On Tuesday, August 9, 2011 4:03:01 PM UTC+2, kirk wrote: > > > This is just a hunch, but, perhaps FOSS projects are more popular than > normal because of the patent system. It's much more difficult to sue the > _creator_ of a FOSS project for patent infringement; some bigcorp might join > in, and the last thing a troll wants is to be challenged in court as that > might render their patent permanently unenforceable. There's virtually no > money to be had. It's even worse for PR than usual, etc, etc. As a creator > of a project, the reduction in risk when you FOSS your library vs. charging > a moderate price for it is possibly convincing some programmers to go the > FOSS route vs. trying to sell it if patent risk wasn't a concern. > > > these guys do not care about PR. Trolling is a source of funding. troll > Omni will require for 50,000,000,000 in patent fees to satisfy their funders > demands for ROI. >
Of course they care about PR. Enough public badmouthing of a specific case and people show up funding the defendant, prior art is searched for by more people, a lawyer might offer their services pro bono. A big company might take the opportunity to earn some geek cred and take up defense. Sure, they wouldn't give a flying one if their name is spoken with derision around the tech sphere, but there are other costs to being a well known jackass. Quiet, fast settlement. That's perfection for a patent troll. Anything else is suboptimal for them. None of this invalidates my point. It's _much_ easier to just abandon the IP if you have no support contracts and not even implied merchantability because your library was a FOSS project and you never sold anybody anything. Does FOSS projects mean the current patent system is okay? Of course not. That's not what I was trying to say though: I'm suggesting that perhaps we see more FOSS projects that normal because of patents. That's I guess a very small positive amongst a sea of negative consequences, and certainly not a good reason to keep it around or to avoid reform. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/javaposse/-/zQf2Txivk8QJ. To post to this group, send email to javaposse@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to javaposse+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
