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Subject: 
Re: Microsoft spreads Linux FUD
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.off-topic.geek
Date: 
Mon, 19 Feb 2001 02:52:10 GMT
Reply-To: 
MATTDM@MATTDM.ORGstopspammers
Viewed: 
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Larry Pieniazek <lpieniazek@mercator.com> wrote:
Perish the thought of those POOR PEOPLE having to NOT PAY for software. Oh,
the humanity! Gotta love it.
I'd give him a lot more cred if he could dig up examples of where opensource
has actually caused people trouble (where they couldn't get support or
something like that). Of course that's a lot harder to come up with than FUD.

I think that the point that they are inarticulately trying to make is:
"The system of proprietary intellectual property rights provides an
incentive to put money into research. The principles of openness and sharing
demonstrated in the open-source philosophy are contrary to this model, and
therefore will lead to less software research, which will hurt everyone in
the long run."

This isn't as foolish on the face of it as the quotes are taken out of
context. It's *wrong*, but not stupid. As you say, changing that system --
an artificial [1] construct created by the government before computers were
even invented -- is a goal of the GNU Free Software movement (although not
necessarily of Open Source folks). But of course, it's not because they want
to destroy research and innovation: to the contrary, free sharing of
innovative -- and for that matter, derivative -- ideas benefits everyone.
Check out <http://sourceforge.net/> -- 15,703 open source projects. And Sun,
IBM, HP, SGI, Compaq, Motorola, Dell, Borland, and so on (not to mention Red
Hat and VA Linux) certainly seem to refute the thesis that companies won't
spend money on open source.

I recently bought an IBM drive for my Libretto, and was really happy to see
that IBM's HD support page provides Linux-friendly versions of their
utilities *without even making a big deal of it*. They're just there.



[1] no matter what your views on *physical* property, Larry -- this is
different in many ways.

--
Matthew Miller                     --->                 mattdm@mattdm.org
Quotes 'R' Us                    --->              http://quotes-r-us.org/
Boston University Linux            --->               http://linux.bu.edu/



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: Microsoft spreads Linux FUD
 
(...) We had some of this debate before... I'm not sure what I think, exactly. Open Source clearly works and delivers good things but there has to be an incentive of some sort to cause clever people to do clever things. Whether IP is the best way, I (...) (24 years ago, 19-Feb-01, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)  

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Microsoft spreads Linux FUD
 
(...) Well, this part IS true, as far as it goes. That's the idea, after all!!! If you read the GNU Manifesto, it comes through loud and clear. MS has a simple answer to it though, make stuff that's so much *better* than what you can get for free (...) (24 years ago, 18-Feb-01, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

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