Software Patents and Other Issues
Patents will not cause the death of the industry some predict, this is typical computer industry over-hyping. Patents are a double edged sword for the computer industry. They do allow big companies to stifle competition but on the other hand they also allow chancers (a person who takes a chance) to sue the very same big companies for very large sums of money - just ask Microsoft. I expect some companies will become rather less enthusiastic about patents when they've had to pay out a few billion dollars.
I think this may lead to a change in the patents are issued and administered, I also expect (or rather, hope) that patents will eventually be issued for shorter lengths of time as befits a rapidly developing industry, this will benefit everyone from the big companies to open source developers, it will also spur innovation since you wont be able to live off past glories for long.
DMCA and such like laws will be seen for exactly they are: a complete overreaction. They will eventually be toned down to sensible levels. This may happen in court room precedents though rather than in government. In Europe it'll happen the same way it always has with stupid laws: we'll just ignore them. Some countries will probably not implement them in the way intended and thus take out their bite.
I'd like to see government mandated data exchange formats, i.e. standard office use file formats. This would do more against Microsoft's desktop monopoly in one night than Linux has done in ten years. Unfortunately I don't see any move towards this whatsoever.
I fully expect SCO to lose their case and go bankrupt. The management will not care because they got rich anyway. This will raise questions and investors will end up suing SCO, this could get messy but could potentially lead to new company regulations in the US. Germany already appears to have these regulations so they wont care either.
Banging the DRM
DRM is not going to work. In some cases such as Digital TV, it's possible to control both the source and destination for the media yet even these sophisticated DRM systems are cracked. The only reason the TV companies can keep making money is because they still control the SetTopBox and can rapidly update the decryption keys.
DRM for mass market media is a different matter altogether, the companies do not control the media players and thus cannot update them. Once one of these DRM systems is broken that's it - it's broken forever. Once someone implements a working anonymous file sharing network it'll all get shared.
Old style copy protection mechanisms worked because even when they are broken there was no way to get copies to everyone in an easy way. These days we have the internet so it doesn't matter how difficult the DRM system is to break, it only needs to be broken once and that's it, everyone can copy the files.
The future is flat rate media [9], pay $10 a month and listen to whatever you want whenever you want, royalties are distributed according to what's being listened to. There will no need for DRM as there's no point trying to cheat, you could try and download everything and stop paying but it'll be more expensive to store it than pay the $10, more importantly it'll be easier to pay the $10 so even if a few do cheat 99% of people wont be bothered.
--
That's part one, next time I'll cover the radical changes I expect to happen in the hardware domain, some of which will leave the industry reeling. I also cover how Microsoft will attempt to reverse the trends and try to re-gain it's monopoly in a way nobody will expect.
Part 1 References
[1] Some organisations already legally require an Architecture
Enterprise Architecture by Legislation
[2] When a building falls it's news:
Many die as Turkey flats collapse
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3453131.stm
[3] The Software Architect's Profession - Mark Sewell and Laura Sewell.
A philosophical look at Software Architecture and why we need it (scroll down page):
http://www.wwisa.org/wwisamain/books.htm
[4] Article on software development myths
The Demise of the Waterfall Model Is Imminent" and Other Urban Myths
[5] Extreme Programming
http://www.extremeprogramming.org/
[6] World Wide Institute of Software Architects
http://www.wwisa.org
[7] Software Architect - By Nigel Leeming
What do they do? Read this on-line book to find out:
http://www.softwarearchitect.biz/arch.htm
http://www.softwarearchitect.biz/frames.htm (Older browsers)
[8] Other books on modern Software Architecture:
Software Architect Bootcamp - By Raphael C. Malveau,Thomas J. Mowbray.
Want to be an Architect? Get your hair cut short and enlist for basic training here (scroll down page):
http://www.wwisa.org/wwisamain/books.htm
Software Architecture: Organizational Principles and Patterns - By David M. Dikel, David Kane and James R. Wilson.
http://www.vraps.com/index.jsp
[9] I'm not the only one who thinks flat rate media is the future:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/35260.html
Copyright (c) Nicholas Blachford, February-March 2004
Disclaimer:
This series is about the future and as such is nothing more than informed speculation on my part. I suggest future possibilities and actions which companies may take but this does not mean that they will take them or are even considering them.
- "Future of Computing, Page 1/3"
- "Future of Computing, Page 2/3"
- "Future of Computing, Page 3/3"
