Some Open Office Development Crippled by Legal "Chilling Effects" - More Proof of Suppressed Competition & Innovation.

I posted this on slashdot.org as well under the title (due to their shorter title size limits) as:

Open Office Development Crippled by Legal "Chilling Effects".

Here is even more proof of the "chilling effects" caused by overly-far-reaching legal decisions, patents, and other "intellectual Property" laws:

http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=20370

For those who do not wish to read through the bug/feature report dialogue, the summary is as follows; They have closed the feature request to "embed" fonts in Open Office documents, and listed it as "Won't Fix" due to fears over legal issues, even for embedding completley "open" fonts. These fears are not unfounded of course, as they indicate from commenting about their interpretation of the meaning of the legal decision regarding the case "Adobe versus ITC", but surely there must be _some_ solution in some way.

I have asked EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation - http://www.eff.org ) to take a look at this to see if there are any options. It is early yet, and I have not yet heard back from the voice and email messages I left late this afternoon. Not considering development on this feature is a SIGNIFICANT crippling of the ability for OpenOffice to compete with products such as Microsoft Office, and just one more indicator of how fears over legal harrassment, even from different countries than were the devleopers are located in, where it is perfectly legal for such development (Skylarov/Adobe issue for example). This is just one more indication of how such IP "legal" abuses and intimidation are crippling innovation around the globe.

I have commented on my blog and technology talk radio show over the years about how I have observed (albeit however subjectively) the recent decline in technology innovation being available to the general public. I can not count the numerous technologies I have watched be shelved, never attempted, or kept only "in house" in recent years just due to fears over legal entanglements. This has stopped many individuals, companies and groups from even beginning the process of creating great solutions due to legal fears.

This question is coming up from people more and more as the '08 general elections approach. Of course, I've been active on this topic every year, not just electrion years.

I guess it's time I finally started to sum up where I stand on the man different political issues. Below is just the beginning with an overview. More details on specific issues will be posted later...

* I would be considered fiscally conservative and socially moderate. I tend more towards libertarianism, but find the party and people tend to go "to far". I can not ally my self with any  of the current parties comfortably, and especially not the Republicans or Democrats. The Republicans have lost their vision (and souls?), and become too corrupt and strayed too far from their platform goals and become too facist and capitalistically corrupt. I am for capitalism and democracy, but without it becoming oligarchical in scope. I do not wish to see the USA further shifted towards socialism and communism, nor towards extreme right-wing fascism. When asked who I would vote for, I have to reply "I would vote for McCain before I would vote for Obama, but I can NOT in good conscience vote for McCain, so I will likely pencil someone in". I am still researching the possbilities therein. When people say "you are just throwing away your vote then" and "you just have to pick the lesser of two evils", I respond with "that is what leads to further corruption, it brings more of the same 'change' but without any positive transformation. If you choose the lesser of two evils, you are still choosing evil, which means further harm is done to the country and it's citizens. It is time for people to step out of the narrow mindedness of only accepting one party or the other, and through their votes, demand REAL transformation.". Alas, this mostly is just met with glazed looks, indifference, or irritation. But I am strong in my convictions and so can not compromise them easily.)