The God I believe in the same in Christianity and Islam. The total adherents of those two faiths accounts for more than 50% of the world population.
That may be true.
However.
Christians can't even agree on which God they worship. Is it the angry God of modern American fundamentalism? Or the Jehovah's Witness' God who makes Gods of his followers? Or the polygamy-loving God of the LDS?
So many people call themselves "Christians," and yet obviously do not believe in the same God. I'm not saying they can't all call themselves "Christians." I'm just saying, they can't all be right.
Linux doesn't want to be OS X. OS X is very nice, and a better OS for newbies. But it's not what Linux wants to be.
Linux is exactly what it wants to be, right now-- an open platform where geeks can meet and thrive. OS X is closed up to Apple developers only. That's not necessarily bad (though I feel it is, that's my opinion, not a fact), it isn't what Linux developers want.
Keep in mind Linux and OS X have different development philosophies, and you'll do all right.
Our school system issues aren't all the fault of the government. Sure, "No child left behind" has fucked it up even more, but we can only lay a certain amount of blame on the government.
Our society looks down on education, to the point where we pass over well-educated, well-spoken presidential candidates for the apparent moron, the "regular joe guy I'd like to have a beer with." (Sorry, he doesn't drink any more, so you won't get that chance. But if you want to do some blow, he's the man.) Until we start respecting education as a society, our school system is doomed.
Not that we can't fix the government's problems with education, while we're waiting: stop funding schools based on property taxes, which slants education in favor of the rich, and punishes the poor. Stop pretending you can replace teachers with a computer, or some bloke off the street, and start paying them better. Repeal "No Child Left Behind."
Anyway. We've got a long way to go before we can fix our education system. But there's a lot more than the government at work here.
The difference is, it doesn't take a lot of money to buy a politician. A few hundred thousand is sufficient, not the billions that are spent on health care, or welfare.
Social security and welfare *benefit* society. Sure, there are those who take advantage of the system, but I can promise you, they are the minority. For most folks on welfare, it's a short-term thing, a stop-gap to fill in while they figure out their financial life since their ex-corporate masters outsourced their job to India or China.
As far as the Alaska bridge: it is often brought up, but what *isn't* mentioned is that it would've done the community of Ketchikan some good. And it would've been nice for the tens of thousands of tourists who visit Alaska each year. No, I don't think it would've been worth the federal moneys. Hell, that's what the $4 fee to use the ferry was for in the first place. (I was born in Ketchikan, grew up in Thorne Bay, a logging camp not far for Ketchikan. I'm not just guessing at this.) It would've been worth the money, in the long run, as it would've connected Ketchikan with its airport, which is on an island a stone's throw away.
Anyway.
These aren't just "pork." But really, they pale in comparison to what the government is spending on foreign aggression these days. And I submit that the war in Iraq feeds nothing back to the economy, whereas welfare and social security most certainly do.
As far as the topic goes:
Corporations of money are finding they get much better return on investment when they purchase themselves a politician or two. The best thing we could do would be to prohibit corporate influence in the political sphere. Of course, it won't happen, as the corporations have their tenterhooks in too deep.
In any event, I wish Mr. Lessig well. He's right, the corruption runs too deep to fight just copyright.
I guess it's true what they say... a mechanic's car is always the last to get fixed.
That's very true.
Especially when the mechanic is incompetent, and more interested in throwing around political weight than actually trying to accomplish anything useful.
And given the difficulty Gaiman has had with Sandman and movie studios, I don't think this will ever see daylight.
Gaiman has a lot of movies in the works: "Coraline," "Stardust," and "Beowulf" are all in post-production or are completed right now. So, as far as this ever making it to the theaters, I think we have a pretty good chance of it.
The creator of the work gets the exclusive rights for a period of time, protected by the law, and after a period of time the work falls into the public domain.
Too bad the creators of the works don't get the exclusive rights. Those usually go to the distributors, who have attempted to classify the musicians' music as "work for hire," to avoid paying them for anything at all.
Oh, well. Those with money get to fuck those without. I guess we're all whores, in the end.
Even the so-called monopoly of Standard Oil wasn't a monopoly!
Smaller oil companies sold out to Standard Oil because they either had to sell, or die. Standard Oil brooked no competition, and had the market power to destroy smaller companies, such as dropping the price of gasoline below cost, to bleed a weaker competitor of money, and then raising the price again once the competitor was destroyed. They would use methods other than competition, if need be.
In one example of Standard's aggressive practices, a rival oil association decided to build an oil pipeline, hoping to overcome the virtual boycott imposed on Standard's competitors. In response, the railroad company (at Rockefeller's direction) denied the consortium permission to run the pipeline across railway land, forcing consortium staff to laboriously decant the oil into barrels, carry them over the railway crossing in carts, and then pump the oil manually back into the pipeline on the other side. When he learned of this tactic, Rockefeller then instructed the railway company to park empty rail cars across the line, thereby preventing the carts from crossing his property.
Yes, a citation is needed; however, I learned this not from Wikipedia, but during one of my college economics class. Wikipedia was just an easy place to point.
This kind of practice is exactly what maintains a monopoly, once established. Government intervention is a contributor in many cases (such as the current oil cartel), but there comes a point when a corporation has more control over an industry than the government can possibly wield.
For instance, the software industry was unregulated by the government, but it didn't stop Microsoft from becoming a monopoly. Certainly, they didn't start off as a monopoly, but once they achieved market dominance, they pushed their weight about quite effectively. It's at the point where only two operating systems even stand a chance at holding on in the industry, one completely free software (Linux), and the other based on free software (OS X).
Some potential competitors were merely incompetent (IBM, with OS/2; Netscape, with Netscape), but many were perfectly competent, like BeOS and Digital Research, but were cock-blocked by Microsoft, who had the market clout to control the distribution chain.
This is what Rockefeller and Gates both understood: control the distribution chain, and you control the market. This is also the whole point of the ??AAs.
What else are Microsoft's recent "patent" deals about, if not to control the Linux distribution chain? What else might the RIAA's lawsuit rampage be, except an attempt to clamp down on a distribution model it cannot control?
Find the company who controls distribution, and you find the monopoly.
Actually, all we expect from any company is openness, and not lies. If you are selling a piece of shit, please let us know how bad it smells before we buy it. If you discover you have a problem with your hardware, fess up and do right by the people who spent their money on your stupid fucking product.
I'm not just talking about monopolies who abuse their market position to control the market in ways the government can't even dream about. I want ethical behavior from *all* corporations.
Not that we'll get it. In our current consumerist, corporate culture, ethics are a bother.
You are absolutely right in your analysis, in that we are in the Kon-Tiki stage of space exploration. By why should we stop? Why would we *ever* stop?
Every year brings progress, and new knowledge. Without our little dangerous excursions, progress will go much slower.
The problem with Stross' analysis is that he ignores progress. Yes, we need new methods of propulsion. That comes with work, and research, and knowledge.
We *will* go to the stars, if we can just build self-sustaining colonies on our own back-yard neighbors. We can colonize Mars in the next 100 years, for instance, instead of cowering on our own dangerous planet. After that, we can try the moon (for self-sustaining colonization, not just a small base that requires help from Earth).
We need to do this. Otherwise, I believe we are doomed.
It's interesting that the linked article only refers to the mindless dedication to a company and not to a cause. IMO the latter is the more harmful and destructive, and *much* more common on Slashdot.
So true.
There are so many fundamentalist libertarians around here, it makes me sick.
Of course not. That's why the biggest on-line success stories are based on free software (Google, Amazon, others). That's why most fortune-1000 companies use free software. That's why Linux has been the fastest-growing OS for several years. (Not that it means much, as it's also still behind Apple in terms of desktop deployment.)
The patent agreements are to increase the fears, not allay them. Right now, you can use Linux freely. You can download a copy and install it on all your computers, whether you have one or one thousand or one million. The BSA can't bust down your door and count your Linux seats. (Well, they can, but there's nothing they can do about it.)
Microsoft aims to change that perception. They want people to believe that Linux has the same licensing requirements as MS-Windows. They want to reduce people's freedoms, or at least change their perception of those freedoms.
If you can support a company like that, be my guest. I won't. I refuse to use their software. I will never develop for their software. Not that my threats keep Ballmer up at night or anything, but they aught to realize they are alienating their own customers, which is *never* a good business strategy.
This isn't about shutting down these companies. This is about making Linux unfree.
See, right now, you have the freedom to download and install Linux on as many machines as you desire. Imagine a corporation with thousands of computers. Imagine the license fee savings alone, let alone the freedom of modifying the system to fit your business model, rather than fitting your business model to your software. Right now nobody can tell you that you must purchase a per-seat license, and you don't have the right to make modifications, or distribute those modifications.
Microsoft is attempting to change all that. They are trying to put the cloud of patent litigation over every "unauthorized" installation of Linux. They are trying to give the appearance that they are the ultimate arbiters of who can and cannot use Linux. They are giving veiled threats: "It'd be a shame if somethin' bad were to happen to your network infrastructure. A damn dirty shame."
If Microsoft were simply to create an MS-Linux, they would be forced by the licenses to release their modifications. They would have to abide by the various licenses. Now, granted, they could make changes to the X Windows System, or Apache, or Perl, and not release those modifications back to the community, but they would then have to suffer the non-standard nature of their distro. But, MS-Linux would be an overall win for Linux, and for free software.
And, I believe, for Microsoft.
The path they have chosen is the path of pain. It will harm everyone involved, and many not currently involved. All of use will suffer. Right now, Microsoft is trying to keep their name in the news, with the appearance that they own Linux. I'm not sure about the timing, but I bet it has to do with corporate license renewals, especially concerning Vista. I would bet their salesmen are able to point at the news and say, "See that? We own Linux, too. Now how about signing that license renewal? We'll give you a great deal. We'll throw in patent indemnity for Linux, for a modest fee."
Or, are we going to say, "You are free to choose, as long as you don't make these choices?"
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
You are not free to make choices that restrict my freedoms. Full stop.
Part of freedom is about maintaining freedom. The problem with deals like Linspire and Novell and Xandros is this: they are complicit in Microsoft's attempt to control free software. If they are successful, they have contributed to the reduction of my freedoms.
This isn't a matter of, "You are free to do as I say." This is a matter of, "Don't tread on me." This is a matter of, "Your right to swing your fist ends just before my nose." This is a matter of, "Those fuckers are trying to destroy a beautiful thing."
You are free to use Linspire. Go ahead. But as you find yourself free to do what Microsoft says, remember: it was your choice.
The licensing for using GNU/Linux as your core OS isn't too bad, really. If you distribute it, you'll have to make the GNU/Linux source code available to your customers. You don't have to distribute it to them, you just have to let them know they can get it from you at any point. If you make any modifications to the GNU/Linux source code, you must make the source code to those modifications available to your customers, as well.
The source code to your application is yours. You do *not* have to distribute it, nor make it available. That's how Oracle can sell its RDBMS system for Linux. That's how other embedded companies can sell their applications.
As with any operating system, you'll want to check the requirements for the libraries on which your application depends. For LGPL libraries (which should be most anything), you can dynamically link against them. You'll only have to release the source code to the libraries themselves, so if you make a change to the library, you must release the code to that change. You don't have to release the code to your application.
I'm not sure why you consider dynamic linking onerous. It's dead-bloody simple, really, and though it adds a little to the application start-up time, there's no practical difference between that and static linking.
There's no reason not to use GNU/Linux, unless you have a preference for *BSD or MS-Windows CE/Embedded/Flavor-of-the-month.
If you are uncomfortable reviewing the licensing yourself, I suggest hiring a consultant to review them for you. I suggest this no matter which OS you choose, as licensing is a quagmire on all fronts.
I am available, for a modest fee, but I suggest you trust whomever you hire.
The problem with the whole "obvious" thing is this: lots of things become obvious to many people at once. It is the progressing state of the industry that makes it obvious at a specific time.
It *was* obvious at the time. I remember a website at a university early on that did something similar, for their area. This was like, 1994-95. It was like the coffee-cam (one of the first webcams), interesting but essentially useless; however, it embodied the basics of what this patent covers.
It was obvious because the internet made it obvious. Many things became obvious once the internet took off. Just because someone applied for a patent in 1996 doesn't mean it wasn't obvious, even at the time.
The patent system is broken, fucked up, and pretty much a hinderance to progress. The sooner the patent system is dismantled, the better off we'll *all* be.
Unfortunately, we probably can't dismantle the USPTO without dismantling the government first.
You are assigning a right of an individual person to a corporation. That's false. Corporations don't have the same rights as people.
It's more like, Chrysler purchased up all the gas stations in the country, made deals with gas pump manufacturers and petroleum distributors to sell only to Chrysler, and only allowed Chrylers to fill up.
Should TCP/IP stack vendors also complain that Microsoft includes a TCP/IP stack in Vista?
Close.
It's more like, Microsoft includes a TCP/IP stack with Vista, but only Microsoft products can use it, and it doesn't allow installation of any third party TCP/IP stacks.
Read the complaint. It's not that Microsoft included a search tool. It's that Microsoft intentionally hobbled the ability to write a third-party search tool.
Why is Microsoft "obligated" to make it easier for their competitors?
It's simple, really. A free market is only "free" inasmuch as the consumer is in control. That is, as long as the old middle-school "supply-and-demand, build-a-better-mousetrap" balance is maintained, you have a more-or-less free market.
It has been noted throughout history that when on company achieves a stranglehold on a market, there is no competition. Corporate control of a market is much more sure than government control of a market, because a corporation doesn't have to worry about parliamentary procedure, and whatnot. They get to do what they want, when they want, without the facade of transparency and participation required by many governments.
In this case, Microsoft has a stranglehold on a market. They have used dirty tricks to maintain their stranglehold, too, such as the deals made with all PC suppliers back in the 90s, or the specific targeting of competing products, such as Lotus 123 and DR-DOS.
Consider this: if Ford purchased up all the gas stations in the US, and modified them so that Chevys couldn't fill up, and made deals with all gas-pump manufacturers and all petroleum companies to sell only to Ford, would Ford's behavior be ethical? Legal? Good for the individual (that is, consumers or citizens, whichever way you like to view yourself)?
Microsoft is in the position of Ford owning all the gas pumps.
Microsoft isn't obligated to make things easier for their competitors. They're obligated to not intentionally make things harder.
Slashdot Mirror
The God I believe in the same in Christianity and Islam. The total adherents of those two faiths accounts for more than 50% of the world population.
That may be true.
However.
Christians can't even agree on which God they worship. Is it the angry God of modern American fundamentalism? Or the Jehovah's Witness' God who makes Gods of his followers? Or the polygamy-loving God of the LDS?
So many people call themselves "Christians," and yet obviously do not believe in the same God. I'm not saying they can't all call themselves "Christians." I'm just saying, they can't all be right.
Linux doesn't want to be OS X. OS X is very nice, and a better OS for newbies. But it's not what Linux wants to be.
Linux is exactly what it wants to be, right now-- an open platform where geeks can meet and thrive. OS X is closed up to Apple developers only. That's not necessarily bad (though I feel it is, that's my opinion, not a fact), it isn't what Linux developers want.
Keep in mind Linux and OS X have different development philosophies, and you'll do all right.
Our school system issues aren't all the fault of the government. Sure, "No child left behind" has fucked it up even more, but we can only lay a certain amount of blame on the government.
Our society looks down on education, to the point where we pass over well-educated, well-spoken presidential candidates for the apparent moron, the "regular joe guy I'd like to have a beer with." (Sorry, he doesn't drink any more, so you won't get that chance. But if you want to do some blow, he's the man.) Until we start respecting education as a society, our school system is doomed.
Not that we can't fix the government's problems with education, while we're waiting: stop funding schools based on property taxes, which slants education in favor of the rich, and punishes the poor. Stop pretending you can replace teachers with a computer, or some bloke off the street, and start paying them better. Repeal "No Child Left Behind."
Anyway. We've got a long way to go before we can fix our education system. But there's a lot more than the government at work here.
The difference is, it doesn't take a lot of money to buy a politician. A few hundred thousand is sufficient, not the billions that are spent on health care, or welfare.
Social security and welfare *benefit* society. Sure, there are those who take advantage of the system, but I can promise you, they are the minority. For most folks on welfare, it's a short-term thing, a stop-gap to fill in while they figure out their financial life since their ex-corporate masters outsourced their job to India or China.
As far as the Alaska bridge: it is often brought up, but what *isn't* mentioned is that it would've done the community of Ketchikan some good. And it would've been nice for the tens of thousands of tourists who visit Alaska each year. No, I don't think it would've been worth the federal moneys. Hell, that's what the $4 fee to use the ferry was for in the first place. (I was born in Ketchikan, grew up in Thorne Bay, a logging camp not far for Ketchikan. I'm not just guessing at this.) It would've been worth the money, in the long run, as it would've connected Ketchikan with its airport, which is on an island a stone's throw away.
Anyway.
These aren't just "pork." But really, they pale in comparison to what the government is spending on foreign aggression these days. And I submit that the war in Iraq feeds nothing back to the economy, whereas welfare and social security most certainly do.
As far as the topic goes:
Corporations of money are finding they get much better return on investment when they purchase themselves a politician or two. The best thing we could do would be to prohibit corporate influence in the political sphere. Of course, it won't happen, as the corporations have their tenterhooks in too deep.
In any event, I wish Mr. Lessig well. He's right, the corruption runs too deep to fight just copyright.
God help us all.
I swear I never in my life heard so many people specifically come out AGAINST a mere product before it's even available.
I have.
The PS3.
Pretty much anything that isn't from Microsoft gets bashed heavily before it arrives.
Pretty much everything that is from Microsoft gets bashed before *and* after it arrives.
Corporate disinformation is standard practice. I stopped believing anything at all, and I'm much happier for it.
Since they offered to sell him the same machine with MS-Windows, I believe your argument is a little off-target.
Really, I think this experience simply shows that Dell is not serious about Linux, and is still very much in the pocket of Microsoft.
But we already knew that.
I guess it's true what they say ... a mechanic's car is always the last to get fixed.
That's very true.
Especially when the mechanic is incompetent, and more interested in throwing around political weight than actually trying to accomplish anything useful.
And given the difficulty Gaiman has had with Sandman and movie studios, I don't think this will ever see daylight.
Gaiman has a lot of movies in the works: "Coraline," "Stardust," and "Beowulf" are all in post-production or are completed right now. So, as far as this ever making it to the theaters, I think we have a pretty good chance of it.
The creator of the work gets the exclusive rights for a period of time, protected by the law, and after a period of time the work falls into the public domain.
Too bad the creators of the works don't get the exclusive rights. Those usually go to the distributors, who have attempted to classify the musicians' music as "work for hire," to avoid paying them for anything at all.
Oh, well. Those with money get to fuck those without. I guess we're all whores, in the end.
Smaller oil companies sold out to Standard Oil because they either had to sell, or die. Standard Oil brooked no competition, and had the market power to destroy smaller companies, such as dropping the price of gasoline below cost, to bleed a weaker competitor of money, and then raising the price again once the competitor was destroyed. They would use methods other than competition, if need be.
According to Wikipedia:
Yes, a citation is needed; however, I learned this not from Wikipedia, but during one of my college economics class. Wikipedia was just an easy place to point.
This kind of practice is exactly what maintains a monopoly, once established. Government intervention is a contributor in many cases (such as the current oil cartel), but there comes a point when a corporation has more control over an industry than the government can possibly wield.
For instance, the software industry was unregulated by the government, but it didn't stop Microsoft from becoming a monopoly. Certainly, they didn't start off as a monopoly, but once they achieved market dominance, they pushed their weight about quite effectively. It's at the point where only two operating systems even stand a chance at holding on in the industry, one completely free software (Linux), and the other based on free software (OS X).
Some potential competitors were merely incompetent (IBM, with OS/2; Netscape, with Netscape), but many were perfectly competent, like BeOS and Digital Research, but were cock-blocked by Microsoft, who had the market clout to control the distribution chain.
This is what Rockefeller and Gates both understood: control the distribution chain, and you control the market. This is also the whole point of the ??AAs.
What else are Microsoft's recent "patent" deals about, if not to control the Linux distribution chain? What else might the RIAA's lawsuit rampage be, except an attempt to clamp down on a distribution model it cannot control?
Find the company who controls distribution, and you find the monopoly.
Nice spin. You dizzy yet?
Actually, all we expect from any company is openness, and not lies. If you are selling a piece of shit, please let us know how bad it smells before we buy it. If you discover you have a problem with your hardware, fess up and do right by the people who spent their money on your stupid fucking product.
I'm not just talking about monopolies who abuse their market position to control the market in ways the government can't even dream about. I want ethical behavior from *all* corporations.
Not that we'll get it. In our current consumerist, corporate culture, ethics are a bother.
Who cares about safety?
You are absolutely right in your analysis, in that we are in the Kon-Tiki stage of space exploration. By why should we stop? Why would we *ever* stop?
Every year brings progress, and new knowledge. Without our little dangerous excursions, progress will go much slower.
The problem with Stross' analysis is that he ignores progress. Yes, we need new methods of propulsion. That comes with work, and research, and knowledge.
We *will* go to the stars, if we can just build self-sustaining colonies on our own back-yard neighbors. We can colonize Mars in the next 100 years, for instance, instead of cowering on our own dangerous planet. After that, we can try the moon (for self-sustaining colonization, not just a small base that requires help from Earth).
We need to do this. Otherwise, I believe we are doomed.
You got modded "troll."
Sorry, man. Slashdot had its sense of humor surgically removed a couple of years ago.
It's interesting that the linked article only refers to the mindless dedication to a company and not to a cause. IMO the latter is the more harmful and destructive, and *much* more common on Slashdot.
So true.
There are so many fundamentalist libertarians around here, it makes me sick.
'Free' in business terms doesn't exist.
Of course not. That's why the biggest on-line success stories are based on free software (Google, Amazon, others). That's why most fortune-1000 companies use free software. That's why Linux has been the fastest-growing OS for several years. (Not that it means much, as it's also still behind Apple in terms of desktop deployment.)
The patent agreements are to increase the fears, not allay them. Right now, you can use Linux freely. You can download a copy and install it on all your computers, whether you have one or one thousand or one million. The BSA can't bust down your door and count your Linux seats. (Well, they can, but there's nothing they can do about it.)
Microsoft aims to change that perception. They want people to believe that Linux has the same licensing requirements as MS-Windows. They want to reduce people's freedoms, or at least change their perception of those freedoms.
If you can support a company like that, be my guest. I won't. I refuse to use their software. I will never develop for their software. Not that my threats keep Ballmer up at night or anything, but they aught to realize they are alienating their own customers, which is *never* a good business strategy.
This isn't about shutting down these companies. This is about making Linux unfree.
See, right now, you have the freedom to download and install Linux on as many machines as you desire. Imagine a corporation with thousands of computers. Imagine the license fee savings alone, let alone the freedom of modifying the system to fit your business model, rather than fitting your business model to your software. Right now nobody can tell you that you must purchase a per-seat license, and you don't have the right to make modifications, or distribute those modifications.
Microsoft is attempting to change all that. They are trying to put the cloud of patent litigation over every "unauthorized" installation of Linux. They are trying to give the appearance that they are the ultimate arbiters of who can and cannot use Linux. They are giving veiled threats: "It'd be a shame if somethin' bad were to happen to your network infrastructure. A damn dirty shame."
If Microsoft were simply to create an MS-Linux, they would be forced by the licenses to release their modifications. They would have to abide by the various licenses. Now, granted, they could make changes to the X Windows System, or Apache, or Perl, and not release those modifications back to the community, but they would then have to suffer the non-standard nature of their distro. But, MS-Linux would be an overall win for Linux, and for free software.
And, I believe, for Microsoft.
The path they have chosen is the path of pain. It will harm everyone involved, and many not currently involved. All of use will suffer. Right now, Microsoft is trying to keep their name in the news, with the appearance that they own Linux. I'm not sure about the timing, but I bet it has to do with corporate license renewals, especially concerning Vista. I would bet their salesmen are able to point at the news and say, "See that? We own Linux, too. Now how about signing that license renewal? We'll give you a great deal. We'll throw in patent indemnity for Linux, for a modest fee."
Or, are we going to say, "You are free to choose, as long as you don't make these choices?"
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
You are not free to make choices that restrict my freedoms. Full stop.
Part of freedom is about maintaining freedom. The problem with deals like Linspire and Novell and Xandros is this: they are complicit in Microsoft's attempt to control free software. If they are successful, they have contributed to the reduction of my freedoms.
This isn't a matter of, "You are free to do as I say." This is a matter of, "Don't tread on me." This is a matter of, "Your right to swing your fist ends just before my nose." This is a matter of, "Those fuckers are trying to destroy a beautiful thing."
You are free to use Linspire. Go ahead. But as you find yourself free to do what Microsoft says, remember: it was your choice.
And choices have consequences.
This is a fallacy. There's lots of closed source for Linux.
The huge arguments are about people usurping Linux itself, about closing up Linux. It's not about applications, it's about the OS.
Closed source applications are no problem whatsoever.
The licensing for using GNU/Linux as your core OS isn't too bad, really. If you distribute it, you'll have to make the GNU/Linux source code available to your customers. You don't have to distribute it to them, you just have to let them know they can get it from you at any point. If you make any modifications to the GNU/Linux source code, you must make the source code to those modifications available to your customers, as well.
The source code to your application is yours. You do *not* have to distribute it, nor make it available. That's how Oracle can sell its RDBMS system for Linux. That's how other embedded companies can sell their applications.
As with any operating system, you'll want to check the requirements for the libraries on which your application depends. For LGPL libraries (which should be most anything), you can dynamically link against them. You'll only have to release the source code to the libraries themselves, so if you make a change to the library, you must release the code to that change. You don't have to release the code to your application.
I'm not sure why you consider dynamic linking onerous. It's dead-bloody simple, really, and though it adds a little to the application start-up time, there's no practical difference between that and static linking.
There's no reason not to use GNU/Linux, unless you have a preference for *BSD or MS-Windows CE/Embedded/Flavor-of-the-month.
If you are uncomfortable reviewing the licensing yourself, I suggest hiring a consultant to review them for you. I suggest this no matter which OS you choose, as licensing is a quagmire on all fronts.
I am available, for a modest fee, but I suggest you trust whomever you hire.
The problem with the whole "obvious" thing is this: lots of things become obvious to many people at once. It is the progressing state of the industry that makes it obvious at a specific time.
It *was* obvious at the time. I remember a website at a university early on that did something similar, for their area. This was like, 1994-95. It was like the coffee-cam (one of the first webcams), interesting but essentially useless; however, it embodied the basics of what this patent covers.
It was obvious because the internet made it obvious. Many things became obvious once the internet took off. Just because someone applied for a patent in 1996 doesn't mean it wasn't obvious, even at the time.
The patent system is broken, fucked up, and pretty much a hinderance to progress. The sooner the patent system is dismantled, the better off we'll *all* be.
Unfortunately, we probably can't dismantle the USPTO without dismantling the government first.
Maybe that isn't so unfortunate.
But, it's not more than Apple did. It's not like Apple made it intentionally harder for others to do it.
That's the key difference. Apple has a tight grip on its OS, but it also doesn't try to fuck over anyone.
You are assigning a right of an individual person to a corporation. That's false. Corporations don't have the same rights as people.
It's more like, Chrysler purchased up all the gas stations in the country, made deals with gas pump manufacturers and petroleum distributors to sell only to Chrysler, and only allowed Chrylers to fill up.
That'd be *one* way to get rid of competition.
Should TCP/IP stack vendors also complain that Microsoft includes a TCP/IP stack in Vista?
Close.
It's more like, Microsoft includes a TCP/IP stack with Vista, but only Microsoft products can use it, and it doesn't allow installation of any third party TCP/IP stacks.
Read the complaint. It's not that Microsoft included a search tool. It's that Microsoft intentionally hobbled the ability to write a third-party search tool.
I wonder if this kind of complaint will ever result in the Federal government officially finding Microsoft an abusive monopoly that must be corrected.
They did. Last time. But for some strange, unaccountable reason, the penalty phase forgot the penalty.
Why is Microsoft "obligated" to make it easier for their competitors?
It's simple, really. A free market is only "free" inasmuch as the consumer is in control. That is, as long as the old middle-school "supply-and-demand, build-a-better-mousetrap" balance is maintained, you have a more-or-less free market.
It has been noted throughout history that when on company achieves a stranglehold on a market, there is no competition. Corporate control of a market is much more sure than government control of a market, because a corporation doesn't have to worry about parliamentary procedure, and whatnot. They get to do what they want, when they want, without the facade of transparency and participation required by many governments.
In this case, Microsoft has a stranglehold on a market. They have used dirty tricks to maintain their stranglehold, too, such as the deals made with all PC suppliers back in the 90s, or the specific targeting of competing products, such as Lotus 123 and DR-DOS.
Consider this: if Ford purchased up all the gas stations in the US, and modified them so that Chevys couldn't fill up, and made deals with all gas-pump manufacturers and all petroleum companies to sell only to Ford, would Ford's behavior be ethical? Legal? Good for the individual (that is, consumers or citizens, whichever way you like to view yourself)?
Microsoft is in the position of Ford owning all the gas pumps.
Microsoft isn't obligated to make things easier for their competitors. They're obligated to not intentionally make things harder.