MS Office is available for the Macintosh. MS could port it to Linux, but I imagine the small size of the desktop Linux market means they wouldn't recoup the cost of the port.
I've been told by finance types at my job that Excel has features that are missing in the Libreoffice equivalent. Specifically in some of the features of the pivot table functionality. The Google docs version of that feature was unusable. So people might have good reasons for sticking with the MS Office suite.
Yes indeed, people may have good reasons for sticking with the MS Office suite... in particular on the Excel side if an enterprise has a lot invested in it.
I use the LIbre Office spreadsheet and have done so for about 5 years now for all and everything.. especially income tax return preparation. If you don't need all the bells and whistles, it works fine.
While one can say the Linux market is so small, one really doesn't know what the reality of the Linux market share might be. Linux works extremely well on older 2nd hand machines with less resources. And the Linux/Unix servers using Samba actually provide an office setting with are more stable and faster NTFS file server than Microsoft's own product.
UNIX/Linux OSes are here to stay and provide much of the backbone of the WWW. China seems to prefer Linux. And much of the world that remains impoverished might find Linux more accessible as it does support all the languages available through Unicode. Ubuntu comes from the South African for 'human kindness' and seems to expect to fill the gap at the bottom end of world wealth.
Richard Stallman extreme? Seems so at first. I have been taken aback by his conclusions many times. I have tried to fault his logic over the years and failed so far. You have to admit that everything he predicted that would happen as a consequence of closed source proprietary software did happen.
...when it was adopted by FSF it certainly became a free alternative to Unix.
Indeed. Do note however its not about the price. It's not about being cheap skate and saving a few bucks over buying a commercial OS offering. When the FSF says "free" they are talking about liberty not money. The usually use a capital "F" to emphasis this. It's all about your ownership of your machines, your control of your life. Who as the power. Yep it comes down politics. But that Freedom is also a very practical and economically valuable thing.
I think the best idea is if they wind up the whole company, divide all their cash up among the share holders and opensource all their products.
This has the great advantages of.
1) Allowing all those users of XP or whatever to continue with it. If there is enough interest companies will form around supporting it.
2) It avoids the long and certain decline and painful death that is coming to MS as a company.
3) All the world will get to be able to run Word and such on Linux.
4) It would be a net gain to the US economy, indeed the worlds, economy as it's not necessary to pump money into MS coffers that is only ever used to create new shiny versions of useless stuff that nobody wants.
5) The share holders could reinvest there money into that newly stimulated economy and stimulate further creation of actual value.
Looking at the long term it's cheaper if they just call it a day now.
We need a Stallman right now. Yes, he is extreme. And that clarity is and was necessary to bring the issues surrounding software into a broader dialog.
I too am touchy about the use of the word "theft" where we really should say "infringe" We have two words because there are real differences between information and matter, though some physicists are beginning to believe matter may just be information, but I digress.
For something to be theft, there needs to be a material loss of property. In the case of a software, or more generally, an information product, this does not happen when a copy is made.
In the case of a BASIC, the original author still has their BASIC, they still have all the rights associated with that BASIC, including the opportunity to sell a copy of their BASIC to anyone, even the person who made a copy. And I'm writing that in the context of the current legal landscape, not the one back then.
Unethical to make copies?
Yeah, mostly.
In the case of Bill's BASIC, it was. And it was because I suspect those people understood Bill's intent, and just as a matter of human decency, should have honored it. It was legal not to however.
However, the ethics blur quite easily. Say I own an information product distributed on some fragile media. I decide to archive it. That's ethical, though not always legal to do, but it's mostly legal to do. Another ethics question? Sure. Say my original gets stolen, now somebody else has stolen some media from me, and in doing so, infringed on the right of the creator of said media by using it, among other things, and I am left with an ethical, and in most cases legal backup, so do I continue to use? Legally? Ethically? Yes.
Now the same scenario with a different intent. I decide to flat out give Heater my original and continue to use my backup. Legal? Yes in nearly all cases. Ethical? Maybe. Say I loan media to friends to cut costs. A group each buys a title, views, swaps with friends, and everybody sees a lot of movies. Legal? Yeah. Ethical? Absolutely. Say those people make backups. The original purchaser does it, in case the movie doesn't come back. One who has a loan does it, in case of theft or loss or damage. Etc...
Now take away the media and consider information products alone, and those scenarios. The word "theft" cannot even be used anymore.
So there are new scenarios. One of us gets an information product that doesn't work well with our device. So we transcode it somehow. I have it on good authority right from the RIAA that it's OK to do this. But it's making copies. Mix tapes today often involve just combining information products into a new one and then flat out distributing that to another person. That's generally OK too, though not strictly legal in most cases.
Now, that one is very interesting!
Go back to the BASIC, and somebody makes a copy to understand it, perhaps write their own so that they and their friends can just ignore Bill and his painful rantings. They look at it, but not actually use it, and then author one themselves. Today, we have a growing mess of software and business process patents aimed at discouraging that activity. IMHO, that whole class of rights and regulations is entirely unethical.
And there is a nice solution today, and that is to deliver software as a service. Then people don't even get the software in the first place. Trust me, most of this conversation will rapidly move to data products, and there was Stallman way back when, who knew better, and also discussed data, not executables in the same kind of context. Lessig and the late Aaron Schwartz, and some others, worked on Creative Commons to flesh out answers to what Stallman understood early on as a very serious infringment on our basic rights as people.
Now, two wrongs don't make a right, but let's go with ethics one more time.
FREE THE MOUSE
That's an aging bumper sticker on my seriously old and crappy '89 Corolla. I get a question on that bumper sticker once a month minimum. Larry Lessig thought that one up, and it's been the best sticker ever. It's the best, because I get to talk about a theft and a very serious infringment on our rights as people.
Every time Mickey Mouse comes up for expiration as a copyrighted product, the Disney company spends a lot of money, and gathers their heavy friends and their money to get copyright extended so that doesn't happen.
A little trip back in time shows Disney got their start by making new, derivative works from those of the Brothers Grimm. When the Brothers Grimm authored, copyright was 28 years, and it was a little as 14, both terms seen as adequate protection and incentive to produce creative information products for the general good. We have a richer society when we do this, and that was all well understood.
Now, after some extensions, Mickey Mouse won't come up again for discussion until long after most of us are gone, dead, don't care. Ever notice Betty Boop, Felix the Cat and some others actually did? And what happened? Those have been incorporated into works of various kinds, as have lots of things from a domain we call the Public Domain.
By extending copyright, Disney denies us the rich Public Domain which makes creating new, compelling information products more difficult, and the product of that is a lot of retreads of existing ones, owned by corporations, who exploit this to great profit, while frequently working to dodge basic obligations to the very society that brings them wealth in the first place.
FREE THE MOUSE
When I explain this to people, they get it. And it's interesting! "So, is that why we keep seeing the same things over and over?" or my favorite "Why were they allowed to build a big thing from the works of others, but nobody today can build in the same way?" Yeah, they get it when they ask that one.
Those things were all legal to do, but totally unethical. This blade cuts on both sides, with Stallman's ideas right there in the middle, entirely material to the discussion, and given how sharp the blade really is, and the strength of those who wield it against ordinary people and how they use and trade information products today, being a little extreme is a perfectly fine thing as that extremism has inspired many great people to contribute to the common good and preserve a measure of information freedom we see play out every day, even right here.
IMHO, you don't have to like Stallman, but it's very difficult not to recognize his contribution to the information environment today as positive.
Regarding commercial software and open alternatives: Say I have older hardware, or some entity decides my hardware isn't good for me anymore and they would prefer I buy new hardware. Having the ability to pry into software, write my own software, etc... means I have a much greater ability to call the shots on my hardware use, and not be over exploited by those who would rather profit from that control. Stallman is entirely right about this.
Say everybody is using something like Microsoft Office. Once everybody is using it, what exactly is the incentive to actually improve it as opposed to modify it to generate revenue by making it more difficult for people to communicate with it? Having Open Code out there presents as a nice check and balance to that scenario. If commercial software makers actually do seek over exploitation, they know people can move to alternatives easily. If those alternatives were not there, I suspect Microsoft Office would be far more painful to work with and or use as we do today, and it would be expensive. A lot more expensive. Why not?
Finally there is the value in the general escalation of technology. Most of what Microsoft Office does today is easy. High School kids can author software that performs those functions. When people can communicate and leverage their work, as they can with the body of open code out there, getting things done does not always require commercial interests. This general dynamic puts an onus on those who do sell software to actually add value to warrant the cost of said software; otherwise, people will just make their own software as they should. That is what Linux + GNU basically is.
Oh, one more thing about information differences. Material things actually cost money, take up space, etc... If I were to make a garage, where you could put material things in there, all our friends could too, the garage would be filled with lots of useful things. But, when one of us takes a useful thing out, the garage is a little more empty. These costs show up as rentals, or we just buy our own things, or we make loans among ourselves. Copying physical things is very expensive.
With information, such a collection presents the same awesome value to every contributor! The whole has more value than the parts do! I once had to explain this to a committee in Oregon discussing software and it was amazing to see legislators minds get it, light bulbs turn on, like "Oh! It works LIKE THAT?"
Theft isn't a part of it. Infringement is, and we have to be careful, very careful, about what we say is infringing, or we deny ourselves a very potent, common good type resource we might seriously benefit from. And again, there is Stallman way ahead of everybody else, those clear, extreme positions carving this out for us, painful as that may be.
Does "stealing" always have to be unlawful to be wrong? People can "steal" ideas, pass them off as their own, and take all the credit. It's done all the time, and it's not illegal. It's up to a person's morals and ethics to decide if it's acceptable behavior.
Does "stealing" always have to be unlawful to be wrong?
No. What is ethically correct and whatever laws you have in your land at the time say, are two totally different things. Sometimes at totally odds with each other.
Whilst I agree with most of potatohead's essay above I have always had a problem with the explanation that copyright infringement is not "stealing" because the original owner still has what he had before, the "thief" has a copy. Suggesting that nobody is deprived by copying software and other media. Suggesting that because those bits are not physical material it is somehow different.
I look at it more like this:
There is a train that travels from here to where I want to be ten times every day. Normally it has many free seats. So, if I ride on that train to where I want to be and I don't pay for a ticket there is no harm done. The train is going to go that way if I ride on it or not. I have not deprived anyone of a seat by riding on it. Ergo it is no harm if I don't pay. It makes no difference to anybody. Right?
(Let's ignore the little bit of energy the train needs to carry me for now)
So what is wrong with this train free loader argument?
Well, obviously that railway line was built at great expense. Also the locomotives and carriages and stations etc. Also the driver and staff work there and need money.
The cost of all that is borne by the passengers buying their tickets every day.
Clearly if the passengers don't pay the whole enterprise fails and there is no more train service. If half the passengers don't pay the ticket price would have to go up to make it work. And so on.
So by freeloading a ride on that train I would effectively be "stealing" from all the other passengers who have to pay more or end up with no train service.
This all sounds more like an argument as to why copying software is "stealing". If someone has invested a huge amount of time and effort into a program and paid many developers that cost has to be recouped from somewhere. By copying that code for free I would be getting something that all the other users had paid for. If nobody paid there would be no product. If few people want to pay the price has to be higher to make the product viable. In effect by free loading I am "stealing" from all the other customers.
On the other hand...I can argue that all the free loaders of MS products, for example, have vastly increased MicroSoft's market over the years by virtue of network effects. But that is a whole other essay.
On the third other hand...I can argue that every body has a moral duty to copy everything all the time. and that is another essay as well.
Does "stealing" always have to be unlawful to be wrong? People can "steal" ideas, pass them off as their own, and take all the credit. It's done all the time, and it's not illegal. It's up to a person's morals and ethics to decide if it's acceptable behavior.
What did those Vaudeville guy used to say? "I never heard a joke I didn't steal"?
If folks did "steal" hooks from previous songs, there would be no such thing as pop music.
If folks did not "steal" words that embody thoughts from folks around them, there would be no such thing as language.
Of course, if anybody steals my dessert, it may result in fisticuffs.
Heater, that is a theft of service, well covered by law, nearly everywhere.
I pose the explanation I do because I would not like to see new law where we have already defined things.
Software does have different dynamics than physical goods do. It is very important we recognize that.
A train operates on a track and at a cost that makes theft of service material in ways it often isn't when software is used or copied. That difference is why we have the word infringement.
"Theft", "theft of service", "infringement", "fraud", quite so. The law has a thousand ways to describe what it is you did to get what the law says you should not have.
No wonder people give up and end up talking about "stealing" and "piracy".
I don't think my train analogy is a bad start. Clearly big and complex code is expensive to create. Like a railway system. It gets financed by small amounts of money from many users. Clearly Bill wanted those hobbyists to pay for whatever benefit they got from his BASIC so he could use the money to go on and make more big and expensive software. Bill was true to his word and did that. Had everyone free loaded back in the day he could not have done so.
Software is different as you say. For example if a million people have paid a dollar which allowed a million dollars to be spent on developing some program that they all wanted. Then when the job is done, everyone is happy, everyone got what they wanted. The developers had a salary and the users get a useful program. It was a fair exchange all around.
So what then if a billion free loaders get copies of that program for nothing?
That takes nothing from anyone. It does not change the fact that the million original customers were happy with the deal they got.
Should those billion free loaders also have to pay a dollar? As in the first deal. That's crazy because now the software developer has a billion dollars for work he has not done.
Effectively the developer is now making a huge killing on the investment of the original few. That looks unethical to me.
Given the huge amounts of money MS has I suspect that is what has happened.
Clearly Bill wanted those hobbyists to pay for whatever benefit they got from his BASIC so he could use the money to go on and make more big and expensive software. Bill was true to his word and did that. Had everyone free loaded back in the day he could not have done so.
And if no one else did either then we wouldn't have cheap computers today.
No. What is ethically correct and whatever laws you have in your land at the time say, are two totally different things. Sometimes at totally odds with each other.
Whilst I agree with most of potatohead's essay above I have always had a problem with the explanation that copyright infringement is not "stealing" because the original owner still has what he had before, the "thief" has a copy. Suggesting that nobody is deprived by copying software and other media. Suggesting that because those bits are not physical material it is somehow different.
I look at it more like this:
There is a train that travels from here to where I want to be ten times every day. Normally it has many free seats. So, if I ride on that train to where I want to be and I don't pay for a ticket there is no harm done. The train is going to go that way if I ride on it or not. I have not deprived anyone of a seat by riding on it. Ergo it is no harm if I don't pay. It makes no difference to anybody. Right?
(Let's ignore the little bit of energy the train needs to carry me for now)
So what is wrong with this train free loader argument?
Well, obviously that railway line was built at great expense. Also the locomotives and carriages and stations etc. Also the driver and staff work there and need money.
The cost of all that is borne by the passengers buying their tickets every day.
Clearly if the passengers don't pay the whole enterprise fails and there is no more train service. If half the passengers don't pay the ticket price would have to go up to make it work. And so on.
So by freeloading a ride on that train I would effectively be "stealing" from all the other passengers who have to pay more or end up with no train service.
This all sounds more like an argument as to why copying software is "stealing". If someone has invested a huge amount of time and effort into a program and paid many developers that cost has to be recouped from somewhere. By copying that code for free I would be getting something that all the other users had paid for. If nobody paid there would be no product. If few people want to pay the price has to be higher to make the product viable. In effect by free loading I am "stealing" from all the other customers.
On the other hand...I can argue that all the free loaders of MS products, for example, have vastly increased MicroSoft's market over the years by virtue of network effects. But that is a whole other essay.
On the third other hand...I can argue that every body has a moral duty to copy everything all the time. and that is another essay as well.
by the way ... that third hand you tried to use is called 'the gripping hand' ... excellent book by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.
be careful, your Forum Bot is arguing why Bill Gates was correct to do what he did.
My Forum Bot is just fine.
In fact, ignoring some rather big details which we can skip over for now, I might be prepared to say that actually Bill Gates was correct in what he did.
Also his customers made wise an logical decisions.
And all the developers of software for Windows made the right decision.
Only problem is, that despite everyone doing the right thing at the time, we end up in a situation where MS has global dominance of the computing landscape. The world finds itself in a situation of dependence on some company over which they have no control and which for most is in a foreign country.
This is not acceptable.
Whilst I think people have every right to copy XP, for example, which they have paid for already and which they need to keep something running. And they should not be bullied into upgrading. I think it's a bad idea to copy any MS products. That just perpetuates the problem described above.
Luckily, slowly the world has started to understand this an do something about it.
Thanks for "the gripping hand" reference. I have to check that out.
And to the point why there might be no free Update from W8.1 to W9...
I always assumed that there are 2 concurrent teams working on MS Windows for Desktop. Kind of odd and even. One is usable, the next one not. Think Win98 and Win98ME. XP and Vista. Win7 and Win8.x.
So I hope Win9 will just come out as a Servicepack for Win8.x. Odd name for a Servicepack, but who knows.
Developing Software for mostly small company's I have to support a lot of different Windows Versions but have never found any company using Linux as Desktop. None. Server side yes. Some. But Client side? Nope.
As for free in free like a Bier - yes a lot of the small company's I worked for never paid MS any penny. From Desktop to Server, Office, Photoshop, AutoCat, whatever. Everything gets cracked and installed. Small company's simply can not afford prices like that. Sometimes even to make it easier for the Sys-Admins. Buy a PC from whoever with WinOs and the next step is to replace OS and Applications in one step from an image. Done. Who cares about it?
So @Heaters first other hand comment is absolutely true. MS increased the Market Share by making it easy to copy their products. But still sold them and kept a legal handle to hit those hard who overdid it.
And doing that there where able to provide good paying jobs to a lot of people over a lot of years. Programmer like me and you, so to speak.
Sure Bill Gates did become amazingly rich compared to other people doing the same stuff at the same time. So did Charlie Chaplin. Is it wrong? Am I not allowed to watch the great dictator anymore?
Whilst I agree with most of potatohead's essay above I have always had a problem with the explanation that copyright infringement is not "stealing" because the original owner still has what he had before, the "thief" has a copy.
This shows a GROSS misunderstanding of how those who depend on distributed sales make their living. Let me set you straight with an example: me.
It's true that I have all my original manuscripts and artwork for every book I've published, and distributing a digital copy does not take these materials away. But if someone obtains a copy of my work that is not legitimate, I have not been paid for my time, effort, skill, and knowledge. What I lose is the INCOME I should have received from it. This is very tangible, real, and measurable. The person has effectively stolen money out of my pocket.
It is simply naive and ignorant to think that because digital copies can be freely made that the author or creator of the work is not harmed by the copying. It is not the physical result of the creativity that is the issue. That's worth maybe 45 cents in paper and printing. What's been taken, without compensation, is the value of the content. I can assure you money is quite physical. In this case it IS stealing, plain and simple.
If folks did "steal" hooks from previous songs, there would be no such thing as pop music.
If folks did not "steal" words that embody thoughts from folks around them, there would be no such thing as language.
What you're talking about is creative license, not the entire (or even substantial portion) of the original. If an artist literally steals a hook, verse, or melody from another artist, and claims it as their own, that's called shameful. If they adapt these things, especially with acknowledgement, that's professional courtesy.
We are all inspired and influenced by someone else. It's how the arts are built. But at some point, left unchecked the inspiration can become downright plagiarism.
Kind of odd and even. One is usable, the next one not. Think Win98 and Win98ME. XP and Vista. Win7 and Win8.x.
Sorry can you remind me. Which is which there?
Developing Software for mostly small company's I have to support a lot of different Windows Versions but have never found any company using Linux as Desktop. None. Server side yes. Some. But Client side? Nope.
And so it is all over the world. Did you ever think that this weird?
Bill Gates becomming personlly wealthy is not what this is about.
You have quoted me and then said "This shows a GROSS misunderstanding..." but actually what I said agrees with you !
But whilst we are here....
Let's say someone like you spends a year researching and writing a book.
It get published and sells OK and after a while you have received what might be regarded as a reasonable salary for a years work in royalties.
Clearly if everyone free loads your book you don't get your fair salary.
But what if this book becomes really popular and sells really well?
Now you can get ten years worth of salary for that one years work. Or more. Or perhaps you die and your family and whoever gets their hands on the copyright can have a good income from it. For decades and decades....
Heater, I understand the sentiment is not necessarily yours, and didn't mean to make it sound like like it was. I was referring to this as a common misconception. Replace "you" with "one," or whatever.
We all wish for the payday, but they're rare. Best selling books are the exception, not the rule. Out of tens of thousands of books published each year only a handful make the top money. Everything else is what they call "midlist." They sell, but not in great numbers. The result is an income like anyone else's. We have to keep working to pay bills. Most authors and artists do not retire until they are unable to work -- for one thing, being freelance there's no such thing as a company pension after 30 years.
Now, a person could say, "Move with the times! Publish online!" Far easier said than done to make a living. The real money online is made from large ad networks. Authors who've tried affiliate sales on their sites quickly discover they net just a few bucks per month, sometimes nothing. There are a few -- VERY few -- independent content creators who have leveraged these ad networks and make decent money. For example, several video bloggers on YouTube make in excess of a million dollars a year. But most people just make pennies, if that.
Stallman is all about the freedom of choice. The Internet groupthink is exactly the opposite, though Stallman has never explicitly admitted this (he implicitly does so by crafting a license that takes experienced lawyers to decipher it all). The "Internet user" -- as an anonymous group -- has taken real choice away, and insist on theirs only. There is no "freedom" for the person who created the work. It's a one way deal, no negotiations.
To answer the question about the value of residual copyright: if your work is pirated, how much do you think the copyrights are worth? At a certain point publishers remove books from their system, and place them out of print. They no longer sell. Technical books, especially, have a limited life span. My first books were on Lotus 1-2-3, the original Macintosh, WordPerfect for DOS, and similar topics. Exactly how much do you think the copyright on these books is worth?
(As a point of interest, I GIVE away the content to my old WPDOS book. It was my one really big seller, and I made my money on it. Alas, this was over 25 year ago, and the money is long spent. The difference here is that *I* chose to offer it free. The decision wasn't made for me by some uploader to ScribD.)
Yes, life is different for properties like the Ian Fleming or Agatha Christie estates, and those copyrights retain their value. But it should be obvious these are like the megamillion lottery winners. What about everyone else playing the scratch and sniffs?
Think about how much money Microsoft makes from books, consulting, training, and certification. People need to trained and certified for the new OS, companies need to upgrade computers as well as train employees, hardware vendors need to certified drivers for the new OS, and software vendors need to train and certify for the new OS. That is in addition to the rest of us needing to buy the new OS and hardware and software that supports.
Just one big money making machine. Wall Street wants to see the money so the stock can rise to the sky and all the executives with stock and options can retire early.
@Heater, so what if they do? The people who funded the program still have their program.
If they made it an open program, they would welcome the billion users. If they made it closed, and denied the billion, they may well see a fraction of the billion write an open one anyway.
When said program needs attention, fundraising that from a billion is a much easier proposition.
This goes lots of ways, not all bad.
@Gordon
Yes, a lot of content creators see it that way. I'm one too, and I used to see it that way, and no longer do.
You still have the opportunity to sell it to them, and they the opportunity to pay as well as recommend, endorse, etc...
Then ther is the matter of whether or not they were capable of paying, and or a prospect of any real kind prior.
When this infringement happens, there are a lot of potentials, none absolute, all difficult to quantify.
For example, opportunity cost claims. Those are generally valued as the revenue divided by the risk, or put another way, real nature of the opportunity being claimed as a loss.
If a poor person reads it, and were unable to pay, your opportunity claim is basically valued at zero. Now you are still miffed because they used it, but you didn't actually lose anything, and in fact now have a user where you did not before.
That user as an asset could present new, qualified opportunity which then actually would have value potential you would not have had otherwise.
Interesting isn't it?
There are authors I know who are doing very well with those kinds of realizations, which mind you, only are realized when we treat information differently from physical things, which was my point in denying the word theft as being applicable.
And to be clear, I do not endorse this kind of thing happening in most cases. But when it does happen, ore more importantly when people are seeking ways to make it happen, those are opportunities as much as they are annoyances.
Here is another way it goes:
Want a signed, or printed, official copy? Pay for it, because there are physical costs. If somebody wants the information, give it to them, and let them print, bind, whatever.
While giving it to them, collect data, show an AD, and ask them for a contribution. And make doing that considerably easier than tracking down torrents, and or risking malware, etc...
Further, say you have demand for other languages, devices, formats. Others will do this for you for nothing, and they will give you their work products to distribute too.
Now that easier than piracy access is generating value and opportunity, arguably of the sort not in the equation otherwise, unless you were to make very significant economic investments, which would also likely dilute your margins, which is precisely why they don't get done. But your fans and users will, because they want to add value, share, promote, and so forth.
Whether or not you agree with any of that doesn't change the dynamics in play with information, nor the validity of the business models I juat hinted at here.
That those models work, and generate income, and make creative information works viable means the conversation about opportunity losses isn't as cut 'n dried as many of us want it to be, and that too is my point.
If we recognize the actual dynamics and use those actual words, we will settle in on actual law we can life with and attempting to treat information the same way we treat physical things won't get us there, and is arguably more expensive for all of us too.
This shows a GROSS misunderstanding of how those who depend on distributed sales make their living. Let me set you straight with an example: me.
It's true that I have all my original manuscripts and artwork for every book I've published, and distributing a digital copy does not take these materials away. But if someone obtains a copy of my work that is not legitimate, I have not been paid for my time, effort, skill, and knowledge. What I lose is the INCOME I should have received from it. This is very tangible, real, and measurable. The person has effectively stolen money out of my pocket.
It is simply naive and ignorant to think that because digital copies can be freely made that the author or creator of the work is not harmed by the copying. It is not the physical result of the creativity that is the issue. That's worth maybe 45 cents in paper and printing. What's been taken, without compensation, is the value of the content. I can assure you money is quite physical. In this case it IS stealing, plain and simple.
I guess the Flight and Engine Control Software @Heater helped to develop for Boing and got paid for to doing so is not Free (capital F) at all.
@Heater,
Only problem is, that despite everyone doing the right thing at the time, we end up in a situation where MS has global dominance of the computing landscape. The world finds itself in a situation of dependence on some company over which they have no control and which for most is in a foreign country.
This is not acceptable.
Slowly I understand where you are getting at.
George W. Bush once claimed that one of the problems of America was that "most of our imports come out of foreign country's".
It is called globalization. A common problem nowadays. Stuff is produced somewhere and shipped to get mounted somewhere else to be a product of whom then?
-Technically I am able to recreate source out of every Net Assembly. It does not help me much since I am not smart enough to understand the source compared to the whole project.
-Technically I am able to get the complete source of say Debian XX. It does not help me much since I am not smart enough to understand the source compared to the whole project.
So on the end it is a question of TRUST. Either believe that Debian is OK for your use, or not. Same with Windows. Believe it or don't. Neither me nor you can understand a source like windows or Linux completely. Nor does anybody else. The common believe now seems to be that Free and/or Open Software leads to more secure Software since anybody can look at it. But who does? Who is able to?
I am pretty sure that the code you wrote for Boing went thru strict company rules and was reviewed by other paid programmers bound to company regulations and done by professional people knowing their job. No chance for you to put some backdoor or easter egg into your code displaying some funny message to the pilots at your birthday, for example.
On the other hand is Linux and other Free Software. Anybody can see it and anybody can commit. Basically. There is for sure some code review done up the tree. Done by engaged hobbyists first. Later on even Linux comes down to paid professional at different company's like Suse, Debian, Novell, SUN you name the others. All of them pay people to provide software to support Linux. Are them people working for - say - Novell more or less trustworthy then those working for MS? Why?
I have listen a lot to Richard Stallman. Not as much fun as Stubornella and CSS3. I agree with a lot of what he is saying. But it is like with Forth. I can not wrap my head around it and find out how Me, Myself and I will get paid for the work we do.
Just coming back from some time travel to COBOL-Land. Things where different then. A lot of them systems are running since 20-30 years now. Mostly unchanged. Just back from the Job. They even had those chain like line printers still running. Amazingly fast and loud...
Enjoy!
Mike
So do you trust Oracle more then MS Sql-Server? Why?
A young potatohead did, in fact, copy, use, learn a lot of CAD software and paid nothing. And in one of those cases, performed the assembly code work needed. (and didn't share that one)
Some few years later, came to a place where manufacturing and that understanding paid off, and some CAD got sold. A user presented real value.
Some time after that, an opportunity to actually trade, train, support CAD cam up, and now that same user presented value greately exceeding even the most optimistic opportunity value loss estimate possible.
That young potatohead had zero dollars too.
The overall net value was a pure gain for all infringed. Interesting isn't it?
Honestly, that value is an easy 7, possibly 8 figures too. Not small change. This kind of thing does not happen with physical things, but it can, does, and will continue with information.
Again, I do not condone any of it, just being honest. Now I have left that niche, but I can tell you among my peers, an extremely high number took the same path. Net gain, but difficult to sort out. I can also tell you very aggressive anti-piracy efforts today blunt the value potential of the same exact programs. It is notable how much. So they feel better about it, but they also are now leaving rather significant amounts of money on the table too. They don't really want to know how large.
Very soon, the business model will be to give it away, gratis. Just provide your name and basic info. What will be revenue generating? I'll leave that off the table for now.
Ask most of Silicon Valley how they got it done. It will ring true to this little tale for sure. More interestingly, ask Bill Gates why he too so long actually preventing Windows piracy. Users is why. He needed more users than revenue. No joke. By playing a longer game, Bill converted ALL his users, Pirates or not, into dollars.
Users, of any kind have value potential, which makes these discussions far more subtle in the dynamics that it would appear using physical analogies.
A young potatohead did, in fact, copy, use, learn a lot of CAD software and paid nothing. And in one of those cases, performed the assembly code work needed. (and didn't share that one)
Some few years later, came to a place where manufacturing and that understanding paid off, and some CAD got sold. A user presented real value.
Some time after that, an opportunity to actually trade, train, support CAD cam up, and now that same user presented value greately exceeding even the most optimistic opportunity value loss estimate possible.
That young potatohead had zero dollars too.
The overall net value was a pure gain for all infringed. Interesting isn't it?
Honestly, that value is an easy 7, possibly 8 figures too. Not small change. This kind of thing does not happen with physical things, but it can, does, and will continue with information.
Again, I do not condone any of it, just being honest. Now I have left that niche, but I can tell you among my peers, an extremely high number took the same path. Net gain, but difficult to sort out. I can also tell you very aggressive anti-piracy efforts today blunt the value potential of the same exact programs. It is notable how much. So they feel better about it, but they also are now leaving rather significant amounts of money on the table too. They don't really want to know how large.
Very soon, the business model will be to give it away, gratis. Just provide your name and basic info. What will be revenue generating? I'll leave that off the table for now.
Ask most of Silicon Valley how they got it done. It will ring true to this little tale for sure. More interestingly, ask Bill Gates why he too so long actually preventing Windows piracy. Users is why. He needed more users than revenue. No joke. By playing a longer game, Bill converted ALL his users, Pirates or not, into dollars.
Users, of any kind have value potential, which makes these discussions far more subtle in the dynamics that it would appear using physical analogies.
I think stories like this are why many companies offer their expensive products to students at much lower prices.
Took a generation of people to grow up for it to happen. Early on, that was seen as a pure loss, unworthy investment. So people did it anyway. And it paid off too. I engaged in this advocacy relentlessly in the 90's to largely deaf ears. One company listened, and they have a very, very large market share today. Good for them. The vast majority wouldn't hear of it. Interesting. Some of them are gone today.
Today, yes. Student software can be had for $100 or so for some period of use, say a year.
Back in the day, I would have had to spend $100K to learn what I did. That's more than a reasonable law degree back then, with bar exam! Of course, the chance of that was nil, so there you go. (and I think I would have been good too) All I really had to do was collect parts, assemble, then invest food and time. Nice. And again, no regrets as well as no endorsements. The world isn't always a pretty, cut 'n dried place.
Today, a student can spend a few thousand and get a similar exposure. Cool beans.
Not one year ago, this question was asked on Quora. A place filled with professionals of all kinds, and a lot of software people in particular. The majority answer? Do it, don't talk about it, be smart (virtual machines, no network, etc...), get the skills, get work, change the world and pay up and forward the minute you can. Notable, if a bit disconcerting to some. Empowering to others.
And this happens every day. One stand out is Oracle. Do what you want, costs nothing but your time. And as soon as it is of value, pay up. I find that very reasonable. Lots of Oracle experts out there too. Funny how that works, isn't it?
In the developed world, the student fees are reasonable. For a person in the situation I was in? Still out of reach. Wouldn't change a thing today. And in those parts of the world where it really matters? Nothing has changed at all.
What I really am after here isn't some justification. That's just reality. Put people out there, with some constraints, and they can, will, do make choices. That's just how it is. The upside is a majority have good intent and this stuff works out.
No, what I'm after is the idea that law is best when it resonates with human behavior, and that it makes good sense for all involved. That won't happen when we ignore very significant value and many of the dynamics involved, that's all. The tale above serves to illustrate some of why that is and how that might be.
And if we aren't careful, we blunt open efforts in an attempt to secure the interests as seen through often antiquated information and incomplete observations. The person who chooses to invest in users, just as Microsoft did, Autodesk did, and many others did, needs to be able to do that, and both those entities in particular turned a seriously blind eye to copies, knowing darn well that when skills were developed and mapped onto their information products they would be able to sell them lots of things and eventually get revenue due to lock in and cost of change.
The authors who choose to publish mixed model need to be able to do that too. Torrents of their work need to be OK, as do the sites where they invite people to read them, leave a tip, or tell a friend, or do a translation, give a recommendation, whatever.
And those of us authoring open software need to be able to write our software, pool it, and empower more of us to use, learn, do with it.
Go too far with the word "theft" and many of those things can be constructed as to be theft of opportunity for competitors. "Your honor, he's giving it away!!" No joke, and we don't want that with information, but we do want it with physical goods, and we have law for that, which sort of works when we sort of enforce it. (dumping)
So that's it. I'll move on, but it's infringement, not theft for very good, material reasons. Way too often glossed over and framed in terms that are again, antiquated and or incomplete with the potential to harm all of us.
Yes, a lot of content creators see it that way. I'm one too, and I used to see it that way, and no longer do.
You still have the opportunity to sell it to them, and they the opportunity to pay as well as recommend, endorse, etc...
I really can't agree. When you have sites like ScribD, which built its business on piracy (they've since "cleaned up" their act), the general public doesn't know the free copies are not legitimate. These days if you Google most any book, after Amazon's listings you are very likely to then get dozens and even hundred of links to "file lockers" with pirated content. These operate by paying a small fee to third-parties to upload content. They make their money selling so-called premium access. Because it is so rampant the general public thinks it's normal business.
I am not saying you can't make some sort of income, but you're missing the point: The Internet has created a mindset that not only allows piracy, but explains it away as normal business.
I've been on many sites run by authors who have addressed this situation with zillions of Google ads, even popups or come-ons to sign up to a newsletter for spamming. That's just not something I want to do. It isn't the type of Web site I enjoy visiting. I'd rather find a completely new line of work if this is what it comes down to.
I *have* sold printed and signed copies of my books, and the other things you've mentioned. I've self-published some titles since 1985. These things simply can't be relied upon to pay the rent. It's extra cash for the little things, but it's not a livelihood.
I think stories like this are why many companies offer their expensive products to students at much lower prices.
More likely they know a greater exposure of their products to individuals about to enter the workplace will create a greater business-level demand. Adobe knows this full well. With their licensing servers it's not easy to pirate their software*, yet they offer pretty good student discounts. Every student that gets and learns Photoshop is one more user in the corporate world. Adobe still charges good money for non educational users for their suite. Their cloud ends up being $600 a year. That's a good chunk of change.
It's historically been business users, not students, who are the biggest pirates, though usually this is in the form of sharing one bought license across many PCs. With this logic, they'd should be the ones to get the biggest discounts.
(*An exception to this is keygen utilities that are almost always rootkit installers in disguise. They may or may not work, but even if they do, anybody running one these on their PC deserves the headache that comes.)
The first two feature works one can buy in print. Amazon carries the first one for $14. And that's a ways down the page. The majority of the other links are controlled by the author, which get used for a variety of purposes, not just a mess of ads. Various advocacy works are there, info about the author, translations, transcodes and an opportunity to purchase the book is there, with the free PDF serving to drive a lot of traffic to the purchase links, without having to pay for Google ads too. Notable. And people who want print, want print. Those who don't, may spring for a well formatted, searchable, useful e-book, or they might just want a PDF and go too.
Both authors sell mixed mode, through sellers of various kinds, using content marketing to establish their channels as the distribution authority, and they include links in their texts to further reinforce that however the material is obtained. They know how to maximize users.
Well known here, isn't doing that. Would be very interesting to compare strategies one day. Notably, the first "free" links are to entities outside the privvy of the author, where in the former cases, those links are actually harder to find, due to the authority / content marketing dynamics.
So, is that "normal" business? You tell me. I think it's perfectly normal, and I seek these people out and favor them for purchases, because I see they get it.
I happen to know the first two authors well enough to know their sales are significant. One is notable for their legal status and political advocacy. The other was largely unknown, applied the same strategies, and got established in very similar ways.
Not for everybody, but definitely viable and practical. And it's again, a shining example of how it's not cut n' dried as in somebody reads something and it equates to no value, when it most clearly does. The problem is how to understand, and benefit from that value. It's different.
This shows a GROSS misunderstanding of how those who depend on distributed sales make their living. Let me set you straight with an example: me.
It's true that I have all my original manuscripts and artwork for every book I've published, and distributing a digital copy does not take these materials away. But if someone obtains a copy of my work that is not legitimate, I have not been paid for my time, effort, skill, and knowledge. What I lose is the INCOME I should have received from it. This is very tangible, real, and measurable. The person has effectively stolen money out of my pocket.
It is simply naive and ignorant to think that because digital copies can be freely made that the author or creator of the work is not harmed by the copying. It is not the physical result of the creativity that is the issue. That's worth maybe 45 cents in paper and printing. What's been taken, without compensation, is the value of the content. I can assure you money is quite physical. In this case it IS stealing, plain and simple.
Agreed.
Note in the article I posted the percentage of illegal XP copies in circulation...
Comments
Yes indeed, people may have good reasons for sticking with the MS Office suite... in particular on the Excel side if an enterprise has a lot invested in it.
I use the LIbre Office spreadsheet and have done so for about 5 years now for all and everything.. especially income tax return preparation. If you don't need all the bells and whistles, it works fine.
While one can say the Linux market is so small, one really doesn't know what the reality of the Linux market share might be. Linux works extremely well on older 2nd hand machines with less resources. And the Linux/Unix servers using Samba actually provide an office setting with are more stable and faster NTFS file server than Microsoft's own product.
UNIX/Linux OSes are here to stay and provide much of the backbone of the WWW. China seems to prefer Linux. And much of the world that remains impoverished might find Linux more accessible as it does support all the languages available through Unicode. Ubuntu comes from the South African for 'human kindness' and seems to expect to fill the gap at the bottom end of world wealth.
Richard Stallman extreme? Seems so at first. I have been taken aback by his conclusions many times. I have tried to fault his logic over the years and failed so far. You have to admit that everything he predicted that would happen as a consequence of closed source proprietary software did happen.
Indeed. Do note however its not about the price. It's not about being cheap skate and saving a few bucks over buying a commercial OS offering. When the FSF says "free" they are talking about liberty not money. The usually use a capital "F" to emphasis this. It's all about your ownership of your machines, your control of your life. Who as the power. Yep it comes down politics. But that Freedom is also a very practical and economically valuable thing.
Microsoft is ACTUALLY listening to its customers? That is a switch!
If they are truly listening... We want XP (just like Coke offered Coke Classic). Offer several operating systems, not just one! Duh!!!
And zillions of people have complained for years about wanting collapsible favorites back (when adding new favorites) in I.E.
This has the great advantages of.
1) Allowing all those users of XP or whatever to continue with it. If there is enough interest companies will form around supporting it.
2) It avoids the long and certain decline and painful death that is coming to MS as a company.
3) All the world will get to be able to run Word and such on Linux.
4) It would be a net gain to the US economy, indeed the worlds, economy as it's not necessary to pump money into MS coffers that is only ever used to create new shiny versions of useless stuff that nobody wants.
5) The share holders could reinvest there money into that newly stimulated economy and stimulate further creation of actual value.
Looking at the long term it's cheaper if they just call it a day now.
I too am touchy about the use of the word "theft" where we really should say "infringe" We have two words because there are real differences between information and matter, though some physicists are beginning to believe matter may just be information, but I digress.
For something to be theft, there needs to be a material loss of property. In the case of a software, or more generally, an information product, this does not happen when a copy is made.
In the case of a BASIC, the original author still has their BASIC, they still have all the rights associated with that BASIC, including the opportunity to sell a copy of their BASIC to anyone, even the person who made a copy. And I'm writing that in the context of the current legal landscape, not the one back then.
Unethical to make copies?
Yeah, mostly.
In the case of Bill's BASIC, it was. And it was because I suspect those people understood Bill's intent, and just as a matter of human decency, should have honored it. It was legal not to however.
However, the ethics blur quite easily. Say I own an information product distributed on some fragile media. I decide to archive it. That's ethical, though not always legal to do, but it's mostly legal to do. Another ethics question? Sure. Say my original gets stolen, now somebody else has stolen some media from me, and in doing so, infringed on the right of the creator of said media by using it, among other things, and I am left with an ethical, and in most cases legal backup, so do I continue to use? Legally? Ethically? Yes.
Now the same scenario with a different intent. I decide to flat out give Heater my original and continue to use my backup. Legal? Yes in nearly all cases. Ethical? Maybe. Say I loan media to friends to cut costs. A group each buys a title, views, swaps with friends, and everybody sees a lot of movies. Legal? Yeah. Ethical? Absolutely. Say those people make backups. The original purchaser does it, in case the movie doesn't come back. One who has a loan does it, in case of theft or loss or damage. Etc...
Now take away the media and consider information products alone, and those scenarios. The word "theft" cannot even be used anymore.
So there are new scenarios. One of us gets an information product that doesn't work well with our device. So we transcode it somehow. I have it on good authority right from the RIAA that it's OK to do this. But it's making copies. Mix tapes today often involve just combining information products into a new one and then flat out distributing that to another person. That's generally OK too, though not strictly legal in most cases.
Now, that one is very interesting!
Go back to the BASIC, and somebody makes a copy to understand it, perhaps write their own so that they and their friends can just ignore Bill and his painful rantings. They look at it, but not actually use it, and then author one themselves. Today, we have a growing mess of software and business process patents aimed at discouraging that activity. IMHO, that whole class of rights and regulations is entirely unethical.
And there is a nice solution today, and that is to deliver software as a service. Then people don't even get the software in the first place. Trust me, most of this conversation will rapidly move to data products, and there was Stallman way back when, who knew better, and also discussed data, not executables in the same kind of context. Lessig and the late Aaron Schwartz, and some others, worked on Creative Commons to flesh out answers to what Stallman understood early on as a very serious infringment on our basic rights as people.
Now, two wrongs don't make a right, but let's go with ethics one more time.
FREE THE MOUSE
That's an aging bumper sticker on my seriously old and crappy '89 Corolla. I get a question on that bumper sticker once a month minimum. Larry Lessig thought that one up, and it's been the best sticker ever. It's the best, because I get to talk about a theft and a very serious infringment on our rights as people.
Every time Mickey Mouse comes up for expiration as a copyrighted product, the Disney company spends a lot of money, and gathers their heavy friends and their money to get copyright extended so that doesn't happen.
A little trip back in time shows Disney got their start by making new, derivative works from those of the Brothers Grimm. When the Brothers Grimm authored, copyright was 28 years, and it was a little as 14, both terms seen as adequate protection and incentive to produce creative information products for the general good. We have a richer society when we do this, and that was all well understood.
Now, after some extensions, Mickey Mouse won't come up again for discussion until long after most of us are gone, dead, don't care. Ever notice Betty Boop, Felix the Cat and some others actually did? And what happened? Those have been incorporated into works of various kinds, as have lots of things from a domain we call the Public Domain.
By extending copyright, Disney denies us the rich Public Domain which makes creating new, compelling information products more difficult, and the product of that is a lot of retreads of existing ones, owned by corporations, who exploit this to great profit, while frequently working to dodge basic obligations to the very society that brings them wealth in the first place.
FREE THE MOUSE
When I explain this to people, they get it. And it's interesting! "So, is that why we keep seeing the same things over and over?" or my favorite "Why were they allowed to build a big thing from the works of others, but nobody today can build in the same way?" Yeah, they get it when they ask that one.
Those things were all legal to do, but totally unethical. This blade cuts on both sides, with Stallman's ideas right there in the middle, entirely material to the discussion, and given how sharp the blade really is, and the strength of those who wield it against ordinary people and how they use and trade information products today, being a little extreme is a perfectly fine thing as that extremism has inspired many great people to contribute to the common good and preserve a measure of information freedom we see play out every day, even right here.
IMHO, you don't have to like Stallman, but it's very difficult not to recognize his contribution to the information environment today as positive.
Regarding commercial software and open alternatives: Say I have older hardware, or some entity decides my hardware isn't good for me anymore and they would prefer I buy new hardware. Having the ability to pry into software, write my own software, etc... means I have a much greater ability to call the shots on my hardware use, and not be over exploited by those who would rather profit from that control. Stallman is entirely right about this.
Say everybody is using something like Microsoft Office. Once everybody is using it, what exactly is the incentive to actually improve it as opposed to modify it to generate revenue by making it more difficult for people to communicate with it? Having Open Code out there presents as a nice check and balance to that scenario. If commercial software makers actually do seek over exploitation, they know people can move to alternatives easily. If those alternatives were not there, I suspect Microsoft Office would be far more painful to work with and or use as we do today, and it would be expensive. A lot more expensive. Why not?
Finally there is the value in the general escalation of technology. Most of what Microsoft Office does today is easy. High School kids can author software that performs those functions. When people can communicate and leverage their work, as they can with the body of open code out there, getting things done does not always require commercial interests. This general dynamic puts an onus on those who do sell software to actually add value to warrant the cost of said software; otherwise, people will just make their own software as they should. That is what Linux + GNU basically is.
Oh, one more thing about information differences. Material things actually cost money, take up space, etc... If I were to make a garage, where you could put material things in there, all our friends could too, the garage would be filled with lots of useful things. But, when one of us takes a useful thing out, the garage is a little more empty. These costs show up as rentals, or we just buy our own things, or we make loans among ourselves. Copying physical things is very expensive.
With information, such a collection presents the same awesome value to every contributor! The whole has more value than the parts do! I once had to explain this to a committee in Oregon discussing software and it was amazing to see legislators minds get it, light bulbs turn on, like "Oh! It works LIKE THAT?"
Theft isn't a part of it. Infringement is, and we have to be careful, very careful, about what we say is infringing, or we deny ourselves a very potent, common good type resource we might seriously benefit from. And again, there is Stallman way ahead of everybody else, those clear, extreme positions carving this out for us, painful as that may be.
Whilst I agree with most of potatohead's essay above I have always had a problem with the explanation that copyright infringement is not "stealing" because the original owner still has what he had before, the "thief" has a copy. Suggesting that nobody is deprived by copying software and other media. Suggesting that because those bits are not physical material it is somehow different.
I look at it more like this:
There is a train that travels from here to where I want to be ten times every day. Normally it has many free seats. So, if I ride on that train to where I want to be and I don't pay for a ticket there is no harm done. The train is going to go that way if I ride on it or not. I have not deprived anyone of a seat by riding on it. Ergo it is no harm if I don't pay. It makes no difference to anybody. Right?
(Let's ignore the little bit of energy the train needs to carry me for now)
So what is wrong with this train free loader argument?
Well, obviously that railway line was built at great expense. Also the locomotives and carriages and stations etc. Also the driver and staff work there and need money.
The cost of all that is borne by the passengers buying their tickets every day.
Clearly if the passengers don't pay the whole enterprise fails and there is no more train service. If half the passengers don't pay the ticket price would have to go up to make it work. And so on.
So by freeloading a ride on that train I would effectively be "stealing" from all the other passengers who have to pay more or end up with no train service.
This all sounds more like an argument as to why copying software is "stealing". If someone has invested a huge amount of time and effort into a program and paid many developers that cost has to be recouped from somewhere. By copying that code for free I would be getting something that all the other users had paid for. If nobody paid there would be no product. If few people want to pay the price has to be higher to make the product viable. In effect by free loading I am "stealing" from all the other customers.
On the other hand...I can argue that all the free loaders of MS products, for example, have vastly increased MicroSoft's market over the years by virtue of network effects. But that is a whole other essay.
On the third other hand...I can argue that every body has a moral duty to copy everything all the time. and that is another essay as well.
What did those Vaudeville guy used to say? "I never heard a joke I didn't steal"?
If folks did "steal" hooks from previous songs, there would be no such thing as pop music.
If folks did not "steal" words that embody thoughts from folks around them, there would be no such thing as language.
Of course, if anybody steals my dessert, it may result in fisticuffs.
I pose the explanation I do because I would not like to see new law where we have already defined things.
Software does have different dynamics than physical goods do. It is very important we recognize that.
A train operates on a track and at a cost that makes theft of service material in ways it often isn't when software is used or copied. That difference is why we have the word infringement.
"Theft", "theft of service", "infringement", "fraud", quite so. The law has a thousand ways to describe what it is you did to get what the law says you should not have.
No wonder people give up and end up talking about "stealing" and "piracy".
I don't think my train analogy is a bad start. Clearly big and complex code is expensive to create. Like a railway system. It gets financed by small amounts of money from many users. Clearly Bill wanted those hobbyists to pay for whatever benefit they got from his BASIC so he could use the money to go on and make more big and expensive software. Bill was true to his word and did that. Had everyone free loaded back in the day he could not have done so.
Software is different as you say. For example if a million people have paid a dollar which allowed a million dollars to be spent on developing some program that they all wanted. Then when the job is done, everyone is happy, everyone got what they wanted. The developers had a salary and the users get a useful program. It was a fair exchange all around.
So what then if a billion free loaders get copies of that program for nothing?
That takes nothing from anyone. It does not change the fact that the million original customers were happy with the deal they got.
Should those billion free loaders also have to pay a dollar? As in the first deal. That's crazy because now the software developer has a billion dollars for work he has not done.
Effectively the developer is now making a huge killing on the investment of the original few. That looks unethical to me.
Given the huge amounts of money MS has I suspect that is what has happened.
be careful, your Forum Bot is arguing why Bill Gates was correct to do what he did.
by the way ... that third hand you tried to use is called 'the gripping hand' ... excellent book by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.
Enjoy!
Mike
In fact, ignoring some rather big details which we can skip over for now, I might be prepared to say that actually Bill Gates was correct in what he did.
Also his customers made wise an logical decisions.
And all the developers of software for Windows made the right decision.
Only problem is, that despite everyone doing the right thing at the time, we end up in a situation where MS has global dominance of the computing landscape. The world finds itself in a situation of dependence on some company over which they have no control and which for most is in a foreign country.
This is not acceptable.
Whilst I think people have every right to copy XP, for example, which they have paid for already and which they need to keep something running. And they should not be bullied into upgrading. I think it's a bad idea to copy any MS products. That just perpetuates the problem described above.
Luckily, slowly the world has started to understand this an do something about it.
Thanks for "the gripping hand" reference. I have to check that out.
I always assumed that there are 2 concurrent teams working on MS Windows for Desktop. Kind of odd and even. One is usable, the next one not. Think Win98 and Win98ME. XP and Vista. Win7 and Win8.x.
So I hope Win9 will just come out as a Servicepack for Win8.x. Odd name for a Servicepack, but who knows.
Developing Software for mostly small company's I have to support a lot of different Windows Versions but have never found any company using Linux as Desktop. None. Server side yes. Some. But Client side? Nope.
As for free in free like a Bier - yes a lot of the small company's I worked for never paid MS any penny. From Desktop to Server, Office, Photoshop, AutoCat, whatever. Everything gets cracked and installed. Small company's simply can not afford prices like that. Sometimes even to make it easier for the Sys-Admins. Buy a PC from whoever with WinOs and the next step is to replace OS and Applications in one step from an image. Done. Who cares about it?
So @Heaters first other hand comment is absolutely true. MS increased the Market Share by making it easy to copy their products. But still sold them and kept a legal handle to hit those hard who overdid it.
And doing that there where able to provide good paying jobs to a lot of people over a lot of years. Programmer like me and you, so to speak.
Sure Bill Gates did become amazingly rich compared to other people doing the same stuff at the same time. So did Charlie Chaplin. Is it wrong? Am I not allowed to watch the great dictator anymore?
Enjoy!
Mike
This shows a GROSS misunderstanding of how those who depend on distributed sales make their living. Let me set you straight with an example: me.
It's true that I have all my original manuscripts and artwork for every book I've published, and distributing a digital copy does not take these materials away. But if someone obtains a copy of my work that is not legitimate, I have not been paid for my time, effort, skill, and knowledge. What I lose is the INCOME I should have received from it. This is very tangible, real, and measurable. The person has effectively stolen money out of my pocket.
It is simply naive and ignorant to think that because digital copies can be freely made that the author or creator of the work is not harmed by the copying. It is not the physical result of the creativity that is the issue. That's worth maybe 45 cents in paper and printing. What's been taken, without compensation, is the value of the content. I can assure you money is quite physical. In this case it IS stealing, plain and simple.
What you're talking about is creative license, not the entire (or even substantial portion) of the original. If an artist literally steals a hook, verse, or melody from another artist, and claims it as their own, that's called shameful. If they adapt these things, especially with acknowledgement, that's professional courtesy.
We are all inspired and influenced by someone else. It's how the arts are built. But at some point, left unchecked the inspiration can become downright plagiarism.
Bill Gates becomming personlly wealthy is not what this is about.
You have quoted me and then said "This shows a GROSS misunderstanding..." but actually what I said agrees with you !
But whilst we are here....
Let's say someone like you spends a year researching and writing a book.
It get published and sells OK and after a while you have received what might be regarded as a reasonable salary for a years work in royalties.
Clearly if everyone free loads your book you don't get your fair salary.
But what if this book becomes really popular and sells really well?
Now you can get ten years worth of salary for that one years work. Or more. Or perhaps you die and your family and whoever gets their hands on the copyright can have a good income from it. For decades and decades....
Does that make any sense at all?
We all wish for the payday, but they're rare. Best selling books are the exception, not the rule. Out of tens of thousands of books published each year only a handful make the top money. Everything else is what they call "midlist." They sell, but not in great numbers. The result is an income like anyone else's. We have to keep working to pay bills. Most authors and artists do not retire until they are unable to work -- for one thing, being freelance there's no such thing as a company pension after 30 years.
Now, a person could say, "Move with the times! Publish online!" Far easier said than done to make a living. The real money online is made from large ad networks. Authors who've tried affiliate sales on their sites quickly discover they net just a few bucks per month, sometimes nothing. There are a few -- VERY few -- independent content creators who have leveraged these ad networks and make decent money. For example, several video bloggers on YouTube make in excess of a million dollars a year. But most people just make pennies, if that.
Stallman is all about the freedom of choice. The Internet groupthink is exactly the opposite, though Stallman has never explicitly admitted this (he implicitly does so by crafting a license that takes experienced lawyers to decipher it all). The "Internet user" -- as an anonymous group -- has taken real choice away, and insist on theirs only. There is no "freedom" for the person who created the work. It's a one way deal, no negotiations.
To answer the question about the value of residual copyright: if your work is pirated, how much do you think the copyrights are worth? At a certain point publishers remove books from their system, and place them out of print. They no longer sell. Technical books, especially, have a limited life span. My first books were on Lotus 1-2-3, the original Macintosh, WordPerfect for DOS, and similar topics. Exactly how much do you think the copyright on these books is worth?
(As a point of interest, I GIVE away the content to my old WPDOS book. It was my one really big seller, and I made my money on it. Alas, this was over 25 year ago, and the money is long spent. The difference here is that *I* chose to offer it free. The decision wasn't made for me by some uploader to ScribD.)
Yes, life is different for properties like the Ian Fleming or Agatha Christie estates, and those copyrights retain their value. But it should be obvious these are like the megamillion lottery winners. What about everyone else playing the scratch and sniffs?
Just one big money making machine. Wall Street wants to see the money so the stock can rise to the sky and all the executives with stock and options can retire early.
If they made it an open program, they would welcome the billion users. If they made it closed, and denied the billion, they may well see a fraction of the billion write an open one anyway.
When said program needs attention, fundraising that from a billion is a much easier proposition.
This goes lots of ways, not all bad.
@Gordon
Yes, a lot of content creators see it that way. I'm one too, and I used to see it that way, and no longer do.
You still have the opportunity to sell it to them, and they the opportunity to pay as well as recommend, endorse, etc...
Then ther is the matter of whether or not they were capable of paying, and or a prospect of any real kind prior.
When this infringement happens, there are a lot of potentials, none absolute, all difficult to quantify.
For example, opportunity cost claims. Those are generally valued as the revenue divided by the risk, or put another way, real nature of the opportunity being claimed as a loss.
If a poor person reads it, and were unable to pay, your opportunity claim is basically valued at zero. Now you are still miffed because they used it, but you didn't actually lose anything, and in fact now have a user where you did not before.
That user as an asset could present new, qualified opportunity which then actually would have value potential you would not have had otherwise.
Interesting isn't it?
There are authors I know who are doing very well with those kinds of realizations, which mind you, only are realized when we treat information differently from physical things, which was my point in denying the word theft as being applicable.
And to be clear, I do not endorse this kind of thing happening in most cases. But when it does happen, ore more importantly when people are seeking ways to make it happen, those are opportunities as much as they are annoyances.
Here is another way it goes:
Want a signed, or printed, official copy? Pay for it, because there are physical costs. If somebody wants the information, give it to them, and let them print, bind, whatever.
While giving it to them, collect data, show an AD, and ask them for a contribution. And make doing that considerably easier than tracking down torrents, and or risking malware, etc...
Further, say you have demand for other languages, devices, formats. Others will do this for you for nothing, and they will give you their work products to distribute too.
Now that easier than piracy access is generating value and opportunity, arguably of the sort not in the equation otherwise, unless you were to make very significant economic investments, which would also likely dilute your margins, which is precisely why they don't get done. But your fans and users will, because they want to add value, share, promote, and so forth.
Whether or not you agree with any of that doesn't change the dynamics in play with information, nor the validity of the business models I juat hinted at here.
That those models work, and generate income, and make creative information works viable means the conversation about opportunity losses isn't as cut 'n dried as many of us want it to be, and that too is my point.
If we recognize the actual dynamics and use those actual words, we will settle in on actual law we can life with and attempting to treat information the same way we treat physical things won't get us there, and is arguably more expensive for all of us too.
Yes. Thanks for putting that out. It is as simple as you said.
I guess the Flight and Engine Control Software @Heater helped to develop for Boing and got paid for to doing so is not Free (capital F) at all.
@Heater,
Slowly I understand where you are getting at.
George W. Bush once claimed that one of the problems of America was that "most of our imports come out of foreign country's".
It is called globalization. A common problem nowadays. Stuff is produced somewhere and shipped to get mounted somewhere else to be a product of whom then?
-Technically I am able to recreate source out of every Net Assembly. It does not help me much since I am not smart enough to understand the source compared to the whole project.
-Technically I am able to get the complete source of say Debian XX. It does not help me much since I am not smart enough to understand the source compared to the whole project.
So on the end it is a question of TRUST. Either believe that Debian is OK for your use, or not. Same with Windows. Believe it or don't. Neither me nor you can understand a source like windows or Linux completely. Nor does anybody else. The common believe now seems to be that Free and/or Open Software leads to more secure Software since anybody can look at it. But who does? Who is able to?
I am pretty sure that the code you wrote for Boing went thru strict company rules and was reviewed by other paid programmers bound to company regulations and done by professional people knowing their job. No chance for you to put some backdoor or easter egg into your code displaying some funny message to the pilots at your birthday, for example.
On the other hand is Linux and other Free Software. Anybody can see it and anybody can commit. Basically. There is for sure some code review done up the tree. Done by engaged hobbyists first. Later on even Linux comes down to paid professional at different company's like Suse, Debian, Novell, SUN you name the others. All of them pay people to provide software to support Linux. Are them people working for - say - Novell more or less trustworthy then those working for MS? Why?
I have listen a lot to Richard Stallman. Not as much fun as Stubornella and CSS3. I agree with a lot of what he is saying. But it is like with Forth. I can not wrap my head around it and find out how Me, Myself and I will get paid for the work we do.
Just coming back from some time travel to COBOL-Land. Things where different then. A lot of them systems are running since 20-30 years now. Mostly unchanged. Just back from the Job. They even had those chain like line printers still running. Amazingly fast and loud...
Enjoy!
Mike
So do you trust Oracle more then MS Sql-Server? Why?
A young potatohead did, in fact, copy, use, learn a lot of CAD software and paid nothing. And in one of those cases, performed the assembly code work needed. (and didn't share that one)
Some few years later, came to a place where manufacturing and that understanding paid off, and some CAD got sold. A user presented real value.
Some time after that, an opportunity to actually trade, train, support CAD cam up, and now that same user presented value greately exceeding even the most optimistic opportunity value loss estimate possible.
That young potatohead had zero dollars too.
The overall net value was a pure gain for all infringed. Interesting isn't it?
Honestly, that value is an easy 7, possibly 8 figures too. Not small change. This kind of thing does not happen with physical things, but it can, does, and will continue with information.
Again, I do not condone any of it, just being honest. Now I have left that niche, but I can tell you among my peers, an extremely high number took the same path. Net gain, but difficult to sort out. I can also tell you very aggressive anti-piracy efforts today blunt the value potential of the same exact programs. It is notable how much. So they feel better about it, but they also are now leaving rather significant amounts of money on the table too. They don't really want to know how large.
Very soon, the business model will be to give it away, gratis. Just provide your name and basic info. What will be revenue generating? I'll leave that off the table for now.
Ask most of Silicon Valley how they got it done. It will ring true to this little tale for sure. More interestingly, ask Bill Gates why he too so long actually preventing Windows piracy. Users is why. He needed more users than revenue. No joke. By playing a longer game, Bill converted ALL his users, Pirates or not, into dollars.
Users, of any kind have value potential, which makes these discussions far more subtle in the dynamics that it would appear using physical analogies.
Took a generation of people to grow up for it to happen. Early on, that was seen as a pure loss, unworthy investment. So people did it anyway. And it paid off too. I engaged in this advocacy relentlessly in the 90's to largely deaf ears. One company listened, and they have a very, very large market share today. Good for them. The vast majority wouldn't hear of it. Interesting. Some of them are gone today.
Today, yes. Student software can be had for $100 or so for some period of use, say a year.
Back in the day, I would have had to spend $100K to learn what I did. That's more than a reasonable law degree back then, with bar exam! Of course, the chance of that was nil, so there you go. (and I think I would have been good too) All I really had to do was collect parts, assemble, then invest food and time. Nice. And again, no regrets as well as no endorsements. The world isn't always a pretty, cut 'n dried place.
Today, a student can spend a few thousand and get a similar exposure. Cool beans.
Not one year ago, this question was asked on Quora. A place filled with professionals of all kinds, and a lot of software people in particular. The majority answer? Do it, don't talk about it, be smart (virtual machines, no network, etc...), get the skills, get work, change the world and pay up and forward the minute you can. Notable, if a bit disconcerting to some. Empowering to others.
And this happens every day. One stand out is Oracle. Do what you want, costs nothing but your time. And as soon as it is of value, pay up. I find that very reasonable. Lots of Oracle experts out there too. Funny how that works, isn't it?
In the developed world, the student fees are reasonable. For a person in the situation I was in? Still out of reach. Wouldn't change a thing today. And in those parts of the world where it really matters? Nothing has changed at all.
What I really am after here isn't some justification. That's just reality. Put people out there, with some constraints, and they can, will, do make choices. That's just how it is. The upside is a majority have good intent and this stuff works out.
No, what I'm after is the idea that law is best when it resonates with human behavior, and that it makes good sense for all involved. That won't happen when we ignore very significant value and many of the dynamics involved, that's all. The tale above serves to illustrate some of why that is and how that might be.
And if we aren't careful, we blunt open efforts in an attempt to secure the interests as seen through often antiquated information and incomplete observations. The person who chooses to invest in users, just as Microsoft did, Autodesk did, and many others did, needs to be able to do that, and both those entities in particular turned a seriously blind eye to copies, knowing darn well that when skills were developed and mapped onto their information products they would be able to sell them lots of things and eventually get revenue due to lock in and cost of change.
The authors who choose to publish mixed model need to be able to do that too. Torrents of their work need to be OK, as do the sites where they invite people to read them, leave a tip, or tell a friend, or do a translation, give a recommendation, whatever.
And those of us authoring open software need to be able to write our software, pool it, and empower more of us to use, learn, do with it.
Go too far with the word "theft" and many of those things can be constructed as to be theft of opportunity for competitors. "Your honor, he's giving it away!!" No joke, and we don't want that with information, but we do want it with physical goods, and we have law for that, which sort of works when we sort of enforce it. (dumping)
So that's it. I'll move on, but it's infringement, not theft for very good, material reasons. Way too often glossed over and framed in terms that are again, antiquated and or incomplete with the potential to harm all of us.
I really can't agree. When you have sites like ScribD, which built its business on piracy (they've since "cleaned up" their act), the general public doesn't know the free copies are not legitimate. These days if you Google most any book, after Amazon's listings you are very likely to then get dozens and even hundred of links to "file lockers" with pirated content. These operate by paying a small fee to third-parties to upload content. They make their money selling so-called premium access. Because it is so rampant the general public thinks it's normal business.
I am not saying you can't make some sort of income, but you're missing the point: The Internet has created a mindset that not only allows piracy, but explains it away as normal business.
I've been on many sites run by authors who have addressed this situation with zillions of Google ads, even popups or come-ons to sign up to a newsletter for spamming. That's just not something I want to do. It isn't the type of Web site I enjoy visiting. I'd rather find a completely new line of work if this is what it comes down to.
I *have* sold printed and signed copies of my books, and the other things you've mentioned. I've self-published some titles since 1985. These things simply can't be relied upon to pay the rent. It's extra cash for the little things, but it's not a livelihood.
More likely they know a greater exposure of their products to individuals about to enter the workplace will create a greater business-level demand. Adobe knows this full well. With their licensing servers it's not easy to pirate their software*, yet they offer pretty good student discounts. Every student that gets and learns Photoshop is one more user in the corporate world. Adobe still charges good money for non educational users for their suite. Their cloud ends up being $600 a year. That's a good chunk of change.
It's historically been business users, not students, who are the biggest pirates, though usually this is in the form of sharing one bought license across many PCs. With this logic, they'd should be the ones to get the biggest discounts.
(*An exception to this is keygen utilities that are almost always rootkit installers in disguise. They may or may not work, but even if they do, anybody running one these on their PC deserves the headache that comes.)
Among business users, a very large chunk of piracy incidents boil down to people looking for ways to improve their employment prospects.
Re: normal business
What's that these days? It's a serious question.
Honestly, it's as easy as searching on "title" + .pdf, or whatever format. Torrents are normally in the first page search results.
Here are three searches:
https://www.google.com/search?site=&source=hp&q=down+and+out+in+the+magic+kingdom+pdf&oq=down+and+out+in+the+magic+kingdom+pdf&gs_l=hp.3..0.2170.9137.0.9393.40.37.1.0.0.0.136.2897.31j6.37.0.chm_pq_qw%2Chmrde%3D0%2Chmffs%3D3%2Chmffl%3D3%2Chmffmp%3D0-6%2Chmffot%3Dtrue%2Chmnts%3D3000%2Chmqwl%3D4...0...1.1.51.hp..3.37.2808.0.dhIANOt5X3Q
https://www.google.com/search?site=&source=hp&q=free+culture+pdf&oq=free+culture+pdf&gs_l=hp.3..0j0i22i30l2.1510.17784.0.18103.25.20.5.0.0.0.117.1523.18j2.20.0.chm_pq_qw%2Chmrde%3D0%2Chmffs%3D3%2Chmffl%3D3%2Chmffmp%3D0-6%2Chmffot%3Dtrue%2Chmnts%3D3000%2Chmqwl%3D4...0...1.1.51.hp..2.23.1469.0.rVuXKl4GQkQ
The first two feature works one can buy in print. Amazon carries the first one for $14. And that's a ways down the page. The majority of the other links are controlled by the author, which get used for a variety of purposes, not just a mess of ads. Various advocacy works are there, info about the author, translations, transcodes and an opportunity to purchase the book is there, with the free PDF serving to drive a lot of traffic to the purchase links, without having to pay for Google ads too. Notable. And people who want print, want print. Those who don't, may spring for a well formatted, searchable, useful e-book, or they might just want a PDF and go too.
Both authors sell mixed mode, through sellers of various kinds, using content marketing to establish their channels as the distribution authority, and they include links in their texts to further reinforce that however the material is obtained. They know how to maximize users.
This author:
https://www.google.com/search?q=the+black+art+of+multiplatform+game+programming+pdf&oq=the+black+art+of+multiplatform+game+programming+pdf&gs_l=serp.3..0i20j0.4004.5376.0.5574.4.4.0.0.0.0.127.375.2j2.4.0.chm_pq_qw%2Chmrde%3D0%2Chmffs%3D3%2Chmffl%3D3%2Chmffmp%3D0-6%2Chmffot%3Dtrue%2Chmnts%3D3000%2Chmqwl%3D4...0...1.1.51.serp..0.4.374.ptJm4VjLdEU
Well known here, isn't doing that. Would be very interesting to compare strategies one day. Notably, the first "free" links are to entities outside the privvy of the author, where in the former cases, those links are actually harder to find, due to the authority / content marketing dynamics.
So, is that "normal" business? You tell me. I think it's perfectly normal, and I seek these people out and favor them for purchases, because I see they get it.
I happen to know the first two authors well enough to know their sales are significant. One is notable for their legal status and political advocacy. The other was largely unknown, applied the same strategies, and got established in very similar ways.
Not for everybody, but definitely viable and practical. And it's again, a shining example of how it's not cut n' dried as in somebody reads something and it equates to no value, when it most clearly does. The problem is how to understand, and benefit from that value. It's different.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems
Until that changes, Microsoft is really in a bad spot.
Agreed.
Note in the article I posted the percentage of illegal XP copies in circulation...