Copying, content and communism (Bill Gates on Who is a Communist

BBC ^ | Bill Thompson

[KwasiOwusu]

"This nation was built by free people who wanted to do their own thing....The Open Source community's philosophy and background is very similar"


Dream on.
This country was built by capitalists and entrepreneurs with a strong profit motive
Men like J P Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller etc etc.
They built this country. Strong visionary men who went out to build and to OWN what they built.
Every one of them stood for principles diametrically opposite to what the communist open source crazies stand for.

[B Knotts]

http://archive.salon.com/21st/feature/1998/01/cov_29feature.html

[kezekiel]

The cry "information just wants to be free" is at core an attack on intellectual property (private property) rights....

It was these kinds of thinkers that created the internet and the web. But why quibble.

[Reaganghost]

The patent and copyright provisions of US law and the Constitution were intended to offer monopoly rights to inventors and creators of intellectual property for a limited time to be determined by Congress. After the expiration of the protected period the monoply rights expire and become a part of the public domain in order to allow the public to improve and advance the original ideas of the inventor or creator.

How long should patents and copyrights protect is the heart of the question under discussion. Naturally creators and inventors want the protection to last as long as possible and the public should want it to last long enough to keep inventors and creators motivated to do their thing, but short enough to give everybody else a chance to get on the bandwagon and improve. Democrats, close cousins of communists, extended copyrights substantially beyond anything reasonable. That is why software authors are far more interested in copyright protection instead of patent protection. And defending patents against infringers or circumventers is far more difficult than defending copyright claims.

Kwasi has confused the roles of capitalists and communists in this debate because of the confusion over copyrights. Gates is not the good guy and the open source folks are not the communists. Microsoft has already had reasonable protection for its inventions. The same is true of authors, playwrights, movie producers, entertainment artists etc. Congress will be the arbiters of these disputes and has some homework to do before it determines what is reasonable copyright and patent protection. As always, government planning is an oxymoron and they have let things get badly out of balance. It is predictable that they will swing too far the otherway.

This is so far a thread full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Feel free to waste more band width by airing your opinions on a discussion that will matter but be held elsewhere sometime in the future. The US has several problems of considerably greater importance and of a much more urgent nature. Here is one that needs to be addressed before it becomes too late. The archive contains a great deal more on the subject.

[KwasiOwusu]

"It was these kinds of thinkers that created the internet and the web"

Open source had nothing to do with the creation of the Internet.
The interned was created as a direct result of the US government ARPA awarding the ARPANET contract to BBN etc etc.
All this was paid for by US goverment tax dollars, just like the NASA moon landing project was.
No open sorcery here, mate.
Thinkers are thinkers. Thy create and invent things. They don't need open source ideology for that.

[ShadowAce]

Where is the open source car?
Open source plane?

Look out the window sometime. Every one you see is open source. They may not be free (as in beer), but they are open source.

Want proof? Go to Autozone and get a third-party repair manual. They couldn't produce those without knowing the layout and diagrams of their product.

[ShadowAce]

Open source had nothing to do with the creation of the Internet.

What flavor is that Kool-Aid?

[KwasiOwusu]

"What flavor is that Kool-Aid?"

The "TRUTH" flavor?
Try it sometime. Do you a lot of good.

[KwasiOwusu]

"Look out the window sometime. Every one you see is open source"

And I am the King of Norway. LOL!
When you wake up from dreamland let me know.
This is the real world, not fantasy land.

[KwasiOwusu]

"Want proof? Go to Autozone and get a third-party repair manual. "

That is not open source.

[ShadowAce]

Do you know what open source is?

[KwasiOwusu]

"Kwasi has confused the roles of capitalists and communists in this debate because of the confusion over copyrights"

No confusion here.
I have listened to Eric Raymond and Richard Stillman.
What thy preach and what Marx and Engels preached are remarkably similar in lots of ways.
They are dunking from the same fountain.

"Gates is not the good guy "

He is, and most Americans agree.
He is a great American being constantly vilified by the open source barbarians.

"open source folks are not the communists"

They are.

[KwasiOwusu]

"Do you know what open source is?"


One thing I know its not: its not every car I see in the window.

Stop making extravagant claims.

[ShadowAce]

One thing I know its not: its not every car I see in the window.

That's what I was beginning to suspect--you have no idea what it is you are argusing against.

Open source is source code from computer programs that is open for anyone to look at. That's it. Nothing more.

So my claim of cars and planes being open source? Perfectly valid. Anyone can go in and look at how it is put together. That's how and why we have third-party repair manuals.

Open source is governed under several different licenses in order to grant priviliges not otherwise granted under copyright. Make no mistake--copyright is still under full force with open source.

Perhaps you mean to argue against the GPL? Or the BSD license?

[KwasiOwusu]

"That's what I was beginning to suspect--you have no idea what it is you are argusing against"

I am wiling to bet know what I am about and what life is about, far more than you do. I know exactly what I am arguing against.

"Open source is source code from computer programs that is open for anyone to look at. That's it. Nothing more."

If you think that is all open source is about, you are even more confused than I thought.


"So my claim of cars and planes being open source? Perfectly valid. Anyone can go in and look at how it is put together"

You claim about every car being open source is utter nonsense and the rantings of a deranged psychopath.

"Open source is governed under several different licenses in order to grant privileges not otherwise granted under copyright. Make no mistake--copyright is still under full force with open source."

So how come Linux has so much stolen IP in it then?

[KoRn]

Finally an explaination as to what open source means.

Open Source/Standards are what computing and networking was built on since the early 80's. Everything was out in the open for different vendors and innovators to develop and improve what was already in existence.

If everything would have been closed and proprietary, like the M$ kool-aid drinkers advocate, we may not even be on the Internet now as we know it.

Could you imagine what it would be like right now if a Cisco router couldn't communicate with a 3COM router? What if the computer you were using couldn't get on the Internet because the proprietary networking protocols of the manufacturer of your PC didn't agree with the protocols of the next router in your packet's journey.

How about if your computer couldn't network with another computer you just purchased because, for example, Dell and HP, because each have their respective networking protocols closed?

[ShadowAce]

So how come Linux has so much stolen IP in it then?

Rantings of a psychopath? You call me that and then post this drivel?

Post your proof. If you can, then I know a Utah company that would love to talk with you.

[KwasiOwusu]

"If everything would have been closed and proprietary, like the M$ kool-aid drinkers advocate, we may not even be on the Internet now as we know it."

The Internet was invented by the US government ARPA project, and paid for by American tax payers.
Open source crazies had nothing to do with.


"Open Source/Standards are what computing and networking was built on since the early 80's. Everything was out in the open for different vendors and innovators to develop and improve what was already in existence"

Yet another piece of nonsense.
Neither the Internet, nor Unix , nor SQL, nor Dos, nor Windows, nor even the Mac, nor the first GUI from XEROX PARC was developed through open source.
None of the leaders of the computer industry from the 80,s like Sun Micrososystems, Oracle, Microsoft or even IBM etc etc had anything to do with open source.
Everything they did was proprietary.
IBM only went open partly source recently, and since then its IB that is giving IP to open source, not the other war round.

All the open source nuts have done is copy or clone what others had already done, like Linux being cloned from Unix.

[KwasiOwusu]

"Post your proof. If you can, then I know a Utah company that would love to talk with you"

The case is already in court even as we speak.
It's going to get proved there.

[ShadowAce]

So you're claiming something is true before it's proved?

And you call us nuts?