Re: Why Bill Gates Will Win

[Mark Hinds <zoro@tc.fluke.com>]

  charles mueller <cmueller@metrolink.net> wrote:
  
  <Buches-O-stuff>
  
  I think he was promoting an anti-antitrust position,
  but I'm not sure.
  
  Let's get real here please.
  
  
  1. The Laws of Copyright were established to protect
     the owners of the copyrighted works. If an entity
     (individual or corporate) expends the effort to
     create something they are then entitled to make
     some money for it. Fine, fair enough.
     MS depends heavily on the Laws of Copyright.
  
  2. If a thing however cannot be copywritten, say
     for instance a hammer, or perhaps a look-and-feelish
     kind of thing like a GUI, then everyone has a right
     to try their hand at making the better MS mouse trap.
     That's also fair enough and as it should be. MS has
     certainly benefitted from seeing other nice looking
     software gizmo's and "borrowing" from them. This a
     very common practice in the software biz.
  
  So, now PLEASE stop giving me this moral crapola about goverment
  and business. There are certainly no constitutional garantees
  regarding copyrights. So if there can be copyrights, then
  certainly there can be antitrust laws. It is not a moral
  issue. These are both simply attempts by our society to
  balance individual and societal needs. Big fat harry deel.
  
  I personally don't trust MS or Bill Gates to have so much
  influence over the industry which I have worked in for years (20).
  I ceratinly don't want to grant this guy more protection by
  validating the crazy licensing practices of MS (or most other
  SW companies). OK, people can't just copy the stuff for free,
  but that's it. No more crazy deals with HW manufacturers.
  No more "by being in the same room with a computer displaying
  this notice you agree to do whatever the heck we say, and if you
  don't like it go jump in a lake". We are allowing this stuff
  to be pushed off on us. It is our (we the people) right to
  come up with the laws that we are governed by.
  
  Mark Hinds
  
  
  PS
  
  I'm pretty much hacked-off that MS had the brass to call their latest
  OS product NT. Common on folks, it still doesn't have all the functionality
  of the various unix's, some of which are now free. These have been
  around since before MS even existed. I'm sorry, this is NOT NEW TECHNOLOGY.