[thelist] Patents screw plug-ins

Geoff Sheridan web2k2 at premonition.co.uk
Fri Sep 12 10:44:17 CDT 2003


At 7:39 am -0700 12/9/03, bruce wrote:
>this is the way the ballgame is played....
<snip>
>this is the way biz is done.... welcome to the world...

The fact that this sort of nonsense is commonplace and legal does not make
it right.

>do i like it...no.. would i fight like hell to make sure you don't infringe
>on my patent if i had one that was valuable..hell yes!!! and i'm pretty sure
>you would too!

No, I would not, since I have integrity and am not simply out for every
penny I can screw out of the rest of humanity. These patents are bogus -
the company in question did not 'invent' plug-ins in any meaningful sense;
they simply filed a whole bunch of speculative ideas and have retrospectively
moulded them to attempt to describe plug-in technology and cash in.
The development of plug-in technology owes nothing to these people.

The use of patents in this manner is emphatically not 'the way of the world',
but a social malaise which can be fought and changed. That is why I have
been involved in the campaign to stop the introduction of similar patent
laws in Europe http://www.eurolinux.org/

The laws are getting more and more favorable to the multi-nationals which
mostly hold and abuse patents (eg in software, agriculture, pharmaceuticals,
music and film) and less and less favorable to ordinary people and
developing nations.

This is because they spend a lot of time and money getting laws changed,
while you sit on your arse and say 'that's just the way it is'.

Geoff


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