[CS-FSLUG] Sydney Morning Herald: Cuba to Dump Windows for Linux

[Don Parris]

On 5/20/05, David Aikema <daikema at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/20/05, Fred A. Miller <fmiller at lightlink.com> wrote:
> > SUSE's manuals are actually pretty good. I buy the "Upgrade" release which is
> > cheaper and has the "main" manual.
> 
<SNIP>

> 
> What I meant was on an individual customer basis... customer A gets a
> copy and then proceeds to use SuSE's bandwidth (which costs them
> money).
> 
> As a whole SuSE may be profitable, but for a some percentage of their
> customers they may be loosing some money (a fairly small amount...
> unless there's a whole lot of security patches/updates).
> 

BTW, the Apple Store competes against P2P, and seems to be doing quite
well at it.  Some apparently have said that they make it their stuff
"easier than free".  Additionally, In Singapore's high-"piracy"
market, their theatres still thrive - Both of these examples are from
"Free Culture".  In other words, a free market keeps you and I
competitive.  Even when the goods are free, people will still pay for
quality goods & services.  If we try to stamp out *all* competition,
then we're no better than Microsoft.

I did not know this, but apparently Microsoft lobbied the government
to veto a meeting to discuss LOSS.  It was either WIPO or a
WIPO-related meeting.  This is within the last two years.  The wording
used by our USPTO representative, Lois Boland, was to the effect that 
 LOSS runs against the mission of WIPO.  Her comments, presumably
spurred by Microsoft's misunderstanding of what LOSS is, include the
idea that LOSS is about waiving rights held under copyright.  The goal
of WIPO is to determine (a) how best to protect IP, and (b) what the
best balance of rights is.  LOSS and libre arts fulfill these goals
naturally, including the balance part.

This is just one effort to get people to believe that LOSS is somehow
anti-IP.  What they're really saying is that they've lost their
innovative edge.  The real issue is that companies need to innovate,
not only in the area of software development, but also in business
development.  How do we adapt our businesses to the disruptive
technologies, such as the ability to download a whole OS via
broadband?  We cannot rely on IP to protect our monopolies.  We must
innovate.  That's a free market.  An IP-controlled market is not a
free one, but a protectionist scheme.

Have I turned the table on you yet? :)

Don
-- 
DC Parris GNU Evangelist
http://matheteuo.org/
gnumathetes at gmail.com
Free software is like God's love - 
you can share it with anyone anywhere anytime!