For Fun and Profit

For Fun and Profit PDF Author: Christopher Tozzi
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262551780
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
The free and open source software movement, from its origins in hacker culture, through the development of GNU and Linux, to its commercial use today. In the 1980s, there was a revolution with far-reaching consequences—a revolution to restore software freedom. In the early 1980s, after decades of making source code available with programs, most programmers ceased sharing code freely. A band of revolutionaries, self-described “hackers,” challenged this new norm by building operating systems with source code that could be freely shared. In For Fun and Profit, Christopher Tozzi offers an account of the free and open source software (FOSS) revolution, from its origins as an obscure, marginal effort by a small group of programmers to the widespread commercial use of open source software today. Tozzi explains FOSS's historical trajectory, shaped by eccentric personalities—including Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds—and driven both by ideology and pragmatism, by fun and profit. Tozzi examines hacker culture and its influence on the Unix operating system, the reaction to Unix's commercialization, and the history of early Linux development. He describes the commercial boom that followed, when companies invested billions of dollars in products using FOSS operating systems; the subsequent tensions within the FOSS movement; and the battles with closed source software companies (especially Microsoft) that saw FOSS as a threat. Finally, Tozzi describes FOSS's current dominance in embedded computing, mobile devices, and the cloud, as well as its cultural and intellectual influence.

For Fun and Profit

For Fun and Profit PDF Author: Christopher Tozzi
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262551780
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 335

Get Book Here

Book Description
The free and open source software movement, from its origins in hacker culture, through the development of GNU and Linux, to its commercial use today. In the 1980s, there was a revolution with far-reaching consequences—a revolution to restore software freedom. In the early 1980s, after decades of making source code available with programs, most programmers ceased sharing code freely. A band of revolutionaries, self-described “hackers,” challenged this new norm by building operating systems with source code that could be freely shared. In For Fun and Profit, Christopher Tozzi offers an account of the free and open source software (FOSS) revolution, from its origins as an obscure, marginal effort by a small group of programmers to the widespread commercial use of open source software today. Tozzi explains FOSS's historical trajectory, shaped by eccentric personalities—including Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds—and driven both by ideology and pragmatism, by fun and profit. Tozzi examines hacker culture and its influence on the Unix operating system, the reaction to Unix's commercialization, and the history of early Linux development. He describes the commercial boom that followed, when companies invested billions of dollars in products using FOSS operating systems; the subsequent tensions within the FOSS movement; and the battles with closed source software companies (especially Microsoft) that saw FOSS as a threat. Finally, Tozzi describes FOSS's current dominance in embedded computing, mobile devices, and the cloud, as well as its cultural and intellectual influence.

Race for Profit

Race for Profit PDF Author: Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469653672
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST, 2020 PULITZER PRIZE IN HISTORY By the late 1960s and early 1970s, reeling from a wave of urban uprisings, politicians finally worked to end the practice of redlining. Reasoning that the turbulence could be calmed by turning Black city-dwellers into homeowners, they passed the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968, and set about establishing policies to induce mortgage lenders and the real estate industry to treat Black homebuyers equally. The disaster that ensued revealed that racist exclusion had not been eradicated, but rather transmuted into a new phenomenon of predatory inclusion. Race for Profit uncovers how exploitative real estate practices continued well after housing discrimination was banned. The same racist structures and individuals remained intact after redlining's end, and close relationships between regulators and the industry created incentives to ignore improprieties. Meanwhile, new policies meant to encourage low-income homeownership created new methods to exploit Black homeowners. The federal government guaranteed urban mortgages in an attempt to overcome resistance to lending to Black buyers – as if unprofitability, rather than racism, was the cause of housing segregation. Bankers, investors, and real estate agents took advantage of the perverse incentives, targeting the Black women most likely to fail to keep up their home payments and slip into foreclosure, multiplying their profits. As a result, by the end of the 1970s, the nation's first programs to encourage Black homeownership ended with tens of thousands of foreclosures in Black communities across the country. The push to uplift Black homeownership had descended into a goldmine for realtors and mortgage lenders, and a ready-made cudgel for the champions of deregulation to wield against government intervention of any kind. Narrating the story of a sea-change in housing policy and its dire impact on African Americans, Race for Profit reveals how the urban core was transformed into a new frontier of cynical extraction.

For People, Not for Profit

For People, Not for Profit PDF Author: Thomas Martorelli
Publisher: Author House
ISBN: 1477216995
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
Thomas Martorellis For People, Not for Profit tells the story of Fenway Healths growth from a small, volunteer-run walk-in clinic to an international leader into an international leader in care and research for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community and people living with HIV/AIDS. It is also the story of the tremendous societal changes that drove and affected that growth. The community activism and volunteer collectives of the 1970s; the devastation of the HIV/AIDS epidemic which emerged in the 1980s; the LGBT civil rights movement that gained strength and momentum through the 1990s; and the advances in research and advocacy that have brought so many health care and civil rights victories in the 2000s its all there. At the same time, Martorelli tells us Fenways story through the voices of the people who were and are still a part of this incredible organization from the early ups and downs through Fenways growth into one of the largest LGBT health organizations in the world.

Penology for Profit

Penology for Profit PDF Author: Donald R. Walker
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781585440436
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Before the discovery of oil and the advent of Progressivism to Texas, the state dealt with prison overcrowding by leasing convicts and their labor to private industry and funneling the profits into the state's coffers. In this book, Donald R. Walker examines economic, social, and political aspects of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Texas that resulted in the leasing system and its eventual demise. Convict leasing resulted in high mortality rates among prisoners, and stories of abusive guards and intolerable conditions were common. Blacks, who lacked social standing, legal counsel, and the rights to vote, testify, and sit on juries, made up a disproportionate amount of the prison population and were usually sent to work in the fields. In the twentieth century, revenues from the oil industry eased the financial woes of the state, and a movement for social reform gained momentum. Investigative journalism revealed to the public the abuses of prisoners, and in 1912 the state retook control of the prison system. Relying mainly on primary sources, including eyewitness accounts from prisoners, prison records, private correspondence, and newspaper accounts, Walker gives details and statistics of prison management in Texas during that era that will interest scholars of corrections management, Texas, black history, and the South.

The Profit of the Earth

The Profit of the Earth PDF Author: Courtney Fullilove
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022645486X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
While there is enormous public interest in biodiversity, food sourcing, and sustainable agriculture, romantic attachments to heirloom seeds and family farms have provoked misleading fantasies of an unrecoverable agrarian past. The reality, as Courtney Fullilove shows, is that seeds are inherently political objects transformed by the ways they are gathered, preserved, distributed, regenerated, and improved. In The Profit of the Earth, Fullilove unearths the history of American agricultural development and of seeds as tools and talismans put in its service. Organized into three thematic parts, The Profit of the Earth is a narrative history of the collection, circulation, and preservation of seeds. Fullilove begins with the political economy of agricultural improvement, recovering the efforts of the US Patent Office and the nascent US Department of Agriculture to import seeds and cuttings for free distribution to American farmers. She then turns to immigrant agricultural knowledge, exploring how public and private institutions attempting to boost midwestern wheat yields drew on the resources of willing and unwilling settlers. Last, she explores the impact of these cereal monocultures on biocultural diversity, chronicling a fin-de-siècle Ohio pharmacist’s attempt to source Purple Coneflower from the diminishing prairie. Through these captivating narratives of improvisation, appropriation, and loss, Fullilove explores contradictions between ideologies of property rights and common use that persist in national and international development—ultimately challenging readers to rethink fantasies of global agriculture’s past and future.

The Future of the Profit Split Method

The Future of the Profit Split Method PDF Author: Gabriella Cappelleri
Publisher: Kluwer Law International B.V.
ISBN: 9403524316
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 355

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Book Description
The Future of the Profit Split Method Edited by Robert Danon, Guglielmo Maisto, Vikram Chand & Gabriella Cappelleri Among the various transfer pricing methods, the profit split method (PSM) is under the spotlight after the OECD’s Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project. However, both expert analysis and experience indicate that this method is not straightforward either for taxpayers to apply or for tax administrations to evaluate. In this thorough and detailed commentary – the first book to analyse this increasingly adopted transfer pricing method – notable scholars and practitioners working in the international tax community express their views on the method, answering some unresolved questions and highlighting issues that are still open and pending, especially in light of the digitalization of the economy. Crucial issues covered by the contributors include the following: choice of the appropriate splitting factors, their relative weights, and valuation of the contributions; uncertainties and outcomes potentially not aligned with the arm’s-length standard; possible role of assessments made by the European Commission on State aid; nexus with the work done by the EU Joint Transfer Pricing Forum; impact of profit split on indirect taxes (VAT/customs tax/excise tax); and application to digital business models and, in general, to the digitalized economy. Moreover, relevant experience of applying this method in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States is provided. A concluding chapter also deals with selected industry experiences. Due to a high level of uncertainty in alignment with international guidance in the application of the PSM – and to the underdeveloped nature of current literature on the subject – there is a need for this book because both tax administrations and taxpayers, going forward, will apply the PSM extensively. The book is highly relevant for policymakers, tax administrations, practitioners and academics engaged in the areas of international taxation, transfer pricing and tax policy.

Risk, Uncertainty and Profit

Risk, Uncertainty and Profit PDF Author: Frank H. Knight
Publisher: Cosimo, Inc.
ISBN: 1602060053
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
A timeless classic of economic theory that remains fascinating and pertinent today, this is Frank Knight's famous explanation of why perfect competition cannot eliminate profits, the important differences between "risk" and "uncertainty," and the vital role of the entrepreneur in profitmaking. Based on Knight's PhD dissertation, this 1921 work, balancing theory with fact to come to stunning insights, is a distinct pleasure to read. FRANK H. KNIGHT (1885-1972) is considered by some the greatest American scholar of economics of the 20th century. An economics professor at the University of Chicago from 1927 until 1955, he was one of the founders of the Chicago school of economics, which influenced Milton Friedman and George Stigler.

Extracting Profit

Extracting Profit PDF Author: Lee Wengraf
Publisher: Haymarket Books
ISBN: 1608468763
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Extracting profit explains why Africa, in the first decade and a half of the twenty-first century, has undergone an economic boom. This period of “Africa rising” did not lead to the creation of jobs but has instead fueled the growth of the extraction of natural resources and an increasingly-wealthy African ruling class.

Power, Pleasure, and Profit

Power, Pleasure, and Profit PDF Author: David Wootton
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674989902
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
A provocative history of the changing values that have given rise to our present discontents. We pursue power, pleasure, and profit. We want as much as we can get, and we deploy instrumental reasoning—cost-benefit analysis—to get it. We judge ourselves and others by how well we succeed. It is a way of life and thought that seems natural, inevitable, and inescapable. As David Wootton shows, it is anything but. In Power, Pleasure, and Profit, he traces an intellectual and cultural revolution that replaced the older systems of Aristotelian ethics and Christian morality with the iron cage of instrumental reasoning that now gives shape and purpose to our lives. Wootton guides us through four centuries of Western thought—from Machiavelli to Madison—to show how new ideas about politics, ethics, and economics stepped into a gap opened up by religious conflict and the Scientific Revolution. As ideas about godliness and Aristotelian virtue faded, theories about the rational pursuit of power, pleasure, and profit moved to the fore in the work of writers both obscure and as famous as Hobbes, Locke, and Adam Smith. The new instrumental reasoning cut through old codes of status and rank, enabling the emergence of movements for liberty and equality. But it also helped to create a world in which virtue, honor, shame, and guilt count for almost nothing, and what matters is success. Is our world better for the rise of instrumental reasoning? To answer that question, Wootton writes, we must first recognize that we live in its grip.

Against the Profit Motive

Against the Profit Motive PDF Author: Nicholas R. Parrillo
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300187300
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 582

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Book Description
In America today, a public official's lawful income consists of a salary. But until a century ago, the law frequently authorized officials to make money on a profit-seeking basis. Prosecutors won a fee for each defendant convicted. Tax collectors received a cut of each evasion uncovered. Naval officers took a reward for each ship sunk. The list goes on. This book is the first to document American government's "for-profit" past, to discover how profit-seeking defined officials' relationship to the citizenry, and to explain how lawmakers-by banishing the profit motive in favor of the salary-transformed that relationship forever.