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An open letter from Alan CoxAn open letter from Alan CoxPosted May 31, 2004 13:17 UTC (Mon) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091)In reply to: An open letter from Alan Cox by sir_clive Parent article: An open letter from Alan Cox Revolutions seldom work: most often you exchange one tyrant for another. Civil disobedience would be more like it; it worked for Gandhi. I don't know what it might mean in this circumstance, though. Massive public violation of software patents? :P
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An open letter from Alan Cox Posted May 31, 2004 17:01 UTC (Mon) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link] " Massive public violation of software patents? "Isn't only in Linux/FOSS, but there are others more serious, i belive, proprietary applications and projects that have software patents inside, some of them well known ones, and there aren't any licences that agree to that use, besides the patent owners complaisence. IMHO, two ways exist to mitigate the problem: 1) The very hard one of stoping software patents, wich could only happen in europe (EU) now (JAPAN have them),... 2) Have a "ENDLESS" Writen Public License to all those patents that there are in Open Code, and that could be adden in context of a Open Standards with the full power of enforceability,... more or less like the IETF and WWW Consorcium but for Open Patents and with full power for enforceability and negociations,... tough job, but perhaps less hard than above, because many Big Corporations, owners of the majority of patents, are now participating, contributing and "taking advantage" of the quality that the Open-Source method has to offer against proprietary bullies... But tomorrow, if IBM for example, gets to be in a financial down, much certainly to happen because business proceed by cicles, it could decide, on a new Darl style management, to collect money from all patents that seem ok now in open source... much, much worst than SCO, because instead of dubious copyrights "we'll" have to deal with registered patents... 3) a full blown "underground" movement of civil desobidience for the continuing of ideas and work sharing... "I belive" no one really wants to "talk about" about an alternetive like this one (obvious!) because it will be almost inevitable!!..., if a patent war breaks loose, and a lot of Open Source projects and independent developers are presecuted and cuted off from normal distribution... Microsoft would not care about a underground movement, not only because their own home and SOHO market is already a huge "UNDERGROUND" for their own Windows and Office software products piracy(the base of their monopoly)... but because it will prevent a lot of distribution of Open Source to entreprises, where the real money is!!...
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