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At 9:31 AM -0700 5/13/02, Joshua Allen wrote:
>I think comparing Compuserve and WWW is a wee bit unfair; at least from
>a "free and open" perspective. The WWW succeeded over alternatives
>because of universal identifiers. I don't think that patent or cost
>considerations led organizations to choose WWW over CompuServe. And
>plenty of people still use AOL, so there is nothing about a
>"proprietary" system that precludes participation in a universal
>identifier system.
The WWW wasn't universal initially. It could not, for example, point
into Compuserve content or AOL forums. (In fact, I think it still
can't). However, it became universal or nearly so because it was free
and open.
>Cisco still doesn't provide source code for their routers, AFAIK. The
>very fabric of the Internet is only as "open" as the protocols that get
>pounded out between Cisco and its competitors in the IETF. No open
>source reference implementations there.
>
There are most certainly open source implementations. I don't know if
they're always the official reference implementation (if indeed any
such exists) but the fact is a Linux box running free software can do
anything a Cisco router can do, maybe not quite as fast (yet) but
that's more an issue of custom hardware than software. I for one
fully expect Cisco to nose dive within five years in the face of open
source competition from faster and cheaper commodity hardware.
>Expecting people to renounce selfish behavior and behave altruistically
>is not realistic. Expecting society to abolish intellectual property is
>not realistic. Anyone who holds such expectations will be faced with
>constant shock and indignation (when not busy looking for diamond tiaras
>in the gutter), and will be pliable material for the politicians.
>
Expecting current notions of intellectual property to survive in the
21st century is not realistic, precisely because people don't behave
altruistically. Napster was just the beginning. I don't know exactly
what the future will look like, but I am confident that in 50 years
(probably within 20, possibly within 10) copyright law is going to be
as obsolete as 19th century laws about horses and buggies. Society
will abolish intellectual property, initially without the cooperation
of the courts or politicians but eventually they'll come around too.
I'm not saying that's a good thing or a bad thing or moral or
immoral. I'm saying it's going to happen whether you want it to or
not, and that it cannot be stopped by law.
Some pieces will survive. Trademarks will probably still be
important. Patents may survive in some form until we have cheap
fabricators on our desks and then they too will disappear into
irrelevance. Copyright's going to be the first to go. It's already
falling apart.
--
+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo@metalab.unc.edu | Writer/Programmer |
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