"They can't force developing countries like us to solely use legal software since we can't afford it."
WTF? Why not?
Property laws and copyright laws. The government (of Indonesia) writes them and can change them, as long as they stay sovereign. This applies to the enforceability of the GPL as well. Any government can use eminant domain with respect to copyright ownership or mod the law with respect to any enforceability.
All the people who are doing X already get to decide if I get the Patent.
Am I the only one who sees a conflict of interest here.
Then why not add conflict of interest rules to the peer review process, similar to jury selection guidelines? Peers can't be employed by, investors in, family members of, or dependant on grants or fees from companies which could be directly effected by the subject of the patent under review. Retired professors and such (just like the types who get stuck with real jury duty). And open source experts would have very little demonstratable financial conflicts of interest.
It's designed so that an author gets pay for his work but he cannot blackmail more and more later on.
Commerce requires blackmail. What intelligent business person would pay for something they could, completely legally and exactly the same product, get for free?
In that case every one of your customers pay for 1/100th of the price you require.
Only the first need pay. Then your business model is blown because the other 99% you need to finance the software development never have to pay up.
Look up the histories of SAIL, the Model Railroad Club or the Dreyfuss brothers' reactions to IBM's internal culture, if you'd like to see how things actually went.
And going by the median type, the typical "computer engineer" in the mid-1960's was one of those IBM'ers (or maybe at one of the "seven dwarves").
This model works fine if there is only one customer for the product of your hard work. If you have 100 potential customers for a GPL'd product, you give the right to your first customer to get the source, compile it, and give it to the other 99. Increase the number of potential customers, and your potential sales price *per customer* asymptotically approaches zero.
He's flying over your house with the tank on empty, and he doesn't have the insurance to pay for the damage when he breaks down and crashes into your house. Doesn't seem quite as cool anymore. It's bound to happen.
Also uncool are these things called "cars" and "trucks". Someone might forget to keep their brakes in repair and drive right thru your houses front window.
It's all about where to store the cat. My cat loves sleeping behind the LCD. Right next to the transformer for extra cat warming action. When I had a CRT there just wasn't enough desk space for cat storage, and not enough heat generated for cat warming.
The cat goes right on top of the CRT monitor, a nice warm spot where she can wave her tail in front of the web page you are trying to read...
...until the whole thing catches fires due the accumulation of cat fur under the vents around the high voltage components.
Was there a ruling? My recollection of Apple history has MS and Apple settling this case out of court, with MS paying Apple an undisclosed amount of money.
If my recollection is correct this was announced at the same time that it was announced that Bill Gates was buying $1 million in Apple stock, and MS bringing Office back to the Mac. I think this was shortly after Steve Jobs came back to Apple. I seem to remember a keynote with Bill Gates coming on the screen and people booing.
That was a different and later lawsuit. Something about some copyrighted Apple code ending up in some M$ product without a license.
Slashdot Mirror
WTF? Why not?
Property laws and copyright laws. The government (of Indonesia) writes them and can change them, as long as they stay sovereign. This applies to the enforceability of the GPL as well. Any government can use eminant domain with respect to copyright ownership or mod the law with respect to any enforceability.
Then why not add conflict of interest rules to the peer review process, similar to jury selection guidelines? Peers can't be employed by, investors in, family members of, or dependant on grants or fees from companies which could be directly effected by the subject of the patent under review. Retired professors and such (just like the types who get stuck with real jury duty). And open source experts would have very little demonstratable financial conflicts of interest.
Depends on the level of quality you imply in the word "support".
Commerce requires blackmail. What intelligent business person would pay for something they could, completely legally and exactly the same product, get for free?
In that case every one of your customers pay for 1/100th of the price you require.
Only the first need pay. Then your business model is blown because the other 99% you need to finance the software development never have to pay up.
And going by the median type, the typical "computer engineer" in the mid-1960's was one of those IBM'ers (or maybe at one of the "seven dwarves").
once.
This model works fine if there is only one customer for the product of your hard work. If you have 100 potential customers for a GPL'd product, you give the right to your first customer to get the source, compile it, and give it to the other 99. Increase the number of potential customers, and your potential sales price *per customer* asymptotically approaches zero.
Also uncool are these things called "cars" and "trucks". Someone might forget to keep their brakes in repair and drive right thru your houses front window.
My cat loves sleeping behind the LCD. Right next to the transformer for extra cat warming action.
When I had a CRT there just wasn't enough desk space for cat storage, and not enough heat generated for cat warming.
The cat goes right on top of the CRT monitor, a nice warm spot where she can wave her tail in front of the web page you are trying to read...
...until the whole thing catches fires due the accumulation of cat fur under the vents around the high voltage components.
That was a different and later lawsuit. Something about some copyrighted Apple code ending up in some M$ product without a license.