Well, I do think that the "market" was artificially restricted to x86-based computers to boost the monopoly claims. It's like saying that LCD and Plasma TVs are in different markets because they use a different display technology.
Interesting that "history if rife with better alternatives" but you don't mention any. Or perhaps you're thinking about the alternatives that appeared after Windows' success.
Your statement implies that there was some reasonable and equally inexpensive alternative to Windows at the time it was created. What do you suggest was that alternative? Surely not Linux: it didn't exist at the time and could never run on an 8088.
"Semantics. Who cares... everyone knows what is meant."
There's a big difference. The DOJ chose a civil action because the standard for a criminal conviction is "beyond a reasonable doubt". The DOJ didn't believe they could win under that standard, so they opted for the low-hanging fruit of a civil case. Had they done otherwise, it's quite possible that MS would have won the case.
"The whole point of this suggestion is that with Microsoft's monopoly on preinstalled OS, such a market is stifled at birth. There can never be a "then"."
Sure, that's why the Japanese were never able to challenge the US car and electronic markets since US companies had over 90% of those markets. Seriously, market forces always limit how long a company can stay on top. MS will not always be the market leader of destop OS's. Apple will not always be the market leader for portable music players.
1) Microsoft lost the civil monopoly case. You cannot be convicted of anything in a civil case. I know it's temping to suggest MS has done something criminal, but they have not.
That's a great answer if you're more anti-MS than pro-consumer. The pros and cons of unbundling for a consumer don't change whether the vendor has 1% of the market or 99%.
That's not the reason. Those who might be willing to pay for their crapware to be installed on Linux rightfully reason that many of those who are interested in desktop Linux want their applications to be "free as in beer" as well as "free as in RMS-speak". Thus it's unlikely that it would be a good investment.
Create a viable market for proprietary Linux desktop applications and then vendors may be willing to pay.
"BTW, for having a nickname of "ClosedSource", you present a very balanced view of proprietary and OSS software. That's quite refreshing."
Thanks. I'm sure, however, that some of my posts have seemed less than balanced. Even though I've posted on Slashdot for over 5 years, I'm still surprised that "ClosedSource" had not been taken already.
Clearly if the primary business is retail than it would be much smarter to pay for a proprietary POS (or use an existing OSS version) than starting a new OSS project. The latter approach is going to take a long time to get to the level where it can be used effectively for a business and there's a significant risk that it never will.
He should get the core business profitable ASAP and then if he has money left to burn, he can hire people to create any OSS product he wants - there's no particular reason why his choice should be limited to applications related to his "day business".
The bottom line is that starting a software project (proprietary or OSS) to support some aspect of a new business is not a very good idea unless the software is a core part of the business and isn't available from anyone else. Unfortunately in that scenario the software is likely to hold most of the value of the business and so making it OSS will probably limit profitability in the future.
There's an almost unlimited set of legal principles as well as routine pleadings that are usually routinely denied. I suspect that this defense is rarely successful or the whole patent system would break down given that there's no standard for determining how long is too long. One could also argue that MS's statement that Linux violates their patents is enough notice to undermine this defense. In fact under the "many eyes" theory MS could argue that the Linux community is uniquely equipped to search through the patents to determine which ones are involved.
"While I agree that it's not really fair to call C# a direct "copy" of Java, it's certainly Microsoft's answer to Java; it's unlikely that C# would exist today had Sun allowed Microsoft to build their platform on top of Java."
I think that may be true. J++ was a great way to do COM programming. I think the biggest problem Sun had with it is that it made it impossible for Sun to create a "Java processor" that would run on all systems. Selling Java hardware was really the only viable long-term way that Sun could make Java profitable.
Still Java was always more about beating Bill Gates than it was about making money for Sun.
What "US law" are you referring to? That sounds like a trade secret issue, not copyright. This program effectively waives any right MS would have to protect this code as a trade secret.
"Does anyone else have the impression that the Microsoft Permissive License is nothing more than a means of showing source, hoping that others will copy it into some product and thereby be liable of some infringement and be sued?"
Around Slashdot? Of course. But if you take off the tinfoil hat you might realize that no major competitor is going to be that stupid and the small fry don't have enough money to pay MS legal fees for a month. No matter how evil you imagine MS is, they aren't going to sue if there's no profit in it.
First there would have to be a legal definition of the term "open source". The fact that some private group came up with the phrase and acts as if they own it doesn't mean it has any legal weight.
You're confused. The only legal issue involved with seeing unsecret code is copyright, not other forms of IP. Claiming that somebody has written code that performs the same function as your code is not a valid argument in a copyright infringement case.
I doubt that the fact that the code merely looks similiar would carry much legal weight, but if, as you claim, "A lot of code out there tends to look similar", then even clean-room code could look like MS's and you could still be found to be violating MS's copyright. In fact, the clean-room code is probably more likely to be similiar because with access to MS's source you'd go out of your way to make it look different.
Now if the code represented a trade secret or a patent it would be different. It can't be a trade secret because MS is making it public. If it's covered by a patent, then even a clean-room implementation would be equally vunerable.
.NET was never a fork of Java. Java itself has been largely irrelevant to the Windows world for about a decade: ever since Sun decided that MS's version was making the performance on other platforms look bad and decided to kill it by suing MS.
The only way you can get into more trouble with reading MS's code than you would otherwise is if you duplicate actual lines of code thus violating their copyright. If you violate their patents, they could sue you anyway and reading their code wouldn't be relvant to the case.
Sorry to disappoint you, kid, but I have twice as many years experience as you. Of course, you and I could have a 100 years experience and still have a baised opinion.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I do think that the "market" was artificially restricted to x86-based computers to boost the monopoly claims. It's like saying that LCD and Plasma TVs are in different markets because they use a different display technology.
Interesting that "history if rife with better alternatives" but you don't mention any. Or perhaps you're thinking about the alternatives that appeared after Windows' success.
Your statement implies that there was some reasonable and equally inexpensive alternative to Windows at the time it was created. What do you suggest was that alternative? Surely not Linux: it didn't exist at the time and could never run on an 8088.
"Semantics. Who cares... everyone knows what is meant."
There's a big difference. The DOJ chose a civil action because the standard for a criminal conviction is "beyond a reasonable doubt". The DOJ didn't believe they could win under that standard, so they opted for the low-hanging fruit of a civil case. Had they done otherwise, it's quite possible that MS would have won the case.
"The whole point of this suggestion is that with Microsoft's monopoly on preinstalled OS, such a market is stifled at birth. There can never be a "then"."
Sure, that's why the Japanese were never able to challenge the US car and electronic markets since US companies had over 90% of those markets. Seriously, market forces always limit how long a company can stay on top. MS will not always be the market leader of destop OS's. Apple will not always be the market leader for portable music players.
1) Microsoft lost the civil monopoly case. You cannot be convicted of anything in a civil case. I know it's temping to suggest MS has done something criminal, but they have not.
That's a great answer if you're more anti-MS than pro-consumer. The pros and cons of unbundling for a consumer don't change whether the vendor has 1% of the market or 99%.
That's not the reason. Those who might be willing to pay for their crapware to be installed on Linux rightfully reason that many of those who are interested in desktop Linux want their applications to be "free as in beer" as well as "free as in RMS-speak". Thus it's unlikely that it would be a good investment.
Create a viable market for proprietary Linux desktop applications and then vendors may be willing to pay.
When I was a kid new computers used ferrite-core memory.
"BTW, for having a nickname of "ClosedSource", you present a very balanced view of proprietary and OSS software. That's quite refreshing."
Thanks. I'm sure, however, that some of my posts have seemed less than balanced. Even though I've posted on Slashdot for over 5 years, I'm still surprised that "ClosedSource" had not been taken already.
If your goal is to earn money, you're right. Making enough to earn a living is a different matter.
I agree. It may take months just to learn how to talk to a receipt printer.
Clearly if the primary business is retail than it would be much smarter to pay for a proprietary POS (or use an existing OSS version) than starting a new OSS project. The latter approach is going to take a long time to get to the level where it can be used effectively for a business and there's a significant risk that it never will.
He should get the core business profitable ASAP and then if he has money left to burn, he can hire people to create any OSS product he wants - there's no particular reason why his choice should be limited to applications related to his "day business".
The bottom line is that starting a software project (proprietary or OSS) to support some aspect of a new business is not a very good idea unless the software is a core part of the business and isn't available from anyone else. Unfortunately in that scenario the software is likely to hold most of the value of the business and so making it OSS will probably limit profitability in the future.
There's an almost unlimited set of legal principles as well as routine pleadings that are usually routinely denied. I suspect that this defense is rarely successful or the whole patent system would break down given that there's no standard for determining how long is too long. One could also argue that MS's statement that Linux violates their patents is enough notice to undermine this defense. In fact under the "many eyes" theory MS could argue that the Linux community is uniquely equipped to search through the patents to determine which ones are involved.
"While I agree that it's not really fair to call C# a direct "copy" of Java, it's certainly Microsoft's answer to Java; it's unlikely that C# would exist today had Sun allowed Microsoft to build their platform on top of Java."
I think that may be true. J++ was a great way to do COM programming. I think the biggest problem Sun had with it is that it made it impossible for Sun to create a "Java processor" that would run on all systems. Selling Java hardware was really the only viable long-term way that Sun could make Java profitable.
Still Java was always more about beating Bill Gates than it was about making money for Sun.
What "US law" are you referring to? That sounds like a trade secret issue, not copyright. This program effectively waives any right MS would have to protect this code as a trade secret.
Well, we could debate that, but it's irrelevant to the issue of C# as a fork of Java.
"Does anyone else have the impression that the Microsoft Permissive License is nothing more than a means of showing source, hoping that others will copy it into some product and thereby be liable of some infringement and be sued?"
Around Slashdot? Of course. But if you take off the tinfoil hat you might realize that no major competitor is going to be that stupid and the small fry don't have enough money to pay MS legal fees for a month. No matter how evil you imagine MS is, they aren't going to sue if there's no profit in it.
First there would have to be a legal definition of the term "open source". The fact that some private group came up with the phrase and acts as if they own it doesn't mean it has any legal weight.
You're confused. The only legal issue involved with seeing unsecret code is copyright, not other forms of IP. Claiming that somebody has written code that performs the same function as your code is not a valid argument in a copyright infringement case.
I doubt that the fact that the code merely looks similiar would carry much legal weight, but if, as you claim, "A lot of code out there tends to look similar", then even clean-room code could look like MS's and you could still be found to be violating MS's copyright. In fact, the clean-room code is probably more likely to be similiar because with access to MS's source you'd go out of your way to make it look different.
Now if the code represented a trade secret or a patent it would be different. It can't be a trade secret because MS is making it public. If it's covered by a patent, then even a clean-room implementation would be equally vunerable.
Sure, because we all know that Sun invented virtual machines.
.NET was never a fork of Java. Java itself has been largely irrelevant to the Windows world for about a decade: ever since Sun decided that MS's version was making the performance on other platforms look bad and decided to kill it by suing MS.
The only way you can get into more trouble with reading MS's code than you would otherwise is if you duplicate actual lines of code thus violating their copyright. If you violate their patents, they could sue you anyway and reading their code wouldn't be relvant to the case.
Sorry to disappoint you, kid, but I have twice as many years experience as you. Of course, you and I could have a 100 years experience and still have a baised opinion.
If you presented some evidence you'd be more convincing. It sounds more like a bias to me.