🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <111700188@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu| krb20699@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu writes:
|
|     It all boils down to Apple wanting the most profit it can get from it's
|excellent graphics interface (=suing potential competitors.)  This, if I am
|not mistaken, is what Xerox wants to do.  I don't know much about the Star
|system, or the Berne convention, but it seems Xerox is trying to be a hero
|by suing Apple in exchange for what it's done in the courtroom.  Do two
|wrongs (according to at least one person here, defending a company's copyright
|makes that company "scumbags from hell."  Applicable to Xerox, don't you
|think?) make a right?  Xerox is doing the same thing Apple has done.  What's
|the damn difference?  It may be a picky thing for Apple to do, but the inter-
|face is so easily copiable (OS/2, Windows, etc.) that the lawsuits seem to
|be at _least_ partially justified.
|
| ....[more defending Mac's right for sueing...]

Normally I don;t get involved in this kind of a flame war, but...

None of what you have said is (unfortunately) the issue. 

For years apple has kept its battalion of lawyers busy suing Mom & Pop
companies out of business. None of these cases made it to court because
the smaller companies couldn't hire the lawyer-power to defend themselves.
Apple claimed moral victories, and smugly went on its way...

 Last year, it decided to throw its weight around a little more and tried 
to sue Microsoft and HP...now its playing with the big boys...
Microsoft, more than a little upset that Apple was playing word games with
a legal contract that they had with Apple, countersued. Along about
the same time, Apple increased its Mac prices 42% *across the board.*
Coincidence?

Now, what is Apple sueing everyone about? The "look and feel" of an
operating system. No lawyer I know (and I've talked about this with
several) would take this seriously. It akin to Ford suing GM because
GM's cars looked and felt like Ford cars. (They each had a steering wheel,
they each had 4 tires, etc)

And what was the "look and feel" they were protecting? The Mac OS,
which has its dubious roots in the Xerox Star system. (The Mac's 
"founding father" brazenly went into Xerox Palo Alto and hired its
programmers on the spot. Admitedly, nothing wrong with that, but 
I wouldn't go trying to claim that the "look and feel" was mine, when it
clearly sprung from another source.)

Now Xerox wants to recoup the losses from some of its Star system 
using Apple's disgusting practice of sicing lawyers on a company...

...and you expect *me* to feel pity for Apple? Like its the good
guy in all of this?

I'll tell ya...I love computers, I really do. In my job(s), I've had 
to develop expertise on quite a few diverse and esoteric platforms:
Suns, Apollos, VAXens, DecStations, IBM PCs, Macs, Atari's, Amigas,
UNIVAC's, IBM Mainframes, PDP's, homebrewed hardware, Harris, etc.
I also have (understandable) had to master a variety of operating
systems: UNIX, VMS, VM/CMS, Vulcan, GEM, DOS, OS/2, etc.

And you know what, out of all those, there are only two computer combinations
that I refuse to work on...don't even list them on my resume anymore
because I want nothing to do with them:

	IBM VM/CMS - 	because although the hardware is ok, the
			operating system is braindead
	Any Apple product -	The hardware is ok, and the OS is
				just ok...but the policies of the
				Apple Corporation are so warped
				and so perverted, that I cannot, will not,
				bring myself to support their products.

Apple has to change corporate hands and policies before I begin to
suggest to any of my employers, colleagues, or clients to use Apple
products.

And you know what? I'm not alone....


 - Rob DeMillo			| Internet: rjd@brown.cs.edu     
   Brown University 		| BITnet: DEMILLO%BRNPSG.SPAN@STAR.STANFORD.EDU
   Planetary Science Group	| Reality: 401-273-0804 (home)
"I say you *are* the Messiah, Lord! And I ought to know, I've followed a few!"