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Re: [ox-en] Germ of a new form of society or germ of a new form of business?



Niall Douglas <s_fsfeurope2 nedprod.com> writes:
On 3 Feb 2004 at 2:23, Rich Walker wrote:

If the FSF and GNU really had the best interests of software in
mind, they would not act like they do.

Software doesn't have interests. Software runs on computers for the
use of humans. Humans have interests. The FSF wants software to be as
effective in the pursuit of those interests as possible. "information
wants to be free" is not an FSF slogan, is it?

That is not fair. The fact that the FSF doesn't agree with you
about the ideal license in all cases doesn't mean that they don't
have the best interests of software in mind.

SOFTWARE IS NOT A PERSON.

Intangible things can have interests. For example, it is in the
interests of world hunger that we end western financial hegemony.

Only if you've acknowledged that intangible things are "alive" in some
sense. [1]

What's good for software (in my opinion) is to maximise its rate of
step-change innovation. What's bad for software is to let Microsoft
continue to sell most of it as crappy closed source software is
usually more profitable than good closed source software.

I'm curious as to whether there are any examples of closed-source
software with a large market share that has displayed innovation and
quality across its life?

There seem to be several things we need from software: for some areas,
we need dynamic development with many competing implementations and
exciting things appearing regularly. In other areas, we need reliable,
robust stable software with well-honed interfaces and rapid
bug-fixes. But mostly we need software running appliances that simply do
their job.[2]

1. A certain RISC microprocessor manufacturer wanted to develop a
C++ compiler for their processors. G++ was already available
complete with back-end for their instruction set. However they
still had to employ fifteen engineers over two years to write
another from scratch because of the GPL forcing early disclosure
of trade secrets from which this company derives most of its
profits.

Without more details of the precise trade secrets this is a
non-example. Why didn't they re-hire those Cam. Prof. who wrote the
original C compiler to improve the optimisation phase of GCC so it
optimised the code for their CPU?

Hmm, you seem to know what I was referring to despite me not giving
any clues. Unfortunately I think I'm still bound by contractual
reasons that I can't say, but I can tell you that in my opinion it was
a stupid move to make, indeed their entire development suite should
have gone a different direction. Making it just like their competitors
offers no product differentiation and therefore little reason to
choose between them except upon cost.

If this was the british company I'm thinking of, there are a number of
angles they (and their original parent company) could have
exploited. For example, shipping computers with proprietary development
systems - always a bad idea! [3] Not funding the porting of the GCC
suite to the OS's that ran on those machines...

Returning to the particulars of development models, it's very
interesting to see some of the things that have dropped into GCC in the
last few years - large components generated independently by
organisations working with the compiler and donating those components
back to GCC. 


All of these are based on the idea of selling software licenses and
restricting access to software as the only way to make money from
software and to make development profitable enough to support. I
think this is just uncreative.

No, it's exploitative. It's the "money-lending" model - one that can
be backed up by thuggery if required.

You have it in one. Motivational and exploitative are the two ways in
which capitalism works.

Although even the motivation takes much more of the nature of coercion
in a world where "not having an income" is an eventual death sentence.

Can I link GPL code in with my open source product and sell that
product? No. Why? Because the GPL guarantees the freedom to
distribute your product to others without paying you.

And patents protect the rights of small innovators.

(Next time, I'll mark this up as sarcastic)

Patents are quite a different matter Mr. Walker! Personally I'd have
no problem with software patents if they patented only the
implementation, not the theory.

And there, strangely, copyright applies already and lasts much
longer. At present, the uses of patents by small organisations are
almost exclusively defensive [4]- and even there, defending a patent claim
will probably ruin the company. For large organisations, they have
become an  effective method of locking innovation out of the market.

It's pointless doing work unless the work is worth it. Since KHTML
was designed, yet another free HTML renderer seems foolish. Still,
people are free to waste their time if they choose.

You think KHTML is a good renderer? You think XFS prevents ext3 or
Reiser? You think Coda, InterMezzzo, GFS and ClusterFS inter-prevent?
Would you want NFSv2 for the rest of eternity?

To me, software doesn't need to be perfect - just good enough to
enable new orders to emerge. To reiterate the same thing too much is
inefficient and is slowing step-change innovation.

But the GPL, and the ability to take the system and build on it, affords
step-change innovation as well as robust development. And the
publication of interfaces (you've got the source as well as the
operational system) makes it easier to build replacement components
where necessary. 

cheers, Rich.




Footnotes: 
[1]  Which is getting into the debate about whether corporations and
     other large organisations are in fact organism...

[2]  Don Norman's book "The Invisible Computer" is a very interesting
     one, dealing with the move from computer-as-computer to the
     development of what he calls "information appliances"

[3]  In the embedded sector, there are only a few companies that sell a
     high-price development system for their products; for the most
     part, development systems are heavily subsidised because the
     development system is a barrier to access.

[4]  As in the conversations that go "Very interesting - do you have a
     patent on it?" "no" "Oh, then I'll copy it rather than buying it
     from you."

-- 
rich walker | technical person | Shadow Robot Company | rw shadow.org.uk
front-of-tshirt space to let     251 Liverpool Road   |
                                 London  N1 1LX       | +UK 20 7700 2487
_______________________
http://www.oekonux.org/



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