Are American high tech workers obsolete?

Erik Price erikprice at mac.com
Thu Aug 15 10:33:38 EDT 2002


On Wednesday, August 14, 2002, at 04:36  PM, Jerry Feldman wrote:

> Open source is a good thing, but there is room for both proprietary and
> open source products. I think one can look at the drug companies for an
> analogy.
> The cost of development of a product is high, and that business needs to
> amortize the cost of R&D associated with that product. However, once 
> that
> is realized, then the drug can become generic.
> Same with a software product. I see that Sun and OpenOffice.org have 
> come
> out with a new licensing agreement that works and that can be used to 
> allow
> the open source community to share sources with proprietary 
> developments.

Tell that to the 26 million people in Africa whose access to generic 
("open source"?) HIV-treating drugs is explicitly barred by the threat 
of sanctions against countries who attempt to provide it.

Sun is being far more charitable than the WTO*, in my opinion.



Erik


* The WTO serves the pharmacorps' interests in this regard.



--
Erik Price

email: erikprice at mac.com
jabber: erikprice at jabber.org




More information about the gnhlug-discuss mailing list