mutt is more powerful than Pine, vastly more so for those of use who learn to configure it. It's my primary mailer, Thunderbird my sencondary. But,
Pine is user friendly. It's doesn't have a GUI, but still has a menu system that makes it almost as user friendly as a GUI mailer. To many people I know, it is invaluable. It's what works without learning a bunch of keystrokes, whether you need to log in from a foreign remote Windows machine (no X, don't want to set up IMAP) to read mail, or if you just want a lightweight mailer.
I'll be looking for a replacement, possibly Alpine, as suggested in this thread, when it goes beta, whereas I'll reserve the mutt recommendation to power-users.
Well I don't think Miguel agrees with you but that situation existed long before he came to Novell.
Miguel's work is important, but I'll continue to worry about Mono entering the core Linux desktop until Microsoft issues a non-revocable public license for their CIL and.NET patents.
OpenOffice is more a competitor to the lite versions of Office and as already mentioned VB has been available for some time before this deal. So I can only conclude that all this noise has nothing to do with patents.
Most (all?) office documents I've seen are simple enough that they could have been written in just about any word processor. I frankly don't know how OO.org compares an advanced features, but considering "competition" I'd look at the broad part of the population, and in that respect I think familiarity and brand name is the biggest challenge for OO.org.
If patents, copyrights or trade secrets are not an issue here, then the only noise I'd make is an applaud for OO.org. I'm simply lacking the assurance.
But simply fratenizing with the enemy and GPLers are notorious for not getting along with others hence GPLv3.
GPLers is a broad generatization. Not all GPL users are Free Software proponents in RMS' sense, though I'd probably include myself. The GPL is designed to avoid software from being lifted into propreitary products. It's no stricter than common propreitary licenses, except if it is used for libraries, in which case LGPL or dual licensing are options.
Microsoft has two projects which are important for their lockin,.NET and MS Office, and two projects Mono and OpenOffice.org which they wish never existed. They have recently made a deal with Novell on both. There is smoke, we just don't know if its an innocent campfire or two houses being torched. Microsoft's has been quite innovative in their quest to eliminate their competitors in the past. There is good reason to keep an eye at Novell and Microsoft at the moment.
One thing is for sure: when Intel, AMD, Nvidia, and ATI fight, we customers win.
Nvidia and ATI are quite much equal competitors at the moment. If AMD and ATI merges, that could tilt the competition to ATI's favour. That means less competition in the graphics sector, and customers loose. On the CPU front AMD is already gaining on Intel, they don't really need this.
OTOH, it would be nice to see a "low-end" on-board graphics card with a FOSS driver on AMD boards, similar to what Intel offers. That would be very nice for servers and many of the Linux desktops. However, I don't think that's the motivation for this purchase if the rumour is true.
While it's a neat (if not original) hack, why bother making actual photographs with it?
These photos are, in addition to their subject, also "photos of the scanner" which is a tangible thing. That makes it more interesting, or at least different, than digital effects. I think the process is part of the artwork. But maybe most importantly, its seems a lot more fun duing it like this.
They have already ported it to Mac which shares little with Windows API.
The reason for not porting to Linux is purely strategic.
Linux and Windows are completely two different software archetectures - Linux is focused around client-server connections using terminals (some of which are incapable of instantly distinguishing ESC from some other keypress without looking ahead) and has "perfected" that system. On the other hand, Windows is focused on a local user interface and has "perfected" that system - you can do almost anything in Windows just by using the base API.
Terminals are not meant for graphical applications, X is. Once the connection
to the X server is made, the X API works just like a local GUI from the programmers
point of view. Keys are transmitted both as keycodes and and interpreted with
masks for the modifiers. I don't see the issue. The only reason to bypass X is
for very graphics intensive stuff like games. There is standard extensions
(shipped with X.org) for combining direct rendering with X.
Right now, MS has merged various OS extensions into the main product (e.g. external WinSocks were replaced by an MS implementation.) However, I haven't seen much change in the basic Linux or POSIX API, aside from third party extensions (such as SDL.)
Consider Gnome, KDE, SDL
and many other libraries to be part of Linux. They come with all Linux
distribution I have seen this far, and if that isn't integration, I am not
sure what it is suppost to be integrated into. I think "third party" and "integration"
takes on a different meaning in an Open Source OS. The availability of APIs
are assured foremost by their use in popular applications, implying that
they become mantatory "integral" components of distributions.
The government policy is for internal use, and does not apply to citizens. That said, I think the translation goes very far; it even excludes some open source licenses (like QPL, but IANAL). But, the text that passed is different from that of TFA according to some posts.
Their definition of "Free Software" is in fact very close to that of the FSF due to the requirement that modified versions shall be redistributable under the original license (cf GPL). The subitter of the article was modest when translating it as Open Source, since Free Software is a stronger requirement.
Looking under the hood, the Linux development model is more organised than one might expect. Consider the parts that make up a Linux system.
The Linux kernel with internally and externally developed modules. The kernel is mananged with a strong central authority. I will not
go into details, as this is fairly well known.
Hundreds to thousands libraries (depending on how much you install).
Hundreds to thousands applications (dependin on how much you install)
Distributions are more or less centrally managed. They put it all together,
but don't have much control over individual components, unless they also happen
to invest developer time on those components.
Libraries and applications are typically managed by smaller teams, and even if
people contribute, those contributions are reviewed. Accepting that, we only have to look at the big structure. Some observations about libraries:
They are hierachically organised through depedencies
Often several libraries implements the same or similar functionality, possibly
in very different ways. That is, developers have choices.
Libraries are occationally replaced, though the old ones are kept around until
dependent parts are migrated or dropped. That is, there is a selection process which is not necessarily centrally controlled.
Good libraries serve a well defined task, and has a flexible interface.
Individual libraries evolve through requests and contributions from outside developers.
The whole is a mixture of bottom-up and top-down hierachical control. To understand the dynamics, consider an individual project. At an early stage, the developers looks around to identify what is already done, and tries to identify reasonably stable, common, and well managed libraries which they can use. This is a very feasible thing to do due to open source licenses. They will then start from there, and do occational changes in dependencies throughout the lifetime of the projests due to new needs and changes in availability and quality of dependent parts. Sometimes, libraries are split out of projects by abstracting out identifiable tasks.
An important observation is that by maintainers of a popular project casts a vote when choosing dependent projects. The more important the project is, the higher weighted is the vote for the dependent parts to survive. When most projects thus migrites to a better library, the rest will have to choose to follow suit or to risk loosing ground due to a more difficult installation process. The distributors are the ultimate judges, though their power is limited by what software is available.
In other words, there is a semi-democratic system that organises a hierachical structure of componets, with no single central authority.
When I need to choose an application for a task, I take all options, line up their icons, and push them in close succession. I call this the race for service. The first application which starts, wins. Needless to say I still use Vim/LaTeX.
Seen from the company, the incentive is to make money. From societies point of view, the purpose of companies is to produce. We support capitalism / market economy because has proven the most efficient system to produce what we need for our welfare. However, it is not perfect, and this shows very in the case of a monopoly, esp. when it makes both OS and applications.
Now, this is not directly related to your post, but the relevace of the second view is that we as citizens we have the right to speak up when products which are economically viable by themselves are blocked by strategic considerations. It's a matter of pressure and possible invokation of antitrust. These are logical adjustments to the economy to account for the discrepancy between the monetary incentive of companies and their productivity. I will not defend the badly argued AC post you replied to, only point out that by perpetuating the "idea of companies are to make money" half-truth, you are effectively stating an opinion.
Funny, I thought that the idea of companies was to make money.
Funny, I thought the idea of companies was to make products, and that money is a means to that end.
Why the absurd claim that by not supporting every single minority OS out there, MS are not a real software company? That's like claiming that dogs aren't animals because they don't wqear contact lenses - the two ideas are completely different.
You are right, of course. They can choose the platforms to support. I think the belief many of us have is that if MS Office was producted by an independent company, it would have been ported to Linux by now. Of course, we don't know that.
Looking at it the other way, code should never be GPL'd. A real developer wouldn't care about the license the user of the code wants to use.. Who cares about the license the customer choses, you should support it regardless.
Who suggested that MS Office should change it's license? And do you think you can pick your license if you choose a commercial product? Many who use GPL do in fact offer other licensing options for a fee.
Why should the poster bring evidence?
The post quotes the Sindey Morning Herald
article, and we must assume they have done
their work. This is a blog, and the post
simply opens a discussion on news from other
sources.
As the OS becomes less visible to the users, the dominace of a specific OS is no longer a sales argument. It will be more important to the vendors of the devices to have a customisable, stable and cheap OS on which they can put their polished wonderware.
The worst solution is the most widely used one. You get a digital certificate from the bank, which is read by some Java applet on the website after you enter a password. So it is not imported into the browser keystore. The security is thus both a file on the harddrive, and a password. Works only with IE.
Sounds like the Java applet I'm using - on a Linux with Firefox. But, I could not make it work with Blackdown or IBM Java, only Sun Java.
Good someone mention SSL. To me it seems that the bank is working around accessibility problems, but as a result create an inferiour solution.
The bank could easily tell a geek never to type in their password unless the page secure by the bank's SSL key. How do we make that work for the rest of the population?
The browser: A dedicated spot outside the rendering area, shows the name of the owner of the SSL key, not just a symbol showing its encrypted. Next to the location bar would be a good spot.
The bank: When people get an account, hand out a folder with screenshots of popular browsers, indicating how it's supposed to look like. Make it very clear that it is the customers resposibility to check that the name of the bank is shown in that exact spot on the same browser window as the page.
As for customers tendency to use bad passwords, why don't the bank install a password checker on the server? That would make all the difference, since they close access after a few tries (at least my bank), thus making it impossible to brute-force the account, anyway.
We haven't had much innovation in keyboard design, at least not designs which have become mainstream. Hype may convince the people making them to carry out the task. Besides, it us creating the hype here. For you, nothing to see here, move along.
For comparison, some other
special keyboards have prices like,
EZ-Reach $100,
Kinesis Contour $240,
DataHand (very original!) $500.
Maybe this only shows that people are conservative when it comes to keyboards, though the Optimus may easily become mainstream. Well, it's just great! (Though, I'm not buying, since I won't give up the alignment of rows on my current EZ-Reach.)
The UA string proper use is exactly, as you say, to work around browser bugs. But from the article,
"Developers should ensure that their sites are ready for the IE 7 user agent string and treat IE 7 just like they would IE 6," Schare said.
So, either MS has done little to fix the bugs in IE, or Schare is advicing people to continue to program for specific browsers.
And when they are
telling [developers] that Microsoft continues to run across Web sites that are not expecting Version 7 of the browser, and urging them to test their UA strings.
it does look to me that they are seeing the same thing users of non-MS browsers see: outright exclusion from the page.
I agree that 3D acceleration is best done by the highly specialised GPU, but if the purpose is "taking over more primary PC functions", a would look for general purpose units with better CPU connectivity. A point where games can improve is on the physics engine, which works on quite different principles than rendering.
Furthermore, nVidia and ATI are marketing their GPUs as capable of taking over more primary PC functions, thus, thet makes 4 HUGE opponents for this kind of stuff. Personally, I believe this is IBM's attempt at wagging the dog. They're still screwed.
That's what the
Cell processor is for. It is a POWER-like processor with several number-chunching sub-processors on the same die. This allows much better communication between the units that the classic CPU/GPU couple, besides the sub-processors are more general purpose than GPUs.
If they can demonstrate that it can be programmed efficiently, I think the PC has real competition. Initially, it will probably be most interesting to game developers and scientists who are willing to invest time in performance.
Computers are in fact not that good with logic. We easily formulate the rules of chess in a state-of-the-art solvers for first order logic, and it would make a horrible chess player. This is because first (and higher) order logic is NP-complete, which means it is quite easy to come up with a problem that it can not solve within reasonable time on today's or tomorrows computers (until we have usable quantum computers).
Humans can solve logical puzzles which the computer can't, because we use intuition and expert knowledge to prune what possibilities to investigate. I know there is at least one logic system, Coq, which is designed to let a human guide the proof search, combining the precision and brute force of computers with human intuition.
The fact that software is so immensely complex is actually one of the
resons patents on software don't protect the developer. Each idea
you get, you would have to go through an expensive and time-consuming
process only to discover that your program depends on even more ideas
than you can claim.
Compare this to a technical invention. A new brake system may
depend on a few patents, which can be sorted out. A car may depend
on many patents, but individual inventors don't have the resources
to make them. Thus, the inventor has can claim licenses from
the car manufacturers without worrying about licensing of the
other patents. (When you can make CPUs in
your living room, we may have to reconsider
the patent system for some technologies, as well.)
The analogy to software would be that individual software developers only
discover the algorithms, but never actually writes the full applications.
We know that this is not the case. In software, individuals, groups,
and small companies create the final products. But due to the
complexity of their software, they are bound to infringe on hundreds
of patents in countries where software patents are valid.
In other words the situation is turned around. Patents may favour the
inventor of the brake, but software patents strongly disfavours small
entities from writing software, because of the complexity involved and
the fact that they make a final product.
This is exactly the situation that the big software houses wants. First,
they don't have to worry about patents, because they have an arsenal
of them to defend themselves. On the other hand, this intellectual
"property" is useful to get rid of the small companies and
commercially employed open source, so that professional software
developer will have to work for them in order to legalise their
activities.
The intellectual "property" of software patents is in its final
consequence the ownership of the "right" to make software, the
ownership of the work market, the
"right" to decide what programmers shall do, and what the general
public shall use in their living rooms and offices.
Slashdot Mirror
mutt is more powerful than Pine, vastly more so for those of use who learn to configure it. It's my primary mailer, Thunderbird my sencondary. But,
Pine is user friendly. It's doesn't have a GUI, but still has a menu system that makes it almost as user friendly as a GUI mailer. To many people I know, it is invaluable. It's what works without learning a bunch of keystrokes, whether you need to log in from a foreign remote Windows machine (no X, don't want to set up IMAP) to read mail, or if you just want a lightweight mailer.
I'll be looking for a replacement, possibly Alpine, as suggested in this thread, when it goes beta, whereas I'll reserve the mutt recommendation to power-users.
Well I don't think Miguel agrees with you but that situation existed long before he came to Novell.
Miguel's work is important, but I'll continue to worry about Mono entering the core Linux desktop until Microsoft issues a non-revocable public license for their CIL and .NET patents.
OpenOffice is more a competitor to the lite versions of Office and as already mentioned VB has been available for some time before this deal. So I can only conclude that all this noise has nothing to do with patents.
Most (all?) office documents I've seen are simple enough that they could have been written in just about any word processor. I frankly don't know how OO.org compares an advanced features, but considering "competition" I'd look at the broad part of the population, and in that respect I think familiarity and brand name is the biggest challenge for OO.org.
If patents, copyrights or trade secrets are not an issue here, then the only noise I'd make is an applaud for OO.org. I'm simply lacking the assurance.
But simply fratenizing with the enemy and GPLers are notorious for not getting along with others hence GPLv3.
GPLers is a broad generatization. Not all GPL users are Free Software proponents in RMS' sense, though I'd probably include myself. The GPL is designed to avoid software from being lifted into propreitary products. It's no stricter than common propreitary licenses, except if it is used for libraries, in which case LGPL or dual licensing are options.
Microsoft has two projects which are important for their lockin, .NET and MS Office, and two projects Mono and OpenOffice.org which they wish never existed. They have recently made a deal with Novell on both. There is smoke, we just don't know if its an innocent campfire or two houses being torched. Microsoft's has been quite innovative in their quest to eliminate their competitors in the past. There is good reason to keep an eye at Novell and Microsoft at the moment.
Now, come on, have everyone forgotten that French Scientists Link Higher BMI with Lower IQ. Itsatrap!
One thing is for sure: when Intel, AMD, Nvidia, and ATI fight, we customers win.
Nvidia and ATI are quite much equal competitors at the moment. If AMD and ATI merges, that could tilt the competition to ATI's favour. That means less competition in the graphics sector, and customers loose. On the CPU front AMD is already gaining on Intel, they don't really need this.
OTOH, it would be nice to see a "low-end" on-board graphics card with a FOSS driver on AMD boards, similar to what Intel offers. That would be very nice for servers and many of the Linux desktops. However, I don't think that's the motivation for this purchase if the rumour is true.
While it's a neat (if not original) hack, why bother making actual photographs with it?
These photos are, in addition to their subject, also "photos of the scanner" which is a tangible thing. That makes it more interesting, or at least different, than digital effects. I think the process is part of the artwork. But maybe most importantly, its seems a lot more fun duing it like this.
Try "re-written".
They have already ported it to Mac which shares little with Windows API. The reason for not porting to Linux is purely strategic.
Linux and Windows are completely two different software archetectures - Linux is focused around client-server connections using terminals (some of which are incapable of instantly distinguishing ESC from some other keypress without looking ahead) and has "perfected" that system. On the other hand, Windows is focused on a local user interface and has "perfected" that system - you can do almost anything in Windows just by using the base API.
Terminals are not meant for graphical applications, X is. Once the connection to the X server is made, the X API works just like a local GUI from the programmers point of view. Keys are transmitted both as keycodes and and interpreted with masks for the modifiers. I don't see the issue. The only reason to bypass X is for very graphics intensive stuff like games. There is standard extensions (shipped with X.org) for combining direct rendering with X.
Right now, MS has merged various OS extensions into the main product (e.g. external WinSocks were replaced by an MS implementation.) However, I haven't seen much change in the basic Linux or POSIX API, aside from third party extensions (such as SDL.)
Consider Gnome, KDE, SDL and many other libraries to be part of Linux. They come with all Linux distribution I have seen this far, and if that isn't integration, I am not sure what it is suppost to be integrated into. I think "third party" and "integration" takes on a different meaning in an Open Source OS. The availability of APIs are assured foremost by their use in popular applications, implying that they become mantatory "integral" components of distributions.
The government policy is for internal use, and does not apply to citizens. That said, I think the translation goes very far; it even excludes some open source licenses (like QPL, but IANAL). But, the text that passed is different from that of TFA according to some posts.
Their definition of "Free Software" is in fact very close to that of the FSF due to the requirement that modified versions shall be redistributable under the original license (cf GPL). The subitter of the article was modest when translating it as Open Source, since Free Software is a stronger requirement.
Looking under the hood, the Linux development model is more organised than one might expect. Consider the parts that make up a Linux system.
Libraries and applications are typically managed by smaller teams, and even if people contribute, those contributions are reviewed. Accepting that, we only have to look at the big structure. Some observations about libraries:
The whole is a mixture of bottom-up and top-down hierachical control. To understand the dynamics, consider an individual project. At an early stage, the developers looks around to identify what is already done, and tries to identify reasonably stable, common, and well managed libraries which they can use. This is a very feasible thing to do due to open source licenses. They will then start from there, and do occational changes in dependencies throughout the lifetime of the projests due to new needs and changes in availability and quality of dependent parts. Sometimes, libraries are split out of projects by abstracting out identifiable tasks.
An important observation is that by maintainers of a popular project casts a vote when choosing dependent projects. The more important the project is, the higher weighted is the vote for the dependent parts to survive. When most projects thus migrites to a better library, the rest will have to choose to follow suit or to risk loosing ground due to a more difficult installation process. The distributors are the ultimate judges, though their power is limited by what software is available.
In other words, there is a semi-democratic system that organises a hierachical structure of componets, with no single central authority.
When I need to choose an application for a task, I take all options, line up their icons, and push them in close succession. I call this the race for service. The first application which starts, wins. Needless to say I still use Vim/LaTeX.
Seen from the company, the incentive is to make money. From societies point of view, the purpose of companies is to produce. We support capitalism / market economy because has proven the most efficient system to produce what we need for our welfare. However, it is not perfect, and this shows very in the case of a monopoly, esp. when it makes both OS and applications.
Now, this is not directly related to your post, but the relevace of the second view is that we as citizens we have the right to speak up when products which are economically viable by themselves are blocked by strategic considerations. It's a matter of pressure and possible invokation of antitrust. These are logical adjustments to the economy to account for the discrepancy between the monetary incentive of companies and their productivity. I will not defend the badly argued AC post you replied to, only point out that by perpetuating the "idea of companies are to make money" half-truth, you are effectively stating an opinion.
Funny, I thought that the idea of companies was to make money.
Funny, I thought the idea of companies was to make products, and that money is a means to that end.
Why the absurd claim that by not supporting every single minority OS out there, MS are not a real software company? That's like claiming that dogs aren't animals because they don't wqear contact lenses - the two ideas are completely different.
You are right, of course. They can choose the platforms to support. I think the belief many of us have is that if MS Office was producted by an independent company, it would have been ported to Linux by now. Of course, we don't know that.
Looking at it the other way, code should never be GPL'd. A real developer wouldn't care about the license the user of the code wants to use.. Who cares about the license the customer choses, you should support it regardless.
Who suggested that MS Office should change it's license? And do you think you can pick your license if you choose a commercial product? Many who use GPL do in fact offer other licensing options for a fee.
Why should the poster bring evidence? The post quotes the Sindey Morning Herald article, and we must assume they have done their work. This is a blog, and the post simply opens a discussion on news from other sources.
As the OS becomes less visible to the users, the dominace of a specific OS is no longer a sales argument. It will be more important to the vendors of the devices to have a customisable, stable and cheap OS on which they can put their polished wonderware.
Sounds like the Java applet I'm using - on a Linux with Firefox. But, I could not make it work with Blackdown or IBM Java, only Sun Java.
Good someone mention SSL. To me it seems that the bank is working around accessibility problems, but as a result create an inferiour solution.
The bank could easily tell a geek never to type in their password unless the page secure by the bank's SSL key. How do we make that work for the rest of the population?
As for customers tendency to use bad passwords, why don't the bank install a password checker on the server? That would make all the difference, since they close access after a few tries (at least my bank), thus making it impossible to brute-force the account, anyway.
We haven't had much innovation in keyboard design, at least not designs which have become mainstream. Hype may convince the people making them to carry out the task. Besides, it us creating the hype here. For you, nothing to see here, move along.
For comparison, some other special keyboards have prices like, EZ-Reach $100, Kinesis Contour $240, DataHand (very original!) $500.
Maybe this only shows that people are conservative when it comes to keyboards, though the Optimus may easily become mainstream. Well, it's just great! (Though, I'm not buying, since I won't give up the alignment of rows on my current EZ-Reach.)
The UA string proper use is exactly, as you say, to work around browser bugs. But from the article,
So, either MS has done little to fix the bugs in IE, or Schare is advicing people to continue to program for specific browsers. And when they are
it does look to me that they are seeing the same thing users of non-MS browsers see: outright exclusion from the page.
I agree that 3D acceleration is best done by the highly specialised GPU, but if the purpose is "taking over more primary PC functions", a would look for general purpose units with better CPU connectivity. A point where games can improve is on the physics engine, which works on quite different principles than rendering.
That's what the Cell processor is for. It is a POWER-like processor with several number-chunching sub-processors on the same die. This allows much better communication between the units that the classic CPU/GPU couple, besides the sub-processors are more general purpose than GPUs.
If they can demonstrate that it can be programmed efficiently, I think the PC has real competition. Initially, it will probably be most interesting to game developers and scientists who are willing to invest time in performance.
Computers are in fact not that good with logic. We easily formulate the rules of chess in a state-of-the-art solvers for first order logic, and it would make a horrible chess player. This is because first (and higher) order logic is NP-complete, which means it is quite easy to come up with a problem that it can not solve within reasonable time on today's or tomorrows computers (until we have usable quantum computers).
Humans can solve logical puzzles which the computer can't, because we use intuition and expert knowledge to prune what possibilities to investigate. I know there is at least one logic system, Coq, which is designed to let a human guide the proof search, combining the precision and brute force of computers with human intuition.
"Warning! Attempt to eavesdrop our network,
may cause electrocution without trial."
The fact that software is so immensely complex is actually one of the resons patents on software don't protect the developer. Each idea you get, you would have to go through an expensive and time-consuming process only to discover that your program depends on even more ideas than you can claim.
Compare this to a technical invention. A new brake system may depend on a few patents, which can be sorted out. A car may depend on many patents, but individual inventors don't have the resources to make them. Thus, the inventor has can claim licenses from the car manufacturers without worrying about licensing of the other patents. (When you can make CPUs in your living room, we may have to reconsider the patent system for some technologies, as well.)
The analogy to software would be that individual software developers only discover the algorithms, but never actually writes the full applications. We know that this is not the case. In software, individuals, groups, and small companies create the final products. But due to the complexity of their software, they are bound to infringe on hundreds of patents in countries where software patents are valid.
In other words the situation is turned around. Patents may favour the inventor of the brake, but software patents strongly disfavours small entities from writing software, because of the complexity involved and the fact that they make a final product.
This is exactly the situation that the big software houses wants. First, they don't have to worry about patents, because they have an arsenal of them to defend themselves. On the other hand, this intellectual "property" is useful to get rid of the small companies and commercially employed open source, so that professional software developer will have to work for them in order to legalise their activities.
The intellectual "property" of software patents is in its final consequence the ownership of the "right" to make software, the ownership of the work market, the "right" to decide what programmers shall do, and what the general public shall use in their living rooms and offices.