On 3/23/07, Ian Hickson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Fri, 23 Mar 2007, Robert Sayre wrote:
> On 3/23/07, Ian Hickson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> > The technologies I listed _are_ covered by patents, yet they are not
> > proprietary. This seems like a relevant counterexample to your
> > argument.
>
> If I have to pay someone because they own something, that seems like a
> pretty good indicator of a proprietary technology. Why would I have to
> pay money if no one owns the codec?
It's not the codec owners you have to pay money to. You have to pay money
to the people whose techniques are used in the codec algorithms. They
don't own the codec, they own a government-granted temporary monopoly on
the ideas that the codec makes use of.
Seems like you're splitting hairs. Here's the definition of
proprietary, according to the "[definition]" link helpfully provided
by Google search, sense 3:
<http://www.answers.com/proprietary&r=67>
"3. Owned by a private individual or corporation under a trademark or
patent: a proprietary drug."
So there it is, right there in the dictionary. You can always tell
that a technical mailing list off on some ridiculous tangent when
people are pasting dictionary definitions of words into threads.
--
Robert Sayre
