Suppose my company (i dont work for any, btw :) has spent a million bucks in developing and promoting a technology, would I like it if someone was to develop something which circumvents my security measures and possibly eat into or even trivialize my profits?
This is actually a gray area - while Free Software is about *creating* gray area and not stealing ideas from others, some times it becomes imperative that a proprietary technology is made available to the public(through a Free software ofcourse) when the technology becomes critical for the masses - e.g. making software which reads MSOffice files(Abiword,OOo), or making software which interoperates with MS machines in a file sharing network(Samba).
1. But the general idea of problems of this nature is - that if you dont like the policies of the company who creates this technology in the first place - dont buy it. Nobody is forcing you to do so!
2. On the other hand, people have strong opinions on the very terms under which this technology is given and find it "unfairly" restrictive.
It is a gray area, and a persons opinion varies according to where he prefers drawing a line between these two arguments.
- Sandip
-- Sandip Bhattacharya sandip (at) puroga.com Puroga Technologies Pvt. Ltd. Work: http://www.puroga.com Home: http://www.sandipb.net
GPG: 51A4 6C57 4BC6 8C82 6A65 AE78 B1A1 2280 A129 0FF3
-- Sandip Bhattacharya sandip (at) puroga.com Puroga Technologies Pvt. Ltd. Work: http://www.puroga.com Home: http://www.sandipb.net
GPG: 51A4 6C57 4BC6 8C82 6A65 AE78 B1A1 2280 A129 0FF3
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