It does matter if it's a "defensive" patent or, for lack of a better term, a business patent. Business patents in software are potentially and unpredictably troublesome for future generations, and especially in the computer world, a "generation" is about 5 years young. Defensive patents are still a problem too, for that matter, since you can't predict if the business owners are going to change their minds in the future.
In my opinoin it's not okay at all, no matter which part of it is patented, or if it's the whole thing. If it's open source, there's no telling how the software will be integrated into future more ambitious projects. A trivial example is probably a complete package that does what you do AND adds some feature, like agents' employee time. Anyhows, a patent by any name is an exclusionary measure to future development: it says "we are the only ones with the right to use it this way" for a significant amount of business time. It directly contradicts Free Software ideas. Although, http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html "At a trade show in late 1998, dedicated to the operating system often referred to as "Linux", the featured speaker was an executive from a prominent software company. He was probably invited on account of his company's decision to "support" that system. Unfortunately, their form of "support" consists of releasing non-free software that works with the system—in other words, using our community as a market but not contributing to it. He said, "There is no way we will make our product open source, but perhaps we will make it 'internal' open source. If we allow our customer support staff to have access to the source code, they could fix bugs for the customers, and we could provide a better product and better service." (This is not an exact quote, as I did not write his words down, but it gets the gist.) People in the audience afterward told me, "He just doesn't get the point." But is that so? Which point did he not get? He did not miss the point of the Open Source movement. That movement does not say users should have freedom, only that allowing more people to look at the source code and help improve it makes for faster and better development. The executive grasped that point completely; unwilling to carry out that approach in full, users included, he was considering implementing it partially, within the company." A "patented" open source package sounds suspect in that it is able to leverage the community's effort while being in a position of exclusive authoritative control. On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 11:14 AM, KRTorio <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Our company is applying for patents to our software. > We're using open source software (php frontend, database is mysql, asterisk > for voip applications). > > Is it ok for the whole software to be patented, ok for some parts only > (patentable ones like user views, database schema), or none at all? > > _________________________________________________ > Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List > http://lists.linux.org.ph/mailman/listinfo/plug > Searchable Archives: http://archives.free.net.ph > _________________________________________________ Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List http://lists.linux.org.ph/mailman/listinfo/plug Searchable Archives: http://archives.free.net.ph
