From kragen@dnaco.net Fri Jul 3 02:10:39 1998 Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1998 02:10:38 -0400 (EDT) From: Kragen To: systalk@ml.org Subject: Re: [ST] Bill Could Make Seeking Security Holes Illegal In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Keywords: X-UID: 219 Status: O X-Status: On Thu, 2 Jul 1998 coder@ibm.net wrote: > On 02/07/98 at 11:46 PM, kragen@pobox.com (Kragen) said: > >It's > >clear to essentially everyone who's investigated the matter that > >programmers, no less than font designers or fashion designers, can make a > >good living without intellectual property "protections". > > Font designers can and do have a very tough time of it, and in general are > not rewarded commensurate with the value of the products they produce > (this is, BTW a field I'm well familiar with). Programmers typically fall > into the same class. I can't comment on fashion designers. Well, while I don't know that much up-close about either of these two fields, I have made the following two observations: - Some people do indeed make a living at both of these occupations. - There are a heck of a lot of fonts and fashions out there. This is what IP protection is intended to achieve (at least here in the US), so IP protection is not necessary, at least in these fields. I know a lot of font designers feel ripped-off and have a hard time of it. > I used to write 3rd party apps for the CAD market. Single seat licenses > for the stuff I wrote typically sold in the $3,000 - $7,000 range, one had > a single seat price of almost $15,000. Were those products to have been > open source, or otherwise unprotected: > > a) They never would have been written. There was just not enough demand > by any *single* customer to get them written. > > b) They would have never been written as there would have been no > effective way of of recouping the expense of their development. > > c) They would have never been written as there would have been no > effective way to get funding for them in a timely manner. This logic appears to make sense. But when it comes to real software, open-source software with small markets and tremendous up-front development costs gets written anyway. Linux, from 1992 to 1994, was just such software. Emacs, from 1970 to 1980, was, too. At the moment, there are also such pieces of software as: - Strata, a GPLed "geology package for ocean basin modeling and display" - TOCHNOG, a GPLed finite element analysis program . . . which seem to me to fit your criteria of very few users and enormous development costs. Perhaps I have misunderstood the magnitude of your undertakings. Perhaps also the examples I have given are not that good -- they have been added to the SAL list in the last few months, which means they're probably not ready for prime time. > As it happens of course, they were written, and many millions of people > indirectly benefit from that fact daily in driving on the roads, riding in > the planes, living in the houses, shopping in the stores etc etc etc etc > whose CAD files were processed by my tools. Hey, that's great. More power to you. I think proprietary software has its place, for now. I hope open-source software will make that place shrink as quickly as possible, maybe even down to nothing eventually. Meanwhile, of course we should continue writing software and getting it used in every way possible! > Such things do not and cannot work in the GPL universe -- not on any > timeframe that would make them useful. This is not to say that others > cannot, just that the field has limits. It was said that commercial-quality C compilers would never be developed under such a license, because it did not and could not work. Then gcc appeared. It was said that commercial-quality OS kernels for PCs would never be developed under such a license, because it did not and could not work. Then Linux appeared. It was said that really usable GUI tools would never be developed under such a license, because it did not and could not work. Then the GIMP, KDE, GNOME, and DDD appeared. You may be right. But I suspect that the limits of the field are broader than you think they are, because in the past, they have proved broader than most people thought they were. Kragen