[wplug] COLLABORATION AS DISTRIBUTED CAPITALISM?

[James O'Kane]

This one time, at band camp, bgtrio at yahoo.com said:

> It wouldn't really be that hard to offer the EXACT SAME warranty and 
> support offered for Microsoft Windows out of the box and 
> to advertise such, since they don't really offer very much.  If such an 
> organization existed they could allay the fears of management types and 
> provide them with the purchased product security blanket they so 
> desperately crave.

Since IANAL, I can't say with any backing, but I read something to day 
that brought up the pointabout providing a warranty to something that the 
end-user can change at will. While that's isn't a show-stopper, it's 
something that closed-sourse software doesn't have to worry about as much.

This was the concept that the makers of the IOpener hide behind when they 
started coating their motherboards with epoxy to keep people from modifing 
their product to do something useful.

This probably all gets back to the software industry pretending it's a 
manufacturing business and not service oriented.

-james