Richard and all,
I agree largely. Very little software warrents patenting. Protection
of any authors software can much better and easily be done in other
ways. Open source is not the total answer either as some types of
software in open source format would be ill advised.
Richard Stallman wrote:
The operative word here is uncertainty. A patent-holder creates
uncertainty. How should an SDO respond? I'm not sure. I'm only sure
that I don't like getting DoSed, either into dropping a standard or into
not implementing it for fear of infringing.
That's the nature of software patents: each one denies people the
freedom to write and run certain kinds of software. This is why we
must abolish software patents.
Until we succeed in doing that, we can resist in certain ways. One of
them is to refuse to establish standards that encourage their use.
Generally speaking, standards are useful, because they enable people
to converge what they are doing. But that ceases to be true when the
use of the standard is patented. It is better to have no standard
than have a standard that invites people into danger.
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Spokesman for INEGroup LLA. - (Over 284k members/stakeholders strong!)
"Obedience of the law is the greatest freedom" -
Abraham Lincoln
"YES WE CAN!" Barack ( Berry ) Obama
"Credit should go with the performance of duty and not with what is
very often the accident of glory" - Theodore Roosevelt
"If the probability be called P; the injury, L; and the burden, B;
liability depends upon whether B is less than L multiplied by
P: i.e., whether B is less than PL."
United States v. Carroll Towing (159 F.2d 169 [2d Cir. 1947]
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