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| Sir Tim Berners-Lee: How the WWW Might Never Have Happened |
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Tuesday, June 15 2004 @ 09:36 PM EDT
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Here's a story for the patent police to ponder. Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web -- although not to hear him tell it -- says that if he had charged royalty fees for his invention, the WWW never would have happened. He won an award today, the Millennium Technology Prize, an award partially subsidized by the government of Finland, for his achievement, and made his remarks in connection with accepting the $1.2 million award:
"'If I had tried to demand fees ... there would be no World Wide Web,' Berners-Lee, 49, said at a ceremony for winning the first Millennium Technology Prize. 'There would be lots of small webs.'" Image a world with no WWW.
He says he took "lots of things that already existed and added a little little bit": "'Building the Web, I didn't do it all myself,' he said. 'The really exciting thing about it is that it was done by lots and lots of people, connected with this tremendous spirit.'
"Berners-Lee indeed took concepts that were well known to engineers since the 1960s, but it was he who saw the value of marrying them.
"Pekka Tarjanne, chairman of the prize committee, said 'no one doubts who the father of the World Wide Web is, except Berners-Lee himself.'" In a SCO-controlled world, it would be illegal to invent what he did, because he worked from knowledge that came before him. And in their world, patent fiefdoms would have been established, and royalties would have been demanded, because that is their MO, and they would have cut off their nose to spite their face in the process, because the power that is the WWW depended on not doing what they think must be done. The WWW would never have happened. I think companies like BayStar need to think deeper thoughts about what they are funding, and companies like Microsoft need to think about what they are building up a patent regime for. They seem to me to be working against the world's best interest when they attack the GPL and Linux. And for those who think that giving things away results in a tanked economy, just think of all the money companies have made and saved using the WWW. If you saw SCO's new offerings today, you'll see that the company is selling web services products, something they couldn't sell had the WWW never been invented or if it had been hobbled by royalty demands. The Information Age, we now call it, or the Digital Age. It's worth pondering that this man, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, along with all those who worked with him and whose ideas he benefitted from, changed the world, nothing smaller than that, and it was done not by greedily grasping for every last drop of money from their "intellectual property", but by giving collaborative creativity and innovation room to flourish by taking a broader and less selfish view, giving room for the thought that some things benefit everyone and so are worth doing regardless of the immediate financial possibilities for just oneself. That is what the award was for: "The prize committee agreed, citing the importance of Berners-Lee's decision never to commercialize or patent his contributions to the Internet technologies he had developed, and recognizing his revolutionary contribution to humanity's ability to communicate." That is what is so wrong about corporate influence. Can they ever take the long view of what is in the interests of humanity? If not, then it's clear someone else must. Companies like SCO don't think such deep thoughts. But the rest of us should. What's good for Microsoft or SCO isn't necessarily what's good for the world or for its economy. There is a picture of the award being presented in the press release. More pictures here. The press release provides some more from his speech: "'We must remember that the web is a long way from revealing its full potential. The extension from human-readable to include also machine-readable information is just one direction of development,' Tim Berners-Lee said in his acceptance speech. Berners-Lee, an Englishman and a graduate of the University of Oxford, is currently working on further development of the web at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He created the WWW, which was first released in 1991, at CERN in Switzerland." Doctor Jaakko Ihamuotila, Chairman of the Board of the Finnish Technology Award Foundation, brought up technology education in Finland:
“'Technology should be a subject in its own right to allow every citizen the opportunity to take a stand on different technologies and to encourage talented young people to enroll in technical education', Ihamuotila suggested.
“'A broader understanding of technology is not an unreasonable suggestion considering the opportunities that new technologies hold and the global challenges which are common to all of humankind, challenges that only technology can help to resolve in an economic way.'” Imagine if Microsoft had invented the World Wide Web instead of Berners-Lee, why don't you? What the world would have lost. Here's something patents in Europe might kill off. A new Knoppix 3/5 LinuxTag 2004 DVD Edition has just been announced. Do we want a world without Knoppix? Here's what the Knoppix home page says: "'Software-Patents' in Europe: The threat prevails
"Soon the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers will again decide about the legalisation and adoption of so-called 'software patents' in Europe, which are already used by large companies in other countries to put competitors out of business. This can lead to the termination of many software projects such as KNOPPIX, at least within Europe, because the holders of the over 30,000 already granted 'software patents' (currently without a legal foundation) can claim exclusive rights and collect license fees for trivial things like 'progress bars', 'mouseclicks on online order forms', 'scrolling within a window' and similar. That way, software developers will have to pay the 'software-patentholders' for using these features, even in their own, completely self-developed applications, which can completely stall the development of innovative software for small and medium companies. Apart from this, the expense for patent inquiries and legal assistance is high, for even trying to find out if the self-developed software is possibly violating 'software-patents', if you want to continue to market your software. Contrary to real patents, 'software-patents' are, in the draft proposed by the commission, monopolization of business ideas and methods, even without any tangible technical implementation. "More about the current major problem at http://swpat.ffii.org/index.en.html." Here is their Software Patents in Europe: A Short Overview page at FFII.
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| Authored by: Darkside on Tuesday, June 15 2004 @ 11:08 PM EDT |
So that PJ can find them.
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| Authored by: Darkside on Tuesday, June 15 2004 @ 11:10 PM EDT |
(NT)
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, June 15 2004 @ 11:15 PM EDT |
Man, good thing for Al Gore. :)
Void[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, June 15 2004 @ 11:16 PM EDT |
Image a world with no WWW.
Imagine a world with no WWW. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, June 15 2004 @ 11:23 PM EDT |
There are four new filings (at least) in the IBM case
178, 179 and two transcripts of conferences that took place last year (10/31 and
11/21).
(1) I have seen 178, and it's not really very interesting
(2) 179 is described on the docket at "Docket Text: Stipulation by SCO Grp
re: briefing for pending motions"
I am little intrigued by 179, as SCO has already had two extensions (151 and 161
- 161 is 2 weeks by itself) for their reply in support of their motion (144) to
dismiss or stay IBM's 10th counterclaim
(3)+(4) The attorney cibferebces of 10/31 and 11/21 could be interesting too
Any chance we might see them any time soon?
P.S.
www.sco.com/ibmlawsuit
Look at 2nd entry under March 29th. This appears to be the notice of deposition
IBM served on SCO regarding a patent desposition on SCO. Enjoy. This one
doesn't appear on the docket BTW for obvious reasons.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: AJWM on Tuesday, June 15 2004 @ 11:32 PM EDT |
Berners-Lee may have "invented" the web, but there was plenty of prior
art for many aspects of it. (Gopher, Ted Nelson's various hypertext experiments
(Xanadu), some other online systems going back to the 80s and earlier (I was
involved in some of this).
With all that prior art, Berners-Lee could never have gotten a patent.
Oh... wait...
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, June 15 2004 @ 11:43 PM EDT |
No person can truly extract even a fraction of their economic value that they
contribute to the greater economy. The question should be: Can market
structures be established to enable everyone give more of their value to the
economy. This is allowing everyone putting their two cents in. This is the
value of freedom.[ Reply to This | # ]
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- I beg to differ. - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 16 2004 @ 04:13 AM EDT
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| Authored by: tredman on Tuesday, June 15 2004 @ 11:45 PM EDT |
Imagine if Microsoft had invented the World Wide Web instead of
Berners-Lee, why don't you? What the world would have lost. I
can imagine it, though it wasn't invented by Microsoft, but AOL and, before
that, Compuserve. Besides, in the true spirit of things, the web would
have probably sprung up in any event because of people wanting to find a free
alternative. Oh, wait a minute, that happened, too. They were called
BBS's. Tim [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: kawabago on Tuesday, June 15 2004 @ 11:46 PM EDT |
They bought or stole it. Anything they couldn't buy they locked out of the
market. Far from inventing, Microsoft has routinely held back innovation to
protect it's own interests.
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, June 15 2004 @ 11:48 PM EDT |
"Imagine if Microsoft had invented the World Wide Web instead of
Berners-Lee, why don't you? What the world would have lost."
They're still trying to take it over with all their proprietary formats and are
being somewhat successful at it. That might be better than inventing it as far
as M$ is concerned. If we don't keep pushing open standards they'll likely
succeed. Don't give up the fight![ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 16 2004 @ 12:09 AM EDT |
IMO the double click and long clicks are more meritorius inventions than the
WWW. Has to be - otherwise what would explain why MS is soooo successful
compared to the inventor of www (or al gore ;})[ Reply to This | # ]
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- IMO - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 16 2004 @ 12:24 AM EDT
- IMO - Authored by: PJ on Wednesday, June 16 2004 @ 12:46 AM EDT
- IMO - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 16 2004 @ 01:07 AM EDT
- IMO - Authored by: brian on Wednesday, June 16 2004 @ 04:46 AM EDT
- IMO - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 16 2004 @ 04:54 AM EDT
- IMO - Authored by: archonix on Wednesday, June 16 2004 @ 06:08 AM EDT
- IMO - Authored by: Upholder on Wednesday, June 16 2004 @ 10:43 AM EDT
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| Authored by: bobn on Wednesday, June 16 2004 @ 12:21 AM EDT |
| Imagine if Microsoft had invented the World Wide Web instead of Berners-Lee,
why don't you? What the world would have lost.
There's plenty to fear
from MS, but pre-emptive "invention" isn't one of them. Cotrary to all their
lies, there is little or no invention being done at MS. ---
IRC:
irc://irc.fdfnet.net/groklaw
the groklaw channels in IRC are not affiliated with, and not endorsed by,
either GrokLaw.net or PJ. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 16 2004 @ 12:36 AM EDT |
new technology. Linux will probably not topple Micro$oft. At least not by
itself. At best it will keep a total lock with absolute price control and
feature shrink from happening.
When we get the supercalc for linux or the gui (or game) that everyone must
have. Then M$ will collapse like a house of cards. If that killer app can be
blocked and killed in the cradle, M$ will remain dominant, forever.
This is not a troll. Being as good as (or just a bit better) than M$ will not
be a win. M$ has proved that.
The stakes for software patents are VERY high.
-- Alma J. Wetzker[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: davcefai on Wednesday, June 16 2004 @ 12:58 AM EDT |
| Imagine if Microsoft had invented the World Wide Web instead of Berners-Lee,
why don't you?
Easy! We would need to reboot the planet several times a
day!
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 16 2004 @ 01:08 AM EDT |
Remeber Compuserve, AOL (pre-Internet), GEnie, Prodigy, and the other big
players in the 1980s?
Remember Fido and the other popular BBS networks? Remember the
"stand-alone" BBSs and information services, some of which were free
and others pay?
Remember X.25 pads?
And we can't forget UUCP!
Imagine having to dial into one phone number and use one set of software to
contact 10% of what is now the web, and another phone # and stack for another
30%, and another phone # and stack for .... and so on. Imagine the cost to
businesses. Ugh. It's enough to make one yearn for snail-mail and fax
machines.
-David Richardson, davidwr.geo AT yahoo.com
formerly (as in late 1980s):
Fido: "David Richardson" at 1:130/13
...!ames!killer!davidr (I think - it's been sooooo long)[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 16 2004 @ 01:10 AM EDT |
Ever since Adam Smith it has been known that millions of individuals each
motivated by self interest can build an economy from the bottom up which is much
more efficient that could be ever be designed working from the top down.
So I see nothing wrong with corporations being greedy. If the rules of the game
are properly designed this greed can in fact be a tremendous positive force. The
problem arises when the `game' is badly designed so that greed is channeled in
harmful directions. In particular the big players should NEVER be allowed to
dictate the rules of the game. US politicians need to be reminded of this fact.
Currently the `rules' of copyright and patent are very badly designed indeed
creating artificial monopolies protected from true competition which would not
exist in a proper free market. These dangerously disrupt the economy so that it
functions at far below optimum efficiency.
In short the problem is not the `freedom' in the `free market'. It is the lack
of freedom created by excessive and poorly conceived IP law which monopolists
exploit in an effort to drive free competition from the market. `Free software'
and `free markets' should not be portrayed as enemies. Both are on the side of
freedom - natural allies. The enemy of both free markets and free software are
the monopolists who seek to control the rules of the game to restrict the
freedom of others to escape from their monopoly control.
Sometimes people forget that IP law is by definition a restraint on the freedom
of the market. Supposedly there is some benefit, some flaw in the unconstrained
behaviour of the market which which these laws are intended to correct. However
at present the harm caused by these restrictions on competition and free trade
clearly outweigh any benefits. Hence the economy would probably function much
more efficiently if patents were simply abolished and copyrights were, if not
abolished, then at least massively curtailed. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: ile on Wednesday, June 16 2004 @ 01:57 AM EDT |
If I may be allowed to root for my home team, I'd like to
remind you that the inception and first implementation of
HTML was in CERN; that is, in a basic science institution,
and for the purpose of furthering collaborative work in
basic science.
And, reciprocally, the amount of time we save in basic
time by being able to use Linux and similar FLOSS is huge.
We are much closer to GRID distributed computing
(absolutely necessary for particle physics in the
foreseeable future) thanks to FLOSS, for instance.
The only propietary program I have not yet abandoned for a
superior FLOSS alternative is Mathematica. Powerful as
they are, neither XMaxima nor Scilab meet my current needs
with so much ease... (and I could not for the life of me
code anything for those two programs, unfortunately, an
itch not to be scratched).
However, basic science is also being drafted, kicking and
screaming, into producing "economic value" through patents
and restrictions. An interesting fight, indeed :-( [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 16 2004 @ 02:04 AM EDT |
Some suggestions I've heard on patent and copyright reform, short of getting rid
of them altogether, is to have mandatory licensing, like radio stations do with
songs.
If I play your song on the air, you can't stop me. I do have to pay you a fixed
fee, based on things like my audience size.
If I cover your song, or use your words in a medley, I owe you fixed,
predictable royalties.
I've heard patent proposals along the lines of
"mandatory licensing, with a fee not to exceed a fixed, small percentage of
the product cost for all patents combined."
Of course, this doesn't make patent/copyright-holders very happy if you are
giving away the product for free - X% of $0 is still $0 no matter how high X
is.
Another reason greedy IP-holding corporations, particularly companies whose only
business is to "hold" patents, won't ever agree to this:
It's too easy for a commercial company to stiff patent-holders, by selling
software that doesn't infringe on others's IP at a steep profit, and selling
infringing "add-ons" for next to nothing or giving them away. Imagine
if FAT32 were (validly) patented - a digital-camera company could sell their
camera with plain-old-FAT, and "sell" a flash-rom-upgrade that
contained the FAT32 code for $0.01, and turn over a portion of that revenue to
MS. MS would not be amused.
Anyhow, the patent and copyright systems do need reform, but as they say,
"the devil is in the details."
For starters, if a court determines that a patent or copyright impedes "the
useful arts" rather than promoting it (or even having a neutral effect on
it), the patent or copyright should be revoked. After all, patents EXIST
because the founding fathers believed that they "promoted the useful
arts."
-David Richardson, davidwr.geo@yahoo.com
PS: Under current copyright laws, is a baby's genetic makeup copyrighted by his
or her parents?[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 16 2004 @ 02:19 AM EDT |
As seen on slashdot.org:
From http://notabug.com/kahle/ :
----cut here------
'Kahle v. Ashcroft is a lawsuit that challenges changes to U.S. copyright law
that have created a large class of "orphan works." Orphan works are
books, films, music, and other creative works which are out of print and no
longer commercially available, but which are still regulated by copyright.
...
To win the lawsuit, we need your help. We need more examples of people being
burdened by these copyright-related barriers to the use of orphan works.'
----cut here------
Basically, if you've been unable to legally copy something because you were
UNABLE to ask permission, these people want your help.
They also want your help if the copyright holder said "NO" but I think
that's a lost cause - Disney, for example, does NOT want copies of children's
movies it re-issues every generation to be re-copied, even if a fee is paid.
It's part of the "cachet" of their movie portfolio that the
availability is, in theory, finite and smaller than demand.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 16 2004 @ 04:30 AM EDT |
| http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3798393.stm [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: GJ on Wednesday, June 16 2004 @ 05:13 AM EDT |
| http:/
/www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/16/uk_firm_patents_downloads/
This could be
a nuisance. How can a company just patent something people have been doing for
years ? [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 16 2004 @ 06:38 AM EDT |
I think most people tend to forget the basics when discussing
these issues. May be they get too emotional, or may be they
don't follow their reasonings to the end.
First, let's consider SCO and Microsoft for example. The poor
guys (and I *do* mean it) can't do otherwise. They aren't
allowed at all indeed. Just like almost every other company
in the current system they belong to shareholders, most of them
anonymous people who don't even know what they are investing
on. All they care about is that they put their lifetime
savings somewhere and they want increasing benefits from
them every day. Many don't know where their money is being
invested at, that's for brokers and analysts to decide, they
just want benefits off their savings.
That's people like the guy next door. Or may be yourself.
Now, what are executives to do? They know they are going to
be measured by each quarter benefits, not by long term
investments or profitability. Actually not even so. Big
investors will be more interested in quick stock
fluctuations happening in a few days or even during the
day than on quarterly reports.
And then imagine that you are bing paid big bucks for yielding
benefits. The owners of the company make no questions, and
don't care how you do it. They just want ever more money...
What are you to do? If you can get it done ethically, you
do, but what if your company is going down the drain (as SCO
was one year ago)? What if you have the global monopoly and
there is no more space left to grow (like Microsoft)? How do you manage to
increase profit for those hungry, greedy,
anonymous investors? Oh, yeah, you may be innovative... but
the average John Doe is only average imaginative, and thus
can not compete. The bigger a company is, the more average
people it has. The more inertia against innovation...
And now consider this: do you have any stock options? A life
insurance? Any investment? A retirement plan? A bank account? All those and many
more work by speculating in the
stock market. When was the last time you asked how your
money was being invested? And when was it the last time you
asked about invested companies practices? Have you ever
changed your investments after discovering that the brokers
used were investing in dubious or non-ethical companies?
For all you know, you may be an investor in Microsoft or SCO
and don't even care for it. So, why complain?
To me it's absurd to, on the one hand, complain on business
practices of many companies while, on the other hand, you
are sending them the opposite message (hey guys, I don't
care what you do, I just want benefits) by not caring
about how your money is being used by banks, insurance
companies, brokers, retirement plans, etc...
Before complaining about SCO, MS, Sun, etc... we should look
at ourselves and what we are doing to our own world. How
each and every of us loves to get magic benefits in the
oblivion of how the magic happens. And how we exact from
the magicians ever more profits every day.
> I think companies like BayStar need to think deeper
> thoughts about what they are funding, and companies like
> Microsoft need to think about what they are building up a
> patent regime for. They seem to me to be working against
> the world's best interest when they attack the GPL and
> Linux.
There you have it. They do to survive yet another qarter
giving you benefits.
C'mon. Put yourself in their shoes: would yo go to those
great extents of machiavellic and complex moves if you
could as well keep your job (and that of several thousand
employees) in a more relaxed form? Wouldn't you play with
your kids rather than skin competitors? Relax in good
company rather than endure sleepless nights worrying about
how to increase benefits?
So, don't blame it on the messenger (the companies), but on
the anonymous investors behind them (and that's probably
you and me).[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 16 2004 @ 08:23 AM EDT |
Such required patents would let FLOSS develop, but it would kill off Red Hat,
IBM, Novell, ec. using it. 1000 patents each getting not more than 1% of
selling price leave very little room for any commercial operation at all. It is
cheaper to give it away.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: ironring58 on Wednesday, June 16 2004 @ 08:34 AM EDT |
| As I understand it copyrights currently last for the life of the author plus 75
years or if created as "a work for hire" they last for 95 years.
How can
this be?
The US Constitution, Article 1, Section 8 gives
The
Congress shall have Power To …
To promote the Progress of Science and useful
Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right
to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
I think the key
words here are
limited Time
.
In what sense is life plus 95
years "limited Time?"
The constitution begins with "We the people," so I can
only conclude that proper interpretation of time would include some sense of a
persons lifetime. Using this interpretation
of "limited Time" shouldn't the
duration be less than a persons lifetime? Perhaps not the authors lifetime after
he writes it, but at least less than the average citizens life
expectancy.
This would seem to be precisely what the Copyright Act of 1790
enacted. The duration was 28 years or more than half of the life expectancy at
this time.
Has anyone ever argued the current limit unconstitutional in this
"limited Time" sense? [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: wvhillbilly on Wednesday, June 16 2004 @ 10:22 AM EDT |
required reading for every corporate executive worldwide. It is such a profound
example of the difference between the mindset of cooperation, where all share
and work together to make a better product, a better Worldwide Web, a better
world, and the mindset of corporate greed which says, "That's mine, you
can't have it! And if you use it I'll sue you!" And so they expend a
major part of the resources and energy they could be using to build a better
product, trying to destroy their competition and/or defending themselves from
others trying to destroy them. And all the lawyers get filthy rich while the
rest of us are all the poorer.
As I've said before, greed always has its payback. It may be long in coming,
but when it does come it will be devastating.
---
What goes around comes around, and it grows as it goes.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: edumarest on Wednesday, June 16 2004 @ 10:32 AM EDT |
When does greed cross the line into theft? I am currently researching for PJ all
of the lawsuits that have been filed against Microsoft. There have been more
than one.
For some interesting reading go to
http://www.lannigan.org/msft.htm
and download Bill's prospectus when MS went public.
From that site:
"The Microsoft prospectus was not without controversy. The IRS was
threatening to charge Microsoft a $30,000,000 personal holding company (PHC)tax.
(PHC tax is intended to prevent individuals from setting up a corporation simply
to avoid taxes.) Another more interesting threat was a lawsuit by Seattle
Computer Products (this was the company that Microsoft bought DOS from, for
$50,000)."
---
...if you cannot measure it then you cannot troubleshoot it, you can only
guess...
SuSE 9.0 on hp pavilion ze 4560us[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 16 2004 @ 12:00 PM EDT |
to me how in the world somebody other than the owner is able to patent a
sequence of processor instructions?
To me it apears that there is only
1 party is entitled to patent any instruction on it's processor, that is the
owner of the instructions, thus a party like Intel or Motorola or IBM.
Not some
person that had put a certain, often unavoidable, sequence of processor
instructions to make the processor do something.
I advice corperations
like Intel, Motorola and other chip sellers to do more to
protect their property against the corporate hyjacking that is going on
today.
The processor instruction and thus also their sequence is the chip
makers' property and nobody elses.
And for them to make money
is to keep the instructions and sequences of instructions open
for the world to use.
In my opinion all patents on
processor instructions from other than the owner of these instructions are
illegal.
Why is this so unclear in real life law while it is clear in
principle?
IANAL but not stupid either, but still things like this bug
me.
Bas Burger.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: pmccombs on Wednesday, June 16 2004 @ 12:33 PM EDT |
This month's Inside Risks column, by Peter Neumann, has the following
relevant insight:
Governments are beseiged by intense
shortsighted lobbying by special interests, while research funding has
increasingly focused on short-term returns, to the detriment of the
future.
There is also an article by Pamela Samuelson (Law Prof.
at Berkeley) on "Why Reform the U.S. Patent System?" This article brings up
three currently proposed reforms that we should all consider and support. Good
reading.
Companies, unable to compete on the merits of their products, turn
to legislation in order to pass their business plans into law. In America, we
are increasingly outsourcing all of our labor and tangible skills to cheaper
markets, and what are we left with? The nebulous cloud of intellectual
"property" from which we must increasingly support our economy. So, in order to
make profits right now, we must destroy future potential by limiting what
creative people can learn, think, and innovate until the businesses who have any
stake in those ideas (and tenuously related ideas) have been paid their
due.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: grouch on Wednesday, June 16 2004 @ 12:50 PM EDT |
Doctor Jaakko Ihamuotila, Chairman of the Board of the
Finnish Technology Award Foundation, brought up technology education in
Finland:
“'Technology should be a subject in its own right to
allow every citizen the opportunity to take a stand on different technologies
and to encourage talented young people to enroll in technical education',
Ihamuotila suggested.
“'A broader understanding of technology is not
an unreasonable suggestion considering the opportunities that new technologies
hold and the global challenges which are common to all of humankind, challenges
that only technology can help to resolve in an economic
way.'”
Using
licensing deals that discourage
even trying non-Microsoft products,
a
slush fund
to make
certain they can undercut Linux service providers' prices, along with the FUD
and lobbying you read about almost daily, Microsoft has taken over many schools
and universities. Why is this bad? Read the Microsoft EULA and imagine trying to
teach students about computing. You are limited to teaching how to use the menus
of Microsoft products. You, as teacher, will be training mouse-clicking
consumers of Microsoft products for the future.
To quote
myself:
Students should, at least, be given the opportunity to see how their
new tools work. They should be given the opportunity to examine the inner
workings of software. They should be given the opportunity to extend the
functions of their tools, where they see or imagine possibilities. They
should not be held back by locking the toolbox of the Information Age and
told they must not peer inside, must not try to discover how it works, must not
share their tools with others, must not use their tools without paying proper
tribute to the software overlords, under penalty and punishment of
law.
Free some school today. Give them a Linux distribution
and some of your time.
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| Authored by: Michael57 on Wednesday, June 16 2004 @ 01:38 PM EDT |
You referred to this man as having done a great deed (which is absolutely
right). But you referred to SCO and Microsoft as being bad because they are
corporations.
I object to this definition. These corporations are made of humans as well. They
started out to contribute something and earn a living with it. There is nothing
wrong with that. The way those companies intentions grew towards greed and bad
ideas, is a grievance for us all. Nevertheless this has nothing to do with being
a company or with being a human being.
For the good and for the bad - it is the people that are responsible for both
results. Naturally I prefer the good people![ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: mto on Wednesday, June 16 2004 @ 03:36 PM EDT |
It's worth pondering that this man, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, along with
all those who worked with him and whose ideas he benefitted from, changed the
world, nothing smaller than that, and it was done not by greedily grasping for
every last drop of money from their "intellectual property", but by giving
collaborative creativity and innovation room to flourish by taking a broader and
less selfish view, giving room for the thought that some things benefit everyone
and so are worth doing regardless of the immediate financial possibilities for
just oneself
Personally, after reading this single sentence, I'm
left wondering why he hasn't been awarded a Nobel peace prize.
Surely anyone
who makes it possible for people to communicate and collaborate to such an
extent worldwide deserves a Nobel peace prize, no? I wish I could figure out how
to just suggest him as a possible candidate to the Nobel comittee.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 16 2004 @ 08:47 PM EDT |
Thank you for this. You've been telling us over and over again in various ways
about how much we need human kindness, but this article really crystallized it
for me.
And I love how you brought in SCO's new offerings and placed them in their
proper context!
Allan[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, June 17 2004 @ 05:26 PM EDT |
detailed account of the Al Gore "invention of the internet" and
surrounding issues:
http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue5_10/wiggins/[ Reply to This | # ]
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