Re: Copyright Misuse Doctrine in Apple v. Psystar

[amicus_curious]

"Alan Mackenzie" <acm@muc.de> wrote in message 
news:gnujma$19h9$1@colin2.muc.de...
> In gnu.misc.discuss amicus_curious <ACDC@sti.net> wrote:
>
> > "Alan Mackenzie" <acm@muc.de> wrote in message
> > news:gnrq0u$8t6$1@colin2.muc.de...
>
> > > It seems to me, you're in favour of ignoring the GPL's conditions, yet
> > > are in favour of conforming to the conditions of proprietary licenses.
> > > Why?
>
> > As I stated elsewhere in this thread, I am opposed to copyright of
> > software source entirely.
>
> OK, fair enough.  Abolishing copyright on source code would give rise to
> problems of definition, e.g. for interpreted languages, but no worse
> than what we have at the moment, I suppose.
>
> However, the lack of copyright on source code would extinguish free
> software, or at the very least considerably impede it.
>
> > Keep it a secret if you don't want others to know.  If you want people
> > to learn about your stuff, go ahead and publish the source and be happy
> > that you helped others along.  In either case, quit being so obnoxious.
>
> Well, thanks, and all that, yet again!  I'm happy for people to learn
> about my code, and modify it.  I would NOT be happy about somebody
> starting off from my code and building their own proprietary stuff based
> on it.  I'm just not keen on being taken advantage of, of being
> exploited, thank you very much.  However, if that somebody contributes
> his enhancements back to the project, we all win.
I'm a believer in the land of opportunity myself.  I am more inspired by 
there being a real chance for a rags to riches story than I am dismayed 
about someone else's success due to luck or pluck.  Bill Gates made an 
exhorbitant pile from Microsoft, but to be fair, hundreds of working stiffs 
got multiple millions along with Bill.  Some, like Allen and Ballmer got 
multiple billions, and I am sure there a single billionairs and 
hundred-millionairs in there too.  Steve Jobs made a bundle, too, as did 
Michael Dell and others riding the Microsoft coat-tails.

It would seem to me that anyone wanting to be of service to the world, as 
the FOSS advocates claim that they want to be, would not be so resentful of 
the rest.  If you resent someone else making money, what is the solution? 
That no one make any money?  That is not good in the long term in a society 
where the money keeps the economy strong.

> I asked you a while back to consider why the GPL is such a popular
> licence for free software.  The above is one answer.  Hackers are happier
> contributing their skills when they're confident they're not being used
> as unpaid labour for Megabucks Incorporated.
>
> > I do not know of any opportunity for anyone to take an open source
> > product and convert it to commercial, proprietary use.
>
> Really?  Apple saw fit to take the BSD kernel and use it as the basis of
> OS/X.
But they really do not sell it on the open market like Windows.  They sell a 
comprehensive solution that is dependent on their hardware, just like 
Actiontec sells a router as a comprehensive functional device.  What is 
under the hood is not important, rather it is just part of the package. 
Windows, however, is a commercial product on its own, sold to companies who 
make competing computer systems and to individuals who want to improve what 
they have or else build their own machines.  Apple had to spend a lot of 
money on their proprietary UI as well.

Also, this is not much of an opportunity.  If you own an extensive hardware 
manufacturing company such as Apple, you can avail yourself of the freeBSD 
and save some R&D bucks for your overall product.  But that is a very 
limited opportunity as opportunities go.  Very few have such a resource to 
use to leverage success.  Certainly Red Hat and other Linux suppliers of 
commercial distributions took similar advantage of the "free" as in beer 
cost of Linux, too, but you have to invest a couple of billion overall in 
infrastructure in order to tap that well of opportunity and they are 
essentially competing as a low price provider in the Unix server market, 
which is not such a wonderful place to be.

If you wanted to commercialize Apache or OO or PHP, where would you run to? 
The best you can hope for is to come up with a desireable add-on that people 
see as very desirable to have and that others cannot clone so easily if you 
keep it a secret.  So far I don't know where anyone has done that.  The 
improvements to Linux seem to come from the original project team or else 
from the commercial suppliers like Red Hat who have a means to extract a 
financial benefit from their efforts.

> > It does not make any marketing sense unless you modify it so
> > extensively that it has substantially different fit, form, and feel and
> > provides a highly recognizable benefit to the users who would buy it
> > because of that.
>
> Are you aware of the case that sparked the GPL into existence?  The Lisp
> Machine had been developed at MIT as a fully open system, much as you're
> advocating at the moment.  In the mid 1980s, some of the collaborators
> left MIT, forming a company, Symbolics, to market their own Lisp
> Machines, using the unrestricted code from MIT.  They made proprietary
> enhancements to it, gaining an unfair advantage.  This created a great
> deal of resentment in those left behind, among them Richard Stallman.
What should these folk have gotten in return for their innovation?  I am not 
at all familiar with the details, but it seems to me that anyone who is 
clever enough to invent something that others can use and that other 
appreciate enough to pay for deserve the fruits of their innovation.  If you 
write a good novel, you can prosper, why not a convenient program utility?

> One of the GPL's major goals was to prevent the like happening in the
> future.  Look up the history of the MIT Lisp Machine, Symbolics, Lisp
> Machines Inc., and you might come to understand the GPL better.
Exactly true, I think.  I do not subscribe to the "opportunity is an evil" 
theory, though.  Someone has to be smart enough to see an improvement and 
talented enough to implement it and dedicated enough to promote it.  They 
deserve the reward.

> > The big projects, say Linux itself or OO or the GNU utilities, are so
> > complex to begin with that I don't think it would even be possible to
> > do that.  If someone did made a significant improvement to Linux or OO
> > or any other FOSS project, I think just knowing the nature of the
> > improvement would be enough of a revelation to allow it to be
> > replicated separately.
>
> Indeed, RMS was able to duplicate the enhancements made by the Symbolics
> team.  But it's a stupid waste of effort to do things twice, when
> there're so many fresh things to be done.
My view is that the history of FOSS is pretty much duplicating something 
that is proprietary.  I am sure there have been one or two things spring up 
on their own, but I can't think of any offhand.  Can you?

Stallman seems to see profits from innovation as something to eradicate. 
His reaction to Sybolics success was to try to put them out of business. 
That seems even more stupid.  There are a thousand contributors to Linux, 
but there are tens of millions of users.  That seems unbalanced to me.