Because modern financial markets work on derivatives over underlying financial assets. Thus an exerciseable option over insurance loss for a satellite would be valued at a few billion dollars, and can be implemented as a single accept/decline of exercise. Thus the apparant information size is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the contractual obligations and legal infrastructure underpinning that option.
If you want real value, figure out the information cost of accessing the US bootball that controls the nuclear codes. You can literally reduce the world to the Stone age with effectively wiping out probably 1,000 trillion dollars of accumulated human capital and investment.
If you want something closer to home, figure out the cost of the root password to the root servers which will be registring an increasing amount of world commerce. I believe (hearsay) ATT once figured out the business losses stemming from a 1 hour disruption of their network and it wasn't pretty.
I believe maintenance makes up the bulk of the total costs of software. It may be highly cost-effective for your employer to pass the support costs downstream to customers (capitalise gains, socialise costs). But if you got run over by a truck, how much time would be lost training someone else to finish off your code?
.... will probably be very difficult to transition to an open-source model. Basically they are in the widget IP licensing business, they only make money by selling complex components that other companies can script together. As such they have a very good business plan in targeting the mass market (consumer ignorance + millions of units). OpenSource makes business sense for small specialised niches (where the money is in the expertise/consulting e.g. tax laws), academia where you'd want to encourage uptake of new technology (which always require more hacking), and long-term infrastructure where you absolutely must be able to access data/devices beyond the longivity of any single supplier.
So long as MS can make high margins on the components, control the "works under Windows xyz" trademark, and can buy out any disruptive upstart, I really don't see why they'd be motivated to open-source anything.
... is that you cannot protect an extrinsic convention (in this case a Question/Answer format). This is in contrast with other interpretations such as databases where the facts may be public (e.g. sports scores) but they've ruled that schemas and intrinsic data structures can be protected. This is a ruling that follows common sense as the parties indepedently constructed their FAQs and it would be unconciousable to extinguish one or the other.
FAQs are a common industry custom, and much like man-pages follow a certain format, is based on expectations of that that information is intended to achieve. After all, similar intentions for a well-defined domain usually result in similar solutions. In this case attempting to use one legal concept (exclusive right to duplicate original copy) to achieve anti-competitive outcomes was rejected. There res decidendi (or question in conflict) was not relevant to copyright.
I hope some of the principles from this case can be moved over to the software patent domain. The reversal of historical application of patents as defensive shield towards modern offensive tactics (business process patent), is creating outcomes contrary to the original intent. When companies prepared to use new technology are esstoped from deployment by pure IP hurdles (cough*RamBus*cough) or other nuisance patents (cough*oneClick*cough), then perhaps it is worthwhile reconsidering redefining the bar to innovation.
Perhaps OpenSource could then be described as a defensive legal tactic... if it appears in an open forum then perhaps that establishes prior art which cannot be claimed as proprietary technology.
SGI actually produced a product in the 90's which did exactly this. This was when they had high resolution monitors (1600x1200??) that people wanted to project. The difficultly was a) mechanically somewhat fragile - if it slipped/shoved off the projector, it cost b) the LCD diminished lumination a fair bit which reduced screen contrast in ambient conditions c) did I mention cost and fragility of backlight?
A good idea which could and should have been improved.
I would have thought in return for receiving code, the consideration was to refrain from certain behaviour? E.g. can only charge for cost of media/distribution. This is not an illusionary promise.
This was discussed in some length in an old/. thread (http://slashdot.org/features/99/09/02/2038236.sht ml). I'll repeat some pertinent comments.
Every profession, once it reaches a point of maturity (I'll leave it up to the pundits as to whether IT has hit that sweet spot yet) establishes a set of customs or cultural norms that, if nothing else, help protect themselves from excesses and self destruction and help define their purpose for existance. The doctors have their Hippocratic Oath, lawyers their client-attorny priviledge, and the largest corporations a distinctive cultural mindset. In fact this is a phenomenum that ESR has detailed quite nicely in his writings about the hacker community and open source development.
The question is that if the computing industry is to move from being seen as the province of self-absorbed geeks and nerds, to the level of expertise and professional found in top-notch surgical teams (and I believe the level at the top of technical mastery of details is on a par), I would have to argue that a code of conduct be ennunciated so at least we can define a standard for members to be identified with.
Some basic customs which I note have been enshrined in some form or another...
- respect/acknowledge the work of (open-source) contributors (attribution of effort) - understand the licensing/distribution arrangements (offer from the coder/group) - document how you expect your work/API to be used/accessed
An engineer can guarantee a bridge to fail at specific loads... can the state of software engineering claim the same for a piece of software? Even design by contract software like Eifel is no security blanket when used by the wrong hands or incomplete specifications (cf rocket that blew up due to engine being calibrated for different flight mode).
We are still in the dark ages as far as software liability goes...:-(
Because for software to be useful, it has to interact with other components and people. A hair dryer is a stand alone task but driving a car, you have to acknowledge the rules of the road and all the traffic signals and accept liability for 3rd party damaage and injury.
GPL is a *voluntary* offer. In return for consideration of using other people's GPL code, you agree to behavior restrictirs (not obscuring source). EULA offer zero warranties and impose so many conditions and disclaims and exclusions clauses it wouldn't surprise me if it violated a dozen statutes. Because so many technical people have tested GPL (not to mention argued it up and down the valley) hackers have a fair understanding of the implications, even if they disagree with it, can can even come up with their own counter-offers (MPL, etc).
With the commercial world, pre-defined contracts basically weight themselves against the user, there is no negotiation, and courses for remedy are virtually non-existant. The doctrine of equity is seriously eroded here. Until companies come up with a way of justifying their service (as encoded in software) is legally binding and balanced as to benefit/obligations, I think the public is right to be sceptical of any claims. Would you trust an email that offered you $xxxx by doing your taxes in a certain way? Or would you ask your accountant who can at least be charged with professional negligence.
A legal rule for voiding contracts based on
- (computer) illiteracy
- (program) radically different from what it is
- failure to understand due to complexity (not carelessness)
The key item is #2, that the program is in fact radically different in intent to what the person downloading it believes it to be (file fetching v P2P node). Fact is that computer literacy is so absymally low that items 1) and 3) would apply to 99.9% of the population.
This is the same reason why we retain accountants. The complexity of the legal code is such that we trust professionals to interpret it for us. Perhaps in some far off day, we ask open source advocates to help audit/secure software instead of picking up viruses and trojan horses willy-nilly.
Unlike a normal retailer, you know that they specialise in a specific genre (science fiction/fantasy). Hence the success rate of actually finding something (if you fit this segment) is actually quite high.
So what is their business? I would guess it is to specialise in a category and make their brand (trademark) imply a certain level of quality and endorsement. I know that when I go scanning along the book spines along store shelves, if I spot their symbol, I recognise what it means and take the time to read the jacket and guage the likelihood I would enjoy the rest of it.
People forget that one of the reason to read is to enjoy/explore/engage. Curl up in bed on a cold night with a favorite. Look for new ideas or a new prespective on life. Give a book to a friend to argue the issues. When the DRM or purchasing hassles get in the way of this, it merely increases the barriers to actually using their service.
I would suggest some improvements for their eBooks... some hint of the size (can be an ALTTEXT), and perhaps links to discussion forum (think if they come across a blockbuster like Nuromancer). As a personal plug, I would suggest people read Earth Web, there's some ideas on creating a market for ideas, putting monetary thresholds on accepting unknown email (they pay you to read it!), and blackmarketing in information. While the ideas are not particularly new, the way they are considered in a social setting does give some clues as to whether they would be accepted or not.
From observation I would say that GPL are good for infrastructure type software which needs to have a level of consistency/interoperability in the decade range. Given the systems that these are playing with (Tflop beasts) the operational goal is to develop/port robust scientific software fast enough that it is useful before you have the usual transitional delays in migrating to a new platform. Keep in mind that just support costs (electricity, staff, etc) are probably enough to run a 3rd world country (just look at the DoE budget). The software libraries are basically computational engines, they are only useful if someone else defines the problem in the right form. As such the set of people who are interested in modifying it or even have the right skillsets (parallel programming, numerical maths, application insight) are small enough that they know each other and they can exert peer pressure to prevent any idiot from doing silly things. Peer review is critical as when you're designing complex systems, numerical accuracy/stability is more important than speed/feature bloat. Hence there is no point is trying to run ahead of Moore's Law or the MS upgrade cycle.
Again, my observation is that BSD is more suited to consortiums who need a public reference implementation but want to split up and compete privately afterwards. This is particularly good for embeded stuff as you are selling optimised widgets which you can say are protocol/functional/operational equivalent to a "public" standard.
I think a good analogy is that "public domain" (ie no legal rights) is equivalent to terra incognita. There's something there but nobody knows what the alligators are. GPL is for those who have explored the Brave GNU World and come back with a map indicating the swamps and natural right of way around them. BSD is fencing off a domain but accepting the traditional public right of passage to allow access to the "interesting" spots.
Of course there are always issues with idiots coming in (embrace), bulldozing the landscape (extend) and erecting toll gates (extinguish). Which of the licenses is more robust against this? GPL consider it another swamp to work around whereas BSD loses the really scenic spots. In theory there is nothing wrong with this but just as some people climb mountains for the interest/challenge (how many serious people would climb Mt Everest if they know you can pay someone to lug you up?), working on your private patch of paradise becomes less appealing when the tourists start gawking en-mass and asking for directions.
The government history of management of public lands does not exactly encourage one to believe they have a better clue as to what license to apply. He who write the code gets to choose the license is just as applicable for tax-payer software as anything else and you can always make a counter offer (cf Aladin ghostview software where public viewers are reassurance that it will appear correctly on printers which is what they're really selling). Time to move on...
... actually promoted an essay writing competition to encourage how people approved of the the way IP laws helped them. (http://www.wipo.int/pressroom/en/alert/2001/ma03r ev.htm)
A bunch of legal scholars spearheaded a counter-essay competition to reflect less sanguine views (http://www.wipout.net/essays.html)
I think people here are missing an important point... what are the limits of space and time shifting? The courts have agreed that shifting music purchased under the First Sale Doctrine onto a device to be legal. VCR is a precedence for time-shifting (which TiVo mimics digitally).
However, from a media studio point of view, this deprecates their backlist. Basically they build up a catalog of works and hope to extract as much future revenue as possible out of sunk costs (think director's cuts, think remix, think DVD extras). By having an alternative "source" of originals (abeit not as mutable) they lose pricing power over secondary/tertiary markets. Apple's business model doen't rely on them owning content, but on allow consumers to rip and snip, effectively bringing the studio into the house. Time and space shifting, if you extend this beyond the immediate neighbourhood via digital means (think web-radio) hurts the larger companies who rely on regional segmentation to market at different price-points. Any corporation which has a backlist of crap is basically going to be ignored despite how much they intend to push the stuff once they lose control of the distribution system.
The fact that there is civil disobediance in people not obeying the copyright law in music indicates that either the law is flawed or that there's some distortions in the market. My guess is that the advertisement business model is just not sustainable over the internet as ads effectively "dilutes" the signal-to-noise ratio when hunting for decent music. If people time-shift ads to inifinity, or space-shift popups to/dev/null then they gain "value" at the expense of businesses trying to capture the fickle tastes and limited attention of consumers. The sad thing is that companies can't change as they've already got those music backlists on their accounting books as "assets" and consumers are becoming more adventurous in their exposure to internet music.
Immoveable object vs irresistable force springs to mind.
You don't "own" your DNA... or technically the diagnostic/theraputic downstream outcomes. I believe that there was this case where a person was operated on (cancer???) and the hospital researcher who analysed the tissue eventually discovered some useful properties and developed a line of products (I read this around 10 years ago so forgive my hazy memory). The patient sued on account that he did not give permission and other grounds claiming that he deserved a slice of the profits but the courts overruled him.
So in theory, if you contributed DNA and someone else made a discovery and created a software service (e.g. submit DNA and get back your chances of say certain types of cancer), the precedent would be that you don't benefit financially, only the group who actually "knows" what to do with the DNA. On the other hand, human nature is quite reactionary... I have heard some hearsay about a guy who was so determined to limit the role of companies patenting the human gene maps that he single-handed wrote an annotation server and open-sourced it. Sure, your DNA can be protected by the same medical confidentiality laws as your patient records but then I'd also note that people donate blood willingly and many companies have a profitable business in buying from "donated" blood banks and selling processed blood products.
Golden Rule... he who has the gold makes the rules.
I think people are (slowly) coming to realise the different strengths of different licenses. GPL are the electronic equivalent of public byways... indefinite access and thus are suited towards long-term infrastucture type projects (public parklands) where you need the flexibility to adapt to different needs (e.g. GCC tool-chain). On the other hand BSD can be useful for consortium-style reference implementations (think public footpath) where you want broad consensus and a test case that can be used by the rest of the world for interoperability but you can optimise internally. I'm sure the big guys like Apple, Sun, IBM, MS, are plugging the digital equivalent of drive-ways to toll-roads.
Let's not get carried away by dogmatic insistance on a particular license... you might recall the lines "he who writes the code gets to choose the license". The GPL is good for keeping specific coding domains and public-interest areas open to the public, but it doesn't mean that there shouldn't be fences to deliminate private entities.
There is a reason why MS tries to get at least 5 companies to push technology such as their WebPad. It's basically called divide and conquer in that it's easier for each OEM to gain market share by competing against each other than to gang up and change the rules. Think of it as a modified prisoner's dilemma with prisoners not allowed to communication and kept in separate cells so they can't revolt. That is the reason why OEM licenses are considered trade secrets by MS. Since each OEM doesn't know the special volume discounts (which are significant given the low margins of box pushing) of the others, they attempt to bargin a better deal which as OPEC has shown leads to similar concessions by the others.
It will be interesting to see how Intel attempts to wriggle more negotiating space with the alternatives of Linux, HP Unix coming on-line.
... when RMS was faced with a similar situation he turned the vendor's tactic of copyright information into enforcement of the GPL through copyleft. Why can't hackers come up with a legally valid method that exploits this act's provision to legally endorse P2P? Then any attempt to fence in the intellectual commons would be considered an erasement (sp?) and thus subject to penalties? Afterall, if the absence of a copybit represents the fact that you can copy freely then by law all computer manufacturers will have to support it? What better way of enforrcing P2P systems and preserving freedom?
Irregardless of whether it is a good, bad or ugly law, the fact is that if this bill obeys the duely constituted and mandated processes for the law of the country, any citizen is bound by it. Civil disobediance is one way of altering bad laws through non-observation when they conflict with common law practices but it is too slow and common practices takes time to evolve.
As Gilder once noted, value migrates to the edge of the network (think broadband beach-head into office/home/mobile) and all that software on the SIM card. If any telco forgos this control, they suddenly enter the wholesale broadband market with low margins and having someone else eat their lunch. They want to provide telephone numbers, white pages, call-waiting, call-blocking, etc... (all at a nice mark-up) and when (not if) Microsoft rolls out their Smart Phone in force, there's going to be some major tussles (see http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?S tory_ID=1033763). Given the circumstances, it is probably cheaper for telcos to leave unused fibre in the ground rather than give a potential competitors an opportunity to get a slice of the action. Not good for the average consumer but when did that worry stockholders?
Despite what happened to Enron, they did have a role in moving staid industries away from regulated energy supply/demand contracts into a much more market-friendly environment. Too bad they could do a proper job (with decent accounting controls) on bandwidth.
... because if the courts accept that it is valid, then it could also be used for contracts. The legal bar for communications of acceptance can be pretty stringent so any relaxation (a la postal rule) should be looked at closely. Some generally accepted guidelines
- must be some objective manifestation (or evidence) of acceptance.
- if a 3rd party agent guarantees delivery (a la British Post) but this rule is being deprecated with modern instantaneous methods like fax, the business should have recognised delivery pathways
- if all reasonable steps have been undertaken to bring communications to notice of recipient, then courts can deem the delivery to be effective (e.g. receipt of telex during normal business hours)
So I would guess that email by itself is not enough but if you combine registered mail, personal phone calls, delivery to registered offices of business premises, and then email, the courts will proably accept that if they were a legit business, they should have at least under reasonable expectations be aware. Of course, different jurisdictions may not accept this argument which makes enforcement difficult. Note that notification of delivery is not the same as mental assent (which requires a human to read it!... unless smart agents are enpowered by law).
The problem is that the old mail system was not intended to be used as the standard for legal communications. Some recent discussions on next generation mail systems like IM2000 (http://www.ultraviolet.org/mail-archives/im2000.2 001/ , http://www.manxome.org/~samael/projects/im2000/) might be worthwhile considering.
The fundamental change that the Internet introduced was the economic fact that sending n pieces of email took the same effort as sending 1. The fact that this essentially puts the cost (storage, bandwidth, attention, etc) onto the recipient distorts the incentive for posting which consequently leads to spam. This is the old story of privatise the benefits and socialise the losses.
The book EarthWeb (see http://www.baen.com/blurbs/067157809X.htm, http://www.the-earthweb.com/) had a good idea in that people could set a threshold... if the email wasn't worth their time, then they would "charge" the sender a small amount. If the free market worked, then advertisers would figure out the cost of your attention (especially if they lumped their mistakes) and be more selective in their branding activities (as well as reduce visual pollution). However, because the consumer doesn't have any expectation of privacy, much less opinion as to their preferences, B2C cheerfully ignore these minor details in their belief that buying xxx will solve your worries.
Marketing is a necessary evil but the economic costs should be bourne by the originators (whoch have control over quantity) rather than the public at large. How much do you value your attention (and thus time)?
I believe Linux Conf Australia had a speaker (see http://www.linux.org.au/conf/abstracts.html#tinmit h) who discussed converting predefined glyphs into 3D overlays. Extending this capability to a wider set of real-world signage would be a worthy project for the Linux-based PSX2 and it would require insane amounts of image processing.
A well formed explanation and essentially correct... the bank's job is credit expansion but I would interpret the overall financial system somewhat differently. The goal of any modern capitalist society (ignoring the greed of corporations like Enron) is to transfer savings (as measured by reduced consumption... ie financial surplus) to those entrepreneurs best able to use those savings in more effective ways and supply *future* goods, services or titles that other people desire. A bank is an important intermediatory as they shift these savings through space (borrow in one city, lend in another) and time (long-term loans, short term cash deposits). Your average bank is effectively a pawn-broker, holding title to collatoral (e.g. mortgages) while you slave your guts out to pay it off. Other banks specialise in high finance, industry development, trade, infrastructure etc... The Federal bank has a special role in providing short-long term liquidity through the bonds (another way of creating money from thin air using monetary mechanisms) though people are finding wholesale money markets are more efficient (not that the Feds want to relinquish their role). In a modern system the interest rate reflects the opportunity cost, the premium for taking a risk along with a margin that creditors are willing to give to debtors. It's a curious fact of human nature that we are much more willing to punt with other people's money (OPM) than our own. Hence riskier activities (which supposedly have a higher payoff) would not be undertaken if everyone was adverse to losing their own house. Banks and insurance companies (another form of finacial intermediatory) work on certain statistics, they can't tell who is going to toss up their credit cards but they can work out the average default and charge accordingly (along with a hefty premium of thei own).
Now as to whether PayPal is a bank, it looks like the Feds have agreed that it is a billing agency but with the fun part of exposing the merchant's fee the credit consortiums traditionally have insist be hidden in the overall cost. IMHO this is good since historically frugal people who pay cash have been subsidising the credit card owners. It'll be good to see PayPal give the credit companies (their real competitors) a run for their money.
... but why do they have to erect the toll gates first ? I was reading the ToS for an ISP hosted site with the thought of donating some of the capacity to freenet and they promised to:
- perv at (monitor activity) what I'm doing (item 1.3) - refuse access at their discretion (item 2.8) - pass on any liability due to fraudulent access (item3.5) - censor any content deemed inappropriate (item 4.3); - keep any left-over money paid in advance (item 5.2); - and generally ask me trust them on any software they provide (item 6.4).
I know eternal vigilence is the price for freedom but it would be nice to nap a bit instead of continually maintaining your own system. Now if they can come up with a combo 802.11+freenet cache node and sell it, it might be a hit.
... if you think the Hitachi mu-chip + RFID raised privacy concerns (see http://www.usethesource.com/articles/01/09/26/1052 39.shtml), guess what Intel Chip ID + WiFi will do for your filters. It's not going to be just the transparent society but downright naked in having lifestyle choices spammed up places where they shouldn't be. Maybe it's not too late to buy real estate in places where it is just to expensive to have blanket net coverage (Canada? Australia?). Is it my imagination or are chip designers serving a self-selected group (BSA, DRM, etc) rather than the consumer nowadays? Either that or all CxOs are branded with the same mental template.
Slashdot Mirror
Because modern financial markets work on derivatives over underlying financial assets. Thus an exerciseable option over insurance loss for a satellite would be valued at a few billion dollars, and can be implemented as a single accept/decline of exercise. Thus the apparant information size is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the contractual obligations and legal infrastructure underpinning that option.
If you want real value, figure out the information cost of accessing the US bootball that controls the nuclear codes. You can literally reduce the world to the Stone age with effectively wiping out probably 1,000 trillion dollars of accumulated human capital and investment.
If you want something closer to home, figure out the cost of the root password to the root servers which will be registring an increasing amount of world commerce. I believe (hearsay) ATT once figured out the business losses stemming from a 1 hour disruption of their network and it wasn't pretty.
LL
I believe maintenance makes up the bulk of the total costs of software. It may be highly cost-effective for your employer to pass the support costs downstream to customers (capitalise gains, socialise costs). But if you got run over by a truck, how much time would be lost training someone else to finish off your code?
LL
.... will probably be very difficult to transition to an open-source model. Basically they are in the widget IP licensing business, they only make money by selling complex components that other companies can script together. As such they have a very good business plan in targeting the mass market (consumer ignorance + millions of units). OpenSource makes business sense for small specialised niches (where the money is in the expertise/consulting e.g. tax laws), academia where you'd want to encourage uptake of new technology (which always require more hacking), and long-term infrastructure where you absolutely must be able to access data/devices beyond the longivity of any single supplier.
So long as MS can make high margins on the components, control the "works under Windows xyz" trademark, and can buy out any disruptive upstart, I really don't see why they'd be motivated to open-source anything.
LL
... is that you cannot protect an extrinsic convention (in this case a Question/Answer format). This is in contrast with other interpretations such as databases where the facts may be public (e.g. sports scores) but they've ruled that schemas and intrinsic data structures can be protected. This is a ruling that follows common sense as the parties indepedently constructed their FAQs and it would be unconciousable to extinguish one or the other.
... if it appears in an open forum then perhaps that establishes prior art which cannot be claimed as proprietary technology.
FAQs are a common industry custom, and much like man-pages follow a certain format, is based on expectations of that that information is intended to achieve. After all, similar intentions for a well-defined domain usually result in similar solutions. In this case attempting to use one legal concept (exclusive right to duplicate original copy) to achieve anti-competitive outcomes was rejected. There res decidendi (or question in conflict) was not relevant to copyright.
I hope some of the principles from this case can be moved over to the software patent domain. The reversal of historical application of patents as defensive shield towards modern offensive tactics (business process patent), is creating outcomes contrary to the original intent. When companies prepared to use new technology are esstoped from deployment by pure IP hurdles (cough*RamBus*cough) or other nuisance patents (cough*oneClick*cough), then perhaps it is worthwhile reconsidering redefining the bar to innovation.
Perhaps OpenSource could then be described as a defensive legal tactic
LL
SGI actually produced a product in the 90's which did exactly this. This was when they had high resolution monitors (1600x1200??) that people wanted to project. The difficultly was
a) mechanically somewhat fragile - if it slipped/shoved off the projector, it cost
b) the LCD diminished lumination a fair bit which reduced screen contrast in ambient conditions
c) did I mention cost and fragility of backlight?
A good idea which could and should have been improved.
LL
I would have thought in return for receiving code, the consideration was to refrain from certain behaviour? E.g. can only charge for cost of media/distribution. This is not an illusionary promise.
LL
This was discussed in some length in an old /. thread (http://slashdot.org/features/99/09/02/2038236.sht ml). I'll repeat some pertinent comments.
...
Every profession, once it reaches a point of maturity (I'll leave it up to the pundits as to whether IT has hit that sweet spot yet) establishes a set of customs or cultural norms that, if nothing else, help protect themselves from excesses and self destruction and help define their purpose for existance. The doctors have their Hippocratic Oath, lawyers their client-attorny priviledge, and the largest corporations a distinctive cultural mindset. In fact this is a phenomenum that ESR has detailed quite nicely in his writings about the hacker community and open source development.
The question is that if the computing industry is to move from being seen as the province of self-absorbed geeks and nerds, to the level of expertise and professional found in top-notch surgical teams (and I believe the level at the top of technical mastery of details is on a par), I would have to argue that a code of conduct be ennunciated so at least we can define a standard for members to be identified with.
Some basic customs which I note have been enshrined in some form or another
- respect/acknowledge the work of (open-source) contributors (attribution of effort)
- understand the licensing/distribution arrangements (offer from the coder/group)
- document how you expect your work/API to be used/accessed
LL
An engineer can guarantee a bridge to fail at specific loads ... can the state of software engineering claim the same for a piece of software? Even design by contract software like Eifel is no security blanket when used by the wrong hands or incomplete specifications (cf rocket that blew up due to engine being calibrated for different flight mode).
... :-(
We are still in the dark ages as far as software liability goes
LL
Because for software to be useful, it has to interact with other components and people. A hair dryer is a stand alone task but driving a car, you have to acknowledge the rules of the road and all the traffic signals and accept liability for 3rd party damaage and injury.
GPL is a *voluntary* offer. In return for consideration of using other people's GPL code, you agree to behavior restrictirs (not obscuring source). EULA offer zero warranties and impose so many conditions and disclaims and exclusions clauses it wouldn't surprise me if it violated a dozen statutes. Because so many technical people have tested GPL (not to mention argued it up and down the valley) hackers have a fair understanding of the implications, even if they disagree with it, can can even come up with their own counter-offers (MPL, etc).
With the commercial world, pre-defined contracts basically weight themselves against the user, there is no negotiation, and courses for remedy are virtually non-existant. The doctrine of equity is seriously eroded here. Until companies come up with a way of justifying their service (as encoded in software) is legally binding and balanced as to benefit/obligations, I think the public is right to be sceptical of any claims. Would you trust an email that offered you $xxxx by doing your taxes in a certain way? Or would you ask your accountant who can at least be charged with professional negligence.
LL
Non Est Factum
A legal rule for voiding contracts based on
- (computer) illiteracy
- (program) radically different from what it is
- failure to understand due to complexity (not carelessness)
The key item is #2, that the program is in fact radically different in intent to what the person downloading it believes it to be (file fetching v P2P node). Fact is that computer literacy is so absymally low that items 1) and 3) would apply to 99.9% of the population.
This is the same reason why we retain accountants. The complexity of the legal code is such that we trust professionals to interpret it for us. Perhaps in some far off day, we ask open source advocates to help audit/secure software instead of picking up viruses and trojan horses willy-nilly.
LL
Unlike a normal retailer, you know that they specialise in a specific genre (science fiction/fantasy). Hence the success rate of actually finding something (if you fit this segment) is actually quite high.
... some hint of the size (can be an ALTTEXT), and perhaps links to discussion forum (think if they come across a blockbuster like Nuromancer). As a personal plug, I would suggest people read Earth Web, there's some ideas on creating a market for ideas, putting monetary thresholds on accepting unknown email (they pay you to read it!), and blackmarketing in information. While the ideas are not particularly new, the way they are considered in a social setting does give some clues as to whether they would be accepted or not.
So what is their business? I would guess it is to specialise in a category and make their brand (trademark) imply a certain level of quality and endorsement. I know that when I go scanning along the book spines along store shelves, if I spot their symbol, I recognise what it means and take the time to read the jacket and guage the likelihood I would enjoy the rest of it.
People forget that one of the reason to read is to enjoy/explore/engage. Curl up in bed on a cold night with a favorite. Look for new ideas or a new prespective on life. Give a book to a friend to argue the issues. When the DRM or purchasing hassles get in the way of this, it merely increases the barriers to actually using their service.
I would suggest some improvements for their eBooks
LL
From observation I would say that GPL are good for infrastructure type software which needs to have a level of consistency/interoperability in the decade range. Given the systems that these are playing with (Tflop beasts) the operational goal is to develop/port robust scientific software fast enough that it is useful before you have the usual transitional delays in migrating to a new platform. Keep in mind that just support costs (electricity, staff, etc) are probably enough to run a 3rd world country (just look at the DoE budget). The software libraries are basically computational engines, they are only useful if someone else defines the problem in the right form. As such the set of people who are interested in modifying it or even have the right skillsets (parallel programming, numerical maths, application insight) are small enough that they know each other and they can exert peer pressure to prevent any idiot from doing silly things. Peer review is critical as when you're designing complex systems, numerical accuracy/stability is more important than speed/feature bloat. Hence there is no point is trying to run ahead of Moore's Law or the MS upgrade cycle.
...
Again, my observation is that BSD is more suited to consortiums who need a public reference implementation but want to split up and compete privately afterwards. This is particularly good for embeded stuff as you are selling optimised widgets which you can say are protocol/functional/operational equivalent to a "public" standard.
I think a good analogy is that "public domain" (ie no legal rights) is equivalent to terra incognita. There's something there but nobody knows what the alligators are. GPL is for those who have explored the Brave GNU World and come back with a map indicating the swamps and natural right of way around them. BSD is fencing off a domain but accepting the traditional public right of passage to allow access to the "interesting" spots.
Of course there are always issues with idiots coming in (embrace), bulldozing the landscape (extend) and erecting toll gates (extinguish). Which of the licenses is more robust against this? GPL consider it another swamp to work around whereas BSD loses the really scenic spots. In theory there is nothing wrong with this but just as some people climb mountains for the interest/challenge (how many serious people would climb Mt Everest if they know you can pay someone to lug you up?), working on your private patch of paradise becomes less appealing when the tourists start gawking en-mass and asking for directions.
The government history of management of public lands does not exactly encourage one to believe they have a better clue as to what license to apply. He who write the code gets to choose the license is just as applicable for tax-payer software as anything else and you can always make a counter offer (cf Aladin ghostview software where public viewers are reassurance that it will appear correctly on printers which is what they're really selling). Time to move on
LL
... actually promoted an essay writing competition to encourage how people approved of the the way IP laws helped them. (http://www.wipo.int/pressroom/en/alert/2001/ma03r ev.htm)
A bunch of legal scholars spearheaded a counter-essay competition to reflect less sanguine views (http://www.wipout.net/essays.html)
It will be interesting to compare the results.
I think people here are missing an important point ... what are the limits of space and time shifting? The courts have agreed that shifting music purchased under the First Sale Doctrine onto a device to be legal. VCR is a precedence for time-shifting (which TiVo mimics digitally).
/dev/null then they gain "value" at the expense of businesses trying to capture the fickle tastes and limited attention of consumers. The sad thing is that companies can't change as they've already got those music backlists on their accounting books as "assets" and consumers are becoming more adventurous in their exposure to internet music.
However, from a media studio point of view, this deprecates their backlist. Basically they build up a catalog of works and hope to extract as much future revenue as possible out of sunk costs (think director's cuts, think remix, think DVD extras). By having an alternative "source" of originals (abeit not as mutable) they lose pricing power over secondary/tertiary markets. Apple's business model doen't rely on them owning content, but on allow consumers to rip and snip, effectively bringing the studio into the house. Time and space shifting, if you extend this beyond the immediate neighbourhood via digital means (think web-radio) hurts the larger companies who rely on regional segmentation to market at different price-points. Any corporation which has a backlist of crap is basically going to be ignored despite how much they intend to push the stuff once they lose control of the distribution system.
The fact that there is civil disobediance in people not obeying the copyright law in music indicates that either the law is flawed or that there's some distortions in the market. My guess is that the advertisement business model is just not sustainable over the internet as ads effectively "dilutes" the signal-to-noise ratio when hunting for decent music. If people time-shift ads to inifinity, or space-shift popups to
Immoveable object vs irresistable force springs to mind.
LL
You don't "own" your DNA ... or technically the diagnostic/theraputic downstream outcomes. I believe that there was this case where a person was operated on (cancer???) and the hospital researcher who analysed the tissue eventually discovered some useful properties and developed a line of products (I read this around 10 years ago so forgive my hazy memory). The patient sued on account that he did not give permission and other grounds claiming that he deserved a slice of the profits but the courts overruled him.
... I have heard some hearsay about a guy who was so determined to limit the role of companies patenting the human gene maps that he single-handed wrote an annotation server and open-sourced it. Sure, your DNA can be protected by the same medical confidentiality laws as your patient records but then I'd also note that people donate blood willingly and many companies have a profitable business in buying from "donated" blood banks and selling processed blood products.
... he who has the gold makes the rules.
So in theory, if you contributed DNA and someone else made a discovery and created a software service (e.g. submit DNA and get back your chances of say certain types of cancer), the precedent would be that you don't benefit financially, only the group who actually "knows" what to do with the DNA. On the other hand, human nature is quite reactionary
Golden Rule
LL
I think people are (slowly) coming to realise the different strengths of different licenses. GPL are the electronic equivalent of public byways ... indefinite access and thus are suited towards long-term infrastucture type projects (public parklands) where you need the flexibility to adapt to different needs (e.g. GCC tool-chain). On the other hand BSD can be useful for consortium-style reference implementations (think public footpath) where you want broad consensus and a test case that can be used by the rest of the world for interoperability but you can optimise internally. I'm sure the big guys like Apple, Sun, IBM, MS, are plugging the digital equivalent of drive-ways to toll-roads.
... you might recall the lines "he who writes the code gets to choose the license". The GPL is good for keeping specific coding domains and public-interest areas open to the public, but it doesn't mean that there shouldn't be fences to deliminate private entities.
Let's not get carried away by dogmatic insistance on a particular license
LL
There is a reason why MS tries to get at least 5 companies to push technology such as their WebPad. It's basically called divide and conquer in that it's easier for each OEM to gain market share by competing against each other than to gang up and change the rules. Think of it as a modified prisoner's dilemma with prisoners not allowed to communication and kept in separate cells so they can't revolt. That is the reason why OEM licenses are considered trade secrets by MS. Since each OEM doesn't know the special volume discounts (which are significant given the low margins of box pushing) of the others, they attempt to bargin a better deal which as OPEC has shown leads to similar concessions by the others.
It will be interesting to see how Intel attempts to wriggle more negotiating space with the alternatives of Linux, HP Unix coming on-line.
LL
... when RMS was faced with a similar situation he turned the vendor's tactic of copyright information into enforcement of the GPL through copyleft. Why can't hackers come up with a legally valid method that exploits this act's provision to legally endorse P2P? Then any attempt to fence in the intellectual commons would be considered an erasement (sp?) and thus subject to penalties? Afterall, if the absence of a copybit represents the fact that you can copy freely then by law all computer manufacturers will have to support it? What better way of enforrcing P2P systems and preserving freedom?
Irregardless of whether it is a good, bad or ugly law, the fact is that if this bill obeys the duely constituted and mandated processes for the law of the country, any citizen is bound by it. Civil disobediance is one way of altering bad laws through non-observation when they conflict with common law practices but it is too slow and common practices takes time to evolve.
If you can't fight it, subvert it.
LL
As Gilder once noted, value migrates to the edge of the network (think broadband beach-head into office/home/mobile) and all that software on the SIM card. If any telco forgos this control, they suddenly enter the wholesale broadband market with low margins and having someone else eat their lunch. They want to provide telephone numbers, white pages, call-waiting, call-blocking, etc ... (all at a nice mark-up) and when (not if) Microsoft rolls out their Smart Phone in force, there's going to be some major tussles (see http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?S tory_ID=1033763). Given the circumstances, it is probably cheaper for telcos to leave unused fibre in the ground rather than give a potential competitors an opportunity to get a slice of the action. Not good for the average consumer but when did that worry stockholders?
Despite what happened to Enron, they did have a role in moving staid industries away from regulated energy supply/demand contracts into a much more market-friendly environment. Too bad they could do a proper job (with decent accounting controls) on bandwidth.
LL
... because if the courts accept that it is valid, then it could also be used for contracts. The legal bar for communications of acceptance can be pretty stringent so any relaxation (a la postal rule) should be looked at closely. Some generally accepted guidelines
... unless smart agents are enpowered by law).
2 001/ , http://www.manxome.org/~samael/projects/im2000/) might be worthwhile considering.
- must be some objective manifestation (or evidence) of acceptance.
- if a 3rd party agent guarantees delivery (a la British Post) but this rule is being deprecated with modern instantaneous methods like fax, the business should have recognised delivery pathways
- if all reasonable steps have been undertaken to bring communications to notice of recipient, then courts can deem the delivery to be effective (e.g. receipt of telex during normal business hours)
So I would guess that email by itself is not enough but if you combine registered mail, personal phone calls, delivery to registered offices of business premises, and then email, the courts will proably accept that if they were a legit business, they should have at least under reasonable expectations be aware. Of course, different jurisdictions may not accept this argument which makes enforcement difficult. Note that notification of delivery is not the same as mental assent (which requires a human to read it!
The problem is that the old mail system was not intended to be used as the standard for legal communications. Some recent discussions on next generation mail systems like IM2000 (http://www.ultraviolet.org/mail-archives/im2000.
LL
The fundamental change that the Internet introduced was the economic fact that sending n pieces of email took the same effort as sending 1. The fact that this essentially puts the cost (storage, bandwidth, attention, etc) onto the recipient distorts the incentive for posting which consequently leads to spam. This is the old story of privatise the benefits and socialise the losses.
... if the email wasn't worth their time, then they would "charge" the sender a small amount. If the free market worked, then advertisers would figure out the cost of your attention (especially if they lumped their mistakes) and be more selective in their branding activities (as well as reduce visual pollution). However, because the consumer doesn't have any expectation of privacy, much less opinion as to their preferences, B2C cheerfully ignore these minor details in their belief that buying xxx will solve your worries.
The book EarthWeb (see http://www.baen.com/blurbs/067157809X.htm, http://www.the-earthweb.com/) had a good idea in that people could set a threshold
Marketing is a necessary evil but the economic costs should be bourne by the originators (whoch have control over quantity) rather than the public at large. How much do you value your attention (and thus time)?
LL
I believe Linux Conf Australia had a speaker (see http://www.linux.org.au/conf/abstracts.html#tinmit h) who discussed converting predefined glyphs into 3D overlays. Extending this capability to a wider set of real-world signage would be a worthy project for the Linux-based PSX2 and it would require insane amounts of image processing.
LL
A well formed explanation and essentially correct ... the bank's job is credit expansion but I would interpret the overall financial system somewhat differently. The goal of any modern capitalist society (ignoring the greed of corporations like Enron) is to transfer savings (as measured by reduced consumption ... ie financial surplus) to those entrepreneurs best able to use those savings in more effective ways and supply *future* goods, services or titles that other people desire. A bank is an important intermediatory as they shift these savings through space (borrow in one city, lend in another) and time (long-term loans, short term cash deposits). Your average bank is effectively a pawn-broker, holding title to collatoral (e.g. mortgages) while you slave your guts out to pay it off. Other banks specialise in high finance, industry development, trade, infrastructure etc ... The Federal bank has a special role in providing short-long term liquidity through the bonds (another way of creating money from thin air using monetary mechanisms) though people are finding wholesale money markets are more efficient (not that the Feds want to relinquish their role). In a modern system the interest rate reflects the opportunity cost, the premium for taking a risk along with a margin that creditors are willing to give to debtors. It's a curious fact of human nature that we are much more willing to punt with other people's money (OPM) than our own. Hence riskier activities (which supposedly have a higher payoff) would not be undertaken if everyone was adverse to losing their own house. Banks and insurance companies (another form of finacial intermediatory) work on certain statistics, they can't tell who is going to toss up their credit cards but they can work out the average default and charge accordingly (along with a hefty premium of thei own).
Now as to whether PayPal is a bank, it looks like the Feds have agreed that it is a billing agency but with the fun part of exposing the merchant's fee the credit consortiums traditionally have insist be hidden in the overall cost. IMHO this is good since historically frugal people who pay cash have been subsidising the credit card owners. It'll be good to see PayPal give the credit companies (their real competitors) a run for their money.
LL
... but why do they have to erect the toll gates first ? I was reading the ToS for an ISP hosted site with the thought of donating some of the capacity to freenet and they promised to:
- perv at (monitor activity) what I'm doing (item 1.3)
- refuse access at their discretion (item 2.8)
- pass on any liability due to fraudulent access (item3.5)
- censor any content deemed inappropriate (item 4.3);
- keep any left-over money paid in advance (item 5.2);
- and generally ask me trust them on any software they provide (item 6.4).
I know eternal vigilence is the price for freedom but it would be nice to nap a bit instead of continually maintaining your own system. Now if they can come up with a combo 802.11+freenet cache node and sell it, it might be a hit.
LL
... if you think the Hitachi mu-chip + RFID raised privacy concerns (see http://www.usethesource.com/articles/01/09/26/1052 39.shtml), guess what Intel Chip ID + WiFi will do for your filters. It's not going to be just the transparent society but downright naked in having lifestyle choices spammed up places where they shouldn't be. Maybe it's not too late to buy real estate in places where it is just to expensive to have blanket net coverage (Canada? Australia?). Is it my imagination or are chip designers serving a self-selected group (BSA, DRM, etc) rather than the consumer nowadays? Either that or all CxOs are branded with the same mental template.
LL