Re: Restrictive Patent Usage

You are accepting a situation that encourages legal
restrictions on what software you and your community
can write.

Your definition of pragmatist seems to be a person
who accepts one shackle because it's better than two.

I'd ask you to reconsider as this draft affects a lot
of people, patents only "protect" a rich few.

You mention that "neither side is completely happy".
I think it is wrong when freedom is taken away from
the people of society, the programmers and users that
make up one side.  The companies who stake there
commercial interests on blocking members of society
aren't all going to go broke over night if they are
forced to be nice.

Ciaran O'Riordan


> >  The software (and documentation) that I write is
> >released as Free Software (under the GNU GPL).  My
> >hope is create software that everyone can use for
> >any purpose be they wealthy or not.
> >
> >  In order to write Free Software I must avoid the
> >use of patent restricted technologies.  To allow
> >me, and the thousands (or millions?) of Free
> >Software programmers to continue writing software
> >that makes use of the best technologies, please
> >consider ammending the draft to require all
> >patents to be royalty-free without restriction.
> 
> Hi Ciaron,
> I suspect this is one of the compromises that allowed
> the royalty free policy to pass.  The fact that
> neither side is completely happy with the compromise
> is perversely a good sign that perhaps it was a fair
> deal.  Although I am also a staunch advocate of Free Software,
> I support the W3C's draft patent policy because
> I am also a pragmatist.  The compromise is acceptable
> to me.
>
> Cheers,
> Dan Kegel
> http://www.kegel.com

Received on Monday, 25 November 2002 22:49:57 UTC