How to kill open source
The use of lawyers to go after open source frontally, with copyright and patents, has not worked, so many in the open source community are under the mistaken impression that the war is over and they won.
It's not over. (A podcast of this old-timey radio show is available through Boxcar711.)
There are two ways to kill open source which do work:
- Spam it to death. That's what killed newsgroups.
- Keep it from getting raw material. That's what is happening to Internet radio.
That's right, either ignore the law or twist it against the Internet's interests.
Spamming has done more than kill off newsgroups as a valid way to exchange information. It also keeps bandwidth prices extraordinarily high, compared to costs.
It is killing non-proprietary e-mail using POP3, which is being replaced either with corporate monitors or proprietary Web-based interfaces such as Google Mail.
And it's a perfect excuse for both government and big corporations to demand centralization of resource control, turning the "stupid" network "smart" but giving those in charge of that brain ample excuse for both charging you out the wazoo and controlling what you can do with the resource.
Digital Rights Management (DRM) had been the route to keeping open source from getting its raw material. Content demands a DRM, many FOSS advocates loath DRMs on principle, thus content won't move through FOSS channels. Those struggles seem to be waning, as music companies find they can make more money selling music without DRMs than with it.
But the ongoing squeeze to kill Internet radio shows another way to go. Set unrealistic copyright charges, and the monopoly of over-the-air radio can be maintained. Think that will work with video? I do.
My point is that so long as Internet values such as openness, connectivity and consensus can be successfully put down, either by violating or twisting the law, open source is threatened.
Rebuttal?