🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <FRIEDMAN.91Oct28164525@nutrimat.gnu.ai.mit.edu>, friedman@nutrimat.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Noah Friedman) writes...
>   What I find *really* slimy is that Apple has these really slick
>advertisements for their Mac-2's and add, with a withering sneer, "and the
>mac can run MS-DOS software too!"  How can any halfway-ethical company sue
>a company for trying to write compatible software and then turn around and
>support that companies' original software?  Don't you detect a double
>standard there?

No.  

The issues in the Apple-Microsoft lawsuit have been discussed ad nauseum, 
and the details are complex, but neither company is challenging the concept of 
user-interface copyrights, and neither company is applying a double standard.

What is relevant to the comment made by Noah Friedman regarding MS-DOS
is that the emulator that runs on the Mac (SoftPC by Insignia Systems)
includes a legal copy of MS-DOS v.3.3.   Insignia pays the same license
fees/royalties to Microsoft that any other PC clone vendor does for the 
right to include copyrighted Microsoft software with its product.

To legally run newer versions of DOS or Windows -- yes, the Mac can run 
MS Windows, too -- the user must purchase licenses for that software just 
like any other user of a PC-clone.

Strictly speaking, this is an example of Insignia's "slimy" practice
of paying for the right to use copyrighted material.  However, Apple
is equally guilty of such deplorable practices;  many parts of the 
Macintosh OS and accessories are licensed by Apple for distribution
with the Macintosh.  Well-known examples include some of the basics
from the Xerox Star, but there has also been TrueType, which comes 
out of a collaboration/cooperation with Microsoft, Adobe Type Manager,
and Adobe's PostScript.  There are also many smaller examples of 
clever ideas from independent developers that a big company 
could easily have rejected on the "not-invented-here" principle,
but were instead licensed by Apple because they made the Mac better.

The recent Apple-IBM agreement is the latest example of this thinking.
Here we have two big companies with large investments in original 
research and development who have cross-licensed significant 
portions of their technology to each other.

In the real world, this sort of practice makes sense because it
serves the mutual self-interest of those who engage in R&D.

Apple, IBM, AT&T, Microsoft, Texas Instruments, Motorola, Intel,
Xerox and a host of smaller companies continue to innovate because
they know that our legal system will protect their rights to 
to benefit from their investment in research.  If instead we had
a system in which everyone had the right to clone inventions as
soon as they are made public, the impetus for major innovations 
like new hardware architectures and new operating system software 
would not exist.

It is often argued by LPF/FSF apologists that the fact that Macintosh
was developed before the legal concept of "user interface" copyright
was established proves that such guarantees are not necessary to 
ensure the continued innovation in the computer industry.

This begs the question.  Of course it is true that the UI concept
had yet to be established in 1980-84 when the Mac was developed!
The Macintosh _introduced_ the concept of a computer user-interface,
and Apple was fought tooth and nail by competitors who are now
fighting for the right to introduce similar products.

Another issue that is conveniently ignored by the GNU apologists 
-- who are quick to rightly point out that "independent invention"
of algorithms is a common for programmers -- is that out-and-out
copying is far more common in the software industry than it is
for other commercial products.  

Witness the demise of the company that introduced "Visi-Calc".  

This was a company that introduced a concept that changed the world 
-- that changed the way we live and work.  They were briefly rewarded 
with commercial success as businesses snapped up the new Apple II's 
(remember Apple?) to run this incredible new business tool, only to 
be swamped by the combination of IBM, who copied Apple's invention 
of the personal computer, and Lotus, who copied Visi-Calc and added 
insult to injury by claiming the right to sue anyone who did the 
same to them.

This is context in which "evil" Apple developed the Macintosh.


After reading the LPF propaganda, one might get the impression that 
computers and operating systems just materialize out of thin air.

It is understandable that it might appear that way to the cs-grad-student 
type who is accustomed to a free account on his/her university computer.   

For better or worse, the real world is not a socialist utopia 
or a collective farm in which the efforts of happy peasants 
(that's us, in the basement computer labs) are sufficient to
put a computer on every desk and a chicken in every pot.

Digital computers and their operating systems have been developed 
at the cost of many billions of dollars, and countless man-hours
of professional engineering time.  Fortunes have been won and
lost by entrepreneurs who gambled their time and money in a 
process that revolutionized the way we live and work.

Not everybody had the guts or inclination to "bet the farm".
Many computing pioneers from the academic community chose to 
remain in the secure cocoon that is the typical university
computer lab, conducting research, acting as system managers,
and generally pining for the "good old days".

Let me conclude this "essay" by quoting from Richard Stallman's 
recent interview on National Public Radio -- ironically on a 
talk show funded by Apple Computer.  Stallman was asked:

Q:   What do you say to a programmer who says to you, 
     "I worked hard on this;  I deserve to be paid;  
     I own this program that I created."?

RMS: Well, first I'd point out that there are several assumptions 
     hidden in that which are actually not true.  One of them is 
     that the only way to be paid to write the program is to be
     able to stop people from using it.  That's not so, the
     Free Software Foundation raises money;  we've hired a number
     of staff people to write programs and write manuals.  So, one
     answer is "Work for an organization that will raise money to
     pay you to write free software.".

  [ Editorial comment:  earlier in the interview it was mentioned 
    that Stallman himself was paid less than $10,000 for writing 
    software last year.  This is an alternative way to get
    a paycheck as a programmer?  ]

RMS: But there is another answer which I think is more an ethical
     answer than a practical answer, and that is the thing that this 
     programmer is asking to do actually wastes the value of the 
     program that's been written.  It takes the same amount of work 
     to write a program whether it's going to be used by a thousand 
     people or a million, and so if you only let a thousand people 
     use it because you give them a financial disincentive to use it
     you are destroying what you have created.

  [ Comment:  There are _millions_ of people who have paid to use 
    MS-DOS, Lotus 123, WordPerfect, dBase, and yes, the Mac OS under 
    such a financial disincentive.  There are thousands of people --
    programmers and business persons -- who have earned a living 
    writing, marketing and using these products.   How many people
    earn their living because of EMACS?  Hundreds?   Maybe ...
    EMACS undoubtedly took as much effort as WordPerfect, but clearly
    the questions of time wasting and destroying what is created
    is up for interpretation. ]


Q:    When you talk about "free", in the Free Software Foundation,
      how are you using that word?

RMS:  Well, the word "free" has two meanings in English.  One has to
      do with no price.  The other has to do with freedom.  In the 
      term "free software", I am talking about freedom, not price.
      So when a program is free, it means that you the user have the
      freedom to make copies, the freedom to study it and change it
      and improve it.  But it doesn't say anything about whether you
      pay money to get it.  You might get it without paying money, 
      or you might pay money to get it.   At the Free Software Foundation,
      we distribute software in two ways.  We put copies on the 
      computer nets and people can copy that and they don't have to
      pay anything.  Or they can send us money and we'll mail them
      tapes.  And that's how we raise most of our money.

---- end quote ----


So you might get it without paying money, or you might pay money to
get it?   Speaking from the perspective of one who is actually foolish
enough to pay shareware fees, I find it incredible that anyone could
consider describing a completely voluntary payment plan as a viable
way of raising funds to cover programming costs.

The benefits of software that is released with source is compelling
and obvious.  People borrow liberally from "free" source code, and
one tends to see elements of good free software that crops up again
and again in subsequent works.

It is this fact, and not the soft-headed parlor socialism of the 
"Copyleft" that is the underlying strength of the free software 
movement.  Ideas that aren't available for use by others tend to
get supplanted by those that people are free to build upon.  

But if it is reasonable for Stallman to fantasize that people 
who donate money to FSF are somehow "paying" for free software, 
I think that it is equally fair to point out that the commercial 
world has its own way of sharing ideas.  

This is the way of contracts, copyrights, patents, and licensing.  
It's not a perfect system, but this way the bills get paid.

-- Bill Johnston (johnston@minnie.me.udel.edu) 
-- 38 Chambers Street;  Newark, DE  19711;  (302) 368-1949