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The Need for Open Hardware
bwt asks: "With all the talk of DRM lately, it occurs to me that the entire concept depends on limiting the choice for computer hardware. OK, so the proper reaction to the copyright industry's attempts at PC market control is to be able to build a PC that they can't control. I know there have been some discussions on open hardware, but most if it was prior to the emergence of DRM as a real threat. In fact, Richard Stallman wrote an editorial in 1999 and said 'Because copying hardware is so hard, the question of whether we're allowed to do it is not vitally important.' DRM has perhaps changed that. Isn't the need for open hardware becoming critical? What is the status of the open hardware efforts?"
If any of evil legislation being proposed passes, wouldn't the status of open hardware be....
illegal
Really that is what the fight will be all about. Hardware will be made to defeat DRM, the only way it will not be is if it is all illegal.
Even if anti-DRM hardware is deemed illegal expect a black market in it that will put the alcohol black market during prohibition to shame.
General purpose components (processors, memory, storage) without DRM enforcement will be readily available until it is governmentally mandated otherwise, and at that point open hardware without DRM would be illegal. This discussion leads to a dead end.
The real problem isn't availability of open hardware; anyone will (presumably) remain able to cobble together chips and wires and create a piece of computing equipment.
The problem will arise when you try to use your homebrew machine on the internet. There are two scenarios here.
The more likely scenario is that the big content suppliers and middlemen will pressure PC manufacturers into supplying only "DRM enabled" hardware to consumers; support for such hardware will be built into the Windows kernel and DMCA-protected against interference. What's more, a Palladium (or succeeding) web security system will interact with the trusted end-user hardware to enable net content access. In this scenario, users of noncompliant hardware will still be able to use their machines locally, and to access non-Palladium net content, but will be excluded from using the most popular OS and apps.
The less likely but still frighteningly probable scenario would involve the government (whichever government you happen to live under) passing a "net homeland security act" which would make it illegal to attach non-certified hardware to the internet. Needless to say, the certification process would be onerous and expensive for hobbyists, and would mandate compliance with DRM standards.
The latter may sound far-fetched, but consider that we already require cars to be certified as safe (and relatively non-polluting, in some states) before they're allowed to use public roads. The analogy is fairly direct.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
Capitalism works perfectly well for IP as long as it is allowed to work in a (relatively) level playing field
That means that the government should work to keep the playing field level as it was intended to be. Patents should be offered for true innovation in the hardware world where no prior art existed and enforced properly when offered properly. Copyright while in existence should gauruntee the author the ability to make a profit and avoid having their works horribly abused, but the copyright protections should be limited while they exist and of limited duration, not extended perpetually.
As a side not, the dot com bubble was not capitalism failing, it was capitalism working beautifully coupled with idiot investors who overvalued entirely too much. The solid internet commpanies such as ebay thrive to this day, the ones with good prospects such as amazon.com and netflix.com are still around with time to prove themselves, and the weak one(who really wants to buy cheese graters or petfood online at a specialty website????) died as they should have. The only little glitch in the bubble was caused by mass stupidity and rampant overvaluing, which are not problems in the system itself.
Software can be written by anyone with even a very lowly computer.
So can hardware if you use Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA). True, you won't generate a 20 THz processor with FPGA, but most hardware doesn't need power. If FPGA's became more common, you could download and share devices, rather than just downloading and sharing device drivers.
You would still need to buy the physical end, such as a virgin controllerless harddrive, or a simple plug to put an ethernet cord into. But if you could download the rest of the hardware, and if you could then plug it into a device like an FPGA, you could bypass almost any complaints people would have with hardware manufacturers.
More importantly, when you can download a set of instructions for programming hardware, you can then share these instructions. Then you gain all the known benefits of open source software.
The key to open hardware, in my opinion, is paradoxical. To have open hardware, your design must be closed, immutable.
That's the only reason why Apple survives, even thrives today, because they control the OS as well as the hardware.
Just because the design is closed doesn't mean, however, that the use and functionality of the system cannot be adjusted. You can slam as many drives, RAM, processor upgrades, and PCI cards in a desktop Mac as you would any other PC. Only the circuit designs remain under the control of one company.
In the case of Apple, it's a benevolent dictatorship at the moment, with a CEO who is outspoken on DRM issues.
The Intel world is problematic because Intel calls the shots. This is good because all companies must follow the designs that fit their processor. But it leaves us in that benevolent dictatorship again. Add the Microsoft layers and things are pro-DRM again.
Yet, take out the MS layers and Intel loses the need for most of its processors and cannot afford to make them.
So, it does seem that the only way to break into a true open hardware design is to break out of the traditional processor model. The PowerPC chip specs are openly available, but I don't see processor manufacturing becoming a home or OSS project. Too much capital and hardware.
Was it the Crusoe project that was trying to make a processor that ran any OS? Could that be the key? Was it cheaper?
Somehow, there's gotta be a way to make a cheaper processor.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
Well, it's not as open as it was in the early 80's when IBM used to sell technical reference guides for PCs which contained the actual circuit diagrams. Those of us who worked at PC clone companies found these to be immensely useful.
You might argue that IBM ended up losing out to its competition in the PC market and shouldn't have done this. I believe, however, that the open nature of the PC eventually resulted in a total market sized hundreds of times larger than what would have resulted under IBM's total proprietary control. They probably made more profit in PCs, PC-based servers and PC software over the last 20 years than they ever would have if the system weren't open.
Their relative share of the pie was smaller, but the pie turned into a monster pie. Moreover, other clone companies pioneered the concept of the very profitable PC-based server. IBM stole this idea back and created their own lines of servers. The PC pie became richer, too.
There's even a control case to check this theory: witness the what happened when they tried to go back to a closed hardware system with the PS/2. It wasn't a poster child for success.
I've about had it with Slashdot's political bent. In the past year. Slashdot has gone from an site full of links to interesting and fun things to a mess of misinformation about the DMCA, DRM technology, patents, copyrights, and other issues that-- for reasons that escape me-- are fundamentally offensive to a good chunk of the Slashdot audience.
I believe that reasoned political debate is a wonderful thing. I love talking politics with my friends, whether we agree or disagree. Those sorts of conversations always leave be with the sense that I've learned something new, or heard an opinion that I haven't heard before.
But Slashdot is not the place for reasoned political debate. More often than not, the people who post to Slashdot seem to lack even the most basic information about the topic at hand. Instead of reading and listening and learning about significant issues, the Slashdot readership prefers instead to just repeat the same old litanies: DMCA bad, RIAA bad, MPAA bad, DRM bad, MS bad, Linux good, EFF good, RMS good, capitalism = greed, government = corruption, et cetera, et cetera.
A year ago, the solution was easy: I just chose not to see any articles from the "Your Rights Online" section on the front page. Poof. Done.
Now, half the articles, more or less, make reference to one of the collection of alphabet soup I listed above.
I'm tired of this. I've been an active participant on Slashdot for a long time-- I don't remember precisely how long, but I've posted some 1,200 comments, and I maxed out my karma a long time ago-- but I'm just about ready to give it up. I'm just not finding that much on Slashdot that's worth reading any more.
I know this is off-topic-- and I'm sure I'll be moderated accordingly-- but I just felt like letting go with a rant. Don't follow this up here. Instead, if you want to reply at all, do so on my journal.
The notion that the "Free market will solve everything" is based on some very flawed assumptions.
The first is the assumption of the perfectly informed consumer. There is no such thing as the perfectly informed consumer, a customer who is aware of which companies own which, which company behave ethically or distrubite products that do not conform the consumers ethical standards.
There is just too much information and it is just too complicated for even the concerned consumers to know it all. Most consumers dont even care if a company kills babies* so long as they get cheap gasoline (*i know of know such company).
the second flawed assumption is that the market can ever actually be free.
Governments can and do interfere. Governments usually* set minimum ethical standards and try to stop companies defrauding the investors or cheating their customers (* need i even say Enron, WorldCom etc?).
Governments are also one of the largest spenders in the market. The economies of many small towns are totally dependent on Goverment military spending, governmetn prison bugdets.
So government legislation and spending have a huge effect on the market place.
big businness calls for 'laissez faire' so they can make as much profit with the minimum obligation to show and morality or provide quality products.
Capitalism is not supposed to solve problems like this.
Democracy, and a goverment that represents the best interests of the majority of its people is supposed to sovle this.