[CS-FSLUG] OT: A war against the freedom to innovate

[Fred A. Miller]

"Stanford law professor and free software advocate Lawrence Lessig called on 
the open source community to stand up and fight or risk being buried by 
patent-wielding legacy businesses with arsenals of powerful lawyers. "There 
is a war against the freedom to innovate and this community has done way too 
little to resist," Lessig said. "I am a puny, independent law professor. If 
you are depending on me [to fight the war] you are hopeless and lost," he 
added. 

He pointed to Microsoft, which he said could spend more than anyone could 
imagine in defense of what he called its monopoly, primarily through arming 
itself with lawyers and defending its patents. "Microsoft believes a form of 
property [patents] to be their saving grace. There is a huge sucking sound as 
Microsoft fills its arsenal with lawyers," Lessig said during a keynote at 
the Open Source Business Conference.

According to Lessig, big, bad Microsoft wants to lock out competition, and the 
open source--what Lessig likes to call "free software"-- community is the 
anti-monopoly. Despite the fact that Microsoft has mostly used its patents 
defensively so far, the company could switch to offense, he said."

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/index.php?p=1247&tag=nl.e539

-- 
The only bug free software from MickySoft is still shrink-wrapped
in their warehouse..."