Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!decwrl!labrea!polya!shap
From: shap@polya.Stanford.EDU (Jonathan S. Shapiro)
Newsgroups: gnu.gcc
Subject: Re: What is the poison in the Apple?
Message-ID: <8123@polya.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 3 Apr 89 09:10:25 GMT
References: <8903281812.AA00242@sugar-bombs.ai.mit.edu>
Sender: Jonathan S. Shapiro <shap@polya.Stanford.EDU>
Reply-To: shap@polya.Stanford.EDU (Jonathan S. Shapiro)
Distribution: gnu
Organization: Stanford University
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I own a Mac II (purchased before the lawsuit nonsense) and I will
never willingly buy another apple product.  The reasons are that Apple
is acting in a fashion I believe is improper in these lawsuits, and
that apple's pricing and upgrade policies when coupled with their
support policies are hurting the individual users.  The Mac-II to
Mac-IIx upgrade gives me nothing I want, but wait and see how quickly
they obsolete the Mac II.

Fundamentally, the issue is this: what should, in principle,
"intellectual property" mean.  I support Richard's view that Apple's
approach to this question is both wrong and bad.  If Apple manages to
win these cases, they will establish legal precedents that will hurt
all software developers in the intermediate and long term.

The current state of affairs is that I can be sued for independently
developing a piece of software, and the de facto burden of proof falls
on the plaintiff.  I cannot afford to defend a case against bastards
like Apple, even if I am in the right.  This is great for the short
term - the company and its stockholders that win by default are
delighted.  In the long term it is very bad.  It creates an
environment in which *everything* must be done in a clean room
atmosphere.  If I wish to have a defendable case under the current
law, not only can't I use your code, I can't talk to your employees -
even if they are best friends or family, because this would violate
the clean room, and I need to prove beyond a doubt to the jury that I
had no inside knowledge.  Further, I need to preprocess everything
that goes into the clean room, having it looked at by a team of
lawyers and engineers that are not involved in the actual development.
This easily multiplies the cost of software development by a factor of
10.

Worse, I can't afford to defend, and a company like Apple can engage
in nuisance lawsuits that appear legitemate enough that I can't turn
the tables.

To fix this, we would have to make it be the case that if A sues B,
and A proves to be wrong, A must pay all of the costs and lost income
incurred by B plus a hefty penalty, say 200%.  At the moment, if I sue
and I lose, all I have lost are the legal fees, which is not even a
drop in the bucket.

Apple is creating legal precedents that will hurt us all.  *That* is
why they should be boycotted.  The issues pertinent to FSF are
strictly incidental.

Of course, the sweet irony of the whole situatio is that ultimately
these increased costs will mean that Apple goes out of business.  It
isn't big enough to survive an increase of a factor of 10 in the cost
of software production.

Jon Shapiro

These opinions are my own, and certainly not those of my employer!