Wired’s, Leander Kahney Turning CueCat Into a Cool Cat has an article on the ongoing CueCat controversy that includes an interview with Digital:Convergence’s CTO, Doug Davis.
There area lot of things I could say about CueCat, but basically I think it comes down to the fact that Digital:Convergence completely misunderstands the psychology of hardware. What the heck does that mean? Consider this gem from Davis:
Just because I give you the Cat scanner, it does not immediately give you the right to go into business against me with my own technology. We have an intended use for it.
In essence, Davis is right (though with some caveats I won’t go into here) in that the CueCat is licensed rather than outright given to people. The problem for D:C is that the idea of licensing hardware is downright bizarre to the average consumer, especially for something that is being given away.
Every so often, for example, a group of people, usually elderly men, show up on campus and station themselves in high traffic areas to hand out small green copies of the New Testament. Can you imagine how absurd it would be to open up one of those free copies to find a licensing agreement stipulating how and under what conditions this free book could be used? (Sticking with Davis’ assertion that I can’t go into business using the CueCat, imagine someone giving you a free Bible with a license saying that Protestants only use it if they first convert to Catholicism. After all, what right does a Protestant have to use a Catholic-sponsored Bible to help out the competition?)
One of my co-workers regularly receives cheap soft briefcases from Staples when she makes office supply orders. It would be absurd, and downright laughable, if one of those briefcases showed up with a license dictating what could and could not be carried in it (maybe, for example, the company who makes it manufactures a laptop bag it wants to sell and so might include a license forbidding the carrying of a laptop in the briefcase).
But this is exactly what CueCat is trying to do. Most people don’t treat software as licensed, and they’re rebelling strongly against the idea of restrictive licenses on music and e-books. There’s no way D:C is going to convince people that a restrictive license on a piece of hardware is legitimate. They have about as much chance of that as AOL would have adding a license proviso that I’m not allowed to throw away all of those free CD offers I keep receiving.