How Microsoft will kill Bangladesh (unless Linux saves ‘em)
One of my pet causes, in relation to our Wadi, is the consequences of what we do in the wider world. I just stumbled into the following article, which makes one case related to that:
One hopes that the Government of Bangladesh has been paying attention to the World Trade Organization negotiations. One of the main demands that Western countries made was that Least Developed Countries recognize their Intellectual Property Rights, by which they meant the copyrights and patents of US and European corporations. So far, pharmaceuticals and agriculture have been the most prominent arena of the Intellectual Property Rights debate, as most LDCs realized very quickly that they would never have the money to pay Western prices for anti-AIDS drugs and unscrupulous American patents of basmati rice. Under the WTO, LDCs will lose the right to use all such intellectual property without proper payment to the copyright owner. Violations of Intellectual Property Rights will result in a country like Bangladesh facing severe consequences in the form of trade restrictions. But a potential Intellectual Property Rights disaster for Bangladesh has remained unresolved: the widespread use of unlicensed Microsoft software… How Microsoft will kill Bangladesh (unless Linux saves us)
copyright 2002 by Zeeshan Hasan. First published in Bangladesh in the March 22nd, 2002 issue of Star Weekend Magazine.
Read the full article at: http://www.liberalislam.net/linux.html
