[citation][nom]vkg1[/nom]They are evil because they say they innovate, and sheep believe them, but really all they do is make patents to screw everyone and generally be closed. Of course there isn't a free arch yet, because if there was then there wouldn't be any Intel. But you're a fool if you can't see that it is only a matter of time. These companies are powerful. But it's still only a matter of time.[/citation]
This is gonna be a long post, but oh well.
Even if there was a free arch, there would need to be companies using it. It would take tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars. Intel not only has their own architectures, but they also have fabs and the money to use all of this. There are semi-free archs, such as PowerPC and it's derivatives/variants, however it still has nothing against X86. Heck, there actually are architectures that are free to use, but again, there's no money in them, so companies don't make use of them. You fail to realize the enormous costs that even an architecture that is freely available would require. It would need millions, if not billions, in sheer R&D. It would need even more money for fabs.
There would need to be guarantees that if there are problems, they would be solved (there will be problems) without the customers losing out. Completely free archs are impossible in any true economy and their being "free" is just an illusion that you've fallen for. Even if free archs were available, do you think that they would be able to compete with the Intel architectures? Not a chance. Intel spends huge amounts of money on R&D. They can also put out a new architecture very quickly when under pressure (Intel has done some of their best work in short time periods where they were at disadvantages) and they have the money to keep any competition from getting traction. Just look at AMD. Intel had the money to keep AMD's far superior Athlon 64s (compared to the Pentium 4s from being more than a blip on the radar for years and AMD wasn't poor either.
Do you think that with no money backing them, these *free* archs could stand a chance against even AMD right now? Heck, AMD is quickly improving their CPUs to the point where if you know what you're doing, they are very competitive against some of Intel's mid-ranged processors. A free arch would need to have enough money backing it to kill off these two giants (granted, Intel is also a giant compared to AMD, but AMD is not a small company either) and to sway the entire industry. This would take decades if the free arch had the money backing it. Without even that, there's simply not much of any chance at all for a free arch to compete anywhere except in niches that the others have missed and even then, if it gets too successful, you can bet that one of the companies would then enter and overwhelm that niche.
Do I like this? No, not at all. However, there's absolutely nothing that we can do about this right now. Beyond all of this, patents are not evil. Patents have a job that is very important. The problems come in because the patent systems tend to make mockeries of this job rather than do it. They are what were supposed to protect innovation from being stolen and although they aren't doing a good job of that at all, that job is still important. In an everything is free world, this job could be less important, but that would mean that no matter how much I work, my accomplishments won't get me anywhere and could be taken away at any time. That would be far worse than even what the world is today IMO.
Also, although a lot of supposed innovation really isn't innovative, there is still innovation every now and then. That a lot of great ideas get snuffed out really doesn't help this, but it doesn't mean that the ideas were never there. Even some of the companies have good ideas occasionally. When they do, they should be able to protect such ideas and if patents are the only way to do so, then they should be able to patent them. Sure, most of what gets patented these days is stuff that was stolen, effectively stolen, or just plain obvious (or a combination of these and maybe a few other possibilities), but that doesn't mean that the true innovation should not be patent-able and recognized as it is.
and i understand why people can't be botherd to shell out 50 euros or more on windows in china .... apropriate priceing for apropriate markets ....
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram