Vengeance Against Adobe

Tim May tcmay at got.net
Tue Jul 24 11:29:36 PDT 2001


At 11:16 AM -0700 7/24/01, mmotyka at lsil.com wrote:

>A very sound prediction about the behavior of a subset of potential
>employees. I would bet that 40-50% of SW people haven't even heard of
>the DMCA and Sklyarov or don't see it as a problem.
>
>While I'd like to think Adobe's behavior will limit their access to
>people who fall on the high side of the curve, I've met plenty of bright
>people who just don't care about certain issues.
>
>Another counter-factor for your prediction would be continued economic
>decline and a scarcity of jobs which while not a certainty is certainly
>a possibility. The all-consuming Bay Area monkey-on-the-back mortgage
>might tend to eclipse the politics for all but the most stallwart
>technology freedom fighter.

I know of people who refuse to buy Intel-based machines "on 
principle." Some are Sun users, some are Mac users, some think they 
are bypassing Intel by using AMD Athlons.

And the anti-Microsoft efforts are legendary. Alternative OSes, Star 
Office, etc. If some people will go to these lengths to avoid MS 
products, imagine the programmers they are missing out on. (I 
understand that there are still tens of thousands who work for MS. 
The interesting regime is at the margins, in the five sigmas zone.)

Likewise, I know of even some Cypherpunks who have left their 
employers for ideological reasons. And if some have _left_ jobs, the 
effects are likely greater on the _recruiting_ side (where the costs 
of a decision are much less).

No wonder Adobe is back-pedalling so furiously.

(This, and fears that Adobe salesmen and engineers may be arrested 
for violating _Russian_ laws, e.g., the  European laws (I have read 
about) that make it a crime to sell a software product which cannot 
be backed-up. And if not this law, they may find something else to 
arrest and Adobe person for. Trading cards. Adobe escalated the war. 
Now Adobe realizes what can of worms they have opened.)


--Tim May




-- 
Timothy C. May         tcmay at got.net        Corralitos, California
Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon
Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go
Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns





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