re: Get your copy of M$ Word while you still can
Wednesday, August 19, 2009 at 11:07 am
Windows 98 Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by gewg_
(4444 messages posted)
Arminius wrote:
|It makes me wonder what the people running Microsoft are thinking.
|
As always: "Money, money, money..." and "We can game the system".
...and to Bob:
This is all about the vendors you choose to support and their business models.
It is NOT an issue isolated to 1 product line.
M$ has also made threatening overtures to Free/Open Source Software
by stating that FOSS projects are infringing on numerous M$ patents
but **M$ NEVER SPECIFIES _WHICH_ PATENTS**. (See "submarine patents".)
|Is software "patented" or "copyrighted"?
|
Well, with EITHER paradigm, you should be expected to PUBLISH.
Books that are allowed to go out of print
*should* go into the Public Domain in short order.[1]
In the tech domain, abandonware that isn't already under a copyleft
license
should also go into the Public Domain.
If you've ever seen a patent application,
you'll notice that a drawing of the gizmo figures prominently in that.
The equivalent of that for software SHOULD be a source code listing.
Just as an application without an exacting mechanical drawing is rejected,
an application without a source code listing should be rejected.
Patents are *supposed* to be about a *process* to do something new or better.
If you clicked my SOFTWARE PATENTS SUCK link,
you'd see that the Bilski case revolves around the notion that
the software needs to be INTEGRAL to the process
and if you can pluck out the software and *replace* it with something else
then what you have ISN'T a unique process worthy of a patent.
|Patents run out after 17 years, copyright is supposed to last a 100.
|
The perversion of both (obvious stuff with existing exemplars in the case of patents
and the Mickey-Mouse-must-never-go-into-the-Public-Domain thing
in the case of copyright) spits on the Founding Fathers' original vision:
"The Congress shall have Power [. . .] To promote the Progress of Science
and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors
the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries
cache
of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_copyright_law#History
(Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the Constitution of the United States)
Disney and Microsoft, to cite 2 high-profile examples,
have given the USA the appearance of a banana republic.
With the increasing dexterity which modern technology affords creators
(making the production of new works ever EASIER),
the platform of the Pirate Party of Sweden
increasingly makes more sense that the current (horribly broken) system.
cache
of http://www.piratpartiet.se/international/english
With Piratpartiet's sucess in the last round of elections,
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?threshold=5&sid=09/06/07/2044217
it's obvious that this nascent movement is on the right track.
Even where they aren't the *victor* in the contest,
their existance forces the opposition to actually **confront** the issues.
[1] One of the great travesties of our current "Intellectual Property" laws
is the nitrate film stock that is lying around and turning to sludge
because the rights holders won't step up and do the needed preservation work.
Anyone else who *does* make the effort stands to lose any rights
when, after he does, the "owner" pops up out of the shadows.
In the tech domain, an analog of this is "submarine patents".
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 |  |  | re: Get your copy of M$ Word while you still can (gewg_: Wed, Aug 19, 2009, 11:07 am) |
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