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The coming civil war over general purpose computing

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Re: The coming civil war over general purpose computing

#91

Post by abecedarius »

demallien wrote: post #77
abecedarius wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An iPad is not a phone. An iPod Touch is not a phone. Even on phones, many, maybe most, aspects of the lockdown have nothing to do with carriers' interests. Apple has decided it likes being like a carrier; its relation to users has changed from computer company to jealous boyfriend. (I'm not getting involved beyond your first paragraph.)

There is a spectrum of openness when it comes to computing devices. At one end you have computers that are very open, with all of the problems that come with that, and at the other extreme you have fixed-function devices such as printers. In between, you have things like game consoles, smartphones, and other mobile devices. iDevices are more closed than computers, sure, but they are much more open than say a Nintendo…

This claim (that there's a big niche for curated computing with one central curator) would sway me a little if it weren't for all the patent litigation. And the really strong network effects in OS adoption.

Where I'd expect them to be: no correlation a priori between whether a computer has a multitouch interface and whether its own owner can choose what software to run.

Re: The coming civil war over general purpose computing

#92

Post by klez »

parasubvert wrote: post #86
klez wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All owners of that software have a restriction on your behaviour with that software, including free or open source software. Quoting the GNU GPL (v2, since it's less legalese-esque): > The act of running the Program is not restricted

But the act of copying, distributing, or modifying said software is restricted. Much more so than, say, the Apache license. Those are behaviours too. The GPL controls you "in your own interests", or to quote them: > To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if…

Well, so does a law that prevents you from selling your labor as a slave, but I don't think you would see that as bad.

For the fact of 'owning' the software... well, as long as you don't redistribute it, who cares. And if you do restribute it, why should you take away from your users the same freedom that was given to you? (by making your software proprietary or by limiting the use they can make)

Re: The coming civil war over general purpose computing

#93

Post by robertskmiles »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #6

I just watched the whole thing. I liked how Cory Doctorow acknowledged that some of these problems he didn't know the answers to but he seemed satisfied just to get the conversation started. Near the beginning he flashed a picture of an iPad as an example of a device that records everything you do and there is nothing you can do about it. I had never thought of that; instead I had viewed the iPad as a nice little dev…

Depending on what you do, the 'productivity tax' is often temporary. It can take a while to find out what tools you like best and get them set up just how you like them.

Re: The coming civil war over general purpose computing

#94

Post by ekianjo »

rdl wrote: post #63
ekianjo wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we were talking about applications when we say "locked down"...

The applications didn't have API access to anything "phonelike" about the phone; it was just a PDA glued onto a phone. You could write your own PDA apps, but nothing really interesting.

Most of the applications were far more advanced that what you find on the iPhone and Android (at least until recently after pouring years of development into iOs and Android) - there's no way you can disqualify the PDA apps as being "not really interesting", and you had access to phone functions through the development environment. Of course, there was no accelerator, no multi-touch screen, no GPS, so a number of functions were missing but the software part was advanced and very capable. That was when the iPod was big as a brick and could not run any application, for your information.

Re: The coming civil war over general purpose computing

#95

Post by rdl »

ekianjo wrote: post #94
rdl wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The applications didn't have API access to anything "phonelike" about the phone; it was just a PDA glued onto a phone. You could write your own PDA apps, but nothing really interesting.

Most of the applications were far more advanced that what you find on the iPhone and Android (at least until recently after pouring years of development into iOs and Android) - there's no way you can disqualify the PDA apps as being "not really interesting", and you had access to phone functions through the development environment. Of course, there was no accelerator, no multi-touch screen, no GPS, so a number of fun…

What platform or apps are you talking about? I remember WinCE (Compaq Ipaq) which I hacked to run Linux, but I only ever had the PDA form of those, and it was essentially a small laptop (ipaq + cradle + 4GB HDD on CF card + metricom ricochet modem), and the Handspring (PalmOS) things. Nothing on PalmOS was particularly advanced. WinCE did have a lot of desktop-app-ports, but I didn't know anyone actually used them.

Re: The coming civil war over general purpose computing

#96

Post by parasubvert »

klez wrote: post #92
parasubvert wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the act of copying, distributing, or modifying said software is restricted. Much more so than, say, the Apache license. Those are behaviours too. The GPL controls you "in your own interests", or to quote them: > To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if…

Well, so does a law that prevents you from selling your labor as a slave, but I don't think you would see that as bad. For the fact of 'owning' the software... well, as long as you don't redistribute it, who cares. And if you do restribute it, why should you take away from your users the same freedom that was given to you? (by making your software proprietary or by limiting the use they can make)

What does slavery have to do with this? There's ample discussions over the past 10 years over why many people disagree with the approach the GPL takes as being too restrictive and freedom-restricting, and not actually in the spirit of "open". I don't have to even argue that, it's been done before ad nauseum. Of course many support the GPL and it's approach. The point on GPL is that "freedom is a feature", it's all in the eye of the beholder of what's more important - free to use & redistribute, or free to use but only redistribute under certain circumstances. The choice has massive implications for people using that software - I've seen many a review of weeding all GPLv3 or AGPL dependencies out of a product for this very reason.

The original point is that Cory seems to think that protecting user's freedoms first requires securing device owner's freedoms, though the two come into conflict regularly, and he doesn't have clear answers of how to resolve that. I'm suggesting that he's not looking at ownership broadly enough.

Re: The coming civil war over general purpose computing

#97

Post by ekianjo »

rdl wrote: post #95
ekianjo wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the applications were far more advanced that what you find on the iPhone and Android (at least until recently after pouring years of development into iOs and Android) - there's no way you can disqualify the PDA apps as being "not really interesting", and you had access to phone functions through the development environment. Of course, there was no accelerator, no multi-touch screen, no GPS, so a number of fun…

What platform or apps are you talking about? I remember WinCE (Compaq Ipaq) which I hacked to run Linux, but I only ever had the PDA form of those, and it was essentially a small laptop (ipaq + cradle + 4GB HDD on CF card + metricom ricochet modem), and the Handspring (PalmOS) things. Nothing on PalmOS was particularly advanced. WinCE did have a lot of desktop-app-ports, but I didn't know anyone actually used them.

I used applications on WinCE - I had a Toshiba PDA. I cannot remember all the application names, but SPB was one of the key developpers for the platforms and their organizer/calendar/scheduler apps (Spb Calendar if I remember correctly) was much better than what you could find on iOS or Android until recently. There were also applications that could open and edit actual word documents and excel sheets (forgot the name) which worked pretty well for tweaking existing files.

The main drawback was the lack of a good browser - these were the days before firefox/chromium so there were no real alternatives out there.

But I had Skype running to call people YEARS before any smartphone could do it. Smartphones were just catching up to what the original PDAs were capable of doing, basically.

Re: The coming civil war over general purpose computing

#98

Post by klez »

parasubvert wrote: post #96
klez wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, so does a law that prevents you from selling your labor as a slave, but I don't think you would see that as bad. For the fact of 'owning' the software... well, as long as you don't redistribute it, who cares. And if you do restribute it, why should you take away from your users the same freedom that was given to you? (by making your software proprietary or by limiting the use they can make)

What does slavery have to do with this? There's ample discussions over the past 10 years over why many people disagree with the approach the GPL takes as being too restrictive and freedom-restricting, and not actually in the spirit of "open". I don't have to even argue that, it's been done before ad nauseum. Of course many support the GPL and it's approach. The point on GPL is that "freedom is a feature", it's all in…

Fair enough, as you say it's in the eye of the beholder.

What I'd like is a precise use of terms. Saying (as most do) that GPL is restrictive is imprecise. As you better put it, GPL is restrictive on redistribution.

As for ownership, I'd like you to expand on what you think about it. As you say Cory didn't look broadly enough, so I'd like to read further opinions about it.

Re: The coming civil war over general purpose computing

#100

Post by blub »

parasubvert wrote: post #82
blub wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are ways to offer predefined paths for those people that don't care about choice without taking away choice from everyone. Apple has completely failed at providing this because they're hungry for control and want to impose their will upon their customers. Ideally all people that use computers. >Firstly, you do realize that you have political freedom -- people are completely free to jailbreak their phones, no po…

> There are ways to offer predefined paths for those people that don't care about choice without taking away choice from everyone. Apple has completely failed at providing this because they're hungry for control and want to impose their will upon their customers. Ideally all people that use computers. And their customers are thanking them for it. Apple's control is primarily about improving the overall experience of…

You're working from the assumption that openness (and by extension freedom, privacy) are features, but they're more than that.

They are essential human needs and the market can not be relied upon to provide them, they must be enforced. Convenience is very alluring and freedom is very difficult. Most people will choose convenience, that I already know - what is extremely important is that there is always a Free option available and that corporations like Apple are mercilessly criticized whenever they fail to uphold the ideals of openness.

You can relax and think the market will look out for your rights and you'll wake up with your hands tied behind your back parasubvert. These "tradeoffs" always seem nice until you're trapped.

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