Re: Bill Gates doesn't want Americans working for him

[Paul Bramscher]

John Bailo wrote:
> Paul Bramscher wrote:
>
> > Except for the profit motive part.  That's lacking in both the open 
> > source (OSI) and free software (GNU) movements.  Also, nobody in the 
> > open source movement can corner or monopolize something.
>
>
> Yes, you should have attended the lecture given by David Brin and Corey 
> Doctorow at EMP in Seattle.
>
> Brin was the more brilliant speaker -- said that the struggle is between 
> people who build the marketplace, and the monopolists who want an 
> oligarchy.
>
> GNU Linux is far from any of the things you accuse it of.  It's more 
> akin to an absolutely free marketplace, where vendors can work and sell 
> their wares ( in this case, labor ).

"Accuse" it of???  I *congratulate* it for being anarcho-syndicalist in 
nature.  I run a SourceForge project myself an have been coding 
professionally in open source technologies for 5 years.

> CSS is like a feudal castle, where high taxes are imposed on people and 
> craftsmen, just for being on the land of the baron, and transacting 
> business.
>
> > If you take the firefox source code and do something awesome with it, 
> > start a new project or major functionality, that's totally acceptable. 
> > Even encouraged.  If you get the sourcecode of XP, you're probably 
> > going to jail.
>
>
> Yes, but if you want to create a website, that adheres to world 
> standards, you're not under the mercy of Bill Gate$ allowing you to run 
> your code.   Firefox is a Marketplace through which goods and services 
> from businesses like Amazon can pass.   Internet Explorer is a toll 
> road, and more than that, it's a toll road through which the toll owner 
> can block and hinder commerce to force it to his own store.

True.  Though keep in mind that the so-called "standards" (changing 
monthly it seems) bodies are dominated by many Fortune 500 companies. 
Take the w3c for example: http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Member/List

And FireFox's development path is somewhat determined by them.