I saw details of one of the licenses, and AFAICC they do not have to pay SCO anything in the future for using Linux if Linux contains no SCO code. However SCO also do not say that Linux does contain any code in the contract.
But, if the parent is true, then EV1 and SCO should lose their rights under the GPL. In which case EV1 are now "pirating" Linux.
Wouldn't it be terrible if the Us government weren't funded in a large part by MS's bribes, and were actually willing to go after them for extending their illegal monopoly (which they already gained mainly through crime, "piracy", bribery, blackmail, battery, &c.)
They did not say they can charge fees. They said that they were entitled to enumeraton for any "intellectual property" lost.
This is more likely to mean that MS will have any of their exclusive intellectual exploitation rights (EIER) (probably mainly patents?) on their illegally-closed interfaces compulsorily public-domained and be compensated by a reduction in their fine money -- it just says "renumeration" which in the context of talking about the EC fining MS, I would guess means out of the fine money. This is of course only one of several possible interpretations of this vague EC statement.
Also remember that the renumeration may be negligible as the only value of MS's EIER on interfaces in the EU may be for MS to use to further their criminal practices. The market value might be interpreted to be low.
I doubt it means what you say as the EC are genuinely trying to show that they are not in bed with MS and are going to be forceful but fair on them. They would tell it as it is in their press release.
That may be true, because apparently he has said he is going to leave nothing to his children. I also suspect he may and try and take MS down with him when he goes, too.
In a way, there' s something good about this way of thinking.
I hope this is not true and I certainly would not interpret it like that. The press release by the EC seems a bit vague, but my interpretation was that
"To the extent that any of this interface information might be protected by intellectual property in the European Economic Area, Microsoft would be entitled to reasonable remuneration."
means renumeration out of the money they were fined not from anyone who uses their interfaces.
In other words, from an optimistic point of view, I would interpret that as saying that the EC are compulsorarily public-domaining (like copmulsory purchasing) MS's exclusive intellectual exploitation rights (what sort of rights are we talking -- patents mainly I assume?).
I've just discovered that/. is brilliant for rants (when one is pissed off) especially in threads like this were no one seems to be commenting (or reading);-).
Hmm...ye...I wrote the grandparent post very quickly when the article first came out. I must stress that I think it really is great that they have a policy on FOSS and I really hope the action plan will trickle down to some action on the ground. As an example of why I was being cynical though, in my experience, ATM many parts of the government only produce documents in proprietary Microsoft formats (and even worse expect others to be able to read and send documents to them in the same formats) -- also, although this is now a lot better, some Government websites used to be made seemmingly purposely to only work with MSIE -- funny enough I believe the search function on the *EC* website for anti-monopoly legilsation requires MSIE -- I went on there to search for info in relation to the EC v. MS case a while back.
I will definitely be commenting on this document (which is after all only a draft) and making suggestions (including, ahem, some of the same ones I made here but in a more polite less ranting way). I don't think this has been discussed on the FSF Europe mailing lists yet either, so I'll pass it on to them (and other relevant lists) when I can.
I think the policy ATM is better than no policy and I am sure they will be open to suggestions for improvements. Definitely, if as many of us tell them as possble about how their policy may be a good start but needs improving, they should get the message.
>>Figures?<<
Well, that was something I remember seeing somewhere a while back (so may not be statistically accurate and it is really impossible to know what software exists in the world, what counts as software and whether it has to be publically available). I cannot find the source ATM -- the point I was making is that I'm sure most FOSS is not released under an license written by the OSI (and that the most popular licenses are actually made by the FSF). Probably shouldn't bandy around stats without a source, but then the Government don't give any justification or sources for any of their claims (many of which are innacurate) in their OSS policy on which we are commenting.
Actually, I had a look at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/ and I found it says there that "more than half of free software packages" use the GNU GPL.
>>thats distribution not redistribution<<
OK I see there is a difference between the two, but I doubt anyone reading it will notice that subtlety -- that bit is possibly not technically untrue but it clearly gives a wrong impression of how GPL works if the popular the license they claim is prduced by the OSI really is the GNU GPL.
>>their executive-level introduction of what open source is is a bit inaccurate. But its just an introduction and not the policy.<<
I commented on the intro because I hadn't read the policy at the time. I've now read the whole thing and, to be honest, I think the policy is also in real need of some imprvement too.
>>Bollocks. In fact, the 2005 plan was produced because it was felt many of the goals of the 2002 plan<<
I was just drawing from my previous experience of how anything called an "action plan" works in government (i.e.: the words "action plan" usually imply that anything contained threin is unlikely to happen and that the only action this commonly occurs is the prduction of more action plans;-) ) and I did not read the previous action plan -- there isn't a link to it. Now you have given me the link the previous one, I've looked at it and it doesnt seem to be about software (or for that matter freedom) -- in fact there is no mention of the word software -- looks to me to be about Internet access and availability which i
>>No kidding>Figures?>thats distribution not redistribution>their executive-level introduction of what open source is is a bit inaccurate. But its just an introduction and not the policy.>Bollocks. In fact, the 2005 plan was produced because it was felt many of the goals of the 2002 plan>Government depts are well aware that having access to the source prevents them being held to ransom by companies who need a big license payoff to stay afloat.>Eh??? Have you looked at HMSO [hmso.gov.uk] recently?>All the acts since 1991 are there, online, for free, and can be reproduced for free.>My own complaint about those is that they only go back 'selectively' beyond 1991.>That's a problem, because eg the laws relating to pollution since then (which it sounds like you're interested in) have been supplementary to the previous Acts.
In fact i originally compalined about the lack of freeness a few years beack when researching pollution law (in order to look at possible introduction of regs or laws on light pollution).
I'll check up on the click-through thing tomorrow. I think, they do sell licenses for some purposes that arent covered by the "free-use" license.
I've gotta go now so won't rant about the policy too;-), but briefly I have some problems with the policy being ambiguous/vague and the stress on cost not freedom.
At least it should mean M$ actually reads the some of the Europeans law if they write them themselves, so they are less likely to break them and, if they do break their own laws, they cannot claim ignorance of the law like in the EC prosecution.;-)
I mean if MS writes all the laws, then they might break them less which is really what we've all being calling for on/....
Here's my quicky-written in-depth textual analysis of page 1 (the intro.). I'm glad they are taking notice of the pressure us, UK free-software users are putting on them, but, let's say, it doesn't look as great as it could be though. Disclaimer: maybe I'm very cynical and I am in a pissed off mood about just talking to the powers at be at my central-government-funded college who think that free software "is evil hacking [sic] tools like Kazaa" and who worships MS -- only using MS software were possible.
"Open Source Software (OSS) is software whose source code is openly published"
This is exactly why (as I said in my last post) it should be about free software. They obviously think they any software with source is open source as opposed to only stuff that fits the Debian Free Software Guidelines, OSI open source definition or the FSF free software definition.
"is usually available at no charge"
But they still seem to think that it is about cost not freedom (even though they use the term, open source, which was apparently designed to remove perceived ambiguity with the term free software -- I personally think free software is a clearer term). Cost hardly matters to governments anyway -- they get very good deals -- the fact that MS has control over the government's computer systems and all the personal data of UK citzens, and that no one can see what the software is doing is *far* more important.
"under a licence defined by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) which prevents it from being redistributed under a more restrictive licence."
AFAIK the OSI have not made under any software licenses. Also, I believe, at least three-quaters of software is licesed under the FSF's GNU GPL. If the are talking about the GNU GPL, the GPL does not "[prevent] it from being redistributed under a more restrictive licence" -- the author can distribute it under any license -- it does prevent a *derivative* work from being licensed under a more restrictive license (unless all the orignal authors have seperately licensed the software under a more restrictive license).
"It has leapt to prominence by starting to take a significant market share in some specific parts of the software infrastructure market."
So, they are saying that they now like FOSS because it may have a monopoly in some areas -- I'm not sure which ones they are refering to -- servers?
OK, fine they actually think the government should go out of their way to support monopolies and lack of freedom, then? I can see why most desktop PC's in the UK gov. run MSW then, if they have that attitude.
"to live up to their initial press hype. OSS is indeed the start of a fundamental change in the software infrastructure marketplace, but it is not a hype bubble that will burst and UK Government must take cognisance of that fact."
Do they have a guilty concious about being a gov. who are very into creating and blindly following hype bubbles or sthg? Seriously though, it seems they have (after the years of campaigning that free-software advocates by those at the UK AFFS, FSF, &c.) finally realised that free software is an important and fundamental change (or actually return to the old days) in the way we look at software (esp. in gov.).
"The Action Plan (June 2002) for the European Commission's initiative eEurope 2005: An Information Society for all builds on the previous Action Plan (June 2000) which set the target "to promote the use of open source software in the public sector and e-Government best practice through exchange of experiences across the Union"."
So it seems that they are making another action plan as part of their previous action plan on which they haven't done anything yet but produce another action plan. Oh, and they are only doing it because the EU (who I think are more free-software friendly thanks to FSF Europe bringing them over) forced them. My experience is that the only way to get the UK government to do anything for their citizens (as oppose
Seriously though, I have contacted polticians to try and get them to get a policy on this and it sounds like they are starting to listen, so I'll be sending them lots of comments on this.
For a start, as an FSF member and given that this is in relation to government, I really think it should be called "free software" or "software libre" to emphasise the freedom aspects -- for most government apps they couldn't care less about the source but freedom and data protection is very imprtant.
How dare the EU declare war on and infringe the human rights of a lovely corporation like MS who just happens to have madesubstantialcontributionsto
Ms. Murray's campaign fund.
(~$200000).
This would only be fair from a moral point of view if:
it were proven that the owners of the website commsioned the spam
it were bulk UCE
UCE were considered illegal in the jurisdiction of the website owners
Even if it was morally justfied, I can see legal problems in many jurisdictions for ISP's censoring the Internet. Of course, AOL are not an ISP but an online service provider -- they don't actually say they will give any user any Internet access at all -- so they might get away with it.
This wouldn't work for long because the spammers would just move to another domain.
AOL aren't serious about stopping spam. They are only issuing lots of press releases about it recently, because many are starting to realise that not only are AOL a big spammer, but most spam comes from their network, they encourage people to use their networks for spam, and they are funded by spammers.
You can say that again. This wouldn't get through in a million years -- unless the US is really corrupt & undemocratic, and M$ bribe the SEC and US government...oh wait..never mind.
AOL own many of the major rival ISP's to MSN (Netscape, AOL, Compuserve &c) and the big search engines, the biggest web directory (ODP), rival browsers to MSIE (NN, AOl), rival IM clients to MSN (AIM, ICQ), news services...I could go on.
At least he has some basic understanding of what security means (even if he lies/spins it) and must be a reasonably clever business man to be in the position he is in (and without getting banged up for it) unlike George W. Bush.
I mean, you wouldn't want someone like Bush (who has the mental age of a 3 year old) in charge of any nukes...oh..wait...never mind.
Uuh, the same people who would have been responsible if there was no company (i.e.: the people actually intentionally involved in causing or planning the pollution) as opposed to the company (which cannot be punished) being responsible.
This is a very good example because I know many companies continue to pollute after being caught, because no one cares about the company being fined a negligible sum each time the authorities find out (whereas they might actually stop it if the people polluting and those employing them to do it were personally find and/or jailed).
Making political parties, permanent political organizations, illegal might actually accomplish something.
I'm glad you agree, but actually there is no need to make them illegal (and this would also infringe on basic human rights of assembly) -- all that is required is to take away the special constitutional powers that most countries bestow on poltical parties (like the one who gets the most votes gets to run the country as opposed to the parliament doing that or the special powers that the official opposition get or only allowing parties to propose laws) -- if this was done parties would just become groups of individuals (that happen to be politicians) that agree to be friends with each other and nothing more.
The current system in nearly all pseudo-representative democracies is made to kill off indepdendents, so one has to be a slimey yes man who worships a party to get anywhere in politics, and then people wonder why there aren't many morally good politicians?
political parties have the power
Therefore the US, UK &c are not (representative) democracies (which they would be if parties' special powers were removed) -- QED.
American Indians: The fact that USans managed to totally massacre some (actually very advanced in many respects) civilisations has nothing to do with companies -- companies probably did not exist then -- and even if it did it there would be no reason to make that over-generalised connection and it would not IMO be much of a plus point for companies.
What would limit innovation more than preventing things that require a lot people, money and organization
I refer you to, on the one hand, free software (especially the bazaar model), and, on the other, the large amount of chaff, disorganisation, useless management and people whose jobs seem to involve not actually doing anything in your typical company.
I also point out that I am not saying companies should be got rid of. I'm just saying maybe we should remove their special legal rights (to do pretty much anything they like and not get punlished because they don't exist).
The point is that the moment that government has the right to tell a proprietary software owner to open their software, it also has the right to tell an open software developer to close their software
Well then it is good that the EU do not have this right, and that is why they are fining MS instead of asking them to open the source. Actually, it is AFAICC impossible to close somethnig that is already open but anyway...
OK. I'm not in the USA, but that sounds pretty crazy.
So I can make as many abstract entitities as I like in the US and these non-existent things have equal rights under the US constitution as a real person does.
Do they have the right to vote too? Or don't they need it as bribing or blackmailing politicians seems to be perfectly legal over there?
Also how exactly does this work? How does something that doesn't exist bare arms or excercise its right to free speech?
I agree in general with the GNU manifesto, and I think RMS says in there somewhere that the problem is not capitalism itself but the way it is currently implemented.
As soon as you have something jointly owned by more than one person, you have some kind of a company.
Well in that case companies should not have any special legal status.
Incidentally I just realised that the idea of companies being bad for capitalism (which I just thought of) is probably similar to my long held belief that giving special status to groups of politicians (i.e.: political parties) (for instance with the concept of governments) is what makes pseudo-representative (US/UK-style) democracy undemocratic.
I'm not sure what point you are trying to make about American Indians.
I'm glad my post made some sense to someone -- it was wrote very quickly.
I actually only just thought of the idea that companies are what holds back capitalism, and I think you say it a lot better. I treekilled your articles for future reference.
This is of course assuming the EU will force them to open the code (which they won't and probably can't) and that anyone can make any sense of or anything usable from MS's code -- it will probably be quicker coding from scratch than using it. Why do you think MS want to hide the code?
Slashdot Mirror
I saw details of one of the licenses, and AFAICC they do not have to pay SCO anything in the future for using Linux if Linux contains no SCO code. However SCO also do not say that Linux does contain any code in the contract.
But, if the parent is true, then EV1 and SCO should lose their rights under the GPL. In which case EV1 are now "pirating" Linux.
Wouldn't it be terrible if the Us government weren't funded in a large part by MS's bribes, and were actually willing to go after them for extending their illegal monopoly (which they already gained mainly through crime, "piracy", bribery, blackmail, battery, &c.)
See my aunt post.
They did not say they can charge fees. They said that they were entitled to enumeraton for any "intellectual property" lost.
This is more likely to mean that MS will have any of their exclusive intellectual exploitation rights (EIER) (probably mainly patents?) on their illegally-closed interfaces compulsorily public-domained and be compensated by a reduction in their fine money -- it just says "renumeration" which in the context of talking about the EC fining MS, I would guess means out of the fine money. This is of course only one of several possible interpretations of this vague EC statement.
Also remember that the renumeration may be negligible as the only value of MS's EIER on interfaces in the EU may be for MS to use to further their criminal practices. The market value might be interpreted to be low.
I doubt it means what you say as the EC are genuinely trying to show that they are not in bed with MS and are going to be forceful but fair on them. They would tell it as it is in their press release.
In a way, there' s something good about this way of thinking.
In other words, from an optimistic point of view, I would interpret that as saying that the EC are compulsorarily public-domaining (like copmulsory purchasing) MS's exclusive intellectual exploitation rights (what sort of rights are we talking -- patents mainly I assume?).
Woops!
/. is brilliant for rants (when one is pissed off) especially in threads like this were no one seems to be commenting (or reading) ;-) .
;-) ) and I did not read the previous action plan -- there isn't a link to it. Now you have given me the link the previous one, I've looked at it and it doesnt seem to be about software (or for that matter freedom) -- in fact there is no mention of the word software -- looks to me to be about Internet access and availability which i
>>No kidding<<
There was a disclaimer, OK?
I've just discovered that
Hmm...ye...I wrote the grandparent post very quickly when the article first came out. I must stress that I think it really is great that they have a policy on FOSS and I really hope the action plan will trickle down to some action on the ground. As an example of why I was being cynical though, in my experience, ATM many parts of the government only produce documents in proprietary Microsoft formats (and even worse expect others to be able to read and send documents to them in the same formats) -- also, although this is now a lot better, some Government websites used to be made seemmingly purposely to only work with MSIE -- funny enough I believe the search function on the *EC* website for anti-monopoly legilsation requires MSIE -- I went on there to search for info in relation to the EC v. MS case a while back.
I will definitely be commenting on this document (which is after all only a draft) and making suggestions (including, ahem, some of the same ones I made here but in a more polite less ranting way). I don't think this has been discussed on the FSF Europe mailing lists yet either, so I'll pass it on to them (and other relevant lists) when I can.
I think the policy ATM is better than no policy and I am sure they will be open to suggestions for improvements. Definitely, if as many of us tell them as possble about how their policy may be a good start but needs improving, they should get the message.
>>Figures?<<
Well, that was something I remember seeing somewhere a while back (so may not be statistically accurate and it is really impossible to know what software exists in the world, what counts as software and whether it has to be publically available). I cannot find the source ATM -- the point I was making is that I'm sure most FOSS is not released under an license written by the OSI (and that the most popular licenses are actually made by the FSF). Probably shouldn't bandy around stats without a source, but then the Government don't give any justification or sources for any of their claims (many of which are innacurate) in their OSS policy on which we are commenting.
Actually, I had a look at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/ and I found it says there that "more than half of free software packages" use the GNU GPL.
>>thats distribution not redistribution<<
OK I see there is a difference between the two, but I doubt anyone reading it will notice that subtlety -- that bit is possibly not technically untrue but it clearly gives a wrong impression of how GPL works if the popular the license they claim is prduced by the OSI really is the GNU GPL.
>>their executive-level introduction of what open source is is a bit inaccurate. But its just an introduction and not the policy.<<
I commented on the intro because I hadn't read the policy at the time. I've now read the whole thing and, to be honest, I think the policy is also in real need of some imprvement too.
>>Bollocks. In fact, the 2005 plan was produced because it was felt many of the goals of the 2002 plan<<
I was just drawing from my previous experience of how anything called an "action plan" works in government (i.e.: the words "action plan" usually imply that anything contained threin is unlikely to happen and that the only action this commonly occurs is the prduction of more action plans
>>No kidding>Figures?>thats distribution not redistribution>their executive-level introduction of what open source is is a bit inaccurate. But its just an introduction and not the policy.>Bollocks. In fact, the 2005 plan was produced because it was felt many of the goals of the 2002 plan>Government depts are well aware that having access to the source prevents them being held to ransom by companies who need a big license payoff to stay afloat.>Eh??? Have you looked at HMSO [hmso.gov.uk] recently?>All the acts since 1991 are there, online, for free, and can be reproduced for free.>My own complaint about those is that they only go back 'selectively' beyond 1991.>That's a problem, because eg the laws relating to pollution since then (which it sounds like you're interested in) have been supplementary to the previous Acts.
;-), but briefly I have some problems with the policy being ambiguous/vague and the stress on cost not freedom.
In fact i originally compalined about the lack of freeness a few years beack when researching pollution law (in order to look at possible introduction of regs or laws on light pollution).
I'll check up on the click-through thing tomorrow. I think, they do sell licenses for some purposes that arent covered by the "free-use" license.
I've gotta go now so won't rant about the policy too
At least it should mean M$ actually reads the some of the Europeans law if they write them themselves, so they are less likely to break them and, if they do break their own laws, they cannot claim ignorance of the law like in the EC prosecution. ;-)
I mean if MS writes all the laws, then they might break them less which is really what we've all being calling for on /. ...
Oh! nevermind....
I believe they still have the biggest army per head of poulation...
Here's my quicky-written in-depth textual analysis of page 1 (the intro.). I'm glad they are taking notice of the pressure us, UK free-software users are putting on them, but, let's say, it doesn't look as great as it could be though. Disclaimer: maybe I'm very cynical and I am in a pissed off mood about just talking to the powers at be at my central-government-funded college who think that free software "is evil hacking [sic] tools like Kazaa" and who worships MS -- only using MS software were possible.
"Open Source Software (OSS) is software whose source code is openly published"
This is exactly why (as I said in my last post) it should be about free software. They obviously think they any software with source is open source as opposed to only stuff that fits the Debian Free Software Guidelines, OSI open source definition or the FSF free software definition.
"is usually available at no charge"
But they still seem to think that it is about cost not freedom (even though they use the term, open source, which was apparently designed to remove perceived ambiguity with the term free software -- I personally think free software is a clearer term). Cost hardly matters to governments anyway -- they get very good deals -- the fact that MS has control over the government's computer systems and all the personal data of UK citzens, and that no one can see what the software is doing is *far* more important.
"under a licence defined by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) which prevents it from being redistributed under a more restrictive licence."
AFAIK the OSI have not made under any software licenses. Also, I believe, at least three-quaters of software is licesed under the FSF's GNU GPL. If the are talking about the GNU GPL, the GPL does not "[prevent] it from being redistributed under a more restrictive licence" -- the author can distribute it under any license -- it does prevent a *derivative* work from being licensed under a more restrictive license (unless all the orignal authors have seperately licensed the software under a more restrictive license).
"It has leapt to prominence by starting to take a significant market share in some specific parts of the software infrastructure market."
So, they are saying that they now like FOSS because it may have a monopoly in some areas -- I'm not sure which ones they are refering to -- servers?
OK, fine they actually think the government should go out of their way to support monopolies and lack of freedom, then? I can see why most desktop PC's in the UK gov. run MSW then, if they have that attitude.
"to live up to their initial press hype. OSS is indeed the start of a fundamental change in the software infrastructure marketplace, but it
is not a hype bubble that will burst and UK Government must take cognisance of that fact."
Do they have a guilty concious about being a gov. who are very into creating and blindly following hype bubbles or sthg? Seriously though, it seems they have (after the years of campaigning that free-software advocates by those at the UK AFFS, FSF, &c.) finally realised that free software is an important and fundamental change (or actually return to the old days) in the way we look at software (esp. in gov.).
"The Action Plan (June 2002) for the European Commission's initiative
eEurope 2005: An Information Society for all builds on the previous Action
Plan (June 2000) which set the target "to promote the use of open source
software in the public sector and e-Government best practice through
exchange of experiences across the Union"."
So it seems that they are making another action plan as part of their previous action plan on which they haven't done anything yet but produce another action plan. Oh, and they are only doing it because the EU (who I think are more free-software friendly thanks to FSF Europe bringing them over) forced them. My experience is that the only way to get the UK government to do anything for their citizens (as oppose
Have to sign up to make comments....
For a start, as an FSF member and given that this is in relation to government, I really think it should be called "free software" or "software libre" to emphasise the freedom aspects -- for most government apps they couldn't care less about the source but freedom and data protection is very imprtant.
How dare the EU declare war on and infringe the human rights of a lovely corporation like MS who just happens to have made substantial contributions to Ms. Murray's campaign fund. (~$200000).
Also "99% of researchers and statisticians have no idea what they are talking about and don't know what research means"
- it were proven that the owners of the website commsioned the spam
- it were bulk UCE
- UCE were considered illegal in the jurisdiction of the website owners
Even if it was morally justfied, I can see legal problems in many jurisdictions for ISP's censoring the Internet. Of course, AOL are not an ISP but an online service provider -- they don't actually say they will give any user any Internet access at all -- so they might get away with it.AOL own many of the major rival ISP's to MSN (Netscape, AOL, Compuserve &c) and the big search engines, the biggest web directory (ODP), rival browsers to MSIE (NN, AOl), rival IM clients to MSN (AIM, ICQ), news services...I could go on.
At least he has some basic understanding of what security means (even if he lies/spins it) and must be a reasonably clever business man to be in the position he is in (and without getting banged up for it) unlike George W. Bush.
I mean, you wouldn't want someone like Bush (who has the mental age of a 3 year old) in charge of any nukes...oh..wait...never mind.
This is a very good example because I know many companies continue to pollute after being caught, because no one cares about the company being fined a negligible sum each time the authorities find out (whereas they might actually stop it if the people polluting and those employing them to do it were personally find and/or jailed).
I'm glad you agree, but actually there is no need to make them illegal (and this would also infringe on basic human rights of assembly) -- all that is required is to take away the special constitutional powers that most countries bestow on poltical parties (like the one who gets the most votes gets to run the country as opposed to the parliament doing that or the special powers that the official opposition get or only allowing parties to propose laws) -- if this was done parties would just become groups of individuals (that happen to be politicians) that agree to be friends with each other and nothing more.The current system in nearly all pseudo-representative democracies is made to kill off indepdendents, so one has to be a slimey yes man who worships a party to get anywhere in politics, and then people wonder why there aren't many morally good politicians?
Therefore the US, UK &c are not (representative) democracies (which they would be if parties' special powers were removed) -- QED.American Indians: The fact that USans managed to totally massacre some (actually very advanced in many respects) civilisations has nothing to do with companies -- companies probably did not exist then -- and even if it did it there would be no reason to make that over-generalised connection and it would not IMO be much of a plus point for companies.
I refer you to, on the one hand, free software (especially the bazaar model), and, on the other, the large amount of chaff, disorganisation, useless management and people whose jobs seem to involve not actually doing anything in your typical company.
I also point out that I am not saying companies should be got rid of. I'm just saying maybe we should remove their special legal rights (to do pretty much anything they like and not get punlished because they don't exist).
So I can make as many abstract entitities as I like in the US and these non-existent things have equal rights under the US constitution as a real person does.
Do they have the right to vote too? Or don't they need it as bribing or blackmailing politicians seems to be perfectly legal over there?
Also how exactly does this work? How does something that doesn't exist bare arms or excercise its right to free speech?
I agree in general with the GNU manifesto, and I think RMS says in there somewhere that the problem is not capitalism itself but the way it is currently implemented.
Incidentally I just realised that the idea of companies being bad for capitalism (which I just thought of) is probably similar to my long held belief that giving special status to groups of politicians (i.e.: political parties) (for instance with the concept of governments) is what makes pseudo-representative (US/UK-style) democracy undemocratic.
I'm not sure what point you are trying to make about American Indians.
I actually only just thought of the idea that companies are what holds back capitalism, and I think you say it a lot better. I treekilled your articles for future reference.
This is of course assuming the EU will force them to open the code (which they won't and probably can't) and that anyone can make any sense of or anything usable from MS's code -- it will probably be quicker coding from scratch than using it. Why do you think MS want to hide the code?