Re: Article: IBM wants to "clean up the license" of Linux

MOLNAR Ingo (mingo@chiara.csoma.elte.hu)
Sun, 20 Dec 1998 22:41:32 +0100 (CET)


On Sun, 20 Dec 1998, Alan Cox wrote:

> > What the free software community needs isn't so much a way of "buying
> > into" some kind of partial rights to software patents, but a horde of
> > people finding prior art, to defend free software.
>
> Thats I think the wrong approach. If US patents are like EU patents you
> sign an affidavit that what you claim is the truth. It would be far
> more effective to start finding clearly bogus patents and sueing the
> lacky who signed their name to it for perjury.

IBM should rather lobby to mend patent laws to exempt Linux, not the other
way around :)

the generic idea would be to create positive discrimination laws for free
software: to make new laws to protect free software, acknowledging the
fact that free software is in the public interest, thus free software
deserves extra protection like academic research does: eg. patent law does
not apply... (time to call your congressman, it's easy :)

-- mingo

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