Re: Why DRM exists [was Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!]

Tom Lord
2003-05-01T03:04:02Z

> The thread was about corporations and powers which are
> orders and orders of magnitude more powerful than we will
> ever be.

It was also about innovation and R&D (or the lack thereof) in the free
software and open source communities, and the lack of business models
that seek to address that. Kudos to you for taking the crap for
talking openly about that lack of innovation instead of trying to
handwave it away. Some of us, at least, share your observations and
think you are right on the money.

> But since you insist on harping on BK, I get what you are
> saying, but we are cranking out code faster than you can
> type. I have an engineer here who has over 100 active BK
> repositories, just that one person can code circles around
> all the BK cloners stacked up and then some.

Now, there: be careful. I can only hope/guess that the code you guys
are cranking moves well beyond just basic revision control and into a
complete software development pipeline infrastructure. It's no
virtue of a revision control system that it takes a lot of code to
implement it or countless revisions to get it right.

> We're not worried that the BK cloners are going to keep up.

Yeah -- cloning is dumb. I think that a radically different approach
(specifically, dare I say it, arch) is better. No, arch isn't ready
for LK work. I won't pretend for a minute that it is. I was
shocked and amused to learn that last year somebody actually tried it
for that purpose.

But what's the delta between where arch's at, and an arch that's great
for something the scale of LK? It's not that huge, guy, and if I
weren't so broke -- you'd have something to worry about there, IMHO.

But I am broke, and that just reinforces your recurrent theme about
business realities vs. free software R&D. You Are Right.

> Look at Subversion, that's a funded project, serious
> programmers (good ones), open source, etc. They admit that
> they can't do what BK can and we started more or less at the
> same time

If you ask me, they're totally messed up. They aren't passionate
about revision control or source management generally. The paid ones
seem to be passionate about Collabnet's short-term business plans and
putting on a public project face that fits the mythology of free
software success. I'm sorry -- that's completely rude. Hopefully it
won't land me with a subpoena or anything. But really, I have yet to
see any evidence to the contrary, and plenty supporting it.
It's sad, really, because the core idea -- a txnal file system db --
is a totally winning direction.

> It's absolutely true that I'm pissed off at the kernel
> people looking at cloning BK. Why shouldn't I be?

Because, combined with their inevitable failure, it's just free
publicity.

> Yeah, I'm pissed. If you were me you would be livid. It
> sucks to try and help and be distrusted and crapped on.

It's probably comparably heartbreaking to try and help, and _not_
break any basic licensing precepts of the "community" -- and get
crapped on anyway. It's really lost on me, at this point, why anybody
thinks it's a good idea to _volunteer_ for commercially significant
free software projects. In your case, I can sort of see: if nothing
else, you get some marketing and testing and use cases to study. I'd
guess you'd say "not nearly enough to justify the costs" -- but still,
you have _some_ business reason for spending salary on this, at least
for now.

> We've had 5 years of "you're just evil corporate bastards"

There are worse ones.

> and so far we have never done a single thing to deserve
> that.

Eh. It's just flames and they happen both ways. I think you're
exaggerating there. But, yeah, when you start saying "this is really
exasperating," a "communal" response of "dog pile on the rabbit" is
not the right thing.

> As one open source luminary said "It will take them 5 years
> to catch up to where you were last year and unless you guys
> are idiots you'll be more than 5 years ahead of them then".

It will take that long, but only because of the absence of real R&D
spending in the free software world. I could seal your fate in a year
given <$2M. (Which means that I can't do it in a year and pretty
much have to give up trying.) ("Seal your fate" doesn't mean match
your features or clone -- just get enough leverage to start taking
away project wins.)

> Exactly. Nobody here is sitting back and resting, we think
> what we have is garbage and have a clear vision as to how to
> make it be great. We're doing that. If the copiers can do
> better, that's very cool, but we'll probably respond by
> hiring them if they are really that good, we're always
> looking for people as passionate as we are about this stuff.

I'm available, and I'm looking to get out of this free software
"community" :-)

-t