On Tue, May 31, 2005 19:28:51 PM -0400, Daniel Carrera
([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
> >Heavy capital investment isn't new, but it has been for a long time
> >reserved, for any reasons, only to religious or politic, anyway
> >monolithic and centralized, administrations
>
> I'm pretty sure that rich people who are not political or religious
> institutions have been around for a long time.
Of course. But if they do it for profit, they will only shell the
money out if there is the possibility (through patents) to get more
back.
If they do it for fun, I don't want to depend on them, that is to wait
until I find one with the same taste. Assuming they exist, and won't
prefer to spend their money buying Da Vinci codes, divorcing from the
next Ivana Trump or similar amenities.
> I'm talking about private individuals who are rich, and spend money
> on "science" (before the name as such appeared) and don't see a need
> to exclude others from using the knowledge they discover.
Unfortunately, very, very few people with this sensibility get
rich. Better not to risk to delay progress by relying only on them.
> Look, you've made a lot of good points and I don't want to deny
> them. But at least I hope I've successfully questioned the "common
> wisdom" that patents for /inventions/ are necessarily good and will
> encourage progress.
I hope I've successfully questioned the wisdom, common in Free SW
circles, that all patents for any invention (excluding SW, genes,
drugs) are necessarily harmful and will slow down progress.
> At the very least, you've limited your claim to inventions that
> require heavy capital investment.
No, that was only part of my examples, or at least of my thought. If I
invent something truly revolutionary and useful spending just 10
Euros, I want both:
the possibility to give it to everybody now for free and
the possibility to make 100000 Euros, thanks to patent law, before
giving it away to everybody for free
and the freedom to choose by myself which one to pick.
Ciao,
Marco
--
Marco Fioretti mfioretti, at the server mclink.it
Fedora Core 3 for low memory http://www.rule-project.org/
We have to pursue this subject of fun very seriously if we
want to stay competitive in the 21st century. -George Yeo,
Singapore's Minister of State for Finance.
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