Hi all. I thought it might be good to give a quick "review" of the presentation for those that could not make it....
I thought his talk on software patents was pretty good. He was able to help put things in perspective for me, and dug deeper into the issues involved with software patents. His analogy helped clue it in for me... I'll paraphrase for you (just cuz I can't remember the exact wording.. <grins>) Imagine it is a few hundred years ago, and it was possible to get a patent on a musical note, a series of notes, or a particular rhythm. Now imagine you are a composer trying to come up with a new masterpiece. You could take the time to learn about all the musical patents that are out there, and purposely try to write your masterpiece so as not to be affected by them. BUT, some patents might not be available to you at the time of your research yet still affect your work. So now it becomes very very difficult to create a musical composition without getting affected by a patent. Did you use a C note? oops, that's patented. Did you use a triplet? oops, that's patented too. So, the alternatives are to either purchase a license for each of the patents that the composition is affected by. But this is financially prohibitive - especially if there is more than one. The only other real option is to create a new style of music, using new notes and rhythms - but then people probably wouldn't think of it as music and want to listen to it. Beethoven and Mozart would be crippled when it comes to composing music. The patent holders (usually big companies) tell them that they aren't smart enough if they can't create something original. THIS is the problem with software patents. Software, like music, is created from ideas. These ideas trigger other ideas, and so on, until a product is developed. By allowing software patents, we are being prevented from building on these ideas to come up with the next generation application or system. The patent issue is even more complicated, but that's another discussion... :) With regards to Richard Stallman himself, I have had my suspicions confirmed. He IS as eccentric as he seems, and very opinionated with regards to certain issues (as he probably should be, given the position he is in...). I spoke with him briefly to say thank you on behalf of all the CLUG members that were present (there were about 15 or 20 of us that I saw...). Mr Stallman suggested we could thank him by changing the name of our group to "Calgary GNU/Linux User's Group". To avoid any clash of opinions, I suggested that I would post this issue to the group. Comments? Overall, the presentation was pretty good. The venue was great (theater type classroom at UofC), and the sound system probably wasn't needed but was appreciated. I was disappointed that CUUG did not mention CLUG's efforts in promoting the event, but I'm sure I've missed out on thanking a few people at our meetings. The door prize was a wireless NIC (I think), which seemed somewhat inadequate for the event and the numbers attending. That, and there was only the one prize - with the numbers attending, it seems there should have been a couple more. That said, I would like to thank CUUG for organizing this event, and the CLUG members who helped promote it and/or attended it. Shawn (PS. The opinions stated above are my own, and should not be taken as CLUG's official stance....) _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [email protected] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) **Please remove these lines when replying
