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Perens on Patents
lewiz writes "An interesting interview with Bruce Perens over at the BBC. He's up discussing the role of HP, IBM, et al and the move towards Linux. However, his main point is about software patents and how they are much more of a problem than SCO: 'We're looking at a future where only the very largest companies will be able to implement software, and it will technically be illegal for other people to do so.'"
fp!
hi taco!
I like buttsex, receiving that is!
Proprietary code should be defended not by a patent, but by copyright.
You can copyright content that is a product of intellectual endeavour, but you can't patent the words used to write it, nor can you patent grammatical structure and the vocabulary used, or the type of media used to store and distribute. And that is exactly what software patents attempt to do, restrict the very language and tools we use to creative our work. It is very easy to accidentally invent a method used to solve a problem strictly in a clean-room situation that could infringe on some unknown patent.
Copyright is the right way to protect software, not patents.
>>esr>>
Having read the article thoroughly, this startling news shows the flaws in the brewing Open Source Zeitgeist that is gripping the software community. Have you considered that providing software for free to countries such as China is essentially tacit support for oppressive regimes?
Far-fetched? Think about it: With MySQL, the People's Army will now be able to do multiple queries on their tables of democratic activists in Olog(n) time instead of lengthy searches in card catalogs. The bureaucratic overhead previously allowed activists enough time to flee the country. How about building cheap firewalls so the people can't get the unbiased reporting that CNN provides? Or using Apache to publish lists of Falun Gong people to their police forces instantly? I doubt that never crossed your minds when you were coding away in your parents' basements. Consider putting that little thought in your mental resolv.conf file.
If that does not concern you ( which it probably doesn't, since the lashout.org paradigm is publishing articles about how not to pay for things ), consider something else. When China eventually goes to war with Taiwan, we want to be able turn their command and control facilities into the computing equivalent of a train-wreck. One of the advantages of Windows never mentioned in the article is the ability of Microsoft to remotely deactivate Windows XP in the case of a national emergency. Thanks to GNU/Lunix, Taiwan will be on a collision course with the mainland in the near future.
Which throws into question Bruce Perens's motives. A known proponent of socialism, the Chinese government and Mr.Perens are natural allies. Could it be a back door to Perens's dream of an uber-Socialist United States? We may never know for sure. Next time you consider contributing to an open source project, ask yourself this question: don't you want to make sure your work isn't used for nefarious purposes? Will you risk having blood on your hands?
Once again I failed to convince someone of the qualities of Firebird:
... how useful!).
On the first sites he visited, there was a Macromedia Flash(R) based menu, which lead to a clumsy install of the appropriate plug-in.
The second site was a city map, requiring - you already guessed it - a Java Virtual Maschine (a.k.a. Sun's Jerky Amateurish Vagina Appendix).
Installing the related plugin for application/x-java-vm took 15 minutes (even though we used DSL) and even after a restart, the plug-in did not work (it showed up in about:plugins though
So, let me conclude:
LINUX IS NOT READY FOR THE DESKTOP
What are you talking about? The guy is Eris S. Raymond, a visionary luminary and luminary visionary of the open source community, author of fetchmail and dozens of other essays.
Who cares what you say. You are a flaming liberal and probably a communist at that. I heard you lost your job at HP because you couldn't keep your liberal democrat communist mouth shut. Believe it or not Bruce people have to make a living somehow other than living off of others. Communists like you are like parasites.
I'm sure the Raynond family is quite upset at your accusation, Mr. "Anonymous Coward"
It's dorks like you who gave us the Windows95 era. Yeah, nice MSDOS machine, great for games--too bad the OS that everyone else in the household had to use for, like, work was a crash-happy POS.
Buy a fucking $200 game console. It'll last longer than your current computer and actually does what it's designed to do. Plus, it plays DVDs (badly).
Let your computer do computery stuff, like downloading DiVX-ripped movies and hardcore pr0n. =^)