Imagine, an industry group formed to protect intellectual property, whose main purpose is to fight against piracy, also has a few lines in their report on about perceived unfair trading practices.

It’s shocking! Shocking! These companies want to be able to sell more software on an open market. They also want to do away with other import quotas, including local film quotas in Indonesia – but I don’t hear anybody boycotting Avatar (FYI, your truly has yet to see that cinematic marvel. I’m waiting for the book).

Well, kids, that’s what capitalism is. And yes, even companies that deal in FOSS also make money. You have to pay your engineers, you know (Red Hat, Canonical). Oh – wait, I don’t think Sun did a very good job of that, though.

Excuse me while I shut down Firefox & reopen this in IE.

Me – See I don’t mind them trying to promote their own products – but not in a government report and certainly not by turning it into a diplomatic issue – which is what the special 301 report is all about.

In short, this is an example of a corporation overstepping its bounds and trying to bulldoze governments into not doing what’s best for their own citizens.

I think poor countries are doing the right thing by moving to free software to save money…It’s legal, so why shouldn’t they? If I were a paid software producer, I too would probably be pissed like Microsoft but since I’m not, all I want to say is “go for it!”

Me – Open source software like Openoffice is as technical as MS Office. So if you use one, you can use the other. If you’re interested, here’s the link to download and install OpenOffice: http://www.openoffice.org/ . Try it if you’re feeling happy with life :)