[KLUG Advocacy] Another interessting article

Rusty Yonkers therustycook at yahoo.com
Tue Jun 8 07:40:47 EDT 2004


> feelings for M$;  I'm a *(&^#$@&*^$^&* socialist and think,
> ideally, the
> federal government should sieze control of the entire company,
> auction off
> it's assets and make all its intellectual property public-domain. 

I am pretty much a capitalist purist and as far as I am concerned the
forced distribution of intellectual property is one of the worst
things that can happen!  The problem is patenting software.  The
patent system is a system for the industrial age (and even then not
really as good a solution as people had hoped).  It is not open
source software that will free us but the ability to improve,
innovate, and compete that will give us the best of the best and
prevent monopolies and power centralization.  Pure capitalism is
about not having strong central control.  Socialism is all about
strong central control.  People are inherently powerhungry and
control freaks.  The role of government in a capitalist government
should be about making sure that a single group does not inhibit
other groups from competing, whether it is with free, open source,
shareware, or closed source software.  

I have no problem with people deciding to close source their code if
they chose.  They created it.  They just need to be made to compete
fairly in the marketplace!  The problem with people like Billy Gates
is that they only believe that they have won when everyone is using
thier solution.  He does not believe in the win-win option.  

On an aside from this, maybe should be made a new thread, I was
thinking about the possibility of trying to get a ballot proposal on
the state ballot that would state that all governmental data created
needs to be in data formats that are completely open and published
standards.  Something like a Word document would not be allowed
because Microsoft has never published a document as to how to code
the data file, thus it needs to be reverse engineered.  Thus the
state would either have to save in formats such as rtf or they would
have to use a format like the star/openoffice format that is openly
documented.  This is a way to get Microsoft playing on a fair field! 


The problem is not the closed source code of Word but the fact that
other competing programs have potential troubles with reading and
writing the data file format.  Thus people are timid about switching
to another tool to create the data.  What is happening with software
right now would be like a company like Craftsman coming out with a
carpentry tool that worked with certain raw materials that Sears also
made.  Other tools could be made to work with the raw materials but
they would not work as well in all circumstances so people by
Craftsman just so that they do not have to worry about it.  

You know, the only problem with trying to describe the problem to
non-computer geeks is that no analogy in the non-cyber world fits
exactly to the realities of the cyber world.  Oh well, we can try.  

What do others think about a ballot proposal like this??? Don't think
there would be time for this year but there is 2005.  Talk about
putting Michigan in the news!  We could start a whole new revolution.
 The open data format movement!  If we could get it started and then
a large number of governmental units required open data format it
would force Microsoft to play on a more fair field!!!!  You would see
the competition start to really heat up between M$, and WordPerfect,
and Lotus, and Sun, and OpenOffice, and AbiWord, etc etc etc.  Could
this also be successful for things like audio formats???


=====
Russell C. Yonkers Jr. 
CNE, MCP, A+, CCNA, Linux+, Server+, Network+ certified
-----------------------------------------
Currently using SuSE 9, Mac OS X, Windows 2000, and WinXP 
And yes I run a network at home with Linux and Windows servers
See my personal website http://www.geocities.com/therustycook
Or my consulting site at http://www.atomicsupergeek.com


	
		
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