[Commons-Law] Re: The gates of intellectual property (Lawrence Liang) (Hasit Seth) (Sudhir) (Hasit)

[Jeebesh Bagchi]

dear Hasit,

Thanks for your sobering provocation to think afresh the `question of 
newness` in software. I do agree with you that the emergence of new 
ideas in software is fairly interlaced within many contexts and it will 
be futile to isolate strands in a simplified way.

Need to think this simple question that you raise about open source not 
being able to come up with a `new` breakthrough idea of software ( it 
primarily working on an `imitation` model of creative participation).

This leads to an interesting question - how is `newness` produced?. And, 
why is the `open-laboratory-peer-production` practices of software 
development not producing fresher imagination of software?

Do correct me i am getting you wrong.

Thanks for raising this questions.

best
jeebesh

Hasit seth wrote:

>Hi Sudhir and Everyone,
>
>    This is just a subjective take on comp. sci. research in an
>attempt to answer Sudhir's query.  I do not believe that there is an
>artificial divide between "basic" computer science research done in
>Universities and "applied" stuff being done in the industry. 
>Mathematics that relates to computer science is done largely in
>Universities, but fundamental theoretical computer science (which is
>some math anyway) is done everywhere.  Best of computer science
>theorists Donald Knuth of Stanford is an active programmer though a
>mathematician by training.  But Al Aho, who crystallized compiler
>research, works at Bell Laboratories and does a lot of theory.  Some
>esoteric stuff such as "hard" Artificial Intelligence has only
>academic interest because industry sank a lot of money in it without
>any good results.  But fields such as searching (Google), computer
>vision (Siemens and tons of other companies), speech recognition (IBM,
>Microsoft, Matsushita...) have a lot their theory and applications
>being done both in academic and industrial world.  Historically,
>terrific stuff has come out of  industry "incubators" such as Bell
>Labs (UNIX) and Xerox PARC (Ethernet, Mouse, GUI, Laser Printers...).
> 
>      Bigger issue than academic/industry divide is the lack of major
>breakthroughs in research.  I understand that many readers of this
>list are interested in
>Legal/Social/Ethical/Political/Emotional/Activism side of innovation
>and not the technical aspects, but any discussion of these aspects of
>invention without considering technology issues is bizarre.  Open
>source is a reaction to this lack of major innovation in computer
>industry.  For example, from a user's viewpoint why should I upgrade
>from Windows 95 to Windows XP and pay any extra money for it when all
>I get is better eye-candy on screen but nothing significant
>functionally?  A group of hackers can get together and clone this OS
>and applications and not pay the "windows upgrade tax" to Microsoft. 
>That is what is Linux today.  Earlier such cloning was for academic
>purposes or just for hacking fun - BSD is a clone of Linux, GNU is a
>UNIX clone, GNU/Linux is still a UNIX clone.  Yes, it is "free" - that
>is the innovation here! but technology wise? not a major breakthrough.
> To say this is NOT to undermine the TREMENDOUS efforts of
>BSD/GNU/Linux  hackers,  because in first place writing the code and
>then making everything work through a community effort is just a
>fantastic achievement. For those who are interested in state of system
>software research, Rob Pike of Bell Labs, a respected UNIX hacker,
>wrote a paper in 2000 about how system software research has become
>stagnant (here: http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/who/rob/utah2000.pdf)
>
>     Now what could be a breakthrough in software?  No predictions. 
>But take an example:  Continuous speech recognition where user speaks
>normally to computer (with no special microphones, no a priori
>training of speech models, etc.; this does mean an intelligent
>conversation, but recognizing continuous spoken words syntactically
>and semantically) is a tough problem, and any operating
>system/application solving that will be a major breakthrough. 
>Everyone - academia, industry and open source community is trying to
>solve this problem since years, and patents are least of hurdles here,
>though a lot of approaches (neither of which is entirely workable) are
>patented.  And users will pay for such an invention, because they will
>see it is a major breakthrough.  If this comes through
>industry-patented tech route, people will still pay for it but its
>spread will perhaps be a little slower.  Academic debates will
>continue about why it is evil to have this patented, but people will
>be more interested in getting hands on this technology rather than
>debate about it.  If users pay for a better toaster or television,
>then why not better software?  If open source community achieves  this
>first, the spread will be perhaps much faster.
>
>The point is not who does it, the point is how to do it? when will it
>happen?  Right now the state of research in continuous speech
>recognition is like Edison trying thousands of chemical compounds to
>build a storage battery with just failures in sight ahead, but a lot
>of hope ahead.  In many cases like these, invention is not a David vs.
>Goliath fight between open source vs. patents, industry vs. academia
>or industry vs. open community.  There may be skirmishes on the way, 
>but in a bigger picture it is rather every-kind-of-effort against the
>scientifically unknown and uninvented. For business to chase such
>tough problems it needs money to keep payroll for programmers going. 
>For open source community, it needs interest of the community to be
>kept going to solve such long term non-cloning type demanding
>problems.
>
>       In short, invention is not simply Archimedes getting an
>"Eureka" idea and running out of his bathtub (modesty and clothing is
>not at issue here!)  straight to the Greek patent office and blocking
>all invention related to the Eureka and hoarding billions in money by
>monopolizing the use of "Eureka" through a patent.  This could happen,
>but usually it is lot more complex than this.
>
>Regards,
>Hasit Seth
>
>  
>
>>Message: 2
>>Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2005 11:00:41 +0100
>>From: <sudhir at circuit.sarai.net>
>>Subject: Re: [Commons-Law] Re: The gates of intellectual property
>>        (Lawrence       Liang) (Hasit Seth)
>>To: Hasit seth <hbs.law at gmail.com>
>>Cc: commons-law at sarai.net
>>Message-ID: <5cbaf66cc761ec00466ab779c2768c84 at sarai.net>
>>
>>Dear all
>>
>>Thanks Hasit for that interesting post on the early computer industry. I
>>would suggest that there is one important actor left out of this story -
>>the University and Research Institutes!
>>
>>Most accounts of computer software innovation rely on industry based
>>innovation models. As you rightly point out a large part of such innovation
>>is generating clones, marginally differentiated for the market. I am
>>curious whether innovation in computer software breaks down into the Basic
>>and Applied Science categories - where basic and fundamental innovation
>>more often occurs in the University and Research Institute rather than the
>>software company.
>>
>>Best
>>Sudhir
>>
>>many firms are the level of innovation  On March 15, 5:04 pm Hasit seth
>><hbs.law at gmail.com> wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>Hi,
>>>
>>>Interesting article.  The New Zealand patent if it tries to claim XML
>>>as being proprietary then it is utterly stupid.  Cannot comment more
>>>without reading the text of the patent.
>>>
>>>I am not a big fan of Microsoft, but as a computer enthusiast I find
>>>the characterization of Gates and Microsoft in early PC history is
>>>terribly twisted.    Microsoft's DOS OS was the prime reason for
>>>personal computing being affordable today.  CP/M the only major "PC"
>>>OS around at the time was proprietary.  IBM's PC-DOS (developed by MS)
>>>was expensive (or impossible at one stage) for PC Clone makers to
>>>license through IBM.  Apple being the paragon of proprietary stuff had
>>>no interest (and still doesn't) in licensing its OSs.  MS-DOS is what
>>>ran the PC-Clone market.  Technical merits of MS-DOS is a different
>>>topic, and GNU certainly didn't make personal computing happen.  If
>>>one understands the difficulty that Linux is facing today in
>>>supporting thousands of different types of hardware devices from
>>>multiple vendors, therein lies the historical value of MS-DOS and
>>>Microsoft.  Linux enthusiasts are doing an admirable job of supporting
>>>drivers for a lot of hardware but still a lot needs to be done (e.g.,
>>>Wireless cards with proprietary firmware are a pain to setup).  DOS
>>>ran on every kind of PC clone, and Windows still supports the widest
>>>variety of garden hardware.
>>>
>>>Yes, MS monopolized the Windows Application market, but this deserves
>>>a closer look.  But before that on DOS platform, MS just provided the
>>>OS - The Wordprocessing package was Wordstar, The Spreadsheet was
>>>Lotus 1-2-3 and The Database was dBase III+  - all non-MS
>>>applications.  All these non-MS application makers very quite slow in
>>>releasing their Windows versions.  Most were so wedded to the text
>>>based MS-DOS that they just could not make the transition fast enough
>>>(e.g, dBase III+ or Wordstar).  Nobody wanted to develop applications
>>>till Windows 3.1 became popular.  MS filled in this space (of course
>>>with head start from knowing Windows codebase) with acceptable Apps
>>>such as Word and Excel.  Developing these Apps is hardly a trivial
>>>task where one can say that MS just hacked together a few pieces of
>>>off-shelf software.  Just look at the effort required in OpenOffice to
>>>understand the nature of the task.  Other OS Vendors lost faith in the
>>>PC market - principal being IBM with a much superior offering of OS/2.
>>> MS continued developing both OS and App market, with entry barriers
>>>getting higher and higher for other players.  Sure they were
>>>monopolistic, but just look at Apple or IBM in similar circumstances
>>>and they are no different.
>>>
>>>Software is not easy to develop, especially complex and large
>>>applications.  For example, GNU's Hurd kernel is years in making
>>>without any significant results.  It is just a damn tough job.  Linux
>>>enthusiasts will rave about Vi and Emacs, GNU CC and Make as all that
>>>you need to develop applications.  May be.  But MS's contribution,
>>>from a purely technical and developer producity viewpoint, in Visual
>>>Basic is just immense.  Nothing comes close in ease of developing a
>>>GUI app - whether free or proprietary application.  I know there is a
>>>ongoing Gambas project to close Visual Basic, but then like most open
>>>source projects it is a cloning effort.
>>>
>>>If we accuse of MS of rehashing and repackaging existing technology,
>>>open source software is no different with their best efforts being
>>>admirable clones (some better, some worse) of existing proprietary OSs
>>>or Applications.   While MS is a terrible company, a classic
>>>monopolist at many times, its historical role in bringing affordable
>>>computing to masses cannot be just wished away.
>>>
>>>Regards,
>>>Hasit Seth
>>>      
>>>
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