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From: andy@carcoar.Stanford.EDU (Andy Freeman)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,comp.society.futures,comp.misc,talk.politics.misc,ba.politics,comp.std.misc,soc.misc
Subject: Re: Rewarding Researchers Without Restricting Copying
Keywords: copyright patent economics ISA
Message-ID: <22611@labrea.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 14 Jun 88 23:54:01 GMT
References: <10777@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Sender: news@labrea.Stanford.EDU
Reply-To: andy@carcoar.Stanford.EDU (Andy Freeman)
Organization: Stanford University
Lines: 46

In article <10777@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> hans@web8e.berkeley.edu
(Hans Reiser </>) writes:

Reiser's scheme doesn't work for a large fraction of the software
market, and distorts the hardware market.

There are lots of programs that only have a few users each.  They
don't have lots of users because they're fairly specialized.
Producers of such software won't be paid by Reiser's ISA because it
doesn't (and can't) survey every user; it merely survey's a
statistically significant portion.  This is fine for operating
systems, editors, compilers, spreadsheets, some databases but not much
else.  (For example, there are very few airline databases and their
software is specialized, so airline database programmers won't get
squat from ISA.)

In addition, the software cost to the hardware cost is basically
wrong.  Look at the PC/clone market.  Extremely reliable machines tend
to cost more, as do portables, but why should the ISA tax on these
machines be higher than that on the cheaper desk-top models?

At best, the ISA serves a portion of the hardware and software market.
Since those groups can already form such an organization yet they
haven't, it seems that the people who would actually benefit from an
ISA don't want it.

The ISA that Reiser is really promoting requires more coercion than
he's admitting to because he's lobbying congressmen.  (If it didn't,
he could set it up himself and sign up any hardware and software types
who were interested.)  I suspect he's a stooge for a large software
house (or he's a wannabe).  They'll naturally benefit from a process
that can be influenced by politics like "we deserve a bigger portion
because we're constantly releasing new versions while that guy hasn't
updated his program in years" or even "we have 100 programmers, we
should get more money than some guy working in a garage even though
the same number of people use our programs."

-andy

ps - Anyone who thinks that the ISA won't get into software
development is smoking better stuff than I can afford.  Of course,
ISA-developed software will be benefit from the politics mentioned
above.
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