Something has been bugging me for a long time now.
I am primarily GNU/Linux user, power user, zealot and advocate. I am also a developer and I developed software for various operating systems ranging from AIX, Solaris, HP-UX and Linux to Windows, software that was commercial and copyrighted and free software that was copylefted and released under GPL license. So I can objectively represent either side of the coin.
What has really irritated me is that there are numerous people that have absolutely no clue what are licenses, what is intellectual property, why is piracy bad and why copyrights can’t just go away, why we can’t have all-you-can-eat-forever-and-ever situation regarding intellectual property.
Read More if you think you are ready to grasp the whole wide idea of all those buzzwords. If you’re not sure or you don’t care about such things, better turn around now. ;)
A little while ago I was writing about Open Source Community, Microsoft, Computer industry in general and why open source is doing good. Today I’ll try to tackle latest development in what looks like a third browser war which is being fought in courts instead in the field – the market.
It wasn’t the first time that European Union tried to swing against Microsoft. First battles were fought more than ten years ago in 1997 and Novell complained even before that in 1993. So, this has been dragging for quite some time now and not so long Microsoft was charged somewhere around US$ 2 billions because of their actions. European Commission (EC) also forced Microsoft in selling two different versions of Windows in EU region – one with Windows Media Player and one without it. Microsoft complied but they put the same price tag on both boxes. The end result was probably some face-palming inside EC, some grinning inside Microsoft and nobody actually buying the stripped down version of Windows.
Now people in EC got smarter and they are trying to outwit Microsoft. They decided that Microsoft should include other browsers in Windows Installation.
Continue reading if you want to know why I think that Microsoft should be sanctioned in some way, but I doubt that this is the correct way.
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