“Safari loads web pages 1.9 times faster than IE 7 and 1.7 times faster than Firefox 2. Safari also runs JavaScript up to six times faster than other browsers…”

Having used  it since it was first released last year on Windows, I think this is more than just twisted statistics. Forget those measurements (down to decimal points, for god’s sake), but Safari definitely feels faster than either Firefox or Opera. Safari’s UI needs a post to itself, but it puts both IE and Firefox to shame.

Apple could put more muscle behind promoting Safari on Windows (for reasons I outlined last June), but I don’t see it giving either Firefox or IE a serious run for their money. My prediction is that Safari’ll be locked in an inconsequential battle for third place with Opera (also a fast, snappy alternative).

IE will always be number 1 because it’s pre-installed with Windows (and is un-installable). The vast majority of the installed base won’t switch to anything else (both home and business users). IE’s good enough. ‘Nuff said.

Firefox is the poster boy of the power-user crowd because it’s so customizable. But there’s an upper cap to the market share it can gain (see IE above).

Safari’s USP is speed and simplicity. Speed isn’t enough for the IE crowd to switch. And Safari’s simplicity (which implies non-extensibility) is a deal-killer for the Firefox crowd. Opera faces the exact same problems.

Between these massive masses of users, both of whom have diametrically opposite views on what a browser should be, are the miniscule 4-5% who use either of Safari or Opera, regardless of how good/fast/simple/snappy they are. Pity.

Footnote: Hark back to my June 2007 article about why Apple wants Safari on Windows – it’s got to do with the iPhone. Opera, with its large mobile push, probably has the same strategy too.

However, DostPost has one fatal flaw: this point from their “Terms of Use” page:

By posting Content to any public area of DostPost, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to DostPost an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, fully paid, worldwide license to use, copy, perform, display, translate, reformat and distribute such information and content and to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such information and content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.

Scary, almost.

This kind of licence goes beyond forcing you to put your work in the public domain. The only sweetener (if you can view it as that) is that the license is “non-exclusive”, meaning not only DostPost, but anyone at all can do whatever he/she likes with your content – without needing to give you, the creator, any credit at all for the work.

Isn’t it voluntary, though?

Of course, DostPost could quite easily argue that if a user’s agreed to put his/her work up in public in the first place, he/she is willing to let anyone use it – so all that DP is doing it formalizing it in its Terms and Conditions. I’m not sure if that argument washes: one, the simple act of making it publicly accessible does not imply that the author permits anyone to make any use of it. Simple analogy – books in print. Two, the author may not, in the first place, intend to make it available to “the public” – if he/she wanted to share it with a set of disparate people? With different permissions for each? Does DP allow that kind of flexibility? What if the author wishes to put his/her works up under his/her own license (or terms and conditions?) Will DP’s terms and conditions allow this?

Content lock-in is dead.

Sadly, DP’s creators display the same intent to control content that have characterized the old, pre-Web-2.0-era applications. Audiences don’t buy lock-in any more. Flickr and Google Photo Albums will prevail over Webshots not just because they have a snazzier interface – but because Webshots will not allow you or your users to access the photos in their original format, original size. DP would do better to pay more careful attention to what is happening around them. What companies that have bet their future on “social applications”(or to use Yahoo’s disgusting term “user generated content”), are doing. DP needs to take a closer look at the licenses under the Creative Commons umbrella, and “permit” its users to define their licenses, if they wish to.

DP needs a change in the approach to their business – their revenue model, ought to make money by being a platform where this kind of academic content is shared – not to make money using that content. The revenue will come from the platform, not the content.

Repeat, platform, not content.

I (like many engineers, I suspect) view reverse engineering as a Natural Right. That is, I believe that we are endowed with certain unalienable Rights, and that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Understanding how the hell something works (or doesn’t, as is frequently the case). Perhaps perversely to some, it is my strong belief in the right to reverse engineer that leads me to my equally strong belief in the responsibility of government to establish a system of patents: if you use my product, you have the right to take it apart and understand its inner workings, but I have the right to protect my intellectual property by patenting the novel mechanism that represents a non-obvious advance in the state of the art. That is, it should be the protection afforded by patents — and not the obfuscation inherent in a running system — that prevents the rip-off artists. My belief reflects the fact that nearly all applications of reverse engineering do not in any way violate anyone’s intellectual property — and the act itself and alone can never violate intellectual property.

Quite right. Unfortunately, software patents today are ridiculous – there’s an article every week or two on Slashdot about some extremely obvious idea being granted a patent. I think we’ve already reached the point where any piece of decent software inevitably violates some or the other software patent. Software patents have now become a tool for companies to muscle their way into, or keep their stranglehold on, existing markets, using the principle of Mutually Assured Litigation. You use a patented idea of mine that doesn’t make a difference to me, that’s fine – but if it’s any threat at all to my market position, I’ll sure as hell sue you. So we’re now walking through a legal minefield wherever we go. In addition, there isn’t too much use knowing how a particular piece of software (Bitkeeper in this case) works unless you can do anything with it. If, for instance, Tridge did find out how Bitkeeper worked, he wouldn’t have been able to do much with it. It’d only tell him how not to design a new source code management system, since the existing process’ been patented. So although in principle, reverse-engineering ought to be allowed for patented software, from a practical point of view, it really doesn’t mean too much.

BMC does, however, consider that point of view:

I believe strongly in reverse engineering in particular, but it plays an especially critical role in the development of software: in my experience, when developing a layer in the stack of software abstraction, you always need to understand at least one layer below you and you often need to understand at least one layer above you — and reverse engineering is often the primary means to achieve this understanding. More generally, software is usually reverse engineered to work around oversights or blunders, or to simply understand a software system sufficiently well to interoperate with it.

So reverse-engineering for the sake of developing software elsewhere in the software stack, or for the purpose of interoperability, ought to be allowed. It also enables better quality software (in terms of bugs being found, or better interfaces being suggested). Therefore, using the simple principle of “many eyeballs make bug-finding easier” (or equivalent) by Eric S. Raymond, software ought not to be closed-source in any case.

So we’re at a stage where software patents are important (even a necessary evil, perhaps) to preserve competitiveness and encourage participation (indeed, there are many startups whose entire existence depends upon a patent or two!). But we need to draw a line when patents are granted. All too often, one crucial aspect of a patent – novelty and non-obviousness – is simply overlooked. And availability of source (which, actually, obviates the need for reverse engineering) is a necessary (but not sufficient! ;-) precondition for high-quality software.