Comment 28283

By leeeenus (anonymous) | Posted January 22, 2009 at 10:43:03

mr meister i realize your also replying to a smith but heres my two cents

"what you're talking about is abolishing patents and trademarks."

no, open source software is free and open specifically because of the licencing it's released under - the gnu gpl, mit licence, bsd licence etc which legally enforce the software's openness.

remember free software doesn't mean free as in free beer, it means free as in free speech. anyone can read the source, anyone can change the source, anyone can incorporate the source in their own projects -- but some licence (eg gpl) insists that software made using free software must also be free.

companies can still make lots of money off of free software (eg red hat, ibm) but they must do it by selling service not code (eg micro$oft).

"there are many good things about it but it also has drawbacks not everything is compatible and some of the things can take a while to figure out"

true and the os community is aware that it needs to get better at ui -- linux is getting steadily better (latest ubuntu is at least as user friendly as the awful vista). also you can buy commercially supported linux distros that eliminate most of these problems for average consumer.

theres a reason most servers run linux: most server admins are computer experts and for them the benefits of linux far outweigh the small inconveniences. they're not locked into network externalities because they have the expertise to make the jump.

thats the only real reason windows still dominates the desktop and linux development hasn't been faster - average user will just go with what most people are going with, what happens to be windows due to history of msdos licencing on clone pcs.

"windows was a real breakthrough from the old dos type everything way of doing things."

and it came years after apple mac, commodore amiga, etc. windows was copycat software -- and for years it was inferior copycat software -- but people used it because it ran on msdos and they knew msdos. straightforward network externality, m$ was first out of the gate to get its os on most pcs.

funnily enough m$ did this by licencing really cheap (compared to other os's kicking around at the time) - an early lesson in the benefits of making software more accessible. dos was mediocre but accessible, and my dos program or file was more likely to work on your pc.

"why don't more people go the alternate route? "

they're starting to. linux and mac os-x (built on bsd/unix and posix compliant, with a shiny mac gui sitting on top) are both gaining market share against windows. vista has had lousy consumer uptake, and i know several people who have switched to os-x or ubuntu (a great transition is install the ubuntu dual boot on an existing win xp installation).

"nothing stops you or anybody else from using a dvorak keyboard they are certainly available."

nothing except network externalities, same as windows. each extra person who uses a given network (wither an os or a keyboard design or a communications tool like telephone, fax, email) makes that network more valuable for everyone else so people get locked in. nothing to do with windows being superior.

"not protecting somebody's intellectual property will result in less time and money being spent on new ideas and that translates into fewer new ideas and products not more and we will all be worse off."

no, oss proves people will contribute __more__ to new ideas if they have guarantee that there work won't unfairly profit someone else. look at wikipedia, better than any commercial encyclopedia and 100% written, error checked, cited and corrected by volunteers doing as much or as little as each wants. what would never fly in a company where people are supposed to do similar amount of work to get paid for it.

"drug companies spend huge amounts of money on marketing because after you make it you have to sell it."

ri-i-i-i-i-ight. like serafem, a wonderful new patented drug to deal with "pre menstrual dysphoric disorder" (what used to be known as "pms"). except that wonderful new drug is just fluoxetine hydrochloride, already patented as "pro-zac" (had to stick in dash to beat spam filter).

"sometimes companies are better off not imposing their patents"

true. most patents these days are "defensive patents" -- companies only take them out to fend off other companies trying to sue them. it's a pwot race to the bottom.

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