I have been wailing, here and elsewhere, since Judge Jackson's Finding of
Law, that the Court should, unilaterally if necessary, open-source
Microsoft to some extent. There are a few reasons this bears repeating,
and in linux-kernel.
Now is the official time to do what I've been doing for a long time, which
is speak to the Court as an interested public. I'm not much of a public,
however. The party currently taking wails is the US DOJ.
I heard at MDFIG today that certain Linux users with severely deformed
feet have been bad-mouthing unix again. They need to see what "sucks"
REALLY looks like. Free access to older Windows source, reverse-engineered
perhaps, but legally re-useable, could also assist such creatures in thier
efforts to slaveishly mimic Windows, and could improve Linux's "traction
on the desktop", even with deformed feet, at least to the extent that
mimicry and interoperating with other deformities could improve traction.
To restate clearly, if you like big numbers of humanoids, many Linux
people don't know any better than to Windows-ize Linux, and the appended
proposal assists with that, bigtime, at the kernel level and up.
At the Maryland Forth Interest Group meeting today, I mentioned the basic
idea of the proposal appended below, and 3 of the five other people there
nodded, and seemed to agree. No argument erupted, which is wierd. Not
impressed? I challenge you to get 5 Forth guys to agree that 2 and 2 are
numbers. Plenty of other arguments did erupt. There's more people at
MDFIG when someone brings in thier own from-scratch working
Forth-CPU-based multimedia platform or something. These guys have a sense
of what works :o) The guy that reserves the room for us at Hopkins APL is
busy trying to win a contract to lob some junk to Mercury. The poor
bastard has been told he has to use a PPC. The PPC is a fine piece, but 7
watts is a bit much for a trip to Mercury. We haven't talked much about
the stack-machine supposely underneath Microsoft's new .BLA or whatever it
is. The guys that show up no matter what are Amiga guys as well as
Forthers, of course.
*nod*
Rick Hohensee
rickh@capaccess.org
Professor Gavil,
As an independant programmer, I am obsessed with what works in
terms of software. Since Judge Thomas Penfield-Jackson's Finding of Law I
have been sure that the judiciary could use some help from an individual
such as myself, and events since then seem to bear this out. I get the
impression that the Microsoft case has gone on longer than the even Court
would have prefered.
I attempted to convey a suggestion to Judge Jackson shortly after his
Finding of Law, and also spread my suggestion around the Internet a bit.
That suggestion is at
ftp://linux01.gwdg.de/pub/cLIeNUX/interim/amicus_curae
My thinking on that original suggestion has evolved only slightly since
that time. A websearch for "Compromising Microsoft" or "Microsoft's word"
combined with my surname, Hohensee, should produce later writings. Here's
what I think now...
The Court declares Microsoft operating system products "criminally
compromised intellectual property". This is a special state of copyright
protection vacancy, under which Microsoft operating system products lose
thier patent and copyright protections exactly five years after thier
release dates.
That's it.
Simple
First off, it has one essential characteristic of anything that will be
effective upon Microsoft, simplicity. They feed on loopholes. There are
none in the above. There's nothing they can do about the Fed not
protecting the copyrights thier existance depends upon.
There is nothing for them to cooperate with
This doesn't require any cooperation or good faith from Microsoft, which
is also crucial. (They may actually favor this remedy, however.)
Partial substantive monopoly relief
It does actually partially break thier monopoly. The AOLs and Oracles
and Rick Hohensees of the world can produce thier own alternatives to
Windows, based on older versions of Windows. (I personnally have to be
very well paid to look at a Windows desktop, but distastes vary. I use
Linux.) I believe this addresses what you mentioned to me over the phone
as something Judge Jackson insited upon.
Emphasis on operating systems
The focus is on the software others are dependant on, operating systems.
This leaves Microsoft untouched as to application products such as Office.
Leaves Microsoft running Microsoft
What goes in an OS, where they expend thier energies, all product design
decisions and so on remain with Microsoft. Federal micromanagement of
Microsoft is avoided, to everyone's benefit.
asserts a compromised bargaining position upon Microsoft
A negotiation is always determined by the initial positions and status of
the negotiators. This creates the possibility of an outside force to
condition Microsoft's tenacity. The legislatures of the nations of the
world might enact the above if the Court doesn't.
Fosters innovation in and outside Microsoft
This blows a nice neat .22 caliber hole in Microsoft's hull, and leaves
them at the helm, with no patch kit. What will leak into thier vessel, and
the only way they can defend themselves from it, is innovation.
Can provide replacements for Microsoft if necessary
If Microsoft is destroyed by the above, or to the extent that it is, it
will be by being replaced by viable alternatives.
Self-proportionalizing
How bad this turns out to be for Microsoft will be proportional to how
little they have improved thier products recently.
About Intellectual property
Microsoft postures quite enthusiastically as a defender of intellectual
property rights. As an individual that produces intellectual property,
rather than buying and stealing and reselling it, I personally do not
anticipate any harm to me from a compromise upon the copyrights of proven
habitual criminals.
Rick Hohensee
rickh@capaccess.org
http://linux01.gwdg.de/~rhohen
ftp://linux01.gwdg.de/pub/cLIeNUX
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Dec 23 2001 - 21:00:10 EST