Authored by: Crocodile_Dundee on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 03:00 AM EDT

Please put the correction in the title and any description in the body



thanks



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That's not a law suit. *THIS* is a law suit! [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Crocodile_Dundee on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 03:02 AM EDT

Please put your weird and wonderful stuff here and please make your links the

type that click.



Thanks



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That's not a law suit. *THIS* is a law suit! [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 03:09 AM EDT

Bill Gates's statement that the GPL "makes it impossible for a commercial company to use any of that work or build on any of that work" is pretty ironic, considering that Microsoft seems to be offering some GNU utilities as an optional part of their Utilities and SDK for UNIX-based Applications for Windows Server 2003. Judging by the files on their FTP server, they may have already been using the GNU utilities by the time the statement was made. They may have inherited it from when they acquired Interix in 1999 (the notes still refer to it as "OpenNT") but, as I said, it still strikes me as ironic. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Crocodile_Dundee on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 03:11 AM EDT

I was working for a company that purchased a Cisco firewall. After using it for

some time I realised that there were some open source alternatives that were

easier to set up and maintain (i.e. cheaper - less time and effort).



We Used Linux-based software firewalls as we went forward, but the Cisco

firewall remained in place (and almost certainly still does) because the manager

did not want to admit that the purchase and maintenance of it was a mistake.



Paradoxically, being both better and cheaper was a problem.



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That's not a law suit. *THIS* is a law suit! [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 04:06 AM EDT

"...those myths are still perceived as true today by

some..."



Could you be more precise about who believes these myths?

Programmers? Managers? Directors? The public?



Obviously I have some ideas about this but it would be

nice to know what the research actually says. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 04:10 AM EDT

You may want to reconsider the form of this article. Recent research (can't find the URL, sorry) has shown that people tend to remember repeated statements as true, even if the repetitions are denials. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: ghost on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 04:21 AM EDT

The major software licenses in the FOSS explained in plain language.



In other word, a can do and can not list, for each license, together with the

requirements.



In general, people are not really in to reading legaleese, and could do with a

little help, to show that these licenses actually are very friendly, and give

them a simple understanding of do's and dont's, and how to avoid the silly

mistakes.



A "licensees cookbook" if you will. =) [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: hagge on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 04:25 AM EDT

I think these additional points should be covered, too.



1. To Myth 4: FLOSS licences are designed to *prevent* stealing of intellectual

property. The reason is simple: everyone can check by looking at the code. It's

much more difficult to check closed source projects for stolen IP, therefore

there may be a large number of stolen IP you'll never find.



2. To Myth 10: Ask yourself: Which kind of software is more likely to foster

innovation? A software covered by many patents and restrictive licenses where

any modification is disallowed and any new ideas lead to time-intensive

litigations over "IP"? Or some free-to-change software where everybody

is encouraged to add new parts and where such improvements appear only hours

after having been brought in?



3. New Myth: "FLOSS development is slower than closed source

development"

No. A software that can build on already written modules can be built much

faster than having to develop everything anew from scratch. This especially

results in faster time-to-market.



4. New Myth: "Closed source can protect my ideas better. If I put my

improved code back to the FLOSS community, my competitor can take it and make

profit from it, too. This I'm afraid of."

As seen in the previous myth, the faster time-to-market compensates for any

"secrets" given away to the competitor. The net-effect of open source

software is always a faster development. Open source is a process of taking and

giving, but you always benefit much more from the taking than you are at a

disadvantage by the giving part of the deal. Licenses like the GPL just ensure

that you are not only taking (which would be unfair), but also giving something

back, helping to improve the overall project.



In general co-operating in innovation-friendly open source projects leads to a

quicker innovation for society as a whole than struggling alone in closed

sourced projects, where court litigations over patents and other IP are the

rule, not the exception, often delaying the development process by months or

even years.



Regards,



Hagge [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 04:34 AM EDT

O'Reilly was not founded as an open-source-oriented publishing house. That was

one of several re-inventions of the company, the recent being that Web 2.0 thing

...



IMHO O'Reilly is also today not open-source oriented. Open-source is just one of

their current lines of business. They grew with their original audience (Unix

programmers), and that brought them into open-source as some kind of a natural

flow of things. But they make money with everything that sales, just like any

other business. Nothing wrong with that. But there is a reason they call open

source writers of open source documentation "amateurs", because unlike

open-source source-code writers the open-source documentation writers could

affects their business.



[ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 04:36 AM EDT

If you want Viral licensing - take a GOOD look at the licenses for the

commercial software you use.



Quite a few vendor toolkits have quite nasty gotcha's - of course almost no-one

reads 50 pages of legalese - but most make the GPL look decidedly friendly.



And the GPL isn't viral - all it says is that there are restrictions on what you

can do with OUR code. If you don't like that, write your own equivalent. It

doesn't force anyone to make their own code GPL - remedies are pretty much

limited to not distributing the GPL code any more.



[ Reply to This | # ]



Myth #4 - Authored by: vinea_mayhem on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 12:09 PM EDT

Authored by: mattflaschen on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 04:53 AM EDT

The whole list is quite good. However, in parts you are actually just

reiterating the myth rather than refuting it. For instance, why do we need to

hear every Microsoft allegation against the GPL? You can mention there patent

allegations, but then note that no evidence was provided and move on. Also,

point out that it is effectively impossible to avoid infringing software

patents, since independent innovation is not a defense (it doesn't matter

whether you meant to copy; if they published a patent and your code does the

same thing, you're automatically infringing). That's why Microsoft (among many

others) has been found guilty of broad patent infringement.



With regard to copyright, you shouldn't half-concede that 300/6 million lines

are infringing. No court has explicitly found /any/ of these lines to be

copyrightable, or infringed by Linux. In fact, no court to date has found any

FLOSS project guilty of copyright or patent infringement.



Also, you spend too much time on Eclipse. Most FLOSS projects are careful about

copyrights. For instance, OpenOffice.org, Apache, and GNU all have copyright

assignment policies. Of course, that doesn't guarantee code isn't falsely

assigned, but it's fairly effective at tracing the sources of code.



Thanks again for writing the article. I hope you get some good tips. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: eskild on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 04:56 AM EDT

Many myths contain a certain amount of truth with exageration as an adaption

layer.



This is rather obvious for myth1: Interest in FLOSS may be spurred by an

arrogant and appalling treatment by M$, giving a desire to leave the windows

world. To the newcomers, Linux takes the focus, as it is more known to the

public, than other FLOSS projects. Press coverage adds exageration, because the

press in general seams to prefer to cover one-to-one fights.



---

Eskild

Denmark [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Nomen Publicus on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 05:23 AM EDT

If I wanted to drive a Ford-like car, I would buy a Ford. I wouldn't by a Citron and modify it till it looked a bit like a Ford. If I wanted to use Windows-like apps I would use Windows. Creating Open Source Windows-like applications for Linux/Unix may be satifying for the authors, but essentialy it is a waste of time and effort. While Microsoft, using evil mind rays, can alter user interfaces at every release but not lose a single customer, the open source equivalent application will always be critisised for not being 100% compatable with the original. It is unlikely that the Windows user interface is the best possible. So why not do something far more interesting that copying a bad example? ---

If you love some code, set it free.

[ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: aj on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 05:24 AM EDT

How about "open source software is less secure than proprietary

software"? [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: SteveRose on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 05:29 AM EDT

I suggest Myth #7 asks whether people would buy a vehicle that had the hood

welded closed, even if the vehicle was so reliable it would never need to be

serviced.

Perhaps point out that it's mechanics who open the vehicle hood, just as it's

software "mechanics" who would open the software "hood".



Steve



---

"May the source go with you" - Gavin Flower, Wgtn, NZ [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: xtifr on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 05:37 AM EDT

Even many FLOSS fans believe that the stability and reliability of Free Software is a relatively recent phenomenon related to the commercial interest in and support of Free Software. But it's actually been higher quality than most proprietary software all along, suggests a study from the University of Wisconsin in 1995: Fuzz Testing of Applications. (Scroll down to see the 1995 study.) They compared a number of standard UNIX toolkits from a number of vendors, including IBM (AIX), Sun (Solaris), HP (HP/UX) and GNU. Standard utility programs were fed huge amounts of random data to see if they would crash or hang. Among the results they found: It is also interesting to compare results of testing the commercial systems to the results from testing freeware GNU and Linux. The seven commercial systems in the 1995 study have an average failure rate of 23%, while Linux has a failure rate of 9% and the GNU utilities have a failure rate of only 6%. This is one of the oldest formal studies of the relative reliability of Free Software vs. proprietary that I know of, which makes it particularly interesting, in my opinion. Plus, those numbers are pretty dramatic! :) ---

Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards, for it makes them soggy and hard to light. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: capt.Hij on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 06:37 AM EDT

One of the things I do not like about these kinds of lists is that they focus on the negatives. It would be nice to see the statements made in the positive rather than responding to a negative. Additionally, this article focuses on the utility of open source. Something should be said about the moral dimension of free software. The repeated use of the term "open source" rather than free makes it clear which side of the aisle this is coming from. With respect to myth 7, that end users do not care about source code. One of the great things about free software is that it is generally instigated by end users who are trying to fix a problem they are intimately familiar with. This is end user driven software in its most basic form. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Dark on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 06:50 AM EDT

There is no guarantee that simply "dumping" source code on the community will make a FLOSS project appear, and there have been several examples of such behavior to be viewed even negatively, because the community may see this as "garbage dumping" of code. What are these examples? I am always grateful when companies release their code under free licenses, even if I have no current use for the code. In fact, I'd like it to become the default action for code that is no longer useful. I'm distressed by the thought that some people are going around telling companies that this is a bad thing to do. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 07:00 AM EDT

Just about the patent myth: Microsoft has never made any claims of Linux patent infringements in Germany, and I suppose many Groklaw readers now why.



For those who don't know: In Germany, making such claims would be considered "unfair competition" against companies like RedHat distributing Linux. A court would tell Microsoft within ten seconds that they should either put up and tell the public exactly which Microsoft patents are infringed upon by which Linux source code, or shut up.



So as long as Microsoft doesn't publish any such allegations in Germany, you can be sure that they are FUD. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 07:59 AM EDT

I think I agree with some other posters that this article - although obviously

written with the best intentions - risks providing a platform for the very FUD

it seeks to debunk.



It is important to remember that the "pointy haired boss" types at

which anti-

linux FUD is addressed are naturally inclined to respect the likes of Gates and



Ballmer - so citing them, then (effecively) saying "...but they're

wrong" is

unlikely to be effective (don't expect the majority of readers to follow the

footnotes and get to the evidence).



Perhaps you could turn the article on its head and make it "10 unpleasant

truths about closed-source software" - and (e.g.) compare the escape-

clause-ridden "warranties" of closed source with the patent pledges,

support

contracts and indemnification policies now available for open source.

Highlight the nasties lurking in EULAs; the derivative nature of closed-source

applications (Bloated descendants of Wordstar and Visicalc, vs. Open Source,

which built the modern internet...)





[ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: kh on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 08:05 AM EDT

Authored by: kh on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 08:21 AM EDT

Myth 12: OS licenses are difficult to understand and companies will have to pay

licenses for each server and each user and have an expert in licensing to

understand their licensing obligations.

SWAT teams may bust down you door and force you to pay large amounts of money

for any software you haven't paid for.



If you are just using the software and not changing it and distributing it to

anyone else there is no cost. You can even copy it and give it away.



If you are adding your own code to someone else's software and distributing it

then OS is much simpler than either writing proprietary software from scratch

and distributing it or adding your code to someone else's proprietary software.

With some Open Source licenses there are some small obligations such as having

to distribute the source of your software.



No-one will be busting down your door for using open source software. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 08:35 AM EDT

Myth #1: It's a Linux-vs-Windows thing.

It is a Windows vs Linux thing.

Recall 1984 that is the book not the year.

Society is divided into 3 classes. The high, the middle, and the low.

The objective of the high/upper class is to remain on top.

The objective of the middle is to get as many goodies as they can from the

Upper.

The objective of the lower is to have a revolution so that there is no classes

in society.

On occasions the lower succeeds and overthrows the Upper.

From which society again splits into three classes with the same desires.



There is a war between Windows and Linux. If you do not believe that ask the

people at Microsoft. They are definitely at war with Linux and will do any thing

to oppose it.



Mac is doing what the middle class always does belly up to the upper class.



Linux has the typical lower class psychology of establishing an equalitarian

system.

Myth #2: FLOSS is not reliable or supported.

Wonder has anyone bother to visit the Fedora, OpenSuSE, OpenMandrake, PCLinux,

Sabasian et site lately or the KDE or Gonome site either.



Funny they keep changing.



When you have development you have change.



That means that what your developing is UNSTABLE in the aspect of there being NO

CHANGE.



DEVELOPMENT = CHANGE

CHANGE = UNSTABLE with unstable being defined that what is today is not what was

yesterday. One can think of instability as computers crashing. True. But, that

is only one form on instability. There is also instability over long periods of

time due to change.



Base on this since

DEVELOPMENT = CHANGE and CHANGE = INSTABILITY

Then

DEVELOPMENT = INSTABILITY



As development equals change the that implies that the instruction manuals for

yesterday are not applicable for today as writing instruction manuals lags the

developers producing the change.





Bases on these concepts then one can only conclude that the Myths are not Myths

but reality.



Of course we could have stagnation.

We could leave Microsoft in a dominant position.

We could not improve Linux.



That is the other alternative.

[ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: swmcd on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 08:48 AM EDT

You cite Dan Bricklin's spreadsheet idea as a new concept.

In fact, businessmen had been writing spreadsheets on blackboards and summing

the rows and columns by hand for decades. Bricklin took the (obvious?) step of

writing a computer program to do the same thing.



That's one reason that VisiCalc was an instant success: every businessman who

saw it knew

- exactly what it was

- exactly how it worked

- how much time and effort he was going to save by doing it on a computer rather

than a blackboard. [ Reply to This | # ]



Spreadsheets - Authored by: PM on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 04:42 PM EDT

- Authored by: PM on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 04:42 PM EDT Spreadsheets - Authored by: Aim Here on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 05:04 PM EDT

Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 09:12 AM EDT

I don't think one should counter Myth 10 merely by saying it isn't true (although of course it isn't). I think that instead one should identify some of the ways in which Microsoft has struggled to catch up with the Free Software world, and in some cases has yet to do so. Despite all the help which the Free Software community gave to Microsoft in the form of Internet specifications (a lot of the Internet RFCs are technical specifications), Microsoft has still not implemented all of these useful facilities correctly.

Indeed, if we are believe Microsoft's testimony to the European Union, Microsoft has not even learned how to write software specifications.

No Microsoft web browser has been even close to the state of the art for about 4 years.

Conflicting versions of libraries can cause problems to users of every operating system; but while most OSs (including Linux) at least have a solution (albeit not always simple for the users), "DLL hell" in Windows doesn't yet have a solution even in principle. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 09:33 AM EDT

The FLOSS needs the credibility of non-profit consumers associations

successfully operating in many countries around the world; in order for FLOSS to

succeed.



For example, in the USA (and Canada) there is the Consumers Union,

http://www.consumersunion.org/ which publishes Consumer Reports magazines. In

the U.K. a similar non-profit publishes Which? magazines. And there are similar

non-profit organizations in Holland and many other countries.



What the above non-profit consumer associations mainly do, is to buy products

and services out of the market place and do precise scientific comparative

testing; and then apply a simply rating so that consumers can instantly

understand which products are better and why.



For example, there are FOUR million subscribers to the monthly Consumer Reports

magazine; but, even more important, thousands of local television stations in

the USA use the constant stream of information released directly by Consumer

Reports to the TV stations on a weekly basis.



The reason for the success of the above non-profits consumers associations is

the credibility; a credibility that arises from the fact that consumers realize

that ZERO money comes from corporations to carry out the extensive testing on

products. That in fact, corporations dont even supply the products being

tested; the associations send out their own buyers into the market place and buy

from retailers.



The connection between FLOSS and Consumer Reports, would be relatively simple;

because Consumer Reports has been testing computers and some software for the

past 20 years. Even better, Consumer Reports have been assisting consumers in

dealing with the internet in general; check out

http://www.consumerwebwatch.org/.



To date, FLOSS hasnt even appeared on the radar at Consumer Reports (as far as

I can remember) and I feel that speaks volumes. Imagine all the office suites

being tested against each other and ranked; spread sheet against spreadsheet and

so on. Imagine all the multimedia software being tested against each other.

Imagine the interoperability of various formats being tested. And so on.



To me its a no-brainer. Shall we dance! [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: TemporalBeing on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 09:45 AM EDT

Myth #7: Open source software only matters to programmers, since most users never look under the hood anyway. Something else that would be good to mention - when small software companies start out and get a big contract, or a government contract, they are usually required to put their code in escrow with a company that can back them. I could be wrong, but I would think that the company holding the code would be charging a fee to do so, however large or small that fee may be. This is done so that if the company goes under, the purchasing entity may still be able to make fixes to the code by hiring another party, or doing it themselves. This is used to reduce the risk of the purchasing entity - risk that the small company may not be there to support its proprietary software.



As Open Source is already public, a company could be their own escrow holder if they so desire to have that kind of arrangement and thus be able to avoid having a third party involved as an escrow holder.



Any how...just a thought. More research would need to be done to show its viability, but it is a point nonetheless. (BTW, the big companies like IBM and gang - perhaps even Microsoft - do the escrow holding.) [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: kh on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 09:59 AM EDT

Linux is not subject to viruses. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 10:23 AM EDT

Although I support the effort and goal, I'm not certain that the article has the

right approach.

It's like trying to defend against negative campaigning. You cant effectively

fight a negative message, especially when it's factually and blatantly false.



It's just my own opinion. I'm trying to be constructive. But I believe an

article using the same facts, but constructed as "10 facts you should know

about FOSS" would be more effective than 10 myths dispelled. Affirmative

comments are more effective than defensive ones. It's time FOSS stopped being on

the defensive...it IS better at a lot of things after all.



Just my opinion.

[ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: zman58 on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 10:47 AM EDT

The GPL provides a coherent and relatively straightforward licence. If you

understand it, then you understand the requirements for use of all software in a

GPL system--such as a GNU/Linux system. This provides a far more

"standardized" approach to licensing. It provides a clear

understanding of terms for the entire system.



On the contrary, consider the variances in proprietary software licenses in a

given proprietary system. There is no consistent proprietary license model. They

are all different and require careful consideration. Additional, any one of

these can change at any time--so most seem to state anyway. The user has

virtually no control.



Consider the variances in licensing terms across Microsoft products alone. Each

product carries a different license designed predominantly to protect the

financial interests of the vendor. There could be literally dozens of different

licenses in a given system. How do you grok that?



Consider the Microsoft EULA for a Windows OS desktop system. One good example of

the truly viral aspect of this proprietary license model can be found in a

restriction that includes requiring a user client license for any system that

attaches to a Windows system--even if it happens to be a Linux system that is

used to access it. Why would I have to purchase a Windows license, when one has

already been purchased for the system I am attaching to? The viral nature of the

Windows EULA forces me to be subject to it when I am using a non-Microsoft

system. THAT is viral! [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: talexb on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 11:27 AM EDT

Myth #6: If I give away my software to the Open Source community, thousands of developers will suddenly start working for me for nothing. OK, maybe not thousands, but there will almost certainly be folks who are interested in extending your code. My case in point is the terrific Perl module Mech, otherwise known as WWW::Mechanize. I have this module installed, and recently wanted to extend it, so I copied the code from the library directory to a development directory and modified the source code to add the feature that I wanted. I asked on IRC about the protocol for adding improvements to a module, and posted the information on Perlmonks, in this node. If my patch is accepted by Andy Lester, I will have made a small but (I hope) useful contribution to the open source movement, and that's the kind of improvement that's virtually impossible in the world of closed source. And it's important to me to give back to the world of open source, since that's where I've worked for the past ten years. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: mdarmistead on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 11:32 AM EDT

Google Searches:

Results 1 - 10 of about 53,000 for dispelling myths about linux.



Results 1 - 10 of about 47,500 for dispelling myths about "open

source".



Results 1 - 10 of about 742,000 for debunking myths about linux.



Another list in the same vein is admirable, but pointless. I agree with the

concept of combating these myths; however, I feel, as others do, that our

community would be better serviced by a paper about the positives of open

source.



Matt [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 11:37 AM EDT

A very important point is that most of the volunteer contributions come from

people who program for a living (or from college/grad students who soon will be

programming for a living).



So, most FLOSS code comes from professional coders, but not necessarily on a

paid basis.



(There are exceptions, of course. I'm one. I am a surgeon who codes as a

hobby. I had taken a lot of comp sci courses as an undergraduate before deciding

to go to medical school. I got back into programming about 20 years later when

my daughter needed to learn her multiplication tables. The best free program I

found (TuxMath) asked the questions too fast for her, so I taught myself enough

C to modify it for her use. One thing led to another, and for the last two

years I have been the lead programmer for the project. But I think my case is

the exception, rather than the rule). [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Peter Baker on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 12:10 PM EDT

Here's an exercise in logic for you:



(1) MS has made IP claims against Linux. Logically, a business owner would

assume there is some truth in them.



However:



(2) MS has kept schtumm (quiet) about those same claims in the one country where

they would have to prove them - Germany.



Ergo:



IMHO, they have thus proven their claims have nil substance. If there was ANY

substance in it whatsoever, do you really think they would have hesitated to

push it further?





---

= P =

[ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 12:57 PM EDT

Linux and its identity crisis

By Don Reisinger, CNET News.com

Monday, September 24 2007 10:10 AM

http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/software/0,39044164,62032550,00.htm



If you've been following the current rift in the Linux community between Linus

Torvalds and his minions squaring off against Con Kolivas and the mainstream

Linux fanatics, you probably know that it's getting quite heated.



You also probably know that these two entirely different ideas could create

three possible paths Linux can take for the future: stay geeky and appeal to the

advanced tech guru in all of us; go mainstream and leave the advanced

functionality and reliable kernel behind to compete with Microsoft and Apple; or

face a "civil war" that could lead to total Linux annihilation.



[ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: TheEvilTroll on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 01:14 PM EDT

Any software not made or sanctioned by Microsoft is evil and bad. It will cause your CPU to rust, and leak bits. Use at your own risk. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 01:30 PM EDT

Von Hippel's Democratizing Innovation is available online as a PDF as well as in a print edition. I know because I have a copy on my virtual desktop. I can't remember where I got it though. [ Reply to This | # ]



footnote 3 - Authored by: artp on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 05:40 PM EDT

Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 01:51 PM EDT

PJ, groklaw has been excellent on SCO and some IT law. Good job and lots of

hard work there! Helped defend OSS community, deserve your awards.

I think you serve best by sticking with developing IT law, lots of work and

readers need that.

I mention this, becuase groklaw is starting to get watered down, there are tons

of OSS 'reporting' and 'movement' web sites.

There are some very important changes going on in OSS now. If you want to

report on OSS movement, lead the way, otherwise stay focused in this bewildering

land. These Myths time apply in 2000-2003, OSS world is really changing, some

for the bad. AIX or Linux at IBM, hum? Redhat EL or Fedora, Quality or

trialware...

Side point, we all read too much today, what is in demand, is short, crisp, real

news and whats going on now...Use links to established works for intros, ask

your readers perhaps?

Perhaps a Groksource website is in order? A minilinks, like EFF, would be

great.

Excellent work overall, hard to get everything done. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: vortex on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 04:46 PM EDT

There is no support: Most large scale project do have companies that provide paid-for support, in a way similar to that of proprietary software companies. The availability of the source code and the modification rights gives also the additional advantage that support can be obtained even for projects that are no longer active, in stark difference with proprietary software where no code escrow clause was included in the acquisition contract. This fails to address: The tacit myth that proprietary software (meaningfully) has support.

The vast advantage, with support for FLOSS, that there's a free market in its provision. In terms of fighting the myths, it is worth addressin the former – proprietary software charges you for support, but what you get for your money is pretty much what FLOSS provides by default. You get updates / patches. You can report bugs, and you might even live long enough to see a fix for it (on both sides of the fence, there's variation in how quickly). Finding documentation or user guides is a mixed bag – whether proprietary or FLOSS – and you might be able to get it from third parties; but, with FLOSS, the supplier is more apt to link to the better third-parties, where the proprietor is more apt to view them as undermining the "support" revenue-stream. Contacting someone for a support dialog works differently – in the proprietary model, you 'phone a pay-per-minute line during office hours and spend many minutes listening to piped music before anyone listens to you (or tries to sell you something); with FLOSS you get a newsgroup or chat room which is active at all hours – but it's there either way. The second point is even more important. If the supplier of the software doesn't regard your problem as important enough to be worth fixing, your options are really limited if you don't have access to the source code under a license that gives you the freedom to study and modify it, or that restricts you to doing those things only for yourself. A central plank of the GPL is that you have the freedom you need to be able to solve your problems even if the supplier isn't interested, or charges too much, or provides lousy support. The proprietary model leaves you at the mercy of the proprietor; if their support is expensive and/or lousy, there's no-one else you can turn to. Businesses can offer support; and no one of them can have a monopoly on provision of support, so there's competition in the support market, which greatly improves your chances of getting what you want at a price you can afford. ---

Finally - the end game.

Break out the pop-corn, sit back and watch the fire-works.

[ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: vortex on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 05:22 PM EDT

Reading #5, I didn't feel like the question had been answered, per se. The information provided does match with what I consider to be the answer, but it doesn't articulate that clearly. So I would suggest changing the opening, e.g. along these lines: replace While FLOSS as a definition covers principally the licensing regime, by extension the "openness" of the code … with While FLOSS as a definition covers principally the licensing regime, FLOSS is actually all about collaboration – the licenses are merely a mechanism for promoting collaboration. FLOSS licenses ensure that all comers are free to collaborate; some licenses also endeavour to prevent any one party from hijacking the collaboration – but the very process of collaboration itself, and the FLOSS culture that's grown up around it, protects even the projects whose licenses don't. The "openness" of the code … except that I'm not very good at keeping things pithy and brief, so you probably need to find someone who is to rearrange that somewhat ;^) ---

Finally - the end game.

Break out the pop-corn, sit back and watch the fire-works.

[ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 05:57 PM EDT

Skimming through the article, I have to agree with other posters, that the

authors are a little naive in how to manage a propaganda campaign. So I'd like

to start a thread here explicitly for the purpose of anybody who wants to post

about how to disseminate effective propaganda or how to fight propaganda. I

wouldn't claim to be an expert, but I'll start off with some points others have

already made:



1) Readers interpret bolded, larger print information as being more important.

You must make your headers be the talking points you want your readers to

remember, as many readers will only skim those headers. In this case, making

the myths be your headers is 100% contrary to your purpose.



2) Defending yourself will always give the attacks validity in some readers

eyes. The more you protest your innocence, so to speak, the more some people

will be suspicious.



3) Your target audience with a piece like this are not logical, rational,

get-the-facts type of people. They are susceptible to FUD, which is an

emotional response. If you intend to use facts, they must support an emotional

appeal, not an analytical one.



4) The messenger is just as, or more important, than the message. Of course,

who makes good messengers depends on the audience. In this case, I'm not sure

your organization is in a position to buy off a spokes(wo)man to present the

information.



5) Whoever gets to frame the debate pretty much wins. Debating something that's

inherently set up against you is a bad idea. You have to make an effort to

reframe the debate, to set its terms and parameters. Attempting to correct

misinformation is fighting on their terms.



6) Instead of just trying to give people "true" information, tell them

that they've been lied to, manipulated, suckered and used, knowingly and

callously by libelous and borderline fraudulent executives. Make it personal.

Make it emotional. And then use your facts to back it up. Then trumpet it to

the world with an appropriate messenger.



There's a reason that most politicians fight dirty. It's because so much of the

time, that's what works: their target audiences respond to emotional ploys and

not facts. A holier-than-thou, I'm-too-good-to-play-that-game attitude might

feel good but loses the election. So if you want to play this game, forget the

moral high ground and fight propaganda with better propaganda. You at least

have an incredible edge: the facts are on your side. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 06:17 PM EDT

the biggest myth of all is missing, where's the response to this:



myth #X: there's no one to sue when something goes wrong.



ok, guys, what of it? [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 08:12 PM EDT

OEM installed software is not supported by the people that wrote the software

but the OEM. They hire people, give them a 3 week training progam and they then

provide support. If your problem will take more than 20 minutes to resolve then

they recommend a format reinstall (they claim to have studies that show this is

what the customer prefers). If you find a problem in your software the best

that they can do is give you a work around. They cannot write a patch for you,

unless is is a common documented problem they will recommend a format reinstall,

and hope another agent takes your callback. Eventually you will either stop

using the product, hire a local person to help or move to another platform. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 09:43 PM EDT

I apologize for the lateness of this post. I needed a bit of time to think

about what you are doing. I'm a marketing professional. I've taught it and

I've done it. I can't say I fully understand what you want to accomplish, so

this is my take from a position of ignorance. Apologies for the length, but I'm

trying to do a lot in a small space.



You write "we are preparing a guide for helping small and medium-sized

enterprises on the adoption of free/libre/open source software (FLOSS)."



I'm not sure who the intended readers are. I'm guessing that the ultimate

target audience are management decision-makers, who determine the fate of a

proposed adoption of a FLOSS product. Since this could be any of a number of

possible product offerings, I've tried to keep things at a general level.



The tone and orientation of the guide should reflect its role in the (FLOSS)

adoption process. Here's a very quick and general look at such a process from

the point of view of the seller:



Creating awarenessgenerally done with some form of advertising or publicity.

Arousing interestwhat's the quick, powerful answer to "what's in it for

me?" This would be the headline of an ad, the start of a presentation, the

hook in a sales call. Bear in mind that you want something from your audience

(and you should have a very clear idea of what that is). What's in it for them

is why they'll listen.

Passing preliminary evaluation. This is relatively cursory testing on whether

the promised benefit(s) are believable. Some call this a smell test.

Reinforcing interestnow you can begin to describe other benefits; they're your

answer to Is that all?

Providing further information. This is, generally, responding to active

inquiry, (For the buyer seeking information, this amounts to looking at the

package and reading what's on it in some cases. If you've done that, for

instance, in a store with a food product, you were at this stage.) If you went

to a website it's similar, except that you can't buy-it-take-it home unless it's

downloadable.

Identifying and overcoming objections. This is generally something for an

interactive selling situation, and it's what you seem to be trying to do with

your article: set up the objections and knock them down. This is fine if it's

intended for use by a sales person. If it's intended for your prospective

"purchaser" it needs reframing. Essentially it needs to serve as a

set of additional reasons to move to FLOSS productboth benefit claims and

support for those claims.



This is tricky territory. To illustrate, let's suppose that, generally

speaking, FLOSS offerings have better support than proprietary products. Simply

asserting that "FLOSS support is better" won't do. The assertion must

be done in a way that makes it "instantly" believable. Otherwise

you're hit with another objection. In this case, and purely for illustration,

you might say "Support for FLOSS products is available 24/7, with little or

no waiting" then add "most FLOSS products have more support personnel

in more places than Microsoft" and give some data to prove it. [Clearly

you would not say this unless it were true. I'm just illustrating.]



You've been told about the perils of negation--the brain seems to ignore

"not" and it's a good point. Another basic of psychology is loss

aversion. The American Declaration of Independence puts it well

"...accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to

suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the

forms to which they are accustomed." This may be the core of the FLOSS

marketing problem.



Marketers are well aware of loss aversion and will often point out that there's

a limited time only, while supplies last, sale ends soon. Be the first in your

neighborhood.... Notice that the potential of losing out can help offset the

potential loss from making a mistake.



Speaking of mistakes, we tend to believe that 50 million Frenchmen can't be

wrong. If we believe that a product is popular, we tend to think that we can't

go very wrong if we make the same choiceprovided that we think that our

situation or tastes are much like those of others. (A connoisseur of teas is

unlikely to think that the popular brands have much to recommend them.) A proxy

for popularity that we often use is weight of advertising or distribution. We

reasonably conclude that McDonald's is popular if we see a lot of McD's. If, as

a small business I keep hearing about a particular FLOSS product, I'm likely to

assume that there must be something there.



Ask for the orderthis is the classic call to action. In the final analysis you

want prospects to do something. This is where you tell them what it is: sign

here, pick up the phone, come to our showroom at.....



Best of luck!

[ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: pcrooker on Monday, September 24 2007 @ 11:03 PM EDT

When people come to your site, they won't have their list of myths looking for

answers. Just ignore the lot and present the answers to the myths in their own

right. Just positive statements as the others in this thread have stated. I

think there is little point in retaining this myth focus at all.



Also, put in the silly corporate jargon that marketers use, at least as

headings, eg "Open Source is Enterprise ready", "Build you

business with flexible, innovative tools", "Budget-friendly

software", "The open source community vibrates alot, er is

vibrant." Just kidding, but you'll get the idea.



Certainly the more serious, detailed stuff can be put somewhere, but make sure

you are interesting and relevant for this group. Once you get something up, ask

them. And do what they say.



[ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: hagge on Tuesday, September 25 2007 @ 04:56 AM EDT

I attend to agree that stating the (negative) myths in bold once again with this

list may be counterproductive in the end. On the other hand we need some precise

answers for those people who have just exactly these concerns and questions.



So how about this? Just invert the headlines to make them positive, but rebut

the myths in the explanation as before. You still have to sense the myth in the

headline, even as it is phrased somewhat differently now. Here is my

suggestion.



Fact 1: FLOSS is way beyond a simple Linux vs. Windows thing

Fact 2: FLOSS is reliable and well supported

Fact 3: Many big companies use FLOSS

Fact 4: Open Source software honors intellectual properties

Fact 5: Open Source software is more than just licenses

Fact 6: (I would leave that out at all; put one of the other more important

ideas from this discussion here)

Fact 7: Open Source software matters to everyone, not just programmers

Fact 8: You can make money with Free Software

Fact 9: Open Source is an attitude, not just one way of writing software

Fact 10: Open Source fosters innovation and goes new ways



I think with these headlines, we could also include more of the ideas and

thoughts mentioned here in the discussion.



Hagge [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: mlwmohawk on Tuesday, September 25 2007 @ 08:42 AM EDT

I have to agree with the others, refuting accusations and FUD is only a way to

re-enforce FUD.



According to Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently was able to convince people he was a

psychic by a set of strategically deployed denials. It is fiction, but it points

out that it is often the case that if you deny something, you merely propagate

that which you are denying.



You make excellent points, but they could be made as "little know facts

about Free Software." People like things like "little known

facts" because it sounds like they are being let in on a secret, and if

they think it is a secret, they give it more weight than a denial.



[ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, September 25 2007 @ 10:12 AM EDT

Perhaps folks here dont know how pervasive "One Person Businesses"

are in the USA and Europe. First of the all, in the USA, 78% of all businesses

are One Person Businesses!



The U.S. Census has new statistics out  and they show that the numbers of

single-person businesses are booming. There are now over 20 million such

businesses, based on the most recently available data as of 2005.



To be exact, the United States has 20,392,068 single-person businesses. In the

space of three years, 2.7 million more people became the owner of a business of

one.



These single-person businesses account for 78% of ALL U.S. businesses. You know

those millions of small businesses that everyone is always talking about? Well,

the majority of them fall into this category of single-person business.



http://www.smallbiztrends.com/2007/07/single-person-businesses-booming.html



When it comes to Europe, 60% of all businesses are One Person Businesses!



Around 60% of European businesses are one-person-enterprises (OPEs), i.e.

enterprises that employ no personnel. These 15 million single self-employed

entrepreneurs constitute more than 8% of total employment. They are primarily

active in crafts, personal and business services, trade and transport,

construction and agriculture.



The following facts and figures are results from an analysis conducted by the

European Commission Enterprise and Industry Directorate General, which included

a Eurobarometer survey among 4,000 OPEs in 19 countries and a group of national

experts. The aim was to identify reasons why OPEs do not recruit in order to

come up with recommendations as to how conditions could be improved to make

recruitment easier.



http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/05/202&format=H

TML&aged=0%3Cuage=EN&guiLanguage=en



What the two above quotes means is that there is a potential of 35 MILLION

people/businesses, to switch to FLOSS (plus a percentage of the contractors who

will switch because of "word of mouth"). You likely have heard of the

notion of the 'TIPPING POINT", and it would be interesting to see what

would happen after 35 million USERS switched to FLOSS.



One Person and Family businesses survive by being extremely conservative on how

they spend their money. And if anyone, running a one person knew about FLOSS (or

FOSS); they would adopt it immediately! Why? Because a penny saved is a penny

earned! Of course anyone running a One Person or family business would want to

know that FLOSS software was good. And thats where the various consumer

associations come into the picture - doing comparative tests, comparing FLOSS to

NON- FLOSS software. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: hamstring on Tuesday, September 25 2007 @ 11:13 AM EDT

IT support companies have not yet found a good method for making revenue from

FLOSS. This is probably the single biggest hold back to adoption of FLOSS.



Since many FLOSS programs now run by companies used to be considered

"Unix", there was simply a migration of practice and knowledge from

platform to platform. A HP-UX administrator competent with Sendmail and Apache

has little adaptation time going to Linux. An IT support company providing

Apache and Sendmail had a fixed cost for their HP-UX system running those

applications. It is a pretty much a straight translation moving to Linux for

both the company and technical people.



Now we come into the problem for the IT company. Currently, a company sells a

seat of M$ Office for X dollars a year. The support company makes a fixed

percentage of that cost. The model generally will generate enough revenue for

profits and the cost of paying someone to install it, and re-install when it

breaks.



How can an IT company make profit selling OpenOffice?



It is very easy to hide profits in mark ups in proprietary software, and most IT

support companies have relied on this structure for income for a long time. New

models have to be built which can justify the cost for the Admin time now, that

were hidden previously from customers.



Currently, if you told a customer that you were going to charge them $60.00 a

seat anually to run OpenOffice, they would think you are crazy. "But that

software is free" is generally the thoughts from a customer. The customer

does not realize that the IT companies previously made that same $60.00 from

them per seat of M$ office, and maybe more if the rebate cycle was good or M$

had incentive programs.



IT providers loose money on software required for Windows, but Not Linux. Linux

does not charge money for each user attaching to a server, while M$ does. This

translates to lost revenues for IT providers. Additionally, AV software,

registry fixers, remote access services, etc.. all get lost when moving to

FLOSS. Yes, computers become much cheaper for the end user.. but IT providers

still need to support them.



In an FLOSS world everything support does shows as overhead.



This is not an easy problem to solve.



---

# echo "Mjdsptpgu Svdlt" | tr [b-z] [a-y]

# IANAL and do not like Monopoly [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: vinea_mayhem on Wednesday, September 26 2007 @ 11:41 AM EDT