habit of slander or is there something more going on?
>
> You have argued in this very newsgroup for going behind your boss's back
> to use Lisp. Do you not remember this? I do. Such comments tell me;
> "Do _not_ hire this guy." I tend to remember such things.
Um, geez, you totally misunderstood me, but then, that's normal for
you.
In any case, if you have an actual accusation to make, then make it.
There have certainly been times where I was told by a supervisor not
to do something, and I knew it was the right thing to do, did it
anyway, and was thanked for it.
> And you give them free food so you take away their means of creating a
> market for food.
Really? Hrm, of course you told me that you thought it was never
harmful to offer someone a choice. But then you don't have opinions,
you just have reactions.
Thomas
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <3226342032898547@naggum.net>
* Thomas Bushnell, BSG
| Um, geez, you totally misunderstood me, but then, that's normal for
| you.
I am not your projections. Quit being such a dishonest bastard that you
confuse your conclusions and your observation and try to make others
share your conclusions. They can reach their own conclusions, but
somehow I think you do not trust them to reach the same conclusions you
do, so they need your "help".
| In any case, if you have an actual accusation to make, then make it.
You are an evil person, destructive, disrespectful, toying with people
because you probably have no way to prove me wrong when I point out that
you are an intellectualy dishonest and very destructive person.
| Really? Hrm, of course you told me that you thought it was never harmful
| to offer someone a choice.
I never said any such thing. You "misunderstand" on purpose in order to
make me look foolish when my own words and what I actually say could not
accomplish that, and you know it, or you would simply have been able to
refute my arguments. But then again, what I want from my fellow men is a
symptom of _thinking_ about issues, but you do not exhibit any symptoms
of that.
| But then you don't have opinions, you just have reactions.
That must be why you keep posting insults and lies about me. You just
made yourself so much worse, but then again, you cannot even discuss
things civilly in personal mail, so this is pure evil on your part.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> You are an evil person, destructive, disrespectful, toying with people
> because you probably have no way to prove me wrong when I point out that
> you are an intellectualy dishonest and very destructive person.
I don't need to prove you wrong. I simply don't intend to dance
around providing you reactions you eagerly crave from others.
If you think I'm evil, well, I take that a high praise.
> That must be why you keep posting insults and lies about me. You just
> made yourself so much worse, but then again, you cannot even discuss
> things civilly in personal mail, so this is pure evil on your part.
Oh, now I'm pure evil! Whee, what fun!
Now suddenly you're angry, upset, and ever-more-vicious. And nothing
makes your more angry, upset, and vicious, than my open
acknowledgement of how important it is for you to be that way, and my
desire to do nothing to stop you.
Quite the contrary Erik: I don't want to disprove you, I just want to
watch you twist. I'm sure that you're a nice person in many ways; but
on Usenet you play a clown exceedingly well, and I'm enjoying watching
you.
And *that* seems to have you really upset. Weird.
Thomas
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <3226344638557721@naggum.net>
* Thomas Bushnell, BSG
| I don't need to prove you wrong. I simply don't intend to dance
| around providing you reactions you eagerly crave from others.
Please quit projecting yourself onto me.
| Now suddenly you're angry, upset, and ever-more-vicious.
Please quit projecting yourself onto me.
| And nothing makes your more angry, upset, and vicious, than my open
| acknowledgement of how important it is for you to be that way, and my
| desire to do nothing to stop you.
Please quit projecting yourself onto me.
| Quite the contrary Erik: I don't want to disprove you, I just want to
| watch you twist. I'm sure that you're a nice person in many ways; but on
| Usenet you play a clown exceedingly well, and I'm enjoying watching you.
Please quit projecting yourself onto me.
| And *that* seems to have you really upset. Weird.
I think you are providing the world with a lot more information about
yourself than you are ready to understand at this point. I look forward
to the time when you figure out what you have done. Those who have gone
before you on that path have generally been very, very quiet afterwards.
A quiet Thomas Bushnell would be a remarkably good thing. You will keep
posting until you understand, if only keep such understanding at bay.
You will continue to portray more and more of yourself onto me, because
you _have_ to kill that monster that has reared its ugly head within, and
the only way to _really_ get rid of it is to quit life, as you are stuck
in yourself. I actually appreciate that you have begun to self-destruct.
If ou enjoy this so much, please use Google to watch how others of your
kind have gone completely to pieces at the end of their USENET carreers.
Your need to pretend that you are playing with others is interesting. It
is _such_ a good indicator that you have lost control and have to work so
hard to pretend to regain it. But this all shows that you do not take
part in USENET discussions in order to discuss anything, learn anything,
share any insight you might have, or try to educate others, you take part
in USENET discussions in order to assassinate other people's character
and play with them and destroy the utility of the forum. My mistake is
to hope that your kind is able to think and actually come to USENET in
order to take part in the _purpose_ of the newsgroups they post to. It
is clearly impossible for low quality people like yourself to understand
that you do in fact receive reactions to your own hostile behavior and
cease and desist: To such people as yourself, the conclusion is that you
can now elicit "reactions" form other people, and then you go ahead to do
more bad. When you get a stronger negative raactions, you want not only
to do bad things, but to take personal revenge and have to try to paint a
portrait of your opponent such that you can defend your own behavior. It
is fairly classical criminal behavior. It is nice to see that you have
reached your final stage, however.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
>
> > You are an evil person, destructive, disrespectful, toying with people
> > because you probably have no way to prove me wrong when I point out that
> > you are an intellectualy dishonest and very destructive person.
>
> I don't need to prove you wrong. I simply don't intend to dance
> around providing you reactions you eagerly crave from others.
Sometimes Webster's is really cool:
``His path is one that eminently craves weary walking.''
-- Edmund Gurney
> If you think I'm evil, well, I take that a high praise.
Oh, do you? What are you? A troll?
> > That must be why you keep posting insults and lies about me. You just
> > made yourself so much worse, but then again, you cannot even discuss
> > things civilly in personal mail, so this is pure evil on your part.
>
> Oh, now I'm pure evil! Whee, what fun!
No, that's not funny, actually.
> Now suddenly you're angry, upset, and ever-more-vicious. And
> nothing makes your more angry, upset, and vicious, than my open
> acknowledgement of how important it is for you to be that way,
> and my desire to do nothing to stop you.
``To do nothing to stop him''. Uhuh. Well, to direct your
desires to a more productive direction, you might want to have a
look at google for how nice comp.lang.lisp was between the
departure of our last troll, some atrocious Frenchman, JFB, and
your arrival. Everybody was happy, everything was about Lisp.
Now, everything is about flaming each other, and Kent felt the
need to take a break again. It is you who caused that. I am not
telling you to go away, but you could try to recall the more
fruitful threads you were involved in, you were even discussing
with Erik in sensible ways; why don't you try more of that style
again? It is all up to you: Continue stirring everything up or
return to useful discussion. Sure, you think it's not your
fault, but quite a few people who've been longer around than you
think you are wrong on this. Why this arrogance? Why are you so
sure that you know everything better, although you're new here?
Can't you back up a bit and be more gentle?
> Quite the contrary Erik: I don't want to disprove you, I just want to
> watch you twist. I'm sure that you're a nice person in many ways; but
> on Usenet you play a clown exceedingly well, and I'm enjoying watching
> you.
So you think this is all for your amusement only? Or what?
Regards,
--
Nils Goesche
Ask not for whom the <CONTROL-G> tolls.
PGP key ID 0xC66D6E6F
Nils Goesche <···@cartan.de> writes:
> Oh, do you? What are you? A troll?
Oh, no. A brief search of Usenet on groups.google.com shows that
"troll" is much more associated with Erik.
When someone behaves as badly as he does, I regard their attempts at
being insulting as high praise, for the simple reason that their
measurements seem totally reversed from reality.
Now, one in a position such as me should do a reality check. Let's
see. Do I engage in massive flame wars everywhere I go? Nope. Do I
call people idiots? Does Erik? Hrm, constantly.
This is a lesson from the kindergarten playground. If there's one kid
that gets in fights with everybody, it's probably his fault.
Thomas
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> When someone behaves as badly as he does, I regard their attempts at
> being insulting as high praise, for the simple reason that their
> measurements seem totally reversed from reality.
I don't really see why. You're basically saying that his compass is
reliably pointing in the wrong direction, when it's probably more
accurate to say that it's spinning wildly.
As such, his insults can neither be taken to be praise nor, well,
insults.
--
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
·····@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <·····@gnus.org> writes:
> I don't really see why. You're basically saying that his compass is
> reliably pointing in the wrong direction, when it's probably more
> accurate to say that it's spinning wildly.
>
> As such, his insults can neither be taken to be praise nor, well,
> insults.
Ah, quite right, my mistake.
Yeah, they actually cease to have any cognitive content at all; they
aren't properly *assertions* of anything.
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <3226348646613812@naggum.net>
* Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
> As such, his insults can neither be taken to be praise nor, well,
> insults.
* Thomas Bushnell, BSG
| Yeah, they actually cease to have any cognitive content at all; they
| aren't properly *assertions* of anything.
Can you two please get a room?
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
> > As such, his insults can neither be taken to be praise nor, well,
> > insults.
>
> * Thomas Bushnell, BSG
> | Yeah, they actually cease to have any cognitive content at all; they
> | aren't properly *assertions* of anything.
>
> Can you two please get a room?
Aw, does it make you feel bad to have people talk about you in
unflattering tones?
Thomas
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <3226350759247780@naggum.net>
* Thomas Bushnell, BSG
| Aw, does it make you feel bad to have people talk about you in
| unflattering tones?
It has no possible constructive function in this newsgroup, but is an
obvious personal exchange between you two, who have found something you
can gang up on, nonthinkingly, yet apparently uniting in your affinity
for toying with people. Yet another bystander has entered the game,
willing to fight, but not to help reduce what he obviously considers bad.
Thus the badness increases and when two bad people gang up on one, the
result is much more evil than one bad person acting alone, because you
are able to drive up eachothers hatred and hostility unchecked. This is
the group frenzy of hateful mobs in miniature. Most people are smart and
ethical enough to figure this out, and stay out of such situations and do
not cheer people on, either. As soon as some immoral idiot does, more
people feel compelled to join the fray, which is why you should not cheer
eachother on, but stop to think about what you do. You two do not, which
indicates that this is not a desire to see change for the better in this
newsgroup, it is only a desire to hurt and destroy. There is no longer
any doubt about your character or your goals, Thomas Bushnell.
You two are now _only_ being destructive here. Cease and desist.
This is only a reaction to your behavior. No action on your part, no
reaction on mine is necessary. Everybody knows what I think of evil
bastards like you, but you keep obsessing about posting your hatred for
that monster you have given my name in your deluded mind, and that is,
frankly, annoying. I do not feel bad when people of your moral caliber
show their true nature. You do not elicit such emotion, only disgust
that you keep posting and making it necessary to respond to you in the
hopes that you will shut the fuck up, but you are not going to, are you?
Cease and desist, Thomas Bushnell. _You_ are the aggressor.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> It has no possible constructive function in this newsgroup, but is an
> obvious personal exchange between you two, who have found something you
> can gang up on, nonthinkingly, yet apparently uniting in your affinity
> for toying with people.
This, from Mr. Flame and Mr. Insult?
Incidentally, you'll notice that I haven't posted any sort of thing
that you seem to find so horrible except in response to yours...though
perhaps I may have slipped and carelessly violated that rule, for
which I apologize.
If you object to my fun, then it's really pretty easy: don't post
hostile things to or about me.
Thomas
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <3226361001830385@naggum.net>
* Erik Naggum
> It has no possible constructive function in this newsgroup, but is an
> obvious personal exchange between you two, who have found something you
> can gang up on, nonthinkingly, yet apparently uniting in your affinity
> for toying with people.
* Thomas Bushnell, BSG
| This, from Mr. Flame and Mr. Insult?
Please quit projecting yourself onto me.
I note in passing that you are much more interested in a moronic retort
than getting the point, and also much more interested in going on another
stupid character assassination mission than to get the point.
| Incidentally, you'll notice that I haven't posted any sort of thing that
| you seem to find so horrible except in response to yours...though perhaps
| I may have slipped and carelessly violated that rule, for which I
| apologize.
We are all aware that when you are a bad guy, it is not your own fault.
The worse person you are, the more it is someone else's fault. Your fake
and dishonest "apologies" are not worth squat around here, Thomas Bushnell.
Only a change in behavior counts for something as vile as you. Get it?
| If you object to my fun, then it's really pretty easy: don't post hostile
| things to or about me.
This, from Mr. Flame and Mr. Insult?
I do not post hostile thing to or about you. I respond only to what you
write about me. Please quit this idiotic game-playing of yours now. You
semm, however, to do the same thing every other bad guy in comp.lang.lisp
and probably on USENET do: Try to make it your victim's fault and try to
force your victim to stop defending himself before you, the aggressor
stops attacking. What kind of person does that? Just cease and desist.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> I do not post hostile thing to or about you.
So far you've called me an idiot, a moron, intellectually dishonest,
an asshole, and an evil person, among other things.
Such things are hostile--whether true or false--such things are
manifestly hostile.
And they are not true; indeed, if you thought they were true, you
would do more than repeat them here. If you had the courage of your
words, you'd repeat them in a letter to the graduate advisor
responsible for me.
Thomas
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <3226383726119876@naggum.net>
* Erik Naggum
> I do not post hostile thing to or about you.
* Thomas Bushnell, BSG
| So far you've called me an idiot, a moron, intellectually dishonest,
| an asshole, and an evil person, among other things.
You are so amazingly hypocritical and stupid, too, since you failed to
get the point that you you only wrote your crap in response to what I
wrote, except when you did not, which was such a truly stupid thing to
say that I had at least hoped you were chuckling when you wrote that
ludicrous lie, but now I see you actually meant it.
| And they are not true; indeed, if you thought they were true, you would
| do more than repeat them here. If you had the courage of your words,
| you'd repeat them in a letter to the graduate advisor responsible for me.
_Really_, Thomas, your graduate program is not part of your news persona,
nor is your news behavior any business of your graduate advisorb, unless,
of course, you _make_ them so. You have invoked your graduate program as
evidence that you are not a non-thinking, evil brute several times. You
effectively want your ability to get into a graduate program to prove
that you are able to think when you are not thinking _here_, which is
what matters _here_. Who _cares_ if a wife beater does not beat anyone
else or is nice to his dog? However, a wife beater who argued in his
defense that he was nice to his dog would not exactly be seen as having a
fully operational conscience. But I have had enough of you this. Please
post the name and address of your graduate advisor. I shall certainly
write a letter you will not forget, _especially_ since you invoke your
graduate advisor to "prove" something about you. I will use the focus on
the fact that you have held the graduate program at University of
California Irvine up as a shield and a defense for your behavior here,
which, if you had not requested this several times over in a stupid game
of chicken to you, but a very serious thing to everyone else, would not
even have been an issue.
If I were you now, I would begin explaining your behavior here to your
advisor and the funders of your program and start to lay the ground for
_why_ they are evidence of anything at all regarding your behavior here.
If you are actually posting here with your advisor's permission and
sanction, please let us know, as there are a lot of people who need to be
informed about what their resources are used for. Your advisor can get
into very serious trouble if he has officially approved of your behavior
and has associated the reputation of University of California Irvine with
you. You less so, since they can at least get rid of you in a hurry.
Effectively, everything you have said here would be the _responsibility_
of your graduate program, advisor and university. Even at the very
liberal University of Oslo, if you tried to implicate the instituion in
_any_ way, you would get into serious trouble. I cannot imagine anything
else being true for University of California Irvine. So I not only
accept your challenge, I shall investigate if I can channel this through
the American Embassy in Oslo. I know some people there who might be able
to make this exceptionally embarrassing for the University of California
at Irvine, and you _have_ asked for it three times, so there is no way
back for you. And if you think you are _not_ an idiot at this point,
think again.
I just took a look at your headers in order to see if you posted anything
about your affiliation, and I found this gem:
X-Reply-Permission: Posted or emailed replies to this message constitute
permission for an emailed response.
_That_ is the most ridiculous thing I have seen in a _long_ time.
Here are my rules for a mailed exchange: If you drag your public
hostility into a private exchange, it is no longer a public hostility
between two public positions and two public personas, it is a private and
personal matter, and in your case, that means that you actually have a
severe behavioral problem when you cannot even refrain from continuing
your behavior, which is disgusting enough in news, to e-mail. When you
make the conscious choice to write someone personally during a public
debate, it is no different from picking up the phone and calling them, or
requesting a private aside in the debate, or even visiting the person in
question. When you do that, you have a fresh start. If you use that
opportunity for a fresh start to mindlessly continue your attacks, you
have shown the other part that your public attacks have _all_ been
personal, not part of any public debate. I have no interest at _all_ in
engaging you on a personal level, but you have decided to continue to
behave like the retarded brute you are in mail, which is why I have put a
reject rule in my mailer, to try to keep your idiotic behavior a public
matter.
But my God, Thomas Bushnell, you really are severely unintelligent. Not
only do you ask people to ruin your academic career by implicating your
degree-granting institution and your advisors in the defense of your
posts here ("Look! I can think! I got into University of California
Irvine and their graduate program! I couldn't think before I got in, but
now I have proof I can!" looks like a line in the Drew Carey Show, except
you mean it), but you actually _believe_ that you have a non-worthless
mental capacity because you got into a graduate program. When was the
last time I saw such charming na�vit�? Must have been that episode of
The Simpsons where Lisa loses her belief in the American System. It was
a funny episode. It is not funny when some idiot uses a university to
prove the power of his mind. IF YOU HAD A MIND AND COULD USE IT, YOU
WOULD HAVE USED IT HERE, TOO! *sigh* Seldom has "moron" been a more
applicable label.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
"Thomas Bushnell, BSG" wrote:
> And they are not true; indeed, if you thought they were true, you
> would do more than repeat them here. If you had the courage of your
> words, you'd repeat them in a letter to the graduate advisor
> responsible for me.
At which point you'd spring the trap and sue him for libel.
Paul
I entered this discussion because of Kent's rather intriguing
proposition that free software is without value (which I hope he'll
expand upon when he returns), and then got sidetracked into yet
another discussion about Erik.
I'm sorry about that. It's probably been more embarrassing to watch
than it has been entertaining.
--
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
·····@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <·····@gnus.org> writes:
> I entered this discussion because of Kent's rather intriguing
> proposition that free software is without value (which I hope he'll
> expand upon when he returns), and then got sidetracked into yet
> another discussion about Erik.
>
> I'm sorry about that. It's probably been more embarrassing to watch
> than it has been entertaining.
Thanks very much for this honorable gesture. But why have you
people taken this ``value'' thing so seriously? When I read what
Kent posted, I thought it was merely a joke: Just take an
economical definition of value, and voila: Free Software has no
value; there is nothing to be upset about, because ``value'' has
a thousand of different meanings, and just that such and such a
thing you like has no ``value'' under a certain definition of the
term is really no reason to raise blood pressure, is it?
Regards,
--
Nils Goesche
Ask not for whom the <CONTROL-G> tolls.
PGP key ID 0xC66D6E6F
Nils Goesche <···@cartan.de> writes:
> When I read what Kent posted, I thought it was merely a joke: Just
> take an economical definition of value, and voila: Free Software has
> no value; there is nothing to be upset about, because ``value'' has
> a thousand of different meanings, and just that such and such a
> thing you like has no ``value'' under a certain definition of the
> term is really no reason to raise blood pressure, is it?
I don't think my blood pressure was raised.
In my experience (from reading this newsgroup for quite a while), Kent
usually means what he says, unless it's clearly flagged as a joke.
This wasn't. Hence (parts of) this thread. I'm sure all will be made
clear when Kent returns. :-)
--
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
·····@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> Nils Goesche <···@cartan.de> writes:
>
> > Oh, do you? What are you? A troll?
>
> Oh, no. A brief search of Usenet on groups.google.com shows that
> "troll" is much more associated with Erik.
I don't have to look at google, because I've been following
comp.lang.lisp for years, other than you, obviously.
> When someone behaves as badly as he does,
He doesn't. It is really you who is the offender here. You have
already shown a capability of learning to adapt to a new
environment, by stopping to post Scheme propaganda, for instance.
Thank you very much for this. Now please go on: Watch how thinks
work here before trying to change everything. Some modesty would
really be nice. When people tell you you're doing something
wrong, *believe* them, even if you don't immediately understand,
why. Jeez, I've been lurking here for /years/ before opening my
mouth that wide.
> I regard their attempts at being insulting as high praise,
You really shouldn't do that. Some humility, please.
> for the simple reason that their measurements seem totally
> reversed from reality.
And that impression could not've been caused by a lack of
understanding on your side?
> Now, one in a position such as me should do a reality check. Let's
> see. Do I engage in massive flame wars everywhere I go? Nope.
Yes, *you do*, for chrissake! That's your whole appearance, here!
> Do I call people idiots? Does Erik? Hrm, constantly.
Not without reason :-)
> This is a lesson from the kindergarten playground. If there's one kid
> that gets in fights with everybody, it's probably his fault.
Indeed. Think about this some more :-)
Regards,
--
Nils Goesche
Ask not for whom the <CONTROL-G> tolls.
PGP key ID 0xC66D6E6F
Nils Goesche <···@cartan.de> writes:
> You have already shown a capability of learning to adapt to a new
> environment, by stopping to post Scheme propaganda, for instance.
Please cite some Scheme propaganda that I posted. This is one of
Erik's little lies; repeat it enough and people start to believe it.
Thomas
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> Nils Goesche <···@cartan.de> writes:
>
> > You have already shown a capability of learning to adapt to a new
> > environment, by stopping to post Scheme propaganda, for instance.
>
> Please cite some Scheme propaganda that I posted. This is one of
> Erik's little lies; repeat it enough and people start to believe it.
I am not going to make the google monkey, here. Several of your
early posts here were Scheme propaganda; sometimes more,
sometimes less subtle, but always recognizable. Kent described
that very nicely; now that I remember that, I think I /will/ do
the google monkey:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&frame=right&rnum=131&thl=1092610190,1092603881,1092028402,1092469418,1092597854,1093024038,1092924934,1092891786,1093746713,1094270307,1094632257,1094608011&seekm=sfwadt5sptd.fsf%40shell01.TheWorld.com#link134
Regards,
--
Nils Goesche
Ask not for whom the <CONTROL-G> tolls.
PGP key ID 0xC66D6E6F
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> You have demonstrated a serious lack of respect for those who are
> not on your most favored others list, including your disloyalty to
> your boss that first made me aware of your tendencies, and then your
> utter disrespect for those you think do something wrong.
Nice to see that you avoid the ad hominem.
> Respect for others start with respect for oneself, and I think it is
> impossible to acquire or maintain that value if you are not _aware_
> that you cannot escape originating your own interests, including
> those for others.
I think your verbosity and obtuse style shows a great disrespect for
us.
--
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
·····@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> My view on this is a little differentiated: (1) I think operating systems
> and systems software should be open source, but I also think that those
> who want to take some piece of open source or free software and accept
> accountability for it, should get paid well for that. There is no
> support for this model in the current Open Source world, and especially
> not in the Free Software world. This keeps much commercialization back,
How is "be paid for accepting accountability for" different from "be
paid for providing a warranty"?
There doesn't actually seem to be much of the latter going on in the
free software world - this is probably not helped by the usual
standard of warranty in the shrink-wrap world being approximately
"we'll replace the media if it turns out to be blank" - but the GPL
("You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy,
and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a
fee") at least seems to have been written with this activity in mind.
-dan
--
http://ww.telent.net/cliki/ - Link farm for free CL-on-Unix resources
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <3226237805282731@naggum.net>
* Daniel Barlow <···@telent.net>
| How is "be paid for accepting accountability for" different from "be
| paid for providing a warranty"?
That is actually a good question. First impression in draft form: It is
not. This is probably not entirely correct and may not remain with this
view if you let me know in more detail what you have in mind.
Random quote of the day, from watching a nature feature on TV as I wrote
the above: "Unlike the Scottish wild cat, domesticated cats have the
mentality of kittens. Knowing exactly where the next meal comes from has
removed their urgency in life."
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
>
> > And again, it shows the adjectives turned on their heads in a way I
> > would generally agree with. Because it's often the producers, the ones
> > who actively do the enriching of society, who get called the "stingy" and
> > "hoarder" and "self-serving".
>
> But the producers of free software--who *ARE* producers--earn nothing
> but scorn. Why is that?
Because they offer nothing of value. Where "value" is defined by "something
above the baseline of what you can get for free".
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> Because they offer nothing of value. Where "value" is defined by "something
> above the baseline of what you can get for free".
In other words, the food bank I work at offers nothing of value?
Funny that, because the people we help seem awfully grateful.
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
>
> > Because they offer nothing of value. Where "value" is defined by
> > "something above the baseline of what you can get for free".
>
> In other words, the food bank I work at offers nothing of value?
> Funny that, because the people we help seem awfully grateful.
It depends on whether the people are being grateful as in "wanting to
work to return the favor or otherwise provide compensating value to
the world" or just grateful like "they've learned to smile and say
thank you but keep coming back for more".
We all have our days when things don't quite balance and it helps to have
friends.
But the point of my remark was that friendship can get easily taken
advantage of if it is truly offered unconditionally as a right.
It isn't a comment about your goodwill, it is a comment about what kinds
of things pass for gratefulness.
Give me a fancy car and I'll be "grateful" too. Maybe I'll say "thank
you" several times and even bake you a cake. Then again, if the car
was free and it gets wrecked, I may not value it the same as if it was
a car I bought with my own money where I had to yield something else
of value in exchange for getting it...
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> > In other words, the food bank I work at offers nothing of value?
> > Funny that, because the people we help seem awfully grateful.
>
> It depends on whether the people are being grateful as in "wanting to
> work to return the favor or otherwise provide compensating value to
> the world" or just grateful like "they've learned to smile and say
> thank you but keep coming back for more".
Even if they are just mooching for no good reason, it's still clear to
me that the food has value, indeed, they even value it.
> It isn't a comment about your goodwill, it is a comment about what kinds
> of things pass for gratefulness.
You were talking about *value*, not about gratefulness. The fact that
they *want* the food, whether or not they pay, whether or not they
could, demonstrates that they do *value* it.
You are confusing value, cost, and price. I recommend any basic
economics textbook.
Thomas
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> You were talking about *value*, not about gratefulness. The fact that
> they *want* the food, whether or not they pay, whether or not they
> could, demonstrates that they do *value* it.
No. It's the fact that they /would/ pay for it if
(i) They had any money
(ii) You wouldn't give it away for free
> You are confusing value, cost, and price. I recommend any basic
> economics textbook.
I think it's you who needs to read something more about this.
But please note that both the bible and Karl Marx are a bit
dated, when you buy a book about it :-)
Regards,
--
Nils Goesche
Ask not for whom the <CONTROL-G> tolls.
PGP key ID 0xC66D6E6F
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
>
> > Because they offer nothing of value. Where "value" is defined by "something
> > above the baseline of what you can get for free".
>
> In other words, the food bank I work at offers nothing of value?
> Funny that, because the people we help seem awfully grateful.
Why are they grateful? Because you offer them something they'd
have to pay for elsewhere, because it has value. But if you
would supply the whole region with free food, and everybody likes
your food, the price for food, and hence its value, would indeed
drop to zero there.
Regards,
--
Nils Goesche
Ask not for whom the <CONTROL-G> tolls.
PGP key ID 0xC66D6E6F
Nils Goesche <···@cartan.de> writes:
> Why are they grateful? Because you offer them something they'd
> have to pay for elsewhere, because it has value. But if you
> would supply the whole region with free food, and everybody likes
> your food, the price for food, and hence its value, would indeed
> drop to zero there.
And people would *still* value it, because without it they would die.
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> Nils Goesche <···@cartan.de> writes:
>
> > Why are they grateful? Because you offer them something they'd
> > have to pay for elsewhere, because it has value. But if you
> > would supply the whole region with free food, and everybody likes
> > your food, the price for food, and hence its value, would indeed
> > drop to zero there.
>
> And people would *still* value it, because without it they
> would die.
Yes, that's probably the reason they'd pay for it if it weren't
available for free. What is do hard to understand about this?
Regards,
--
Nils Goesche
Ask not for whom the <CONTROL-G> tolls.
PGP key ID 0xC66D6E6F
Nils Goesche <···@cartan.de> writes:
> Yes, that's probably the reason they'd pay for it if it weren't
> available for free. What is do hard to understand about this?
Nothing at all. But by that measure, there's nothing about GNU Emacs
that is "valueless", since people did pay for the best they could get
before it was available. Heck, people *still* pay for GNU Emacs
today.
Kent said it had no value, and therefore was not a contribution to the
world. But that failed to take into account that it's the sort of
thing many people *would* pay for if they had to.
Thomas
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> Nils Goesche <···@cartan.de> writes:
>
> > Yes, that's probably the reason they'd pay for it if it weren't
> > available for free. What is do hard to understand about this?
>
> Nothing at all. But by that measure, there's nothing about GNU Emacs
> that is "valueless", since people did pay for the best they could get
> before it was available. Heck, people *still* pay for GNU Emacs
> today.
>
> Kent said it had no value, and therefore was not a contribution to the
> world. But that failed to take into account that it's the sort of
> thing many people *would* pay for if they had to.
But they don't have to, and so it has no value. This is a
trivial question of definitions, and not saying anything
/against/ Emacs. If you pay for a CDROM with GNU Emacs on it,
you are actually paying for the CDROM, not Emacs itself, BTW.
Emacs is great, but it has no value, /precisely/ because it is
available for free everywhere.
Something entirely else is the /free availability/ of Emacs.
People put their time and energy, which is equivalent to money,
into the development of Emacs -- apparently to get something,
like -- the free availabilty of Emacs. So, apparently there is
some value in that. Because people were and still are paying for
it.
Regards,
--
Nils Goesche
Ask not for whom the <CONTROL-G> tolls.
PGP key ID 0xC66D6E6F
Nils Goesche <···@cartan.de> writes:
> Something entirely else is the /free availability/ of Emacs.
> People put their time and energy, which is equivalent to money,
> into the development of Emacs -- apparently to get something,
> like -- the free availabilty of Emacs. So, apparently there is
> some value in that. Because people were and still are paying for
> it.
Um, ok, then, the free availability of free software has tremendous
value. The point Kent was making is that authors of free software are
producing something valueless. If you want to distinguish the bits
and the free availaibility of the bits, and say that only the latter
has value, fine with me. But Kent's point is still bogus then,
because this free availability is valuable.
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> Nils Goesche <···@cartan.de> writes:
>
> > Something entirely else is the /free availability/ of Emacs.
> > People put their time and energy, which is equivalent to money,
> > into the development of Emacs -- apparently to get something,
> > like -- the free availabilty of Emacs. So, apparently there is
> > some value in that. Because people were and still are paying for
> > it.
>
> Um, ok, then, the free availability of free software has tremendous
> value. The point Kent was making is that authors of free software are
> producing something valueless. If you want to distinguish the bits
> and the free availaibility of the bits, and say that only the latter
> has value, fine with me. But Kent's point is still bogus then,
> because this free availability is valuable.
To be even more precise, it has value to those who actually /do/
pay for it, consciously. Many people pay for the free
avaiability of lots of things privided by the state, but aren't
asked if they are willing to do so: Their tax money is simply
taken from them and then spent by the government, for whatever
the evil purposes might be. The amount that is spent still
determines the value, though, because it tells what you'd get
if you want to sell something.
Regards,
--
Nils Goesche
Ask not for whom the <CONTROL-G> tolls.
PGP key ID 0xC66D6E6F
Nils Goesche <···@cartan.de> writes:
> To be even more precise, it has value to those who actually /do/
> pay for it, consciously.
No, that's the price.
> Many people pay for the free
> avaiability of lots of things privided by the state, but aren't
> asked if they are willing to do so:
Those are externalized costs, and not part of the price at all.
> The amount that is spent still
> determines the value, though, because it tells what you'd get
> if you want to sell something.
No, now you're talking about the market price: that is, the price you
would be able to charge if you decided to sell it.
But that's close to value. If the market is a commodity market, then
the value is defined to be the market price.
However, this is independent of the actual price. If widgets are a
commodity, and the market price of widgets is $2, but I sell you one
for $15, the value of a widget is still $2.
Thomas
Nils Goesche <···@cartan.de> writes:
> Emacs is great, but it has no value, /precisely/ because it is
> available for free everywhere.
No. Emacs has a price of zero, a great cost, and a value so huge that
I don't think I have enough digits on my keyboard to express it.
--
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
·····@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <·····@gnus.org> writes:
> Nils Goesche <···@cartan.de> writes:
>
> > Emacs is great, but it has no value, /precisely/ because it is
> > available for free everywhere.
>
> No. Emacs has a price of zero, a great cost, and a value so huge that
> I don't think I have enough digits on my keyboard to express it.
You might take this as evidence that your definition of ``value''
isn't very practical :-)
Regards,
--
Nils Goesche
Ask not for whom the <CONTROL-G> tolls.
PGP key ID 0xC66D6E6F
From: Andreas Eder
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <m3r8m699za.fsf@elgin.eder.de>
Nils Goesche <···@cartan.de> writes:
> Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <·····@gnus.org> writes:
>
> > Nils Goesche <···@cartan.de> writes:
> >
> > > Emacs is great, but it has no value, /precisely/ because it is
> > > available for free everywhere.
> >
> > No. Emacs has a price of zero, a great cost, and a value so huge that
> > I don't think I have enough digits on my keyboard to express it.
>
> You might take this as evidence that your definition of ``value''
> isn't very practical :-)
Do you value the love of others (your wife)? Have you paid for it?
Andreas
--
Wherever I lay my .emacs, there�s my $HOME.
Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <·····@gnus.org> wrote in message news:<··············@quimbies.gnus.org>...
> Nils Goesche <···@cartan.de> writes:
>
> > Emacs is great, but it has no value, /precisely/ because it is
> > available for free everywhere.
>
> No. Emacs has a price of zero, a great cost, and a value so huge that
> I don't think I have enough digits on my keyboard to express it.
It helps to distinguish between absolute value and marginal value.
Emacs has a very small marginal value (at least to people who are
already clueful enough that they already use it).
Absolute value is a very intuitively attractive idea, but it can
easily lead you into silly fallacies. E.g. when two parties are making
an exchange -- e.g. two nations trading, or a laborer working for a
capitalist -- you tally up the value of the things exchanged, and you
tend to end up with three choices: one party is being exploited
(because the values are unequal) or there's no reason to make the
exchange (because the values are equal). This isn't a very good
explanation of why markets happen and work so well.
The idea of "marginal utility" is fundamental to modern
microeconomics. If you already understand this, what I say won't be
very interesting. If you don't understand this but my comments pique
your interest, look at a decent economics text. It's not a hard
concept (and in fact I'd expect most programmers can breeze through
all of basic micro to the extent that the presentation is clear about
what's definitely true, why it is definitely true, and where the
limitations of the approximation are).
To illustrate, think about air. How much is air worth to you? It
depends on how much you already have. If you have a supply of 100,000
liters or so (wild guess) per day, then another 1000 liters per day
won't be worth much, unless you're using air for something other than
breathing. But at some point (maybe 10,000 liters per day?) you have
only just enough for nonvigorous activity, and even limiting yourself
to nonvigorous activity you have to reuse the air so it's somewhat
stale, and your performance probably suffers from marginal hypoxia. At
that point 1000 more liters of air per day are worth a lot.
Generalizing, when someone has N units of something, they allocate
them to their N most important activities. Thus the (N+1)th unit would
only be used for the (N+1)th most important activity, and isn't in
general as valuable as the earlier ones. (There's another part of the
curve where you have so little air that even another 1000 liters
aren't going to keep you alive, so they're not worth much to you, but
2000 liters *would* be enough. But that's not relevant to the analysis
of the value of emacs, so I'll just ignore it.)
Getting back to emacs, copies of emacs are in essentially unlimited
supply. So the marginal value of another copy of emacs to an emacs
user is zero, because he's already got enough copies of emacs to do
everything he wants to do with emacs. But that doesn't mean that
emacs' value is zero, any more than my lack of enthusiasm for another
1000 liters of air means that air isn't valuable.
··············@airmail.net (William Newman) writes:
> Getting back to emacs, copies of emacs are in essentially unlimited
> supply. So the marginal value of another copy of emacs to an emacs
> user is zero, because he's already got enough copies of emacs to do
> everything he wants to do with emacs.
I understood Kent to be saying that free software is without value.
That is, it's not copy N+1 of Emacs that has no value, but Emacs
itself.
Which is a rather puzzling thing to say. Hence this thread.
--
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
·····@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <3226280514189501@naggum.net>
* Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
| I understood Kent to be saying that free software is without value. That
| is, it's not copy N+1 of Emacs that has no value, but Emacs itself.
But what would you have to forsake in order to acquire Emacs? What would
you take that have today and be prepared to lose in order to gain Emacs,
or be prepared not to gain in order to keep Emacs? That would be a good
measure of its value. I think the value of Emacs is close to the value
of my cat -- both were acquired at no cost, both have required a massive
amount of time, love, and care, and both are so important to me that I
have declined opportunities that would have meant parting with either of
them.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
William Newman wrote:
> It helps to distinguish between absolute value and marginal value.
>
> Emacs has a very small marginal value (at least to people who are
> already clueful enough that they already use it).
>
> Absolute value is a very intuitively attractive idea, but it can
> easily lead you into silly fallacies. E.g. when two parties are making
> an exchange -- e.g. two nations trading, or a laborer working for a
> capitalist -- you tally up the value of the things exchanged, and you
> tend to end up with three choices: one party is being exploited
> (because the values are unequal) or there's no reason to make the
> exchange (because the values are equal). This isn't a very good
> explanation of why markets happen and work so well.
The possibility of trading isn't about the difference between
absolute value and marginal value. It's about the difference
between absolute value and agent-relative value: another sort
of relativity.
If I give you X and you give me Y and we're both happy, that
indicates that X is worth more to you than Y, and Y is worth
more to me than X. That *might* be because our value systems
are isomorphic but I already have more X and you have more Y,
but it might equally be because our value systems are different.
> Getting back to emacs, copies of emacs are in essentially unlimited
> supply. So the marginal value of another copy of emacs to an emacs
> user is zero, because he's already got enough copies of emacs to do
> everything he wants to do with emacs. But that doesn't mean that
> emacs' value is zero, any more than my lack of enthusiasm for another
> 1000 liters of air means that air isn't valuable.
The value of a copy of emacs to someone who doesn't have one
is very far from zero (if the person in question is a programmer
and prepared to learn). The value of a copy of emacs running
on your laptop when you already have one on your desktop is
very far from zero. The value of a new emacs window/frame when
you already have one open is sometimes rather far from zero.
Because emacs is a piece of software and software is mostly
easy to copy, the marginal *cost* of another copy of emacs
is very small. But its marginal *value* isn't smaller than
that of lots of other things. If I have a very fast car,
the extra value to me of another one is probably entirely
a matter of what I can sell it for. That copies of emacs
don't have *that* sort of marginal value is a rather trivial
fact...
--
Gareth McCaughan ················@pobox.com
.sig under construc
Nils Goesche <···@cartan.de> writes:
> But they don't have to, and so it has no value. This is a
> trivial question of definitions, and not saying anything
> /against/ Emacs.
If that's the only definition of value, then that free software
producers produce nothing of value (which is where this branch of the
thread came in) is a completely bogus reason to scorn them. Or
should we also scorn holders of expired patents and authors of
out-of-copyright books?
-dan
--
http://ww.telent.net/cliki/ - Link farm for free CL-on-Unix resources
From: Andreas Eder
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <m3vgbi9a3r.fsf@elgin.eder.de>
Nils Goesche <···@cartan.de> writes:
> But they don't have to, and so it has no value. This is a
> trivial question of definitions, and not saying anything
> /against/ Emacs. If you pay for a CDROM with GNU Emacs on it,
> you are actually paying for the CDROM, not Emacs itself, BTW.
> Emacs is great, but it has no value, /precisely/ because it is
> available for free everywhere.
You mean, it has no cost. It certainly has value, otherwise people
wouldn't bother to use it. Windows e.g. has no value to me, though it
costs some money, because I see no reason to abuse my time with it.
I think, there is a confusion about value, cost and freeness here.
Andreas
--
Wherever I lay my .emacs, there�s my $HOME.
> But they don't have to, and so it has no value. This is a trivial
> question of definitions, and not saying anything /against/ Emacs.
> If you pay for a CDROM with GNU Emacs on it, you are actually paying
> for the CDROM, not Emacs itself, BTW. Emacs is great, but it has no
> value, /precisely/ because it is available for free everywhere.
This is not correct. Anyone who installs and uses emacs clearly
`values' emacs.
One thing I find interesting about the free software movement is that
it explores ways of measuring value that are not monetary. There's a
science fiction book by James P. Hogan, the name of which escapes me,
something with CHILDHOOD in it I think, that tries to explore how a
society might operate without money, and still be able to measure
value. It's really important to be able to measure value in an
economic system. Otherwise scarce resources get badly mis-allocated.
The only workable system for doing this that we've come up with so far
is money. But there are numerous lossages in any monetary system
(inflation, just to mention one).
--
Fred Gilham ······@csl.sri.com
If you want to be largely ignored by women, playing jazz guitar is
pretty good strategy... --- Bob Russell
The world rejoiced as Fred Gilham <······@snapdragon.csl.sri.com> wrote:
>> But they don't have to, and so it has no value. This is a trivial
>> question of definitions, and not saying anything /against/ Emacs.
>> If you pay for a CDROM with GNU Emacs on it, you are actually paying
>> for the CDROM, not Emacs itself, BTW. Emacs is great, but it has no
>> value, /precisely/ because it is available for free everywhere.
>
> This is not correct. Anyone who installs and uses emacs clearly
> `values' emacs.
>
> One thing I find interesting about the free software movement is that
> it explores ways of measuring value that are not monetary. There's a
> science fiction book by James P. Hogan, the name of which escapes me,
> something with CHILDHOOD in it I think, that tries to explore how a
> society might operate without money, and still be able to measure
> value. It's really important to be able to measure value in an
> economic system. Otherwise scarce resources get badly mis-allocated.
> The only workable system for doing this that we've come up with so far
> is money. But there are numerous lossages in any monetary system
> (inflation, just to mention one).
Larry Niven has played the game, too, with an essay or two on what
would be the effect of having "replicator machines."
The short answer is, "Economics wouldn't suddenly disappear."
Unlike the "Star Trek Way," where somehow money mystically disappears
in the 23rd century, the impact of easy, cheap near-perfect
"replication" would _NOT_ cause the laws of supply and demand to just
evaporate.
Things would certainly _twist_; a lot of industries and jobs based on
replication of objects being costly and labor-intensive would be
likely to evaporate. But new constraints would emerge to effect a new
equilibrium in much the same way that economics didn't end when Henry
Ford brought in assembly lines which made automobiles vastly cheaper,
destroying various industries based on the economics of older
assumptions about the production of goods.
Unfortunately, the ridiculous Star Trek "economics" has been so widely
seen that people may have unconsciously assimilated it, consider it of
some merit.
--
(reverse (concatenate 'string ····················@" "454aa"))
http://www3.sympatico.ca/cbbrowne/x.html
"Sponges grow in the ocean. I wonder how much deeper the ocean would
be if that didn't happen." -- Steven Wright
Christopher Browne <········@acm.org> writes:
> Unlike the "Star Trek Way," where somehow money mystically disappears
> in the 23rd century, the impact of easy, cheap near-perfect
> "replication" would _NOT_ cause the laws of supply and demand to just
> evaporate.
> [...]
> Unfortunately, the ridiculous Star Trek "economics" has been so widely
> seen that people may have unconsciously assimilated it, consider it of
> some merit.
Star Trek is usually silent about economics, but it's clear there is
some.
First off, obviously, latinum functions as an unforgeable medium of
exchange.
There are references to humans spending latinum for luxury goods of
various sorts, and when we see civilians on earth, they are often
running shops and make references to getting paid.
I think the point is that money is not a huge deal to them--especially
not to members of Star Fleet, who are primarily after other things.
That as for many of the necessities of life, they are now sufficiently
plentiful that there is no need to account for them any longer.
Thomas
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> Christopher Browne <········@acm.org> writes:
>
> > Unlike the "Star Trek Way," where somehow money mystically disappears
> > in the 23rd century, the impact of easy, cheap near-perfect
> > "replication" would _NOT_ cause the laws of supply and demand to just
> > evaporate.
> > [...]
> > Unfortunately, the ridiculous Star Trek "economics" has been so widely
> > seen that people may have unconsciously assimilated it, consider it of
> > some merit.
>
> Star Trek is usually silent about economics, but it's clear there is
> some.
Wrong. Capt. Jean-Luc Picard (obviously French) states that "the
economy of the future is quite different" in "Star Trek: First
Contact" :) Which seems to leave only the Ferengi in a
"lasseiz-faire-ist" state of mind. :)
Cheers
--
Marco Antoniotti ========================================================
NYU Courant Bioinformatics Group tel. +1 - 212 - 998 3488
719 Broadway 12th Floor fax +1 - 212 - 995 4122
New York, NY 10003, USA http://bioinformatics.cat.nyu.edu
"Hello New York! We'll do what we can!"
Bill Murray in `Ghostbusters'.
Marco Antoniotti <·······@cs.nyu.edu> writes:
> > Star Trek is usually silent about economics, but it's clear there is
> > some.
>
> Wrong. Capt. Jean-Luc Picard (obviously French) states that "the
> economy of the future is quite different" in "Star Trek: First
> Contact" :) Which seems to leave only the Ferengi in a
> "lasseiz-faire-ist" state of mind. :)
So, how does this contradict what I said?
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> Marco Antoniotti <·······@cs.nyu.edu> writes:
>
> > > Star Trek is usually silent about economics, but it's clear there is
> > > some.
> >
> > Wrong. Capt. Jean-Luc Picard (obviously French) states that "the
> > economy of the future is quite different" in "Star Trek: First
> > Contact" :) Which seems to leave only the Ferengi in a
> > "lasseiz-faire-ist" state of mind. :)
>
> So, how does this contradict what I said?
It does not. I should have not said "Wrong". I was too hasty and I
should have said: "As a matter of fact". :)
Sorry for the noise.
Cheers
--
Marco Antoniotti ========================================================
NYU Courant Bioinformatics Group tel. +1 - 212 - 998 3488
719 Broadway 12th Floor fax +1 - 212 - 995 4122
New York, NY 10003, USA http://bioinformatics.cat.nyu.edu
"Hello New York! We'll do what we can!"
Bill Murray in `Ghostbusters'.
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <3226235986126902@naggum.net>
* Christopher Browne
| Larry Niven has played the game, too, with an essay or two on what would
| be the effect of having "replicator machines."
A disturbingly large fraction of science fiction is based on the premise
"what if infinite amounts of energy were free". I used to enjoy this
greatly, until it dawned on me that speculation like this is worthless.
There is an insurance company that annoys me with its stupid ads on CNN
these days, with the punch line "if you take away risk, anything is
possible". Yes, way, way too much of anything is possible without risk.
Risk is what makes us think, value, prioritize, and ultimately allocate
our time wisely. Would ethics be the same if you could not be hurt,
could not die? I do not think so. I think ethics evolved from realizing
that people can get hurt and will die. Risking harm is good, but being
able to control risk is even better.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> A disturbingly large fraction of science fiction is based on the premise
> "what if infinite amounts of energy were free". I used to enjoy this
> greatly, until it dawned on me that speculation like this is
> worthless
This is one of the less problematic bits of scifi. I find "what if
you could travel faster than the speed of light" to be a much greater
distraction, since I can't imagine any way around *that*.
As for unlimited energy, consider if small-scale (say, house-sized)
fusion reactors were reasonably inexpensive. I could imagine that as
a potential engineering development given a couple centuries, and it
essentially provides unlimited cheap energy.
Thomas
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <3226232917260862@naggum.net>
* Nils Goesche
| But they don't have to, and so it has no value. This is a trivial
| question of definitions, and not saying anything /against/ Emacs. If you
| pay for a CDROM with GNU Emacs on it, you are actually paying for the
| CDROM, not Emacs itself, BTW. Emacs is great, but it has no value,
| /precisely/ because it is available for free everywhere.
I am not sure I agree with this. Using Emacs requires time and effort to
learn which could have been used for something else, and the threat of
losing the ability to use Emacs causes people to do many weird things.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Nils Goesche <···@cartan.de> writes:
> Yes, that's probably the reason they'd pay for it if it weren't
> available for free. What is do hard to understand about this?
Your point.
Kent is saying that free stuff has no value. You're saying that free
stuff has no cost. One of these statements are true.
--
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
·····@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
In an attempt to throw the authorities off his trail, Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <·····@gnus.org> transmitted:
> Nils Goesche <···@cartan.de> writes:
>
>> Yes, that's probably the reason they'd pay for it if it weren't
>> available for free. What is do hard to understand about this?
>
> Your point.
>
> Kent is saying that free stuff has no value. You're saying that free
> stuff has no cost. One of these statements are true.
I don't think _either_ statement is true.
- Free stuff certainly has whatever value may be attained by utilizing
the "free stuff."
- The notion that free stuff has no cost associated with it is
only true for stuff that may simply be collected from natural
processes.
And if there is a cost to the collection process, that obviously
disproves the costlessness.
Neither statement has to be true, and I would contend that neither is
true.
--
(REVERSE (concatenate 'string ········@" "enworbbc"))
http://www3.sympatico.ca/cbbrowne/freeecon.html
The only problem
with Haiku is that you just
get started and then
Christopher Browne <········@acm.org> writes:
> Neither statement has to be true, and I would contend that neither is
> true.
Yes, you're right. I was conflating cost and price.
--
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
·····@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <·····@gnus.org> writes:
> Nils Goesche <···@cartan.de> writes:
>
> > Yes, that's probably the reason they'd pay for it if it weren't
> > available for free. What is do hard to understand about this?
>
> Your point.
>
> Kent is saying that free stuff has no value. You're saying that free
> stuff has no cost. One of these statements are true.
Yes ;-)
It is indeed so, that free stuff has no cost (remember that often
there are hidden costs), that is the definition of ``free''.
Food isn't free, BTW. That free stuff has no value is a trivial
corollary.
Regards,
--
Nils Goesche
Ask not for whom the <CONTROL-G> tolls.
PGP key ID 0xC66D6E6F
Nils Goesche <···@cartan.de> writes:
> It is indeed so, that free stuff has no cost (remember that often
> there are hidden costs), that is the definition of ``free''.
> Food isn't free, BTW. That free stuff has no value is a trivial
> corollary.
A distinction between use value and sale value would be useful
here. Open Source software has no sale value, but has use value. This
is an extreme case of a commodity, as I understand it, enabled by the
fact that the marginal cost of production of software is zero.
--
-> -/ - Rahul Jain - \- <-
-> -\ http://linux.rice.edu/~rahul -=- ············@techie.com /- <-
-> -/ "Structure is nothing if it is all you got. Skeletons spook \- <-
-> -\ people if [they] try to walk around on their own. I really /- <-
-> -/ wonder why XML does not." -- Erik Naggum, comp.lang.lisp \- <-
|--|--------|--------------|----|-------------|------|---------|-----|-|
(c)1996-2002, All rights reserved. Disclaimer available upon request.
Rahul Jain <·····@sid-1129.sid.rice.edu> writes:
> A distinction between use value and sale value would be useful
> here. Open Source software has no sale value, but has use value. This
> is an extreme case of a commodity, as I understand it, enabled by the
> fact that the marginal cost of production of software is zero.
s/zero/very nearly zero/
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> Because they offer nothing of value. Where "value" is defined by
> "something above the baseline of what you can get for free".
Well, that's an, uh, interesting definition of "value".
I assume that you can get air for free around where you live. Does
air have no value for you, then?
--
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
·····@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
The world rejoiced as Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <·····@gnus.org> wrote:
> Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
>
>> Because they offer nothing of value. Where "value" is defined by
>> "something above the baseline of what you can get for free".
>
> Well, that's an, uh, interesting definition of "value".
>
> I assume that you can get air for free around where you live. Does
> air have no value for you, then?
Air is an interesting example.
It is typically something that personal deployment of money is unable
to meaningfully influence.
If I'm in some mountainous area of cleanliness, I typically don't have
to spend specific money on the "air is clean" part of the exercise.
And if I go to Mexico City, Delhi, or Bombay, I haven't _any_
meaningful ability to influence the [spectacularly horrid] quality of
the air. I _might_ be able to bring along an oxygen tank, or some
personal air filters. (And I'd commend such ideas to would-be
visitors of those cities!) But the likelihood of using money to
usefully influence the air outside is rather low.
--
(reverse (concatenate 'string ··········@" "enworbbc"))
http://www3.sympatico.ca/cbbrowne/indiatrip.html
Microsoft Outlook: Deploying Viruses Has Never Been This Easy!
Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <·····@gnus.org> writes:
> Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
>
> > Because they offer nothing of value. Where "value" is defined by
> > "something above the baseline of what you can get for free".
>
> Well, that's an, uh, interesting definition of "value".
>
> I assume that you can get air for free around where you live. Does
> air have no value for you, then?
What makes you think air is free?
I think a lot of air pollution comes because people don't think of it
as having value, exactly because they can get it for free.
Most people come to value what costs them.
That's why they don't value teachers.
[And probably why you don't value my remark. If I charged you more,
studies on cognitive dissonance say that, rhetoric claiming "it would
never happen to me" notwithstanding, you'd believe me more. Heh...]
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> That's why they don't value teachers.
You're playing semantic games. "Has no value" is something different
than "places no value on".
> [And probably why you don't value my remark. If I charged you more,
> studies on cognitive dissonance say that, rhetoric claiming "it would
> never happen to me" notwithstanding, you'd believe me more. Heh...]
:-) Sure. People place more value on things that they've paid a lot
for. They hire in expensive consultants to tell them what they
already know. That's a pathology, though.
--
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
·····@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
In article <···············@shell01.TheWorld.com>, Kent M Pitman wrote:
> Most people come to value what costs them.
>
> That's why they don't value teachers.
>
> [And probably why you don't value my remark. If I charged you more,
> studies on cognitive dissonance say that, rhetoric claiming "it would
> never happen to me" notwithstanding, you'd believe me more. Heh...]
Funny you should say that. I had the thought earlier: "I wonder if Kent has a
PayPal account[1] or something, to which I could send money, so as to tangibly
express my appreciation for his time and effort in this newsgroup, teaching me
Lisp & economics out of the kindness of his heart." :)
Hmmm ... micropayments for Usenet? "The wisdom of c.l.l., free for
non-commercial use"? *laugh*
-- Larry
[1] Ignoring for the moment the issues many people have with PayPal.
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <3226232571252983@naggum.net>
* Kent M Pitman
> Because they offer nothing of value. Where "value" is defined by
> "something above the baseline of what you can get for free".
* Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
| Well, that's an, uh, interesting definition of "value".
"Value" is often thought to be an absolute or argued as if it were, but
while one may always be able to quantify some value for the purpuse of a
monetary exchange, I think even then it is a relative concept. This is
just like "priority". People say they "value" something just like they
say they will "prioritize" something. How utterly meaningless. To give
this any meaning at all, it must have more or less value or priority than
some other thing. In this regard, something is valuable if you are
willing to do something to acquire it and/or willing to do something to
maintain it. If you need not take any action at all to either acquire or
maintain something, I think the concept of value does not apply to it.
Since all choices of action related to value thus defined boils down to
at least its relative value to the time and energy you need to spend to
acquire or maintain that value, I think it follows that those things that
can be acquired with the least amount of time and energy spent or "what
you can get for free" does indeed define the baseline, but this
definition only works in a context where "value" means "more valuable
than" which means "higher willingness to spend time or energy to acquire
or maintain than", and for all practical purposes, nothing ls less
valuable in this scheme than that which has no cost. (That is, the cost
of maintaining something may be considered the negative value of not
acquiring something you do not want. I choose to ignore this and instead
use "maintain", but feel free to translate it to "acquire or prevent".)
| I assume that you can get air for free around where you live. Does air
| have no value for you, then?
If nothing has to be done in order to continue to breathe, who cares? It
actually took mankind a _really_ long time to figure out what breathing
was all about. One reading of the very early Jewish mythology likens
their early images of deities to that which inhabited breathing life. I
mention this only to suggest that not only has air been "free", it was
"valued" only because it could leave a living thing and it died, but
there was nothing anyone could do about this, so this became religion.
Water is generally considered free, too, but I think I pay a nickel for
each cubic meter of tap water and about a quarter per liter of bottled
water because I think the tap water tastes funny. However, the third
world war is expected to start, at least, over water access.
Then there are the smokers, who are facing ever harsher reactions for
soiling the air that non-smokers want to be free of their pollution.
All of these indicate that something that was free _gains_ value (i.e., a
willingness to _do_ something about it) only when it is under threat.
This I believe, is not unusual for natural resources. For whatever this
is worth.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <3226195830019600@naggum.net>
* Thomas Bushnell, BSG
| But the producers of free software--who *ARE* producers--earn nothing but
| scorn.
They do? Is it qua producers of free software that they are scorned?
Are they not praised for the software they produce while they are scorned
for their political views? Methinks you should just acquire more bits.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> * Thomas Bushnell, BSG
> | But the producers of free software--who *ARE* producers--earn nothing but
> | scorn.
>
> They do? Is it qua producers of free software that they are scorned?
> Are they not praised for the software they produce while they are scorned
> for their political views? Methinks you should just acquire more bits.
Which political beliefs are these?
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> Free software talks of leveling the playing field, but that's just
> what it doesn't do. Because equal opportunity is not to be had when
> value is taken from those who contribute and given freely to everyone.
But it's not *taken* from anybody. It's freely *given* by those who
contribute.
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
>
> > Free software talks of leveling the playing field, but that's just
> > what it doesn't do. Because equal opportunity is not to be had when
> > value is taken from those who contribute and given freely to everyone.
>
> But it's not *taken* from anybody. It's freely *given* by those who
> contribute.
Those people don't "freely" give it. They give it subject to a complicated
contract that restricts uses.
"Freely given" is possible to do by putting something in the Public Domain.
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> > But it's not *taken* from anybody. It's freely *given* by those who
> > contribute.
>
> Those people don't "freely" give it. They give it subject to a complicated
> contract that restricts uses.
That all depends on which license in question. (They are not
generally, in fact, contracts.)
The GPL might be complicated; I don't know. I've understood it for so
long it's hard for me to judge. I don't think it restricts uses at
all, though it does restrict copying some. However, it restricts
copying far less than the average commercial license, which is what
you are comparing it to, right?
The new BSD license, or the X license, are not complicated at all, and
I don't see how one could ever say they restrict uses.
Thomas
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> ·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
>
>> Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
>>
>> > Free software talks of leveling the playing field, but that's just
>> > what it doesn't do. Because equal opportunity is not to be had when
>> > value is taken from those who contribute and given freely to everyone.
>>
>> But it's not *taken* from anybody. It's freely *given* by those who
>> contribute.
>
> Those people don't "freely" give it. They give it subject to a complicated
> contract that restricts uses.
First you say that value is "taken" (by some unnamed agency) and
"given freely" to the world. And then you say that "freely" doesn't
apply at all.
Perhaps you should pursue some other rhetorical line.
--
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
·····@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> wrote in message news:<···············@shell01.TheWorld.com>...
> ·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
>
> > Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> >
> > > Free software talks of leveling the playing field, but that's just
> > > what it doesn't do. Because equal opportunity is not to be had when
> > > value is taken from those who contribute and given freely to everyone.
> >
> > But it's not *taken* from anybody. It's freely *given* by those who
> > contribute.
>
> Those people don't "freely" give it. They give it subject to a complicated
> contract that restricts uses.
>
> "Freely given" is possible to do by putting something in the Public Domain.
I apologize if this sounds pedantic, but for anyone who doesn't
already know, I'd like to point out how much Lisp free software is
excluded by the clarification that KMP has just made here.
A substantial chunk of Lisp free software, including the work of the
subcommunity I'm in (CMU CL and the SBCL fork), *is* in the public
domain. So when KMP attacks "free software" here in comp.lang.lisp, it
might sound (as indeed it did to me before I read the posting I'm
replying to) as though he's criticizing more people and more software
than he actually is.
(Instead, perhaps this is fundamentally just another skirmish in the
Free Software License Wars. Contemplating the apparently-endless
nature of the conflict, the diehard nature of some combatants -- even
recent arrivals like Microsoft -- and our ongoing progress toward
rapid prototyping hardware which can be hacked to produce devices of
megaton yield, I consider the Wars to be one more reason to hope that
cheap interplanetary space travel gets cheap fast.:-)
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> Money isn't a bad thing. It's a good thing. It translates one
> person's value system to another.
Money is a good thing. But my value system is simply not denominated
in dollars.
Thomas
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
>
> > Money isn't a bad thing. It's a good thing. It translates one
> > person's value system to another.
>
> Money is a good thing. But my value system is simply not denominated
> in dollars.
I can't see this statement and not hear "I'm just annoyed that the things
other people value enough to part with money over aren't the things I would."
Let's just say I'd be very surprised if in a world where people were
paying dollars for the things you valued, you'd have the same
"principled" stance.
Money is the tangible acceptance of the notion that others don't value
things the same as we do. It is the acceptance of a multicultural world,
and all that that implies.
It's funny, too, that the people who I find most likely to claim money
is evil are the ones who are most likely to preach cultural tolerance.
It's almost like they both want to be tolerant and they also want to
control the set of things they are tolerant of...
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> ·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
>
> > Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> >
> > > Money isn't a bad thing. It's a good thing. It translates one
> > > person's value system to another.
> >
> > Money is a good thing. But my value system is simply not denominated
> > in dollars.
>
> I can't see this statement and not hear "I'm just annoyed that the things
> other people value enough to part with money over aren't the things I would."
The reason I don't part with money for commercial software (in
general) is not because I'm stingy; it's because I want certain rights
that they authors of that software are not willing to give me.
Since I try to be an honorable person who keeps my commitments, I
would keep that commitment if I made it; as a result, I abstain from
making it. (But, there are exceptions; there have been cases where I
*do* willingly part with the freedoms that I greatly value. However,
what accounts for the exceptions is *not* the utility of the software
in question but rather other, secondary, considerations.)
I'm not annoyed that other people have different interests and are
willing to accept restrictions that I do not accept. However, I think
they may well be foolish in accepting those restrictions, and I
suggest that people not accept them. It's not a major deal for me;
it's not like I go around pestering all my Windoze-loving friends and
trying to convince them they should abandon non-free software.
> Let's just say I'd be very surprised if in a world where people were
> paying dollars for the things you valued, you'd have the same
> "principled" stance.
Huh? I'm happy to accept dollars for the things I value. But the
presence of dollars does not account for the value. I value them
whether or not they come with money attached.
By contrast, when it comes to handing out my money (or time), I
certainly do pay close attention to handing it out only to the things
I value--either on strictly utiliatarian grounds, such as when I give
Starbucks money to keep pouring coffee down my throat, or on
political, moral, or religious grounds, such as when I give money to
political campaigns, write free software, play bowling with my
friends, and give money to religious or charitable institutions.
If I received dollars for bowling with my friends, I'd accept it
happily. It wouldn't "taint" the pleasure of bowling.
> It's funny, too, that the people who I find most likely to claim money
> is evil are the ones who are most likely to preach cultural tolerance.
> It's almost like they both want to be tolerant and they also want to
> control the set of things they are tolerant of...
Nobody here has claimed that money is evil. Money is a good thing,
just not the only thing.
And, anyway, the free software movement is not about removing them
money from software.
Thomas
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> I can't see this statement and not hear "I'm just annoyed that the things
> other people value enough to part with money over aren't the things I would."
well, other people's stupidity gets some getting used to. i use the technique
called "concentrating on my own stupidity" -- hours of fun...
thi
Kent M Pitman wrote:
> Money isn't a bad thing.��It's�a�good�thing.��It�translates�one
> person's value system to another
Money is neither good nor bad. It is a tool. Whether the translation of
values, the tradeoff between short- and long-term uses, or the use of the
power that derives from having this tool when others do not, on the whole,
does benefit or harm to the people involved or the world as a whole (or
whether this actually matters) are value judgements. In short, money is
neither good NOR bad. The tool has no intrinsic value. We imbue value
into it by our judgement of the use of the tool.
Tools are usually classed as such because they provide efficiency in
performing some action that would not be available, had the tool not been
available. Some people feel that the availability of any tool is good.
This is usually because, cetera paribus, they value the efficiency and
enhanced capability that the tool gives them. However, most things
(certainly in the eyes of a multitude of people) are NOT equal and it is
the majority of people's judgement of whether or not the tool is used for
good or evil that labels the tool.
My hammer is neither good nor evil until I use it to build or destroy.
Even then, whether this is good or bad is something I (and you and the rest
of society) decide.
So this brings me to a fundamental value judgement. is the majority of the
uses of money, in the world today, good or bad? I have my own view, which
I will not burden the reader with. Y'all can make your own choice. I
don't get paid to be a philospher...
faa
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <3226192774360446@naggum.net>
* Kent M Pitman
> Money isn't a bad thing.��It's�a�good�thing.��It�translates�one person's
> value system to another
* "Frank A. Adrian"
| Money is neither good nor bad. It is a tool.
There are two ways to read this: (1) having X amount of money is a good
thing, and (2) having money as a neutral medium of exchange is a good
thing. You seem to argue against case 1, which I consider ludicrous,
because even the context you have quoted indicates that it is case 2 that
applies.
However, it does appear that some people are allergic to the existence of
other people who have more money than they have, and dredge up their
social theories of inequality every time their mental allergen triggers a
rash of postings. This is a bad thing.
| Tools are usually classed as such because they provide efficiency in
| performing some action that would not be available, had the tool not been
| available.
In other words, money is a good thing.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
From: Frank A. Adrian
Subject: Inherent value of money/tools [was: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines]
Date:
Message-ID: <ovfo8.314$1j5.273483@news.uswest.net>
Erik Naggum wrote:
> * Kent M Pitman
>> Money isn't a bad thing.��It's�a�good�thing.��It�translates�one person's
>> value system to another
>
> * "Frank A. Adrian"
> | Tools are usually classed as such because they provide efficiency in
> | performing some action that would not be available, had the tool not
> | been available.
>
> In other words, money is a good thing.
I don't know yet. Is a knife a good thing? Is a car a good thing? Is a
supertanker a good thing? Is a neutron bomb a good thing? Can one really
say that a thing in and of itself is good or bad, divorced from its use?
Or is an object neutral until used and achieves the property of goodness or
badness based on one's judgment of the use? Currently, I try to withhold
judgment until I see what purpose the object is put to (Actually I don't.
I have my own values that I tend to view objects with and I certainly take
into account the way they are used the majority of the time. But for the
sake of argument...).
One way that I could interpret what you are saying above (and please excuse
me if I misstate your position) is that you perceive that tools (including
money) are good in and of themselves because their existence gives one more
options, a richer and more diverse set of opportunities. To me, this says
more about your value system and optimistic nature (i.e., having more
opportunities and/or capabilities is perceived by Erik as being a good
thing) than it does about the object itself. I, a skeptic, may not
perceive options or opportunities in a positive light (they place upon me
the requirement that I make decisions; they waste my time in their
exploration; they provide the possibility of hurting others via my choices;
some opportunities are negative; etc.) and, as such, I could perceive the
existence of tools, with their increasing of capabilities and options, as a
bad thing. In the end, I am still unsure whether value is intrinsic in a
tool or if we all simply project our own values upon ostensibly neutral
objects from which the world is constructed.
One of the few things that I think the Randians got right (though I
approach it from a very different angle) is that money (as all tools) is
neutral and generally derives its value from the character or purpose of
the person using it. To put it more bluntly, is money still good when it
can pay to train people to fly jets into large towers? (*NOTE* - I now
have stopped all rational discussion by Adrian's September 11'th corollary
to Godwin's law - the terrorists have already won.)
faa
P.S. To me, this is a really interesting philosophical conundrum, touching
on ontological categorization of positive and negative attributes, value
theory, the question of where objects' attributes come from or if objects
are simply the sum of their attributes, and possibly going as far as
theological debate over original sin, if you apply these arguments to
people. So sue me if I wax philosophical...
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: Inherent value of money/tools [was: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines]
Date:
Message-ID: <3226235443145526@naggum.net>
* "Frank A. Adrian"
| I don't know yet. Is a knife a good thing? Is a car a good thing?
There is a significant difference between the goodness of the existence
of something vs the goodness of its non-existence and the goodness of the
uses of something that already is taken for granted to exist. One does
not imply the other. Or, equivalent, the difference between the value of
an enabling technology or science, i.e., that it has been brought forth,
and the value of what it enables.
| In the end, I am still unsure whether value is intrinsic in a tool or if
| we all simply project our own values upon ostensibly neutral objects from
| which the world is constructed.
What if things have no value, neither in themselves nor given by us, but
that you value things according to their relation to the rest of your set
of values? I.e., value is not "in" the thing (intrinsic) and not "in"
you (subjective), but "between" you and the thing (personal relation).
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
From: Thien-Thi Nguyen
Subject: Re: Inherent value of money/tools [was: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines]
Date:
Message-ID: <kk9n0wty69p.fsf@ttn1.best.vwh.net>
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> What if things have no value, neither in themselves nor given by us, but
> that you value things according to their relation to the rest of your set
> of values? I.e., value is not "in" the thing (intrinsic) and not "in"
> you (subjective), but "between" you and the thing (personal relation).
obzamm-link:
http://www.csn.ul.ie/~chopper/zen/
thi
"Frank A. Adrian" <·······@ancar.org> writes:
> Kent M Pitman wrote:
>
> > Money isn't a bad thing.��It's�a�good�thing.��It�translates�one
> > person's value system to another
>
> Money is neither good nor bad.
Unless you take into account Sir Thomas Gresham's Law, of course: bad
money drives out good money, but good money cannot drive out bad
money.
:)
Cheers
--
Marco Antoniotti ========================================================
NYU Courant Bioinformatics Group tel. +1 - 212 - 998 3488
719 Broadway 12th Floor fax +1 - 212 - 995 4122
New York, NY 10003, USA http://bioinformatics.cat.nyu.edu
"Hello New York! We'll do what we can!"
Bill Murray in `Ghostbusters'.
Eric Moore writes:
> <excellent economic analysis omitted>
> ...
>
> No socialist rhetoric (that I've noted, aside from perhaps the
> notion that laws should be for the common good, rather than crafted
> to aid special interests, but that notion is one usually accepted by
> members of a democratic society, most capitalists do not believe
> laws should be bought and sold like any other good) in this post,
> just capitalist economics.
But the above shows one of the `lossages' of a monetary system --- it
is totalitarian (not deliberately, but inevitably). Eventually the
legal system, which is just another good or resource, will be bought
and sold like any other good or resource. Society might try to push
this traffic, like prostitution, into the back-alleys, but it will
exist unless people measure value with something other than money.
This is demonstrated by the recent fiddling with the copyright laws,
which are now severely biased in favor of the producers of content.
--
Fred Gilham ······@csl.sri.com
I can't escape the sensation that I have already been thinking in Lisp
all my programming career, but forcing the ideas into the constraints
of bad languages, which explode those ideas into a bewildering array
of details, most of which are workarounds for the language.
--Kaz Kylheku
Fred Gilham <······@snapdragon.csl.sri.com> writes:
> But the above shows one of the `lossages' of a monetary system --- it
> is totalitarian (not deliberately, but inevitably).
I think that any system eventually reduces to a monetary system,
whether the money is explicit or implicit. People will always want to
trade something they have for something they don't, money just
provides a way of buffering that exchange among arbitrary numbers of
people.
> Eventually the
> legal system, which is just another good or resource, will be bought
> and sold like any other good or resource. Society might try to push
> this traffic, like prostitution, into the back-alleys, but it will
> exist unless people measure value with something other than money.
I don't think this is an economic issue. Rather, it's a moral one and
in a different scope from the discussion so far.
> This is demonstrated by the recent fiddling with the copyright laws,
> which are now severely biased in favor of the producers of content.
I don't see any way around this trend. Those who have power will use
it to increase it. We give the content producers enormous power, and I
think part of that occurs because they are dealing with intellectual
property, which doesn't have any intrinsic marginal cost of production
(only the vehicles of transfer create this cost, and they are becoming
cheaper and cheaper). Now that I think about it, this seems to be
related to Erik's cab driver example.
--
-> -/ - Rahul Jain - \- <-
-> -\ http://linux.rice.edu/~rahul -=- ············@techie.com /- <-
-> -/ "Structure is nothing if it is all you got. Skeletons spook \- <-
-> -\ people if [they] try to walk around on their own. I really /- <-
-> -/ wonder why XML does not." -- Erik Naggum, comp.lang.lisp \- <-
|--|--------|--------------|----|-------------|------|---------|-----|-|
(c)1996-2002, All rights reserved. Disclaimer available upon request.
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes (in the middle of a long
and good article) the following:
> Yes, I too started out very differently. And this is why it disturbs
> me to see that this movement appears to appeals so much more to young
> people than older ones. I think they think they have a "better way",
> but I also think they don't understand that some of us had that same
> "better way" back then. They look at us like children look at adults,
> not seeing the continuum, and thinking that "adults" and "children"
> are fundamentally different kinds of stuff, and thinking that adults
> could never possibly have once been children. I don't mean to use the
> terms adult/children pejoratively here. But it does have the timeline
> aspect of the metaphor, and I can't avoid that. I've been on the
> other side. And when I woke up, as children all do one day, I was
> angry that I had been allowed to flounder for so long.
For my feeling you are still on the other side, at least when I
consider the huge amount of time you invest for this newsgroup without
any compensation but our respect. Thank you very much for that.
Nicolas.
>>>>> "KMP" == Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
[...]
KMP> ... I don't think anything could
KMP> be more central to the discussion of Lisp than how to make a
KMP> buck off of it.
Hmm, I am almost sure you are exaggerating some here. The tradition
you yourself have been a part of does not seem to have making money
off of ideas as its main motivation. I don't think McCarthy was
running around telling his students and staff "our numbers are bad,
implement this damn eval ASAP." Of course making a living is
important, but the "most central" is a bit pushing it.
KMP> I would bet that if you asked people what
KMP> one choice more than any other motivates their use of a
KMP> language you wouldn't get "where they put their parens" but
KMP> rather "how quickly I can make enough money to pay my
KMP> mortgage".
It depends on which people you ask at what part of their lives.
[...]
>> So, when I say "free software", I mean libre, not gratis,
KMP> Libre as in "it's free for everyone except the people who
KMP> made it to decide how it's used". That's not "free", that's
KMP> "stolen". [...]
I dislike this as much as I dislike Stallman's overloading of 'free.'
If the maker says 'take this, you can use it in whatever manner you
want except you have to abide by such and so rules that _I_ set' it is
hardly theft. I used to occasionally loan money to friends or outright
give them money as a gift, I'd say stuff like "do whatever you want
with it except spending it in a bar." Now by your stretched analogy,
this is no different than a non-drinker strealing from me. Not so, I
voluntarily give up my control over that money with some stipulations.
I read the thread from the beginning over again to find out what exactly
pushed you to write this, and I couldn't find anything. Would you care
to maybe write some more and tell us why you wish to play the same game
with 'theft' as the GNU zealots are playing with 'freedom' ?
[...]
KMP> I said that for those who want to make their business writing
KMP> software, free software injures their market and risks
KMP> putting them out of business.
This is clearly correct. Free (ie no money) software has been used
by not-so-benign companies to do just that. (If anyone cares to respond
please do not repeat libre != gratis arguments.)
KMP> This seems to be a cost you're
KMP> prepared to accept. But then, you aren't in that kind of
KMP> business. What's curious about this kind of reasoning, in my
KMP> experience, is that the usual motivation for people going
KMP> into free software is that they perceive some other uncaring
KMP> soul is out there making decisions they perceive to be
KMP> callously injuring the things _they_ care about. But I guess
KMP> the tactic of injuring without caring is ok when it's done
KMP> for a noble reason.
Motivations aside, the effect you described in the previous paragraph
seems inescapable unless there's some magical mechanism that sees to
it that monetary costs are automatically incurred whenever somebody
gets some use out of some software regardless of whether the creator
of that software wants compensation. As you might be well aware,
several companies are trying to make money off of reselling help/labor
that most of us give away for free on usenet. You yourself have
probably produced much elucidating prose on many issues for free that
nonetheless had enormous value and could probably have been saleable.
You set a great example, in my opinion, by your well thought out and
extremely well written prose. If more able people follow your example
a potential market will be killed. Are you aware of this? Does it
only become offensive when some cultish behaviour emerges and not
otherwise?
cheers,
BM
Bulent Murtezaoglu <··@acm.org> writes:
> ... As you might be well aware,
> several companies are trying to make money off of reselling help/labor
> that most of us give away for free on usenet.
(Indeed on some days I've thought of entering this business myself.)
> You yourself have
> probably produced much elucidating prose on many issues for free that
> nonetheless had enormous value and could probably have been saleable.
Possibly so. There's also a difference between a "loss leader" and
"giving away the store". But the line is subtle and subjective.
And this place isn't just advice. It's also comradery and coalition
building and other things. There's not a bright line here between
chit chat and advice. The value those other companies sell may be
"slicing through the chit chat" so in that sense they may be in a
different area, by design.
> You set a great example, in my opinion, by your well thought out and
> extremely well written prose. If more able people follow your example
> a potential market will be killed. Are you aware of this? Does it
> only become offensive when some cultish behaviour emerges and not
> otherwise?
If someone offered to pay me for what I am doing now, I would not insist
on doing it free. :-)
I would want it to be at a reasonable price, but not just out of the
goodness of my heart--rather because I think most of the market would
be missed if I didn't.
I do think that, along with the good it does, there is some degree
harm done both by the fact that newsgroups don't cost and don't pay.
I don't have a good theory of how to fix the problem of competing with
legitimate advice-giving services at this time. I would not engage in
a political fight with someone who did come up with a theory of how to
offer a more equitable system than the present one.
<······@world.std.com> wrote:
> If someone offered to pay me for what I am doing now, I would not insist
> on doing it free. :-)
Are you sure? Suppose I offered to pay you for the time you spend
answering my questions with the proviso that you follow through on your
promise and stop answering questions for free. That means you don't
answer questions for anyone unless they pay you the going rate (which
means no more answering questions on c.l.l.). Would you do it?
E.
"Erann Gat" <···@jpl.nasa.gov> wrote in message
·························@192.168.1.50...
> <······@world.std.com> wrote:
>
> > If someone offered to pay me for what I am doing now, I would not insist
> > on doing it free. :-)
>
> Are you sure? Suppose I offered to pay you for the time you spend
> answering my questions with the proviso that you follow through on your
> promise and stop answering questions for free. That means you don't
> answer questions for anyone unless they pay you the going rate (which
> means no more answering questions on c.l.l.). Would you do it?
>
What is the point of this question? If you said that you like
to work for money and I replied, "Suppose that work involved
dousing yourself in gasoline while people threw matches at you.
Would you like that?" Same relevance. You are reading too
much into what he said in partial jest. Or are you making him
a serious offer? I expect the proviso will add a bit to his
price.
Geoff
"Geoff Summerhayes" <·············@hNoOtSmPaAiMl.com> wrote in message news:<·························@news2.calgary.shaw.ca>...
> "Erann Gat" <···@jpl.nasa.gov> wrote in message
> ·························@192.168.1.50...
> > <······@world.std.com> wrote:
> >
> > > If someone offered to pay me for what I am doing now, I would not insist
> > > on doing it free. :-)
> >
> > Are you sure? Suppose I offered to pay you for the time you spend
> > answering my questions with the proviso that you follow through on your
> > promise and stop answering questions for free. That means you don't
> > answer questions for anyone unless they pay you the going rate (which
> > means no more answering questions on c.l.l.). Would you do it?
> >
>
> What is the point of this question? If you said that you like
> to work for money and I replied, "Suppose that work involved
> dousing yourself in gasoline while people threw matches at you.
> Would you like that?" Same relevance.
Some people actually make their living in ways not so different from
that. Circus performers, for example. It's not what I would choose
for myself, but there's no accounting for taste.
> You are reading too
> much into what he said in partial jest.
I'm not reading anything into what he said. I'm just asking a
question. (I'm asking it precisely because I *don't* want to read too
much into what he said.)
> Or are you making him
> a serious offer? I expect the proviso will add a bit to his
> price.
I'm not making any kind of offer (yet) but I am making a serious
inquiry. I am in fact trying to hire Kent to do some work for me (for
money).
E.
> "Geoff Summerhayes" <·············@hNoOtSmPaAiMl.com> wrote in message
news:<·························@news2.calgary.shaw.ca>...
> >
> > What is the point of this question? If you said that you like
> > to work for money and I replied, "Suppose that work involved
> > dousing yourself in gasoline while people threw matches at you.
> > Would you like that?" Same relevance.
"Erann Gat" <···@flownet.com> wrote in message
·································@posting.google.com...
>
> Some people actually make their living in ways not so different from
> that. Circus performers, for example. It's not what I would choose
> for myself, but there's no accounting for taste.
You mean I could get *paid* for doing that?! Damn!
> I am in fact trying to hire Kent to do some work for me (for
> money).
I wasn't aware that Kent was into this kind of `performance art'.
Please take photos.
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <3226190036128798@naggum.net>
* Bulent Murtezaoglu <··@acm.org>
| I dislike this as much as I dislike Stallman's overloading of 'free.'
| If the maker says 'take this, you can use it in whatever manner you
| want except you have to abide by such and so rules that _I_ set' it is
| hardly theft.
I have to assume that you are aware of what happens to any desired
changes to a GPL'ed program. Briefly put, the author can change the
license for some customers and charge money for the product, but if you
want to make money on your enhancement, you quickly find out that you
have no way to do that. You cannot even sell it back to the author.
I mean, I even (voluntarily) signed the copyright of my enhancements to
GNU Emacs over to the FSF. Today, this choice makes me not do things for
GNU Emacs if I think I can make money off of it, and sometimes, I can.
| I used to occasionally loan money to friends or outright give them money
| as a gift, I'd say stuff like "do whatever you want with it except
| spending it in a bar." Now by your stretched analogy, this is no
| different than a non-drinker strealing from me. Not so, I voluntarily
| give up my control over that money with some stipulations.
What if they took the borrowed money and either invested wisely or won in
the lottery so they got a 1000-fold return, and just gave the money they
borrowed back to you? Would you still keep financing other people's
investments or gambling?
| This is clearly correct. Free (ie no money) software has been used by
| not-so-benign companies to do just that. (If anyone cares to respond
| please do not repeat libre != gratis arguments.)
I maintain that libre == gratis at this point and that there is no point
in trying to argue that libre does not imply gratis, but gratis does not
imply libre, of course, which I think those who argue "libre != gratis"
are trying to communicate, and themselves imply that libres does not
imply gratis.
| Motivations aside, the effect you described in the previous paragraph
| seems inescapable unless there's some magical mechanism that sees to it
| that monetary costs are automatically incurred whenever somebody gets
| some use out of some software regardless of whether the creator of that
| software wants compensation.
What seems really curious to me is that some people actually believe that
if they can find a problem with a proposed solution that itself has no
solution, then the proposed solution should not be discarded. I find
such lines of argumentation to be intellectually dishonest, not because
they use it very selectively, but because there are always more problems
and never any perfect solution, so it _cannot_ be an argument against any
solution at all as it makes all solutions equally impossible.
| As you might be well aware, several companies are trying to make money
| off of reselling help/labor that most of us give away for free on usenet.
| You yourself have probably produced much elucidating prose on many issues
| for free that nonetheless had enormous value and could probably have been
| saleable. You set a great example, in my opinion, by your well thought
| out and extremely well written prose. If more able people follow your
| example a potential market will be killed. Are you aware of this?
Do people answer all questions? Can anyone here be held accountable for
not answering, for giving unsatisfactory answers, for giving wrong or bad
answers? The difference between a professional service and a voluntary
service is accountability. That is what you pay for. (Of course, that
does not mean that people should be allowed to post downright bad advice,
but there is no legal sanction against it, only social, and some of those
who do not care whether they give bad advice or not as long as they think
it is in good faith, become very hostile to a requirement to give good
advice.) People in a reasonably friendly community help eachother and
they return the favors. The currency of good-will is not worthless, but
when people do not return the favors, it becomes worthless and giving
away "support" at that time is killing the market for support. But as
long as the people you help can become productive members of the same
community, there is exchange of real value.
| Does it only become offensive when some cultish behaviour emerges and not
| otherwise?
You are not under attack, so just cut the counterattacks, lest you want
to attack first, of course.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
>>>>> "EN" == Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
[...]
BM> I used to occasionally loan money to friends or outright
BM> give them money as a gift, I'd say stuff like "do whatever
BM> you want with it except spending it in a bar." Now by your
BM> stretched analogy, this is no different than a non-drinker
BM> strealing from me. Not so, I voluntarily give up my control
BM> over that money with some stipulations.
EN> What if they took the borrowed money and either invested
EN> wisely or won in the lottery so they got a 1000-fold return,
EN> and just gave the money they borrowed back to you? Would you
EN> still keep financing other people's investments or gambling?
I probably would grumble a bit, but surely my pal using the money wisely
is not theft? What I do the next time when I see the same signs of
investment insight and/or luck in someone who asks for money might be
different after this experience but now we are moving away from the subject.
My point was simple: I am not advocating one true way of money lending,
or giving gifts. All I am saying is while gift giving with stipulations
might reasonably be cosntrued as something other than gift giving but as
long as it is voluntary it doesn't come anywhere near theft.
I suspect you are not idly nitpicking here though, so I'll contiunue
in similar vein. Surely my wiser elders will tell me that my funds
aren't limitless and I ought to regard my friendly and kind-hearted
monetary activities as investments with a possibility of profit. They
would be right probably, but I wouldn't like them to begrudge me
mistakes of inexperience. I would hate for them to mislabel my
activities. OK?
[apparent agreement elided]
[on for money advice vs. usenet]
EN> Do people answer all questions? Can anyone here be held
EN> accountable for not answering, for giving unsatisfactory
EN> answers, for giving wrong or bad answers? The difference
EN> between a professional service and a voluntary service is
EN> accountability. That is what you pay for.
These are all valid points, but I think you'll hear similar lines
from people who sell GPL'ed software. And for the record, I think
(as in the example I deleted) Kent's and for that matter your advice
here is worth money w/o accountability or refunds. You both have good
reasons for doing it for free, but the point remains that if you put
it out there for free you are killing the market (at least partially as
you outline above) for for money services.
[more agreement elided]
BM> Does it only become offensive when some cultish behaviour
BM> emerges and not otherwise?
EN> You are not under attack, so just cut the counterattacks,
EN> lest you want to attack first, of course.
Oh, I realize that. With all due respect to Kent, I thought he was
stretching his arguments too far that's why I got the urge to make
noises. I didn't see the reason for it at the time I posted.
No counterattack was intended.
cheers,
BM
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <3226237222867767@naggum.net>
* Bulent Murtezaoglu <··@acm.org>
| I suspect you are not idly nitpicking here though, so I'll contiunue in
| similar vein. Surely my wiser elders will tell me that my funds aren't
| limitless and I ought to regard my friendly and kind-hearted monetary
| activities as investments with a possibility of profit. They would be
| right probably, but I wouldn't like them to begrudge me mistakes of
| inexperience. I would hate for them to mislabel my activities. OK?
Sure, but I am happy that you picked up on this, because the fairly
obvious followup-question is "would you lend money to people with the
proviso that they give away any profits they might get from their
investments or lottery tickets after you got 'burned' the first time?"
I believe that the Free Software movement grew out of a disgruntled giver
who saw that those who accepted the gift just ran off with the huge
amount of money he gained from his investment or lottery ticket and gave
nothing of it back to you, and then the GPL got written which dictates
that if you do something useful with the gift, you cannot keep it.
| These are all valid points, but I think you'll hear similar lines from
| people who sell GPL'ed software. And for the record, I think (as in the
| example I deleted) Kent's and for that matter your advice here is worth
| money w/o accountability or refunds. You both have good reasons for
| doing it for free, but the point remains that if you put it out there for
| free you are killing the market (at least partially as you outline above)
| for for money services.
Well, I have to agree with you on this. It happened in the SGML
community, where I put up a fairly large archive of SGML stuff and after
a while needed funding for it, because it was beginning to take time away
from paying efforts. What I basically got back from people I talked to
was that asking for help in funding it and my activities in maintaining
it was "not right" since I had done it without pay so far. I was greatly
puzzled by this. Then one of the companies who had refused to fund me,
put conditions on inclusion of their freely available software in the
archive that I provide them with logs of requests for their software. I
just removed their software and, disgusted, froze the archive, which
still hangs around, but has not been maintained for 6 years.
However, I value the communities I take part in highly, and they reward
me for it, too. My intense distaste for stupidity and for people who
abuse any forum with their unprofessionalism and their utter lack of
respect for those who give valuable advice away for free to those who
seem to want to learn, does not seem to deter those who _have_ respect
for the community-building efforts or the value of the advice so given.
Also, if they have any idiots on board, they graciously keep them out of
my way at all times, which enables a great working relationship and much
improved working conditions.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
>>>>> "EN" == Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
[...]
EN> Sure, but I am happy that you picked up on this, because the
EN> fairly obvious followup-question is "would you lend money to
EN> people with the proviso that they give away any profits they
EN> might get from their investments or lottery tickets after you
EN> got 'burned' the first time?"
Ok I see where you are going with this. _I_ probably wouldn't on a
contractual way but I might say 'oh just be nice to someone else, if
you make it.' But yes, it is worth thinking about what stipulations
placed on a gift turn it into a yoke. We are now beyond 'don't spend
this on booze' kind of restrictions but are talking about when a
gift is no longer a gift but a concealed instrument of control. I'm
happy to concede that I'd consider it a disgrace on my part under most
circumstances if I found myself doing it. But then again, for this
specific example, I do not have as strong feelings on making profit with
seed money received as a gift as I do on destruction through alcoholism.
Note that there isn't much of an element of regret in the vague internal
process I outline above unlike what you say below:
EN> I believe that the Free Software movement grew out of a
EN> disgruntled giver who saw that those who accepted the gift
EN> just ran off with the huge amount of money he gained from his
EN> investment or lottery ticket and gave nothing of it back to
EN> you, and then the GPL got written which dictates that if you
EN> do something useful with the gift, you cannot keep it. [...]
This is consistent with what little I heard about the historical facts
but hardly the only explanation. While it is fun to theorize about
such things, it is not clear to me (outside of corruption of language
as in effectively hollowing out the meanings 'freedom' or 'gift') that
in itself this stipulation is a bad thing. My understanding of what
KMP is arguing is that it is not always a good thing nor is it
clear that it only hurts the people/institutions/attitudes it is meant
to hurt.
EN> [on a free service needing funding] What I
EN> basically got back from people I talked to was that asking for
EN> help in funding it and my activities in maintaining it was
EN> "not right" since I had done it without pay so far. I was
EN> greatly puzzled by this.
Are we talking about 'entitlement' stupidity or was there another reason?
EN> Then one of the companies who had
EN> refused to fund me, put conditions on inclusion of their
EN> freely available software in the archive that I provide them
EN> with logs of requests for their software. I just removed
EN> their software and, disgusted, froze the archive, which still
EN> hangs around, but has not been maintained for 6 years. [...]
I don't understand why you would be disgusted. I used to dutifully put
my real e-mail as the password in the pre-http anon FTP days. I didn't
think twice about doing that since I saw it as an obvious and reasonable
thing for people to want to know who was using their service. What is
so disgusting about that? I believe I once suggested to KMP that the
web copy of the hyperspec should be extensively bugged so we could tell
how people were using it and maybe get insights about popular/confusing
aspects of CL or even alternative ways of presenting the same content.
He wouldn't go for it AFAIR. All this puzzles me. Would you care to
comment further?
cheers,
BM
Bulent Murtezaoglu <··@acm.org> writes:
> Ok I see where you are going with this. _I_ probably wouldn't on a
> contractual way but I might say 'oh just be nice to someone else, if
> you make it.' But yes, it is worth thinking about what stipulations
> placed on a gift turn it into a yoke.
Quite true. But Erik has said (which I agree with) that making a tool
available never decreases freedom, but can only add to it. (At least,
that's how I understood him on the thread of whether money is a
neutral thing or a good thing.)
So, similarly it seems to me, offering a gift (with whatever
restrictions) is not a decrease in freedom. If the restrictions are
really noxious, one can simply refuse it and be no worse off. So it's
not a joke, whatever it is.
Thomas
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <3226275471536218@naggum.net>
* Thomas Bushnell, BSG
| Quite true. But Erik has said (which I agree with) that making a tool
| available never decreases freedom, but can only add to it. (At least,
| that's how I understood him on the thread of whether money is a
| neutral thing or a good thing.)
This is not quite what I said, but I agree with the conclusion.
| So, similarly it seems to me, offering a gift (with whatever
| restrictions) is not a decrease in freedom. If the restrictions are
| really noxious, one can simply refuse it and be no worse off.
This also applies to bad TV shows and to supporting organized crime like
Microosft, but still, just turning it off and not purchasing their tools
of mass destruction is not sufficient to curb their influence.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <3226274860829318@naggum.net>
* Bulent Murtezaoglu
| I don't understand why you would be disgusted.
Perhaps I explained only enough for me to understand what I was talking
about. I had asked company x for funding for my FTP site, which took
time and money to maintain on my part, and I had grown tired of doing
this for free when several commercial interests were asking me to make
their stuff available. None of them valued my central site higher than
doing their own thing, apparently, and that is certainly their choice,
but my reaction was a marked reduction in my willingness to spend more
time, energy, or money on this. So when one company that had declined to
provide funding asked me not only to continue to keep my site up to date
with their software, but also to work for free to provide them with logs
and retrieval statistics, which I had hitherto not done for anyone, not
even for my own use, what disgusted me was not that the users left their
e-mail addresses with me in good faith and I was asked to surrender them,
it was that this company wanted me to do such work for them for free
after they had declined to fund the site.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> I believe that the Free Software movement grew out of a disgruntled giver
> who saw that those who accepted the gift just ran off with the huge
> amount of money he gained from his investment or lottery ticket and gave
> nothing of it back to you, and then the GPL got written which dictates
> that if you do something useful with the gift, you cannot keep it.
I think his annoyance was with the fact that those people who received
stuff refused to give that stuff on to others. Which is quite a
different thing.
An the other hand, if I write a book, and then give you a copy of it,
you're free to do whatever you want with it -- except redistribute it.
Is it therefore a gift with strings, and therefore suspect? If so,
it's impossible to give anybody any non-suspect gifts that involve IP.
--
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
·····@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <·····@gnus.org> writes:
> I think his annoyance was with the fact that those people who received stuff
> refused to give that stuff on to others. Which is quite a different thing.
I thought Erik was referring to Gosling and the whole Unipress/GosMacs
debacle. I've gotten the impression that Erik is correct in his
characterization of RMS' attitude toward Gosling (i.e. selling out to the
"detriment" of everyone else), while you seem to be focused more on what I
understand to be RMS' reaction to Unipress itself.
I'd ask him directly, but I'm concerned that he gets tired of rehashing
history over and over and over again. Is there a public statement that
names names so that we don't end up speculating all the time?
> An the other hand, if I write a book, and then give you a copy of it,
> you're free to do whatever you want with it -- except redistribute it.
Actually, that's only the case if you make it so. You (as the author)
have the opportunity to give the gift w/out those strings, especially if you
self-publish.
> Is it therefore a gift with strings, and therefore suspect? If so, it's
> impossible to give anybody any non-suspect gifts that involve IP.
Certainly by putting the IP into the public domain it is possible to give
the gift with no strings attached. The perceived "problem" with this is
that you lose control of what happens afterward. Consequently, most "Open
Source" Licenses place at least minimal restrictions on subsequent use
(i.e. you have to give me credit for the work I did even if you don't give
me $$$$).
The anti-Microsoft propaganda film AntiTrust certainly tries to present
Open Source as noble and egalitarian (i.e. human knowledge belongs to the
world). Nothing accomplishes this more effectively than putting something
directly into the public domain.
The extent to which I am not allowed to exercise control over something is
an element of the extent to which I do not personally own it. GPL helps me
to "own" it in the aggregate with others, but not at the expense of being
able to own it completely personally. On the other hand, public domain
means that everyone owns it to the fullest extent personally at the expense
of the "community" to control it's use.
I'm confident of these things:
* Not everything should be public domain, lest we lose private property and
with that our autonomy.
* Not everything should be GPL, lest we lose the ability to act
independently.
* Not everything should be Open Source, if only to demonstrate that another
possibility exists.
* Not everything should cost $$$ to obtain, since some ideas can only be
achieved when people value them absolutely rather than marginally.
I'm less confident about these things, although I think that they hold:
* The value that I derive from using Gnus exceeds what I pay for it [both in
terms of $$$ paid indirectly (DSL, Linux distros, etc.) and in time] by at
least two orders of magnitude.
* Gnus would not be the quality program that it is without a community of
people dedicated to constantly improving it.
* Charging too many $$$ would prevent the community from developing.
* Marketing / sales folks are not trained in building communities, but in
maximizing revenues.
* Maximizing revenues and building communities are goals which eventually
conflict with each other. Leaning too far in either direction can be
detrimental.
Here's a proposal for helping to balance the conflict of interest between
the Open Source Lispers and the Commercial Lispers:
Suppose that we created an entity (i.e. corporation) which we collectively
owned (through shares of stock) chartered with building a community of Lisp
programmers. Rather than chasing a market that we don't necessarily know
[and that doesn't know us], our initial target "market" could be the
community. We build tools for us - like developing a Lisp environment that
is at least as good as Genera. We could even try to obtain Genera from
Symbolics Technologies as a starting base. We could allow both individuals
and corporations [like Franz and Xanalys] as first-class members.
Funding would have to come from us as both the owners and the target
market, but presumably we would use these tools for generating enough other
money that we could afford to do this. I am, of course, assuming such a
collection of tools would be worth more to productivity [and thus, revenues]
than the cost of building it - or we wouldn't do it. And, as owners and
members of the community, we'd presumably be biased in favor of our own
product [hence we'd buy it] or we'd drop out of the community [i.e. sell our
shares of stock].
* We'd have access to the source code - because we own it - literally.
* As owners, we could set the price.
* As the community that purchases the product, we recognize that the value
derived is at least as much as the price, so we buy. [Libre, not
gratis.]
* We can expand the community by selling shares to other folks who want to
join.
* We don't shoot ourselves in the foot economically in the current software
marketplace as it exists today. In other words, we could work in common
to build better tools / environments for the community to use to solve
real world problems *better* than they are solved now for real $$$ that
are used to keep the community alive [both personally through our
individual incomes and corporately through sales to the community.]
This seems to more closely reproduce the "socialist state" that KMP
referred to previously in discussing the "golden days" - with our Lisper
owned corporation replacing MIT/DARPA.
So, what's wrong with this model?
-jon
--
------------------
Jon Allen Boone
········@delamancha.org
Jon Allen Boone <········@delamancha.org> writes:
> This seems to more closely reproduce the "socialist state" that KMP
> referred to previously in discussing the "golden days" - with our Lisper
> owned corporation replacing MIT/DARPA.
>
> So, what's wrong with this model?
Among other things, you won't leverage all the people out there who
have decided only to work on free software (where I use "free" in the
same sense as the FSF does).
·········@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> Among other things, you won't leverage all the people out there who have
> decided only to work on free software (where I use "free" in the same sense
> as the FSF does).
I can not control what other people do based on their principles, nor do I
wish too. I respect their right to do that and I applaud them for having
the integrity to live up to their ideals. However, I do not have a need to
cater to them in all circumstances.
To be honest, I suspect that this model would appeal to a small subset
(hopefully non-empty) of the current open-source crowd and that's ok with
me. [Please recall that I'm confident that not everything should be GPL.]
Can you be more explicit about the "other things"?
-jon
--
------------------
Jon Allen Boone
········@delamancha.org
Jon Allen Boone <········@delamancha.org> writes:
> * Not everything should be GPL, lest we lose the ability to act
> independently.
[...]
> So, what's wrong with this model?
That one. :-)
I think free software has been, and is, an immense boon. The
infra-structure stuff goes without saying -- I doubt half of the
companies started the last ten years would have had any chance getting
off the ground if they couldn't have used free software to base their
business on. (The firm I'm working for now, for instance.)
And I think the division between infra-structure stuff and
"applications" is artificial. The former is "stuff that IT people
need to work" and the latter is "the rest". Saying that we should get
that stuff for free and the rest shouldn't sounds almost, well,
libertarian. :-)
But I think one point Kent made some months back is true. (And I'm
paraphrasing.) Free software is going to make the commodities market
for software disappear. In 2015, you won't be able to buy any
shrink-ware software. It'll all just be there. And all us IT people
will basically have to face that we work in a service industry. We're
car mechanics, not authors.
(On the other hand, I think it's not unlikely that people will stop
being so willing to plumb for free. My current enthusiasm is
<URL: http://gmane.org/>, which is a purely service-related thing, and
I could easily see myself getting fed up with doing that for free once
it's all implemented.)
--
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
·····@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <·····@gnus.org> writes:
> But I think one point Kent made some months back is true. (And I'm
> paraphrasing.) Free software is going to make the commodities market
> for software disappear. In 2015, you won't be able to buy any
> shrink-ware software. It'll all just be there. And all us IT people
> will basically have to face that we work in a service industry. We're
> car mechanics, not authors.
One delightful part of this will be the way that life improves for
everyone. My university spends a vast sum on the Microsoft tax, and
with that money, I imagine it could fund quite a number of programmers
and technically savvy people who would be able to offer more dedicated
consulting, well-tailored custom software, and all the rest, to make
the place just that much more livable.
Thomas
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <3226277678401093@naggum.net>
* Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
| And I think the division between infra-structure stuff and "applications"
| is artificial. The former is "stuff that IT people need to work" and the
| latter is "the rest". Saying that we should get that stuff for free and
| the rest shouldn't sounds almost, well, libertarian. :-)
To me it sounds very much like labor unions that have solidarity only
with their own, which has been a stronghold of socialist ideas for ages,
guilds that allow only accepted members to benefit from their knowledge,
which were precursors to the labor unions. Absolutely nothing here can
be construed to be "libertarian". Libertarian would have been make
everybody pay for everything all the time.
As for infrastructure vs applications, I see this as the same difference
as between road systems and cars. While people can build their own
roads, few highways and interstate routes are built by private interests,
not the least because it costs so goddamn much to set up usage-based
payment systems to get the money back compared to using tax money on it.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> To me it sounds very much like labor unions that have solidarity
> only with their own, which has been a stronghold of socialist ideas
> for ages, guilds that allow only accepted members to benefit from
> their knowledge, which were precursors to the labor unions.
I believe there was very essential differences between labor unions
and guilds. Guilds were for educated craftsmen, whereas the "laborer"
was unskilled and without bargaining power. They gained _some_
bargaining power by forming unions and thus having the threat of
striking, but that power only goes as far as the support of the
union. This goes a long way to understanding labor unions' hostility
towards what they perceive as scabs and freeloaders.
--
Frode Vatvedt Fjeld
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <3226277052923656@naggum.net>
* Jon Allen Boone <········@delamancha.org>
| * Maximizing revenues and building communities are goals which eventually
| conflict with each other.
The rest of your points look pretty solid to me, but I do not understand
this. Especially when there is such a move towards "building communites"
on the Web, and that is seen as a good thing for marketing and keeping
your customers.
| So, what's wrong with this model?
Not much, but I am curious how you reward people for their contributions.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> * Jon Allen Boone <········@delamancha.org>
> | * Maximizing revenues and building communities are goals which eventually
> | conflict with each other.
>
> The rest of your points look pretty solid to me, but I do not understand
> this. Especially when there is such a move towards "building communites"
> on the Web, and that is seen as a good thing for marketing and keeping
> your customers.
I think the emphasis must be on "eventually" here.
The point is that at some point nearly any community will want to do
something which is contrary to the goals of the people getting the
money, and either community or revenue (or both) will have to suffer
at that point. I'm not sure if this is true or not.
But the intuition is surely something like the following: imagine a
company with a web site that offers chat rooms. The company gets
advertising revenues pegged to the number of people in the chat rooms.
And then people begin using the chat rooms, and as often naturally
happens, a community starts to develop. Suppose the company does
something which pisses off some significant fraction of the
community... which is virtually certain to happen eventually. And
suppose the members of the community start agitating to change the
company's practice, or boycott it, or something like that.
At this point, the company's profits and the community's interests
might start to come into close conflict.
If the company starts to censor the community, it will damage the
community.
If the company doesn't censor the community, it will find its revenues
falling as the community works against the company.
Thomas
I'm going to try to answer this part of Erik's response by following up to
Thomas, as he's given me a running start...
* Jon Allen Boone <········@delamancha.org>
| * Maximizing revenues and building communities are goals which eventually
| conflict with each other.
* Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes (as quoted by Thomas Bushnell):
|
| The rest of your points look pretty solid to me, but I do not understand
| this. Especially when there is such a move towards "building communities"
| on the Web, and that is seen as a good thing for marketing and keeping your
| customers.
Although I address this in detail below, I must admit that as soon as I
saw this question, I went to Google to make sure that this was one of the
things that I was "less confident about." Because, of course, once you
brought the spotlight to bear on it, I wasn't comfortable with the idea that
I had claimed I was confident of it...
* Thomas Bushnell, BSG <·········@becket.net> writes:
> I think the emphasis must be on "eventually" here.
Well, in fact, yes, the emphasis was on eventually. :-)
Now, the main reason for my thinking that this is so is because I have
seen what would appear to be exactly this happen many times. Sometimes it's
a good thing [for the company] when it happens; sometimes the alienated
members of the community prove to have been more important than the company
initially anticipated [and it's bad for the company.] But, I think it's
nearly always bad for the community.
<attempted explanation>
I think that this "factor" stems from the something I think is a fact - it
is harder to build a community than it is to sell a product. Here are some
reasons:
1. Community building necessarily involves repeated interactions among the
various parties involved and, thus, takes time.
2. Repeated interactions imply that reputation becomes an important factor.
3. Perceived commitment to the community is important, to offset skepticism
and the cynical belief that the company is just out to milk the
community for all it can get.
4. The gradual breakdown in Western (at least, American) society has led to
an increase in alienation, skepticism and cynicism [at least in
America]. .
5. Due to #4, there are few people under 40 who actually understand what it
means to be involved in a community. I will say that some of the few
who best understand what this means are the ones involved in the Open
Source software movement.
6. Many of the people that are over 40 adopt a "me-and-mine-first" approach
to interaction which undermines the idea of community and validates the
alienation/cynicism/skepticism of the younger crowd.
7. There is a common fallacy among people of all ages that being part of a
community involves all "take" and no "give". Or, at best, that you
"give" only your "fair share."
This list is not meant to be exhaustive, but it is meant to be
illustrative of the amount of effort and energy that is involved in true
community building. And, it doesn't necessarily alleviate the need for
Marketing!
When you can skip all of this, and get right to Marketing [which appears
to deliver more bang for the buck], it's very difficult to rationalize
community building over the short term. Eventually, the decision is made to
sacrifice [or scale back] community building. This perpetuates the cycle of
distrust, since it undermines the perception of commitment. Around and
around we go.
</attempted explanation>
The focus of building on-line communities [it seems to me] is an attempt
for companies to adjust to the notion [which I can neither refute nor
validate] that as products become more and more commoditized, the only other
option to competing on price is to appeal to a "niche market." Sometimes
this market is self-identifying [i.e. Dead Heads], but sometimes the "niche"
has no common identity. In those cases, current marketing "gurus" espouse
the notion of creating the identity for the niche.
So, then, who controls the community identity? If the marketing folks at
the company control it, things can co-exist in harmony with maximizing
revenues for quite some time. But, if the community truly has an
independent identity, then the potential for the conflict begins to emerge.
It seems to me that one important area in which this conflict begins to
become apparent is when the company begins to court another "niche".
[Perhaps temporary] conflicting priorities [influenced by potential revenues
from each "niche"] determine which community gets it's needs/desires met
with the available resources. The one that doesn't begins to weaken...
Does that make what I'm thinking clear? I'm not claiming to have done an
exhaustive analysis of this.
I think that having community ownership of the company alleviates this
pressure - if not for good, at least for a long time. Perhaps this is
similar to the idea of a Co-Op...
I'm too young to really know what much of this stuff is about - I'm only
31... :-)
-jon
--
------------------
Jon Allen Boone
········@delamancha.org
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <3226396442957787@naggum.net>
* Jon Allen Boone <········@delamancha.org>
| Although I address this in detail below, I must admit that as soon as I
| saw this question, I went to Google to make sure that this was one of the
| things that I was "less confident about." Because, of course, once you
| brought the spotlight to bear on it, I wasn't comfortable with the idea
| that I had claimed I was confident of it...
Thanks for the great effort to explain it. I understand where you are
coming from and how you think they conflict over time, but it seems to me
that this situation may also be explained as a company or organization
initially being the creator of the community, then naturally the leader
or anchorpoint for some time, but eventually in your view, the community
acquires a life of its own, at which point the company loses control and
may be abanadoned as the community focus moves in a different direction
than the company that created and led it. Any such change in direction
would be more costly than if you did not have repeat business from the
same customers. However, all this community thing seems to be about
getting repeat business from your loyal customers. If you maintain a
fairly loose coupling with that community and do not let it grow too
strong, I think this could go on for a really long time.
Howver, if the community has already done something quite significant on
its own to rally around, like, say, a specification or something, a
company that tries to "hijack" said community would probably be really
hurt. But that is a fairly special case, I think.
I found this illuminating and appreciate that you brought it up, as I
have sort of regarded "community building" as fairly free of dangers.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> but I am curious how you reward people for their contributions.
Now that I've found a few spare moments, I'll try and address this issue,
which I believe to be an important one. In this regard, there may be room
for creativity, such as devolving the copyright back to the original author
in the even that the collective corporation goes out of business, etc.
Now, my proposal was for a Lisper owned/operated company that would have
the copyright on the LispM software development environment [almost like a
Software Co-Operative]. So there are two obvious ways that individuals
benefit [whether or not they contribute back to the environment code base]:
by having the environment available and by sharing in the profits [such as
they may be] that come from licensing the use of the environment to
interested 3rd parties. In the minimalist case, there would be no profits
because everyone interested in using the environment would be a shareholder
and would get the license to use the environment at the cost of the co-op to
produce it.
What about those who contribute to the advancement of the environment? I
would imagine that they would either be paid a negotiated rate for their
contribution [ala contract work or salaried employee] or they would donate
it to the co-operative for gratis.
Everyone who was a share-owner would get the use of the environment at the
cost to produce it and could use it for their own programming, including
delivering applications to other parties. Not really too revolutionary an
idea for a software company - but the twist is this, /we/ are the tool
vendor. So the risk that some of us perceive existing in working with a
non-open-source vendor would effectively disappear.
It seems to me that the heart of the matter boils down to having a sense
of community together with a means of controlling our own collective fate
[as it were]. This can already be done under the Open Source model, but
there are some obvious drawbacks to what is arguably the most effective Open
Source license [GPL]. This would allow us to build tools in common, from
which we can all benefit, and still be able to deliver products for $$$ to
customers [both individually and collectively].
-jon
--
------------------
Jon Allen Boone
········@delamancha.org
I may be off, but this sounds like the Mondragon cooperative model. I
haven't read the book on it, but have been told it's a good model for
enterprise, in that the people involved in the creative work get rewarded
proportionally to their creative input.
Maybe this book would provide useful material for discussiion?
Eric
Eric Moss <········@alltel.net> writes:
> I may be off, but this sounds like the Mondragon cooperative model. I
> haven't read the book on it, but have been told it's a good model for
> enterprise, in that the people involved in the creative work get rewarded
> proportionally to their creative input.
>
> Maybe this book would provide useful material for discussiion?
I've never heard of this... can you provide a more complete reference?
-jon
--
------------------
Jon Allen Boone
········@delamancha.org
Try the following:
www.sfworlds.com/linkworld/mondragon.html
Have fun,
Eric
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <3226276015193596@naggum.net>
* Erik Naggum
> I believe that the Free Software movement grew out of a disgruntled giver
> who saw that those who accepted the gift just ran off with the huge
> amount of money he gained from his investment or lottery ticket and gave
> nothing of it back to you, and then the GPL got written which dictates
> that if you do something useful with the gift, you cannot keep it.
* Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <·····@gnus.org>
| I think his annoyance was with the fact that those people who received
| stuff refused to give that stuff on to others. Which is quite a
| different thing.
Why would they have to do that? The original source could just give it
away again, right? My point is that the disgruntled giver realized that
the recipient just accepted the gift and then "refused" to share his own
contributions with anyone.
| An the other hand, if I write a book, and then give you a copy of it,
| you're free to do whatever you want with it -- except redistribute it.
Huh? If you can make a copy of it and give me the book or the copy, I
can copy it and give someone else the book or a copy.
| Is it therefore a gift with strings, and therefore suspect? If so, it's
| impossible to give anybody any non-suspect gifts that involve IP.
That does not follow.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> Why would they have to do that? The original source could just give it
> away again, right? My point is that the disgruntled giver realized that
> the recipient just accepted the gift and then "refused" to share his own
> contributions with anyone.
Except that none of this is what RMS actually says; the signal event
he talks about over and over again is his experience with printer
software when a new printer arrived and the manufacturer refused to
share the source except under a nondisclosure agreement. There was
never any claim that the manufacturer had included RMS's code (or
anyone else's in particular).
From: Craig Brozefsky
Subject: In Defense of Free Software Sociopaths(tm) Was: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <873cyn5ecr.fsf_-_@piracy.red-bean.com>
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> Would that it were off topic. I don't think anything could be more central
> to the discussion of Lisp than how to make a buck off of it. I would bet
> that if you asked people what one choice more than any other motivates their
> use of a language you wouldn't get "where they put their parens" but rather
> "how quickly I can make enough money to pay my mortgage".
And if this was the question foremost on their mind it would seem
obvious to me that they would get over nostalgiac attempts at
reproducing an older market model based on the sales of "tools" and
"libraries" in CL by small or independent vendors, and move towards
solving problems that people with the appropriate financial resources
are willing to fund. Laments, no matter how well put, are not going
to change the trend towards the commodification of tools that has been
going on since the start of industrialization.
This shift in perspective might have, and *HAS HAD*, some useful
results, not limited to paying several people's mortgages and
producing tools and libraries that the community can, and is, using.
Those tools can then help other people use CL in their work, widening
the pool of capital available to the CL community.
An inability to deal with this change of financial context has
resulted in lots of verbage about how Free Software is destroying the
community's chance of furthering its "collective" interest and
backhanded suggestions that some of the people who are writing CL code
now are sociopaths because they give it away.
I know we've been thru this before but I'm not about to stand for an
argument, no matter how verbose, eloquently spoken or rationalized,
that is going to call people actually contributing working code and
helping others use CL in their business or hobby or entertainment,
destructive sociopaths. I know of several cases, just dealing with
the FS CL tools I've contributed too, where people have been able to
get their company using CL, or have started to build up a company
around CL. To a certain extent I can understand the personal stress
this change has caused people, but when it turns into unproductive
attacks (disguised as attempts at balancing the scales of rhetoric or
otherwise) on other Lispers working to expand the community and
empower others in it, I lose patience.
The capital for expanding CL's capabilities is not coming thru direct
investment in CL tool vendors, it is being funneled thru people
writing solutions to other problems using CL and then sharing the
tools used to solve those problems when possible. There are no fringe
languages really capable of attracting the capital investment for pure
tool vendors anymore, since the ROI in such cases is dwarfed by the
size of the tool market in mainstream languages.
I say this as an owner of a CL shop, as a programmer in a CL shop, as
a contributor to and major author of several CL tool packages
distributed as Free Software, and as someone who also has co-workers
"paying their mortgages" with licenses for a vertical applications
written entirely in CL.
In the interest of heading off yet another giant thread dominated by a
few loquascious participants, I submit this post as my final
contribution. I think that the code that I and the other Free
Software Sociopaths(tm) have produced, and which the community is
presently using, speak louder than any psuedo-civilized whining that
appears in this newsgroup.
--
Craig Brozefsky <·····@red-bean.com>
Free Software Sociopath(tm) http://www.red-bean.com/~craig
Ask me about Common Lisp Enterprise Eggplants at Red Bean!
From: Jon Allen Boone
Subject: Re: In Defense of Free Software Sociopaths(tm) Was: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <m31ye0zgzg.fsf@validus.delamancha.org>
Although I was initially content to let this response stand on it's own
merits, someone on irc://irc.openprojects.net:#lisp seemed to think that it
merited a response. Since I finally have some time, I do have a few
quibbles [perhaps minor] with some of the things that Craig posted. All
quotes are from Craig Brozefsky <·····@red-bean.com> in Message-Id:
<·················@piracy.red-bean.com>.
> And if this [how to pay the mortgage] was the question foremost on their
> [a representative programmer] mind it would seem obvious to me that they
> would get over nostalgiac attempts at reproducing an older market model
> based on the sales of "tools" and "libraries" in CL by small or independent
> vendors, and move towards solving problems that people with the appropriate
> financial resources are willing to fund.
I think that this observation is, in fact, what plays out in the larger
programming arena. Most programmers care more for making $$$ [proxy for
paying the mortgage, etc.] than which tools they use. Consequently, most
programmers use tools such as Visual C++ or VisualBasic. Many of them begin
with gcc/emacs [unless they are in a community college / tech-school
setting, where "professional tools" are more common], while in school, but
rather than pining for their "lost" tools, they adopt whatever crap the
paymaster asks them to use.
> Laments, no matter how well put, are not going to change the trend towards
> the commodification of tools that has been going on since the start of
> industrialization.
But, this seems sweepingly over-stated. Tools as a category of objects
have been increasing in number and power for the entirety of human recorded
history. Industrialization has caused a proliferation of specialized tools
that are useful for only solving a single problem with [at least] marginal
efficiency gains. So, rather than commoditizing tools, industrialization
has resulted in specializing of tools. Indeed, without the mass production
capacity that industrialization affords, specialized tools are too expense
to produce, so people have rely on more general tools.
On the other hand, *certain* tools have definitely become commodities.
The hallmark of this is that consumers no longer consider the source of the
tool nor it's anticipated longevity, but merely it's price. Examples of
these sorts of tools abound [pens, pencils, paper, hammers, nails, wrenches,
screwdrivers, etc.], but this commoditization does not preclude the
simultaneous existence of specialized versions of these same tools to serve a
niche market. Indeed, current marketing appears geared toward exploiting
exactly this phenomenon. [I'm no marketing person, but I did take a few
classes at Wharton...]
> This shift in perspective might have, and *HAS HAD*, some useful results,
> not limited to paying several people's mortgages and producing tools and
> libraries that the community can, and is, using. Those tools can then help
> other people use CL in their work, widening the pool of capital available to
> the CL community.
Personal paradigm shifts can be enormously psychologically empowering for
those who accept them [and crippling for those who don't.] However, the
apparent success of personally adopting a new perspective does not validate
it as in tune with objective reality. :-) So, I congratulate you on being
able to pay your mortgage and contribute to the community at the same time.
You may, none the less, be exploiting a local maximum in your environment
that is not sustainable over the long run. Only time will tell. In any
case, it isn't clear that it is generally applicable.
Also, the new paradigm that you have adopted is not the only legitimate
means of producing additional capital for the CL community. Arguably, it is
not even the most effective one. However, you should, by all means,
continue with the experiment so that we can all look back on this in 20
years and judge the outcome.
> An inability to deal with this change of financial context has resulted in
> lots of verbage about how Free Software is destroying the community's chance
> of furthering its "collective" interest and backhanded suggestions that some
> of the people who are writing CL code now are sociopaths because they give
> it away.
Here you seem to shift somewhat in your focus. Previously you talked
[falsely] of commoditized tools and how it was possible to give away the
source and still pay the mortgage. But the the new financial context that
you seem to be referring to here might be summarized as: the market is
unwilling to sustain large numbers of vendors of CL-based toolkits - and
*that* is why open source software is necessary.
So, Kent's basic premise seemed to be: some vendors produce software in a
way that undermines the market's ability to sustain for-profit vendors [aka
dumping].
Your response seems to be: the market is unwilling to bear the high costs
of sustaining those vendors, so if we don't give it away it won't be
available at all. And you can still pay your mortgage.
The interesting question to answer is not which of you is correct [which
is necessary, but not sufficient to establish the existence of sociopathy
among open source supporters], but, rather, how can we expand the market?
If we do not expand the market, then it will collapse [or stagnate, which
some seem to suggest it already has].
> I know we've been thru this before but I'm not about to stand for an
> argument, no matter how verbose, eloquently spoken or rationalized, that is
> going to call people actually contributing working code and helping others
> use CL in their business or hobby or entertainment, destructive sociopaths.
> I know of several cases, just dealing with the FS CL tools I've contributed
> too, where people have been able to get their company using CL, or have
> started to build up a company around CL.
You seem to imply that giving it away will [in your opinion] enlarge the
market for CL, thereby allowing for new [and more lucrative] opportunities,
leveraging the open-source tool base that was responsible for expanding the
market in the first place. I hope that you are correct.
> The capital for expanding CL's capabilities is not coming thru direct
> investment in CL tool vendors, it is being funneled thru people writing
> solutions to other problems using CL and then sharing the tools used to
> solve those problems when possible. There are no fringe languages really
> capable of attracting the capital investment for pure tool vendors anymore,
> since the ROI in such cases is dwarfed by the size of the tool market in
> mainstream languages.
I agree that it is unlikely that Symbolics will be resurrected to it's
former glory - or that Franz or Xanalys will become giants - but there user
base [it seems to me] has always traditionally been big government and big
business. It is precisely in that market place that the "mainstream" tools
are making huge in-roads.
However, the necessity for cooperative action among Lispers who want to be
successful and financially stable does not automatically imply that they
have to "give" it away. I've presented an alternative model that [at first
glance] appears to yield the same benefits [and more] of the open source
version.
> I say this as an owner of a CL shop, as a programmer in a CL shop, as a
> contributor to and major author of several CL tool packages distributed as
> Free Software, and as someone who also has co-workers "paying their
> mortgages" with licenses for a vertical applications written entirely in
> CL.
Do your vertical applications rely on the open-source code-base? Or has
the source been dual-purposed [licensed one way for open-source use, another
for keeping the company afloat]?
> In the interest of heading off yet another giant thread dominated by a few
> loquascious participants, I submit this post as my final contribution.
That's too bad. You made a lot of interesting assertions, but they would
be enhanced by providing more details. If you want to avoid flame fests and
pointless arguments, perhaps simply being choosy about whom you respond to
is more appropriate than unilaterally withdrawing from the conversation.
> I think that the code that I and the other Free Software Sociopaths(tm)
> have produced, and which the community is presently using, speak louder
> than any psuedo-civilized whining that appears in this newsgroup.
"We reject kings, presidents and voting. We believe in rough consensus and
running code."
And that applies to whining too - no matter how eloquent, rationalized or
pseudo-civilized. But it also applies to economic arguments advanced in
either direction, in which case "running code" takes on a slightly different
meaning. :-)
-jon
--
------------------
Jon Allen Boone
········@delamancha.org
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <3226108718369067@naggum.net>
* Thomas Bushnell, BSG
| It's very interesting that you say this. Once there was essentially
| nothing like a copyright system in Europe, which had no shortage of
| brilliant works of art being produced. Indeed, the "true artist", who
| produces the best art, art for the sake of art, is likely to produce
| great art under any system that gives him enough money to live on, which
| the patronage/performance system did quite nicely for musicians, and the
| commission system did for playwrights.
Where do you think the people who could pay for these artists got their
money? I am not a big fan of theft and robbery and feudalism just to be
able to fund "real artists". They money has to come from _somehwere_,
the expression "to make money" to the contrary notwithstandning.
| Indeed, even today, the finest television programming I get comes in from
| PBS.
Which, to my utter dismay when I found out, is funded with tax money, the
supreme form of coercion in modern society, not much different from
"protection money" paid to criminal gangs.
| So it's not so clear what you say. It seems to me that the copyright
| motive doesn't so much encourage *brilliance*, per se.
It provides a means to get enough money to pay for the real artists.
Please note that the proceeds on successful books pays for all the books
the same poublishing company has published at a sometimes great loss. I
am at a loss for how "*brilliance*" is a function of any political
system. Some individuals do amazing stuff regardless of which political
system they live under, so obviously the brilliance of an individual is
not an argument for the political system. The question is rather at what
cost their brilliance comes, and where a brilliant person chooses to
direct his brilliance.
| So, when I say "free software", I mean libre, not gratis, that is, free
| as in "free speech", not as in "free beer".
*sigh* � This really has become a "dimwith alert". People are free, and
some lunches are free, but that does not mean that some people are
lunches any more than it means that some lunches have freedom. Same with
software. However, this abuse of the word is well known, albeit counter-
productive, as some people actually imagine that the two do not overlap,
that one _cannot_ argue against freedom with costs, but all freedom has
very significant costs. Free is not free. (See how confusing that gets
and how capitalization does _not_ work to distinguis them? :)
| I'm surprised you're apparently unfamiliar with that usage.
Will you please stop insulting me with your own stupidity? This is so
goddman annoying. You _know_ I have worked with Richard Stallman both
personally and on GNU Emacs. Damnit, countering such moronic nonsense is
_really_ taxing on my patience with some people.
What would happen if you just assumed I knew both usages? MIT has some
of the most severe licensing agreements I have ever seen, and actually
taking your _own_ stuff out of MIT is no walk in the park. People pay
huge amounts of money for this right in many cases, so MIT can keep doing
world-class research. They also get paid enormous amounts of money to do
research on demand, but still keep rights to the research. MIT is the
_one_ place in the world I would choose to point out that organizations
do make money on past work if I were allowed only one example.
| I meant only narrowly that he was wrong in saying that making bucks is
| impossible or unlikely in a free software (again, libre, not gratis), not
| that I had demonstrated that everything he said was incorrect.
How do you know this? I mean, people argued that Pol Pot was not a
serious threat to anyone, either, because "lookit all them survivors!
must be millions and millions". For some people, it has indeed become
impossible to make money they wanted to make in a line of work they
appreciated, and they have gone on to green pastures. I mean, all the
Linux distribution companies seem to struggle. I have some inside
information that will probably become public in about four weeks unless
they manage to get new investors that yet another Linux distribution
company is about to fold. Many software "developers" are simple steel
workers and just code from 9 to 5 and think not at all, but these work in
the same kind of industries where the designs have been drawn up by other
people. Such software may well be free, because the designs have already
paid for itself in the sold products. Where the software is the probuct,
things look very different.
I regard Open Source and Free Software as building infrastructure, so
that people can profit on using it rather than having to fight the lack
of it. I consider this operation akin to the development of railroads in
the United States. Whatever private successes there were, it was
eventually nationalized and is now running at a loss, failing to compete
with the road system, which has been paid for by another public money
pool, although privately owned roads are still an option in many places,
and users pay for bridges and roads all over the place with tolls. This
is not quite how we can make software work, however, so the problem is
that people who want software to be "free" fail to grasp that in order to
build infrastructure, you cannot require that all usage be free, too.
You cannot give people a road "for free" and demand that cars that use it
must be given away by the car company, that goods shipped on it must be
"free" with the notion that "traffic should be free".
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> Where do you think the people who could pay for these artists got their
> money? I am not a big fan of theft and robbery and feudalism just to be
> able to fund "real artists". They money has to come from _somehwere_,
> the expression "to make money" to the contrary notwithstandning.
Um, there are plenty of really rich people around even today.
> Will you please stop insulting me with your own stupidity? This is so
> goddman annoying. You _know_ I have worked with Richard Stallman both
> personally and on GNU Emacs. Damnit, countering such moronic nonsense is
> _really_ taxing on my patience with some people.
Then why did you play dumb?
> What would happen if you just assumed I knew both usages? MIT has some
> of the most severe licensing agreements I have ever seen, and actually
> taking your _own_ stuff out of MIT is no walk in the park.
Yes, and I never said the contrary. What I said was that that
particular code was free software originally. MIT produces huge
amounts of free software, and it also produces things under severe
licensing agreements. I was speaking of lispm code that was decidedly
in the former category (until Slimbolics M-DEL Symbolics decided they
owned it). There's an example of theft!
Thomas
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <3226130117982238@naggum.net>
* Thomas Bushnell, BSG
| Then why did you play dumb?
Thomas Bushenll, THINK! Is there another possibility that you have
overlooked because _you_ are so hung up in your abusage of the word
"free" that you cannot see anything else? As I said: Freedom has costs.
You seem to want to ignore that completely, much like almost every other
"Free" Software proponent.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> * Thomas Bushnell, BSG
> | Then why did you play dumb?
>
> Thomas Bushenll, THINK! Is there another possibility that you have
> overlooked because _you_ are so hung up in your abusage of the word
> "free" that you cannot see anything else? As I said: Freedom has costs.
> You seem to want to ignore that completely, much like almost every other
> "Free" Software proponent.
Of course it has costs. Nobody would say the contrary. Free software
is just as costly to produce as non-free software. (That is, when you
exclude the non-value-added parts of non-free commercial software like
packaging, advertising, and so forth.) The actual programmer labor is
pretty much the same. How could it be otherwise?
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <3226154595289114@naggum.net>
* Thomas Bushnell, BSG
| Free software is just as costly to produce as non-nfree software.
*sigh*� That is so not the issue. _Freedom_ is not costless.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> writes:
> * Thomas Bushnell, BSG
> | Free software is just as costly to produce as non-nfree software.
>
> *sigh*� That is so not the issue. _Freedom_ is not costless.
Nope, freedom is very dearly bought, and all the more precious.
On Tue, 26 Mar 2002, Erik Naggum wrote:
> * Thomas Bushnell, BSG
> | Free software is just as costly to produce as non-nfree software.
>
> *sigh* That is so not the issue. _Freedom_ is not costless.
If I may attempt to make the point more explicit, consider "The price of
liberty is eternal vigilance" and other such slogans.
Or the current mania for trading liberty for "security".
I remember a friend saying of the French slogan "Liberte, egalite,
fraternite", that they were willing to give up some of the first in
exchange for more of the the rest.
Free software very much trades off certain freedoms for others. The usual
justification is that "freedom to share" (even if not the originator) is a
morally trumping value (although there are varients, "open source" tends
to say that it's *practially* superior in some ways, etc.).
Cheers,
Bijan Parsia.
In article <··············@becket.becket.net>,
Thomas Bushnell, BSG <·········@becket.net> wrote:
>
>I'm not particularly interested in a lengthy flame war; I pretty much
>said what I meant to say.
Unfortunately, once it gets started, it's hard to stop. Now I'm going to
have to put this thread in my killfile, since its signal-to-noise ratio has
become unbearable.
--
Barry Margolin, ······@genuity.net
Genuity, Woburn, MA
*** DON'T SEND TECHNICAL QUESTIONS DIRECTLY TO ME, post them to newsgroups.
Please DON'T copy followups to me -- I'll assume it wasn't posted to the group.
Kent, you wrote:
> Free software may be differently motivated, but it has the same
> commercial effect as dumping. It puts legitimate investors at a
> commercial disadvantage because they have to compete with people who
> didn't pay money to get the value they are offering.
I'm not paid to do software development full time, although I do it
incidentally as part of my job. I also recognize that I could go into
business for myself and make software development my full-time job.
It turns out, however, that at this point I value the benefits [pun
intended] that come along with having someone else assume most of the
risk [not to mention the paperwork and other administrative issues]
involved in running a company. In other words, I prefer to be an
employee.
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that I wanted to switch to being
a full-time software developer. The market puts a certain valuation
on my software development skills, influenced by things like the fact
that I don't use most of the commercial tools that professional
software developers use, etc. So, to switch from my current
profession into software development would likely involve taking a
significant pay cut.
It seems to me that the rational economic behavior for me is to
continue to draw the larger salary for my "day job" and moon-light as
a software developer [provided it is allowed by the contract I have
with my employer]. I would expect that if I were to do this enough, I
could build up my market value as a software developer. Is there a
market for part-time software developers other than the open-source
community?
It seems that even most contract work is set up with the
preconceived notion that you'll work "full-time" for a limited
duration rather than "part-time" for a longer duration...
-jon
--
------------------
Jon Allen Boone
········@delamancha.org
Jon Allen Boone <········@delamancha.org> writes:
> Is there a
> market for part-time software developers other than the open-source
> community?
I think so, but I don't know how big it is. I know someone who does
database programming on a per-case basis but basically none of the
sales and marketing. They have an agent who does all the promotion
and billing and just subcontracts the actual work to whoever can do it.
But I suspect situations like this are daily made more rare by two
factors: (a) the ability of free software to drive down the breakeven
price for individual providers to near zero, requiring a great deal of
economy of scale to make any money and (b) the desire of the companies
big enough to have that economy of scale to minimize their
administrative costs by getting a few full-time employees instead of
many part-time ones.
Personally, I consider this a very interesting area. I'd love for my
company, HyperMeta, to grow up into something that had a distributed
campus of people working at home, emphasized employee quality of life
in exchange for "value provided" rather than "hours spent", etc. But
getting from here to there involves first getting enough dollars in
that I can afford to experiment. And getting to that point involves
making money at all. And making money at all involves competing with
people giving away stuff for free. And that means not making very
much money, so working longer. So don't hold your breath.
> It seems that even most contract work is set up with the
> preconceived notion that you'll work "full-time" for a limited
> duration rather than "part-time" for a longer duration...
This is because the people who are in control of the purse strings
control the world. And the people who know a lot about computer science
are walking like lemmings toward a cliff that falls off into a world
where it's not possible to use their key talent to make any money.
So they don't get empowered, and their ideas never come into play.
But at least when they come home from their day job doing whatever it is
that people pay an hourly wage for, they can enjoy themselves making
things for free that they can't afford to buy because their day job
doesn't pay enough...
Greetings, Kent and group.
On Tue, 26 Mar 2002 19:59:09 GMT,
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> wrote:
> Jon Allen Boone <········@delamancha.org> writes:
>
>> Is there a
>> market for part-time software developers other than the open-source
>> community?
>
> I think so, but I don't know how big it is. I know someone who does
> database programming on a per-case basis but basically none of the
> sales and marketing. They have an agent who does all the promotion
> and billing and just subcontracts the actual work to whoever can do it.
Minus the agent, that is just the way that I earned some pocket
money with about two days of work per week while raising my kids
the remaining five. After adjusting the prices from "hobby" level
to what I consider an appropriate fee [1] I was kind of astonished
at how much money it really made in the course of the year.
>
> But I suspect situations like this are daily made more rare by two
> factors: (a) the ability of free software to drive down the breakeven
> price for individual providers to near zero, requiring a great deal of
> economy of scale to make any money and (b) the desire of the companies
> big enough to have that economy of scale to minimize their
> administrative costs by getting a few full-time employees instead of
> many part-time ones.
There are more factors contributing to this. I seem to live in a region,
where at most few free lance programmers are available and willing to
actually tackle specific problems of software users in a way that does
not force (sometimes major) adjustments on the customer. There seem to
be more SMEs around here who are willing to pay for the kind of service
I provide than I can handle ...
I wish there would be less MS Access/VBA users out there and more
Smalltalk/Lisp/Ruby applications to improve. But I am working on it :-9
>
> Personally, I consider this a very interesting area. I'd love for my
> company, HyperMeta, to grow up into something that had a distributed
> campus of people working at home, emphasized employee quality of life
> in exchange for "value provided" rather than "hours spent", etc.
This is exactly what I would like to see in more places ... please
keep me posted about the development.
Just the other day it occurred to me as an apt way of handling
politicians compensations ;>
Seriously, this plan would have a chance to work if you manage
to find collaborative people who allow others to judge the value
of their work and submit to this "higher authority" continuously.
"Value provided" is an extremely difficult thing to measure.
How does one value cleaning up (refactoring) a given codebase?
I was doing this for some months last year. In the beginning the
software was like a can of sauerkraut, where you'd pull at one
fibre and the whole mess would come out. When we stopped this
process and started adding features it was in a state resembling
spaghetti napoli, where you're still not able to see the end of
a thread but at least can pull one item out without disturbing
the remainding system. (Oh, and sometimes you need to change your
shirt because a blob of tomato sauce has caught you off guard :)
> But
> getting from here to there involves first getting enough dollars in
> that I can afford to experiment.
Alternatively, you might need time. So you could fork out part of the
project to somebody willing to give your model a try, and if said party
fails to deliver code of appropriate quality, do the stuff yourself.
So you get the chance of surprising your customer with early delivery,
but still be on time if collaboration does not work out.
Or am I totally naive here? Please remember that, from a business point
of view, I am just growing up...
> And getting to that point involves
> making money at all. And making money at all involves competing with
> people giving away stuff for free.
Heh, like the son of the company owner who meddled with this database
for some years ...
> And that means not making very
> much money, so working longer. So don't hold your breath.
>
>> It seems that even most contract work is set up with the
>> preconceived notion that you'll work "full-time" for a limited
>> duration rather than "part-time" for a longer duration...
>
> This is because the people who are in control of the purse strings
> control the world.
Don't despair. If your work proves valuable to the gold owner,
he will readjust. Or lose you. The key point is to let him come
to this conclusion himself and not force it on him.
> And the people who know a lot about computer science
> are walking like lemmings toward a cliff that falls off into a world
> where it's not possible to use their key talent to make any money.
> So they don't get empowered, and their ideas never come into play.
> But at least when they come home from their day job doing whatever it is
> that people pay an hourly wage for, they can enjoy themselves making
> things for free that they can't afford to buy because their day job
> doesn't pay enough...
Sometimes they just tackle the challenges, "because they are there".
There are lots of commercially sold software with more or less serious
bugs, which just don't get fixed. So I don't wonder, if some smart
people (technically at least) get the feelling that "I can do better"
and start working at it.
Maybe the problem you see is analogous to the problem than craftsmen
are worrying about since the dawn of industrial revolution? The availability
of "almost free" goods devalueing (does this word exist?) their own work?
manufacture : industrial production :: X : "free" software
where X is "whatever you do"?
BTW, how would you call what you are doing in English? I am still
seeking for a satisfactory yet short description of what I am doing
in German ...
Regards,
S.
[1] I still seem to be way too cheap, since nobody bargains when
they hear my rates. OTOH, I really can't see myself charging
$120/hour for performing an artificially complexified upgrade
process, when you just have to keep hitting the OK button and
call the helpdesk (highly charged support number $1.50/min,
from the customers phone), if something goes wrong.
On Sun, 24 Mar 2002 12:10:34 GMT, Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com>
wrote:
> The way many people learned about the Lisp Machine was literally to do this:
[...]
I posted my request before seeing other articles in this thread, so I was
about to follow up with a "never mind, I've seen the replies" post. But I
really appreciate the additional information you have provided.
> The reasons modern OS/architectures are already hampered are not due to
> hardware/software per se, but due to lack of buy-in to these common
> paradigms from each and every application, contributing to a coherent
> sense of whole:
[...]
> I'm sure there are other elements. But maybe you can see by some of these
> I've enumerated that the problem is more than is within power of a single
> application writer to fix. It's about a whole community mindset and a
> willingness of that entire community to contribute to the illusion.
This is why I think that Lisp is a civilization, and the Lisp Machines are
among its most advanced cultural centers.
> this story also probably makes it clear why it may not be an accident that
> Scott McKay and others point to MCL as the closest contender to LispM-like
> culture...
I am aware that Scott knows "a couple" of things about mouse sensitive
typeout-areas :)
Paolo
--
EncyCMUCLopedia * Extensive collection of CMU Common Lisp documentation
http://www.paoloamoroso.it/ency/README
[http://cvs2.cons.org:8000/cmucl/doc/EncyCMUCLopedia/]
From: Friedrich Dominicus
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <87eli92l4h.fsf@fbigm.here>
Paolo Amoroso <·······@mclink.it> writes:
> On Fri, 22 Mar 2002 13:38:53 GMT, "Scott McKay" <···@attbi.com> wrote:
>
> > Genera's programming environment is still incomparable.
> [...]
> > fine thing to do. The Lisp environments sold by other
> > vendors are a total joke, in my humble opinion; only MCL
> > even makes a credible try, and its scope is a fraction of
>
> How much of Genera's functionality can be implemented on contemporary, non
> Lisp based machines and operating systems? I'd like to know whether the
> lack of such functionality in current Lisp environments is "merely" due to
> limited resources and commercial/marketing decisions, or to intrinsic
> technical limitations of contemporary hardware/software.
Well technically I can't see why it should not work anywhere
else. It may need a shift towards another way of thinking. E.g the
Unix folks have decided that everthing will be treated as flat
character streams the Lisp people have decided that structured objects
are the way to go. All the tools are adopted to suit this wish...
Regards
Friedrich
Friedrich Dominicus <·····@q-software-solutions.com> writes:
> Well technically I can't see why it should not work anywhere
> else. It may need a shift towards another way of thinking. E.g the
> Unix folks have decided that everthing will be treated as flat
> character streams the Lisp people have decided that structured objects
> are the way to go. All the tools are adopted to suit this wish...
A more serious problem is that in Unix flat character streams are
interpreted *everywhere* by code and logic duplicated a jillion times
over.
Consider the hair and pain involved in making Unicode work on
GNU/Linux systems with UTF-8. This is the easiest way to go, and even
so it's lots of work converting a jillion applications to work right.
And this is because "character stream" is *not* a well defined
concept; Unix historically only has ASCII character streams, and from
this comes a giant problem.
Unix is *filled* with such issues, where instead of an abstract type a
specific encoding is used--not just character streams, but that's
what's on top of my mind at present.
This problem is solvable in many different languages (not just Lisp
variants); Smalltalk is also able to do a perfectly good job. What it
takes is understanding the great importance of *abstracting* away
issues of representation.
And, of course, an attitude of *not* reimplementing everything a
jillion times just because things are in separate processes. Care to
guess how many times different argument parser routines there are in
an average GNU/Linux system? I pick that one because argument parsing
is actually, a *total waste*, forced by the use of a "shell"--another
wasted concept unnecessary in a Real System (like the various lispms
had, and like Sky [should it ever happen] will have).
Thomas
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <3226037188416051@naggum.net>
* Thomas Bushnell, BSG
| Consider the hair and pain involved in making Unicode work on GNU/Linux
| systems with UTF-8. This is the easiest way to go, and even so it's lots
| of work converting a jillion applications to work right. And this is
| because "character stream" is *not* a well defined concept; Unix
| historically only has ASCII character streams, and from this comes a
| giant problem.
No, this is an important mistake. Unix has a well-defined concept of an
"octet stream". This is _never_ what you really want. On top of this
"octet stream" Unix has, via C's lack of a real character type, given its
users the notion that a _character_ is just the same as a small integer
that happens to fit in an octet. All of this is unfortunately wrong.
A character and its encoding are different concepts. An encoding and its
(external) representation are different concepts. An external
representation and the numeric values of whatever unit it is made up of
are different concepts. By conflating all four concepts into one, Unix
has held text processing and computing in general back several decades.
This is fairly ironic, since Unix started out as a text processing
vehicle.
One result of this character = small number = octet confusion is that
"variable length" encodings are seriously frightening to Unixoid coders
(partly because of the observation that you make that all the code that
deals with octet-stream -> anything-else interpretation and has caused
such a problem with stable and well-defined standards such as ISO 2022
that the IETF was utterly unable to use any existing standards for the
representation of multi--character-set "documents" and "streams", and so
had to invent both MIME (extremely crude structured objects in mail) and
a charset property at an extremely high level, such that mixing charsets
became extremely verbose and difficult. This is also why some people
think Unicode sucks because it may force programmers to deal with
characters differently than "just assume 16 bits" instead of the old
"just assume 8 bits".
| Care to guess how many times different argument parser routines there are
| in an average GNU/Linux system? I pick that one because argument parsing
| is actually, a *total waste*, forced by the use of a "shell"--another
| wasted concept unnecessary in a Real System (like the various lispms had,
| and like Sky [should it ever happen] will have).
I think you overreact now. The biggest problem here is that _everything_
in Unix is an octet stream, even strings, and program arguments are just
strings. (The fact that you need to parse the "string" from beginning to
end to find the in-band terminator (which cannot even be escpaed) makes
it a stream, and the "pointer" you have into a stream to read the current
position is just like the position in a stream.)
Unix is in fact so streams-based that it is nearly _impossible_ to work
with structured objects. Everywhere an object wants to go, it has to be
marshalled into and out of an octet-stream--based external format, both
in arguments and in pipelines. It is as you had to call a function foo
like (eval (format nil "(····@{ ~A~})" <arguments>)). Hey, I just
reinvented Tcl.
Of course, every object must have an external representation of _some_
sort to communicate it with external programs, but marshalling to and
from octet stream should preserve the object-ness. Lisp and things like
ASN.1 enable the preservation of objectness in marshalling, and many
other attempts have been made. But treating everything like a string
without futher adornment or syntax (which Unix shells and, ironically,
SGML and XML do) is just plain wrong.
On the other hand, there _are_ times when you want to just copy a file or
ship across a network bit by bit, in which case the octet stream might
seem the only alternative. This is not really a situation that the user
or even (application) programmer needs to be exposed to.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Erik Naggum <····@naggum.net> wrote in message news:<················@naggum.net>...
(snip)
> I think you overreact now. The biggest problem here is that _everything_
> in Unix is an octet stream, even strings, and program arguments are just
> strings. (The fact that you need to parse the "string" from beginning to
> end to find the in-band terminator (which cannot even be escpaed) makes
> it a stream, and the "pointer" you have into a stream to read the current
> position is just like the position in a stream.)
>
> Unix is in fact so streams-based that it is nearly _impossible_ to work
> with structured objects. Everywhere an object wants to go, it has to be
> marshalled into and out of an octet-stream--based external format, both
> in arguments and in pipelines. It is as you had to call a function foo
> like (eval (format nil "(····@{ ~A~})" <arguments>)). Hey, I just
> reinvented Tcl.
>
> Of course, every object must have an external representation of _some_
> sort to communicate it with external programs, but marshalling to and
> from octet stream should preserve the object-ness. Lisp and things like
> ASN.1 enable the preservation of objectness in marshalling, and many
> other attempts have been made. But treating everything like a string
> without futher adornment or syntax (which Unix shells and, ironically,
> SGML and XML do) is just plain wrong.
>
> On the other hand, there _are_ times when you want to just copy a file or
> ship across a network bit by bit, in which case the octet stream might
> seem the only alternative. This is not really a situation that the user
> or even (application) programmer needs to be exposed to.
>
> ///
Would like to have the properties usually associated with operating
system objects, such as persistency and security, given to Lisp
objects? Or am I misunderstanding you?
Security could be handled similarly to what Jonathan Rees explained in
"A Security Kernel Based on the Lambda-Calculus".
http://mumble.net/jar/pubs/secureos/
Persistency could be dealt with using transactions. (There may be
other approaches. I haven't read very much about this.)
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: Questions about Symbolics lisp machines
Date:
Message-ID: <3226193291697650@naggum.net>
* Martin Pomije
| Would like to have the properties usually associated with operating
| system objects, such as persistency and security, given to Lisp
| objects? Or am I misunderstanding you?
If the implied subject of the first sentence is "you", then yes.
///
--
In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
Friedrich Dominicus <·····@q-software-solutions.com> writes:
> Paolo Amoroso <·······@mclink.it> writes:
>
> > On Fri, 22 Mar 2002 13:38:53 GMT, "Scott McKay" <···@attbi.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Genera's programming environment is still incomparable.
> > [...]
> > > fine thing to do. The Lisp environments sold by other
> > > vendors are a total joke, in my humble opinion; only MCL
> > > even makes a credible try, and its scope is a fraction of
> >
> > How much of Genera's functionality can be implemented on contemporary, non
> > Lisp based machines and operating systems? I'd like to know whether the
> > lack of such functionality in current Lisp environments is "merely" due to
> > limited resources and commercial/marketing decisions, or to intrinsic
> > technical limitations of contemporary hardware/software.
> Well technically I can't see why it should not work anywhere
> else. It may need a shift towards another way of thinking. E.g the
> Unix folks have decided that everthing will be treated as flat
> character streams the Lisp people have decided that structured objects
> are the way to go. All the tools are adopted to suit this wish...
Plus, Dick Gabriel's "worse is better" phenomenon is in play.
Nelson Rodriguez <···········@intershop.de> wrote in message news:<············@linux1.netconx.de>...
> Hello,
>
> I'm thinking on getting a Symbolics lisp machine for me and my friend to
> play with it at home. I have searched the newsgropus and the internet but
> I didn't find many precise information on these machines. Therefore I
> want to ask the experts here.
>
> We think about the XL1200, a 3620 and the 3630 machines but I will like
> to gather all the answers and generate a little FAQ on the topic. You are
> encourage to comment also on all the other Symbolics machines that you
> know about.
36xx's will be cheaper, but a lot slower. And they aren't the snappiest
machines around nowadays anyway. But the environment is impressive, and
Dynamic Windows is amazingly cool.
> The questions are:
> - How loud and hot are they really? We only have a little "computer
> study" and don't want to make it a sauna or go deaf :-)
The XL1200's aren't particularly quiet. They aren't heaters, though.
They do prefer ambient temps to be on the cool side, though (say mid-60's).
> - Would they run on 220V/50Hz electricity or do they need a transformer?
Don't know. Mine runs off a UPS plugged into a wall socket, but that's
US power specs. Presumably a machine that's been floating around in
Europe would handle the euro-spec power ok.
> - What about ordinary IDE or SCSI HDs, CD-ROM and tapes? Would these work
> on the bare machines or do they need extra hardware to work?
SCSI works, but the drives need to be able to handle odd-sized blocks.
> - How good are the machines networked? Do they understand TCP/IP, FTP,
> NFS, ...?
yes.
> - How much do they weigh? How tall, wide, depth are they?
An XL1200 will fit nicely to the side of a desk. It'll be a few
inches shorter, and a few inches less deep. But it's sizeable.
> - How much memory, HDs, ... support each machine?
Depends on what you want to do. They do have really good VM.
> - Which other cards would you recommend to install on the machines (like
> FrameThrower, ...)? What will these cards do?
Framethrowers are video capture/output devices.
> - Would the machines only work with an original Symbolics console,
> keyboard, mouse? (I think the original consoles are pretty sensitive and
> get broken fast?).
Yes. If the consoles are well broken-in they should be ok, though. Dave
Schmidt fixed mine the last time it went out.
> - Another questions?
>
> I think another FAQ can/should be about the first installation
> respectively maintenance of Genera on the machines. I found a page with a
> little report on a MacIvory installation and I think for us first users
> suche advices/hints are always very welcome.
If you've never maintained one of these machine before, it can
be overwhelming -- they just don't do anything remotely like any
other machine on the planet. I used one in college, but never
had to do the admin-type stuff, so when I got mine awhile back, I
had an "interesting" few weeks. The documentation is very good
and complete, except when it isn't. The slug mailing list is a
good source for help.
Hi, Nelson!
Nelson Rodriguez schrieb:
>
> [...]
>
> We think about the XL1200, a 3620 and the 3630 machines but I will like
> to gather all the answers and generate a little FAQ on the topic. You are
> encourage to comment also on all the other Symbolics machines that you
> know about.
I used a 3640 some years ago and a MacIvory.
> The questions are:
> - How loud and hot are they really? We only have a little "computer
> study" and don't want to make it a sauna or go deaf :-)
That's a problem with the 3600 series. They are hot.
You won't like them in the same room where you're sitting (in summer).
They are a bit loud, but that's not too bad.
The MacIvory is much better.
> - Would they run on 220V/50Hz electricity or do they need a transformer?
The 3640 runs on 220V/50Hz consuming ~1 kW (and more during startup).
Don't overload your power line.
The MacIvory is like your PC.
> - What about ordinary IDE or SCSI HDs, CD-ROM and tapes? Would these work
> on the bare machines or do they need extra hardware to work?
36xx - special hardware
MacIvory - Mac hardware (SCSI, CD-ROM etc.)
> - How good are the machines networked? Do they understand TCP/IP, FTP,
> NFS, ...?
Good networking support.
> - How much do they weigh? How tall, wide, depth are they?
3640: Twice the width and the depth of a PC big tower.
MacIvory: desktop or tower Macintosh.
> [...]
>
> Thanks,
>
> Nelson
Regards,
--- Ralf
I suggest that you check this site:
http://www.abstractscience.freeserve.co.uk/symbolics/
Paolo
--
EncyCMUCLopedia * Extensive collection of CMU Common Lisp documentation
http://www.paoloamoroso.it/ency/README
[http://cvs2.cons.org:8000/cmucl/doc/EncyCMUCLopedia/]
Paolo Amoroso <·······@mclink.it> writes:
> I suggest that you check this site:
>
> http://www.abstractscience.freeserve.co.uk/symbolics/
Does somebody know of a in detail description of a processor designed
to run Lisp software? Especially the instruction set would be
interesting.
Regards,
Julian
--
Meine Hompage: http://julian.re6.de
Um meinen oeffentlichen Schluessel zu erhalten:
To get my public key:
http://math-www.uni-paderborn.de/pgp/
From: "Julian Stecklina" <··········@web.de>
> Does somebody know of a in detail description of a processor designed
> to run Lisp software? Especially the instruction set would be
> interesting.
http://www.delphion.com/details?pn=US04887235__
http://fare.tunes.org/tmp/emergent/memo444.htm
http://www.unlambda.com/lispm/memo528.html
ftp://publications.ai.mit.edu/ai-publications/pdf/AIM-514.pdf
http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/~mhwu/scheme86/sbt.ps
http://fare.tunes.org/tmp/emergent/kmachine.htm
~jrm
Reading all this information about the LispMs is quite interesting and
inspiring, and I'm curious to actually see/try it for myself. I don't
know of any Symbolics or LMI machines in the area, unfortunately. But
I do know my department is supposed to keep, in some near-mythological
storage area, an old Xerox lisp machine. My question is: Are they as
interesting, and worthwile to spend a few days or weeks to get
running?
--
Frode Vatvedt Fjeld