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Re: Sunday, August 18, 2002
On the next page (252), Larry says, Software is a special case... Worse, the copyright system protects software without getting any new knowledge in return. When the system protects Hemingway, we at least get to see how Hemingway writes... Softwre is different... software is compiled; the compiled code is essentially unreadable; but to copyright software, the author need not reveal the source code. (Pick up the text from a Wired piece by Larry...) Thus, while the English department gets to analyze Virginia Woolf's novels to train its students in better writing, the computer science department doesn't get to examine Apple's operating system to train its students in better coding. The harm that comes from this system of protecting creativity is greater than the loss experienced by computer science education. While the creative works from the 16th century can still be accessed and used by others, the data in some software programs from the 1990s is already inaccessible. Once a company that produces a certain product goes out of business, it has no simple way to uncover how its product encoded data. The code is thus lost, and the software is inaccessible. Knowledge has been destroyed. Copyright law doesn't require the release of source code because it is believed that software would become unprotectable. The open source movement might throw that view into doubt, but even if one believes it, the remedy (no source code) is worse than the disease. There are plenty of ways for software to be secured without the safeguards of law. Copy-protection systems, for example, give the copyright holder plenty of control over how and when the software is copied. If society is to give software producers more protection than they would otherwise take, then we should get something in return. And one thing we could get would be access to the source code after the copyright expires. I believe the remark about copy protection, plus the whole obsession with source code, serves Dave's case. Perhaps copyright law is concerned about the protective qualities of closed source. But the real reason to keep it closed is simple: it's easier to sell, and to ask a price that's north of zero. The market actually wants it that way, on both the buy and the sell side. That's the lesson VA Linux (now VA Software) learned. That's the lesson CollabNet learned too. That's the what's behind the new dual- licensing scheme that CollabNet is helping put together for RealNetworks. As Rahul points out, there are other variables. It's more complicated than it appears. I still don't think these guys are that far apart. We need to learn from each other. Larry has learned a lot from the open source guys. Now the commercial guys who aren't Microsoft need to teach him the rest. There are responses to this message:
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