Tim May <tcmay@got.net> writes:
Monty writes:
The important thing is establishment of the custom. Most cryptoanarchists with class will pay. The way to do this is to make it clear from day one that it is not free software.
_This_ cryptoanarchist will almost _never_ pay for that which is free.
It depends what you call free. If someone puts a copy of eudora pro 5.67 or whatever other commercial software up on the eternity service, is that "free"? It is free to the extent that it is unlikely that you will be caught. It is even less likely that you will be caught if you are a nym using remailers mostly. The difference with an anonymous cryptoanarchist run software house is that you know that they probably aren't paying taxes on their sales. So you have additional assurance that they can't touch you if you use their software -- they'd have to blow their cover unless they just made a donation to AP or something:-) People copy commercial software all the time. I suspect only some small fraction of personal use software is ever paid for. Companies are less likely to do this because they are larger and more worth going after, and because the SPA software police have caused some companies problems already. The shareware, beggarware, or "charityware" approach of giving it away for free, and then demanding or begging payment is partly an acknowledgement that there is no way to stop you redistributing it even if they demanded payment up front. Plus the advantage that you get free distribution, if people like it, it'll be all over the place in no time. Beggarware has worked for a few people, I think, perhaps ID software's DOOM was one example. Yes most people didn't pay, but the free advertising more than compensated I suspect. We to frown on protocols which rely on "please give me money", or "and then we call the cops". Payment protocols should be clean. One alternative which Intel is brewing up for us is clipper CPUs which do things against their owners interests, like encrypted instruction schemes... nasty stuff. This would then be used to ensure your copy of the software won't run on other peoples machines. That could be enabling technology for all sorts of snooping. One idea which I did like was the open bidding for a product to be developed, people interested in the feature or product pay how much it is worth to them up front, developers bid to take the job on. After it's done the software is freeware. Supporting ideas discussed before on this topic are that first to complete gets paid, or lowest bidder presents completion bond, and that there are independent aribitrators checking quality. There was someone who posted to the list that he was going to set this up. He even purchased the domain name if I recall. What happened, did anything come of it? Adam -- Now officially an EAR violation... Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/ print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<> )]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`