On Fri, 24 Sep 2004, Meng Weng Wong wrote:
The fundamental problem is the patent system. Yes, it's
unfortunate that Microsoft is involved, but if any other
company were holding the cards, who's to say that wouldn't
be just as bad?
It could potentially be, but that is very very unlikely. I think if we had
RedHat or AOL or Sun or IBM - we would not have had the same problems.
It really was a combination of that it was Microsoft with its monopolistic
and "take-over-world" attitude and that it could use patents to do what
it wanted and that it was just at the time that billgatus of borg had made
that stupid promise that he'll cure spam for everyone and of course being
who he is, he does not know how to cooperate with others without taking
over what they do...
The real problem is that the cards are being dealt at all.
Most of the patents being issued are bad. There is some value and I have
to agree with Phillip Hallam-Baker - if we had a working software patent
system we'd have 5-10 patents issued per year for some realy innovative
computer science algorithms. But considering how it is all going on now
it is better to not have them at all.
---
William Leibzon, Elan Networks:
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