[Elecraft] K2: Firmware Escrow

[Brian Lloyd]

On Jun 10, 2007, at 2:59 AM, David Woolley wrote:

> 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.

Correct. OTOH, the would-be competitor would not likely be able to  
innovate to the level required to be competitive. Even if the  
competitor started out even with the hardware and software, the  
competitor would quickly fall behind because the competitor does not  
have the necessary innovative people.

This is why both trade secret and patents do not produce the results  
expected.

>> 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.

I have seen that too. It is a pain and tends to lock us into things  
like Windows.

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

Huh? I thought Bob Bruninga published the spec for APRS in one of the  
ARRL/TAPR/AMRAD digital conferences and anyone could do it.

>> 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;

The people who will take advantage of this sort of thing are a  
relatively small part of the market. How many people the ham  
community actual pick up a soldering iron these days? Precious few.  
These are the only ones for whom software escrow or open software  
becomes an issue. Therefore, for the large percentage of the market,  
this is a non-issue and will have no impact on future sales.

>
> - 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.

If the old product is such competition to the new product, you  
haven't done a very good job on the new product.

Consider the K2 and the K3. Do you not agree that the K3 is  
sufficiently advanced relative to the K2 that the K2 presents no real  
challenge to the K3? If a competitor would buy Elecraft for the K3  
technology, either to use it to get a leg up on their other  
competitors or to kill the K3, support for the K2 is not likely to be  
an issue.

> 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.

Perhaps I am an idealist but I like to think that products get better  
and justify themselves that way. The problem Microsoft has is that  
there really isn't all that much substantive you can add to an  
operating system to really justify an upgrade. Instead MS relies on  
flashy visual things instead of substantive underlying structural  
improvements. Many people realize that there really isn't an  
advantage of Vista over XP over 2000 and therefore there really isn't  
a need to upgrade. Microsoft then has to force the issue with the  
customer.

Now if Microsoft were to add features like the zetabyte file system,  
virutalization, reduced context switching time, etc., then there  
would be a real reason to upgrade as there would be real performance  
advantages.
>
>> 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.

It is a competitive market. Sun and Apple both recognize that their  
R&D dollars are smaller than Microsoft's. Both Sun and Apple have  
thrown their operating systems 'open'. I believe this is an attempt  
to help find the talented people who will make improvements that keep  
them ahead of the guys with the bigger wallets.

>> 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.

An interesting example of openness is the Internet. There you had  
competitors innovating cooperatively and the results were to vastly  
grow the market. That is a way to make a lot more money without  
having to try to take market share from someone else.

>
> > 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.

I agree.

> 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.

I agree.

> 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.

To some extent I agree. Unless Elecraft is actively pursuing sales in  
restrictive countries, they are not likely to run into the problem. I  
think that they are just trying to meet current demand.

73 de Brian, WB6RQN
Brian Lloyd - brian HYPHEN wb6rqn AT lloyd DOT com