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    SubjectRe: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]
    On Fri, 20 Jun 2003, Stephan von Krawczynski wrote:

    > On Fri, 20 Jun 2003 07:24:36 -0700
    > Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com> 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.

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