On Thu, 15 Jun 2000, Shane Nay wrote:
> Hehe, I was going to say I thought I saw some etoy.com action in Perrin's
> headers, but looks like he spoke up for himself. The bottom line is that a lot
> of companies have law departments that Do Bad Things. You just have to keep
> them in check. (i.e. Get GPL clauses in your contracts!, it's _IMPORTANT_, I'm
> doing this right now, and will see if it's okay with my lawyer to post the
> wording for anyone to use.)
Besides of course abiding by all your software licenses, I believe
programmers working for Internet companies have another serious duty.
That is to squarely refuse to assist in the filing of insipid patents.
You can also have it written into your offer of employment that patent
applications are excluded from your work duties. By doing so, the
technical people who are behind the inventions can keep the Internet
patent land grab from getting out of control.
IMHO, naturally. Your philosophical mileage may vary.
Jeffrey Baker
