Re: A 'Statement of Assurance' on SELinux patents

[Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au>]

On Thu, 8 Aug 2002 15:53, Ben McGinnes wrote:
> [other good point about monopoly-potential in buying patent/SCC]
>
> Which is one very good reason, of course, for a more well-meaning
> group to purchase either the company or the patent; in order to prevent
> any future corporate travesty on the part of either SCC or anyone else
> they might sell the relevant patents to.

So if you behave badly then you get paid for doing so...

I prefer the model of channeling money to people who do good things.  If a 
company produces solid products, does the right thing, and contributes to the 
community then you recommend them.  If a company has great products but 
doesn't contribute to the community and leaves legal issues etc in an unclear 
state which costs people money then you should not deal with them.  This 
discourages bad behaviour, and is also sound practise.

Some years ago I recommended that a client make a significant investment in 
Linux related hardware from a company that did not behave particularly well.  
Since then the lack of support from the company (delayed releases supporting 
new versions of software and configuration changes that aren't properly 
documented making it difficult to migrate the config files) has been 
continually delaying upgrades on the machine in question.  The amount of time 
that has been wasted due to that hardware has cost more than the purchase 
price of the hardware.

I have learnt from that experience that the business ethics of a company you 
deal with are quite important, especially months or years after purchase.  I 
will recommend to my clients that they spend more money for a product with 
less features if it means better support (usually no-one uses all the 
features of a product and the purchase price is often a small fraction of the 
overall cost).  Often the only way to determine the level of support you can 
expect is to see how the company deals with the community (because by the 
time you get accurate information it's way too late).

-- 
I do not get viruses because I do not use MS software.
If you use Outlook then please do not put my email address in your
address-book so that WHEN you get a virus it won't use my address in the
>From field.

--
You have received this message because you are subscribed to the selinux list.
If you no longer wish to subscribe, send mail to majordomo@tycho.nsa.gov with
the words "unsubscribe selinux" without quotes as the message.