Jack Rickard of EVTV.ME Rants Against Closed IP and Some PC History

The full article is here: http://evtv.me/2014/06/shit-attack/

I recommend reading it as a case why the GNU Project should succeed, and become the heart of an industry.

There needs to be a guarantee for a GLP-only copyright collective, FSF approved software distribution repositories, GNU consortium of software consulting companies, and hardware makers dedicated to making hardware on which GPL'ed software can run. Companies fail, employees turnover, copyright can be sold and re-licensed/dual licensed. Hardware is innovating constantly and software requires constant support/development to keep pace with hardware. This requires an industry not charity. Lastly, computers are valuable based on what people/corporations can do with them.

Jack writes a long article and discuses a number of other things such as why Apple II was successful. His points as to why closed patent IP and closed copyright IP are harmful ring true.

..."never released the Software Developers Kit he promised."

"If anything substantive goes wrong"..."they pretty much have to fix it. If they don’t want to, I'm out [of luck]"..."Let’s say they DO want to [fix it] but insist it isn’t covered by warranty and that it will cost"...

"In the case of both Azure Dynamics and CoDA, I hear from these guys all the time. Car worked great. They loved it. It broke. Probably something simple. But they have no place to take it. And no place to turn. So can’t I do something. Mostly not…"

...During the winter of 1978/1979 Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston worked on a software program for the Apple II that is credited with being the first spreadsheet program for a personal computer. In two months, they wrote a program titled VISICALC that ran on the Apple II and unveiled it at the National Computer Conference on June 4, 1979. Over the next six years, it sold 700,000 copies on the Apple II platform. The question is, were people who had bought the $2000 Apple II buying the $100 Visicalc, or versa vice? Actually it was almost entirely versa vice. They were buying the $2000 computer specifically to run the $100 Visicalc, and indeed there are reports of people who didn’t precisely know that the device WAS a personal computer. They thought it was an office machine called a VISICALC. A modern desktop calculator with no arm to pull. My recollection is it sold a heck of a lot of Apple II computers – many more than Steve Jobs ever did....