Subj : Re: GNU Public Licences Revisited (again) To : comp.programming From : Randy Howard Date : Wed Aug 31 2005 01:11 pm Serge Skorokhodov (216716244) wrote (in article ): > Randy Howard wrote: >> >> Sort of. Are patent protections too lengthy, especially in an >> industry that moves this quickly? Probably. Does a patent >> prevent you from starting from scratch on a different >> solution? Not at all. See also improvement patents. > > It is a kind of art to formulate patents in a way that covers > everything:( True. It's another form of art to find ways around them. >> Yeah right. XML exists so that people can interoperate with >> the data. Good luck to MS convincing people not to use plain >> text data descriptions. > > It opens the way for two major tricks that all authorities > (either national or corporative) employ most often. I mean double > standard and selective law enforcement:( Except Microsoft is crowing about how they believe in "open standards". They could try and have it both ways, but I'd love to be on that jury. > If a supplier provides API and data formats and puts > his business at stake that nothing but this API and data > structure is hidden inside, it's OK with me:) Would you trust > your life to MS? :-)) Not intentionally, but I'm not sure I'm not doing it anyway. "Cyber-terrorism" seems to be pretty well enabled by Microsoft's screwups, so it might be unavoidable for now. >> What does that mean? If I come up with some sort algorithm is >> so efficient that it makes all existing implementations pale >> by comparison, do I have a responsibility to give it away? >> This naive view of the world ignores that without protection >> of invention, there is little incentive to invest in finding >> them in the first place. Apart from those few that will do it >> just for the recognition, it would all but dry up. > > It's not that naive. I would rather call your opinion a naive > golden fever psychology;) An algorithm is not an invention. It's > a discovery. People get patents almost daily on silly stuff like drilling down through a tree control. That is /far/ less of an invention than a quantum leap forward in sorting efficiency, algorithm or no. > Can you see the difference? You do not create it, > it's always there. Yes, and solar panels were "always there" for the last few million years, but nobody managed to build one in time to install it in the Great Pyramid during construction either. All inventions have always been there, they just haven't been seen yet. > And I don't believe that creative people make discoveries > exclusively for money. We have plenty of evidence of the > contrary. They just need sponsors:) Right. They don't do it for money, they just need money to do it. Gotcha. > And it's OK to grant a > temporary exclusive right to stimulate sponsors;) But not > practically endless right:) I agree, patents last too long now. -- Randy Howard (2reply remove FOOBAR) .