Friday, October 03, 2003

Joe Firmage: An open-source letter | CNET News.com

Joe Firmage: An open-source letter "The downfall of communism was due to state control by totalitarians--an attribute embodied by today’s commercial software industry far more than by the emergent open-source science of information technology.
Public and private organizations around the world are now choosing the fundamental character of information infrastructure likely to serve human civilization for decades to come, possibly for centuries to come. The stakes of this choice reach far beyond the trivialities of the case of SCO vs. Linux. They reach far beyond the market cap of Microsoft. Our choice will inevitably shape the very purpose, freedoms and ethics of the medium through which human beings will communicate, trade, govern, learn and play in the 21st century and beyond."

Maybe even has extraterrestrial significance... More seriously: anyone who doesn't think that Microsoft exemplifies (predatory) capitalism needs a refresher course on capitalism, socialism, and communism. In the meantime, I wonder how many other former Novell executives are polishing their "It wasn't my fault!" insights.

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