Replacing Piracy with Choice

In case you haven't noticed, large software companies such as Microsoft and Adobe are making a lot of noise about the issue of software piracy. Of course, figures which estimate these companies' monetary losses by treating every pirated installation as a lost sale are fundamentally flawed; nevertheless, the fact is that piracy is taking its toll on the software industry, both for the companies which lose revenue, and for the paying customers who face annoying and restrictive anti-piracy "features" in commercial software. I feel that a much better alternative to these restrictions would be to provide a wider array of licensing options to end users. I'm not talking commercial users here, but individuals who don't have the resources or money to negotiate a fair license with a software giant. Frankly, I suspect that many of the individuals presently labeled "pirates" would gladly fork over the money for a legal license if they were provided with licensing options in line with their actual usage habits.

The very existence of casual piracy among non-commercial users demonstrates that the traditional shrink-wrapped-copy-for-one-computer-costs-$700 is not right for every consumer. Ignoring the risk of lawsuit, here is what Adobe has to say about the benefits that legitimate copies of their software have over pirated versions:

What do I get out of purchasing my own software?

When you purchase authorized copies of software programs, you may receive user guides and tutorials, quick reference cards, the opportunity to purchase upgrades, and technical support from the software publishers. With authentic Adobe software, your programs are safe, stable, and backed by a partner you can trust.

No doubt most sane people would consider these benefits to have monetary value, but casual pirates are casual users and these benefits are not worth $700 upfront to casual users.

A greater variety of licensing options to suit different needs, given proper publicity (and accompanied by the complete stripping of annoying, buggy anti-piracy features from off-the-shelf software), would go far to balancing the relationship between large software makers and individual users, and would, in my opinion, greatly reduce the demand for pirated software. After all, why use software illegally when there are legal alternatives which match your particular usage habits and are thus priced fairly?

The type of license I see as crucial for fighting piracy allows users to purchase less than what a full $700 package provides. Why pay for the entirety of Photoshop or Dreamweaver, if you're only going to use the software one to three hours a month? The full price would allow one to use the software every hour of the month, but the price currently does not scale back if one's needs are substantially less. This is a bad situation from the consumer's standpoint; the choice is to either pirate (which is unfair to the company), or pay the full box price (which is unfair to the consumer). Now, I absolutely do not condone the use of pirated software, and I do not use pirated software myself; but at the same time, I have a hard time blaming non-commercial users for committing casual piracy given this dilemma, and I find it absolutely despicable that commercial software vendors criminalize casual software piracy when the software makers themselves are the ones with the power and responsibility to provide a fair deal, yet don't!

I am not terribly fond of the idea of "software as a service;" I like to have control over where my data is stored, and I also like the convenience and speed which comes from using software which does not depend on an Internet connection. A "pay-per-hour" or "pay-per-use" license for desktop software would seem to have the disadvantages of "software as a service" (the user depends on the vendor's existence and willingness to continue selling the product), while at the same time providing none of the technical advantages (eg. remote data storage & product updating). One way around this would be for software manufacturers to provide a sort of guarantee - if the company is no longer selling hours to users, the users are automatically entitled to an infinite amount of time, as if they'd purchased a full shrink-wrapped product. Generally speaking, I try to use Free software in lieu of proprietary/closed software; but where this is not possible, I would gladly pay for proprietary desktop software on a "pay-per-hour" basis given the stipulation that if (Adobe, say) abandons the product and is no longer willing to sell more hours, I am legally entitled to use the software for as long as it continues to run on my computer, without paying a nickel. I view this as an equitable agreement; Adobe, Microsoft, et al., make money, while my right to use the software is preserved. (The software vendors' claim that users have no rights to the software they use is nonsense insofar as the intended use of the software is the creation of original content by the user.)

I propose that, as an alternative to criminalizing casual software piracy, large software makers draft a small set of stock "fair" licenses, each catering to the needs of a different group of users, and put them in multi-colored boxes and market them the way Apple marketed fruit the original iMac.

In the mean time, so long as large commercial software vendors continue their anti-piracy crusades without providing a fair, legal alternative to piracy, I will avoid their products wherever possible.

P.S. Everything I have written above is geared towards non-commercial users; piracy by commercial organizations is just plain wrong, and software makers are right to pursue such actions in court as theft.

Microsoft & Piracy: The irony

I just read this article on the Register and I couldn't help but find it somewhat ironic.

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2007/08/09/american_man_sentenced_to_jail_for_windows_piracy/

This person committed a serious breach of Microsoft's IP rights, and yet it's the authenticity sticker that lands him jailtime - a wonderful thing, according to Microsoft. The explanation:

"To date, civil remedies, in and of themselves, have not been enough to dissuade people even in the US from committing copyright infringement," Jeffery Glassman, an intellectual property lawyer with the California firm Moldo, Davidson, Fraioli, Seror & Sestanovich, told El Reg. Pirates weren't worried about paying civil damages, he explained, because their illegal software businesses were so darn lucrative. They could still come out ahead.

Fine, but it seems to me that a more direct resolution would be to allow Microsoft to collect more in damages. After all, it's the copying that MS presumably wants to stop, not the usage of fake authenticity stickers.

Free vs. Proprietary: Coexistence is the Best Approach

I read the following article (found via Wikipedia) about OpenOffice.org and it got me to thinking about the relation between free/open source and proprietary software:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2005/dec/08/opensource.software

The article is somewhat dated, and I feel it paints an overly grim picture of OpenOffice.org, but nevertheless the author makes interesting points about how far the open source development model can go.

The myth of open source rests on two improbable assumptions. The first is that a significant proportion of users can fix bugs. That is true at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where the concept of free software was first formalised in the 1980s by Richard Stallman and others, and it is true in some of the geekier corners of the internet. But on programs intended for use by the non-programming public, it's a very different story.

The author's point seems to be that a general disconnect between the users and developers of software limits the ability of hackers working on a volunteer basis to write software which can compete with commercially available options. I feel that there is validity to this position. It is my guess that this point puts a firm wedge between open source and the professional (non-technical) communities made up of individuals who rely on high-end programs for their livelihoods.

For example, take the old debate of Photoshop vs. The Gimp. Surely The Gimp is a powerful program and is certainly overkill for most people doing image editing at home. Nevertheless, issues ranging from the absence of a few key features to what some claim to be a poor user interface to the lack of a real marketing campaign have prevented The Gimp from competing with Photoshop among professional users. It is my guess that this failure is due to the (understandable) lack of professional photographers and graphic artists among the developers.

Given this state of affairs, one might say that it is necessary to implement, in the open source world, a tighter connection between the users and the developers:

When developing products for the public, [commercial software companies] spend a lot of money on usability testing to find out what users expect from software, and how to meet those expectations. Companies lose from user dissatisfaction in a way open source software doesn't, and so have an incentive to avoid errors in the first place: the number of calls to a support desk grows exponentially with the number of bugs and users.

However, I feel that the best solution may be to keep both proprietary and open source software as they are and allow each to excel at what it is good at.

Commodity vs. Specialty Software

There has been talk of the role open source has to play in the commoditization of software (eg. see Ian Murdock's blog). Over time, a useful product becomes so widespread that it loses its novelty and people realize that they can create a comparable product and make it available at a lower price. So we find Free software: developers realize that they can create a full Unix-like environment (GNU and later Linux) which is hacker-friendly and free for anyone to use, modify and distribute. Furthermore, due to many eyes/shallow bugs (see ESR's The Cathedral and the Bazaar), over time the new system is given the potential to become far better than the system it was supposed to replace (Unix).

Thus, commodity software arises when there is a program (or, more generally, a set of features) which almost everyone has a use for. Regardless of whether we have the ability to hack into code, we all have certain needs; we edit images; we may make flyers occasionally; we need to check our e-mail every day; we use web browsers all the time. In each of these areas, the availability of superb Free software which does the job to the level that the "average" user needs it done is very high, because the needs are so universal that the developers are regular users.

On the other hand, as you go further and further from the heavily-beaten path, you end up in an arena where the community of developers and the community of users may have vastly different needs and expectations of their software. This may apply to (for example) high-end image manipulation as well as enterprise office software.

In short, there is no fundamental reason that proprietary software (eg. Microsoft Office) must be dominant among users at home, aside from aggressive business tactics. High-quality Free alternatives exist for the vast majority of proprietary software which can be considered to exist under the umbrella of commodity software. However, in the arena of highly specialized professional- and business-oriented software, in many cases users may find themselves better served by proprietary software than by Free and/or open source software.

The Necessity of Open Formats and Choice

Microsoft Works exists as a sort of commodity Office; it is inferior in terms of features but generally adequate for home users. However, work done at home doesn't necessarily stay at home; anyone who has dealt with opening someone else's Works document when only Word is available will agree that it is a headache which would be painfully easy for Microsoft to resolve simply by using a single, consistent file format between its two products.

If the world of software is to diverge so that we have a large body of Free commodity software alongside a large body of specialized proprietary software (each in wide use outside the technical community), it is vitally important for users of both Free and proprietary software that file formats be open and unencumbered by patents. A computer today doesn't exist in a vacuum; it must be able to cooperate reliably with other computers running different software on top of different operating systems. I feel that the wide adoption of open formats (such as ODF) will go a long way towards bringing about the acceptance of Free software as an alternative to proprietary software in the commodity realm, and at the same time will bring a kind of cooperative competition to the software world which will benefit Free and proprietary software alike.

So what about OpenOffice.org? Well, regardless of how anyone feels about whether OpenOffice.org is successful as a community project, the fact is that aside from this particular program, there are other Free, community-driven projects which have filled the role of commodity office software for years (I'm speaking of programs like AbiWord, Gnumeric and KOffice). Individual projects can succeed or fail as they may, but Free software moves relentlessly onwards. I do not foresee Free software eliminating the need for proprietary software, but I do feel that the striking of a proper balance between the two, combined with the wide usage of open file formats, would be a blessing for computer users and the software industry in general.

Choosing a distribution

There are so many guides and reviews out there on the net, it hardly seems necessary to write another regarding the topic of choosing a Linux distribution. Still, it can't hurt, can it? :-) I have tried a fair number of distributions, but I'm only going to write about those I have some at least some real experience with.

Ubuntu

Ubuntu is undoubtedly among the best of desktop-oriented Linux distributions today. If you have a computer with fairly common hardware inside, chances are Ubuntu will install painlessly. Ubuntu is designed to hide the interior mechanics of the operating system, and the installation CD is also a so-called Live CD, meaning you can run the OS just by inserting the CD and booting. The CD comes with all the basic software you'd want on a desktop, including OpenOffice.org, and even the command line is designed to be somewhat more user-friendly than Linux command lines traditionally are. For example, if you open a terminal window and type "inkscape" (an excellent free vector drawing program), which doesn't come with the CD, you will get a nice message telling you the command to download and install inkscape via apt-get. Furthermore, the many included administration tools, including network tools, X configuration tools, package managers, etc., means that if you're familiar with using the Windows control panel to configure your system, Ubuntu should be easy to learn how to administer. Still, as much as Ubuntu tries, it is not a Windows replacement; it is a very user-friendly operating system, but sooner or later you will run into problems which require some knowledge of Linux to fix (although the Ubuntu forums really help here). Thus, if you are new to Linux and want to give it a try, I suggest you download or buy the Ubuntu CD and at the same time get a good Linux book so you can start building your knowledge of the nuts and bolts of the OS. FYI: Dell is now selling desktops & laptops with Ubuntu Linux pre-installed. http://www.ubuntu.com

Debian

As great as Ubuntu is, much of its ease of use comes from the distribution it originated from: Debian. Perhaps Debian's greatest feature is that it is built upon an astounding package management system known as apt, which does a fantastic job of resolving dependencies (programs & libraries that other programs require to run). Debian tends to rely on the command line for configuration; this doesn't necessarily make it hard to work with Debian (in many ways, Slackware can be harder to set up), but it does mean you'll have to read a fair amount of documentation before you try to install. I would mainly give one word of warning with Debian (and similarly for Ubuntu): Never add an unofficial repository to the apt sources list; there is a perfectly good chance that you'll break your system. If you want software not in the main repository (this should be a rare occurrence), compile from source. http://www.debian.org

Slackware

Slackware can be an excellent option if you like to have control over your computer. I wouldn't recommend Slack to someone who is new to Linux; Ubuntu, for instance, does all the set-up automatically and delivers a powerful Linux desktop with a large repository of software and the ease of Debian's apt packaging system. However, if you aren't content with the "standard" setup (GNOME, the default services, sudo), Ubuntu can be a pain. I feel that this is where Slackware shines; although it comes with helpful text-based configuration tools, it is designed to be easily configurable through basic text files, and therefore gives easy access to all the customizability of Linux (GUI tools, by design, can't encapsulate every single option). It's not as strongly tied to its packaging system as, say, Debian/Ubuntu; rather, it focuses on making compiling programs as easy as possible, instead of trying to put every possible package into one large repository. All the window managers have usable configurations out-of-box, unlike other distros where care is only given to KDE or GNOME. Slackware isn't for everyone, but if you like to tinker and don't mind taking a week to set-up your operating system, you may want to give Slack a try. http://www.slackware.com

Other fine distros

There are plenty of distros which have a goal similar to that of Ubuntu: a user-friendly desktop Linux operating system. There's Mandriva Linux, SuSE Linux, and Fedora Linux, to name a few. Fedora Linux is based on the late Red Hat Linux (Red Hat is now focusing on enterprise needs rather than the desktop). I used Red Hat Linux 9 for a short while, and found it somewhat buggy. Fedora aims to include the absolute latest software, so I wouldn't expect it to give the best experience for a new Linux user. I haven't tried Mandriva or SuSE, so I won't comment beyond "try them." Gentoo Linux is a popular distribution which caters to experienced Linux users, like Debian and Slackware; however, with Gentoo, you can compile everything, which is supposed to optimize the OS and programs for your particular system. FreeBSD (and its cousins, NetBSD and OpenBSD) are also interesting distributions; they are based on a different kernel (not Linux), and aside from the debate between GPL and BSD definitions of "free," the big difference between FreeBSD and, say, Debian or Slackware for a desktop user is that it can be (much) harder to get some hardware to work with FreeBSD than Linux. This is mainly because Linux has a large desktop user base and is "cool," so there's a larger effort towards getting a wide variety of desktop-oriented hardware drivers written for Linux.

Update (7/29): I would like to add that I am not an authority on any BSD. If you want to get the facts about FreeBSD vs. Linux, go here:

http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/bsd4linux1.php

As a desktop user, I don't necessarily value stability above all else. I personally feel that Linux, "chaotic" though its development process may be, provides a nice compromise between stability, security, "tinker"-ability, and desktop-oriented hardware support.

Slackware Linux 12 on Dell Latitude D400

I purchased this notebook used and it's great. I kept Windows on it for a few weeks and used Cygwin to run the Linux programs I needed, but couldn't wait to get back to the Linux world. Installed Ubuntu 7.04, which worked great out-of-box, but was painful when I tried using non-standard setups (like using Window Maker instead of Gnome). I just felt that Ubuntu was too controlling, so I purchased a Slackware 12 DVD. It works great, but there are a few snags that come up with this particular Dell model.

Disclaimer: I provide no warranty that this will work for you. If you use anything you read here, you do so at your own risk.

Hardware

1.4 GHz Pentium M processor
1 GB RAM
Intel 82852/855 accelerated graphics
External CD/DVD combo drive (write CDs, read DVDs)
Broadcom 5705 Ethernet
Alps Touchpad
Conexant D480 56k (winmodem)

Installation

I've read that with older versions of Slackware, the external USB combo CD/DVD drive can be a problem. However, with Slack 12 the drive was detected perfectly. Installation went well for the most part; the only issue is that LILO installation failed when I tried to install it to the root partition. Installing LILO to the MBR instead worked fine.

Booting

Booting after installation resulted in a kernel panic. I found that this could be fixed by typing "Linux root=/dev/hda1" at the LILO prompt. I think the easiest way to make this permanant is to run liloconfig once you've booted; on the "append" screen, type "root=/dev/hda1".

X

X setup went smoothly with xorgconfig using the i810 video driver and setting the video ram to 64MB; screen resolution should be set to 1024x768. I don't remember whether the "dri" module was loaded by default; if it's not, just uncomment the 'Load "dri"' line if you want hardware acceleration.

"Tap-to-click" is enabled by default and it gets really annoying (to me). I fixed this by installing the synaptics touchpad driver and using it to disable tap-to-click in xorg.conf (see the synaptics documentation). Also, since the D400 really comes with an ALPS Glidepoint touchpad, to use sidescrolling you'll need to set the pertinent options (LeftEdge, RightEdge, etc.) according to README.alps (in the synaptics package) in your xorg.conf.

Power usage

Out-of-box, CPU frequency scaling doesn't work and if you try to suspend by pressing the power button or closing the lid, the whole system locks up. Fortunately, fixing this situation is as easy as re-compiling the kernel. To make this process basically foolproof, when you `make menuconfig' you should import the default Slackware kernel config, which is in the /boot directory. Choose a "local version" under general setup so you don't confuse your kernel config with the default. Under ACPI, you should enable CONFIG_ACPI_SLEEP, CONFIG_ACPI_AC, CONFIG_ACPI_BATTERY, CONFIG_ACPI_BUTTON, CONFIG_ACPI_FAN and CONFIG_ACPI_PROCESSOR. Under CPU Frequency Scaling, enable CONFIG_CPU_FREQ, all the governors (ondemand, performance, etc.), and CONFIG_X86_SPEEDSTEP_CENTRINO. I also enabled CONFIG_X86_SPEEDSTEP_CENTRINO_ACPI and CONFIG_X86_SPEEDSTEP_CENTRINO_TABLE. Don't compile these as modules; compile them directly into the kernel. After you compile & install your new kernel, you can install cpufreqd, and then configure acpid to respond to button and lid events. There seems to be a bug where closing the lid causes the laptop to lock up so that you can't get out of X, or reboot, or anything else. This was discussed on the Ubuntu forums, and the fix is to add "nmi_watchdog=0" as a boot parameter in /etc/lilo.conf (don't forget to run /sbin/lilo after you edit the file).

Misc

There are automounting features in Slack 12, but I haven't taken the trouble to learn how to work with them. If you want to use more traditional methods, you need to uncomment the cdrom line in /etc/fstab so that root can `mount' the combo drive. Also, unlike some distros (eg Ubuntu) Slackware won't recognize USB memory sticks automatically; to use one, type "mkdir /mnt/usbstick" as root and add the following line to /etc/fstab:

/dev/sda1 /mnt/usbstick vfat noauto,owner,rw,user,exec,dev,umask=0 0 0

The Linuxant modem drivers were easy to install on Ubuntu; you can get 14.4k for free, and the upgrade to the 56k driver is $20 IIRC. I haven't tried installing the drivers on Slackware, although it shouldn't be too difficult. I haven't tried getting the wifi working; I would point you in the direction of ndiswrapper if you want wifi.

A final word...

I strongly suggest reading http://jpjorda.club.fr/x300.html because the X300 and D400 share quite a bit of hardware.

First Post

Well, this is my first blog post. As the title of this blog suggests, I use Linux as my primary desktop (laptop) operating system, and largely depend on "free" software (http://www.fsf.org) such as OpenOffice.org, LyX, and GNU Octave to complete my daily work. Why do I use Linux? Mostly because I find other operating systems too boring. I like to tinker, and Linux makes it easy for me to do just that. In addition, Linux tends to support a wider variety of useful desktop hardware than, say, FreeBSD, if only because more people use Linux and it has a higher coolness quotient today.

My first encounter with Linux was when I purchased a Linux book from the local Tower bookstore and tried installing the included Red Hat Linux 5.0 on an eMachines eTower 266 (which came with 32 MB of memory and a 2.1 GB hard drive - stone age technology!) The installation didn't go so well, and not having any other computers to play with, I gave up on Linux for a while.

A couple years later, I purchased a cheap used desktop (in the $50 range, IIRC) and used Debian Linux 3.1. That was fun for a while, but (perhaps due to constantly swapping the 7 Debian CDs over and over) the CD-ROM drive gave out. That computer was generally losing it anyway so I moved on to a low-end Fry's "Great Quality"-brand desktop PC (either 128 or 256 MB ram, 1.1 GHz). The computer came with "ThizLinux" pre-installed and the supplied manual (surprise, surprise) was mostly instructions on how to remove Linux and install Windows. Instead, I purchased a copy of Slackware Linux 9 and got an nVidia video card to use instead of the onboard SiS graphics (which were only partially compatible with Linux). That computer lasted me through high school, and a month or two ago I moved on to a Dell D400 notebook (which I purchased used) running Windows XP, then Ubuntu 7.04, and now Slackware 12. Getting Slack 12 up and running was a small challenge in and of itself, so I intend to write a short piece about that.

Well, that's it for now.