People worry, "Will I be put in jail in the future?" The answer is yes, look at people who illegally download music off the internet.
What about the torrents of Hollywood movies? Just because many get away with it does not mean it is right.
At one time Red Hat Linux was red hot. People are now very scared of trouble with the law. Microsoft is going after companies that use it. According to Microsoft the UNIX operating system variant Linux violates some of their patents.
In fact, Linux is open source so that it was easy to prove that some of the programmers copied code without permission. Even bugs and "mizpellins" were copied.
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People worry, "Will I be put in jail in the future?" The answer is yes, look at people who illegally download music off the internet. What about the torrents of Hollywood movies? Just because many get away with it does not mean it is right. |
Microsoft is not going to allow the goose that laid the golden eggs to die. When Linux was less than 1% of the market for operating system software they were not worried, but now they see declining sales and they will fight back.
Without deep pockets and mountains of money, Linux is doomed as an operating system. Microsoft will fight in court and prove that they own the patents and stop the sale of Linux products. They will crush the little guys who use free open source software. With their 50 billion dollar war chest they can attack the small vendors and run them out of business.
Typically prices come down while they destroy Linux and then they shoot up when there is no more competition. Microsoft destroyed Netscape Navigator with Internet Explorer, Word Perfect with MS Word, Lotus with Excel, dBASE with Access, and the list goes on.
Expect a lot of empty promises from politicians and then a "sorry but the law is the law." See what the record companies have done.
I predict that we will fondly remember the good old days of open source in the future,
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