Is open sourcing a good idea?

"Brandon J. Van Every" <try_vanevery_at_mycompanyname@yahoo.com> schreef in
bericht news:bn5fud$ss5iu$1@ID-207230.news.uni-berlin.de...

[snip]


> > I think Brandon tries to say that when you spent a lot of time and
> > money to write a program, you open the source, and instead of people
> > inputting new ideas and improving the program they just take your
> > code and use it, there's nothing in it for you.
>
> More to the point, if you are too generous with your R&D, corporations
> *will* rip you off, *will* productize your R&D, *will not* compensate you
> one penny for it. Patent Law is for protecting the small inventor from
> greedy corporations like Microsoft.
>
> Personally I think if you're going to patent something in software, it
> better jolly well be worthy of patenting. I am opposed to frivolous
> software patents, which is to say, most of them. I am opposed to legal
> prospecting in general. But there are people and companies who
legitimately
> need the protections of patent law.
>
> Patents are an incentive to progress. Without patents, few people would
> have the economic incentive to create new processes. I've rarely met an
> anti-patent person who was (1) self-funded, (2) capable of producing
> anything worthy of a patent.

I totally agree with you. So, before you open the source of a project,
consider first if it's worth it. If it's really cutting edge technology that
you intend to sell you might not want to open the source. But if you are
just learning, want to do the world a favour, want to get joy out of people
using your software, want others to look at your software and critique, etc.
etc. go ahead. I sure don't regret opening the source of my bitmap library
project (without the input of others it would sure have sucked a lot).

Floris

Gerry Quinn wrote:
>
> As people who argue along the lines you propose usually do, you
> conflate
> patents and copyrights. Only patents protect ideas, the protection
> time
> is very limited and the ideas have to be adjudged novel (the last bit
> needs improvement, I agree).

Actually, I don't think patents protect ideas, I think they protect ideas
embodied in concrete processes. But I am unsure here.

--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA

Taking risk where others will not.

Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
> Noah Roberts wrote:
>
>>1) Who said this had anything to do with business deadlines, or
>>anything
>>to do with businesses in the first place? However, you point is
>>correct
>>- you can't expect that people won't be in such a hurry that they
>>can't
>>wait and need to come up with it on their own. But you can reasonably
>>expect some courtesy.
>
>
> Clearly, courtesy ends when definite need begins. Nobody's going to sit
> around endangering their own projects in order to "be courteous." Just as
> the original author isn't going to "courteously" march to the schedule of
> someone else's need.
>
>>I think you are making a lot of assumptions about something you know
>>next to nothing about.
>
>
> I think you're too biased in this matter to see the general point of view of
> the other side. You think open source is supposed to automatically revolve
> around you, the author. It isn't. That's why it's open source. If you
> want it to revolve around you, the author, license it differently.
>

You are still talking out of your ass. Stop eating chili.

--
Noah Roberts
- "If you are not outraged, you are not paying attention."

Noah Roberts wrote:
>
> 1) Who said this had anything to do with business deadlines, or
> anything
> to do with businesses in the first place? However, you point is
> correct
> - you can't expect that people won't be in such a hurry that they
> can't
> wait and need to come up with it on their own. But you can reasonably
> expect some courtesy.

Clearly, courtesy ends when definite need begins. Nobody's going to sit
around endangering their own projects in order to "be courteous." Just as
the original author isn't going to "courteously" march to the schedule of
someone else's need.

> 2) When you are writing something on a voulanteer basis in the time
> not speant trying to eat, some things get placed on a back burner.
> Had this person come to me before hiring someone to implement
> something I was
> going to anyway, I may have altered my priorities. This seems like
> common decency to me, you at least offer - then if they don't want to
> put a rush on hire some outsider to do it.

Did you have an obvious business model where they knew if they contacted
you, you could provide features for them for such-and-such a rate? Like, a
website pitching your services?

> I think you are making a lot of assumptions about something you know
> next to nothing about.

I think you're too biased in this matter to see the general point of view of
the other side. You think open source is supposed to automatically revolve
around you, the author. It isn't. That's why it's open source. If you
want it to revolve around you, the author, license it differently.

--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA

Taking risk where others will not.

(Followups to comp.programming only. I hate myself for writing this
response in the first place.)

gerryq@indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn) wrote:
> Copyrights protect only the expression of
> ideas, and prevent nobody from using the ideas - that's why long
> copyright periods do no obvious harm that I can see. You can't use
> Mickey directly but you can create an animated mouse of your own any
> time you want. Mickey is not the idea of a cartoon mouse, but an
> expression of that idea.

If we had perpetual copyright, there is an awful lot of work derived from
Shakespear, Grimm, etc which might not have been made. Disney would have
hardly made anything at all if they could not have used works which we now
have in the public domain.

Copyright exists to provide an incentive to authors (that's us) to do our
work, without having to resort to crude patronages in days of old. Society
benfits from authors creating stuff which they may not have otherwise
bothered to create and the author benefits from being the only one who can
make copies and is allowed to charge whatever the author feels the market
will bear.

Problem is, with copyright, a monopoly is created. Monopolies are usually
bad things. There is a quid-pro-quo in copyright. What society gives up
(ability to make copies) should be of equal value of what society gets back
(books, music, computer software).

One way of restraining the gift of legally-enforced-monopoly is to make it
of limited time. How much is reasonable is debatable. (IMO, 14 years is too
short and life+70 years is way too long. I'd favour a flat 70 years.)

Bill, we now return you to your scheduled newsgroup.

--
The address in the reply to header is correct, but I'll
read it quicker if you drop the word "usenet".

Timothy J. Bruce wrote:
> Interesting and related aside:
> Archemedes's `The Method' was recently uncovered in a palimpset.
> Since the US Patent Office now accepts algorithms could the Heirs of
> Archemedes patent integral calculus (he was doing it before N&L)?
> Could the Heirs of Archemedes claim a patent on programming (I define
> `programming' as `solving a puzzle', not `typing')?

Nope, there's plenty of prior art for programming. Prior art isn't reckoned
according to when something was invented, it's reckoned according to when
the patent claim is filed. Your historical questions are utterly
uninteresting.

> Are these notions patently offensive?

No, just patently ridiculous.

> This obviously points to serious flaws in the
> current US patent procedures,

Not in the slightest. If you really believe so, you need to brush up on
Patent Law 101.

--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA

Taking risk where others will not.

Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
> Noah Roberts wrote:
>
>>What is society getting out of the deal? You take what society gave
>>you, add a small spattering of your own, and then sell it back.
>>Nothing
>>has been contributed, seems like a rather one sided transaction to me.
>
>
> Noah, are you (1) self-funded,

I am not paid for the development I do. I have been paid before, when
it happened it was under explicit agreements that placed the code in
open source. I do have a job, I write code for someone else (among
other things) - I have no control over it.

(2) engaged in any kind of cutting edge R&D?

Yet to be seen.

> If not, your remarks are those of a self-serving whiner who expects others
> to do the hard work of thinking for free.

Not true. Everything I have done has gone open source. It does not
matter if it is "cutting edge" or not, they are works that involved much
time and hard work. Some of what I have done was not seen elsewhere,
some has - none is anything you would get a phd for.

If you are, at least you can
> argue the merits / demerits of your idealism from a credible position.

You're so full of shit it isn't even funny anymore.
>


--
Noah Roberts
- "If you are not outraged, you are not paying attention."

Noah Roberts wrote:
>
> What is society getting out of the deal? You take what society gave
> you, add a small spattering of your own, and then sell it back.
> Nothing
> has been contributed, seems like a rather one sided transaction to me.

Noah, are you (1) self-funded, (2) engaged in any kind of cutting edge R&D?
If not, your remarks are those of a self-serving whiner who expects others
to do the hard work of thinking for free. If you are, at least you can
argue the merits / demerits of your idealism from a credible position.

--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA

20% of the world is real.
80% is gobbledygook we make up inside our own heads.

"Brandon J. Van Every" <try_vanevery_at_mycompanyname@yahoo.com> schreef in
bericht news:bn5g90$s76fe$1@ID-207230.news.uni-berlin.de...
> Gerry Quinn wrote:
> >
> > As people who argue along the lines you propose usually do, you
> > conflate
> > patents and copyrights. Only patents protect ideas, the protection
> > time
> > is very limited and the ideas have to be adjudged novel (the last bit
> > needs improvement, I agree).
>
> Actually, I don't think patents protect ideas, I think they protect ideas
> embodied in concrete processes. But I am unsure here.

No, patents protect ideas. But afaik the idea has to be concrete enough to
be patentable. As an example you can't patent: "some thingie that you put
under a car to make it drive". You can however patent a good definition of a
wheel (though it wouldn't last longer than 5 seconds in court).

Floris

(Followups to comp.programming only.)
"Timothy J. Bruce" <uniblab@hotmail.com> wrote:
> I think this all comes down to what the originator would like. If my
> business model depends on service contracts for support of my product I
> would probably welcome and benefit from an Open Sores initiative.

Maybe.
Advocates of free software say that support contracts are a way for a
programmer to get paid.

There are lots of people who sell support services for CVS. How many of
them hand over some of the money to the original CVS authors? Since they
don't have to, I would imagine the answer is somewhere in the region of
"None".

The quid-pro-quo for the CVS authors is that any improvements made will
make thier way back to them. This works very well for the support people,
who don't make any modifications, simply viewing the CVS executable as an
infinitely copyable zero-cost commodity.

Bill, off the shelf.

--
The address in the reply to header is correct, but I'll
read it quicker if you drop the word "usenet".