Re: Patents again

[Abdullah Ramazanoglu]

begin  <telford@xenon.triode.net.au> dedi ki:
> In gnu.misc.discuss Abdullah Ramazanoglu <abdullah@ramazanoglu.tr> wrote:
> 
>> I don't believe that there would be genuine good faith towards OSS in the
>> commercial world, beyond the front window dressing. As long as they can
>> make the community to believe that they're friends (as opposed to allies),
>> why should go that extra mile and give up their "ammunition" away? It
>> doesn't sound like a good business deal.
> 
> It wouldn't happen without considerable public pressure. At the moment
> there is a lot of humming and haring without a clear direction so this
> sort of collective indecisiveness will not generate the required pressure.

Frankly I think it all takes a businessman and a calculator. When the
stakes are high enough (and I think it will be *really* high in 10 years'
time) no public pressure would work. SCO has disregarded it even for
today's meager stakes, even for a hopeless case. If some big player
manages to indirectly bug GNU/Linux in the next 10 years, with hundreds or
thousands of patented codes swamped all over the place, and when GNU/Linux
is being used by half of the Fortune-1000 companies, which public pressure
would possibly stop that big patent player from monopolizing, or at least
manipulating to their best benefit, the Linux market (maybe the complete
IT market)?

So, I don't believe very much in "soft" means like OSS public pressure and
opinions to tame commercial players. Commercial world is famous with its
dirty conducts and they need concrete barriers not to transgress, I
believe.

-- 
Abdullah        | aramazan@ |
Ramazanoglu     | myrealbox |
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