[mdlug] Linspire caves in to Microsoft patent threat

[Ingles, Raymond]

> From: Wolfger

> >  If Linux, KDE, et. al. became closed source, they would 
> > immediately lose nearly all of their advantages.
> 
> Uh... No. They might (probably would) lose their advantage in the
> future, but the "immediate" effect to any user is null. Most Linux
> users never even download the source code anymore, so they wouldn't
> even realize the code's be closed.

 (It would take a magic artifact on the order of the One Ring to actually
close the source for all of those, but going with the spirit of the
notion...)

 Sure, when you cut the engine in a plane and it switches from climbing
to descent, the passengers don't necessarily notice immediately. But
that doesn't mean that it's not a significant change.

 The sudden ceasing of bug fixes and other updates would be noticed
in short order. Perhaps you might not pick up on it for as long as a
month, but I'm reasonably sure you'd find out within days when you got
hacked.

 Open source also fosters the ability of companies and individuals to
work together. Support would wither quickly in all kinds of areas, and
proprietary formats for everything would rapidly become the norm. Recall
the fragmentation and near destruction of the Unix market in the 1990s -
the lack of source code affected end users pretty dramatically there.

 Software isn't just useful for the near term, there's a value based on
the expected future use of the data it manipulates. When a closed-source
product is EOLd, the value of the current installations immediately drops.
Closed-sourcing Linux et. al. would drastically decrease their expected
future utility.

 Longer term, you'd see this:

 http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

 Sincerely,

 Ray Ingles                                    (313) 227-2317

 "Physicists have pretty much thrown in the towel on unifying
 gravity with the other elemental forces, so now we have the
 Standard Model, which says that everything works together in
   intricate harmony except gravity, which is on holiday in
   Tasmania and need not concern us further." - John Caroll


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