... a trivially replicable massage machine, or does the personal touch matter that much?
Perhaps it does, and i didn't mean to suggest that a post-scarcity society was a practical possibility, but that a lesser-scarcity one was, and that artificial scarcities impede progress in that direction.
Yet, as squalid as the conditions of the Industrial Revolution were, they still left the poor far better off, in absolute terms: half of London's poor children managed to live past the age of five, because they could no work for a living.
Whether that was wonderful or horrible really depends on one's perspective.
As to regulation being necessary to "bust monopolies", traditionally monopolies tend to die of their own weight within 15 years. If anything, governments do more to prop them up, if inadvertantly, than shut them down.
You will find, sadly, that my spelling does leave quite a bit to be desired. But I do try to avoid the more common grammatical errors. Also, while even the good people at Oxford have accepted split infinitives and dangling participles, "to boldly go" is still something "up with which I shall not put", to mix qotations.
Respectfully, I think you misunderstand my point (or I have not made myself sufficient clear).
The intellectual property exists in two forms: (1) that my secrets are my own, and (2) that I may license them. Copyrights and patents are, IMHO, default means of licensing ideas. (Yes, I know that license law is a different beast).
IOW, the artificial property right is not that i own the idea, but rather that I can share the ideas with an agreement to compensate me for the sharing, or otherwise restrict it's use, that can be enforced at law.
This is not the same thing as government granting copyrights and patents, though the effect may be identical.
Even if the purported purpose of patent and copyright (to provide incentive to inventers) was a farce to gain broad acceptance, it still stands as a reasonable principle, to be tempered with a technologically appropriate limited duration.
IOW, I think we are in agreement with regard to reasoning even as we might disagree on historical motives.
Your analysis is excellent, but omits one very important facet: rights enforced not by government, but agreed-upon by contract.
Consider the absence of government-imposed copyright. Uncoerced parties could contract to respect an intellectual property right: in exchange for revealing a secret (to which I have a supreme right, assuming the secret is knowledge I obtained on my own) to someone, they agree to not reveal it further. Certainly such contracts can create the effect of copyright and patents in the absence of the government constuct and enforcement thereof.
The question of interest then becomes, "Are such contracts binding in perpetuity?". Or, put another way, should the government be the arbitor of last resort for disputes based on the alleged breaking of such contracts? I think my analysis shows that, beyond some limit, the answer is no.
Of course, a purely libertarian position would be to punt the question and respond that no rational person would accept a perpetual contract like that. But, not all people are rational, and having extracted sufficient income from disclosure of a secret, one could collect this income forever, and ensure that the secret remains so. Clearly that would not be in the public interest.
And this leads to an interesting possibility: public policy making by a libertarian government is limited to it's pre-announced position on just what disputes it will agree to resolve as the court of last resort. Such positions would be announced (and be binding on the government court) as part of it's efforts to become elected.
Yes, of course, but what could you reward one with in a post-scarcity, or limited-scarcity society?
Time would cease to have value because there's nothing it could be traded for -- you wouldn't loose work time because you would not have to work.
The point is, having created a piece of software, there would be no justification for hoarding it because you couldn't get anything in exchange for it that you didn't already have.
Actually, that isn't quite true: you could trade it for things that are promised, but don't exist -- other software. But you wouldn't need to trade it for food, clothing, or shelter.
Artificial scarcity begets ongoing scarcity, and that is the argument for limiting it's duration.
Yes, I addressed this briefly, and in more detail in response to the basic flaw in my reasoning that post-scarcity is impossible.
But, the ideas that apply in a post-scarcity society, also apply to move in the direction toward such a society, i.e. in a succession of less-scarcity societies. Indefinite artificial scarcity protections prevent this transition.
Hmm, the paranoid in me thinks that the current corrupt policies extend artificial scarcity protections specifically in order to slow down progress, then their prtagonists can claim that the extended protections are justified because progress has slowed down.
Yes, I have noticed this flaw as well (and addressed it, ableit briefly): a true post-scarcity society can not exist. However, I think it still serves as a useful model to move in the direction of less scarcities, and the limited durations on artificial scarcity rights have precedent in law: patents and copyrights were not envisioned to be perpetual rights, though some could argue that they should be.
In short, it appears that accepting power over one's self, in one form or another, for extensive periods, is not a naturally acceptable condition for humans. Limits on artificial scarcities address this, though present tendencies are in exactly the wrong direction.
Certainly, artificial scarcities will always be useful constructs because the post-scarcity society can not exist (even if there are no natural scarcities, there will always be artificial ones because their existance can be envisioned). However, I think a strong argument can be made that such scarcities not be tolerated in perpetuity.
I was going too, but my ideas are still rough, and I wanted feedback before I made a more polished "fait acompli" version. The present discussion was an instance of the problems I'm addressing, so appeared as good a place as any to spring my ideas. OTOH, if you object to the front-page space it takes, complain to the moderators.
Once I refine and extend them, I might do as you suggest.
Yes, I support the idea of shorter artificial scarcity rights. The difficult thing for me, as a libertarian, was to come to the conclusion that artificial scarcity rights should be limited at all, since I have a strong sense of property rights.
To arrive at that conclusion, I started by (a) considering what kind of society does not need such rights (post-scarcity); (b) whether such a society was desirable (yes); and (c) what it would take to go in that direction. The conclusion was that artificial scarcity rights need to be limited in duration.
I would still argue that the duration of artificial scarcity rights should be set in a free market, rather than by government fiat, but the important notion is that the public should be educated as to the real costs of accepting artificial scarcity rights. This would lead to either a more informed free market for them, or pressure on governments to shorten their duration in an increasingly technologially sophisticated environment. Either approach would move society in a desirable direction, rendering my natural anti-interventionist tendencies philosophical oppositions rather than pragmatic ones.
Historically, innovators have become wealthy precisely because others have been slow to "catch up". Artificial scarcity rights that benefit such innovation also impede overall progress. Lately, the emphasis has been on increasing such rights rather than on new innovation: the rich innovators of old have gotten fat and lazy.
Gee, thanks for the mod points, but I'd really like to see discussion.
A couple of observations I should have included, but forget are the following, relating classical economies to artificial scarcity.
RMS has been accused of being a communist because of his notions about intellectual property. However, communism has one great flaw: it seeks to redistribute existing scarce goods without creating incentive to eliminate the scarcity to begin with. That's why it appears to work so well at the beginning: it corrects a terribly skewed distribution of scarce things. While RMS attacks artificial scarcity, communism lumps natural scarcity in there as well. Note that combating natural scarcity requires the incentive to overcome the scarcity of knowledge of knowing how: once know, this knowledge can be kept artificially scarce (or not).
Capitalism, on the other hand, rewards those who can produce scarce goods. In theory, such goods will be delivered in the most efficient manner possible due to free market competition. The free market notion is nice because it does not create a have/have-not dichotomy, at least not in theory: anyone has the potential for success.
Of course, temporary extremes in both these economic models lead to undesireable circumstances that result in some form of government intervention: in the United States, we therefore have a mixed economy (note: many of the injustices attributed to capitalism and free markets can probably be attributed to "mismanagement" of this mixed economy -- this is why libertarians want less government). Recently, China has been experimenting with capitalist incentives within a predominantly communist economy. So, as presently practiced, communism and capitalism (both vulnerable to government corruption, though those of us in capitalist countries tend to think of communist governments are more corrupt), both seek to address scarcity issues, but in different ways. Personally, my bets are on a more capitalist incentive approach, because it offers the possibility of benefiting from short-term scarcity relief (i.e. "getting rich") as well as addressing the long term issues.
Finally, another way to look at the artificial scarcities is not as restrictions enforced by governments, but rather scarcities which do not remain so naturally: software is easy to copy. Heck, digital media in general is easy to copy. Information and knowledge are hard to keep secret. Such scarcities can only exist by the application of force or by concent. Absent concent, they are thus ultimately counterproductive to those who seek to exploit them too much.
I've been thinking about these kinds of things for a while now, and while I haven't examined the ramifications of the ideas that I'm about to share with any great rigor, I still think they are worth sharing.
RMS believes that software should be free, that agreeing to not share code one has, or to not be able to study and modify it is immoral. Basically, the world is a better place with free software than without. As a libertarian, I have a strong sense of property rights so I don't accept this view outright. Yet, because I am a libertarian, I also accept the idea that those who wish to produce free software not be impeded from doing so, and note that this is indeed helpful. So, I ask myself, "In what kind of society are restrictions on software use and distribution clearly wrong"?
The answer is a post-scarcity society (well, not really, but I'll get to that and why) -- one where no one wants for anything: replicators (for example) run on abundant (i.e. more than enough) solar power and employ nano-technology to make whatever anyone desires: food, clothing, shelter.
O.K. This is an artificial construct, to be sure, but bear with me.
In such a society, hoarding software, or licensing it under restrictive terms clearly harms those who want it, but can't have it. Why would one do this? To exact some price for it? But that is meaningless: one can already have anything one wants, and any price exacted could be met for the same reason. To deprive others of something that costs one nothing, and anyone could afford is not nice: its like throwing away perfectly good scraps of food that one can't eat or save when others are starving and it is no effort to give it away to them.
So, the only justification for restrictions on software, or the creation of an artificial scarcity of it (or anything else, for that matter: information in general) is the need to compensate for a natural scarcity -- if I write code for free, I can't earn a traditional living, and so can't affort scarce goods, like food. Writing free code costs me, in other words, and that cost needs to be mitigated.
So, the justification for artificial scarcity is a compensation for natural scarcity: if one can produce something in abundance for themselves, but limit its availability to others, one can avoid seeking other scarce things, through a mechanism of trade.
On the other hand, does this mean that it is acceptable to others that the artificial scarcity ber permitted to last indefinately? After all, this means a gravy train for life for some while others struggle in a world of scarcity? Traditionally, most people have said "No," and have enacted laws to deal with such artificial scarcities.
Before software, artificial scarcities existed for other things, like writings and the applications of inventions, namely copyrights, and patents. There was no infinite property right recognized for ideas by society, or its governing representatives -- the stable state is that of public domain, tending to lessen scarcity.
Artificial scarcities, like copyright and patents, were inventions of government, granted and enforced for limited durations, in order to reflect the realities of living iin a naturally scarce world, yet to encourage the eventual lessening of scarcities, otherwise known as progress.
While philosophically, I might object at the arbitrary imposition of a limit on copyright and patent, preferring instead to see a negotiation of terms acceptable creator and user, I nevertheless recognize that such intellectual property should not remain proprietary forever.
Pragmatically, the "market force" of negotiation, civil or otherwise, establishes a flow from the haves to the have-nots: governments, empowered with the legal use of force, dictate terms, and mobs forcibly revolt when they have "enough" (distinguishing a mob from a government is left up to the reader).
Note that this applies to anything that can be made artificially scare, or restricted by license: writings, software, drug formulas, etc. The bottom line is that artificial scarcity is justified only by overall scarcity and it is desirable to reduce scarcity overall. Thus, artificial scarcity is like debt: useful, but not something of which one wants an excess.
Now, this analysis does break down to some extent in that there will never be a completely post-scarcity society: things that can be envisioned, but do not exist, will remain scarce, and artificial scarcity can encourage people to continue to try to invent. But, the principle that artificial scarcity be limited in duration remains.
The natural state, then is public domain, and this is what we should strive toward. Note, that the GPL is not the same as public domain, in that free software can not be employed in non-free derived works. But the teeth behind that are the same teeth that generate copyright-based artificial scarcity to begin with. If copyright and patent protection were substantially weakened, would the GPL need to be so restrictive? I don't think so -- it is as protective of fighting artificial scarcity as copyright is of promoting it: a rather nice balance.
So, what does all this mean? Instead of changing the free software mantra, we should be arguing for a recognition that artificial scarcity property rights, propped up by government should be temporary in nature, as a matter of principle, and shorter terms are better for society than longer terms. This is the exact opposite of recent trends. People need to be educated that the acceptance of artificial scarcities in their lives is like taking on debt.
These are only partially-baked ideas, so I appologize for the roughness of thought, but I certainly welcome comments.
Re:Time to test the free software/OS ethos...
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Linus Does Not Scale
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· Score: 2
Well, human nature being what it is, I think it is understandable that Linus wants to retain some degree of control over "his" baby.
The intent of my analysis was to determine just how much control is reasonable: certainly he can't stop others from forking kernel maintainance, nor should he try. But, his reputation should not be sullied by their failed efforts. And we all know that reputations depend on what people think, whether or not those thoughts are rational.
So, some measure of limiting confusability of failed, or buggy forks with Linus' version, is important.
Of course, a completely different line of thinking leads one to conclude that, since power corrupts, the power to control what other use should never concentrate without consent.
Re:Is Linux bigger than Linus?
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Linus Does Not Scale
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· Score: 3, Interesting
... I for one respect that he wants to keep that control,...
Call me mean, but I don't respect anyone for wanting to "keep control" over what is supposed to be free software (well, except for modules), espescially when they decided to make it free. Wha? "It's free unless it becomes a hit and then I want control?" I don't think so -- I think Linus has plenty of leveragable egoboo to not need that kind of power trip.
If Linus wants to play architect, and concentrate on APIs, modularity, and scalability, great. If he wants to bundle components meeting his standard for stability, also great. But, if he can't do it all himself, he shouldn't try to prevent others from stepping in.
If he is worried about dilution of the stability associated with "his" Linux, he should excercize his trademark rights: you can't call a kernel, bundled with loadable modules, "Linux®" unless it has his blessing. Of course, meeting the lesser standard of API complience should garner a "Linux®-compatible" moniker, or "[insert favorite distro]-certified Linux® compatible", with Linus authorizing major distros to do their own testing, and applying that moniker.
Does this mean a forking of monolithic kernel bundles? Yes, but I don't think that seperate module sets are that traumatic of a fork. This is an area that the various distro-makers can move into, and an espescially fertile one for embedded kernel providers.
Re:Is Linux bigger than Linus?
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Linus Does Not Scale
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· Score: 4, Interesting
The problems with CVS is that it doesn't handle directories and branch merges very well. The former is a shortcoming of CVS and the latter makes it painful for Linus (or anyone for that matter) to maintain a private branch. It's doable, but ugly.
Of course, I was spoiled with Clearcase when I was at Teradyne, but, at $1000 a seat, it isn't exactly cheap (and is dangerous in the wrong hands). Working at a startup now, and living with CVS, has tought me that it doesn't provide the kind of isolation, yet, tracking that Linus needs.
However, perhaps all is not lost. If Linus doesn't like CVS, let him not build out of CVS, but still provide an incomming CVS repository for certain trusted leutenants that filter patches. This provides the following:
1. A history of patches received.
2. A mechanism for delivering those patches to testers.
3. A source Linus can diff against his private tree.
Of course, when Linus makes changes outside the CVS repository, it will be out of sync, but the suggested Patch Penguin can be charged with syncing it up with Linus' latest changes. This way, Linus can generate his own patches from CVS and examine them at will, or on the urging of leutenants.
Another orthogonal approach to the ckernel into separately maintainable parts. There is no excuse for bundling every device driver under the sun when one has loadable modules. Device driver patches would then go to the device driver maintainer (in the same way, and for the same reason,that Linus does not get Apache patches), offering some relief. Some core device drivers might remain Linus' responsibility, but he'd be more free to concentrate on architectural rather than implementation issues.
Yes, this would fork the kernel, in so much as there would be different bundled device driver sets. I see this no worse than the variety of existing distros, though I would like some central mirrored repository of what drivers were available.
The question wasn't whether one could get rich... there is no "right to profit". The question was whether proprietary software serves the public good as much as free software. I think the answer is no.
That said, you are correct in noting that few can afford to simply develop software to give away: Since we do not live in a post-scarcity society, food has to be put on the table, and that means (a) supporting yourself via means other than the free software you produce; (b) producing non-free software; (c) living like RMS, chosing to support yourself within the modest means possible from sources other than production of non-free code (RMS gets paid to lecture, and he doesn't charge very much, relatively speaking).
Because of these impedements we are stuck in a world where those who desire certain software will have to pay for it (or someone will have to), and non-free software developers attempt to invest in the production of software that will sell. No surprise there (and nothing wrong with this).
But, because of the nagging observation that free software is socially better than non-free software, and that non-free software property rights are protected by artificial mechanisms enforced by government, it is legitimate to ask whether non-free software should, at some point, become free, and if so, when?
We see many cases of so-called "abandonware", software that has been surpassed in functionality, or runs only on obsolete hardware. It is generally perceived to not be worth trying to sell because the market is so small. Should it not then be freed, so the few who do care for it can have copies?
Put another way, shouldn't the protections against the duplication of non-free software expire when the software in question is no longer being exploited for profit? I don't presume to know when this should happen, but I don't think the answer is as simple as never.
Good points, but, with well-designed software, maintainance costs should not be such a large fraction of overall costs to be significant.
The interesting thing about large proprietary projects is that, as the codebase gets larger, maintainance costs appear to go up as a fraction of overall costs, increasingly robbing future reinvestment of profits into additional R&D.
To some extent, free software does not suffer this fate because the number of developers available grows as the number of users, and thus, desired features. Of course, this remains true only of classical geek-appeal software where many users are also developers.
Yes, of course, this is all true (pretty much, anyway).
As others have pointed out, it isn't just R&D, but costs for space, uilities, legal fees, etc.
However, that is generally amortized against the expectation of selling some number of copies a year, and coming up with a price per unit. Now, what if you sell more units.
Yup, assuming an efficient distribution infrastructure, like online-downloads (sorry, charlie, boxed sets in retail shops aren't efficient), you're looking at essentially pure profit.
So, no: software does not cost a lot to produce, only the first X units cost a lot to produce. And while it stands to reason that there should be legal principles, like licenses and copyright, that permit one to recover one's development expenses and overhead by being able to restrict redistribution of those first few copies, should those same principles permit the subsequent generation of extreme profits? As much as I am a free market libertarian, I'm not sure.
Certainly, in liew of copyright and license, one could have a subscription model: pre-sell a given number of units and use that to fund the R&D and initial overhead. If insufficient demand exists, all monies collected are returned, and the project scrapped. IIRC, some classical music by certain desired orchestras was recorded this way, by subscribtion. But, this technique is awkward: the buyer assumes all the risk regarding the quality of the product, and whether it gets finished at all, once started. The restrictions imposed by copyright and licenses appear to work quite well, in this regard: make something, offer it, and be secure that (almost) everyone who wants a copy pays you for one. The risk falls on the developer, not the buyer, and the system generally works quite well.
Of course, not all software is produced as an "adventure in trade" as some government desciptions of business put it. Some is produced for personal benefit, none of which is diminished by sharing the result. So the R&D costs are effectively written off, and the overhead is essentially nil. A lot of good free software gets written that way. Other free software gets written for reasons of, as ESR put it, egoboo, or prestige. Some gets written to satisfy political of philosophical pressures: RMS helped bring forth a C compiler because a free one was required.
Whether one supports the proprietary (make money) or free (help the world) camps, and I think most of use lean toward some combination of both, one can not deny that when software is free, everyone benefits, except perhaps, providers of a non-free alternative. Note Microsoft's recent rants about how "open source software" (their words) is "unamerican". About the only thing that free software inhibits is a right to profit. Last time I checked, there was no such constitutional right, at least not in the U.S.A. If there were, any semblence of free market competition would disappear to be replaced by government-sanctioned monopolies in a multitude of areas. Clearly, free software serves the public good.
This means that attempts to stifle it's propagation need to be for reasons that also serve the public good. If one has invested significant time and money to develop a better algorithm of some kind, this should be rewarded with a limited right to exclusively exploit the algorithm. If one has invested time and money to discover a novel idea, this should be rewarded with a limited right to exclusively publish the idea for other interested parties. Enter patents and copyrights.
Of course, both patent and copyright appear horribly broken un the U.S.A. of late, primarily because legislators appear to have forgotten what for a limited time means. The founding fathers of the U.S.A. recognized that ideas were not property, but to secure their development, artificial property-like protections would be granted to individuals (patents are awarded to indivuals, subsequently assigned, perhaps, to ficticious citizens, i.e. corporations) for limited times, so that the ideas could be exploited for financial gain.
Should software not be treated in a similar manner? If source is disclosed, patent protection may be available. In any case patent and copyright protections expire in a reasonable length of time, present limits being laughingly unreasonable. That leaves licenses to restrict software.
Licenses serve to limit how something may be used. The presumption is that property rights remain with the provider of the item. Of course, if property rights secured by patent and copuright are artificial and limited to begin with, there is no property to license once they expire. A license can certainly be used to restrict software beyond whatever protections copyright and patents provide, but such extra restrictions should expire when the copyrights and/or patents or license does, whichever comes first.
But wait! Because new ideas were recognized as being in the public interest even while those who thought of them were granted temporary property-like priveledges, these property rights were not absolute: copyright was envisioned as a balance between author and reader. Witness the doctrine of first sale: you could resell a copyright work if you retained no copies. With all the effort expended to come up with a reasonable balance of rights with regard to copyright works, should licenses changing such a balance even be permitted? Why bother trying for a reasonable balance in the first place?
If a system is in place to supposedly serve the public good, it makes no sense to do an about face and permit circumvention of that system. So, if you have copyright law with fair use provisions, it should not be possible to use licenses to restrict such fair use. It would be reasonable to use licenses to define liquidated damages if copright or patent rights were subsequently violated.
So, what does this leave?
We are left with shortened copyright and sane patent protections on software, after which it reverts to the public domain. Note, this is not free in the GPL sense, but closer to a BSD-style license. I wonder what RMS would say about a system where all software would, within a reasonable term, revert to the public domain, including GPL-covered software. Perhaps a condition of securing these rights would be a requirement to place the source code in escrow, to be made public when the terms expire.
This rather lengthy analysis ultimately addresses the initial concern of "excessive" profits on software, after all the R&D has been amortized away. It would retain many of the benefits of copyright and patent protection, but temper a runaway profit-engine, running on artificial property rights. While all code would eventually become public domain, and anyone could produce derivitive works of popular software after a time, the original author would enjoy a head-start in getting such works ready. So long as they continue to innovate, they will effectively enjoy their early property rights over and over again. Surely that is a reasonable balance.
Re:APL - A mathematical programming language
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Programming Mathematics?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Ah yes, APL... the only language in which you can invert a matrix with three characters, one of which is a backspace. (quad, backspace, divide; also known as domino).
Seriously, though, APL let me do my arithmetical stats course assignments in the 30 minutes before class, many, many moons ago.
That said, I think that Mathematica or even MatLab would be better suited for what you want to do.
is a problem akin to Shannon's Theorem: you know, the maximum data rate of a channel is related to the bandwidth and noise floor?
In this case, the effect occurs close to the intentional absorbtion band, where signals get reflected because of impedance mismatch. So, the signal gets strongly attenuated. Gets there faster, but is much weaker, yes?
The effect of the thermal noise of the receiver in the band of interest thus gets more significant. More relative noise, less bits per pulse (think AM).
So, what would be a 1 km cable capable of carrying 100 mb/s (for example -- I'm pulling these numbers outa my...) now looks like a 100 m cable capable of carrying 1 Mb/s... great for wire latency, lousy for bandwidth.
Now, we all know that for typical packet sizes, wire latency is insignificant to data serialization latency: the time it takes for the last bit in a packet to leave the transmitter, compared to the first bit. So, you've cut wire latency by 90% and increased data latency by much more.
What am I missing here? Or, is there, as I suspect, NSTASFL
I wired my new house with 6 drops of 2xCat5e (phone and ethernet) and 6 drops of quad-shielded 2xRG6U (satellite muxed with terrestrial HDTV antenna and back-feed) with a 5x8 (two sat feeds) multiswitch, and linksys 8 port 10/100 Mb/s router/firweall. Hooked up the DSL pair myself once the telco people connected it at the demarc. The headend isn't exactly big (2 14"x24" Leviton cabinets) but still tends to impress people.
Inside installer guy came in, looked, smiled, muttered something about doing a better job than he would have, and left. In fact, the DSL people strongly recommended that I firewall my link and couldn't care less how many computers I had.
Similar story with the satellite dish installer: he came, prepared to run a dual-shielded RG6-U cable "to the satellite receiver". I handed him two spools of quad-shielded RG6-U, connectors, a combo stripping and crimping tool, grounding blocks, dish, two dual-LNBs, and pointed him to the "X" I had marked for the ingress point on the inside of the house.
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Perhaps it does, and i didn't mean to suggest that a post-scarcity society was a practical possibility, but that a lesser-scarcity one was, and that artificial scarcities impede progress in that direction.
Whether that was wonderful or horrible really depends on one's perspective.
As to regulation being necessary to "bust monopolies", traditionally monopolies tend to die of their own weight within 15 years. If anything, governments do more to prop them up, if inadvertantly, than shut them down.
You will find, sadly, that my spelling does leave quite a bit to be desired. But I do try to avoid the more common grammatical errors. Also, while even the good people at Oxford have accepted split infinitives and dangling participles, "to boldly go" is still something "up with which I shall not put", to mix qotations.
Er, it was a typo, not an ignorant grammatical error: i.e. I did not intend to write "loose", but rather "lose". Still, good catch.
The intellectual property exists in two forms: (1) that my secrets are my own, and (2) that I may license them. Copyrights and patents are, IMHO, default means of licensing ideas. (Yes, I know that license law is a different beast).
IOW, the artificial property right is not that i own the idea, but rather that I can share the ideas with an agreement to compensate me for the sharing, or otherwise restrict it's use, that can be enforced at law.
This is not the same thing as government granting copyrights and patents, though the effect may be identical.
IOW, I think we are in agreement with regard to reasoning even as we might disagree on historical motives.
Consider the absence of government-imposed copyright. Uncoerced parties could contract to respect an intellectual property right: in exchange for revealing a secret (to which I have a supreme right, assuming the secret is knowledge I obtained on my own) to someone, they agree to not reveal it further. Certainly such contracts can create the effect of copyright and patents in the absence of the government constuct and enforcement thereof.
The question of interest then becomes, "Are such contracts binding in perpetuity?". Or, put another way, should the government be the arbitor of last resort for disputes based on the alleged breaking of such contracts? I think my analysis shows that, beyond some limit, the answer is no.
Of course, a purely libertarian position would be to punt the question and respond that no rational person would accept a perpetual contract like that. But, not all people are rational, and having extracted sufficient income from disclosure of a secret, one could collect this income forever, and ensure that the secret remains so. Clearly that would not be in the public interest.
And this leads to an interesting possibility: public policy making by a libertarian government is limited to it's pre-announced position on just what disputes it will agree to resolve as the court of last resort. Such positions would be announced (and be binding on the government court) as part of it's efforts to become elected.
Time would cease to have value because there's nothing it could be traded for -- you wouldn't loose work time because you would not have to work.
The point is, having created a piece of software, there would be no justification for hoarding it because you couldn't get anything in exchange for it that you didn't already have.
Actually, that isn't quite true: you could trade it for things that are promised, but don't exist -- other software. But you wouldn't need to trade it for food, clothing, or shelter.
Artificial scarcity begets ongoing scarcity, and that is the argument for limiting it's duration.
But, the ideas that apply in a post-scarcity society, also apply to move in the direction toward such a society, i.e. in a succession of less-scarcity societies. Indefinite artificial scarcity protections prevent this transition.
Hmm, the paranoid in me thinks that the current corrupt policies extend artificial scarcity protections specifically in order to slow down progress, then their prtagonists can claim that the extended protections are justified because progress has slowed down.
In short, it appears that accepting power over one's self, in one form or another, for extensive periods, is not a naturally acceptable condition for humans. Limits on artificial scarcities address this, though present tendencies are in exactly the wrong direction.
Certainly, artificial scarcities will always be useful constructs because the post-scarcity society can not exist (even if there are no natural scarcities, there will always be artificial ones because their existance can be envisioned). However, I think a strong argument can be made that such scarcities not be tolerated in perpetuity.
Once I refine and extend them, I might do as you suggest.
To arrive at that conclusion, I started by (a) considering what kind of society does not need such rights (post-scarcity); (b) whether such a society was desirable (yes); and (c) what it would take to go in that direction. The conclusion was that artificial scarcity rights need to be limited in duration.
I would still argue that the duration of artificial scarcity rights should be set in a free market, rather than by government fiat, but the important notion is that the public should be educated as to the real costs of accepting artificial scarcity rights. This would lead to either a more informed free market for them, or pressure on governments to shorten their duration in an increasingly technologially sophisticated environment. Either approach would move society in a desirable direction, rendering my natural anti-interventionist tendencies philosophical oppositions rather than pragmatic ones.
Historically, innovators have become wealthy precisely because others have been slow to "catch up". Artificial scarcity rights that benefit such innovation also impede overall progress. Lately, the emphasis has been on increasing such rights rather than on new innovation: the rich innovators of old have gotten fat and lazy.
A couple of observations I should have included, but forget are the following, relating classical economies to artificial scarcity.
RMS has been accused of being a communist because of his notions about intellectual property. However, communism has one great flaw: it seeks to redistribute existing scarce goods without creating incentive to eliminate the scarcity to begin with. That's why it appears to work so well at the beginning: it corrects a terribly skewed distribution of scarce things. While RMS attacks artificial scarcity, communism lumps natural scarcity in there as well. Note that combating natural scarcity requires the incentive to overcome the scarcity of knowledge of knowing how: once know, this knowledge can be kept artificially scarce (or not).
Capitalism, on the other hand, rewards those who can produce scarce goods. In theory, such goods will be delivered in the most efficient manner possible due to free market competition. The free market notion is nice because it does not create a have/have-not dichotomy, at least not in theory: anyone has the potential for success.
Of course, temporary extremes in both these economic models lead to undesireable circumstances that result in some form of government intervention: in the United States, we therefore have a mixed economy (note: many of the injustices attributed to capitalism and free markets can probably be attributed to "mismanagement" of this mixed economy -- this is why libertarians want less government). Recently, China has been experimenting with capitalist incentives within a predominantly communist economy. So, as presently practiced, communism and capitalism (both vulnerable to government corruption, though those of us in capitalist countries tend to think of communist governments are more corrupt), both seek to address scarcity issues, but in different ways. Personally, my bets are on a more capitalist incentive approach, because it offers the possibility of benefiting from short-term scarcity relief (i.e. "getting rich") as well as addressing the long term issues.
Finally, another way to look at the artificial scarcities is not as restrictions enforced by governments, but rather scarcities which do not remain so naturally: software is easy to copy. Heck, digital media in general is easy to copy. Information and knowledge are hard to keep secret. Such scarcities can only exist by the application of force or by concent. Absent concent, they are thus ultimately counterproductive to those who seek to exploit them too much.
RMS believes that software should be free, that agreeing to not share code one has, or to not be able to study and modify it is immoral. Basically, the world is a better place with free software than without. As a libertarian, I have a strong sense of property rights so I don't accept this view outright. Yet, because I am a libertarian, I also accept the idea that those who wish to produce free software not be impeded from doing so, and note that this is indeed helpful. So, I ask myself, "In what kind of society are restrictions on software use and distribution clearly wrong"?
The answer is a post-scarcity society (well, not really, but I'll get to that and why) -- one where no one wants for anything: replicators (for example) run on abundant (i.e. more than enough) solar power and employ nano-technology to make whatever anyone desires: food, clothing, shelter.
O.K. This is an artificial construct, to be sure, but bear with me.
In such a society, hoarding software, or licensing it under restrictive terms clearly harms those who want it, but can't have it. Why would one do this? To exact some price for it? But that is meaningless: one can already have anything one wants, and any price exacted could be met for the same reason. To deprive others of something that costs one nothing, and anyone could afford is not nice: its like throwing away perfectly good scraps of food that one can't eat or save when others are starving and it is no effort to give it away to them.
So, the only justification for restrictions on software, or the creation of an artificial scarcity of it (or anything else, for that matter: information in general) is the need to compensate for a natural scarcity -- if I write code for free, I can't earn a traditional living, and so can't affort scarce goods, like food. Writing free code costs me, in other words, and that cost needs to be mitigated.
So, the justification for artificial scarcity is a compensation for natural scarcity: if one can produce something in abundance for themselves, but limit its availability to others, one can avoid seeking other scarce things, through a mechanism of trade.
On the other hand, does this mean that it is acceptable to others that the artificial scarcity ber permitted to last indefinately? After all, this means a gravy train for life for some while others struggle in a world of scarcity? Traditionally, most people have said "No," and have enacted laws to deal with such artificial scarcities.
Before software, artificial scarcities existed for other things, like writings and the applications of inventions, namely copyrights, and patents. There was no infinite property right recognized for ideas by society, or its governing representatives -- the stable state is that of public domain, tending to lessen scarcity.
Artificial scarcities, like copyright and patents, were inventions of government, granted and enforced for limited durations, in order to reflect the realities of living iin a naturally scarce world, yet to encourage the eventual lessening of scarcities, otherwise known as progress.
While philosophically, I might object at the arbitrary imposition of a limit on copyright and patent, preferring instead to see a negotiation of terms acceptable creator and user, I nevertheless recognize that such intellectual property should not remain proprietary forever. Pragmatically, the "market force" of negotiation, civil or otherwise, establishes a flow from the haves to the have-nots: governments, empowered with the legal use of force, dictate terms, and mobs forcibly revolt when they have "enough" (distinguishing a mob from a government is left up to the reader).
Note that this applies to anything that can be made artificially scare, or restricted by license: writings, software, drug formulas, etc. The bottom line is that artificial scarcity is justified only by overall scarcity and it is desirable to reduce scarcity overall. Thus, artificial scarcity is like debt: useful, but not something of which one wants an excess.
Now, this analysis does break down to some extent in that there will never be a completely post-scarcity society: things that can be envisioned, but do not exist, will remain scarce, and artificial scarcity can encourage people to continue to try to invent. But, the principle that artificial scarcity be limited in duration remains.
The natural state, then is public domain, and this is what we should strive toward. Note, that the GPL is not the same as public domain, in that free software can not be employed in non-free derived works. But the teeth behind that are the same teeth that generate copyright-based artificial scarcity to begin with. If copyright and patent protection were substantially weakened, would the GPL need to be so restrictive? I don't think so -- it is as protective of fighting artificial scarcity as copyright is of promoting it: a rather nice balance.
So, what does all this mean? Instead of changing the free software mantra, we should be arguing for a recognition that artificial scarcity property rights, propped up by government should be temporary in nature, as a matter of principle, and shorter terms are better for society than longer terms. This is the exact opposite of recent trends. People need to be educated that the acceptance of artificial scarcities in their lives is like taking on debt.
These are only partially-baked ideas, so I appologize for the roughness of thought, but I certainly welcome comments.
The intent of my analysis was to determine just how much control is reasonable: certainly he can't stop others from forking kernel maintainance, nor should he try. But, his reputation should not be sullied by their failed efforts. And we all know that reputations depend on what people think, whether or not those thoughts are rational.
So, some measure of limiting confusability of failed, or buggy forks with Linus' version, is important.
Of course, a completely different line of thinking leads one to conclude that, since power corrupts, the power to control what other use should never concentrate without consent.
Call me mean, but I don't respect anyone for wanting to "keep control" over what is supposed to be free software (well, except for modules), espescially when they decided to make it free. Wha? "It's free unless it becomes a hit and then I want control?" I don't think so -- I think Linus has plenty of leveragable egoboo to not need that kind of power trip.
If Linus wants to play architect, and concentrate on APIs, modularity, and scalability, great. If he wants to bundle components meeting his standard for stability, also great. But, if he can't do it all himself, he shouldn't try to prevent others from stepping in.
If he is worried about dilution of the stability associated with "his" Linux, he should excercize his trademark rights: you can't call a kernel, bundled with loadable modules, "Linux®" unless it has his blessing. Of course, meeting the lesser standard of API complience should garner a "Linux®-compatible" moniker, or "[insert favorite distro]-certified Linux® compatible", with Linus authorizing major distros to do their own testing, and applying that moniker.
Does this mean a forking of monolithic kernel bundles? Yes, but I don't think that seperate module sets are that traumatic of a fork. This is an area that the various distro-makers can move into, and an espescially fertile one for embedded kernel providers.
Of course, I was spoiled with Clearcase when I was at Teradyne, but, at $1000 a seat, it isn't exactly cheap (and is dangerous in the wrong hands). Working at a startup now, and living with CVS, has tought me that it doesn't provide the kind of isolation, yet, tracking that Linus needs.
However, perhaps all is not lost. If Linus doesn't like CVS, let him not build out of CVS, but still provide an incomming CVS repository for certain trusted leutenants that filter patches. This provides the following:
1. A history of patches received.
2. A mechanism for delivering those patches to testers.
3. A source Linus can diff against his private tree.
Of course, when Linus makes changes outside the CVS repository, it will be out of sync, but the suggested Patch Penguin can be charged with syncing it up with Linus' latest changes. This way, Linus can generate his own patches from CVS and examine them at will, or on the urging of leutenants.
Another orthogonal approach to the ckernel into separately maintainable parts. There is no excuse for bundling every device driver under the sun when one has loadable modules. Device driver patches would then go to the device driver maintainer (in the same way, and for the same reason ,that Linus does not get Apache patches), offering some relief. Some core device drivers might remain Linus' responsibility, but he'd be more free to concentrate on architectural rather than implementation issues.
Yes, this would fork the kernel, in so much as there would be different bundled device driver sets. I see this no worse than the variety of existing distros, though I would like some central mirrored repository of what drivers were available.
That said, you are correct in noting that few can afford to simply develop software to give away: Since we do not live in a post-scarcity society, food has to be put on the table, and that means (a) supporting yourself via means other than the free software you produce; (b) producing non-free software; (c) living like RMS, chosing to support yourself within the modest means possible from sources other than production of non-free code (RMS gets paid to lecture, and he doesn't charge very much, relatively speaking).
Because of these impedements we are stuck in a world where those who desire certain software will have to pay for it (or someone will have to), and non-free software developers attempt to invest in the production of software that will sell. No surprise there (and nothing wrong with this).
But, because of the nagging observation that free software is socially better than non-free software, and that non-free software property rights are protected by artificial mechanisms enforced by government, it is legitimate to ask whether non-free software should, at some point, become free, and if so, when?
We see many cases of so-called "abandonware", software that has been surpassed in functionality, or runs only on obsolete hardware. It is generally perceived to not be worth trying to sell because the market is so small. Should it not then be freed, so the few who do care for it can have copies?
Put another way, shouldn't the protections against the duplication of non-free software expire when the software in question is no longer being exploited for profit? I don't presume to know when this should happen, but I don't think the answer is as simple as never.
The interesting thing about large proprietary projects is that, as the codebase gets larger, maintainance costs appear to go up as a fraction of overall costs, increasingly robbing future reinvestment of profits into additional R&D.
To some extent, free software does not suffer this fate because the number of developers available grows as the number of users, and thus, desired features. Of course, this remains true only of classical geek-appeal software where many users are also developers.
Aw, geez, why be so difficult?
s.GNU/Linux.Linux.g
Or, if that's not the way you swing:
s.Linux.GNU/Linux.g
As others have pointed out, it isn't just R&D, but costs for space, uilities, legal fees, etc.
However, that is generally amortized against the expectation of selling some number of copies a year, and coming up with a price per unit. Now, what if you sell more units.
Yup, assuming an efficient distribution infrastructure, like online-downloads (sorry, charlie, boxed sets in retail shops aren't efficient), you're looking at essentially pure profit.
So, no: software does not cost a lot to produce, only the first X units cost a lot to produce. And while it stands to reason that there should be legal principles, like licenses and copyright, that permit one to recover one's development expenses and overhead by being able to restrict redistribution of those first few copies, should those same principles permit the subsequent generation of extreme profits? As much as I am a free market libertarian, I'm not sure.
Certainly, in liew of copyright and license, one could have a subscription model: pre-sell a given number of units and use that to fund the R&D and initial overhead. If insufficient demand exists, all monies collected are returned, and the project scrapped. IIRC, some classical music by certain desired orchestras was recorded this way, by subscribtion. But, this technique is awkward: the buyer assumes all the risk regarding the quality of the product, and whether it gets finished at all, once started. The restrictions imposed by copyright and licenses appear to work quite well, in this regard: make something, offer it, and be secure that (almost) everyone who wants a copy pays you for one. The risk falls on the developer, not the buyer, and the system generally works quite well.
Of course, not all software is produced as an "adventure in trade" as some government desciptions of business put it. Some is produced for personal benefit, none of which is diminished by sharing the result. So the R&D costs are effectively written off, and the overhead is essentially nil. A lot of good free software gets written that way. Other free software gets written for reasons of, as ESR put it, egoboo, or prestige. Some gets written to satisfy political of philosophical pressures: RMS helped bring forth a C compiler because a free one was required.
Whether one supports the proprietary (make money) or free (help the world) camps, and I think most of use lean toward some combination of both, one can not deny that when software is free, everyone benefits, except perhaps, providers of a non-free alternative. Note Microsoft's recent rants about how "open source software" (their words) is "unamerican". About the only thing that free software inhibits is a right to profit. Last time I checked, there was no such constitutional right, at least not in the U.S.A. If there were, any semblence of free market competition would disappear to be replaced by government-sanctioned monopolies in a multitude of areas. Clearly, free software serves the public good.
This means that attempts to stifle it's propagation need to be for reasons that also serve the public good. If one has invested significant time and money to develop a better algorithm of some kind, this should be rewarded with a limited right to exclusively exploit the algorithm. If one has invested time and money to discover a novel idea, this should be rewarded with a limited right to exclusively publish the idea for other interested parties. Enter patents and copyrights.
Of course, both patent and copyright appear horribly broken un the U.S.A. of late, primarily because legislators appear to have forgotten what for a limited time means. The founding fathers of the U.S.A. recognized that ideas were not property, but to secure their development, artificial property-like protections would be granted to individuals (patents are awarded to indivuals, subsequently assigned, perhaps, to ficticious citizens, i.e. corporations) for limited times, so that the ideas could be exploited for financial gain.
Should software not be treated in a similar manner? If source is disclosed, patent protection may be available. In any case patent and copyright protections expire in a reasonable length of time, present limits being laughingly unreasonable. That leaves licenses to restrict software.
Licenses serve to limit how something may be used. The presumption is that property rights remain with the provider of the item. Of course, if property rights secured by patent and copuright are artificial and limited to begin with, there is no property to license once they expire. A license can certainly be used to restrict software beyond whatever protections copyright and patents provide, but such extra restrictions should expire when the copyrights and/or patents or license does, whichever comes first.
But wait! Because new ideas were recognized as being in the public interest even while those who thought of them were granted temporary property-like priveledges, these property rights were not absolute: copyright was envisioned as a balance between author and reader. Witness the doctrine of first sale: you could resell a copyright work if you retained no copies. With all the effort expended to come up with a reasonable balance of rights with regard to copyright works, should licenses changing such a balance even be permitted? Why bother trying for a reasonable balance in the first place?
If a system is in place to supposedly serve the public good, it makes no sense to do an about face and permit circumvention of that system. So, if you have copyright law with fair use provisions, it should not be possible to use licenses to restrict such fair use. It would be reasonable to use licenses to define liquidated damages if copright or patent rights were subsequently violated.
So, what does this leave?
We are left with shortened copyright and sane patent protections on software, after which it reverts to the public domain. Note, this is not free in the GPL sense, but closer to a BSD-style license. I wonder what RMS would say about a system where all software would, within a reasonable term, revert to the public domain, including GPL-covered software. Perhaps a condition of securing these rights would be a requirement to place the source code in escrow, to be made public when the terms expire.
This rather lengthy analysis ultimately addresses the initial concern of "excessive" profits on software, after all the R&D has been amortized away. It would retain many of the benefits of copyright and patent protection, but temper a runaway profit-engine, running on artificial property rights. While all code would eventually become public domain, and anyone could produce derivitive works of popular software after a time, the original author would enjoy a head-start in getting such works ready. So long as they continue to innovate, they will effectively enjoy their early property rights over and over again. Surely that is a reasonable balance.
Seriously, though, APL let me do my arithmetical stats course assignments in the 30 minutes before class, many, many moons ago.
That said, I think that Mathematica or even MatLab would be better suited for what you want to do.
In this case, the effect occurs close to the intentional absorbtion band, where signals get reflected because of impedance mismatch. So, the signal gets strongly attenuated. Gets there faster, but is much weaker, yes?
The effect of the thermal noise of the receiver in the band of interest thus gets more significant. More relative noise, less bits per pulse (think AM).
So, what would be a 1 km cable capable of carrying 100 mb/s (for example -- I'm pulling these numbers outa my...) now looks like a 100 m cable capable of carrying 1 Mb/s... great for wire latency, lousy for bandwidth.
Now, we all know that for typical packet sizes, wire latency is insignificant to data serialization latency: the time it takes for the last bit in a packet to leave the transmitter, compared to the first bit. So, you've cut wire latency by 90% and increased data latency by much more.
What am I missing here? Or, is there, as I suspect, NSTASFL
Hehe.
I wired my new house with 6 drops of 2xCat5e (phone and ethernet) and 6 drops of quad-shielded 2xRG6U (satellite muxed with terrestrial HDTV antenna and back-feed) with a 5x8 (two sat feeds) multiswitch, and linksys 8 port 10/100 Mb/s router/firweall. Hooked up the DSL pair myself once the telco people connected it at the demarc. The headend isn't exactly big (2 14"x24" Leviton cabinets) but still tends to impress people.
Inside installer guy came in, looked, smiled, muttered something about doing a better job than he would have, and left. In fact, the DSL people strongly recommended that I firewall my link and couldn't care less how many computers I had.
Similar story with the satellite dish installer: he came, prepared to run a dual-shielded RG6-U cable "to the satellite receiver". I handed him two spools of quad-shielded RG6-U, connectors, a combo stripping and crimping tool, grounding blocks, dish, two dual-LNBs, and pointed him to the "X" I had marked for the ingress point on the inside of the house.