(C)opyright Eben Moglen, 1998.
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Mail: moglen@columbia.edu
For contrast, the system called old.law.columbia.edu -- which routes
all my email, runs three mailing lists, mounts my course web pages and
my electronically-published scholarship, serves an average of 750 web
hits per day, and performs a host of other complex functions -- runs
the free GNU/Linux operating system. Far more sophisticated than
Windows, it is available at no cost, without redistribution
limitation, to anyone on the planet who wants it; it also runs on
hardware that wouldn't be capable of meeting the exorbitant needs of
Windows '9x.
The point? Old.law ran, continuously, from Oct 3, 1997 to Apr 1,
1998, without ever crashing, rebooting, or experiencing any other form
of system disruption. I restarted it, after 4325 hours of continuous
heavy use, because its durability was actively inconvenient. I
attempted to make it fail on numerous occasions, but could not.
Several questions of professional interest arise: (1) Why -- meaning,
as an outcome of what social process -- do people believe Microbrain
makes good software? (2) Why do people believe free software cannot
be technically superior to commercial software? (3) Why do
enterprises prefer software with high maintenance costs to software
with low maintenance costs and zero acquisition or upgrade cost? (4)
What benefit, in this instance, does so-called intellectual property
law confer on society, as opposed to the monopolist whose bad software
is thus protected against quality-improving derivative works? (5) How
do the processes of social misperception contribute to the legal
situation? And, (6) why does the law school where I work, and pretty
much every other technically sophisticated workplace on the planet,
spend so much of its time and money coping with failures of Microbrain
Windows, which is the single most expensive item in our software
support activity?
Questions 1-5 are posed as a challenge for those who believe that the
mythology of pervasive economic rationality is useful in explaining
all sociolegal phenomena. Question 6 is not merely of academic
interest.
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"Windows" and "Linux" are registered trademarks. "Microbrain" is just
a fact.
The Microbrain Launch
A Memo from The Invisible Barbecue
April 21, 1998
Bill Gates personally demonstrated Windows '98 at its public launch
yesterday in Chicago. As you may have heard, his so-called operating
system crashed during the demonstration. Software that fails the
smoke test when the CEO stages a personal dog and pony show is, by the
standards of the industry as I learned them, junkware.