From: robert@metropolis.com (Robert Munyer)
Subject: Stallman & lawyers (was Re: SPA piracy raid at Oregon?)
Organization: Metropolis Software, Inc.
Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1992 19:54:54 GMT


In article <D2150035.9b5fum@outpost.SF-Bay.org> peirce@outpost.SF-Bay.org
(Michael Peirce) writes:

> Come on.  Stallman would like to see the end of the commercial software
> industry as we know it.

Abbreviations:
     FSF  -- Free Software Foundation
     LPF  -- League for Programming Freedom
     NTFL -- Not Too Likely

Is the FSF trying to kill off the commercial software industry "as we know it"?
Maybe; I'm not convinced.  If they are, are they going to succeed?  NTFL.  FSF
has about as much chance of killing off this industry as Communism had of
killing off capitalism.  I am NOT worried about this.

But there IS a group out there that is working real hard at killing off all
software development as we know it.  Who is it?  [drum roll please]  It's
LAWYERS and the companies that hire them, specifically the Look-And-Feel guys
and the Patented-Algorithm guys.  If these guys get their way, the software
development process will be slowly strangled, until it withers up and dies.

The software industry is full of brilliant, hard-working people.  One of the
biggest reasons it can attract this kind of people is the FREEDOM of creation--
you are free to think of anything your mind can imagine, and then you sit down
and create it.  But gradually, as more and more Looks and Feels and Algorithms
are "stolen" from the public domain and "privatized" by individual companies,
the software development process will start to become a plodding, bean-counting
sort of exercise.  For every module you are going to write, your employers will
expect you to come up with at least half a dozen different implementations, and
then do a patent search for each one, and choose whichever one of your
implementations infringes the CHEAPEST patents.

You think I'm exaggerating?  Think about what computing would be like right now
if Xerox had managed to convince the courts in 1980 that all the ideas that
they implemented first BELONGED to them and nobody else could use those ideas.

Hell, consider this -- Imagine what it would be like if these lawyers had
started doing their dirty deeds thirty years ago.  Imagine if EVERY SINGLE
THING in Knuth's "Art of Computer Programming" was PATENTED by somebody.  How
would you like to try to write ANY kind of useful program that doesn't infringe
on something in Knuth?  You just couldn't do it.  Every time you programmed
ANYTHING, you'd have to go thumbing through Knuth to figure out whose patents
you were infringing on, and how much it was going to cost you.

Programming would become a dull, plodding experience.  It would suck.  People
like me would be driven to quit programming (hell, I'd probably become a lawyer
:-), and nobody would be left but the bean counters.

It's a Damn Good Thing that these kinds of lawyers weren't around in the 50's
and 60's and 70's.  If Stallman gets his way, they won't be around in the 90's.
I don't care if he's a Communist or a Socialist or a Zoroastrian; if he's
trying to put some restraints on those lawyers, I think he's great.

> Personally I boycott anything that is associated with GNU.

I hope you meant this to be a joke, because it's REALLY funny.  I bet they
[chuckle] are really missing the [giggle] income that they're losing [ha ha]
because you're *boycotting* [hee hee] all those free [HAW HAW HAW] products!

______________________________________________________________________
Robert Munyer            |   "I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid."
robert@metropolis.com    |      -- Bishop, _Aliens_
Disclaimer: this does not necessarily represent the views of my employer.