On Thu, Nov 13, 2003 at 11:12:04PM +0100, Henning Makholm wrote: > There's the difference that it takes explicit action and quite a bit > of money to acquire and keep holding a patent. Going through that > trouble just to grant the public a perpetual, non-exclusive, > worldwide, fully paid-up and royalty free patent licence without a > reciprocity clause would be senseless. An easier way to achieve the > same legal result would be not to take out a patent at all. Exactly; all the more reason not to do it. Companies with patents are like countries with nuclear weapons; once you have them, it's very difficult to resist the temptation to play with them, and intimidate one's neighbors. This is not a temptation that ordinary people of ordinary means have to wrestle with. The Free Software and Open Source Movements are a community of rough equals. There is no society among giants. -- G. Branden Robinson | The more ridiculous a belief Debian GNU/Linux | system, the higher the probability branden@debian.org | of its success. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- Wayne R. Bartz
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