The Land of the Free

I thoroughly enjoyed Karl Fogel's presentation (also his suspenders) and thought that the parallels between the free software movement and all intellectual property were extremely relevant and exciting. After learning that open source software like Apache is at the heart of almost all servers in the world - specifically the servers that host millions of pages on the web - it became quite clear that innovation in computers and the internet happened because of the amazing contributions that open source and the "free software" movement provided. Open source and free software have a unique mindset in comparison to many other areas of IP however. People like Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman created amazing pieces of software and, rather than make them proprietary and squeezing their creations for every dollar, they laid it out for others to add and develop. In the end, while this may not have directly made them the richest men, they were able to create along with the help of other contributers something that has changed the way we live our lives.

I was very interested in this unique movement and found a small documentary, Revolution OS. It recounts how things used to be in the computer world and how the environment changed. Copyright and licensing played a very large part in how this technology was shaped. In Bill Gates' "Open Letter to Hobbyists" he basically goes on a tirade regarding the current state of computer programing and how everything was being shared without compensation and such practices would lead to discouraging developers from investing time in money in something that they would never see a return on, as such no good software could be made if the author was not being paid. This is the exact opposite of what the free software and GNU manifesto proposed. It also was a sign of things to come from Bill Gates and microsoft.

One of our readings was a talk from Cory Doctorow given to Microsoft's Research Group. He very effectively proposes reasons why Microsoft should abandon DRM and create a DRM-free player. After understanding how Bill Gates envisioned Microsoft and proprietary ownership and control over creations, this talk, while very concisely presented, probably fell on deaf ears.