Re: Patents to be Auctioned

On Sat, Jan 19, 2008 at 08:21:22PM +1100, Dudley Mills wrote:
> Guess you won't be bidding afterall?

I guess not.

> Right. Disclosure is an essential part of it. Not the whole of it.

Disclosure is the whole point of the patent system. Without that there
would be no reason for the patent system to exist. Please remember
that it is the governments charge to look after the interest of the
public not that of private enterprises. Disclosure is your part of the
bargain in exchange for a little bit of the public's freedom.

> I'd be most grateful if you would point out a major application either
> planned or in operation.

Sure, <http://www.google.com/>, have you heard of it?

> Sorry to say that I don't think that your free software development
> would cut the mustard here. Money needs to be in prospect, made and
> to pass through many hands to make possible the required amount of
> cooperation by many people with different skills, most of whom need
> to make a living.

You don't think it cuts the mustard? I think, perhaps, you chose the
wrong free software developer to pick a fight with.

  http://www.gnu.org/people/people.html#n
  http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=nslater@bytesexual.org
  http://couchdb.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/AUTHORS

I spend my time contributing, pro bono, to:

 *) the GNU Project, the worlds largest and most succesful free
    software operating system in use by millions of people worldwide.
 *) the Debian GNU/Linux free software distribution, one of the oldest
    and most successful free software distributions in the world. 
 *) CouchDB, a free software document oriented database that is about
    to become an official Apache project and who's lead developer is
    moving to IBM who are paying him to work full time on it.

So, getting back to your point, I really don't think money has
anything to do with effort, coordination or success. In fact, patents
such as yours directly harm the communities I spend so much time
contributing to.

> There are plenty of businesses paying royalties for the use of a
> wide variety of Intellectual Property. They do so because they are
> the busineses which see the value of an idea. There are also
> businesses which don't pay royalties. Commonly they also don't have
> any novel ideas.

Either you are confused or you are trying to confuse us.

Business don't pay royalties because they see a value in an idea, they
pay royalties because they have to.

> Software is "just" another (patentable) technology.

Yes, that is correct. It doesn't mean it's ethically justified.

> Please buy my patents and you can have the honour...

The honour of what? Buying morally corrupt legal devices from someone
who spams a community mailing list in the most inappropriate way
possible so that I can extort and damage the very community I have
worked for so long to develop and enrich.

Sure, makes sense.

Best,

-- 
Noah Slater <http://bytesexual.org/>

"Creativity can be a social contribution, but only in so far as
society is free to use the results." - R. Stallman

Received on Saturday, 19 January 2008 09:50:04 UTC