...more recent posts
Well, this stuff is almost boring at this point; if only it weren't so important. Last week Microsoft sent another shot the open source way through a speech given by VP Craig Mundie, claiming once again that Microsoft owning everything is somehow better for everyone than having lots of competition. Huh? Anyway, I don't recommend the Mundie speech unless you're looking for examples of very poor reasoning. It's the same kind of logic that the RIAA, and the MPAA, and every other group that profits from selling the creative works of others tries to make: strong intellectual property rights are fundamental to creative output. It's the old, "nobody would make any music if they weren't going to get paid" argument, which is so patently false I wonder how some of these people can actually make it with a straight face. Ever heard of history? How about 10,000+ years of cultural development that had nothing to do with strong intellectual property rights. How about the very foundation of western science with its reliance on sharing of information? (peer review anyone?) We're all richer by sharing, and anyone arguing anything else is trying to...
Oh forget it. Read the response to Mundie from Linus "benedict" Torvalds himself:
"I'd rather listen to Newton than to Mundie. He may have been dead for almost three hundred years, but despite that he stinks up the room less."
Just got back in touch with an old friend from out west. She's just like I remember her. So sweet. It's nice when the past comes around again.
Potlatch - the gift economy.
"Right now we're just trying to describe an economic system in which creators don't have to sell their chldren to survive. Because of the nature and the popularity of P2P 'viral distribution' networks, we don't think that payment for cultural products can be enforced - hence the emphasis on gifts and voluntary payments. We do think that payment, or reciprocity, can be facillitated and encouraged in various ways. To this end we hope to introduce an intuitive, reliable, and reasonably secure peer-to-peer payment system. Design goals: easy to set up; easy to use; impossible to control."