[Edu-sig] politics,again

[Arthur]

From: "Laura Creighton" <lac at strakt.com>

> Right now we got a terrific set of ammendments.  Go to www.ffii.org and
> see why I want the current law passed, not failed.

Good news.  Sounds like quite an accomplishment to get things turned around
that fundamenatlly.
>
> YOu've been hanging out in the wrong newsgroups.  Go to www.ffii.org
> and find some there and you will have all of such debate as you could
> ever desire.

More than I can handle, in fact.  I just don't have the basics enough under
my belt to follow it. And then there is the whole layer of EU specific
politics on top of it.

I'll stay on the sidelines, as to the specifics.

But I do think I have a sense of the "market" here.  And would argue that
innovation, and efforts toward innovation, are in fact being most
dramatically impacted by peoples *inability* to protect and lay claim to
their innovative work.  It has been proved time and time again that the
bigger players (read Micosoft)  will lay back, let innovative actors act and
innovative sectors take shape, and - once established - swoop it up - lock,
stock and barrel - after the hard stuff has been done.  By branding it and
giving it a prettier GUI or something This pattern has repeated itself so
often that it seems foolhardy, at this point, to expect it will  be
otherwise.  And smart people don't stay foolhardy.  And go to other things,
or 'join-up', as it were. Ascetics carry on. But many of the capable don't
see writing innovative software as a "calling" - it that sense.

Anything of this addressed in the revised legislation?  Is it addressable?
Is it laws intended to protect us from monopolies that I should be lookingt
toward, rather than patent or copyright laws.   If so, trouble.  The US
government "won" the case against Micosoft?  I wonder what a loss would have
looked like.

Part of this new religion on my part is that I happen to be working in a
little corner of the universe with a piece of business/accounting software
that Microsoft recently brought to market.  And I know enough about this
stuff to understand what a piece of crap it truly is.   They brought it to
mrket by buying a company grown from scratch, by a North Dakota farm boy.
It was pretty decent stuff-  too decent, too high end for the market
Microsoft is targeting  - the Quickbooks/Peachtree market . So they take the
product they bought - and rip some guts out of it so that they wouldn't be
giving away too much for too little.  What results from haphazardly ripping
some guts out of a coherent piece of software?  Obviously, an incoherent
piece of software. An arrogant piece of software.  A piece of arrogant,
crappy software selling - I'm sure - like hotcakes.

I have been radicalized.

And not sure where to go with it.

Art