Devil's Advocate: Freeing up software

Should Windows be available to copy, free of charge? Should any software with a commanding market share? Martin Brampton shares some of the feedback he received last week.

Last week I contemplated the imposition of a rule that made copying of software with more than 50 per cent market share legitimate. Several readers made interesting comments, so let me see if we can develop the idea just a bit further.

First, hats off to Cristian Nicola, who has been advocating similar ideas for several years. And rightly draws attention to the value of public goods. The Greeks of Athens created a civilised society that has continued to be admired over thousands of years. One of their characteristic conceptions was the idea that a healthy society had worthwhile public facilities, not merely a large aggregation of private wealth. Cristian is supported by Brian Charlwood, and also wants to extend the principle into films, music and perhaps pharmaceuticals.

Jeremy Chatfield worries that there would be much argument over the definition of 50 per cent. That is probably so, but it should be possible to overcome that hurdle. We already have competition regulators who are called on to make judgements on similar matters. Similarly, he thinks Microsoft might suddenly start claiming a much larger market share for Linux.

That would not be an easy decision, though. Software markets are, as we have noticed in the past, very often 'tippy', where as soon as a market leader emerges, it receives the majority of orders. Knowing that, major software companies would be very chary of understating their market share. It would be interesting if they did because it would help to promote lively competition. Would we see each company running advertisements extolling the virtues of rival products?

Dominic Tristram suggests that it would be sufficient to abolish software patents, while leaving copyright protection in place. Certainly it seems that patents are the more pernicious problem in the current environment. But leaving copyright untouched would still allow a product to dominate a market in a way that stifles innovation and price competition.

He further proposes that information such as file formats be made public, citing Microsoft Word as an example. I agree that is highly desirable but fear that it is too prescriptive an idea to be accepted by contemporary governments. Possibly this might be achieved by the “50 per cent rule” if vendors actually sought competition in a sector in order to continue to charge for products. One effective way to stimulate rivals would be to publish a good deal of information on such things as file formats.

The case of Word is interesting. It may be that Microsoft would like to change the file formats more often but large customers are increasingly resistant to frequent changes in such basic software. As a result, knowledge of the file formats has become widespread. Sufficiently so that Open Office can read most Word documents and is able to write .doc files to suit software of various vintages. And that is in addition to being able to export .pdf files, for which most platforms have a free reader.

David Sparkes comes to my support by saying that it would be easy to find ways to measure market share but makes the valid point that my rule might put vendors off developing for small niche markets. I leave that as a problem for readers to figure out. Anon rightly says that it is marketing that drives success and not always merit. Opening up markets is a way to give merit a better opportunity to shine, to some extent regardless of marketing muscle.

Paul W rounds off the arguments nicely by remarking that in the early days of PC development, a good deal of software copying did take place. He applauds the results and regrets the restrictions that are now imposed. Back to the days of copying, he says. And at least for products that have come to dominate a market, so say I.