Still good news

Still good news

Posted Oct 26, 2012 14:31 UTC (Fri) by david.a.wheeler (guest, #72896)
Parent article: Motif relicensed

As a widely-useful library, it's way too late. But it's still good news:

1. I'm sure there are old programs somewhere where this helps. Most people won't be running them, but for those few, this is great news for them.
2. It may be great news for killing some software patents. People have been patenting anything that moves; Motif is unquestionably old, so any prior art in it would help.
3. Who knows, there may be something of value that can be salvaged from it - a clever approach or whatever.
4. If nothing else, this will prevent a loss of history. Since its code is widely released, it is much less likely to be lost in the future, and this makes it much easier to "resurrect" a simulated old system.

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