Re: [gnome-db] OleDB

[Danilo Schoeneberg <dj starfire-programming net>]

On Monday 12 May 2003 18:46, C.J. Collier wrote:
> On Mon, 2003-05-12 at 09:38, Jean-Michel POURE wrote:
> > Le Lundi 12 Mai 2003 18:13, Rodrigo Moya a écrit :
> > > Apart from that, there's nothing we can gain from them looking at the
> > > code, since we can't do the same with theirs.
> >
> > During a discussion, MS ***may*** learn more about GnomeDb and discover
> > its exact scope, i.e. discover what has not yet been implemented and
> > "patent" the underlying ideas. Also, they ***may*** "patent" your ideas
> > before you program them.
> >
> > No need to look at the source code. This is not a question of friendship
> > but a question of law, even if the laws should and hopefully will be
> > changed.
> >
> > There is very little you can do against it, apart asking MS a preliminary
> > written agreement that they will never "patent" your ideas worldwide,
> > including the US and Europe, nor use the "such as" clause. The agreement
> > must be a signed by an authorized person from Microsoft in the mother
> > company, not a subsidiary. It will not prevent them from "patenting"
> > non-implemented features of GnomeDB.
>
> We take these risks being Free Software developers.  If you have ideas,
> you should write them down and submit them as TODO items to provide
> prior art.  Even if we don't intend to implement them, just having them
> in the repository is enough.

That's true to some extend, but nobody tells us that we'll have to run onto 
the street screaming out to the world that we're gonna take a risk

> > IMHO, the best is to stay away from MS.
>
> I think you're mistaken.  I feel that we should befriend the company and
> the employees of the company.  We could both learn much from eachother.

Erm, with all respect to your friends and yourself, but this one is a bit of a 
dangerous assumption to me. First of all there's a fundamental difference in 
the motivation for us and 'The Beast' (aka. Microsoft Corp.)  

MIcrosoft does it for the money (some say world domination, but i think they 
really just want the money), we work on it for either pure enthusiasm and/or 
to create a nice database interface and to a certain extent for personal 
satisfaction. But by doing that we're fishing in a lake that MS considers its 
own world exclusive property (aka known as "the IT market") and they will do 
anything but be our friends.

To sum it up, geeting in touch with MS without any reason certainly is as 
usefull as driving head-on into a wall. The employees themselves may be nice 
folks but the company itself is the evil empire (Personal Opinion) and they 
wouldn't be where they are now if they had played fair with anything that 
might be a potential competition, so with all respect i would say you better 
give up on that thought or we might see our work smashed to pieces before we 
know.

Cheers

> > Cheers, Jean-Michel
>
> C.J.
>
>
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