"Free software is great, and corporate America loves it. It's often high-quality stuff that can be downloaded free off the Internet and then copied at will. It's versatile - it can be customized to perform almost any large-scale computing task - and it's blessedly crash-resistant. A broad community of developers, from individuals to large companies like IBM, is constantly working to improve it and introduce new features. No wonder the business world has embraced it so enthusiastically: More than half the companies in the Fortune 500 are thought to be using the free operating system Linux in their data centers. But now there's a shadow hanging over Linux and other free software, and it's being cast by Microsoft. The Redmond behemoth asserts that one reason free software is of such high quality is that it violates more than 200 of Microsoft's patents."
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Member since:2007-02-17
{Mutually Assured Destruction - this is an old paradigm, one that is now obsolete: patent disarmament in a world driven by the ever more free exchange of information is the only way forward.}
I'd agree with the latter part of your statement, but disagree with the opening premise ... "Mutually Assured Destruction" is most certainly not obsolete when it comes to patents.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Invention_Network
http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/pat_owned.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Technical_Disclosure_Bulletin
http://www.osdl.org/newsroom/press_releases/2005/2005_11_15_beavert...
http://www.patentcommons.org/
http://www.patentcommons.org/commons/patentsearch.php?searchSubmit=...
http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=20050402193202442
The "free world" that Microsoft is taking on here has more than enough patent defenses to initiate a Mutually Assured Destruction scenario.
Edited 2007-05-14 14:17
Member since:
2006-06-02
Mutually Assured Destruction - this is an old paradigm, one that is now obsolete: patent disarmament in a world driven by the ever more free exchange of information is the only way forward.
True globalisation of the production and dissemination of information needs to hit home - the Microsoft centre cannot hold, and neither can Floss Apparatchiks claim any better way; information is growing, evolving and developing beyond such staid economic and ideological structures - this is the last Cold War.
Just a Burroughsian take on all this.