[Cumbria] Legal development of free software

[Michael Saunders]

On Fri, 14 Mar 2003, Nick Hill wrote:

> I am concerned that companies such as Microsoft will succeed in
> killing their competition- free and open source software.

Don't be. This was more of a worry in 1998/99, when Linux was just
starting to appear on Microsoft's radar, but now there's far, FAR too
much investment (not just financially) in open source software.

IBM, Red Hat etc. aren't going to sit around and let Microsoft try to
spoil things; equally, Sun, Intel, AMD, Oracle et al. have varying
levels of involvement in open source code and won't be tolerant.

When the world's biggest computer company (and a traditionally very
conservative one) is putting $1 billion into Linux development, it's a
sign that Linux and OSS is here to say. The Internet pretty much runs
on Apache, Sendmail, BIND etc. -- they're not going away.

> There is a real and current danger that free software will,
> effectively, be outlawed by the introduction of extended
> state-sanctioned monopolies.

It'll never be "outlawed". As said, Linux, *BSD, OSS etc. is now way
too important to large companies for anything very serious to happen.

Microsoft may be powerful, but can you imagine such "outlawing"  
actually happening? Somebody telling Amazon, Google, Yahoo! etc. that
they must close business to replace all their servers? Some poor sod
visiting IBM, Sun and others, asking them to halt their millions of
bucks and research and switch to Windows?

Software patents are generally horrid things and Microsoft will no
doubt try to slow the pace of Linux development with them, but IBM,
Sun, Red Hat etc. have a LOT of clout and won't just sit back and
watch a convicted monopolist (with a few supportive individuals) try
to destroy the Free Software world.

Microsoft are struggling to get a hold on all this. They're not evil,
just overly-aggressive and too focused on short-term money-making. The
days of expensive shrink-wrapped boxed software are slowly coming to
an end, and MS realises this -- it's why they're utterly saturating
their Xbox product with money (projected losses of $750m/yr and
growing), in order to get a foothold in a more lucrative market.

Very large and powerful companies are supporting Linux directly, and
many more have a significant investment (time, money and manpower) in
all this free code.

These are good times.

Unless you're SCO, of course.

Mike

-- 
Michael Saunders
www.aster.fsnet.co.uk