Re: is free, open source software ethical?

On Wed, 05 Mar 2008 19:45:22 +0000, Richard Heathfield wrote:

> Nelu said:
>
> <snip>
>
>> We may think that something does not benefit us but in reality it may
>> not be true. Your conscious decision may have factors that you cannot
>> acknowledge.
>
> If those factors are outside my power even to acknowledge, let alone
> control, then either I don't have free will (in which case ethics is
> really rather a pointless exercise)
> or those factors are not the
> dominant factors in my decision to give away a program from which others
> will benefit. In the latter case the behaviour is altruistic; either
> way, it's not unethical to give that software away.

Good point. Although I find the free will part a little blurry, in
general, when it comes to humans, especially to the ones that have the
conscious-unconscious dichotomy ).


--
Ioan - Ciprian Tandau
tandau _at_ freeshell _dot_ org (hope it's not too late)
(... and that it still works...)

In article <yOqdnWCX2uUPd1PanZ2dnUVZ8surnZ2d@bt.com>,
Richard Heathfield <rjh@see.sig.invalid> wrote:
[SNIP]

> When scientists make claims that are not verifiable, their credibility
> becomes important. When they say stupid things (e.g. [...] "random
> data cannot be compressed"), I am likely to reassess their credibility.

In what sense do you believe that random data can be compressed? (In
the usual sense of the word, statistically random data N bits long
contains N bits of information, and that can not be represented in less
than N bits.)


--
---------------------------
| BBB b \ Barbara at LivingHistory stop co stop uk
| B B aa rrr b |
| BBB a a r bbb | Quidquid latine dictum sit,
| B B a a r b b | altum viditur.
| BBB aa a r bbb |
-----------------------------

Barb Knox wrote:

> In article <yOqdnWCX2uUPd1PanZ2dnUVZ8surnZ2d@bt.com>,
> Richard Heathfield <rjh@see.sig.invalid> wrote:
> [SNIP]
>
> > When scientists make claims that are not verifiable, their credibility
> > becomes important. When they say stupid things (e.g. [...] "random
> > data cannot be compressed"), I am likely to reassess their credibility.
>
> In what sense do you believe that random data can be compressed? (In
> the usual sense of the word, statistically random data N bits long
> contains N bits of information, and that can not be represented in less
> than N bits.)

Take a page from chaos theory even in your random data there will
be patterns and quite a few compression algorithms are designed
to reduce these patterns to a smaller representation. RLE used in faxes
is a small example of this.


w..

Barb Knox wrote:

> In what sense do you believe that random data can be compressed? (In
> the usual sense of the word, statistically random data N bits long
> contains N bits of information, and that can not be represented in less
> than N bits.)

In thinking about the problem one small test might be to devise
compression algorithms that compress known numbers with
reasonable characteristics like for example pi.

w..

In article <47CF0BB3.15CDB9E6@bytecraft.com>,
Walter Banks <walter@bytecraft.com> wrote:

> Barb Knox wrote:
>
> > In article <yOqdnWCX2uUPd1PanZ2dnUVZ8surnZ2d@bt.com>,
> > Richard Heathfield <rjh@see.sig.invalid> wrote:
> > [SNIP]
> >
> > > When scientists make claims that are not verifiable, their credibility
> > > becomes important. When they say stupid things (e.g. [...] "random
> > > data cannot be compressed"), I am likely to reassess their credibility.
> >
> > In what sense do you believe that random data can be compressed? (In
> > the usual sense of the word, statistically random data N bits long
> > contains N bits of information, and that can not be represented in less
> > than N bits.)
>
> Take a page from chaos theory even in your random data there will
> be patterns

If there are patterns then it is not statistically random.

> and quite a few compression algorithms are designed
> to reduce these patterns to a smaller representation.

Indeed, that is what compression is all about.

> RLE used in faxes is a small example of this.

And faxes are clearly not random patterns of dots. If you tried RLE (or
any other encoding) on 2D grids of statistically random dots then it
would not compress them.

--
---------------------------
| BBB b \ Barbara at LivingHistory stop co stop uk
| B B aa rrr b |
| BBB a a r bbb | Quidquid latine dictum sit,
| B B a a r b b | altum viditur.
| BBB aa a r bbb |
-----------------------------

In article <47CF0F04.8377B293@bytecraft.com>,
Walter Banks <walter@bytecraft.com> wrote:

> Barb Knox wrote:
>
> > In what sense do you believe that random data can be compressed? (In
> > the usual sense of the word, statistically random data N bits long
> > contains N bits of information, and that can not be represented in less
> > than N bits.)
>
> In thinking about the problem one small test might be to devise
> compression algorithms that compress known numbers with
> reasonable characteristics like for example pi.

But the digits of pi are *not* random in the usual sense, since a small
algorithm suffices to generate them. See
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity>.

--
---------------------------
| BBB b \ Barbara at LivingHistory stop co stop uk
| B B aa rrr b |
| BBB a a r bbb | Quidquid latine dictum sit,
| B B a a r b b | altum viditur.
| BBB aa a r bbb |
-----------------------------

Some entity, AKA Barb Knox <see@sig.below>,
wrote this mindboggling stuff:
(selectively-snipped-or-not-p)


> > RLE used in faxes is a small example of this.
>
> And faxes are clearly not random patterns of dots. If you tried RLE (or
> any other encoding) on 2D grids of statistically random dots then it
> would not compress them.

A marginally sane FAX program would simply print:
"100 PAGES OF GARBAGE OMITTED"

Cor

--
SPAM DELENDA EST http://www.clsnet.nl/mail.php
(defvar My-Computer '((OS . "GNU/Emacs") (IPL . "GNU/Linux")))
Alle schraifvauden zijn opsettelick, teneynde ieder lafaart de cans te
gevuh over spelingk te mekkuh instede de inhaut

In article <see-34B202.10423806032008@lust.ihug.co.nz>,
Barb Knox <see@sig.below> wrote:
>In article <47CF0BB3.15CDB9E6@bytecraft.com>,
> Walter Banks <walter@bytecraft.com> wrote:
>
>> Barb Knox wrote:
>>
>> > In article <yOqdnWCX2uUPd1PanZ2dnUVZ8surnZ2d@bt.com>,
>> > Richard Heathfield <rjh@see.sig.invalid> wrote:
>> > [SNIP]
>> >
>> > > When scientists make claims that are not verifiable, their credibility
>> > > becomes important. When they say stupid things (e.g. [...] "random
>> > > data cannot be compressed"), I am likely to reassess their credibility.
>> >
>> > In what sense do you believe that random data can be compressed? (In
>> > the usual sense of the word, statistically random data N bits long
>> > contains N bits of information, and that can not be represented in less
>> > than N bits.)
>>
>> Take a page from chaos theory even in your random data there will
>> be patterns
>
>If there are patterns then it is not statistically random.

Well, no. There will always be patterns if you have enough data, but
that doesn't mean that the patterns will be long enough to take advantage
of. This distinction, of course, is not one that the random data fans
understand. They see the occasional 1234567 in a 20GB file as a chance
for compression. The rest of us see it as a chance to waste precious
bytes describing the location, length, and form of the patten, resulting
in, if they are very, very lucky, no gain at all.

Alan
--
Defendit numerus

Robert Uhl <eadmund42@NOSPAMgmail.com> writes:

> If you want SBCL to be innovative, then (drumroll please) innovate, and
> add it to SBCL. There's no reason for free software not to be
> innovative, save that most people don't want to innovate.

I think this posting hits one nail squarely on the head. I will get
to the point about "dumping" near the end after the line of dashes.

I am a software entrepreneur and I like innovating. However, I also
like a rather expensive lifestyle, not movie star or rock star
extravagant, but six figure USD per annum salary is a personal
requirement and easily obtained (although not solely as the
entrepreneur that I was), which is far more than many of my lesser
paid international colleagues expect. If I could, I would make my
money developing and selling innovative software--I almost did for a
few years. Unfortunately, I was at least partially the "victim" (I
use this term loosely as I don't feel a victim in this case) of this
zero cost software dumping, as several inferior products were released
that competed with things I wrote, but were zero dollar acquisition
cost. It is very hard to compete with something which is perceived as
being adequate and free.

I am perfectly willing to concede that most (and more likely all) of
these zero cost competitors were developed altruistically. In
addition, some of the competitive zero cost products were also
innovative in at least one way or another. Thus, you cannot fault
their developers, nor the clients who chose them.

Now, having a generally superior product kept my company afloat for
some time, and it still exists and makes some money, because in sme
ways it still serves its niche better than any of its competition (and
thus there are some commercial clients who realize it is worth the
small sum I charge them annually for maintenance and minor
improvements). However, it never paid a sufficient return that I
could devote my talents to it full time. Perhaps my own altruistic
impulse was not strong enough to forego the lifestyle that I was able
to maintain by not devoting more of my talents to a product that was
competing in a race-to-the-bottom with software that was zero cost.

I still devote some time to my software, partially because I enjoy
innovating with it. At the same time, I know there are things that I
would like to have been able to do with it, which I could not afford
to do given my other priorities in life. Some of them will get done,
but the market has spoken and said that it was not willing to finance
me doing them at the price I wanted to charge. Clearly the market has
a different value on what it thinks I should be doing, as I easily
make my required salary by doing something other than being an
entrepreneur.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Now, one small point about dumping. I believe there is some dumping
in the zero cost software market. For example, Intel gives away lots
of software for free that it spent significant revenue developing. It
recoups that money via hardware sales. Moreover, in my opinion it
does this for a monopolistic reason. If there is zero cost software
for an Intel platform that does the task, it is hard for a software
company to develop a competing piece of software that might work with
a competitive platform (or be platform independent). Thus, Intel
keeps down the number of competing architectures and thus helps keep
its hardware margins up. For Intel, the per chip margin is the most
important measure of success. The dearth of 68000 based personal
computers is one mark of Intel's success.

Barb Knox <see@sig.below> writes:
> In article <47CF0BB3.15CDB9E6@bytecraft.com>,
> Walter Banks <walter@bytecraft.com> wrote:
>
>> Barb Knox wrote:
>>
>> > In article <yOqdnWCX2uUPd1PanZ2dnUVZ8surnZ2d@bt.com>,
>> > Richard Heathfield <rjh@see.sig.invalid> wrote:
>> > [SNIP]
>> >
>> > > When scientists make claims that are not verifiable, their credibility
>> > > becomes important. When they say stupid things (e.g. [...] "random
>> > > data cannot be compressed"), I am likely to reassess their credibility.
>> >
>> > In what sense do you believe that random data can be compressed? (In
>> > the usual sense of the word, statistically random data N bits long
>> > contains N bits of information, and that can not be represented in less
>> > than N bits.)
>>
>> Take a page from chaos theory even in your random data there will
>> be patterns
>
> If there are patterns then it is not statistically random.
>
>> and quite a few compression algorithms are designed
>> to reduce these patterns to a smaller representation.
>
> Indeed, that is what compression is all about.
>
>> RLE used in faxes is a small example of this.
>
> And faxes are clearly not random patterns of dots. If you tried RLE (or
> any other encoding) on 2D grids of statistically random dots then it
> would not compress them.

With a small enough sequence of "random" dots, there may be, by
chance, enough runs (of whatever sort) that it is significantly
compressible, but that should be pretty unusual.

And of course, "apparent randomness" is not the same thing as "actual randomness" ;-).
--
output = ("cbbrowne" "@" "cbbrowne.com")
http://linuxdatabases.info/info/multiplexor.html
The English exam was a piece of cake---which was a bit of a surprise,
actually, because I was expecting some questions on a sheet of paper.

In article <fqn5rb$tfq$1@xenon.Stanford.EDU>,
amorgan@xenon.Stanford.EDU (Alan Morgan) wrote:

> In article <see-34B202.10423806032008@lust.ihug.co.nz>,
> Barb Knox <see@sig.below> wrote:
> >In article <47CF0BB3.15CDB9E6@bytecraft.com>,
> > Walter Banks <walter@bytecraft.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Barb Knox wrote:
> >>
> >> > In article <yOqdnWCX2uUPd1PanZ2dnUVZ8surnZ2d@bt.com>,
> >> > Richard Heathfield <rjh@see.sig.invalid> wrote:
> >> > [SNIP]
> >> >
> >> > > When scientists make claims that are not verifiable, their credibility
> >> > > becomes important. When they say stupid things (e.g. [...] "random
> >> > > data cannot be compressed"), I am likely to reassess their credibility.
> >> >
> >> > In what sense do you believe that random data can be compressed? (In
> >> > the usual sense of the word, statistically random data N bits long
> >> > contains N bits of information, and that can not be represented in less
> >> > than N bits.)
> >>
> >> Take a page from chaos theory even in your random data there will
> >> be patterns
> >
> >If there are patterns then it is not statistically random.
>
> Well, no. There will always be patterns if you have enough data, but
> that doesn't mean that the patterns will be long enough to take advantage
> of.

Good point.

> This distinction, of course, is not one that the random data fans
> understand. They see the occasional 1234567 in a 20GB file as a chance
> for compression. The rest of us see it as a chance to waste precious
> bytes describing the location, length, and form of the patten, resulting
> in, if they are very, very lucky, no gain at all.
>
> Alan

--
---------------------------
| BBB b \ Barbara at LivingHistory stop co stop uk
| B B aa rrr b |
| BBB a a r bbb | Quidquid latine dictum sit,
| B B a a r b b | altum viditur.
| BBB aa a r bbb |
-----------------------------

> Ron Garret is wrong to say that "for it to be altruism they must get
> nothing in return" but in this case I really didn't (unless you count a
> cup of coffee and a biscuit, which cost rather less than the petrol I used
> in driving over there).

You got in return the satisfaction of having helped a friend. That's a
thing money can't even buy, so... in a sense, you really gained a
lot
But then, you could say that "altruism" is "doing something for the
sole satisfaction of having helped someone"... this imho hardly
qualifies as selfishness even if it does give you something in return.
In fact, under this definition, you can't both be altruist and do
something which favors you while damaging others, i.e. be selfish.
Anyway that's just another example of the fact that most words have
imprecise meaning, and trying to reason as if their meaning was black-
or-white is pointless.

To return to the original question, I don't think your argument is
only about free (in GNU's sense) software. In fact, it applies well to
all kinds of free (as in beer) products and services. GMail is
probably at least as harmful to the market of email clients as GCC is
for the market of C compilers. The difference between them is that you
can use GMail for free, but you can't modify it or build something
upon it. With GCC you have at least the option to modify it and even
redistribute the modified version, provided that you do so in
accordance with the GPL. So if SBCL is 'dumping', so is Internet
Explorer, for example.
The fact that some free software may be paid with tax money does not
make it unethical, either. A lot of things have been paid with public
money during the course of history. In Italy till recent times the
railways, highways, phone lines, postal service, and many other
companies were owned by the State. (Things have changed in the last
10-15 years). I and many others don't find it unethical, since those
services are useful for the community. The same can be true for
software as well. Of course this does not apply to Stallman being paid
by MIT to do research and actually using his time to compete with
Symbolics (if things really went that way), nor to the State financing
some company for other reasons than public utility (e.g. the company's
president is friend of the prime minister...)

cheers
Alessio Stalla

In article <yOqdnWCX2uUPd1PanZ2dnUVZ8surnZ2d@bt.com>,
Richard Heathfield <rjh@see.sig.invalid> wrote:

> Ron Garret said:
>
> > In article <n7idnVtH674MfFPanZ2dnUVZ8gydnZ2d@bt.com>,
> > Richard Heathfield <rjh@see.sig.invalid> wrote:
> >
> >> Ah, so an *irrational* person is someone who holds a view different to
> >> yours?
> >
> > No. An irrational person is one who persists in a view in the face of
> > overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
>
> Well, according to Chambers a /rational/ person is someone who is sane,
> intelligent, endowed with (or agreeable to) reason. Chambers further
> defines "reason" as "the mind's power of drawing conclusions and
> determining right and truth" - which aptly describes the process through
> which I went with "The Selfish Gene".

Well, according to Garret, a rational person is one who bases his or her
beliefs on experimental evidence. So there.

> > All creationists are irrational.
>
> That's a well-known fact, of course, and thus unarguable.

I didn't say it was unarguable. You can argue it all you want. But you
will be wrong nonetheless.

> Here is another well-known fact, which is equally inarguable:
> All Californians are irrational. Gee.

There is a significant difference between being a Californian and being
a creationist, to wit, that one is defined by geography while the other
is defined by beliefs. A better analogy would be to say that all
Californians live on the West Coast (which is in fact correct). Since
rationality is a circumstance of belief and not geography, if you want
to claim that all Californians are irrational then you have a burden of
proof analogous to one who wishes to claim that all Creationists live on
the West Coast. But that claim that all Creationists are irrational is
in fact a tautology, just like the claim that all Californians live on
the West Coast.

> > (I don't know that you are a creationist, but you are strongly hinting
> > that you are.)
>
> I'm not really an "-ist" of any description. My view used to be
> such-and-such. Now, as a result of reading Dawkins, it's more
> this-and-that. Perhaps there is an argument that I have not heard as yet,
> that can persuade me to revert to such-and-such. I don't know.

Why so coy about your beliefs?

> When scientists make claims that are not verifiable, their credibility
> becomes important. When they say stupid things (e.g. "all creationists are
> irrational" or "there is no such thing as altruism" or "Olly's fish has
> chickenpox" or "random data cannot be compressed"), I am likely to
> reassess their credibility.

Random data in fact cannot be compressed. That is actually part of the
definition of random data.

> >> Of course the Sun revolves around the Earth - to someone who is actually
> >> standing on the earth. And to someone who is standing (or vaporising) on
> >> the Sun, the Earth goes round the Sun. And to someone hanging around
> >> somewhere off to stage left, the Earth and Sun are both revolving about
> >> their centre of mass. And the thing is that all three of them are right.
> >
> > But some of them are more right than others.
>
> No, absolutely not. Each is perfectly correct within his own frame of
> reference, and there is no plausible and reasonable way to order those
> frames in terms of "rightness". (Astrophysics is very postmodernist in
> some ways.)

No, it isn't. To say that the sun revolves around the earth is very
badly wrong in fundamental ways. To give just one example, if the sun
revolves around the earth, what is it that keeps it moving in a
non-straight-line path?

> > Of course people write programs (and do all manner of things) in the
> > interests of other people. But for it to be altruism they must get
> > nothing in return. But you *are* getting something in return:
> > friendship.
>
> Nonsense. The friendship already exists and would have continued whether I
> wrote the program or not.

Friendship is an analog relationship, not a binary one. It is likely
that your good deed strengthened your friendship in ways that will
provide you some direct benefit down the road. Maybe she'll now do you
a favor that she might otherwise not have done. Maybe she'll go out
with you now. Maybe your good deed moved her closer to the point where
she wants to bear your children. Like it or not, if you're human
chances are good that your brain is hardwired to want that, and
improving your chances of getting laid is a benefit to you that is not
fundamentally different from improving the quality of the food you eat
or the shelter you live in or the clothes you wear or the car you drive.

rg

On Wed, 05 Mar 2008 18:02:11 -0800, Ron Garret <rNOSPAMon@flownet.com>
wrote:

>To say that the sun revolves around the earth is very badly wrong in
>fundamental ways. To give just one example, if the sun revolves around
>the earth, what is it that keeps it moving in a non-straight-line path?

First, let me say that I'm on your side in this discussion. Second, let
me point out that this is actually a bad example. ;-)

What you're saying is true only if you restrict yourself to Newtonian
mechanics. In his theory of general relativity, Einstein showed that
_all_ reference frames are equivalent, even non-inertial ones. (Special
relativity, by the way, deals only with inertial reference frames.)

So, to answer your question, from a (simplified) relativistic point of
view, if we take the motionless earth as our reference frame, what keeps
the sun (and everything else in the rest of the universe) moving in a
non-straight-line path is the curvature of space-time induced by the
mass of the earth and the mass and momentum of the sun (and everything
else in the rest of the universe). The apparent non-Newtonian motion is
the result of the non-Euclidean geometry of space-time.

Steve Schafer
Fenestra Technologies Corp.
http://www.fenestra.com/

In article <pkpus3h71jihk1l4pldj329qvatj7ifj4d@4ax.com>,
Steve Schafer <steve@fenestra.com> wrote:

> On Wed, 05 Mar 2008 18:02:11 -0800, Ron Garret <rNOSPAMon@flownet.com>
> wrote:
>
> >To say that the sun revolves around the earth is very badly wrong in
> >fundamental ways. To give just one example, if the sun revolves around
> >the earth, what is it that keeps it moving in a non-straight-line path?
>
> First, let me say that I'm on your side in this discussion. Second, let
> me point out that this is actually a bad example. ;-)
>
> What you're saying is true only if you restrict yourself to Newtonian
> mechanics. In his theory of general relativity, Einstein showed that
> _all_ reference frames are equivalent, even non-inertial ones.

If all frames of reference are equivalent, how does one distinguish
between an inertial frame and a non-inertial one?

> (Special
> relativity, by the way, deals only with inertial reference frames.)

That's correct. But just because general relativity extended the theory
to non-inertial frames that does *not* mean that all frames (inertial
and non-inertial) are equivalent.

> So, to answer your question, from a (simplified) relativistic point of
> view, if we take the motionless earth as our reference frame, what keeps
> the sun (and everything else in the rest of the universe) moving in a
> non-straight-line path is the curvature of space-time induced by the
> mass of the earth and the mass and momentum of the sun (and everything
> else in the rest of the universe). The apparent non-Newtonian motion is
> the result of the non-Euclidean geometry of space-time.

OK, two more questions:

1. The earth is not a perfect sphere. It bulges at the equator. If
the sun revolves around the earth and not vice versa, how do you account
for this bulge?

2. Notwithstanding this bulge, the earth is a very close approximation
to a sphere. And yet the motion of the sun around the earth is not
spherically symmetric. The sun not only revolves around the earth every
24 hours, but it also oscillates vertically (that is, along the sun's
axis of rotation around the earth) with a period of approximately 365.25
days. How do you account for this?

rg