Chaos Computer Club 1997 February/cccd_beta_feb_97.iso/chaos/habi1/txt/hb1_28.txt

Text File | 1997-02-28 | 10KB | 236 lines

    have the time. I give whar support I can, for much the
    same reason that l'm at this conference, for the inrer-
    action with other hackers over a network. I don't
    know, I'm having a little trouble in my own mind
    figuring out just why I did it the way I did it.

    RICHARD STALLMAN: What wouid you think if
    somecne else wanted to work on improving it, say,
    and then distribueed it as freewam and split che results
    with you7

    BROTHERS: It has happened and they are not splitting
    (laughter) and I don't know how tO handle tbet.

    BRIAN HARVEY I'd like to argue against the idea
    of intellectual property in software. And here's why.
    I have a version of LOGO for UIMIX tbet I worked on,
    tbat I v~rote. So it's my intellectual property, right'
    I started with something tbet somebody else did and
    improved it. I improved it a lot: it s aboue 90 perrent
    me. But I started with somebody else's suucture. Now,
    before tbat he started wieh some terrific intellectual
    work done by Seymour Papert and Wally Ferezog and
    the gang at BBN {Bolt, Beranek & Newman, a Cambridge
    ressarch institute] and MIT. I also started from the work
    done by Ken Thampson and Dennis Ritchey and Brian
    Kernighan to give me the programming tooLs tbat I
    needed to write that thing. I also started with a whole
    basis of material support from the guys who built the
    hardware and designed the hardware. Okay7 That's
    not to say that I didn't do anything.

    VOICE: Don't forget your mother and father. (bughter;

    HARVEY: Damn straight. And the people who were
    paying my salary while ~ was doing it─ehey weren't
    paying me exactly to do that (laughter), but hang on,
    the truth is l was a teacher in a high school and I needed
    this program to tesch my kids. They weren't paying me
    to be a programmer, but I did ;t because it was some-
    thing I needed ro suppore my work. The point is what
    I did was based on the work of a hell of a lot of other
    peopie, all right7 I think that's true of anything that
    anybody does. If I say fuck ehe world this is my thing
    and l'm in it for whae I can get, then l'm a son of a bitch.

    STEVE WOZ~IAK: Philosophically you go higher
    and higher and higher and the whole ~vorld is the bese
    thing if the world gains, tbet's better than if your little
    country geins. or your little company geins. But then
    we donie want the others to get it, because "If IBh1
    gets it it's ganna be a bad outcome for The People."
    It turns out tbet that's either bullshit or something else,
    but it's bullshit. It turns out if IBM got it the rest of the
    worid wouid really have more and do rnor~ We really
    just want to make as much money as we can off of
    what we put our time in. Now you eake that one level
    further and . . . I forget what I vves gonna say.
    (laughter, applause)
    JERRY JEWELL (fonndef of Sirfus Software, publisher of
    computer games): I think in most cases the program-
    mers here who are wanting to make money at this are
    a lot like old witckdoctors. As long as they can keep a

    ! 28 i

    secret how they do things, it appears to be magic to
    John a Public. and they're gonna make a living, but as
    soon as everybody has a computer and knows how tO
    program and we have languages that don't require any
    specisi knowledge, your income's gonna go away.

    DAVID WBAR: But there are more people willing tO
    buy games and play them than are willing to write them.

    JEWELL: Right. Because they don't know how to
    write them.








    WOZNIAK: I remember what I was gonna ssy. The
    company wants to keep it secret to make as much
    money as they can, but here's how we get beyond that
    level. We sey that the whole world wins because other
    peopie are mor~ inspired to go wnte their own pro-
    .erams and design their own hardware because they're
    gonna make moneY. They're gonna make so much pro-
    duct and do so well off it chat they'll go out and do
    the most incredible things. They're inspired. That's
    the American way.

    RICHARD GREEbIBLATT: There is a [once in this
    world for standardization. If there's a knowledgeable
    marketplace people will say, "Gee, we want to do
    things a standard way." That's what IBM really did right.
    They said, "We're ganna haYe an open architecture
    on the PCs," and they advereisod thae and ic vvas the
    one thing they did right, and look whene it got 'em. In
    software that same thing can happen. If you have some-
    thing done right and it's standardized and it's public,
    people will want that as opposed to the proprietary
    thing. And it's not necessarily because it's better taday
    than the proprietary thing, but they realize that it is
    building a foundation and over the long term maybe it
    will get to be better tban the proprietary thfng.

    WOINIAK: Customers set the standards.

    GREENBLATT: C~stomers inevitably will set the stan-
    dards, no matter what.

    DAVE HUGHES ("Sourrovo~d Dave," system operator of
    pac~serting bollenn board system─3031632-3391~:
    Hackers are doomed, and you just better accept that.
    tHssssss) Not doomed to extinction, you're doomed to
    iive a life in which you're on the fror~tier. Nobody pays
    for my WORD-DANCE, nobody paid for your early
    stuff, nobody paid for T S Eiiot's first goddamn poems.
    When he got comrnerl:ial. then the ethic meant when
    he made it he damn well better cycie back, and at ieast
    Apple and ~ few companies try to give it back, and the
    Sharevvare and Freeware is an attempt tO cry to recon-
    cile that boundary tovvard an ethic and a commitment.

    ~ENRY LIEBERMAN (MIT A.l. [ob) How does the
    frontier get supported' How do the ceneers of ressarch
    and the centers of education get supported? I think
    there is another kind of software pirary going on tbat's
    not discussed very much, and the villains are not high
    school kids who copy discs and break secret codes.
    They're executives in three-piece suits tbat work for
    large corporations and drive Mercedes. They make
    money off the results of ressarch and education, and

    they don'r kick very much back ro support the next
    generation.

    VOICE: They will argue that they paid the taxes tbet
    funded the MIT A.l. Lab.

    LIEBERMAN: That's true, and that is the only rea-
    son that places like MIT and Stanford don't disappear
    enrirely off the face of the Farth. We have this para-
    doxical situation wLere the computer industry is booming
    and yst places like MIT and Stanford don t hsve secure
    support. It's very iikeiy rhat I will be out of a job in a
    year. Places like the MIT A.l. Lab get no direct benefit
    from places like IBM or Apple. Well, that's not true,
    that's not true. They give us discounts on their
    machines, and that's very helpful.

    And thq contribute some cash, but the amount they
    contribute is piddling in the sense that wLen it comes
    time to psy my salary, the poople I work for have to
    go begging to people iike ARPA and they have to prom-
    ise to build bombs (murmuring) [ARPA i5 Advanced
    Research Projects Agency, part of the Defense Depart-
    mentJ and that disturts me deeply. I and my colleagues
    come up with important ideas which people acknow-
    ledge helps support the industry and makes money
    for people. I wouid like to be able to pursue my
    work without having to go to the Defense
    Departrnent.








    RICHARD STALLh1AN: It's worse than that even.
    because at a university paid for by everyone in the
    country an idea will be developed almost to the peint
    where you can use it, but then the last bit of work
    will be done by some company and the company will
    get lots of money. and those of us who aiready paid
    for most of the work wen t be able to use the results
    without paying agein, and we wan't be able to get
    the sources even thou~h we paid for those sources
    to be written.

    L~S ERNEST (founder of Imcgen Systems, former bead
    of Stanford A.l. Lab): Vardous ideas have been given
    about what is che essence of hacking. Is it altruism or
    is it financial mouve7 My view is that it's primarily an
    ego trip, by most poople. All good hacks are done by
    somobody who thinks he can do i~ a bt better than
    anybody else, and he goss off and does it There are
    very few team hacks that one can think of that went
    anywhere. (murrnunng) Of course commercial develo~
    ment is intrinsically a team effort, and therefore there
    is always sonne tugging going on when you change over
    from being a hacker to trying to do some commercial
    development. It was mentioned a little while ago tbat
    Japan, while they have good hardware, don't seem to
    have good sottware for the most part. My view iSr
    that's a coltur~l problem; Japanese culture velues team
    effort very mÖch; it does not value ego trips

    BILL BURNS: I think Les i5 right, and I aiso agree with
    what Woz sald, and I wouid like to propose that we
    separate two things. I think the "hacker drive'' is indi-
    vidual, i~'s a drive within us. Itts what happens wLen
    we're doing something absolutely useless: we ~ust de-

    ~ Lett John Draper (Cap'n Crunch) with
    a one of the originol "blue 6005" used for
    | hacking up 2he planet's telephone system.

    | Abeve, Scott Kim, author of Inversions,
    | designer of the Hackers' Conference logo
    and T-shirt (p. 44~.

    I Right. Diana Merry, Xerox PARC.

    -

                    ~ -
    0: ~

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