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len
yes the whole IP thing is complex. what i think happens is we get a
conflict of expectation.
like all of us i've got valuable ip - it must be i make a good living
from it.
where the difficulty comes is understanding what are core things,
controlled by standards, left to be implemented by open and close source
companies/individuals, and from which the whole computing community can
draw on.
msphobia as you call it comes from ms deciding they want to control
something, often something that was open source or subject to
international standards.
so eg, what happens if ms (or sun, or ibm if we want to be fair),
decides that they like xml, but really want it to be a bit different to
the standards because it suits one of their goals. they build the new
functionality into their products and market them to their developers
who start using the non standard components because they're really good
(or the developers don't know they're non standard) and now all the
standards complying software doesn't work anymore, so now you have to
use proprietary products.
and all the good work of people like yourself is now put aside as one or
two giant companies start dictating the new standards.
to be a phobia it needs to be largely unexplainable, those of us who
have been bitten several times really have a fear rather than a phobia.
so i support ip, open source, proprietary products, and most importantly
standards. but in the end the big companies and the markets will
determine which, if any, of these things have value.
rick
ps buying based on who you can sue is basically admitting failure before
you've even tried success. that might explain a lot of large system
failures
On Mon, 2003-07-21 at 06:40, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
> Yep. Lower risk and in case of risk, the risk is borne
> by the software vendor. Who bears the risk if the
> vendor is a company delivering open source? As I
> understand it, the company making the delivery. So,
> for Linux, that would be IBM, Red Hat, etc. Now if
> these companies refuse to assume that risk, they
> will have some problems selling it. In the contracting
> world, that is called "indemnification". If the big companies
> won't indemnify a product or service, big buyers back
> off the deal. Read your RFPs. The only advantage to
> open source there is escrow and even then, maybe not
> because versions, etc., have to be accounted for.
>
> Meanwhile, the less risky bets are on the companies
> that have already licensed the necessary pieces from
> their owners for either cash or value in kind.
> Companies without value in kind are forced to use
> cash. Companies with value in kind can create
> perfectly straightforward and legal trading aggreements
> that maintain cash assets while obtaining rights.
> It makes indemnification not just cheap, but free.
>
> Oh, and it makes getting more IP a high value quest.
> So innovation is guaranteed the old fashion way: earn it.
>
> So just as the same people who talked frictionless
> economy and the rest of the rot of the dot.bomb are
> now talking about the disappearance of IP in software,
> the importance of IP is on the increase as it represents
> a quite powerful value in kind. The open source
> community must be very careful not to believe that
> what they have is more valuable than the IP being
> traded in kind. Netscape did the same dumb thing.
>
> But it's just more fun to lay into MS than to
> understand the big picture. MSPhobia a neat
> distraction; keeps 'em welded together in a
> common cause against a common perceived enemy,
> and keeps 'em just as blind and witless and
> ready to make the same mistakes Netscape made.
>
> Cui bono?
>
> len
>
>
> From: Rick Marshall [mailto:rjm@zenucom.com]
>
> of course closed source companies like ms could violate lots of
> copyrights and we'd never know because noone can look at the code....
> hmmm...
>
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