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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!nntp.coast.net!chi-news.cic.net!usc!howland.reston.ans.net!EU.net!Austria.EU.net!siemens.at!not-for-mail From: mingo@news.siemens.co.at (Ingo Molnar) Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Linux vs FreeBSD Followup-To: comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Date: 15 Dec 1995 11:08:20 GMT Organization: Siemens AG Austria Lines: 147 Message-ID: <4arkv4$las@news.siemens.at> References: <489kuu$rbo@pelican.cs.ucla.edu> <4a14v5$1lq@dyson.iquest.net> <4a2kme$32d@josie.abo.fi <4agsg2$bqc@uriah.heep.sax.de> <4ai8rk$maf@solaria.cc.gatech.edu> <4aj6tv$g98@park.uvsc.edu> <4amduo$rnd@news.siemens.at> <4ao7hn$rf8@park.uvsc.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: pc5829.hil.siemens-austria Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.advocacy:30343 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:10467 Terry Lambert (terry@lambert.org) wrote: : mingo@news.siemens.co.at (Ingo Molnar) wrote: : ] : ] Terry Lambert (terry@lambert.org) wrote: : ] : This is not a bad model. Consumers who do not do a proper job : ] : of picking the company which they buy from are screwed. This : ] : provides a nice, desirable, evolutionary pressure which has the : ] : effect of eliminating bad consumers. : ] : ] This has nothing to do with "being a bad consumer". If you dont have the : ] information, how can you make a good decision?? It's much more like russian : ] roulette. Currently we are going towards "monopolized information", and : ] i just dont like that. : : If you don't have the information, you *can't* make a good : decision! This is exaclty the point of difference between a : good and a bad consumer! The bad consumer makes the decision : anyway. : : ] So what do you do if ... Hitler took over Oracle, and he would : ] declare that: : ] : ] " Oracle as a product is discontinued, because i want it so. : ] The source code is already destroyed, all backups are burned. : ] No more Oracle!" : ] : ] a pretty irrealistic, but possible scenario. He has the right to do so, and : ] because no source code is published, all the information is lost. And quite : ] a few companies would be screwed. If Oracle was GPLed, no such thing would : ] be possible. : : Well, assuming your example came to pass: as a stockholder or : board memebr of Oracle, a publically held corporation, I'd : fire Hitler and get someone else in there. And if there was : anyone stupid enough to "just follow orders", I'd fire them : too. : : ] AND dont tell me i'm a bad costumer because i use Oracle!!! : : Naw. You're a bad customer because you depend on your SQL : server being oracle instead of just depending on it being : an SQL server (which as a commodity item can be obtained from : other than Oracle). BTW: here I am assuming Oracle isn't : publically held and you stupidly didn't write SQL engine : independent query software, which means you have two marks : against you being a good customer. OK, i rephrase my point: there exists a legal possibility to destroy valuable information, since information can be owned. Owning information = power. Power = the ability to change things on the global scale. But information is not a thing that should be a subject evolution, it's a special thing that once gotten is pretty valuable. And IMHO i dont like power, since i believe in micro- dynamics, rather than in macrodynamics. : ] Secrecy is power. : : Information is power. Secrecy is a form of centralization of : control of information. So are governments. Why are you : arguing with me instead of attempting to abolish governemnts? : : You have yet to prove that this is "a bad thing". It is a "bad thing" in the sense of scientific advance. Restricted information means less informed (=less productive) individuals. The problem is that science itself isnt the only "human activity" that uses "global resources". So it has to "compete". If we take this very abstact, this is OK. But we live in a finite world, and your model of "competing organisms" just creates "super-entities", a well-known effect in the field of genetic algorithms, in the real world they are called "monopolies". And these "super-entities" are stable too. "Free market" exists only for infinite worlds. : ] : Thus there is no mechanism for amortizing developement costs over : ] : a product life cycle, and thus there is no money for research : ] : and thus we have "putter"'s writing all our code. : ] : : ] : See why sane people reject the idea? : ] : ] sane = "people who want to make alot of money" ? : : People who want to encourage quality an progress, and see that : in order to do so, one must spend on R&D. about another problem: The problem is, that information is handled just the same way as "matter". Information is something special, other rules should apply to it. The problem is that research interacts with the market directly. Thus making technical inventions, which are considered useful for the whole organism called humanity, a subject of "selling". my view about information: - it has costs to "make" it, as everything else - Information can be replicated at virtually no cost. - "good" information can be useful or useless for any organizm, but it cant make harm - harm can be done only if that information is "bad", to be puristic (lets say i implement a system that doesnt solve a problem, or somebody lies about me) - information should not be destroyed, it should only be created Do you see? These properties are VERY different from normal matter. So your arguments are not acceptable, to say the least. You dont distinct between information and matter! Since information is handled like matter, currently, one can only make models how it could be handled. Making models about information handling is not the same as making models about how organizsm should interact with each other. (ie. i'm not dreaming, i'm just thinking) - maybe information should be made PUBLIC, R&D should be payed from taxes. If R&D doesnt do well, taxes go down on the long term, so >some kind of< feedback exists. - free market rules should apply to using that information (ie. ser- vices or converting matter), but once a kind of information is generally considered to be "good", it should go PUBLIC It's a pretty drastic model, but you might get the point: information is something special. : FYI: I have contributed large amounts of code to various projects : in my time. I just don't think other people should be bludgeoned : into contributing as ell in order to use my contribution. It would : considerably cheapen the value of my gift to give with one hand : and club into submission to my philosphy with the other. I will : generally contribute code any time I see it as "raising the bar" : across the board, and won't contribute it to advantage a single : party: I sell it to cause the advantaged party to be me. Sorry, i know that, i didnt mean to offend you in any way. -- Copyright 1995. Ingo Molnar, mingo@hercules.elte.hu, Microsoft Network is prohibited from redistributing this work in any form, in whole or in part without license. License to distribute this work is available to Microsoft at $500. Transmission without permission constitutes an agreement to these terms.