"more money than brains?"

Nick Szabo szabo at netcom.com
Wed Aug 25 17:52:15 PDT 1993



M. Stirner: 
> Only one question:  WHY?  If PGP is freeware for noncommercial single
> users, why on earth would anyone wish to drop $100 +/- for single-user
> rights to a virtually identical program?

There are several business proposals floating around the cypherpunks
community that would require commercial licenses.  I encourage the
various crypto-entrepreneurs elaborate if they wish.  

Some of the proposals are quite interesting and illuminating.
There's a strong habit of keeping business ideas "trade secret", 
which can be a bad idea, since (a) many of the ideas
are obvious; trade secrets only work for subtle but important
technological bottlenecks known to a small group of mutually
trustworthy people, and (b) many of the ideas need to
debugged by a wide variety of crackers and experts before they will
provid good privacy.  Trade secrets also inhibit the progress
of the cypherpunks agenda, but that's a judgement call; I myself
dont' feel morally bound to Reveal All for the sake of the 
Movement.  But, "I'll post mine if you post yours".

Nick Szabo					szabo at netcom.com






More information about the cypherpunks-legacy mailing list