Countries Ponder: GNU/Linux vs. Microsoft

koody writes: "IDG has an overview of how many countries are getting drawn into the debate over the relative merits of using open source software rather than Microsoft Corp.'s Windows applications. Seems like many countries would be slowly moving towards the open source community, while a few still pledge allegiance to Microsoft."

Comments

Re:All I care about is the research

[jedidiah]

No, but it did make it easy for Microsoft to take an standard and mutate it into something that interferes with software replaceability. You make it sound like companies need to get something for free before they will ever implement anything new when there's really no good reason that companies can't all just work from a well documented specification.

The LGPL quite nicely achieves this for them while remaining open to review and verification.

If you really want to "perpetuate good code" or "spread a good idea" then there is no reason you need to do it with psuedo-PD.

Also, the point of Free Software is to increase choice for EVERYONE. If you don't grok that by now, you really haven't been paying attention.

Anarchy != Freedom, no matter how often you dress it up and repeat it.