On Wed, 2009-11-25 at 17:36 +0530, Adhin D wrote: > > As far as I'm aware, patenting has nothing to do with open source. Its > my understanding that patenting reffers to "rights granted to the > inventor". That right includes whether to share your knowledge or not. > In case of Free Software we can just patent it, and then we can share > the code.
The idea would have been nice if patent and copyright were similar -- one could do what Adhin has suggested and what Stallman did with copyright. But the problem is that patents, especially software patents, could easily lead to litigation because patents are given for inventions and software patents are written in such a manner that they cover a large area. Thus, the patent we take out could violate some patent(s) held by, say, Microsoft, and they could file a case against us. Where will we find the money for defending our patent? They make money out of their patents, but we can't. Copyright is different because it is for an actual implementation -- in the case of software, it becomes a violation only if someone else uses the same code. It can't be a violation if an implementation uses the same idea but different code. Of course, two people could write the same code by chance, but the chance will be pretty tiny. Best -- V. Sasi Kumar http://swatantryam.blogspot.com -- "Freedom is the only law". "Freedom Unplugged" http://www.ilug-tvm.org You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "ilug-tvm" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For details visit the website: www.ilug-tvm.org or the google group page: http://groups.google.com/group/ilug-tvm?hl=en
