[Lancaster] [Fwd: Re: Twitter]

[Richard Robinson]

On Sat, Feb 21, 2009 at 02:47:55PM +0000, mp wrote:
> 
> The GPL is precisely such a good example - not just for software -,
> because it treats individuals and the collective in a novel manner: the
> configuration between the individual and the collective is very
> different under the GPL from what it is like under exclusive, private
> property rights as they are known in the capitalist economy.


I disagree. The GPL is based entirely on existing copyright law. It's an
amusingly different take on what can be done with private property, but it
depends entirely on the concept that a piece of software _is_ property, such
that its owner gets to say what anyone else can do with it.


> ...
> 
> The suggestion that without Microsoft's questionable business practices
> there would have been no Internet is pure speculation 

It's pure *bullshit*.

Even if the statement were to be modified to mean only the domestic
popular-consumer aspects, they still denied the importance of that for years
after it was a done deal; until a history of several years of exponential
growth forced them to change their minds.

I switched from Windows to Linux in the beginning of '95. At that time, the
M$ OS of the day had no support whatsoever for TCP/IP connectivity. Neither
the GUI layers nor the underlying DOS layer. There was some 3rd-party
support, actively discouraged by Microsoft, who were going to invent
something better, which we should all wait for ... (right up until the
middle of December of that year, iirc).

Demon's original DOS-based software was a very admirable piece of work.
Shame about the documentation, though. And then Trumpet Winsock. ...



> Did you really read this far?

No, I just bit on the fragments above. But I may get back to it ...


-- 
Richard Robinson
"The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes" - S. Lem