Last Word on ADTI Document

kris writes "Linux and Main's Anthony Awtrey put together a very nice analysis of the ADTI "Opening the Open Source Debate" paper before and after the temporary retraction. He came up with some interesting research of just why the paper adressed specific examples such as the FAA and exposes the FUD behind the FUD in the paper."

Comments

Again with the inflamation

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Ya think we might, one day, get a non-inflammatory response to the ADTI paper? This latest one is as bad as all the others - filled with deprecating comments written as if the audience was part of the "in-crowd." If you really care about the accuracy of the debate, why waste your time writing a rebuttal article for the linux audience? The ADTI article was not aimed at the linux audience but rather at the suits who don't know the details of the either the politics or the tecnology. A rebuttal written for that target audience is worth more to the forward progress of linux than a hundred of these "nudge, nudge, wink, wink" rebuttals that can only sound like the squabbling of an infant to an outside party.

Reverse Engineering

[Waffle Iron]

They highlight a quote from the original white paper:

"reverse engineering harbors very close to IP infringement because and has staggering economic implications."

That is utterly bogus. I spent the first 5 years of my career reverse engineering IBM's PCs (back in the days when IBM was the "bad guy" and Microsoft supplied a fun little OS that freed users from sysadmin tyranny). Due to the efforts of hundreds of engineers like myself at PC "clone" manufacurers, we now enjoy a utopia of cheap, fast, interchangeable PCs supplied by numerous competitors in the marketplace.

Decades of continued reverse engineering between manufacturers as they added improvements has maintained compatibility as the architecture has scaled in performance by over 1000X. The affordable computing power made possible by reverse engineering has provided immeasurably huge benefits to the world's economy.

Unfortunately, the software market has not seen nearly as much reverse engineering and cloning as the hardware market. If it did, we'd all get to keep more of our money to spend as we wish, and we'd have fewer headaches managing and sharing our data.

Sending your money to someone just because they've erected a barrier of obscurity and secrets around the tools you need to use your data does not help the economy or spur innovation. It's more like being taxed to pay for an entitlement program.

You know, it just depresses me

[Dark Paladin]

I have yet to read the newly revised version of the ADTI document, but looking at the original doesn't fill me with anger, or the need to go change the world.

It just depresses me. That there are people out there who find nothing better to do with their time and money than to tear other people down.

We have Microsoft machines at my Day Job. And MS SQL servers. And an AS 400. And a Macintosh (granted, only me, but hey, it's a start). And several Novell servers (I love the new licensing scheme.) And a Nokia IPSO box.

They all do a job, they all work together, and when I need to do something new, I look it over, and choose what I need. More often than not, it's Open Source, and everything else is slowly being pushed out (well, except for the Netware boxes - NDS rocks). I don't care about philosphy. I care about cost, performance, and how easy/difficult it is for me to use.

I might read the new version of the ADTI just for the heck of it. Odds are, I won't. It doesn't nothing but tear down, and I have a hard enough time building things to worry about what I should be taking out.

Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.