mbm mbm@rlogin.net wrote:
MJ Ray mjr@phonecoop.coop wrote:
Are Asus and Nokia equally bad at supporting software patents? My impression is that Nokia are worse, but I don't know Asus much.
I'm not sure what this means. Surely no Free/OSS advocate would wish to see software patents enforced?
Of course not. I think Nokia are bad because "Nokia seems absolutely pro-swpat. Their patent department has done lots of lobbying in conferences and in the European Parliament. We encountered the head of their IP department, Tim Frain, in Bournemouth in summer 2002." http://eupat.ffii.org/gasnu/nokia/index.en.html
Maybe I should have written "bad for supporting software patents".
[...] Nokia at least respects the GPL and other Free/OSS licences and refers to that fact in the documentation for the n800. See www.maemo.org.
Well, that's one good thing Nokia have done (although I don't like recent GTK+) but I think I'd still say Nokia are more troublesome for free software than Google... and I'm really no fan of Google.
Regards,