Nah, Joe Alter already holds this...
I still have yet to figure out why folks unabashedly slam Joe. Yes, there
are patent trolls and yes, there are serious problems with our patent
system, but after evaluating the entire situation after the Yeti deal
collapsed (which was unfortunate), it seems to me that, in general, Joe is
the "little guy" that the best parts of our decrepit patent system support.
Before the Yeti thing, his patent basically kept several large studios from
outright stealing his work and giving him no compensation for it. Isn't
that the ideal situation for patents? Protecting the little guy from the
big conglomerate corporations?
I don't want to turn this into a political discussion but this "evil Joe
Alter" thread came up on a neighboring VFX list that Joe was actually on,
and when he calmly presented his case it actually made a lot of sense.
Yeti is an unfortunate causality to this situation, but this doesn't mean
that Joe is a patent troll... I mean, he did the actual work and makes
money from competing products based on that work. I'm all for open-source
stuff and I think if someone wants to go down that route, more power to
them. All of my released work has been released as such. But that doesn't
mean that if someone wants the protection of the law for their creation they
should be denied that. Methinks if his detractors actually held patents
they would have a different opinion of him.
My 0.02.
-Eric
-----Original Message-----
From: Eugen Sares
Sent: Monday, August 26, 2013 10:23 AM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Friday Flashback #133
Nah, Joe Alter already holds this...
