It’s too bad that Novell and other big businesses are backing Linux because their CFO told the Board of Directors that it would make their stock prices go up. An ideological or ethical support of Linux would make me pretty happy. Then again, that doesn’t fit into the “survival instinct” of big business culture. If animals can posess survival instincts but also posess ideology and ethics, what do we need in the economy to spur in business what grows naturally in the ecology? How can we engineer an economy that not only allows for, but almost forces business ethics to develop. It’d be awfully nice if there were a business that was able to succeed while sticking to pure ethics even in the face of corporate growth and rising stock prices.

Small young game development firm Vicarious Visions builds itself as a buisiness entity with a set of values they won’t compromise, some relating to the content of the games that they’ll work with. After some time they become more successful and the business organism is offered the chance to take on a high-profile project in development for Doom 3, a violent game that slices deeply into the values the company is built on. Of course they took the deal, hell, I’d have probably taken the deal, because it meant prestige and money… lots of money. So what’s missing in this situation to prevent VV from holding tight to it’s values which have gotten it at least so far as to be offered such a high-profile piece? Well I don’t know dick about economics, nor do I know about business or even much about Vicarious Visions. However, I don’t think it’s too much to ask, “Why can’t businesses operate in a fashion that seems to be ethical and generally beneficial to entities outside of the company organism the same as it is to those inside. Maybe this has alot less to do with profit driven decision making and more to do with viewing the company as organism’s position in the ecology, or in the business’ case, economy, and how to equalize the system, not dominate the system.

Alright, now I sound like you. The socialistic, linux-loving slut. I’m just saying “Would that the world were as enlightened as you, Dan.” And then you say, “Oh, were that it would.” :P

Here’s something you can be happy about, though. BioForge seems to be the answer to your gripes about genetic patents. I don’t believe anyone should be able to hold the patent on something occurring in nature, much less be able to hold the patent on a person. Can you imagine a corporate research lab owning the patent on the genetic code for a race of humans? It’d be like futuristic corporate slavery… they really own you right down to your genes.

If you’re a genetically modified person and a lab owns the copyright to your genetic code, but then you develop skin cancer from sun exposure, can the lab’s parent company sue the sun for genetic code copyright infringement? Circumventing their code’s manufacture in mutation to allow for new genetic possibilities not provider for with the original genetic code. I’d like to see a genetics research company sue GE for dumping PCBs into the Hudson and providing for a situation where their copyrighted genetic codes could be mutated and used in a way that circumvents the intention of the patent holder. I could die a happy man if I were to live to see that happen.

Now I need to start building my home genetics lab so I can participate in the open-source biology movement. I want to have a hand in the genetic code written for the new release of Homo Sapien. You think you’ll have to write your own drivers if you’re rewriting the geneitc code for an entire species? ‘Cause I’m not up for that.