Re: Wall Street article on a new Cooperative

On Wednesday, April 21, 2004, at 11:29 AM, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
>
> But it is not at all obvious that those children would agree that
> unemployment is a good thing!  Just because the boycott organizers in
> the US think those 12-year-olds should be studying their ABCs doesn't
> guarantee they won't go into the sex trade when the sweatshop is shut
> down.  In fact, there are documented cases of exactly that (well, on
> Japanese TV and Agnes Chan, former UN "Children's Ambassador").  *If
> you don't consider how to prevent sexual slavery when you protest
> child labor in manufacturing,* you are confusing your personal
> interest in "having a nice world" with the public interest, one
> component of which is the welfare of those children.
>

Of all the lame arguments I have heard in my life this is the 
singularly most inane. Children do not "choose" to be slaves, sexual or 
otherwise, because the market has failed to offer them attractive 
alternatives.  Are you completely incapable of thought outside your  
highly limited tautology?

Your laughable theories are also fairly far afield of fsb at this 
point.  I do not believe that child labor or slavery are topics for fsb.

As for the actual topic, I believe the reason the companies are a 
cooperative is to provide joint intellectual property protection. I 
believe they also created a patent pool.  The only people safely 
capable of developing a cooperative and giving away the software are 
those with very heavy patent portfolios (e.g., IBM), those certain of 
code purity, and government.  Government is immune from IPR claims in 
the US. So expect leadership at the state and local level.

-Jean