> Lee Daniel Crocker <lcrocker@mercury.colossus.net>
>
> >Why is India the bad guy for not adopting the silly western idea
> >of patents?
>
> My emotions tell me your opinion on patents is correct but my mind tells
> me you're wrong. ... [snip] ...so I must reluctantly conclude that
> patents are [a good thing] too. [John Clark]
with our current system of software being given a copyright, the way i understand it is anyone can legally develop a word processor that works exactly like microsloth's with the exception that it cannot read or write ms word compatible documents.
china has been notoriously weak in protecting intellectual property. i understand that the chinese are now taking u.s. software and creating one-offs by changing a few lines of code so that they cannot read files created in the original.
sounds like a great scam, until you hear that every chinese coder wants to become the next birr gates, and consequently makes the software incompatible with anyone elses. china is developing a situation where everyone flees from standards and eschews intellectual property protection. the utter chaos that will result will make them cheerfully hand over a few hundred to birr gates for office xx slothware. spike