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I have a Visa Platinum card (issued through BofA) so I went looking to verfiy this warranty doubling feature.

I found this, which is an extended warranty program. Pay extra for more warranty. Not what the poster was referring to.

I dug some more and found this, which is a benefit that will replace any item purchased on certain types of Visa cards for any reason, fire, theft, water damage, elephant stepping-on, anything, within the first 90 days of purchase. That's nice, but not the same thing the OP is referring to.

Sorry, but could the OP provide some documentation for this "double warranty" coverage? I'm interested but skeptical. I know that American Express provides that, but I can't find anything that says Visa will do it.

One reason that many companies need to use a commercial security tool is because of Visa and Mastercard CISP and SDP compliance.

In order to comply you must have various levels of security testing done and certified by an approved vendor.

One reason that many companies need to use a commercial security tool is because of Visa and Mastercard CISP and SDP compliance.

In order to comply you must have various levels of security testing done and certified by an approved vendor.

No, as I posted earlier, they're required to give you your money back within five business days.

Hmm, I think you missed a crucial part of the link you supplied. At the top they start off with a strong statement that sounds like what you're saying, but it has an asterisk... which leads to this statement:

Visa's Zero Liability policy does not apply to commercial card or ATM transactions, or to PIN transactions not processed by Visa....

The phrase is "don't keep all your eggs in the same basket". Have a house account with no debit card tied to it if you're that concerned. Bouncing a check isn't the end of the world anyway, you're not going to lose whatever for a single late payment. At worse, you'll have a fee.

And, have you ever tried to get your money back in that case? It can take upwards of sixty days with some financial institutions.

No, it can take five, at the very longest.

I would dare say that far more people ruin their own credit with poor money management brought on by easy access to credit cards. Any losses from debit card fraud pale hugely in comparison to the "save yourself from yourself" factor of living a cash lifestyle.

The parent poster is right. NEVER use your debit card unless you absolutely have to.

That's nothing but FUD. Once I get out of my current financial situation I'll be quite happy to never be in debt to anyone ever again, especially credit card companies. I love the debit card concept, the convenience of plastic while still living a cash lifestyle.

That was somewhat true when debit cards were first introduced (there was $50 or so liability then), but hasn't been the case for a very long time now. Any debit card with the Visa or MC logo has the same level of fraud protection as a credit card.

A card that says "Ask for ID" is treated as an unsigned card. A merchant should make you sign the card before accepting it. Otherwise they're not eligible for "Card Present" protection.

see the visa's zero liability policy The Zero Liability policy covers all Visa credit and debit card transactions processed over the Visa network--online or off. The only transactions not covered under the Zero Liability policy are commercial card, ATM, and non-Visa-branded PIN transactions.

If your bank won't treat it as such, you can write Visa, and they'll work on it.

People who intentionally cause massive harm to others should be punished

• VISA, a company that hires behavioural psychologists to determine new ways to induce vulnerable people to borrow as much money as they can, often times resulting in shattered lives (lifelong debt, bankruptcy)
• Enterprise Arms, manufacturers and sells devices that are built solely for the purpose of killing other humans (and large mammals) "NEW! Romanian WASR-10, AK47 Type Rifle"
• ...
• A teenager who wrote a lame virus. Thousands of hours of productivity lost! Sure, it was hard to pick out those hours impacted due to the virus but we're pretty sure it was still really really malicious. And damaging! LET'S DRAW AND QUARTER HIM, THE BLOOD OF THE TEENAGE HACKER WILL RUN IN THE STREETS! OR AT LEAST A PUBLIC EXECUTION!!!

Verified by Visa does just this. I believe other CC companies will be following suit, so within a few years requiring a password for online credit card transactions will probably be common-place.

Lot's to argue with here but I'll take up only one: Credit Card Fraud. Are you aware that the Visa spec for authenticated payments online is open for download to everyone who wants to view it or explore it? It tells you exactly how the authentication of your credit card is processed. Here's the link

Will I have to agree to the software terms before I open the box?

Please note that Apple does not permit the return of or offer refunds for the following products:

• Product that is custom configured to your specifications
• Opened memory
• Opened software
• Electronic software downloads

Before I may enter the website?

Before I walk in the store?

Before I get internet access?

Before I get a credit card to pay for my ISP?

Before I wake up?

Before I was born?

BEFORE THE FABRIC OF TIME, SPACE AND DIMENSION WERE TORN ASUNDER BY THE GREAT GOD ALGOROTH AND FASHIONED INTO THE UNIVERSE??

So yes, the lawyers have struck everywhere.

Everytime passwords get mentioned on slashdot, I say they suck with little to no moderation. Regarding the lack of standard protocols and software packages try:

Multos
EMV (Europay-Mastercard-Visa) Specifications
JavaCard
OpenCard
PC/SC Workgroup
Standards Committees and Standards Related to Smart Cards

I attended the 10th annual smartcard convention in 1999, yet have not seen a smartcard outside of the places I used to work programming them. Maybe its time... The cards then were 1 or 2 dollars and the readers were about 6 or 7, hardly an expensive periferal on your computer.

Let me reiterate. Passwords have nothing to do with authentication, they only say that someone knows your password. Even having a magstripe card at least says that you know a password and were able to obtain phyisical access to the card. The best is a biometric reader with a smartcard. I think bioreaders are about 50 dollars.

Just to provide a URL so people can have something to point to (since I wasn't aware it was against credit cards rules to set minimum purchase prices)--

http://www.corporate.visa.com/footer/faqs.shtml#7

Make sure to let it scroll down automatically, or click on the FAQ entry for minimum purchase to use a Visa card.

"See ID" is consider invalid. The merchant is not allowed to accept any card with "See ID" written on it. They're supposed to make you sign the card and then compare that signature with another piece of signed identification. If you refuse to sign the card, they're not allowed to accept it. They usually do, of course, due to poor training or apathetic cashiers, but they're completely liable for any chargebacks in that case.

It already is! Visa "gift card" - like a regular gift certificate, up to $500 value, but in the form of a pre-paid Visa card. Mastercard have one too. Certainly not as anonymous as cash, but probably close with careful use and procurement. For that matter, you can even use one to obtain cash from an ATM, putting an extra layer in between you and the purchases...

I spent the last few years working in a bookstore, and I would argue that your purchase is never really "anonymous" unless you pay with cash and avoid using any kind of "frequent reader" card.

At my store, we had to retain all receipts for some set period (I can't remember exactly -- at least 12 months) for accounting reasons. Now, we did not have an integrated credit card system on our Point of Sale system, so the itemized sales receipt and the credit card slip were separate pieces of paper, but there were identifying marks written on the credit card receipts that allowed them to be tracked back to the itemized register receipt (which listed the titles purchased).

So, no matter what was going on in the computer, as long as the paper copies of both receipts were still extant, you could track the purchases of specific books back to a credit card number. If a store has an integrated Credit Card/POS, then the credit card number and the book titles are on the same piece of paper, so it's even easier.

As others have said here, pay cash and you've got no problems (short of surveillance cameras that show you purchasing the books ;-) ).

My wife and I pay for almost everything we buy at retail or in restaurants with a credit card to rack up frequent flyer miles, and I ocassionally get paranoid about this (my paranoia seems to vary in direct proportion to the amount of time spent reading slashdot). But at least I'm aware of the fact that I am trading the privacy of my purchases for something else of value to me (airline miles), the convenience of not having to carry much cash or make change, and the float that I get from not paying for my purchases until the next month.

What I would really like is something like the "Visa Cash" card. I get the impression that there is nothing like this available in the U.S. yet?

Is this a bad thing?

The retailer should be held accountable for not putting some sort of safety mesure in place. There are a number I know are actively used:

1. Ship to addresses that differ from the address on the account must be added to the account as a ship-to address. New Egg currently does this at least.

2. the 3 digit security code on the back of your card, though I dunno if that info is part of the DB stolen. This is becoming more promenent every day on line.

3. A PIN, visa is currently marketing this as Verified Visa.

One of my biggest problems with Walmart is that they almost never check ID when I write checks. If someone steals my check book and uses it at walmart successfully then walmart is partially to blame.

Actually card issuers are being forced to migrate from magstripe (magenetic-stripe) cards to smart-cards by Europay, Mastercard and Visa (this is called the EMV migration). Here's a nice document from VISA (PDF) about it.

A smart-card actually has a microchip with some programming in it (while a magstripe one only has data). Actually, one smart card can have several applications (for example: shop customer-card application + medical information application + debit application).

From a hardware point of view there is really no difference between a debit and credit application - the difference is in the application itself (the debit one will only let you spend the money you've already loaded in the card, the credit one will only let you spend money up to a limit defined in the card)

By the way, the apps and the data area for each app are encrypted with a specific key for the card and one for the app.

Of course, I'm not so certain that this needs to be a government implemented project. Companies in the private sector have already done something similar, see Visa.

And anyway, don't many people choose to be cashless as it is now? When I was in retail, a large percentage of people paid with debit cards linked to a major credit card. There's no cash! John Doe has his paycheck directly deposited in to his checking account, then pays for purchases with his debit card which utilizes a preexisting network system (Visa, Mastercard).

So bottom line: yeah, a (near-)cashless society is cool, but is government intervention necessary?

If a company such as American Express doesn't want me to link to them, what if I provided a link on my site such as americanexpress.com? You don't actually own the representation of the human-readable address, do you?

(Just for grins, compare sections three and eight of the American Express rules & regs.)

available here Tell them what you think.

From the Whois database
evisa.com : Record created on 27-Aug-1997
e-visa.com: Created on Wed, Apr 22, 1998

evisa.com had been registered just under a year when VISA registered their domain for eVisa (as a product)

A quick search of the US PTO database reveals that VISA did not register their trademark for eVisa and e-Visa until "August 19, 1999".

Though interestingly a search of the wayback machine shows an incarnation of the evisa website from oct 12 1999 (after the eVisa trademark was filed) as a webdesign and e-commerce company, with later additional web directory content. The wayback machine does not have any Visa (as an entry stamp) information as of Sep 25 2001 (its last entry for evisa.com)

Most (if not all) credit card companies have policies against charging extra for credit card transactions.
http://usa.visa.com/personal/about_visa/contact_us .html?it=ss_/index.html#d

From Visa's web site:

Can merchants set a minimum purchase or charge me a fee for accepting my Visa card?

Visa merchants are not permitted to establish minimum transaction amounts, even on sale items. They also are not permitted to charge you a fee when you want to use your Visa card.

If you run into a problem like this with a merchant, please notify the financial institution that issued you your Visa card. These institutions have access to the appropriate Visa rules and regulations and can help you document and file your complaint. You'll find their address and/or telephone number on your Visa statement. Their telephone number may also appear on the back of the card itself.

It's backed by Visa as long as the transaction occurs on their network.

The Zero Liability policy covers all Visa credit and debit card transactions processed over the Visa network--online or off. The only transactions not covered under the Zero Liability policy are commercial card, ATM, and non-Visa-branded PIN transactions.

For transactions on other networks, the liability decision is left to the financial institution that issued your card. The Issuer has the option of extending the same protections afforded by Visa's Zero Liability policy.

-- Zero Liability

It's better protection than I thought it might have, but it's still not as good as a credit card, which is required by law to limit the holder's liability.

You may want to read up on EMV. It is a cooperative initiative between Visa, Mastercard and Europay, and is set to roll out (region dependant) by 2005. Credit cards will be phased out soon after (by the aforementioned companies refusing to accept liability to fraud on non-EMV transactions).

EMV provides for online and offline transaction approval, mostly based on the size of the transaction and the running size of offline transactions since the last online one.

Gives more credence to the idea of one time use credit card numbers. Now you don't even have to be online to have your number stolen.

This should come as no suprise seems it has been easier to steal credit card numbers offline than online for some time now. Think about that pimply faced waiter disapearing in the back with your credit card at a restaraunt. Who cares if you lose your credit card/number anyway?

And it hasn't been for over two years now. Why is this particular piece of FUD so hard to stamp out? Debit cards from Visa/MC have the exact same level of liability, specifically none, with no limitation on how soon you need to report the card lost/stolen.

Visa:
Card Comparison chart, notice that all the check cards are covered by Zero Liability.
Information on Visa's Zero Liability Policy.
Mastercard:
Debit MasterCard features, notice their own Zero Liability Policy listed.
Information on the MasterCard Zero Liability Policy.

And it hasn't been for over two years now. Why is this particular piece of FUD so hard to stamp out? Debit cards from Visa/MC have the exact same level of liability, specifically none, with no limitation on how soon you need to report the card lost/stolen.

Visa:
Card Comparison chart, notice that all the check cards are covered by Zero Liability.
Information on Visa's Zero Liability Policy.
Mastercard:
Debit MasterCard features, notice their own Zero Liability Policy listed.
Information on the MasterCard Zero Liability Policy.

Western Union offers Mastercard, but they are not the *BANK* that *ISSUES* the credit card. The *BANK* is "Direct Merchants Bank, N.A., Arizona" Any organization can have credit cards issued, but they have to get a bank to back them..

Western Union Mastercard has the details.

The VISA site explains how to get your company name on a VISA card.. How'd you like a VISA with "Joe's Bar" emblazen across the front.. :)

VISA CoBranding

Here in America, we've grown used to thinking that anyone who acts like a bank is a bank. That's mostly because the feds kick around anyone who tries to be a bank and isn't. I strongly suspect that the feds aren't just letting PayPal go. They have something bigger on them.

Heh, user puts on speedpass watch and forgets he/she's wearing it and at a visit to a speedpass supported gas station, walks a wee bit too close to the pumps...

Actually I've been using the Speedpass technology for some time now and, as far as I can see there are many more advantages than disadvantages.
First of all, most of the reasons not to use the speedpass are some what mythical. Take, for example, the one cited above. You can only pump gas while in the general vicinity of the pump. In other words, if you walk a wee bit too close to the pumps they will be active for the 2 seconds you are directly in front of them and no longer active when you walk away.

The other great thing that has been mentioned in some of the posts as a disadvantage is that it is attached to your credit card and it doesn't require a pin/signature. Remember you have ZERO liability for any fraudulent activity that ends up on your credit card. (I know that in actuality there is some minimal legal liability, but here are links from Visa and Mastercard guaranteeing cardholders will have no liability.)

All things considered, I think its pretty cool technology. Like anything there are some risks, but, as far as I can tell, all of these are taken by the big credit card companies leaving you with all the benefits and none of the liability.

That would be the time to test those new "low limit" credit cards.

They issue a credit card with a limitied amount and a one shot use, if I remember correctly.

The Visa Cash card seems to do just that. Prevend them from charging more than what you want. Anyone know if it is supported by every site that support credit cards or just some specific ones?

Please folks, before you get over exited, I would consider that there is some panic on PayPals side involved in going for IPO, getting new capital in and expand RAPIDLY before others catch up. PayPal used to be pretty unique and the banks (even if Deutsche Bank was one of the original investors), especially big banking, pretty much stayed away from them. Why did the banks do that? They thought a technology driven company like Paypal (and DigiCash (today known as eCash Technologies), CyberCash(aquired by VeriSign and others), GlobeSET(acquired by Trintech) and many more ...) never posed a threat to the big banks. Then Paypal started to do something you shall not do . Disintermediate the banks. Now the banks think, wow, they are stealing customers from us. So there are various new initiatives on their way. Visa 3-D Secure ( See here), which is _first_ aimed to eliminate consumer fraud but has extensions in the protocol for later P2P use, NACHA has several initiatives on the way: ISAP which is again _first_ an internet payment protocol but will carry into P2P later, Project Action which will aim directly at the eBay Payments of PayPal. So they are afraid. They are afraid for a good reason. They need money to compete (and, according to rumours they are pretty much running out of it). So an IPO is a logical step. Maybe they will even make it in these difficult times ...

I saw a commercial about a Visa card that's smart. It referenced a link to Visa's .

As far as I can tell, these "smart cards" do nothing at all.

Sure they do, they make a bunch of unwashed Windows users think they're 31337 because they have a credit card with a computer chip in it.

That's right, just Windows users. Oh you thought Macs and Linux might be supported? Fat chance! AmEx Blue has been promising Mac support Real Soon Now since their card debuted two years ago, but now they don't even mention it on their system requirements page anymore. The promised Mac support was one of the reasons I got the Blue card, along with the 'added security'-- but their security is a joke in general. There was significant fraud perpetrated with my account number before I even got the card, and it did not involve identity fraud or interception of my postal mail.

VISA's smart cards also offer bupkis in the way of non-Windows support.

~Philly

It's nice to see some card companies finally moving towards smart cards in the hope that one day we may not need to carry cash.

The two major offerings are currently Visa's smart Visa and American Express's Blue. At this stage, it seems that MasterCard does not have a combined smart card/credit card.

There have also been various smart card only cards including MasterCard's Mondex and Visa's Visa Cash, but neither of these seems to have gained wide acceptance, despite being backed (however weakly) by the major credit card companies. Let's hope these new combined cards don't suffer the same fate.

The spirit of the law is good. But, you lose anonymity in the process. It should be the parents' job to monitor and teach the children, not the government.

Companies like Digicash (today eCash Technologies) or Zeroknowledge are having a hard time these days. eCash was shut down completely in Europe with the stop of the Deutsche Bank support (see here), ZKS let go more than 25% of their employees a couple of weeks ago, not many people are using Hushmail's premium service, etc. etc. yada yada. Everybody wants privacy, nobody wants to pay. It costs money to run a mixing network, it costs money to issue and check coins instead of just doing a LUN check to see if you CreditCard# is valid. SET was also a failure in the US. 3D Secure (see here) is coming up, protecting only the merchant, not the sensitive information of consumers. Why? Nobody wants to pay.

What if "ownership" is defined as a "nontransferable right to participate" within an idea-trading community?


http://www.chaordic.org/chaordic/what_des.html
http://www.partnershipway.org/unesco.html
http://technocrat.net/947223068/index_html

Huh? Believe it or not, a *shared ownership* model organizes the most successful global enterprise on earth: VISA International.

http://www.chaordic.org/chaordic/res_choasgood.htm l
http://www.fastcompany.com/online/05/deehock.html
http://visa.com/av/who/main.html

Dee Hock, who founded VISA, tells a bit of the story like this:

"In the strict legal sense, VISA was a non-stock, for-profit membership corporation. In another sense, it was an inside-out holding company in that it did not hold, but was held by its functioning parts. The financial institutions that create its products were, at one and the same time, its owners, its members, its suppliers, its customers, its subjects, and its superiors.

"It could not be bought, raided, traded, or sold, since ownership was in the form of perpetual, nontransferable rights of participation.

"VISA espoused no political, economic, social, or legal theory, thus transcending language, race, custom, and culture to successfully bring together people and institutions of every political, social, and religious persuasion.

"It went through a number of wars and revolutions, the belligerents continuing to share common ownership and never ceasing reciprocal acceptance of products, even though they were killing one another."

! Dee Hock estimates that if equitable ownership had been extended to merchants and card-holders, (all users), Visa would today be *four times* more successful today. !

Something to consider when deciding whether "for profit" or "non profit".. Neither And Both =)

for those who are interested in this, Visa has some details on the cards here

>Well, it's been several years, and SET still >isn't implemented at any major e-commerce site >that I know of. The costs SET-compliant software >are huge. Well, maybe not on any major sites, but many smaller sites at least here in Europe are already using it. Lists by Visa and Mastercard.

• Call this OS anything you want, but please include the name "linux" in whatever you call it.
• Please claim to your free subdomain (reputation) in our community-owned, mother-of-all-intranets at http://our.linux.org/dns (eg: va.linux.org = valinux.com etc)
• Let's chaorganize ourselves to free our idea exchange, while forging a commercial agreement to immunize ourselves from free-riders like Dr. Chiou.. This process might take us a year..

As you invoke links between free-thinking geeks and proprietary-minded suits, does the code word "choardic"(#3;) arise in any of your dialogues? Could creative freedom and cooperation enforced by "open source" also inform actual corporate by-laws, (sort of like Dee Hock's 25% implemented code for Visa International?). Are they conceivable, corporations that don't suck?

IPO's can be used by *people with a surplus of stored value (ca$h or credit) to multiply said surplus as much and as fast as possible and preferably with the least possible effort. If successful, such users earn themselves even more "freedom". (from what: fear? envy? lack of sex appeal? who knows?;) anyways..

Companies which conduct these IPO's exploit such human virtues to raise money (needed to finance international legal and customer aquisition costs.. (remember, you are now an Internet company dotcom(tm), or you are roadkill, and this web grows global fast)). Founders and early investors of Internet companies can also use these IPO's to amass fabulous fortunes for themselves to diversify and secure by investing in new IPO's, politicians , etc.

Now, partially owned by the "public" (see above*), stock prices reflect "our" confidence in the company's potential to profit. Company managers, typically holding stakes of their own, spur the company to attract the highest possible share price. Bottom line. Period.

Whether our grandchildren or theirs will regard this behavior as blatently criminal is another question.

Whether there are alternatives to inequity exacerbating IPO and "street" methods of idea "ownership" is a question I hope /. will address and soon. After all, the MAN(tm), his law(tm) and by-laws(IPO Corp.) are forms of "code", right? (They instruct energetic systems to behave predictably. Or try to.)

So how do IPO's and like ownership models perpetuate "code"? Openly? How does it affect our capacity to trade our learning and creativity? Are there alternatives? Here may be a interesting one:

"Chaord" or "chaordic". [haHA! 2nd post:] It's shocking that Dotters of Slash completely ignore an archetypical business structure that seems to effectively trade creativity and borderlessly: Visa International. Growth? 20% annually, since way before any long boom, past $ 1.2trillion in '98 sales, no end in sight. Method? Better attract human ingenuity, (the most valuable AND abundant resource on the planet.) Blend competition with cooperation, seamlessly. Failure? Dee Hock, who founded Visa, says it could have been four times more powerful if ownership had been extended to merchants and cardholders.. Customers owning the business? COOL! bu..WTF!? How to hack that???

IPO? Stock? Forget it. Visa can't bought, sold, traded or raided. Ownership is shared in non-transferable rights of participation.

It's a very unusual "learning organization": commanders don't control it from the center. Instead, chaos organizes itself at the edges, adapting locally, learning and evolving. Advantages arise out of individual initiative. Ideally, "chaorganizations" are "equitable owned by all participants." Sound like a more "open source" code for biz? IMHO, /. and RHAT and MP3c may have kinda choked if they didn't consider more "open" ownership models, proven successful by Visa..

Anyway, a more positive way to look at IPO's and Public Companies is as forms of "currency". If you have some to spare, you could buy gold, but you have to pay someone to guard it, and gold's value is dropping. You could guard U.S.Gov't(tm) printed dead prezidents, but why do it when your banker will pay you interest to borrow them? Still, who wants a measly 6% when brand-name "currency" like yahoo! or rhat or idealab! may earn me 600%? In this light, it's more rewarding to invest in people and ideas rather than self-obsoleting systems or hoarding stores of value. Currency users now have more options, can better "vote with their pocketbook", perpetuate what they value, and maybe earn themselves some more "freedom". More options, more freedom? Who knows?

links, again, on dee hock, visa, and chaords:
http://www.chaordic.org/chaordic /chaos_is_good.htm
http://www.cascadepolicy.org/dee_hock.htm ">
http://www.fastcompany.com/online /05/deehock.html

First off, CONGRATS! Slashdot is IMHO by the best news forum online. (I hope it gets lots better:) You "owners" certainly deserve to be rewarded, and "thanks" obviously doesn't pay rent or cut cake. Besides, prosperity could be useful, right? But at the possible expense of some trust?

So.. ASK SLASHDOT: are there alternatives to IPOs and Stock Ownership to finance Internet Companies? Was the RHAT IPO as fair as it could have been? Are better methods of "ownership" even conceivable? Can they, in reality, be hacked?

Why does nobody here ever mention chaords? Search /. for the word "CHAORD". Nothing, right? Try "chaordic". So.. these words don't exist here, at least before this post, right?. (ha! first post!:^)

Chaord? (CHAos+ORDer) It's that which "exists in the phase between chaos and order." A chaord is a "self-organizing, self-governing complex capable of constant learning and evolution." Like Linux. Like the Internet. Like money.

Pull out your shiny VISA card. Take a good look. Quite a capitalist tool, huh? Founded in the sixties, VISA International has grown 20% annually, through boom and bust, thick and thin, past $1.2 trillion in 1998 sales (11 zeros), with no end in sight. Hmmm. Wanna buy stock? No way, Jose.

VISA International is "owned" by its members. They share "ownership" by non-transferable rights of participation. (User rights!) These rights can't be bought, sold, traded or raided. Dee Hock, who founded VISA, had hoped to extend this ownership to merchants and cardholders, but it wasn't possible at the time. (Had it been, Mr. Hock believes the VISA community would be four times more powerful! )

Think I'm a wacko AC? Read the links. VISA thrives by an alternative system of "ownership", which, at its core, better motivates and rewards innovation by members. Does this sound a bit more in tune with open source purposes and principles?

As Open Source starts to suck in lawyers and money, how might we addapt? Maybe business planners can consider evidently successful alternatives to IPO's, and the inevitable management of "responsibilities to shareholders." It may be in their interest to do so.

In the end, informed users (customers) don't appreciate being forked over by short-sighted proprietary systems bent on obscene profits. So we then seek options. If we don't find them, we then create them.

- A.C., but not for long :->

"listen to the technology.. find out what it's telling you" -G.Gilder