> "Albert D. Cahalan" wrote:
>
> > It is unfortunate that the FSF doesn't hold any patents. I don't think
> > that they like patents at all, but they need some so that they can trade.
> > (if anything, patent issues could give GPL code an advantage over BSD code)
>
> Stallman once told me, "patents are a governement mandated monopoly".
> I've thought alot about that. He's right.
On Sun, 20 Dec 1998, Alan Cox wrote:
> > to put it into the public domain after X years expired. A patent at least
> > makes sure that the details are shared with the common community after a
> > period of exclusive use by the inventor. Without patents, there would be a
> > great many more trade secrets.
>
> _used to_. There is now an entire profession of writing patents in such
> a way that even when they expire you cannot possibly reconstruct what they
> were on about in full.
>
> In the current world trade secrets are less evil than patents. If someone
> discovers something clever and patents it then they get a little piece
> of paper granting them monopoly power. These are then traded to create a
> little cabal of vendors who 'compete' in a very minimal fashion and lock
> the entire market down while ripping customers off
You guys forget that one of the main reasons for inventing patents in the
first place is to protect someone who dumps a lot of money into developing
something. If the "something" they sell based on that is easily reverse
engineered and copied, then the reverse engineers have the upper hand, and
always will.
Trade secrets hinder development of new technology. Ideas are rarely "out
of the blue". More often they are straightforward extrapolations of current
ideas. By limiting the spread of ideas and information, you slow the growth
of technology.
All that said, patents still suck giant giraffe balls. There's got to be a
better way to both protect the researcher, and encourage free exchange of
ideas.
Anyone want to see my file folder of potential multimillion-dollar products
and companies to start that I will never have time for?
-- Bob
Bob McElrath (mcelrath@draal.physics.wisc.edu) Univ. of Wisconsin at Madison
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