Re: [Trisquel-users] How much x86 power are we excluded from?

[Igor . Zobin]

Qi is certainly a nice project and building hardware for free software in a  
community is probably really fun.
I don't quite understand though, why hardware should be patent-free? Patents  
in the physical world actually serve a purpose and there are no problems with  
them there, in theory. It's the software world where patents become simply  
absurd. If you build a new piece of hardware and are able to make it superior  
to old stuff in some way, why not have a patent for the hardware? So that  
only you can build this piece for some time, not to hinder others to use it  
within their software projects that is.