Just responding to one point below...
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On Fri, Jun 8, 2012 at 12:28 PM, Ben Finney
It certainly seems to me that the American corporate model is hell bent on self destruction. Wait till China or India or another nation which doesn't so much care about this provide better freer alternatives. Not hard to do given the shoddy treatment that users are given from current IT providers.
What makes you think China or India will actually produce organisations (corporations?) that have better incentives to support customer freedom?
Yes, the US's corporate model has failed to do this. But I don't see how merely being a different country would necessarily make it produce better organisations; there are reasons to think they would be even worse in the field of people's freedom.
Agree as a general point, and lord knows in civil society and government China has a long way to go in the direction of freedom of speech etc ;) But - product manufacturers in China arguably have a pretty strong incentive to try and route around competing based on "IP", and instead try to gain market share via efficient low-cost production. A purported example of this is the "Shanzai" group of manufacturers of electronics: http://p2pfoundation.net/Shanzhai An effort to describe the 'rules of Shanzai' include: 1) Design nothing from scratch; rather, build on the best of what others have already done. 2) Innovate the production process for speed and small-scale cost savings. 3) Share as much information as you can to make it easy for others to add value to your process. 4) Don’t make it until you’ve already got a buyer. 5) Act responsibly within the supply chain. -- Pat.