|
|
|
| Authored by: sproggit on Wednesday, May 09 2012 @ 03:33 PM EDT |
Sadly, this is not surprising at all, merely inevitable.
There are many
cases in the established software industry that make a mockery of what is now
happening with patents and copyrights.
For example, Bill Gates of
Microsoft has acknowledged that, when he was at High School he went dumpster diving to steal source code written by professional
developers that worked at other companies.
Further, back in the days
when Microsoft was actually competing with the likes of Lotus, Borland, Word
Perfect, Novell, Banyan and others, they would regularly "borrow" functionality
that had been developed by their competitors and put it into Microsoft
products.
The moment their products became dominant in the marketplace,
Microsoft moved to software patents and essentially used that portfolio to
prevent anyone from competing with them. Analogy: once they had climbed up into
the castle, they pulled up the drawbridge to keep everyone else out.
Microsoft are by no means the only example of a company that has done
this, just the most widely known.
It is therefore not remotely
surprising that Oracle would reverse their earlier decision on software patents
- just as soon as quickly as they realised that patents could help them preserve
the near-monopoly they held on database technologies.
Patents are,
after all, suppose to act like a time-limited, government-granted monopoly.
Except, of course, that those companies who get patents are working hard to
ensure that they are far more pervasive and restrictive than the originators of
patent legislation ever envisioned.
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: designerfx on Wednesday, May 09 2012 @ 07:02 PM EDT |
This is exactly how corporations and anyone in power abuses
capitalism:
"it's good for us when we benefit, it needs to be outlawed/not
allowed when others benefit".[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|
|
|
|
|
