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

On 28 Sep 2003 at 21:32, Ciaran O'Riordan wrote:

Users must have the four freedoms, something must require that they be given these freedoms.

Governments could pass laws requiring software distributors to give all users these freedoms, but would you trust all the worlds governments to do this and not revert the law later?

What is to stop any government reverting laws and doing what it feels like?

Why nothing other than the vigilance of the people.

Cheers, Niall

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

On 28 Sep 2003 at 3:36, David Golden wrote:

Note: I appreciate that some of the stuff I've said below is hard. Most people when I start talking like below switch off or deliberately take simplified (and therefore totally incorrect) interpretations of what I really said. But if you study it long enough, it's very worthwhile.

...

I had worked on the basis that divisive discussions such as these are best kept off public fora. But if people want to, we can.

I disagree totally, openness and honest acknowledgement of division is becoming more and more important, and is vital for a resilient society that won't "shatter when struck"- you can't analyse and really resolve division by hiding it.

Oh but we're not hiding it. These discussions merely go on behind closed doors where the enemy(TM) have difficulty getting to it.

If you don't think they employ people to spy on us, see the Sunday Times today about BAE paying for agents to infiltrate anti-arms sales groups.

Digression: I recommend the book by David Brin "The Transparent Society: Will technology force us to choose between privacy and freedom?" for an introductory and accessible (i.e. not written by Popper) exploration of why it's probably for the best to keep such things out in the open, and why it's becoming much more important that we do so as technology advances (demand reciprocal transparency, not privacy, one of my bones of contention with the FSF is their privacy stance.). http://www.davidbrin.com/tschp1.html

I hope you don't mind me saying I think this approach somewhat naïve and simplistic. He who controls information creates the potential for power. Therefore putting this stuff in public is counter-productive in the current climate.

...

In fact, some like me think the GPL a necessary evil and a doubtful one still at that.

I do hope one day the GPL will become unnecessary. I don't think it's particularly evil. Certainly not compared to your average MS EULA :-)

The single advantage of the MS model over the free software one is that it is long-term self-sustainable. If the free software movement did not have proprietary software to clone, they would quickly lose cohesion and it would become a right mess.

If you disagree, go read "The Mythical Man Month" and note my points about free software requiring consensus before it can achieve something (and I mean through volunteers, not injection of external capital to employ people to do something they wouldn't personally normally do). And everyone can agree on copying an existing example.

...

I meant that the GPL does many of the same bad things to software as proprietary closed source does eg; duplication and thus waste of production.

Duplication? The duplicator had a choice, they could always have just abided by the GPL, and avoided the effort, couldn't they?

Most engineers will tend to duplicate rather than reuse. It's bad practice and has been for thirty years, yet we're all still doing it. The GPL and closed source both encourage duplication over reuse, and therefore work against best practice. I am therefore opposed to both.

...

The GPL seeks to permanently restrict the use of software just like proprietary. I don't for a second call GPL software free software.

Again: it only restricts those who would exert exclusive rights over non-scarce information themselves, as far as I'm concerned.

Except it asserts exclusive rights over the very same non-scarce information as well. It's a manifestation of the same problem ie; that software use must be permanently controlled for its own good.

I say no! I say that we need a better system, one which does everything to encourage best practice wherever it can. And we don't just need it in software, we need the same across all society across the world.

I liken the relationship between the GPL and closed source to capitalism and communism - these both stem from the same set of underlying assumptions ie; communism is merely a form of capitalism underneath. What those who hailed the victory of capitalism over communism fail to understand is that its death knell is also that of capitalism.

...

Well copyright is nearly dead already. Another ten years and they'll be screaming out for a legislative replacement.

Perhaps, but the pessimist in me predicts the replacement will be the legislation of mandatory DRM brain-implants :-))

Not if someone invents a totally secure and untrackable file trading system. Other than install a chip in every computer (which Linux could disable anyway), that event is only years away.

...

This is one of the best features of capitalism - that taking risk is rewarded ie; entrepreneurship.

There should be no guarantee of adequate reward for "taking risk". If there was, it wouldn't be "taking risk" - Think about it!

I should have said "that there is an incentive to take risk ie; entrepreneurship". I usually do, just forgot this time.

Current nominally "capitalist" nations are anything but - you have governments left right and centre swallowing the anti-capitalist arguments that people, in particular pseudopeople that are large corporations, should be entitled to recoup investments they have made, even if bad (particularly if bad, in some cases...).

That's different. That comes from the more recent ideology that what is good for business is automatically good for society. The Americans in particular use this one openly - while we stopped doing so in the 1960's, that mantra still underlies much of government and social policy in Europe.

In fact, most of the participants in the ever more popular "anti-capitalist" protest marches around here (Dublin) are really anti-corporatist if you listen to what what they're complaining about. Unfortunately, capitalism (free-market capitalism) is being tarred with the same brush as corporatism since the fascists in power describe themselves as capitalists, and even call their completely-anti-free-market pushes for further first-world protectionism "establishing global free markets". [Sigh...]

I'd go much further than you have. I would say that the global opposition to globalisation actually stems from the usual social unrest which precedes a civilisation bifurcation point. People are intuitively realising that the current world system is unsustainable and is increasingly showing large cracks - and that total collapse is coming closer.

If you explain it this way, suddenly the recent penchant of western governments to legislate everything becomes clear - they are trying to wallpaper over the ever widening cracks. Things like DRM, software patents, EU legislation on the bendiness of bananas - all of this comes from a psychological need to feel like we're doing /something/ about this problem. Indeed the invasion of Iraq is clearly to secure control of energy sources but when looked at from higher up, it's more actually to feel like you're taking proactive action against the inevitable collapse of the current bretton woods system.

Since the late 1970's, the future for the world has become clear. Research started then has been increasingly growing though it is virtually unrecognised by the mainstream. A growing number of wealthy individuals are pouring money into post-capitalist research and the results are very interesting. Yet even if you searched the internet right now, I'd bet you'd have trouble finding any of this stuff.

What I especially like about it is that the future world order as proposed by these theories is completely scientific, long-term sustainable and ties in human spirituality very neatly as well. In fact, one could call it the grand unified theory of everything :)

...

You have, like many others, made the logical mistake of believing there is a difference between manipulating intangibles and tangibles. There is not.

You have, like many others, made the logical mistake of believing there is no difference between manipulating intangibles and tangibles. There is.

This means the same thing?

That's a little off, though, really, I actually agree pretty much with your version of the statement - but only because, in the limit, I don't really believe in intangibles. "intangible" is woolly thinking. Information only exists when impressed on a physical substrate.

Not at all. The dictionary definition of intangible is anything you can't hold in your hand. And you're wrong - information exists without any physical representation, just as does love, bad, an idea or plato's horse.

You're about to say that all those are human relative. And you'd be right - love to a human is a human's understanding of love. But love exists well beyond the ken of a human. Love exists without requiring a subjective interpretation just as much as plato's horse exists without a human ever seeing one.

Is this scientific? Absolutely. Once you accept the inevitable consequences of a quantum multiverse, all these things become clear.

I acknowledge things get a little awkward at quantum level, where there's glimmerings that there is a quite close correspondence between information and physical items, but it isn't a correspondence that suggests that any existing frameworks will be valid as they currently stand once we gain the ability to control things at that level.

All conventional matter is merely emergent strands of order from an ever increasing quantity of complexity. Ditto for our brains and thus any ideas it forms. Everything in the universe is connected - and a rock is just as much alive as we are or the sun is. What is moral is only that which is long term self-sustainable and the quantity of morality is a measure of the contribution of complexity and thus evolution it gives to whatever is around it.

You may think this too metaphysical and thus irrelevent to the discussion. But I don't think you can understand why I think the way I do without understanding what I have said above. If you want further clarification, Gregory Bateson is a good start.

...

Thus this foolish idea of working on software as being a kind of services industry (like where you pay an engineer to fix your motor) rather than a manufacturing industry (like where you make a motor and sell it) is extremely dangerous in the long-term.

Dangerous for who? Microsoft, yes (but not so dangerous that they couldn't successfully adapt, in my opinion).

Dangerous for long-term sustainability. Thus treating software as a service is immoral and bad for society.

Handy you chose motors- I have a masters in mechanical engineering as well as being a professional software developer and all round annoying know-it-all ("consultant"). I happen to know, from personal experience, that software production is almost NOTHING like motor production.

The production of it is irrelevent. They are of the same because both are solutions to a problem ie; an engineering solution. A book is not, except as a doorstop.

Software+Hardware is slightly like a motor. Software on it's own definitely isn't. With software, a sufficiently detailed specification IS the software.

Totally incorrect, but it's a common mistake. Is software any less of a complete solution to a problem without the computer hardware it runs upon?

Think of it this way: is an electric motor any less of a complete solution to a problem without electric current?

You can't write down "this is an A.C. induction motor" and have it be called the motor, but you can write down "(setf pants (make-instance 'someclass))" and have it be called the software.

A description of software is like the plans for constructing an electric motor - incomplete.

Further thought: Modern motors and more complex machines involving motors often have control systems. Software certainly is used , in that context, as the settings/instructions for the control system computer. When you're a junior engineer doing some grunt work "fixing" a machine from the disinterested manager's perspective, you're actually often tweaking or rewriting said settings and instructions (i.e. writing software, perhaps in some godawful PLC assembler). So software _production_ can actually be very like motor _fixing_. :-))

No, you're confusing software production with software debugging. Debugging software is not production just as much as fixing a machine is not building it.

...

That whole idea must be stamped out and I unfortunately notice a strong correlation of this idea with those who believe in the GPL.

Hmm. "The whole idea must be stamped out"? A tad extreme, and not something I like to hear in any context.

What about stamping out fascism or torture?

I know it's not popular in the modern age, but there is absolute right and absolute wrong. The GPL is bad but I agree it's necessary. However treating software production as a service is an extension of the logical errors behind thinking computer software is nothing more than information. That is a recipe for future disaster.

Pure information can not solve a problem without a human added to the equation. This is why computer software is more than normal vanilla information - it has value and worth beyond normal information because it can solve problems.

Let's look at the entire universe. What does it do? Easy: it solves problems. Every single facet of everything solves problems. Look at biological life - what does all of it do? Again, it solves problems. - From the single celled bacteria to a dog to a human, their primary function is to solve problems.

Therefore a computer program, because it is a self-standing solution to a problem not requiring a human in its relational definition, is a manifestation of new emergent order.

Haven't you ever wondered why it is possible for us to double transistor counts every twelve to eighteen months? Sure, you can explain it in terms of improvements in technology. I go further than that - I say we tapped into a manifestation of the fundamental operating principle of the universe. If humankind wants to evolve, and I mean /really/ evolve, therein lies the solution.

...

(for example a computer program baking a cake is substantially more than the recipe for a cake).

A computer program might, when run on a computer interfaced to a servomechanism/robot, instruct a cake to be made. But a computer program will never bake a cake in and of itself, no more than my mind (best guess is that's information impressed upon the physical substrate of my brain) can bake a cake without my hands.

What all computer software solves are human defined problems. But you must not confuse the nature of the act of solution with the end result itself.

Cheers, Niall

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

On 28 Sep 2003 at 12:11, Fergal Daly wrote:

...

I don't care how it's done legally, but I cannot be swayed from the notion that if a person or group contributes significantly to the improvement of their fellow man, they should be adequately rewarded. This is one of the best features of capitalism - that taking risk is rewarded ie; entrepreneurship.

This bit puzzles me. This is exactly the purpose of patents, so why were you against software patents? Was it simply due to the excessive duration? In which case what about shit-hot clever ideas who's time has not yet come?

Do you think that software patents are not fundamentally flawed, just implemented badly?

I am opposed to anything which restricts the freedom of ideas to make software. I strongly support anything which adequately rewards a person's contribution to the improvement of their fellow man.

Since software patents seeks to restrict the freedom of ideas behind software, they are fundamentally flawed. But I'm fine with something restricting temporarily the implementation of software so sufficient reward can be earned to give to the programmer for their work.

This isn't copyright BTW. Copyright protects the expression of ideas and so theoretically is the right approach. My problem is that it was written with books in mind and so is an ill fit for software plus it has become unenforceable in the current age. Therefore it will increasingly not reward the person contributing to the improvement of their fellow man, and thus needs replacing with something which will.

Cheers, Niall