On Tue, Jun 12, 2001 at 06:30:39PM -0700, Timothy Bolz wrote:
> I e-mailed my contact at Sun at 6 yesterday telling him the StarOffice disks
> didn't make it. Today he called and apologized. The shipping department
> didn't get it out. I let him know how the meeting went. He will be sending
> them along with two StarOffice boxes for the Demo Day.
>
Do the CDs use the same binary that can be downloaded? If not, how
does it install? I'm still looking for a method that's OpenBSD friendly ...
Maybe I should follow your lead, Tim, and just ask Sun if I can
distribute the rpm I have, but I guess I might need to contact Mandrake
also ... hmmm, would Mandrake be willing to help OpenBSD users use
software that already works on Mandrake?
> He said that Microsoft has banned the use of Linux
> or FreeBSD on computers at Microsoft.
I'll send them some OpenBSD install disks ;)
> He said that it came from their legal department. Wow! The GNU License has
> Microsoft that afraid!
Probably afraid they'll lose their best developers. Probably afraid their
developers will look at some code on these systems, and see that the code
is copyrighted by coders, not corporations. That's the beauty of
OpenSource. Sure, the programs are free, which gets people to use them.
People use them and like them, and they decide they want some tweaking on
how it works. Who better to ask than the original author? So even though
a lot of work is given away for free, the author can still make money off
of it. Now, with the GPL, the new work must also be GPL'ed. It's likely
that people who are willing to pay for new software feature are using the
software to make money. Most likely we're talking about businesses. Enter
the business mindset. Think clear and distinct advantage. Think greed.
Are you going to pay for something, only to have it given away to
your competitors? Now you're thinking like MS want's you to think.
(OK, I'm not THAT good of a writer ;) This is what MS means when it's
FUD department says the GPL is bad for business, that it will stiffle
development of new technologies. But there are numerous advantages to
paying for OpenSource development. First of all, just because something
is GPL, it doesn't mean it has to be on SourceForge or FreshMeat. I
doubt a developer would deliver a paid for product via one of those
websites, most likely you would be the fisrt to recieve the enhanced
version, and you could probably get beta versions, so you could get to
know the software, which likely wouldn't be in wide use by others. You
can still be the "first" so to speak. And once others do have the
software, then there is a larger user base to make bug reports and all
the other advantages that are OpenSource come into play. And who
knows, maybe your competitor will even pay for some enhancement later,
that you end up profitting off of more than they did.
> He said that if one line of code was written with GNU
> code, then that would effect all of their code and all of it would have to
> be GNU.
Of course, a BSD style license puts no such restrictions on derived
works.
Surely MS has a good legal staff. The GPL isn't that complex. Neither is
a BSD style license. Of course, these are the same lawyers who design long
and complex licenses in an attempt to leave no stone unturned. Maybe
they can't comprehend simplicity? Maybe the need to get some of those
lawyers from Apple ;)
I think this is all part of trying to keep their coders from 'deffecting'.
I mean, they don't want ANYONE to believe that something like the GPL even
exists, and they don't want anyone to know that they can use their computers
for free. They don't want this to happen because they would lose money
in software sales. But if they didn't have any software to sell ...
> I think as long as they work at MS, they have to use a MS OS. I don't
> think they are able to control what they use when they go home.
>
It would be funny if someone cracked MS's personel dept, to get the home
addresses of their developers to send them OpenSource OS CDs.
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
