Sam Ramji: On the CodePlex Foundation and more [LWN.net]

Sam Ramji: On the CodePlex Foundation and more

Posted Oct 17, 2009 23:40 UTC (Sat) by BrucePerens (subscriber, #2510)
Parent article: Sam Ramji: On the CodePlex Foundation and more

Under what terms were Red Hat and IBM offered those patents? I doubt they were fair ones. But there's a lot we're not being told about those patents, by any of the players.

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Sam Ramji: On the CodePlex Foundation and more

Posted Oct 21, 2009 16:07 UTC (Wed) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link]

Or outside confirmation. "hearing" something doesn't mean that it actually happened, let alone in the way you think.

Sam Ramji: On the CodePlex Foundation and more

Posted Oct 22, 2009 13:52 UTC (Thu) by johnflux (guest, #58833) [Link]

I knew someone who used to be in a lot of negotiations. He said that if you don't want to do something, you should never outright say no, but instead just attach complex conditions that you know the other side will never accept.

Then paint the other side as being unreasonable for refusing your request. That way you gain what you want (Redhat etc not accepting the patent), while making it seem like the other side is being unreasonable, giving you greater leverage in the future.

Note that the conditions you attach should be complex - that way if it hits the news, the average person won't be able to follow the conditions and understand that they are unreasonable, making it very difficult for the other side to explain themselves.

Sam Ramji: On the CodePlex Foundation and more

Posted Nov 4, 2009 20:04 UTC (Wed) by hozelda (guest, #19341) [Link]

>> Note that the conditions you attach should be complex - that way if it hits the news, the average person won't be able to follow the conditions and understand that they are unreasonable, making it very difficult for the other side to explain themselves.

The patent system comes to mind. Why? Because I think most people understand what a patent is supposed to be (and can accept the general motivation behind such a system), but don't appreciate how broken the system is in allowing fast runners and those piggie-backing on the industry to gain monopoly control (or taxing powers) over huge areas of intellectual development and products.

In the patent world, prior art means nothing. Only those taking out patents (which can carefully cut around your tiny prior art implementation) have any real leverage and are ridiculously empowered to control things whose details their authors will never dream up or implement. This happens because English and other spoken languages allow generalities to "cover" in scope many things over which the details are unknown.

You either work and contribute to society (if you are allowed to) or you rake in profits via patents as you leech off society's bounties created by others -- this is where software is headed if SCOTUS permits this potentially ridiculously perverse system to apply to software.

Is less than a week, SCOTUS hears verbal arguments on Bilski.