On Wed, Feb 02, 2011 at 04:46:57PM -0500, Fleep Tuque wrote: > I have quite a lot of respect for the Reaction Grid team and the services > they are providing to educators and newbies in the opensim space. There are > many faculty and teachers whose expertise is in something other than > managing servers, and they are far from stupid people. > > Personally, I'll reserve judgement until I've, you know, read the patent > application. You probably should, too.
If they're applying for business method or software patents, that's enough right there to condemn them, as far as I'm concerned. There's no possible way in which their doing so is going to help open source software, OpenSim specifically, or virtual worlds (especially in the education space) in general. The only conceivable way it might be justified to help is if it's going to be used "defensively" and if it's going to be submitted to a common pool of defensive patents. However, that's not usually what companies do; they file patents so as to increase the valuation of their company in case they get sold or in case their investors want proof that they're getting something for their investment. I feel very strongly about this. I got myself fired once upon a time for not wanting to be part of a patent process on software patents. So, don't go and tell me that I can't judge when somebody else is applying for business method or software patents. The very *concept* is flawed, and somebody taking advantage of that concept is taking advantage of the system for personal valuation of their own company at the expense of the long term and the broader intellectual ecosystem. ReactionGrid may be doing good things. And, if they're big enough, they're not monolithic. The people doing good things may not be the ones pushing for patents. But if ReactionGrid as an entity is filing patents on doing stuff with OpenSim, then ReactionGrid as an entity is, unless this is VERY different from nearly every other software or business method patent out there, at least partially working on becoming harmful. -- --Rob Knop E-mail: rk...@pobox.com Home Page: http://www.pobox.com/~rknop/ Blog: http://scientopia.org/blogs/galacticinteractions/
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