Rob Pike on Richard Stallman
commandcenter.blogspot.com
commandcenter.blogspot.com
I suppose there's a contingent here that doesn't mind patents on basic techniques, but let the karma suffer, my momma taught me right from wrong.
Edit: It seems like he has the patent number wrong. US Patent #4555755 appears to be for a multiphase AC control system - http://www.google.com/patents?id=CFg7AAAAEBAJ&dq=4,555,7...
775, not 755
I took at as a sarcastic indication that he didn't think it was a valid moral claim.
As an ideologue and a moral gadfly, Stallman is less compromising than most. That's central to his role and value to the community. And it makes him annoying. Pike's statement was trying to swing sympathy from Stallman to him by pointing out that he (Rob Pike) is like us -- more compromising -- and Stallman is a purist who doesn't cut us the kind of slack we're accustomed to allowing ourselves.
Which does give me sympathy for him. Even minor moral compromises look dirty when you examine them closely. But there's value in the kind of intolerant, absolutist examination that a self-styled saint applies. That's Stallman's role, and I think he plays it well.
I don't like software patents or RMS; can't there be a sane middle ground?
Update: added real
It's the same argument as always, just with a spin that you may not have thought of before.
First, there was no rule of law, and the citizen had no protection but to supplicate to the most powerful.
Then, there was the rule of law, but the laws were written by someone else.
Then, there came democracy, and citizens had some sort of indirect input to ruling themselves.
Afterward, commercial interests found that they could exercise power over others using the framework of markets, and monopolys and other abuses had to be curtailed.
Information was not so easily manipulated and aggregated when our country was founded, but the importance of what happens to information and who has control over it has increased as our ability to leverage information processing has increased. As a result, we are becoming aware of new, hitherto unrecognized rights. We're going to have to fight for them. I'm not sure if we need to do this politically, commercially, or with a combination of the two.
At first, when developers sent us information and it was on our computers, Stallman said that we should be able to use this information in any way we chose, since it was our freedom to use our property that was at stake. I agree with this.
Now, however, when we send information to the developers, it seems that Stallman has switched sides, and doesn't believe that that recipient or holder of the information should be free to do as they will with it. In light of this, maybe it was never freedom to use information we had that was important to Stallman, but something else that coincided.
Also, in Stallman's world, if you don't want to share your source, you're free to keep it to yourself. Likewise, he urges users to keep their information to themselves.
Given that you have to give your SSN for all kinds of miscellaneous stuff where you don't particularly trust the recipient, these days (credit apps, etc), I don't think anyone has the illusion that their SSN is private, do they? Still?
Privacy is effectively dead, and the only substitute we have is secrecy, which can be destroyed by any party to the secret. This is the world we live in, now, and I can't see any way to reverse course, no matter what the law says.
Yes, but remember, I'm talking about the situation in Stallman's world. No one would use non-open software, and no one would send their personal information.
As far as privacy being dead, "dead" is a misleading term here. Privacy is a concept, and as such has no vital signs. It can be alive again as easily as a comic book character. The transition from the time before universal suffrage is just as big as the change from the current situation to privacy as a right.
If you ask ordinary people about these topics, you'll find that many, if not most people out there have some sort of expectation about privacy. I think that these are rights waiting to be discovered. Just as my downloading a GPL'ed app or marking the checkbox under the Terms of Service means I agree to a specific contract, I think that there should be certain implicit contract going the other direction. Just as no one should be able to, say, sell kitchen utensils that blow up and kill people.
The SSN as a secret is in trouble. However, there are more robust protocols than the secret number.
In that case, both my blathering and Stallman's would be irrelevant, on this subject.
I think that universal suffrage is not in the same category as privacy, because nothing about technological advance really dictated it. Privacy and copyright are more like slavery (not making a moral statement here!), in that after certain technological advances, it's just not possible to sustain them and continue competing economically. That's what I mean when I say that privacy is dead: without some unforeseen technological problem (or solution, if you're so inclined) that makes it possible to control other people's computers with your software against their will, it's only a matter of time until societal mores catch up and recognize the de facto situation.
Actually, what you're talking about is Digital Rights Management. IF DRM worked, it could be used in the other direction, and your private information could be distributed in the form of software agents. Big if here, granted. However, I suspect that something like Vernor Vinge's "Trusted Computing Environment" will eventually exist. It's too useful not to.
There is another mechanism that already can "control other people's computers with your software against their will" using legal means. Namely the GPL.
Something like the GPL combined with simple protocols can protect private information, say, like a number. Using one-time proxy-numbers, I can already shop with my credit card, but without revealing my account number. Craigslist also has a similar mechanism to protect emails. If this were built into email clients, then it would be easy for users to register, and always know exactly who sold their email address to spammers.
Better yet, why not build registration protocols into browsers in the same way RSS reading and SSL session key negotiation is?
This sort of thing will not completely prevent the aggregation and inference of private data. But combine these mechanisms with legal protections of privacy, and it will make it very hard for corporations to use the data they aggregate illegally.
only a matter of time until societal mores catch up and recognize the de facto situation
There was a time when the US was very cavalier about copyright, and we just up and published our own editions of books without paying royalties. Societal mores were fine with this. (Dickens had to go on tour and do readings of _A Christmas Carol_ to make money from it in the US!) Somehow, the situation shifted the other direction in this case.
I agree that it's a big 'if', because I don't think that DRM will actually ever work reasonably well, and I don't think usefulness is a huge boost -- there are too many confounding factors, even if the encryption itself isn't cracked.
I'm not sure what to quote of the middle of your post. :) First off, "legal" is pretty fluid; I can find a jurisdiction that allows me to do whatever I want with personal information. Second, once someone has a copy of personal information in an unencrypted format, the source becomes very difficult to identify (unless everyone gets a customized copy, as you point out for email; I used a scheme like this to track who was selling my email to spammers from 1998 for a few years, but it didn't do me any good to find out, and it was a bit of trouble to keep up with).
But essentially, privacy and copyright are the same fight, and if you can come up with an effective enforcement tool for either one, the other one is solved as well.
Somehow, the situation shifted the other direction in this case.
I'm not suggesting that there's any social inevitability, here, except as a result of a technological one.
The GPL seems to work regardless. It works because it is respected by and large by the programmer community, and because most of the relevant places respect the relevant laws.
Second, once someone has a copy of personal information in an unencrypted format, the source becomes very difficult to identify (unless everyone gets a customized copy, as you point out for email;
A "Trusted Computing Environment" would ensure that only the trusted environment would ever get a copy.
I used a scheme like this to track who was selling my email to spammers from 1998 for a few years, but it didn't do me any good to find out, and it was a bit of trouble to keep up with).
If it was implemented as a protocol and integrated in the browser, the user would only have to see "Received at address send to X" and the rest could happen automatically.
I'm not suggesting that there's any social inevitability, here, except as a result of a technological one.
But printing kept on getting more efficient throughout the Industrial Revolution. The cost of transcription was a relative non-issue. The technology trended in a direction that would indicate more copying. Yet it came to pass that there was less copying of books and that it wasn't as acceptable. Why?
Democracy doesn't mean anything because it is two wolves and one sheep deciding what to eat for dinners. However, guns in the hand of the people matters. When people have guns, they have the ability to protect themsleves from a brewing mob. It creates for a more... polite society.
I think those three are enough to protect the citizen's rights over their private information, without the guns. However, I think that these are lacking in sufficient measure in our society.
If people are asked to hand over their guns, than it is the same as having no defense. It is the same as giving up liberty. It is the same as letting yourself and everyone else be massacared.(The Nazis will have an extremely difficult time of exterminating the Jews if all Jews are well armed)
Words are not substitue for armed men who cannot easily be coreced into giving up his liberty.
That is why the founding father put in the 2nd Amendment because they forseen the possiblity that the government of this country may become tyrannical. Without arms, there are no way to resist the government when it decided to turn on the population.
The guns are an implementation detail. The tools you need are generally context-specific. Malone: "You wanna know how you do it? Here's how, they pull a knife, you pull a gun." What if they're destroying your culture, your economic substrate? Bringing a gun to this party is like bringing a knife to go after Malone. (The Untouchables.)
Knowledge, intelligence, and organization are fundamental. These are the fundamental means of defense, which the populace has given up.
The Nazis accomplished an impressive feat of data processing to collate the identity information of almost all of the Jews in the territories they controlled. If the Nazis lacked that, far more lives would have been saved than arming the Jewish minorities. A gunfight is one of the outcomes they would have wanted. It would have been a propaganda coup for them! And if the Jews had been an unorganized mob, so much the better for them.
Personally I don't worry about that. What I worry about is the safety of my data. When the day comes when I can't use a desktop client to download email from GMail, or when I won't be able to open a .doc file without M. Office, then I'll be worried.
> If it's not, everyone is at the mercy of one company.
I don't know about that. I've heard it from Stallman's talks but it's too dramatic for my taste. What people should be worrying about is open specs to protocols and file formats.
The best example of a software monopoly is Windows, and if Windows was the only operating system available, then we'd surely be at the mercy of one company.
But that's not the case and while some people can point to the GPL as the catalyst, that's not necessarily the case. It might be the technology's fast pace or the academia which has always favored collaboration, not to mention that the open source model of development is in many ways just better.
I don't think software is the domain in which monopolies can be established indefinitely.
But then it will be too late.
I think current software patents last too long, to a point where non-obvious inventions become obvious as a field develops, and too many obvious or suitably vague patents are passed as well. Clearly you shouldn't be able to patent how many clicks something takes. Whatsmore, submarine patents really are a threat, and there should be a 'use it or lose it' enforcement clause, similar to trademarks. But these aren't problems of software patents alone, these also apply to patents in general, and situation really needs to change.
However, I'm not sure I can say that software patents are inherently a bad idea. I have no real objection to the creators of the MP3 format receiving income from their innovations, for example, or other, similarly complex software innovations. The current system being flawed doesn't mean that a better, more reasonable, system couldn't be made.
The main issue is that sure it's great to be compensated for your work but it is not a right. Patents and copyrights are to encourage people to produce & that is all. The software industry does not need patents to encourage people to innovate, so by definition we don't need patents in software.
Without intellectual property, why would anyone ever acquire a startup? Just copy it or poach a few key developers.
Remember, everyone's gotta eat, put a roof over their head and so on. RMS has got that covered with a million-dollar grant from the MacArthur Foundation and another cool million from the Takeda foundation. What do you got?
However, RedHat manages to survive and even thrive just fine.
Reddit has no unique "intellectual property" of a make-or-break nature, as far as I know. Yet they were bought. There are lots of reasons to buy startups that have nothing to do with patents or copyright: to get the founders, to get the name, domain, and code, to get the userbase (same as last, in some cases), to get contracts or other associated deals, and probably lots more.
Now,as I mentioned earlier I don't really agree with copyright, primarily because it lasts too long & its not a voluntary contract between individuals. Everything that copyright covers could be defined in a contract between the buyer and seller and not defined by politicians.
I think software patents harm innovation. I think file sharing is a very minor offense that shouldn't entertain anywhere near the penalties it does. I think industries like drug companies ought to be able to get some protection on their very expensive research and trials - but the time frame should be based on the necessity of protecting that research pathway. I think artists should be able to set licenses they want their work to carry, we should go to other artists work if we disagree with the license rather than getting rid of copyright.
Its hard to ever get into the subtleties of the subject, because people get so angry about bad patents or copyright penalties that they are drawn to pleasingly utopian fantasies where we get rid of all IP laws.
Without intellectual property, why would anyone ever
acquire a startup? Just copy it or poach a few key
developers.
I've worked in a wide range of developer roles, including bitsy consulting work. Copyright and patents have never been significant in the business models of any of the companies I've worked for in a positive way. Conversely, I have been denied the ability to work by a court injunciton accusing me of copyright infringement (settled as soon as the business situation had changed) and I've seen companies slapped down in an anti-competitive way for "patent infringement".
What software customers care about is being able to get people to solve their problems. They want to be able to pick up the phone and get support, and get changes made. The actual build that is live at the moment is just a short-lived tool in their business process.
If you had the source code for an organisation's risk management system or trading system or human resources system it would be near worthless. You'd have to get the code to work in your setting and then bend it to your requirements which will be different. You'd end up with an unwieldy system that is inferior to what you'd get if you pieced one together based on your requirements. Where goodwill is involved the barriers are far greater still.
But still - imagine a world without copyright. Fly-by-night operations would act as marketing efforts for the company who had their act together. Conversely, if a company got acquired and run into the ground, its customers wouldn't be permanently locked into a parasitic vendor. Startups wouldn't be at risk of shutdown from patent trolls. These patterns would be beneficial to startups and consumers.
poach a few key developers
Patents don't cover algorithms. They can cover the use of algorithms to accomplish a particular task but that doesn't affect others much.
In fact, the general patents rely on the doctrine of equivalents and are thus algorithm independent.
The closest you can get to an algorithm patent is to claim the use of an algorithm to produce algorithm-specific output. For example, one could patent the use of a new sorting algorithm to produce sorted output. However, such patents are almost all extremely weak because there are typically multiple algorithms to accomplish the same result.
Yes, a patent on an algorithm to solve a specific NP-complete problem in polynomial time would affect others, but isn't that exactly the sort of thing that patents should cover?
If someone wanted to portray that sequence of events in a hostile way, the usual course would be to not admit any trepidation and mention dismissively that some fanatics held up signs.
He might be bitter on the subject elsewhere, but casting that blog post as such seems to be reaching.
"hippie pipe dream"
"promiscuous computing"
"harangue"
"I always thought only boring people went to Heaven."
"characteristic inaccuracies" (here referring to the idea that AT&T ever threatened to sue)
"bizarre form of political correctness"
"eager misguided nerds who in a healthier environment would probably be protesting the killing of rats in biology class"
If he had come right out and said Stallman was an attention-whoring fool whose ideas were incoherent religious baloney, we'd expect him to back it up. So why should we accept him using indirect language to say the same thing? I realize he was posting something he wrote fifteen years earlier, but he didn't say anything to disown or apologize for his intemperate language.
I really like these protesters. To me, the article suggests that if you invent something genuinely cool and useful, no-one will hate you for patenting it - even if they want to.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/plan-nine.html
The wave of FOSS came at just the wrong time for Plan 9. Lucent had bought the Labs and were losing money hand over fist in the tech crunch, they were taking out alternate light bulbs in the Labs building to save money! Lucent's lawyers were unhappy about removing the restrictions (you could modify the kernel source for your project but had to submit your changes upstream to Lucent - crazy clause!).
The corp name over the door changed to Alcatel / Lucent. The team was let go - mostly to Google (where Pike is now).
http://www.proweb.co.uk/~matt/plan9/curse_of_glenda.html
Still, Plan 9 From Bell Labs lives on, even with its patents copied into Linux (private namespaces). We'll wait for Oracle to use them for MySQL and raise the submarine!!