[DotGNU]Re: DotGNU and business

[Timothy Rue]

On 09-Jul-02 10:22:32 Norbert Bollow <address@hidden> wrote:
 NB> Timothy Rue <address@hidden> wrote:

>> To streamline the patent issue, or more correctly the anti-patent
>> issue, doesn't take the kind of money needed in the patent filing
>> loop. In fact all it takes is a matter of publishing with intent to
>> prevent a patent on what is published, to prevent such a patent.
>>
>> It's called Prior Art. :)

 NB> Things are not as easy as this.  Prior Art is definately a very
 NB> good and valuable thing.  However in practice, the existence of
 NB> prior art does not always prevent patent claims from being
 NB> accepted.  And if then a company with deep pockets sues you, you
 NB> may still have a serious problem even when from theory we would
 NB> say that it should be easy to prove the patent to be invalid.

Considering the MS has deeper pockets than you and my pockets are turned
inside out, mostly due to the computer industry, I'm going to have to
either consider there are somethngs you cannot patent, like natural law,
physical phenomenon and abstract ideas. Which I think would include the
identification of the natural laws of our physical phenomenon to convert
abstract ideas into reality... Mathmatical algorythims are another thing
you are not suppose to be able to patent but considering some kid, with
the help of his father who work in dealing with patents and trying to
teach his kid a lesson in patents, got a patent on swinging sideways on
a swing....I'd imagine you could get a friggn patent on air an try make
everyone pay you for using it...

But all this is really a fear tactic of use by those not really
supporting freedom but rather one body rule methodologies. So instead,
lets' focus on using the freedoms we have to improve and expand them,
instead of extending monopolistic (who's got the most money) fear tactics.

OK?

>> going to the www.dotgnu.org I find a link to
>> http://FreeDevelopers.net/ but upon further inspection it appears
>> that effort has also gotten bogged down almost to a halt

 NB> This is my impression also.

>> Seems dotgnu is related, but really a project of it's own.

 NB> Well, the three founders of the DotGNU project intially met on a
 NB> mailing list of FreeDevelopers.  At a later time there were
 NB> ideas to turn the DotGNU project into a business project, and
 NB> FreeDevelopers played a large role in those ideas, but these
 NB> ideas are dead now.  Right now it seems that the only
 NB> practically relevant relationship between FreeDevelopers and the
 NB> DotGNU project is that FreeDevelopers.net Inc. is still domain
 NB> name holder for the dotgnu.org dotgnu.net and dotgnu.com domain
 NB> names, (i.e. FreeDeveloper is responsible for paying domain name
 NB> renewal fees) and also FreeDevelopers may hold a trademark on
 NB> DotGNU (I don't know anything specific about that, only that
 NB> there were intentions to register such a trademark.)

Interesting! Perhaps there should be such a notice of closed doors,
<shrug> as the signing of the Declaration of Software Freedom continues to
happen. I don't know, but I don't think it's right in how misleading it
can be, as it seem to be presenting nothing but a false hope.

Perhaps there is another perspective. One of taking what is an making it
better....or worse....instead of starting over, for certainly the US
president in being elected, can't so easily "start over" the country.
I've seen way to many things start up and die only to see the same or some
of the same people repeat this process as many times as it takes to ...
well I still haven't seen it done right. Honestly.

>> I suppose that is to be expected when you try and mix politics with
>> commercial business plans for a Free Software base.

 NB> I'm now convinced that it's better not to mix them up.

 NB> However, the events that caused most of the "core group" of
 NB> FreeDevelopers to become totally and permanently frustrated
 NB> with the person who made all the decisions in FreeDevelopers,
 NB> that kind of thing can happen in any kind of organisation.
 NB> More than anything else, that was a "people" problem.

Not following the GNU/GPL rule of not allowing collected authority, but
instead promote decentralization? :)

>> But then business is the point of dotgnu, right?

 NB> The point of DotGNU is freedom.

 NB> The _strategy_ of DotGNU is to compete with a certain proprietary
 NB> software company in a certain area.

Please don't take this wrong, but isn't that like kicking the wounded or
from another perspective, playing a game where there is a chance of
losing, or from even another perspective isn't that really and honestly a
rather small target? Does not all you really need to do is just provide a
more free as in freedom option than "a certain company" does?

The public and the world has got the message that "one rule" in the
software industry is not a good thing, and that decentralized authority is
alot better, more efficent and safer for the dollar and public interest.

>> Personally I think trying to clone the "enemy" is inherently flawed
>> at the very core or conception level.

 NB> It has never been the intention to _clone_ .NET

 NB> However for strategic reasons we consider it important that .NET
 NB> programs will run on the DotGNU platform.

Freedom, to all, even those who want to constrain the freedom of others
(so long as their freedom does not contridict the freedoms of others,...
no double standards.) No problem here, everyone has the ability to change,
but exposure to a better way helps.

>> I guess the point is to understand the motive, the incentive
>> of Microsoft to "invent" ".net" to begin with.

 NB> Some degree of speculation about this may help to predict
 NB> possible future actions of our competitor.

Isn't there like a long paragraph in the declaration of software freedom,
that pretty much says "contridict Freedom in order to unsurp unearned
value from others"?

 NB> But the main thing to understand is what motivates
 NB> decision-makers everywhere to choose .NET, and how we can
 NB> motivate them to choose DotGNU instead.

The genuine product of "Freedom" should be able to speak plenty loud on
it's own and can only be gaged to the degree you design a system to
contridict such Freedom.

>> What's the goal?

 NB> Here are the three main goals of the DotGNU project:

 NB> The main goal is to prevent .NET, and the webservices wave in
 NB> general, from destroying the essentially-free-as-in-freedom
 NB> nature of the internet that we value so much today.

Consumer choice, the anti-trust Law, should be all you need in supporting
any genuine option. Perhaps it's just a matter of comming up with a
genuine and better option?

 NB> Secondary to this is the goal to create useful software that
 NB> the contributors to the DotGNU project consider to be valuable.

That's scary. Remove one rule to replace it with another one rule.
Shouldn't it be about what is useful to everyone, which includes the
contributors?

 NB> Thirdly it is a goal to find ways in which DotGNU project
 NB> contributors can earn good money through contributing to DotGNU.

What is "good money?" Some things need to happen before other things can
be done. For example, the industrial revolution needed to happen before
the information revolution could happen, otherwise the information
revolution would be running on what and communicating what?

In other words, there may be an issue of putting the cart before the horse
here. I don't know, but what I do know is that for there to be
Integration Technicans (IT) there has to be data to integrate and map
(perhaps that should be Integration Mapping Technicians?). But anyway,
before that can happen the general population of users needs to be able to
do more for themselves and that includes being able to speak computer
automation. I think it's pretty clear that "good money" was already made
in integrating nothing in the dot con era (depending on where you consider
the money came from. re: trillion dollar bet.)

 NB> So, for the DotGNU project, freedom is more important than
 NB> features and both are more important than business interests, but
 NB> all three are considered important.  (This in contrast to the GNU
 NB> project and FreeDevelopers, which have both stated that they do
 NB> not care whether developers get paid.  Actually, when I agreed to
 NB> DotGNU becoming "a project of FreeDevelopers", I was under the
 NB> impression that the whole point of FreeDevelopers is to work
 NB> towards the goal that developers can get paid for working on Free
 NB> Software.  I have plans for starting an organisation which can
 NB> replace FreeDevelopers in this respect.)

In the GNU theme of decentralized authority I think you will have a better
chance of putting togther a business that bids on GPL projects, and hires
the help as needed for fullfilling the project. While perhaps also seeking
sponsorship funds to help finance some (multi-million dollar sponsors are
not uncommon). I don't know, but with more and more governments adopting
open source and free software, I have no doubt that one of the project
requirements you might expect from such governments, is of having some
sort of assurance of supporting the required license(s) in that of not
wrongly using what you might learn from the projects (you know, the red
tape stuff that all is well and fine or you go to jail without passing go.)

One of the things I seem to be seeing happening today is that of Richard
Stallman and some others going around the world helping others, like
governments better accept, understand and use Free.......
"Freedom Software" as in free from external corporate control.. This has
got to be helping to generate more jobs for such freedom software
programmers.

>> I honestly believe, based on research, that the only way to
>> really achieve this is thru FreeSoftware and GPL method. But
>> I'm concerned that trying to clone the "enemy" is perhaps
>> putting a very big inherently biased dampener on correctly
>> achieving the goal.

 NB> I think that your goal, while different from the core goals of
 NB> DotGNU, is not in conflict with the goals of DotGNU.  So I
 NB> suggest that you design a software project (or several) which
 NB> you believe will achieve your goal.  Then, as a second step, we
 NB> can discuss how those ideas could perhaps be made to fit into
 NB> the DotGNU framework.

Above you have more said what DotGNU is not then what it is, and I seem to
recall a similiar lack of overall definable focus comming from Microsoft.
As if to present a chalk board and claim their right to control the
development of anything that gets written and suggested by others outside
MS employ scribble on that chalk board. Really no different then their
"Where do you want to go next?" promo theme and method of extracting value
from others.

It's obvious the worldwide netwerk is a valuable communication media. The
fuzzy part is the details, the specifics of how exactly it's going to be
used. But it's also like a moving target, that damn well doesn't want to
get shot or trapped and then subjected to the constraints of being bled
and not permitted to move beyond the cage..... But thanks to anti-trust
law... some forms of hunting and trapping are illegal and this helps the
target to keep moving. And I suppose this also helps to make dotGNU to be
at best an effort to create tools that other will hopefully use enough to
enable a viable market operating through the tools. <shrug> I don't know.
But What I do know is that there is more than one way to skin a cat and as
such, there is no guarantee. I suppose that is why MS is pursuing a
direction of hardware constraints.

Then there is me, a consumer who has to also produce in order to exist in
the economic cycle of living in society. And I know that having such
autocoding or "automation" tools at my access and freedom to use, would
certainly allow me to do a hell of a lot more than what I have been
allowed to do so far by the computer industries higher level of required
resources than what I have available ..... and it appears to only be
getting worse. Wanna see my pockets again?

A Project to get out of this mess? Automation tools, as has been
defined.....

Ask me again, And I'll tell you the same.

no matter, I'm actually toying around with the idea of a bounty or hire to
produce it .......... IN GPL of course!

But I really must say thankyou Norbert, for your feedback, as it has most
certainly helped me to draw a clearer picture of dotGNU, where it stands
and how I might, or not, benefit from it at this point in time. It's not
an easy tasks for the user to grasp so quickly a clear view of what's
happening with the computer industry produced tools the user is being
presented with today and even harder to grasp now, what is planned for
tomorrow.

Where do I want to go today? How about to shell beach? (re: Dark City)

---
Timothy Rue
Email @ mailto:address@hidden
Web @ http://www.mindspring.com/~timrue/