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