🚀 go-pugleaf

seajays@my-deja.com wrote:
> 
> A good point about Free software.  However, the ideals being put
> forward simply will not work in our Western, economy driven, capitalist
> society.  Corporations will simply want to take any advantage that they
> can, and if source code was free, the larger corporations would simply
> be able to squash any competition by using any code, from anywhere.
> Even if a small company had produced something unique, any advantage
> that that gave them in competing with the 'big boys' would vanish.  And
> with it the small companies would vanish.  Far from helping creativity,
> it would actually make it impossible for smaller companies to compete.


I don't think the author intends the ideals to work in a capitalist
society (given name of the link eh?) :-)

But seriously, I think you would be hard-pushed to convince me in any
fashion that the proprietary software production model hasn't failed.
Small companies do not compete with the 'big boys' in the manner you
suggest:- anyone with anything unique to offer gets bought in short
order and likely their ideas are suppressed to fit in with the bigger
marketing plans of the giant that bought them, or at best appear in an
about box somewhere. You don't have to go very far on the internet to
find screeds of information on that sort of business practice. Free 
software has shown itself the only viable weapon against that sort of
corporate hegemony, because the target is endemic to the system itself.
The software business in particular has been plagued by this sort of
crap for years as a result of the law being incapable of demarkating
fairly who owns what in an area where an appropriate and just definition
of intellectual property is still lacking. 


Ever pause to reflect on where we'd all be now if the stupid,
middle-management inbreeds at IBM had decided to go with the 68000
instead? :)


 
> Now of course, if you're advocating changing the entire economic system
> and eradicating capitalism, then it would be a different story - and I
> may find myself supporting the argument for open source code.  :-)
 
I should bloody cocoa hehe

Angus


-- 
It said WinNT 4.0 or better on the box.
So I installed Linux.