Siva (slight return)

I found this article interesting:

But capitalism means monopoly; at least, Gates-style capitalism does. People who think that everyone should be free to program, free to write complex software, they are communists, says Mr. Gates. But these communists have infiltrated even the Microsoft boardroom. Here's what Bill Gates told Microsoft employees in 1991:

"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today...A future start-up with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose."

Mr. Gates' secret is out now--he too was a "communist;" he, too, recognized that software patents were harmful--until Microsoft became one of these giants. Now Microsoft aims to use software patents to impose whatever price it chooses on you and me. And if we object, Mr. Gates will call us "communists

Dealer's choice

Just letting you all know--I'm currently reading Copyright in Historical Perspective by Lyman Ray Patterson. Hopefully this is okay. I thought I'd read it to get a more definitive historical account of copyright for my own background (and yours). Hopefully I'll be able to link some of these historical accounts to some relatively new decisions.