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Giving it Away for Free
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| I was talking with a pal of mine yesterday out back in his workshop. He was
| making a beautiful piece of furniture and I was going on about the world
| which, of course, eventually led to a discussion of computer operating
| systems, open source, that kind of thing.
|
| [...]
|
| As we both oooh'd and ahhh'd over it and ran our fingers over it I asked
| him, "So, Frank, how much you gonna sell this bad-boy for?" Frank just
| smiled. "I'm not selling this, I can't. You know, it's too much of me, to
| much soul, too much devotion. I could never sell this, I'd either keep it for
| myself or give it to someone I loved."
|
| "So, Frank, you mean like those Open Source developers?", I asked. And he
| smiled again. He got it. His smile got crooked and he said, "Yeah, ya bastid,
| just like those open source developers." You could almost see his epiphany.
`----
http://www.debiantutorials.org/content/view/235/1/
It's a question of scarcity, of which there is none in the digital world. Only
intellectual monopolies try to limit endless duplication that costs nothing.
Recent:
Bilski: Be prepared for huge lobbying in Congress?
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| The outcome of the Bilski case, which should be published in October, might
| invalidate software patents in the United States:
|
| Plager said he regretted the unintended consequences of the decisions in
| State Street Bank and AT&T. Those rulings led to a flood of applications
| for software and business method patents, he noted. If we “rethink the
| breadth of patentable subject matter,” he said, we should ask whether
| these categories should be excluded from patent protection.
|
| If the CAFC are clever enough to follow the Supreme Court and kick software
| patents out, you might see the desperate large corporations and their patent
| department rushing to Congress. Especially if tomorrow the banks value their
| patent portfolio as void, and not useful to get any credit.
`----
http://stopsoftwarepatents.org/forum/t-95558/bilski:be-prepared-for-huge-lobbying-in-congress
Latha Jishnu: The mouse that bit Microsoft
PATENTLY ABSURD
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| Here’s what Gates wrote in an office memorandum in 1991. “If people had
| understood how patents would be granted when most of today’s ideas were
| invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete
| standstill today. . . I feel certain that some large company will patent some
| obvious thing related to interface, object orientation, algorithm,
| application extension or other crucial technique.”
|
| This was the year after Microsoft launched Windows 3.0, the first of its new
| operating systems that would become hugely popular across the world. Yet,
| three years down the line, Microsoft had changed from a kitten that was
| content with copyright protection to an aggressive patents tiger. In 1991,
| Microsoft had filed fewer than 50 patent applications whereas last year it
| was awarded 1,637 patents, almost a 12 per cent increase in the number of
| patents it received in 2006. According to IFI Patent Intelligence, the rise
| in Microsoft’s patents portfolio bucked the general trend in 2007 when the
| number of patents issued by the US Patents and Trademark Office dipped by 10
| per cent. Apparently several thousand of the company’s filings are still
| pending.
|
| All this may prompt the reader to conclude that there is indeed a direct
| correlation between IPR and growth — and wealth — as the company claims. Not
| true, says Mark H Webbink, a US Supreme Court lawyer who is a recognised
| voice on IT issues. Charting the company’s revenues, R&D spending and patent
| filings from 1985 onwards, he shows that the spike in patent filings occurred
| long after the Microsoft “had become well established and was being
| investigated for its monopolistic practices”. Webbink contends that patents
| did not spur the launch and rapid growth of the mass market software
| industry. On the other hand, patents have become a threat to software
| innovation, he warns.
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http://www.business-standard.com/india/storypage.php?autono=330566
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