“Most people think of open source software as a good thing. If nothing
else, it’s an option available for those who don’t have the resources
available to take the commercial route. But there are elements who
believe that open source is a bad thing. A very bad thing … for big
business.”
Companies like SCO cannot compete so they do whatever they can to fight back; The best way for linux to fight this evil is to be as transparent as possible and out develop, and out design them.
The problem is that it is not companies like SCO who can’t compete doing this,it is companies with excessive financial recourses and political clout,companies with massive incomes pay taxes too,as such they can have a major inpact on law making etc.
brunomcl wrote:
> Ridiculous and scary at the same time. And these IP groups got away with
> so much already.
yep…
my take is that M$ has tried for years to kill all OS and application
competition in a variety of both gentlemanly and illegal ways…with
some successes, many successes…yet still they have been loosing
market share steadily (but slowly)…especially during this “economic
downturn”…
as governments and institutions looked for ways to trim their budgets
it didn’t take long to see the whopping annual cost to keep M$
licenses…so, many (for example European) state, local and federal
level governments have moved large sections of their bureaucracies to
free and open source software…
and, good old Redmond is just fighting back as usual, but this time
hoping to link open source with theft of IP and etc…
kinda sad, i my mind they would have a better chance to remain viable
by offering a better, more dependable/stable/effective product at a
lower price…but, they appear totally unwilling to control the greed
and trim their profit margins…
Not to mention the unacceptable risks to sovereign governments, and businesses posed by bug-prone software. Look at what happened to those Chinese activists whose email accounts got hacked via IE.
I read this as IIPA is concerned with entities that promote Open Source
over all other solutions creating ‘artificial preference’. In effect
locking out commercial softwares. If that is the case, then I agree with
them. Commercial and Open Source software should be evaluated on merit,
not whether one is closed or open sourced. Open Source is terrific, but not
always the best available solution. If it makes sense to use a commercial
app, then users should not be restricted from doing so because of a mandate
to use only Open Source.
Seriously, this is all done for very obvious reasons; to cash in and to lock-in. It seems far easier to lobby and change the law in your favor than to change and improve your products to better compete with others. This is what they’re trying to do.
This reminds me of a song…“money for noth’n and the chicks for free”.
This is how they got it often and they don’t wanna change right? So they are perfectly coherent.
Btw: the named countries are promoting the use of OpensourceSoftware for security, cost and open standard reason. So, I did not get it if they are angree because opensource is more secure, because it has a lower cost at comparable quality or because it sticks to open standards and they don’t…
Boh…For sure they are angry for loosing “money for noth’n”.
