On Thu, 01 Jul 2010 07:57:59 EDT ken...@vlsi1.ultra.nyu.edu (Richard Kenner) wrote:
> I disagree. From what I see of the industry and its practices, I think the > risk of an attack on Free Software due to lack of providence issues is > INCREASING, not decreasing. As FLOSS software makes more and more inroads > into the commercial world, proprietary software companies will feel more > and more threatened and the way most companies react to threats nowadays is > via legal attacks. We've had companies (e.g., SCO) in the past who > transitioned from being software companies to legal firms. It would not > surprise me at all if one or more compiler companies did something similar > in the next decade. The transition from software to lawyer companies seems inevitable. It's been my feeling for a while, though, that, after SCO, anybody who contemplates a copyright-based attack on free software will have to be *very* sure of the ground they stand on. I don't really expect to see it, honestly. As your failing compiler company lays off engineers and tops up its legal staff, it will almost certainly find that picking up a software patent or two in the process is an easy thing to do. That's where we're really exposed, and no amount of provenance metadata will really help much in our defense. jon
