DragonMaci
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Posts posted by DragonMaci
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How can you tell a polluted project from one that isn't?
Sometimes you can't as the developer does not make enough clear (such as motives, etc). But when you can tell there is the means Prometheus mentioned. And by the same means you can sometimes tell that some projects are not only uncorrupted, but in vact very pure (such as Microsoft making free software that automatically improves Windows performance by altering Windows settings and improves battery life by altering Windows settings; they do it to increase the value of Windows and thus help the sales of Windows).
As a separate point, I also claim that this happens much more frequently than is commonly believed -- based on many years of personal experience.
Maybe but so what if it does?
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Except Linus lives in Finland, and isn't subject to US law or US courts.
I never mentioned US law or US courts. I left it open to which country's laws and courts. This is because I didn't know where he is based.
I haven't taken the time to look into this myself. However, last I heard, Linux supported FAT32, and part of FAT32 is Joliet naming.
And do you know for a fact that Linux's support of FAT32 uses Joliet naming rather than a work around? The latter is in no way illegal to the best of my knowledge. It certainly shouldn't be illegal. Nor is it immoral.
The "so what" is that many users of Linux and other open source software are unknowingly accepting the risk of being liable for patent infringement.
That doesn't really answer the question of "So what if there is a potential patent infrigement." Your "answer" really only answers "So what if there is a patent infringement"? I asked the former not the latter. The two are very different questions.
The creators of the software know that risk is present, and refuse to disclose it. I view this lack of disclosure to be an immoral action by the creators and distributors.Some may be guilty of that, but not all are.
The point I'm trying to make is that free software as a principle is flawed; that there are cases where making software free, or releasing it in open source form, is damaging to the developer.No, it is not. It depends on the context to which the principle is applied. My example reasons are cases where in fact the principle is very sound and even sometimes makes a profit (very good profit in some cases. And "that there are cases where making software free, or releasing it in open source form, is damaging to the developer" if anything helps my point of it being contextual, not your point that the principle itself is flawed. Thoses cases are contextually bad cases, whereas others are contextually good cases.
Again, I'm not arguing against free software as such. I'm saying the reasons some developers choose to make their software free or release it as open source are not always rational.Well you seemed to be saying the former not the latter. In fact "The point I'm trying to make is that free software as a principle is flawed" further seems like the former not the latter despite what you followed that quote with.
They may not release directly competing software, but it can still be competitive in the sense that all software is written by software developers; the products may not compete, but the skillsets do.
Well, might not compete even then. Maybe they work for different companies, in different divisions of the same company, or make their ownh software for different customers, so they can both co-exist without ever competing for each other. The job of a programmer for the interface of Windows might never end up competing even for promotion within Microsoft.
If you were planning to actively upskill, while using open source to reduce the value of the jobs of your competing coworkers and improve the health of the company you work for, that might be a rational reason to participate in it. Unfortunately, most of the Open Source developers I know don't think that far ahead.
I am not sure what your point is here. Could you please clarify?
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I am further asserting that this use of stolen resources morally pollutes the pool of open source software, in the same way that excessive stolen goods might pollute an otherwise valuable flea market.
No. It pollutes some open source projects, not "the pool of open source" which can really only mean "open source as a whole. Nor does the stolen goods thing work that way for a flee market. Unless only stolen goods are sold, one can still buy legimately obtained stuff from the flea market mentioned. That is not devalued just because other vendors stole goods. Same goes with open source projects that do not involve stolen resources.
Patent law restricts the use of a patented invention without the explicit agreement of the patent holder, regardless of how the item containing the invention was acquired. Infringement, even if accidental, is subject to financial penalties.
So what are you trying to say?
Yes, and when those people act in a way that endangers their job, they are being immoral. Morality is always about individual behavior.
The point is that many (and probably even most) open source developers are in no way endangering their job. Besides, it is not true that any act that endangers one's job is immoral. Such an act can accidentally be done through honest error. Honest errors are not immoral.
If your choices are rational for the long-term, then they are moral. My claim is that many people involved in open source are not thinking about the long term.
So what? There is also many that do thinking long term.
EDIT: Fixed a few spelling mistakes and added clarification to my 2nd to last point.
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Then I would contend that by selling copies of a book without the involvement of a contract, you are giving implicit permission for buyers to do whatever they please with their copy, creation of additional copies included. Before the advent of the printing press, this was certainly the case.
This is never done. All publishing companies put "you may not copy, modify etc this without permission" text in the page about when it was published. Not to mention, as Prometheus said, the automatic protection under law, which is valid since one has property rights to the products of one's mind. Besides, that is an invalid comparison anyway. The two are very different. You are comparing looking at and appreciating one thing with copying and modifying a very different thing. See the key and obvious differences in the two things? If not why should I bother to debate with you?
By that logic, wouldn't inheritance be unjust? You have not earned the rights claim property rights on your parent's property.1. Inheritence can be earned.
2. As I stated earlier, the right to property includes the subset right of the right to dispose of your property as you wish as long as you do not violate the rights of others. This includes putting your house, savings, car, or whatever else in your will for your kids, lower, whoever to get when you die.
But then the work become public property, which is by definition NOT privately owned, which is in conflict with capitalism.No. It would become unowned, not public property. It is similar to how unclaimed land is unowned not public property. Public property is an invalid concept at best and an anti-concept at worst.
It's relevant to the labor centric theory of property, and it uses the same underlying economic principle for justification. Under such a theory, there is property in her beauty.Then the theory is confused and incorrect. Beauty is a result of actions not property. To say beauty is property is as silly as saying you own the greenness of the grass on your lawn. To say you own the greenness of your grass is utterly nonsensical. You own the grass not its colour.
EDIT: Corrected a spelling error and improved the formatting.
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The onlookers are receiving the 'fruits of the labor', namely beauty of my date in the example without giving any compensation or receiving permission. This is what is known in economics as positive externalities, and the insult du jour of the beneficiaries is 'free riders.' The patrons are 'free riding' on my date's labor in the given scenario, and if free riding is immoral, then the other patrons are immoral actors. Mark Lemly worte a good paper on the subject. http://papers.ssrn.c...tract_id=582602
Here is the key thing you are mjissing: by going to a public restaurant, she is givinmg implicit permission for them to appreciate her beauty, so free-riding is occuring.
You know, I have to wonder why you come to this site given you seem not to agree with Objectivism.
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It states very explicitly that in the US, IF we have a patent or copyright system, it MUST exist because it will create a public benefit, not because of natural right.
Then if so it is a flaw that needs to be rectified.
Yes it does. This three statements are not logically consistent with each other, so at least one of them must be false.
Nope. Besides, you need to show how such a statement is the case, not just state that it is the case.
It's the same concept with beauty and copyright: Containment of positive externalities of labor.
Mind explaining that?
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I see it as disrespectful to the user, just as I see DRM as disrespectful to the user. What constitutes being rude is subjective, though.
Then I guess it must be disrepectful for an author to not give away his plot notes with books or via other means so that users can do the equivalent with books (ie create their own books based on the notes, create modified versions and distribute them, etc). Despite what you and Stallman may or may not think, the two are equivalent.
He is correct from the US legal standpoint
I made it perfectly clear elsewhere in that post or another post that I was referring to his views on copyright and patents quo the general concepts, not quo the specific implementation in the US.
Influence is enough to opt for something else in regards to news.
All that matters me is whether they are objective. That is all that should matter to anyone, not whether or not they are paid for their efforts. Though getting monetary compensation for one's efforts is a good thing, including for media.
He was specifically talking about not having an expensive lifestyle, so he wouldn't dearly need money.
I know. I was addressing his pathetic attempt to justify that.
No after publishing, which is bringing it into the public's view. Propertizing positive externalities isn't a particularly good idea, and is in many cases implausible. Let's say I have a date with a beautiful woman. She spends a considerable amount of time, labor, and knowhow to make herself exceptionally beautiful that night for me. However, other patrons of the restaurant are able to see her beauty without either her or my permission. Are they committing a moral wrong in doing so, or should we have just stayed home if we didn't wish for her beauty to be seen?
I am not sure what you are trying to say, but your example is utterly nonsensical. The re is no "looking at her beauty without permission" when she goes to a public restaurant. And, no, viewing source code without the maker's permission is not similar to that. It is closer to viewing her insides, what she is physically made of, without her permission.
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Google recently lost a $5M patent infringement suit that was based on something specific in the kernel. See http://www.baudlabs.com/archives/1441
That article claims it is patent trolling. Often companies doing that are misusing their patents and/or have illegetimate patents in the first place. If true then the real evil is on Bedrock Computer Technologies' part not Google's. The fact they sued only Google, not the makers of the Linux kernel suggests they are indeed patent trolling. It seems to me that Bedrock Computer Technologies is very similar to Rambus. Suing only Google and leaving alone Linus Torvalds, the guy who puts everything in Linux (others merely submit code; Linus determines whjat goes into the kernel and then puts it in), is a very questionable tactic.
and for the way it handles long names (Joliet naming)Do you know for a fact that Linux handles long names in the same way? Or does it handle it differently? If the former, can you prove it? If the latter, there is no problem.
but that's really an unknown until they are litigated; there is still a potential liability.So what if there is a potential? And is the patent even legitimate in the first place? There are some illegitimate patents in the software industry (just like in other industries).
True. However, it still retains the rich intellectual heritage of UnixThe point was it is not so rich anymore thanks to that divergence.
Equally important, AT&T's work established the initial market for this type of OS, including wide adoption in Universities due to a liberal licensing policy for educational institutions. Without those efforts, while something like Linux may have come along eventually, it wouldn't have had nearly the same level of acceptance.What has that got to do with anything? Microsoft and Apple paved the way for some features that now exist in Linux that now make Linux distributions more widely accepted. No copyright or patent infringement exists there though as the Linux versions use very different code than even Apple despite OS X also being Unix based.
Consider honesty as a moral virtue. We know that telling a lie is bad, because it can hurt you; not just through guilt, but also from the reaction of others. If you don't care or don't think about the consequences of telling a lie, it doesn't mean they aren't there.
That is not relevant. It does not mean makers of free software are doing something wrong. They are not responsible for the result. The bad ideas of those that think like that are, not the makers of free software. There are many good reasons to make software free, including but not limited to the following:
1. Having free versions of software to try convince people to get a paid version. Good examples include: Ad-aware Free, Advanced System Care Free, Avast Antivirus, the Express Edition versions of MS's Visual Studio family (which in fact has a licence which does not let you make and release commercial software with it), and many more. Sure, many don't upgrade to paid versions, but many do upgrade as well. This model has been going a long time and has proven profitable for the companies that do it if done right.
2. Similar to number 1, some companies make software free to enhance the value and/or usage of other software they charge for or otherwise profit off. Such as Microsft making some of their software free to enhance the value and usage of Windows (eg: a Windows performance optimizing tool they recently released for end users that don't know how to do such themselves, and a similar battery life optimizing tool they recently released).
3. The software itself is free to end users but you get revenue thanks to advertising revenue. It is not just websites that do this, some software does it too. The only example that I can think of right now is Microsoft Office Starter, which you can only get pre-installed on PCs that OEMs make.
4. Some software is simply worth so little money that the revenue wouldn't justify the costs of selling it (marketing, etc) as the profit wouldn't be worth the effort or in fact you might lose money. But the demand for the software does exist and you might have a good reason to create and release it. A good example is a browser toolbar such as Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer. That at best is worth a few dollars, making commercialising it more trouble than it is worth. However, Google has good reason to release it anyway, ie, potentially increased use of their search engine, which is a big money maker for them, so the toolbar is also a good example of number 2.
5. Making the software itself free but charging for support and the likes. An example is Canonical and Ubuntu/Kubuntu/etc.
Some companies even combine multiple of the above. These are all very selfish, moral, and legitimate reasons to make free software. Your lemon example does not change that fact.
The main irrational actors in this case are the developers.No. It is the people that choose irrational ideas about software development that are the main (and unless the developers are actively promoting such ideas, in fact only ones) that are being irrational in that regard.
Continuing the example above, how can your employer compete with "free"? One way is to cut costs. They might reduce staff and just make less of the same high-quality product. Or, when they see that the public accepts a lower quality product as long as it costs much less, they might jump on the bandwagon and do they same. Maybe they replace their staff with a bunch of low-paid flunkies, or they buy cheap oranges from overseas, or maybe they even ship the whole business overseas. Whichever direction they choose, odds are that your job, wage and future will be impacted.Or he could do what many software developers do and make their paid versions enough of an improvement on free software that people consider them worth paying for. This is one reason why commercial security suites like Norton's and McAfee's still sell despite free virus scanners, adware scanners, firewalls, etc existing, ie, many think it is worth paying for even though free stuff exists. Hell, most of the makers of free security software make successful commercial versions of their software (Ad-Aware, Avast, etc). This in fact may have a positive effect on their job as the improved nature of their software helps their revenue stream, thus making them more likely to give you a raise, especially since you done some of the work that helped make it better.
Therefore, if you give away a product similar to what you're being paid to create, it has the potential of damaging you, not unlike being dishonest does, so it's immoral.Btw, it is very rare for developers to actually compete with software they make for their employees, even with another commercial item let aline free things. They usually make non-competing software.
But to deny that releasing a complex, functional, well-tested application as open source doesn't serve as education, and to deny that some of those you educate might eventually compete with you in some way, is just evasion.Not all open source code is used for competing software. Sometimes (and in fact quite often) open source code is used for software that doesn't at all compete with the software it originates from. This may be that the code is also useful for a very different program, that the software is a similar program but being released in a different market, or tagergeting different types of people, etc.
A rational person will probably care if they have competition. Wages in the software industry, as in most industries, are proportional, in part, to supply and demand. If there are a large and increasing number of people available who can do the same things you do, then your wages and possibly your job are at risk; specialization and uniqueness have value.There is a way of avoiding this result. It is called upskilling or otherwise making yourself more valuable than your competing workers.
My perception of Objectivism thus far has been that, you are not required to give away anything you don't want to. Following the same train of thought, you are entitled to give away whatever of your possessions you choose, for whatever reason you choose. The major determining factor is that you are not morally obligated to do so making Linux well within the realm of neutral when viewed Objectively.
Correct. The right to property, by extension, includes the right to dispose of it how you want (as long as you don't violate someone else's rights, such as dumping your rubbish at their place without permission), including selling it or gifting it (which as has been stated in this thread already, open source software if done right is an equivalent to).
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Yeah, as I recall improved GC has always been one of the major driving factors in Firefoxs incremental improvements in memory management . I guess memory management was pretty badly overlooked in really early versions of Firefox. I have to wonder even if even had any GC at first. It was made with C++ as I recall and that has no native GC, so possibly the programmers neglected to add much of their own and then later had to bolt it on, hence why it still does not work as well as arguably it should.
I think I recall 1.5 or 2.0 added GC and earlier versions didn't have it. I might be wrong though.
I remember reading recently that improved GC is one non-performance benefit that could arise from making each tab be a seperate process like in Chrome as then GC could then be programmed to address each tab seperately as needed rather based on when a single process than handles all tabs is ready for it. Apparently splitting processes into another tab already provided a similar benefit for FF and the fact Chrome uses a seperate process for each tab and GC for each tab is probably a part of why it uses less memory.
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Ah well you see, I have not really bothered with Firefox 7 Aurora or following the updates about it, as I really ahve little reason to bother with version 7 right now. Still, thats pretty good to hear...
Well, I just read about it in an article hence the "apparently" in my post.
Addiition: But if true that would likely be their biggest memory reduction yet and damn impressive. I think that apparently the patch mainly works make bis improvements to garbage collection or something like that.
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I should also add that Chrome does one thing quite well that Firefox *still* has serious issues with now and again ( if you try to run it for extended time periods anyway) : Preventing memory-leaks. Though Firefox is certainly MUCH better at this than it used to be. Chrome tends to use less memory too, but even Firefox does nto really raise much issue for me in this regard, even with "only" 2GB of RAM installed currently ).
Well, Firefox 7 Aurora apparently cuts memory usage by about 30%... and thanks to just 1 patch. And with their new accelerated development cycle, FF7 is not far from reaching "gold".
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1. The code is well-documented to have violated many patents. Unfortunately, the patent holders have (so far) been reluctant to enforce their rights, but the violations nonetheless exist. Some patent holders have given their rights away in support of free software, but not all of them have.
2. The code is distributed to people without disclosing to them that by using it, they are subjecting themselves to potential claims for patent infringement -- which is basically a form of fraud.
To the best of my knowledge this is not true of the kernel itself, which, as has already been said, is all Linux actually is. Nor is it true of all distributions. In fact many companies (eg Canonical and Novell, but they are far from alone there) are careful about avoiding this very thing by not including even pripority software on their CDs/DVDs that the licence lets them distribute in this manner as they don't want to be stuck to the licences of said software as they find them too restricting, but also don't want to breach copyright and patent laws and rights. Adobe Flash is one such example. So, as as been said already, some are immoral, but others are not.
I should add that while I think Linux' use of the original Unix code by itself was probably moral, I do think the government actions which made that possible were immoral. Unix used to be protected by AT&T as a Trade Secret; it was not patented or copyrighted. There would seem to be a moral gray zone of sorts here, since Linux relies on information that was basically extorted from its original inventors.Linux has diverged from UNIX a lot by now though, including fixing many issues still unfixed in UNIX and other UNIX derived kernel/OSes (such as Apple's OS X).
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Sure, but I think the point was that Stallman thinks it should *all* be legal, even in the cases you and I might think should be illegal / remain illegal.
Then if so the person I replied to used poor wording that did not make that clear.
Along the lines of what I have already stated, it is better to say that patents and copyrights are the means to *protect* certain inalienable rights. But yeah, of course those are the sorts of inalienable rights that I was talkiing about.
My point was that producers have an inalienable right to the product of their mind and that that is what the concepts of copyrights and patents are meant to address, even if current implementations are poor.
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Actually, possibly not "many" things, but enough of certain things that it makes it a little bit of a hassle to bother with Chrome for some of the stuff I like to do semi-regularly. But mainly it is just that Firefox does a pretty adequate job of *everything* I do these days, though I will concede that Chrome probably still does render some stuff a bit faster. But I dont really have much of an issue with speed anyway, so this is not much of a plus for me.
IE9 is certainly pretty fast, and it is nice to see IE9 ( 8 as well to a lesser extent of course) doing a really good job of CSS, at least compared to the horribleness of earlier versions. It is still not perfect, but frankly *no* browser implements the most current verison of CSS perfectly anyway.
Yeah, IE8 and 9 - especially 9 - were big steps forward. And now that MS is releasing versions of IE faster than in the past we don't have to wait as long for such steps forward :-D
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That and there are many things which Chrome *still* fails to do properly for some strange reason. For instance, if you try to use some chatrooms , the text will mysteriously not update dynamically as it is meant to . It does on all the other browsers though, ceteris paribus.
That is why I no longer use it as a secondary browser. IE9 is fast and good enough feature wise for that purpose.
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I don't think that Stallman intends to take that right from you. At worst, he thinks you're a jerk or rude for not sharing your source code, and he very well may be right on that matter.
No, he is completely wrong on that. I am no more a jerk or rude for wanting to keep my source code to myself so others cannot use them than I am for wanting to keep the notes for my fiction stories to myself so others cannot use them. And this is not a privacy right, but rather a right to the product of one's mind - for the same reasons one has the right to physical products one makes. That is all a copy or patent right is - ie, property rights applied to the products of one's mind. This principle applies as much to software as to other products of the mind, such as art.
Also he says that copyright today is granted for too long (Mickey Mouse).
He is wrong about that in many cases (though not necessarily all). Your example is a good example of one he is wrong about. Ones like that get such long copyright due to the fact the rightsholder(s) are still using them in productive efforts. It is the same as (talking hypothetically) if Wizards of the Coast still held the copyright to Dungeons and Dragons when it is 100 years old as they are still making D&D products.
He's suggested a possible system in which all usage of p2p technology is legalized
He of all people should know that p2p software is in fact legal and has many legal uses - such as for collaborative work, or downloading open source software, or downloading other free software that the rightsholders make available via p2p software. It is simply certain uses of it, ie ones that breach copyright laws, that is illegal.
From his viewpoint, a copyright or patent is a state sanctioned monopoly, not a recognition of a natural property right.
Then he is a highly irrational fool. That is all there is to it.
Yes, Money influences people.1. Influence is not the same as controlling. Stallman seems to think it controls people, not just that it influences them.
The need to keep up expensive habits, which he mentioned, can make money even more influential.This is a fictional need. Just because one has a lot of money does not automatically mean one will have an expensive life style. In fact contrary to popular belief there is such a thing a rish people and semi-rich people that spend very little money. In fact in many cases that is a large part of how they got so much money in the first place.
Let me stop you right there. Copyright and patents aren't an inalienable right. Their current implementation demands that they be alienated from the rightsholder at some point.
So producers don't have an inalienable right to the products of their minds? That is nonsense. And even if the current implemntation is flawed (I cannot comment there as I don't know US copyright and patent laws) that does not mean the concept is. The concept is about the rights of producers to the products of their minds.
For those that think Prometheus was not getting Stallman right, look at the video exit_success posted for proof that he is right. What Stallman calls "freedoms" 1-3 in that video are not freedoms at all. You have no more right to such "freedom" 1 than you have a right to view an author's plot notes, character notes, etc unless the rightsholder(s) grant you permission to do so. You have no more right to "freedom" 2 than you do to make copies of a book or movie and to then distribute them. You have no more right to "freedom 3" than you do to make an altered version of a book (say Harry Potter for example) and distribute it. And the talk of it being "necessary to live an ethical life where they help their neighbours" says a lot about how horrible his philosophy is, especially in regards to ethics.
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Do you realize that it's not possible to prevent reverse engineering by technology?
So what? It is immoral to do so against the producer's wishes. That is all that matters
You can say "then don't do it". But why? It's not like stealing someones car. It's in MY memory.Why? Because you are stealing if you do so against the producer's wishes. You are stealing his intellectual property.
Please stop with this crap. I'm interested in information technology not in any of your political or economic views.Then apparently you don't care about Rand's either since those are applications of views she also held. So why are you here of all websites?
And as I said it isn't anti-profit. Do you realize that vast majority of software that lives on internet runs free software (or at least BSD)? There is a lot of companies that invest in free software (Intel, IBM, Oracle, ...). There are companies that profit from free software (RedHat, Google).So what? He didn't say free software is anti-capitalist, only that Stallman's views are anti-capitalist.
Regarding political views, I think I'm socialists (the middle) so don't try this "pure capitalist" crap at me.Then, I repeat, why are you here of all places?
Sure you can. But only way to enforce these rights is to cut other rights (like privacy).There is no right to the privacy to violate the rights of a producer by reverse engineering his software or otherwise looking at or using his source code without his permission. If you do not see that then this is the wrong place for you as this is a website for those that think along those lines and other equally rational lines from Ayn Rand.
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If you decided to do build career on .NET and Visual Studio whatever that's your only way.
Wrong. Linux has MonoDevelop and the Mono Runtime, which bring .NET to Linux, hence my previopus post.
EDIT:
I was replying mainly to this:
... but not enough to change the fact that Windows is the best platform to learn programming on when one has such plans
But, you see I was talking about the very thing Prometheus was referring to, ie, making .NET software projects.
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The fact is exact opposite.
For starters that comment is now 3 years old. Back then MonoDevelop did not exist. Also, the Mono Runtime was a lot worse 3 years ago than it is now. Wine was also a lot worse than it is now - but still cannot run the Express Edition products in the Visual Studio family of products. And yet MonoDevelop and the Mono Runtime are still not as good as modern versions of the .NET runtime and even the Express Edition products in the Visual Studio family when it comes to making .NET products, let alone paid versions of Visual Studio. So, no "the exact opposite" is not the fact since my point was that Windows is best for .NET projects. This was very true 3 years ago and while Linux distros and their relevant software has come a long way in the last 3 years, they have a long way to go to catch up to Windows in that regard. But they will likely never catch up let alone overtake Windows in that regard given Windows and .NET are made by the same company.
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"I think you might need to get some help."
Thats not psychologizing!
In case you missed it, he made it clear he is not sure.
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Of course, if I remember correctly the OP is at least pretends to be firmly against porn ( at least in visual form) and even goes as far as to severely condemn Peikoff for his views on it here : http://www.peikoff.com/2010/12/20/do-you-disagree-with-ayn-rand-on-pornography/
Yeah, I am pretty sure it was him.
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I think you people severely over analyzing something which is, in fact, a piece of amateurishly written furry porn.
In that casse the author himself is based on his comments. But to some extent I agree with this:
Dude, you wrote a piece of porn, a piece of weird furry rabbit porn where people have sex in a graveyard. -
Putting oneself in the readers' minds, I have mixed feelings about. That's one way of becoming stifled, creatively. Usually, if you can write, and you care about your subject, the reader will understand and care, too.
This is not true. "Putting oneself in the mind of the reader" is not even what I said. I said looking at the writing from the perspective of a readern without the foresight of being the writer. The point of it is purely to see if it could be understood by such a person. This is simply a technique to help you edit your story to make it better. Rather than stiffle creativity it boosts creativity as improved editing means improved creativity. Writing and caring do not guarantee success in regards to readers understanding and caring. Looking at your work from the perspective of a reader with no foreknowledge does help in that regard though.
[Edited to remove an irrelevant part of the quote.]
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this short story actually comes from the middle of the whole story.
That is a part of the reason we are having trouble with it. One cannot objectively pick up a story, any story, from the middle without a lot more to go on that what you included. We cannot read into what is not there because you decided to start from the middle not the start. Try starting from the start and it will be a lot easier to understand your points.
[Edit to fix quote]
Morality of Linux
in Software
Posted · Edited by DragonMaci
You missed my point. My point is that either way it is contextual rather than blanketly good or blanketly bad. In some cases OSS is valid, in others it is not.
ADDITION: It is similar to how a contract between a writer and his publishing company is not blanketly good or bad, but rather how specific cases of such a contract are good or bad.
That wording suggests it was the fact they made OSS at all that resulted in their job loses. Or did you mean that they lost work due to doing it on company time? Or did you mean making competing OSS software? The last 2 I could believe, but not the former. MS themselves make OSS and even created a site for OSS created with their development tools. The site is called CodePlex.