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Re: Friday, March 9, 2007
Dear Doc: Thank you very much for posting that link to my blog. You've really been on a change the world binge, but also been a little short on detail. :) Improving some basic legal agreements like NDAs and employment contract would have a concrete effect across all layers of society. I just updated the piece with some more news. I still haven't found a piece of boilerplate suitable for the NDA problem... and I shudder to think of the employment agreement problem. I just grit my teeth and sign... I have hope that perhaps Creative Commons or the OSI would try to get into the act. So much energy and time got spent in the late 90s on creating open source software licenses - what are all those lawyers doing now? Heck, I'd love to see someone at the Harvard Business school give crafting some new NDAs a shot. We really need some innovation here. The difference between how authors and programmers are treated in business is amazing. Ever hear of the Interminable agency clause? I hadn't til I went looking for the apparently mythical "ideal SFWA" authors agreement. That such a clause exists for authors - that ever existed - and that they have the gall to complain about losing it in some cases - is almost unimaginable to me! Yet, in a way, "non-interminable agency" is what working on open source software provides to a programmer. It's a way to retain "authorship", or to keep a product alive, if abandoned. I miss Lotus Manuscript, to this day. T here are plenty of interesting examples from the authorship realm that could perhaps get into more employment models. In a world where demand for programmers outstrips supply, and Bill Gates is calling for more slaves from the Far East, perhaps better contracts could be a better solution to lure mo' better programmers and contractors to companies that are prepared to take advantage of this legal asset. All that legal fodder aside, I really believe that the open source development model is the best way to bring up a new piece of hardware, quickly and well, long before the product actually ships - and that it can be done with very little IP exposure to the company making the product. I totally understand and agree with a corporate need to keep the hardware details secret up until the product launch, and even afterwards, so keeping the spec under wraps is ok by me, so long as the code goes out meeting the open source licensing requirements, whatever they are. In particular a dual licensed GPL scheme would probably enable more full featured software to get developed, sooner, cheaper, and faster - on Linux first - and then a company could still meet the requirements for Windows and Macintosh releases. In a day and age where a new hardware product is obsolete in 18 months, doesn't it make sense to get the software started and finished as early as possible? Thx again for the backlink. You're the greatest. -- Mike PS: I note that the cell phone issue you mentioned recently is just alarmist email. But: wouldn't it be great if there was a donotmail.gov?
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