SCO's claims seem empty

SCO's claims seem empty

[Martin List-Petersen]

It seems that the claims of SCO are empty. The register is running a story on,
that when Novell sold UnixWare it didn't include the copyrights and patents on
UNIX System V, so these are still owned by Novell.

The article can be found here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/30910.html
Novell press release is also quite interesting:
http://www.novell.com/news/press/archive/2003/05/pr03033.html

Regards,
Martin List-Petersen
--
BOFH excuse #57:

Groundskeepers stole the root password

Re: SCO's claims seem empty

[Paul Rolland]

Look at Sco's answer :
http://ir.sco.com/ReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=110126

Paul

> It seems that the claims of SCO are empty. The register is 
> running a story on, that when Novell sold UnixWare it didn't 
> include the copyrights and patents on UNIX System V, so these 
> are still owned by Novell.
> 
> The article can be found here: 
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/30910.h> tml
> Novell 
> press release is also quite interesting: 
> http://www.novell.com/news/press/archive/2003/05/pr03033.html
> 

Re: SCO's claims seem empty

[Mark Mielke]

On Fri, May 30, 2003 at 03:01:53PM +0200, Paul Rolland wrote:
> Look at Sco's answer :
> http://ir.sco.com/ReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=110126

It sounds as if SCO did a diff against Linux and is claiming that any
sections of lines that match, line for line, are being claimed as
'stolen'. It worries me that the panel of 'experts' they are inviting
to 'see for themselves' are members of the media. How will they know
what they are looking at, whether the code is original or not, or whether
it was SCO who stole the code from Linux?

mark

-- 
mark@mielke.cc/markm@ncf.ca/markm@nortelnetworks.com __________________________
.  .  _  ._  . .   .__    .  . ._. .__ .   . . .__  | Neighbourhood Coder
|\/| |_| |_| |/    |_     |\/|  |  |_  |   |/  |_   | 
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  One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring to bring them all
                       and in the darkness bind them...

                           http://mark.mielke.cc/

Re: SCO's claims seem empty - Open Source Initiative Paper by Eric Raymond

[Piet Delaney]

On Fri, 2003-05-30 at 01:04, Martin List-Petersen wrote:

Eric Raymond's paper on the SCO-vs.-IBM Complaint was interesting. 

See: 
http://opensource.org/sco-vs-ibm.html

kernel developers may want to help Eric collect information. 

-piet 

> It seems that the claims of SCO are empty. The register is running a story on,
> that when Novell sold UnixWare it didn't include the copyrights and patents on
> UNIX System V, so these are still owned by Novell.
> 
> The article can be found here:
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/30910.html
> Novell press release is also quite interesting:
> http://www.novell.com/news/press/archive/2003/05/pr03033.html
> 
> Regards,
> Martin List-Petersen
> --
> BOFH excuse #57:
> 
> Groundskeepers stole the root password
> 
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/
-- 
piet@www.piet.net

Re: SCO's claims seem empty

[brian]

On Fri, May 30, 2003 at 03:01:53PM +0200, Paul Rolland wrote:
> Look at Sco's answer :
> http://ir.sco.com/ReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=110126

I get a page with SCO navigation and other highlights,
but no content.



> Paul
> 
> > It seems that the claims of SCO are empty. The register is 
> > running a story on, that when Novell sold UnixWare it didn't 
> > include the copyrights and patents on UNIX System V, so these 
> > are still owned by Novell.
> > 
> > The article can be found here: 
> > http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/30910.h> tml
> > Novell 
> > press release is also quite interesting: 
> > http://www.novell.com/news/press/archive/2003/05/pr03033.html
> > 
> 
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/

-- 
Brian Litzinger

Re: SCO's claims seem empty

[Paul Rolland]

Hello,

> On Fri, May 30, 2003 at 03:01:53PM +0200, Paul Rolland wrote:
> > Look at Sco's answer : 
> > http://ir.sco.com/ReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=110126
> 
> I get a page with SCO navigation and other highlights,
> but no content.
> 
Argh... Yes, I just checked, and it looks like the Press Release
has been removed. Even when clicking on "Press Release", and browsing 
the list, I can't find it anymore...

It seems they removed everything related to this case from the
Press Release page.

Anyone knows why ?

Paul

Re: SCO's claims seem empty

[Lionel Elie Mamane]

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On Sun, Jun 01, 2003 at 09:56:42AM +0200, Paul Rolland wrote:

> It seems they removed everything related to this case from the
> Press Release page.

> Anyone knows why ?

Might be related to
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/hps-31.05.03-003/  
http://www.linuxtag.org/2003/de/press/releases.xsp?id=3

It is unclear to me if the first link refers to a cease-and-desist
letter or a restraining order from a court. Maybe people that speak
German better than I do can tell us?

-- 
Lionel

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Re: SCO's claims seem empty

[Markus Plail]

On Sun, 1 Jun 2003, Lionel Elie Mamane wrote:

>On Sun, Jun 01, 2003 at 09:56:42AM +0200, Paul Rolland wrote:
> 
>> It seems they removed everything related to this case from the
>> Press Release page.
> 
>> Anyone knows why ?
> 
> Might be related to
> http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/hps-31.05.03-003/  
> http://www.linuxtag.org/2003/de/press/releases.xsp?id=3
> 
> It is unclear to me if the first link refers to a cease-and-desist
> letter or a restraining order from a court. Maybe people that speak
> German better than I do can tell us?

It means that they must not uphold their claims. If they do they may
have to pay 250.000€. In german it's Abmahnung, should be reminder in
english? The decision was made by a court.

regards
Markus

RE: SCO's claims seem empty

[Riley Williams]

Hi Lionel.

 >> It seems they removed everything related to this case from the
 >> Press Release page.
 >>
 >> Anyone knows why ?

 > Might be related to http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/hps-31.05.03-003/
...
 >
 > It is unclear to me if the first link refers to a cease-and-desist
 > letter or a restraining order from a court. Maybe people that speak
 > German better than I do can tell us?

Here's what BabelFish made of that page...although I'm none the wiser on
that point...

=======8<======= CUT =======>8=======

A muzzle for SCO

The ex-Linux-ex-Linux-Vertreiber SCO may not maintain no more for the time
being after provisional orders, Linux is an illegal beneficiary protected
Unix code. After a warning by the LinuxTag e.V. now a provisional order is
opposite SCO been issued that the enterprise may not state for the time
being any longer, Linux contains to injustice code from the Unix existence
by court. During offence SCO a punishment of 250.000 euro threatens; with a
just as high penalty clause that occupied of Bremen regional court the
German SCO address in the case of the expression mentioned, after the
software house had become before digit there Univention -- this case the
effect is limited however to the German address of SCO.

The today's SCO resident in the US Federal State Utah, followed from the
Linux linux-Vertreiber Caldera of system, Inc., which 2001 software division
and the Professional services division of the 1979 created The Santa Cruz
operation (SCO) took over the active of the servers and thereupon as Caldera
international, Inc. firmierte. Only in the year 2002 the new Caldera in SCO
designated itself over. The new SCO bankruptcy-endangered in the meantime
had arrived by the entrances from the original Santa Cruz operation into the
possession of copyrights at the operating system Unix and in March IBM for a
billion US dollar compensation sued, because Big Blue hurt the Unix vested
titles by its Linux commitment allegedly.

Although in the public fast the suspicion arose, SCO wanted to provoke by in
the meantime gratefully the action supported by Microsoft against Linux a
firm buying up as last rescue , continued to heat up the SCO strategists the
conflict lively and threatened meanwhile also the Linux author Linus
Torvalds with legal steps. This showed up however little impressed and
followed the being correct leaders, that wanted to see first proofs of SCO.
Also Novell had denied and sees themselves the SCO requirements on Unix
percentages of profits publicly now obviously likewise in the line of fire
of the SCO lawyers. ( hps /c't)

=======8<======= CUT =======>8=======

 > ... or to http://www.linuxtag.org/2003/de/press/releases.xsp?id=3 ...

That includes an English translation, so is much easier to parse...

Best wishes from Riley.
---
 * Nothing as pretty as a smile, nothing as ugly as a frown.

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Re: SCO's claims seem empty

[Nicolas Vollmar]

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On Sonntag, 1. Juni 2003 11.22 wrote Lionel Elie Mamane:
> Might be related to
> http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/hps-31.05.03-003/
> http://www.linuxtag.org/2003/de/press/releases.xsp?id=3
>
> It is unclear to me if the first link refers to a cease-and-desist
> letter or a restraining order from a court. Maybe people that speak
> German better than I do can tell us?

I hope my english is enough to give a short translation of the heise news:
LinuxTag e.V has got an order from a court that SCO Germany prohibit to affirm
that Linux contains illegal Unix Code. If they do it again, SCO has to pay a
250.000 Euro penalty.

Is this what you want to know?

mfg
Nicolas
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Re: SCO's claims seem empty

[Adrian Bunk]

On Sun, Jun 01, 2003 at 11:22:33AM +0200, Lionel Elie Mamane wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 01, 2003 at 09:56:42AM +0200, Paul Rolland wrote:
> 
> > It seems they removed everything related to this case from the
> > Press Release page.
> 
> > Anyone knows why ?
> 
> Might be related to
> http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/hps-31.05.03-003/  
> http://www.linuxtag.org/2003/de/press/releases.xsp?id=3
> 
> It is unclear to me if the first link refers to a cease-and-desist
> letter or a restraining order from a court. Maybe people that speak
> German better than I do can tell us?

The PDF at the link behind "Strafandrohung" is the scanned version of a 
court decision.

The judge said SCO is no longer allowed to publically state that Linux 
illegally includes IP owned by SCO and/or that Linux user might be sued 
by SCO.

The decision of the judge only affects what SCO is allowed to publically 
state at the moment. This has no influence on any lawsuits now or in the 
future.

> Lionel


cu
Adrian

-- 

       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
        of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed

Re: SCO's claims seem empty

[Michael Frank]

On Sunday 01 June 2003 17:22, Lionel Elie Mamane wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 01, 2003 at 09:56:42AM +0200, Paul Rolland wrote:
> > It seems they removed everything related to this case from the
> > Press Release page.
> >
> > Anyone knows why ?
>
> Might be related to
> http://www.linuxtag.org/2003/de/press/releases.xsp?id=3

This page announces that LinuxTag sent a  notice to SCO germany
demanding from SCO to ceise claiming linux infringes on SCO rights 

---

> http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/hps-31.05.03-003/

Announces temporary restraining order against SCO germany
http://lwn.net/Articles/34351/

---

More links:

http://lwn.net/Articles/33975/
http://lwn.net/Articles/33976/

---


Regards
Michael

Re: SCO's claims seem empty

[Valdis.Kletnieks]

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On Sun, 01 Jun 2003 11:40:51 +0200, Nicolas Vollmar said:

> I hope my english is enough to give a short translation of the heise news:
> LinuxTag e.V has got an order from a court that SCO Germany prohibit to affir
m
> that Linux contains illegal Unix Code. If they do it again, SCO has to pay a
> 250.000 Euro penalty.

No, they are not prohibited from making the claims again.

If they want to make the claims again, they have to disclose the details.
So they can't say "They Stole Code!" unless they add "See? Right here in
foobar.c, near line 510, is code illegally taken from our code".

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Re: SCO's claims seem empty

[Adrian Bunk]

On Sun, Jun 01, 2003 at 11:38:25AM +0200, Markus Plail wrote:
> On Sun, 1 Jun 2003, Lionel Elie Mamane wrote:
> 
> >On Sun, Jun 01, 2003 at 09:56:42AM +0200, Paul Rolland wrote:
> > 
> >> It seems they removed everything related to this case from the
> >> Press Release page.
> > 
> >> Anyone knows why ?
> > 
> > Might be related to
> > http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/hps-31.05.03-003/  
> > http://www.linuxtag.org/2003/de/press/releases.xsp?id=3
> > 
> > It is unclear to me if the first link refers to a cease-and-desist
> > letter or a restraining order from a court. Maybe people that speak
> > German better than I do can tell us?
> 
> It means that they must not uphold their claims. If they do they may
> have to pay 250.000???. In german it's Abmahnung, should be reminder in
> english? The decision was made by a court.

This is wrong.

SCO is still allowed to uphold their claims.

This decision only says they are currenly not allowed to publically
state that Linux illegally includes IP owned by SCO and/or that Linux
user might be sued by SCO.

They are still allowed to sue whoever they want to sue.

> regards
> Markus

cu
Adrian

-- 

       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
        of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed

Re: SCO's claims seem empty

[Michael Frank]

This one is nice too: http://lwn.net/Articles/33883/

Re: SCO's claims seem empty

[Paul Rolland]

Hello,

Maybe some more news next week :

http://www.crn.com/sections/BreakingNews/dailyarchives.asp?ArticleID=42313

> 
> On Sunday 01 June 2003 17:22, Lionel Elie Mamane wrote:
> > On Sun, Jun 01, 2003 at 09:56:42AM +0200, Paul Rolland wrote:
> > > It seems they removed everything related to this case 
> from the Press 
> > > Release page.
> > >
> > > Anyone knows why ?
> >
> > Might be related to 
> > http://www.linuxtag.org/2003/de/press/releases.xsp?id=3
> 
> This page announces that LinuxTag sent a  notice to SCO 
> germany demanding from SCO to ceise claiming linux infringes 
> on SCO rights 
> 
> ---
> 
> > http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/hps-31.05.03-003/
> 
> Announces temporary restraining order against SCO germany 
http://lwn.net/Articles/34351/

Re: SCO's claims seem empty

[Richard B. Johnson]

On Sun, 1 Jun 2003, Paul Rolland wrote:

> Hello,
>
> > On Fri, May 30, 2003 at 03:01:53PM +0200, Paul Rolland wrote:
> > > Look at Sco's answer :
> > > http://ir.sco.com/ReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=110126
> >
> > I get a page with SCO navigation and other highlights,
> > but no content.
> >
> Argh... Yes, I just checked, and it looks like the Press Release
> has been removed. Even when clicking on "Press Release", and browsing
> the list, I can't find it anymore...
>
> It seems they removed everything related to this case from the
> Press Release page.
>
> Anyone knows why ?
>
> Paul

Death throes?? When a company dies, it often complains that
its competition didn't play fairly. You have charges and even
lawsuits claiming that intellectual properly was stolen, etc.

We are probably witnessing this all too common event. Stay tuned.


Cheers,
Dick Johnson
Penguin : Linux version 2.4.20 on an i686 machine (797.90 BogoMips).
Why is the government concerned about the lunatic fringe? Think about it.

Re: SCO's claims seem empty

[Horst von Brand]

"Riley Williams" <Riley@Williams.Name> said:
> "Lionel Elie Mamane" <lionel@mamane.lu> said:

>  > Might be related to http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/hps-31.05.03-003/
> ...
>  >
>  > It is unclear to me if the first link refers to a cease-and-desist
>  > letter or a restraining order from a court. Maybe people that speak
>  > German better than I do can tell us?
> 
> Here's what BabelFish made of that page...although I'm none the wiser on
> that point...

Let me take a look...

It says SCO for now can't claim that Linux has being using protected Unix
code. If SCO goes on doing so, they might have to pay up to E250.000.- in
fines. The same goes for SCO Germany (due to a separate court decision in
Bremen).

This decision is in force until SCO shows evidence for their claims (as was
asked for by LinuxTag e.V.) [This I get from other stuff I've read about
the matter].

It goes on to describe SCO's woes, that MS gratefully supported SCO's
actions, and the suspicion that this is just in order to get bought up.
-- 
Dr. Horst H. von Brand                   User #22616 counter.li.org
Departamento de Informatica                     Fono: +56 32 654431
Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria              +56 32 654239
Casilla 110-V, Valparaiso, Chile                Fax:  +56 32 797513

Re: SCO's claims seem empty

[Martin List-Petersen]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1488 bytes --]

On Sun, 2003-06-01 at 09:56, Paul Rolland wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> > On Fri, May 30, 2003 at 03:01:53PM +0200, Paul Rolland wrote:
> > > Look at Sco's answer : 
> > > http://ir.sco.com/ReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=110126
> > 
> > I get a page with SCO navigation and other highlights,
> > but no content.
> > 
> Argh... Yes, I just checked, and it looks like the Press Release
> has been removed. Even when clicking on "Press Release", and browsing 
> the list, I can't find it anymore...
> 
> It seems they removed everything related to this case from the
> Press Release page.
> 
> Anyone knows why ?

Essentially it said:
"SCO’s lawsuit against IBM does not involve patents or copyrights. SCO’s
complaint specifically alleges breach of contract, and SCO intends to
protect and enforce all of the contracts that the company has with more
than 6,000 licensees." 

Meaning after they shot themselves in the food, Novell told them "no no,
that won't work", they try to shoot the rest of it off, too.

However ..somebody must have realised, that this was nonsense and
removed it from the site.

Regards,
Martin List-Petersen
martin at list-petersen dot dk
--
"Never laugh at live dragons, Bilbo you fool!" he said to himself, and
it becamea favourite saying of his later, and passed into a proverb.
"You aren't nearly
through this adventure yet," he added, and that was pretty true as well.
-- Bilbo Baggins, "The Hobbit" by J.R.R. Tolkien, Chapter XII


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Re: SCO's claims seem empty

[Horst von Brand]

Paul Rolland <rol@as2917.net> said:

[...]

> However ..somebody must have realised, that this was nonsense and
> removed it from the site.

Perhaps due to the court decision in Germany, restraining them from
claiming that Linux uses Unix code illegaly until the court sees into the
matter...
-- 
Dr. Horst H. von Brand                   User #22616 counter.li.org
Departamento de Informatica                     Fono: +56 32 654431
Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria              +56 32 654239
Casilla 110-V, Valparaiso, Chile                Fax:  +56 32 797513

Re: SCO's claims seem empty

[uaca]

Hello everybody


let me speculate what we will see when SCO shows their "assumed proofs"

they will show code of the kernel and they will claim that was previously on
SCO's operating system (and was made by them without a GPL license), 

how to refute that?

	Ulisses

                Debian GNU/Linux: a dream come true
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Computers are useless. They can only give answers."            Pablo Picasso

--->	Visita http://www.valux.org/ para saber acerca de la	<---
--->	Asociación Valenciana de Usuarios de Linux		<---
 

Re: SCO's claims seem empty

[Stefan Smietanowski]

uaca@alumni.uv.es wrote:
> Hello everybody
> 
> 
> let me speculate what we will see when SCO shows their "assumed proofs"
> 
> they will show code of the kernel and they will claim that was previously on
> SCO's operating system (and was made by them without a GPL license), 
> 
> how to refute that?

Take the subsystem which they show code that "look! They stole it from
us!" and look at how it has developed over time, including this very
mailing list discussions. I mean. Noone pushed in any subsystem into
the kernel (except linus) and just let it sit there, most were
gradually merged, so should have historical baggage.

"Look here in 2.0, here we did like this and then during 2.1 it was
changed and in 2.2 it was rewritten to this gradually in these
kernels and in 2.3 we redid it slowly over all of these versions ..."

How can they refute it? The linux kernel and all the historical versions
are available on the net including at least some of the discussions
behind their incorporation. The other part would in part be discussed
over the IRC, I know.

// Stefan

Re: SCO's claims seem empty

[Marcus Metzler]

uaca@alumni.uv.es writes:
 > Hello everybody
 > 
 > 
 > let me speculate what we will see when SCO shows their "assumed proofs"
 > 
 > they will show code of the kernel and they will claim that was previously on
 > SCO's operating system (and was made by them without a GPL license), 
 > 
 > how to refute that?
 > 

Actually, you should not need to refute that. Innocent until proven
guilty and all that. They have to prove that it was their code.

Marcus

-- 
/--------------------------------------------------------------------\
| Dr. Marcus O.C. Metzler        |                                   |
|--------------------------------|-----------------------------------|
| mocm@metzlerbros.de            | http://www.metzlerbros.de/        |
\--------------------------------------------------------------------/

Re: SCO's claims seem empty

[Raimundo Bilbao]

El Dom 01 Jun 2003 21:19, Horst von Brand escribió:
> Paul Rolland <rol@as2917.net> said:
>
> [...]
>
> > However ..somebody must have realised, that this was nonsense and
> > removed it from the site.
>
> Perhaps due to the court decision in Germany, restraining them from
> claiming that Linux uses Unix code illegaly until the court sees into the
> matter...

What's up doc, nice to see you here !  :-D

Honestly, I don't know what to think right now, perhaps all that SCO's stuff 
was a mere smoke-bomb (you kown, that's M$ bombs what we seen back in the 
90's :-D  agaisnt IBM ?, remember OS/2 --> xxxNT ?)

A chimp's IQ level CIO of any company don't start to sue everyone in the 
planet if  he have a little of common sense about they possibilities to win 
(or else they must to be prepared for the linux's strike back :-} ), and for
this particular case they are, to say, very very wired (AFAIK they haven't 
provide a concise probe of that _stolen-critical-olimpicus-code_ that nobody 
else on this planet can write, except off course, SCO and their ilumminated 
community of gurues :-D  ).


cheers 
mundo

Re: SCO's claims seem empty

[Martin List-Petersen]

Citat Stefan Smietanowski <stesmi@stesmi.com>:

> uaca@alumni.uv.es wrote:
> > Hello everybody
> > 
> > 
> > let me speculate what we will see when SCO shows their "assumed proofs"
> > 
> > they will show code of the kernel and they will claim that was previously
> on
> > SCO's operating system (and was made by them without a GPL license), 
> > 
> > how to refute that?
> 
> Take the subsystem which they show code that "look! They stole it from
> us!" and look at how it has developed over time, including this very
> mailing list discussions. I mean. Noone pushed in any subsystem into
> the kernel (except linus) and just let it sit there, most were
> gradually merged, so should have historical baggage.
> 
> "Look here in 2.0, here we did like this and then during 2.1 it was
> changed and in 2.2 it was rewritten to this gradually in these
> kernels and in 2.3 we redid it slowly over all of these versions ..."
> 
> How can they refute it? The linux kernel and all the historical versions
> are available on the net including at least some of the discussions
> behind their incorporation. The other part would in part be discussed
> over the IRC, I know.
> 

I agree. 

Besides this article states confirmation on similar code, still i would say: Did
it come from Linux orginally or did it come from SCO ?

http://informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=10300314

Regards,
Martin List-Petersen
martin at list-petersen dot dk
--
Today is what happened to yesterday.

Re: SCO's claims seem empty

[Alan Cox]

On Gwe, 2003-06-06 at 13:31, Martin List-Petersen wrote
> Besides this article states confirmation on similar code, still i would say: Did
> it come from Linux orginally or did it come from SCO ?
> 
> http://informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=10300314

If it isn't simply carefully doctored choices designed mislead clueless
analysts. You are also ignoring at least two other things - code that is
common because its from the reference (eg intel locking code) and code
from third party vendors legitimately supplied to both Linux and SCO.

Alan

Re: SCO's claims seem empty

[Paul Rolland]

And if it is only comments, it could be Sco that has taken then from
Linux, without any damage to their code ;-)

Paul

> If it isn't simply carefully doctored choices designed 
> mislead clueless analysts. You are also ignoring at least two 
> other things - code that is common because its from the 
> reference (eg intel locking code) and code from third party 
> vendors legitimately supplied to both Linux and SCO.

Re: SCO's claims seem empty

[Richard B. Johnson]

On Fri, 6 Jun 2003, Paul Rolland wrote:

> And if it is only comments, it could be Sco that has taken then from
> Linux, without any damage to their code ;-)
>
> Paul
>
> > If it isn't simply carefully doctored choices designed
> > mislead clueless analysts. You are also ignoring at least two
> > other things - code that is common because its from the
> > reference (eg intel locking code) and code from third party
> > vendors legitimately supplied to both Linux and SCO.
>

There is also the problem of those "skilled in the art" teaching
others "methods". If I worked for BCC (Big Computer Company) and,
after interfacing with others "skilled in the art", I might pick
up some programming methods which I may incorporate into open-
source code. For instance, I might use "for(;;)" at the start
of a "do forever" loop, instead of "while(1)". If I make many
contributions to open source, eventually the source may start
to show the "personality" of BCC, without anybody ever divulging
BCCs trade secrets. So, code inspection may "show" that some
code was stolen or trade-secrets divulged, without anything like
that ever actually happening. That's why, in legal battles, each
side usually hires its own experts. These experts will usually
disagree.

I remember something in an article, I think it was in IEEE
"Computer", several years ago, where attempts were made to
show that source-code was taken from several sources. It ended
up in a "tie". One theory would "prove" that AT&T got its
source from Berkeley and the other theory would "prove" that
Berkeley got its source from AT&T. The facts in the matter
were that the source could have been copied by BOTH from an
unknown source, probably public domain. The source was surprisingly
similar, even the variable names were the same. Certainly, if
I were to steal somebody else's' code, I would change the variable
names --at least.

I think we're just experiencing the death throes of SCO.

Cheers,
Dick Johnson
Penguin : Linux version 2.4.20 on an i686 machine (797.90 BogoMips).
Why is the government concerned about the lunatic fringe? Think about it.

Re: SCO's claims seem empty

[Martin List-Petersen]

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On Fri, 2003-06-06 at 17:13, Alan Cox wrote:
> On Gwe, 2003-06-06 at 13:31, Martin List-Petersen wrote
> > Besides this article states confirmation on similar code, still i would say: Did
> > it come from Linux orginally or did it come from SCO ?
> > 
> > http://informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=10300314
> 
> If it isn't simply carefully doctored choices designed mislead clueless
> analysts. You are also ignoring at least two other things - code that is
> common because its from the reference (eg intel locking code) and code
> from third party vendors legitimately supplied to both Linux and SCO.

I'm just pushing it here. Of course this code could be from anywhere and that's exactly the point.
Wouldn't wonder me if some code was legitimate both used in Linux and SCO that came from outside.

Regards,
Martin List-Petersen
martin at list-petersen dot dk
--
In like a dimwit, out like a light.
                -- Pogo


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Re: SCO's claims seem empty

[Rob Landley]

On Friday 06 June 2003 11:13, Alan Cox wrote:
> On Gwe, 2003-06-06 at 13:31, Martin List-Petersen wrote
>
> > Besides this article states confirmation on similar code, still i would
> > say: Did it come from Linux orginally or did it come from SCO ?
> >
> > http://informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=10300314
>
> If it isn't simply carefully doctored choices designed mislead clueless
> analysts. You are also ignoring at least two other things - code that is
> common because its from the reference (eg intel locking code) and code
> from third party vendors legitimately supplied to both Linux and SCO.
>
> Alan

Don't forget BSD code that was freed up by that lawsuit in the early 90's. :)

There's no point speculating until SCO shuts up and shows us the code.  (And 
if they had anything real enough to withstand scrutiny, they probably would 
have released it publicly by now...)

Rob

Re: SCO's claims seem empty

[Martin List-Petersen]

Citat Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>:

> On Gwe, 2003-06-06 at 13:31, Martin List-Petersen wrote
> > Besides this article states confirmation on similar code, still i would
> say: Did
> > it come from Linux orginally or did it come from SCO ?
> > 
> > http://informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=10300314
> 
> If it isn't simply carefully doctored choices designed mislead clueless
> analysts. You are also ignoring at least two other things - code that is
> common because its from the reference (eg intel locking code) and code
> from third party vendors legitimately supplied to both Linux and SCO.

This article states, that they might violate the GPL:

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1123199,00.asp

Regards,
Martin List-Petersen
martin at list-petersen dot dk
--
Q:	What do you call the scratches that you get when a female
	sheep bites you?
A:	Ewe nicks.

Sco vs. IBM

[Martin List-Petersen]

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Ok .. here we got us a few more articles about the stuff going on. A
friend pointed me at these:

Byte.com states: SCO Owns Your Computer 
http://www.byte.com/documents/s=8276/byt1055784622054/0616_marshall.html
Comment: read and cry (or not ?) :-/

On Linux Planet, they try say "SCO Pulls Trigger, Targets Torvald":
http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/newss/4858/1/

However .. more or less it is about the current way people think about
it.

Regards,
Martin List-Petersen
martin at list-petersen dot dk
--
All things are either sacred or profane.
The former to ecclesiasts bring gain;
The latter to the devil appertain.
-- Dumbo Omohundro


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Re: Sco vs. IBM

[Luigi Rosa]

Hello Martin,

Wednesday, June 18, 2003, 7:36:48 PM, you wrote:

MLP> Ok .. here we got us a few more articles about the stuff going on. A
MLP> friend pointed me at these:

I think that this one

<http://www.forbes.com/2003/06/18/cz_dl_0618linux.html>

is very illuminating.



-- 
Best regards,
 Luigi                            mailto:kernel@mail.hypertrek.info

Re: Sco vs. IBM

[Martin List-Petersen]

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On Wed, 2003-06-18 at 20:13, Scott Robert Ladd wrote:
> Martin List-Petersen wrote:
> > Ok .. here we got us a few more articles about the stuff going on.
> [snip]
> 
> I'll panic when Linus panics... or when IBM surrenders. ;}
> 
> Certainly, SCO will influence the ebb and flow of the universe; in the 
> end, I suspect it will be much ado about nothing.

I see no reason to panic yet, either.

In Europe this is taken very relaxed, also if you see the court rulings
that have been done (in Germany etc.). Sco get's no foot on the ground
before they show us some legitimate proof.

Regards,
Martin List-Petersen
martin at list-petersen dot dk
--
In Devon, Connecticut, it is unlawful to walk backwards after sunset.


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Re: Sco vs. IBM

[Scott Robert Ladd]

Martin List-Petersen wrote:
> Ok .. here we got us a few more articles about the stuff going on.
[snip]

I'll panic when Linus panics... or when IBM surrenders. ;}

Certainly, SCO will influence the ebb and flow of the universe; in the
end, I suspect it will be much ado about nothing.

-- 
Scott Robert Ladd
Coyote Gulch Productions (http://www.coyotegulch.com)

Re: Sco vs. IBM

[James Simmons]

> MLP> Ok .. here we got us a few more articles about the stuff going on. A
> MLP> friend pointed me at these:
> 
> I think that this one
> 
> <http://www.forbes.com/2003/06/18/cz_dl_0618linux.html>
> 
> is very illuminating.

How pathetic!!! He is just like the people who going into stores to stage 
accidents and then sue the store.He makes a living by sueing. I dobut he 
can sue every big UNIX implementor/user. he has to go again SUN, IBM and 
other big names.

Re: Sco vs. IBM

[Rick Franchuk]

On Wed, 18 Jun 2003, James Simmons wrote:

> 
> > MLP> Ok .. here we got us a few more articles about the stuff going on. A
> > MLP> friend pointed me at these:
> > 
> > I think that this one
> > 
> > <http://www.forbes.com/2003/06/18/cz_dl_0618linux.html>
> > 
> > is very illuminating.
> 
> How pathetic!!! He is just like the people who going into stores to stage 
> accidents and then sue the store.He makes a living by sueing. I dobut he 
> can sue every big UNIX implementor/user. he has to go again SUN, IBM and 
> other big names.

In other words:

"Those who can't do, sue."

To be fair though, SCO aren't the only ones suing for a living. Check out
these guys:

http://www.extremetech.com/print_article/0,3998,a=34898,00.asp

Article focuses on the adult industry, but it's easy how this could spill over
to affect anyone delivering any sort of content online. Gotta love our current 
IP laws...

Re: Sco vs. IBM

[Richard B. Johnson]

On Wed, 18 Jun 2003, James Simmons wrote:

>
> > MLP> Ok .. here we got us a few more articles about the stuff going on. A
> > MLP> friend pointed me at these:
> >
> > I think that this one
> >
> > <http://www.forbes.com/2003/06/18/cz_dl_0618linux.html>
> >
> > is very illuminating.
>
> How pathetic!!! He is just like the people who going into stores to stage
> accidents and then sue the store.He makes a living by sueing. I dobut he
> can sue every big UNIX implementor/user. he has to go again SUN, IBM and
> other big names.
>

They forgot INTERACTIVE Unix! This is/was a Kodak Company. When word
gets out, they may even sue Kodak. They claim that any form of
Unix (whatever that is), now belongs to them because one of their
predecessors purchased a license. Get this, it was a non-exclusive
license even!

Maybe they think all Judges are stupid??  Probably not, it's likely
just the death throes of a company that drank a fatal dose of corruption.

FYI, I noticed an unauthorized reproduction of some of my code. It
used a variable, "i", in a "for" loop. Maybe I should go buy a lawyer.
I can show that only persons who had been previously been poisoned
by FORTRAN would ever use such a variable name. This certainly
points to me.

Cheers,
Dick Johnson
Penguin : Linux version 2.4.20 on an i686 machine (797.90 BogoMips).
Why is the government concerned about the lunatic fringe? Think about it.

Re: Sco vs. IBM

[Martin List-Petersen]

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On Wed, 2003-06-18 at 21:39, Richard B. Johnson wrote:

> FYI, I noticed an unauthorized reproduction of some of my code. It
> used a variable, "i", in a "for" loop. Maybe I should go buy a lawyer.
> I can show that only persons who had been previously been poisoned
> by FORTRAN would ever use such a variable name. This certainly
> points to me.

Eerh .. one stupid question: Who has not used that and in what
programming language was it not used ?

Regards,
Martin List-Petersen
martin at list-petersen dot dk
--
To err is human, to forgive is against company policy.


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Re: Sco vs. IBM

[Tom Diehl]

On 18 Jun 2003, Martin List-Petersen wrote:

> On Wed, 2003-06-18 at 21:39, Richard B. Johnson wrote:
> 
> > FYI, I noticed an unauthorized reproduction of some of my code. It
> > used a variable, "i", in a "for" loop. Maybe I should go buy a lawyer.
> > I can show that only persons who had been previously been poisoned
> > by FORTRAN would ever use such a variable name. This certainly
> > points to me.

You forgot the smiley!! :-))

> 
> Eerh .. one stupid question: Who has not used that and in what
> programming language was it not used ?
> 
> Regards,
> Martin List-Petersen
> martin at list-petersen dot dk
> --
> To err is human, to forgive is against company policy.
> 
> 

-- 
......Tom		Registered Linux User #14522	http://counter.li.org
tdiehl@rogueind.com	My current SpamTrap		mtd123@rogueind.com

Re: Sco vs. IBM

[Richard B. Johnson]

On Wed, 18 Jun 2003, Tom Diehl wrote:

> On 18 Jun 2003, Martin List-Petersen wrote:
>
> > On Wed, 2003-06-18 at 21:39, Richard B. Johnson wrote:
> >
> > > FYI, I noticed an unauthorized reproduction of some of my code. It
> > > used a variable, "i", in a "for" loop. Maybe I should go buy a lawyer.
> > > I can show that only persons who had been previously been poisoned
> > > by FORTRAN would ever use such a variable name. This certainly
> > > points to me.
>
> You forgot the smiley!! :-))
>

Yah. That's probably why I got a ton of messages asking me to
explain! Some seemed really concerned ;^)=--)



Cheers,
Dick Johnson
Penguin : Linux version 2.4.20 on an i686 machine (797.90 BogoMips).
Why is the government concerned about the lunatic fringe? Think about it.

Re: Sco vs. IBM

[Grzegorz Jaskiewicz]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Wednesday 18 of June 2003 18:36, Martin List-Petersen wrote:
> Ok .. here we got us a few more articles about the stuff going on. A
> friend pointed me at these:
>
> Byte.com states: SCO Owns Your Computer
> http://www.byte.com/documents/s=8276/byt1055784622054/0616_marshall.html
> Comment: read and cry (or not ?) :-/
>
> On Linux Planet, they try say "SCO Pulls Trigger, Targets Torvald":
> http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/newss/4858/1/
>
> However .. more or less it is about the current way people think about
> it.
How about this one:
(english translation)
http://forum.golem.de/phorum/read.php?f=44&i=1869&t=1716

- --
Grzegorz Jaskiewicz
K4 Labs
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Re: Sco vs. IBM

[Werner Almesberger]

Luigi Rosa wrote:
> <http://www.forbes.com/2003/06/18/cz_dl_0618linux.html>

"[...] in two other Canopy companies, Troll Tech and Lineo, [...]"

Makes one wonder what else to expect in the future ...

- Werner

-- 
  _________________________________________________________________________
 / Werner Almesberger, Buenos Aires, Argentina         wa@almesberger.net /
/_http://www.almesberger.net/____________________________________________/

Re: Sco vs. IBM

[Dominik Kubla]

Am Mittwoch, 18. Juni 2003 20:17 schrieb Martin List-Petersen:
>
> I see no reason to panic yet, either.
>
> In Europe this is taken very relaxed, also if you see the court rulings
> that have been done (in Germany etc.). Sco get's no foot on the ground
> before they show us some legitimate proof.
>

Exactly.

There might also be some unexpected benefit for us in Europe lurking there 
since it sheds a very unfavourable light on US IP and SW patent law which the 
EU is currently being trying to adopt. So all of you living in the EU, please  
point your MEP (and your state and national MP for that matter) towards this 
mess and explain to him/her why software patents and all the other crap the 
EU commission wants to inflict on us is not in the interest of EU consumers 
and companies alike and let's see what happens...

Regards,
  Dominik
-- 
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit
atrocities.    (Francois Marie Arouet aka Voltaire, 1694-1778)

Re: Sco vs. IBM

[Richard B. Johnson]

On Wed, 18 Jun 2003, Werner Almesberger wrote:

> Luigi Rosa wrote:
> > <http://www.forbes.com/2003/06/18/cz_dl_0618linux.html>
>
> "[...] in two other Canopy companies, Troll Tech and Lineo, [...]"
>
> Makes one wonder what else to expect in the future ...
>
> - Werner

> "[...] in two other Canopy companies, Troll Tech and Lineo, [...]"
                                         ^^^^^^^^^^
                 I thought this was a joke! There __is__ really
such a company???!! Wonder what they do....., maybe troll this
list... hehe....


Cheers,
Dick Johnson
Penguin : Linux version 2.4.20 on an i686 machine (797.90 BogoMips).
Why is the government concerned about the lunatic fringe? Think about it.

Re: Sco vs. IBM

[Magnus Solvang]

Quoting Richard B. Johnson (root@chaos.analogic.com):
[...]
| > "[...] in two other Canopy companies, Troll Tech and Lineo, [...]"
|                                          ^^^^^^^^^^
|                  I thought this was a joke! There __is__ really
| such a company???!! Wonder what they do....., maybe troll this
| list... hehe....

You could try a search before joking about it. I believe it's this
Norwegian company they write about:

http://www.trolltech.com/

- M

Re: Sco vs. IBM

[Thorsten Körner]

Am Donnerstag, 19. Juni 2003 13:04 schrieb Richard B. Johnson:
> On Wed, 18 Jun 2003, Werner Almesberger wrote:
> > Luigi Rosa wrote:
> > > <http://www.forbes.com/2003/06/18/cz_dl_0618linux.html>
> >
> > "[...] in two other Canopy companies, Troll Tech and Lineo, [...]"
> >
> > Makes one wonder what else to expect in the future ...
> >
> > - Werner
> >
> > "[...] in two other Canopy companies, Troll Tech and Lineo, [...]"
>
>                                          ^^^^^^^^^^
>                  I thought this was a joke! There __is__ really
> such a company???!! Wonder what they do....., maybe troll this
> list... hehe....
Ever heard about QT-Libs?

CU
thorsten

Re: Sco vs. IBM

[jdow]

From: "Magnus Solvang" <magnus@solvang.net>

> Quoting Richard B. Johnson (root@chaos.analogic.com):
> [...]
> | > "[...] in two other Canopy companies, Troll Tech and Lineo, [...]"
> |                                          ^^^^^^^^^^
> |                  I thought this was a joke! There __is__ really
> | such a company???!! Wonder what they do....., maybe troll this
> | list... hehe....
> 
> You could try a search before joking about it. I believe it's this
> Norwegian company they write about:
> 
> http://www.trolltech.com/
> 
> - M

If so then say good by to KDE sometime soon....

{O.O}

Re: Sco vs. IBM

[Magnus Solvang]

Quoting jdow (jdow@earthlink.net):
[...]
| > I believe it's this Norwegian company they write about:
| > 
| > http://www.trolltech.com/
| 
| If so then say good by to KDE sometime soon....

How did you arrive at that conclusion? Do you believe that
SCO will destroy everything and everybody related to Linux
when they can make money by suing them? :)
And KDE is not limited to just Linux.

- M

Re: Sco vs. IBM

[Martin List-Petersen]

Citat Magnus Solvang <magnus@solvang.net>:

> Quoting jdow (jdow@earthlink.net):
> [...]
> | > I believe it's this Norwegian company they write about:
> | > 
> | > http://www.trolltech.com/
> | 
> | If so then say good by to KDE sometime soon....
> 
> How did you arrive at that conclusion? Do you believe that
> SCO will destroy everything and everybody related to Linux
> when they can make money by suing them? :)
> And KDE is not limited to just Linux.

Go back and read the forbes article. That was more or less exactly the point of
that article. 

Regards,
Martin List-Petersen
martin at list-petersen dot dk
--
BOFH excuse #66:

bit bucket overflow

Re: Sco vs. IBM

[Jesse Pollard]

On Thursday 19 June 2003 08:03, Martin List-Petersen wrote:
> Citat Magnus Solvang <magnus@solvang.net>:
> > Quoting jdow (jdow@earthlink.net):
> > [...]
> >
> > | > I believe it's this Norwegian company they write about:
> > | >
> > | > http://www.trolltech.com/
> > |
> > | If so then say good by to KDE sometime soon....
> >
> > How did you arrive at that conclusion? Do you believe that
> > SCO will destroy everything and everybody related to Linux
> > when they can make money by suing them? :)
> > And KDE is not limited to just Linux.
>
> Go back and read the forbes article. That was more or less exactly the
> point of that article.

It was the original reason Gnome was started. Trolltec had released thier
toolkit for "free" but not GPL. They then changed the licence a bit, but I
think they still have some (lot?) control over the toolkit. I believe the
KDE group did start a re-work to implement an independant version, but I
don't know how that went.

Re: Sco vs. IBM

[Thorsten Körner]

Hi
Am Donnerstag, 19. Juni 2003 15:14 schrieb Jesse Pollard:
> On Thursday 19 June 2003 08:03, Martin List-Petersen wrote:
> > Citat Magnus Solvang <magnus@solvang.net>:
> > > Quoting jdow (jdow@earthlink.net):
> > > [...]
> > >
> > > | > I believe it's this Norwegian company they write about:
> > > | >
> > > | > http://www.trolltech.com/
> > > |
> > > | If so then say good by to KDE sometime soon....
> > >
> > > How did you arrive at that conclusion? Do you believe that
> > > SCO will destroy everything and everybody related to Linux
> > > when they can make money by suing them? :)
> > > And KDE is not limited to just Linux.
> >
> > Go back and read the forbes article. That was more or less exactly the
> > point of that article.
>
> It was the original reason Gnome was started. Trolltec had released thier
> toolkit for "free" but not GPL. They then changed the licence a bit, but I
> think they still have some (lot?) control over the toolkit. I believe the
> KDE group did start a re-work to implement an independant version, but I
> don't know how that went.
I think all newer versions of QT are licensed under GPL. And IMHO uses the 
KDE-Project QT-Libs that are 'GPLed', so trolltech can't stop the project 
from using this Libs.

CU

Thorsten

Re: Sco vs. IBM

[Adrian Bunk]

On Thu, Jun 19, 2003 at 08:14:55AM -0500, Jesse Pollard wrote:
> On Thursday 19 June 2003 08:03, Martin List-Petersen wrote:
> > Citat Magnus Solvang <magnus@solvang.net>:
> > > Quoting jdow (jdow@earthlink.net):
> > > [...]
> > >
> > > | > I believe it's this Norwegian company they write about:
> > > | >
> > > | > http://www.trolltech.com/
> > > |
> > > | If so then say good by to KDE sometime soon....
> > >
> > > How did you arrive at that conclusion? Do you believe that
> > > SCO will destroy everything and everybody related to Linux
> > > when they can make money by suing them? :)
> > > And KDE is not limited to just Linux.
> >
> > Go back and read the forbes article. That was more or less exactly the
> > point of that article.
> 
> It was the original reason Gnome was started. Trolltec had released thier
> toolkit for "free" but not GPL. They then changed the licence a bit, but I
> think they still have some (lot?) control over the toolkit. I believe the
> KDE group did start a re-work to implement an independant version, but I
> don't know how that went.

That's not correct.

Qt was pulished under the QPL. The QPL is an open source license. The 
only problems was that the QPL is not compatible with the GPL.

There were copyright problems since some small parts of KDE (IIRC e.g. 
kghostview) contain GPL'ed code not written by the KDE developers.

Since version 2.2 Qt is dual-licenced under both the QPL and the GPL 
(you can choose under which license you want to use it.

Trolltech has the same control over Qt as Linus over the Linux kernel.

There's no license reason today why there are two big desktop projects 
(GNOME and KDE).

cu
Adrian

-- 

       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
        of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed

Re: Sco vs. IBM

[Bruce Ferrell]

Anbody know if the Canopy Group is still involved in SCO/Caldera?  Given 
  that their web site lists the Caldera -> SCO name change, I would 
suspect that they are. They did the original VC funding for Caldera and 
Lineo so I have a hunch that Lineo will be left alone.

Ray Norda may be crazy, but he's crazy like a fox!

Always, always, always... Follow the money


Richard B. Johnson wrote:
> On Wed, 18 Jun 2003, Werner Almesberger wrote:
> 
> 
>>Luigi Rosa wrote:
>>
>>><http://www.forbes.com/2003/06/18/cz_dl_0618linux.html>
>>
>>"[...] in two other Canopy companies, Troll Tech and Lineo, [...]"
>>
>>Makes one wonder what else to expect in the future ...
>>
>>- Werner
> 
> 
>>"[...] in two other Canopy companies, Troll Tech and Lineo, [...]"
> 
>                                          ^^^^^^^^^^
>                  I thought this was a joke! There __is__ really
> such a company???!! Wonder what they do....., maybe troll this
> list... hehe....
> 
> 
> Cheers,
> Dick Johnson
> Penguin : Linux version 2.4.20 on an i686 machine (797.90 BogoMips).
> Why is the government concerned about the lunatic fringe? Think about it.
> 
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/
> 

Re: Sco vs. IBM

[Miquel van Smoorenburg]

In article <20030619141443.GR29247@fs.tum.de>,
Adrian Bunk  <bunk@fs.tum.de> wrote:
>There's no license reason today why there are two big desktop projects 
>(GNOME and KDE).

There is. If you want to develop a commercial application under
KDE you need to pay TrollTech for the Qt license. Basically
TrollTech controls all commercial KDE applications.

Which makes no sense. You're not at the mercy of Linus or the
kernel developers, neither at that of the KDE developers, but
TrollTech controls the KDE desktop wrt commercial apps.

What if TrollTech decides to only license (or sell) Qt
to, say, Microsoft? What does that mean for, say, the Kompany ?

Mike.

Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Larry McVoy]

These discussions always make me wonder if the open source crowd is ever
going to realize it's reasonable to be friendly with commercial companies.
Troll Tech is being nice.  They have a nice product, they've created a
business model that let's you have the product for free and ensures that
they will be in business to support that product.   That's a Good Thing,
you benefit from that.

The Gnome guys will do something very similar or just die out.  It's a
huge amount of work to keep making the toolkits both look good and work
well.  So far, what I see from Gnome is more on the look good front and
nowhere near enough on the work well front.  I'll take Microsoft's desktop
over Gnome any day.  KDE is better but not better than Microsoft.  Why?
Because it takes a lot of effort to do all the grunt work and if that
grunt work is behind the scenes in things like application to application
communication, there is less incentive for people to work on it.  The last
Gnome interview I read was all about the icons.  Icons are great if the
underlying system works well.  Otherwise they are just eye candy and
suck people in for a while and then they give up.

The world is not going to end up with all software working perfectly and 
being free.  Software is hard work, software tends to rot if you don't 
take care of it, there has to be an business plan better than

	1.  Give it away.
	2.  ???
	3.  Make lots of money.

Instead of fighting with people like Troll Tech, you should be figuring
out how to do more stuff like that.  It's a pretty sweet deal you have
there.

On Thu, Jun 19, 2003 at 04:34:05PM +0000, Miquel van Smoorenburg wrote:
> In article <20030619141443.GR29247@fs.tum.de>,
> Adrian Bunk  <bunk@fs.tum.de> wrote:
> >There's no license reason today why there are two big desktop projects 
> >(GNOME and KDE).
> 
> There is. If you want to develop a commercial application under
> KDE you need to pay TrollTech for the Qt license. Basically
> TrollTech controls all commercial KDE applications.
> 
> Which makes no sense. You're not at the mercy of Linus or the
> kernel developers, neither at that of the KDE developers, but
> TrollTech controls the KDE desktop wrt commercial apps.
> 
> What if TrollTech decides to only license (or sell) Qt
> to, say, Microsoft? What does that mean for, say, the Kompany ?
> 
> Mike.
> 
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/

-- 
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[ismail (cartman) donmez]

On Thursday 19 June 2003 19:59, Larry McVoy wrote:
> These discussions always make me wonder if the open source crowd is ever
> going to realize it's reasonable to be friendly with commercial companies.
> Troll Tech is being nice.  They have a nice product, they've created a
> business model that let's you have the product for free and ensures that
> they will be in business to support that product.   That's a Good Thing,
> you benefit from that.
TT is just great. If all commercial companies are like that. Noone could 
object commercialism in OSS. [1] GTK+ people are being cheap and go blame Qt 
for being GPL. Now TT puts a great product there with great help system for 
free  so I would better shut up or put up.

> KDE is better but not better than Microsoft.  Why?
> Because it takes a lot of effort to do all the grunt work and if that
> grunt work is behind the scenes in things like application to application
> communication, there is less incentive for people to work on it.  The last
> Gnome interview I read was all about the icons.  Icons are great if the
> underlying system works well.  Otherwise they are just eye candy and
> suck people in for a while and then they give up.

Gnome is great for icons yeah. But KDE ( with -devs -apps ) are great. Not 
ready for %90 of desktop out there but getting there. I suggest Gnome people 
stop whining about Qt but creating a usable GTK+ file dialog at least.

[1] : Its nice of BitKeeper to provide CVS and SVN gateways. People should 
appreciate it.

Regards,
/ismail 

Re: Sco vs. IBM

[Robin Rosenberg]

torsdagen den 19 juni 2003 18.34 skrev Miquel van Smoorenburg:
[snip]
>
> What if TrollTech decides to only license (or sell) Qt
> to, say, Microsoft? What does that mean for, say, the Kompany ?

A link for those that bothered to look at trolltech's site: 
http://www.kde.org/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php

Trolltech is doing a great job. QT works and seems to work well by default
in most apps. Linux needs toolkits like that results in well working consistent
apps an not just great screenshots. Trolltech provides that. For free.

-- robin

Re: Sco vs. IBM

[jdow]

From: "Thorsten Körner" <thorstenkoerner@123tkshop.org>

> Hi
> Am Donnerstag, 19. Juni 2003 15:14 schrieb Jesse Pollard:
> > On Thursday 19 June 2003 08:03, Martin List-Petersen wrote:
> > > Citat Magnus Solvang <magnus@solvang.net>:
> > > > Quoting jdow (jdow@earthlink.net):
> > > > [...]
> > > >
> > > > | > I believe it's this Norwegian company they write about:
> > > > | >
> > > > | > http://www.trolltech.com/
> > > > |
> > > > | If so then say good by to KDE sometime soon....
> > > >
> > > > How did you arrive at that conclusion? Do you believe that
> > > > SCO will destroy everything and everybody related to Linux
> > > > when they can make money by suing them? :)
> > > > And KDE is not limited to just Linux.
> > >
> > > Go back and read the forbes article. That was more or less exactly the
> > > point of that article.
> >
> > It was the original reason Gnome was started. Trolltec had released
thier
> > toolkit for "free" but not GPL. They then changed the licence a bit, but
I
> > think they still have some (lot?) control over the toolkit. I believe
the
> > KDE group did start a re-work to implement an independant version, but I
> > don't know how that went.
> I think all newer versions of QT are licensed under GPL. And IMHO uses the
> KDE-Project QT-Libs that are 'GPLed', so trolltech can't stop the project
> from using this Libs.

Thorsten, that does not follow directly. You know and I know that when
there is "one way to do something" the code you write and the code I
write without ever meeting each other might have remarkable resemblance
once our preferred formatting differences are ironed out. This has not
stopped SCO from claiming copying by IBM into Linux. (That is a major
laugh, by the way. It is a corporate firing offense.) They can claim
that the KDE people copied code from the QT library rather than fully
and properly recreated it from cold. And who in the KDE world has enough
money to beat someone buying a verdict?

(The word from inside at the coder level of IBM is that you work on
proprietary code or you work on Linux code. Proprietary code does not
leak from one proprietary domain to another or into Linux. It does not
leak the other way. Said leaks are firing offenses. The same happens
at UniSys. My partner has source code for much of XP because he builds
HALs for the ES-7000 etc. He WILL NOT go NEAR the Linux material I
happen to have due to my interests. And I do not discuss any Linux
tricks I note with him. His golden handcuff level income is something
neither of us wish to toss away.)

{^_^} Joanne

[OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Werner Almesberger]

Larry McVoy wrote:
> These discussions always make me wonder if the open source crowd is ever
> going to realize it's reasonable to be friendly with commercial companies.

The problem is that you can't trust a company. You may choose to
trust people who control or shape a company, but they may lose
that control, and then all bets are off.

Something like the "KDE Free Qt Foundation" may work to protect the
interests of both sides. It certainly looks fine to me, but maybe
I'm just not crooked enough to see the loopholes.

> 	1.  Give it away.
> 	2.  ???
> 	3.  Make lots of money.

2. Give it away and still make lots of money.

Proving this is left as an exercise to the reader ;-)

- Werner

-- 
  _________________________________________________________________________
 / Werner Almesberger, Buenos Aires, Argentina         wa@almesberger.net /
/_http://www.almesberger.net/____________________________________________/

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Stephan von Krawczynski]

On Fri, 20 Jun 2003 00:12:17 -0300
Werner Almesberger <wa@almesberger.net> wrote:

> Larry McVoy wrote:
> > These discussions always make me wonder if the open source crowd is ever
> > going to realize it's reasonable to be friendly with commercial companies.
> 
> The problem is that you can't trust a company. You may choose to
> trust people who control or shape a company, but they may lose
> that control, and then all bets are off.

And that is exactly _the_ argument in this whole discussion. There seem to be
people out there who want to make a living from _others_ _ancient_ work they
bought for small bucks by sueing just about anyone.

GPL has an inherent long-term strategy, you are talking of short-term, Larry.
That does not match. If I am using only GPL-software I know I am able to use it
as is in five years from now. If I depend on being nice to commercial
companies, it may well turn out, that they are not being nice to me no matter
what I do.
In other words: it's all about being free or being dependant on goodwill.

Greets to the land of the free and the home of the brave,
Stephan

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Larry McVoy]

On Fri, Jun 20, 2003 at 12:09:10PM +0200, Stephan von Krawczynski wrote:
> On Fri, 20 Jun 2003 00:12:17 -0300
> Werner Almesberger <wa@almesberger.net> wrote:
> > Larry McVoy wrote:
> > > These discussions always make me wonder if the open source crowd is ever
> > > going to realize it's reasonable to be friendly with commercial companies.
> > 
> > The problem is that you can't trust a company. You may choose to
> > trust people who control or shape a company, but they may lose
> > that control, and then all bets are off.
> 
> And that is exactly _the_ argument in this whole discussion. There seem to be
> people out there who want to make a living from _others_ _ancient_ work they
> bought for small bucks by sueing just about anyone.
> 
> GPL has an inherent long-term strategy, you are talking of short-term, Larry.
> That does not match. If I am using only GPL-software I know I am able to use it
> as is in five years from now. 

Actually, my point is about long term strategy and what you think is long
term I think of as short term.  5 years isn't long term in my book.

Here's some mail I sent last night which summarizes my view.  I didn't
intend to post it here as it is a little harsh but what the heck, in for 
a penny, in for a pound.

    I've said for years that the open source world is all about
    reimplementing and not about new innovation.  Sure, people make
    the thing they copy somewhat better and maybe even lots better.
    I personally like Linux better than any of the Unices and I've been
    running Unix since 32v timeframe.

    But the deal is that if Linux and the rest of the open source world
    was creating their own stuff instead of copying someone else's,
    this wouldn't be a Linux problem, it would be an IBM problem.

    The reason I take this point of view, unpopular though it may be,
    is that I see open source as basically parasitic.  It lives off the
    efforts of others and the big bummer is that it is killing its host.
    If open source can realize this and change gears fast enough to learn
    to create its own work, great.  But that's going to take a lot more
    money than open source is currently generating.  Like at least 3
    orders of magnitude.  Sun spends more in a year on Solaris than all
    the other open source revenue put together.  Think about that for
    a while.  Then realize that a ton of the work in Linux was dreamed
    up by the Solaris engineers.  Remember, I've been on the mailing
    list since 0.99 days or earlier and I worked at Sun, I know where
    stuff came from.  There is very very very little new work in Linux.
    Better tuned?  Sure.  Leaner?  Sure.  Cleaner?  Maybe.  New?  No.
    So where is the inspiration for new work going to come from when
    Linux kills off Sun and every other source of innovation?

    Don't get me wrong, Linux is better in some ways.  The main thing,
    however, is device drivers.  That's hardly innovation.

    I hate to sound like Bill Gates but I start to think he has a point.
    I wouldn't be surprised if I get sent to /dev/null in your procmailrc
    for this rant but that's my view of where we sit.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Larry McVoy]

On Fri, Jun 20, 2003 at 07:24:36AM -0700, Larry McVoy wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 20, 2003 at 12:09:10PM +0200, Stephan von Krawczynski wrote:
> > On Fri, 20 Jun 2003 00:12:17 -0300
> > Werner Almesberger <wa@almesberger.net> wrote:
> > > Larry McVoy wrote:
> > > > These discussions always make me wonder if the open source crowd is ever
> > > > going to realize it's reasonable to be friendly with commercial companies.
> > > 
> > > The problem is that you can't trust a company. You may choose to
> > > trust people who control or shape a company, but they may lose
> > > that control, and then all bets are off.
> > 
> > And that is exactly _the_ argument in this whole discussion. There seem to be
> > people out there who want to make a living from _others_ _ancient_ work they
> > bought for small bucks by sueing just about anyone.
> > 
> > GPL has an inherent long-term strategy, you are talking of short-term, Larry.
> > That does not match. If I am using only GPL-software I know I am able to use it
> > as is in five years from now. 
> 
> Actually, my point is about long term strategy and what you think is long
> term I think of as short term.  5 years isn't long term in my book.

I realized after I sent that that maybe the point was too subtle.
Open source is great, I use it, I love it, no problem there.  However,
*if* I'm correct that what is happening is basically a process of copying,
and *if* open source kills off the companies producing the products which
are being copied, then open source slowly grinds to a halt in terms of
creating anything new.

That may well be fine in the minds of many.  Lots of people can't see
past their nose and all they want is free versions of what they have to
pay for today.  What's past their nose is all the new stuff we haven't
seen yet.  Imagine a world without that new stuff.  Just roll back the
world to 5 years ago and think of what you would have lost.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Nick LeRoy]

On Friday 20 June 2003 9:24 am, Larry McVoy wrote:

Larry...

> Here's some mail I sent last night which summarizes my view.  I didn't
> intend to post it here as it is a little harsh but what the heck, in for
> a penny, in for a pound.
>
>     I've said for years that the open source world is all about
>     reimplementing and not about new innovation.  Sure, people make
>     the thing they copy somewhat better and maybe even lots better.
>     I personally like Linux better than any of the Unices and I've been
>     running Unix since 32v timeframe.
>
>     But the deal is that if Linux and the rest of the open source world
>     was creating their own stuff instead of copying someone else's,
>     this wouldn't be a Linux problem, it would be an IBM problem.
>
>     The reason I take this point of view, unpopular though it may be,
>     is that I see open source as basically parasitic.  It lives off the
>     efforts of others and the big bummer is that it is killing its host.
>     If open source can realize this and change gears fast enough to learn
>     to create its own work, great.  But that's going to take a lot more
>     money than open source is currently generating.  Like at least 3
>     orders of magnitude.  Sun spends more in a year on Solaris than all
>     the other open source revenue put together.  Think about that for
>     a while.  Then realize that a ton of the work in Linux was dreamed
>     up by the Solaris engineers.  Remember, I've been on the mailing
>     list since 0.99 days or earlier and I worked at Sun, I know where
>     stuff came from.  There is very very very little new work in Linux.
>     Better tuned?  Sure.  Leaner?  Sure.  Cleaner?  Maybe.  New?  No.
>     So where is the inspiration for new work going to come from when
>     Linux kills off Sun and every other source of innovation?
>
>     Don't get me wrong, Linux is better in some ways.  The main thing,
>     however, is device drivers.  That's hardly innovation.
>
>     I hate to sound like Bill Gates but I start to think he has a point.
>     I wouldn't be surprised if I get sent to /dev/null in your procmailrc
>     for this rant but that's my view of where we sit.

We've communicated before, and I've been a (quiet) supporter of your views.  
But, here I think that I'm forced to take issue.

You sight the Linux kernel as non-inovative, essentially.  I'll certainly 
grant that the general idea of a Unix kernel is not original work, and that 
most of the concepts from which Linux is derived are well known.  I also take 
issue with the idea that there's _nothing_ innovative about LK, but I'm

However, I think that we need to look at the whole open source "picture".

Sendmail, very much open source, was certainly ground-breaking.  The X window 
system.  Nethack, adventure, etc. -- the whole concept of computer gaming 
derives from the open source world (granted the is all from long before the 
term "open source" existsed).

I'm in the "grid computing" world, so I'd like to discuss the inovations in 
it.  The Condor project, of which I am a core member, has it's roots as a 
open source project (originally a BSD-like license), and was very 
ground-breaking in the world of distributed computing, and still is.  The 
reason that Condor became non-open is because pieces of it were closed off 
for profit by groups that I won't mention here.  Shameless plug: Condor is 
now released under the Condoor Public License, and we will be releasing the 
source code as soon as we get it cleaned up and "releasable" 
(http://www.condorproject.org).  The point is that Condor and other open 
source projects (like Globus) are leading the entire field of grid / 
distributed computing.

I'm sure many other such examples exists.  Which is why I have to take 
exception to your blanket statement.

Hope we're still friends....

-Nick

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Michael Poole]

Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com> writes:

> I realized after I sent that that maybe the point was too subtle.
> Open source is great, I use it, I love it, no problem there.  However,
> *if* I'm correct that what is happening is basically a process of copying,
> and *if* open source kills off the companies producing the products which
> are being copied, then open source slowly grinds to a halt in terms of
> creating anything new.

This is such an inane hypothesis I'm not sure why I bother responding.

Yes, a lot of open source software is just copying what someone else
has done.  A lot of *all* software is re-implementing similar code
from someone else.  Otherwise, what would be the point of IBM's DB2 vs
Oracle vs whoever else?  [I will not say anything further about
monopolies and your self-comparison to Bill Gates.]  If you look at
things like Apache or Perl, you can see just a few of the high-profile
open source projects that drive innovation in the computer field.  If
you look at other specific areas, I bet you could find others.

Companies that sell hardware or systems tend to accept open source
software much more than software companies do, since using OSS is
often a win for both them and their customers.

Companies that make their money by selling software legitimately feel
threatened by open source software that performs the same functions.
It seems not so long ago that you, Larry, were trumpeting how BitMover
was and could easily stay ahead of free software revision control
systems.  There are good economic reasons that open source is not the
first to enter most markets -- reasons that boil down to return on
investment and available resources to invest.  Perhaps that lag is
what leads you to your hypothesis; but that lag also provides a space
where commercial software companies can exploit their development
speed to turn a profit.

Open source software can be a reflection of market efficiencies: if
the users of software have in-house developers (or are developers), it
can be cheaper for them to develop, enhance or maintain software than
to have someone else do it.  When base source code is available and
customizable, total development costs are lower, regardless of who
does the development.  False cries that open source software is
derivative will not change the economics that drive it.

Michael Poole

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Larry McVoy]

On Fri, Jun 20, 2003 at 09:44:05AM -0500, Nick LeRoy wrote:
> You sight the Linux kernel as non-inovative, essentially.  I'll certainly 
> grant that the general idea of a Unix kernel is not original work, and that 
> most of the concepts from which Linux is derived are well known.  I also take 
> issue with the idea that there's _nothing_ innovative about LK, but I'm

I knew I would be taken to task on that point.  Remember, I'm a big fan of 
Linux, I've been here forever and tried to help where I could.  I thought 
about what is new in Linux and couldn't come up with much.  /proc is a
hell of a lot nicer than /proc in solaris, it's not really /proc, it's
/system and there was a Usenix paper about /system long ago.  clone(2) is
clone but it's basically plan 9's rfork (though I like how the code 
works in Linux somewhat better, it's really clean).  

One thing that is "new" is a passion for keeping the kernel fast with a lean
system call layer.  I _love_ that part of Linux, it may seem subtle, but
Linux is really the only operating system where you can use the OS level
services as if they were library calls and not really notice that you are
going into to the kernel.  That's very cool and you could say it is new
in terms of cleanliness and discipline.  

I'm definitely not trying to say Linux is bad, quite the opposite.
Linux rocks, I'll fight to keep it healthy and in fact that's why I
rattle the cages once in a while.

I think the most profound new things in Linux are Linus himself, he's a
unique leader IMO, and even moreso the process by which it is developed.
The *process* is new, at least new to the commercial world.  It's too
bad that the community couldn't patent the development process :)  Most
commercial folks who come in contact with the Linux development process
just don't get it, they want to impose "control" and "release process"
and all sorts of stuff that makes sense in a commercial environment but
would ruin what's going on with Linux.  The BSD folks are much closer to
commercial people in mentality, they want that feeling of control and 
Linux is developed in a sort of zen like free for all that is different
and works well.

> Sendmail, very much open source, was certainly ground-breaking.  The X window 
> system.  Nethack, adventure, etc. -- the whole concept of computer gaming 
> derives from the open source world (granted the is all from long before the 
> term "open source" existsed).

The stuff you are describing is 20 years old.  The problem I'm describing
is current.

Maybe this is a way to see the point:  Red Hat, which is a company I like
and I have friends there so I'm not trying to beat up on them OK?, has been
around for quite a while.  They are an open source company.  I'm not sure
how old they are but it has to be more than 5 years, right?  Wouldn't it
be interesting to go compare what Red Hat has done in terms of new stuff
to say, Sun, in the same first N years of their history?  I'd have to go 
look at the timelines but Sun brought us mmap(), the VFS layer, NFS, RPC,
yp, etc.  And wrote nice thoughtful papers about it all so that others 
could learn from their efforts.

> Hope we're still friends....

Absolutely.  I know my views are not widely held and they piss people off.
Sorry about that, it's not my goal to piss anyone off, it's my goal to get
people to look farther out into the future and try and plan for it.

Cheers,
-- 
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Werner Almesberger]

Larry McVoy wrote:
>     The reason I take this point of view, unpopular though it may be,
>     is that I see open source as basically parasitic.

Think of it as a child that's growing up. For quite a while, it
will just draw resources from the parents, add little work or
innovations, and will have considerably less economical power
than the parents.

You choose to view Open Source as a historical accident that
needs to be integrated into the traditional framework. I'd say
it is more like an evolution into an age where most of the
physical limitations of the sharing of information have
disappeared.

Regarding your statement that there is no innovation in Linux:
in the end, only the author can tell whether something is really
new or not. When I look back on my own projects, I find quite a
few things that weren't based on somebody else's blueprint. And
I'm sure it's the same for many other Linux developers too.

With plenty of companies establishing Linux as a platform for
migrating their current installed base to, it's just natural
that a lot of quite visible work is being put into duplicating
functionality found on legacy platforms.

That doesn't mean that innovation doesn't happen. It may just
be a bit harder to recognize on that big construction site.

- Werner

-- 
  _________________________________________________________________________
 / Werner Almesberger, Buenos Aires, Argentina         wa@almesberger.net /
/_http://www.almesberger.net/____________________________________________/

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Larry McVoy]

On Fri, Jun 20, 2003 at 12:18:34PM -0300, Werner Almesberger wrote:
> Larry McVoy wrote:
> >     The reason I take this point of view, unpopular though it may be,
> >     is that I see open source as basically parasitic.
> 
> Think of it as a child that's growing up. For quite a while, it
> will just draw resources from the parents, add little work or
> innovations, and will have considerably less economical power
> than the parents.

That's a perfectly fine thing, it's the normal circle of life and to 
some extent I think we're in agreement.  

The point I'm trying to make is could we please think about how create
a world that is sustainable and based completely on open source?  There 
are lots of people who say you can't trust anything but open source, the
companies behind are evil corporate monsters just waiting to jump out 
from under your bed at night and grab you (sorry, couldn't resist). 
Seriously, if what you want is an all open source all the time, which
would be fantastic in some sense, then how about a plan that shows how
that will work?  Saying that open source is a child growing is a nice
analogy but what's the grown up child look like?  Is this going to just
be like the 60's flower children that grow up and turn into their parents
after all?
-- 
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Larry McVoy]

On Fri, Jun 20, 2003 at 10:59:00AM -0400, Michael Poole wrote:
> Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com> writes:
> 
> > I realized after I sent that that maybe the point was too subtle.
> > Open source is great, I use it, I love it, no problem there.  However,
> > *if* I'm correct that what is happening is basically a process of copying,
> > and *if* open source kills off the companies producing the products which
> > are being copied, then open source slowly grinds to a halt in terms of
> > creating anything new.
> 
> This is such an inane hypothesis I'm not sure why I bother responding.

Lots of people claimed the world was flat because they couldn't imagine
anything beyond the horizon.  

I don't think the point I'm making is that much of a stretch.  Look at 
Sun - it's been the source of many of the things in Linux.  There is no
question, in my mind at least, that Linux is putting Sun out of business.
Sun used to do 10% of their annual revenue on Wall Street.  Wall Street
businesses are moving to Linux in droves.  That's an example of what I
call killing off the host.

I'm sure you can muddy the waters by saying that Sun has other problems
and I won't go there.  I think enough people can see that Linux is hurting
Sun, that's all I wanted to get across.

Maybe there will always be another host to come along and so we have an
uneasy truce where each time a new cool thing comes along the community
copies it, if they do it fast and well enough, that host goes away.

It would be a zillion times better, in my mind, if there was significant
effort in creating business models which allow open source to be self
sustaining.  Rather than beating up on each and every company that
doesn't just GPL everything and hand it over, it would be nice if this
community was trying to find ways to be healthy without any dependency
on the companies which are creating the ideas which are being copied.
That way, if those companies go away, open source is self sustaining.

That would be nothing but a good thing.  If I'm right, it's a really 
important thing, if I'm wrong, it's still a fine thing to have open
source have more ways to support itself.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Stephan von Krawczynski]

On Fri, 20 Jun 2003 07:24:36 -0700
Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com> wrote:

> > And that is exactly _the_ argument in this whole discussion. There seem to
> > be people out there who want to make a living from _others_ _ancient_ work
> > they bought for small bucks by sueing just about anyone.
> > 
> > GPL has an inherent long-term strategy, you are talking of short-term,
> > Larry. That does not match. If I am using only GPL-software I know I am
> > able to use it as is in five years from now. 
> 
> Actually, my point is about long term strategy and what you think is long
> term I think of as short term.  5 years isn't long term in my book.

Call up your banker and explain in detail :-) A lot of the dotcom-hype
"companies" did not even make it 3 years. In todays' world five years are ages.
There are "operating systems" whos' live cycle is set to 3 years by the
manufacturer. How does a long-term strategy for a company doing application
software for such a system look like? Just like this:
- make a brand new, brilliant piece of software
- start to sell it and make money
- big company (the maker of your underlying OS) takes a deep look
- your innovation is borg'ed and re-furnished into an all-in-one OS-plugin type
  of thing
- your innovation is delivered together with the next OS version at zero bucks.
- your company is dead.
all within 5 years. Do you really argue that this "company-live-cycle" did not
happen? This is no SF, this is the simple truth. This happens if your OS
manufacturer is a monopoly and can therefore act like a vacuum cleaner, just
suck up the whole damn market.
And _that_ does not happen on a GPLed OS. It is one of many reasons why
application writers should really think twice about the platform they are
building their future on.
 
>     I've said for years that the open source world is all about
>     reimplementing and not about new innovation.  Sure, people make
>     the thing they copy somewhat better and maybe even lots better.
>     I personally like Linux better than any of the Unices and I've been
>     running Unix since 32v timeframe.
> 
>     But the deal is that if Linux and the rest of the open source world
>     was creating their own stuff instead of copying someone else's,
>     this wouldn't be a Linux problem, it would be an IBM problem.

I am not quite sure if you really spent the last years in *nix area. The real
kick behind this damn old basic platform is that a lot of the code can be
re-used. It is _meant_ to be re-used and brushed up. I'd really say this has
always been the basic intention of the people writing the stuff. Unfortunately
they were more programmers than lawyers or philosophers. I never heard
Ian Taylor say "shit, those bloody Linux-kids stole my code and use UUCP, SHOOT
THEM".
If we follow your thinking no car would have wheels, because they are for sure
not invented by the car companies, they should have invented something _new_
instead. Have you really thought about it?

>     The reason I take this point of view, unpopular though it may be,
>     is that I see open source as basically parasitic.

Just about as any car company.

>  It lives off the
>     efforts of others and the big bummer is that it is killing its host.

I can feel your bank account grow ... ;-)

>     If open source can realize this and change gears fast enough to learn
>     to create its own work, great.  But that's going to take a lot more
>     money than open source is currently generating.

Ah, another very interesting topic. You have to be _rich_ to be able to do real
life-changing innovation. I really seldomly heard something ranking higher on
the stupid-o-meter. Sorry to say that.

>  Like at least 3
>     orders of magnitude.  Sun spends more in a year on Solaris than all
>     the other open source revenue put together.

It is not only a matter of how much you spend, it is truly very dependant on what
the money is used for...

>  Think about that for
>     a while.  Then realize that a ton of the work in Linux was dreamed
>     up by the Solaris engineers.

Question: then why is Solaris that "wide-spread" ? I mean you say its all the
same innovation, the company has lots of money and quite a good PR, anyway they
are not near the market share of linux, why is it then? Have you ever thought
about the possibility that the way decisions about ongoing development are made
in the linux-community is simply superior to other strategies implemented in
whatever company tried to sell a *nix style/any OS? 

>  Remember, I've been on the mailing
>     list since 0.99 days or earlier and I worked at Sun, I know where
>     stuff came from.  There is very very very little new work in Linux.

Yes, and after all von-Neumann already said it all. Nothing new from then on.

>     Better tuned?  Sure.  Leaner?  Sure.  Cleaner?  Maybe.  New?  No.
>     So where is the inspiration for new work going to come from when
>     Linux kills off Sun and every other source of innovation?

Hm, ok, you wanted it, now I tell you :-)
Have you ever thought about the simple truth that a computer is only a tool for
reaching a goal that has in fact nothing to do with the computer itself? I mean
most people on this planet don't spend their time for "backstage work" in
computer business. It is only a tool for talking to distant people, for writing
books, for entertainment, for improving health, for flying to mars. And my
personal opinion is that the real important goals of mankind should not be
slowed down by people not wanting to let others (capable but _not_ rich)
improve the _tool_ because of a dead paper in a patent office. Understand?

>     Don't get me wrong, Linux is better in some ways.  The main thing,
>     however, is device drivers.  That's hardly innovation.
> 
>     I hate to sound like Bill Gates but I start to think he has a point.
>     I wouldn't be surprised if I get sent to /dev/null in your procmailrc
>     for this rant but that's my view of where we sit.

Look at what you do and ask yourself: is it really important for mankind?
Ask yourself: is it a good thing if your childrens' "passport"(tm) is given out
by the company.
Ask yourself: is it a good thing that the life of your children is influenced
by technology they are not allowed to understand because it is patented and
locked away somewhere?
Think about the real important things first, then come back to the discussion
about the _tool_ and see how narrow and short-sighted people react.

Regards,
Stephan

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Nick LeRoy]

On Friday 20 June 2003 10:17 am, Larry McVoy wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 20, 2003 at 09:44:05AM -0500, Nick LeRoy wrote:

> I think the most profound new things in Linux are Linus himself, he's a
> unique leader IMO, and even moreso the process by which it is developed.
> The *process* is new, at least new to the commercial world.  It's too
> bad that the community couldn't patent the development process :)  Most
> commercial folks who come in contact with the Linux development process
> just don't get it, they want to impose "control" and "release process"
> and all sorts of stuff that makes sense in a commercial environment but
> would ruin what's going on with Linux.  The BSD folks are much closer to
> commercial people in mentality, they want that feeling of control and
> Linux is developed in a sort of zen like free for all that is different
> and works well.

Yup.  I know that you feel that way.  I think that we're all in agreement 
here.

> > Sendmail, very much open source, was certainly ground-breaking.  The X
> > window system.  Nethack, adventure, etc. -- the whole concept of computer
> > gaming derives from the open source world (granted the is all from long
> > before the term "open source" existsed).
>
> The stuff you are describing is 20 years old.  The problem I'm describing
> is current.
>
> Maybe this is a way to see the point:  Red Hat, which is a company I like
> and I have friends there so I'm not trying to beat up on them OK?, has been
> around for quite a while.  They are an open source company.  I'm not sure
> how old they are but it has to be more than 5 years, right?  Wouldn't it
> be interesting to go compare what Red Hat has done in terms of new stuff
> to say, Sun, in the same first N years of their history?  I'd have to go
> look at the timelines but Sun brought us mmap(), the VFS layer, NFS, RPC,
> yp, etc.  And wrote nice thoughtful papers about it all so that others
> could learn from their efforts.

Not sure how much to snip here....

Right now, I'm reading a book by Stephen Hawking named "On the Shoulders of 
Giants", and somehow it all seems so relevant.  My point is that most, if not 
_all_, innovation the CS world, originated in the open source world.  Unix 
would, in all likelyhood, have died an early death had Bell Labs not release 
the source code to universities (esp Berkley) which grew it into a real 
product.

Sun, that you sight above, never could have given us NFS, etc. had it not been 
for the TCP, UDP & IP socket stuff that Berkley created.  I'm not dissing Sun 
here; they've done some wonderful things, but they've only been able to do it 
as part of a community.  It's the giants who make their work available to be 
built upon, like the science community, that drives true forward progress.  
Imagine what our world would be like if true science were driven by profit, 
and locked up it's work?  Where would the quantum physics upon which our 
computers are based be?  Would we be able to fly if Newton's laws of 
gravitation had been kept a deep secret?  Gee, I'm starting to feel like ESR 
here.  :-)

Sun is, I contend, the exception, not the rule, unfortunately.  Corporations 
are driven by profit, not the good of the world, the good of the users, or 
anything like that.  That's why you see monsters like M$, who would bat an 
eyelash about destroying the world if it'd make they're shareholders another 
$.  It's just sick.

Larry, I know that you've done the LK community a lot of good with BitKeeper, 
and many of us do appreciate your contribution both the kernel directly, and 
through your offering of BK services.  But, even you didn't invent the source 
control idea.  It's all been built on the shoulders of giants.  :-)

Ok, time to get off my soapbox, and back to work.

-Nick

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Lawrence Walton]

<SNIP>
> It would be a zillion times better, in my mind, if there was significant
> effort in creating business models which allow open source to be self
> sustaining.  Rather than beating up on each and every company that
> doesn't just GPL everything and hand it over, it would be nice if this
> community was trying to find ways to be healthy without any dependency
> on the companies which are creating the ideas which are being copied.
> That way, if those companies go away, open source is self sustaining.
> 
> That would be nothing but a good thing.  If I'm right, it's a really 
> important thing, if I'm wrong, it's still a fine thing to have open
> source have more ways to support itself.
> -- 
d> ---
> Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

I usually never respond to political rants on LK, but has it ever occurred
to you that maybe software creation in all its forms is just
overvalued financially?

That Open source is reseting the equilibrium, of the computer industry
to a more sane level? why should any software cost more then say a book?

If Sun goes out of business it might just be a sign that as a industry
is maturing?

Sorry about being off-topic, and whistling in the dark at the same time.
-- 
*--* Mail: lawrence@otak.com
*--* Voice: 425.739.4247
*--* Fax: 425.827.9577
*--* HTTP://the-penguin.otak.com/~lawrence/
--------------------------------------
- - - - - - O t a k  i n c . - - - - - 

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Jeff Garzik]

On Fri, Jun 20, 2003 at 08:24:47AM -0700, Larry McVoy wrote:
> The point I'm trying to make is could we please think about how create
> a world that is sustainable and based completely on open source?  There 
> are lots of people who say you can't trust anything but open source, the
> companies behind are evil corporate monsters just waiting to jump out 
> from under your bed at night and grab you (sorry, couldn't resist). 
> Seriously, if what you want is an all open source all the time, which
> would be fantastic in some sense, then how about a plan that shows how
> that will work?  Saying that open source is a child growing is a nice
> analogy but what's the grown up child look like?  Is this going to just
> be like the 60's flower children that grow up and turn into their parents
> after all?


Look at the scientific process for a model for how it can work, and how
people can make money.  Discoveries in science are protected for a
little while, maybe patented, but eventually make their way into the
general public.  Sometimes its immediate, sometimes it's eventual due to
business.

The wheel has already been invented, open source just wants to continue
building on that, rather than (as a proprietary app company does)
continually reinvented our own wheel, so that we can built upon.

Open source software has far larger opportunity to make significant
advancements in computer science, since the only thing you're ultimately
competing against is time and yourself.

That's the utopian view.  The pragmatic open source view says the open
source software works best for commodity products.  Focused, vertical
market products can certainly benefit from open source, but finding R&D
funding for vertical markets is so difficult that sometimes proprietary
software is the only way to go.

If we could solve the "software R&D funding" problem, then the world
would be doing nothing but open source software!  :)

	Jeff

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Larry McVoy]

On Fri, Jun 20, 2003 at 08:50:03AM -0700, Lawrence Walton wrote:
> I usually never respond to political rants on LK, but has it ever occurred
> to you that maybe software creation in all its forms is just
> overvalued financially?

Yes that has occurred to me.

> That Open source is reseting the equilibrium, of the computer industry
> to a more sane level? why should any software cost more then say a book?

I think open source does drive down the cost of software dramatically.
It also drives down the revenue available for development dramatically.
That's all great until you stop to wonder why companies are spending 
so much on software, the open source model seems to suggest that they
are all a bunch of crappy coders.

Maybe a picture would help.

Creating new software:  $$$$$$$$$$
Copying existing software:       $

Replace dollars with hours of effort, the ratios are the same.

The thing that is worrisome, to put it mildly, is that it takes a much
larger effort to create new stuff than to copy it.  If you manage to 
kill off the source of the new stuff, what do you copy?  Oh, nothing?
OK, so now the open source community has to produce the new stuff.  
Let's have another picture:

Revenue from commercial software: $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Revenue from open source:                                        $ (at best)

So where is the money going to come from to create the new stuff?  That's
what I've been trying to get people to see.  I'm not against open source,
I'm against a grayish world that simply can't support the creation of new
stuff.  That looks bleak and boring.  I don't know what people are going
to create in the future but I do know that I want to see it.  
-- 
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Jeff Garzik]

On Fri, Jun 20, 2003 at 09:02:11AM -0700, Larry McVoy wrote:
> Creating new software:  $$$$$$$$$$
> Copying existing software:       $

Agreed.  Except maybe that one dollar sign is too much :)


> The thing that is worrisome, to put it mildly, is that it takes a much
> larger effort to create new stuff than to copy it.  If you manage to 
> kill off the source of the new stuff, what do you copy?  Oh, nothing?
> OK, so now the open source community has to produce the new stuff.  
> Let's have another picture:
> 
> Revenue from commercial software: $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
> Revenue from open source:                                        $ (at best)

This is misleading.  Revenue has nothing to do with whether the software
is open source or not.  Look at Digital's and IBM's billions that they
made as a service organization, where often there "proprietary" software
simply existed as a loss leader which opens doors to new service
contracts.

There is a pool of money that businesses have, that can be spent on
total IT.  At the end of the day, businesses don't give a damn whether
they are spending 80% on service, 10% on hardware, and 10% on software,
or, 10% of service, 20% on hardware, and 70% on software.  As long as
their business needs are met within the given budget, they're satisfied
to let the engineers dicker about whether OSS or proprietary software is
better.

	Jeff

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Helge Hafting]

On Fri, Jun 20, 2003 at 07:24:36AM -0700, Larry McVoy wrote:

>     The reason I take this point of view, unpopular though it may be,
>     is that I see open source as basically parasitic.  It lives off the
>     efforts of others and the big bummer is that it is killing its host.
>     If open source can realize this and change gears fast enough to learn
>     to create its own work, great.  But that's going to take a lot more
>     money than open source is currently generating.  Like at least 3
>     orders of magnitude.  Sun spends more in a year on Solaris than all
>     the other open source revenue put together.  Think about that for
>     a while.  Then realize that a ton of the work in Linux was dreamed
>     up by the Solaris engineers.  Remember, I've been on the mailing
>     list since 0.99 days or earlier and I worked at Sun, I know where
>     stuff came from.  There is very very very little new work in Linux.
>     Better tuned?  Sure.  Leaner?  Sure.  Cleaner?  Maybe.  New?  No.

Well, ideas alone aren't enough.  They can be implemented badly,
or well.  There's lots of little issues that don't show
up until implementation.  There are even some ideas that looks
great on paper that don't work in practice.

So Sun spends more on Solaris than all open source together, and
still can't match linux wich only is a part of open source.
Dreaming up stuff isn't enough - some of the novelty lies in
a working good implemetation, not merely in the original abstract idea.
Ideas tend to lack in practical detail.

I don't think open source is so parasitic.  Commercial software
have a head start, open software is still catching up in many fields.
Thats why OSS often implementing old ideas. And they're implemented
well enough to out-compete commercial software. This is not
like a paraiste killing the host - OSS will go on even if _all_
commercial software dies. And then you'll see more new things too.  
 
>     So where is the inspiration for new work going to come from when
>     Linux kills off Sun and every other source of innovation?
> 
No problem at all.  Innovation will come from people, as it always have
done.  People will get ideas anyway.  Some will always get paid
for programming too, altough it will be more of a service
function than it is today.

Helge Hafting

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Larry McVoy]

On Fri, Jun 20, 2003 at 12:13:31PM -0400, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 20, 2003 at 09:02:11AM -0700, Larry McVoy wrote:
> > Creating new software:  $$$$$$$$$$
> > Copying existing software:       $
> 
> Agreed.  Except maybe that one dollar sign is too much :)

:-)

> > Revenue from commercial software: $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
> > Revenue from open source:                                        $ (at best)
> 
> This is misleading.  Revenue has nothing to do with whether the software
> is open source or not.  

No argument.

> There is a pool of money that businesses have, that can be spent on
> total IT.  At the end of the day, businesses don't give a damn whether
> they are spending 80% on service, 10% on hardware, and 10% on software,
> or, 10% of service, 20% on hardware, and 70% on software.  

I don't think businesses think like you think they think.

The world of business is a strange place.  I'm an engineer just like you
who has been forced to learn about business.  The business world is an
ecosystem and it has rules which makes the ecosystem work.  Some of the
rules are quite counterintuitive until you think it through.

For example, the original commercial BK contract had a clause which said
that if you hit a 1/1 bug (i.e., a showstopper, you couldn't get your
job done and it was BK's fault) and we either couldn't or wouldn't fix
it promptly (2-3 days at the very most) then we would drop what we were
doing, come to your site, get the data out of BitKeeper and import it
into the SCM system of your choice.  At our expense.

This clause raised all sorts of red flags with businesses and it took
me forever to figure out why.  Can you guess why?  If you think like
a business you will see that while that clause seems like it is the
ultimate in support it actually puts the business at risk.  Say what?
Here's how: suppose we're in at XYZ big company.  We're working a deal
with RST big company and they know we're in at the other big company.
RST's fear is that XYZ will hit some problem and we'll all be off at XYZ
doing the import into SVN or whatever for the next month.  During which
time RST isn't getting supported.

The much shorter version is that there is a fundamental principle in
business: the health of your suppliers is critical.  Anything which
puts them at risk buts you at risk.  IT managers/purchasing people are
_experts_ at sniffing out the health of their suppliers, that's how they
manage their risk.

OK, so what does this have to do with your point above?  It counters
the claim that businesses don't give a damn.  The correct statement is
that they don't really care what the mix is as long as the end result
is that they are dealing with a healthy supplier.

Another way to put it is they don't really buy products based on how good
they are, the IT guys frequently are nowhere near qualified to determine
if a product is good enough.  So they buy products based on knowing that
the vendor is healthy, there is a revenue stream going to that vendor,
there are lots of other people buying the product, so if the product
sucks in version 3.x, that's not the end of the world, the vendor will
fix it in 4.x and it will still be a good choice.

Very different way of looking at from how an engineer would look at
it, eh?

All of this is problematic for open source based business models because
if the product is truly open source then the vendor is standing on much
shakier ground.  What guarentee does the buyer have that the vendor will
make it to next year and support the product?  No matter how you slice it,
it's a much higher risk equation for the buyer than a commercial choice.

The good news is that money talks.  Microsoft has gotten so greedy
that they are forcing people to look at open source as an alternative.
If they actually priced their products fairly I don't think any IT
shop would even think of looking at Linux.  Windows isn't that bad
these days, I run on it part of the time and with a little work it's
fairly close to Linux in some respects, I can rlogin in, I have bash,
I can get an X11 server, it's OK.  Don't get me wrong, I'd much prefer
to see Linux as the kernel in Windows, that would be a much better world
for a programmer, but the reality is that Windows works well enough in
many cases.  It's the economics which are causing people to look at Linux.
Hard to resist Linux when you are looking at something which is "free"
versus something which is clearly overpriced.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Jesse Pollard]

On Friday 20 June 2003 09:30, Larry McVoy wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 20, 2003 at 07:24:36AM -0700, Larry McVoy wrote:
> > On Fri, Jun 20, 2003 at 12:09:10PM +0200, Stephan von Krawczynski wrote:
> > > On Fri, 20 Jun 2003 00:12:17 -0300
> > >
> > > Werner Almesberger <wa@almesberger.net> wrote:
> > > > Larry McVoy wrote:
> > > > > These discussions always make me wonder if the open source crowd is
> > > > > ever going to realize it's reasonable to be friendly with
> > > > > commercial companies.
> > > >
> > > > The problem is that you can't trust a company. You may choose to
> > > > trust people who control or shape a company, but they may lose
> > > > that control, and then all bets are off.
> > >
> > > And that is exactly _the_ argument in this whole discussion. There seem
> > > to be people out there who want to make a living from _others_
> > > _ancient_ work they bought for small bucks by sueing just about anyone.
> > >
> > > GPL has an inherent long-term strategy, you are talking of short-term,
> > > Larry. That does not match. If I am using only GPL-software I know I am
> > > able to use it as is in five years from now.
> >
> > Actually, my point is about long term strategy and what you think is long
> > term I think of as short term.  5 years isn't long term in my book.
>
> I realized after I sent that that maybe the point was too subtle.
> Open source is great, I use it, I love it, no problem there.  However,
> *if* I'm correct that what is happening is basically a process of copying,
> and *if* open source kills off the companies producing the products which
> are being copied, then open source slowly grinds to a halt in terms of
> creating anything new.
>
> That may well be fine in the minds of many.  Lots of people can't see
> past their nose and all they want is free versions of what they have to
> pay for today.  What's past their nose is all the new stuff we haven't
> seen yet.  Imagine a world without that new stuff.  Just roll back the
> world to 5 years ago and think of what you would have lost.

so you are saying there should be only one OS.

Only one C compiler.
Only one assembler.
Only one processor.
Only one disk drive. (since all they do is copy... :)
Only one language.

Since all of the following ones are only "copies" of the first one.

And M$ must really love this one since copying is all they do.

And what would I have lost?

not much. I am still using a 200 MHz SMP PPro.
welll... I would loose the UCITA, DMCA, Carnivore, 75 (or is it 90) year 
copyrights, restrictions on re-engineering ....

And a TON of stupid software patent restrictions.

I would have gained a number of bugs. I still use the window manager from 5 
years ago... with my own enhancements.

And I still wouldn't use M$ based systems.

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Larry McVoy]

> so you are saying there should be only one OS.

No, I'm saying that you should dream up new stuff on your own instead of
complaining about the licenses of the software that other people dream 
up.  If you want open source software, then *create* some.  If all you
are able to do is copy some existing software, you're profoundly limited
in what you can accomplish and you are really big trouble if your copying
cuts off the supply of things to copy.

It's sort of like saying "Daddy is paying for college but when you get 
out of college you have to figure out how to make a living, you might
want to start thinking about that".  In fact, it's a lot like that.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Jesse Pollard]

On Friday 20 June 2003 10:17, Larry McVoy wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 20, 2003 at 09:44:05AM -0500, Nick LeRoy wrote:
> > You sight the Linux kernel as non-inovative, essentially.  I'll certainly
> > grant that the general idea of a Unix kernel is not original work, and
> > that most of the concepts from which Linux is derived are well known.  I
> > also take issue with the idea that there's _nothing_ innovative about LK,
> > but I'm
>
> I knew I would be taken to task on that point.  Remember, I'm a big fan of
> Linux, I've been here forever and tried to help where I could.  I thought
> about what is new in Linux and couldn't come up with much.  /proc is a
> hell of a lot nicer than /proc in solaris, it's not really /proc, it's
> /system and there was a Usenix paper about /system long ago.  clone(2) is
> clone but it's basically plan 9's rfork (though I like how the code
> works in Linux somewhat better, it's really clean).
>
> One thing that is "new" is a passion for keeping the kernel fast with a
> lean system call layer.  I _love_ that part of Linux, it may seem subtle,
> but Linux is really the only operating system where you can use the OS
> level services as if they were library calls and not really notice that you
> are going into to the kernel.  That's very cool and you could say it is new
> in terms of cleanliness and discipline.

Uhhh that is 20 years old... the original MULTICs had that.

[snip]
>
> > Sendmail, very much open source, was certainly ground-breaking.  The X
> > window system.  Nethack, adventure, etc. -- the whole concept of computer
> > gaming derives from the open source world (granted the is all from long
> > before the term "open source" existsed).
>
> The stuff you are describing is 20 years old.  The problem I'm describing
> is current.

And you think there have been no improvements? Think about windows... 10 years
to get NT4... and no real improvement there.

>
> Maybe this is a way to see the point:  Red Hat, which is a company I like
> and I have friends there so I'm not trying to beat up on them OK?, has been
> around for quite a while.  They are an open source company.  I'm not sure
> how old they are but it has to be more than 5 years, right?  Wouldn't it
> be interesting to go compare what Red Hat has done in terms of new stuff
> to say, Sun, in the same first N years of their history?  I'd have to go
> look at the timelines but Sun brought us mmap(), the VFS layer, NFS, RPC,
> yp, etc.  And wrote nice thoughtful papers about it all so that others
> could learn from their efforts.

I was using a "VFS" layer way before Linux existed... Look at the old PDP-10
tops-10 system for a first draft (that I used, there may have been others).
When DEC released RSX11 all filesystems were under a form of virtual 
filesystem. Tapes, disks, and later networks and network filesystems.

Even microkernel systems existed in 1971.. though they weren't called that.
The RSX11 kernel only handled memory management and system calls. Everything
else was handed off to a privileged user mode task (disk drivers, file
systems, even some system calls).

The big innovation going on in linux is being able to learn from others
mistakes, then doing it better.

Propriatary software/IP doesn't let you do that, so you are stuck in a rut.

No improvements, no innovation.

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Larry McVoy]

On Fri, Jun 20, 2003 at 11:58:39AM -0500, Jesse Pollard wrote:
> > One thing that is "new" is a passion for keeping the kernel fast with a
> > lean system call layer.  I _love_ that part of Linux, it may seem subtle,
> > but Linux is really the only operating system where you can use the OS
> > level services as if they were library calls and not really notice that you
> > are going into to the kernel.  That's very cool and you could say it is new
> > in terms of cleanliness and discipline.
> 
> Uhhh that is 20 years old... the original MULTICs had that.

You've missed the key term "fast".  Unix exists because MULTICS was slow.
What part of "keeping the kernel fast" was unclear?
-- 
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Jesse Pollard]

On Friday 20 June 2003 10:34, Larry McVoy wrote:
[snip]

> I don't think the point I'm making is that much of a stretch.  Look at
> Sun - it's been the source of many of the things in Linux.  There is no
> question, in my mind at least, that Linux is putting Sun out of business.
> Sun used to do 10% of their annual revenue on Wall Street.  Wall Street
> businesses are moving to Linux in droves.  That's an example of what I
> call killing off the host.

That has little to do with Linux and more to do with Sun starting life being
a hardware manufacturer. Intel is what is killing Sun, not Linux.

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Jesse Pollard]

On Friday 20 June 2003 12:01, Larry McVoy wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 20, 2003 at 11:58:39AM -0500, Jesse Pollard wrote:
> > > One thing that is "new" is a passion for keeping the kernel fast with a
> > > lean system call layer.  I _love_ that part of Linux, it may seem
> > > subtle, but Linux is really the only operating system where you can use
> > > the OS level services as if they were library calls and not really
> > > notice that you are going into to the kernel.  That's very cool and you
> > > could say it is new in terms of cleanliness and discipline.
> >
> > Uhhh that is 20 years old... the original MULTICs had that.
>
> You've missed the key term "fast".  Unix exists because MULTICS was slow.
> What part of "keeping the kernel fast" was unclear?

Absolutely none. The key part is:

	...really the only operating system where you can use the OS level
	services as if they were library calls...

It was accomplished by COPYING the capability from MULTICS, then making
it fast by eliminating what wasn't copied - and that was done in the original
Unix, to run something "multics like" but for a very small system.

Even mmap existed in MULTICS before Sun "copied" it for use in their version
of Unix.

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Richard B. Johnson]

On Fri, 20 Jun 2003, Stephan von Krawczynski wrote:

> On Fri, 20 Jun 2003 07:24:36 -0700
> Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com> wrote:

[Sorry about snipping a lot.... ]

> Think about the real important things first, then come back to the discussion
> about the _tool_ and see how narrow and short-sighted people react.
>
> Regards,
> Stephan


Well the 'tool' is just some political hackery that
some persons have created to make themselves seem
important. These are the same persons who fail to
recognize that most everybody needs to work for a
living somehow and, if they "contribute" to free-
source code, it's usually something they've done
while being paid by some company to do something
different.

Any technical business person who's worth their
salt can look through the various Web Pages of
the various so-called open-source advocates and
see major portions of their company resources being
given away when, in fact, it wasn't the right or
privilege of the employees to give the property
the company paid to develop away at all.

As usual, there are several sides to this whole
story. Many open-source advocates adopt their
special ideas of "open-source" as a kind of a
religion. They claim that the big bad companies
are withholding the knowledge to which everybody
is entitled.

The fact is that nobody is entitled to knowledge.
Those who have paid their own way through universities
may understand this. Others won't and never will.
The knowledge that companies pay to acquire is
called intellectual property. That's the stuff
that makes things work.

Without it, the only companies that can exists are
distributors. Distributors make their money by moving
value from one location to another. In so doing,
they don't increase the value. They just take their cut.

Technology companies make new money where none existed
before. This is because they create value instead of
just moving it around.  Once you give away that technology,
you no longer create value. If you survive, you survive
only as a distributor. The economy can handle only so many
distributors. To keep growing and make jobs for the new
workers that are being born every day, one needs to make
new value. Enough Economics 101.

Many technology companies understand that their employees
may want more recognition than just a paycheck. Therefore,
many turn their heads as they become aware that employees
are sometimes giving away work performed on "company-time".
After all, a dedicated employee can't just turn off his or
her innovation when they go home from work. They end up
doing lots of company work on their "own-time".

However, once the Lawyers smell blood, the day of reckoning
is not far behind. Because of their aggressive pursuit of
other people's money, the lawyers will not be satisfied
until there is a sharp demarcation between a private person's
intellectual property and a company's intellectual property.

If you've ever read the fine-print on employee "agreements",
forced upon engineers as a condition of employment, you will
note that everything of value that the poor slob thinks about
while being employed is, in principle, the property of that
employer. So, if you submit a bug-fix while employed, watch
for lawyers in the shadows.

Now that a little company is trying to extort money (I call it
like I see it) from a big company, we have a wake-up call.
If this trend continues, an employee will not be allowed to
communicate ideas to potential employees of potential competitors.
It is no longer a situation involving "open source", but a
situation involving speech itself.

The United States Constitution doesn't help here. It has long been
established that a company has a right to prevent an employee from
divulging the nature of his or her work.

If fact, when I worked in the "high country", I wasn't allowed
to even travel to certain places in the state or to go to certain
night-clubs or bars. If I didn't like those restrictions, I could
quit. Otherwise, I just planned my life around the requirements
of the company. FYI, we were given a list of places that we could
not go. That's like an open invitation to go there and see what
they were hiding from us!

I can foresee the time where employees won't even be allowed to
communicate on the Internet because of the potential of leaking
company secrets. This is what the SCO/IBM lawsuit is all about.
This is why it's damned important for IBM to accept the challenge
and nip this kind of stuff in the bud.


Cheers,
Dick Johnson
Penguin : Linux version 2.4.20 on an i686 machine (797.90 BogoMips).
Why is the government concerned about the lunatic fringe? Think about it.

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[John Alvord]

On Fri, 20 Jun 2003 09:45:24 -0700, Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com>
wrote:

>> so you are saying there should be only one OS.
>
>No, I'm saying that you should dream up new stuff on your own instead of
>complaining about the licenses of the software that other people dream 
>up.  If you want open source software, then *create* some.  If all you
>are able to do is copy some existing software, you're profoundly limited
>in what you can accomplish and you are really big trouble if your copying
>cuts off the supply of things to copy.
>
>It's sort of like saying "Daddy is paying for college but when you get 
>out of college you have to figure out how to make a living, you might
>want to start thinking about that".  In fact, it's a lot like that.

The flaw in this argument is that computing is driven by applications
and striking out in a new direction, free of legacy, gives you no
workload of any interest. That makes it a toy development in most
cases which satisfies some academics but few others.

john alvord

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Greg KH]

On Fri, Jun 20, 2003 at 07:24:36AM -0700, Larry McVoy wrote:
> 
>     Don't get me wrong, Linux is better in some ways.  The main thing,
>     however, is device drivers.  That's hardly innovation.

Yeah, no innovation _ever_ happens in device drivers...

One might consider such a wide range of different device support
generally without access to hardware documentation a worthwile
innovation, but I just need to keep remembering, "no one cares about
device drivers, except when their devices don't work."  :)

greg k-h

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Larry McVoy]

On Fri, Jun 20, 2003 at 12:36:18PM -0700, Greg KH wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 20, 2003 at 07:24:36AM -0700, Larry McVoy wrote:
> > 
> >     Don't get me wrong, Linux is better in some ways.  The main thing,
> >     however, is device drivers.  That's hardly innovation.
> 
> Yeah, no innovation _ever_ happens in device drivers...

Whoops, sorry, didn't mean to get down on the driver folks.  It's hard to
make a point without pissing someone off...

> One might consider such a wide range of different device support
> generally without access to hardware documentation a worthwile
> innovation, but I just need to keep remembering, "no one cares about
> device drivers, except when their devices don't work."  :)

Hey, I think Linux's driver support is amazingly good, no disrespect was
intended.  I'm not so sure that it a fertile ground for new ideas, drivers
are basically still trying to provide open/close/read/write/strategy/ioctl
semantics, aren't they?  If they aren't, I'd ask if that is a good thing
but that's a different topic.

Sorry to rile you up, Greg, you're the last person I'd want to do that to.
My apologies.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Paul Mackerras]

> I don't think the point I'm making is that much of a stretch.  Look at 
> Sun - it's been the source of many of the things in Linux.  There is no
> question, in my mind at least, that Linux is putting Sun out of business.
> Sun used to do 10% of their annual revenue on Wall Street.  Wall Street
> businesses are moving to Linux in droves.  That's an example of what I
> call killing off the host.
> 
> I'm sure you can muddy the waters by saying that Sun has other problems
> and I won't go there.  I think enough people can see that Linux is hurting
> Sun, that's all I wanted to get across.

Hmmm, it seems to me that it is primarily *Intel* that is hurting Sun
by taking away their low end.  If the Sun gear was competitive on
price/performance at the low end, Wall St would still be buying Sun
boxes and would still be running Solaris on them.

At the high end Sun is also having big problems being competitive,
of course, but that has nothing to do with Linux.  Basically the
ultrasparc is about the slowest general purpose microprocessor in
current production, and that's got to hurt.

Paul.

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Frank Cusack]

On Fri, Jun 20, 2003 at 07:24:36AM -0700, Larry McVoy wrote:
>     I've said for years that the open source world is all about
>     reimplementing and not about new innovation.

Almost spot-on.

Where it's off is

- It's not ALL about reimplenting.  Didn't Solaris' prstat come AFTER top?
  Anyway I'm sure there are lots of examples here, maybe not LARGE pieces
  of code (although I'll point to TeX since every exception needs an
  exception as well), but I think you discount open source innovation
  too much.  All of the ATTENTION is on the bits that are reimplementations
  because that's how mass markets work.

- Just because two people independenty implement something doesn't mean
  one of them is REimplementing.

Isn't bk simply a reimplementation of p4 by your argument?

/fc

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Larry McVoy]

On Fri, Jun 20, 2003 at 05:04:46PM -0700, Frank Cusack wrote:
> Isn't bk simply a reimplementation of p4 by your argument?

If that were true then CVS would have been good enough for Linus.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Werner Almesberger]

Larry McVoy wrote:
> All of this is problematic for open source based business models because
> if the product is truly open source then the vendor is standing on much
> shakier ground.  What guarentee does the buyer have that the vendor will
> make it to next year and support the product?  No matter how you slice it,
> it's a much higher risk equation for the buyer than a commercial choice.

That's why some companies sell "commercial grade" Linux with all
kinds of assurances. Then it's up to them to figure out how to
ensure that the product is properly maintained.

I mean "up to them" not in "pondering this is beneath me, and
it's probably impossible anyway" kind of sense, but in the sense
that they seem to know pretty well how to do (and finance) this.

The flaw in your reasoning is that you assume that the whole
product lifecycle has to happen within the same company. That is
largely true for closed source, because you're dealing with that
closely guarded precious secret Intellectual Property.

In Open Source, that secret is worthless. So once your program
starts getting boring, you may as well hand it over to a
maintainer, and tackle something new.

You can even take this further, and only contribute a few key
ideas to the project, and leave the other inventions to others.
You can see Linus do this quite often.

Of course, you still have to solve the problem of financing the
initial development. My thoughts on this are in the longish mail
I posted earlier today.

- Werner

-- 
  _________________________________________________________________________
 / Werner Almesberger, Buenos Aires, Argentina         wa@almesberger.net /
/_http://www.almesberger.net/____________________________________________/

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Henning P. Schmiedehausen]

Stephan von Krawczynski <skraw@ithnet.com> writes:

>There are "operating systems" whos' live cycle is set to 3 years by the
>manufacturer. How does a long-term strategy for a company doing application

Hm. Speaking of support: Most programs for Windows 95/98 still run on
my WinXP desktop. Those binaries for RedHat Linux 5.1 don't even link
on RHL9.

	Regards
		Henning

-- 
Dipl.-Inf. (Univ.) Henning P. Schmiedehausen          INTERMETA GmbH
hps@intermeta.de        +49 9131 50 654 0   http://www.intermeta.de/

Java, perl, Solaris, Linux, xSP Consulting, Web Services 
freelance consultant -- Jakarta Turbine Development  -- hero for hire

--- Quote of the week: "Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down
to their level, then beat you with experience." ---

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Henning P. Schmiedehausen]

Helge Hafting <helgehaf@aitel.hist.no> writes:

>So Sun spends more on Solaris than all open source together, and
>still can't match linux wich only is a part of open source.
>Dreaming up stuff isn't enough - some of the novelty lies in
>a working good implemetation, not merely in the original abstract idea.
>Ideas tend to lack in practical detail.

Give me a well working multipath FC implementation. Go Gigabit
Ethernet. Go USB. Go IEEE1394. Go DRM. Go "any new technology that's
beyond the level of a printer port".
Compare Linux vs. Solaris. Rinse. Repeat.

Most of the stuff in the Linux kernel (and Userland) is marked as
"Version 0.1. 0.7beta. alpha-release. 0.2.1testing. 1.2-pre". And so
on. You won't find many OpenSource developers that call their product
"Version 3.1" Because they're afraid to bite the bullet a do a
release.  With a commercial OS, you get a release version on which you
can build. Sure it has bugs. Sure, some of the code _is_ alpha
quality. But that's what a vendor is for.

>I don't think open source is so parasitic.  Commercial software
>have a head start, open software is still catching up in many fields.

No it does not. It simply has no political or ideological reasons not
to talk to other companies, sign NDAs and spend money.  If Sun wants a
"state of the art" driver for nVidia chips, they call nVidia, draft up
an agreement, get access to the nVidia docs and build such a
driver. The main problem of the "open-source" movement is that
"beggars" attitute. If it costs money, we won't use it.

Look how long it took Linux to get a really decent driver for the
eepro100 chips, which are commodities parts these days. And only after
Intel finally decided that there is no more interesting IP in the docs
and released them for free.

Check the level of support of _current_ graphics chips in Linux. You
get a halfway decent ATI support, "bad, bad, bad closed source" but
performance-wise very good nVidia support and Matrox is a bad joke
(judging from my experience of trying to get a G550 with DVI running).

	Regards
		Henning

-- 
Dipl.-Inf. (Univ.) Henning P. Schmiedehausen          INTERMETA GmbH
hps@intermeta.de        +49 9131 50 654 0   http://www.intermeta.de/

Java, perl, Solaris, Linux, xSP Consulting, Web Services 
freelance consultant -- Jakarta Turbine Development  -- hero for hire

--- Quote of the week: "Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down
to their level, then beat you with experience." ---

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Martin Diehl]

On Fri, 20 Jun 2003, Stephan von Krawczynski wrote:

> GPL has an inherent long-term strategy, you are talking of short-term,
> Larry. That does not match. If I am using only GPL-software I know I am
> able to use it as is in five years from now.

Really? Are you sure it would still compile with gcc-5.1.7 at that time? 
Are you sure somebody will take care it will still work with latest 
hardware then? Are you sure somebody will fix all the security issues 
which came up over the years? Are you sure somebody will help you out in 
case you are stuck with a new problem then?

Do you feel comfortable depending on that helpful unknown somebody? What 
if the one who released the stuff doesn't support it any longer because he 
gave away the hardware or got tired having to fix his stuff over and over 
again due to api volatility even months after so-called feature freeze or 
simply due to changed personal preferences?

Of course, you are still better of with the GPL'ed sources available but 
this alone doesn't buy you anything. In real world the difference between 
"still possible to support" (thanks to GPL f.e.) and "getting good 
(relyable in quality and time) support" tends to be non-trivial ;-)

So I don't see any long term strategy there inherent in the GPL. Simply 
throwing RTFS in front of the people is definitedly better than nothing, 
but doesn't qualify as a strategy to me. But maybe I'm missing something.

> If I depend on being nice to commercial
> companies, it may well turn out, that they are not being nice to me no matter
> what I do.

Well, as a test you might want to try asking (say here on lkml) to get the 
GPL'ed defxx-driver working. I might be wrong but it may well turn out 
nobody would be nice doing it for you, no matter what you do ;-)

> In other words: it's all about being free or being dependant on goodwill.

Nope, at least from a user's POV: While you are always free to decide to 
use it or not - you are always depending on somebody providing you the 
support you need to keep the stuff working for you...

For somebody willing and capable to do the maintenance himself it's still 
imposing some dependency/constraint to him, because one needs to allocate 
time to both keep up with the development process and do the actual work. 
Which in turn means being dependent on other people's or institutions' 
goodwill so you can afford said amount of time.

Martin

Re: Sco vs. IBM

[Holger Freyther]

> What if TrollTech decides to only license (or sell) Qt
> to, say, Microsoft? What does that mean for, say, the Kompany ?
>
> Mike.
The KDE e.V. and Trolltech A.S. have a legal agreement. Basicly the last 
version of Qt  will be relicensed to a BSD like license.


regards hOlgAr

-- 
_____________________________________________
Holger 'zecke' Freyther
developer
Project OPIE- the Open Palmtop Integrated Environment
http://opie.handhelds.org | http://www.opie.info (german)
IRC: irc.freenode.net #opie #opie.de

Re: Sco vs. IBM

[Martin Diehl]

On Sat, 21 Jun 2003, Holger Freyther wrote:

> The KDE e.V. and Trolltech A.S. have a legal agreement. Basicly the last 
> version of Qt  will be relicensed to a BSD like license.

So KDE e.V. could redistribute Qt sources under BSD (like) license?
Wanna have!

Martin

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Stephan von Krawczynski]

On Sat, 21 Jun 2003 10:01:41 +0200 (CEST)
Martin Diehl <lists@mdiehl.de> wrote:

> On Fri, 20 Jun 2003, Stephan von Krawczynski wrote:
> 
> > GPL has an inherent long-term strategy, you are talking of short-term,
> > Larry. That does not match. If I am using only GPL-software I know I am
> > able to use it as is in five years from now.
> [...]
> So I don't see any long term strategy there inherent in the GPL. Simply 
> throwing RTFS in front of the people is definitedly better than nothing, 
> but doesn't qualify as a strategy to me. But maybe I'm missing something.

Indeed, there is a small but significant thing you are missing:
Whereas GPL'ed software tends to rely on open standards (that may be quite
"ancient" indeed) and gain a long-lasting usability value, proprietary software
often tries to invent the wheel for about the 110th time, only to be _not_
compatible with its own predecessors from the same company or of course with
products from competitors. Take something as simple and well-known as a text
processing software and look at the mess of the import-filters, being only
partly available, doing anything to your docs but correctly importing them and
so on.
Do you really think it was _necessary_ to change the document format in just
about any W*rd version available? Do you? Not really.
Its all about creating problems for competitors and none about being kind to
the own customer.
You don't find this kind of behaviour in GPL software.
This is only _one_ small example for what I call a long-term strategy.
If I write a book, I want to be able to save my work, even if I change the
software I am writing with.
Do you think I would be able to write this mail to you and others if internet
were proprietary? You can answer that if you know the old days of BTX and
Compuserve (just to name two examples) here in germany - a complete mess.
Learn from this example: learn what was bad about it, and learn what has
survived - internet dependant on _open_ standards heavily supported by _open_
software.

> > If I depend on being nice to commercial
> > companies, it may well turn out, that they are not being nice to me no
> > matter what I do.
> 
> Well, as a test you might want to try asking (say here on lkml) to get the 
> GPL'ed defxx-driver working. I might be wrong but it may well turn out 
> nobody would be nice doing it for you, no matter what you do ;-)

Thing is: I may as well be able to do it _myself_, only using my brain and a
freely available compiler. Contrary to that I would have to buy a whole bunch
of software to make it work on some M$ platform, not knowing if I have to
repeat the whole story next year, when the next completely new release of an OS
comes out.
I can forsee that with upcoming DRM it will become quite likely you are not
even _allowed_ to compile your own stuff on a computer. You may well buy a
_license_ from your favourite OS-company to be able to do that (and not only
the software you need).

> > In other words: it's all about being free or being dependant on goodwill.
> 
> Nope, at least from a user's POV: While you are always free to decide to 
> use it or not - you are always depending on somebody providing you the 
> support you need to keep the stuff working for you...
> 
> For somebody willing and capable to do the maintenance himself it's still 
> imposing some dependency/constraint to him, because one needs to allocate 
> time to both keep up with the development process and do the actual work. 
> Which in turn means being dependent on other people's or institutions' 
> goodwill so you can afford said amount of time.

What market for supporting acts do you think looks more promising (to the
user):
one regulated by _one_ company (the OS manufacturer), or one where everybody
and his son in law have a chance to supply support for free _or_ for bucks at
their personal will.

Regards,
Stephan

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Henning P. Schmiedehausen]

Stephan von Krawczynski <skraw@ithnet.com> writes:

>Do you really think it was _necessary_ to change the document format in just
>about any W*rd version available? Do you? Not really.
>Its all about creating problems for competitors and none about being kind to
>the own customer.

>You don't find this kind of behaviour in GPL software.

I'd consider "If it does not work with the new version of libfoo,
please recompile" or "you need a newer blafoo tool to use this" or
"your compiler isn't usable for application xxx" much worse. 

And _this_ is common for many open source projects.

Reality Check: 99,9% of all computer users don't know what a compiler
is but can open Word 6.x documents in WordXP.

	Regards
		Henning

-- 
Dipl.-Inf. (Univ.) Henning P. Schmiedehausen          INTERMETA GmbH
hps@intermeta.de        +49 9131 50 654 0   http://www.intermeta.de/

Java, perl, Solaris, Linux, xSP Consulting, Web Services 
freelance consultant -- Jakarta Turbine Development  -- hero for hire

--- Quote of the week: "Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down
to their level, then beat you with experience." ---

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Andrey Panin]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1028 bytes --]

On 172, 06 21, 2003 at 11:53:29 +0000, Henning P. Schmiedehausen wrote:
> Stephan von Krawczynski <skraw@ithnet.com> writes:
> 
> >Do you really think it was _necessary_ to change the document format in just
> >about any W*rd version available? Do you? Not really.
> >Its all about creating problems for competitors and none about being kind to
> >the own customer.
> 
> >You don't find this kind of behaviour in GPL software.
> 
> I'd consider "If it does not work with the new version of libfoo,
> please recompile" or "you need a newer blafoo tool to use this" or
> "your compiler isn't usable for application xxx" much worse. 
> 
> And _this_ is common for many open source projects.
> 
> Reality Check: 99,9% of all computer users don't know what a compiler
> is but can open Word 6.x documents in WordXP.

If you want Windows, you know where to get it.

People please stop this useless thread !

-- 
Andrey Panin		| Linux and UNIX system administrator
pazke@donpac.ru		| PGP key: wwwkeys.pgp.net

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Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Stephan von Krawczynski]

On Fri, 20 Jun 2003 09:33:49 -0700
Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com> wrote:

> All of this is problematic for open source based business models because
> if the product is truly open source then the vendor is standing on much
> shakier ground.  What guarentee does the buyer have that the vendor will
> make it to next year and support the product?  No matter how you slice it,
> it's a much higher risk equation for the buyer than a commercial choice.

Larry, sorry, but this is pure bs.

If a company survives has absolutely _zero_ to do with commercial or
non-commmercial give-away of products. Example: mysql, it's all about service
and none about selling a product.

And to give an example seen from another side:
I have a paper hanging on the wall, writes:

"What do you mean? We are a multi billion dollar company."

It was emailed to me years ago by someone from middle management from Commodore
International as an answer to a my complaint that exactly this management is
producing big bs in designing their product portfolio. 1,5 years later the
company was dead.
There is nothing like a guaranteed life for a company, no matter what it
_sells_. One thing that is heavily underestimated by analysts of all kinds is
that a company has _no_ life of its own. It is run by people, and _these_ are
important, and not the company, be it big or small.

Regards,
Stephan

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Stephan von Krawczynski]

On Fri, 20 Jun 2003 12:18:34 -0300
Werner Almesberger <wa@almesberger.net> wrote:

> Larry McVoy wrote:
> >     The reason I take this point of view, unpopular though it may be,
> >     is that I see open source as basically parasitic.
> 
> Think of it as a child that's growing up. For quite a while, it
> will just draw resources from the parents, add little work or
> innovations, and will have considerably less economical power
> than the parents.
> 
> You choose to view Open Source as a historical accident that
> needs to be integrated into the traditional framework. I'd say
> it is more like an evolution into an age where most of the
> physical limitations of the sharing of information have
> disappeared.

Werner, this is by far the most thoughtful and best-phrased statement I read in
this thread. You express exactly my feelings towards the issue.

Regards,
Stephan

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Stephan von Krawczynski]

On Sat, 21 Jun 2003 07:37:21 +0000 (UTC)
"Henning P. Schmiedehausen" <hps@intermeta.de> wrote:

> Stephan von Krawczynski <skraw@ithnet.com> writes:
> 
> >There are "operating systems" whos' live cycle is set to 3 years by the
> >manufacturer. How does a long-term strategy for a company doing application
> 
> Hm. Speaking of support: Most programs for Windows 95/98 still run on
> my WinXP desktop. Those binaries for RedHat Linux 5.1 don't even link
> on RHL9.
> 
> 	Regards
> 		Henning

Well Henning, question is: did you jump from W95/98 to XP? You should have
followed the product flow according to the vendor:

W95->W98->NT3->NT4->W2K->XP

Have you tried your apps on NT3/NT4? If they didn't work back _then_ you
probably have exchanged them back then - which was the original intention of
the whole story.
As you may remember the licenses were just adjusted to _prevent_ people from
upgrading "multi-hop", why do you think they did that?

Regards,
Stephan

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Henning P. Schmiedehausen]

Stephan von Krawczynski <skraw@ithnet.com> writes:

>Well Henning, question is: did you jump from W95/98 to XP? You should have
>followed the product flow according to the vendor:

>W95->W98->NT3->NT4->W2K->XP

That's BS. There is no "W98 -> NT3" jump. Fact is, that programs
written in 1995 for Win95 still run on XP. Without changes from my
side (I consider myself a sore (l)user on Windows who can hustle a
mouse and squish little images so that a text processor or a business
package appears. Never had any interest to do more with it).

I don't give a fscking hoot through how many loops the vendor had to
jump to make this possible. You simply can't do this with the current
linux distributions. I just pulled out my trustworthy old RedHat 4.2
(which was sometime released in Summer 1997; the Wayback Machine gave
me only Mar1997 for 4.1 and Dec1997 for 5.0) and guess how many of its
binaries still run on my RedHat-9 desktop here? 

>Have you tried your apps on NT3/NT4? If they didn't work back _then_ you
>probably have exchanged them back then - which was the original intention of
>the whole story.

I tried NT4. Yes, the program in question (which is a quite complex
accounting and business program I'm using for ages) runs. So does
e.g. CorelDraw.

Backward compatibility is the mantra of successful software. Without
it, you simply won't accumulate an user base. You may want to read the
article by Pat Gelsinger (sp?) in the last c't magazine. He did talk
about processors, but software is the same thing. Look where the two
companies that did put this above everything else are (HW: Intel SW:
Microsoft)?

	Regards
		Henning

-- 
Dipl.-Inf. (Univ.) Henning P. Schmiedehausen          INTERMETA GmbH
hps@intermeta.de        +49 9131 50 654 0   http://www.intermeta.de/

Java, perl, Solaris, Linux, xSP Consulting, Web Services 
freelance consultant -- Jakarta Turbine Development  -- hero for hire

--- Quote of the week: "Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down
to their level, then beat you with experience." ---

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Stephan von Krawczynski]

On Sat, 21 Jun 2003 12:55:12 +0000 (UTC)
"Henning P. Schmiedehausen" <hps@intermeta.de> wrote:

>  Look where the two
> companies that did put this above everything else are (HW: Intel SW:
> Microsoft)?
> 
> 	Regards
> 		Henning

Both are where they are because of an ancient management fault at IBM.
Nothing more.

Regards,
Stephan

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Matthias Schniedermeyer]

On Sat, Jun 21, 2003 at 12:55:12PM +0000, Henning P. Schmiedehausen wrote:
> 
> I don't give a fscking hoot through how many loops the vendor had to
> jump to make this possible. You simply can't do this with the current
> linux distributions. I just pulled out my trustworthy old RedHat 4.2
> (which was sometime released in Summer 1997; the Wayback Machine gave
> me only Mar1997 for 4.1 and Dec1997 for 5.0) and guess how many of its
> binaries still run on my RedHat-9 desktop here? 

Hmm, strang i don't have problems with historic software. I just
installed the libc5-packages and everything works fine. (SuSE & Debian.
Maybe the libc5-package(s) (is/are) missing in RedHat)

AFAIK even libc4-programms would run, if you install the necesary
librarys and setup the system youself. But as i don't have any libc4
programs anymore i haven't tried it.





Bis denn

-- 
Real Programmers consider "what you see is what you get" to be just as 
bad a concept in Text Editors as it is in women. No, the Real Programmer
wants a "you asked for it, you got it" text editor -- complicated, 
cryptic, powerful, unforgiving, dangerous.

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Larry McVoy]

On Sat, Jun 21, 2003 at 02:20:48PM +0200, Stephan von Krawczynski wrote:
> On Fri, 20 Jun 2003 09:33:49 -0700
> Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com> wrote:
> 
> > All of this is problematic for open source based business models because
> > if the product is truly open source then the vendor is standing on much
> > shakier ground.  What guarentee does the buyer have that the vendor will
> > make it to next year and support the product?  No matter how you slice it,
> > it's a much higher risk equation for the buyer than a commercial choice.
> 
> Larry, sorry, but this is pure bs.
> 
> If a company survives has absolutely _zero_ to do with commercial or
> non-commmercial give-away of products. 

First of all, tell that ti the IT managers, they are the ones you need
to convince.  I believe that I have faithfully and accurately relayed
what I've learned from them.

Second, the point you are missing, on purpose? is that with a pure
open source play there is no barrier to entry for anyone else, they
can take your source and sell it under the same terms.  There is a
reason that the VC's want to know what you have that noone else has
and how you are going to keep them from getting it.  Hate VC's all
you want, they still have a point.

You're welcome to rant and rave about how wrong all this is, but they
are well established basic business principles and your ranting isn't
going to change them, it's going to take something more substantial
to do that.  If you want to change them, start with talking to the
business folks, not me.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Paul Jakma]

On Fri, 20 Jun 2003, Larry McVoy wrote:

> No, I'm saying that you should dream up new stuff on your own
> instead of complaining about the licenses of the software that
> other people dream up.

But this is not how innovation works.

99% of innovation is not "think up something new" but rather "improve
upon what exists". Eg, Watt did not invent the steam engine, rather
he improved upon the Newcomen atmospheric steam engine (Watt
optimised out the use of atmosphere). The atmospheric steam engine
built upon the work of an italian who used a bowl and tube mercury to
demonstrate the fact that atmosphere exerts a pressure. etc...

Innovation is the process of building on other people's ideas.

You stated the following in another email:

"Maybe a picture would help.

Creating new software:  $$$$$$$$$$
Copying existing software:       $"

Perhaps, if you consider that innovation is a building process, not a 
'think of something completely new' process we could restate that as:

Creating new software:  		$$$$$$$$$$
Building upon existing software: 		 $

And possibly we might consider that the reason why 'creating new
software' is so high is precisely because it refuses to acknowledge
how innovation actually has worked throughout the ages, that its a
process of building new ideas on old, refining what exists to make it
better. That so much software is closed source and hence impossible
to build on adds greatly to the cost and stifles innovation even
further.

So perhaps its actually commercial software (in the sense that
commercial software is nearly always closed source) which is causing 
'cost of innovation' problems in the software industry, not open 
source software.

regards,
-- 
Paul Jakma	paul@clubi.ie	paul@jakma.org	Key ID: 64A2FF6A
	warning: do not ever send email to spam@dishone.st
Fortune:
Never let someone who says it cannot be done interrupt the person who is
doing it.

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Stephan von Krawczynski]

On Sat, 21 Jun 2003 06:38:31 -0700
Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com> wrote:

> [...]
> Second, the point you are missing, on purpose? is that with a pure
> open source play there is no barrier to entry for anyone else, they
> can take your source and sell it under the same terms.

Sorry, they don't _sell_ it, because this is a GPL violation. They may
distribute it. And thats about it.
And _after_ it is distributed they would have to prove the same in-depth
knowledge about the product and its source that you have being its author. Do
you think you have problems explaining your service will be better if your name
/ your companies name is written everywhere in the source (which everybody can
take a look)? Not very likely I guess.

> You're welcome to rant and rave about how wrong all this is, but they
> are well established basic business principles and your ranting isn't
> going to change them, it's going to take something more substantial
> to do that.  If you want to change them, start with talking to the
> business folks, not me.

Hm, very likely I cannot explain my point to you. My simple point is this:
The "business folks" (as you call them) have no need to change, as they mostly
act towards the needs of their respective employers. I am trying to tell you
that there are other possibilities to get into business than the one you are
preferring. There is nothing wrong with you going that direction and me going
in the opposite one, only you sound like denying that my way _exists_. And this
is wrong. Plain and simple.

Regards,
Stephan

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Henning P. Schmiedehausen]

Stephan von Krawczynski <skraw@ithnet.com> writes:

>> open source play there is no barrier to entry for anyone else, they
>> can take your source and sell it under the same terms.

>Sorry, they don't _sell_ it, because this is a GPL violation. They may
>distribute it. And thats about it.

He talks about open source. You talk about GPL.

And of course you can sell GPLed Software for $$$$. What do you think
that RedHat, SuSE, Mandrake and all the others do. I can sell you an
linux-2.0.40.tar.gz for $20,000 and if you buy it, good for
me. Nothing illegal here.

	Regards
		Henning

-- 
Dipl.-Inf. (Univ.) Henning P. Schmiedehausen          INTERMETA GmbH
hps@intermeta.de        +49 9131 50 654 0   http://www.intermeta.de/

Java, perl, Solaris, Linux, xSP Consulting, Web Services 
freelance consultant -- Jakarta Turbine Development  -- hero for hire

--- Quote of the week: "Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down
to their level, then beat you with experience." ---

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[David Weinehall]

On Sat, Jun 21, 2003 at 05:05:52PM +0000, Henning P. Schmiedehausen wrote:
> Stephan von Krawczynski <skraw@ithnet.com> writes:
> 
> >> open source play there is no barrier to entry for anyone else, they
> >> can take your source and sell it under the same terms.
> 
> >Sorry, they don't _sell_ it, because this is a GPL violation. They may
> >distribute it. And thats about it.
> 
> He talks about open source. You talk about GPL.
> 
> And of course you can sell GPLed Software for $$$$. What do you think
> that RedHat, SuSE, Mandrake and all the others do. I can sell you an
> linux-2.0.40.tar.gz for $20,000 and if you buy it, good for
> me. Nothing illegal here.

Well, that would be false marketing, because I still haven't managed to
put myself through the last ordeal that it is to fix the remaining
issues before I can release linux-2.0.40...


/David
-- 
 /> David Weinehall <tao@acc.umu.se> /> Northern lights wander      <\
//  Maintainer of the v2.0 kernel   //  Dance across the winter sky //
\>  http://www.acc.umu.se/~tao/    </   Full colour fire           </

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Scott Robert Ladd]

Stephan von Krawczynski wrote:
> GPL has an inherent long-term strategy, you are talking of short-term, Larry.
> That does not match. If I am using only GPL-software I know I am able to use it
> as is in five years from now. If I depend on being nice to commercial
> companies, it may well turn out, that they are not being nice to me no matter
> what I do.

A very technocratic view, to be sure. Source code is no guranatee of 
future portability or viability; for the vast, vast majority of users -- 
we do care about those, don't we? -- source code is useless.

You or I might be able to keep a source-based program going past the 
interest of its creators -- but most computer users lack the skills and 
tools to equal our prowess.

Scan SourceForge and Freshmeat, and you'll find an amazing number of 
dead and dying projects, without support or documentation. The printing 
press didn't automatically impart literacy upon the masses, and the 
source code for "free" software promises nothing about future support.

I'm not saying that commercial companies are any more reliable -- what I 
*am* pointing out is that "free" software makes no guarantees, either.

> In other words: it's all about being free or being dependant on goodwill.

Free software is very dependent on good will -- the good will of 
developers to continue maintaining and updating their software for free! 
A commercial software company only survives if it provides value to its 
customers -- and that value includes future support.

Most "free" software exists to scratch an itch; if the programmer stops 
scratching, users are out-of-luck. Unless, of course, they hire someone 
like you or me to maintain or update an abandoned program... ;)

Commercial software is no better or worse then its free counterpart; 
they merely operate under different rules. While I love free software 
and strongly support its existence and growth, I also am cognizant of 
its weaknesses. To ignore those weaknesses requires either fanaticism or 
willful ignorance.

-- 
Scott Robert Ladd
Coyote Gulch Productions (http://www.coyotegulch.com)
Professional programming for science and engineering;
Interesting and unusual bits of very free code.

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Michael Poole]

Scott Robert Ladd <coyote@coyotegulch.com> writes:

> A very technocratic view, to be sure. Source code is no guranatee of
> future portability or viability; for the vast, vast majority of
> users -- we do care about those, don't we? -- source code is
> useless.

To the vast, vast majority of users, being able to program their
computers is even more useless than someone else's source code is.

Detection of the logical fallacy in both views of "uselessness" is
left as an exercise to the reader.

Michael Poole

Re: [OT] Troll Tech

[Jan Rychter]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2671 bytes --]

>>>>> "Henning" == Henning P Schmiedehausen <hps@intermeta.de> writes:
 Henning> Helge Hafting <helgehaf@aitel.hist.no> writes:
[...]
 >> I don't think open source is so parasitic.  Commercial software have
 >> a head start, open software is still catching up in many fields.

[...]

 Henning> Look how long it took Linux to get a really decent driver for
 Henning> the eepro100 chips, which are commodities parts these
 Henning> days. And only after Intel finally decided that there is no
 Henning> more interesting IP in the docs and released them for free.

 Henning> Check the level of support of _current_ graphics chips in
 Henning> Linux. You get a halfway decent ATI support, "bad, bad, bad
 Henning> closed source" but performance-wise very good nVidia support
 Henning> and Matrox is a bad joke (judging from my experience of trying
 Henning> to get a G550 with DVI running).

That's a problem which is inherent in open-source software, because
manufacturers do not release the specs. But it could be alleviated. I'm
especially surprised that it doesn't change much even though companies
like Intel start to "support" Linux.

Look at Linux on laptops. I've just checked: it took more than a year
and a half for Linux on my laptop to become stable and usable in most
aspects. A year and a half! During this time, I've been going through
endless upgrades of ACPI, kernel (for things like USB, and because ACPI
required it), swsusp and wireless card drivers.

Several days ago I've finally achieved a stable, reasonably-working
solution. Which means that my wireless card doesn't crash too often, the
system is able to suspend and resume and not die in the process, and
thermal management works. I'm very happy now. I'm also very grateful to
all the people who made this possible. But I also know that the cycle
will start all over again very soon -- as soon as I get one of the new
Centrino-based laptops. And I know that I won't be able to use 2.4 much
longer -- very soon support for new hardware will be in 2.5/2.6
only. See cpufreq for an example.

The sad thing is that most distribution vendors care much more about
putting the latest and greatest "graphic environments" than stabilizing
the base system. Not surprising, given that sales of desktop Linux are
driven by press reviews and press concentrates *exclusively* on "it has
the GNOME 2.X and KDE 3.X with a gazillion new colorful animated
click-them thingies".

--J.  
PS: I'm actually quite surprised that swsusp receives so little
attention from the "core" kernel developers. It seems as if nobody uses
laptops? Or do people just reboot so often?

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Re: [OT] Troll Tech

[Russell King]

On Sat, Jun 21, 2003 at 02:49:48PM -0700, Jan Rychter wrote:
> And I know that I won't be able to use 2.4 much longer -- very soon
> support for new hardware will be in 2.5/2.6 only. See cpufreq for an
> example.

Picking up on this specific point...

It may be worth discussing this issue a little more and finding out
whether Marcelo would be willing to take it (maybe for .22 or .23?)

It has been in the 2.4-ac trees for some time without much problem,
and it can be configured out.

The only real sting in the tale is that it won't have the sysfs
interfaces, because there's probably no way in hell that sysfs would
appear in 2.4.  Since it is in 2.4-ac, this problem has already been
solved.

Personally, I'd like to see cpufreq go into 2.4 since its a requirement
for some ARM platforms.

-- 
Russell King (rmk@arm.linux.org.uk)                The developer of ARM Linux
             http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/personal/aboutme.html

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Stephan von Krawczynski]

On Sat, 21 Jun 2003 15:03:19 -0400
Scott Robert Ladd <coyote@coyotegulch.com> wrote:

> Stephan von Krawczynski wrote:
> > GPL has an inherent long-term strategy, you are talking of short-term,
> > Larry. That does not match. If I am using only GPL-software I know I am
> > able to use it as is in five years from now. If I depend on being nice to
> > commercial companies, it may well turn out, that they are not being nice to
> > me no matter what I do.
> 
> A very technocratic view, to be sure. Source code is no guranatee of 
> future portability or viability; for the vast, vast majority of users -- 
> we do care about those, don't we? -- source code is useless.

I doubt that. You are probably right with your exact statement, meaning that
the _user_ cannot make use of the available source code himself (though the
only reason why is that he plays user and refuses to learn anything :-)
, BUT:
the manpower and brain invested in creation of this open source code is not
lost in space. Someone with brain and time can pick it up and revive it at any
given time. And this is a very big advantage in comparison to closed source
which simply vanishes with its producing company - and there already have been
quite a few of those.
So even if your statement looks correct in micro-economics, it is completely
wrong in macro-economics. As Larry already pointed out in another post software
development is often expensive. But it is only expensive if every company has
to re-invent the wheel. If you can simply use the wheel and go on producing a
car "on top" of it, you _saved_ money, time and manpower.
So from that point of view, no piece of crappy software ever written is
useless, as long as its source is _open_. Because I think based on todays'
knowledge you simply do not know which software is really the "wheel" and which
is pure nonsense. Only time can tell.

Regards,
Stephan

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Scott Robert Ladd]

Stephan von Krawczynski wrote:
> Scott Robert Ladd <coyote@coyotegulch.com> wrote:
>>A very technocratic view, to be sure. Source code is no guranatee of 
>>future portability or viability; for the vast, vast majority of users -- 
>>we do care about those, don't we? -- source code is useless.
> 
> I doubt that. You are probably right with your exact statement, meaning that
> the _user_ cannot make use of the available source code himself (though the
> only reason why is that he plays user and refuses to learn anything :-)

While I subscribe to the theory that specialization is for insects (ala 
Heinlein), I also recognize that no one can know everything. Having 
tried to be a universalist, I'm somewhat familiar with the limitations 
of time over genius; while it is certainly possible for me to perform 
surgery, for example, I would much rather have a trained professional do it.

Just because someone is not a programmer does not make them lazy. Most 
users have other tasks at hand; in my case, I would much rather my 
surgeon refine his skills the the scapel, than have him waste time 
writing his own diagnostic software.

> the manpower and brain invested in creation of this open source code is not
> lost in space. Someone with brain and time can pick it up and revive it at any
> given time. And this is a very big advantage in comparison to closed source
> which simply vanishes with its producing company - and there already have been
> quite a few of those.

I most certainly agree. Knowledge is built on knowledge, and if a Homo 
erectus had patented the flaked stone tool, we would all still be living 
in caves.

Of course, not everyone is capable of creating a sharp edge by banging 
the rocks together. And that's why different people do different things.

> So even if your statement looks correct in micro-economics, it is completely
> wrong in macro-economics. As Larry already pointed out in another post software
> development is often expensive. But it is only expensive if every company has
> to re-invent the wheel.
 >
 > If you can simply use the wheel and go on producing a
 > car "on top" of it, you _saved_ money, time and manpower.

The mere act of making code open (or object-oriented) does not make 
people reuse it. I am constantly amazed by the amount of available 
information, and am disturbed by how few people take advantage of it.

Almost every company *does* reinvent the wheel -- and that can not be 
legitimately blamed on closed-source software. Witness the massive 
duplication of effort in the free software community -- KDE, Gnome, and 
other "desktops" being a salient example. Egos, license disputes, 
business concerns, and technical choices lead to duplication of effort; 
as a former evangelist of object-oriented programming, I'm more than 
aware that it is not technology that prevents code re-use, but psychology.

-- 
Scott Robert Ladd
Coyote Gulch Productions (http://www.coyotegulch.com)
Professional programming for science and engineering;
Interesting and unusual bits of very free code.

Re: [OT] Troll Tech

[Horst von Brand]

Jan Rychter <jan@rychter.com> said:

[...]

> PS: I'm actually quite surprised that swsusp receives so little
> attention from the "core" kernel developers. It seems as if nobody uses
> laptops? Or do people just reboot so often?

I just reboot. Suspend in any form scares me, to be honest... Besides,
booting up this machine and going into Gnome is faster than just starting
up a user in WinXP (came preinstalled, need it once in two blue moons...)
-- 
Dr. Horst H. von Brand                   User #22616 counter.li.org
Departamento de Informatica                     Fono: +56 32 654431
Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria              +56 32 654239
Casilla 110-V, Valparaiso, Chile                Fax:  +56 32 797513

--h5M1NBHG006025.1056244991/eeyore.valparaiso.cl--

Re: [OT] Troll Tech

[Jan-Benedict Glaw]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 849 bytes --]

On Sat, 2003-06-21 14:49:48 -0700, Jan Rychter <jan@rychter.com>
wrote in message <m21xxnxfr7.fsf_-_@tnuctip.rychter.com>:

> PS: I'm actually quite surprised that swsusp receives so little
> attention from the "core" kernel developers. It seems as if nobody uses
> laptops? Or do people just reboot so often?

Well, I simply don't switch my laptop off. It basically has got
something called "battery" or "accu" which makes it survive all my
travelling to work and back and so on. It's fastest to not power off at
all...

MfG, JBG

-- 
   Jan-Benedict Glaw       jbglaw@lug-owl.de    . +49-172-7608481
   "Eine Freie Meinung in  einem Freien Kopf    | Gegen Zensur | Gegen Krieg
    fuer einen Freien Staat voll Freier Bürger" | im Internet! |   im Irak!
      ret = do_actions((curr | FREE_SPEECH) & ~(IRAQ_WAR_2 | DRM | TCPA));

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Stephan von Krawczynski]

On Sat, 21 Jun 2003 21:12:41 -0400
Scott Robert Ladd <coyote@coyotegulch.com> wrote:

> I most certainly agree. Knowledge is built on knowledge, and if a Homo 
> erectus had patented the flaked stone tool, we would all still be living 
> in caves.

Hear, hear ...
 
> Of course, not everyone is capable of creating a sharp edge by banging 
> the rocks together. And that's why different people do different things.

And there is nothing wrong with that.

>  > If you can simply use the wheel and go on producing a
>  > car "on top" of it, you _saved_ money, time and manpower.
> 
> The mere act of making code open (or object-oriented) does not make 
> people reuse it. I am constantly amazed by the amount of available 
> information, and am disturbed by how few people take advantage of it.
> 
> Almost every company *does* reinvent the wheel -- and that can not be 
> legitimately blamed on closed-source software. Witness the massive 
> duplication of effort in the free software community -- KDE, Gnome, and 
> other "desktops" being a salient example. Egos, license disputes, 
> business concerns, and technical choices lead to duplication of effort; 
> as a former evangelist of object-oriented programming, I'm more than 
> aware that it is not technology that prevents code re-use, but psychology.

Well, see it as an evolutionary process. Of course you will always see
duplication as a try to re-invent something _better_. Anyway you will notice,
that evolution lives by the possibility to reuse and refine things that have
proven good.
It is a matter of time simply. It is no matter of black and white, rather of
darker and lighter grey. The more time the more the positive effects of the
"lighter grey" open source strategy (compared to "darker grey" closed source)
will take effect. See we are still at the very beginning of the "open source
age".
Since we all do not know what mission-critical questions for mankind will arise
in upcoming years,  we, too, cannot make claims about the resources needed to
solve - or at least survive - them. To me it is very clear that open source has
the capability to set resources free (see Larry: "will Sun survive the open
source") that can be very well needed in other important areas. This is not
bad, it is a chance. Reaching the same goal with less resources is never a bad
thing.
Just step back and watch the big picture, not only our "backstage area". A tool
can be very important, but you also need the people to use it for reaching the
right goal. Handing the car key to Homo erectus may not have been the right
thing to do, though the "car tool" itself is brilliant.

Regards,
Stephan

Re: [OT] Troll Tech

[Daniel Phillips]

On Sunday 22 June 2003 03:47, Horst von Brand wrote:
> Jan Rychter <jan@rychter.com> said:
>
> [...]
>
> > PS: I'm actually quite surprised that swsusp receives so little
> > attention from the "core" kernel developers. It seems as if nobody uses
> > laptops? Or do people just reboot so often?
>
> I just reboot. Suspend in any form scares me, to be honest... Besides,
> booting up this machine and going into Gnome is faster than just starting
> up a user in WinXP (came preinstalled, need it once in two blue moons...)

That's you.  I depend on suspend, not just on my laptop, but on all my 
(modern) machines.  It preserves context, in a browser for example.

Poor support for suspend is something you'd only expect to find in a 
substandard operating system.

Regards,

Daniel

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Werner Almesberger]

Scott Robert Ladd wrote:
> Most "free" software exists to scratch an itch; if the programmer stops 
> scratching, users are out-of-luck. Unless, of course, they hire someone 
> like you or me to maintain or update an abandoned program... ;)

Yes, but that's precisely the point. Free software doesn't replace
the specialists, but it strenghtens their position to help you, and
it enables more people to become such specialists that help
themselves or others.

When deciding which product to use, its long-term viability plays a
role in both worlds. Open Source does not imply a guarantee that a
product will be useful forever, but if your company-wide integrated
IT solution comes from dead-now.com, you're out of luck too, no
matter how much you paid them, or what glowing promises they made
in the contract.

- Werner

-- 
  _________________________________________________________________________
 / Werner Almesberger, Buenos Aires, Argentina         wa@almesberger.net /
/_http://www.almesberger.net/____________________________________________/

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[David Woodhouse]

On Sat, 2003-06-21 at 14:38, Larry McVoy wrote:
> Second, the point you are missing, on purpose? is that with a pure
> open source play there is no barrier to entry for anyone else, they
> can take your source and sell it under the same terms. 

They can sell it 'under the same terms' in that they can write the same
things on the contract -- but they can't offer the same service and make
it as attractive to the customer -- because although any of your
competitors may be able to copy and distribute the code you wrote, that
doesn't mean they know it and can support it just as well as you can.

To take an example -- if, for the sake of argument, you were to GPL
BitKeeper, do you really think anyone would be able to jump on the
bandwagon and support it as well as you can?

It doesn't work like that -- those who wrote and continue to maintain
the 'official' (or only) branch of the code do have a serious commercial
advantage in offering support. 

I've seen customers come to my employer for support on stuff we've
written and maintain, after failing to get satisfaction from our
competitors -- who have access to all the same code. Why do you think
that happens?

> There is a reason that the VC's want to know what you have that noone
> else has and how you are going to keep them from getting it.  Hate
> VC's all you want, they still have a point.

They do indeed. But sometimes they have some flawed ideas about
precisely what it _is_ that nobody else has but would need to compete
properly.

It's not just access to the source code of the software -- it runs
deeper than that. To be honest, I consider hiding and restrictively
licensing your code to be largely analogous to security by obscurity --
it tends to work to a large extent but it's a poor substitute for
_really_ fixing the problem, by being able to offer your customers a
decent service and making them want to stay with you. 

The increasing prevalence of Free Software means that the industry is
more and more about _services_ rather than products, and hence companies
have to stay alert and think about providing a decent service to their
customers rather than resting their on their laurels and drawing in
money from old technology while papering over the holes.

While I can see that giving the VCs the screaming heebie-jeebies since
it means that IT companies need to work hard to recruit and retain good
people and there are far fewer cash cows, I don't necessarily think it's
a bad thing for the industry or for IT consumers/users in general.

-- 
dwmw2

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Jesse Pollard]

On Saturday 21 June 2003 07:55, Henning P. Schmiedehausen wrote:
[snip]
> Backward compatibility is the mantra of successful software. Without
> it, you simply won't accumulate an user base. You may want to read the
> article by Pat Gelsinger (sp?) in the last c't magazine. He did talk
> about processors, but software is the same thing. Look where the two
> companies that did put this above everything else are (HW: Intel SW:
> Microsoft)?

And IA32 applications run on IA64 without recompiling????
Or worse, a 286 app runs on IA64...

How about a 186...

No. sorry. There are limits to backward compatability.. Even M$ is dropping
that...which is why their server 2003 doesn't run some (a lot of?) NT 3/4 
apps.

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Jesse Pollard]

On Saturday 21 June 2003 08:46, Paul Jakma wrote:
[snip]
> Perhaps, if you consider that innovation is a building process, not a
> 'think of something completely new' process we could restate that as:
>
> Creating new software:  		$$$$$$$$$$
> Building upon existing software: 		 $
>
> And possibly we might consider that the reason why 'creating new
> software' is so high is precisely because it refuses to acknowledge
> how innovation actually has worked throughout the ages, that its a
> process of building new ideas on old, refining what exists to make it
> better. That so much software is closed source and hence impossible
> to build on adds greatly to the cost and stifles innovation even
> further.

welll... really it does understand that. Which is why propriatary systems
try to own the entire heirarchy... The cost history of propriatary software
shown above is the SUM of the entire evolution cost.. and the company wants
to say "... mine, mine, you can't have it (unless you give me more money for
every time you do use it...)". Which would explain the high cost of creating
"new" propriatary software.

> So perhaps its actually commercial software (in the sense that
> commercial software is nearly always closed source) which is causing
> 'cost of innovation' problems in the software industry, not open
> source software.
>
> regards,

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Alan Cox]

On Llu, 2003-06-23 at 13:16, Jesse Pollard wrote:
> And IA32 applications run on IA64 without recompiling????

Yes

> Or worse, a 286 app runs on IA64...

Yes

> How about a 186...

Yes

Although at a certain point you can switch to software emulation because
you'll trivially outperform the "real" hardware.

Also you'll notice one of the big wins about AMD x86-64 is running
x86-32 apps well.

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Jesse Pollard]

On Monday 23 June 2003 07:44, Alan Cox wrote:
> On Llu, 2003-06-23 at 13:16, Jesse Pollard wrote:
> > And IA32 applications run on IA64 without recompiling????
>
> Yes
>
> > Or worse, a 286 app runs on IA64...
>
> Yes
>
> > How about a 186...
>
> Yes
>
> Although at a certain point you can switch to software emulation because
> you'll trivially outperform the "real" hardware.

It would almost have to be emulation.. I haven't seen a system that supports
segmentation in user mode in quite a while.

>
> Also you'll notice one of the big wins about AMD x86-64 is running
> x86-32 apps well.

news to my AIDA compiler... (though that may be due to DOS no longer working
on anything recent.. BTW.. it is the old z compiler thing that only supported 
16bit addressing with segmentation.. I'm dropping that turd and only keeping
the language reference after my relocation completes.. and the 286 is going 
in the spare parts bin).

Though I did know AMD supported the IA32, I didn't think the Itanium supported
that old an instruction set as the 186 segmentation support.

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Krzysztof Halasa]

"Henning P. Schmiedehausen" <hps@intermeta.de> writes:

> Most of the stuff in the Linux kernel (and Userland) is marked as
> "Version 0.1. 0.7beta. alpha-release. 0.2.1testing. 1.2-pre". And so
> on. You won't find many OpenSource developers that call their product
> "Version 3.1" Because they're afraid to bite the bullet a do a
> release.

Probably you'd like RH version numbering scheme more?
Do you think there is a big difference between, say, RH or Mandrake 9,
and Debian 3 (not sure about exact numbers)?

>  With a commercial OS, you get a release version on which you
> can build. Sure it has bugs. Sure, some of the code _is_ alpha
> quality. But that's what a vendor is for.

A vendor is for releasing alpha quality code? Well...

> No it does not. It simply has no political or ideological reasons not
> to talk to other companies, sign NDAs and spend money.  If Sun wants a
> "state of the art" driver for nVidia chips, they call nVidia, draft up
> an agreement, get access to the nVidia docs and build such a
> driver. The main problem of the "open-source" movement is that
> "beggars" attitute. If it costs money, we won't use it.

Not the money is the problem. I don't think the documentation costs
(much) money anyway. The NDA is the problem - why would you want
documentation if it prohibits you from releasing your (source) code?

> Check the level of support of _current_ graphics chips in Linux. You
> get a halfway decent ATI support, "bad, bad, bad closed source" but
> performance-wise very good nVidia support

Never worked for me reliably.

My experience is that under Linux no binary-only kernel modules work
reliably. Not that it's much different with (the) other OSes.
-- 
Krzysztof Halasa
Network Administrator

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Larry McVoy]

On Mon, Jun 23, 2003 at 09:54:27AM +0100, David Woodhouse wrote:
> It's not just access to the source code of the software -- it runs
> deeper than that. To be honest, I consider hiding and restrictively
> licensing your code to be largely analogous to security by obscurity --
> it tends to work to a large extent but it's a poor substitute for
> _really_ fixing the problem, by being able to offer your customers a
> decent service and making them want to stay with you. 
> 
> The increasing prevalence of Free Software means that the industry is
> more and more about _services_ rather than products...

The one flaw in this argument and all of those which say basically "services
is the answer" is that it only works if you produce crappy software which
needs servicing.  
-- 
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[David Woodhouse]

On Mon, 2003-06-23 at 14:22, Larry McVoy wrote:
> The one flaw in this argument and all of those which say basically "services
> is the answer" is that it only works if you produce crappy software which
> needs servicing. 

I think you misunderstand; it's not always the _software_ which needs
looking after.

How much time do you spend supporting BitKeeper users? Quite a lot, I
suspect. I wouldn't argue that fact makes it 'crappy' software.

Neither am I arguing that you, personally, should be trying to make a
living by support alone -- I'm merely observing a trend. 

-- 
dwmw2

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Larry McVoy]

On Mon, Jun 23, 2003 at 02:32:42PM +0100, David Woodhouse wrote:
> On Mon, 2003-06-23 at 14:22, Larry McVoy wrote:
> > The one flaw in this argument and all of those which say basically "services
> > is the answer" is that it only works if you produce crappy software which
> > needs servicing. 
> 
> I think you misunderstand; it's not always the _software_ which needs
> looking after.
> 
> How much time do you spend supporting BitKeeper users? Quite a lot, I
> suspect. I wouldn't argue that fact makes it 'crappy' software.

Actually, we don't spend that much time supporting users and the time we
do spend tells us where we need to fix the product and/or documentation.
We have a goal of zero support.  Anything less than that means the software
is counter intuitive or has some other problem.

Do you think that we'd give out BK for free if all of you were asking for
support every day?  We'd be out of business in a week.

> Neither am I arguing that you, personally, should be trying to make a
> living by support alone -- I'm merely observing a trend. 

And I'm pointing out that the logic on which that trend is based has some
severe problems.  I don't know about you, but I don't want to be part of
a business who's business model is to ship incomplete or broken software
and then charge to fix it.  
-- 
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Jan-Benedict Glaw]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1439 bytes --]

On Mon, 2003-06-23 06:22:31 -0700, Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com>
wrote in message <20030623132231.GC6715@work.bitmover.com>:
> On Mon, Jun 23, 2003 at 09:54:27AM +0100, David Woodhouse wrote:
> > The increasing prevalence of Free Software means that the industry is
> > more and more about _services_ rather than products...
> 
> The one flaw in this argument and all of those which say basically "services
> is the answer" is that it only works if you produce crappy software which
> needs servicing.  

Not to upset or insult somebody, but there are thousands of users which
seem to be completely unable to read. Some are even resistent towards
learning. Using something, esp complex systems like database servers SCM
tools et al. actually requires to basically understand them (if you want
to do your job right).

...and then, there are those who do installations of complex software.
Either some admin who's already there can do the setup (and will need a
week to get it right), or you can do that for him, charging some $$$.
_But_ the company has got a reliably working installation within hours.

MfG, JBG

-- 
   Jan-Benedict Glaw       jbglaw@lug-owl.de    . +49-172-7608481
   "Eine Freie Meinung in  einem Freien Kopf    | Gegen Zensur | Gegen Krieg
    fuer einen Freien Staat voll Freier Bürger" | im Internet! |   im Irak!
      ret = do_actions((curr | FREE_SPEECH) & ~(IRAQ_WAR_2 | DRM | TCPA));

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Larry McVoy]

> ...and then, there are those who do installations of complex software.
> Either some admin who's already there can do the setup (and will need a
> week to get it right), or you can do that for him, charging some $$$.

Or you can fix your software so it just works.  If you don't, you are 
leaving the door open for someone else to demonstrate how their software
has a lower cost of ownership than yours.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[David Woodhouse]

On Mon, 2003-06-23 at 14:37, Larry McVoy wrote:
> > Neither am I arguing that you, personally, should be trying to make a
> > living by support alone -- I'm merely observing a trend. 
> 
> And I'm pointing out that the logic on which that trend is based has some
> severe problems.  

Ah, but attempting to associate observed trends with actual logic is a
fruitless task attempted only by economists and loons :)

> I don't know about you, but I don't want to be part of
> a business who's business model is to ship incomplete or broken software
> and then charge to fix it.  

Well there we have a different viewpoint -- I work on kernel code where
it's generally accepted that new hardware renders old stuff obsolete
quite quickly, and particularly on _embedded_ stuff, where companies are
bringing out new toys which need Linux to support them all the time.

And even if my viewpoint were different I'm not convinced I agree with
you -- after all, this isn't a problem which is specific to Free
Software, surely? If you produce the perfect word processor or a car
which doesn't rust, you never get repeat business either :)

The continuation of the business depends, in _all_ cases, on the fact
that you add new features, fix bugs, etc. Unless you go into the rental
business, I suppose.

Now, if you were to stand up and declare 'Free Software and sales of
proprietary software are doomed -- everyone needs to lease their
software if they want their business to survive', I'd certainly have a
harder time arguing with you, although I'm not utterly convinced I'd
actually believe that either.

-- 
dwmw2

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Larry McVoy]

On Mon, Jun 23, 2003 at 03:04:33PM +0100, David Woodhouse wrote:
> On Mon, 2003-06-23 at 14:37, Larry McVoy wrote:
> > > Neither am I arguing that you, personally, should be trying to make a
> > > living by support alone -- I'm merely observing a trend. 
> > 
> > And I'm pointing out that the logic on which that trend is based has some
> > severe problems.  
> 
> Ah, but attempting to associate observed trends with actual logic is a
> fruitless task attempted only by economists and loons :)

Well that explains it, I'm an economist^Wloon :)

> > I don't know about you, but I don't want to be part of
> > a business who's business model is to ship incomplete or broken software
> > and then charge to fix it.  
> 
> And even if my viewpoint were different I'm not convinced I agree with
> you -- after all, this isn't a problem which is specific to Free
> Software, surely? If you produce the perfect word processor or a car
> which doesn't rust, you never get repeat business either :)

The difference is that I can charge a price for the word processor which
gives me enough profit to build the spread sheet application.  If you are
trying to do the same thing but your app is GPLed, you can forget about it.
The market won't pay $300 for something they can download for free.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[David Woodhouse]

On Mon, 2003-06-23 at 15:09, Larry McVoy wrote:
> The difference is that I can charge a price for the word processor which
> gives me enough profit to build the spread sheet application. 

...and when that and the rest of the suite are complete, what next? You
only postponed the end, surely?

>  If you are trying to do the same thing but your app is GPLed, you can
> forget about it. The market won't pay $300 for something they can
> download for free.

This is absolutely true -- but why is it relevant and to whom? 

OK, perhaps I see why it makes _vendors_ uneasy, but the _consumer_
doesn't lose out, and it's the consumer's money which drives the trend. 

There will always be companies around to provide whatever needs the
consumer is willing to pay for.

It may turn out that tomorrow's consumer is not willing to pay up-front
for software, at least _commodity_ software.

Markets come and markets go -- life will go on, as it always does. 

-- 
dwmw2

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Scott Robert Ladd]

Larry McVoy wrote:
> The one flaw in this argument and all of those which say basically "services
> is the answer" is that it only works if you produce crappy software which
> needs servicing.  

Your definition of "services" is far too narrow. Requirements change 
with time; ideal software today may be inadequate tomorrow. I make most 
of my money from customizing software to a specific customer's needs. I 
combine and refine existing components to produce unique software.

A case in point: My Java Indexed Serialization Package (JISP) provides a 
very basic tool; about half my business comes from people who like the 
Jisp concept, and need a custom version that is tightly coupled to their 
requirements. I don't sell Jisp; I sell *what I can do* with Jisp.

-- 
Scott Robert Ladd
Coyote Gulch Productions (http://www.coyotegulch.com)
Professional programming for science and engineering;
Interesting and unusual bits of very free code.

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Larry McVoy]

On Mon, Jun 23, 2003 at 10:30:16AM -0400, Scott Robert Ladd wrote:
> Larry McVoy wrote:
> >The one flaw in this argument and all of those which say basically 
> >"services
> >is the answer" is that it only works if you produce crappy software which
> >needs servicing.  
> 
> Your definition of "services" is far too narrow. Requirements change 
> with time; ideal software today may be inadequate tomorrow. I make most 
> of my money from customizing software to a specific customer's needs. I 
> combine and refine existing components to produce unique software.
> 
> A case in point: My Java Indexed Serialization Package (JISP) provides a 
> very basic tool; about half my business comes from people who like the 
> Jisp concept, and need a custom version that is tightly coupled to their 
> requirements. I don't sell Jisp; I sell *what I can do* with Jisp.

I think I'm going to give up soon (much to relief of the list) because I
keep getting the same sorts of answers which make sense from a small
custom shop point of view but are simply broken from a company point of
view.

Your model is fine, there is nothing wrong with it but there isn't a lot
right with it either.  You can't really grow your business under that 
model.  Why?  Because you are essentially a consulting shop and that 
isn't going to generate the revenue you need to hire more people, build
more things, get more consulting.  You can keep yourself going but not
make enough to get more people going.

Instead of coming back at me with the premise of "well, I'm eating so my
model is OK" how about coming back with a plan that says "Here's how we
make an open source based business put Microsoft out of business".  That's
reality.  You are just playing around on the edges, there is nothing 
wrong with that, but until you have a viable plan that competes with the
big boys let's stop kidding ourselves, ok?
-- 
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[David Woodhouse]

On Mon, 2003-06-23 at 16:06, Larry McVoy wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 23, 2003 at 10:30:16AM -0400, Scott Robert Ladd wrote:
> > Larry McVoy wrote:
> > > The one flaw in this argument and all of those which say basically 
> > > "services is the answer" is that it only works if you produce crappy
> > > software which needs servicing.

But Larry, the flaw in _your_ argument is that you think it needs to
'work' -- for you or for anyone else in the IT industry.

It doesn't. It needs to work for the consumer -- if software becomes a
commodity, it's all got to the point where it's perfect and nobody's
willing to pay for anything any more, then perhaps we software engineers
go the way of the coal miner -- but the world won't end, and neither
will a voice from on high declare that it all has to stop because of the
poor hungry programmers.

> I think I'm going to give up soon (much to relief of the list) because I
> keep getting the same sorts of answers which make sense from a small
> custom shop point of view but are simply broken from a company point of
> view.

Yeah -- and the real world is broken from a coal-mining-company point of
view too.... I agree with your observation but your point is not
entirely clear.

If the observed trend is actually real, and if it continues, the
'company point of view' may cease to exist along with the companies
which used to hold it, while the custom shops may remain.

That doesn't make the observers wrong; merely perhaps a little nervous.

> Your model is fine, there is nothing wrong with it but there isn't a lot
> right with it either.  You can't really grow your business under that 
> model.

I don't disagree with this statement, but I don't see its relevance.
What inference can you make from this? 

Are you asserting that the trend toward commoditisation of software
isn't real -- that companies are _not_ becoming less inclined to pay to
license proprietary software when there is a Free alternative which they
can use instead? Or merely that it makes you unhappy?

> Instead of coming back at me with the premise of "well, I'm eating so my
> model is OK" how about coming back with a plan that says "Here's how we
> make an open source based business put Microsoft out of business".  That's
> reality.  You are just playing around on the edges, there is nothing 
> wrong with that, but until you have a viable plan that competes with the
> big boys let's stop kidding ourselves, ok?

Why should an open source based business do that? Why does someone
_need_ to make money out of Free Software in order for it to survive? 

I don't think we disagree on anything much apart from our goals in life.
You are making money from proprietary software; I am observing that this
business model seems to be slowly getting less viable because Free
Software is making consumers less inclined to pay up-front for software,
although it will certainly remain viable for a number of years yet.

I don't need to make suggestions for an _alternative_ business model for
you, and you don't need to agree with me.

If you disagree with my observation, that's fine -- but that doesn't
seem to be the part to which you're objecting, which is why I'm slightly
confused.

-- 
dwmw2

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Geert Uytterhoeven]

On Mon, 23 Jun 2003, Larry McVoy wrote:
> > ...and then, there are those who do installations of complex software.
> > Either some admin who's already there can do the setup (and will need a
> > week to get it right), or you can do that for him, charging some $$$.
> 
> Or you can fix your software so it just works.  If you don't, you are 
> leaving the door open for someone else to demonstrate how their software
> has a lower cost of ownership than yours.

IC, that's why everybody is replacing sendmail by exchange ;-)

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

						Geert

--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert@linux-m68k.org

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
							    -- Linus Torvalds

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Larry McVoy]

On Mon, Jun 23, 2003 at 04:32:38PM +0100, David Woodhouse wrote:
> > Your model is fine, there is nothing wrong with it but there isn't a lot
> > right with it either.  You can't really grow your business under that 
> > model.
> 
> I don't disagree with this statement, but I don't see its relevance.
> What inference can you make from this? 
> 
> Are you asserting that the trend toward commoditisation of software
> isn't real -- that companies are _not_ becoming less inclined to pay to
> license proprietary software when there is a Free alternative which they
> can use instead? Or merely that it makes you unhappy?

Creating software costs money.
Open source doesn't produce very much money.
A world in which all software is produced via support contracts doesn't
look like a world in which there is very much new software.

Yes, that makes me unhappy.  I like programming, I like being paid to
do it.  I've done the consulting gig and that's a crappy way to live,
you don't make enough money to actually fix things, you make enough to
hack things so they sort of work.  No customer is going to pay you to
rearchitect GCC when what they want is support for their new chip.

That's probably a good enough test case.  Explain to me how your support
contracts are ever going to provide enough money to redo GCC or build
something equally substantial.

I'm not saying that you can't make a living doing support, you obviously
can.  I'm saying that it doesn't produce enough income to do what needs
to be done.  If it did then CVS would be BK, for example.  
-- 
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Larry McVoy]

On Mon, Jun 23, 2003 at 05:34:37PM +0200, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
> On Mon, 23 Jun 2003, Larry McVoy wrote:
> > > ...and then, there are those who do installations of complex software.
> > > Either some admin who's already there can do the setup (and will need a
> > > week to get it right), or you can do that for him, charging some $$$.
> > 
> > Or you can fix your software so it just works.  If you don't, you are 
> > leaving the door open for someone else to demonstrate how their software
> > has a lower cost of ownership than yours.
> 
> IC, that's why everybody is replacing sendmail by exchange ;-)

No, they are replacing sendmail with exchange because it solves their
calendar problems.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Stephan von Krawczynski]

On Mon, 23 Jun 2003 08:06:16 -0700
Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com> wrote:

> Your model is fine, there is nothing wrong with it but there isn't a lot
> right with it either.  You can't really grow your business under that 
> model.  Why?  Because you are essentially a consulting shop and that 
> isn't going to generate the revenue you need to hire more people, build
> more things, get more consulting.  You can keep yourself going but not
> make enough to get more people going.

Hm, you shouldn't possibly hire in management of one of the several SAP
consultant companies ;-)

> Instead of coming back at me with the premise of "well, I'm eating so my
> model is OK" how about coming back with a plan that says "Here's how we
> make an open source based business put Microsoft out of business".  That's
> reality.  You are just playing around on the edges, there is nothing 
> wrong with that, but until you have a viable plan that competes with the
> big boys let's stop kidding ourselves, ok?

Well, Larry, probably you should not wonder about not getting suggestions how
to put M$ out of business by consulting for a bitkeeper-like software
application. I guess that wouldn't really work out.
If you are looking for competing with M$ you should call up one of the linux
distributors and merge with them. It does not really look like RH or SuSE do
all that bad (to name examples). And I do believe they could earn a lot more
bucks if (even) more focus is put on consulting.
To my knowledge a consulting company can scale just as well as a (software)
manufacturing company. For sure this type of business is more complex, but
nevertheless I can very well see more income per customer by service contracts
or the like. I mean this is an original M$ statement: "compared to the TCO the
prizing of our product is not interesting", which basically reads: you have to
spend the big bucks _after_ you bought the software...
Which sums up to the point where M$ and open source people basically tell you
the same thing, only you are no believer (don't take this as critics).

Regards,
Stephan

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Alan Cox]

On Llu, 2003-06-23 at 16:39, Larry McVoy wrote:
> Creating software costs money.
> Open source doesn't produce very much money.
> A world in which all software is produced via support contracts doesn't
> look like a world in which there is very much new software.

Thats how most of the world works. In fact open source isn't that
different to the internal economy of many companies. Sooner or later it
becomes more economic to fix the infrastructure as part of fixing the
end users problem. And lets face it - if we started fixing the users
problem a bit more the computing world would improve a hell of a lot.

Making PC's doesn't produce much margin but I'd say Dell have produced
some innovations wouldn't you agree ?

Another problem we seem to have is this "all software" thing. All
software will be C++, all software will be java, all software will be
open source, all software will be .net.

Clearly none of those are true and there will always be cases where the
risk and capital required to get from where you are now to where you
want to be are sufficiently high that gradual evolution won't get you
there in the time you want, and the value of all the open pieces you
could use isnt sufficient to outweigh being able to use copyright to
get your investment back.

One of the reasons copyright exists is so you can make that choice as
author. In theory economics should ensure the right choices then win 8)

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Larry McVoy]

On Mon, Jun 23, 2003 at 05:43:17PM +0200, Stephan von Krawczynski wrote:
> If you are looking for competing with M$ you should call up one of the linux
> distributors and merge with them. It does not really look like RH or SuSE do
> all that bad (to name examples). And I do believe they could earn a lot more
> bucks if (even) more focus is put on consulting.

Red Hat: $1B market cap (not bad), $25M/quarter revenues, running at a loss.
Microsoft: $275B market cap, $7.8B/quarter revenues, running at $2.7B/quarter
profit.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Scott Robert Ladd]

Larry McVoy wrote:
> I think I'm going to give up soon (much to relief of the list) because I
> keep getting the same sorts of answers which make sense from a small
> custom shop point of view but are simply broken from a company point of
> view.

What's wrong with small business? Just because a model doesn't work for 
large companies doesn't invalidate the model. And I'm not convinced that 
the model fails on a larger scale.

> Your model is fine, there is nothing wrong with it but there isn't a lot
> right with it either.  You can't really grow your business under that 
> model. Why?  Because you are essentially a consulting shop and that 
> isn't going to generate the revenue you need to hire more people, build
> more things, get more consulting.  You can keep yourself going but not
> make enough to get more people going.

My business is growing; I've doubled revenues in the last year, and am 
building alliances with other small shops to handle larger tasks. The 
key, for me at least, is creating a baseline product that provides a 
foundation on which I build applications for clients. I'm working on two 
more baselines at the moment, while building a coalition to tackle 
larger jobs.

> Instead of coming back at me with the premise of "well, I'm eating so my
> model is OK" how about coming back with a plan that says "Here's how we
> make an open source based business put Microsoft out of business".  That's
> reality.  You are just playing around on the edges, there is nothing 
> wrong with that, but until you have a viable plan that competes with the
> big boys let's stop kidding ourselves, ok?

I'm not interested in playing with "the big boys", nor do I have a 
desire to "put Microsoft out of business.".

I much prefer to play in the spaces that the big boys have no interest 
in. I can employ several people, have a very comfortable life, and work 
on projects that are far more interesting and important than replacing 
Microsoft. It is possible to build a quality life (and perhaps a 
society) from an economic model that is not founded on corporate 
megalomania.

-- 
Scott Robert Ladd
Coyote Gulch Productions (http://www.coyotegulch.com)
Professional programming for science and engineering;
Interesting and unusual bits of very free code.

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Henning P. Schmiedehausen]

Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com> writes:

>On Mon, Jun 23, 2003 at 10:30:16AM -0400, Scott Robert Ladd wrote:

[...]

>> A case in point: My Java Indexed Serialization Package (JISP) provides a 
>> very basic tool; about half my business comes from people who like the 
>> Jisp concept, and need a custom version that is tightly coupled to their 
>> requirements. I don't sell Jisp; I sell *what I can do* with Jisp.

>I think I'm going to give up soon (much to relief of the list) because I
>keep getting the same sorts of answers which make sense from a small
>custom shop point of view but are simply broken from a company point of
>view.

SAP is doing exactly what Scott is doing on a little larger base. They
have a product with a bazillion of levers and controls and they sell
you services to adapt their product on your needs. Things you could do
yourself if you have five years' time to read all the manuals.

So your argument simply doesn't hold. SAP is not exactly a "small
custom shop".

	Regards
		Henning

-- 
Dipl.-Inf. (Univ.) Henning P. Schmiedehausen          INTERMETA GmbH
hps@intermeta.de        +49 9131 50 654 0   http://www.intermeta.de/

Java, perl, Solaris, Linux, xSP Consulting, Web Services 
freelance consultant -- Jakarta Turbine Development  -- hero for hire

--- Quote of the week: "It is pointless to tell people anything when
you know that they won't process the message." --- Jonathan Revusky

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Henning P. Schmiedehausen]

Geert Uytterhoeven <geert@linux-m68k.org> writes:

>> Or you can fix your software so it just works.  If you don't, you are 
>> leaving the door open for someone else to demonstrate how their software
>> has a lower cost of ownership than yours.

>IC, that's why everybody is replacing sendmail by exchange ;-)

While I can see the sarcasm in your argument; Yes, That's exactly the
point.  Exchange _looks_ easier to use than the usual
[[sendmail|postfix|qmail] + [cyrus|imapd|qpopper] | courier]
combo. Well, as they say: "Looks can deceive...".

	Regards
		Henning

-- 
Dipl.-Inf. (Univ.) Henning P. Schmiedehausen          INTERMETA GmbH
hps@intermeta.de        +49 9131 50 654 0   http://www.intermeta.de/

Java, perl, Solaris, Linux, xSP Consulting, Web Services 
freelance consultant -- Jakarta Turbine Development  -- hero for hire

--- Quote of the week: "It is pointless to tell people anything when
you know that they won't process the message." --- Jonathan Revusky

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[David Woodhouse]

On Mon, 2003-06-23 at 16:39, Larry McVoy wrote:
> That's probably a good enough test case.  Explain to me how your support
> contracts are ever going to provide enough money to redo GCC or build
> something equally substantial.

> I'm not saying that you can't make a living doing support, you obviously
> can.  I'm saying that it doesn't produce enough income to do what needs
> to be done. 

Now we actually isolate a point on which perhaps we disagree.

If there are things which _need_ to be done, but which no individual
customer is willing to pay for in Free Software, one of the following
things will happen:

 1. They'll revert to proprietary software.
 2. They'll club together with other users of the software and fund it.
 3. The contractors (us) will 'tax' them enough on the stuff they _are_ 
	willing to pay for to do it in the background.

I see plenty of evidence that #2 and #3 are actually happening in real
life. I've also seen a lot of #1 of course, but I suspect its frequency
will be decreasing over the coming years.

I certainly wouldn't assert that #1 will die out altogether, but neither
will the non-existence of #2 and #3 cause the Free Software bubble to
burst.  

> If it did then CVS would be BK, for example.

That's possibly a better example than your previous one of GCC, but
without disrespect to your achievements I still suspect it would have
happened, and indeed will happen, eventually.

-- 
dwmw2

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Alan Cox]

On Llu, 2003-06-23 at 17:11, Henning P. Schmiedehausen wrote:
> SAP is doing exactly what Scott is doing on a little larger base. They
> have a product with a bazillion of levers and controls and they sell
> you services to adapt their product on your needs. Things you could do
> yourself if you have five years' time to read all the manuals.
> 
> So your argument simply doesn't hold. SAP is not exactly a "small
> custom shop".

And lots of stuff that is *far* easier to operate and reliable has
active support companies for a variety of reasons. Its cost effective to
aggregate knowledge for example. Not every house has its own plumber,
electrician and painter for the same reasons.

I know people who support TeX profitably. So the support business works
for software that basically has no bugs. 

Alan

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Larry McVoy]

On Mon, Jun 23, 2003 at 05:16:12PM +0100, Alan Cox wrote:
> On Llu, 2003-06-23 at 17:11, Henning P. Schmiedehausen wrote:
> > SAP is doing exactly what Scott is doing on a little larger base. They
> > have a product with a bazillion of levers and controls and they sell
> > you services to adapt their product on your needs. Things you could do
> > yourself if you have five years' time to read all the manuals.
> > 
> > So your argument simply doesn't hold. SAP is not exactly a "small
> > custom shop".
> 
> And lots of stuff that is *far* easier to operate and reliable has
> active support companies for a variety of reasons. Its cost effective to
> aggregate knowledge for example. Not every house has its own plumber,
> electrician and painter for the same reasons.
> 
> I know people who support TeX profitably. So the support business works
> for software that basically has no bugs. 

I give, I'm not going to convince you and you're not going to convince me.
I think that I'm making a mistake by arguing with people who aren't trying
to build a company.  Of course you're right, you have the advantage that
you don't have to put your theories to the test nor do you have employees
who have to find new jobs if your theories are wrong.  Forgive me if I
don't mix your theories into my practice.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Stephan von Krawczynski]

On Mon, 23 Jun 2003 08:59:56 -0700
Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 23, 2003 at 05:43:17PM +0200, Stephan von Krawczynski wrote:
> > If you are looking for competing with M$ you should call up one of the
> > linux distributors and merge with them. It does not really look like RH or
> > SuSE do all that bad (to name examples). And I do believe they could earn a
> > lot more bucks if (even) more focus is put on consulting.
> 
> Red Hat: $1B market cap (not bad), $25M/quarter revenues, running at a loss.
> Microsoft: $275B market cap, $7.8B/quarter revenues, running at $2.7B/quarter
> profit.

Please compare at least the correct time frame. How long does M$ exist, how
long does RH exist?
Additionally we both know that things like M$ only happen if you have the luck
to be pushed by an exploding market.

Regards,
Stephan

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Werner Almesberger]

Larry McVoy wrote:
> Red Hat: $1B market cap (not bad), $25M/quarter revenues, running at a loss.
> Microsoft: $275B market cap, $7.8B/quarter revenues, running at $2.7B/quarter
> profit.

Here's an idea: most Linux users occasionally buy a product
that includes a bundled Microsoft product (e.g. a notebook with
Windows preinstalled.) This is often referred to as the
"Microsoft tax".

So, why not make MS act as our tax collector ? If we assume that
there are about 10 millions of Linux users worldwide, each
spending USD 100 "MS tax" every decade, this makes USD 100
millions per year. With this, one could quite comfortably pay a
thousand Linux developers working on the base OS (kernel, system
programs, window system, etc.).

So all you need to do is to lobby your government into passing
some law that forces companies to re-distribute revenue gained
by bundling products not used by the (de facto captive) customer.
(Give it a catchy name, like "Fair Compensation Bill", or such.)

- Werner

-- 
  _________________________________________________________________________
 / Werner Almesberger, Buenos Aires, Argentina         wa@almesberger.net /
/_http://www.almesberger.net/____________________________________________/

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Werner Almesberger]

Larry McVoy wrote:
> The point I'm trying to make is could we please think about how create
> a world that is sustainable and based completely on open source?

Apparently, the filters guarding linux-kernel didn't like my reply,
and silently discarded it :-( Anyway, you can read it at
http://www.almesberger.net/misc/mail-linux-bank.txt

It's a collection of ideas regarding the creation a set of payment
collection and distribution organizations.

Wishful fiction, for sure, but may still be entertaining reading :-)

- Werner

-- 
  _________________________________________________________________________
 / Werner Almesberger, Buenos Aires, Argentina         wa@almesberger.net /
/_http://www.almesberger.net/____________________________________________/

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[David Blomber]

> The difference is that I can charge a price for the word processor which
> gives me enough profit to build the spread sheet application.  If you are
> trying to do the same thing but your app is GPLed, you can forget about it.
> The market won't pay $300 for something they can download for free.
> -- 
> ---
> Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm
> -
Yes but a word processor is not worth $300.  I am all for anyone making
a profit, but not when they hold the rest of us over a barrel and
railroad us with proprietary products that are vastly overpriced and
marginally better.  (and yes I put my money where my mouth is I actually
buy the distros and software I use and donate to GNU)

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Timothy Miller]

It's funny -- all of this political talk going on about the effect of 
Open Source on commercial software.  Well, for some people, writing open 
source software may have political motivations, but for an even greater 
number of people, writing open source software is something they do 
purely for personal enjoyment.  In terms of motivation, this is no 
different from wood working or launching pumpkins.

The great thing about the open source community that exists is that 
there is a huge body of work out there that you can borrow from in order 
to make getting your enjoyment easier.

How many of you kernel developers out there hate coding but work on the 
Linux kernel just for the sake of beating Microsoft?

For many of us, this is just a hobby.  Yeah, it's awesome that other 
people can benefit from it and use it commercially, but it's just 
something we do for fun.

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Timothy Miller]

(I'm not just under 400 posts behind, so forgive me if this doesn't fit 
the current context.)

Larry McVoy wrote:

> Instead of coming back at me with the premise of "well, I'm eating so my
> model is OK" how about coming back with a plan that says "Here's how we
> make an open source based business put Microsoft out of business".  That's
> reality.  You are just playing around on the edges, there is nothing 
> wrong with that, but until you have a viable plan that competes with the
> big boys let's stop kidding ourselves, ok?

What if Microsoft is a non-issue?  What if the guy doesn't care about 
putting anyone out of business?  Why does putting Microsoft out of 
business have to be one of his goals?

(I'm taking 'Microsoft' to be an example, because I do believe that 
there are reasons why they specifically need competition, but that's 
another discussion.)

RE: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Robert White]

In the theoretical sense, it is easy to create a world that is "completely"
based on open source.  Or at least completely enough that the closed source
elements, when measured by size or volume or feature list, are so deep into
the noise floor as to be meaningless.

The thing is, the first step in that evolution is a human engineering
problem.

The open source model is basically a barter system where the central
exchange is an open and unwatched pit in the center of town.  When all the
participants finally "wise up" to the particular realities of that barter
system then the open source behavior becomes rational.

The fine points that confuse businesses are:

1) You can not "deplete" the pit.  Anything thrown into the pit once can be
removed "an infinite number of times."  This is why the pit doesn't need to
be guarded or administrated.  This is why we don't need a pit boss.

2) You agree, in taking from the pit, to "pay back" by returning to the pit
your improvements.  This is a simple business arrangement.  As "the company"
learns that it isn't "giving away it's hard work" by open sourcing things,
the model starts to work.  The fact is that companies *AREN'T* "giving away"
their hard work, they are "paying (back) their hard work" for the privilege
of using the infinitely larger pool of "hard work" of others.  This has an
inherent profit-and-loss statement to beat all priors.  I can "borrow" the
*entire* *value* of the pit against my eventual contribution of whatever
patch, improvement, new paradigm, spare idea, or spare server space I *may*
eventually have, all without ever having to worry about a bill collector.
That is *pure profit*.  An infinite number of workers for zero payroll up
front and double-value amortization of the work (payroll) I had to pay for
anyway, when the enhancement is returned to the pit.

3) Nobody is keeping score.  This is the hardest part for a business to
swallow.  Money is how businesses keep score, but in this barter system
there is no depletion, no "take away", only "share", and the value being
exchanged is "man thought hours" which is not money.  How do you express
that to shareholders?  It's doable, but in a short-sighted post-80's, no
such thing as the long view version of business savvy we live under it's
damn hard to get the message through.

4) Software is *not* a viable product.  There are all sorts of viable
products surrounding software (devices, services, integration tasks,
content) but the only real "bubble" was the 25 years where the software was
itself a commodity.  We are left with a legacy where it still "feels like"
there is a dream business somewhere in "start software company" "???"
"profit!" but it just isn't true.  Software for software's sake is the
idea-farm equivalent of "Archie McPhee" junk.  New software is "novel" but
anybody who sees the bobbing bird that "drinks" will either think it is
interesting but transient phenomena and buy it if it is *super cheap* or
they will see how it works and go out and build their own.

You have made the *GRAVE* mistake of reversing the cause and the effect in
formulating your observations.  OSS versions of proprietary systems are not
created because the creators can not think of new things on their own.  OSS
version of proprietary systems are created because either the original is
tragically flawed and they cannot get the original company to fix it at
"proper novelty prices"; or because the rest of the world wants to keep some
odd thing afloat and the proprietary system can not be properly extended to
work "in the real world".

Consider SAMBA.  This product doesn't exist because the SMB file system is
somehow excellent technology.  The SMB file system is terribly slow and
awkward.  It is "bad tech".  SAMBA exists because windows can not be easily
and rationally extended to work with NFS for "novelty prices" (neither in
man hours or green-folding-applause) and enough people want to bring the
(increasingly) niche gaming machine or must-be-windows application files out
into the real world.

(Remember this isn't a discussion of "Market Share", this is a discussion of
who is sponging what ideas from whom and where the "natural business model"
is for Open Source, so don't criticize my discussion of M.S. ware as
"niche".  Compare the several hindered or whatever people working on, or
with can-modify-and-distribute access to the windows core/kernel/etc to the
"everybody plus dog" community with can-modify-and-distribute access to the
Linux kernel.  By definition, in terms of creative effort available, any
closed source element occupies a niche exactly as large as the corporate
developer staff.  So "niche"....)

If windows were to be open sourced tomorrow, a year from now it would have
EXT3 and NFS and RiserFS and functioning Kerberos and NIS and so forth, and
SAMBA would be in decline because the gaping security wound that is "Windows
Networking" would be quickly and easily displaced with some SSH tunnel and a
Windows Networking compatibility layer for that legacy stuff.

Further, if the creative effort didn't have to be dissipated (like so much
waste heat) in the effort to crack and hack into the various
low-mental-value but well-secured-from-public-understanding niche-ware we
would have something better than SMB *or* NFS by now.

When nearly nobody *could* program because nearly nobody had compilers and
know-how, that knowledge and access was a dear commodity commanding extreme
prices in a closed market.  Now everybody and their brother thinks they can
program better than everybody else, and poor Linus has to *fight* to keep
the crap-ware from creeping into his domain.

The odd paradox is that even the crap-ware has value to some audience.

The other odd paradox is that now that the windows market has eaten alive
the various basic and C and C++ compilers that were as pervasive as vermin,
the children today don't have that tinker-giest opportunity any more.  The
current Junior-High tech head thinks he is 3l33t because he can copy things
onto his web page.  At least the game-mod systems let some of them see "real
programming" "for free".  Were I a conspiracy theorist this point would
bother me.  I am, however, a realist, and see that the reason the decline of
the GW-Basics of the world is because the uber-mench who think that all
software must have cash value to be wrung from each byte of code, poisoned
their own well by hiding and restricting their future cash crop of cheap
labor.

Closed source is self-punishing, but the learning curve time is currently
somewhere about 35 years per-cycle.  (e.g. we are nearing the end of the
first full iteration.)

The feedback loop is tightening up though, so as the model ages and becomes
more absurd, people will become more clueful.

The current "patent an idea" debacle is the third-to-last ditch effort to
sustain the closed source money bonanza.  But it too shall pass (after it
has left a wake of stupidity, ire, and ruin across our economy... 8-)

As I said in a previous post in this forum, "Monkey See, Monkey Do" and if
you bet against that essential truth, make sure it is a short term bet, and
that you can sell your interest to a backer to take the soaking on the long
term.  Even describing the rough outlines of a software idea is enough to
get the good parts developed out from under you.  No software concern that
wants to have people use its product, and who has a product that doesn't
suck, can get more than two user-weeks into release before someone is
already mapping the good and bad parts of the system with an eye towards
renovation.

Ideas can not be "stolen" unless you hammer out the brains of the original
thinker and then burn and burry the body.  If I "take your idea and run with
it" I haven "stolen" a damn thing, because you still have your idea too.
Ideas will be refined and reconsidered by every person who encounters them.
Nature of the (man) beast.  There is no licensing model or moral tone or
degree of unmitigated whining about the fairness of life that can change
that.

You want to base a business model on the idea that you are going to put out
good software that will remain untouched and unmimiced in the market place?

Really?

You might as well base your business plan on your patented sure fire way to
make money in a world without sex, porn, masturbation, drinking beer, eating
chocolate and gossiping...

How about a business plan where the good TV shows stay on the air and the
cheap rip-offs of the latest reality shows *automatically* die stillborn on
the network boardroom floor before the first dollar is spent on production?

Get serious, we are people and this is earth...


Rob.



-----Original Message-----
From: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org
[mailto:linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org]On Behalf Of Larry McVoy
Sent: Friday, June 20, 2003 8:25 AM
To: Werner Almesberger
Cc: Larry McVoy; Stephan von Krawczynski; miquels@cistron-office.nl;
linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]


On Fri, Jun 20, 2003 at 12:18:34PM -0300, Werner Almesberger wrote:
> Larry McVoy wrote:
> >     The reason I take this point of view, unpopular though it may be,
> >     is that I see open source as basically parasitic.
>
> Think of it as a child that's growing up. For quite a while, it
> will just draw resources from the parents, add little work or
> innovations, and will have considerably less economical power
> than the parents.

That's a perfectly fine thing, it's the normal circle of life and to
some extent I think we're in agreement.

The point I'm trying to make is could we please think about how create
a world that is sustainable and based completely on open source?  There
are lots of people who say you can't trust anything but open source, the
companies behind are evil corporate monsters just waiting to jump out
from under your bed at night and grab you (sorry, couldn't resist).
Seriously, if what you want is an all open source all the time, which
would be fantastic in some sense, then how about a plan that shows how
that will work?  Saying that open source is a child growing is a nice
analogy but what's the grown up child look like?  Is this going to just
be like the 60's flower children that grow up and turn into their parents
after all?
--
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com
http://www.bitmover.com/lm
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Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Larry McVoy]

On Tue, Jun 24, 2003 at 05:31:06PM -0700, Robert White wrote:
> [a long message]

I've taken one pass through your message.  Sounds like you have thought
about this.  My question for you is have you run a business?  Do you
have employees?  How many?

I have no idea where on the spectrum you sit but the thought has occurred 
to me that arguing business models with people who are operating from 
a 100% theoretical position is likely to not reach any agreement in my
lifetime.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Werner Almesberger]

Larry McVoy wrote:
> I've taken one pass through your message.  Sounds like you have thought
> about this.

Only briefly ;-) But I take it as a good sign that this doesn't
appear entirely absurd already at first glance.

> My question for you is have you run a business?  Do you
> have employees?  How many?

Nope, none of that. Nor do I realistically expect to ever find
myself running a company. ("You must create your own company in
order to be independent yet influential" is one of those
stereotypes I'm rather sceptical about. Nothing wrong with the
approach per se, if you can get it to work, but this doesn't
have to mean that alternatives are worse or even impossible.)

> I have no idea where on the spectrum you sit but the thought has occurred 
> to me that arguing business models with people who are operating from 
> a 100% theoretical position is likely to not reach any agreement in my
> lifetime.

It wasn't the point of my posting to convince you to change
your business model. Since there is no such thing as my
fictional "Linux Bank" (or "Linux Fund" or whatever you'd
call it), doing this now would be about as smart as for fish
to give up fins before evolving out of the ocean :-)

Rather, I wanted to outline an alternative model that is
based on very different, yet - I hope - not overly
unrealistic premises, and maybe plant some ideas.

- Werner

-- 
  _________________________________________________________________________
 / Werner Almesberger, Buenos Aires, Argentina         wa@almesberger.net /
/_http://www.almesberger.net/____________________________________________/

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Werner Almesberger]

I wrote:
> Larry McVoy wrote:
>> I've taken one pass through your message.  Sounds like you have thought
>> about this.

Oops, I see now that you were talking about somebody else's message,
sorry. More than one long pamphlet making the rounds, it seems.

- Werner

-- 
  _________________________________________________________________________
 / Werner Almesberger, Buenos Aires, Argentina         wa@almesberger.net /
/_http://www.almesberger.net/____________________________________________/

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Larry McVoy]

On Tue, Jun 24, 2003 at 08:22:13PM -0700, Robert White wrote:
> [I don't have employees and I haven't created a sustainable business]
> 
> -- I also know a flawed business model when I see one.  

Hmm.  With all due respect, I think that arguing business with someone
who has yet to be sucessful at it is not likely to help me or help the
open source world.  I think you have some really interesting thoughts and
it's clear that you have thought hard about this stuff.  I'm also someone
who has thought hard about a lot of things I haven't done only to find
that my opinions changed dramatically once I started doing those things.
Theory and practice and all that.

No offense intended, but I'll pass on this for the time being.  I look
forward to watching you create and run a business based on your principles.
If it's successful, who knows?, maybe I'll be working for you one day and
that would be cool, I'd love to work for someone with a better vision.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Mike Galbraith]

At 08:49 PM 6/24/2003 -0700, you wrote:
>On Tue, Jun 24, 2003 at 08:22:13PM -0700, Robert White wrote:
> > [I don't have employees and I haven't created a sustainable business]
> >
> > -- I also know a flawed business model when I see one.
>
>Hmm.  With all due respect, I think that arguing business with someone
>who has yet to be sucessful at it is not likely to help me or help the
>open source world.

With all due respect, that sounds just a wee bit pompous ;-)  You haven't 
been in business long enough to be considered successful yet.

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[David Woodhouse]

On Wed, 2003-06-25 at 04:49, Larry McVoy wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 24, 2003 at 08:22:13PM -0700, Robert White wrote:
> > [I don't have employees and I haven't created a sustainable business]
> > 
> > -- I also know a flawed business model when I see one.  
> 
> Hmm.  With all due respect, I think that arguing business with someone
> who has yet to be sucessful at it is not likely to help me or help the
> open source world. 

You are still making the fundamentally flawed assumption that there
_has_ to be a business model in it by which you or I can make money. 

People are observing the way the world seems to be going; you seem to
simply repeat ad infinitum "That can't be true because that way I can't
see how to make money out of it".

You had a brief moment of coherency when you asserted that the
prevalence of Free Software would see innovation grind to a halt since
there would be insufficient motivation to fund large-scale projects, and
hence proprietary software would prevail. I didn't _believe_ you when
you said that, but at least I could understand what you were trying to
say.

-- 
dwmw2

RE: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Robert White]

That is very sad.  The fact that I know that I am not the kind of salesman
one needs to be to run a business does not magically disqualify me from all
business knowledge.  In fact it puts me somewhat higher on the spectrum than
most people who run a business.

If you automatically dismiss knowledge from others if they aren't talking
directly down the mountain to you, you likely have more, and more serious,
business problems coming than having people mimic your product.

A good businessman, a man who can transcend the difficult period between
entrepreneurship to corporation, needs to have the ability to delegate, and
let go of things, but more importantly he has to be a person who can see and
harvest the smarts of the people around him who are not trying to be
entrepreneurs themselves.  The simple facts are that "having run a business"
does not qualify a person in the slightest for understanding the software
development process and dissemination of ideas.

The converse is, of course, also true.  Then again, this thread isn't first
nor foremost a discussion of running a business is it?  It is a discussion
on transfer of ideas, trying to halt said transfer (a task I hold to be
impossible and undesirable); it is a conversation about whether being "in
business" or "in open source" (as if the two are mutually exclusive) nets
more innovation; and only *after* those concerns, is it wise to build a
business strategy solely around the production of software.

Since we contend on the first two points, the third is immaterial.  And as
such, you are unwise to discard my opinion on the first two just because you
don't aspire to "my spot" in the business food chain because I don't in turn
aspire to yours.

I have done what I can do to help, but now I suppose it is time, as it must
always eventually be, to settle back, and watch as the market and the
realities of business become your judge, jury, and if appropriate your
executioner.

But don't expect sympathy from anyone for your position, now or in the
future, if you publicly discard the positions of others based on whether
they have the same life-goals as you.

[That is, it would be rational to discard my opinions on business if I had
repeatedly failed at business.  Discarding them because I have no desire to
be a businessman, and so have studied the realities of business from a
different angle, the angle of "only" an active daily participant, is
foolish.]

Rob.


-----Original Message-----
From: Larry McVoy [mailto:lm@bitmover.com]
Sent: Tuesday, June 24, 2003 8:50 PM
To: Robert White
Cc: Larry McVoy; Werner Almesberger; Stephan von Krawczynski;
miquels@cistron-office.nl; linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]


On Tue, Jun 24, 2003 at 08:22:13PM -0700, Robert White wrote:
> [I don't have employees and I haven't created a sustainable business]
>
> -- I also know a flawed business model when I see one.

Hmm.  With all due respect, I think that arguing business with someone
who has yet to be sucessful at it is not likely to help me or help the
open source world.  I think you have some really interesting thoughts and
it's clear that you have thought hard about this stuff.  I'm also someone
who has thought hard about a lot of things I haven't done only to find
that my opinions changed dramatically once I started doing those things.
Theory and practice and all that.

No offense intended, but I'll pass on this for the time being.  I look
forward to watching you create and run a business based on your principles.
If it's successful, who knows?, maybe I'll be working for you one day and
that would be cool, I'd love to work for someone with a better vision.
--
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com
http://www.bitmover.com/lm

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Larry McVoy]

On Wed, Jun 25, 2003 at 01:35:09PM -0700, Robert White wrote:
> That is very sad.  The fact that I know that I am not the kind of salesman
> one needs to be to run a business does not magically disqualify me from all
> business knowledge.  

I'm a pool player, or used to be.  In pool, as with many competitive sports,
you get better by playing against people who are better than you.  You learn
from their actions, etc.  It's perhaps more short term fun to play someone
less skilled but you don't learn anything doing so.

The fact that you aren't someone who has run a business doesn't, as you 
say, necessarily mean that you are less skilled but it certainly, without
any room for disagreement, means you are less experienced.  Experience is
a valuable thing, to me if not to you.  A very valuable thing.  I'm not
discounting your words, I've read them, thought about them, and decided
that I value them less than I value information coming from people with
experience in running a business.

Please remember that I'm an engineer first and a business guy second.
I already know how to do software development, build and ship a product,
build and grow a team, etc.  Of course I can be better at that, I'm just
saying that this isn't some business drone telling you how the world works.
I've also started and grown a business and that has taught me an enormous
amount that I do not believe you understand.  Why?  Because I used to think
just like you and running the business changed my mind.  What are the 
chances that running a business would change yours?  In my opinion, very
close to 100%.  We can argue forever about this and it's pointless, you
aren't arguing from a similar set of experiences so it's never going to
work.

It's not personal, it's just an observation that experience counts for 
a hell of lot more than theories.  
-- 
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Timothy Miller]

Larry McVoy wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 24, 2003 at 05:31:06PM -0700, Robert White wrote:
> 
>>[a long message]
> 
> 
> I've taken one pass through your message.  Sounds like you have thought
> about this.  My question for you is have you run a business?  Do you
> have employees?  How many?
> 
> I have no idea where on the spectrum you sit but the thought has occurred 
> to me that arguing business models with people who are operating from 
> a 100% theoretical position is likely to not reach any agreement in my
> lifetime.

A good scientist is well aware of the fact that theory and reality are 
often not in accord.

A good scientist also performs experiments to test his theory.

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Timothy Miller]

David Woodhouse wrote:
> On Wed, 2003-06-25 at 04:49, Larry McVoy wrote:
> 
>>On Tue, Jun 24, 2003 at 08:22:13PM -0700, Robert White wrote:
>>
>>>[I don't have employees and I haven't created a sustainable business]
>>>
>>>-- I also know a flawed business model when I see one.  
>>
>>Hmm.  With all due respect, I think that arguing business with someone
>>who has yet to be sucessful at it is not likely to help me or help the
>>open source world. 
> 
> 
> You are still making the fundamentally flawed assumption that there
> _has_ to be a business model in it by which you or I can make money. 
> 
> People are observing the way the world seems to be going; you seem to
> simply repeat ad infinitum "That can't be true because that way I can't
> see how to make money out of it".
> 
> You had a brief moment of coherency when you asserted that the
> prevalence of Free Software would see innovation grind to a halt since
> there would be insufficient motivation to fund large-scale projects, and
> hence proprietary software would prevail. I didn't _believe_ you when
> you said that, but at least I could understand what you were trying to
> say.
> 

The concept of "free sharing" is quite alien to many capitalists.  The 
capitalist mindset is that one must ultimately profit from their work. 
Some companies spend billions on R&D, but it's expected that that 
expendature will result in something to profit from in the future.  To a 
capitalist, it seems reasonable to assume that if one spends money and 
resources on developing software that one should be able to profit from 
it (directly).

As we see, capitalist economies are able to support the idea of selling 
software, as ethereal as it is, by creating rules that turn it from 
"copyable data" into a licensable product.

As they say, it's all in the mind.  When people choose to see software 
as something tangible and sellable, they will attempt to sell it.  They 
seem to have succeeded, so far, because they are able to convince others 
  (customers, etc.) to share their perspective.

There is the common opinion that software development takes WORK, and 
when someone wishes to be compensated for their work, they have the 
right to ask for that compensation.  Licensing software is one way to 
get that compensation.  On the other hand, hoarding is generally very 
counter-productive.  Copyright and patent periods are much too long and 
detract from the intellectual commons and technological growth more than 
they add to it.

There is a fine balance between the socialistic notion of sharing 
everything with everyone [see footnote 1] and restricting what you 
create so that you can capitalize on it.  Keep in mind that the most 
successful economies are based on greed, because humans are inherently 
greedy.  Capitalism turns human greed into something productive by 
fostering competition between entities who fight for a greater share of 
the same source of wealth.  Software, like anything easily copied or 
not, can be productized, as long as people are willing to pay for it.

People on this list talk about making software free as if it were a 
moral issue.  In Capitalism, the only 'morality' is imposed by 
government for the purpose of sustaining the free market (i.e. 
anti-trust law).  All that matters is (a) convincing people that your 
product is worth buying and (b) convincing people that you're better 
than your competitor.  If Free Software is to 'win' in this market, it's 
going to have to compete on the same terms as everything else.  What 
consumers care about is not "can I get the source" but "does it give me 
what I want".  Thus, offering source code for a commercial product is 
just another piece propaganda (albeit often a very good one) or another 
bit of added value (but not always).  But it is just one piece of what 
"sells" the product (even if the price is zero).

(One thing I think would be great is if companies were to open their 
closed source after some reasonable period has elapsed, where they have 
gotten from it a deserved amount of profit.)

Does information want to be free?  No.  Some PEOPLE want information to 
be free.  That's an important distinction that many Free Software 
advocates try very hard to bury.  Even the idea that technological 
advancement is important is not shared by everyone.  As much as we are 
bothered by someone that closed-minded, we need to face the fact that 
there are opinions differing from our own, and that there may be some 
logic behind those opinions.  The free sharing of ideas is a wonderful 
philosophy, but it is not a fundamental law of nature -- it exists only 
because we believe in it.  If you want someone else to believe in it 
too, you have to prove to them that it will improve their life.

And here's an important idea to consider.  While it may be provable that 
free sharing of ideas helps everyone, as a group, it may be detrimental 
to some individuals, such as those who would wish to capitalize on 
software as a sellable product.  I'm not a worshipper of Ayn Rand, but I 
also do not believe in foolish altruism.  It goes against human nature 
to completely free yourself from the idea of possessing something, which 
is why communism and pure socialism fail so miserably.  People have a 
fundamental need to be able to acquire wealth and possessions (or at 
least perceive that they are doing that).

I'm also a proponent of the idea of teaching a man to fish, rather than 
just giving one to him.  Rather than spoon-feeding people with whatever 
information they want to have, it is often helpful to them and to 
society in general for people to WORK to acquire knowledge.  This makes 
them into creative, productive people rather than leaches.  Some 
information should only be free once you've EARNED it.




[1] Socialism gets a bad rap due to lousy implementation, but not all 
socialistic ideas are wrong -- sharing is a good thing!  (Don't be a 
dumbass and tell me I'm criticizing open source by calling it 
'socialistic'.  I'm speaking positively about both concepts.)

RE: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[David Schwartz]

> The fact that you aren't someone who has run a business doesn't, as you
> say, necessarily mean that you are less skilled but it certainly, without
> any room for disagreement, means you are less experienced.  Experience is
> a valuable thing, to me if not to you.  A very valuable thing.  I'm not
> discounting your words, I've read them, thought about them, and decided
> that I value them less than I value information coming from people with
> experience in running a business.

	If I see an argument, I don't give a damn who made it. I evaluate the
argument based upon its merits. If I'm not competent to evaluate the
argument on its merits, I'm not competent to have an opinion at all.
Essentially, you're arguing that ad hominem is a valid reasoning tool, even
to reject arguments in which you see no flaw.

	Sure, if someone is a raving lunatic, you might not bother to look at what
they're saying at all. On the other hand, if Bill Gates thinks a business
plan is a good one, you might pay more attention to what he's saying.

	But by your own words, you have already read his argument and thought about
it. At this point, the argument either stands or falls on its merits. If you
can't evaluate it, then you couldn't evaluate it regardless of who made it,
and so you're in no position to have an opinion at all.

	It is definitely inappropriate, once you've committed to discussing
something, to then turn around and say that you can't evaluate competing
claims unless you also withdraw your own. If you can't evaluate competing
claims, then of what value is your opinion to anyone else?

	It is also inappropriate to say "I've talked to experts, this is the
impression they convey to me." Then when people attempt to refute your
claims, you say, "well, I trust the experts and that's what they say". Of
course, you're the one who gets to decide what qualifies as an expert, and
it's never based upon how well-reasoned their arguments are. Let the experts
make their own arguments. If you're not competent to defend the points and
respond to rebuttals, you're not competent to decide who an expert is.

	DS

RE: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Robert White]

People want to receive "payment" for "work".

Fine, true, and desirable.

But the missing piece in the capitalist mindset WRT/software is that those
self-same capitalists don't want to pay for the work of others.

In point of fact, the common intellectual domain, in particular the great
source/sink of free software *doest* fit the pay-for-value model.

The problem is that the current business people don't understand that the
"free software" "costs" the promise to return contributions.  The system is
resilient enough to withstand a huge percentage of parasitism, so each
business wants to say that they might as well a parasite too.

The simple fact is that when you return your modifications to the pool, the
"lost cost" of the man hours and mental effort spent to make that
modification, insignificant to the value you took from the pool.

When you return value to the pool, you have not "given away valuable
property" you are paying (long due) bills for the larger type and number of
works you have already taken possession of "on credit".

Once you take that single step back you realize two things.

1) The total value you harvest dwarfs the total value you return (even in
simple man hour payroll terms) so even if you spend a substantial outlay it
is still a return on investment of remarkable proportions.

2) If software is the only thing you do, you are screwed because that
immense return on investment is payment in kind so there is no "cash margin"
from which to draw profit.

The final conclusion is that "free software" works for every business model
*EXCEPT* pure software sales.  Absolutely every other model (e.g.
"<anything> and no software at all" and "<anything> plus software") lets you
"buy" ninety-plus percent of your "software part" for pennies.  The fact
that "nothing but software" times "free software" nets zero excess cash
should surprise nobody.  Yet it did surprise the entire 1990's economy...

Irony can be so damn Ironic sometimes... 8-)

There is no rational argument that this model "should somehow", in and of
itself, with no further effort on your part, support you financially.
Especially if you have decided that said support will come while you only
fulfill the parasite role of taking what you will and returning nothing.

Rob.

RE: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[David Lang]

Robert, nobody is disagreeing with this part of the discussion, that I
hear Larry saying is that this process isn't producing innovations, it is
almost exclusivly producing copies.

the companies doing propriatatry work are doing the innovation and the
fact that their ideas get copied quickly is reducing/eliminating their
return on investment and is killing them (some slowly some quickly)

one big reason why innovation is so much more expensive then copying is
that when you are innovating you spend a lot of time going down dead-ends,
you have to cover all that time spent and thrown away in the cost of the
product that you produce. when you are copying you get to avoid a lot of
these dead-ends becouse you know what the final product looks like, it's
much easier to work towards a known goal then to work towards something
that you think will work.

Then Larry asks the question 'what will we do if we kill off the companies
that are paying people to do this innovation and there isn't any more
software to copy'

David Lang


 On Wed, 25 Jun 2003, Robert White
wrote:

> Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2003 17:07:31 -0700
> From: Robert White <rwhite@casabyte.com>
> To: Timothy Miller <miller@techsource.com>,
>      David Woodhouse <dwmw2@infradead.org>
> Cc: Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com>, Werner Almesberger <wa@almesberger.net>,
>      Stephan von Krawczynski <skraw@ithnet.com>, miquels@cistron-office.nl,
>      linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
> Subject: RE: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]
>
> People want to receive "payment" for "work".
>
> Fine, true, and desirable.
>
> But the missing piece in the capitalist mindset WRT/software is that those
> self-same capitalists don't want to pay for the work of others.
>
> In point of fact, the common intellectual domain, in particular the great
> source/sink of free software *doest* fit the pay-for-value model.
>
> The problem is that the current business people don't understand that the
> "free software" "costs" the promise to return contributions.  The system is
> resilient enough to withstand a huge percentage of parasitism, so each
> business wants to say that they might as well a parasite too.
>
> The simple fact is that when you return your modifications to the pool, the
> "lost cost" of the man hours and mental effort spent to make that
> modification, insignificant to the value you took from the pool.
>
> When you return value to the pool, you have not "given away valuable
> property" you are paying (long due) bills for the larger type and number of
> works you have already taken possession of "on credit".
>
> Once you take that single step back you realize two things.
>
> 1) The total value you harvest dwarfs the total value you return (even in
> simple man hour payroll terms) so even if you spend a substantial outlay it
> is still a return on investment of remarkable proportions.
>
> 2) If software is the only thing you do, you are screwed because that
> immense return on investment is payment in kind so there is no "cash margin"
> from which to draw profit.
>
> The final conclusion is that "free software" works for every business model
> *EXCEPT* pure software sales.  Absolutely every other model (e.g.
> "<anything> and no software at all" and "<anything> plus software") lets you
> "buy" ninety-plus percent of your "software part" for pennies.  The fact
> that "nothing but software" times "free software" nets zero excess cash
> should surprise nobody.  Yet it did surprise the entire 1990's economy...
>
> Irony can be so damn Ironic sometimes... 8-)
>
> There is no rational argument that this model "should somehow", in and of
> itself, with no further effort on your part, support you financially.
> Especially if you have decided that said support will come while you only
> fulfill the parasite role of taking what you will and returning nothing.
>
> Rob.
>
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/
>

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Larry McVoy]

On Wed, Jun 25, 2003 at 05:27:42PM -0700, David Lang wrote:
> Robert, nobody is disagreeing with this part of the discussion, that I
> hear Larry saying is that this process isn't producing innovations, it is
> almost exclusivly producing copies.
> 
> the companies doing propriatatry work are doing the innovation and the
> fact that their ideas get copied quickly is reducing/eliminating their
> return on investment and is killing them (some slowly some quickly)
> 
> one big reason why innovation is so much more expensive then copying is
> that when you are innovating you spend a lot of time going down dead-ends,
> you have to cover all that time spent and thrown away in the cost of the
> product that you produce. when you are copying you get to avoid a lot of
> these dead-ends becouse you know what the final product looks like, it's
> much easier to work towards a known goal then to work towards something
> that you think will work.
> 
> Then Larry asks the question 'what will we do if we kill off the companies
> that are paying people to do this innovation and there isn't any more
> software to copy'
> 
> David Lang

Perfect summary.  Thanks.  I know my point of view is somewhat extreme
but I've always done that.  One of the things I've learned is to ignore
small adjustments to what is going on right now, look for the asymptote.
Where are we going if we ignore the next 10 years and look out beyond
that?  So looking at the place where free software has killed off their
"hosts" isn't a near term event but it is a fairly likely long term event.
If the free software doesn't start figuring out how to backfill the
development efforts which produce new things, the future looks like a
very dull gray sort of world where all the programmers are the moral
equivalents of today's COBOL programmers.  Not a place I want to be,
dunno about you.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Larry McVoy]

On Wed, Jun 25, 2003 at 04:05:01PM -0700, David Schwartz wrote:
> 
> > The fact that you aren't someone who has run a business doesn't, as you
> > say, necessarily mean that you are less skilled but it certainly, without
> > any room for disagreement, means you are less experienced.  Experience is
> > a valuable thing, to me if not to you.  A very valuable thing.  I'm not
> > discounting your words, I've read them, thought about them, and decided
> > that I value them less than I value information coming from people with
> > experience in running a business.
> 
> 	If I see an argument, I don't give a damn who made it. I evaluate the
> argument based upon its merits. If I'm not competent to evaluate the
> argument on its merits, I'm not competent to have an opinion at all.

Couldn't agree more.  The part you don't seem to want to accept is that 
I don't agree with the merits of the arguments presented.  And my view
is based on real world experience versus the theoretical views of the
people making the arguments.

That doesn't make me right, it just makes quite likely that I'm right
based on past history.  Experience almost always wins over theory.
Not always but so far noone has presenting anything compelling which
suggests the theory beats experience in this case, IMO.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

RE: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[David Schwartz]

> On Wed, Jun 25, 2003 at 04:05:01PM -0700, David Schwartz wrote:

> Couldn't agree more.  The part you don't seem to want to accept is that
> I don't agree with the merits of the arguments presented.  And my view
> is based on real world experience versus the theoretical views of the
> people making the arguments.

	That's just not a useful way to engage in rational debate. No rational
response is possible to "I can find no specific rational flaw in what you're
saying but based upon my experience it doesn't work". We have no access to
your experiences nor any way to validate them or debate them. It's no more
useful than "that's what you think". In fact, that's precisely what it is.

> That doesn't make me right, it just makes quite likely that I'm right
> based on past history.

	Not only doesn't it make you right, it doesn't even make your claims
useful. If based on your experience you acquired reasons why the argument is
wrong, then share those reasons. But "based on my experience that just
doesn't work" is not something anyone can rationally respond to.

> Experience almost always wins over theory.

	Only when that experience produces some sort of reasoning. Like, "in my
experience, businesses that don't have patent protection for their
developments don't work because it is too easy for a competitor to produce a
similar product at a lower cost since they're spared the cost of
innovation". That's a rational argument. But that's not what you're doing.
You're saying that you've considered his ideas, thought about them, and
rejected them because you don't like his credentials.

> Not always but so far noone has presenting anything compelling which
> suggests the theory beats experience in this case, IMO.

	Then there is no possibility of reasoning about the issue. All we can do is
keep trying things and see what works and what doesn't. So why are you
wasting our time?

	DS

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Larry McVoy]

On Wed, Jun 25, 2003 at 07:45:48PM -0700, David Schwartz wrote:
> We have no access to
> your experiences nor any way to validate them or debate them. 

Exactly.  What I'm figuring out is that discussing business models here
is a lot like trying to tell a teenager that he is mortal right before
he goes out for a drive.  I didn't listen, he's not going to listen,
and you aren't listening.  So I've tried about a half dozen times
to gracefully bow out and you keep coming back with more.  No thanks.
I figured it out, you go figure it out, then we can have a fun discussion
about how to move things in a more positive direction.  Baiting me isn't
going to work, the fish aren't biting.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

RE: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Paul Jakma]

On Wed, 25 Jun 2003, David Lang wrote:

> Robert, nobody is disagreeing with this part of the discussion, that I
> hear Larry saying is that this process isn't producing innovations, it is
> almost exclusivly producing copies.

Does that claim stand up though?

If you work from Robert White's economic premise and hence include
all software that was 'innovated' through backing of resources where
the commercial sale of that software was not the reason for the
allocation of those resources (ie the same economic conditions under
which 'free software' is developed), and then examine Larry's claim, 
does it hold up?

I'd say it doesnt. the fact that we can have this discussion via
electronic email over an internet should demonstrate that fact
surely? One could even include the development of Unix as one of
those innovations -> AT&T were precluded from selling software. that
later on other companies were able to commercialise what was
originally free software does not diminish that its original
development took place under conditions where it had no direct
commercial value, at least not from sale of the software itself.

I do think is Larry correct though in that the commercial model is 
the most attractive model for development, under the /current/ 
legislative conditions -> ie artificial monopoly via copyright law. 

I wouldnt think its the best model though. If there were no copyright
law, and source had to be provided to software, software development
would still be funded. Its just its funding would have to be
justified by means other than "we can sell it". Just because it could
not be sold would not though mean that funding would not be
available.

regards,
-- 
Paul Jakma	paul@clubi.ie	paul@jakma.org	Key ID: 64A2FF6A
	warning: do not ever send email to spam@dishone.st
Fortune:
Eureka!
		-- Archimedes

RE: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Robert White]

In point of fact I don't agree at all with the assertion that "companies
doing proprietary work are doing (all/nearly all/most) the innovation"
because that is statistically false.

There is a huge volume of innovation that is happening non-commercially.

The fact that an even more huge number of OSS (Free) software is made to
interoperate with, mimic, or replace proprietary systems leads the lazy mind
to a false perception that there is no open source innovation or at least
the size of same is insignificant.

The "lazy mind" part comes in two flavors.

1) Proprietary vendor makes feature X, OSS guy makes completely independent
X, so OSS guy is useless and didn't really innovate.  A current hot-line
example is "Symmetric Multi-Processing".  IBM created "multiprocessing"
decades ago and it has existed in all of their mainframe lines (check out
any IBM 360 and 370 docs).  SCO claims to have "invented SMP" because there
is some in "their" Unix System V product code.  Linux has SMP code that
totally transcends the Unix cruft.  But who had the idea first and who stole
from whom gets lost in the rhetoric.  Who was the innovator?  The idea that
whatever was built by the Linux SMP stuff "didn't innovate" because some of
the gross-scale labels are the same is just plain lazy thinking.

2) EVEN IF 99.9% of all the open source software is mimicry of something
else, The only definition of "more innovation" that has any meaning is the
comparison of the "weight of innovation" between the 0.1% non-mimicry OSS
and the whatever-percent of non-mimicry is happening in proprietary
software.  It is easy for the lazy analyst to maintain that the "weight of
innovation" taking place on either side of the line is either bolstered or
poisoned by its ratio to total output, but that is not the case.

Neither dollars spent nor ego committed to a product line is a measure of
"innovation."  You can only make a comparison if you refine away (throw out)
every element that is not innovative and then compare the remainders.

Its like art.  Saying that all the innovation is happening in proprietary
software because there is so much mimicware in open source is like saying
all the good music is being made by the RIAA because you can see that all
the bad garage bands mean that "'on the whole' there are no good musicians
out there that aren't getting paid for it."

Don't be myopic.

Creativity and innovation happen because of the actions of individuals.
Companies spend money to put out good software, but they also make lots of
crapware.  OSS Individuals spend good time to make good software because
they need good software, but they also make lots of crapware.  And time is
money in every way that matters to the discussion of innovation.

There is a difference between focus and result.  Companies focus because by
dint of where they think they can make capital returns on their investments.
Individuals focus by dint of where they think they can improve their
situation.  When you apply that to software, individuals make software that
will improve their lives and companies make software they think they can
sell.

More often than not, that means that the individuals working on their own
are going to be more focused on good, practical, not-overly-complicated,
easy to use, solutions while companies are being distracted by margins and
deadlines.  That inevitably means that there will be a lot of
short-and-sloppy individual work.  But *ideas* are short and sloppy, hence
the "rough idea" stage of any development.  And once the rough idea exists,
the refinement to usability takes place to make each implementation
individually stand or fall.

And that focus is the core of innovation.

That a large self-organizing body of people which get together and "fix up"
the part they know, or care about, or need of a particular job-lot of ideas
means that the OSS model, when applied to thing "enough" people think are
important, will net a better product.

And, when it works, no company can marshal the pure brain power and *FOCUS*
to compete with that.

And when it doesn't work no company would send the resources down the pipe
that an OSS project can squander on a boondoggle.

All else is posing or whining or tawdry lament.

Rob.

RE: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Robert White]

With apologies to the group, I have to call a foul...

-----Original Message-----
From: Larry McVoy [mailto:lm@bitmover.com]
Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2003 6:15 PM
To: David Schwartz
Cc: Larry McVoy; Robert White; linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]


> On Wed, Jun 25, 2003 at 04:05:01PM -0700, David Schwartz wrote:
> > 	If I see an argument, I don't give a damn who made it.

> Couldn't agree more.


Sorry Larry, but you lie.  Pick a position and stick to it.

Three messages ago you came right out and said:

From: Larry McVoy [mailto:lm@bitmover.com]
Sent: Tuesday, June 24, 2003 8:50 PM

> Hmm.  With all due respect, I think that arguing business with someone
> who has yet to be sucessful at it is not likely to help me or help the
> open source world.

Which is *EXACTLY* measuring an argument on "who said it" and not on the
merits of the argument itself.  And was a restatement of clear subtext of
the message two back from that one:

From: Larry McVoy [mailto:lm@bitmover.com]
Sent: Tuesday, June 24, 2003 6:21 PM

> I've taken one pass through your message.  Sounds like you have thought
> about this.  My question for you is have you run a business?  Do you
> have employees?  How many?

> I have no idea where on the spectrum you sit but the thought has occurred
> to me that arguing business models with people who are operating from
> a 100% theoretical position is likely to not reach any agreement in my
> lifetime.


I see now that you are just here to lobby for your unsupportable position
and you will pander to the appearance of reasonability while you demonstrate
your fundamental inability to stick to a position.

Go into politics, it is calling you...


Rob.

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Larry McVoy]

Hey Rob,

Your comment about politics is amusing, I'm about the most politically
inept person you are ever going to meet and I have 20 years of Usenet
and mailing list postings, all nicely archived by Google, to prove it.
Thanks for the compliment though, I think you are probably the only
person who has ever even jokingly suggested I should be in politics.  

I don't know why you are all bent out of shape, what is so hard about
hearing "yeah, you sound good, it seems to make sense, but I've heard 
a ton of things that sound good that turned out to be stinkers and now
I trust experience more than I trust things that sound good"?   

> [ ... ]
> Go into politics, it is calling you...
-- 
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

RE: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[David Schwartz]

	One point probably worth making in this mess of discussion is that
BSD-style open source software reduces the cost of developing and improves
the quality of commercial software. As such, at least this portion of the
open source movement contributes to commercial innovation.

	Or, to put it another way, if everything is open source, *all* you can sell
(at least in terms of selling software) is innovation.

	DS

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Stephan von Krawczynski]

On Wed, 25 Jun 2003 14:09:44 -0700
Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 25, 2003 at 01:35:09PM -0700, Robert White wrote:
> > That is very sad.  The fact that I know that I am not the kind of salesman
> > one needs to be to run a business does not magically disqualify me from all
> > business knowledge.  
> 
> I'm a pool player, or used to be.  In pool, as with many competitive sports,
> you get better by playing against people who are better than you.  You learn
> from their actions, etc.  It's perhaps more short term fun to play someone
> less skilled but you don't learn anything doing so.

You may expand this point of view to almost any type of sports and even way
beyond that.

> I've also started and grown a business and that has taught me an enormous
> amount that I do not believe you understand.  Why?  Because I used to think
> just like you and running the business changed my mind.  What are the 
> chances that running a business would change yours?  In my opinion, very
> close to 100%.

It is very likely almost everbody who runs a business will agree with you in
that point - me, too :-)
Indeed business has become even more unbelievable, irritating and absurd since
the internet hype and the dotcom bubble started...

Regards,
Stephan

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Daniel Phillips]

On Thursday 26 June 2003 02:27, David Lang wrote:
> Then Larry asks the question 'what will we do if we kill off the companies
> that are paying people to do this innovation and there isn't any more
> software to copy'

It's a stupid question, since:

  - We won't kill off all those companies, just the lame ducks among them
  - Said lame ducks spend more money on managers than software developers
    anyway
  - Mostly they are just copying (or outright plagiarizing) not innovating
  - There will still be plenty of software when the lame ducks are gone
  - We don't "copy" software, we "derive new software from existing works".

A better question to ask would be: could we possibly fit more logical 
fallacies into a single sentence?

Regards,

Daniel

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Stephan von Krawczynski]

On Wed, 25 Jun 2003 18:09:36 -0700
Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 25, 2003 at 05:27:42PM -0700, David Lang wrote:
> > Robert, nobody is disagreeing with this part of the discussion, that I
> > hear Larry saying is that this process isn't producing innovations, it is
> > almost exclusivly producing copies.
> > 
> > the companies doing propriatatry work are doing the innovation and the
> > fact that their ideas get copied quickly is reducing/eliminating their
> > return on investment and is killing them (some slowly some quickly)
> > 
> > one big reason why innovation is so much more expensive then copying is
> > that when you are innovating you spend a lot of time going down dead-ends,
> > you have to cover all that time spent and thrown away in the cost of the
> > product that you produce. when you are copying you get to avoid a lot of
> > these dead-ends becouse you know what the final product looks like, it's
> > much easier to work towards a known goal then to work towards something
> > that you think will work.
> > 
> > Then Larry asks the question 'what will we do if we kill off the companies
> > that are paying people to do this innovation and there isn't any more
> > software to copy'
> > 
> > David Lang
> 
> Perfect summary.  Thanks.

Yes, it's a summary, and therefore it shows clearly whats really wrong about
the argument.
You deny the simple fact of existing competitors. Your (newly arriving)
competitors will look at your product and partly re-engineer it, learn from it
and try to make a better one - of course by driving around the lots of
dead-ends you walked in being the _first_. Everyone being second will learn
from the first, whoever that was. So you end up at the same point: if you have
one or several competitors or open source people having a look at your software
is more or less the same.
And please, please do not talk about patents to prevent that, because it may
well be that some big bad company one day (after you have worked your ass off
and have a nice customer base and are wealthy) stands up and tells you you
broke their patent XYZ for several years now and therefore sues you for a
billion bucks. It may well be you cannot even afford the court-costs and simply
have to give in, even if you know they are wrong.
And exactly _this_ is what the whole story is all about. _Nobody_ has an idea
of the numerous patents flying around, so you basically can only start business
(or Linux, listen to Linus) by ignoring their existence. If you would want to
check everything out _before_ doing something you will be dead and buried
before you wrote a single line of code - and your lawyer will have all your
money.
And if there might ever been an argument against that it was surely buried by
SCO or by the AOL-M$ agreement regarding Netscape/IE-issue (tm,tm,tm,tm,tm by
whoever owns it).
Do you _really_ know if there are no ten lines of code inside bitkeeper that
are patented and that one of your programmers brought in unknowningly citing
code he has read ten years ago at school in a book by a guy already dead?
I would say you cannot even afford the search for such cases. So it is indeed
very hard to even say who was _first_ ...

Regards,
Stephan

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Scott Robert Ladd]

Larry McVoy wrote:
> The part you don't seem to want to accept is that 
> I don't agree with the merits of the arguments presented.  And my view
> is based on real world experience versus the theoretical views of the
> people making the arguments.

What you don't want to accept is that some of us speak from practical 
experience, too. Just because you have not walked my road does not mean 
my road is non-existent.

It must be a very limited world you live in, if you must personally 
experience everything in order to accept it's reality. Has it occurred 
to you that someone else might develop different views based on 
different experiences and goals?

-- 
Scott Robert Ladd
Coyote Gulch Productions (http://www.coyotegulch.com)

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Jesse Pollard]

On Wednesday 25 June 2003 22:29, Robert White wrote:
> In point of fact I don't agree at all with the assertion that "companies
> doing proprietary work are doing (all/nearly all/most) the innovation"
> because that is statistically false.
>
[snip good stuff]

> Its like art.  Saying that all the innovation is happening in proprietary
> software because there is so much mimicware in open source is like saying
> all the good music is being made by the RIAA because you can see that all
> the bad garage bands mean that "'on the whole' there are no good musicians
> out there that aren't getting paid for it."
>
> Don't be myopic.
>
> Creativity and innovation happen because of the actions of individuals.
> Companies spend money to put out good software, but they also make lots of
> crapware.  OSS Individuals spend good time to make good software because
> they need good software, but they also make lots of crapware.  And time is
> money in every way that matters to the discussion of innovation.

[snip]

> More often than not, that means that the individuals working on their own
> are going to be more focused on good, practical, not-overly-complicated,
> easy to use, solutions while companies are being distracted by margins and
> deadlines.  That inevitably means that there will be a lot of
> short-and-sloppy individual work.  But *ideas* are short and sloppy, hence
> the "rough idea" stage of any development.  And once the rough idea exists,
> the refinement to usability takes place to make each implementation
> individually stand or fall.
>
> And that focus is the core of innovation.
>
> That a large self-organizing body of people which get together and "fix up"
> the part they know, or care about, or need of a particular job-lot of ideas
> means that the OSS model, when applied to thing "enough" people think are
> important, will net a better product.
>
> And, when it works, no company can marshal the pure brain power and *FOCUS*
> to compete with that.
>
> And when it doesn't work no company would send the resources down the pipe
> that an OSS project can squander on a boondoggle.
>
> All else is posing or whining or tawdry lament.


All good stuff. Plus a little observation...

Anybody else notice that US colleges and universities are producing less and
less original research?

It used to be that any research done by a school became public information. 
This includes any research paid for by either private companies OR government
funding.

somewhere along the way (around 1970-80) this changed.

Now the research becomes propriatary to the funding agency, and the government
research quietly gets passed to a contracting company, and becomes 
propriatary.

The people that DID the research disappear into companies, and no longer 
contribute anything (other than to the company).

Research that was paid for by the public (via the government funding) and the
facilities used by the researchers (partially paid for by companies) has 
vanished.

New research can't be done...

Quite frequently, original software is doen the same way. My first exposure 
to that was the RSA security algorithm (My instructor was one of the 
publication evaluators for the paper). Since the algorithm was propriatary, 
nothing could be done with it. Hell, we thought about implementing it just to
see what we could do with it, but were discouraged by the fact that we would 
not be able to release anything. So, no software, no innovation, no usage 
until it was implemented in a country that didn't support that restriction.

Then the algorithm + software went everywhere... with BIG warnings about not
using it in the US.

Current research (and software innovation) is moving out of the US because it
is just not worth doing it here. The public pays for it, and gets amost 
nothing back - except more charges for attempting to use it.

One thing I like about the GPL is that it prevents the stealing from the 
public...

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Horst von Brand]

[Cc: chopped down to size]
David Lang <david.lang@digitalinsight.com> said:
> Robert, nobody is disagreeing with this part of the discussion, that I
> hear Larry saying is that this process isn't producing innovations, it is
> almost exclusivly producing copies.

Wrong. The whole TCP/IP protocol suite was produced by this process, as has
most of the Internet infrastructure we enjoy today. If that isn't innovation,
I don't know what is. If you compare this with the "innovations" large
corporations so proudly announce in their adds...

Calling any random minor commonplace feature fix "innovation" is easy (and
also true but trivial), revolutionary innovations are _very_ far in between
(Web, email, GUIs, the Linux development model, flat screens, ...), and
soon tend to become part of the landscape, i.e., all but invisible.

[...]

> one big reason why innovation is so much more expensive then copying is
> that when you are innovating you spend a lot of time going down dead-ends,
> you have to cover all that time spent and thrown away in the cost of the
> product that you produce.

Right.

>                           when you are copying you get to avoid a lot of
> these dead-ends becouse you know what the final product looks like, it's
> much easier to work towards a known goal then to work towards something
> that you think will work.

The real cause to rally for is to pay for dead ends then. Won't be very
popular ;-)

> Then Larry asks the question 'what will we do if we kill off the companies
> that are paying people to do this innovation and there isn't any more
> software to copy'

In that case an alternative model will have to be found to finance
innovation. The current state of affairs, where everybody has to start
essentially from scratch due to chinese walls isn't exactly a neat idea
either...

No, I'm not qualified to invent a model of software economics that works
better. The current MSFT et al model works (sort of), but is grossly
inefficient. The strict GNU model ("make stuff and give it to the common
pool, hope they ask for more and pay for its development") hasn't been a
stellar success either (but that might just be because it competes in a
world build the other way). In fact, I'd say that BSDish licenced software
and derivatives (X11, sendmail, TCP/IP stacks, ...) is in much more common
use than any other... wonder what that means in the end.
-- 
Dr. Horst H. von Brand                   User #22616 counter.li.org
Departamento de Informatica                     Fono: +56 32 654431
Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria              +56 32 654239
Casilla 110-V, Valparaiso, Chile                Fax:  +56 32 797513

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Larry McVoy]

On Thu, Jun 26, 2003 at 08:20:02AM -0400, Scott Robert Ladd wrote:
> Larry McVoy wrote:
> >The part you don't seem to want to accept is that 
> >I don't agree with the merits of the arguments presented.  And my view
> >is based on real world experience versus the theoretical views of the
> >people making the arguments.
> 
> What you don't want to accept is that some of us speak from practical 
> experience, too. Just because you have not walked my road does not mean 
> my road is non-existent.

Here's a suggestion: instead of arguing that you are right, prove it.
Put your time where your theories and go start companies based on 
those theories and show up with all sorts of new things that you've
built for pennies on the dollar compared to the commercial companies.
I've suggested this before and I get "well, I don't want to run a 
company, I have no experience doing that, but you should run your 
company based on my untested theories".

I'll start listening when you start doing.  Until then, you are just
flapping your gums.  Flap away if it makes you feel good.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Scott Robert Ladd]

Larry McVoy wrote:
> Here's a suggestion: instead of arguing that you are right, prove it.
> Put your time where your theories and go start companies based on 
> those theories and show up with all sorts of new things that you've
> built for pennies on the dollar compared to the commercial companies.
> I've suggested this before and I get "well, I don't want to run a 
> company, I have no experience doing that, but you should run your 
> company based on my untested theories".
> 
> I'll start listening when you start doing.  Until then, you are just
> flapping your gums.  Flap away if it makes you feel good.

And it's clear you don't read our messages in this thread. You've 
attributed an invented quote to me, then insulted me for something I 
never said. How rude.

As I *have* said before in this thread: I *am* running a successful 
business that supports multiple people; I have created profitable free 
software products, and am putting R&D into new (and I think innovative) 
products.

Am I listed in the Fortune 500? No. That isn't my goal. It is possible 
to be a success, and contribute to humanity, and grow a business, 
WITHOUT megalomania.

Do I believe everything "free software advocates" preach? No.

Do I believe all the anti-copyright, anti-patent rhetoric? No.

Do I believe that you can sell custom software development and services 
based on free software? Yes, because I do just that.

I think you disagree because it pleases you to do so; obviously, you 
have no read my prior messages, since you invent a quote above to

-- 
Scott Robert Ladd
Coyote Gulch Productions (http://www.coyotegulch.com)
Professional programming for science and engineering;
Interesting and unusual bits of very free code.

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Adrian Bunk]

On Mon, Jun 23, 2003 at 08:39:52AM -0700, Larry McVoy wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 23, 2003 at 04:32:38PM +0100, David Woodhouse wrote:
> > > Your model is fine, there is nothing wrong with it but there isn't a lot
> > > right with it either.  You can't really grow your business under that 
> > > model.
> > 
> > I don't disagree with this statement, but I don't see its relevance.
> > What inference can you make from this? 
> > 
> > Are you asserting that the trend toward commoditisation of software
> > isn't real -- that companies are _not_ becoming less inclined to pay to
> > license proprietary software when there is a Free alternative which they
> > can use instead? Or merely that it makes you unhappy?
> 
> Creating software costs money.
> Open source doesn't produce very much money.
> A world in which all software is produced via support contracts doesn't
> look like a world in which there is very much new software.
> 
> Yes, that makes me unhappy.  I like programming, I like being paid to
> do it.  I've done the consulting gig and that's a crappy way to live,
> you don't make enough money to actually fix things, you make enough to
> hack things so they sort of work.  No customer is going to pay you to
> rearchitect GCC when what they want is support for their new chip.
> 
> That's probably a good enough test case.  Explain to me how your support
> contracts are ever going to provide enough money to redo GCC or build
> something equally substantial.
>...

HP sponsored one year of Mark Mitchell's work as GCC Release Manager.

The Los Alamos National Laboratory have sponsored the work for a new
hand-crafted recursive-descent C++ parser for GCC.

Apple contributed a precompiled header implementation for GCC.


> Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

cu
Adrian

-- 

       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
        of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Larry McVoy]

On Thu, Jun 26, 2003 at 07:45:21PM +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> > That's probably a good enough test case.  Explain to me how your support
> > contracts are ever going to provide enough money to redo GCC or build
> > something equally substantial.
> 
> [incremental changes given as example]

Incremental changes != redo.  Redo is a ~$10M project.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[David Weinehall]

On Thu, Jun 26, 2003 at 11:40:33AM -0700, Larry McVoy wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 26, 2003 at 07:45:21PM +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> > > That's probably a good enough test case.  Explain to me how your support
> > > contracts are ever going to provide enough money to redo GCC or build
> > > something equally substantial.
> > 
> > [incremental changes given as example]
> 
> Incremental changes != redo.  Redo is a ~$10M project.

You are of course aware of the fact that gcc is already a testimony to
the fact that such a compiler can be made from scratch, aren't you?

If it's been done once, it could be done again if there was need. But
there really isn't (once and again one might wish for the gcc crew to
spend a little concern on compile-times though, since things seem to get
slower every release...)


/David Weinehall
-- 
 /) David Weinehall <tao@acc.umu.se> /) Northern lights wander      (\
//  Maintainer of the v2.0 kernel   //  Dance across the winter sky //
\)  http://www.acc.umu.se/~tao/    (/   Full colour fire           (/

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Larry McVoy]

On Thu, Jun 26, 2003 at 09:10:10PM +0200, David Weinehall wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 26, 2003 at 11:40:33AM -0700, Larry McVoy wrote:
> > On Thu, Jun 26, 2003 at 07:45:21PM +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> > > > That's probably a good enough test case.  Explain to me how your support
> > > > contracts are ever going to provide enough money to redo GCC or build
> > > > something equally substantial.
> > > 
> > > [incremental changes given as example]
> > 
> > Incremental changes != redo.  Redo is a ~$10M project.
> 
> You are of course aware of the fact that gcc is already a testimony to
> the fact that such a compiler can be made from scratch, aren't you?

Aware of it, and friends with the founders of cygnus, the people who did it.
I'm also aware of their finances and what it took and they are partially
the basis for my point of view.  GCC doesn't invalidate my case, it makes it.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

RE: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Robert White]

Actually the below analogy is so pathologically flawed it is laughable.  I
was just going to let it slip buy because I, wrongly it seems, thought that
its flaws were too egregious and fallacious to be worth responding to.

The idea that you "don't learn anything from (playing a less skilled
opponent)" and by extension you also can not learn anything from a
non-player is so flawed as to be laughable.

The natural follow on both in the sports arena and in the business arena are
as follows:

1) The only way you can learn in business is to have your ass handed to you
by a better businessman.

2) There is nothing to be learned from your own mistakes.
or
2a) Any mistakes you make playing an equal or lesser opponent don't count
because you would not have made them "if it mattered".

3) There is nothing to be learned from practice.

4) There is no value to having a coach unless that coach can out perform
every member of his team (or at least used to be able, in his heyday).

5) Third party analysis has no instructive value.

6) No person can gain knowledge or insight about a sport/task unless they
have taken up that task first-person to a level in excess of their
non-tasking knowledge of the task...  8-)

Is this actually your stance?  Stephan?  Larry?

Sticking to "competitive sports", lets see the most obvious examples that
directly illuminate this position as "double plus un-smart."

Golfers (professional and armature alike) ask their caddies for advice.
Why?  Are the caddies the better Golfers?  No, or at least not usually, but
they live with their courses day in and day out and they have the chance to
observe a wide range of skills and approaches.  They can do this and proffer
up a distillation of their knowledge precisely because they are not mired in
playing the game.

Every professional team, and most armature teams, of the common organized
sports (Baseball, Football, Soccer, Rugby (sp?), Lacrosse (again sp?), etc,
od nausium) have coaches, special teams coaches, base coaches, etc.  If
there was nothing to be learned from a non-player, they'd just have their
team captain and they'd just go out and have at it.

...and at this point my brain locks up in apoplexy at picking any one of the
many such examples that are clamoring to be number three...

Everybody who thinks that there is nothing to be learned from anybody except
the "better player" who you can only observe as they are beating you, and
thinks that is a directly useful analogy to apply to business, please tell
me your stock-ticker symbols so I can rush right out today and *not* invest
in your companies.


Rob.

-----Original Message-----
From: Stephan von Krawczynski [mailto:skraw@ithnet.com]
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2003 3:51 AM
To: Larry McVoy
Cc: rwhite@casabyte.com; lm@bitmover.com; wa@almesberger.net;
miquels@cistron-office.nl; linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]


On Wed, 25 Jun 2003 14:09:44 -0700
Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 25, 2003 at 01:35:09PM -0700, Robert White wrote:
> > That is very sad.  The fact that I know that I am not the kind of
salesman
> > one needs to be to run a business does not magically disqualify me from
all
> > business knowledge.
>
> I'm a pool player, or used to be.  In pool, as with many competitive
sports,
> you get better by playing against people who are better than you.  You
learn
> from their actions, etc.  It's perhaps more short term fun to play someone
> less skilled but you don't learn anything doing so.

You may expand this point of view to almost any type of sports and even way
beyond that.

> I've also started and grown a business and that has taught me an enormous
> amount that I do not believe you understand.  Why?  Because I used to
think
> just like you and running the business changed my mind.  What are the
> chances that running a business would change yours?  In my opinion, very
> close to 100%.

It is very likely almost everbody who runs a business will agree with you in

that point - me, too :-)
Indeed business has become even more unbelievable, irritating and absurd
since
the internet hype and the dotcom bubble started...

Regards,
Stephan

RE: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[David Lang]

Robert the key isn't ability it's experiance, the golfer asks his caddy
questions becouse the caddy has more experiance with the course, the
players loearn from the coach becouse the coach has more experiance then
the players.

Larry is saying that the key reason he is discounting some of the posts is
the lack of experiance of the people involved, they have nice sounding
theories, but they have not put the theories into practice so they can't
backup their theories with experiance.

David Lang

 On Thu, 26 Jun 2003, Robert White wrote:

> Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 13:41:49 -0700
> From: Robert White <rwhite@casabyte.com>
> To: Stephan von Krawczynski <skraw@ithnet.com>, Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com>
> Cc: lm@bitmover.com, wa@almesberger.net, miquels@cistron-office.nl,
>      linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
> Subject: RE: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]
>
> Actually the below analogy is so pathologically flawed it is laughable.  I
> was just going to let it slip buy because I, wrongly it seems, thought that
> its flaws were too egregious and fallacious to be worth responding to.
>
> The idea that you "don't learn anything from (playing a less skilled
> opponent)" and by extension you also can not learn anything from a
> non-player is so flawed as to be laughable.
>
> The natural follow on both in the sports arena and in the business arena are
> as follows:
>
> 1) The only way you can learn in business is to have your ass handed to you
> by a better businessman.
>
> 2) There is nothing to be learned from your own mistakes.
> or
> 2a) Any mistakes you make playing an equal or lesser opponent don't count
> because you would not have made them "if it mattered".
>
> 3) There is nothing to be learned from practice.
>
> 4) There is no value to having a coach unless that coach can out perform
> every member of his team (or at least used to be able, in his heyday).
>
> 5) Third party analysis has no instructive value.
>
> 6) No person can gain knowledge or insight about a sport/task unless they
> have taken up that task first-person to a level in excess of their
> non-tasking knowledge of the task...  8-)
>
> Is this actually your stance?  Stephan?  Larry?
>
> Sticking to "competitive sports", lets see the most obvious examples that
> directly illuminate this position as "double plus un-smart."
>
> Golfers (professional and armature alike) ask their caddies for advice.
> Why?  Are the caddies the better Golfers?  No, or at least not usually, but
> they live with their courses day in and day out and they have the chance to
> observe a wide range of skills and approaches.  They can do this and proffer
> up a distillation of their knowledge precisely because they are not mired in
> playing the game.
>
> Every professional team, and most armature teams, of the common organized
> sports (Baseball, Football, Soccer, Rugby (sp?), Lacrosse (again sp?), etc,
> od nausium) have coaches, special teams coaches, base coaches, etc.  If
> there was nothing to be learned from a non-player, they'd just have their
> team captain and they'd just go out and have at it.
>
> ...and at this point my brain locks up in apoplexy at picking any one of the
> many such examples that are clamoring to be number three...
>
> Everybody who thinks that there is nothing to be learned from anybody except
> the "better player" who you can only observe as they are beating you, and
> thinks that is a directly useful analogy to apply to business, please tell
> me your stock-ticker symbols so I can rush right out today and *not* invest
> in your companies.
>
>
> Rob.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stephan von Krawczynski [mailto:skraw@ithnet.com]
> Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2003 3:51 AM
> To: Larry McVoy
> Cc: rwhite@casabyte.com; lm@bitmover.com; wa@almesberger.net;
> miquels@cistron-office.nl; linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
> Subject: Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]
>
>
> On Wed, 25 Jun 2003 14:09:44 -0700
> Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com> wrote:
>
> > On Wed, Jun 25, 2003 at 01:35:09PM -0700, Robert White wrote:
> > > That is very sad.  The fact that I know that I am not the kind of
> salesman
> > > one needs to be to run a business does not magically disqualify me from
> all
> > > business knowledge.
> >
> > I'm a pool player, or used to be.  In pool, as with many competitive
> sports,
> > you get better by playing against people who are better than you.  You
> learn
> > from their actions, etc.  It's perhaps more short term fun to play someone
> > less skilled but you don't learn anything doing so.
>
> You may expand this point of view to almost any type of sports and even way
> beyond that.
>
> > I've also started and grown a business and that has taught me an enormous
> > amount that I do not believe you understand.  Why?  Because I used to
> think
> > just like you and running the business changed my mind.  What are the
> > chances that running a business would change yours?  In my opinion, very
> > close to 100%.
>
> It is very likely almost everbody who runs a business will agree with you in
>
> that point - me, too :-)
> Indeed business has become even more unbelievable, irritating and absurd
> since
> the internet hype and the dotcom bubble started...
>
> Regards,
> Stephan
>
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/
>

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Larry McVoy]

On Thu, Jun 26, 2003 at 01:41:49PM -0700, Robert White wrote:
> The idea that you "don't learn anything from (playing a less skilled
> opponent)" and by extension you also can not learn anything from a
> non-player is so flawed as to be laughable.

In theory, you can learn anything from anyone.
In practice, the highest concentration of useful information comes from
someone with more experience and skill than yourself.

Who do you want to have as your doctor?  Someone who has done it for 20
years or someone who is observing other doctors?  Repeat for any other
profession, sport, discipline, whatever.  Maybe you want to have your
heart surgery done by someone who thinks he can do it, me, I'd pick 
someone who has done it successfully a few hundred times.

That's my point of view, it's clear it isn't your point of view.  That's
fine, how about we agree to have different points of views and let this
thread die?
-- 
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

RE: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Robert White]

David,

Yes, fine, that is in fact why I did give Larry a brief overview of my
experience, as the consideration of experience is valid, and I have TWENTY
YEARS of experience in software design, development, and yes, sales.

Yet because I have never tried to "run" the businesses I have participated
in somehow that experience doesn't count in Larry's explicitly stated world
view.

Larry wasn't discounting "some of the posts" he was specifically discounting
my *particular* posts because I have never "run a business".  See how that
makes your stance come down on my side of the net?

The saddest part is that, in simple fact, the thread is about the sources
and natures of *INNOVATION* which is *EXACTLY* my area of expertise and that
leaves his "you don't know business" (even though I have been in almost
every version of the software business over the last twenty years) defense a
classic example of cupidity and faulty reasoning employed to undermine, I
mean "reinforce", a position.

Rob.



-----Original Message-----
From: David Lang [mailto:david.lang@digitalinsight.com]
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2003 1:50 PM
To: Robert White
Cc: Stephan von Krawczynski; Larry McVoy; wa@almesberger.net;
miquels@cistron-office.nl; linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: RE: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]


Robert the key isn't ability it's experiance, the golfer asks his caddy
questions becouse the caddy has more experiance with the course, the
players loearn from the coach becouse the coach has more experiance then
the players.

Larry is saying that the key reason he is discounting some of the posts is
the lack of experiance of the people involved, they have nice sounding
theories, but they have not put the theories into practice so they can't
backup their theories with experiance.

David Lang

 On Thu, 26 Jun 2003, Robert White wrote:

> Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 13:41:49 -0700
> From: Robert White <rwhite@casabyte.com>
> To: Stephan von Krawczynski <skraw@ithnet.com>, Larry McVoy
<lm@bitmover.com>
> Cc: lm@bitmover.com, wa@almesberger.net, miquels@cistron-office.nl,
>      linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
> Subject: RE: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]
>
> Actually the below analogy is so pathologically flawed it is laughable.  I
> was just going to let it slip buy because I, wrongly it seems, thought
that
> its flaws were too egregious and fallacious to be worth responding to.
>
> The idea that you "don't learn anything from (playing a less skilled
> opponent)" and by extension you also can not learn anything from a
> non-player is so flawed as to be laughable.
>
> The natural follow on both in the sports arena and in the business arena
are
> as follows:
>
> 1) The only way you can learn in business is to have your ass handed to
you
> by a better businessman.
>
> 2) There is nothing to be learned from your own mistakes.
> or
> 2a) Any mistakes you make playing an equal or lesser opponent don't count
> because you would not have made them "if it mattered".
>
> 3) There is nothing to be learned from practice.
>
> 4) There is no value to having a coach unless that coach can out perform
> every member of his team (or at least used to be able, in his heyday).
>
> 5) Third party analysis has no instructive value.
>
> 6) No person can gain knowledge or insight about a sport/task unless they
> have taken up that task first-person to a level in excess of their
> non-tasking knowledge of the task...  8-)
>
> Is this actually your stance?  Stephan?  Larry?
>
> Sticking to "competitive sports", lets see the most obvious examples that
> directly illuminate this position as "double plus un-smart."
>
> Golfers (professional and armature alike) ask their caddies for advice.
> Why?  Are the caddies the better Golfers?  No, or at least not usually,
but
> they live with their courses day in and day out and they have the chance
to
> observe a wide range of skills and approaches.  They can do this and
proffer
> up a distillation of their knowledge precisely because they are not mired
in
> playing the game.
>
> Every professional team, and most armature teams, of the common organized
> sports (Baseball, Football, Soccer, Rugby (sp?), Lacrosse (again sp?),
etc,
> od nausium) have coaches, special teams coaches, base coaches, etc.  If
> there was nothing to be learned from a non-player, they'd just have their
> team captain and they'd just go out and have at it.
>
> ...and at this point my brain locks up in apoplexy at picking any one of
the
> many such examples that are clamoring to be number three...
>
> Everybody who thinks that there is nothing to be learned from anybody
except
> the "better player" who you can only observe as they are beating you, and
> thinks that is a directly useful analogy to apply to business, please tell
> me your stock-ticker symbols so I can rush right out today and *not*
invest
> in your companies.
>
>
> Rob.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stephan von Krawczynski [mailto:skraw@ithnet.com]
> Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2003 3:51 AM
> To: Larry McVoy
> Cc: rwhite@casabyte.com; lm@bitmover.com; wa@almesberger.net;
> miquels@cistron-office.nl; linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
> Subject: Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]
>
>
> On Wed, 25 Jun 2003 14:09:44 -0700
> Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com> wrote:
>
> > On Wed, Jun 25, 2003 at 01:35:09PM -0700, Robert White wrote:
> > > That is very sad.  The fact that I know that I am not the kind of
> salesman
> > > one needs to be to run a business does not magically disqualify me
from
> all
> > > business knowledge.
> >
> > I'm a pool player, or used to be.  In pool, as with many competitive
> sports,
> > you get better by playing against people who are better than you.  You
> learn
> > from their actions, etc.  It's perhaps more short term fun to play
someone
> > less skilled but you don't learn anything doing so.
>
> You may expand this point of view to almost any type of sports and even
way
> beyond that.
>
> > I've also started and grown a business and that has taught me an
enormous
> > amount that I do not believe you understand.  Why?  Because I used to
> think
> > just like you and running the business changed my mind.  What are the
> > chances that running a business would change yours?  In my opinion, very
> > close to 100%.
>
> It is very likely almost everbody who runs a business will agree with you
in
>
> that point - me, too :-)
> Indeed business has become even more unbelievable, irritating and absurd
> since
> the internet hype and the dotcom bubble started...
>
> Regards,
> Stephan
>
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
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> Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/
>

RE: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Robert White]

How *exactly* does that (your below) jibe with your dismissal of the
arguments of people like myself who do, in literal fact, have twenty years
of experience in the field of software design and innovation and the
*business* of selling that design and innovation to others?

You talk this great game about how you are just trying to weight the
comments you receive based on the experience backing them up.  But then, on
the backside you "refine" your allowable definition of experience so as to
comfortably dismiss, without consideration, any comments you don't like.

Further, if you *are* this great paragon of business wisdom, why didn't you
apply this acumen and address a single element of any of the arguments from
my two seminal posts?

Where is your response to my citation of rise and fall of Peachtree or the
passing of the innovate-then-get-bought model exemplified by the product
(and companies behind) things like Quattro Pro and Excel?

How am I wrong in my presentation of my position that the ongoing support
costs of software, particularly in a market that will not let you produce a
product and then move on to another, undermine the financial position needed
to bring successive new products to bear?

With your boundless store of superior software business knowledge, why
haven't you trotted out some model that explains how Microsoft's "superior
innovation" is demonstrated by their ability to buy their out-performing
competitors (Excel, Power Point, Word etc were all "bought" not innovated at
MS) and throw huge amounts of Monopoly money at the tasks of "stealing"
concepts from others (Explorer from Mosaic and/o Netscape, "Windowing" from
X11 and DesqView, DOS from CPM, which stole from Unix, etc)?

See, it is nice and comfortable for you to make statements about innovation
and how the OSS movement is just a bunch of copycats, but you have yet to
turn this sea of insight into something as simple as a single instance of a
company founded and maintained on "innovation" completely without the aid of
the common mimicry you like to repackage as hyperbole-friendly "theft".

There is a fundamental flaw in your entire position.  You fail to recognize
or admit one simple, irrefutable fact:  All software is derivative work.
Even the great seminal works (e.g. "VisiCalc") were produced by applying an
overwhelming body of existing thought to a novel paradigm.

Until your vast (and somehow more important than everybody else's) specific
"I run a business so I know things" experience can debunk that single point,
you have no moral high ground on which to base your as yet unfounded "people
shouldn't mimic my product, its immoral" stance nor any of its in-defensible
follow ons about how "only businesses innovate."

Rob.


-----Original Message-----
From: Larry McVoy [mailto:lm@bitmover.com]
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2003 1:52 PM
To: Robert White
Cc: Stephan von Krawczynski; Larry McVoy; wa@almesberger.net;
miquels@cistron-office.nl; linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]


On Thu, Jun 26, 2003 at 01:41:49PM -0700, Robert White wrote:
> The idea that you "don't learn anything from (playing a less skilled
> opponent)" and by extension you also can not learn anything from a
> non-player is so flawed as to be laughable.

In theory, you can learn anything from anyone.
In practice, the highest concentration of useful information comes from
someone with more experience and skill than yourself.

Who do you want to have as your doctor?  Someone who has done it for 20
years or someone who is observing other doctors?  Repeat for any other
profession, sport, discipline, whatever.  Maybe you want to have your
heart surgery done by someone who thinks he can do it, me, I'd pick
someone who has done it successfully a few hundred times.

That's my point of view, it's clear it isn't your point of view.  That's
fine, how about we agree to have different points of views and let this
thread die?
--
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com
http://www.bitmover.com/lm

RE: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Robert White]

Wow, I don't know what to think...

I didn't cite any private mail I got from people, including Larry himself,
but after such enlightening private responses I got from Larry like the one
that read, in toto: "In your opinion"

I have apparently been declared either winner or pariah:


-----Original Message-----
From: Larry McVoy [mailto:lm@bitmover.com]
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2003 2:24 PM

Sorry, I've had enough.  I started getting private mail from people
saying they have been in the same sort of argument with you over
technical issues and you not only didn't get it right, you refused
for weeks to not see that you didn't get it right.  That's good
enough for me.  Sorry, I just can't waste this much time.

cat >> .procmailrc <<EOF
:0:
* ^From: .*Robert White*
/dev/null
EOF

=== end message ===

I wonder how many other "Robert White"s have just been barred from
interacting with his company.  He probably should have used my company name
or at least my email address...

8-)

Rob.

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Timothy Miller]

Robert White wrote:
> People want to receive "payment" for "work".
> 
> Fine, true, and desirable.
> 
> But the missing piece in the capitalist mindset WRT/software is that those
> self-same capitalists don't want to pay for the work of others.
> 

Well, part of the process of accumulating wealth involves spending as 
little as possible while earning as much as possible.  If a capitalist 
can get something for nothing, that's a wonderful thing.

Rule number 1:  People are selfish.
Rule number 2:  People are greedy.

This is not something you can change.  It's only something that you can 
exploit.  If you can't find a way to use it to your advantage, then 
you're going to lose.  It's human nature, and pretending that it isn't 
true is only going to get you into trouble.

> In point of fact, the common intellectual domain, in particular the great
> source/sink of free software *doest* fit the pay-for-value model.
> 
> The problem is that the current business people don't understand that the
> "free software" "costs" the promise to return contributions.  The system is
> resilient enough to withstand a huge percentage of parasitism, so each
> business wants to say that they might as well a parasite too.

I think you're missing one of my points.  If you want to change people's 
minds about something, the first step is to grok their perspective. 
Know it, understand it, and identify with it.  This is one of the 
reasons that many organized religions aren't very attractive: they 
refuse to see the perspective of the unbeliever.  This is also why some 
cults are often so attractive: the cult leader understands the mindset 
of the unbeliever better than the unbeliever understands himself.

The key idea to understand here is this:  You're describing a system of 
barter, which also is alien (they would call it "primitive") to 
capitalists.  They use it as a last resort, such as in the case of 
swapping patent licenses, but even THEN, they still put a monetary value 
on what they're bartering so that they can judge that they're getting a 
fair trade.

You cannot get a capitalist to NOT put a monetary value on everything 
they encounter.  Everything has its price, and every price is in Dollars 
or Yen or Euro or whatever.

Once upon a time, money was an abstraction.  Back in the days of barter, 
people would look at "money" and consider it worthless, because it 
didn't have any intrinsic value.  Once the concept of money caught on, 
people still judged it in terms of what kinds of goods or valuables it 
represented.  Even the US had a gold standard for a very long time; the 
money didn't have value -- it was a voucher which represented some piece 
of gold sitting in a vault somewhere.  But now we don't have a gold 
standard and money has taken on a life entire of its own.  Money has 
intrinsic value, even though most of the time, it's just signals on a wire.

There's an interesting parallel here:  Because money is just bits, it 
can be copied without deleting it from the source.  But if we were to do 
that, we'd dilute the value of money and ruin the economy.  Similarly, 
software can be copied without destroying the original, but doing so can 
ruin the market for those who wish to profit from selling it.  In both 
cases, when you copy the thing, you devalue it in terms of its ability 
to represent wealth.

Do you see why people want to charge money for software?  They're both 
things that have value only because people believe that they do.


> 
> The simple fact is that when you return your modifications to the pool, the
> "lost cost" of the man hours and mental effort spent to make that
> modification, insignificant to the value you took from the pool.
> 

I don't think anyone disagrees with this.

> When you return value to the pool, you have not "given away valuable
> property" you are paying (long due) bills for the larger type and number of
> works you have already taken possession of "on credit".
> 
> Once you take that single step back you realize two things.
> 
> 1) The total value you harvest dwarfs the total value you return (even in
> simple man hour payroll terms) so even if you spend a substantial outlay it
> is still a return on investment of remarkable proportions.

Agreed.

> 
> 2) If software is the only thing you do, you are screwed because that
> immense return on investment is payment in kind so there is no "cash margin"
> from which to draw profit.
> 

No, if the software economy changes so that you can't sell it then, 
you'll be screwed.  Until then, people see software as something which 
can be sold, so they're going to do it.


> The final conclusion is that "free software" works for every business model
> *EXCEPT* pure software sales.  Absolutely every other model (e.g.
> "<anything> and no software at all" and "<anything> plus software") lets you
> "buy" ninety-plus percent of your "software part" for pennies.  The fact
> that "nothing but software" times "free software" nets zero excess cash
> should surprise nobody.  Yet it did surprise the entire 1990's economy...
> 

People are still selling software.  No one is surprised.

> Irony can be so damn Ironic sometimes... 8-)
> 
> There is no rational argument that this model "should somehow", in and of
> itself, with no further effort on your part, support you financially.
> Especially if you have decided that said support will come while you only
> fulfill the parasite role of taking what you will and returning nothing.


In the end, commercial and free software are going to coexist.  For each 
application, whichever has the greater value to the customer is the one 
that will be 'bought'.  Although they come from different work models, 
they will both exist in the same market, and each will be judged on its 
merits.  If you NEED a piece of software for a specific task, and you 
can't get it for free, you WILL pay for it, or you'll change your needs 
somehow.

There are some types of software that are very difficult to organize in 
the bazaar fashion.  Only a full-time, focused team can do the job in a 
reasonable time period, if at all.  Sometimes, free software developers 
receive the necessary funding, but much more often, only a company which 
is bringing in revenue as a capitalist entity would be able to succeed.

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[John Alvord]

On Thu, 26 Jun 2003 14:39:01 -0700, "Robert White"
<rwhite@casabyte.com> wrote:

>How *exactly* does that (your below) jibe with your dismissal of the
>arguments of people like myself who do, in literal fact, have twenty years
>of experience in the field of software design and innovation and the
>*business* of selling that design and innovation to others?
>

In my experience there is very little innovation per se in software
products. 99.99% of the work is refining, developing, marketting,
supporting the product.  A VP of one of my former employers would go
on and on about legacy code and how high the support costs were. She
never acknowledged my point -- that every product written becomes
legacy code the instant it escapes from development. You need to
recognize that going in and avoid markets that won't pay for the
support burden. That cost can be mitigated by good development
practices and good people, but it can't be eliminated.

Microsoft as an innovator, that's a new one on me!! I can't think of a
single product they innovated on. Their first was a Basic for the
8080... it was based on the specs for the Dartmouth College Basic
which was delivered by timesharing mainframes. Microsoft's genius lies
in marketting, positioning, perserverance and sheer guts. I grant them
a lot but not product innovation. 

There is a lot to be learned from Microsoft... a great innovative
product is not sufficient to build an empire. Innovations are directly
related to new environments... like animals evolving as ecosystems
change. And new environments don't appear very often. So refining,
reimplementing, and supporting us what you need to succeed as a
business.

John Alvord

p.s. I have left Larry off the copy list.

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Timothy Miller]

David Schwartz wrote:

> 
> 	If I see an argument, I don't give a damn who made it. I evaluate the
> argument based upon its merits. If I'm not competent to evaluate the
> argument on its merits, I'm not competent to have an opinion at all.
> Essentially, you're arguing that ad hominem is a valid reasoning tool, even
> to reject arguments in which you see no flaw.
> 

This reminds me of when I was a "creationist" and arguing on 
talk.origins.  I had, in my opinion, evaluated the evidence and decided 
that the earth was created by God 6500 years ago and there was a global 
flood, and a bunch of other stuff, and that since I could come up with a 
coherent explanation for every counter-argument people would throw at 
me, then I must have been right.

The truth is that I WASN'T evaluating the evidence properly.  I was 
dismissing huge volumes of hard scientific data.  But things made sense 
to me anyhow.  What I'm trying to say is that you can use logic to 
support any argument you want, as long as you make up the right facts 
and contrive the right explanations.

Your argument is logically valid.  It's a nice self-contained system 
that makes sense, in its own little world.  But is it SOUND?  When 
compared against empirical evidence, does it stand up?  Until you have 
completely weighed the whole of one argument against the whole of 
another, then you can't compare them.  Until you have allowed yourself 
to experience the other side, you cannot evaluate its validity.

So, you have a good handle on the open source side of things.  Great. 
When it comes to open source theory, I'll listen to you.  But your 
judgement of the closed-source side is based on reasoning in a vacuum. 
You're making up your evidence by which you are judging it.  (This is 
exactly how I once treated evolutionary biology.)  Thus, when it comes 
to closed-source theory, I'm going to listen to Mr. McVoy.

RE: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Robert White]

-----Original Message-----
From: Timothy Miller [mailto:miller@techsource.com]
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2003 3:34 PM

> Robert White wrote:
> >
> > 2) If software is the only thing you do, you are screwed because that
> > immense return on investment is payment in kind so there is no "cash
margin"
> > from which to draw profit.
>
>
> No, if the software economy changes so that you can't sell it then,
> you'll be screwed.  Until then, people see software as something which
> can be sold, so they're going to do it.

I guess I was a bit vague there on number 2.  What I was aiming at was the,
I thought implicit (like that helps 8-) point in the context, question of
"pure software sales" in the age/realm/reality of software derived from or
participant in the OSS domain.  I guess I lost that in my urge to get my
word-count down.  8-)

> There are some types of software that are very difficult to organize in
> the bazaar fashion.  Only a full-time, focused team can do the job in a
> reasonable time period, if at all.  Sometimes, free software developers
> receive the necessary funding, but much more often, only a company which
> is bringing in revenue as a capitalist entity would be able to succeed.

I agree.

In fact that particular "focus" then becomes, in the OSS model, the
_whatever_ that is being provided "along with" the software.  Focus,
commitment, service, responsiveness and so on are *all* primary examples of
the "other than just software" that makes a company feasible.  The current
business models really only value that other when it is hardware or similar
tangible feature, which is ridiculous in our so called "services economy".

The question then, for each company, in an OSS model, can a particular
_whatever_ or combination thereof support the company.  After all, the
software itself is free.

There are contra positives like is OSS the only means to disentangle the IP
claims of what are, for all real purposes, idea squatters?  Can any company
claim sacrosanct autonomy of their software if they use the common public
paradigms of programming like menus and "chrome" and array processing, and
multi-processing and such?  If a company can not "morally" make such claims
because they themselves are engaged in mimicry, how seriously should we take
their claims that they need protection from the mimicry perpetrated by
others?

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Stephan von Krawczynski]

On Thu, 26 Jun 2003 14:02:26 -0700
"Robert White" <rwhite@casabyte.com> wrote:

> David,
> 
> Yes, fine, that is in fact why I did give Larry a brief overview of my
> experience, as the consideration of experience is valid, and I have TWENTY
> YEARS of experience in software design, development, and yes, sales.
> 
> Yet because I have never tried to "run" the businesses I have participated
> in somehow that experience doesn't count in Larry's explicitly stated world
> view.

Hello Rob,

_the_ ultimate difference between someone participating and someone _running_
the business is (in my eyes) that the one "running" it is playing with his own
money, his own existence (and maybe that of his family) and possibly feels a
big responsibility for his employees, the money he was possibly given by
investors or the like. 
If you never made that experience you don't know what Larry is talking about.
If you don't believe that, take all your money and loan your house and start a
business, then experience the feeling.
You may have noticed I do not agree with Larry in many things, but anyway I
fully respect him, because he took true responsibility for running a business,
and I know what that means. There are easier things you could do in life.

Regards,
Stephan

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Larry McVoy]

On Fri, Jun 27, 2003 at 01:45:40AM +0200, Stephan von Krawczynski wrote:
> _the_ ultimate difference between someone participating and someone _running_
> the business is (in my eyes) that the one "running" it is playing with his own
> money, his own existence (and maybe that of his family) and possibly feels a
> big responsibility for his employees, the money he was possibly given by
> investors or the like. 

Yup.  It's funny how your employees become part of your family, not
in the sense of the normal family stuff but in the sense of you feel
responsible for them.  

> If you never made that experience you don't know what Larry is talking about.
> If you don't believe that, take all your money and loan your house and start a
> business, then experience the feeling.
> You may have noticed I do not agree with Larry in many things, but anyway I
> fully respect him, because he took true responsibility for running a business,
> and I know what that means. There are easier things you could do in life.

Yeah.  If I were to do it all over again I would probably take some of
the investment money that was offered.  At the time I didn't because
I wanted control so I could make sure things didn't get screwed up,
things like helping Linus and the rest of the kernel team for example.
That was an expensive choice and probably not the wisest choice if the
goal was making lots of money.  But I got to do what I wanted which was
help out, and BK has helped out more than I ever could have directly.
So that's cool, it was a bad financial decision but the world isn't 
only about money.

If it weren't for the endless license flamewars and the constant worry
over money, the rest of it has been a blast.  Creating a business is like
someone prying open your brain and aiming a firehose of information at
you and you just have to absorb it.  I know all sorts of useless (and
maybe useful) stuff that I didn't know.  I know why I was such a pain
in the ass to manage, for example :)  Contract law, mentoring, company
morale, customer relations, sales, sales, sales, why coding standards
really mean something, why being conservative is absolutely the right
answer at least 90% of the time and the worst answer the rest of time,
why some people are worth a fortune and some aren't.  You learn a _lot_.
There is a ton of stuff that is just not even close to being obvious
to an engineer.  Some of it is kind of fun.  Building a team that works
well together is definitely fun.

I wouldn't suggest anyone try our licensing model, I'm not sure it was
worth it, but I'd encourage those of you with theories to try them out
and try and run a business.  It's a pretty cool ride.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Davide Libenzi]

On Thu, 26 Jun 2003, Larry McVoy wrote:

> Yup.  It's funny how your employees become part of your family, not
> in the sense of the normal family stuff but in the sense of you feel
> responsible for them.

Yeah, I bet Jeffrey Skilling was saying the same thing :)



- Davide

RE: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Robert White]

Stephen,

So given this responsibility he has chosen to take, that you admire, and
that I have no aspirations towards because I already know it isn't an area I
will do well in...

Is it responsible for him to pose a question about the source and nature of
innovation and then reply to the feedback he receives with "you've never run
a business so why should I listen to you"?

Is it responsible to start with the assumption that business is innovation
and non business is, by definition, *not* innovation?  His position only
makes sense if this founding position ("business is the sole source of
meaningful innovation in software") is true.  He will entertain no dissent
on that position no matter how many innovators claim otherwise.

I didn't offer advice on accounting practices, sales channels, or even the
proper way to apportion funds or apportion effort.  I did not posit opinions
on managing employees nor conserving costs.  I offered my specific view
directly related to my specific experience in the field he was addressing.

I also took particular exception to receiving three emails that said
(paraphrased), in order:

1) I {Larry} glanced at what you wrote, who are you that I should care about
your opinion.

(I respond to this reasonable request with the rough overview of my
experience in software development and "innovation")

2) You've never run a business so you will forgive me if I {Larry} don't pay
any attention to anything you have said; I already know that I can only
learn things relating to business by competing against better businessmen.
(e.g. the "I play pool and..." message)

(which I totally let slide and was going to accept as an indication of a
closed and pointless channel, but then, as a reply to a third party I
get...)

3) Exactly, I {Larry} consider all arguments no matter who poses them.

(which is directly belied by message two)

The rampant cupidity of the conflict between items two and three kind of set
me off.  It is not reasonable nor rational nor, I suspect, an indication of
the kind of businessman I would want to have domain over my capital.  It
also exhausted all respect I felt towards Larry, about whom I had no prior
opinion.

And then I started behaving badly... 8-)

Rob.



-----Original Message-----
From: Stephan von Krawczynski [mailto:skraw@ithnet.com]
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2003 4:46 PM
To: Robert White
Cc: david.lang@digitalinsight.com; lm@bitmover.com; wa@almesberger.net;
miquels@cistron-office.nl; linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]


On Thu, 26 Jun 2003 14:02:26 -0700
"Robert White" <rwhite@casabyte.com> wrote:

> David,
>
> Yes, fine, that is in fact why I did give Larry a brief overview of my
> experience, as the consideration of experience is valid, and I have TWENTY
> YEARS of experience in software design, development, and yes, sales.
>
> Yet because I have never tried to "run" the businesses I have participated
> in somehow that experience doesn't count in Larry's explicitly stated
world
> view.

Hello Rob,

_the_ ultimate difference between someone participating and someone
_running_
the business is (in my eyes) that the one "running" it is playing with his
own
money, his own existence (and maybe that of his family) and possibly feels a
big responsibility for his employees, the money he was possibly given by
investors or the like.
If you never made that experience you don't know what Larry is talking
about.
If you don't believe that, take all your money and loan your house and start
a
business, then experience the feeling.
You may have noticed I do not agree with Larry in many things, but anyway I
fully respect him, because he took true responsibility for running a
business,
and I know what that means. There are easier things you could do in life.

Regards,
Stephan

RE: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[David Schwartz]

> David Schwartz wrote:

> > 	If I see an argument, I don't give a damn who made it. I
> > evaluate the
> > argument based upon its merits. If I'm not competent to evaluate the
> > argument on its merits, I'm not competent to have an opinion at all.
> > Essentially, you're arguing that ad hominem is a valid
> > reasoning tool, even
> > to reject arguments in which you see no flaw.

> This reminds me of when I was a "creationist" and arguing on
> talk.origins.  I had, in my opinion, evaluated the evidence and decided
> that the earth was created by God 6500 years ago and there was a global
> flood, and a bunch of other stuff, and that since I could come up with a
> coherent explanation for every counter-argument people would throw at
> me, then I must have been right.

	Except that my reasoning isn't based on anyone's opinions of their own
arguments.

> The truth is that I WASN'T evaluating the evidence properly.  I was
> dismissing huge volumes of hard scientific data.  But things made sense
> to me anyhow.  What I'm trying to say is that you can use logic to
> support any argument you want, as long as you make up the right facts
> and contrive the right explanations.

	What convinced you? Someone telling you that you were not competent to
evaluate the evidence or someone *presenting* the evidence?

> Your argument is logically valid.  It's a nice self-contained system
> that makes sense, in its own little world. But is it SOUND?  When
> compared against empirical evidence, does it stand up?  Until you have
> completely weighed the whole of one argument against the whole of
> another, then you can't compare them.  Until you have allowed yourself
> to experience the other side, you cannot evaluate its validity.

	This is a paragraph-length version of "that's what you think". You can give
me all the reasons you want why I can't evaluate a position, all that does
is lead to the conclusion that I can't participate in the argument. But if
you're the one trying to convince me, convincing me that I can't evaluate
competing positions gets you absolutely nowhere.

	This thing started because Larry advanced and defended a position. When
others responded with contrary arguments, his response was that even though
he considered their arguments, he felt free to reject them because they came
from people who didn't have the credentials he required. If his purpose in
advocating the position was merely to convince himself that he was right,
this is fine. But that was not his apparent purpose.

> So, you have a good handle on the open source side of things.  Great.
> When it comes to open source theory, I'll listen to you.  But your
> judgement of the closed-source side is based on reasoning in a vacuum.
> You're making up your evidence by which you are judging it.  (This is
> exactly how I once treated evolutionary biology.)  Thus, when it comes
> to closed-source theory, I'm going to listen to Mr. McVoy.

	Because you find his arguments more persuasive or because you are more
impressed by his credentials?

	DS

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Larry McVoy]

On Thu, Jun 26, 2003 at 06:17:58PM -0700, David Schwartz wrote:
> 	This thing started because Larry advanced and defended a position. When
> others responded with contrary arguments, his response was that even though
> he considered their arguments, he felt free to reject them because they came
> from people who didn't have the credentials he required. 

Contrary arguments with no experience or track record to back them up
against arguments with tons of experience and track record.  You bet
I rejected and I'd be an idiot not to do so.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Alan Cox]

On Iau, 2003-06-26 at 21:52, Larry McVoy wrote:
> Who do you want to have as your doctor?  Someone who has done it for 20
> years or someone who is observing other doctors?  Repeat for any other
> profession, sport, discipline, whatever.

It is routine for just trained doctors to spot problems missed by other
doctors, to know about alternate ways of handling the problems and to be
very concious of their limitations thus better in some cases.

There is a lovely quote  "Powertools are at their most dangerous when
you know you have mastered them"

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Stephan von Krawczynski]

On Thu, 26 Jun 2003 17:57:36 -0700
"Robert White" <rwhite@casabyte.com> wrote:

> Stephen,
> 
> So given this responsibility he has chosen to take, that you admire,

Sorry, I said "respect", I didn't mean and say "admire".

> and
> that I have no aspirations towards because I already know it isn't an area I
> will do well in...
> 
> Is it responsible for him to pose a question about the source and nature of
> innovation and then reply to the feedback he receives with "you've never run
> a business so why should I listen to you"?

Well, as all of the writers and readers of this and other threads are free
people (I hope), he has a choice. I would not critize someone for his personal
choice in such a matter, you may call it wrong from your point of view, but
this is simply called "different opinions".

> Is it responsible to start with the assumption that business is innovation
> and non business is, by definition, *not* innovation?  His position only
> makes sense if this founding position ("business is the sole source of
> meaningful innovation in software") is true.  He will entertain no dissent
> on that position no matter how many innovators claim otherwise.

>From the deepest ground of my heart I would say: YES. He has a right to think,
say and do whatever he likes as long as it does not interfere with rights of
others. I think you left the thread (already quite off-topic for LKML) and got
to the "free speech" topic (completely off-topic for LKML).

This is really a discussion, Rob. In a discussion you will meet all flavors of
people including ones that don't like you or your sayings. Others may even
ignore you completely. I think it's their right to do so. We are discussing a
controverse topic here, so you can expect to convince nobody but yourself.
Nevertheless you are free to talk about your personal opinion, because it gives
others at least a chance to think about it, even if they don't tell you.

Regards,
Stephan

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Jesse Pollard]

On Thursday 26 June 2003 13:40, Larry McVoy wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 26, 2003 at 07:45:21PM +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> > > That's probably a good enough test case.  Explain to me how your
> > > support contracts are ever going to provide enough money to redo GCC or
> > > build something equally substantial.
> >
> > [incremental changes given as example]
>
> Incremental changes != redo.  Redo is a ~$10M project.


	The Los Alamos National Laboratory have sponsored the work for a new
	hand-crafted recursive-descent C++ parser for GCC.

	Apple contributed a precompiled header implementation for GCC.

Both of these are comple rewrites. Not incremental changes.

Claiming these are "incremental" is like claiming Linux is an incremental 
change to the AT&T Kernel...

Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Timothy Miller]

I've removed Larry from the To list due to his earlier request.

My opinion is this:  If you think you're going to be so great at running 
a business, please go do so and let us know how it goes.


Robert White wrote:
> Stephen,
> 
> So given this responsibility he has chosen to take, that you admire, and
> that I have no aspirations towards because I already know it isn't an area I
> will do well in...
> 
> Is it responsible for him to pose a question about the source and nature of
> innovation and then reply to the feedback he receives with "you've never run
> a business so why should I listen to you"?
> 
> Is it responsible to start with the assumption that business is innovation
> and non business is, by definition, *not* innovation?  His position only
> makes sense if this founding position ("business is the sole source of
> meaningful innovation in software") is true.  He will entertain no dissent
> on that position no matter how many innovators claim otherwise.
> 
> I didn't offer advice on accounting practices, sales channels, or even the
> proper way to apportion funds or apportion effort.  I did not posit opinions
> on managing employees nor conserving costs.  I offered my specific view
> directly related to my specific experience in the field he was addressing.
> 
> I also took particular exception to receiving three emails that said
> (paraphrased), in order:
> 
> 1) I {Larry} glanced at what you wrote, who are you that I should care about
> your opinion.
> 
> (I respond to this reasonable request with the rough overview of my
> experience in software development and "innovation")
> 
> 2) You've never run a business so you will forgive me if I {Larry} don't pay
> any attention to anything you have said; I already know that I can only
> learn things relating to business by competing against better businessmen.
> (e.g. the "I play pool and..." message)
> 
> (which I totally let slide and was going to accept as an indication of a
> closed and pointless channel, but then, as a reply to a third party I
> get...)
> 
> 3) Exactly, I {Larry} consider all arguments no matter who poses them.
> 
> (which is directly belied by message two)
> 
> The rampant cupidity of the conflict between items two and three kind of set
> me off.  It is not reasonable nor rational nor, I suspect, an indication of
> the kind of businessman I would want to have domain over my capital.  It
> also exhausted all respect I felt towards Larry, about whom I had no prior
> opinion.
> 
> And then I started behaving badly... 8-)
> 

Re: SCO's claims seem empty

[Raimundo Bilbao]

El Lun 02 Jun 2003 22:18, Lauro, John escribió:
> From what I read when SCO had more on their web site, it's more a
> question of contract violation. IBM had a contract for their Unix, and
> developed their code for that.  Then IBM ported some of their "own"
> kernel mods that was written for AIX and released it into Linux for
> free.  That violated some portion of the Unix contract. Thus, if IBM
> wins, could have implications against some parts of GPL, and maybe
> that is why Microsoft is backing SCO.
>
> I may be way off base, but SCO always stated it was contract issues
> and not code or copyright.
[...]

Ok, but all this noise (AFAIK) was started from a sue against IBM not Linux, 
however (pretty) soon was focused on some _mitical_ portions of the linux 
kernel (I really want to read those ET codes, maybe I can learn alot from 
those aliens's gurues  ;-D) and then toward GNU licenses and some others 
wired implications. 

I really think SCO haven't a real case against Linux (maybe toward IBM, but 
not linux), however everybody knows what a _special_ group of lawyers can do, 
no?  ;-)

Another think what ringing on mi (little) brain is the simple question : 
somebody remember the surprise off know, sometime ago, that NT was include 
zlib's code into this?, now I asking myself, what else they have _included_?, 
the SCO sue has some implications against them?. Maybe I never know, but it's 
an intersting question, maybe SCO (or anybody else) ending with a sue to 
every operating system on this planet from now toward if they want (a really 
nasty scenario).

OK, enough of this, let's R&R and back to work...  ;-D

cheers
mundo

RE: SCO's claims seem empty

[Lauro, John]

>From what I read when SCO had more on their web site, it's more a
question of contract violation. IBM had a contract for their Unix, and
developed their code for that.  Then IBM ported some of their "own"
kernel mods that was written for AIX and released it into Linux for
free.  That violated some portion of the Unix contract. Thus, if IBM
wins, could have implications against some parts of GPL, and maybe
that is why Microsoft is backing SCO.

I may be way off base, but SCO always stated it was contract issues
and not code or copyright.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Raimundo Bilbao [mailto:rbilbao@inzignia.cl]
> Sent: Monday, June 02, 2003 8:43 PM
> To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
> Subject: Re: SCO's claims seem empty
> 
> El Dom 01 Jun 2003 21:19, Horst von Brand escribió:
> > Paul Rolland <rol@as2917.net> said:
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > > However ..somebody must have realised, that this was nonsense
and
> > > removed it from the site.
> >
> > Perhaps due to the court decision in Germany, restraining them
from
> > claiming that Linux uses Unix code illegaly until the court sees
into
> the
> > matter...
> 
> What's up doc, nice to see you here !  :-D
> 
> Honestly, I don't know what to think right now, perhaps all that
SCO's
> stuff
> was a mere smoke-bomb (you kown, that's M$ bombs what we seen back
in the
> 90's :-D  agaisnt IBM ?, remember OS/2 --> xxxNT ?)
> 
> A chimp's IQ level CIO of any company don't start to sue everyone in
the
> planet if  he have a little of common sense about they possibilities
to
> win
> (or else they must to be prepared for the linux's strike back :-} ),
and
> for
> this particular case they are, to say, very very wired (AFAIK they
haven't
> provide a concise probe of that _stolen-critical-olimpicus-code_
that
> nobody
> else on this planet can write, except off course, SCO and their
> ilumminated
> community of gurues :-D  ).
> 
> 
> cheers
> mundo
> 
> -
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RE: SCO's claims seem empty

[Downing, Thomas]

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Rolland [mailto:rol@as2917.net]

> Hello,
>
>> On Fri, May 30, 2003 at 03:01:53PM +0200, Paul Rolland wrote:
>> > Look at Sco's answer : 
>> > http://ir.sco.com/ReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=110126
>> 
>> I get a page with SCO navigation and other highlights,
>> but no content.
>> 

http://ir.sco.com/ReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=110292

At the bottom of the page is a toll free number where
you can listen to the press conference.