Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S263496AbTFTRRO (ORCPT ); Fri, 20 Jun 2003 13:17:14 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S263558AbTFTRRO (ORCPT ); Fri, 20 Jun 2003 13:17:14 -0400 Received: from chaos.analogic.com ([204.178.40.224]:14721 "EHLO chaos.analogic.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S263676AbTFTROy (ORCPT ); Fri, 20 Jun 2003 13:14:54 -0400 Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2003 13:31:26 -0400 (EDT) From: "Richard B. Johnson" X-X-Sender: root@chaos Reply-To: root@chaos.analogic.com To: Stephan von Krawczynski cc: Larry McVoy , wa@almesberger.net, miquels@cistron-office.nl, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM] In-Reply-To: <20030620174600.681cdf47.skraw@ithnet.com> Message-ID: References: <063301c32c47$ddc792d0$3f00a8c0@witbe> <1056027789.3ef1b48d3ea2e@support.tuxbox.dk> <03061908145500.25179@tabby> <20030619141443.GR29247@fs.tum.de> <20030619165916.GA14404@work.bitmover.com> <20030620142436.GB14404@work.bitmover.com> <20030620174600.681cdf47.skraw@ithnet.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 4877 Lines: 116 On Fri, 20 Jun 2003, Stephan von Krawczynski wrote: > On Fri, 20 Jun 2003 07:24:36 -0700 > Larry McVoy wrote: [Sorry about snipping a lot.... ] > Think about the real important things first, then come back to the discussion > about the _tool_ and see how narrow and short-sighted people react. > > Regards, > Stephan Well the 'tool' is just some political hackery that some persons have created to make themselves seem important. These are the same persons who fail to recognize that most everybody needs to work for a living somehow and, if they "contribute" to free- source code, it's usually something they've done while being paid by some company to do something different. Any technical business person who's worth their salt can look through the various Web Pages of the various so-called open-source advocates and see major portions of their company resources being given away when, in fact, it wasn't the right or privilege of the employees to give the property the company paid to develop away at all. As usual, there are several sides to this whole story. Many open-source advocates adopt their special ideas of "open-source" as a kind of a religion. They claim that the big bad companies are withholding the knowledge to which everybody is entitled. The fact is that nobody is entitled to knowledge. Those who have paid their own way through universities may understand this. Others won't and never will. The knowledge that companies pay to acquire is called intellectual property. That's the stuff that makes things work. Without it, the only companies that can exists are distributors. Distributors make their money by moving value from one location to another. In so doing, they don't increase the value. They just take their cut. Technology companies make new money where none existed before. This is because they create value instead of just moving it around. Once you give away that technology, you no longer create value. If you survive, you survive only as a distributor. The economy can handle only so many distributors. To keep growing and make jobs for the new workers that are being born every day, one needs to make new value. Enough Economics 101. Many technology companies understand that their employees may want more recognition than just a paycheck. Therefore, many turn their heads as they become aware that employees are sometimes giving away work performed on "company-time". After all, a dedicated employee can't just turn off his or her innovation when they go home from work. They end up doing lots of company work on their "own-time". However, once the Lawyers smell blood, the day of reckoning is not far behind. Because of their aggressive pursuit of other people's money, the lawyers will not be satisfied until there is a sharp demarcation between a private person's intellectual property and a company's intellectual property. If you've ever read the fine-print on employee "agreements", forced upon engineers as a condition of employment, you will note that everything of value that the poor slob thinks about while being employed is, in principle, the property of that employer. So, if you submit a bug-fix while employed, watch for lawyers in the shadows. Now that a little company is trying to extort money (I call it like I see it) from a big company, we have a wake-up call. If this trend continues, an employee will not be allowed to communicate ideas to potential employees of potential competitors. It is no longer a situation involving "open source", but a situation involving speech itself. The United States Constitution doesn't help here. It has long been established that a company has a right to prevent an employee from divulging the nature of his or her work. If fact, when I worked in the "high country", I wasn't allowed to even travel to certain places in the state or to go to certain night-clubs or bars. If I didn't like those restrictions, I could quit. Otherwise, I just planned my life around the requirements of the company. FYI, we were given a list of places that we could not go. That's like an open invitation to go there and see what they were hiding from us! I can foresee the time where employees won't even be allowed to communicate on the Internet because of the potential of leaking company secrets. This is what the SCO/IBM lawsuit is all about. This is why it's damned important for IBM to accept the challenge and nip this kind of stuff in the bud. Cheers, Dick Johnson Penguin : Linux version 2.4.20 on an i686 machine (797.90 BogoMips). Why is the government concerned about the lunatic fringe? Think about it. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/