IP: Anotherpoint of view on More on With Stock as Bait, Microsoft Lures Elite Professors

[Dave Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu>]

>Date: Wed, 07 Apr 1999 17:16:49 +0000
>From: "Robert J. Berger" <rberger@ibd.com>
>Organization: Internet Bandwidth Development
>
>To: farber@cis.upenn.edu
>
>I agree that most researches want to have impact on the field (though I'm sure they would like to make more than they do as academic researchers!).
>
>But what I found most disturbing is the fact that bright people are giving their time and genius to the Microsoft Monopoly Machine. Its been looking like Microsoft may finally be on the trailing edge of empire right now. But if this intelligencia helps Microsoft to get "the next big thing" (or the patents on lots of important "little things") then they are having a negative impact on the field by allowing Microsoft to gain dominance in the next wave of computing and keeping the field as a whole from blossoming due to the dominance of a mediocre monopoly (see Windows 2000).
>
>One of Microsoft's stated techniques for stopping Open Source (its only real competition now) is to accumulate patents and then use patent law to shutdown Open Source software piece by piece. (see http://www.opensource.org/halloween2.html#quote9)
>-- 
>Robert J. Berger - Internet Bandwidth Development
>14510 Big Basin Way #253  Saratoga, CA 95070 
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