Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 00:40:52 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in (Rahul Siddharthan) Cc: tlambert@primenet.com (Terry Lambert), nik@FreeBSD.ORG (Nik Clayton), msmith@FreeBSD.ORG (Mike Smith), scrappy@hub.org (The Hermit Hacker), freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Open Source Development Laboratory ... Message-ID: <200101300040.RAA10841@usr07.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <20010127152254.D28709@lpt.ens.fr> from "Rahul Siddharthan" at Jan 27, 2001 03:22:55 PM
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> > What a German hacker can do with impunity, a U.S. hacker will, in > > fact, find themselves legally entangled, at great expense. > > Umm... DeCSS was written by a 16 year old in Norway, called Jon > Johansen (who, by the way, used both linux and FreeBSD), and just > about a year ago his home was raided by Norway's National Authority > for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime > at the instigation of the MPAA, he was questioned for 7 hours, his > computers were seized. Later he took the witness stand at the DVD > trial in New York. I just refreshed my memory on all this at the EFF > web page, Norway has already shown itself to be a legal pushover; that was proven the moment that the Scientology and similar cases succeeded in penetrating anon.penet.fi (an anonymous remailer, which no one can trust now). > I remember reading even at that time that the OS he was primarily > using was FreeBSD, rather than Linux. But it is the "linux community" > which was willing to take up the fight. It's a matter of philosophy. Without advocating action one way or the other, there are some obvious things we can note. Consider that manufacturing hammers is much more difficult than using them. Now consider if one wanted to make posession of hammers illegal: one can crack down on hammer manufacturers in ones territory, and in territory where such crackdown can be reasonably enforced by proxy. Now consider that you have red hammers and black hammers, and red hammers are manufactured in a location where a crackdown is not possible, whereas back hammers are manufactured in a location which is enforcible by proxy (let's call this mythical place "Norway"). It is the ubiquity of the tool, not the willingness of people who are subject to prosecution for manufactuing the tool, which will dictate terms. But for a tool to become ubiquitous, it must first be manufactured _somewhere_. > > > (3) The question of software patents in Europe. I've seen this as part > > > of some signatures, and so on, on FreeBSD lists, but that's about it. > > > The petition against it is housed at http://petition.eurolinux.org. > > > > Similar reasoning applies here: European legislation has little > > impact on those already suffering under the U.S. equivalent. > > That's pretty shortsighted. A better attitude would be to think that > a strong anti-software-patent movement in Europe could strengthen > the movement which already exists in the US. (By the way, did people > notice the news item about someone getting a trademark on the frownie, > :-( ?) No, that's called "market economics". It's really short sighted, from some perspectives, for people to not be willing to die to defend their beliefs, and instead to emigrate to a place where they will not be persecuted, and then try to rally the support of the local population, so that the country where the expatriate is located beats up on the country of origin. It's really a case of risk/return. The U.S. stance on intellectual property law is what drives investment. You'll notice that there is little, if any, investment in technology ventures in countries with weak or unenforced/unenforcible intellectual property laws; Russia and the other former Soviet Republics are good examples, as is China. > > To me, these look like non-U.S. vs. U.S. Corporate interests > > fights. In order to be involved against U.S. corporate interests, > > Well, have it your way, but it is the US corporates which are lining > up behind linux... No, they're not. They are lining up against Microsoft. Linux just happens to be the most populous banner on that side of the fence. It also has the correct diametric opposition, in terms of philosophy and rhetoric. IBM committed $1G to marketing Linux, but if you want to use Linux in an IBM project, you have to fly to an IBM education center and attend a 5 day class on how to keep the GPL from diluting IBM's patents, and what you can and can't use, and who has to vet it, and how it has to be distributed. For big comapnies, Linux is nothing more than a marketing lever. > The point is, the parade did exist before ESR got out in front of it. > And it still exists even though ESR isn't making much noise nowadays. > Most important, to me, the issues the parade is trying to bring to > public focus really are important issues, whether you agree with > them or not. In any prision riot, there will be valid grievances raised. > > Actually, it;s a philosophical war, and BSD is sitting on the fence; > > it's no wonder it hasn't seen any action. > > BSD's entire philosophy is to sit on the fence: that's basically the > usual justification for BSD style licensing, too. It's very nice but > it doesn't inspire large numbers of people to go out and try to change > things... BSD has not taken a side in the philosophical war between corporate and collectivist ownership of intellectual property (regardless of the fact that it is most often corporate dollars which funded the creation of that property in the first place). But the idea that there exist two and only two diametrically opposed forces is what's called an Aristotilian mean. It's a false assumption, and you can really cast a philosophical chalk-line anywhere you want, and get people to rally to either side of the thing. The BSD mentality here is very apolitical; Brett Glass frequently tries to cast the chalk-line between collectivist vs. private (not just corporate) ownership of the property, but the expedient short term best value for BSD, in most of the participants opinions, is to throw BSD's lot in with Linux, rather than in with corporate, and so he reaps violent opposition. The thing we forget is that, without string intellectual property laws, there's no such thing as enforcement of corporate, collectivist, individual, or even the choice to cede as much ownership as you can and still indemnify yourself (the BSD way). With fence-sitting, one is doomed to a dearth of recognized pundits to engage in the activities you suggest, even if they could do so with as little risk as Linux pundits usually manage. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. 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