They may have ‘donated’ not to pass the bill.
It will not work. If the code is open source no one will buy it… they can just go to github and clone it.
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How can they go to github to clone it if the open source codes/softwares will be posted only on the FOSS marketplace? @Almo and I already mentioned and everybody knows that Microsoft made Github not for public interests but for own benefits. It is a long term allegation that Bill Gates stole DOS and sold it to IBM, just like Zuckerberg stole the codes of Facebook from his roommates in Harvard. Zuckerberg’s crime got caught, Gates’s not. So, Microsoft is stealing from Github without paying a penny to anyone. It needs to be stopped and a FOSS marketplace is the answer.
Well if they do that, it is not open source.
Microsoft is able to use open source, the same as anyone else, but if it is GPL licensed
and they add to it , they have to open source the additions.
in theory
In practice, they steal the ideas, and rewrite them into their own code to avoid the licensing restrictions.
There is no way to stop that . Intellectual property laws are toothless.
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Why not? The source code will be given to the puchaser in case of software.
To stop this, we need a open source marketplace. Actually we need a serious discussion on this topic with FOSS board. We need to find a solution otherwise, open source software developers will be always exploited.
So what is to stop the first user from posting the source code in a public site, and making it available free to everyone else?
Is that not the idea of github ?
Only down side is money, we need to eat, live, basic requirements so someone has to pay
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Writers (of books) get paid… sometimes. Artists get grants or awards … sometimes.
but
creators of free open source software never get paid…they do it for the love of creating something. Some even pay to do it. It is like a hobby.
We could maybe setup a prize or award for notable FOSS achievements. That would not undermine GPL .
FOSS software has a much longer life than closed source software
" The best way to keep something is to give it away"
The “Free” bit also stands for freely given.
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And this is the problem. Why don’t they get paid when the corporations make billions using their codes and softwares?! Because nobody is there to raise the voice.
Yes. But when inflation is rising, the ‘love’ will fly out of the window. Creating something is not a big deal. The big deal is maintaining it. When pocket is empty, maintaining a free project becomes a burden.
Creating or doing something as ‘hobby’, gives the result of a hobby. Linux is not a ‘hobby’ project. Or is it? What do you think?
In my opinion, Linux is a ‘professional’ project and ‘Professional’ does not always mean to ‘You get what you pay for’. To me, ‘Professionalism’ means serious and ‘hobby’ never gets serious. So, if I want to contribute to a serious project, then I have to be serious about my contribution, my work and if a developer gets paid for his/her contribution, he/she will devote more ‘serious’ time to maintain it, even if it covers only a portion of his/her requirements which eventually can be increased. So, to pay the developers, we need to think about a way and setting up a marketplace is the best option, in my opinion. Rules are made for people, people aren’t made for rules. Rules can be changed. The laws which were made 300 years ago, has been changed, sometimes deleted entirely according to what today’s society needs. So, the rules of FOSS initiative should be revised according to present scenario. It should not be so rigid which would led it to die.
And these discussions will be just ‘words’ if FOSS management would not be aware of.
I do all the time - wasn’t tempted by Apple till they started using RISC processors again - it’s a RISC based UNIX workstation… All the stuff I use on Linux is available (except for my favourite media-player and manager “Sayonara”) - but I mostly use the UNIX stuff in the shell… about 75% of my shell scripts run identically as on Linux - those that don’t I have case statement logic that splits the job into Darwin/BSD or Linux tasks…
And I make my Gnome desktop look and feel like MacOS (e.g. move the window control widgets to the left) as much as possible.
I probably won’t ever try a Linux distro on my Macs 'cause I already have UNIX.
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How can we get someone to make cut-price Mac clones that will compete with Windows? You would want something at about half the price of a Win PC and absolutely flood the market with it.
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I would question the amount of maintenance that we see happening today.
Long term we cant have maintenance increasing exponentially the way it has been recently. There has to be a way to make stable secure code… and make it once and forget it.
I dont think more money is the answer… sure it may help individuals… but will it help FOSS. ?
I think we need to get clever with the way we manage open source software.
I dont have all the magic answers, of course.
Nearly all the maintenance burden in the little bit of software I maintain comes from people changing things in the environment it runs in… We can stop that.
Eventually all maintainers pass away. What happens then? It is very difficult to pick up someone else’s code and maintain it.
Neville, you just described Chromebooks.
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I think so because every revolution needs fund and if that money helps individual, it will help FOSS because FOSS is the collective of these individual developers.
Nobody is immortal. The father of Linux, Linus Torvalds, also would not be with us oneday. Will Linux die that day? Someone will pick up the flag. Like that, if I create a free software, after I pass away, another software made by someone else will replace it. Creation will never stop. Besides a revolution doesn’t depend on one person. It is a collective of many. FOSS is a revolution. It will not stop if one software creator passes away and moreover, if these developers get paid, then they may start working in groups to create better softwares. Because to creating a real open source alternative of adobe’s applications, cannot be possible for one man.
Another thing, I thought about your comments regarding FREE software. There are many digital creations which are free for personal use but they impose a license fee for commercial use. FOSS can think of something like that.
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We did have a cut price mac around the end of 1990s the powermac trouble was it kept the price high
To compete with windows, several models came out over the 7 or 8 years and it was going to be a different direction. But not really
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Yes, but will it stop corporations stealing the idea rather than the code
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I have no idea what a chomebook is or does
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Any searchengine or most elementary school kids can educate you on chromebooks, Neville.
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Before Apple ushered Steve Jobs back in (he came back as boss when Apple aquired NeXT) - they had licensed PowerPC (RISC) to a number of OEMs that could run Mac System 7, 8, 9 (not a UNIX - Apple did have a UNIX, it was based on AIX and ran the familiar Mac GUI ontop of AIX) - soon as Jobs came back on board - he killed the PowerPC Mac clone licenses…
When Apple switched OS X (i.e. UNIX with bits of BSD and NeXT) over to run on x86 (around 2006?) - that made it possible for anyone with the know how and enthusiasm, to create a Hackintosh - i.e. a generic x86 PC or laptop, running Mac OS X - pretty sure it was nearly impossible with AMD chipsets, only Intel - but I could be wrong.
I did it once - on an IBM/Lenovo PC… Didn’t see the point really - wasn’t worth it in the end, wasn’t very performant either… If I wanted UNIX I’d just install Linux or FreeBSD (or even Solaris X86). However with “Apple Silicon” I do see the point (not in creating a Hackintosh, but in running an M1, M2 or M3 system from Apple - I’m thinking about getting an M1 or M2 Mac Mini to sit in place of my Pop!_OS desktop machine (I will still keep the Pop!_OS machine for gaming - I can SteamLink to it from a Mac) - mainly 'cause Apple’s virtual KVM (keyboard / mouse sharing) is VASTLY superior to Synergy or Barrier…
It’s a laptop or tablet form factor that runs mostly just Google Chrome (you can implement a GUI inside a browser) - and it can “natively” run Android apps too - but - it runs on a Linux kernel (not sure which) and you can turn “developer mode” on and run a Linux container - on my Chromebook - the default Linux container is Debian “bookworm”. Some of them run Intel or AMD CPU, some run ARM - mine’s a Lenovo Duet 3 and runs arm64 (it’s the one I “inherited” off my little sister last month) :
FYI - that photo in the background (not deliberately included) is of myself, my deceased younger brother Ben, and my maternal grandfather Bert Featherston (also deceased: he’d be 127 if still kicking), in 1973 in Fremantle WA (West Australia : NOT WAshington State).
I’m not bothered about masking my IP address (screenshot) - as it’s host only - ChromeOS does some sort “NAT” thing - so if I want to SSH to the Linux container it hosts, I have to create port forward rule (the configurator for the Linux container makes it fairly easy - but there are a couple of other steps - you have to remove a file from /etc/ssh/ (something about “dont_run_sshd” or whatever, and set the SSH listen port in /etc/ssh/sshd_config to whatever you’re going to forward to).
BTW - I ended up trashing and destroying the first profile I created on that Chromebook because it refused to pair with my phone (doesn’t use BT uses WiFi I think) - I kept putting in my Google password - but it kept telling me it was WRONG! Trashing the user profile (which included trashing my Linux container) then starting again from scratch fixed that issue. I wouldn’t recommend a Chromebook - there’s too many inconsistencies - e.g. I login with a 6 digit PIN - but - I can also choose to login with a password (and it presents my username as my Google Mail Address - BUT - won’t accept my Google password - so - I end up using the PIN anyway - and I went to the trouble of changing my Google Mail password “everywhere”).
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Pardon my ignorance. I had a read . Yes a Chromebook is like what I had in mind, but not with the cloud stuff and a thin client… needs to be a fully capable PC
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