Hobbyist licensing white paper, first draft

Jay Maynard

Dec 27, 2000

I've put a first draft of my white paper on why IBM should adopt a hobbyist
license program for its software on my site at
http://www.conmicro.cx/ibmhobbyistlic.html . Please take a look and let me
know what you think. I hope to present this to SHARE and IBM at the SHARE
conference in Long Beach at the end of February.

5:37 pm

RE: Hobbyist licensing white paper, first draft

Gavin Scott

Dec 27, 2000

Jay writes:
> I've put a first draft of my white paper on why IBM should
> adopt a hobbyist license program for its software on my site at
> http://www.conmicro.cx/ibmhobbyistlic.html. Please take a look
> and let me know what you think.

The VMS hobbyist license seems to be aimed specifically at, well,
"hobbyists" who are, by definition, not going to make any productive use of
the systems. This is great for those of us who just want to play around and
ooh and aah over things, but I wonder if this will provide a compelling
enough reason for IBM to go along with the idea.

The only advantage to IBM is if some of these pure "hobbyists" somehow get
interested enough to turn into real Systems Programmers, which sounds
extremely iffy to me. I question whether IBM will give a darn about what a
"hobbyist" thinks.

The VMS hobbyist license contains:

"Use of the Licensed Computer is ONLY FOR NON-COMMERCIAL
USES (e.g., home use). As such, you may not use the Licensed Computer
for any business purposes whatsoever, e.g., to develop applications
for resale, to do business accounting, etc."

Which is obviously intended to make sure that if the user gets *any*
financial advantage from the use of the system that Decpaq will get their
cut. In the case of OpenVMS this is reasonable, since an Alpha OpenVMS
server should be affordable by anyone wanting to seriously use the system
for something like application development.

In the case of IBM systems on the other hand, I think you could allow a lot
more use of a "free" system before IBM would start losing money, and in fact
some "commercial" uses would probably be to IBM's great advantage.
Specifically the use of a "free" license for the purposes of application
development and support purposes would seem to me to offer the possibility
of significantly increased "mindshare" over a simple "hobbyist" license that
would have little real impact.

Decpaq's Hobbyist license immediately shuts down any thought of using the
system for anything other than "playing", and essentially tells the user not
to even think about developing any software that they might want to be able
to sell, or any other way to make money with Open VMS.

In the IBM world, I would think we (and IBM) would want people to think of
every possible way to make money with IBM operating systems, and that
probably ought to include the possibility of selling something that you
develop using the "free" license. IBM has always seemed quite willing to
throw hardware and software at anyone who was willing to actually develop an
application for one of their systems, so I don't think this is that much of
a stretch. I don't know if IBM considers their developer community as much
a source of income as other manufacturers do, or whether a possible decline
in this "income" would be justified in their view by possibly increased
developer activity.

So I would consider at least the suggestion that perhaps a free "Developer's
License" would have much more advantage to IBM than a simple "Hobbyist
License".

G.

8:05 pm

Re: Hobbyist licensing white paper, first draft

Jay Maynard

Dec 27, 2000

On Wed, Dec 27, 2000 at 12:05:05PM -0800, Gavin Scott wrote:
> So I would consider at least the suggestion that perhaps a free "Developer's
> License" would have much more advantage to IBM than a simple "Hobbyist
> License".

You raise a good point. The reason I'd not included software development for
money in the permitted uses is that IBM already has a developer's program
for bonafide developers with pretty advantageous terms (though I don't know
the exact costs), and I thought that includign development in this pogram
might confuse the issue. I'm certainly open to be convinced otherwise,
though.

9:36 pm

Re: Hobbyist licensing white paper, first draft

Jeff Bakalchuck

Dec 28, 2000

Some random thoughts......

I agree that it would be terrific if IBM wen't along with this.
However, based upon my experience with IBM, I'd doubt they would do
it. The best we might be able to get is for IBM to "look the other
way". OS/390 is a very valuable assest to IBM. They charge alot of
money for it and I doubt they are going to wan't to give it away.

On the other hand, I don;t see it likely that IBM would try and take
any action against a hobbiest using OS/390 at home. First, how would
IBM find out about it? Second what would they do? Send a letter to
cease and desist? How would they verify that the person complied
with the order? Can you imagine IBM trying to take legal action in
such a case? I can't imagine a jury awarding monetary damages to IBM.

On the side of licensing, there are risks to IBM. Even if they
provide the software as-is without warantee, there are probably laws
in some locations that would allow for somebody to bring a case
against IBM. Imagine little johnnie the OS/390 sysprog uses his
OS/390 software for no good. Now, we may think of these as possible
lawsuits as a joke, but IBM has deep pockets and thus the potential
to lose alot.

Then there are the issue of virus and security. I think we all agree
that OS/390 is an extremely secure OS. But does IBM really want to
have all these hackers have access to OS/390 systems to "play around"
would this make their OS/390 customers feel more comfortable or
less? I think less.

Then there is the issue of money, as Gilbert pointed out, the PID
folks are paying some serious cash $6000 a pop for OS/390. How many
of these are there? 100, 200, 1000? If there are 1000, that adds up
to $6 million dollars. We are, to paraphrase Everett Dirksen,
starting to talk about real money here.

The biggest hurdle at IBM might be convincing them that mindshare
even matters. The OS/2 folks never seemed to grasp that mindshare
matters, I don't know if the OS/390 people will.

3:44 am

Re: Hobbyist licensing white paper, first draft

Gavin Scott

Dec 28, 2000

Jeff writes:
> On the other hand, I don;t see it likely that IBM would try and take
> any action against a hobbiest using OS/390 at home. First, how would
> IBM find out about it?

Well, they might read this list.

> Second what would they do? Send a letter to cease and desist?

Probably.

> Can you imagine IBM trying to take legal action in
> such a case?

Absolutely.

If you don't protect your rights to intellectual property, then you can lose
them. One of the hazzards of calling IBM's attention to this list is that
if some third party can show that IBM knew or should have known that people
were "bootlegging" their software but did nothing about it then they could
claim that IBM was not protecting its rights and had thus relinquished them.

> On the side of licensing, there are risks to IBM. Even if they
> provide the software as-is without warantee, there are probably laws
> in some locations that would allow for somebody to bring a case
> against IBM. Imagine little johnnie the OS/390 sysprog uses his
> OS/390 software for no good. Now, we may think of these as possible
> lawsuits as a joke, but IBM has deep pockets and thus the potential
> to lose alot.
>
> Then there are the issue of virus and security. I think we all agree
> that OS/390 is an extremely secure OS. But does IBM really want to
> have all these hackers have access to OS/390 systems to "play around"
> would this make their OS/390 customers feel more comfortable or
> less? I think less.

Someone might choke to death on the CD too.

> The biggest hurdle at IBM might be convincing them that mindshare
> even matters. The OS/2 folks never seemed to grasp that mindshare
> matters, I don't know if the OS/390 people will.

Quite possible. Though they seem to grok the whole Linux thing pretty well.

G.

12:58 pm

Re: Hobbyist licensing white paper, first draft

Jay Maynard

Dec 28, 2000

On Thu, Dec 28, 2000 at 04:58:12AM -0800, Gavin Scott wrote:
> If you don't protect your rights to intellectual property, then you can lose
> them. One of the hazzards of calling IBM's attention to this list is that
> if some third party can show that IBM knew or should have known that people
> were "bootlegging" their software but did nothing about it then they could
> claim that IBM was not protecting its rights and had thus relinquished them.

This is true of trademarks, but not copyrights or patents.

2:43 pm

Hobbyist License?

Jay Maynard

Jan 8, 2001

On Mon, Jan 08, 2001 at 11:49:23AM -0500, Don Williams wrote:
> I have not seen any more comments on the Hobbyist License. While my
> comments on the subject imply that it might be difficult. I would love to
> be wrong.

I'm updating the page to reflect the comments here, hopefully by the end of
the day. I'll let the list know when the revised version is up.

5:45 pm