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SubjectRe: Article: IBM wants to "clean up the license" of Linux
On Sat, 19 Dec 1998, George Bonser wrote:

> On Sun, 20 Dec 1998, Dave Cinege wrote:
>
> > Who is to say what is and is not patentable? (Do you cede that government has a
> > stake in all ideas???) If you want to keep TOTAL rights to something, DON'T
> > make it public at all.
>
> Exactly why Coca-Cola has never patented their recipie. To do so would be
> 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.

I began thinking about patents a while ago and that was the same conclusion
I came to. Although patents are not ideal, they do at least allow
for people to share their discoveries (encouraged to do so by
license fee earnings) so that the state of the art may be advanced. In
short, the *principle* of patents is sound, IMvHO.

However, this does not excuse those who are allowed to patent ridiculously
simple ideas (using XOR to move screen objects around, f'rinstance) or the
fact that a patent has a fixed life, regardless of the speed at which an
industry moves. Patents in the computing industry should have much shorter
lives and should should not become 75-year (or whatever) cash cows for large
multinationals.

Best Regards,
Alex.


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