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BLOG@IP::JURPatent Attorney Axel H Horns' Blog on Intellectual Property Law.
Monday, March 06, 2006Mr. Larry Ellison: Linux and Other Open Source Projects Has Depended Heavily on the Support and Investment of Major IT Companies. LinuxWorld reports that according to Oracle Chief Executive Officer Mr. Larry Ellison the success of Linux and other open source projects has depended heavily on the support and investment of major IT companies:"[...] 'Open source becomes successful when major industrial corporations invest heavily in that open source project,' Ellison said at a Tokyo news conference. 'Every open source product that has become tremendously successful became successful because of huge dollar investments from commercial IT operations like IBM and Intel and Oracle and others,' he said. [...]Perhaps Mr. Stallman should take notice accordingly. In fact, over the past twenty years FROSS has changed its nature from a more or less private spare time activity of individual programmers / developers to a commercial business model. This puts fierce anti-patent campaigning of some FROSS people into a different perspective. It would be of some importance for the pro-patent side in the various disputes on the IP system as it stands today to recognise that not all commercial entities are in favour of the patent system as well as that not all relevant FROSS people are born adversaries of the patent system. The reality appears to be much more complex. The central concept might well be that of the "business model": Some companies have developed business models which they see endangered by patents. Others with different business models have embraced the patent system or at least have learnt to live with it. There surely is some grey scale between both poles. Perhaps the patent system favours some sorts of business models while discriminating against others. Whether you like it or not is, of course, a political question. But gurus with an ideological attitude should not be considered to resemble authorities. Technorati Tags: Patents
Your statements are so broad it's hard to disagree :P. Out of curiosity, what do you mean by FROSS? Is it an intentional variant of the more common term FLOSS?
Ah, er... Well, I had thought that it would be obvious: "FROSS" = "FRee / Open Source Software". Ok, for the future I shall consider to switch over to "FLOSS" ...
Oh, FROSS is basically fine, and I guess the meaning is obvious, but I just wondered if you had any reason to take out the L (which stands for 'libre' and is supposed to clarify that the point of FLOSS is not so much that it is 'gratis', but rather that it guarantees some 'freedoms' (i.e. freedom to modify, distribute, etc)). Didn't mean to be a language purist, sorry :)
I'm absolutely aware of Mr. Stallman's distinction between "Free [Beer]" and "Libre" but this was not what I wanted to counteract by using "FROSS". It appears to me as if I had picked up "FROSS" somewhere years ago, not taking notice that the mainstream now goes with "FLOSS" or so ...  Post a Comment
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