Of course it's bad for the company who spent alot of ressources developping an interface to have others all around imitate it. Suppose you develop the ideal interface, it's nice, clean, fast, bugfree, etc. Someone finds it nice, and decides that to mimic it in a theme for some unstable OS. You lost control over the look of your interface, but how it actually works and reacts, and the other advantages of having it run on YOUR platform make them two totally different things.
I think in the end this encourages companies to innovate "under the hood" rather than simply inventing the next generation of pushbuttons. The best innovations are often those you don't see, or dont have a catchy Brand New Innovation Name (TM) over them.
As much as I hate to see people who have nothing to do with (or contribute to) Linux take advantage of it to try to make a quick million or two, all we can do is inform potential investors of the scam they are pulling. Luckily, Business Week did just that. It's a trusted source, read by alot of investors, so it will help protecting folks who will probably lose their investment in that company anyway.
Unfortunately, If people still go ahead and invest in that company.. then there is not much that can be done, and the scam will have succeeded. Their plan is one of misinformation of investors. Counter measure? Information. =)
Also, This kind of scam could not happen over "strongly licensed" software, since the company who owns that software would certainly not allow it. However, in a free software world, people are bound to like their new-found software liberties, and some will unfortunately abuse them to make a quick capitalist buck.
I took great care to state either "alot" or "some" companies. Obviously there are responsible e-commerce companies as well =)
Glad to know there's at least one!
Would be great if the companies made their security policies public (assuming they have one). That way, customer can choose wether they want to trust that particular company in light of what it does with their data.
Alot of E-commerce companies put big efforts in making the "shopping experience" as easy and interresting for the user. Wonderful, the company stored your credit card number, you wont have to type it in again when you shop later!
Security seems to come second for alot of those companies, and it shows. No one with some sense of security would store credit card numbers with expiration dates of all its clients in a database!
Companies need to be educated about security, and users as well. We just had the proof that some companies who try to get users' trust are definitely not trustworthy.
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Of course it's bad for the company who spent alot of ressources developping an interface to have others all around imitate it. Suppose you develop the ideal interface, it's nice, clean, fast, bugfree, etc. Someone finds it nice, and decides that to mimic it in a theme for some unstable OS. You lost control over the look of your interface, but how it actually works and reacts, and the other advantages of having it run on YOUR platform make them two totally different things.
I think in the end this encourages companies to innovate "under the hood" rather than simply inventing the next generation of pushbuttons. The best innovations are often those you don't see, or dont have a catchy Brand New Innovation Name (TM) over them.
As much as I hate to see people who have nothing to do with (or contribute to) Linux take advantage of it to try to make a quick million or two, all we can do is inform potential investors of the scam they are pulling. Luckily, Business Week did just that. It's a trusted source, read by alot of investors, so it will help protecting folks who will probably lose their investment in that company anyway.
Unfortunately, If people still go ahead and invest in that company.. then there is not much that can be done, and the scam will have succeeded. Their plan is one of misinformation of investors. Counter measure? Information. =)
Also, This kind of scam could not happen over "strongly licensed" software, since the company who owns that software would certainly not allow it. However, in a free software world, people are bound to like their new-found software liberties, and some will unfortunately abuse them to make a quick capitalist buck.
I took great care to state either "alot" or "some" companies. Obviously there are responsible e-commerce companies as well =)
Glad to know there's at least one!
Would be great if the companies made their security policies public (assuming they have one). That way, customer can choose wether they want to trust that particular company in light of what it does with their data.
Alot of E-commerce companies put big efforts in making the "shopping experience" as easy and interresting for the user. Wonderful, the company stored your credit card number, you wont have to type it in again when you shop later!
Security seems to come second for alot of those companies, and it shows. No one with some sense of security would store credit card numbers with expiration dates of all its clients in a database!
Companies need to be educated about security, and users as well. We just had the proof that some companies who try to get users' trust are definitely not trustworthy.