Programmers and Hackers v/v Patents, Intellectual Property, etc.

[attila <attila@primenet.com>]

Addressed to: Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>
              Paul Penrod <furballs@netcom.com>
              Cypherpunks <cypherpunks@toad.com>

** Reply to note from Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com> 06/22/96 01:20am -0700

= At 02:57 PM 6/21/96 GMT, attila <attila@primenet.com> wrote:
= 
= >        personally, I think RSA has been most generous in their 
= >    licensing: a personal use license of the basic algorithm is free. 
= >    How do you suppose PGP really exists?  it's free!  RSA has done 
= >    more to advance cryptography with this policy than any other in many
= >    years.  the political and public relations benefits to our rights 
= >    to cryptography and the public relations bonanza for public 
= >    awareness is not even estimable, let alone measurable.  The Federal
= >    persecution of Phil Zimmerman was a PR bonanza and a rallying cry.
= 
= One of the main reasons that PKP let people use RSAREF free was that,
= mostly through PGP, people were already using it; this lets them both
= control the market to the extent that they can as well as letting
= free-software writers advance the state of the art and make commercial
= companies and their markets aware that RSA is the algorithm to use.
=
	absolutely.  if you are being "bootlegged" on a basic conceptual patent by a 
    class of users which are impossible to either regulate or litigate (individual 
    users), might as well maximize your advantage --in this case, the combination of 
    the privacy aware and the intense effort of the government to suppress 1,2,4, and 
    5 combined for a reward of public awareness which would be difficult to attain 
    any other way, particularly for free --I seriously doubt that even saturation 
    advertising time during superbowl would be effctive! (joe sixpack audience)!
 
= >        on the other hand, the Free Software group, despite the 
= >    tremendous value to those of us who develop, does nothing to
= >    protect our basic freedoms, and place the issue before the U.S. 
= >    (and world) forum.                                                   
= 
= The League For Programming Freedom, closely intertwined with FSF,
= has been lobbying against software patents for a long time.
= Maybe it's a losing battle, but they've been one of the prominent
= sets of good guys.  And then there are heavy-duty GNU supporters,
= like Cygnus Support (which makes its money developing and supporting
= free software), one of the co-founders of which was John Gilmore....
=
	free knowledge is a state of mind. free software takes away the "American" 
    work ethic incentive. when a nation state (or state or world, etc) decides to 
    appropriate the work of a class of entreprenuers (say software developers), there 
    will be no more creative productive results; few, if any, programmers will work 
    14-20 hours per day, 7 days a week for what could be several years unless they 
    are: 

	    a)  crazy (good possibility); 
	    b)  deranged (more than a few whom I know fit this class)
	    c)  obsessed (goes with the turf)
	    d)  hoping to swing on the brass ring (not the gold ring).

	I never met or hired a "real old-style hacker" programmer who did not fit 
    _ALL_ 4 of the above categories and was not obnoxious as well.  It is the same 
    difference which separates real hackers from programmers:

	    a)  what languages do hackers use?

		    any, except they do not waste time on x86 

	    b)  where do you find hackers?

		    in a (usually rented) place in the Valley (pick one) in a room 
		    littered with old newspapers and fast food bags, lit only by the 
		    glow of a CRT...

	    c)  what's the real difference between hackers and programmers?

		    programmers code; hackers tweak!
 
= But yes, software patents do mostly suck....
=
	that's the basic idea.  the only useful patents are like those owned by RSA 
    which protect a fundamental principal.  The rest of softwware success is 
    marketing and intimidating anyone who copies your basic ideas which are protected 
    by intellectual property rights --often more valuable than a patent.  

	The RSA saga was first published in Scientific America in Aug of 1977  --it's 
    been a long, and expensive, road which may yet pan out before the basic patent 
    expires in 2001 or so.

		attila



--
Fuck off, Uncle Sam. Cyberspace is where democracy lives!