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 Verfasst am: 25.09.2006, 08:10 Uhr
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Welcome to the world of shareholder value!
That's how it works:
1) Build the name of a non existing animal by combining 2 common words;
2) Add a mediocre drawing showing the animal surrounding a globe;
3) Take a bunch of old crap abandon-ware code;
4) Motivate talented people around the world to contribute to a free and open project;
5) Base your marketing on the David vs. Goliath myth and make the animal famous;
6) Found a corporate entity and let it own "just the trademarks and copyrights";
7) Start talking about "intellectual property", "intangible goods" and other interesting stuff;
8-10) "Protect" your corporate values by bothering everybody who adapts your product to his needs (yes, you have promised this right to everybody in the beginning, but who cares - people forget fast).
Congrats - after reaching 20% market share you have built a multi-billion $ business on the shoulders of talented and - mostly - unpaid people, and on the shoulders of all those lemmings around the world who could not resist your "little foxy". Now start charging for "support", "corporate branded versions", "special extensions" and "artistic themes". If you feel the moment is right, go and have dinner with Bill Gates and ask him for his famous "offer you could not deny".
Greetings,
Chris |
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"An operating system must operate."
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Verfasst am: 25.09.2006, 16:06 Uhr
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slam,
This is a really minor point and does not in any way detract from the rest of what you stated (nor do I want to) but there is an animal called firefox. It's a little red panda and looks a lot like the raccoons that eat the apples out of my apple trees.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Panda |
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 25.09.2006, 17:42 Uhr
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| The answer - rename "firefox" "redpanda" or "bearcat" or "wah"? |
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Kernel 2.6.21-slh-up-7
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Verfasst am: 25.09.2006, 18:45 Uhr
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| LOL@those names...ought to be some sort of vote for a new name for the FF browser in debian. |
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 25.09.2006, 18:47 Uhr
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| Besides the fox in the FF logo resembles a red panda |
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 25.09.2006, 18:56 Uhr
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Wohnort: w3
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tinker hat folgendes geschrieben::
slam,
This is a really minor point and does not in any way detract from the rest of what you stated (nor do I want to) but there is an animal called firefox. It's a little red panda and looks a lot like the raccoons that eat the apples out of my apple trees.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Panda
Thanks for the info - I love to learn something new.
Actually RedPanda would make a great corporate brand name again ....
Greetings,
Chris |
_________________
"An operating system must operate."
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 25.09.2006, 20:53 Uhr
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h2 hat folgendes geschrieben::
I'm seeing the same thing by the way happen on the linux kernel with Thorvald's position against the FSF and the GPL 3, same exact logic, same arguments, and the same cause.
Not too sure what you mean here h2, when Linus and 11 other kernel developers voice opinions against GPL3 then I think there must be some reason. I understand ( I think) what the GPLv3 is trying to do but why the resistance from the key people developing the core element of all versions of Linux |
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 25.09.2006, 21:27 Uhr
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If you read especially linuses comments in groklaw on this topic you'll find that their position is not nearly as rational and reasonable as mundo makes it sound in the current lwn.net thread.
You're absolutely right there's a reason, but I don't think that the kernel developer's themselves actually understand what that reason is. Self understanding is not a quality I expect to see in very high level engineers, to put it mildly, they are immersed in engineering problems all day and begin to lose perspective, this is a danger of doing that kind of work. And if this is suggested they get very defensive without actually even reflecting on the reality of their positions in terms of their daily work and existence.
The core of their arguments is that it will scare away their corporate patrons, which to me simply reveals the presence of the very same slippery slope. Not to mention how shrill and hysterical linus sounds when he discusses this. When you compare the level of coherence and rationality between Stallman/Moglen and linus it's not a flattering picture in my opinion, and I've found that the anti gpl 3 arguments almost all seem to disintigrate upon closer examination. Linus in fact became so hysterical and abusive in the groklaw thread that the moderator had to edit his comments. If he was trying to impress anyone with his cool reasoning skills he failed, to put it mildly. Bottom line is that the core kernel developers are currently far too close to major corporations, and have formed what is essentially an circle made up of only high level engineers, not a group well known for its visionary abilities.
Again, reading stallman/moglen vs the core kernel developers is like night and day, and not in the kernel developers favor. It's the same situation as firefox from what I can see, and will probably have to be dealt with in some major way in the future.
What is interesting is how mundo takes the apparently calm, rational approach here:
http://lwn.net/Articles/200422/
but when you compare that to the leader of the project here:
http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode ... 04#c466084
It's hard to link to the actual page, but if you expand that one using the 'nested' option you can read the whole nasty exchange, and believe me, the public tone linus and the kernel guys are now deciding to take has nothing to do with the tone linus really has, and it's not a pleasant thing to see. I've read and heard tons of interviews with moglen and stallman, and as far as I'm concerned, they are showing just who it was who had the vision to create the gpl, and why it was that linus grabbed onto the vision created by them. Linus does not appear to have the ability to generate any particularly adult vision of his own from what I can tell.
You can see the radical difference. Linus basically hates the whole idea behind free software, thinks that the only opinions that matter are those of the core 11 kernel developers, most of who are I assume employed by some corporation, and none of who seem able to grasp the simple concept that you tend to absorb the values of the people around you, and when those people are corporate types, and that's who pays your bills year in and year out, that's the values you will start having. You can pretend to yourself that this won't happen, but that's fairly naive, that suggests that one can float unaffected above your daily work without being influenced at all by it, sort of like a buddha or something.
This concept appears to be incomprehensible to any of the core kernel developers, especially Linus himself, who from what I read appears to be starting to have some very significant ego problems, and a disconnect from the reality of the growing world of free software. Despite the fact that an entire spanish state, for example, just decided to move to Free as in Freedom software, Linus appears to think and believe that only the corporate takeup of linux matters and is real. Very narrow view, almost blind, which is what I expect from him now.
It's an interesting situation, all I can say is I have now lost a tremendous amount of respect for Linus, but he really is just showing that he just an engineer, a good one, with no vision at all. The core mistake he's making however is not realizing that he got where he is by using Stallman's vision. But now he wants to not do that, but his only vision, in his own words, is 'to have fun', to deal with a tiny group of 11 guys daily, and nothing outside of that.
I had a friend who is a very high level microsoft engineer, and I've seen this process before, I can basically plugin the basic attitude behind Linuses current words, and just by replacing the freesoftware/gpl 3 attacks with unix/linux, I can recall almost identically narrow conversations with my microsoft engineer friend. Literally, almost the same exact mental process. And that's how it happens, year in and year out, you're around a certain type of person, a certain group, a certain value system, so of course it seeps into you more and more, especially as you get into your 30's and your ability and energy to resist it decreases [a sad fact of life...]. This is why I freelance, I've seen the process too often to pretend to myself I can resist it.
I even recognized the increasing shrillness and near hysterical quality of the tone of voice linus is taking, same exact thing I saw with my now ex friend. And the fundamental circling of wagons, and the assuming that only the core group of engineer developers could possibly grasp the larger picture, item for item, it's the same process.
Not to mention how absurdly naive Linus is to think that the core group of developers, the ones he's essentially allowed in over the years, would have anything but the same worldview that he himself has, dugh... obviously, the leader of the project sets the overall tone, and attracts people he can relate to. But this simple principle too is apparently incomprensible to these guys, who actually think doing a poll of a group of people who by definition already more or less agree with you has any meaning at all.
both of those threads are very long, far too long, and the arguments against the position the kernel guys are taking, which in my opinion tend to get buried because they rely on basic common sense and some understanding of human psychology, which are most telling and most revealing tend to get ignored or scornfully rejected, without of course any real discussion of those points. Which to me shows even more clearly that the kernel guys are just engineers, with the limits engineers have. Sad but I think more and more obviously true.
We'll see how it turns out, to me as long as the kernel guys stick to engineering we'll be fine, but when they start trying to create any vision, watch out, linus makes his vision, or total lack thereof, painfully and explicitly clear in the groklaw thread.
And I strongly suspect that the entire DRM thing, which if you read the lwn.net thread you should gain a very clear understanding of, is in fact just what Stallman/Moglen are saying: it has to be stopped now in order to keep software open and free. Imagine a motherboard that will only run signed version of windows for example.
Linus, because of his fundamentally irrational position I'm fairly convinced, even starts saying patently absurd things in defense of himself, like: you can make your own hardware. That's the stupidest response I've yet seen, but it's what he came to to try to defend his position. I don't know about you, but I can't make my own hardware, I don't have a chip fab plant and a team of design engineers at my disposal. Maybe Linus does, I don't know. But you'll see this type of mental slip up over and over if you read their positions carefully, and it's my opinion that these errors reveal that fundamental emptiness of the kernel developer's position, as well as the irrationality of Linuses heated opposition to the gpl 3 and its process.
I think stallman was right when he created the gpl 2, and I think when the gpl 3 is finalized, that will also be fairly close to right, if by right you mean defending the rights of the users long term by envisioning the events that would remove them, then placing barriers against those events. It's my opinion that Linus has now clearly shown that he is completely incapable of envisioning anything at all in this sense, so to listen to him attack Stallman and freesoftware as if he were is getting sort of sad.
Stallman may be a nut case, but I think he's a nutcase in the sense that most visionary geniuses are nut cases. You don't have to be friends with them, but you can appreciate the results of their foresight and genius. Linus clearly does not have this genius from what I can see. Which was fine when he didn't pretend he did, but now it may not be so fine any more. We'll see.
Another huge, but predictable, mental error the kernel guys are making is in believing that taking a 'pragmatic' approach, in other words, an approach that does not scare off major corporate linux kernel supporters, is somehow value neutral. As if corporations are apolitical. This is phenomenally naive, but it's exactly what the kernel guys claim. They think that what they consider normal, pragmatic is completely apolitical, which is ridiculous, but that's what they are trying to convince themselves of. This fact is also pointed out quite clearly by some posters in the lwn.net thread, but the point simply floats over mundoes head, like most of the other key points do.
Keep in mind here though that drm in this context is not about media protection, it's about locking down hardware so only your code can run on it. |
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 25.09.2006, 22:45 Uhr
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h2, thanks for the insightful post!
I heard that some of the linux kernel developers were on the payroll of large corporates, and sure enough:
http://www.linuxtoday.com/developer/2006080303126NWCYKN
What will the big corporates gain from this? It surely isn't charity, but an investment for the future of the firm? Google will be trying to influence the kernel developers towards business goals, right? |
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Verfasst am: 25.09.2006, 23:07 Uhr
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In my opinion the process is far far more subtle than that.
Google is a corporation. By law it must make money for its shareholders. That's not optional. So it will always be pressed to make decisions that will result in some kind of expansion and growth. Those decisions may or may not be in accord with the spirit of open source and free software.
Google itself is a very insular place, very much like microsoft used to by back in the day. I just read a book on them, and they will suffer the same problems other enclosed environments face, corporate culture begins to blind people in the company to outside realities when day to day all you see is the culture you work in.
And of course, with high level computer programming, this is even more extreme a case, since you tend to do it 12 hours a day, and to think about it the rest of the time, and to dream about it when you sleep. As most any programmer can tell you. So you lose even more of your ability to step outside your narrow world and try to see any larger picture in even a remotely objective sense.
This is why I never listen to the political, social, economic etc opinions of most corporate types, by the way, I don't care how they justify the end result of the process, as long as they remain blind to the facts of the process there's not much for them to really say to an outsider. With the exception of other corporate types, who generally will understand them fine, since they share the same core values.
While the OSDL is one step removed, it's directly funded by the major IT companies, so the values are simply filtered and made more generic, not company specific.
This results in one's worldview slowly but surely being distorted away from larger realities and towards the narrower reality of the place you spend most of your waking hours, surrounded by other people who spend their time in the same exact way.
it's almost impossible to avoid this trap from what I've seen. So no explicit intention or scheme or plan is required, it just sort of happens.
this is why it's so dangerous to allow only those types of voices to set policies that affect people outside of that environment. And the problem is, this process is so subtle, and creeps up on you piece by piece, so you don't even know it's happened to you. And then you get outraged when someone suggests that you may no longer be as objective and clear sighted as we'd all like to believe we are....
Re the direct cause of Google hiring this guy, it's partly status, partly because as he says, google does heavy work on its own version of the kernel, so having a top kernel guy is clearly a wise move in terms of locking down a valuable resource, partly them recognizing that they owe open source a massive debt which can essentially never be adequately be repaid, since google generated basically all their billions using linux and other open source products like python. Even the first google logos were made on the gimp, way back in the day. So they do have a sense of this obligation, but as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and I have absolutely no doubt that google, like most other big IT companies, will prove the truth of that saying to everyone's complete satisfaction. |
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 25.09.2006, 23:45 Uhr
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By the way, don't get me wrong, I don't think that the main kernel guys are bad engineers, I assume that they are excellent kernel engineers. I just don't see much sign of any other areas where that excellence shows itself, especially not in Linus nowadays. He just strikes me as a kid throwing a tantrum when someone threatens to mess with his toys. NO NO, I won't do it I won't do it and you can't make me so there. That's really the depth of his argument from what I've read.
Meanwhile Stallman and Moglen strike me as very mature, very well considered, with constantly expanding horizons, due to travelling around the globe constantly talking up free software, meeting with diverse groups of freesoftware advocates, in different countries, cultures, etc. I'm especially consistently impressed with just how reasonable they try to be, as well as how fundamentally rational and consistent their positions strive to be. Of course, that's the whole point behind the free in free software, it's not a compromise, it's not a sellout. So when you try to push compromise solutions they just won't be as rational or as consistent, and will almost by definition create underlying problems and inconstencies in positions, since the positions aren't actually coherent, at least not from what I can gather.
Linus, for example, accuses them of being closed in terms of the gpl 3, which is ridiculous when you consider that linus and his core developers also have absolute veto power over the kernel code itself. What Linus really means is that they didn't do exactly what he wanted when he demanded that some parts be removed. That makes the process 'closed'. Another very childish action by Linus, who seems dead set on making himself as unlikeable as humanly possible in as short a time as possible.
But that's simply another example of just how blind Linus and those guys really are becoming. One poster in the lwn.net threads, for example, points to the constant revision process for the gpl 3 as evidence that it is flawed. As if reacting to public input and changing the document to better deal with the objections shows anything but an open process. But that's the degrees that the people opposed to this have to go intellectually, and it shows the relative emptiness of their core beliefs in my opinion.
decent opinion piece here today:
http://www.libervis.com/gplv3_is_to_pre ... ot_kill_it
plus of course read up on what stallman and moglen actually are saying, many good interviews/transcripts out there
list of recent transcripts on gpl 3 here:
http://fsfeurope.org/projects/gplv3/#transcripts
If you read this stuff anything like I do, you'll start noticing how level, balanced, clear, coherent, etc, these arguments are. And how hard they are working to make the process open, and as responsive to the needs of the actual free software users around the world. Obviously they can't bend as far as the kernel guys want, since that's bending too far from the principles of free software, which is something that Linus and company really should understand better than they appear to.
I would say that if corporations find the gpl 3 this disturbing, then it is very likely that the FSF is on exactly the right track. If you recall, the GPL 2 was called a cancer, communistic, and various other labels, until the corporate world started to see the benefits of not having to create their own operating systems and applications from scratch.
Not to mention that the anti gpl 3 stuff sounds exactly the same as the anti gpl 2 stuff I used to read, not wanting to change, fear, uncertainty, etc. When it's really not that radical at all, it just tightens loopholes.
<sorry, this drifted too far off topic, though it is related to the firefox issue in my opinion in terms of root causes, but now I'll shut up> |
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 26.09.2006, 02:07 Uhr
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| h2, thanks for the insights and the links. Will take some time to read through though. |
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 26.09.2006, 08:35 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 02. Nov 2005
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hmm well ive read enough of all that.......... conclusions? maybe we will all be on kanotix bsd in a few years  haha |
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 26.09.2006, 09:25 Uhr
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h2 I had already read most of the links you posted but don't draw the same conclusions. Linus may well be showing himself in a bad light but being a great developer does not mean he is also naturally eloquent in expressing his views, hence the frustration showing. Stallman et al are fighting on political grounds, Linus purely technical. I am as cynical as most but just to say all the kernel developers are in the pocket of corporations is really far too simplistic, they need paying to live or maybe you think they should fund kernel development from their own pocket.
There are major practical issues changing the kernel to gplv3. It would appear to me that the contentious issues around DRM are more political than technical. It would also seem more than 11 kernel developers are against gplv3 www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/78631 |
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 26.09.2006, 09:49 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 02. Mai 2004
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Fascinating topic. At least it answered the question of why Debian uses a blue globe instead of the Firefox logo. (Which is not a bad thing, since I've never seen an icon of the Firefox logo that didn't look ragged.)
This situation is sort of similar to the distributors of Red Hat derivatives, who are free to use the official source rpms to create their own distros, but have to strip out all Red Hat branding.
But we're not talking about an entire distro here, just a web browser -- even if it's "the" web browser on Linux. It is odd to hear someone like Mr. Connor be so hard-assed as to demand that Debian, one of the major Linux distros, comply with its terms, or 1) make a version completely devoid of its trademarks (including changing its name); or 2) banishing it to non-free (meaning it won't be in the base distro), instead of coming up with some amicable solution. His company's demands are 1) Debian must use the real Firefox logo (which conflicts with the DFSG); and 2) Debian must submit all modifications made to Firefox to Mozilla Corp. for approval before inclusion in Debian.
You'd think Mozilla Corp. would be more interested in having its software included in a major Linux distro than in being "right."
Here's what they say in their trademark policy:
"Those taking full advantage of the open-source nature of Mozilla's products and making significant functional changes may not redistribute the fruits of their labor under any Mozilla trademark. For example, it would be inappropriate for them to say "based on Mozilla Firefox". Instead, in the interest of complete accuracy, they should describe their executables as "based on Mozilla technology", or "incorporating Mozilla source code." They should also change the name of the executable so as to reduce the chance that a user of the modified software will be misled into believing it to be a native Mozilla product."
It would seem that the "significant functional changes" part is what's enabling our friend, Mr. Connor, to demand that the Debian maintainers run their patches by his company in exchange for the use of the Firefox name (and logo! Don't forget to include the logo!).
Their trademark policy also states, "By non-disparaging, we mean that, outside the bounds of fair use, you can't use our trademarks as vehicles for defaming us or sullying our reputation." So please, be careful when you say, "MozillaSux ®". |
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 26.09.2006, 12:19 Uhr
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 26.09.2006, 13:14 Uhr
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So what do people think debian will end up doing? ...
1) reject mozilla's demands and ship debian without firefox
2) reject mozilla's demands and ship debian with firefox but call it a different name, or
3) accept mozilla's debmands, and break their philosophy
I hope it's not number 3, as I like debian because it's fiercely non-corporate.
But if it's number 1 or 2, then will that mean debian will alienate itself from the other linux distro's? ... I'm assuming here that Red Hat and Suse would still ship with firefox. Although I'm guessing that the likes of Ubuntu etc would still ship their releases with firefox? And what of Kanotix? |
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 26.09.2006, 13:17 Uhr
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| i think Fedora does the same sort of thing with FF...they turned off the update function in same fashion as Debian. Not sure if Fedora/Redhat will get same treatment from Mozilla Inc. as Debian is getting |
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 26.09.2006, 15:40 Uhr
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DeepDayze hat folgendes geschrieben::
i think Fedora does the same sort of thing with FF...they turned off the update function in same fashion as Debian. Not sure if Fedora/Redhat will get same treatment from Mozilla Inc. as Debian is getting
It states in the linked corespondence that red hat and Novell already comply with Mozilla's policies ie submit any changes through Mozilla.
Debian cannot ship Firefox as it is as it does not comply with DFSG they have said they will comply with Mozilla's guidelines which can mean only one thing if they want to continue shipping Firefox and that is rename it. This will impact on Debian derivitives, maybe Ubuntu will do something different which will also then affect Meppis. It seems a poor business decision by Mozilla as I am sure the Google search bar will be removed which is a source of income via click thoughs not to mention the bad will it will cause. |
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 26.09.2006, 16:18 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 02. Nov 2005
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| Surely the google search bar would remain- as it is a useful feature- but the data it adds to the search quiery could easily be removed- then no more money for mozilla.... |
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 26.09.2006, 21:46 Uhr
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Zitat:
I am as cynical as most but just to say all the kernel developers are in the pocket of corporations is really far too simplistic, they need paying to live or maybe you think they should fund kernel development from their own pocket.
titan, nowhere did I say that the kernel developers 'were in the pockets of corporations'. In fact, I went very far to make explicitly clear that the process of internalizing values is much more subtle than that. It's you in this case that is trying to simplify a complex and subtle process, and to put words into my mouth. I tried, but I guess failed in your case, to make explicitly clear how that process works.
And I didn't say that they should fund this out of their own pocket. Why people insist on trying to simplify points and reduce them to black and white opposites is absolutely beyond me. I don't say this to be rude, but you really are seriously mistating what I said, and not in a subtle way. I suggest you reread much more carefully what Linus said in the Groklaw threads, and notice how at every step he gets a bit more hysterical, until he finally begins to reveal what he really thinks. Which is useful for anyone paying attention, that's an old method, get the person you want to learn something from either drunk or mad and they'll soon show their true colors. This formula has been known for thousands of years, and it's actually kind of sad to see that Linus was naive enough to fall into that trap, but he was. But I'm not saying anyone laid a trap out for him, just that he fell into a trap he created himself. If you're misreading me this badly, are you absolutely certain that you are also not misreading the other materials you have read?
To make it explicitly clear: the danger in working with and around people who all share essentially the same values is that you will begin to get absorbed into those values, and to lose your ability to resist the values you did not start out having, but which the organization around you does have. This is virtually impossible to avoid. There is no conspiracy in this process, it's just normal human behavior, and always has been. The more intense the work you do, day in and day out, the less likely that you will be able to resist this process. And few things are more intense than kernel development.
One thing I've found over and over again is that once this happens, the people who have fallen into this trap will refuse to see that it's happened, will deny that it's happened, and will get increasingly upset when it's pointed out to them that it probably has happened.
By doing this they are essentially saying that they are cabable of rising above their daily lives and activities, like gods or saints, and to not be influenced by them at all. That's a totally ridiculous thing to believe or expect anyone to do, but that's essentially what they are pretending they can do in this case. This is beyond naive, but it's also par for the course among types like this, as I noted, I've seen this process first hand, it wasn't pleasant then, and it's not pleasant now.
The fact that the kernel developers are unable to recognize this process is the real problem, as I said above. To translate this into the simplest terms: they cannot be as objective as they would like to think that they are, and the arguments they are putting forward just happen to coincide with the essential positions of the corporations with whom they work and that pays most of their salaries. This is not an accident. But it's also not any type of conspiracy, it's no different than people on a sports team evolving a team mentality the longer they play together. You internalize things, you avoid issues that will raise fundamental disagreements in order to get your daiily work done as smoothly as possible. So if HP for example feels strongly that patent protection is not something they are comfortable with, voila, the kernel developers also feel that patent protection is not something they are comfortable with.
They need people like Stallman as much as Stallman needs them, they form a perfect team: linus, cox, morton etc are great kernel hackers, but to be great at one thing you almost always have to sacrifice something else. There are very few universal geniuses around, and Linus is most definitely not one of them. A fact, by the way, he used to, until very recently, have no problems admitting.
Where Linus has focused on the kernel, Stallman has focused on larger issues, and longer range visions. To me, Linus is just a guy who hacks well, and attracts other good hackers. That's a good thing to have, but it's nothing more than that. So when I want long range grasps of potential issues, I'm not looking for solutions from Linus, and he clearly isn't either.
However, I believe, the more on this I read, that this issue is not nearly as significant as Linus and his supporters are trying to paint it. The gpl 3 might negatively affect a few corporations who are trying to take as much advantage of the gpl 2 as possible, but who could give a sh#t about any long range principles, but why should anyone care about them? The kernel would do fine without them, and they would soon find that their opposition was as silly as it was against the gpl 2, before they saw the light.
They just want to minimize risk and maximize profit, and oddly enough, that's the entire point Linus and the kernel guys also are making. Although in the kernel guy's case, risk equals risking losing corporation x or y as a code contributor, and profit equals getting more code. Like I said, it's not surprising when you absorb the values and concerns of the people you work with and around day in and day, believing that you can avoid this is just plain naive. But there is a way out, and it's to recognize this limit, and to accept it, while still hacking away to your heart's content. But that means putting your ego in check, and I think that's the true, core problem that Linus is having today.
You will never find the core of Linuses objections in anything he says, in my opinion, he simply does not have the ability to see that core any longer, that's what it looks like to me anyway. His comments demonstrated that very clearly to me, and mundoes only served to demonstrate that point in a slightly more subtle and less inflamitory way.
The political stuff I referred to also didn't seem to register I'm sad to say, so I'll say it again: supporting the status quo of current corporate values is an inherently political act. Corporations are part of the political system, they influence it, they set policy when they can, which is pretty often. Pretending this doesn't happen is incredibly naive, but that's again what the kernel guys are claiming. This is what happens when you lose the ability to have an overview of yourself and your environment, and it's happened here.
The reason kanotix for example cannot discuss certain topics here is direct result of this corporate political activity. Not understanding this is a big problem, but it does require some insight into how modern politics actually work. So the 'pragmatic' decisions made are in cases like this directly political.
Anyway, it's pointless repeating this stuff, it's obvious, it's easy to learn and understand, so if someone hasn't yet realized that corporations are directly linked into modern political life there is probably very little chance they will understand that just because I type a few words.
Anyway titan, I don't really want to argue points I'm not even making, that's not a very good way to spend time, so at least give a try to arguing the points I am actually making, then maybe we can have a meaningful discussion.
Re Stallman: the definition of a genius is essentially someone who can see more, and earlier, than others who had access to the same information. Geniuses tend to annoy really smart people, who aren't actually at that level, and of course, they also tend to just be plain annoying in and of themselves, and Stallman I'm sure is no exception to this rule. Plus it's just hard on the smart person's ego to have to admit someone else is way smarter than they are. And stallman is in my opinion way smarter than Linus. He sees further, his visions come to life. He even gets people to do the hardest parts of his job for him without having to lift a finger, such as the linux kernel.
From everything I've read of Stallman, including his bio, upbringing, etc, he very clearly is an absolute genius, although of course with few social graces. Linus isn't. He's just a very focused, very bright, engineer.
I respect visionaries far more than highly skilled engineers, I'm sorry to say, especially ones whose visions have turned out to not only be workable, but have resulted in changing the world. I also respect artists more than engineers, for the same reason. |
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By the way, I really want to emphasize again, I think the kernel hackers are doing great work, watching it progess is really a cool thing, I just also think that they are beginning to talk about things that they seem increasingly unable to discuss objectively, or to even understand.
The simple solution would be for them to let go of their egos and say: we don't care about visions, we'll let stallman handle that, it's worked great and taken us this far, so why should we change that relationship?
I don't mean not change the gpl, I mean not change trusting in the essential vision stallman and moglen created with the gpl 2. Obviously, history proved Stallman's ability to see ahead very well, so I'd personally just keep trusting it. But I do now see why Stallman has so little trust and liking for Open Source versus Free Software, he can see how little attachment they have to the actual core values, and how happily they'll compromise just so they themselves can 'keep having fun'. Not to say you shouldn't have fun, but it's not a sin to both have fun and have fundamental core values and beliefs, both at the same time. |
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Verfasst am: 26.09.2006, 22:24 Uhr
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Swynndla hat folgendes geschrieben::
So what do people think debian will end up doing? ...
If this dispute isn't settled amicably, my hope is that the Debian team will strip out all references to "Firefox," come up with a new name, and continue on as before. In other words, have a default browser that is all Firefox except in name.
One of the things that's so interesting about this dispute is that it hasn't come up before. What if the authors of other popular open-source software made the same demands?
"Attention: You can only call it The GIMP if you submit all your distro-related modifications to the GIMP sources to us for prior review; and note that our GIMP logo is protected by copyright and trademark laws and cannot be used or modified under any circumstances by anyone without our permission. If you wish to include The GIMP in your distro, you must not only call it The GIMP, you must also use our proprietary logos."
What a mess that would create. This is a bad precedent. |
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eco2geek, thanks for bringing this back ontopic, lol... that's exactly what the debian guy I quoted said too: why now? this is unprecedented. What gives?
This is really a very simple issue, as you noted, the gimp, apache, the linux kernel, these are all names that are known and trusted, and for some reason each is able to allow what mozilla will not allow. What that mike guy does is try to hide behind technicalities and BS to avoid this core question. And of course, the core question is really the actual issue, not some legal crap that shouldn't even have entered into the discussion in the first place if this was an interaction between adult human beings, which it apparently was before the mozilla corporation and their mike droid decided that it was time to clamp down to minimize threat to a potential profit center, which is what this really appears to be all about. |
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 26.09.2006, 22:54 Uhr
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Zitat:
And of course, the core question is really the actual issue, not some legal crap that shouldn't even have entered into the discussion in the first place if this was an interaction between adult human beings, which it apparently it was before the mozilla corporation and their mike droid decided that it was time to clamp down to minimize threat to a potential profit center, which is what this is all about.
Hehe, in my humble and rude way I have already simplified all that to the same point 2 pages earlier. However, please don't stop - I really love to listen to intelligent discussions - since I was a little boy, actually. 
Greetings,
Chris |
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