Linus Torvalds gets software patents wrong, says attorney (Out-Law)

Posted Dec 2, 2004 5:41 UTC (Thu) by ccchips (subscriber, #3222)
Parent article: Linus Torvalds gets software patents wrong, says attorney (Out-Law)

I believe the idea of copyrights ant patents (at least as framed by the founders of the U.S.,) was to have a trade between short-term monopoly and long-term, unfettered public access.

If you ask me, the real problem here isn't whether something should be patented, but that we have to be so concerned about it. Why?

Could it be because our leaders can't be trusted to make any sort of commitment? That they come up with these social contracts, only to turn around and break them when it suits?

In a world where these things worked like the philosophers intended, I believe we'd probably put up with this. The problem is that the people in support of coftware patents aren't going to stop if they get their way.

Then they will start attacking the "limited time" part of the idea.

Understand?