Microsoft and BIS
Microsoft and BIS
2007-02-25T08:32:00
The rules of ethical competition do not apply to monopolies like MS. An ordinary company producing product XYZ may be beaten by a similar company producing a better product and selling it at a lower cost - but once a company's financial muscle grows to such an extend as MS's, they can easily bend the rules to suit their needs. Patent-free open standards offer a level playing field to everybody - and it is something which MS hates. Read When is a standard not a standard? Activism by organizations like the Free Software Foundation is aimed at creating awareness in the general population about the many threats to a free information society posed by monopolies like MS - its so easy to fool someone who will never realize that he is being tricked - that shouldn't be the case with us. So yes, we need more hackers to write code which fuels the Free Software revolution, we also need more hacker-activists to spread the message of freedom so that the code we write serves its ultimate objective, the creation of a society which values the free sharing of knowledge and ideas.