Michel Bauwens wrote:
interestingly, graham seaman on oekonux just told us he got a bunch of
confidential information, showing how the US govt is punishing firms using
open designs ...
Having looked more at this it turns out it's not particularly confidential,
nor as alarming as I was led to believe. There are two parts to it:
1. A small chip design company released one of the (IMO) most important free
designs - a bus for SoC (Systems on Chip) and subsequently found its
contracts dried up and various other things happened, for which as far as I
know there is no hard evidence as to the cause.
2. (and this is the bulk of the documents, which are mainly describing
publicly available outcomes from court cases) Large electronics companies
work hand in glove with the government and game the patent system to create
oligopolies in a way which is particularly hard on anyone doing open
designs, from the old VME bus to now. This IMO is as surprising as the fact
the Microsoft has an interest in undermining free software where it can.
Sorry for the unwarranted suspense. However, I'm told there is a DVD's
worth of more stuff in the post to me, so there may yet be something more..
Graham
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