Okay, everyone, get this through your skulls (and I say this as a professional software engineer of over 20 years experience):
Bitlegging is NOT theft.
The SPA has done an excellent job of getting people to misconceptualize the economic reality of digital media.
Let's decompose the economics of software development:
$(PRODUCT) development requires people to spend time and effort to create a program.
At the cusp of the 21st century, we currently motivate people to part with their time and effort by offering them money.
Therefore, $(PRODUCT) development costs money.
Substitute for the variable $(PRODUCT) any tangible object, like "washing machine." Once you have developed and built $(PRODUCT), it is yours to dispose of as you see fit. You may choose to sell it, or you may choose to give it away. We may question how the developer arrived at the price, but the decision is ultimately up to the guy(s) who created $(PRODUCT). Therefore, the price assigned to $(PRODUCT) is arbitrary and has nothing whatsoever to do with its development costs. The consequence of this is that there is no entitlement to recover development costs, since there is no direct rational connection between development costs and retail costs.
You may think that's specious, disingenuous, or even insane reasoning. Ordinarily, I might agree with you, except that there's a little concept of "reasonable expectation of return." If you put $10 on number 22 on the roulette wheel, do you realistically expect a return from that investment? Of course not; the odds are stacked against you. Same deal with spending a lot of money digging a hole in the ground: You may strike oil/gold/uranium, but more than likely you won't. (A lot of people are about to learn this lesson very harshly when the Internet stock boom falls apart.)
How do you mitigate against wasting your money? By doing research on your target investment. In this case, people heavily invested in software development have not done their homework. It is an incontrovertible fact that digital information -- software, images, sounds -- can be copied easily, and this fact is not about to change. That's what it was designed to do. So, how stupid do you have to be before you stand there proclaiming that you have an inalienable right to expect people won't copy your stuff, when the medium is fundamentally designed to behave otherwise?
Okay, say you don't buy that line of reasoning. Try this out:
If I take away your $(PRODUCT), I have deprived you of the ability to exchange it for the price you have assigned it. (This is true whether I purchased it from you or shoplifted it; the end result is that you don't have it anymore.)
If I make a copy of your $(PRODUCT), you still have the original. You still have the ability to exchange it for your chosen price.
Note that this is true no matter what the value of the variable $(PRODUCT) is. If I use a matter replicator to make a copy of your washing machine, you still have yours with which to clean your clothes. If I use a CD-ROM drive to make a copy of Quake, you can still play your original. Since you haven't been deprived of anything, you can't claim theft.
Final point:
You offer $(PRODUCT) for sale. I think your price is too high, and walk away. Result: No sale.
You offer $(PRODUCT) for sale. I make a copy of it and take the copy home. Result: No sale.
Thus, the argument that bitlegging results in lost revenue largely falls apart, since the outcome of both situations is the same: No sale.
You may argue that you have lost "potential revenue," since your potential customer base has been reduced by the number of unsanctioned copies. Guess what: This isn't theft, either. Anyone who has held common stock in a public company knows that one of the hazards of stock ownership is a thing called "dilution." Dilution is what happens when the company issues more shares; the potential market for the shares you own is reduced. Nobody in the stock market labors under the delusion that this is "theft". And although a lot of people grumble about it when it happens, it's not even illegal (unless fraud is involved). Unsanctioned copying of software results in the same economic dynamic which, if you've done your homework, should not come as a surprise to anybody.
So, what have we established?
You'd have to be a complete moron to be surprised that software is copyable, and that people are copying it.
Making copies of things, no matter what they may be, is not theft. Period, end of chapter.
There is no direct correlation between unsanctioned copies and "lost revenue."
Now, you can make an ethical argument against copying software, and I would in fact, in large part, agree with you. But software publishers (and anyone else who can't think beyond their own pocketbook) are asking us to criminalize this activity.
Sorry, but that idea is rock-stupid. It's like passing a law forbidding gravity from applying to certain objects: it illustrates a fundamental misunderstanding of how the medium operates. Digital bits are and forever will be easily copied, and you must live in that reality, or you're just setting yourself up for one heck of an ulcer.
But that's not what irritates me most about this. No. It's the fact that they picked on a guy who had no hope of defending himself against the charges. The N.E.T. Act must have the SPA giggling with glee since, because of the way the law is written, they're never going to encounter a defendant who can actually put up a fight. Which, from their track record, is about par for the course for the SPA.
Start changing the way you think about this stuff, or you are all going to be serious fscked when matter replicators show up.
You are strongly advised to check up on the history of a little-known independent game development house called The Dreamer's Guild, a company founded on almost exactly the same principles you mention. Talin was on the executive staff of The Dreamer's Guild.
Briefly, the Guild started getting some good contracts, and the niggly little details of running a business began to get in their way (things like payroll, benefits administration, legal counsel, answering the phones, leasing office space, etc.). So the Guild had to invent management. This worked sorta kinda okay until, one day, the Guild made a poor choice for their CEO, who sank the company.
I'm sure Talin would be the first to tell you that such an idea can still work, but I think you need to disabuse yourself of the illusion that "management" is irrelevant. Once you exceed a certain size (which is surprisingly small), it becomes necessary. I'd strongly recommend talking to Talin (or someone else in the industry) so you can get an idea of all the landmines you need to avoid in order to succeed.
Does anyone know why they chose to use a Linux based workstation instead of using BeOS, NT or FreeBSD?
I imagine it has something to do with the deal they (likely) cut with Cygnus to develop their tools:
"Hi, we need gcc ported to this CPU." "No problem. Here's your Linux executable." "Uh, can we get a WIN32 binary?" *snicker* "Not easily. Besides, there's no decent make for Windoze." "Can't you integrate it with Visual C?" "No. Micros~1 won't tell us how to integrate it, and VisualC isn't Open Source. Their make syntax is completely non-standard, anyway." *sigh* "Okay, how much does this Linux thing cost?" "It's free." "...You're kidding." "Nope." "Well then the tools must cost extra." "Nope, it comes bundled with a compiler, industry-standard make, perl, bash, and EMACS." "...For free." "Yes." "You're not bullsh*tting us?" "No." "Why didn't we know about this before?" "We wonder that ourselves a lot..."
I suspect a *BSD port is a simple matter of a recompile...
What about FEDEX? Do they want to start taxing me for using that service? Sure FEDEX is more reliable, friendlier, and professional, but it takes away from Uncle Sam's almighty dollar (seeing how Uncle Sam is becoming one big fat corporation).
Did you know that it is illegal to use FedEx to send anything other than "time-critical" material or packages?
I kid you not. The government has fined many companies hundreds of thousands of dollars for using FedEx to send non-critical packages. The USPS has a government-imposed monopoly on low-priority letter delivery. Attempt to evade the monopoly, and you will be fined.
Effective immediately, all board members are hereby terminated for gross incompetence. Please clean out your desks and vacate the premises by 17:00 local time. Remaining on Board of Education property after 17:00 will be treated as trespassing, and local law enforcement will be summoned.
Elections for replacements for the vacated posts will be held during the upcoming general elections in November.
Good folk, I respectfully submit that this issue is of gargantuan importance and that we must mobilize ourselves at once to inform our state legislators that this proposal is an astonishing step backwards in consumer protection, from the standpoints of both product liability and baseline consumer protections in the implied contracts governing retail sales.
As I see it, this legislative proposal is a transparent attempt to completely re-write the rules governing retail sales of copyrighted works. By enacting UCITA, purveyors of "information" -- which includes not only software, but digital recordings of music, books, movies, etc. -- can exempt themselves from consumer protection laws and fair use provisions in copyright law. I do not believe I overstate the issue when I assert that this is absolutely unacceptable. Advocates of software publishers (like the SPA) would counter that unfair provisions would not stand in court. The argument falls apart, however, when one observes that litigation is still obscenely expensive, giving the publishers an almost insurmountable advantage; and that such cases would be tested in the nauseatingly complex world of contract law, rather than in the (relatively) simpler and more straightforward arena of copyright and consumer protection law.
Moreover, I further argue that there is no compelling reason for this legislation to exist at all. Existing copyright law has proven more than adequate protection for software vendors and, to date, no one has offered an undesirable (not to mention realistic) scenario whose only solution is legislation of this kind. Many of the arguments I've heard run along these lines:
"Someone could disassemble our software and clone it."
Correct. This is also true of just about everything else you can buy in a retail venue, from power drills and washing machines to cars. All of these devices can be taken apart by their owners and inspected, tweaked, and learned from. None of the corresponding industries is in remote danger of going out of business.
People are going to take apart your software. Deal with it. If you don't want your product taken apart, you have precisely the same option as everyone else in all other industries: Don't sell it in a retail space.
"People don't need to disassemble their software."
How the fsck would you know? People don't "need" to take apart their cars, either, but it's done every day. General Motors is still in business. This is a non-argument.
"We spent $(LARGE_SUM_OF_MONEY) developing this software; that gives us the right to dictate how it may be used."
No, it doesn't. Again, the example of General Motors suffices. Indeed, if dollar figures are to be quoted, General Motors has an even more "compelling" argument to constrain use of their products after the fact, as their R&D investment easily dwarfs even Micros~1's. GM still hasn't made such demands on their customers, and GM continues to be profitable. Non-argument.
"It's our ball; you have to play by our rules."
Ah, the real reason emerges, and it is a valid one. However, you may find life more rewarding if you grow up. You are not an island. The most casual inspection of the Open Source movement illustrates that hoarding software is not only silly, it dooms you to stagnation.
However, there is the, I think, more important issue of how this would affect users of "non-traditional" computing systems. Think "Internet Appliance" here. All the proposals on the table for Internet Appliances are extremely closed systems, WebTV being the most obvious example. Do you know all the data the WebTV box is squirting back to Micros~1? With UCTIA in place, Micros~1 can make it illegal for you to find out. Want to install a proxy to filter out all the fscking ad banners? Sorry, that's not allowed, go to jail, do not pass Go...
Heck, forget the Internet Appliances, think Nintendo. Right now, Nintendo is laboring under the delusion that they have the right to dictate who can and can't write software for their machines. UCITA will allow them to enforce this idea. Same deal with cell phones, PDAs, and other "small-scale" "dedicated" devices where the user "doesn't need" to get in and fiddle with it. There are a lot of organizations with a lot of money trying to make these devices happen, and they are drooling all over the UCITA, which will allow them to lock down the box, screw the user, and absolve themselves of any responsibility.
I'm sorry, but this is just plain wrong, and I challenge anyone in the industry to argue convincingly otherwise. Anyone who wants to take apart their software and computers should be able to. Anyone who wants to write software for a particular platform should be able to, without having to justify themselves to the vendor. How would Gutenberg be remembered today if he had forbidden people from using his printing press to print anything other than "approved" writings?
While I agree widespread adoption of this travesty would be a boon to Open Source solutions, Open Source is still not the primary solution that comes to mind for all classes of computing products. Moreover, the average consumer doesn't understand the subtle implications of selecting Open Source over Micros~1 or Nintendo or whatever. While we could argue over whether they should understand such issues, I personally don't feel that Caveat Emptor needs to be raised to such stratospheric heights.
This is your mom and dad we're talking about here; people who think they will be protected from exploitation by existing hard-won consumer protection laws, when in fact they'll be "signing" their rights away. This isn't just us techno-geeks who will be screwed, it's everyone.
For a variety of (legitimate) reasons, I got to work quite late today and cannot, in good conscience, attend the shindig, since I'd have to leave too early. (I had hoped to buttonhole one of the Slashdot guys.)
For those who didn't know, nVidia has already released an OS-neutral driver suite for the RIVA 128, TNT, and TNT2 series of chips. Fully compilable source for the entire suite is provided under a BSD-ish license. (The source isn't very educational, however, as it's been run through 'cpp'.) Sample driver implementations and example code for Linux and Windoze-NT also accompany the distribution.
The suite is designed to function as low-level support for all rendering and display functions. These functions are exposed in an object-oriented-like fashion at a hardware level. Whatever the hardware doesn't support directly is thunked over to software. Thus, the public API for the NVidia chips is the hardware channels.
This has been out for several weeks now, but every time I've submitted it to Slashdot, it hasn't been approved. Oh, well...
According to previous posters, this works by taking the top polarizing filter off the LCD panel and putting in some "sunglasses" instead.
So, don't look directly at the panel. Look instead at its reflection in the surface of the desk. Most surfaces reflect polarized light. This is why Polaroid sunglasses work at all; they reduce glare by mounting polarizers at 90 degrees to the polarized axis of the reflected light.
Since the light coming off the panel is already polarized, when it bounces off the surface of the desk (which is a natural polarizer), the display's reflection should be somewhat intelligible. They have an exhibit demonstrating this sort of thing in San Francisco's Exploratorium.
It's not like everyone out here is gouging. In fact, it's all too easy to find stories of people putting their house up for sale and receiving offers above the asking price. Interest rates are low, money is plentiful (for the moment), and housing is in very short supply, so prices are high for those units that are available.
Apart from building more houses and easing the space crunch, it's difficult to see how this problem could be addressed. I can assure you rent control will not go over well here. It's also difficult to make the ethical case that some outside agency (government, whatever) should be able to tell people what they can/can't accept for their property.
However, one of the Bay Area's hallmarks is its commitment to open space preservation and well-planned, environmentally sensitive growth. So it's not really possible to plop a couple thousand housing units on a vacant sector of land. One needs only to look at the Los Angeles Metroplex for an example of what happens with unplanned development.
This problem will eventually solve itself as more housing units are built and companies establish remote offices or encourage telecommuting (the advent of the Internet makes this even easier than before). Howver, I think a rather more serious problem needing worrying about is what is going to happen to the banks holding mortgages on these properties when the bubble finally bursts. I'm concerned that property values may fall to as little as half their present level, and banks will be left with X dollars loaned out against collateral worth X/2. About the best we can hope for is that the fall won't be precipitous.
The first speedbump in this roaring market will happen around 1 January, 2000, if for nothing other then purely psychological reasons. If nothing else, it's going to be an interesting ride.
For those who are unfamiliar with the phenomonon of BLAZEMONGER ("If you don't shout when you say it, you suck when you play it."), you can read the complete archive of BLAZEMONGER "press releases." Still funny after all these years...
Sorry, but there are some things you can't agree to, even if you actually sign a contract (a crucial step that most shrinkwrap "agreements" conveniently neglect).
For example: You can't sign yourself into slavery. Slavery is illegal in this country, period. The slaver could wave your signed contract until doomsday; the court would still strike the term as illegal and unenforceable.
The problem here is that software vendors are trying to invent rights for themselves out of thin air (for no good reason that I can see), and get you to acknowledge and agree to observe those rights through the highly dubious mechanic of a shrinkwrap "agreement". It is therefore left to the courts to decide which invented rights are legitimate, and which are unenforceable under various laws. There's a lot of precedent to suggest that 3Dfx is going to lose.
As for the GPL, that's rather different. GPLed code is copyrighted. Thus, you don't have the right to make copies. However, if you fulfill the conditions stipulated in the GPL, then the GPL grants you a license, and you may make and distribute copies. If you don't fulfill those conditions (distributing copies without source code), then the GPL does not grant you permission to make copies, and you are therefore guilty of copyright infringement.
Note the subtle distinction:
GPL: "You may receive this software and do anything you want with it. But if you want to make and distribute copies (or derivative works thereof), you must agree to these terms before we'll grant you a license."
Typical shrinkwrap: "You must agree to these ridiculous conditions, limitations, and disclaimers, or you can't have this software at all.
(Which one is the product of the more mature mind is left as an exercise for the reader:-).)
APIs are not protectible intellectual property (and probably not "intellectual property" at all). 3Dfx is inventing rights out of thin air through its license "agreement". Sadly, contracts of this nature do not create intellectual property or rights therein. 3Dfx is simply indulging in bullying tactics.
The specifics of this case may be different, as Creative was obviously a source code licensee (with signed contracts and everything). We shall have to wait for the results of the discovery process to see what really happened. But your fundamental claim is incorrect: Inventors do not enjoy absolute rights over their inventions unless they keep them to themselves. Once you make it generally available to the public, the rules change.
If the defendants didn't want to be sued, they should not have accepted the license agreement.
Do not get me started about license "agreements." I regard them as an unethical legal fiction with absolutely no validity whatsoever. I have never agreed to the terms of any such contract, and continue to have no trouble obtaining commercial software. If you're bored, you can read my editorial on the subject.
3dfx is not dictating how the GLide API may be used.
Then why the spate of frivolous lawsuits, always, it seems, over GLIDE?
Where I work, we were offered an opportunity to obtain 3Dfx Voodoo3 boards for rock-bottom prices. I abstained from the offer for precisely the resaons you give. I regard 3Dfx's behavior as unacceptable, and I do not want my dollars used to support it.
I also am planning on getting an NVIDIA TNT2-based card, just as soon as I can find a card that has:
The Ultra chipset (highest speed)
DVD playback
Video out
Video in (streaming capture)
The closest I've found so far is the ASUS V3800-Ultra-Deluxe, but for some reason, ASUS gives you 3D glasses with that board (which I don't need), and sells DVD playback separately.
Careful how you swing those allegations; you could put someone's eye out.
Creative, being fairly intelligent, probably clean-roomed the API. Further, their lawyers are no doubt confident that they will prevail over 3Dfx's baseless claims that 3Dfx has the right to dictate how the GLIDE API may be used. Otherwise, they would never have signed off on the release of the drivers in the first place.
That's how I see 3Dfx over this issue. I really wish they would pull the broomstick out of their bum and realize that they have already lost the battle with OpenGL.
Back when 3Dfx was the only 3D accelerator in town, using GLIDE exclusively made sense. Now it's suicidal. If you're starting work on a new game, you use OpenGL. Period. It's cross-platform, and the performance is good and getting better thanks to everybody fighting over Quake frame rates.
I also believe that 3Dfx has no legitimate right to dictate how the GLIDE API may be used. That's a bit like Dennis Ritchie announcing that the C programming language can only be used on AT&T-built computers.
3Dfx should just drop this issue and compete on the merits of their products.
Don't make excuses for pirates. They do put companies out of business.
No. They don't.
The merest child could see that the Mac market was going to hell in a handbasket. Apple's perennial inability to decide on an OS strategy was a fairly decisive factor in sealing their fate as a niche player. None of these factors should come as a surprise to anyone.
One of the reasons that Apple was able to charge a premium for their hardware was that it was different from everything else, and they had no competition. If you buy a sound card for the Mac, you're going to pay 3X what you'd pay for an equivalent-quality card for the PC, because there's no competition driving the price down.
So here comes Micro Conversions offering a Voodoo2 card for the Mac for $150. But guess what. The exact same card is available for the PC for $50. Both are PCI cards, both have exactly the same rendering speeds, both don't care whether its a Pentium or a PowerPC stuffing the bytes down the FIFO. It does not take a neurosurgeon to figure out what's going to happen next.
So, while it was evident that there wasn't a market for Micro Conversions' board, there very clearly was a market for their driver. The fact that they chose to ignore all this information speaks directly to the shrewdness of company management.
And, since Micro Conversions was offering the driver free for download to anyone hitting their site, use of the term "piracy" is more than slightly disingenuous.
Many factors contributed to the demise of Micro Conversions, but "piracy" was not one of them. Bitlegging of software is not a problem, and never has been.
First of all, I am confident that future will come to pass. Ever since we invented the plow, it's the goal toward which mankind has been striving for millennia. It's simply too cool not to happen.
Second, ignoring the future doesn't make it go away. Problems you ignore today will come back to bite you or your children tomorrow. A future world with replicators has certain unavoidable economic realities. The mechanics of replicators is foretold in the memory chips of our computers. Therefore, the economy of the future exists today in our computers. So we'd better start thinking about it in the context of that future, since that's the direction in which we're headed. Otherwise, we're just fooling ourselves.
Finally, you're not the first to call me on the copyright notice. However, I would point out that, even in a future with replicators, intellectual property laws would still need to exist in some form to prevent theft/dilution of reputation. And that's why I put the copyright there, to prevent people passing off my words as their own. I actually encourage dissemination of my work; just let me know what you want to do.
Humans are still a fundamentally competetive species. I assert that, in the future, competition will be over reputation (among other things) rather than material wealth. So while people may not want for their fundamental needs, political power games may get a heck of a lot worse.
My essay also does not postulate pure socialism. Even in a universe with replicators, people will still be motivated by their own ambitions and goals, rather than the "needs of the whole". It's just that most of the mechanical day-to-day issues will be solved, and fighting over material wealth will be, well, silly.
So is jaywalking. So is driving faster than 65 MPH. What's your point?
The law is out of step with the physical and economic realities of digital media. Right now, this incongruity is beneficial to society as a whole, but it won't be long before this is no longer true, and the law will need to change. Read my essay on the subject.
...R&D expenses incurred during development of their own Mac card and driver.
Don't fool yourself. PCI is PCI, no matter what platform it's on. All Micro Conversions did was change the PCI Vendor and Device ID codes, a trivial operation. As for the driver, the sources to GLIDE are easy to obtain and port once you sign the papers with 3Dfx. So their total capital expenditure for R&D was probably on the order of one programmer-year. Pretty damn cheap by today's standards.
Also, it would have been fairly easy for them to cut deals with STB, Diamond, Creative, and other OEMs to get their driver included on the pack-in CD. Even at $2.50/copy, they would have made a lot more money selling unused Mac drivers to PC buyers than they ever would have selling solely to Mac owners at "market rate".
As others have already written, it sounds like Micro Conversions was done in by their own greed, shortsightedness, and lack of business acumen, not "piracy." If they had been even slightly clever, they would have sold the driver standalone for, say, $29.95. Or, if they insisted on being anal about the issue, they could have shipped the driver on floppies to the people who sent in the warranty registration card.
It is indeed a shame that some good programmers had to find new work. But the fault lies squarely with the company's management, not "piracy."
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, everyone, get this through your skulls (and I say this as a professional software engineer of over 20 years experience):
Bitlegging is NOT theft.
The SPA has done an excellent job of getting people to misconceptualize the economic reality of digital media.
Let's decompose the economics of software development:
Substitute for the variable $(PRODUCT) any tangible object, like "washing machine." Once you have developed and built $(PRODUCT), it is yours to dispose of as you see fit. You may choose to sell it, or you may choose to give it away. We may question how the developer arrived at the price, but the decision is ultimately up to the guy(s) who created $(PRODUCT). Therefore, the price assigned to $(PRODUCT) is arbitrary and has nothing whatsoever to do with its development costs. The consequence of this is that there is no entitlement to recover development costs, since there is no direct rational connection between development costs and retail costs.
You may think that's specious, disingenuous, or even insane reasoning. Ordinarily, I might agree with you, except that there's a little concept of "reasonable expectation of return." If you put $10 on number 22 on the roulette wheel, do you realistically expect a return from that investment? Of course not; the odds are stacked against you. Same deal with spending a lot of money digging a hole in the ground: You may strike oil/gold/uranium, but more than likely you won't. (A lot of people are about to learn this lesson very harshly when the Internet stock boom falls apart.)
How do you mitigate against wasting your money? By doing research on your target investment. In this case, people heavily invested in software development have not done their homework. It is an incontrovertible fact that digital information -- software, images, sounds -- can be copied easily, and this fact is not about to change. That's what it was designed to do. So, how stupid do you have to be before you stand there proclaiming that you have an inalienable right to expect people won't copy your stuff, when the medium is fundamentally designed to behave otherwise?
Okay, say you don't buy that line of reasoning. Try this out:
Note that this is true no matter what the value of the variable $(PRODUCT) is. If I use a matter replicator to make a copy of your washing machine, you still have yours with which to clean your clothes. If I use a CD-ROM drive to make a copy of Quake, you can still play your original. Since you haven't been deprived of anything, you can't claim theft.
Final point:
Result: No sale.
Result: No sale.
Thus, the argument that bitlegging results in lost revenue largely falls apart, since the outcome of both situations is the same: No sale.
You may argue that you have lost "potential revenue," since your potential customer base has been reduced by the number of unsanctioned copies. Guess what: This isn't theft, either. Anyone who has held common stock in a public company knows that one of the hazards of stock ownership is a thing called "dilution." Dilution is what happens when the company issues more shares; the potential market for the shares you own is reduced. Nobody in the stock market labors under the delusion that this is "theft". And although a lot of people grumble about it when it happens, it's not even illegal (unless fraud is involved). Unsanctioned copying of software results in the same economic dynamic which, if you've done your homework, should not come as a surprise to anybody.
So, what have we established?
Now, you can make an ethical argument against copying software, and I would in fact, in large part, agree with you. But software publishers (and anyone else who can't think beyond their own pocketbook) are asking us to criminalize this activity.
Sorry, but that idea is rock-stupid. It's like passing a law forbidding gravity from applying to certain objects: it illustrates a fundamental misunderstanding of how the medium operates. Digital bits are and forever will be easily copied, and you must live in that reality, or you're just setting yourself up for one heck of an ulcer.
But that's not what irritates me most about this. No. It's the fact that they picked on a guy who had no hope of defending himself against the charges. The N.E.T. Act must have the SPA giggling with glee since, because of the way the law is written, they're never going to encounter a defendant who can actually put up a fight. Which, from their track record, is about par for the course for the SPA.
Start changing the way you think about this stuff, or you are all going to be serious fscked when matter replicators show up.
Schwab
You are strongly advised to check up on the history of a little-known independent game development house called The Dreamer's Guild, a company founded on almost exactly the same principles you mention. Talin was on the executive staff of The Dreamer's Guild.
Briefly, the Guild started getting some good contracts, and the niggly little details of running a business began to get in their way (things like payroll, benefits administration, legal counsel, answering the phones, leasing office space, etc.). So the Guild had to invent management. This worked sorta kinda okay until, one day, the Guild made a poor choice for their CEO, who sank the company.
I'm sure Talin would be the first to tell you that such an idea can still work, but I think you need to disabuse yourself of the illusion that "management" is irrelevant. Once you exceed a certain size (which is surprisingly small), it becomes necessary. I'd strongly recommend talking to Talin (or someone else in the industry) so you can get an idea of all the landmines you need to avoid in order to succeed.
Schwab
I imagine it has something to do with the deal they (likely) cut with Cygnus to develop their tools:
"Hi, we need gcc ported to this CPU."
"No problem. Here's your Linux executable."
"Uh, can we get a WIN32 binary?"
*snicker* "Not easily. Besides, there's no decent make for Windoze."
"Can't you integrate it with Visual C?"
"No. Micros~1 won't tell us how to integrate it, and VisualC isn't Open Source. Their make syntax is completely non-standard, anyway."
*sigh* "Okay, how much does this Linux thing cost?"
"It's free."
"...You're kidding."
"Nope."
"Well then the tools must cost extra."
"Nope, it comes bundled with a compiler, industry-standard make, perl, bash, and EMACS."
"...For free."
"Yes."
"You're not bullsh*tting us?"
"No."
"Why didn't we know about this before?"
"We wonder that ourselves a lot..."
I suspect a *BSD port is a simple matter of a recompile...
Schwab
Did you know that it is illegal to use FedEx to send anything other than "time-critical" material or packages?
I kid you not. The government has fined many companies hundreds of thousands of dollars for using FedEx to send non-critical packages. The USPS has a government-imposed monopoly on low-priority letter delivery. Attempt to evade the monopoly, and you will be fined.
Schwab
Open Note to Kansas State Board of Education:
Effective immediately, all board members are hereby terminated for gross incompetence. Please clean out your desks and vacate the premises by 17:00 local time. Remaining on Board of Education property after 17:00 will be treated as trespassing, and local law enforcement will be summoned.
Elections for replacements for the vacated posts will be held during the upcoming general elections in November.
Schwab
Good folk, I respectfully submit that this issue is of gargantuan importance and that we must mobilize ourselves at once to inform our state legislators that this proposal is an astonishing step backwards in consumer protection, from the standpoints of both product liability and baseline consumer protections in the implied contracts governing retail sales.
As I see it, this legislative proposal is a transparent attempt to completely re-write the rules governing retail sales of copyrighted works. By enacting UCITA, purveyors of "information" -- which includes not only software, but digital recordings of music, books, movies, etc. -- can exempt themselves from consumer protection laws and fair use provisions in copyright law. I do not believe I overstate the issue when I assert that this is absolutely unacceptable. Advocates of software publishers (like the SPA) would counter that unfair provisions would not stand in court. The argument falls apart, however, when one observes that litigation is still obscenely expensive, giving the publishers an almost insurmountable advantage; and that such cases would be tested in the nauseatingly complex world of contract law, rather than in the (relatively) simpler and more straightforward arena of copyright and consumer protection law.
Moreover, I further argue that there is no compelling reason for this legislation to exist at all. Existing copyright law has proven more than adequate protection for software vendors and, to date, no one has offered an undesirable (not to mention realistic) scenario whose only solution is legislation of this kind. Many of the arguments I've heard run along these lines:
People are going to take apart your software. Deal with it. If you don't want your product taken apart, you have precisely the same option as everyone else in all other industries: Don't sell it in a retail space.
However, there is the, I think, more important issue of how this would affect users of "non-traditional" computing systems. Think "Internet Appliance" here. All the proposals on the table for Internet Appliances are extremely closed systems, WebTV being the most obvious example. Do you know all the data the WebTV box is squirting back to Micros~1? With UCTIA in place, Micros~1 can make it illegal for you to find out. Want to install a proxy to filter out all the fscking ad banners? Sorry, that's not allowed, go to jail, do not pass Go...
Heck, forget the Internet Appliances, think Nintendo. Right now, Nintendo is laboring under the delusion that they have the right to dictate who can and can't write software for their machines. UCITA will allow them to enforce this idea. Same deal with cell phones, PDAs, and other "small-scale" "dedicated" devices where the user "doesn't need" to get in and fiddle with it. There are a lot of organizations with a lot of money trying to make these devices happen, and they are drooling all over the UCITA, which will allow them to lock down the box, screw the user, and absolve themselves of any responsibility.
I'm sorry, but this is just plain wrong, and I challenge anyone in the industry to argue convincingly otherwise. Anyone who wants to take apart their software and computers should be able to. Anyone who wants to write software for a particular platform should be able to, without having to justify themselves to the vendor. How would Gutenberg be remembered today if he had forbidden people from using his printing press to print anything other than "approved" writings?
While I agree widespread adoption of this travesty would be a boon to Open Source solutions, Open Source is still not the primary solution that comes to mind for all classes of computing products. Moreover, the average consumer doesn't understand the subtle implications of selecting Open Source over Micros~1 or Nintendo or whatever. While we could argue over whether they should understand such issues, I personally don't feel that Caveat Emptor needs to be raised to such stratospheric heights.
This is your mom and dad we're talking about here; people who think they will be protected from exploitation by existing hard-won consumer protection laws, when in fact they'll be "signing" their rights away. This isn't just us techno-geeks who will be screwed, it's everyone.
I urge active opposition to the UCITA.
Schwab
For a variety of (legitimate) reasons, I got to work quite late today and cannot, in good conscience, attend the shindig, since I'd have to leave too early. (I had hoped to buttonhole one of the Slashdot guys.)
My fondest greetings to all who attend.
Schwab
For those who didn't know, nVidia has already released an OS-neutral driver suite for the RIVA 128, TNT, and TNT2 series of chips. Fully compilable source for the entire suite is provided under a BSD-ish license. (The source isn't very educational, however, as it's been run through 'cpp'.) Sample driver implementations and example code for Linux and Windoze-NT also accompany the distribution.
The suite is designed to function as low-level support for all rendering and display functions. These functions are exposed in an object-oriented-like fashion at a hardware level. Whatever the hardware doesn't support directly is thunked over to software. Thus, the public API for the NVidia chips is the hardware channels.
This has been out for several weeks now, but every time I've submitted it to Slashdot, it hasn't been approved. Oh, well...
Schwab
Since when is Janet Reno an architect of foreign policy? Who gave her diplomatic status?
The US Ambassador to Germany needs to put her in line posthaste.
Schwab
According to previous posters, this works by taking the top polarizing filter off the LCD panel and putting in some "sunglasses" instead.
So, don't look directly at the panel. Look instead at its reflection in the surface of the desk. Most surfaces reflect polarized light. This is why Polaroid sunglasses work at all; they reduce glare by mounting polarizers at 90 degrees to the polarized axis of the reflected light.
Since the light coming off the panel is already polarized, when it bounces off the surface of the desk (which is a natural polarizer), the display's reflection should be somewhat intelligible. They have an exhibit demonstrating this sort of thing in San Francisco's Exploratorium.
Schwab
Welcome to the dark side of the free market.
It's not like everyone out here is gouging. In fact, it's all too easy to find stories of people putting their house up for sale and receiving offers above the asking price. Interest rates are low, money is plentiful (for the moment), and housing is in very short supply, so prices are high for those units that are available.
Apart from building more houses and easing the space crunch, it's difficult to see how this problem could be addressed. I can assure you rent control will not go over well here. It's also difficult to make the ethical case that some outside agency (government, whatever) should be able to tell people what they can/can't accept for their property.
However, one of the Bay Area's hallmarks is its commitment to open space preservation and well-planned, environmentally sensitive growth. So it's not really possible to plop a couple thousand housing units on a vacant sector of land. One needs only to look at the Los Angeles Metroplex for an example of what happens with unplanned development.
This problem will eventually solve itself as more housing units are built and companies establish remote offices or encourage telecommuting (the advent of the Internet makes this even easier than before). Howver, I think a rather more serious problem needing worrying about is what is going to happen to the banks holding mortgages on these properties when the bubble finally bursts. I'm concerned that property values may fall to as little as half their present level, and banks will be left with X dollars loaned out against collateral worth X/2. About the best we can hope for is that the fall won't be precipitous.
The first speedbump in this roaring market will happen around 1 January, 2000, if for nothing other then purely psychological reasons. If nothing else, it's going to be an interesting ride.
Schwab
For those who are unfamiliar with the phenomonon of BLAZEMONGER ("If you don't shout when you say it, you suck when you play it."), you can read the complete archive of BLAZEMONGER "press releases." Still funny after all these years...
Schwab
Sorry, but there are some things you can't agree to, even if you actually sign a contract (a crucial step that most shrinkwrap "agreements" conveniently neglect).
For example: You can't sign yourself into slavery. Slavery is illegal in this country, period. The slaver could wave your signed contract until doomsday; the court would still strike the term as illegal and unenforceable.
The problem here is that software vendors are trying to invent rights for themselves out of thin air (for no good reason that I can see), and get you to acknowledge and agree to observe those rights through the highly dubious mechanic of a shrinkwrap "agreement". It is therefore left to the courts to decide which invented rights are legitimate, and which are unenforceable under various laws. There's a lot of precedent to suggest that 3Dfx is going to lose.
As for the GPL, that's rather different. GPLed code is copyrighted. Thus, you don't have the right to make copies. However, if you fulfill the conditions stipulated in the GPL, then the GPL grants you a license, and you may make and distribute copies. If you don't fulfill those conditions (distributing copies without source code), then the GPL does not grant you permission to make copies, and you are therefore guilty of copyright infringement.
Note the subtle distinction:
(Which one is the product of the more mature mind is left as an exercise for the reader :-).)
Schwab
Incorrect.
APIs are not protectible intellectual property (and probably not "intellectual property" at all). 3Dfx is inventing rights out of thin air through its license "agreement". Sadly, contracts of this nature do not create intellectual property or rights therein. 3Dfx is simply indulging in bullying tactics.
The specifics of this case may be different, as Creative was obviously a source code licensee (with signed contracts and everything). We shall have to wait for the results of the discovery process to see what really happened. But your fundamental claim is incorrect: Inventors do not enjoy absolute rights over their inventions unless they keep them to themselves. Once you make it generally available to the public, the rules change.
Schwab
Do not get me started about license "agreements." I regard them as an unethical legal fiction with absolutely no validity whatsoever. I have never agreed to the terms of any such contract, and continue to have no trouble obtaining commercial software. If you're bored, you can read my editorial on the subject.
Then why the spate of frivolous lawsuits, always, it seems, over GLIDE?
Schwab
Agreed.
Where I work, we were offered an opportunity to obtain 3Dfx Voodoo3 boards for rock-bottom prices. I abstained from the offer for precisely the resaons you give. I regard 3Dfx's behavior as unacceptable, and I do not want my dollars used to support it.
I also am planning on getting an NVIDIA TNT2-based card, just as soon as I can find a card that has:
The closest I've found so far is the ASUS V3800-Ultra-Deluxe, but for some reason, ASUS gives you 3D glasses with that board (which I don't need), and sells DVD playback separately.
Schwab
Careful how you swing those allegations; you could put someone's eye out.
Creative, being fairly intelligent, probably clean-roomed the API. Further, their lawyers are no doubt confident that they will prevail over 3Dfx's baseless claims that 3Dfx has the right to dictate how the GLIDE API may be used. Otherwise, they would never have signed off on the release of the drivers in the first place.
Schwab
That's how I see 3Dfx over this issue. I really wish they would pull the broomstick out of their bum and realize that they have already lost the battle with OpenGL.
Back when 3Dfx was the only 3D accelerator in town, using GLIDE exclusively made sense. Now it's suicidal. If you're starting work on a new game, you use OpenGL. Period. It's cross-platform, and the performance is good and getting better thanks to everybody fighting over Quake frame rates.
I also believe that 3Dfx has no legitimate right to dictate how the GLIDE API may be used. That's a bit like Dennis Ritchie announcing that the C programming language can only be used on AT&T-built computers.
3Dfx should just drop this issue and compete on the merits of their products.
Schwab
No. They don't.
The merest child could see that the Mac market was going to hell in a handbasket. Apple's perennial inability to decide on an OS strategy was a fairly decisive factor in sealing their fate as a niche player. None of these factors should come as a surprise to anyone.
One of the reasons that Apple was able to charge a premium for their hardware was that it was different from everything else, and they had no competition. If you buy a sound card for the Mac, you're going to pay 3X what you'd pay for an equivalent-quality card for the PC, because there's no competition driving the price down.
So here comes Micro Conversions offering a Voodoo2 card for the Mac for $150. But guess what. The exact same card is available for the PC for $50. Both are PCI cards, both have exactly the same rendering speeds, both don't care whether its a Pentium or a PowerPC stuffing the bytes down the FIFO. It does not take a neurosurgeon to figure out what's going to happen next.
So, while it was evident that there wasn't a market for Micro Conversions' board, there very clearly was a market for their driver. The fact that they chose to ignore all this information speaks directly to the shrewdness of company management.
And, since Micro Conversions was offering the driver free for download to anyone hitting their site, use of the term "piracy" is more than slightly disingenuous.
Many factors contributed to the demise of Micro Conversions, but "piracy" was not one of them. Bitlegging of software is not a problem, and never has been.
Schwab
First of all, I am confident that future will come to pass. Ever since we invented the plow, it's the goal toward which mankind has been striving for millennia. It's simply too cool not to happen.
Second, ignoring the future doesn't make it go away. Problems you ignore today will come back to bite you or your children tomorrow. A future world with replicators has certain unavoidable economic realities. The mechanics of replicators is foretold in the memory chips of our computers. Therefore, the economy of the future exists today in our computers. So we'd better start thinking about it in the context of that future, since that's the direction in which we're headed. Otherwise, we're just fooling ourselves.
Finally, you're not the first to call me on the copyright notice. However, I would point out that, even in a future with replicators, intellectual property laws would still need to exist in some form to prevent theft/dilution of reputation. And that's why I put the copyright there, to prevent people passing off my words as their own. I actually encourage dissemination of my work; just let me know what you want to do.
Schwab
I agree.
Humans are still a fundamentally competetive species. I assert that, in the future, competition will be over reputation (among other things) rather than material wealth. So while people may not want for their fundamental needs, political power games may get a heck of a lot worse.
My essay also does not postulate pure socialism. Even in a universe with replicators, people will still be motivated by their own ambitions and goals, rather than the "needs of the whole". It's just that most of the mechanical day-to-day issues will be solved, and fighting over material wealth will be, well, silly.
Schwab
So is jaywalking. So is driving faster than 65 MPH. What's your point?
The law is out of step with the physical and economic realities of digital media. Right now, this incongruity is beneficial to society as a whole, but it won't be long before this is no longer true, and the law will need to change. Read my essay on the subject.
Schwab
You know... I actually rather like this.
Schwab
Don't fool yourself. PCI is PCI, no matter what platform it's on. All Micro Conversions did was change the PCI Vendor and Device ID codes, a trivial operation. As for the driver, the sources to GLIDE are easy to obtain and port once you sign the papers with 3Dfx. So their total capital expenditure for R&D was probably on the order of one programmer-year. Pretty damn cheap by today's standards.
Also, it would have been fairly easy for them to cut deals with STB, Diamond, Creative, and other OEMs to get their driver included on the pack-in CD. Even at $2.50/copy, they would have made a lot more money selling unused Mac drivers to PC buyers than they ever would have selling solely to Mac owners at "market rate".
Try again.
Schwab
As others have already written, it sounds like Micro Conversions was done in by their own greed, shortsightedness, and lack of business acumen, not "piracy." If they had been even slightly clever, they would have sold the driver standalone for, say, $29.95. Or, if they insisted on being anal about the issue, they could have shipped the driver on floppies to the people who sent in the warranty registration card.
It is indeed a shame that some good programmers had to find new work. But the fault lies squarely with the company's management, not "piracy."
Try again.
Schwab