[Elecraft] K2: Firmware Escrow

[David Woolley]

Brian Lloyd wrote:
> very good alternative to software escrow: open software. Since the K3 

That's what I was hinting at when I was talking of the conflict between 
"amateur" and "business".  I didn't pursue that because it seems that 
Elecraft are pretty well sold on the idea that intellectual property, 
except for the hardware schematic, should be closely guarded, so I just 
discussed the option used by most non-monopoly closed source software 
suppliers, i.e. companies that keep intellectual property close to their 
chest.

For example, Elecraft protect something which is of much less value than 
the firmware, namely the copper layers of the PCB artwork, only allowing 
a noisy JPEG of the actual boards to be published when they must have 
the ability to publish the actual artwork.  As a constructor, that makes 
it difficult for me to work out whether two adjacent pads are connected, 
or  I need to resolve a short, and it makes signal tracing difficult. 
Even with a bit map, I could flood fill to see what's connected on a 
single layer.

I imagine the tooling cost means that it is cheaper for an individual to 
buy the board, a legitimate competitor would respect the copyright and a 
dodgy one could recreate the artwork in about the time it takes to 
construct one kit.

> software is hardware-specific, it is unlikely that it will give other 

Personally I tend to believe that, where the business model is based on 
selling the hardware, it is good to "open source" the supporting 
software, or at least publish it with a no-commercial use clause. 
However, it continually irritates me how many hardware vendors won't 
even publish sufficient information to write a device driver.

It's more difficult for things like APRS, which I believe is not legally 
  implementable by amateurs.

> vendors a leg up to see the Elecraft source code. So two things happen 
> by making Elecraft's software open:

> 2. Anyone can generate a software build. Even if Elecraft stopped 
> developing a particular radio, owners can still enhance their equipment, 

I'm not sure whether the Elecraft people are basically businessmen or 
amateur radio  people, but for a businessman, the ability to kill a 
product has the advantages that:

- you can cease supporting an early product without having sales of
   later products undermined by competitors, or end users, who continue
   to maintain the earlier one;

- you increase the value of the company to a competitor when you come
   to retire, etc., as the competitor can remove your product from the
   market.

Microsoft rely on being able to kill products; preferably by making them 
  appear unfashionable, but also by withdrawing even security support, 
to force people to upgrade, and by locking the licence to a specific 
hardware instance, to force software upgrades on hardware upgrades..

> 
> 2. Others with good ideas can add functionality and features to the 
> radio without having to wait for Elecraft to get around to it. Elecraft 

This is double edged.  It can lead to increased primary sales, but it 
can also damage the after market for the primary company.

> can even fold good, well thought-out features back into the "official" 
> source tree.

A really competent company will do this and will also counter-innovate, 
but most companies prefer to use secrecy instead, as it is more predictable.

 > much in the way we still have folks experimenting with older vacuum
 > tube (valve) kit today.

The move to software and protection of software by secrecy is generally 
a bad thing for innovation by amateurs (in a general sense).  In the 
past, whether or not strictly legal, non-commercial developers were not 
impacted by patents, but these days they cannot get the information 
needed to innovate.  In the short term, that fits in with fact that 
Western economies are now intellectual property economies, but in the 
longer term it seems to me that it will reduce the supply of innovators 
and it is already resulting in a vast amount of duplicated effort.

Elecraft are in the border area between amateur as learner and innovator 
and amateur as appliance operator.  Companies selling to the latter role 
are just selling to yet another consumer technology product, and want 
good consumers, not innovators.

One other possible reason for restricting the firmware is that releasing 
it facilitates overriding operating frequency ranges, etc.  Legislating 
restrictions is easy for governments, although I would argue that, where 
national security is involved, recreating sufficient firmware from 
scratch is well within the capabilities of most insurgent groups who 
might otherwise find the hardware easy to import and better than 
alternatives.

Incidentally, a couple of points that arose elsewhere in the thread:

- escrow is only useful if the customers know about it, so assuming
   that the company does the right thing is not good enough (I think
   this was the result of thinking escrow referred to off site backups);

- a takeover by an asset stripper is not necessarily hostile - hostility
   is determined by the views of the directors, not the impact on
   customers (and employees).
-- 
David Woolley
Emails are not formal business letters, whatever businesses may want.
RFC1855 says there should be an address here, but, in a world of spam,
that is no longer good advice, as archive address hiding may not work.