From: Stefan Mars <mars@lysator.liu.se>
  To  : ggi-develop@eskimo.com
  Date: Mon, 21 Sep 1998 23:11:34 +0200 (MET DST)

[offtopic] Re: NVidia is a horseshit company

On Mon, 21 Sep 1998, Christian Reiniger wrote:

[isn't sure who wrote what..]

> >> You might not have as much freedom in that respect as you think, at least
> >> not in the US.  The *freedom* is held in the hands of the buyer, for the
> >> most part, and not the seller.  If I make widgets, can I choose only to
> >> sell them to blacks, or only to white folk?
> >
> >Yes I thought that was the case.
> 
> Here in Germany such a practice is seen as "discrimination of ethnic
> groups" (or so) and really, really illegal.
> Fortunately.

No, that is UNfortunaly. You and I might agree that discrimination and
rasism is something very bad, something that really should not exist.
However, should I have rasistical feelings, then that is my right to have.

When I develop something, it must be my right, and mine only, to say to
what and to whom I will sell, regardles of _why_.

You see, freedom is one of the most advanced concepts in the world, and it
takes a lot to live up to the ideals of it. One of the things that lives
most closely to my heart, is my belief that the inventor has the right to
what he invents. That he controls it, that he decides for what his
invention is to be used. If I had developed the ideas and equipment
necessary for nuclear fission, got them patented, then they are mine,
because I spent the time, the money, the energy to come up with those
ideas.

Would I allow it to be used in nuclear power plants, where it can give
life and energy to the people of earth? Definitly.

Would I allow it to be used in nuclear bombs, to destroy the earth god
gave us, that we are supposed to pass on to our children? Most certainly
not.

Would I allow it to be used by arabs who are such wellknown terrorists
that the US must immediatdly rush out and bomb them whenever they do
something the US don't like, and hence could build terrorbombs with this
knowledge? Of course I wouldn't, but luckily most arabs aren't what I
described above.

In a way, what we are talking about is trade. Once, several thousand years
ago, when you needed something you couldn't do yourself, you had to locate
one who could, and then exchange something with him. It might be a pile of
wood for his fire, in exchange for me getting his bearskin to myself warm
during the winter.

That's the underlying principle of trade, that we both have something the
other want, and that we want it so badly that we are willing to trade for
it. Today we use currency of course, but the principle is the same. The
exchange of what I have _produced_ for what you have produced. But it only
works when both persons agree to it.

The question then becomes "how much is what I have produced worth". And
the only person that is able to answer that is myself. If I work for
people creating websites, and decides that my time and skills are worth
$1000 each hour, then nobody would hire me. They would be foolish if they
did, and I have no right what so ever to demand that they hire me. If I
can't offer to produce what they want, for a cost that they will accept,
then there is no way in hell that we can do business together.

And the same principle applies here. Right or wrong, NVidia thinks that if
they release the register specs for there chip, then that enables the
competition to gain an advantage over them. Considering that this is a
market with quite a lot of money in it, is it really a suprise to you that
they value this information so much that they won't give it away?

And by no moral right in this world should we be able to force them. Right
or wrong they have made their choice, and I have made mine. I do _not_
want a Riva based card so badly that I will accept a chip that doesn't
come with full specs, not even under NDA. Rather I will stay with S3, but
that's just me.

For people who are interested in the moral complications of freedom,
democracy and capitalism I recommend the book(s) "Atlas shrugged" by Ayn
Rand. You might not agree with all of it, god knows I don't, but it still
interesting reading that really makes you think about what world you would
like to live in. And like information, I want to be free.

-Stefan

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