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| Author: |
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Doc Searls |
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| Posted: |
7/3/2001; 12:26:12 PM |
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| Msg #: |
816 (top msg in thread) |
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815/817 |
| Reads: |
5471 |
Great blogs mind alike 
| | So does Brian here at Orb Designs Graffiti. Kind words, too. Thanks, Brian. By the way, Brian and his partner Tom have co-authored a Linux book you can start reading online here. Or with the story behind the book, which is here. |
Fool magnet
| | Gotta buncha visits today off this post on the Motley Fool board. |
So what happens when a student says the university campanile looks like a dildo?
Maybe the problem is that too many companies are motherless sons-of-nothings who were never told they were loved when they were little baby start-ups
| | Offering further proof that marketing is usually an exercize in zero-box-office narcisism: cosmetics for an audience of one (but an appreciative one) |
No person, nor any other entity, shall infringe on the company's right to act like a hard on
| | Eric Norlin clues us about the offense taken by Invesco over reference by Denver Post sports columnist Woody Paige to Invesco's eponymous new stadium as "The Diaphram." Thus speaks the Invesco legal orifice: "Through this article, The Denver Post and Mr. Paige have impugned the reputation, character and values of Invesco Funds Group and its 850 employees." |
| | Guess "Mile High" wasn't high enough. |
Brave new word: Infectual
| | The gravamen of Microsoft's argument against the GPL is that it is "viral"; that it can somewhow infect other peoples' software, effectively nullifying their intellectual-property rights and removing their ability to profit from their work. |
| | This charge is full of logical and factual errors. It confuses three different issues: mere use of software, aggregation of software, and derivation of software. The best possible ilustration of its falsity and fundamental hypocrisy is that Microsoft has been shipping GPLed software aggregated with its Interix (aka OpenNT) product for years. Because the Interix software is not a derivative work of the GPLed code they ship with it, not a single line of Microsoft code has ever been "infected" by the allegedly "viral" GPL. |
| | But the most interesting irony here comes from considering the terms of Microsoft's so-called "shared source" program. Microsoft assures us that its shared-source program will be deliberately constructed so that Microsoft retains all intellectual-property rights in the code it allows developers to see. |
| | What does this mean? Well...suppose you are a developer. You register with Microsoft to get access to "shared source", or you work at a development shop that registers (giving you presumptive access to Microsoft's source code). |
| | Congratulations. Your brain is now infected with the "I have seen shared source" virus. Are you prepared to bet your career, or your company's existence, that Microsoft will never sue if you write code that (a) behaviorally resembles a Microsoft product, (b) competes with a Microsoft product, or (c) clashes with the color of Bill Gates's underwear this week? |
| | Meanwhile, there's a front page story in yesterday's Wall Street Journal about how Kodak "felt double-crossed" by Microsoft when it discovered that the two companies' collaboration was something less intimate than Kodak had thought: |
| | When Kodak cameras were plugged into a PC loaded with Kodak software, it was Microsoft's own photo software that popped up -- not Kodak's. Camera customers would have to go through a cumbersome process to get Kodak's software to pop up every time, and most would probably just use Microsoft's. |
| | More troubling, the Kodak team found that the new program steered orders for picture prints to companies that would have to pay to be listed in Windows, and that these companies also would be asked to pay Microsoft a fee on every photo sent through Windows. |
| | Kodak had been working with Microsoft and other companies on a new photo-transfer standard that would "let Windows to recognize when a camera was plugged in." Now Kodak felt that the standard was being used by Microsoft to favor its own camera software, which would be embedded in the Windows XP. |
| | "We were being frozen out," a Kodak VP said. "Consumers were effectively being denied a choice of which photo software they could use. More important, they should be able to send photos to any Internet printing service they choose -- without paying a tax to Microsoft." |
| | Let's pause to wonder many former Microsoft partners would, if you poured enough booze into them, gather around a piano for a chorus of "You were only fucking while I was making love"? Just wondering. |
| | Anway, here's my question: Were Kodak and the other industry partners working with any OS vendor other than Microsoft? I dunno. (If some of you do, please tell me.) That phrase — "let Windows recognize when a camera was plugged in" — suggests that the answer is no. |
| | Next question: How many industry fuckers complain about Microsoft's unfair advantages after "partnering" to create software that runs only on Microsoft operating systems? |
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