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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."
"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.
I want a document that has the 10-20 most often heard arguments representing the FUD companies try to spread about Open Source in general and the GPL in particular, and a clear, concise, relevant, non-inflammatory rebuttal to each.
The author's language, such as "the market is a tough bitch" and "hell yes!" will not fly if I ever want to supply a rebuttal to these kinds of arguments.
Take the original paper's example of "a piece of software an engineer writes that represents 5000 hours worth of work, but uses a GPL component that represents 100 hours of effort. Is the GPL'ed component's requirement to release the original work under the GPL 'fair'?"
The proper rebuttal to this is:
Imagine that an engineer writes a piece of software representing 5000 hours worth of work, but uses a PROPRIETARY component that represents 100 hours worth of effort. That proprietary component has a license that says 'the engineer will pay $10,000, plus some percercentage of revenue the original work generates". There are PLENTY of proprietary products like that. Is that fair?
It is up to the engineer to decide. If his time-to-market is so critical that those 100 hours are worth $10,000 plus a percentage, then that engineer will do it... otherwise, they will just write it. It is a business decision, like any other.
In both cases, the person who wrote the 100 hour effort component OWN THAT WORK, and get to say what the costs of its use will be. The person using it has to decide what costs they are willing to pay.
In GPL, the cost is not financial (at least, not directly). The 'cost' is to release the 'new' product under the same license. Many other licenses (both Open and Proprietary) put 'costs' on that have nothing to do with monetary value.
I want to see 10-20 arguments like this made. they are clear, concise, NON-INFLAMMATORY, and make a point.