You can, as so many have stated above, be fired for just about anything. One of the clearest reasons for termination is insubordination - refusal to follow clearly stated orders.
Just as people of conscience once refused to discriminate in hiring or pay of minorities or to do any work associated with war, you can take a moral stand against patents by refusing. The ramifications will doubtlessly be both immediate and definitive - your termination for insubordination.
Patents are legal and few have moral qualms about them. The likelihood of an outcry by your colleagues or the public at large is near zero. So it comes down to a personal choice, your ethics or your job.
Jay
Linux on the desktop has two things that even the average user wants - low cost and high reliability.
However, four far more important things hold it back, even from highly technical users (not developers or uber-geeks, just plain old users wh happen to be technically strong).
The first is the ongoing difficulty in setup and administration compared to Windows. Not that the major Linux distributions are really all that difficult, but that they are very different from what people are used to and that makes them difficult to install and maintain.
Second, is compatability with the Windows applications in use on the majority of desktops. We've all heard the stories about imcompatabilities between various versions of Word, PowerPoint, and the like. But the truth is those are mostly rare and usually minor and there is a substantial degree of uniformity on corporate and home desktops around Office 2000 and above where incompatabilities are very minor. On the other hand, incompatability between Word and Write and between PowerPoint and Impress can be HUGE. True, the problems are minor if you are doing simple things. But, throw graphics into Writer or animations into Impress and the probability of clearly evident incompatabilities rises significantly.
Third, the lack of suitable alternate applications. I know TheGIMP is wonderful and powerful and all that but the printers and graphics people I deal with are standardized on Illustrator, PhotoShop and InDesign or PDF. I can hand off creative work to and endless collection expert users of those programs, almost nobody uses TheGIMP. And there's not a printer around who has even heard of TheGIMP. Similar examples exist for music playing software (no MusicMatch or iTunes), etc.
Lastly, many of the apps available in Linux suffer from user interface incompatability as well as file/operational incompatability. After a lot of work I'm still trying to figure out how to perform some tasks in Writer that I learned how to do ages ago in Word. Note that I am definitely not saying Word is right, I actually believe there is no such thing as an objective "right" in UI design and implementation. And yes, I understand that sometimes getting to "better" means accepting a degree of change. However, the amount of change just in Writer versus Word is way out of proportion to the value of a free program to a $300 solution of Office. Plus, when a user cannot figure out how to do things he has done for ages and is thus slowed down and productivity drops the enthusiasm for leaning Open Office drops to near-zero.
Solve these four problems and Linux could rush onto millions of desktops. Fail to solve them and Linux will continue to be primarily for servers and the desktops of fanatics, hobbyists, and uber geeks.
BTW - yes, I have actually set up complete Linux desktop systems.
One man's opinion.
Back in 1988 or 1989 I was the US product marketing manager for one of Sony's professional video products (a $200k video production switcher). I came up with the idea, which was implemented and sold internationally, for "display buttons."
These were actual control buttons whose top surfaces were 3/4" square LCDs that graphically displayed the specific special effect that had been selected to occur if that button was pushed. It was a ery big leap forward in usability for the high-speed, real-time world of video production.
Sony was going to go for a patent on it, I'm pretty sure they did.
I would truly love to have this modal OLED keyboard, such a tiem saver, so incredibly useful. Someday maybe, someday.
Slashdot Mirror
You can, as so many have stated above, be fired for just about anything. One of the clearest reasons for termination is insubordination - refusal to follow clearly stated orders. Just as people of conscience once refused to discriminate in hiring or pay of minorities or to do any work associated with war, you can take a moral stand against patents by refusing. The ramifications will doubtlessly be both immediate and definitive - your termination for insubordination. Patents are legal and few have moral qualms about them. The likelihood of an outcry by your colleagues or the public at large is near zero. So it comes down to a personal choice, your ethics or your job. Jay
Linux on the desktop has two things that even the average user wants - low cost and high reliability. However, four far more important things hold it back, even from highly technical users (not developers or uber-geeks, just plain old users wh happen to be technically strong). The first is the ongoing difficulty in setup and administration compared to Windows. Not that the major Linux distributions are really all that difficult, but that they are very different from what people are used to and that makes them difficult to install and maintain. Second, is compatability with the Windows applications in use on the majority of desktops. We've all heard the stories about imcompatabilities between various versions of Word, PowerPoint, and the like. But the truth is those are mostly rare and usually minor and there is a substantial degree of uniformity on corporate and home desktops around Office 2000 and above where incompatabilities are very minor. On the other hand, incompatability between Word and Write and between PowerPoint and Impress can be HUGE. True, the problems are minor if you are doing simple things. But, throw graphics into Writer or animations into Impress and the probability of clearly evident incompatabilities rises significantly. Third, the lack of suitable alternate applications. I know TheGIMP is wonderful and powerful and all that but the printers and graphics people I deal with are standardized on Illustrator, PhotoShop and InDesign or PDF. I can hand off creative work to and endless collection expert users of those programs, almost nobody uses TheGIMP. And there's not a printer around who has even heard of TheGIMP. Similar examples exist for music playing software (no MusicMatch or iTunes), etc. Lastly, many of the apps available in Linux suffer from user interface incompatability as well as file/operational incompatability. After a lot of work I'm still trying to figure out how to perform some tasks in Writer that I learned how to do ages ago in Word. Note that I am definitely not saying Word is right, I actually believe there is no such thing as an objective "right" in UI design and implementation. And yes, I understand that sometimes getting to "better" means accepting a degree of change. However, the amount of change just in Writer versus Word is way out of proportion to the value of a free program to a $300 solution of Office. Plus, when a user cannot figure out how to do things he has done for ages and is thus slowed down and productivity drops the enthusiasm for leaning Open Office drops to near-zero. Solve these four problems and Linux could rush onto millions of desktops. Fail to solve them and Linux will continue to be primarily for servers and the desktops of fanatics, hobbyists, and uber geeks. BTW - yes, I have actually set up complete Linux desktop systems. One man's opinion.
Back in 1988 or 1989 I was the US product marketing manager for one of Sony's professional video products (a $200k video production switcher). I came up with the idea, which was implemented and sold internationally, for "display buttons." These were actual control buttons whose top surfaces were 3/4" square LCDs that graphically displayed the specific special effect that had been selected to occur if that button was pushed. It was a ery big leap forward in usability for the high-speed, real-time world of video production. Sony was going to go for a patent on it, I'm pretty sure they did. I would truly love to have this modal OLED keyboard, such a tiem saver, so incredibly useful. Someday maybe, someday.