Linux desktop lacks innovation

[Tommy Trussell]

On Nov 15, 2007 5:57 AM, Donn <donn.ingle at gmail.com> wrote:
> > And what is my reaction to all this?
> >
> > I don't care.   I don't care who came up with the idea first. If it's
> > good and I like it, that's all that matters to me.
>
> Sure, that's pragmatic -- but greedy companies will not care. They equate
> every square pixel on the screen with their own income and for
> every "concept" that we find simply ordinary, they have a patent and several
> large new yachts.

Returning to my previous example, people in the graphics industry have
become used to the way Photoshop and all the other VERY EXPENSIVE
Adobe products work. Floating tool palettes with tabs and collapsing
regions are very familiar. Unfortunately for them, Adobe aggressively
protects its interface with patents, so even though it's technically
easy to "skin" something like the Gimp to make it look and work
exactly like Photoshop, it's also not likely Adobe will license that
for free, because they can charge many hundreds of dollars per seat
for their tools now.

You could argue this isn't good for the users, because not many people
can afford to drop a grand on software, but for the duration of those
patents (many lifetimes in software years) Adobe controls the
interface.

The patent system is broken -- software should not be subject to the
same rules because it doesn't make sense. Either the term should be
shorter or the rules should forbid it. BUT there's a lot of money in
the status quo.

> My question is : "When is rich rich enough?" I don't get the ever-spiraling
> income of the super rich. I suppose it's down to stock-holders and economics,
> but if MS where to throw open the doors and GPL every line of their code and
> release all their patents they would *finally* be doing the human race an
> actual favour.

How many people can look at their paycheck and say "I have now earned
too much. I don't deserve this. Now I will eliminate my source of
income and go to work flipping burgers."

It would be very difficult to make a change like this when (at least
here in the US) the continuing strength of "intellectual property"
businesses are one of few sectors keeping the economy going.