Wednesday, August 04, 2004

Sci-Fi Soldiers

The newest concepts for lightweight, lethal uniform systems to be worn by the future soldiers in battle were displayed at the Russell Senate Building in Washington on July 23. Two uniform systems are under development. The Future Force Warrior system will be available for fielding to soldiers in 2010. The Vision 2020 Future Warrior system, which will follow on the concept of the 2010 Future Force Warrior system, is scheduled to be ready 10 years later.

The Malaysian Government has enshrined the year 2020 as the year Malaysia attains developed-nation status under "Wawasan 2020" or Vision 2020. Advanced and developed nations like the US tend to spend the most on tech in terms of their defence/military. No one can doubt the might of the US military as a consequence of the billions Washington has spent over the years. A more subtle concomitant activity of protection which most in the developing world might not be acutely aware of has been going on for some time too. What am I on about? Copyrights, software patents and the protection of what is confusingly termed intellectual property rights.
According to Professor Mark Lemley of the University of Texas Law School, the widespread use of term "intellectual property" is a recent fad, arising from the 1967 founding of the World Intellectual Property Organization or WIPO. WIPO represents the interests of the holders of copyrights, patents and trademarks, and lobbies governments to increase their power. The hypocrisy of calling these powers "rights" is starting to make the WIPO embarassed.
The open-source movement is rapidly heading towards a "showdown" with intellectual property rights. The momentum can be gauged by the "honour" of us Malaysians having Bill Gates visit our humble country last July.

The open source community and communism are completely different but ironically, the miserable failure of socialism in part was due to the refusal of both workers and corporations to depart with property rights, and to ultimately choose instead the rewards of traditional capitalism. In an eerie coincidence, leaders of the open source community point to distrust of “bosses” and large corporations as the biggest threat to shared community ownership of property.

As Linux continues to assert itself within the private sector, we will soon learn if this cynicism was indeed well-placed.