Hi, I will make this as clear as I possibly can. I apologize if I am stating the obvious to a lot of you.
As a user and proponent of Free Software, and also as one who is concerned about the "Digital Divide", I will not discourage people from applying for development grants from corporations like Microsoft. On the other hand, I strongly advise that you look at the terms and conditions of the grant and think about whether those terms and conditions will limit the effectiveness of your work. I have experienced "grants" from corporations where they limit where the research is used, or put limitations on the distribution of the research because it is intertwined with their own code and business base. I have known cases where these issues were effective in never letting that research be used by the people who could have most benefitted from that research because it "did not fit the business interests" of the company doing the funding. All I ask is that you think about your project in light of the "Terms and Conditions" of the research, its distribution, and the market base of the software you use as the base of the research. I will also admit that often there are grants from corporations where there are "no strings attached", and I have not taken the time to look at the current one from Microsoft to see if that is true of this one or not. Even if I had, each person has to make this decision in light of their own project, their own work, and their own constituency. In the end it is your decision, and that decision may be to apply for the grant even if these limiting conditions exist, but you should go in "eyes wide open", and not having blinders due to large amounts of money. Warmest regards, maddog -- Jon "maddog" Hall Executive Director Linux International(R) email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 80 Amherst St. Voice: +1.603.672.4557 Amherst, N.H. 03031-3032 U.S.A. WWW: http://www.li.org Board Member: Uniforum Association, USENIX Association (R)Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in several countries. (R)Linux International is a registered trademark in the USA used pursuant to a license from Linux Mark Institute, authorized licensor of Linus Torvalds, owner of the Linux trademark on a worldwide basis (R)UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the USA and other countries. _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
