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Last Word on ADTI Document

Posted by michael on from the die-dead-horse-die dept.

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."

1 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. Reverse Engineering by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.