Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : LINUX -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: E. Charters who wrote (1877)	11/26/1999 10:36:00 PM
From: JC Jaros	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2615

...where you own it lease it rent it or sell it so who cares... I beleive IP (Intellectual property - not Internet Protocol) has seen it's day in the sun. The U.S. was founded in part as a reaction to issues involving oppresive IP. Suddenly with Copyright amended, embraced and extended by the likes of M$ lawyers and Jack Valenti (speaking of RIAA), it's all become a tax which the first world extracts from everyone else, specifically the US extracts from it's trading partners. I think in the future (and I think we're IN the future) IP will be more concentrated in branding and servicemarks. Information wants to be free. There is no respite from that. You can only obfuscate something for a very short time. On a separate issue E., computer operating systems are a commodity item who's price is devalued more each passing day. Windows is zero dollars once the anti-trust action is done and the pending publish (Win32) order is complied with. M$ is already preparing for that, it's obvious. MacOS is part of the Mac PC and they're feeling the heat of 'free'. Solaris is free (if you buy an UltraSparc or until you make money using it, whichever comes first). BeOS is doomed as a revenue generator. Amiga has been scrapped, JavaOS has been scrapped, Geo has gone embedded services and the list goes on. Besides suckers who swallowed the M$ line, who actually pays a bill with an "OS" line on it anymore? OSs are the domain of the machine makers now. It's a joke that all of this attention is being paid to "licenses". You're absolutely right; in the final analysis, it's "who cares". It's official. I've now been witness to Bruce Parens going off about ENFORCING licenses MORE than I have Steve Ballmer. Why? At least Steve Ballmer is protecting a brand. Corel hasn't made a DIME from Linux and Bruce Perens is already talking about filing a lawsuit, and vigorously enforcing the GPL. That wouldn't happen under the SCSL. Bruce Parens rails against the SCSL as non "open". I'll tell you this, Solaris and the SCSL is sure less for me to think about license-wise than Open source(tm) Debian Linux (as much as I like it). If they want an "open source" world, why not just "public domain" everything? It's worked for folk music. -JCJ