Prokofy was right.
December 24, 2007 by London Spengler
Sigh, as I had announced, I was going to write a long post about Prokofy Neva, but AnonyMouse did a very good one before I had the opportunity. But luckily for me she didn’t notice something; the grain of truth.
Reading Prokofy’s post is like a visit to the dentist, and I have to admit I hadn’t readed a whole one in ages. I also agree with the idea that she is a troll, always looking for things to critisice and smear, with little respect to the truth. But sometimes, there is a grain of it.
For example, let’s consider open source. Yes, it is a wonderfull thing, and sometimes has helped breaking the monopolies; I hope Linux will break someday the grip of Microsoft. But I hope so because Microsoft isn’t doing it’s work; they products are too comertialy oriented, instead of stability and security oriented. There is little respect to the customer (mmm… can you think of any similar example? OpenSim, where are thou?), and even if it is their company and they can manage as they want, and it seems to work, then cannot expect our simpathy.
But sometimes somebody has an original idea, and works on it, and develops it, and publicites it, and creates a company, with employers… and then somebody decides to replicate the proccess, usually with time that isn’t theirs to play with (aka, at work), and “give it to the comunity”.
Open source is a wonderfull thing, and I love it, but there is a grain of truth in what Prokofy said about it… and her readers cling to it, use it as an excuse to justify the rest, and love it.
That’s the sad side of that kind of “journalism”: appealing to people lower instincts, letting them justify their worst oppinions. Let’s go burn some efigies… there will be always an excuse, a grain of truth on our hate, after all.
‘But sometimes somebody has an original idea, and works on it, and develops it, and publicites it, and creates a company, with employers… and then somebody decides to replicate the proccess, usually with time that isn’t theirs to play with (aka, at work), and “give it to the comunity”.’
There’s nothing wrong with contributing to projects from work when those projects are part of what you’re trying to accomplish. If you had a problem which needed to be fixed in the Apache webserver, then it would be part of your job to fix it and to give it back to the community.
If someone, however, is using their work time to work on non-work things, that’s a problem they should discuss with the people paying them. This is blatantly wrong and, honestly, not the norm in the open source and free software community.
Cloning an existing environment is yet another question. In the US and abroad, court cases established that an API cannot be copyrighted, only the implementation of it. In other words, if I wrote a clone of Windows in my spare time and didn’t use any of the windows source code and didn’t refer to any of it then I would be completely justified in doing so. There is, in fact, a project that does this, it’s called ReactOS which is based on WINE.
So… while, on the surface, it might seem as though there is a grain of truth to what Prok is saying…. ultimately Prok has no ground to stand on whatsoever.
Sincerely, Anony Mouse
I don’t see that searching for a grain of truth in the sea of misunderstandings, lack of information and knowledge, lies and deliberate twistings of what the other side said is worth my time.
And… we’ll spend do much speaking about open source :)
Hehe, I cannot believe you invoked the US law instead a moral interpretation, Anony :-p. In fact, I had a pretty easy example in mind when I wrote the post; myself (who else could be? Did you forget who you where talking to? :-p).
There isn’t any advanced scripting behind the HUD, only the concept of storing permissions, and even that is done by the Hydra and other dancing devices. It’s main value is that it is an idea about what hugging should be, or at least, as close I can imagine it in SL.
But now it is done, it whould be easy to somebody with scripting and animation skills to duplicate the Hud, call it “the freeware Pandora Hud” and give it away as a freebie. Since the hud sales pay for the land I live at, I whould be broke :-p.
Yes, there is nothing wrong about contributing to proyects like Apache, and I still say that Open Sourcing is good… unless you do that by cloning somebody else ideas; it is like saying you don’t have the right to earn money with something because it isn’t physical.
So don’t come telling me cloning is good only because it is legal. It can be good, or it can’t be; the frontier isn’t clear.
But I don’t need it to be, since I am not trying to find it, defend or attack the Open Source. I only say that no system is perfect, and there will always be space for that doubt, that bad practice, that will give people like Prokofy a motive to rant.
And even if you where right, and that truth where only in the surface, that doesn’t contradices me. Even if it is only mistakenly perceived, that false truth gives ground to haters and despisers to feel right, and act boldly.
Also, don’t think I say only that kind of people can fell under the charm. Pretty nice ones take a lot of time to discover it, and they only do when post after post shows them that there cannot be so much dirt in the world. Who knows, maybe even you said once “I like to read it”, and that whouldn’t make you evil.
dandellion, I never said that the possible truth was worth the effort to read her posts, only to show how they could mislead people in believing them. Mixing truth and lies is the second bestr way to deceive.
And if you think I am going to spend my scarce SL time discussing about open source, when I can comment about it and get traffic, you are pretty mistaken *grins*.
Yes, in fact that’s where their argument is the most flawed, because this time they give of so generously is time stolen from an employer, a family, or even from their own lives, in advancing themselves in meaningful ways.
Working on code for free in SL is a diagnosis, not a resume-builder.
Prok,
It’s their lives… and their time to give, except when it’s taken from an employer… that **is** wrong.. but last I checked work is 8 hours a day ;). So, I’m really not sure why you should care. It’s their time to spend. I’m wondering how you would feel, if someone came to you and said “we’ve decided that blogging and spending time on SL is a waste of your time and we’re going to find something better for you to do.” I’d bet you’d resent it. :)
I wouldn’t expect you to understand it since you don’t do it for a living, you don’t have a passion for it… to many coders building code and developing software is like an art. It’s something they love to do, not just for the money.
There are also many examples of open source contributors who have gotten high paying jobs or started their own successful companies based on open source. Companies regularly hire people from the open source community because of their talent. So, contrary to what you’ve said.. it *IS* a resume builder. :)
Sincerely, Anony Mouse
Hello, Prokofy; it is strange to see you here, even if it was predecibe you whould follow the post title. Anyway, welcome :-)
In my previous post the comments derived from specifically “mature people who plays children avatars in a no sexual way” to “ways people reacts to your aspect, being it small, fat or old”. Now it is happening again :-p
It will be a pleasure for me to write a post about open source someday, even if it is a bit redundant since you already know my oppinion:
You can say that it is a dangerous way of intrusism that, being free, nobody can compete agains (I am a pretty good technician, and when I solve pretty complex problems for free I am stopping another tech to earn their money).
You can also say that open source is a blessing, that impulse society grown, collaborative behaviours, personal career development and helps consumers (I am a pretty good technician, and when I solve pretty simple problems for free, the tech support people loves me).
What I cannot understand is why everybody keeps defending one of the sides, as if the other doesn’t exist. Sometimes open source is good, sometimes is evil, and sometimes it only IS. Yes, we can have different oppinions about it, but polarization doesn’t give you the reason, only shows you ignore each other’s arguments.
And before you bite my head off for calling you polariced, yes, Prokofy, I know you where only agreeing with one of my points and, Anony, yes, I noticed you accepted the wrongness of using work time hours. Still, and even being a fascinating theme, I don’t know what the heck is this discussion doing at my blog or how did I get dragged into it. I usually talk about sex, emotions and behaviours, not software rights!!!
Merry Christmas to you all :-)