OpenSource everywhere what do you really think about it.

[Zero999]

The hell it didn't.  (for suitable definitions of "steal" and "ideas.")  Or are you claiming that it was never an intent of linux window managers to provide a "look and feel" similar to proprietary operating systems like Windows and MacOS?  OS may never have stolen "legally actionable intellectual property", but that's not the same as borrowing ideas.

The ideal that ideas can be stolen is questionable. If you make your idea public, then it's no wonder others will use it.

Commercial companies use other peoples' ideas all the time, it's not restricted to open source developers.

The fear is that a company trying to produce a commercial product, using a "young" implementation to produce income to fund additional development, might be undercut by an "open source" version of approximately the same thing, built by bored hackers with idealistic/political motivations who may or may not produce/support the follow-on features envisioned by the would-be commercial product. 

In my opinion, if a company's software is that simple that an alternative implementation can be by created by hackers for free, then there's no real justification for charging an extortionate licence fee.

I think this shows up a lot with compilers, for instance.  Companies trying to implement clever compilers for 8/16 bit CPUs (say, Atmel AVR) have to compete with free versions of gcc.   Gcc isn't particularly wonderful in the 8-bit world, but it is free...  (partially) as a result, commercial compilers seem to come from "big" companies and seem to be particularly expensive...

Although software patents offer questionable value and aren't enforced everywhere, companies have patented optimisation algorithms so others can't use them.

I don't buy the argument that intellectual property is evil, and we should all make our livings from doing maintenace and customizations.

Nor do many of the people in the open source community. Some are fine with IP and the current system, others thing it should be reformed and there are some who do thing IP is evil but I don't think they're the majority. Lots of open source projects possess IP, for example the Mozilla Foundation own the Firefox trademark.

It includes the idea that software (in particular) ought to require continuous maintenance.  And it makes creators into janitors, devaluing the value of thought.  There was a time when only material wealth and labor were considered to have value; the idea that ideas have value is one of the major philosophical advances of the modern age.

People often get paid to improve open source software. If a company are using an open source program and they desire a certain feature they may pay their programmers to implement it, which isn't possible with proprietary software written by a third party.

I particularly dislike "viral" open source licenses (GPL/etc.)   Requiring people you share something with to support your political agenda is ... wrong.  There are already fields where the people writing proprietary software are not allowed to even look at open source SW in the same field (compilers being the obvious example, again.)  There are MANY proprietary endeavors where using open source SW (or pieces thereof) will require approval of a committee of lawyers.  I don't think that that supports the general idea.  (To be fair, I think that FSF has been pretty good at only complaining about appropriately "serious" violations of GPL licenses, and the situation isn't really any worse than including patented/must-be-licensed-from-three-different-vendors technology in international standards.)  But I keep waiting for the trolls to come out.

I don't understand this. Why would someone like Microsoft be any more worried about employing a developer who's seen some GNU/Linux code than someone who has previously coded for Apple?

The only difference is they get sued by Apple instead of the free software foundation if the developer uses some code stored in their brain.

I don't think it was the intent of the "Open Source Movement" to support large groups of lawyers, rather than engineers.  But sometimes it looks like that's the way it's headed.

I don't think that was ever the intention of the free software foundation. It's just a sign of the times. Proprietary software developers such as Microsoft have resorted to such methods so the free software foundation followed suit.

• There are large subsets of "development" that are handled particularly poorly by existing open source licenses.  Deeply embedded (eg for microcontrollers) applications are one.  "Libraries" that have to be distributed in source form are another.
• That doesn't stop people from slapping a inappropriate license on a piece of code that they're willing to share.  There are a bunch of Arduino libraries tagged with GPL3 licenses (which is inappropriate for libraries to start with, and fails to match published intent that Arduinos can be embedded in proprietary products.

I agree but that's the general ignorance of the developers about the licences rather than a fault of the open source model.

In my opinion, software licences have become too long winded. No one bothers to read three pages of legal crap before clicking on the agree button. I think their should be some law limiting the number of words to something sensible, otherwise it gets truncated - let's cut the bollocks.

There's too much "all or nothing" involved.  If I want to allow my OS stuff to be used in proprietary products, but only in return for compensation, my life becomes pretty difficult, and I'm basically dependent on the would-be manufacturer to offer terms.

Then write your own licence. i.e. "Here's the code for the firmware and schematics, you may use it for non-commercial purposes and repairing the produce but if you want to manufacture and sell it you have to seek my permission and pay." You may not be able to claim it's fully open source, shared source is probably a more appropriate term.

With respect to hardware, open source doesn't mean that you can make one yourself.  Arduino hits a sweet spot where even relative amateurs can create and build a slightly modified version in their kitchen/school/etc, but by the time you get to Chumby or BeagleBoard it's a lot more difficult to do anything in a cost-effective manner.

It's not all about being able to make it. It's also about being able to learn about it and fix it when it goes wrong.

[Frangible]

Or are you claiming that it was never an intent of linux window managers to provide a "look and feel" similar to proprietary operating systems like Windows and MacOS?

Microsoft "stole" that idea from Apple, who "stole" it from Xerox.

[AntiProtonBoy]

Arguing about who stole what and when is silly, IMO. Just about every concept you see now is a derivative work of something else. One might call that technological progress.

[Uncle Vernon]

Arguing about who stole what and when is silly

No sillier than the idea of patenting key sequences or gestures or button layouts or even the colour purple. It's all glass houses and stones. Our out of touch patent law has the mud being thrown in all directions.