“Your criticisms are completely wrong”: Stallman on software patents, 20 years in | Ars Technica
I've been following Stallman quite closely for the last few months, he has become my new hero.
Sometimes I wonder when the day will come that we will finally be able to kick micro$oft in the nuts and call it a day.
How many things have you thought about that could become great inventions but are instead sitting on a piece of paper, unbuilt, in a patent office somewhere?
With the FBI saying that paying for your morning coffee in cash means that you could be a terrorist, have you considered using alternative options for payment besides CC? or are you afraid you'll be labelled a terrorist?
I've been following Stallman quite closely for the last few months, he has become my new hero.
Sometimes I wonder when the day will come that we will finally be able to kick micro$oft in the nuts and call it a day.
How many things have you thought about that could become great inventions but are instead sitting on a piece of paper, unbuilt, in a patent office somewhere?
With the FBI saying that paying for your morning coffee in cash means that you could be a terrorist, have you considered using alternative options for payment besides CC? or are you afraid you'll be labelled a terrorist?
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Europe has managed well without software patents, although there is pressure from some to introduce them. My understanding is that you can't patent an idea, only a mechanism to implement the idea. With software you can't easily distinguish between an idea and the code (mechanism) for that idea, as any algorithm has to be expressed at least as metacode so in principle it could be executed.
Europe uses copyright law instead, and I believe that works much better. It (in theory) stops people from stealing ideas, but doesn't prevent them from independently arriving at a similar result. In Europe when you write a subroutine you don't have to worry whether someone has patented it; you just have to be sure you haven't copied it.
Europe uses copyright law instead, and I believe that works much better. It (in theory) stops people from stealing ideas, but doesn't prevent them from independently arriving at a similar result. In Europe when you write a subroutine you don't have to worry whether someone has patented it; you just have to be sure you haven't copied it.
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