Comments on Сoder's stories: "Antitrust" movie and do THEY reuse free software ...

Lawyers stop Microsoft developers from even *looki...

2009-10-02T11:24:19.667+04:00

Lawyers stop Microsoft developers from even *looking at* open source code.

I know Hackers (loving it) and Antitrust. Which on...

2009-10-01T16:34:59.698+04:00

I know Hackers (loving it) and Antitrust. Which one is considered to be "Hackers 2", if people consider Antitrust as "Hackers 3"?

Damn, they actually used real code in the movie. I...

2008-11-23T17:35:00.000+03:00

Damn, they actually used real code in the movie. I didn't expect that. Usually movies fake everything, but why bother to fake some source code when half of the web is free/open source.

At the middle of "http://sources.ru/java/Webserver.java" page, and around 25 minutes into the movie, same code.

From the movie:
"..it's only a matter of time before someone use your code and make millions of it..."

Me thinking:
BSD should published their code under GPL. Apple is really happy right now!

Deep night and bad English made with me a joke :)<...

2008-10-29T22:57:00.000+03:00

Deep night and bad English made with me a joke :)
I hate patents and I like Open Source (and Free Software). The salt was "protecting open software from been reused in proprietary", "advantages, which have proprietary companies in this war".
David: I'm always too relaxed :D Just got up late (3pm...), that is why it was hard to go to bed early.
Warbo: as David noticed, I meant something like "reuse".
By 'stealing ideas' I meant they can reuse it with a cool adds. And people will like it more, than our. Patents is the thing we fight with, I didn't mean using them.
Ian: writing patents can be more difficult than the code :) It can be something like coding patents )

Well yea, if you want to protect the ideas behind ...

2008-10-29T21:42:00.000+03:00

Well yea, if you want to protect the ideas behind code you shouldn't open source it. Instead you should spend all your time writing patent applications, then sue anyone who uses your idea. Then you make money from code without even coding!

I think there is nothing to afraid of. Free softwa...

2008-10-29T18:37:00.000+03:00

I think there is nothing to afraid of. Free software was created for freedom. To make people share good ideas. To prevent them from reinventing the bicycle. And in the end make software better. Ok, somebody don't want to share, but at last we can hope that they will create better software using free code.

The greatest power of Open Source and especially Lunix Kernel is that anyone can take the kernel, put some chips in a plastic box, and launch new product. They don't need to write their own firmware from scratch. And the don't need to make new bugs. Maybe they don't contribute, but I can undenrstand them. Programmers cost money. Lots of money. And consumers want the cheapest hardware possible. So they need to cut their expenses. Look at today's SOHO routers and NAS'es. They have ugly and buggy web-interfaces (written by manufacturers), but quite stable kernels (written by kernel-people). I can't even imagine these boxes with kernels written from scratch.

"Stealing" Open Source code doesn't really make se...

2008-10-29T17:42:00.000+03:00

"Stealing" Open Source code doesn't really make sense, since lots of code is under licenses like the BSD one, which allow anything (as long as credit is given). Take a look through the license to a proprietary application like Adobe Acrobat and you'll find loads of these credits.

The only Free Software licenses which can be infringed by reusing the code are copyleft ones, like the GPL, but that's why we have http://gpl-violations.org/

As for 'stealing ideas', that sounds very much like the broken thinking behind software patents. If an Open Source program does something cool then it's fine for anyone else to implement their own way of doing it. No idea is ever completely original, it always builds on what other people have already done. Restricting what can be done with ideas already though of, just ends up damaging the number of new ideas which are used (not because there are less ideas, but because many are not allowed due to restrictions).

I work with a lot of companies as a consultant, an...

2008-10-29T05:10:00.000+03:00

I work with a lot of companies as a consultant, and I've only run across one that had expropriated (don't use the word "steal") GPL code in their software. Most have strict policies on Open Source use. Okay to link to BSD, LGPL, or use GPL if it's a separate process, etc. The one exception company had GPL kernel code because a developer put it in without asking.

There's really no reason to be paranoid. You'll sleep better at night if you relax.