On Sunday 28 January 2007, charles@daphatbell.com wrote:
I'm not questioning the rights of creators to get paid for what they do, my big problem is the way this has come about and the fact that I don't see them going after M$ or any of the bigger corporations. Maybe because M$ and those companies have deeper pockets
Maybe its because M$ has a license. Look, its not that expensive. If you GIVE away your mp3 software you earn no revenue from it, and you can claim that 2% of zero is still zero. Even if you charge for it, companies like M$ can make the claim that mp3 represents .003% of the purchase price of Windows (i.e. just the Media Player portion) and pay a 2% of the miniscule revenues attributable to Media Player. This is what the EU persecution of M$ over the inclusion of Media Player was all about. The issue was NOT that an OS including a media player was somehow anti-competitive (it includes a calculator too - nobody bitches about that in spite of how many patents HP might hold on calculators), but rather that Microsoft was saying it earned no revenue from Media Player, and therefore the Patent holders were lobbying the EU to force its removal so that other non free providers could sell a media player. Yet everybody, especially in Europe was cheering on the EU for its BOLD stand, when it had absolutely nothing to do with competition. It was all fueled by bribes from wanna-be competitors and patent holders. -- _____________________________________ John Andersen -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org