- From: Robert Sayre <sayrer@gmail.com>
- Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2007 01:37:01 -0400
On 3/23/07, Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote: > On Fri, 23 Mar 2007, Robert Sayre wrote: > > On 3/23/07, Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> 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
Received on Thursday, 22 March 2007 22:37:01 UTC