Is all this Free code giving, ruining our Industry? 4

[MrGreed]

I find it helpful when I am helped by a fellow programmer with a coding question. I also find it helpful when I'm out searching for a way of coding something and find it.

But at the sametime I question whether all this "Free Code" out on the internet is a benefit or a ball an chain to the "IT" industry.

I know of and meet to many non "IT" individuals that think that they can program the "internet" because of all this free code and the same applies to buisness managers that consistantly hire the wrong people for the job.

What do you think? "did you just say Minkey?, yes that's what I said."

MrGreed

 

[iSeriesCodePoet]

As you stated there are pluses and minuses.

On one hand, you are greatly helped in your problem. Others are also helped if they have a similar problem they can quickly decipher it and get a good response.

On the other, you are giving a newbe the ability to do that same thing. Most likely, they won't understand it though. Then they say, "I can do this," but they don't understand why or how it works.

I guess javascript is a good example for this (of which I am guilty). I know very little javascript, but I find something similar to what I need, I copy and modify, I'm done. But that also means most of the time I am finding other ways to achive the same thing. Mike Wills
IBM iSeries (AS/400) Programmer

http://www.koldark.net

 

[svanels]

I don't think that giving free code is ruining the industry. If a manager hires the wrong person because he cannot distinguish a professional from a witch doctor, he gets what he deserves, and he puts his job on stake.
He will have to explain to upper management, board etc why the bussiness is not running. Before the blow reaches at the floor a lot of layers close to the top have absorbed the first impact.

I do not say that everything you must give away for free, but sharing, publishing knowledge is a good way of self promoting. The best way to learn something is to teach in it. Steven van Els
SAvanEls@cq-link.sr

 

[CajunCenturion]

I agree that its a double-edged sword. On the one hand, I agree with swanels in that sharing and publishing knowledge is a good thing. And he's right in that teaching something is the best way to learn it.

On the other hand, it does allow for slugs to pass themselves off, at least for a time, as being qualified to do that which they can't. During that time, they too represent the industry, and give it a bad name. Its very eash for the board, after they've fired both the manager and the employee from the previous example, to generalize that negativism across all the members of our profession. Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[xutopia]

if you are talking about Open Source Software (OSS) some feel both ways about it.

When you really think about it the IT industry should be a two part industry. The first one that is the hardware industry. They provide a product. The other part of the IT industry is a service sector that provides software and consultation.

In this world you cannot give away hardware cause it cost something to produce it. However the knowledge to create it can be given away as a consultation service. Consultants get fees for giving information on something.

On the software side of things there are two distinct types of software. Proprietary and free (like OSS) software.

Microsoft makes money selling Windows and any other software they make. The only free things they give to people are things that forces them to always use their Windows Operating System so they can keep the market tied to them. Since they have a licencing fee for each version of their software that allows them to racks up the money.

Despite making a lot of money on licensing fees Microsoft also makes money off certification for people hoping to become Microsoft Certified Professional Engineer. They also make a lot of money selling tools to help develop on their platform (Visual Interdev).

Linux does make a bit of money but not nearly as much as MS. They sell the CDs on which they have the copies of their software. They also sell support and documentation. This is how they make money.

Both have their place in the IT industry. I know that many things I code could be better done by someone else but some specific things I can do better than others. Sometimes someone can comment on my code if I show it to the world and that allows me to make my code better.

There are still plenty of things we can do in the IT industry. Plenty of software that can be written and I think it will always be that way. If we write software then we should consider ourselves as people offering a service. We offer our time against money. Not something we did. Gary

http://www.xutopia.com

Haran

 

[svanels]

Sometimes giving away things for free is part of a strategy. Look at the programming languages, there are give away versions (stripped) to atract programmers for using it. Do you think VB would have been making it if Micro$oft had been starting just buy selling it? Would you buy a 3-digit software without having a "testdrive" or without knowing what the product is capable of? Steven van Els
SAvanEls@cq-link.sr

 

[cian]

As far as I am concerned the internet is for passing knowledge/information on anything and everything, including code!
Anyway it's not possible to stop people from giving free code, as much right as you may have to sell code, other people have as much right to give away the same code for free.
I don't think it's ruining the industry either, ya still gotta know how to use the code, how to modify it etc

Also, if people can't get code for free they will just try to steal it!


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http://www.endamcg.com

::

http://www.endamcg.com/finland-gaa

 

[strongm]

>Do you think VB would have been making it if Micro$oft had been starting just buy selling it?

Er...they did. I don't recall any freebie or stripped down versions of VB1 or VB2 (and it was VB2 that won market share for VB)

 

[Guest_imported]

Well here'a a thought. Without free code, Windows NT and Mac OS X wouldn't exist. A great deal of the Windows NT code is based on Free BSD code, and Mac OS X is basically BSD with a proprietary Windowing system on top.
The Internet itself is based on a Free standard, TCP/IP, and most TCP/IP stacks in most OS's are just recompiled from the BSD source.
The Apache Web server is Freeware and runs most of the internet.
How has any of this Free software done any damage.
I remember when Bill Gates was asked about the Internet in the early 90's. He said that MS would not support it as he didn't see it as anything more than a techie fad.
Netscape came a long with a free browser (not the first) and suddenly MS could see a market it wasn't dominating, so IE was born (interestingly it too is Free).
Lastly, lets look at Linux. It can reasonably be argued that the superior security of Linux (more freeware)is driving a lot of the MS devlopment in promised upgrades for the future. Surely, even those die hard MS lovers have to acknowledge that a more secure Windows would be a good thing.

 

[strongm]

>A great deal of the Windows NT code is based on Free BSD code

Really?

 

[xutopia]

strongm,

Yes it is. Gary

http://www.xutopia.com

Haran

 

[garwain]

Did you actually expect M$ to develop a solid, stable OS? That company is not rich and famous for developing advanced solutions that are unique and risky. They are rich because they do a good job at buying/ stealing code and recycling it into a marketable product.

 

[xutopia]

M$ history of coyping others :

DOS : bought for 20000$USD when it was still called dirty operating system

Windows 1.0 : copied Xerox

Windows 95 : blatently copied Macintosh (recycle bin, desktop that all comes from Apple).

Windows NT : copied kernel and many subroutines from Freebsd

Word, Excel, Powepoint : Word copied a Mac program whose name I forget. Excel is a copy of Lotus 123, Powerpoint copied Harvard Graphics.

Frontpage : failed attempt to copy Dreamweaver.

Visio : bought from another company and then recoded to work with Office.

Windows XP : some of the bugs found in Freebsd are also found in XP. This leads to think that XP uses lots of C routines found in FreeBSD.

Internet Explorer : some parts are Based on NCSA Mosaic. RSA code copyright of RSA.

ActiveX : nothing more than a Java clone that only works with Windows.

JScript : copy of Netscape's javascript.

MSN Hotmail : bought for a few millions

Say the only thing I recall MS inventing (actually not really inventing but coming up with a commercial version first) is plug and pray. Gary

http://www.xutopia.com

Haran

 

[AIXSPadmin]

An article in today's paper about MSs legal battle with the government and 9 states, listed M$ revenue from 6/2002-6/2002: $28.4 billion; Market Value: $287.6 billion (which is higher than the Gross Domestic Product of more than 150 countries, including Switzerland, Belgium, Saudi Arabia, and Argentina.) They also have 93% of the pc market and 96% of the browser market.

Not bad having 96% of the browser market since they were a late comer to the internet arena and Billy thought it wasn't going to be going anywhere. But with more money than most countries, I guess you can level (destroy) the competition. And hey, you don't have to have good products either or make sure they work because there isn't any competition and if there is you either buy them or destroy them!

 

[svanels]

I liked that phrase: "plug and pray" Steven van Els
SAvanEls@cq-link.sr

 

[xutopia]

to say the least MS forces the world to give its code away for free. Because whenever someone makes something useful to the world (RealAudio, RealVideo, Netscape etc) MS just copies and makes it run better on their OS because they know the OS in and out (and hid the real speed optimisation options that Windows offers to other people).

When Real Networks was making money on RealAudio MS decided to ruin them by offering Windows media and windows media encoder for free in their OS!

When Netscape was making a little money with their browser MS decided to screw them over the same way they did with Real.

This is why we have to give software for free. Because if we don't MS just copies us and screws us over. Gary

http://www.xutopia.com

Haran

 

[strongm]

Good God! You've got a real M$ axe to grind, haven't you?

>DOS : bought for 20000$USD when it was still called dirty operating system

Yep, the somewhat tiny MS of the time bought 86-DOS (aka QDOS, or Quick and Dirty Operating System) from Seattle Computer Products (which was a rip-off of Gary Kildall's CP/M). They modified it to meet the requirements of their then customer, IBM, and released it as MSDOS. IBM also produced a modified version, known as PCDOS. I'll grant that this was because Bill Gates couldn't actually deliver his own OS in time, but how this counts as 'copying', I don't begin to understand

>Windows 1.0 : copied Xerox

I wish! Amongst other things it lacked icons, and overlapping windows, and initially was limited to CGA resolutions.

That being said, Apple released their 'rip-off' of ideas from the Xerox Alto/Star , the Lisa, in 1983 (Xerox sued Apple in 1989. And when did M$ announce that they were going to do their own GUI for the PC? Yep, 1983. So, who do you think they actually copied (badly)?

>Windows 95 : blatently copied Macintosh (recycle bin, desktop that all comes from Apple).

It is a fair point to say that MS didn't originate the some of the ideas in the W95 desktop. However, much of the Mac GUI was a blatant copy of, or derived from, ideas developed at Xerox. But then so is Ethernet, and we don't go around accusing people like 3COM of copying.

>Windows NT : copied kernel and many subroutines from Freebsd

Impressive. FreeBSD v1.0 wasn't actually available until December 1993, and NT 3.1 was released in August of that year (and had been first demod back in 1991), and the design team got together in 1988 which is a whole 2 to 3 years before BSD was ported to the x86 environment. Given the above I'd question your assertion.

>Word, Excel, Powepoint : Word copied a Mac program whose name I forget. Excel is a copy of Lotus 123, Powerpoint copied Harvard Graphics.

Microsoft's first spreadsheet was Multiplan, which predates Lotus 123. Microsoft would argue that Excel was a derivative of Multiplan. Furthermore, Word was originally designed to use the same UI as Multiplan. Since this version of Word was originally released several months before the first Mac, it would make if difficult for it to be a copy of a Mac program. I should also point out that Lotus 123 was a blatant rip-off of VisiCalc. As for Powerpoint - well, the first versions were black-and-white only Mac releases. And it wan't developed in-house. Forethought Inc. developed it in about 1985. MS bought it from them after two years of wrangling, and released it as Powerpoint 1.0 in September 1987. The first version of Harvard Graphics was released in 1986, so Forethough sure as heck can't have been copying it in 1985...

>Frontpage : failed attempt to copy Dreamweaver

Or possibly any other number of HTML editing packages.

>Visio : bought from another company and then recoded to work with Office.

So?

>Windows XP : some of the bugs found in Freebsd are also found in XP. This leads to think that XP uses lots of C routines found in FreeBSD

Is this your sole tenuous basis for arguing that NT is based on FreeBSD? Oh dear.

>Internet Explorer : some parts are Based on NCSA Mosaic. RSA code copyright of RSA

Many early browsers were based on Mosaic, including Netscape's. And ANYONE using RSA has to licence it.

>ActiveX : nothing more than a Java clone that only works with Windows

<sigh>. ActiveX (which really just a marketing rebranding of OLE and COM) is partially derived from IBM technology that MS had access to when working on OS/2, and (as OLE 1.0 and COM) predates Java's 1995 release by at least 4 years.

>JScript : copy of Netscape's javascript

JScript is an implementation of ECMA-262

>MSN Hotmail : bought for a few millions

Rather a lot more than that. But I don't understand the point you are making here.

 

[AIXSPadmin]

strongm, for your information, Windblows DOES use some FreeBSD code in their operating system. That is as much a testament to the quality of the BSD operating system and Unix as anything else. Goes to show that Bill cannot create something on his own without plagerizing others code; you would think with over $5 billion a year spent on research and development that MS could create their own code. Linus T. created his own Unix type kernel from scratch as we all know. What Bill geniuses cannot figure it out? A grad student from Finland did!

 

[xutopia]

&quot;There is some contention as to whether Apple were justified in sueing Microsoft, given that they themselves used some of the ideas from the XEROX 'Star' system when desiging their G.U.I. - however the similarities between MacOS and Windows are much more pronouced than those between the XEROX system and the Mac.&quot;

SRC :

http://www.ox.compsoc.net/~swhite/history/timeline-ORG.html

Today's XP (NT5) has lots of code based on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Some of the bugs reported in their software creeped up in Windows today. Explain that to me. MS says that Open Source is the worst thing that ever happened yet they fully take advantage of it when they can.

On JScript.

Read history of Javascript here :

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/javascript/2001/04/06/js_history.html

Netscape created LiveScript later renamed JavaScript. MS copied and called it JScript *then* the ECMA tried to fuse the two together in what is now ECMAScript.

The point I am making is that MS doesn't truly innovate. All they do is take from others and make it work as best they can to control everything byte related. If you look at the history of computers MS is always the last one to enter the playing field but always does it in a way to squash out competition and often times illegaly.

If I have something against MS! Sure I do. They make me sick! Gary

http://www.xutopia.com

Haran

 

[MikeLacey]

What BSD code does NT use then? Is this documented somewhere?

I remember reading a book about the development of NT (Show Stoppers) but can't recall any mention of that, interesting thought. Mike

&quot;Experience is the comb that Nature gives us, after we are bald.&quot;

Is that a haiku?
I never could get the hang
of writing those things.