Sir;

In your recent column on Lawrence Lessig's proposals for software copyright, you mostly failed to establish substantive arguments to back your primary claims:

Claim 1) "But considering the billions of dollars and thousands of jobs created through software development over the last couple of decades, it's hard to argue there has not been considerable community benefit to letting software developers retain copyright control over their code."

But at the cost to whom? I think your idea of billions flowing from end users (consumers and business) to ISVs for proprietary software is false economy. I work in systems integration, and I've had clients spend tens of millions of dollars on proprietary software that has now been effectively replaced (or complimented) by open source software. If they never bought the proprietary software in the first place, that would be money saved by the buyer, money that can contribute to their *own* bottom line, rather than that of several of the richest men in the world, such as Gates and Ellison.

Claim 2) "Open source has its place, but it's not the answer for everything."

This may be true, but please give an example, or at least a counter example. Why should I believe your claim at all? In fact, I believe its only a question of timing. There is always going to be a place for proprietary software; why shouldn't a company be allowed to get the fat part of the profit curve from its own Intellectual Property? But wouldn't the entire ecosystem be enriched by the eventual open-sourcing of ten-year old software? Geez, it would only open the market up even wider. If Windows 95 were basically given away in (for example) 2005 to the developing world--who may be 2-3 generations behind on hardware--they would enjoy its use and develop a reliance on Windows as a productivity-enhancing operating system for their computers. Since Windows 2000 and XP are supposedly so much better than 95, once these users have reached the level of wealth to afford them, how could they resist upgrading and buying this new, innovative software?

Claim 3) "At this juncture in the history of the software industry, more so than ever before, ten years ain't squat--not when you're attempting to build up brand, distribution and customer loyalty in an increasingly fragmented and competitive market."

How so? Do you really think any of Microsoft's or Oracle's 10-year old code is still running in any substantial manner? Or making any profits for either company? If so, please provide an example. For instance, I can't imagine Oracle would feel threatened by a competitor using the codebase of Oracle 6 against them.

C'mon, fess up...