...and now for something completely different: Why Open Source Stifles Innovation (free subscription required) via b.cognosco. Every perspective has its opposite...
Posted by gsiemens at May 21, 2003 7:18 PM"Every perspective has its opposite"
Sure:
1+1 is 8
slavery benefits slaves
aids is harmless
President Bush is a genius
This article is full of nonsense.
"But the future of open source is clouded by ideology and politics."
It *started* with ideology and politics in 1984, the Open Source Initiative is nothing but a corporate-friendly front-end GUI for that.
"Software that costs nothing"
"free to use GPL software (like Linux) at no charge"
The man definetely needs to hear "Free Speech, not beer" once again.
"But new software that incorporates strands of code from GPL software must also be distributed under the GPL. "
What if I create a modified version of MS Office, what license should that be?
"This makes it impractical to integrate ideas from GPL software in proprietary software because anyone would be free to copy the enhancements."
Copyright doesn't cover *ideas*, patents do. Since the GPL says you hae a royalty-free license to all patents, you are garanteed you can use the ideas.
But this mister wants to copy-paste and sell it as his own.
"The "viral" quality of GPL software is intentional."
Of course it is. Proprietary license is much more viral, they are "terminal".
"goal is to undermine incentives to create software that carries a price tag."
again free speech versus free beer.
the goal is to replace proprietay software.
"But for those of us without ideological qualms about software as private property,"
Prorietary software is equally an idealogical view on software and property, just a different one.
"the wall that GPL erects between open source and proprietary software seems unfortunate"
what about the legal wall between proprietary licenses themselves? Are you allowed to copy-paste code from Wordperfect to Word?
What about the technical walls of reverse engineering?
"some federal software is being released under the GPL."
sometimes taxpayers money is used to create proprietary products.
"The growing involvement of government in open source is most immediately the concern of the proprietary software industry. "
This means: we are winning!
"they have not yet had to confront the headaches of a world in which they must worry about the compatibility of files produced on different software platforms"
now he's saying "Windows-users don't realise compatibility-problems because they never used anything outside the Micro-verse".
This is what Bruce Perens says about this Passell.
"Passell is one of the consultants hired by CompTIA to FUD us. He's taken a hand in official correspondence from CompTIA to which he's signed other people's names - but the .doc file properties on the correspondence identify them as coming from his PC at the Milken Institute."
Now we have all read this nonsense-article.
Let's read some better stuff, about someone who changed his ideas from "stiffling innovation" to "promoting innovation":
"A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Market: Linux, the General Public License, and a New Model for Software Innovation" by Matt Asay
http://www.linuxdevices.com/files/misc/asay-paper.pdf
Hey Wouter...thanks for the link to Matt Asay's article - I haven't seen it before. After a quick skim, it looks interesting...
btw, just to clarify - in stating that every perspective has its opposite, I wasn't giving credit to the concepts in the article. In this forum I've extolled the value of open source (primarily with the intent of discussing how to transfer the chaotic, open system into the organizational structure of institutions. In order for innovation to happen, we need openness and an ability to hear everyone's voice - in essence - we need a true democracy)...and found it interesting (and surprising!) that someone could have an extreme opposite opinion on OS as an innovation killer.
Posted by: gsiemens at May 23, 2003 9:37 AM