This conflict goes back a long time. In the early 1990's, with online journals just getting started, MIT was able to insist on principles like "anyone physically in the library has full access, even if they are not otherwise affiliated with MIT". A couple of years later, power shifted, and Elsevier could "our terms, take it or leave it". Then three decades, a human generation, of Elsevier rent-seeking, and so many people working towards Open Access, unbundling, google scholar, arXiv, sci-hub, and so on. Societal change can be so very slow, nonmonotonic, and profoundly discouraging. And yet here we are, making progress.
For anyone unfamiliar with "author [...] required to relinquish copyright [...] generous reuse rights", journals would require authors to completely sign over copyright, so authors' subsequent other-than-fair-use usage of fragments would be a copyright violation. Rarely enforced, but legally you'd have to obtain permission. While some institutions sign contracts easily, and struggle with the fallout later, MIT legal culture has been pain-up-front careful with contracts. Which is sometimes painful. But IIRC, we're today using X Windows instead of CMU's Andrew, because MIT could say "sure!" while CMU was "sure, err,... we'll get back to you... some mess to clean up first".
I'm going to need more history here on exactly what you linked this is insanely interesting. Alternate windows things in unix land are always interesting
Undoubtedly a reference to CMU's Andrew project [1], which was an experimental distributed computing environment from the 1980s - with an emphasis on providing infrastructure for pedagogy.
Ideas developed by Andrew and Project Athena [2] can still be seen in contemporary software today: window managers, distributed file systems and authentication, compouns documents , etc.
of note AndrewFS (think cousin of NFS).. with features pertaining to systems being "offline" and "online" alternately, but still accessing the same global file / directory namespace, still reading and writing, so some type of git or cvs style merging also exists in that filesystem
typescript (see Figure 4 (Sample Typescript Window)) provides an alternative to xterm. You enter commands to your shell in the input window and the results are shown in the same window where they can be scrolled, searched or saved. Typescript does not support curses like xterm does, so you cannot run vi or bash in a typescript, for example. However, you can use the tcsh or pdksh (ksh) shells.
Typescript has several other features that I find very useful. The README for the word processing package describes how you can cause the current working directory to be kept in the title of the typescript window. Typescript is "smart" about these paths, too. Notice in Figure 4. that the path shown in the title of the window is "~", my home directory, and not a fully qualified path.
Typescript supports use of several PC keys to make it easier to enter commands. The Cursor-Left and Cursor-Right keys can be used to edit the command I am entering (regardless if my shell supports this). The Home and End keys will move the cursor to the beginning or end of the line (or selected area). The cursor keys are also mapped to allow me to move up and down the the command history. Cursor-Up gets the previous command entered, Cursor-Down the one after.
In my opinion an even more useful feature is command completion. If I type "ls" and then press Cursor-Up, I get the previous command that began with "ls". File completion is supported with the tab key. If I enter "ls src/tp" and then press the tab key, typescript will complete the path "src/tp" to "src/tpg-config" (in my case). It makes entering paths to files ten times easier. I love it!
If I enter a command like "ls /etc", the window will likely fill and scroll automatically. If I want to see the beginning of the scrolled data, I must use the mouse (or Page-Up/Down keys) to scroll. However, if I enter "ls /etc control-J" (where I enter the command with a control-J keystroke, rather than the normal Enter), the command is executed, but the output is pushed to the top of the current window so I do not need to scroll.
Typescript also allows me to create my own menus in the file ~/.shmenu. In Figure 4, you can see I have a menu card Internet on the menubar. This is from my own .shmenu file which looks like this:
So many monopolies do this and they should all be disrupted. This is our world, and anyone telling us they get to gatekeep information exchange is not an ally. Google with Chrome, Apple with iPhone.
> Societal change can be so very slow, nonmonotonic, and profoundly discouraging. And yet here we are, making progress.
> This is our world, and anyone telling us they get to gatekeep information exchange is not an ally
Sorry, but this is a worldview that universally leads to nastiness. It's everyone's world, and just as I don't have the right to sleep in your bed (even though it's "our" world and who are you to stop "us"?) we have to have a non-low resolution and non-tribal view of situations.
There is a way to think about this that clears that very low bar, and so this level of discourse is not necessary.
The right analogy here is that you make 50% of the beds in the world and you are preventing anyone from buying sheets except from your own official supply.
When someone wants to read a book in a bed you manufactured, you charge the author 30%. When someone wants to watch a TV show in a bed you manufactured, you take a cut of the subscription revenue and force them to use your accounts and billing system.
When someone wants to have sex in a bed you manufactured, you have to vet them first and you only let them deploy on Tuesdays. And if they don't know the latest moves, they're out. Also they have to wear your condoms, meet people through your dating app, and pretty much obey your rules or they're banned from your beds.
And the other bed manufacturer? You get kickbacks from them. It's just the two of you, controlling all the beds in the world.
The problem is the bed shouldn't really be yours anymore. And you've extended your reach way beyond the original moment of sale into literally every activity the purchaser performs.
Why does Apple get to control what dating apps I use? Why do they get a cut of Kickstarter revenue? Why can't I write software the way I want and give it away to others? It's just silicon, after all. Whatever happened to open computing and monopoly busting? Apple's vice grip just keeps getting tighter as they ensnare more and more of the world.
The coherent way to think about this is in terms of the common good. In fact, the private good is for the sake of the common good: by being able to have private goods, we are better able to flourish (e.g., by removing conflict over common use). But because the common good is superior to private good, it is not the case that there is an absolute right to the private good. This doesn't mean principles of justice can be violated. On the contrary, it allows for them to be more perfectly realized. If you own a warehouse full of food in the middle of a famine, then it isn't theft for the hungry to take it, because you have a moral obligation to supply the starving with that food.
The trouble with the liberal notion of property rights is that it has things exactly backwards. It posits private property as primary, and the common good as a perhaps regrettable, but necessary concession of the private good. But it is the common good that is prior and justifies the private good.
So, in this case, does a company like Elsevier serve the common good?
You are exactly right, especially with the example of the famine. Maybe in some cases moderate amounts of greed and selfishness can lead to the common good (though the market), but higher moral principles must always take priority with there's a conflict. Unfortunately a lot of people miss that, especially with the astounding amounts of free market propaganda out there, hocking incomplete models and nonsense like defining good as whatever the market does.
If you find yourself in a famine with a warehouse of food, and your thought is "how can I exploit this situation for maximum profit" you are doing it wrong.
> People disagree about their higher moral principles. Resolving to absoluteness requires violent resolution.
And what do you think the implication of that is? For example, in the GGP's scenario about the warehouse of food in a famine?
That point is often used as part of a non sequitur excuse to behave badly (e.g. people don't agree on everything, therefore lets have a free for all ruled by only the market).
This sort of extreme argument is silly. Yes in that instance you need bureaucrats who parcel out what's there. But almost all the time (except in countries where governed by "social good" politics, where millions have starved to death) you aren't in a life or death situation and can just proceed normally, producing what people want to consume, or being further back in the supply chain and producing what businesses want to consume, is by far the best approach. Let people decide what they want to do and what they want to buy, and leave them alone as much as possible to achieve that.
Your example would more apt by saying "I don't have the right to sleep in a perfect copy of your bed". You're not literally preventing others (in this case, him) from accessing resources (the bed)
This conflict goes back a long time. In the early 1990's, with online journals just getting started, MIT was able to insist on principles like "anyone physically in the library has full access, even if they are not otherwise affiliated with MIT". A couple of years later, power shifted, and Elsevier could "our terms, take it or leave it". Then three decades, a human generation, of Elsevier rent-seeking, and so many people working towards Open Access, unbundling, google scholar, arXiv, sci-hub, and so on. Societal change can be so very slow, nonmonotonic, and profoundly discouraging. And yet here we are, making progress.
For anyone unfamiliar with "author [...] required to relinquish copyright [...] generous reuse rights", journals would require authors to completely sign over copyright, so authors' subsequent other-than-fair-use usage of fragments would be a copyright violation. Rarely enforced, but legally you'd have to obtain permission. While some institutions sign contracts easily, and struggle with the fallout later, MIT legal culture has been pain-up-front careful with contracts. Which is sometimes painful. But IIRC, we're today using X Windows instead of CMU's Andrew, because MIT could say "sure!" while CMU was "sure, err,... we'll get back to you... some mess to clean up first".