EB>> Whatever I think about IP laws, I can't escape the bare fact EB>> that KWord violates quite a few of them.
When _I_ think about IP laws, I can't help thinking it is basically wrong to give people ownership of ideas. This concept have gone way too far. If someone discovered the fact that humans like menues on top of the text and not on the bottom - why he should own this fact? How at all one can own a fact? But leaving that aside - I do not believe Microsoft may make move as stupid as to claim unique ownership on common windows look-n-feel. In the meantime they always did exactly the opposite - promoted the common l&f so that as many applications as possible would look "similiar" on windows. The reason, of course, is simple - to attract developers and users. Now, it would be very weird if any law would allow anyone to have MS-like l&f as long as it runs on MS OS, but made the same code illegal as soon as it uses any other OS to load. Do you know about such a law? EB>> First and foremost, the fact that open source programmers see MS EB>> applications as a model to imitate. This applies for many GUI EB>> applications that we see lately: They smell MS without being MS. EB>> (GNOME & KDE included) Well, Windows XP smells KDE without being KDE. Not that I like wither XP or KDE too much, but I can't help thinking of similiarity :) EB>> Linux and GNU has the vast advantage, that it doesn't have to be EB>> popular to survive, so we can do things the Right way. Why are Yeah, yeah. I know one project that does OS "the right way" for how long? Twenty years? Anybody used that OS? Anybody did something productive on it? Can I use it as my home OS? My workplace OS? Face the reality - to survive and prosper, the project *has* to have strong backup by either money or public - and it better to be both. EB>> And the other sad thing, is that Linux is risking its legitimate EB>> status by offending laws of intellectual property. And for no EB>> reason at all. If anyone is stupid enough to link Linux 'legitimate status', whatever this could be, to the fact that some program looks like some other program - I really could not care less what this dude thinks about Linux - or anything else, for that matter. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] \/ There shall be counsels taken Stanislav Malyshev /\ Stronger than Morgul-spells phone +972-50-624945 /\ JRRT LotR. whois:!SM8333 ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
