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Thurssday, August 29, 2002
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 Thurssday, August 29, 2002
started 8/29/2002; 1:04:28 AM - last post 8/30/2002; 6:57:56 AM
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Doc Searls - Thurssday, August 29, 2002 
8/29/2002; 5:04:28 AM (reads: 10600, responses: 32)
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Changing my spots 
| | I'm installing Jaguar. Curious to see how it goes. |
| | [2 hours later...] Hmm.. no way to import Palm base into Address book... choice between two closed chat systems (Apple's and AOL's)... I'll find the virtues eventually, I'm sure. Right now I gotta play with the kid. |
Coblog amongt yourselves
| | No time to remark on more of it (I'm in a meeting), but there are several interesting threads weaving in the Discussion zone (that link to the left). |
Webontology
| | Be careful what nest you club with your position paper. |
Self-composting at MSNBC
Stat
Vote Colleen Sterne
| | Time for me to do the same. |
| | She's an ace. If you're reading around here, vote for her. |
Law less
| | Sheila Lennon weighs in with some well-considered thoughts on copyright. She says its origins were ... not to promote artists, but to promote the creation of a publicly available culture. |
| | She also agrees with Verizon cousel Sarah Deutch, who says: |
| | We also want to see a law that's balanced and that the user community will also accept. The copyright community has to understand the reality that if consumers are not happy with the compromise... many of these illegal activities are going to continue. |
| | All fine, as long as we're talking about writing and music. |
| | But software is something else. We can talk about it in the same terms (we write, publish and copy it), but what it does for us is radically different. It's stuff we build. It serves as a platform for other stuff we build. It's an environment for whole domains of our lives (such as our professions). It's provides tools for every kind of activity that can possibly be aided by computer. Those all involve different conceptual frameworks to scaffold our understanding of what software is, and what it's good for. |
| | So why bring copyright law into the conversation at all? Only one reason: it's like publishing. It seeks to lock software into one conceptual framework. |
| | That's not a good enough reason. That reason gives insufficient respect to the profoundly unique nature of software — to the ways software is unlike anything else, and must be understood on its own terms. And we haven't even begun to agree about what those terms are. |
| | I'm a professional open source advocate. I think open source is a Good Thing, as long as it's a plain and simple choice people can make, on both the supply and the demand sides of marketplaces. |
| | I look at it that way because I'm also a libertarian. I have great faith in the unintended consequences of laws, especially those applied to subjects that are still new, changing rapidly and insufficiently understood by everybody involved. The Net is one of those subjects, and so is software. |
| | Much as I like and respect Larry Lessig, I don't believe copyright law should apply to software at all. Dave makes sense to me when he says to Dr. Weinberger, If I build a house I can live in it as long as I want. If I want to rent out rooms I can do that too, as long as I want. |
| | Dave makes software. He also gives software away, along with all kinds of ideas he could easily protect with patents or copyrights, but chooses not to. I respect his choices about both. |
| | In that last quote he conceptualizes software as real estate, not "intellectual property," though he might think of it that way as well. I don't know. But his message is clear: He owns his software. If you don't like it, don't buy it, or don't rent it. |
| | The people to whom it does matter are the free software advocates, which, in some ways, include Larry Lessig. |
| | I believe both Dave and Larry (and the commercial and free software communities behind them) have fundamentally different understandings about software. In their separate conceptual frameworks, both are valid. |
| | And until we find ways to reconcile those frameworks, I'd rather not see any new laws based on either of them. Or on open source, for that matter. The independent software development community is too small already. More laws aren't going to help. |
| | [Later...] I just got off the phone with Dave, who said something really interesting: The source that really matters isn't the code; it's the brains that create the code. I'll leave it up to the rest of ya'll to follow the implications. |
| | I still love and use MORE. Not as much as I used to, but often enough. For taking and organizing notes on the fly, it's invaluable. Even for writing long-form stuff. A fair amount of the prose I post here is drafted in MORE. Same goes for my stuff in Linux Journal. If somebody could just add a way to embed links and make it save as simple HTML, it would be killer. (Radio Userland's outliner does that, but I still like MORE better as a pure writing tool.) A 596k program last improved in 1992, it was not only the most useful writing and organizing instrument ever created, but the first presentation program as well. Even today I like many of its features much better than PowerPoint's. |
| | What Dave says about the brains behind MORE is critical here. It speaks as well to what Judith said yesterday about the frequent pointlessness of secrecy. Because the ideas introduced by MORE were never implemented as well in the programs that knocked them off. I'm talking specifically here about the ouliners in Word and PowerPoint. Word's is better than PowerPoint's, but both are lame compared to MORE. Microsoft has had ten years to improve on those ideas, and approximately nothing has happened. The genius behind those ideas was ignored, then forgotten. Even in Word and PowerPoint, they're legacy features. It's a sad thing. |
Warschwag
| | By the way, Ben is also the source of the real cool one-line hack that produced the translucent terminal window above. |
New hope for AOL
| | So when AOL gives up on their pre-determined, already proven wrong - 'can't work' business model of 'owning the cable access customers', and cuts a REAL commerce deal with REAL partners who TOGETHER are gonna supply INTERACTIVE PROGRAMMING to real HUMANS - I say RIGHT ON. This is a turning point -- a day to celebrate! |
| | But only for the faithful. I'm glad Marc is one of them. |
On the other wing...
| | They've certainly got the cynical case down cold. Here's Richard: |
| | Knauss' larger point is that tech people don't understand politics, aren't active in it, and are seemingly incapable of doing the things you have to do in order to be effective in politics. He's right, of course. I personally spent five years lobbying my state legislature on a regular basis, so I know something about how the game is played: you show up in person at the Capitol, get meetings with lawmakers, press your case, and then work it in the media. |
| | You show up at hearings and testify on bills, and then you plead with every member for their vote. When the other side has the votes, you seek amendments that will blunt the effect of their victory. And you put your own bills together to protect your position and to repeal any gains made by the other side. Playing the game like this for years, you begin getting invited to testify at special hearings, and you're invited to serve on panels, boards, and commissions. More important, your name gets around the Capitol, so that media folks interview you when they're spilling major ink, deep-pockets donors seek your advice about where to spend their money, and you get connected to people with real access who operate behind the scenes. In time, you win some victories, many of them unnoticed by the media but important in the aggregate. |
| | Almost invariably, the tech people who wanted to get involved in my cause thought they could accomplish the task by writing e-mail to lawmakers and to each other, mainly the latter. So they spent their time creating web sites, model laws and mailing lists instead of doing real work. Promoting a Libertarian Party member for Congress does exactly what Knauss says it does -- drains off resources of time and money that could be spent doing something real. It's a sad way to go. |
| | He's right about all but that very last point. |
| | Howard Coble was running unopposed until Tara showed up. Sure she'll lose, but in the process a lot more geeks will get involved in politics. At the very least they'll fund and support what we hope will be exactly the kind of hard work Richard talks about. |
| | Weblogs are sowing the seeds of countless grass roots movements. At least a few are bound to grow. Just watch. |
Wannaskinnybes
| | Twelve pounds down, so far. |
Deer Story II
| | Howard's dad ditched his car Tuesday to avoid a deer. He's okay, and so is the deer. |
| | My own deer story had a less happy ending, at least for the deer. |
| | It happened many years ago, when I was living in Hackensack, New Jersey, and commuting about sixty miles up route 23 to my job as a morning news guy at WSUS, in Franklin, which was way out in the exurbs. My vehicle was a big-ass snot-green '69 Chevy Biscayne with black vinyl seats and bald tires. It looked like an unmarked cop car. I made the run, which took about an hour, between 4:30 and 5:30 in the morning. |
| | At dawn, right around 5:15am, I was starting down a long slope toward the Route 515/Stockholm exit (right about in the center of this map here) in the fast lane when a deer appeared at the side of the road and made a long leap right into my path. I hit my brakes, but it was too late. I caught it square as it took off on a second leap toward the grassy median. I saw its startled face and big brown body held for a moment by the forward movement of the car; and then the world began to spin as the car went out of control, sideways across the median, then backwards across the two oncoming lanes on the other side of the highway. |
| | The car came to a rest on the shoulder of the far side of the highway, pointing in the correct, eastbound, direction. |
| | I got out and went to look for the deer. When I finally found it in the tall grass of the median, it was barely alive. It was a buck. There was a little blood at the base of one of the nubs on his head that would have become antlers if he had lived. The poor guy just stared up at me and heaved one last breath. |
| | I walked back to the car. Traffic was absent and I was in a rush to get to work, so I turned around drove the wrong way on the highway back toward the 515 intersection, where I could take a right and go report the incident to the Stockholm highway patrol station. |
| | Meanwhile a highway patrol car came up on the westbound side, travelling parallel to my car. The officer took an interest in my car going the same direction in the eastbound lanes, and turned his pursuit lights on. I stopped at the intersection with 515, however, and turned in front of him, leading him the short distance home to his own station. |
| | "What's going on?" he said. |
| | "I hit a deer back up above where you first spotted me. I just came here to report it." |
| | "Pretty big. A buck. No rack, though." |
| | "Yep. Lying in the median back there." |
| | "It's yours unless you give it away." |
| | I got to work on time. The bumper and hood of the Chevy were a bit rumpled, but the car was okay. |
| | Later, when I told my father about it, he was pissed. He was a hunter, and he loved venison. "I'd have come up there and gotten it myself," he said. |
| | It was a slow news day, so I took the advice Scoop Nisker would give years later: If you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own. |
| | So I opened with my own lead. |
| | When I was done for the morning, I went out and bought some new tires. |
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Larry Staton Jr - Re: Wednesday, August 28, 2002
8/29/2002; 1:24:27 PM (reads: 1195, responses: 1)
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Dave's analogy fails because any arrangements for a house are governed not by copyright law, but by contract law. And Dave is perfectly able to "license" his software. Indeed, many software companies are using their EULAs to restrict users far more than copyright law. (See MS Front Page EULA that arguably restricts users' speech.) But licenses are in the realm of contract law, not copyright law. There are vast differences between the two areas of law.
Perhaps the solution should be that one can either license their software (contract law) or have the benefit of a government-sponsored monopoly (copyright law). Currently, software companies receive the benefits of both forms of protection under law. Does any other industry receive the benefits of both copyright protection and contract protection in such broad terms as the software industry? I don't think so. These protections are a barrier to entry to new firms who want to enter the market. As a consumer, I want to see competition in the marketplace for software. Barriers to entry only serve to discourage competition.
As to Lessig, I think he would agree with Doc that software is not deserving of copyright protection, but since software does in fact receive copyright protection, Lessig argues for a shorter term of protection.
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Timothy Phillips - Re: Wednesday, August 28, 2002
8/29/2002; 2:02:59 PM (reads: 1254, responses: 0)
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As Larry Staton points out, copyright law reaches, will we, nil we, to software. A programmer might not rely on the privileges copyright law gives. He might not register the copyright (and an unregistered copyright is less valuable than a registered one;) he might not bring any actions. But the term of copyright is now so long that we have no way to predict what a future rightsholder (who might have no connection to, or sympathy with, the original programmer) will do. Even an unregistered copyright might be used as a weapon of mischief.
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Aaron Swartz - copyright as real estate
8/29/2002; 2:25:10 PM (reads: 1267, responses: 16)
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If copyright is real estate, then why are we against the RIAA throwing us out of their house? I don't get this analogy at all.
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Dave Winer - Re: copyright as real estate
8/29/2002; 2:53:36 PM (reads: 1396, responses: 13)
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Big disconnect here. Saw a similar comment on your weblog last night. Still puzzled.
Maybe I don't understand what the RIAA throwing us out of their house means, but if it means that they want to control the distribution of their copyrighted material, it seems to me that they have the right to do that. However I don't believe they have the right to invade my (or your) computer to enforce their copyright. I also think, as a user, that they should give some money to the artists. We all have the right to not buy their product as long as they're not giving us what we want.
If you believe otherwise, imho, you have to be prepared for total anarchy -- or be a hypocrite. Why should you have a right to their property and not vice versa?
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Billy Mabray - Dave, Are you sure you want software to be like houses?
8/29/2002; 3:27:55 PM (reads: 1231, responses: 0)
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Dave says:
If I build a house I can live in it as long as I want. If I want to rent out rooms I can do that too, as long as I want.
But before you built the house, you had to file plans with the city. So if I want a house like yours, I go get a copy of the plans, which are public record, make whatever changes I want, and I build my own.
Personally, I like that idea for software, but I don't think that's what Dave had in mind.
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Doc Searls - Re: copyright as real estate
8/29/2002; 7:16:05 PM (reads: 1470, responses: 0)
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Just to get where I'm coming from straight, I pay close attention to conceptual metaphors: the other things that we speak, literally, in terms of. We borrow the language of travel to talk about life, for example. Birth is "arrival." Death is "departure." Choices are "crossroads." It's a profound irony of human cognition that we understand almost everything in terms of other subjects that often have nothing to do with the subjects to which they lend whole vocabularies. Cognitive linguistics is a deep and fascinating subject, and highly germane to the discussions at hand. So let's get on with it.
Hollywood wants us to conceive their copyrighted materials as property very much like real estate. Very private, very closely held. Don't steal it, don't trespass on it, don't piss on it, get permissions for everything. As Lessig and others have often pointed out, this very narrow interpretation of copyright that tends to exclude fair use. If we apply Hollywood's definitions to everything, and let the same happen with patents, everything logjams. Which is fine with Valenti and Eisner, because that's their system. They're used to it. Never mind that it's nutty to the rest of us.
Unfortunately, conceiving copyrighted works as pure property a very easy metaphor to use and sell, especially to a conservative Congress. Property: good. Theft: bad. Sharing other people's property: piracy. Fair use: tresspass.
The commons metaphor is also a real estate one. We have a well-developed conceptul framework for publicly held real estate: roads and park systems, for exampe. But talking about "property" in a "commons" gets creepily close to Communism for a lot of people. It's got metaphorical problems. For one thing, governments tend to conceive "public" property as government-owned. But no government owns the Net. Nobody does. It's a Whole New Thing.
What we lack is a sufficiently rich sense of what nobody owns, everybody can use and anybody can improve. That's what the Net's protocols provide. That's the geology (yet another metaphor, and a good one) of which the Net is comprised. As I point out here <http://conferences.oreillynet.com/presentations/os2002/doc/source/slide56.html>, a healthy infrastructure and business ecology (a metaphor that sits nicely between geology and real estate) involves a great deal of giving and sharing.
Dave has often said "Ask not what the Net can do for you, ask what you can do for the Net." That's a question businesses ought to ask themselves when they've got something infrastructural all of us can use. Dave's done it many times. But he's also a commercial developer. He deeply believes that what he makes is his before it becomes everybody else's, and that he should be in charge of that process.
It's clear to me that, outside of the developers themselves, who vary extremely in their opinions about what they're doing, and the conditions of its governance, nobody yet fully understands what software really is. It's too new. Construction is thousands of years old. So is Real Estate. Ecology and Geology much less so, but they're still older vocabularies than software.
The time will come, perhaps 50 or 100 years from now, that we'll understand other stuff in terms of software, and software will have as rich and borrowable a vocabulary as real estate, war, travel, money and all the other source metaphors we use unconciously to describe other things. But for now we have these very different and not easily reconcileable metaphors for software that don't do a good enough job. Any of them. Yet use them we must, 'cuz we got nothin' else.
Which is why I am reluctant to see us make more laws that only serve to piss off and drive away the very creative people on which our code-based common (and commons) culture depends.
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Dan Sickles - Re: copyright as real estate
8/29/2002; 7:40:57 PM (reads: 1340, responses: 0)
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Will the government give the local merchant a master key to everyone's house so that they can retreive or confirm stolen goods from suspected theives and take whatever action they feel is necessary on your property to prevent further theft? Sounds like a job for enforecment of existing laws throught existing channels.
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Aaron Swartz - Re: copyright as real estate
8/29/2002; 8:41:20 PM (reads: 1496, responses: 12)
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That's why I don't get the real estate metaphor. What's the equivalent of giving someone a copy of your book/software/music in real estate? What's the equivalent of the computer you store/run it on?
This stuff clearly isn't property. If I take your toaster, you can't make breakfast. If I take a copy of your software, you'll never know nor notice.
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Dave Winer - Re: copyright as real estate
8/29/2002; 8:47:45 PM (reads: 2574, responses: 11)
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Maybe it's an approximate metaphor Aaron. Not perfect. Not multi-faceted. Just a feeling, not a formula.
Now it is property if you believe my brain is part of the source of my program, which I do. You can't have my brain Aaron. But if you spend two or three years apprenticing with me, I can teach you how to work on my program. It's hard work. You might not like me after it's over. But you would be able to work on it. (Most people don't make it through the two-three years, btw.)
That's what so disingenous about Lessig's argument. He thinks he's getting the source when I give him a floppy disk with a bunch of .c and .h files on it. Hah. Okay, maybe he can compile it. But what happens when he changes something and the whole thing doesn't work. Does he *understand* it. He probably doesn't know that such a thing is necessary to work on it.
A famous VC who was on the board of Symantec once asked for the source to MORE. He had some spare time on the weekend and wanted to add a feature. I said give it to him.
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lou josephs - Bye Bye Internet Radio, save for Clear Channel
8/30/2002; 3:11:30 AM (reads: 2390, responses: 0)
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The list is gowing longer at www.kurthanson.com. I think on 1 Sept and thereafter the only US stations webcasting will be Clear Channels, and perhaps some of the ABC talk stations.
Even Walt Sabos FM talk stations aren't streaming anymore.
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Eric Tilton - Jaguar
8/30/2002; 4:01:50 AM (reads: 1359, responses: 9)
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On Palm to Address Book: you should be able to export your Palm contacts as VCards. (I know that the latest Windows version of the Palm software supports this; haven't tried the Mac version.) Then you can import the VCards into Address Book.
On iChat: if you're talking about the choice of screen name (AOL name or blah@mac.com name), it's not necessarily a lock-in choice. Even if you pick a mac.com name, you can still chat with people using AIM. However, there is a backward incompatibility with the mac.com addresses, because they contain the @ symbol and the earlier versions of the AIM client don't support screen names with @s. (And the clones like Fire can't support it either.) So for the greatest compatibility, use an AOL-supplied screen name -- you can get one from aim.aol.com.
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Billy Mabray - Re: copyright as real estate
8/30/2002; 4:44:20 AM (reads: 1961, responses: 5)
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Your argument certainly applies to the VC you mentioned, and possibly to Lessig (but possibly not. I believe he's done some programming.).
But I'm a programmer. Every day, I go to work and make changes to code written by people who no longer work for that company. The software still works and I'm still employed, so I must be understanding something. It's not always easy to understand the code, but I always figure it out, and I'm an average programmer at best. I don't need their brains -- my own is adequate.
Don't misunderstand me, Dave. I'm not arguing that you don't have the right to distribute your work however you want. I just see a flaw in arguing, "No one can understand my code, so they don't need to look at it."
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chuqui - Re: Jaguar
8/30/2002; 6:21:32 AM (reads: 1495, responses: 0)
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yup. That's why I'm using chuqui instead of my chuqui@mac.com.
Scary thing, iChat (esp with rendesvous). I did a lot of RTC stuff a long time ago in a galaxy far away, but the last decade or so, more or less avoided it. With jag out, I've fired up iChat. I'm amazed at how it's letting me and some of my programmers interact on this current project. Fascinating thing so far...
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chuqui - Re: copyright as real estate
8/30/2002; 6:30:36 AM (reads: 1930, responses: 4)
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to me, a huge unanswered question is "what is software?"
Is it the entire program? does changing any part reset the length of ownership? Or do old versions have to be released? How do you define "version" then? the record keeping on a piece of software could be astounding?
what if I write a tool and decide it's a piece of crap and throw it out? a decade later, someone insists I release it? what then? Am I forced to keep everything I ever write? What if my house burns down and destroys the backups?
And nobody seems to have thought of this aspect -- so I have to release my software. I do. that software is useless without this custom ASIC I happened to design to do certain features. that ASIC is IP and not available for purchase, protected under patents and probably other stuff. So what use is the software?
However you build in enforced openness, it's going to be trivial for people WITH RESOURCES to effectively lock it up again anyway, and make it harder ofr the small ones. Just as has happened in the entertainment biz. Doesn't matter that large parts of Sherlock Holmes or Tarzan ARE in the public domain, if you try to use them the estates will nail your butt, whether it's on trademark enfringments or catching you using some trivial from some part of the canon that isn't public domain yet (why do you think there's a tarzan movie every decade or so? Because the copyright on that movie is used as a legal cudgel against people using the public domain texts... You CAN do it, but they'll probably sue you anyway, and can you afford to win? Adn if you make ANY mistake, they own you).
Fact is, anything that gets built, the lawyers and companies who can afford them can turn to advantage. So be careful fixing things because the small fry generally can't afford to fight it, so they lose via loophole.
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Steve Mallett - Re: Thurssday, August 29, 2002
8/30/2002; 10:19:26 AM (reads: 1280, responses: 1)
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I've been watching this Lessig et al. vs. Winer et al. for the last week and a bit & would like to weigh in now that I've had sober time to think everyone's arguements through.
Now that we're getting into methaphors it says to me that the main issues have largely been worked through. 8^)
1) Lessig is brilliant at pointing out the issues and painting the history to put the issues in context. Nevertheless, he is a lawyer, and when posing a solution cannot seem to help being what and who he is and sees more law as a solution. Is it? I dunno, but it makes me squirm. I'd be happy if these people just got out of our way.
I think people often see him as a good explainer and extrapolate that he is a good problem solver. And hence people are willing to accept anything he says as gospel. This is a common human falicy.
His may be good legal solutions *if* that is the kind of solutions you want.
2) Mr. Winer, as an open source advocate I see open source as a practical methodolgy to build better software. I also like the sense of community where everyone is supposedly an equal participant. Is it always better? No. I'd bet on open source producing better software more often than not. In the case of Radio, maybe not. Who knows? But, I'd never insist that you should open your code. That's your domain to choose.
As for your brain, I think you're onto something there for sure, but miss a large point. I like to know that the code for the software I use is understood by others out there if not me.
3) The extremist: I like extremists for no other fact that they make us think in larger terms. Are they useful in a practical way. Nah, but they sure are fun!
*Please note that in both of the above issues I am firmly against forcing someone to act as I'd like.
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Dave Winer - Re: Thurssday, August 29, 2002
8/30/2002; 10:57:56 AM (reads: 1324, responses: 0)
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Good writeup.
By the way, I have led projects that generated lots of open source.
I consider myself an open source advocate. But I also produce commercial software.
As Doc has pointed out, and is discussed behind the scenes in "the industry" -- all of the former open source companies have now adopted this model.
My thoughts are summarized in a piece I wrote early this year.
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Dave Winer - Re: copyright as real estate
8/30/2002; 11:09:00 AM (reads: 2014, responses: 3)
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However you build in enforced openness, it's going to be trivial for people WITH RESOURCES to effectively lock it up again anyway
No kidding. Let's say I own the C compiler. I decide not to worry about copyright, and give it away for free. I put a new verb into the language called "excel." I then implement the famous spreadsheet in the compiler. I release the source code for Excel. It consists of:
void main (int *argv, *argc) {
excel ();
}
I assume Lessig is happy.
Dave
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Frank Steele - Re: Jaguar
8/30/2002; 11:24:00 AM (reads: 1393, responses: 5)
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Export as vCard _is_ one of the options in the Mac Palm Desktop, and you wind up with 1 big vCard with the exported addresses inside.
You can then drag and drop that vCard file right onto Address Book's window; I just did so on my Lombard PowerBook running Jaguar.
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Todd Blanchard - Elitest attitude.
8/30/2002; 7:12:36 PM (reads: 1876, responses: 1)
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You act like you think you're a priest.
I've seen some of your source code. Its OK. Not particularly hard to understand (this is a compliment). Hell, its only a bunch of typing and don't get me started on your overuse of semicolons. (Apologies to Scott Adams)
Any competent practitioner can understand your code.
You go back and forth between "we could never release our source code - its our brain" and "give it to em - they'll never understand it anyhow". Which is it? I'll wager I can understand it and change it to suit me and it won't take me that long.
So turn it loose, maybe someone will make something new.
Not all source code is valuable, sure. But not all of it is worthless either. There are a lot of shitty books that are out of print, sure. But the gems, they keep getting republished and reworked. This is good.
So who cares if Lessig understands your source? I might. Maybe I'll do somthing world shaking with it. Or someone else. It may get split up for parts. Like a rapper rapping over a memorable riff. Thats cool. Its all good. That kind of reuse doesnt cost anything and you weren't going to get that money anyhow. So let it go.
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Todd Blanchard - Well, the compiler will come out too
8/30/2002; 7:18:58 PM (reads: 2018, responses: 1)
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and then we'll see how the excel function gets implemented (they're called functions in C) and that's that.
Either way its coming out.
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Dan Sickles - Another Metaphor
8/30/2002; 10:05:55 PM (reads: 1807, responses: 1)
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Software is like music in that it takes intellect, design and skill to create and it is executed by various "standrd" devices. The souce code is digital audio or even midi. The design documentation, if it exists, is musical notation. Even stricly notated music will be interpereted differently by different performers. Software specs will be programmed differently by different programmers. In the end, both are recognized to a greater or lesser degree as an implemtation of the spec.
Software is not like music: Music is not usually refined/modified after the 1.0 release. It is more likely to be refined/modified by someone other than the creator. Software is likely to be enhanced relying on previous versions. After 10 years, most composers/songwriters have moved on. After 10 years, some software remains viable in the market with code from the 1.0 release. Lotus Notes is 13 years old. Would releasing 1.0 code cause harm to IBM. I don't know.
Trying to find a perfect metaphor would be limiting. Exploring many different metaphors may help to find better ideas.
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Doc Searls - Re: Jaguar
8/30/2002; 11:05:56 PM (reads: 1452, responses: 4)
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Cool!
You're running Jaguar on a Lombard, huh? My wife has my old one. I'm worried about it fitting on a 6Gb HD. Any problems with that?
It's still a terrific machine.
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Frank Steele - Jaguar on Lombard
8/30/2002; 11:48:54 PM (reads: 1840, responses: 2)
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It works pretty well, and I'm driving a 1280 x 1024 external monitor as well as the internal on the 8-meg video card. It's noticeably snappier when I don't have the ViewSonic hooked up.
Apple doesn't officially support the Rage Pro LT card in OS X (let alone Quartz Extreme), but a few enterprising folks discovered how to enable 2-D acceleration. James Denton hosts the patch here. I haven't had any problems using it, but caveat emptor. The patch seemed to make a bigger difference than Jaguar for me.
I installed a 20-gig hard drive long before I installed OS X (it's a very easy upgrade, right under the keyboard), but OS X on Lombard requires a boot volume less than 7 (?) gigs and a volume or volumes for everything else.
Long story short, I have everything I really need in OS X within 5.1 gigs of that 7-gig partition, and that includes Office X, every Mac browser, all the Omni apps, all the iApps, and the developer tools.
On the other hand, I dumped all my Classic apps on the second volume, and have taken pains not to use them, since Classic seems (understandably) like the biggest resource hog in OS X.
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Doc Searls - Re: Jaguar
8/30/2002; 11:49:30 PM (reads: 1285, responses: 1)
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I just did the address book thing. Worked great. Thanks to all of you on that one.
I have a pile of old AIM and AOL identities. They're lost to me now. Nobody uses them, but I can't get back at them: dsearls, docsearls, dsearls1...
That's apparently how AOL works. Once an identity is used, it's gone forever, for some reason.
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chuqui - Re: copyright as real estate
8/31/2002; 1:34:43 AM (reads: 2049, responses: 0)
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Now that I think about it.
I sent this note to Lessig a couple of days ago. Since we've agreed to take the weekend off from the death march and I can think a bit, I've decided to go ahead and add it ot this discussion for your amusement or disgust as well...
(okay, everyone, think nice thoughts about my project being done on time.... it's crunch time again...)
--
From: Chuq Von Rospach <chuqui@plaidworks.com>
Date: Mon Aug 26, 2002 8:19:43 PM US/Pacific
>I don't have much code on my box that's been unmodified for more than 10 years.
You might be surprised. Depends on whether you're talking the total whole or pieces. Large parts of the Unix OS are well older than 10 years. Even if the Unix distribution is updated every few months, in many cases, the vast majority of code isn't changed, merely recompiled. Or if it's changed, a few lines out of the program are changed. How do you define "unmodified"?
Are you simply setting up a situation where a company pulls the software equivalent of letting the fiction fall into the public domain and nailing your butt with trademark? (ask anyone who's ever tried to work with Sherlock Holmes or Tarzan how much fun that is). Release the vast majority of code, but constantly churn key sub-functions that prevent users from taking advantage the rest?
At what point does software become old? Are you looking at lines? functions? or the entire program as an organic whole? I don't know that you've considered that aspect yet, and it creates all sorts of complexities to the case. A given piece of code could have a million lines of code, 80% of which aren't touched for a decade, and the other 20% modified constantly. Does that 20% protect the other 80%? If that 80% isn't usable without the 20%? Are you going to set up something that requires programmers to timestamp every line of code and manage that information forever? That'd really gut the small and independent programmer.
you throw a wrench spanner into the whole issue of "legacy code", while, I think, trying to create an environment that encourages success through innovation. changing the playing field so that new stuff is protected, older stuff isn't. The problem is that many companies have huge worth in that legacy code (ask IBM. ask Computer Associates) - and it's that legacy code that creates the base for innovation, and that innovation is usually closely welded into the legacy code.
I think changing the rules to encourage innovation is a good idea (disclosure: I work for Apple, which I think embodies that attitude) over protecting legacy systems (like I believe MIcrosoft is -- a strategy of protecting its installed base at all costs, basically, but the same can be said of many companies) -- but when you innovate, you don't throw it out and start over. you take a known point and build on it. Even MacOS X was built on known pieces (BSD, for instance). It's what went on top of that stuff that makes it innovative.
One of the things I don't see in your proposals is an understanding of the issues of what codes on inside "code on my box" and how your proposals will deal with it. It may be there, I just don't see it. And my big worry is that your commons won't spur innovation, because companies that might be innovating on legacy code will find themselves with their knees cut out from under them. Either that, or if changing a part protects the whole, you effectively have that trademark problem -- because trivial changes to small pieces will prevent the entire thing from being released.
FWIW, I want to thank you for taking the time for coming online and being willing to discuss and listen. It's been both entertaining and broadening and educational. The best answers come when people from diverse sides sit down and talk it out instead of lecturing each other (something our govt. seems to have forgotten. ohwell...)
good luck in court, by the way. gonna watch that with great fascination.
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chuqui - Re: Another Metaphor
8/31/2002; 1:53:47 AM (reads: 1922, responses: 0)
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Dave has called software art.
I disagree with that idea. Most software isn't art.
Software is craft.
the line between them is sometimes blurry, but I think it's an important difference in how we look at this Let me attempt to explain.
Andy Warhol (to name an artist) painted paintings. He made his money selling those paintings. As an artist, his primary interest is making sure his art is protected so he can make his money off that art.
If you bought a serigraph of a Warhol print, though, you didn't buy a piece of Warhol's art. you bought a print created by some craftsman who reproduced that art (and paid Warhol a royalty for the image). His revenue isn't the piece of art, but the process of creating high-quality duplicates of that print.
It seems to me that the software process is the process of the craftsman -- we aren't protecting "the thing", we're in need of protecting that process for generating "things with value" -- while some of us generate code for a single master, most of the code in question is created to create a package that is later sold in multiple pieces.
One of my hobbies is woodworking. While some woodworkers create art, most of us don't. We're craftsman. For every Sam Maloof, there are dozens of guys selling intarsia puzzles at craft fairs. My stuff isn't going into museums any time soon. Sam Maloof's stuff is.
That seems to be one of the places where we have disconnects in trying to figure this thing out. For most software people, it's not "the software" that's at issue, it's the value that software represents when it's packaged into something and sold for value. Control of access and use of the software is what creates the value. (my writer side reminds me of the truism of writing for money: the words have no intrinsic value -- my ability to control who uses them does. I don't sell the words, I sell access to them)
It seems to me we're looking for the software equivalent of finding a way to allow thta craft fair guy to create a system to build puzzles that precludes someone stealing his designs, opening up a puzzle factory next door, and putting him out of business -- but still allows people to look at what he did and innovate in other places. If you take away the value of innovation ("anyone can have it, so it has no value, so why bother?"), people stop innovating.
One issue I see in all this is we've gone bipolar -- open source vs. proprietary, and see it as a two-faced beast with no middle ground. I think the REAL answer is to realize there's an area in the middle, too, where things can be shared, but with some limits. If open source is the commons where anyone can wander in and take a cow, and proprietary software is the locked barn where you can't get in without a retina scan, what's that part in the middle where you can milk the cow to make cheese, but not take it home and butcher it?
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chuqui - Re: Jaguar
8/31/2002; 1:56:58 AM (reads: 1507, responses: 0)
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A full install of Jaguar plus developer tools is 2.11 gig.
when I asked around my betters, I was told that a 4.5 gig partition was a good minimum size. So six gig is usable.
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chuqui - Re: Jaguar on Lombard
8/31/2002; 2:04:37 AM (reads: 1814, responses: 0)
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Classic is a resource user.
For me, I find I only have two programs left that use classic. I've even deleted all of the games that aren't carbonized.
those two are TheSky, my telescope stuff, and Poser. If you grep Amazon the right way, books for the new Poser are due to be published in October, so I'm guessing THAT's just about fixed. And they keep promising updates to theSky someday, but if Starry Night goes carbonized and works well first, I'll simply switch. Everything else in my (rather bloated) apps folder now is carbonized at least...
I can't think of the last time I booted up classic. In fact, I've only booted it twice since I upgraded the tiBook to 10.2 a few weeks ago, and once was to make sure it worked.
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chuqui - Re: Jaguar
8/31/2002; 2:06:50 AM (reads: 1404, responses: 0)
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I stopped using AOL a while back, but as I understood it, if you discontinued a screen name, they held it in reserve for six months in case you change your mind, and then it goes back in the active pool. If you cancelled your AOL account and then create a new one, I believe you can talk to their tech folks and have the screen names re-activated. Not sure what proof they need that you are you.
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Jeremy Reichman - Re: Jaguar on Lombard
8/31/2002; 3:11:22 AM (reads: 1794, responses: 0)
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It works fine on my Lombard (still having the wake from sleep problem I've had since 9.2, but it's just as sporadic as always). The performance is still slower than 9.2 on the same computer, but I'd rather have the advantages of OS X. It's mildly faster at some things than 10.1 was. Most things continue to take several bounces in the Dock to launch. The battery still lasts about an hour.
It really doesn't compare to the 2x1 GHz tower I played with at CompUSA earlier this week, but oh well.
Maybe I'll try one of the clean install options sometime when I get ambitious. See if that helps.
Btw, I have a 10 GB stock internal drive, and a very late model Lombard. 384 MB RAM. I could probably use more.
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