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Open Source Group Victoria v. SCO, Part II
Following up on last July's complaint, Elektroschock writes that "The Open Source Group Victoria (OSV) made a second complaint to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). In a similar case in Germany SCO Group received an injunction from the court, so SCO never sold Linux licenses in Germany (tarent vs. SCO, district court Munich). Competition police seems to be a strong weapon against SCO-like action."
Funny but also insightful! They haven't sold any because they can go to prison for selling something they don't own. You won't get a license even if you beg for it.
Competition police seems to be a strong weapon against SCO-like action. ... IN countries that have applicable laws
NO SIG
However, I do think the old Mac OS was crap. And it was a fusion of NeXT and *BSD unixes that created the core of OS X.
I'll calmly ignore the Linux remark. But my roommate's seven year old daughter hasn't had any problems with my Debian box. And debian is solid, flexible, powerful... well, it was more solid before I upgraded to testing.
The only upside I see to OS X is that Mac users aren't being subjected to frivolous litigation by a nervous company.
To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.
Competition police seems to be a strong weapon against SCO-like action.
The most salient observation I have seen for some time on Slashdot. You nailed the point.
Intellectual Property, be it trademark, copyright, patent, trade secret, and the related non-IP causes of action such as anti-circumvention, create limitations and monopolies. Ideally, the monopolies are carefully limited against social needs to yield a net societal benefit, but as with all law, horrifying results can occur. IP is a core source these days of examples of unintended consequences.
While IP and pseudo-IP create monopolies sponsored by the government, the government likewise has another body of law, a different kind of trade regulation, antitrust, to keep enterprises from abusing even fairly obtained competitive advantages to the detriment of society. Like IP, the application of these laws must be careful, because fear of antitrust liability can actually result in highly anticompettive consequences to the detriment of society.
Combine that with the corpus of law governing unfair competition and deceptive trade practices more generally, and it is no surprise that when a company really goes out there, there are a kazillion conflicting policies and issues.
That is why some uses of IP can be so "out there" as to rise to anticompetitive conduct, even though the monopoly given was government-blessed. And why some anticompetitive conduct can preclude a right to assert iP.
Look for that whenever: (i) a company with significant market share throws IP weight around; (ii) a company with a fairly fought ownership of a marketplace governed by IP tries to extend their rights to non-controlled markets; and (iii) a company, though not a market leader or innovator, really stretches some IP rights they do have to control a market beyond any reasonable threshold.