On Wed, Aug 11, 2004 at 02:12:50PM +0200, Dr. Giovanni A. Orlando wrote: >Yes. is the patent, not the copyright. >He don't have the money to pay the renew the patent.
That sucks then. Maybe he should have had someone market and promote it better, maybe he would not have needed a patent at all, then. Or he would have gotten money for a patent through marketing. Remember, Philips pushed the CD out with cheap prices, everyone could use CDs cheaply, so there was no real competition. It was the superior solution for cheap. It did not become common because of forcing it on customers, nor did it become common like the VHS tape because JVC bought a big market presence. >Well. If an inventor have no money is a BIG problem, however actually >in the GPL times, it is very easy to release a software also with no money. Or release the specs for some other invention so cheap that you make much money through huge sales. >>The idea is not copyrighted or patented or protected in any way, but the >>code is. >This is bad and incorrect for me. I have heard much better arguments for why it's good that ideas can NOT be protected, not one good argument for why they should be. I'd like to hear that one good argument. People have the same ideas independently, person A and person B. Person A patents it and person B can't compete with person A. Person A makes a bad implementation and no one can do anything about it, no one can do it better. Your idea about protecting ideas starts to sound like Microsoft, doesn't it? Only that Microsoft and maybe some pantent-holders just abused their big money to suppress competition. >>Of course the idea can be patented in some degenerate country like the US >>and it seems the EU is making the same mistake, but technically the idea >>can not be protected. And should not be. >The US is not a degeneated country. Do you stay in the US sometime? I've never been there. But look at the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and others. USA was supposed to be the land of the free, now it's the land of the rich and powerful, where some people are more free than others and some people are more equal than others. Every honest individual who makes an invention may get sued over patents because someone else can claim the most stupid patent ever. There's a term Götterdämmerung Capitalism which is such abuse of a fine thing, and that's what they're into across the Atlantic. The point is not in culminating a lot of money and spending it stupidly or not at all, it's about how money is moved smartly into good causes. Maybe it's unfair to generalize the States, I know there's a lot of good and smart people there, but the country is ran by a monkey, among other flaws. Maybe some libertarian-like state could be found, where it would be good to live. >>You gave it to them, whose fault is that? >I comment what we will do. They release a version. However, actually is >not important. But this is a chance for co-operation, you can ask the KDE guys to do as you say if your system is better. They will get a better system and you will see your brainchild become a used application. Everyone wins. >>Fraud? >>If they do it better, where's the fraud? >No they copy 100% the same machine for car test. So? Everyone else copies them too. Copy something back from China. It should not be seen as a bad thing but as a good thing. -- mjt
