Yes, I (personally) oppose patent protection and copyright on software, and barring that, severe time limits, like say, 5 years. You really think an API should be protected from forking or reimplementation for A CENTURY? It's absurd, Oracle agrees with me (see link at bottom)
The entire PC industry was launched because clean room re-implementation of the API of the BIOS broke IBM's stranglehold. Is the world better without WINE? Without game or CPU emulators?
I am philosophically opposed to the idea of API copyrights especially. This is a corporate battle whose collateral damage is going to harm the entire industry.
It's funny how everyone loves forking, until tribalism kicks in, and then people start granting mulligans on philosophy just because of tribal positions on whichever company they don't like. Remember this? http://www.gordoni.com/software-patents/statements/oracle.st...
"Oracle Corporation opposes the patentability of software"
"A balance of fifty years protection for direct copying of code would continue to be provided by copyright law."
Funny how perspective changes if you perform a buyout of a struggling company's assets to use it to shakedown the market.
I was a huge C64/Amiga fan, but I honestly don't think it would have been Atari or Amiga, both companies were horribly managed. And the Mac was just horrifically overpriced for what you got. At the same time Apple was shipping a $2k non-multitasking, B&W, 128k computer with shitty graphics and sound, Commodore was shipping the Amiga 1000, with twice the memory, and a custom chipset that was not equaled until years later by VGA, or to be honest, SVGA, and at half the price of the Mac 128k.
IMHO, the Amiga 1000 was the 'iPhone' of personal computers, ridiculously better than the Mac and PC at its launch date, it was a step-function better than the Mac. But Commodore was a bungling, mismanaged company that flushed a great opportunity down the drain. It's like if you invented the iPhone, but didn't know how to sell it, market it, and get product market fit.
Commodore was vertically integrated like Apple of today, they had a stellar custom chip development team, and had revolutionary chips in the worlds (AAA and Hombre) that would have been like 3dfx, but in 1992, delivering a quantum leap in gfx and single-texturing 3d pipeline well before others.
I'm really bummed the company flushed it down the toilet and "Xerox PARC"'ed itself, by having a winning team of researchers and engineers, but not being able to make a business.
The entire PC industry was launched because clean room re-implementation of the API of the BIOS broke IBM's stranglehold. Is the world better without WINE? Without game or CPU emulators?
I am philosophically opposed to the idea of API copyrights especially. This is a corporate battle whose collateral damage is going to harm the entire industry.
It's funny how everyone loves forking, until tribalism kicks in, and then people start granting mulligans on philosophy just because of tribal positions on whichever company they don't like. Remember this? http://www.gordoni.com/software-patents/statements/oracle.st...
"Oracle Corporation opposes the patentability of software" "A balance of fifty years protection for direct copying of code would continue to be provided by copyright law."
Funny how perspective changes if you perform a buyout of a struggling company's assets to use it to shakedown the market.