Very Computer

     _________________________________________________________________

       Ground Rules for a Non-Monopolistic Information Technology Market

                 (http://www.a2e.de/phm/konkrefen.html)

   A set of new ground-rules for the information technology market are
   needed, if it is intended to work like a market. The following
   legislative proposal would really stamp out monopolism while
   protecting legitimate commercial software.

precise legal terms open and free

   legal definition of some basic terms:

   open system:
          a system whose relevant functionality is fully specified, so
          that

         1. external systems can call the relevant system functions and
            use them in automated sequence (automatability)
         2. a capable system builder could emulate the system, i.e.
            construct a system that conforms to the specification and be
            sure that thereby it is fully compatible to all external
            systems with which the open system interacts. (emulatability)

   public system:
          a system for which complete and fully documented building
          instructions (source code) are available publicly, so that
          anyone can easily adapt it for a new task by just modifying the
          building instructions.

   free system:
          a public system of which copies and derived versions may be
          freely distributed, provided that

         1. The recipient is enabled to find the original work. Usually
            this means that at least the URL of the original work is
            specified the title and/or other prominent places of the
            system.
         2. Any copyright notices of the original are included
         3. Any modification of the original is clearly documented and
            justified in terms of improvements achieved by it.
         4. The redistributed version is no less free than the original.

   open ardware:
          hardware for whose relevant functionality driver software can
          be written based only on the documentation (without reverse
          engineering or poking into hidden features)

   open operating system:
          operating system which can be rewritten or emulated according
          to the specification (without reverse engineering or poking
          into an existing implementation of this OS specification).

   open software:
          software which is itself an open system and does not depend on
          non-open system.

software and intellectual property laws

   Software copyright and algorithm patents shouldn't entitle the
   patentee to prohibit people from using the algorithm, but they could
   give him a right to charge royalties from commercial applications of
   their work.

openness certification

   The openness of a (soft- or hardware) system can be certified by
   submission of suitable documentation to the patent office or a similar
   organ.

   The patent office makes the documentation accessible but doesn't
   examine it in depth. The applicant swears that it is sufficient for
   guaranteeing opennes in the legal sense (see above). Any third party
   may prove that it doesn't, e.g. by building a valid emulator for
   Win2000 according to the documentation and showing that Word2000
   doesn't run on it because it makes use of hidden features.

   As a part of openness certification, the building instructions (for
   software: the source code) must also be filed with the patent office.
   If they are to be kept secret, a yearly growing secrecy fee must be
   paid to the patent office.

   The patent office publishes the building instructions as soon as
    1. the secrecy fee is no longer paid on time
    2. someone proves that the system is not truly open

   After publication, the system at first becomes a public system, then,
   after two more years, a free system. The status as a public system can
   be prolonged by payment of a lesser, but also incremental, licence fee
   to the patent office.

differential taxation

    1. Acknowledgement of free software as a public infrastructure and of
       donations for free software as in the public interest and
       therefore tax-deductible.
    2. Preferential taxation of open and public systems.
    3. At least in certain fields such as operating systems and network
       protocols, all systems should be required by law to be either open
       or free or both

labeling requirements

   Protection of consumers: any software or hardware sales packaging must
   inform the buyer about the product's openness, and, if nothing
   appropriate is available, accept a label such as: The ministry of
   industry warns: This soundcard may not be useable under a future
   software configuration, since no sufficient interface information has
   been made available.

special duty of public and semi-public institutions

     * Openness Certification as a precondition for use in the public
       service. It is made illegal for officials to spend public money on
       non-public information products. Any information prepared as a
       result of public funding must be made entirely public.
     * Public institutions such as patent offices, telephone- and railway
       companies or market-dominating companies, no matter whether state
       owned or not, are obliged provide certain public information such
       as time tables, telephone books, law texts, normative dictionaries
       and patent disclosures to the public without charge and in a
       standardized format that is independent of any non-open piece of
       soft- or hardware.

public bidding for public infrastructure

   Informational public infrastructure (i.e. informations such as fonts,
   dictionaries, network protocols etc. which everybody citizien should
   have at free disposal but which, once provided in the required open
   form, will be copied and no longer bring money to their creator) is a
   state task. The state is obliged to publicly bid for informational
   infrastructure, using a competitive bidding system, whose openness and
   accessibility has to satisfy highest possible standards (i.e. use
   mailing lists, usenet, www, ftp and whatever may be suited to improve
   accessibility, give detailed account for all expenditures).

   Most of the above principles are not revolutionary, some are mere
   extensions of thoughts implicit in the existing patent system, some
   have even been practised in the US. Not only are they applications of
   basic principles of market economy, they are even widely applied in
   areas outside information technology, such as mobile
   telecommunications for instance. The EU authorities require big
   players such as Siemens, Nokia, Ericsson etc to publish their
   standards and to allow a seamless hand-over from one regional
   operating company to the next, so as to ensure that none of the big
   companies helps one operator create a supraregional monopoly by using
   an un-published winning standard that everybody has to conform to.
   Siemens and the others are actually quite eager to cooperate, just as
   would the software companies, if the ground rules were properly set by
   the governments.

   In the information age, the invisible hand of market economy no longer
   functions by itself. The rules of the game have to become more and
   more artificial. Without artificial new rules, market economy is
   metamorphosing into monopolistic capitalism.

+=========================================================================+
|Hartmut Pilch M.A. <p...@a2e.de>                      PEI2    , Han2mu4   |
|MA, state-examined and court-authorized translator   =||=  ,---,  |  /__ |
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--
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|PILCH Hartmut <p...@a2e.de>                           PEI2    , Han2mu4   |
|MA phil., shtatekzaminita tradukisto por la          =||=  ,---,  |  /__ |
|Germana, Japana kaj China (inkl. Kantona) lingvoj    -||-   ##   /+-/ /  |

The basic premise is the same as the premise that supports socialism.
You can't afford to have all sort of wrong-thinking people going around
and acting on their own. It is much better to have right-thinking people
(like you and I) running things, and helping the great inept masses make
their decisions.

Think of his epistle as the "Mein Kampf" or "Das Kapital" for the
computer industry.

bobsun, allbymyselfnobody else

        And if someone steals your car, you refuse to lift a finger
against the thief, but instead get a new one?

        And what's wrong with demanding that government agencies use open
standards as much as possible? Do you *really* want M$ to have our
Government by the balls?

Quote:>The basic premise is the same as the premise that supports socialism.

Quote:>You can't afford to have all sort of wrong-thinking people going around
>and acting on their own. It is much better to have right-thinking people
>(like you and I) running things, and helping the great inept masses make
>their decisions.

According to my argument, Mr. Petrich, if you want to be President, in
place of Mr. Clinton, you would go out and run for president - and I
strongly encourage it, BTW. But that is another irrelevancy, isn't it?
Just as much as equating private property to roads or the police force
or the military. My guess is that nothing is safe from such an argument.
Anything we might own is open to taking, if Mr. Petrich saw it to be in
the common good.

And why should state governments be uniquely empowered with the right to
take private property, if it is the form of software? If so, why stop
there? Why not empower them to demand other forms of property as a
kickback for doing business with them? I suspect, however, that Mr.
Petrich would agree wholeheartedly with this.

Make note, however, that my generalization are not universal. Just as
many Europeans do no subscribe to the totalitarian perspectives of our
friend from Germany, many Americans are most sympathetic to this view.
One recent, but now seldom heard, variant was the argument for an
"Industrial Policy". How would we keep up with the Europeans, Japanese
and Pacific Rim? Great initiatives were put forth to allow the Federal
Govt. to intervene, to save us from economic disaster. We now hear the
same voices, but now shouting to save us from the "Microsoft Browser
Disaster" - same argument - just as ignorant and self-serving.

bobsun, allbymyselfnobodyelse.

"Make mine a CHEESEburger" - Lyle Lovitt

There may be something to your saying "only in Germany".  
The spirit of believing that the market can handle everything by itself
is typically American.  Sometimes it works well, sometimes not,
as is the case with the Gun Lobby issue, which would be quite
unthinkable elsewhere.

I cross-posted this, so I guess you came from the comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
group.  But don't be so prejudiced.  Microsoft would profit from this system.
With the old outdated competition law, there is only one solution:
Break up Microsoft.  With this one, it could survive and thrive without doing
serious harm to the public.

+=========================================================================+

|MA, state-examined and court-authorized translator   =||=  ,---,  |  /__ |
|for German, Japanese, Chinese (Mandarin+Cantonese+)  -||-   ##   /+-/ /  |
|adr: DE 80636 [Munich] Blutenburgstr. 17             -*--  ----   |  x   |
|tel: +49891278960-8 fax -9, http://www.a2e.de        /|\*  / .\  /| / \  |
|PGP: http://www.a2e.de/phm/pgpkeyen.html              / \    /    |    \ |
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--
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|MA phil., shtatekzaminita tradukisto por la          =||=  ,---,  |  /__ |
|Germana, Japana kaj China (inkl. Kantona) lingvoj    -||-   ##   /+-/ /  |

Quote:>Hmmm. Must have hit a sensitive spot here. The poster proposes seizing
>private intellectual property by the state "for the common good" - and

Quote:>insights into his political perspectives. My reference to "Das Kapital"
>was more appropriate than I had thought.

So far no "information technology market" exists.  Where marketing
is on the rise, market economy is on the decline.

Quote:>And why should state governments be uniquely empowered with the right to
>take private property, if it is the form of software? If so, why stop
>there? Why not empower them to demand other forms of property as a
>kickback for doing business with them? I suspect, however, that Mr.
>Petrich would agree wholeheartedly with this.

Quote:>Make note, however, that my generalization are not universal. Just as
>many Europeans do no subscribe to the totalitarian perspectives of our
>friend from Germany, many Americans are most sympathetic to this view.
>One recent, but now seldom heard, variant was the argument for an
>"Industrial Policy". How would we keep up with the Europeans, Japanese
>and Pacific Rim? Great initiatives were put forth to allow the Federal

Relying on a creed that however sincerely tries to be anti-totalitarian
doesn't help.  You must think for yourself.  You must rethink each time a new
reality emerges.  What was anti-totalitarian yesterday could be totalitarian
today.

Also, please don't go on attacking German thinking as totalitarian.
I am not a representative of German thinking, and if I am wrong, that
is all my own fault.

+=========================================================================+

|MA, state-examined and court-authorized translator   =||=  ,---,  |  /__ |
|for German, Japanese, Chinese (Mandarin+Cantonese+)  -||-   ##   /+-/ /  |
|adr: DE 80636 [Munich] Blutenburgstr. 17             -*--  ----   |  x   |
|tel: +49891278960-8 fax -9, http://www.a2e.de        /|\*  / .\  /| / \  |
|PGP: http://www.a2e.de/phm/pgpkeyen.html              / \    /    |    \ |
+=========================================================================+

--
+=========================================================================+

|MA phil., shtatekzaminita tradukisto por la          =||=  ,---,  |  /__ |
|Germana, Japana kaj China (inkl. Kantona) lingvoj    -||-   ##   /+-/ /  |

The problem is that M$ uses a strategy of * such free-market
responses before they even have a chance to compete on whatever
appeals they may have through the use of anti-competetive contracts.
Witness what happened to the superior D.R. DOS after M$ rolled out
the "per cpu delivered licensing," something which denied Digital
Research and others to compete in any way "Uh...let's see, you want
us to take out the $50 OS, and put on the $70 OS...that will be
$70 please."

Quote:

> bobsun, allbymyselfnobodyelse.

> "Make mine a CHEESEburger" - Lyle Lovitt

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I speak for me, not my employer
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm an engineer, and I'm working on a project in my spare time.
If you presented me with such a law which affected my project
in such a way, I'd probably be tempted to shoot you on the spot.

and yes, I am that serious, because such instruments are the tools
of slavery.

Quote:

> There may be something to your saying "only in Germany".
> The spirit of believing that the market can handle everything by itself
> is typically American.  Sometimes it works well, sometimes not,
> as is the case with the Gun Lobby issue, which would be quite
> unthinkable elsewhere.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I speak for me, not my employer
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

 s> You have to understand the context of this sort of proposal. If you are
 s> an American and don't have something that somebody else has, you decide
 s> to work hard to get the same thing. To many Europeans such as Mr.Harmut,
 s> that is an unthinkable response. It is obvious that the solution is to
 s> seize the property of the person that has more than you do.
sorry to burst you, but this is simply not true. Aside from that fact that it
doesn't fit very well to the fact that especially germans are known for being
industrious.
The difference is rather that in most of europe, protectionism vs. free market
is viewed as a different problem. It's people that are important, not
companies, so if a company does something that hurts a lot of people - like
gaining a monopoly - the governments step in. Not to hurt the company or "seize
the property", but to protect the people. That's the idea behind it. It
probably gets abused about as often as the free market idea gets abused, I'd
say it averages out.

This marketing practice is wdely used in many industries. Go into the
restaurant where you work. Likely, you will find that they sell Coke OR
Pepsi, for the same reason. Why is this practice suddenly
"anti-competitive"? Would you actually prefer that the government
participated as a third party in every contract negotiation to represent
the interests of any third party whose business might be damaged by the
outcome?

bobsun, allbymyselfnobodyelse

Quote:> > bobsun, allbymyselfnobodyelse.

> > "Make mine a CHEESEburger" - Lyle Lovitt

> --
> Aaron R. Kulkis
> Unix Systems Administrator

> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> I speak for me, not my employer
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Quote:> >Hmmm. Must have hit a sensitive spot here. The poster proposes seizing
> >private intellectual property by the state "for the common good" - and

> I propose a deal, not seizing property.
> Currently big companies are allowed to seize public property by leveraging
> proprietary systems into places that belong to public infrastructure.
> This is like allowing people to buy policemen and judges and decide with
> their money what is justice.

Quote:> >insights into his political perspectives. My reference to "Das Kapital"
> >was more appropriate than I had thought.

> If you can read German, you can look at my philosophical web page
> http://www.veryComputer.com/
> It's argumentation is what one calls ordo-liberalist, a school which
> is represented by people like Friedrich Hayek who is one of the most
> outspoken critics of "socialists in all parties".   My article is
> equally outspoken, but I consider certain things that now fall prey
> to marketing strategies as public property whose neutrality and
> equal accessibility must be safeguarded if there is to be a market at all.

Quote:> So far no "information technology market" exists.  Where marketing
> is on the rise, market economy is on the decline.

Quote:> >And why should state governments be uniquely empowered with the right to
> >take private property, if it is the form of software? If so, why stop
> >there? Why not empower them to demand other forms of property as a
> >kickback for doing business with them? I suspect, however, that Mr.
> >Petrich would agree wholeheartedly with this.

> The U.S. constitution very wisely refrains from acknowledging that there
> is such a thing as private "intellectual property".  It only offers the
> patent system as a deal that should work as an incentive to innovation.
> The patentee is granted strictly limited rights that expire after a
> certain time period in return for making is information public.

Quote:> >Make note, however, that my generalization are not universal. Just as
> >many Europeans do no subscribe to the totalitarian perspectives of our
> >friend from Germany, many Americans are most sympathetic to this view.
> >One recent, but now seldom heard, variant was the argument for an
> >"Industrial Policy". How would we keep up with the Europeans, Japanese
> >and Pacific Rim? Great initiatives were put forth to allow the Federal

> One of the early proponents of ordoliberalism wrote an interesting
> book titled "The failure of traditional liberalism as a problem of
> religious history".  Much of the liberalist creed comes from
> unreflected religious perceptions and myths such as that of the
> "invisible hand" or the "chaos from which the best possible order
> emerges".  When this kind of belief is challenged by facts, some
> strong believers --- and there are particularly many in the U.S.,
> which has proven quite advantageous for that country so far --- react
> like fundamentalists whose beliefs are attacked.

Quote:> Relying on a creed that however sincerely tries to be anti-totalitarian
> doesn't help.  You must think for yourself.  You must rethink each time a new
> reality emerges.  What was anti-totalitarian yesterday could be totalitarian
> today.

Quote:> Also, please don't go on attacking German thinking as totalitarian.
> I am not a representative of German thinking, and if I am wrong, that
> is all my own fault.