Re: Beyond Bundling: was Intellectual property? Is it a taking?

[Hans Reiser <reiser@idiom.com>]

I think both legislation and the courts are worth pursuing, and I encourage you
to go after Congress on this while I go after the courts.

Hans

pap wrote:

> From: Hans Reiser <reiser@idiom.com>
>
> > John N Bryan wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > In this, Microsoft is not a software company, it is a
> > > Zero-Sum-Market-Domination company, that happens to use software
> > > as the medium.
> > >
> > > -JNB
> >
> > I think people outside the computer industry don't always realize that yes,
> Bill
> > Gates is very sharp, and technically knowledgeable, but at the same time he
> has
> > absolutely no originality or creativity, he is just dead in this area. The
> thing
> > is, he knows this.  He knows he can't compete with the startups on ideas.
> This
> > explains his behavior, he competes in the only ways he can: cloning other
> people's
> > ideas and implementing them (often implementing them well), and
> monopolizing.
>
> It was also said:
>
> >
> > When you buy a book you do not have the right to duplicate
> >it and sell it. You can read it all. Twice if you care. Reading or
> >seeing the material is not the same as a right to further distribute it for
> >profit.
> >
>
> For me there is one glaring difference. When you buy a book, you are
> reasonably assured that you now have the rights to digest the entire works,
> all the thoughts, information, illustrations and other content that you
> could have sudden interest in.  Further, it is no more or less than that
> which someone else can obtain. This is not the case with copyrighted
> software that does not have source available. It is, has been and will
> continue to be a fundamental root of the problems presented by these
> events, not to mention the unmentionable associated with code executing
> unbeknown to you. What is software if not complex literary works with
> the constantly overlooked potential for the inclusion of powerful
> operational features that you may or may not be aware of?
> Why is there so little interest in the disclosure of the state of this
> potential? It is inviting future disasters on many fronts and hobbles
> anyone looking to build on a platform or rely on it's veracity.
>
> Closed or incomplete source, a bully pulpit with millisecond effects and
> the bully power begins with a subordinate's insecurity, the Sword of
> Damocles, having no assurance that your work will not be broken to pieces on
> a whim.. Not only are you not assured that what you rely on will not change
> without notice or effect, you can not even asses the nature of the changes
> to make accommodations if you suspect them. I can recall hard copy
> documented system calls in DOS 2.0 that were wrong and did not work as
> documented. This was official IBM DOS 2.0 system programming material,
> probably as supplied to them. To my knowledge, it was not corrected. This is
> going to be some circus, I thought at the time. I believe Andrew Schulman
> describes the circus well in many volumes, including some hard looks at the
> intellectual property implications of non-documentation. It strikes me when
> intellectual property rights can be measured by the extent of control over
> entire classes, they are rights that no longer need protection.
>
> Too tempting an opportunity exists to arbitrarily make changes that affect
> whole classes, right down to the individual user. Add in the fact that
> backup and restore complexities can make it near impossible for the average
> user
> to restore a system to a known working state in a useful time frame and you
> could have every day total control weaponry. Closed source has been  the most
> often brandished strategic weapon in this case, albeit there are other more
> conventional ones in the arsenal, ones that are being very thoroughly
> addressed and ones that are more easily characterized as anti-trust
> behavior. But I feel that the power bases are built on no responsibility for
> source and it is still there for anyone to re-trace. When AT&T was axed
> apartthere was nothing unique about copper wire. For Standard Oil, the
> resource wasnot proprietary. Digital industries flourish on the proprietary
> and are consequentlysupported by buyers who will one day realize that they are
> paying for unnecessarychurning. It will not change much unless the code
> resources become a raw material.
>
> It has been demonstrated that it doesn't matter where you are in the pecking
> order, Intel, Apple, Netscape or just someone with a new idea. Everyone
> downstream from invisible source is at constant and real risk of being
> annihilated at any time, including the individual user that uses the
> Internet or upgrades a package. This can be  true for ANY software system
> that does not disclose it's source and even for some that do. With those
> that do you at least have a cleaner shot at fixing it once. Open source is
> not yet a panacea for the average user, but it sure goes a long way to give
> the professional or systems house the tools to optimize their offerings to a
> market demanding the best and most reliable optimization available instead
> of some form of helpless bondage.
>
> In my view, no-responsibility-for-source has been the underlying mechanism
> leading to, among other events, the market's abandonment of many viable
> applications and innovations on this platform, ones that develop strange,
> unpredictable and unserviceable behavior. It's been going on since Lotus
> 123,  plants wither and die in a desert of uncertainty. ("Well I guess it is
> no longer being supported, time to shuffle the deck again").
>
> Netscape was no exception here and I would venture a guess was one of the
> biggest support headaches of the era. Everyone paid with his or her
> inefficient use of time, far more valuable than a few dollars for something
> that worked. In my humble opinion, Netscape was well aware of this but was
> too involved in programmatic one-upsmanship to revise their strategy and
> probably missed the chance to develop a platform solution. They could have
> been a Red Hat very easily some time ago.
>
> Nonetheless, there is still a natural tendency to gravitate toward
> monolithic systems witnessed by a recent IT survey by Computerworld that
> finds IT is not about to change it's strategies. 74 percent feel that the
> findings will not change their thinking, 93 percent will not change how they
> do business with the vendor. For them, the current state of Microsoft
> systems offers substantial value to their businesses. The reason being, I
> feel, is the risk of deviation is too fraught with unpredictable peril. The
> one question that I felt was missing from the survey was; does IT feel there
> is room for improvement if the anti-trust issues are vigorously addressed?
>
> Even if mediation manages to find a satisfactory resolution for all the
> disadvantaged souls in this debate without touching the source issue, it is
> leaving the door open for a continued opportunity to repeat the exercise,
> perhaps not to the current magnitude but nonetheless just as potentially
> devastating case by case. Codeless copyright is a right that anyone can
> obtain. I notice that talk of changing this is not very popular with most of
> the loudest voices. I continue to wonder why. Is it an effort to fragment a
> company that maximized the interpretation of a rule but leave the rule
> intact for others?  Many speak as though Microsoft  is an anomaly, a freak
> of business. It is just our system running full tilt. They are inviting
> re-runsby leaving all the tools on the bench
> Add to all of this the hostility and finger pointing that is prevalent in
> the brilliantly divested communication industry, we have systems that are
> becoming more complex and fragile instead of more robust. Reducing the
> number of interface complexities and requiring source in the copyright process
>
> will help this new medium to flourish. We could be at the beginning
> of a beneficial cycle rather than at the end of one.
>
> It is clear to me that the disclosure of source at the copyright step does
> not give license to copy and profit from the works, like books, music or
> film. Therefore, it is unnecessary to hide code. I don't see disclosure
> inviting illegal copy and sale any more or less than the status quo.
> Use and  use of source are distinct definable permissions and
> remain under the control of the copyright holder. It would be a plus in
> contests over flat out plagiarism of large routines if full disclosure was a
> requirement to obtain a copyright. All the evidence on both sides will be in
> plain view as it is in other forms of publication. Think about that word,
> publication.
>
> We also hear the security argument that full disclosure of widely used
> systems will create huge security breach opportunities. I disagree. Source
> disclosure in copyright will expose these potentials to many more interested
> parties who will then call for immediate remedies. Source disclosure in
> copyright will also not foreclose a business or individual from creating
> secure software for their own use for which no disclosure need ever be made,
> unless they intend to sell or license it to others. There is no reason why
> high security sites with in-house programmers would be compromised by public
> disclosure of mainstream systems.
>
> Microsoft challenges the US Government with the fact that it granted them
> the rights to sell, license, give away or do what they please with their
> works under the copyrights they were granted. These are rights that they
> have relied upon along with everyone else issued a copyright for their
> works.
>
> Proprietary and Open platforms from all vendors can coexist and compete in a
> cloud of interoperability where all source is disclosed. The difference is
> they will much more do so on their own merits. The real solution might be a
> legislative one and it looks as though that could be faster, more effective
> and more useful to emerging enterprise and it's consumers. Published
> standardsof interoperability should be the responsibility of key platform
> vendors with all theAPIs available to their developer community. It is moving
> in that direction anyway.Why not formalize the process and be done with it so
> that we can move on?
>
> Who knows? Perhaps if source had been a convention 30 years ago, some of the
> Y2K date fiasco could have been averted sooner. Yet every day critical systems
> faillargely because there is virtually no way to test through all the
> incompatibilities.
>
>
> Best Regards
>
> -PAP

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