From: Anne P. Mitchell, Esq. [mailto:amitchell(_at_)isipp(_dot_)com]
Most importantly, I believe, and a point I perhaps did not highlight
pointedly enough, is this: the lawyers and suits are the corporate
decision-makers. They generally do *not* take the concerns of the
technical people into account when making either legal or other
corporate decisions.
I don't recall ever having a lawyer advise me to take a particular
course of action for anything other than purely defensive reasons.
Lawyers are rarely true decisions makers for that very reason, give
them four alternative choices for action and they will provide you
with reasons against five of them.
It is in this climate that people in this group are saying
"but someone
who has intellectual property rights to this would _never_ do that,
because it would be wrong - or would not be the best for the
Internet". That's horribly naive.
It depends who, you can usually depend on parties to follow their
own best interests. In the case of the largest computer compaines
that generally means the industry interest as well.
When it comes to the behemoths we are discussing whether or not
we should risk them acquiring one extra missile, and not a particularly
reliableone at that. This would worry me rather more if it wasn't
for the fact that they already own more than enough missiles to
ensure complete destruction if they go the nuclear route.
Their motive for wanting a product to be deployed is _very_ different
than your motive. It has to do with marketshare, consumer
capture and
retention, or, at best, a solution to _their own problem_. This is
true of *any* company, even primarily anti-spam companies, which have
moved from garage to office suite, and *particularly* true of those
which have moved from "a few guys doing something they care deeply
about" to investors and shareholders.
The folk who have recently moved from garage to VC funded startups
are actually a much bigger threat, they have no corporate interest in
the commons. The established players do.
My point, and I do have one, is that the lawyers and suits need
to have an
epiphany, and need to realize that this is a situation which
is turned
on its head from what they are used to - that not only do
they have to
take the concerns of the Geek Front into account - but that
without the
Geek Front they've got nothing.
Its called mindshare. A case in point is S/MIME vs PGP. The format
dispute is an irrelevance from a technical point of view, but the
failure of S/MIME to build a deployment constituency and the failure
of PGP to gain industry support has meant that neither has been
a success.
The problem we have here is that the process was only designed to
address the technical issues. It is quite possible to go from start
to finish without having built the necessary constituency for
deployment.
Phill