🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <13397@claris.com>, Mike_Steiner@claris.com (Mike Steiner) writes:
|> In article <95qs85w164w@mantis.co.uk>, mathew@mantis.co.uk (five minutes) writes:
|> 
|> > [ An aspiring Mac owner who refuses to buy one because of Apple's monopolistic
|> >   practices. ]
|> 
|> Would you care to define "monopolstic," please?  What would you suggest
!> Apple do
|> to change those practices?  Please keep your suggestions realistic--i.e.,
!> so that
|> Apple can continue to remain profitable and remain in business.

You're new around here, it seems.

Apple believes that Apple, and only Apple, has the right to sell a window
system with icons that looks even vaguely like the Macintosh.  They go so
far as to claim exclusive right to the trashcan icon.  They are the primary
practitioners of the "look-and-feel" lawsuit; they are currently suing
Microsoft and HP.  Basically, they want Microsoft Windows declared illegal
(or at least have Microsoft owe them a lot of money); should they win,
they very well may come after the X Window system next.  This despite the
fact that the chief designers of the Lisa graphic user interface, the
predecessor to the Mac, freely admitted in a Byte interview in 1983
that they went over to Xerox PARC, liked the user interfaces they saw
there, and copied them.

They freely admitted this because in 1983, no one thought that a user
interface was something you had a monopoly right to.

This attitude is totally unnecessary for them to make a profit or to remain
in business.  If it persists and prevails in the courts, freely
redistributable software will disappear; it will become illegal even to
give a program away if it contains some element that a computer company
with a large legal staff thinks is theirs.  This is the reason why there
is a boycott against Apple.  And it's too bad, because in many ways I
like the Mac and I salute the designers for the very good job they did,
though I will not use one.  But just as the Mac designers built on the
work that came before, new designers must have the freedom to continue
this process. 


--
Joe Buck
jbuck@galileo.berkeley.edu	 {uunet,ucbvax}!galileo.berkeley.edu!jbuck