On Tue, May 31, 2005 01:34:50 AM -0400, Daniel Carrera ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
> M. Fioretti wrote: > > >In "Free Software, Free Society", R.M. Stallman "talks about the > >perversion of the original intent of patent and copyright law. For > >those of us in the US, our constitution states clearly that these are > >granted for the benefit of society. Most other countries say something > >similar". http://gnu.open-mirror.com/doc/book13.html > > I never said anything to the contrary. You said, in the previous message, "I'm pretty sure that the intention was (2), not (1)", (1) being that patents exist to benefit society. > >I could sell to you something I made which in itself is extremely > >simple, and can be reverse-engineered in seconds. But in practice > >it can be manufactured only with some very special machinery. Which > >I have no obligation to sell you. I'd patent that machinery. > Then the argument simply shifts to the design of the machine. > Spending many years designing your machine in seclusion is less > effective than designing it in small steps and sharing those. Define "effective". If I am a genius, able to work it out 20 minutes a day in six months, I won't have wasted anything. And if I were so disgustingly greedy to want not to become a billionaire, the hell with that, but to just pay my mortgage and afford a nice vacation every summer, then doing it myself and patenting it would be damned effective, if not the only realistic way to achieve the goal. Note that my scheme doesn't exclude yours. There is no reason to patent everything you do. Project A pays the mortgage, project B is a pet activity to do with friends online on saturdays. Ciao, Marco -- Marco Fioretti mfioretti, at the server mclink.it Fedora Core 3 for low memory http://www.rule-project.org/ [Crash programs] fail because they are based on the theory that, with nine women pregnant, you can get a baby a month. Wernher von Braun --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
