[ILUG] Re: The I.S.A in the Irish Times

[Gareth Eason]

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Rory McCann wrote:
| On Fri, 25 Mar 2005 08:42:27 +0000, Tony Groves <tongro at eircom.net> wrote:
|
|>Rory McCann wrote:
|>
|>>I don't think it's a good idea to put forward OpenOffice, Firefox or
|>>Thunderbird as examples of open source innovation. All are too similar
|>>to exisiting Microsoft products to be called 'innovative'.
|>>
|>><Rory>
|>>
|>The point I was making there was that the entire idea of Open Source is
|>innovative in comparison with mainstream software, notably Microsoft's.
|>And if examples are to be given in a non-technical newspaper, they
|>should be programs that the readership can relate to and actually use
today.

	Erm... while I take your point - I seem to recall that IE was NOT
actually the first webbrowser - and in fact was a more or less direct
copy of another software product... the developers of which were
involved in some small law-suit regarding anti-competitive practices...

	So (whether this supports any point or not) remember that many things
Microsoft make are copies of things developed elsewhere (OSS or otherwise.)

	Some examples given of OSS might be things like:
		- The GIMP
		- Firefox
		- Thunderbird (in fact the entire Mozilla suite)
		- Perl
		- Linux
		- vi / emacs
		- Ardour
		- Star/OpenOffice
		- GAIM
...if any of that helps :-)

	Though I have found an argument to support patenting of stuff (OT /
feeble attempt at comedy warning, etc!) at
http://www.signal2noise.co.uk/~eason/cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi/2005/03/27#PatentingBeingATwat

	Best regards,
	-->Gar


	Best regards,
	-->Gar
[munch...]
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