SCO's stock price took a little 5% dive at the end of the day yesterday. This must have been the news.
It only makes sense for systems integrators like HP and IBM to support Linux. They are providing a service in putting their systems together and want to catch as much of the value-add as possible. Paying a rent to Microsoft detracts from that.
Business people are well aware of the dangers of lock-in and looking for alternatives. Witness the recent adoptions of linux for the desktop (government of Munich), the moves by Asian governments (Japan, Korea, China) to create a non-proprietary OS, the moves of industry groups to adopt open standards (CELF in Japan, the embedded market in general).
The tendency here is to view Microsoft as all-powerful. However, as revealed by the recent Fortune opinion piece summarized here, Microsoft cannot come up with new products that genuinely win people over. Business people have revolted over the forced upgrade terms they put through a year ago. People are walking away from their forced lock-in at all levels. If anything, this move will just speed up the process.
My read on it is this. SCO through FUD or legal wrangling might succeed in slowing down Linux or even stopping it. However, the MUCH LARGER TREND IS THE MOVE TOWARD OPEN SOURCE AND OPEN STANDARDS which SCO cannot really affect. Corporations are demanding it as they resist proprietary lock-in.
The same infrastructure niche occupied by linux could be easily occupied by BSD. Linux could even expurgate offending code if needed be and resurrect itself. If SCO is going to make its claims stick, they are going to have to demonstrate the copyright violation. They will have to make a case as to why they are not going after distributors of linux.
Their hope is that people will be sufficiently locked in to linux that they cannot change, making it possible for SCO to extract its tax IF their claims prove out. However, how many people are actually running their oracle database on linux? or their DB2 database?
Further, oracle is being supplanted by open source databases that will run on multiple platforms for lower level tasks.
Finally, SCO's threats seem to be making no grounds overseas. Linux will not be stopped there. Ultimately, we may find ourselves in a situation where the largest computer markets (China, Japan) are opting for low cost software options in Linux while America is fighting this constant monopoly war.
In the end, I think the long-term trend stays. The real question is what of American firms in the short to medium term?
The new IP business boom is based on claiming ownership or potential infringement and then going to court. Look at DirectTV. Look at the RIAA.
This group has focused on large corporations. DirectTV is going after individuals as is the RIAA. Right now, SCO has not demonstrated its legal basis. So, they will be less likely to issue those $3500 settlement letters as DirectTV has done. However, if they win, those letters will not be far behind.
DirectTV is likely to result in no change to current law because so few people are affected. The SCO case is likely to be very different if they win. Many people will be affected.
What will slashdot do? What will home hobbyists do? When the $3500 settlement offer arrives in the mail.
At that point, there may finally be enough critical mass to change our antiquated IP laws.
Well no, his position is more subtle than that. Patent law is based on knowing infringement. By not looking at patents, one cannot knowlingly infringe on a patent. As he points out, this is why engineers should not look at patents.
Linus then goes on to state that the *open* publication process is the best defense. How could Linus or anyone else possibly be aware of all patents? By openly publishing the code and its source, Linus notes that it is possible to back trace to the true "offenders". Linus could have been named as a co-party to the suit. Note that he is not. In a recent interview with CNET, Darl McBride even seemed to agree with Linus' point by stating that having thousands of eyes, open source led to better quality. Well, those eyes might lead to better IP protection too.
SCO's statements just strike me as a tactic to impugn Linus and the whole OS process without going to the mat where they would not have a case. It casts further doubts on SCO's motives.
I used the word "purported" for a reason. You may and may not see these as advantages.
In particular, proprietary encumberment may not necessarily be a bad thing. For instance, Apple's itunes is possible because of proprietary encumberment. You are restricted (although loosely) in how you may use and share the downloaded items. That's why the record companies were willing to make the songs available. Open Source licenses are not so encumbered.
Also, community support, as you point out, does require joining the community, in particular, posing questions that pass with the community. A portion of the computing population is willing to conform to this, but not everyone.
Now, that many people see the advantages I cite as advantages can't be denied. I think for linux, the question is: Will enough people see it that way?
Some of Linux's purported advantages over Microsoft are:
1. Lower licensing fees ($0). 2. Freedom from proprietary encumberment 3. Better security 4. More rapid bug fixes 5. Community support
It just sounds like Microsoft has chosen to compete on the first point. It's really only monopolistic behavior *if* they try to force deals by taking unfair advantage of their monopoly position. Competing on price is not that.
Well, except that if people use Crossover Office, they will still be incurring the $200 Office XP pro license. So, 100 of those at $200 a pop means the total comes to $29089 for Suse. In other words, comparable.
Look, while you have me on some details, you have not refuted the main thrust of my arguments.
In particular, SCO released a *Linux* product under GPL. Now, if they have released their own intellectual property, it is no longer a trade secret. Further, if I make use of a trade secret that is not a trade secret anymore, then I am not liable. IBM might be liable, but others will not be.
Finally, SCO have been rather quiet about exactly what the violations are. So, it is not clear whether the violations are in kernel space. Even if they are in kernel space, what exactly is kernel space? Is Tux kernel space or user space?
You are being a bit docrinaire and missing the forest for the trees.
Actually, the AT&T license covers System V only. BSD is a separate issue that was settled some time ago. The Apple kernel is a BSD derivative, so safe. Linux is a mix of BSD and System V, so a target of SCO.
The funny thing is that Richard Shaheen, Microsoft's chief OS architect, is the one that invented the BSD Mach microkernel, the basis for OS X and Next before it.
Basically, it was possible to do development on BSD because AT&T came to agreement some time ago with the academics who developed it, allowing them to keep the source. Before this agreement, there was actually disagreement and legal battles similar to what we are seeing today.
Back when BSD forked, ownership of the trademark and intellectual property was murky. AT&T had basically been giving out the source, somewhat similar to SCO' recent practice, but not under the GPL. Since SCO released under the GPL, their claims do not seem very strong.
Interoperation means passing data between two different programs over some common bridge. This means typically writing some sort of connector code. In the best case, someone is able to bundle that connector cod into a library.
Consider coding to a web service interface such as SOAP vs. just keeping your application within one programming language and using its built-in constructs for passing data. With the web service, you either have to marshal into and out of SOAP envelopes on your own or use a library. However, not all libraries themselves interoperate. Hence, you have to test for compatibility by running against a suite of other implementations, all of which are also supposedly standard. It's the browser wars all over again. If you don't bother with interconnectivity, the job is over more quickly.
To get an interoperability standard that you can just code to seems to take the developer community years of effort. Yes, there is value to interoperability, and that is why people do actually undertake things like web services projects and spend years trying to develop standards. But for a first project, or even a mature, successfully functioning product, interoperability is not likely to be a first instinct.
I just went over to Firebird forums on mozilla. Well, there is one topic in the general Firebird forums regarding this issue, and it has a grand total of 43 posts, most of which are an argument between two (2) people about whether it would have been more polite to ask the firebirdSQL folks first.
So, while the firebirdSQL folk are unhappy on their site, the real impact of this seems limited from a practical stand point.
The more interesting point is that trademark law forces you to defend your trademark or lose it. However, you cannot claim a universal trademark, so it is okay to have a car and software named the same thing. Are two software products that do very different things but have the same name similar enough for this to be an issue that would lead to confusion?
You need to be careful on what you mean by 38% outsourcing. A lot of that is outsourcing American IT jobs in America. While India has grown, it is not yet that big.
Further, based on direct contacts with Indian outsourcing firms, there are two other phenomena of interest:
1. Indian outsourcers are hiring American front-ends.
2. Indian outsourcers are starting to do their own outsourcing as the Indian labor pool becomes more expensive.
Things that are outsourced tend to be the more "mechanical" jobs, requiring less innovation. Therefore, if you are supplying only marginal value with your current skill set, rethink.
PCs came along, the use of computing and its relevance to business mushroomed. Without PCs, no e-commerce, no e-business connection to small time suppliers, no analytic revolution based on the availability of cheap computing power.
Central control and high fixed cost to entry-level computing, available in the old mainframe model did not make these things happen. Sure, there's a cost to maintenance, but trying to control maintenance costs is not what leads to growth.
People may not remember this, but Corel tried to create a cross-platform Java-based office suite. It failed due to performance issues. Centralized network computing also never quite took off. The vulnerability is all concentrated in one machine. So the combination is supposed to pay off?
My observation is that things are becoming more distributed, not less. Look at P2P, blogs, RSS syndication, amazon web services + google web services + you name it web services. Look at the fact that 57% of companies have implemented WiFi and people are increasingly using thin clients on them.
The question is how to support information flow between all of the disparate devices participating in this web, not how to drive everything back to a central server design. The smart play here is communications infrastructure and devices optimized for high speed translation.
Wireless was heavily hyped toward the end of the dot-com bubble. We were all supposed to browse html sites on 1x2 inch mobile phone screens. Or we were supposed to lug around large laptops.
But things have really changed with the arrival of high performing wireless PDAs. An adequate screen that can handle html. Further, browser technology has improved to the point where the browser will actually simplify the html for you.
The next step is to go beyond content provision in presentation-dependent formats (e.g., get away from sites designed in purely html, wml, etc). Some might have thought this a pipe dream just a few years ago, but that too is already happening. Look at blogs with rss feeds and various sites with rss content syndication. Individuals and non-profits are already taking advantage of these media. It is something that looks much like the early stages of html.
The issue will be corporate participation. The minute you provide your feed in a presentation neutral (read non-proprietary) fromat, how do you retain control? This will inhibit many corporations.
However, the good news is that there will be plenty of free service providers, likely enough to achieve the tipping point.
Well, it seems to me that there is a difference between service and an individual communication. For instance, to read this law as outlawing VPNs would also seem read it as outlawing the use of SSL for web transactions. After all, what is SSL other than a rather punctual VPN?
The real question seems to come down to the issue of how much control I have over third parties' ability to view my individual communications. In that case, current law seems to allow third parties to observe the envelope but not the contents without court (sometimes just secret court) order. This law seems no different.
Separation of Content and Format?
on
Office 2003 and XML
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Isn't the whole idea of XML to separate content from format? So, Microsoft is guarding the last mile from the software infrastructure (including their data format) to the user's brain (supplied by formatting). So, to use Microsoft's data format, I have to come up with my own styling. Isn't this what happens with rss and rdf already? Isn't this potentially a win? Couldn't an industry spring up using microsoft's data format and a set of styling sheets built to transform that format (ie, xslt).
I sense some of the shock and outrage around this article is that people would like to be able to use excel as their data viewer, with an open file format that they could write to. What about simply treating excel as a data publishing system, perhaps even transforming its output to the more open standard developed by OASIS? This starts to consign excel to legacy that needs an adaptor.
You're exactly right. However, a few things to note. The studio does not own LOTR, only the screen rights as long as it has not entered the public domain. You can enjoy LOTR in many other formats without having to pay the movie studio.
Further, you are not obliged to go to movies. This is the idea behind minor league baseball beginning to make inroads to major league baseball. People are looking for entertainment, major league is too expensive, minor league is almost the same but much lower priced.
The question facing the studio is this: How restrictive can we be before people switch? My argument is simply, "not very in the general case." Look at CD and DVD sales. My cut is that studios need to focus on making the packaging of their products truly value-added and probably lower prices. The are effectively complaining about not being able to charge monopoly rates.
The question is to what extent hardware manufacturers will actually allow this level of intrusion to be mandatory. Note, they have opposite interests to content producers. They want their equipment to be usable by the most people possible with the least headache.
Hardware manufacturers are fighting back per recent stories in slashdot.
Pay per use is untenable in a competitive market. Just look at cell phone minutes which are rapidly moving toward an (almost) unlimited use model.
Why is pay-per-use untenable in a competitive market? People do not like it, so it suppresses demand for the pay-per-use service. In a competitive market where suppliers are trying to meet and create demand, this generates an opportunity to undercut the pay-per-use provider. Suppliers almost always emerge who will take that competitive opportunity.
Pay-per-use does however frequently does make sense in a non-competitive or ologopolistic environment where consumers must purchase the service. This situation existed for some time with hub-and-spoke in the airline industry. The commodity being metered was seat miles purchased at particular times. Here the supplier was able to charge to the hilt for demand that was inelastic (i.e., people have to pay because they have no other option).
Well, does inelastic demand like this exist for entertainment? Likely not. As we have seen with the rise of minor league baseball, web journalism, independent films, cd sales, and even blogs, people can find quick substitutes for the over-charged items.
I don't think regulatory relief will be quick (look at microsoft). We'll have to rely on the hacker community and all of the competitors who are seeking to create demand.
Anyway your program is going to spend most of its time in development, not running, so anything that can help that process along is going to be a big help to your project.
This is true, but in production use, code performance is critical. If you can cut execution time by a factor of two or more for any given hardware configuration, it can mean the difference between feasible and infeasible. For instance collaborative filtering on the web.
A lot of optimizations in numerical computing languages involve removing OO features (e.g., matlab). Numerical computing seems to focus on vectorization (re-representing all problems in terms of vectors), a sort of one-size-fits-all data representation, that can than be used in highly optimized algorithms. At the end of the day, one has to wonder about the usefulness of the OO paradigm for heavy duty numerical computing.
To me, the most significant point in the article was Mitchell Baker's note supporting phoenix. In it, he lists one of the reasons for supporting phoenix as an experiment to see whether mozilla can succeed by building core browser functionality that others adapt.
This is where OSS succeeds right now in mainstream implementations, as a base that a value-added integrator can then modify for clients to achieve a lower cost solution. It is hard for OSS to market directly to end-users. OSS is not close enough to end-users to know how to modify interface and other features to suit their needs. However, value-added integrators are.
With microsoft, value-added integrators face high licensing fees and the danger that microsoft will try to eat their lunch. In OSS, this is less an issue.
However, there is one problem with this view. There's plenty of reason for value-added integrators to use mozilla. What is the reason to contribute back? In the end, I suspect the interest for contribution to mozilla is with platform providers, e.g., AOL, who do not want access to their platforms controlled by their competitors. Note, a number of OSS projects have moved to corporate sponsorship congruent with this view, e.g., Gnome, Mozilla, and even Apache.
So, mozilla might find its real success as a neutral technology that can be adapted across a number of platforms by value-added integrators. It will have to look for support to corporations whose interest is in having neutral access technologies for their platforms.
Slashdot Mirror
SCO's stock price took a little 5% dive at the end of the day yesterday. This must have been the news.
It only makes sense for systems integrators like HP and IBM to support Linux. They are providing a service in putting their systems together and want to catch as much of the value-add as possible. Paying a rent to Microsoft detracts from that.
Business people are well aware of the dangers of lock-in and looking for alternatives. Witness the recent adoptions of linux for the desktop (government of Munich), the moves by Asian governments (Japan, Korea, China) to create a non-proprietary OS, the moves of industry groups to adopt open standards (CELF in Japan, the embedded market in general).
The tendency here is to view Microsoft as all-powerful. However, as revealed by the recent Fortune opinion piece summarized here, Microsoft cannot come up with new products that genuinely win people over. Business people have revolted over the forced upgrade terms they put through a year ago. People are walking away from their forced lock-in at all levels. If anything, this move will just speed up the process.
My read on it is this. SCO through FUD or legal wrangling might succeed in slowing down Linux or even stopping it. However, the MUCH LARGER TREND IS THE MOVE TOWARD OPEN SOURCE AND OPEN STANDARDS which SCO cannot really affect. Corporations are demanding it as they resist proprietary lock-in.
The same infrastructure niche occupied by linux could be easily occupied by BSD. Linux could even expurgate offending code if needed be and resurrect itself. If SCO is going to make its claims stick, they are going to have to demonstrate the copyright violation. They will have to make a case as to why they are not going after distributors of linux.
Their hope is that people will be sufficiently locked in to linux that they cannot change, making it possible for SCO to extract its tax IF their claims prove out. However, how many people are actually running their oracle database on linux? or their DB2 database?
Further, oracle is being supplanted by open source databases that will run on multiple platforms for lower level tasks.
Finally, SCO's threats seem to be making no grounds overseas. Linux will not be stopped there. Ultimately, we may find ourselves in a situation where the largest computer markets (China, Japan) are opting for low cost software options in Linux while America is fighting this constant monopoly war.
In the end, I think the long-term trend stays. The real question is what of American firms in the short to medium term?
The new IP business boom is based on claiming ownership or potential infringement and then going to court. Look at DirectTV. Look at the RIAA.
This group has focused on large corporations. DirectTV is going after individuals as is the RIAA. Right now, SCO has not demonstrated its legal basis. So, they will be less likely to issue those $3500 settlement letters as DirectTV has done. However, if they win, those letters will not be far behind.
DirectTV is likely to result in no change to current law because so few people are affected. The SCO case is likely to be very different if they win. Many people will be affected.
What will slashdot do? What will home hobbyists do? When the $3500 settlement offer arrives in the mail.
At that point, there may finally be enough critical mass to change our antiquated IP laws.
Well no, his position is more subtle than that. Patent law is based on knowing infringement. By not looking at patents, one cannot knowlingly infringe on a patent. As he points out, this is why engineers should not look at patents.
Linus then goes on to state that the *open* publication process is the best defense. How could Linus or anyone else possibly be aware of all patents? By openly publishing the code and its source, Linus notes that it is possible to back trace to the true "offenders". Linus could have been named as a co-party to the suit. Note that he is not. In a recent interview with CNET, Darl McBride even seemed to agree with Linus' point by stating that having thousands of eyes, open source led to better quality. Well, those eyes might lead to better IP protection too.
SCO's statements just strike me as a tactic to impugn Linus and the whole OS process without going to the mat where they would not have a case. It casts further doubts on SCO's motives.
I used the word "purported" for a reason. You may and may not see these as advantages.
In particular, proprietary encumberment may not necessarily be a bad thing. For instance, Apple's itunes is possible because of proprietary encumberment. You are restricted (although loosely) in how you may use and share the downloaded items. That's why the record companies were willing to make the songs available. Open Source licenses are not so encumbered.
Also, community support, as you point out, does require joining the community, in particular, posing questions that pass with the community. A portion of the computing population is willing to conform to this, but not everyone.
Now, that many people see the advantages I cite as advantages can't be denied. I think for linux, the question is: Will enough people see it that way?
Some of Linux's purported advantages over Microsoft are:
1. Lower licensing fees ($0).
2. Freedom from proprietary encumberment
3. Better security
4. More rapid bug fixes
5. Community support
It just sounds like Microsoft has chosen to compete on the first point. It's really only monopolistic behavior *if* they try to force deals by taking unfair advantage of their monopoly position. Competing on price is not that.
Well, except that if people use Crossover Office, they will still be incurring the $200 Office XP pro license. So, 100 of those at $200 a pop means the total comes to $29089 for Suse. In other words, comparable.
Look, while you have me on some details, you have not refuted the main thrust of my arguments.
In particular, SCO released a *Linux* product under GPL. Now, if they have released their own intellectual property, it is no longer a trade secret. Further, if I make use of a trade secret that is not a trade secret anymore, then I am not liable. IBM might be liable, but others will not be.
Finally, SCO have been rather quiet about exactly what the violations are. So, it is not clear whether the violations are in kernel space. Even if they are in kernel space, what exactly is kernel space? Is Tux kernel space or user space?
You are being a bit docrinaire and missing the forest for the trees.
Sorry about that, my bad. I remembered it was an Arabic name with the pattern consonant-a-consonant-ee-consonant.
Actually, the AT&T license covers System V only. BSD is a separate issue that was settled some time ago. The Apple kernel is a BSD derivative, so safe. Linux is a mix of BSD and System V, so a target of SCO.
The funny thing is that Richard Shaheen, Microsoft's chief OS architect, is the one that invented the BSD Mach microkernel, the basis for OS X and Next before it.
Basically, it was possible to do development on BSD because AT&T came to agreement some time ago with the academics who developed it, allowing them to keep the source. Before this agreement, there was actually disagreement and legal battles similar to what we are seeing today.
Back when BSD forked, ownership of the trademark and intellectual property was murky. AT&T had basically been giving out the source, somewhat similar to SCO' recent practice, but not under the GPL. Since SCO released under the GPL, their claims do not seem very strong.
Interoperation means passing data between two different programs over some common bridge. This means typically writing some sort of connector code. In the best case, someone is able to bundle that connector cod into a library.
Consider coding to a web service interface such as SOAP vs. just keeping your application within one programming language and using its built-in constructs for passing data. With the web service, you either have to marshal into and out of SOAP envelopes on your own or use a library. However, not all libraries themselves interoperate. Hence, you have to test for compatibility by running against a suite of other implementations, all of which are also supposedly standard. It's the browser wars all over again. If you don't bother with interconnectivity, the job is over more quickly.
To get an interoperability standard that you can just code to seems to take the developer community years of effort. Yes, there is value to interoperability, and that is why people do actually undertake things like web services projects and spend years trying to develop standards. But for a first project, or even a mature, successfully functioning product, interoperability is not likely to be a first instinct.
I just went over to Firebird forums on mozilla. Well, there is one topic in the general Firebird forums regarding this issue, and it has a grand total of 43 posts, most of which are an argument between two (2) people about whether it would have been more polite to ask the firebirdSQL folks first.
So, while the firebirdSQL folk are unhappy on their site, the real impact of this seems limited from a practical stand point.
The more interesting point is that trademark law forces you to defend your trademark or lose it. However, you cannot claim a universal trademark, so it is okay to have a car and software named the same thing. Are two software products that do very different things but have the same name similar enough for this to be an issue that would lead to confusion?
You need to be careful on what you mean by 38% outsourcing. A lot of that is outsourcing American IT jobs in America. While India has grown, it is not yet that big.
Further, based on direct contacts with Indian outsourcing firms, there are two other phenomena of interest:
1. Indian outsourcers are hiring American front-ends.
2. Indian outsourcers are starting to do their own outsourcing as the Indian labor pool becomes more expensive.
Things that are outsourced tend to be the more "mechanical" jobs, requiring less innovation. Therefore, if you are supplying only marginal value with your current skill set, rethink.
PCs came along, the use of computing and its relevance to business mushroomed. Without PCs, no e-commerce, no e-business connection to small time suppliers, no analytic revolution based on the availability of cheap computing power.
Central control and high fixed cost to entry-level computing, available in the old mainframe model did not make these things happen. Sure, there's a cost to maintenance, but trying to control maintenance costs is not what leads to growth.
People may not remember this, but Corel tried to create a cross-platform Java-based office suite. It failed due to performance issues. Centralized network computing also never quite took off. The vulnerability is all concentrated in one machine. So the combination is supposed to pay off?
My observation is that things are becoming more distributed, not less. Look at P2P, blogs, RSS syndication, amazon web services + google web services + you name it web services. Look at the fact that 57% of companies have implemented WiFi and people are increasingly using thin clients on them.
The question is how to support information flow between all of the disparate devices participating in this web, not how to drive everything back to a central server design. The smart play here is communications infrastructure and devices optimized for high speed translation.
Wireless was heavily hyped toward the end of the dot-com bubble. We were all supposed to browse html sites on 1x2 inch mobile phone screens. Or we were supposed to lug around large laptops.
But things have really changed with the arrival of high performing wireless PDAs. An adequate screen that can handle html. Further, browser technology has improved to the point where the browser will actually simplify the html for you.
The next step is to go beyond content provision in presentation-dependent formats (e.g., get away from sites designed in purely html, wml, etc). Some might have thought this a pipe dream just a few years ago, but that too is already happening. Look at blogs with rss feeds and various sites with rss content syndication. Individuals and non-profits are already taking advantage of these media. It is something that looks much like the early stages of html.
The issue will be corporate participation. The minute you provide your feed in a presentation neutral (read non-proprietary) fromat, how do you retain control? This will inhibit many corporations.
However, the good news is that there will be plenty of free service providers, likely enough to achieve the tipping point.
Well, it seems to me that there is a difference between service and an individual communication. For instance, to read this law as outlawing VPNs would also seem read it as outlawing the use of SSL for web transactions. After all, what is SSL other than a rather punctual VPN?
The real question seems to come down to the issue of how much control I have over third parties' ability to view my individual communications. In that case, current law seems to allow third parties to observe the envelope but not the contents without court (sometimes just secret court) order. This law seems no different.
Isn't the whole idea of XML to separate content from format? So, Microsoft is guarding the last mile from the software infrastructure (including their data format) to the user's brain (supplied by formatting). So, to use Microsoft's data format, I have to come up with my own styling. Isn't this what happens with rss and rdf already? Isn't this potentially a win? Couldn't an industry spring up using microsoft's data format and a set of styling sheets built to transform that format (ie, xslt).
I sense some of the shock and outrage around this article is that people would like to be able to use excel as their data viewer, with an open file format that they could write to. What about simply treating excel as a data publishing system, perhaps even transforming its output to the more open standard developed by OASIS? This starts to consign excel to legacy that needs an adaptor.
You're exactly right. However, a few things to note. The studio does not own LOTR, only the screen rights as long as it has not entered the public domain. You can enjoy LOTR in many other formats without having to pay the movie studio.
Further, you are not obliged to go to movies. This is the idea behind minor league baseball beginning to make inroads to major league baseball. People are looking for entertainment, major league is too expensive, minor league is almost the same but much lower priced.
The question facing the studio is this: How restrictive can we be before people switch? My argument is simply, "not very in the general case." Look at CD and DVD sales. My cut is that studios need to focus on making the packaging of their products truly value-added and probably lower prices. The are effectively complaining about not being able to charge monopoly rates.
The question is to what extent hardware manufacturers will actually allow this level of intrusion to be mandatory. Note, they have opposite interests to content producers. They want their equipment to be usable by the most people possible with the least headache.
Hardware manufacturers are fighting back per recent stories in slashdot.
Pay per use is untenable in a competitive market. Just look at cell phone minutes which are rapidly moving toward an (almost) unlimited use model.
Why is pay-per-use untenable in a competitive market? People do not like it, so it suppresses demand for the pay-per-use service. In a competitive market where suppliers are trying to meet and create demand, this generates an opportunity to undercut the pay-per-use provider. Suppliers almost always emerge who will take that competitive opportunity.
Pay-per-use does however frequently does make sense in a non-competitive or ologopolistic environment where consumers must purchase the service. This situation existed for some time with hub-and-spoke in the airline industry. The commodity being metered was seat miles purchased at particular times. Here the supplier was able to charge to the hilt for demand that was inelastic (i.e., people have to pay because they have no other option).
Well, does inelastic demand like this exist for entertainment? Likely not. As we have seen with the rise of minor league baseball, web journalism, independent films, cd sales, and even blogs, people can find quick substitutes for the over-charged items.
I don't think regulatory relief will be quick (look at microsoft). We'll have to rely on the hacker community and all of the competitors who are seeking to create demand.
This is true, but in production use, code performance is critical. If you can cut execution time by a factor of two or more for any given hardware configuration, it can mean the difference between feasible and infeasible. For instance collaborative filtering on the web.
A lot of optimizations in numerical computing languages involve removing OO features (e.g., matlab). Numerical computing seems to focus on vectorization (re-representing all problems in terms of vectors), a sort of one-size-fits-all data representation, that can than be used in highly optimized algorithms. At the end of the day, one has to wonder about the usefulness of the OO paradigm for heavy duty numerical computing.
Oops!
To me, the most significant point in the article was Mitchell Baker's note supporting phoenix. In it, he lists one of the reasons for supporting phoenix as an experiment to see whether mozilla can succeed by building core browser functionality that others adapt.
This is where OSS succeeds right now in mainstream implementations, as a base that a value-added integrator can then modify for clients to achieve a lower cost solution. It is hard for OSS to market directly to end-users. OSS is not close enough to end-users to know how to modify interface and other features to suit their needs. However, value-added integrators are.
With microsoft, value-added integrators face high licensing fees and the danger that microsoft will try to eat their lunch. In OSS, this is less an issue.
However, there is one problem with this view. There's plenty of reason for value-added integrators to use mozilla. What is the reason to contribute back? In the end, I suspect the interest for contribution to mozilla is with platform providers, e.g., AOL, who do not want access to their platforms controlled by their competitors. Note, a number of OSS projects have moved to corporate sponsorship congruent with this view, e.g., Gnome, Mozilla, and even Apache.
So, mozilla might find its real success as a neutral technology that can be adapted across a number of platforms by value-added integrators. It will have to look for support to corporations whose interest is in having neutral access technologies for their platforms.