My Dear Brian,

Though it has been some time since our last lesson, I am pleased to note that you are employing our greatest weapon -- the blurring of the distinction between license and ownership -- to great effect. I am concerned, however, that you are viewing this as our ultimate objective. While it is true that we would prefer a monolithic computing model that focuses on our products driving the rest of the industry, this is only one of our aims. We have another, larger, grander goal that we are pursuing on a completely different level of the industry, and if successful it will enable us to profit whether we manage to consolidate the industry or not.

In our market -- in any market -- corporations live and die by what they can and cannot sell to their customers. We are successful because we are good at marketing our product. We are doubly successful because we have successfully obscured what our product is.

My Dear Brian,

Perhaps our greatest achievement to date has been our ability to convince people to spend enormous sums of money to purchase software that they do not, in fact, own. The idea of product licensing has so thoroughly saturated the computer industry that no piece of software exists without one -- the government even created a license to cover unlicensed programs, which it calls "public domain."

Of course you understand the idea behind the software license, but permit me to explain it nonetheless, simply to satisfy my own rhetorical aestheticism. In our industry, the sole owner of a program is the person who programmed it, unless he specifically transfers those rights to someone else. At Ubersoft, our programmers sign away their rights to the bounty of their work to us -- a sacrifice they are reimbursed handsomely for. Therefore, any software that comes out of Ubersoft is owned by Ubersoft, and is ours to do with as we wish.

We are not in the business of selling software, we are in the business of selling our permission for someone else to use that software. This is extremely advantageous for us for many reasons, but one of the most advantageous (and most deliciously ironic) is that despite the fact that the customer owns nothing, he feels as though he does.

Each customer, despite the fact that he is licensing our software under our conditions and on our terms, feels as though the operating system on his machine belongs to him, the word processor that runs on that operating system belongs to him, the e-mail program that is integrated with that operating system belongs to him, and the web browser that he uses to download naughty pictures from any number of web sites in that eternally useless entity known as "The Web" belongs to him as well.

In fact, unless he is a programmer himself, every single piece of software on his machine is owned by someone else. If he is required to pay nothing for it, and can use it in any way he chooses, it is only because the license attached to the program gives him explicit permission to do so. If he may make innumerable copies of that program and hand those copies out to anyone he pleases, it is due to the authority of that very same license and nothing else. Even the free software community relies on the strength of software licenses to protect their much lauded flexibility and "open" development environment.

As I said, this is well known to you. What you may not know is how, exactly, this came to be.

My Dear Brian,

I chuckle at the thought of your first reaction to this letter -- I am almost certain that you opened the envelope expecting to be fired, due to "thought-crimes" or other some such accusations of disloyalty to Ubersoft. In fact, I am pleased to tell you the truth of the matter is quite the opposite: you are being promoted.

Yes, your recent questions regarding our methods of doing business have drawn plenty of attention. And yes, in many instances such questions are grounds for termination of employment. In fact, in most instances, such questions are grounds for termination immediately... this ensures that the Ubersoft Marketing division functions as a single unit, with no appearance of dissension ever reaching the public's eye.

Your questioning, however, has been different from the norm. It shows a unique desire to find the methods behind the apparent madness of our industry. It shows a desire to learn, and the ability to accept the consequences of possessing that knowledge.

That is why you are receiving this letter.

The Dark Lord of Ubersoft explains to Brian, a Vice-President of Marketing, all the dirty little secrets of the Computer Industry.

With apologies to C. S. Lewis.