[Ldsoss] Dare I say it ... patents ...

[Steven H. McCown]

Of course if you sell, give away, or donate something, then you won't be
able to keep it.  

 

I just found it interesting that with all the talk about how bad some
perceive patents, that the church would find them palatable enough to
solicit them.  From the page, it sounded like the church would keep them and
profit from them.  Someone once asked me to show them the church's official
position on patents.  Although some will no doubt argue to the contrary,
that seemed like an official endorsement, to me.

 

Some patents are stupid and that needs to be cleaned up - I once saw an SGI
patent, filed in the mid 90's, that patented clicking an icon on a desktop
to launch a program.  Can anyone think of some prior art?  I think that the
USPTO was asleep.  Stuff like that needs to stop, because it is souring the
entire system.

 

Still, I don't like the full swing that some have made.  I've been told that
I don't have the 'moral right' to keep inventions for my own benefit and
that they 'belong' to everyone.  I'm still puzzled as to why the majority
gets to decide that for the individual.  To many, 'freedom' must depend on
perspective.

 

In a recent interview
(http://www.forbes.com/2006/03/21/gnu-gplv3-linux-cz_dl_0321stallman2.html),
Richard Stallman was asked, "Would it be ethical to steal lines of unfree
code from companies like Microsoft and Oracle and use them to create a
"free" version of that program?"

 

Here is his answer:   "It would not be unethical, but it would not really
work, since if Oracle ever found out, it would be able to suppress the use
of that free software. The reason for my conclusion is that making a program
proprietary is wrong. To liberate the code, if it is possible, would not be
theft, any more than freeing a slave is theft (which is what the slave owner
would surely call it)."

 

We seem to live in a world of ridiculous extremes . where are the 'happy
mediums'?

 

Steve

 

 

  _____  

From: Jay Askren [mailto:jay.askren at gmail.com] 
Sent: Thursday, April 13, 2006 6:42 AM
To: smccown at earthlink.net; LDS Open Source Software
Subject: Re: [Ldsoss] Dare I say it ... patents ...

 

Of course if we had a software patent in an area where we were planning to
do more work, giving the patent away would mean we could no longer use our
idea which would make us dislike patents even more.  So it doesn't seem like
this would be a good idea if we had a patent that came from our open source
software. 

 

Jay



 

On 4/12/06, Steven H. McCown <smccown at earthlink.net> wrote: 

For those of you who dislike patents, but happen to have them, here is a
website that you are sure to enjoy: 

(http://www.lds.org/ldsfoundation/ways/assets/0,8115,479-1-0-9-p,00.html)


>From the date, it looks like it was released today... 

Steve


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