No, we are seeing monopolist 101 here. Professor: Students, what do we do when competition gets tough. Anyone?
Student at front: Buy the company? Professor: Close! Your thinking in the right direction, but what if you can't buy the company out? Same student at front: Oh, I know!! You spend your R&D budget on producing a competing product, and give it away for free. Professor: Very good! And what does this do?... Anyone? Silence:... Professor: See, we can afford to sell anything at a loss for much longer than any little company. So, this drives your market share up, while at the same time it puts your competitors out of business. Afterwards you can hike the price to pretty much anything you want. Class:Ohhhhh!!
MS only understands one thing: You throw enough money at a problem, and it goes away.
Interesting. From legal precedent, isn't the application layer fair game. That's what the Napster case established. FTP, HTTP... would seem to be the next logical targets with that precedent. Or is it only P2P at the application layer?
"yeah, and we're going to basically own their source when it's all and done with it. tht GPL is going to get ripped to shreds."
The problem is really the software patents. I don't think the GPL itself will be destroyed, although it might destroy the GPL protection of this particular project. That protection might be imaginary anyway, because what would be challenged is the ability for a 3rd party to create a license for an implentation of a patented technology at all.
Microsoft can release all the "open" standards it wants, and it can always reserve the right to change the rules when it concerns their patented IP. Anyone know why MS chose the ECMA to release their "open" standard? Here's a blurb from the ECMA website about patented technologies.
The General Assembly of ECMA shall not approve recommendations of Standards which are covered by patents when such patents will not be licensed by their owners on a reasonable and non-discriminatory basis.
This section off the main ECMA page encourages the implementor to read up on their policy. Therefore, and IANAL, it seems any patents that might exist, Microsoft would have to agree to license to an implementor. But what is reasonable and non-discriminatory mean? A billion dollar license?
So, really the questions are these: What, if any, parts of these IPs are patented? Does the implementor have to look up the patents themselves? What reasonable and non-discriminatory license will Microsoft offer for these IPs? Will this "reasonable" license also permit mono to be re-licenced as GPL?
I sincerely hope the Chimera team continues their work. Considering how bulky and slow the mozilla code is, chimera has always been a breath of fresh air. Chimera offers a (99.9%) standards compliant browser built natively for Cocoa and open source!! Its performance has not been bad.
Considering Apple actually built the architecture it is no wonder their browser is streamlined to use it most effectively. This shouldn't discourage the Chimera guys (although I'm sure they are not entirely broken up about an Apple supported browser appearing). Chimera still has an opportunity to mature with time, hone in on the Apple UI standards, tighten up w3c standards, and pretty much present a good open source alternative.
If for good or ill the Chimera Developers drop the project, maybe they could shift over to KHTML Development.:-) Either way I think thinks are looking up for Mac users!!
w2^8me out.
Don't forgot that Chimera is native Cocoa. Notibly Chimera was the fastest OSX browser before Safari, but in this case native (proprietary) beat native (public).
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No, we are seeing monopolist 101 here. ... Anyone? ...
Professor: Students, what do we do when competition gets tough. Anyone?
Student at front: Buy the company?
Professor: Close! Your thinking in the right direction, but what if you can't buy the company out?
Same student at front: Oh, I know!! You spend your R&D budget on producing a competing product, and give it away for free.
Professor: Very good! And what does this do?
Silence:
Professor: See, we can afford to sell anything at a loss for much longer than any little company. So, this drives your market share up, while at the same time it puts your competitors out of business.
Afterwards you can hike the price to pretty much anything you want.
Class:Ohhhhh!!
MS only understands one thing: You throw enough money at a problem, and it goes away.
640K mem, and an external 3.5 floppy. Oh yeah, we had all those Sierra games too. Yeah, baby, yeah!!
IANALBIAAAWHON (I am not a lawyer, but I am an American who's heard of Norway)
We *already* have the DMCA in the States. So that puts Norway at least temporarily ahead for now.
Interesting. From legal precedent, isn't the application layer fair game. That's what the Napster case established. FTP, HTTP ... would seem to be the next logical targets with that precedent. Or is it only P2P at the application layer?
At any rate this is the 2nd good news of the day.
Can anyone say Tobacco lawsuits?
We are quickly becoming the "poor me" society here in the US.
Although I detest smoking, and the tobacco companies, anyone that actually ever thought that breathing smoke wasn't harmful lacks common sense.
It goes like this: make fire, breath smoke, cough, cough, die. Any firefighter could tell you that.
The problem is really the software patents. I don't think the GPL itself will be destroyed, although it might destroy the GPL protection of this particular project. That protection might be imaginary anyway, because what would be challenged is the ability for a 3rd party to create a license for an implentation of a patented technology at all.
Microsoft can release all the "open" standards it wants, and it can always reserve the right to change the rules when it concerns their patented IP. Anyone know why MS chose the ECMA to release their "open" standard? Here's a blurb from the ECMA website about patented technologies.
This section off the main ECMA page encourages the implementor to read up on their policy. Therefore, and IANAL, it seems any patents that might exist, Microsoft would have to agree to license to an implementor. But what is reasonable and non-discriminatory mean? A billion dollar license?
So, really the questions are these:
What, if any, parts of these IPs are patented? Does the implementor have to look up the patents themselves? What reasonable and non-discriminatory license will Microsoft offer for these IPs? Will this "reasonable" license also permit mono to be re-licenced as GPL?
I sincerely hope the Chimera team continues their work. Considering how bulky and slow the mozilla code is, chimera has always been a breath of fresh air. Chimera offers a (99.9%) standards compliant browser built natively for Cocoa and open source!! Its performance has not been bad. Considering Apple actually built the architecture it is no wonder their browser is streamlined to use it most effectively. This shouldn't discourage the Chimera guys (although I'm sure they are not entirely broken up about an Apple supported browser appearing). Chimera still has an opportunity to mature with time, hone in on the Apple UI standards, tighten up w3c standards, and pretty much present a good open source alternative. If for good or ill the Chimera Developers drop the project, maybe they could shift over to KHTML Development. :-) Either way I think thinks are looking up for Mac users!!
w2^8me out.
Don't forgot that Chimera is native Cocoa. Notibly Chimera was the fastest OSX browser before Safari, but in this case native (proprietary) beat native (public).
w2^8me out.