One of our readers quotes the following portions: “There is a long history of IP litigation in the mobile phone market, and innovation has continued apace [...] as the IP situation settles in this space and licensing takes off, we will see the patent royalties applicable to the smartphone software stack settle at a level that reflects the increasing importance software has as a portion of the overall value of the device.”
“Is this Microsoft-codespeak for, we expect people to start paying us a hardware tax.” –Anonymous readerThe simple translation is that Microsoft wants tax on Linux phones. Microsoft wants us to pretend that mobile Linux too is Microsoft’s own property (the software layer). Our reader says: “Is this Microsoft-codespeak for, we expect people to start paying us a hardware tax. Something like they suggested to the OLPC developers? It’s in the Comes documents, in references to either ‘investing’ in the OLCP or getting them to stump up a Linux tax, can’t remember the exact words.”
With Apple’s lawsuit against GNU/Linux (via HTC/Android), the impact of Microsoft becomes increasingly suspect. Did Microsoft speak to Apple prior to this action? Either way, Apple is clearly a foe of software freedom and GNU/Linux users should cease viewing Apple as benign just because it competes against (or with) Microsoft.
Apple is clearly having a hard time competing against GNU/Linux. The iPad seems like a train wreck that even former Apple executives are negative about [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]. It appears as though the iPad’s target market is dyed-in-the-wool Apple followers. And surely enough, according to the following numbers, just fans are eventually buying it. [via Glyn Moody]
Orders for the Apple iPad fell sharply over the weekend, indicating that most of the real obsessives bought one on Friday.
As Ghabuntu reminds us this week, iPad is just a “toy” (Apple is irrelevant in places like Africa).
I just keep asking myself, what is it that makes Apple toys so special even if they come at a *huge* cost, both economically and philosophically?
SJVN writes about the iPad and resorts to discussing tablets that are better and run GNU/Linux.
After that, why not a wearable Mac or Linux PC? We’ve already had wearable Linux and Windows PCs, but those early models had all the problems I listed earlier. In 2010, it’s a different story. We may not have flying cars, but we can certainly have wearable computers.
We already know that Asus is looking into running Google’s Linux-based Chrome OS on wearable PCs. Who knows: in 2020, we may look back and see that iPads and tablet computers were only a brief rest stop on the way to wearable entertainment devices and computers.
Dell too is planning to release tablets that run Linux (maybe with GNU). Many of the ARM-based tablets look exceptionally promising.
Proprietary giant is licensing open source to its partners. What is going on?
Over the past few weeks Microsoft has been licensing Linux to a number of its partners, most notably Amazon. Although the idea of Microsoft, a company steeped in proprietary software, licensing open source software is ludicrous it’s not completely unexpected. It’s also not the first time Microsoft has played the Linux patent game and we can expect to see more deals in the future. So what’s going on?
[...]
Then in February Microsoft announced a deal with Amazon which it described as covering a “broad range” of products, including Amazon’s Kindle and Amazon’s use of Linux-based servers. Effectively Microsoft is licensing Linux to Amazon on the understanding that it won’t sue the company for infringing on its alleged Linux-related patents.
This is not unlike the agreement struck between Novell and Microsoft in 2006 in which Microsoft agreed to indemnify Suse Linux users against potential patent suits. That deal too attracted significant ire from the open source community.
The most recent Linux patent deal from Microsoft is a deal with Japanese hardware maker I-O Data. Although the specifics of the agreement are not known the two companies said that the the deal “will provide I-O Data’s customers with patent coverage for their use of I-O Data’s products running Linux and other related open source software.” Again, Microsoft is providing an assurance that it won’t file a patent suit against I-O Data for its use of Linux.
This is not the first time that a company has tried to claim Linux patent ownership and used that against other businesses. SCO is the most obvious example and they even went so far as claim that they owned Unix. SCO, fortunately, was never that successful at winning its claim over Linux and Unix. Microsoft on the other hand is a potentially different case.
[...]
Suing a Linux vendor directly over patent claims would be a shortcut to ending up in court. And being hauled into court would force Microsoft to open its books and explain what it is that it claims to own.
For now Microsoft is prepared to rely on compliant partners to create uncertainty around Linux ownership.
It’s a clever strategy by Microsoft and one hard to counteract.
It’s not a “clever strategy”, it’s racketeering and it’s illegal [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. It should be reported by vendors like Red Hat as it probably violates laws introduced with the RICO Act. The racketeering from Gates and Jobs goes quite a long way back. It’s just another SCO-like strategy, going back to around the same time as the SCO lawsuit (2003).
This is just about the most naïve explanation for whether a product will or will not be stable that I’ve ever read. If Maureen had bothered to email or call any one of the core Drizzle developers, they’d have been happy to tell her what is and is not stable about Drizzle, and why. Drizzle has not changed the underlying storage engines, so the InnoDB storage engine in Drizzle is the same plugin as available in MySQL (version 1.0.6).
Watch the first comment which says: “There’s no reason to be nice to MoG. She’s the same hitwoman who wrote a bunch of pro SCO, anti GPL FUD during that whole trial (while being paid by them, while claiming to be impartial), including publishing a bunch of personal info about the previously anonymous blogger behind Groklaw.”
Few more comments like this follow, but a lot more about the SCO/Sys-Con attack on Groklaw can be found in this new Slashdot discussion.
In other important news, the Virnetx case is over and Microsoft lost. We previously covered this in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8] and here is the news from Microsoft Nick:
A Texas jury has sided with VirnetX in its patent-infringement lawsuit against Microsoft, recommending an award of $105.75 million.
In the last few years, Microsoft has become a bigger and bigger supporter of patents, which is a bit ironic, given that Bill Gates once pointed out that the software industry never would have developed if there had been software patents back in the early days. But, proving that new companies innovate, while older companies litigate, Microsoft has become a big patent hoarder in recent years. But, to date, while it’s used those patents to threaten lots of companies, it seems like Microsoft’s decision to live by patents, is actually costing it quite a bit of money.
Sadly, Microsoft uses patent trolls like Virnetx only to justify its own patent attacks against rivals. Microsoft’s #1 rival is Free software of course (although its embodiment can be companies like Google, IBM, Red Hat, and so on). █
“I’d put the Linux phenomenon really as threat No. 1.”
Summary: More Microsoft dirty secrets (anti-GNU/Linux evidence), courtesy of Comes; book about Gates Watcher retrieved, for its scoops to be shared more widely
A YEAR and a half ago we wrote about an HP smoking gun or at least a deja vu that can help connect Microsoft and SCO. Groklaw has just found an interesting Comes vs Microsoft exhibit which shows how Microsoft responded to HP’s embrace of Linux. From the introduction:
I have another Comes v. Microsoft exhibit to share with you, Exhibit 9542 [PDF], a November 22, 2002 email to Jim Allchin and Orlando Ayala from Mike Oldham. It has to do with a planned meeting on the 25th between the two companies, on their “Better Together” theme. I think it will explain some things we’ve sometimes wondered about. One thing is clear. Microsoft was seriously concerned about Linux. And HP? Somewhat flexible, I’d say. Note the part about “the HP plan of record” to “bring a new Linux powered device into the mid-range marketplace” regarding NAS devices (network attached storage devices) and how Microsoft was able to convince them not to do that.
Microsoft and HP recently renewed their vows.
From the exhibit we have : “Based on HP’s server shipments, HP reports Windows share is up one point to 73%, Linux is also up one to two points to 12-13%. This represents approx. 200K Linux servers in the next year. HP believes that a substantial part of the Linux growth is due to the declining share for Novell. However they believe there is a growing Linux threat in the enterprise space – especially financial accounts….”
“Microsoft recently used similar tactics against i4i and against OLPC.”That was in 2002. Interesting. We have more Comes material queued for posting, but not enough time to work on it. One exhibit[PDF] (full text here) that was shown to us by a reader is what Groklaw describes as: “Letter from Bill Gates to Robert Carr, GO Corporation, December 4, 1987 (“It is too bad that you never got a chance to make Framework into the mainstream product it deserved to be. In the objects we are building for the object oriented versions of our languages we will have a concept very similar to your frame.”)”
It “looks like useful work,” said our reader, who helped us see a similarity to Mono, .NET, and Java (former Java developers sometimes join Microsoft). “My point is to update the blank files on GR with brief relevant quotes,” said our reader, “And, for instance in relation to GO, to create a narrative from the texts. In this case, billg [Bill Gates] gets a looksee at GO technology, then after sabotaging GO, incorporates it [into] Microsoft product and later on offers the GO CEO a job at Microsoft.”
We have already gathered “GO” + Microsoft references, extracted the relevant quotes, and put them in chronological order, then inserted links to relevant original Comes exhibits. It’s quite blatant. Microsoft recently used similar tactics against i4i and against OLPC.
He wrote: “Near the end there is a voiceover quote referring to the villain (Arthur Case), something like “he sold his integrity for money and spend the rest of his life trying to get it back”. Just then the scene switches to a picture of a billboard, of Microsoft. Get the movie [trailer] and check it out.
“No shot in a movie is by accident, is this an accident or not?”
Another reader has sent us some articles on Microsoft — old articles taken from different Web sites. “I’m sure you already probably know all this information,” he said, but actually, no, there is a lot of material there which we will organise quite soon. “If Boycott Novell website could offer a download it all as archive version that is html based, it can be translated very eas[ily],” this reader added.
This reader also sent us parts of a book from a revealing account of the daughter of Pam Edstrom (of Waggener Edstrom). Steve Ballmer’s wife comes from there and a lot of dirty secrets about the inner culture at Microsoft are being told there. Expect some interesting posts soon. This book is titled “Barbarians Led by Bill Gates”. █
Summary: More information about the two abusive monopolies and how GNU/Linux fits their puzzle
GROKLAW has begun publishing more Comes vs Microsoft exhibits, including some that we shared here before (some of these posts of ours made the front page of Slashdot, Digg, and even the mainstream press). This series from Groklaw began some weeks ago and we think it’s wonderful that Groklaw brings the material to a broader audience, using some of the transcripts which we worked on in the past (there is reuse going on). It’s a truly wonderful case of community collaboration for the sake of justice.
This exhibit, for example, is from early 2002, and if you recall Darl McBride joined Caldera, now calling itself SCO, in the summer of 2002, and at the end of the year, it was gearing up to attack Linux. That is the context. Microsoft by 2002, after losing to Linux in 1999, was still not able to persuade Intel developers to come back to Windows.
As you read the exhibit, then, please imagine you are Microsoft when Darl McBride comes calling with a plan to litigate Linux into the ground, force Linux to remove code SCOfolk thought Linux couldn’t function without in the enterprise, or place a SCO tax on every Linux server, all of which would make it easier for Microsoft to compete against an operating system that was preferred already at Intel. Imagine you are not the type to stay awake nights, worrying about business ethics or fine points like that.
Microsoft asked Intel what it should do. Some suggestions from Intel: improve interoperability between Windows and Linux/UNIX, improve “stability of environment, OS, shell environment, scripts, etc.”, find “a unique value prop that will convince EDA ISVs about the advantage of supporting Windows & .NET.” Intel reportedly offered to help Microsoft with developing that, “since they’re familiar with the terrain.” In short, if Microsoft could improve in interoperability, it would enable Intel to switch from Linux to Windows and .NET.
So all you folks helping Microsoft become more interoperable, are you working with a “new” Microsoft that has now seen the light? Or, are you enabling Microsoft to replace Linux, after you help them write the code and share with them the way to fix their stupid software? What are you thinking? You are doing their coding for them with a goal on their part you won’t enjoy. In short, the conclusion I reach after reading this exhibit is that if Microsoft can’t interoperate well with Linux, it will decline faster.
More Intel exhibits are to be covered in the future (we haven’t the time to do that yet). We also have some alarming exhibits that show Microsoft giving hints of the SCO lawsuit (or similar). See for example:
These applications touch the heart of corporate innovation – the core designs and concepts that will drive a company forward for a decade or more. They’re more than just marketing numbers and advertising strategies that might affect their bottom line for a few quarters or two years at most. They’re important.
Given that Windows-only users are just the sort who take their work home on their laptops to connect directly to their home Internet connection without so much as a NAT router to protect them – and then click on any old flash game or link they find on Facebook – and then bring the same laptop back to connect to the intranet, is any consideration at all given to security? Do corporations just accept that their most precious intellectual property is flying out the door at an aggregate 1000Gbps? Or do they consider these issues and decide that the value add of Windows environments is worth more than keeping their secrets? If so, how? How do you sit at the table where supposedly savvy and responsible people decide such things and advocate that without being walked directly to the door by security staff?
We hope that more people will help Groklaw assemble what we have from Comes. It’s a fountain of knowledge and a peephole into Microsoft’s corporate crime. In Groklaw’s latest exhibit, Bill Gates is shown referring to his completion as “Jihad”; he has done that more than once (on other occasions), so it’s not just a slip of the tongue.
Earlier this month Microsoft and Intel entered a collaboration around the spying on users and profiling of their habits, having previously attacked OLPC more or less jointly. We will hopefully have time to cover this later today. █
Therefore, it was not particularly surprising to find former Microsoft AstroTurfer Michael Gartenberg (sometimes on the company’s payroll), who is currently serving Microsoft from outside the company [1, 2, 3, 4], throwing some more mud at OLPC.
In The Tragedy of One Laptop Per Child, Michael Gartenberg at Slashgear just called a million and a half computers in the hands of children, radically transforming education and social structures in dozens of countries, a tragedy. With another million on order.
First off,
- how many students complained about OOo? They don’t say
- Did the students or their representatives discuss the issues with the administration or the IT group of this municipality before sending the letter to the mayor? If they did, why didn’t they say anything about it in the letter? Sounds fishy to me.
- Did the blogger do any investigative reporting or just published a sensational article? There is a note about MS complaining but no mention of any administration comments about the subject. It looks like sensationalism at large to me
- Training is very important. Is the administration/IT of this municipality that dumb to roll out a new application before offering adequate training? I don’t think so. May be they did offer, but was not enough for some and may be students just chose not to attend.
It seems to me that some one is behind this with ulterior motives, especially when the reasons given are the same old ones we constantly hear from MS
It’s just like with OLPC. Microsoft exaggerates the issues and hopes that by declaring something “dead”, dead it will become. █
“Ideally, use of the competing technology becomes associated with mental deficiency, as in, “he believes in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and OS/2.” Just keep rubbing it in, via the press, analysts, newsgroups, whatever. Make the complete failure of the competition’s technology part of the mythology of the computer industry. We want to place selection pressure on those companies and individuals that show a genetic weakness for competitors’ technologies, to make the industry increasingly resistant to such unhealthy strains, over time.”
Summary: Slime continues to be thrown at OLPC, thanks in part to Intel and Microsoft, the outlaw companies whose role in fighting OLPC was confirmed before
LAST week we shared some revealing information about OLPC (see the OLPC index). A few days ago we showed that OLPC was coming up with a new design whose architecture probably excludes Windows (ARM/MIPS). OLPC News opines that Windows got its way, but see the comments on this post (GNU/Linux was never a problem for OLPC). Evidence has actually been suggesting that OLPC lost interest in Microsoft and Microsoft lost interest in OLPC, which was never valuable to its shareholders in the first place.
For Microsoft, getting involved in OLPC was about derailing Google and GNU/Linux, as revealed by internal documents [1, 2]. It was not about children or education.
“The main perpetrators were Intel and Microsoft, which systematically dealt blows to this charity.”Over at Groklaw, there is a pointer to the article “Skeptics Question OLPC’s Focus With $75 Tablet”
“Because they always do,” adds Pamela Jones, “Perhaps some monopolies need to stop trying to make it an unachievable goal? That is, from my perspective, what happened to the first XO. So it’s a bit rich to accuse OLPC of not reaching a goal that certain monopolies tried to crush so as to make it not achievable. Shame on them, and go OLPC! I love the new design, which once again shows what vendors could give us if they only wanted to. It’s unrealistic only if you define realistic as making a huge profit on each device, n’est-ce pas?”
OLPC was a good case study in corporate corruption. The main perpetrators were Intel and Microsoft, which systematically dealt blows to this charity. Last year the London Times launched an investigation and published an exposé about it. Its verdict was that Intel and Microsoft indeed attacked the project. They harmed its reputation, too. █
“Ideally, use of the competing technology becomes associated with mental deficiency, as in, “he believes in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and OS/2.” Just keep rubbing it in, via the press, analysts, newsgroups, whatever. Make the complete failure of the competition’s technology part of the mythology of the computer industry. We want to place selection pressure on those companies and individuals that show a genetic weakness for competitors’ technologies, to make the industry increasingly resistant to such unhealthy strains, over time.”
Summary: A closer look at Walter Bender’s recent public talk and more disenchanting news about the activities of Bill Gates
IN OUR OLPC Wiki page we have accumulated some required background information. It ought to shed light on Intel’s attacks on OLPC, using a high volume of evidence. We won’t be repeating old information, but sceptics who are not aware of what Intel did to OLPC will still have access to information from independent, respected journals that verified the facts.
It was only a few days ago that we wrote about Intel’s crimes, for which it is being sued in the United States at the moment. A lot of attention is paid to all sorts of abusive monopolies, but Intel’s PR must be very effective because the company does not get much flak (not from the general public anyway) for crimes that it commits very systematically, then destroying evidence of these crimes.
“The lawsuits alleged that Microsoft not only engaged in collusion with Intel but that it also shipped a product which it knew was defective.”Microsoft was sued for colluding with Intel in order to sell “junk PCs” with Windows Vista [1, 2, 3]. It was a class action and there was more than one lawsuit.
The lawsuits alleged that Microsoft not only engaged in collusion with Intel but that it also shipped a product which it knew was defective. For Intel, the aspiration was to make money from spare hardware which it saw as obsolete. It’s the equivalent of a butcher selling an animal’s head as though it was chops or a shopkeeper selling bad carrots with a lot of condiments on them, in order to hide the fact that they are rotten.
We have just found videos that are only days old. We were particularly interested in Walter Bender’s wonderful talk (keynote). He is the benevolent master behind Sugar and his principles have earned him both fame and notoriety (among Microsoft apologists for the most part). Mr. Bender makes reference to the “Free software” community, which he admires (he doesn’t say “open source”) and in the following first video we found something particularly interesting that suggests Intel was pulling the “junk PCs” trick about 2 years ago, maybe in order to harm OLPC. Older evidence does seem to suggest that this was Intel’s intention. OLPC used AMD chips at the time, but it is moving to ARM now.
Skip to somewhere around the fourth minute (starting 4:15) and listen to what the man says. To quote:
They figured out, “OK, this might be a little bit too slow for our needs, and that Intel still had a couple of Celeron N CPUs on stock that they needed to get rid of, so ASUS stepped in and made the first EEE PC, which became a huge success after they announced it…”
As an important reminder, Mr. Bender insisted on the freedom of children in the face of pressure and abuse from Microsoft, which perceives kids — as well as developing nations and OLPC — as just a bunch of competitive tools to make money from (or otherwise bury). That’s their commercial goal and methods, which they carry out on behalf of shareholders.
To quote Bill Gates, regarding OLPC:
“Geez, get a decent computer where you can actually read the text and you’re not sitting there cranking the thing while you’re trying to type.”
This clearly shows how Microsoft has been viewing OLPC because it didn’t run Windows. OLPC rejected Windows, so Mr. Gates decided to publicly mock OLPC. Very mature.
Since when was this country’s educational system run by Bill Gates and his foundation? When exactly did he and those he’s hired become the top educational experts in the country?
As far as I can tell this (like much else) has to do with who has enough money to boss other people around. There are supposed to be other values in a democracy.
And the irony of the man who was sued by the federal government for a monopoly now endorsing competition in public education hasn’t escaped me, either.
Let us never forget what Bill Gates does for his Monsanto venture that he invests billions of dollars in. Fewa has shared with us the following essay, titled “Culture Wars Between Farmers”
We are all well aware of the no-man’s land of cultural difference between farmers and non-farmers. Visualize on the one hand a high rise apartment dweller in Manhattan burning more carbon than any human ever did before in history just to maintain his luxurious lifestyle while fretting about the evils of global warming. Hold that picture while, on the other hand, visualizing the farmer out in his barn on a frigid December morning shivering and quivering while losing money on every pint of milk he produces and wishing that global warming would hurry up and get here.
But there is another cultural divide coming to the fore in our society, this one between farmer and farmer. The best current example of this phenomenon is the flare up of opposition to Michael Pollan’s books criticizing industrial grain farms and animal factories. Agribusiness has suddenly realized it can no longer just ignore the opposition. A large scale corn and soybean farmer, Blake Hurst, went online with something he called the “Omnivore’s Delusion” to blast Pollan’s “Ominivore’s Dillema.” The crap really hit the fan. Industrial farm supporters and pastoral farm supporters went at each other on the Internet like a couple of tomcats, the former labeled sneeringly as factory food producers and the latter called, even more sneeringly, “agri-intellectuals.” Fast farming vs. fake farming.
For readers’ convenience, we add references about Gates and Monsanto below. By fostering tomorrow’s agricultural monopolies, Gates is causing damage that most people don’t understand, yet. █
Summary: How an anti-GNU/Linux and anti-OLPC executive ended up inside a company where GNU/Linux is an option
Microsoft’s principal booster in CNET has indeliberately posted newer details about a revealing conflict of interests. It is a conflict not just because Microsoft's Will Poole participated in sabotaging OLPC but also because he joined an OLPC rival after doing similar work for Microsoft. We wrote about this in:
Poole joined NComputing just after he had been leading the EDGI group. From a de facto Microsoft PR outlet:
The [Microsoft] approach is similar to one taken by NComputing, a start-up run by former e-Machines CEO Stephen Dukker. Will Poole, the former Windows executive who also led Microsoft’s emerging markets efforts for a time, serves as NComputing’s co-chairman. NComputing sells Windows and Linux-based systems to both schools and businesses.
[...]
The product shares a name–but is separate–from an existing MultiPoint product that allows students to each have their own mouse and work off a single display. (Note that the story I link to has Poole–then at Microsoft–talking about the MultiPoint mouse.)
So, he came to NComputing after he had promoted a similar Windows product inside Microsoft. How suitable. As we stressed before, this cannot be beneficial to GNU/Linux at NComputing. Who can ever forget what Microsoft did to OLPC? They should bury their heads in shame. █
Summary: One person’s thoughts about the change dynamics which can help GNU/Linux
Brooke Crothers sees the Windows ARMageddon coming next year. He recognizes Microsoft’s inability or refusal to run on ARM and other mobile platforms as a detriment to Microsoft, not ARM. He also thinks that Intel is having a hard time competing without Microsoft desktop monopoly help and that the mobile revolution is undermining the once “outrageously successful” Wintel combination. While he understands that competition can squeeze Windows out of the market, he does not consider the global consequences of Microsoft’s criminal collusion to prop their margins up.
Windows Mobile is losing the last vestiges of its mojo–if it really had any to begin with–as the Droid and other phones based on the Android 2.0 operating system push the buzz meter needle into the red zone.. .. [many think that] Windows Mobile has now been relegated resolutely to has-been status. [Many quotes and a market survey showing Windows Mobile at less than 4% of the world market follow.]
Intel is chasing a fast-moving target. TI, and all the other ARM-based chip suppliers cited above, are slated to bring out dual-core designs that can hit speeds as high as 2GHz (think next-generation tablets and media pads).
Droid may not be the iPhone killer but rather the Windows Mobile slayer. Microsoft, of course, will always have the unassailable PC franchise. But, wait, isn’t Android coming to Netbooks next year? Maybe the real battle royal for Microsoft is yet to come.
Windows profits are already down by 50% but it’s going to get worse as margins collapse. TI and other companies have little to lose as the price of laptops and desktops falls to $100 because they were excluded from the high margin market by Wintel long ago. Today, their chips make picture frames and other gadgets that could be PDAs and tablet PCs with a small change in software and a touch screen. Because those computers can do everything users want, they will have little need for boxy desktops with Microsoft Windows. Windows won’t survive the transition as is because non free software can not survive in a world of computers that are cheap and just work. Their ecosystem requires periodic “refresh cycles,” planned obsolescence of high margin equipment and minimally modified software. Only the cooperative efforts of free software developers have a chance of providing complex and high quality software at PDA or calculator price points. A market move to free software on commodity hardware is long overdue and everyone but Microsoft and Intel will benefit.
“Instead of helping they conspired to destroy the OLPC project and foist intellectual monopoly treaties on everyone.”Collusion between Microsoft, Intel and others to thwart competition is really a story of global injustice. The rest of the world has much to gain from cheap computing, especially people in the developing world who have been unable to afford libraries, journals and other information vital to industry and the arts. Companies like Intel and Microsoft, that have brain drained the rest of the world for decades, know better than others what kind of talent is lost to knowledge barriers. Instead of helping they conspired to destroy the OLPC project and foist intellectual monopoly treaties on everyone. This preserved their margins for about five years but it delayed the era of universal access to knowledge and global sharing. Developed world money now wasted on refresh cycles should go to remaining competitive and the specific tasks that people want their computers to do. People in the developed world should also demand the freedom to share. Proper history will censor short sighted and greedy efforts to dominate a crucial part of cultural infrastructure and culture itself. █
