01.21
Everyone’s favorite troll got me thinking again about the GPL and it’s claims of freedom and I think I have worked out another thing that makes me so uneasy about it.
Of course there is absolutely nothing wrong with distributing something under the GPL. If you are committed to freedom then you’ll accept that people should have the freedom to use whatever license they please. What is problematic is the popular view that somehow releasing your software under the GPL is somehow ‘ethical’, with some people even suggesting it should be a legal requirement for all software.
If you believe the revisionists they would tell you that ‘free’ is the natural state of software until companies (mainly Microsoft) came in and ruined everything by ‘closing’ the software and charging money, snatching software utopia out of the worlds hands in the process.
But the problem is this: Why is software the only thing covered by these fundamental freedoms?
Books, Software, Movies and Music are all technically the same thing, they are an infinitely reproducible product based upon human endeavour, differing from standard creations (such as making a chair) in that making 1,000,000 is almost as easy as making 10. Only the first one took the time to make.
The ‘rights’ outlined in the GPL are not just the right to the source code – that is tangential to the issue. The main ‘rights’ are for free modification and redistribution – If I receive any GPL’d software I am free to edit it and give it away for no cost. The claims that ‘you can sell GPL’d software’ as a counter to a claim that it creates an unworkable business model are intellectually dishonest since you can only sell it once – after that you’ll be competing with free.
If I were to buy a new book by Iain Banks, should I have the right to edit, make copies and then give those copies away? Should I demand the original document rather than the printed version as by not being able to do the above easily with a physical book my ‘freedoms’ are being compromised? If I was to make this argument to most people who support the GPL as a vehicle for software progress I would be laughed at, but it is fundamentally the same thing.
The argument could be made that books are for entertainment, but education largely comes in book form. Also there are no clear cut lines between media anymore. If I draw a sapceship on paper, do you have the ‘freedom’ to take it and give it away? What about if I make a 3D rendering of it? What if I make the 3D rendering display as a runtime exe? What if I make it interactive and flyable? At what point do your ‘fundamental rights’ kick in and allow you to do whatever you want with it?
The belief is that if the GPL was enforced today then the world would be better off, and while true this fails to consider the future. If these ‘freedoms’ applied to the world of literature then there would be a wealth of works suddenly made available for low or zero cost. What would then happen though is the individuals who before were creating a livelihood on the sales of their creation would suddenly have no income and be forced to find other avenues for money and while some may be able to monetize their fame most others would not. As a result you would get people like Stephen King working as shelf stackers in supermarkets rather than doing what they do well and sure, he can write in the evenings and weekends but he would only write a fraction of what he could under the previous system.
The ‘freedom’ model essentially pulls the rug out from under the system of rewarding artists that has worked for hundreds of years. People claim that you can ‘sell support’ and that it is just as profitable, but that is blatantly not true in many cases – only certain software can be made profitable.
I want a system where individuals with talent are able to do nothing but exercise that talent, rather than a system where they have to work mundane jobs to simply make a living and are only allowed to create greatness in the evenings and weekends.
Hey, GPL would work well under communism. Because regardless of what happened to your work you´d still get paid.
If those guys, specially RS, would work instead of wasting time fighting for their silly utopia, they could probably have had some success, and could even be a competitor to microsoft in some effective way.
I´m no programer. I´m a graphic designer. I tried ubuntu not too long ago, and it was a nightmare…and all the graphic design software available was horrible(inkscape, gimp, among others). The only one decent was Xara Xtreme, but that´s not open source, of course.
The most ridiculous thing is, if they took themselves seriously and offered a graphic suite with a decente set of tools and interface, just enough for the job, and with a much better price than Adobe´s, i would actually consider that, and they would actually be doing something useful with their knowledge…but instead all i have as alternative is a bunch of whining guys that want me to torture myself using a free piece of garbage that doesn´t do anything right, and makes me much less productive. Go figure…
correction – i guess Xara Xtreme is open source, but only for linux. They have a paid version for windows.
and one last thing. There´s no way a great piece of design would com out from anyone working only nights and weekends. That would only favor the unprofessional, those who don´t care about quality. The world would be a rotten place under GPL.
What annoys me more than anything else is when your give feedback you get told to “fuck off, it’s free, don’t complain”, all the while having to listen to people endlessly tell you to use it repeatedly because it’s so much better.
In their own twisted world we all pay thousands of pounds for Creative Suite and other apps because we are victims of marketing. They honestly think they are ‘as good as’.
You think the proprietary system has worked? What a hatetard. The proprietary system has produced microsoft, which regularly engages in illegal behavior and has been declared an illegal monopoly. Enough said. Of course I don’t expect your puny hatetard brain to understand all that, just know that I win.
Sad but true.
it´s hilarious that i would rather pay “thousands of pounds” for creative suite instead of using the free alternative, if it can even be called an alternative.
I´m usually curious about finding better alternatives to softwares i use on the hope that i´ll find something with which i can work faster and easier.
I started with Corel Draw, then i learned Illustrator, which in my opinion is better and it fits my needs better as well. Then i found out about linux, and decided i wanted to give an honest try. After many hours of updates, i finally got to install and use inkscape, the gimp, scribus and font forge. I was really trying to learn it and see what my production flow would be.
Inkscape: the interface is garbage, but you can actually get some stuff done, it can be used for simple graphics for the web but it lacks important features like CMYK color management and that´s unacceptable, also working with text is a pain. it cannot be taken seriously.
And that´s the only software i really tried to learn, because i gave up on the rest. The gimp interface is the most stupid interface i´v ever seen. The guy who thought those floating panels that cover your canvas is a good idea should never be allowed to ever design another interface. Ever.
Scribus lacks features that MS Word has, and MS Word isn´t even a publishing software. The interface is also terrible, looks like something from 1995, and you have to dig through a thousand menus to actually find what you need….
To say those softwares are better alternatives is proof that those guys are delusional and that they don´t actually use any of it, they´re probably using the cli or something similar to that to make some emoticons for pidgin, or to draw a penguin (http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/~pconrad/cs8/09M/labs/lab04/testDrawSquare.png)
Except for Blender, there´s no way a graphic designer will ever use linux for anything whatsoever.
correction – i guess Xara Xtreme is open source, but only for linux. They have a paid version for windows.
The paid Windows version also includes Xara’s originl proprietary rendering engine, which was its biggest (and some say only) redeeming factor. It’s FAST. That didn’t make it into Xara Xtreme, however, which last I checked used a much slower Cairo backend.
In their own twisted world we all pay thousands of pounds for Creative Suite and other apps because we are victims of marketing.
Didn’t you get the memo? Pantone, Hexachrome, non-destructive editing, large format support, large format printer support, negative scanner support, and prodictivity in general are markewting gimmicks.
I started with Corel Draw, then i learned Illustrator, which in my opinion is better and it fits my needs better as well
It depend on your needs. Illustrator is geared more toward designers, while Draw is geared toward pre-press (and also includes font design, multi-page, duplexing and DTP functions not found in Illustrator (that’s what InDesign is for).
They’d both great though, depending on which role you fill, the only thing that shits me about either though, is that you tend to need both when you work in print.
it can be used for simple graphics for the web
Didn’t you get the memo? Freetards refuse to acknowledge that there’s a medium outside of the web.
but it lacks important features like CMYK color management and that´s unacceptable,
It’s worse than that. It actually has CMYK support, it’s juast useless because of the lack of support for Pantone or Hexachrome, not to mention the lack of system level colour calibration.
The gimp interface is the most stupid interface i´v ever seen. The guy who thought those floating panels that cover your canvas is a good idea should never be allowed to ever design another interface. Ever.
I don’t mind the interface, myself. It’s sort of similar to PS’s interface on OSX, except retarded. It’s the lack of CMYK, Pantone, Hexachrome, color-matching, colour calibration, large format support, etc that makes it useless to me, personally.
The truly sad part is that not only is Photoshop a vastly superior raster editor than Gimp, it’s also better at HDR than any of the OSS offering for Linux, a better Panoramic tool than any of the OSS offerings, and it’s limited vector editing functionality is still leaps and bounds ahead of what’s offered by Inkscape.
Except for Blender, there´s no way a graphic designer will ever use linux for anything whatsoever.
Even blender isn’t that great IMHO. I always found it to have a painfully unintuitive interface and thought it more a programmer’s modeller than a modeller’s modeller (Infini-D is still the single most intuive modeller ever conceived IMHO). And even then, Blender runs on Windows and OSX. Linux’s only redeeming factor in the field, imho, is that you can set up a Maya render farm on the cheap with it.
If the proprietary system “doesn’t work” then doesn’t that make the fact that people will still pay thousands to use it over the free system demonstrate that linux has somehow done worse than fail?
Of course. That’s why everyone except hatetards supports free software. Get with the program.
IfYou’reNotWithUsYou’reAgainstUs(tm)
Queefer, you make me laugh
“Of course. That’s why everyone except hatetards supports free software. Get with the program.”
I’m kinda slow in the head sometimes, but I really can’t understand your point here… so you’re saying 99% of the people with a computer are hatetards? Cuz i’m pretty sure they don’t hate linux, they just don’t give a shit (or tried it once, laughed, and threw the CD in a garbage bin).
“I always found it to have a painfully unintuitive interface and thought it more a programmer’s modeller than a modeller’s modeller”
I occasionally do hobbyist stuff with Blender and from what I gathered from the community the reason the interface is so bizarre is that it was originally used for in-house work. I’m curious what v2.5 brings since they claim to have overhauled the UI, but I haven’t felt the need to poke around and figure out what that may mean.
I also remember reading a while back that some designers on actually movies (I’m not sure exactly which ones but Spiderman leaps to mind) used Blender for some of their pre-visualization. The chatter around CGTalk also seems to suggest that Blender is of entry-level professional quality as well. This standing in stark contrast to how every graphic designer I’ve ever met has laughed when I asked what their opinion of the GIMP was (I’m not even being figurative. Asking for an opinion has resulted in some sort of snort or chuckle from all 6 designers I’ve ever asked the question to).
Microsoft can afford to spend billions to market to the masses so they believe windows is the only way. That’s why they don’t use linux. And all you hatetards say that microsoft is not an illegal monopoly are surely paid to bring linux down.
Nope, we are not paid. We hate Linux out of passion, and we will bring it down, sooner or later. We will prevail and you Freetards will lose, like you always do
.
I don’t know if you guys know but QT has been almost fully ported to Haiku (all that’s missing is using the native controls instead of emulating them)
We’ll have a truly free linux substitute soon enough guys, MIT license for the win.
Software installation in haiku: download a zip, extract, run, damn nice.
Oh and despite being in alpha, IT’S MORE STABLE THAN LINUX.
Fail.
Oh and Adam, you still seem to think we’re MS fanboys/employees, we’re not, microsoft has the terrible habit of releasing good versions of windows in intervals.
Windows 95: Good
Windows 98: Shit
Windows 98 SE: Good (separate because it was a massive improvement)
Windows ME: Shit
Windows XP: Good
Windows Vista: Shit (fixed somewhat in SP1)
Windows 7: Good (seriously i like the new taskbar a lot)
Mac has problems too, snow leopard might be a lot faster but it broke compatibility with a few things it shouldn’t have.
Oh and getting it to work in a regular pc is a pain in the ass
The sad thing is, despite all this, PEOPLE DON’T USE LINUX, it’s terrible by design, it’s chaotic, unstable, and all over the place, just terrible on the desktop.
Tell that to all the users who run the linux desktop without issues.
Linux on the desktop is just a myth. There’s no hard evidence that it exists, because there are no people that are using it.
Speaking of interface, take a look at this:
http://labs.opera.com/news/2009/04/01/
It´s absolutely hilarious. I can´t imagine who would be willing to do that. uhahuahuauh, imagine all the face exercises to avoid repetitive motion injury.
“Tell that to all the users who run the linux desktop without issues.”
I also ran linux in the desktop without problems… then compiz came, them pulseaudio came, then kde4 came, then grub2 came, all the while my hardware either worked or didn’t with every update, no stability what so ever (grub2 really was the last straw, that was just unacceptable).
Nightmare after nightmare after nightmare, people who put up with crap like this are either masochists, or don’t know how to pirate windows.
@pcavalcanti
Thank you for putting a smile on my face, that was so stupid, those opera guys have really lost it.
Note: I know it’s an april fools joke, but really, the mouse gestures are almost as bad.
i loved the end of that video: “as you can see, the future of browsing is here”. That´s just crazy. Is the future of browsing people licking air to bookmark a page?
I wonder who´s on the other side of the camera laughing.
it´s a joke, but i bet if they started advertising it, like the “evil microsoft” everybody would start doing it, right?
Known Issues
As with any beta release there are some known issues with the current version of Face Gestures. Please read below before reporting a bug.
Beards and hair styles
Face Gestures is compatible with most types of facial hair and haircuts. But if your face is covered with more than 25% of facial hair, recognition errors may occur. Please note that handlebars and goatees are compatible independently but if combined recognition will decrease. At the moment soul-patches crashes the browser and it refuses to relaunch, we are looking into this problem. Bushmen beards and emo haircuts are not supported.
Adult Web sites
Users visiting Web sites that contain adult content sometimes make unconscious facial expressions. If Opera keeps opening Speed Dial and Zooming In and Out, please be aware that this not a bug. It may be useful to disable Face Gestures for a better experience. Also remember that wiping your cache is recommend after visiting untrusted websites.
Financial Web sites
For compatibility reasons Face Gestures auto-detects financial news services and disables itself. The current version of the recognition software is unable to adapt fast enough to the sudden change in the users expression map. As soon as the new version is available you will be prompted to install stimulus_package.patch.
@pcavalcanti
Thank you so much. I needed a good belly laugh today.
Tell that to all the users who run the linux desktop without issues.
Yes, we’ll be sure to let all four of them know.
The chatter around CGTalk also seems to suggest that Blender is of entry-level professional quality as well.
It’s not the quality of the output that I question, or even what Blender is capable of outputting, it’s the UI and workflow that I find excruciatingly painful to work with, which is why I’d much rather pay for the convencience of an “artist’s modeler” (XSI, Max, even Carrera (why oh why couldn’t DAZ assimilate Infini-D’s interface in addition to the renderer and network-renderer?).
I do intend to take 2.5 for a whirl eventually, a low cost/free modeling alternative is always welcome, but I won’t hold my breath on it, empty, broken promises are, after all, the hallmark of free software.
You think the proprietary system has worked? What a hatetard. The proprietary system has produced microsoft, which regularly engages in illegal behavior and has been declared an illegal monopoly. Enough said. Of course I don’t expect your puny hatetard brain to understand all that, just know that I win.
Adam King uses exactly the same phrases as SnickerDouche from the LHB. They are obviously one and the same.
Adam King has NOTHING LEFT
Professional studios regularly use linux, particularly gimp, to render their films. Linux is used in numerous routers and mainframes. The world’s greatest supercomputers use linux as I’ve said before a hundred times. Only a hatetard would go back and say it’s not fit for the desktop. In contrast, windows does one thing: a buggy, inconsistent, and unpredictable desktop interface. Such is the power of free software.
If you sell support then you’re selling your time which means you’re not using the time to write more software or improve your software. It’s another way of ensuring that you fail.
“Professional studios regularly use linux, particularly gimp, to render their films”
This is a lie, if anything they might use blender, but that works in any mainstream os.
“Linux is used in numerous routers and mainframes”
It also runs on toasters, and so does netbsd, your point?
“The world’s greatest supercomputers use linux as I’ve said before a hundred times”
Supercomputers do run linux (and i’ve stated why), but not the greatest ones.
“Only a hatetard would go back and say it’s not fit for the desktop”
So… you’re agreeing that desktop linux is a pile of dog feces?
“In contrast, windows does one thing: a buggy, inconsistent, and unpredictable desktop interface”
buggy: No, in fact it’s surprisingly stable.
inconsistent: I agree, first because every idiot thought he could do a better job then microsoft and made his own controls through gdi, and now because microsoft have finally said fuck it and started doing the same (it used to be only in office).
WPF only made everything worse, it doesn’t even draw the menu bar like the native control
unpredictable: in linux you have a billion window managers and 2 different gui toolkits, so yeah, only mac os x gets this right.
Then why are whole governments recommending a switch away from internet explorer? It just goes to show how much microsoft sucks.
Adam, even the hatertards know that IE sucks, no need to go down that route.
This is a lie, if anything they might use blender, but that works in any mainstream os.
At best, they use Linux for cheap Maya renderfarms. Gimp for rendering? No, some studios actually use FilmGimp (which is developed and maintained entirely by said Studios) for certain kinds of touch ups (rotoscoping, mostly).
“Linux is used in numerous routers and mainframes”
And yet it’s second fiddle to VxWorks and QNX, and zOS, respectively.
Supercomputers do run linux (and i’ve stated why), but not the greatest ones.
Indeed, I already tackled that in the previous entry’s comments (and several times on LHB, with more in depth numerical analysis). I look forward to Fujitsu-Siemens unveiling their 10 PFLOP UltraSPARC-based supercluster in ’11-12, based on the currently available data, it’s set to provide 5x Jaguar’s current maximum (not sustained) output on less than half the cores (this is without factoring in Fujitsu hinting that they’re after NEC’s efficiency crown as well). That should shut the loons up once and for all.
in linux you have a billion window managers and 2 different gui toolkits,
EFL, Motif, OpenMotif, FoxPro and TCL/Tk don’t get any love?
So… you’re agreeing that desktop linux is a pile of dog feces?
Didn’t you get the memo? Superclusters and routers are exactly the same as desktops.
I should clarify that FilmGimp’s two “big” features are support for 16-bit colour depths, and opening numbered frames in sequence, which in and of itself isn’t particularly special.
(Photoshop, conversely allows you to simply drop raw video into the app, that’ll open as a single animation with each frame on its own layer, and allows you to edit non-destructively)
@ Thomas
“hatertards”? Is it even possible for you to say anything without trying to get on someone’s “good side” anymore?
IE6 sucked (but was leaps and bounds better than what was available at the time of its release, though you’re forgiven for ignoring that, since you’re not old enough to remember the horrors of Netscape Communicator and early versions of Opera).
IE8 is quite good actually.
It’s worth pointing out that the fuss over IE is because of an exploit that is only exploitable in IE6 (~10 year old browser) on XP (8 year old OS). To trigger it in Vista or Seven (on IE7 or
you’d need to go out of your way to disable all kinds of default security settings, which although do not prevent the bug from triggering, prevent it from being exploitable, and on XP, you’d have to also go out of your way to disable things like DEP for it to do any damage.
@Frank Lambert
“in linux you have a billion window managers and 2 different gui toolkits,
EFL, Motif, OpenMotif, FoxPro and TCL/Tk don’t get any love?”
Hahaha, i meant 2 MAIN gui toolkits, though i should probably have said 3, because motif is still used WAY too often.
Thomas B sucks African gorilla cock.
So the gaping security hole that was responsible for the Chineses hacking google doesn’t exist? Oh my how hatetards love to pretend reality has a big microsoft logo on it.
@Adam King
just in case you haven´t read this already:
“It’s worth pointing out that the fuss over IE is because of an exploit that is only exploitable in IE6 (~10 year old browser) on XP (8 year old OS). To trigger it in Vista or Seven (on IE7 or you’d need to go out of your way to disable all kinds of default security settings, which although do not prevent the bug from triggering, prevent it from being exploitable, and on XP, you’d have to also go out of your way to disable things like DEP for it to do any damage.”
“Oh my how hatetards love to pretend reality has a big microsoft logo on it.”
whatever. as long as it doesn´t have a tux logo on it(specially if made on gimp), i´m fine with it.
So the gaping security hole that was responsible for the Chineses hacking google doesn’t exist? Oh my how hatetards love to pretend reality has a big microsoft logo on it.
Queefer, learn to read.
Evidently someone over at Google fucked up hard.
^
Sauce plz.
… and btw.
I thought Google runs Linux? (i even do believe that someone claimed that they ran Linux, inhouse?)
Soo.. When the chinese are capable of hacking G$$gle.. Doesn’t that mean that g$$gle is, in fact, not that shining magic box o’ wonders that freetards believe it to be?
Big problem with the GPL is that while the software may be free, the programmer’s options are limited. It’s the information’s freedoms, not the programmer’s freedoms.
Apparently the poor souls think that there’s a point to having morality and such apply to code.
Why would someone in his/her right mind (not someone that has been brain washed by RS and other freeetards) think GPL is good in anyway. When you start working as a developer in a firm, inform the firm that they should not pay you salary. Tell them to pay you from money they get from support because you want them to give out the software for free. It seems freetards dont think for themselves, why must RS do the thinking for them?