Open source means freedom from 'anti-features'

Feb 09, 2010, 14:03 (3 Talkback[s])

"Proprietary vendors are using "anti-features", features that no user would ever want, to protect intellectual property, Benjamin "Mako" Hill, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told the linux.conf.au open source conference last month.

"But IP protection is only one of several reasons vendors introduce such features into their products.

"An anti-feature serves the interests of the vendor, he says, not the user. A typical example is the set of limitations placed on the Home Basic version of Microsoft's Vista operating system; these restricted memory and disk-storage support and limited the user to at most three concurrent applications using the graphical user interface, Hill says."

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