Fuck your competition American style: Business school FYCAS 101
| Column three agents | companies-dominant |
| companies small | experienced programmer |
| starting programmer | manager |
| rich-consumer | poor-consumer |
| knowledgeable-rich | knowledgeable-poor |
| hide source code to keep developers divided, disenfranchised and dependent; | Don't want them to earn too much | eliminatable in compulsory licensing by copy free documents |
| tie inferior products to dominant ones; | why else would they sell | seller-appropriateness helped no one |
| quash promising competitive start-ups; | otherwise they will become a threat later | eliminatable in compulsory licensing by 3 year shelter |
| leverage dominant products into other, unrelated businesses; | what's wrong with that? | seller-appropriateness helped no one |
| carve up markets to eliminate real competition; | wonderful American way to maximize profits | seller-appropriateness helped no one |
| utilize predatory pricing practices to foreclose competition; | Another way of forestalling competition | eliminatable in compulsory licensing by uniform if not allowed rules |
| cause developers to constantly re-invent the wheel by hiding the source code; | and make them pay the price of development repeatedly | Reason why patents work |
| exercise general thuggish behavior in business dealings; | How else would intimidation work? | eliminatable in compulsory licensing by allowing recording |
| compel weak competitors to destroy their own innovative products to protect established profitable ones; | makes business sense surely | eliminatable in compulsory licensing by 3 year shelter |
| fail to respond to customer requests and needs in a timely fashion; | costs money to do it properly | eliminatable in compulsory licensing by service or pay rules |
| exploit natural "choke-holds" in the economy for their own advantages; | as long as they let you own them | anti-trust rules |
| manipulate and delay technological progress to maintain supremacy; | else competitors get you | encouraging competitors to kill you when it happens |
| hide coding bugs thereby jeopardizing stability and security; | you don't want to lose customers | developer can not shield from liability beyond a point |
| de-humanize software developers by considering them as "inputs" or "assets"; | they might charge you their real worth otherwise | yet to meet a dehumanized developer, QA might! |
| stifle innovation; "embrace and extend" or otherwise pollute open standards in order to break and appropriate them; | open standards only empower the opposition | Must pay, incompatible extensions ok |
| use exclusionary contract provisions to enforce censorship over disclosure of bugs and defects; | eventual loss of customers | bugs/defects through ombudsman |
| shut-off or block channels of distribution to legitimate competitors; | if they can't sell, then they won't be able to compete | sales/distribution separate |
| announce vaporware to foreclose adoption of real competitive products; | Why would a customer hold off buying otherwise from competition | Customer freedom to sue if vaporware |
| frustrate, taunt and antagonize governmental officials protecting the public interest; | every one knows how bad they ALL are! | freedom to sue |
| truncate choices; create confusion and frustration in users by selling inferior code; | encourages them to buy improved versions | Cant release new versions faster than a rate |
| take the innovations developed by others as their own; | saves costs | Forced tax on profits using industry wide automatic patents |
| practice differential pricing to punish those that oppose them; misinform and exploit users; | keeps distributors in line | forced uniform pricing beyond a size |
| use undocumented features as an anti-competitive device; | Otherwise competition will start using them too | Must document or can't use rules. split otherwise |
| suppress the open, efficient and free nature of the scientific method by keeping the code secret; | Its all commerce and damn these scientists! | Forced tax on profits using industry wide automatic patents |
| purposefully break the code of competitors so that there are code inoperability across products; | consumers will desert them | eliminatable in compulsory licensing by 3 year shelter |
| prohibit friends from sharing software with friends; | why else would friends pay up? | must-pay technology |
| coerce their users to fore-go promising competitive technologies; | to remain compatible | eliminatable in compulsory licensing by 3 year shelter |
| use overly restrictive and exclusionary contracts against weaker competitors; | Empowers them otherwise | eliminatable in compulsory licensing by 3 year shelter |
| and perform other anti-social, anti-competitive and improper acts to establish, maintain and extend their software monopolies. | How else will they persist? | eliminatable in compulsory licensing by 3 year shelter |
| commoditize and objectify their customers by making them captive; | Don't want them to run away | government funded consumer samples |