I admire your attitude but some of us who have observed M$ over the years aren't so naive as to trust the company based on their say so. So, I assume that in your wonderful Utopia there in Holland no one ever lies?

I wouldn't necessarily find the new contribution to be a positive thing. It all depends on their intent. They have been trying to eliminate open source from the beginning, so why should they be trusted now?

Interesting. Sarah Palin's speech was coherent? Which speech was that again? Not sure what you mean with your list of examples, but I can say that Palin's interview with Katie Couric revealed that she possessed a very poor grasp of multiple areas that would be very important were she to be elected. That was the problem. And that was what the public grasped immediately. So, say all you want about quotes being taken out of context but Palin's responses during the course of that interview made things very clear to the American public.

The point that I was making with regard to OSS was that the deal is that Red Hat, IBM etc, can't pass the work off as their own. So they can't charge for the software itself. From wikipedia definition of Open Source Software --- "1. Free Redistribution The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale." They, IBM Red Hat etc didn't write it after all. And Red Hat charges for the services - support etc. And they offer Fedora for free and they offer RHEL because they did engineering work to make it more robust or whatever.

That's true enough. The idea is just the start of the thing. After coming up with the idea there is still a tremendous amount of work to be done. Of course that remaining work is basically pretty simple isn't it? I mean, how many competent writers are there out there? And how many best selling authors? But I guess I agree with your basic contention, if they just want feature ideas that's pretty innocent.

Ummmm, no you're quite mistaken. That is exactly the point. Open and fair attribution of the source of ideas is the key to this thing. This same basic issue was dealt with pretty intelligently already by the open source community - ie. anyone is free to use oss software at no charge as long as that person does not derive financial benefit. Otherwise there needs to be some sort of licensing arrangement. By the way, since you didn't answer the question that I posed, I'll do so for you. I believe that if your boss/manager/superior stole your ideas and suggested to others within your company that they were his own you would not be so philosophical about the whole thing. You would be highly annoyed. Admit it.

But you're missing the point. The point is that if Google takes someone else's ideas and makes a fortune on them then that is just wrong. The IEEE code of conduct is simply used as a reference to back up that basic and I think obivious supposition. The code of conduct is not scripture but it is well written and well thought out. Also, it's also about attribution. How would you feel if your manager stole every good idea that you proposed to him and posed them as his own?

Right, except in this case it seems wrong. Here is what they are saying in essence. "Here's how we'll work together, you guys come up with these great ideas and we'll execute and become even more wealthy then previously seemed possible. Thanks!" What a great arrangement. Certainly, execution is very important. It's similar to what Thomas Edison said, genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. But my reply would be What? If they think they are so smart, why don't they just execute and come up with their own ideas? They're making millions and millions of dollars because they had a new tilt on an old idea - search. Now, they want to cash in on someone else's genius? They should do their own work.