[OT] Microsoft filled patent applications for scoped and immutable types

[Nick Sabalausky via Digitalmars-d]

On 8/31/2014 12:57 AM, Era Scarecrow wrote:
> On Sunday, 31 August 2014 at 04:25:11 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>
>> He keeps harping on how MS is being evil, and GPL v3 prevents the evil
>> MS is attempting...but jesus crap he *WILL NOT* spend ONE FUCKING WORD
>> on ***HOW*** the shit any of that supposedly works. We're supposed to
>> just blindly accept all of it just like the good little corporate
>> whores he keeps trying to crusade that we *shouldn't* be. Shit.
>
>   If it's something like being on the news floor where they are talking
> to him, he doesn't have time. The loopholes he is talking about could
> take an hour of talk, not only in legal speak but in references and how
> things connect from law A to law B to law C, and how things actually
> work to the written letter of the law for an individual state (not to
> mention the whole country). They honestly aren't going to give him more
> than 5 minutes of screen time which means quite often for the large
> majority of people you have to greatly simplify it and keep it
> understandable for the general populous.
>

Well, that page was an article written and posted by Stallman, not a TV 
sound bite.

>   The impression i got on the Novell pact: M$ would have acquired
> certain copyright ownership of all the programs that the OS contained.
> This would include programs such as: sort, awk, sed, grep, sh, tar,
> cpio, cp, mv, etc. Now since they have partial ownership, rights of all
> related programs that duplicate their effects fall under M$'s curfew
> (regardless who wrote them); They could start hampering on anyone trying
> to distribute OSes that involve any of these programs required to make
> the OS run, or sue them into the ground for infringing on copyright or
> patents; Thereby either you paid to keep the software somewhat free
> (probably each and every version/subversion) or they would gain total
> monopoly and Windows is the only OS you can get your hands on which you
> pay your usual $100-$200 for.
>
>   I'm not sure how close i hit the bullseye, but i would imagine i'm not
> too far off. And if taken to court, they have the money and the
> influence to win regardless if they are right or wrong.

Yea could be. And again, I don't doubt it. I just wish Stallman would 
have stepped out of evangelist mode long enough to be straightforward 
about things. And not pretend that "GPL incompatible with GPL" somehow 
isn't one hell of a gaping whole in that big 'ol "GPL == 
Freeeedooooom!!!!" assertion.

In a more general sense, I think Stallman/FSF have a very unfortunate 
habit of letting the strict goals and evangelism get in the way of the 
practical realities of actually *attaining* said goals and successfully 
getting the messages across.

Another example of that self-defeat:

The OS distros which staunchly exclude non-open software (codecs, 
drivers, etc). Heck, I'm totally with Stallman that that stuff is 
horrible and we need to work against it.

But if you're saying...

"Here, use our OS, it's more ethical. Oh and BTW it won't let you watch 
your beloved dancing pig Flash animations without putting up a fight. 
(Or even easily connect to the internet at all if you have the wrong 
wireless chipset...You *DO* know the make and model of the chipset your 
motherboard uses for 802.11 don't you? Huh? Whadda mean 'Greek'?? It's 
Engl...oh.)"

If you're doing that, then all you accomplish is hijacking your own cause.

Nobody cares about your/our/his cause, they care about their dancing 
pigs and bowling elves. People will just stick with systems that are 
even LESS open, not more. It just won't work. That's why we have Mint 
and such. To make the transition easy and painless enough that even 
minor, unappreciated reasons like "ethincs" and "freedom" are enough to 
draw them over and hurt the shackleware peddler's bottom line.

And that kinda leads to another example:

I know FSF prefers "free" over the "open" I've been using. But really, 
everybody knows what "open" and "open source" mean, and it's *not* 
confusing and ambiguous. So the whole "free" obsession is just semantic 
pedantry that introduces ambiguity and confusion ("free as in...what, 
which 'free' now? Because Linux...I mean GNU/Linux...is both types, 
right?") and distracts people from the more important matters.