Re: Check that out: THe Bottom Line: Software and copyright

From: Tsu Dho Nimh (tsudhonimh_at_lumbercartel.com)
Date: 10/06/03 

Date: Mon, 06 Oct 2003 04:43:24 -0700

varum <varum534@aol.com> wrote:

>http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20031003-052555-4332r

>By Gregory Fossedal

Alexis de Toqueville Foundaiton, and (shudder) an investment
consultant ... who has no clue what he's writing about.

>The bottom line for global investors fishing for a few good shorts at these high levels
>for the U.S. technology market is, which of these sectors is most vulnerable to the
>kind of domestic and international assault seen in, for example, the music recording
>industry -- which has seen sales plummet in recent months despite the too-late effort
>to battle off low-cost piracy abroad and no-cost sharing over the internet.

Ignoring the fact that they are releasing FEWER titles, and
trying to push manufactured "talent" in an overcrowded market.

>Straightforward piracy is an issue solved for the software industry 25 years ago by a
>brilliant young executive named Bill Gates,

  Which is why Microsoft uses the BSA ... to fight the problem
His Billness solved 25 years ago?

>who realized that only by basing software
>on undisclosed "source code" could the industry ever really thrive.

  Undisclosed source code did NOT originate with Microsoft.

>Today, however, the quasi-monopoly enjoyed (in various sectors) by Microsoft

  Sorry Gregory, but Micorsoft is a convicted monopolist, under
totally ineffective sanctions, but there's nothing "quasi" about
them.

>It won't be long before some Third World country reverse engineers a workable version
>of one of the older (and better, actually) versions of Windows(r) -- perhaps even using
>some of the source code the company has willingly dribbled out in recent years to
>shield itself from various anti-trust cases.

Why bother ... they can work on WINE instead, legallyt6, an dget
it to run even more Windows software. I believe that Third World
entertainment company called Disney recently hired a project out
to get Adobe Photoshop to work on Linux.

>At that point, neither the U.S.,
>diplomatically, nor an army of lawyers from its unpopular corporate giants, will be
>able to do more than the vast number of smaller companies that have already given up in
>international patent cases.

Again - why bother with reverse engineering obsolete crap by
Microsoft when you can legally work on source code.

>The problem of outright theft, however, is aided and abetted by a more subtle, but in
>the long run even more dangerous, threat to proprietary software: the "open source"
>movement. Open source can be a misnomer, but in general, open source is a product of
>thousands of programmers who agree to share their work in developing a joint product
>with revealed code -- hence, "open source."

>There are now many programs developed in
>this way, such as the operating system Linux, which might better be called "mixed
>source" or "shared proprietary source" -- because under the licensing arrangements for
>using Linux, programmers who improve or make changes to the system must agree that
>their innovations become the property of the system.

Absolutely wrong: YOu only have to hand back the changes IF you
are redistributing them outside your company. I know of quite a
few companies that use heavily adapted GPL programs internally.

>Linux and many programs built on it (such as the Linux-based office suite) function
>comparably to Microsoft, Oracle, and Sun products. The difference is, they're
>practically free. They thus fit in to a world in which consumers expect intellectual
>property to approach the near-zero marginal cost they now enjoy in sharing music,
>buying or selling stocks, making long-distance telephone calls over the internet, and
>logging on to the net itself using wifi.

And why not? I see no reason to spend more than necessary. It's
the "penny saved, penny earned" philosophy of Benjamin Franklin I
learned.

>These products and the service they may need, to be sure, are not truly free over time.
>Large companies, not to mention whole countries, that are now dumping Microsoft to run
>their networks on Linux, want help servicing their products. Hence such Davids like Red
>Hat and VA Linux have sprung up and -- over the last two years -- significantly
>outperformed the stock price of the proprietary software Goliaths.

VA Linux ... didn't they crash spectacularly aftre the IPO?

>Still, on the whole, no cost up-front is hard to beat. The software giants already
>concede their products have no advantages over open source products in terms of
>security and reliability. They hope to maintain sales based on superior service and
>customer service, but then again, none of the companies mentioned have a reputation for
>much other than arrogance when it comes to dealing with customers.

OK ... they go the way of the dinosaur, and the 19th-century
robber barons like Carnagie and Vanderbilt.

>"It is no accident," as the Marxists like to say, that China and India were able to
>work out a common agreement to implement open source software for many government
>systems. This is the least unlikely partnership one can conceive short of a joint
>venture firm named Sharon & Arafat.

Of course it's no accident, but what the hell do the Marxists
have to do with it? Don't you credit your "little borwn
brothres" and your "little yellow brothers" with having the
intelligence to recognize that the Microsoft tax is a heavy
burden on them, and that open source software puts them in
control of their data. Technological colonialism is still
colonialism - the tribute is money and not opium, but the idea is
the same ... run the weak countries for the benefit of the rich
folk in the strong ones.

And it's one reason why Linus Torvalds and RMS should be
nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize - their software managed to
do what diplomats have failed to do ... get Korea, Japan and
China TALKING and COOPERATING.

>According to a reliable U.S. official familiar with Chinese industrial espionage
>efforts, the use of Linux products by those governments is only the beginning.

What does Linux have to do with industrial espionage? IT'S OPEN
SOURCE!

>"The Chinese and the Indians both plan to become a hub for developing countries eager to
>escape from U.S. software 'hegemony,' if you will," the source said. Today, the
>People's Bank of China. Tomorrow, a billion desktops in India, another billion in
>China, and another quarter of a billion in Brazil.

He forgot Peru and Gremany and the UK. And I applaud their
efforts at unchaining their IT and local software industries.
The less money they ship to Redmond, the more money they will
have to spend locally, and the less foreign aid we'll be asked to
send.

>But cost-cutting misses the point. It didn't help the recording industry; consumers are
>balking at paying $25 for a CD that costs a few pennies to produce, but they will also
>balk at paying $15 or $10.

I wouldn't balk at paying $10 ... IF the music was good, and IF I
knew the artists weren't being ripped off by the record
distributors.

> "Let them eat Microsoft," is the
>motto, and, to be sure, there is a special hatred reserved only for Bill Gates among
>the community of programmers who couldn't get hired, or compete, with the Redmond
>wunderkind over several generations of products.

You assume they wanted to get hired and weren't, and it's sour
grapes. It isn't. The distaste shown for Microsoft and Gates is
because of their dirty tricks to eliminate supreior products
(rmeembre, they are currenlty in two legal battles for the way
they treated competitors and stole patents) and their crappy
products that cause headaches even for those that do not use
them, such as my Linux-lusing friend whois getting hammered with
hundreds of Microsoft-based owrm emails every minute.

  As for not competing, why are you writing this column if those
that weren't hired by Microsoft weren't creating something
competitive?

>Even so, it's a better guess that Microsoft, with the most cash and the largest house
>and the most solid oligopoly power, will out-survive Oracle and Sun. Ultimately it,
>too, is vulnerable.

Not ultimately ... It's going to go before Oracle - at least they
have a good database.

>Sun and Oracle remain good shorts, as they have for more than a year. Microsoft is
>becoming a good short, too; at these levels, it is already time to start nibbling. On
>the buy side, there are dozens of feisty young companies -- Red Hat, Sco Group, and VA
>Software -- that are already taking advantage of the new global paradigm.

SCO can't be sold short ... the brokers have no shares ot loan,
because it's already shorted to the max.

>The little competitors, indeed, are already fighting amongst themselves, much as some
>types of insects and carnivorous fish eat themselves. Heck, they're already suing each
>other. In this too, the software industry takes much hope,

No. SCO is suing IBM for supposedly breaking a contract, and
Redhat is suing SCO for lying about REdhat. A German Linux group
sued SCO over there and SCO folded rather than fight.

>much as the recording
>industry delighted in its ability to crush this music-sharing program, or that overseas
>piracy operation. Pirates, one can kill -- but piracy, especially once it is welcomed
>into the intellectual community, just changes its address. And termites, unless
>completely exterminated, just keep munching.

Your equating open source with piracy is a sleazy tactic.

>Sell the proprietary software makers, buy the feisty open-source servicers.

Probably the only sensible thins he said.

Tsu Dho Nimh 

-- 
When businesses invoke the "protection of consumers," it's a lot like 
politicians invoking morality and children - grab your wallet and/or 
your kid and run for your life.

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