From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,52a0bacbcdd2da17 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-08-16 07:55:48 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!skynet.be!skynet.be!louie!tlk!not-for-mail Sender: lbrenta@lbrenta Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Realtime/embedded project to help with employment. References: <3F367B39.8060108@noplace.com> <1060611604.45048@master.nyc.kbcfp.com> <3F38DEBC.8040208@noplace.com> <3F3A39E6.1070803@noplace.com> <3F3CDDDF.70205@noplace.com> <3F3E18C5.8090708@noplace.com> From: Ludovic Brenta User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.2 Date: 16 Aug 2003 16:55:12 +0200 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Organization: -= Belgacom Usenet Service =- NNTP-Posting-Host: 217.136.15.32 X-Trace: 1061045720 reader1.news.skynet.be 743 217.136.15.32:40752 X-Complaints-To: usenet-abuse@skynet.be Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:41582 Date: 2003-08-16T16:55:12+02:00 List-Id: Marin David Condic writes: > Suppose I wrote "Marin's OS" and it started becoming enormously > popular. Bill gates comes around and wants to buy it from me and I > don't want Microsoft to crush it. I say "O.K. You can buy it for > Thirty Seven Trillion Dollars and you have to kiss my ass on PBS > during their fund raisers for the next 5 years." You think he'd get > the message? :-) Well, they'd have two alternative courses of action. 1) Reimplement the interesting and popular features of Marin's OS into Windows 2018. (Do that in C, and badly, of course). FUD your OS to death while the masses await the "new and improved Windows". The best way to do that is to declare Marin's OS "non-standard", thus implying that Windows 2018 is, or will be, "standard". Then wait until you sue them for copyright or patent infringement. By the time your complaint arrives before a court, you're out of business, and they can pay more lawyers than you can. 2) Sue *you* for patent infringement, over one of their 18,459 software patents (though probably not the one that covers the "use of the colour blue in a screen that warns the user about a fatal condition that caused the operating system to become inoperative"). You'd have no option but to give them your source code, for free, _and_ under NDA, so that no-one else will benefit from it. I sympathise with your argument that the developer ought to have a way to profit from their own work, but unfortunately, I am more and more concerned that if your software is not open source, it doesn't stand a chance against Microsoft. Besides, there's another trend that I am observing. The *users* of software are starting to get the message that the purpose of Open Source is to protect them, the users - not the programmers. As a result, more and more users are demanding access to the source code of whatever software they use. I think that, in the long run, the only business model that will stand a chance in the marketplace will be ACT's: sell services and support, give away the software. Perhaps an intermediate position would be "ransom software" whereby you release your software as closed-source until you've received enough money for it ("enough" being defined by you within a time frame also defined by you, but verified by a third party), at which point you commit to releasing it as Open Source. I've seen a page explaining this somewhere on the Web. -- Ludovic Brenta.