The freedom to innovate is the sole property of the everyone. The
Freedom to Innovate Network and their ilk put on the guise of protecting the "freedom to innovate" however when you look at the actions they wish their supporters to take one can only see how they are purely talking about microsoft's freedom to innovate. They talk of how
government regulations (mainly those against monopolies) stifle their baby's (microsoft's) freedom to innovate. When in fact the
legislation that microsoft supports (such as broad
software patents and highly restrictive
copyright legislation) does more to stifle innovation than any
DOJ injunction in the history of man. Could one really "build a better
mousetrap" if a company owned a patent on all "mouse trapping
technology"? Innovations are built on the innovations that came before them.
flintlock -
revolver - automatic
pistol - machine pistol
Now you tell me which of these two really promotes innovation:
1.) A closed operationg system whose secrets are carfully guarded and only given(or sold) out to those "approved" by a parent
company, making development on, or
improvement to the OS the sole arena of that company.
2.) An
open source OS which allows anyone to submit changes or improvements, that is freely available so that programmers can write programs which do not conflict with that
operating systems
primary functionality.
Now I'm not saying that
software has to be given away for
free, and that people shouldn't be able to make
money off the software they produce. But merely raising the question of what having the "freedom to innovate" is really all about.