---- Original Message ----
From: steefvanduin@zonnet.nl
To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: microsoft vs opensource
Date: Wed, 05 Mar 2008 13:55:51 +0000
thanks david. i myself got the impression that 'the' big corporations
are often keeping busy themselves with legalized theft, backed up by
their respective governments.
As far as I've been able to see it, that's how things operate in any
field.
Not just I.P.
'Their respective govts' are repayed with such commodities as
database information that govts are constitutionally not permitted to
collect from their citizens, but by a quirk of law, corporates are.
I heard somebody say, a little while back, 'We got rid of corporate
government, as a concept, in the eighties.'
Bullshit!
In the land of the dollar, where the dollar rules, justice is the
first casualty.
I heard that one years ago.
I don't have an attribution for it, but it nails the situation nicely.
Where microsoft and the ilk have the advantage is in the way they can
afford to register a thousand patents and the little man just doesn't
have the money to challenge the situation once it's established.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Microsoft-Applauds-Its-Patent-Portfolio
-77372.shtml
The weak link in the chain is at the patent office, which lost the
patents on the terms of 'modernisation' and 'innovation' some
considerable time ago.
Regards,
David Palmer.