today.reuters.com— Microsoft's top lawyer said on Wednesday that the company would take new compliance steps to meet requirements set by the European Commission.
Jan 25, 2006View in Crawl 4
It's too bad a company can be beat into releasing it's proprietary knowledge by some psuedo government. I'm no Randist, and I think the government should have a huge role in business, but this is like the government forcing the Steelers to open their playbook so that other teams can figure out how to defend against them and score points against them.
The usual knee-jerk laissez-faire stuff here.Copyright is a monopoly granted by the state. The state expects something in exchange, like e.g. obey our laws. If you don't like the laws you can buy some legislators who will change them for you.
I agree with ianubis, and to extend on it a bit, I think microsoft SHOULD be allowed to make windows run ONLY Microsoft software if they want. They should be able to make IE the only browser that works with Windows. Its their product, its their choice. A new leader would eventually come up in the OS world that developers would make programs for, and consumers would switch to the new OS so they had more choice.
LeFou said, "software is not property. copying it violates no one's natural rights."LeFou, so I guess that means that if you were a software developer, and you came up with a highly in demand piece of software, and you planned to be "set for retirement". So, you began selling your software. But, you find out that the first person you sold it to, started copying it and selling it to the public at ohhhhhh.i dont know....a quarter of what you sell it for. Or better yet, he just starts giving it to all his friends, and they gave it to all their friends...and so on. Do you think that your rights would have been violated? Would you not feel like your dreams of an early retirement and all of your hard work and sweat that went into creating that piece of software was for squat? Just something to think about, before ya go making assinine statements like you made above again.
Meh, I hate the EU, bunch of idiots they are. MS isn't really releasing their source code, only a small part of it, related to what the issue with servers is. If they released the entire source code of the OS, then that would be something. I agree with those of you who said MS should be able to do what they want with their OS. They made it, their rules. Government should but out of business too.
thanks for responding scottevans. If you disagree with the thing I *actually said, and feel that copying "intellectual property" violates the author's/creator's natural rights, I'd love to hear how.Copyright protection is not a natural right; it is granted by the government, and the metaphor of "property" is applied to creative output, because it is thought that people will not write softare or novels without the incentive produced by these exclusive rights.If you actually want government *completely out of the market for software, revocation of copyrights to source code would be a good starting point. But anti-anti-trusters (often) actually want the benefits of government-granted monopolies but not the drawbacks of regulation.As for how I personally plan to make a living, that's my own business, literally. It's irrelevant.
This is such crap.Nobody wants Microsoft's source code. Anybody who needs it can already get it.The point is that they want documentation on how to interact with Microsoft's protocols and file formats. And they don't want it under some s**t license that restricts what you can and cannot do with the source code you yourself wrote based on this documentation.Nobody want's Microsoft's crusty code in their Linux apps or anything like that. It's just Microsoft trying to bulls**t the EU into avoiding having to document their file formats and networking protocols.It's just proof that it's Microsoft's game all along to get customer's relying on propriatory formats to hold their data so that their customer's can't go to any other vendor in case they get pissed off at MS or anybody with a cheaper and/or better product comes along and they want to use that instead.Same thing everybody has been telling Windows users for years. Your only digging your own grave. It's now nearly impossible for a company that depends on Microsoft's products heavily to ever possibly use anybody else's software with reasonable expenses/results.
7of7Jan 25, 2006
It's too bad a company can be beat into releasing it's proprietary knowledge by some psuedo government. I'm no Randist, and I think the government should have a huge role in business, but this is like the government forcing the Steelers to open their playbook so that other teams can figure out how to defend against them and score points against them.
lefouJan 25, 2006
The usual knee-jerk laissez-faire stuff here.Copyright is a monopoly granted by the state. The state expects something in exchange, like e.g. obey our laws. If you don't like the laws you can buy some legislators who will change them for you.
psyonJan 25, 2006
I agree with ianubis, and to extend on it a bit, I think microsoft SHOULD be allowed to make windows run ONLY Microsoft software if they want. They should be able to make IE the only browser that works with Windows. Its their product, its their choice. A new leader would eventually come up in the OS world that developers would make programs for, and consumers would switch to the new OS so they had more choice.
scottevansJan 25, 2006
LeFou said, "software is not property. copying it violates no one's natural rights."LeFou, so I guess that means that if you were a software developer, and you came up with a highly in demand piece of software, and you planned to be "set for retirement". So, you began selling your software. But, you find out that the first person you sold it to, started copying it and selling it to the public at ohhhhhh.i dont know....a quarter of what you sell it for. Or better yet, he just starts giving it to all his friends, and they gave it to all their friends...and so on. Do you think that your rights would have been violated? Would you not feel like your dreams of an early retirement and all of your hard work and sweat that went into creating that piece of software was for squat? Just something to think about, before ya go making assinine statements like you made above again.
yanks2435Jan 25, 2006
Meh, I hate the EU, bunch of idiots they are. MS isn't really releasing their source code, only a small part of it, related to what the issue with servers is. If they released the entire source code of the OS, then that would be something. I agree with those of you who said MS should be able to do what they want with their OS. They made it, their rules. Government should but out of business too.
lefouJan 25, 2006
thanks for responding scottevans. If you disagree with the thing I *actually said, and feel that copying "intellectual property" violates the author's/creator's natural rights, I'd love to hear how.Copyright protection is not a natural right; it is granted by the government, and the metaphor of "property" is applied to creative output, because it is thought that people will not write softare or novels without the incentive produced by these exclusive rights.If you actually want government *completely out of the market for software, revocation of copyrights to source code would be a good starting point. But anti-anti-trusters (often) actually want the benefits of government-granted monopolies but not the drawbacks of regulation.As for how I personally plan to make a living, that's my own business, literally. It's irrelevant.
dragJan 25, 2006
This is such crap.Nobody wants Microsoft's source code. Anybody who needs it can already get it.The point is that they want documentation on how to interact with Microsoft's protocols and file formats. And they don't want it under some s**t license that restricts what you can and cannot do with the source code you yourself wrote based on this documentation.Nobody want's Microsoft's crusty code in their Linux apps or anything like that. It's just Microsoft trying to bulls**t the EU into avoiding having to document their file formats and networking protocols.It's just proof that it's Microsoft's game all along to get customer's relying on propriatory formats to hold their data so that their customer's can't go to any other vendor in case they get pissed off at MS or anybody with a cheaper and/or better product comes along and they want to use that instead.Same thing everybody has been telling Windows users for years. Your only digging your own grave. It's now nearly impossible for a company that depends on Microsoft's products heavily to ever possibly use anybody else's software with reasonable expenses/results.