On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 9:52 AM, Nagarjuna G. <[email protected]>wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 9:49 AM, Nagarjuna G.<[email protected]> > wrote: > > On Sun, Aug 9, 2009 at 9:16 PM, jtd<[email protected]> wrote: > >> And can anybody elaborate how standards are going to be open and > unencumbered > >> and yet covered by patents? > >> > > > > If a standard includes patented ideas, and the holder of the patent > > does not license it for royalty free usage, and does not state that > > free software could use it, then such a standard is not open. Though > > Sun had patents on some ideas related to ODF, they allowed royalty > > free usage and that free software could use it, making ODF an open > > standard. > > > > Just to add: similarly if a software includes patented ideas and is > released under GPLv3, then the copyright holder is explicitly making > it unencumbered. I understand this to mean that FSF is not against the idea of software patents per se, only against encumbered or entailed software. Do Fosscommers feel otherwise, generally speaking? In the particular instance of software patents, I feel that patenting is not the best means to promote software freedom, even though a century or more of patent use has resulted in an ecosystem to support it. As an earlier post mentioned, expressing an idea for the first time is itself a de facto declaration of right of discovery. The 'ecosystem' of patents has moved towards (a trend, not an absolute fact) corporate/third party ownership of patents, which is rarely in the best interests of either the discoverer or the rest of us. -- Vickram http://communicall.wordpress.com
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