On Sun, 2004-12-12 at 16:55, Jan Depner wrote: > On Sun, 2004-12-12 at 09:17, Mark Knecht wrote: > > On Sun, 12 Dec 2004 12:03:40 +0100, Esben Stien <executiv@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > Frank Barknecht <fbar@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > > > > > > > So basically they want to protect their investment in getting > > > > knowledge of how to implement a powerful firewire interface from the > > > > eyes of other hardware manufacturers. > > > > > > A society where you put money higher than cooperating with other > > > people is not a good society, in my opinion. > > > > Socialism - it ain't pretty... > > Really. I was going to point out that that is exactly what Karl Marx > (or was that Groucho) said. You can see how well that worked out. Guys, i'm sorry to say that, but you have no clue what you are talking about. ;) The true meaning of socialism or communism has nothing to do with what happened to the former communist states in europe after WW2. A political system which was first deceitfully and then violently pursued and resulted in an economic environment based upon state monopoly and shared a lot of similarities with monarchies. And it's more similar to monopoly capitalism than you might think. (see TCPA and recent DRM activities, BSA allowing people to denounce others on their website in case they find out that they're using illegal software, intimidating with "beware, you can be the next one, we see what you're doing" campaigns, it's *dangerously* close) What Esben described is not only a typical open source society. It has always been beneficial when large companies joined efforts in creating technology standards. Of course, a standard is not always a result of cooperation. Cooperation isn't what determined the kind of socialism we were used to in former communist countries. There was no real cooperation happening. It's the way the ideas were enforced(mostly) upon people or encouraged(remainder, propaganda). Marek
