Re: OT - Curl & patents

[Jeffrey Siegal <address@hidden>]

Christopher Barber wrote:
> Jeffrey Siegal <jbs@quiotix.com> writes:
> 
> 
>>Christopher Barber wrote:
>>
>>>>Clearly, Curl, Inc, is a very lawyer-centric place.
>>>
>>>Most companies are, but please don't judge the product by this.
>>
>>It is pretty clear tha the original poster was suggesting *in comparison
>>to other companies*.
> 
> What other companies?  Have you read the legalese from Microsoft, Applet and
> Sun?

Ask him.  (I don't know anything about Applet -- never heard of them -- 
but I will say that comparing yourself with Sun or Microsoft is 
unrealistic to the point of perhaps being delusional.  From what I've 
seen here, and a bit elsewhere, I find Curl's approach both out of the 
mainstream and inappropriate for a startup.  Take that for what you 
think it is worth, which may be nothing, but I may have more experience 
with startups than you realize.)

> 
>>>As an engineer, I have mixed feelings about software patents, but given that
>>>the law allows them to exist, it makes business sense for Curl to try to
>>>protect our stockholders considerable investment.
>>
>>It *may* make business sense, to the extent that taking such an approach
>>does not, directly or indirectly, alienate to many potential customers.
> 
> We have no intention of alienating customers if we can help it.  Of course,
> there are a small subset of people that object to the commercialization of any
> programming language and will hate us no matter what we do.  That is too bad,
> but we cannot do anything about it.

And there is likely to be a much larger subset of people who have 
reasoned concerns about *over*-commercialization and are wary of making 
personal, commercial, or financial investments in a platform that is too 
tightly locked up by a single vendor.  People might have been more 
likely to fall into that trap in past decades, but today the costs of 
having critical infrastructure held as proprietary IP are too well 
understood.

There has been *major* resistance to both Sun's and Microsoft's attempts 
to "own the Internet", though perhaps their *relative* success compared 
to yours has blinded you to that fact.  There is a major difference 
between them and you, however, is that Sun and Microsoft were already 
enormous, highly-successful companies by the time they tried to do this. 
  They have the ability to "push" to a degree that is light years ahead 
of anything that Curl could ever pull off.  To succeeed, Curl must rely 
on the classic (pre- and post-dot-com) startup model of slow 
self-reinforcing pull-driven growth that begins with early adopters and 
gradually spreads from there.  Unfortunately, it is precisely the early 
adopters, on whom your entire success depends, who are going to be 
mostput off by what may be perceived to be a lawyer-centric corporate 
culture and strategy.

Sun and Microsoft have the recognition, money, and customer base to 
bypass early adopters.  You don't.

This is really a separate issue, but I always thought that the move to 
commercialize Curl was extremely premature, from the point of view of 
the success of the platform.  I realize that, at the time, 
commercialization was all the rage at MIT and few were willing to pass 
on what seemed like a great opportunity to become a dot-com millionaire 
(or better), but that mistake is one that you must now live with.  Had 
Curl had more of an opportunity to gain recognition, and outside 
interest, and bigger following as an academic project, your job would be 
easier now.  Instead it may well crash and burn entirely, like so many 
other truly promising technologies that got caught up in the mania.. 
That's life.