An idea to make RISC OS Open Source
Simon Inns (2484) 108 posts |
You can fall back on personal attacks all you like (Steve and Dave) it still doesn’t alter the fact that you can’t answer a simple question which was directly stated and asked. If you’re unable to defend your viewpoint without resorting to insults that’s ok. Doesn’t bother me. |
Steve Fryatt (216) 2044 posts |
Huh? I thought that was a genuine question. Oh well; I guess your response means that you don’t have an answer either… |
David Feugey (2125) 2687 posts |
I do: I attack and say bye to the troll. |
Steve Pampling (1551) 7921 posts |
No insult, just a statement. I pointed out you were wrong. If you don’t like people pointing out that you’re wrong the solution is simple don’t make incorrect statements.
Strange, I thought people had explained in plenty of detail why they don’t like (in some cases) GPL or said how it was incompatible with the current licence and that finding and negotiating with the many copyright owners to obtain all the code permissions was likely to be less productive than working as is or as I suggested writing clones of those elements so they were not relevant.
Now there’s another incorrect statement. |
Rick Murray (539) 13385 posts |
Funny. One could say the same about the GPL, or any other licence for that matter. If it is not your personal preferred licence, it is “someone else’s”.
And many do not agree to the idea of GPLing the OS, yet, oddly, you seem to repeatedly handwave the very important objections as just not being relevant. Perhaps I should instead ask you why Canonical have ditched the GNU “GRUB” bootloader. Reason? GPLv3 and UEFI cannot co-exist. There’s no ums or ers or maybes. Look it up.
That entirely depends upon what the product is. If the product is a piece of proprietary software statically linked in with everything else, then no, they cannot co-exist. There’s no ums or ers or maybes. Read the GPL text.
Well, good for you. But you do not speak for everybody. The company I work for embraced open source. With the computer upgrades, we went to Linux and we introduced a proper stock control system with barcode labels to stick to everything in sight. Problem was, it was awful. Stuff was missed, codes didn’t exist, and syncing with head office failed as often as it worked. The people that supplied the system started dragging their feet and demanding money. The company made an offer and, well, no fixes turned up. That software was ditched and another installed. This had a different set of problems. When the author was contacted, he trotted out the infamous “you have the source, fix it yourself” routine.
What utter bulls**t. I am perfectly fine if somebody wishes to write software and give it to the world for free. I am also fine if somebody writes software and then sells it. You know why? Because it pays the bills. Few people knock up something in a weekend – be it a song, a movie, a book, or a program of reasonable complexity. It takes time. Time not only in the physical aspect of writing the code, but time to research the problem so one understands it well enough to devise a solution. Time, also, to be able to get to a state where one is even capable of providing such a solution. Time in testing all of the parts in turn and then the entirety as a whole (though I suspect more and more people skip this part these days). Time in writing documentation. Time in making something that can be given to others. Oh, and you’ll need a dev environment. You’ll need to learn to use the dev environment. A reasonable spec machine to do the dev work on. If you are making “apps”, a handful of devices of different types and sizes is a lot more useful than some emulation. The electricity. The food. The heating. Is it right that a person has copyright in their work for life plus a gazillion years? No. Not really. It is unreasonably long.
Oh the other hand, if I created something and was not paid for the act of creating it, then it should be my right to charge per copy if I so wish.
My God, you really have bought into the RMS spiel, haven’t you? In the middle of the Recent Posts list, Steffen said “ I quickly found out that writing in German is a joy,”. This is why I program. This is why I write stories. If I was any good at drawing, I’d write a manga. But I suck (xkcd looks better than my drawings). But I do it because I enjoy it. If I did not, I’d stop.
And so all of the time that has gone into designing and creating the system is not relevant to you? You feel you ought to have the right to copy it because you can? I’m, actually, lost for words.
Do you apply this same logic to movies and music? After all, why should somebody bother buying Rio2 on DVD – it’s been made, it’s done. Surely it would suffice to just download it? Well, like with writing software (or anything else), there is a whole period where the “product” is being created that somebody goes out on a limb and pays for. It doesn’t matter if it is me and my time, or George Lucas spaffing huge amounts of money in a film. Stuff is paid for, and the end product and repeat sales of said end product are what recoups the investment and maybe makes a little bit of profit on top.
Copyright is being abused – yes. Copyright is broken – yes. Because offering stuff for free is nice, but it don’t pay the bills and it don’t put food on the table, and ultimately those two things matter more than every ideaism in the world. |
Rick Murray (539) 13385 posts |
How about because the entire business model around software, books, music (etc) is different? Some are salaried and they do not deserve the right to be paid per item (in fact, generally, all rights of the creations of a salaried employee will belong to the employer). For the rest, they may have an advance, but the end product is the product. Selling copies of the end product is where the money comes from. It is an entirely different business model to building a bridge1 where it is designed and built and paid for2 along the way, a checkout girl who doesn’t actually “create” anything, and a teacher who hopes to inspire but is otherwise just paid a wage. Different people make different contributions to the world, and copyright is important to the groups you mention because in this day and age it is trivially easy to rip off a copy and pass it around – thus denying the creator (or whoever coughed up the cash initially) from the money that they would recoup by that item being sold at face value. Copyright is the legal stick that is used to hit people over the head with if they fail to abide by the conditions of supply. GNU/FSF themselves have used this same stick for GPL infractions. It isn’t that GPL is setting copyright to fight itself, GPL depends extremely heavily on strong copyright laws. Without that, GPL would be utterly worthless. 1 Bridges and such are host to all sorts of copyrights and patents and such. Perhaps one of the most preposterous is the lightshow on the Eiffel Tower – apparently you can’t video it as it is “copyright” although one could wonder if sticking a fancy lightshow in the middle of a capital city wouldn’t count as a public performance? Nobody said copyright made sense… 2 …out of our tax money, most likely. Is it fair that you pay a contribution to a bridge on a road that you never use? I ask myself if it is fair that I – unmarried and with no podlings – pay a lot of social charges to support other people’s brats going to school…maybe, maybe not, but that’s how it goes – I might appreciate it more if my daughter ever turns up. What’s fair depends on a myriad of interacting events; one single thing is not enough to decide. |
Rick Murray (539) 13385 posts |
…and this topic is so far off topic it is in danger of wrapping around. We did use signed integers, didn’t we? ;-) |
Alan Robertson (52) 420 posts |
Perhaps a reframe is required. |
Simon Inns (2484) 108 posts |
I asked a straight-forward question; not one like “Please provide me with a business plan to make it work” – if I could invent successful business plans which were moral I wouldn’t be here posting, I’d be sitting on my yacht enjoying a whiskey. As for who really makes open source software between us I would guess both of us (but I can’t speak for you). I have a whole web-site of open-source code and CC projects that I personally maintain.
So does drug-dealing. Doesn’t make it or copyright protection moral.
In so far as I agree with him that copyright is a bad thing.
The business model is different because of copyright. This doesn’t answer why certain vocations are artificially protected by copyright and other’s aren’t.
Yes, you are right. Since there is no barrier to making a copy of something, their business model is based on copyright protection. Protection that covers certain vocations and products but not others. Again my question is why certain vocations deserve it when others do not. Why does international law protect bad business models. Many successful business models have fallen due to technology which disrupts them (take horse carts for example – when cars replaced them no one changed the law to keep all the cart makers in business)
That’s very subjective and I can’t speak for anyone but myself. I’d find the project much more attractive both to use and contribute to. |
Malcolm Hussain-Gambles (1596) 811 posts |
@Steve I’m attempting to get the resolver module rewritten, it’s slow work though – not RISC OS at fault there, amount of spare time is the problem! But I’ve made some progress understanding the Internet part (reading 5-PRM). It’s not exactly difficult, in fact it’s dead easy – which is my way of praising the documentation in the PRMS. That’s my attempt at trying to distract this thread ;-) Without starting a flame-war about GCC’s suitability and version compatibility, can it compile RISC OS modules? |
Simon Inns (2484) 108 posts |
According to the GCCSDK documentation it can, but I have not tried it myself. |
jim lesurf (2082) 1330 posts |
All laws are “artificial” yet we may need them to have any kind of functioning society. In general the laws aren’t perfect, so bring both fairness and unfairness. Hence the argument is over the details, not the existence of the laws.
And it is also often a way to allow authors and creators to make a living that supports them going on to be more creative. Thus doing work which others find beneficial.
Afraid you may have shot your own fox with that example. :-) ARM make no hardware at all. They create and license designs. Copyright is just one aspect of IPR law. Their documents will be copyright and they’ll use that as part of the IPR protections the law provides to make a living and go on developing the IPR which we end up relying upon for RO to have ‘native’ hardware. I’m afraid your arguments seem too simplistic and ‘black and white’ to me. I agree that many of the current details of IPR laws need changing. But I have no argument at all with the concepts of copyright and being able to use it to regulate copying, etc, when that suits people. All a question of case-by-case details. For example, since people keep drifting: I’d personally advocate that a more important change we need is that companies should cease being treated as if an ‘incorporation’ – i.e. as if they were a person. So the IPR laws for public companies should be very different to that for individuals or small co-operating associations. In effect, big companies milk pretending to be a ‘person’ when it suits them, but dodge taxes and responsibilites by using Laws that treat companies differently to people. e.g. corporation taxes. However the real point here is that the devil is in the details. Not a simple as ‘copyright is bad, freedom is good’. Jim |
Simon Inns (2484) 108 posts |
Very true, however morality is the way to judge the correctness of laws. Once a law stated you could own slaves and people considered it moral, now attitudes have shifted and it was considered immoral so the law was changed (note: this means a law is not necessarily moral, which is an important point). Copyright was considered moral when the printing press was invented (at least by those who had a say in the matter), however it is now employed to protect a specific range of vocations and products far beyond it’s original intent. Treating people unfairly (providing more rights to one select group whilst denying the same rights to others) is immoral, even more so when a democratically elected government is doing it. Therefore so is copyright. The correct answer to my question is: Software developers (and musicians and authors) do not deserve special treatment at the detriment of others. This breaks the artificial business models; well boo-hoo. Time to find a more moral model or a more moral means of employment. Furthermore (back on the subject of GPL) a new licensing model (not based on copyright) could be drafted too, thus removing the issues with using such licenses. So, yes copyright is immoral, and no the GPL is not perfect, but the two things are linked. To solve one you must solve the other.
I’d be right there holding a banner behind you on that one. There are so many issues with corporate law it’s hard to know where to start! By preventing the immoral application of copyright by others on your software (as well as a the prevention of a number of other legal restrictions) you are slowly eroding software companies which are using copyright against you. If you can’t kill open source (which is what many companies try to do with copyright and patents) then it will continue to grow (this is one of the primary aims of GPL in my opinion). Slowly but surely the software users run will be more and more open source until the closed-source components finally have no value at all. OK, it’s a long road and may never happen, but that doesn’t prevent myself and others from trying. Examples are Linux, Apache, LibreOffice, Firefox, etc. etc. (and yes I know they are not all GPL; lesser licenses allow greater adoption (by corporations) but they don’t speed up the downfall of copyright in software by forcing more open source to be created – which makes lesser licenses exactly that ‘lesser’) |
Dave Higton (1515) 3404 posts |
Simon:
I have to straight up, head on, disagree with you there. Copyright protection is necessary to protect businesses. For example, the company I work for produces software that you buy, install, and use as an embedded system, although it is on PCs. The purchase price of the software licence is what finances development. There is no service model to use instead; it should work without intervention from installation onwards. If you remove copyright protection on the binaries, it could be freely copied by all potential users. There would be no point in companies even trying to develop software to that job. So there wouldn’t be any software to that job at all. That’s no help to people what want that functionality. Copyright does have a place, both legally and morally. As for RISC OS: you still haven’t said what would in any way be different if it were released under a different open source licence from the present one. Why do you think that it’s your moral right to take RISC OS, and all the work that has gone into it, as if it were equal in value to a contribution that you might hypothetically make? |
Simon Inns (2484) 108 posts |
Yes, provided that business is based on business model supported by copyright. This is a cyclic argument. If you agree with copyright in such a way (which you seem to) then there’s nothing more to discuss. Copyright is immoral, therefore business models based on it are immoral too. Morality is a subjective thing. Clearly we have different moral codes; so be it.
Why not? Do you believe that, without copyright, no one would produce software? Going back to the example given by someone before about the company who chose to go open-source (for stock taking), found that the software was lacking in functionality and gave up. They approached the author for help and he replied “you have the source code, fix it yourself”. I agree with the author; the company obviously saw value in the open source application, they could have paid a software developer (or developers to fix it) – probably at a fraction of the TCO involved in deploying the windows replacement. So apart from the obvious effect of developers being paid (which is nice right?) thanks to open-source everyone else would have access to that enhanced application too. Who knew, a business model which pays software engineers without the need for immoral applications of copyright.
Because I can think of some novel ways to use it for my own embedded electronics projects as well as some areas I could help develop the OS, but the restrictions on my work which are enforced on the people I’d like to help through the combination of the work already done and my own potential uses and enhancements make GPL licensed operating systems more attractive. I admit not everyone is bothered by the licensing, but I am and I imagine so are others.
I can take a copy of RISC OS right now from CVS so this is a bit of a moot point as a specific example. However, with a ‘real; licence (such as GPL) which supports my ideals and has been tried and tested in law in many countries, I would feel a lot more comfortable contributing – safe in the knowledge that my code (like the the code on which the OS is based) would remain free and accessible to all (in it’s present form and that of any derivative forms). |
Rick Murray (539) 13385 posts |
At work using a phone, so short question – if musicians and programmers and authors are supposed to provide their work to the world….. How exactly do they get paid? |
Rick Murray (539) 13385 posts |
Thank you. The logical extrapolation from that is that the GPL is immoral. :-P |
jim lesurf (2082) 1330 posts |
bq.bq. All laws are “artificial” Yes. Hence all the other things I wrote which you snipped. :-) Morality is like law. In practice it makes more sense to apply it case-by-case in accord with the circumstances than try to force one absolute black-and-white all-or-nothing rule onto every situation regardless of circumstances. I’m afraid that simply branding the ones you don’t “artificial” is just debating rhetoric. All laws and moralities are “artifice”. Just as true for ideas of ‘free and open’ as any other model. You seem to have a fixed view that “Copyright” is immoral, full stop. But I and others think the reality is more complex. Particularly because in reality there are a plurality of copyrights as well of cases and situations. Its not one fixed single thing in a one-dimensional world. Jim |
Simon Inns (2484) 108 posts |
Well, I think I gave a pretty good example of a business model that works without copyright in my previous post concerning software engineering. As for other professions, well that’s up to them. Free market economy is there to allow you to make money from a viable business model if you can find one. Musicians, for example, can make money from performing; just like they did before copyright. I’d admit that for authors (whom copyright was originally invented for) it would be tricky, but, if people want books (which they clearly do) then a model is surely possible – and why should my rights be limited just because they want an easy way to profit? You could even look towards models like Spotify – you’re not really interested paying for the content (you could get it from bittorrent – and before such services a lot of people did) you are really paying for the distribution service which is more convenient and therefore worthwhile – before I could only play albums I paid for, now I can listen to anything I like when I like for a flat fee. Same could be done for books. When big companies like Sony amd EMI lost the power to enforce distribution (since copying became trivial) some one else came a long with an alternative business model that worked. That’s what the free market economy is for.
GPL uses copyright against itself in an attempt to use copyright in a moral fashion. Other than removing copyright altogether there is no legal means to do what GPL does without it. Again, it’s the snake chasing it’s tail. You can’t fix one without the other. I’d prefer it if GPL didn’t need copyright, but that requires copyright to be removed from international law.
Yes, you are right, I do. |
Steve Pampling (1551) 7921 posts |
Nice. I thought you had that specific project on a very back burner. Good to hear it is nearer the front. Packet capture to see the to and fro helps too (pretty much means you need a PC and a copy of wireshark. Plus a mini-hub (not a switch) or a managed switch that you can mirror a port on1) 1 Might be able to supply something suitable. I’m coventry based and the 19" rack mounted switches are weighty enough to make carriage an issue. |
jim lesurf (2082) 1330 posts |
The snag for the people supplying access in exchange for charging you is fairly obvious. If you insist that you should also be able to copy things (or bittorrent) without payment then anyone who wishes can do that and eventially save the cost of paying to have access without needing their own copy. At that point their business dries up. And in turn some authors and artists lose income and aren’t able to produce more work because they have to get a ‘real job’. Also, personally I can’t say I’m interested in listening to classical music or jazz interrupted by ads. Nor in poor-quality low rate mp3 streaming when I can have better sound by other routes. And TBH I don’t trust companies who sell ‘access’ to content without letting me have my own copy. They have a habit of closing down or changing their behaviour. But then I wouldn’t put my data on the ‘cloud’ either. So that’s not a copyright issue but a reluctance to trust companies. And unlike yourself I’m not happy with systematically taking copies of things outwith copyright and making it default behaviour. I object to the way media companies ‘milk’ material. But if artists want to earn a living I’m happy to think they should be able to be paid if you want their output. Maybe my ideas of morality differ from yours. If so, fair enough. My own concerns about copyright are wrt issues like the way companies ‘keep in the vault’ some material as a strategy to help them flog a limited range of other items. That isn’t fair on the creators and artists whose work is kept unavailable. So I’d have the law require publishers to re-publish at a sensible price on demand. Fish or cut bait. However I’d expect them and the creators/artists to be paid as a result. Again, the point for me isn’t a simplistic “copyrights = bad”. It is the details of how it is operated which I’d have changed. Jim |
Simon Inns (2484) 108 posts |
Fair enough from me also. Since there are so many mumbles about trolling, this will be my last post on this topic. I still believe that RISC OS would benefit from a better license and I still think it’s possible – and I don’t think challenging and arguing about such things is a waste of time (I guess that’s clear from my persistence on the subject). Along the way I’ve picked up some good ideas (work on RPCEm and GCCSDKing the build process) which I might explore. My original idea for using the Pi and RISC OS (if anyone is still interested, there was a reason why I raised the subject of the licence) was to build an Arduino API in ARM assembly and (with the help of a Arduino header daughterboard) turn it into a 700Mhz Arduino (the B+ now has enough pins to make this possible and 3V3 to 5V conversion is an easy electronics task). RISC OS is nice and thin so once the API is running the OS can be kept to one side allowing real-time (clock accurate) GPIO control. RISC OS would be used to load on the Arduino code. Probably possible with Linux too, but more hassle as the OS has lots of memory protection and pre-emptive processing and it’s memory foot print is big. This idea is © Copyright 2014 Me – so don’t try this yourselves ;) |
Steve Pampling (1551) 7921 posts |
Aw and my idea was to use the Pico build rather than the standard build so that you don’t have unwanted elements in the way from the word go. Not strictly my idea, in fact not much at all because it was what Pico was created for. Not that it matters since someone who hates copyright isn’t going to do anything than open source the idea of the Softuardino. The name is an original from me, so I’ll claim the rights. :) BTW. I think a check of news and these forums might well turn up what might be deemed “prior-art” in the soft programmable Arduino-like field so your copyright might fall. |
Rick Murray (539) 13385 posts |
Phew. Saves me trying to figure out how to make a coherent reply to “you could get it from bittorrent”. Copyright existed long before music, movies, and software were “items” that could be sold. Their business model is to sell the stuff, using copyright as a protection. Copyright is often abused for That ****ing Mouse, but it long predates these things.
As far as I understand (English→French→English) they did make an offer to the author, but the author seemed to be “it’s a lot of work” and not so interested. I rather suspect the “value” in open source was not a value in open source, but a freedom from Windows licencing. Given the costs involved, I don’t expect that they made the decision to go back without a lot of thought. People who sell a product have to meet a certain standard, and if supplying specialist software to companies, may even need to demonstrate that the software works, support contracts and so on. People writing stuff for free? They aren’t obliged to provide functional software. Some (Linux itself, for example, Apache and such also) is very good. Some, not so good. I spoke to one of the higher-ups today and they aren’t geek but it seems that the machines on-site issued SQL requests through the network to the main office. Main office is reliably contactable (they Skype each other often enough), however for some reason a random number of these SQL communications were failing. Worse yet, the on-site software pretty much assumed that in the absence of a response, all was okay. Duh.
Prior-art is for patents. You can patent an idea, but you can’t copyright one – “The idea must be fixed in a tangible medium of expression.” – basically you can’t copyright the idea itself but if you turn that idea into an actual “thing”, then that can be copyrighted. By the way – a lesson Apple learned hard. In Europe – describing your own idea that you plan to patent can itself cause the patent application to fail because its own description, if made public prior to the patent request, would be considered “prior art”. Specifics: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/30/steve_jobs_bounces_out_apples_patent_case/
…so, basically you are running a Pi but whatever it is connected to will believe that it is an Arduino? You won’t be running at 700MHz. If you are executing Arduino code (some sort of ATmega CPU?) then it’ll take clock cycles for the emulation. It would, however, make for some extremely capable debugging by executing the Arduino code and allowing tracing, breakpoints, memory examination and such directly on a live system. Sadly, the idea is not new. It’s what ICE was prior to the advent of JTAG: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-circuit_emulator
Yup. While this doesn’t affect me and the stuff I listen to, I have heard from people who regularly listen to “older” material about this exact problem. Especially given the older material is likely mixed correctly and not the horrible over-emphasised crap that they lay down onto CDs these days. I have a Dire Straits CD from yonks ago that says it is a digital conversion of an analogue master). Comparing that to a friend’s more recent Golden Hits Best Of Last Mix Ever Wowee Platinum Coated With A Cherry On Top Special Extra Whiter-whites release, it was quite an eye opener.
I’d add: It cannot be possible to sue/claim “loss of profits” and all the usual bull on the not-so-legal downloading of material that is not available for retail in the country where the infraction occurs. Most stuff can be offered for an easy mp3 download these days – iTunes and Amazon have built business on this principle. Can’t speak for iTunes (don’t use it), but Amazon certainly offer different content in different country stores – the MP3 tracks on Amazon.fr and Amazon.co.uk are not the same if you are looking for more niche artists (try Hoyt Axton or pretty much anything Japanese that isn’t Morning Musume or AKB48). Why? It’s a licencing/political boundary. Completely artificial. If these companies are to embrace the spirit of capitalism to make their business work, then they ought to embrace it a little bit further and say “if you’re willing to pay, we’re willing to sell”. None of this country-specific rubbish. And if a track you want is available in another country and it is denied you so you go and download a “free” copy of it, well, yes, that’s a copyright infringement, but the penalty is zero. It could have been offered, it wasn’t. Tant pis to the distributor. Unfortunately, that won’t ever happen. Secret negotiations are rather keen on pushing copyright in exactly the other direction. Thankfully we still have some politicians left1 with enough balls to make the issue public and rebel against the entire process.
Funny irony is I think Simon would probably be extremely cheesed off if somebody took his code, totally ignored the GPL, and did what they felt with it. To my mind, there isn’t really any difference. Either the “rights” of the creator is respected, or it isn’t. There’s no deep questions of morality necessary. A DVD costs €16,99. Take it on the usual terms, or leave it. Simon’s code is GPL. Take it on the usual terms, or leave it. The best way to influence copyright is not to attack copyright, but to just decide “these terms are no longer viable” and simply stop buying stuff. If enough of us did that, they would have to listen. Not because we’re great or powerful but because all the shareholders will be baying for blood and somebody’s head on a silver platter with an apple stuffed in the mouth. Back to Simon’s ICE idea. 1 Not in the US, UK, or France, I should add. First world politicians don’t work for the people, they work for their paymasters. It shows. |
Steve Pampling (1551) 7921 posts |
Rather much as the Pico build configured to start in BASIC, or for the antiquities among us the Beeb being configured to start running View. |