16 May
2000
16 May
'00
8:45 p.m.
On Tue, May 16, 2000 at 11:20:48PM -0000, Eric Smith wrote:
Some cite free software as a force to prevent this
kind of madness. Right
now we can run both free operating systems and commercial operating systems
on the same inexpensive commodity hardware (with the exception of certain
peripheral devices whose manufacturers won't release hardware specifications).
But eventually we might have a situation where commodity hardware can only
run officially sanctioned operating systems, and hardware that is capable
of running free software can't run the official stuff.
I think in America at least there will always be enough individualists
to say "over my dead body," and probably always competitors in the
hardware space too. Even Intel has never had a real monopoly; and lately
my perception is it's got less market share than it used to. And the free
software tends to be more portable. So if Intel were to decide to cater
to the "lockdown" market then maybe AMD would be selling more processors
to the rest of us. Fortunately Intel's attitude towards free software is
not that bad at the moment. And even if they try to lock things down
the efforts of the hackers to find workarounds can't be underestimated.
I think that in the long run the majority usually gets its way; and
everyone knows it's better to own than to rent if one can afford it.
--
_______ Shawn T. Rutledge / KB7PWD ecloud(a)bigfoot.com
(_ | |_) http://www.bigfoot.com/~ecloud kb7pwd(a)kb7pwd.ampr.org
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