EU software patent law faces axe 784

Op Thu, 17 Feb 2005 21:17:58 +0000, schreef billwg:

You couldn't tell the difference between M$' practice of taking others' ideas and then selling it off again under the strictest of terms, and the open source movement's practice of giving away its own products for free, insisting it stays free.

The fact that I even have to elaborate on this indicates that I seem to have rather overestimated your intellectual capacity.

Our problem is that M$ takes other peoples' ideas, calls these their own and then abuses its monopoly position to 1) force this "innovation" upon its vict^H^H^H^Hcustomers (which has nothing to do with "appeal"), and 2) attempt to kill off all alternatives, including the ones offered by the open source movement. So hell yes, we have a problem with that.

Not for patent infringement (yet, if ever). They don't even need to, since the threat alone will put prospective compebreastors off even more effectively: without lawsuits, and without all related hbuttle, costs, and above all negative publicity.

I'm talking about random audit threats to town councils, schools, hospitals and the likes, where M$ has no evidence whatsoever that anything is wrong. One of the problems with proprietary software is that it's almost impossible to be 100% compliant - especially in larger organisations. So many of the aforementioned organisations choose to pay protection money instead of awaiting the uncertain outcome of an audit. As a result of this rake-in-the-money scheme, most of these organisations tend to be overlicensed on an already way too expensive IT infrastructure.

Hahaha, very funny! Much to my relief, M$ doesn't supply me with anything, so I have noting to fear - except that they try to crush my favourite OS to satisfy their greed for money and power.

I'm not saying they should be forced to give their products for free (and I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole if they did).

But they're a monopoly, holding over 90% of the desktop OS market. Because of this, they at least should not be allowed to actively ban competing products from interoperating with their OS. Yet this is what they do.

And again there's quite a range of possibilities between giving away stuff for free, or taking as much as possible, and in return take even more (money, power). But the whole concept of sharing and altruism is probably beyond your comprehension anyway, so I think I'll leave it at this.

Richard Rasker

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