I have no wish to infringe intellectual property or copyright laws. However, anyone accusing me of that needs to be specific (which patent am I using, what is its expiry date, which piece of work have I plagiarised), I'd like to have the opportunity to check myself (e.g. for prior art), and I'd like the opportunity to cease and desist if I have inadvertantly strayed.
If we turned off all the terrestrial broadcast TV transmitters, and gave those people receiving them enough money to buy the same basic service from cable/satellite TV operators, that would free up loads more spectrum for the 'higher-value' uses we are discussing here.
How much would it cost to square everybody, and would it be worth it in terms of the economic development that ought to follow ?
Nobody wants to force you to give away some original work that you don't want to make a gift of.
However, you should examine what someone could do with a gift of the source code; the obvious answer is 'buy more of your embedded network products'; if that's what you want people to do, and if the gift is really yours to make (i.e. it really is original work), maybe you should consider it.
If you really want to (at least with Starband), then get yourself an old PC with a Windows98 license from your local dumpster or pennysaver; install the Starband software; install Apache from http://www.apache.org, configure it as a 'cacheing proxy'; install XMail from http://xmailserver.org and configure it as MTA. Be careful with XMail, you do not want to make an 'open relay'. Starband will connect via USB or Ethernet, but will not share an Ethernet, so you may need to pay $2 for another Ethernet adapter to connect to your domestic area network.
Then you will be on a level playing field with the rest of us PC satellite users; at least as far as HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, SMTP, and POP3 go.
You might want to look at http://www.dslreports.com before putting any money down. Different people view satellite Internet as "wonderful" or "bottomless pit", you need to make your own mind up before committing.
For me ? Well, I would have designed the satellite modem to be vendor-neutral --- I have a http://www.dlink.com/products/broadband/di713p/ and I think it's a good piece of domestic networking equipment. Come to think of it, Starband could still get it right by supplying new firmware for their modem, if they wanted to. I don't think "conspiracy" is the word; more like "failure to conform with standards, which eventually has unfortunate commercial consequences".
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I have no wish to infringe intellectual property or copyright laws. However, anyone accusing me of that needs to be specific (which patent am I using, what is its expiry date, which piece of work have I plagiarised), I'd like to have the opportunity to check myself (e.g. for prior art), and I'd like the opportunity to cease and desist if I have inadvertantly strayed.
If we turned off all the terrestrial broadcast TV transmitters, and gave those people receiving them enough money to buy the same basic service from cable/satellite TV operators, that would free up loads more spectrum for the 'higher-value' uses we are discussing here. How much would it cost to square everybody, and would it be worth it in terms of the economic development that ought to follow ?
Nobody wants to force you to give away some original work that you don't want to make a gift of. However, you should examine what someone could do with a gift of the source code; the obvious answer is 'buy more of your embedded network products'; if that's what you want people to do, and if the gift is really yours to make (i.e. it really is original work), maybe you should consider it.
If you really want to (at least with Starband), then get yourself an old PC with a Windows98 license from your local dumpster or pennysaver; install the Starband software; install Apache from http://www.apache.org, configure it as a 'cacheing proxy'; install XMail from http://xmailserver.org and configure it as MTA. Be careful with XMail, you do not want to make an 'open relay'.
Starband will connect via USB or Ethernet, but will not share an Ethernet, so you may need to pay $2 for another Ethernet adapter to connect to your domestic area network.
Then you will be on a level playing field with the rest of us PC satellite users; at least as far as HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, SMTP, and POP3 go.
You might want to look at http://www.dslreports.com before putting any money down. Different people view satellite Internet as "wonderful" or "bottomless pit", you need to make your own mind up before committing.
For me ? Well, I would have designed the satellite modem to be vendor-neutral --- I have a http://www.dlink.com/products/broadband/di713p/ and I think it's a good piece of domestic networking equipment. Come to think of it, Starband could still get it right by supplying new firmware for their modem, if they wanted to.
I don't think "conspiracy" is the word; more like "failure to conform with standards, which eventually has unfortunate commercial consequences".