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
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