At 03:35 PM 12/27/99 -0600, Leland V. Lammert wrote:
>At 08:14 AM 12/26/99 , you wrote:
> >At 05:15 AM 12/26/99 +0100, Roberto Micarelli wrote:
> >>
> >>That's a good question, stay with us in fighting against sw patents.
> >
> >I *HAVE* to take exception to this. As a patent holder myself (I hold 4
> >of them), what's wrong with somebody being able to safeguard their own
> >personal inventions? You seem to believe that nobody has a right to do
> that.
> >Sorry, pal, but you are just plain WRONG! And I think it's highly
> inappropriate
> >that you openly push that agenda in a forum like this.
>
>Dan,
>
>I also believe in SW patents, .. but the current farce with RSA, even you
>have to admit, is stupid! Why cannot developers purchase a license (I do
>not call $100,000 a license fee for ANYONE)? Why has RSA abandoned RSAREF?
Caveat emptor: this is going to continue my unpopular thoughts on this
subject, but I have the right to make my feelings known as well.
Why is it stupid? Maybe usury, but surely they have a right to charge what
they want for their products, don't they? The thing that kills me about this
whole "free software" thing is that people seem to expect me, as a business
owner, to invest literally hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of $$$ to
develop software, betting my company on it, then give it away just because
people don't want to pay. Where's the incentive, then, to develop quality
software, if people are to force you to give it up with no hope of recovering
your development costs?
The other argument, that of "it's just mathematical equations", is equally
as farcical. Books are just collections of words, yet people copyright them.
Surely words should be in the public domain, right? If it's that easy, then
expend your own resources and write your own algorithms. If you build a
better
mousetrap...
Now, I'm not saying a $100k fee is fair, by any stretch of the imagination.
But by the same token, it *IS* their software to license. Just because someone
thinks it should be free, isn't any kind of a good reason to MAKE it free.
As for RSAREF, I guess I see it the same way. But it is at least funky that
it was available free for so long, and is no longer so. That's one example
that I think is questionable, to be sure.
>I think even you would have to agree that this is a SW patent gone WAY off
>track.
Hmmmmm...yes, maybe to some degree. However, they DO have the right to do
business, no matter how much people think they shouldn't.
------
+-------------------------------+---------------------------------------+
| Dan O'Reilly | |
| Principal Engineer | "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit |
| Process Software Corporation | flies like a banana." |
| http://www.process.com | -- Groucho Marx |
+-------------------------------+---------------------------------------+
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