Would you like to buy your software from the monopoly for the price the monopoly can claim? Would you be satisfied with software quality of products that have no competition? Are you happy to pay the TCO of inferior software?
Without the option of having small software companies (and professionals writing open code like me), prices could go sky-high, and quality could go even lower than now.
This is what the lobbers wish the European Council to force.
Software and algorithm patentability will kill European software industry, if accepted into legistlation. There are only two players in this game that would win due to unlimited patentability: patent lawyers and international big software companies.
Why should you take my word for real?
About 25 years ago I shared the dream about a real personal computer
with my pals; so did IBM. Only we were pushing towards real
computers with real operating system, which we now do have.
About 20 years back I had the fantasy of having continuous
connection to Internet, even a slow one. Now, some 10 years after
Microsoft joined my thinking about Internet, most of us do have
the connection.
About 18 years ago I started
telling people 'landline telephone will die, phone becomes a
personal tool'. This has already happened, at least here in Finland.
Some 12 years ago I
started telling 'tape backups will be replaced by (IDE) disks'.
This has been happening for some years now.
Now I'm telling you 'European
software business is turning into reselling and representing
software from a few international companies, since no-one
can sell software from European (SME) makers due to patent problems'.
Are you willing to see if this is true in three years?
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"Selling the patent license to Microsoft is kinda cute, Microsoft
probably didn't have to pay too much and there is probably some
piece of SCO technology somewhere that would allow a claim to be
made they infringed. SCO could not make the claim because Microsoft
can say the same of them. If however SCO is liquidated the patents
could be bought by a private patent-extortion outfit."
Zeinfeld in SlashDot about Microsoft licensing SCO UNIX after SCO claiming IBM is infringing SCO's immaterial rights. |