Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Maybe Software Patents Won't Kill FOSS After All

Posted by timothy on from the hurdles-and-hoops dept.

Roblimo writes "Lawrence Rosen, attorney for the Open Source Initiative, doesn't seem to be as worried about software patents' effects on open source development as some Slashdot readers. In this article he says, 'Don't be too paranoid about the patent problem. It's a real problem, but not a catastrophe. Any patent owner that tries to assert its patents against open source software has many hurdles to leap before the royalty checks start to arrive.'"

4 of 305 comments (clear)

  1. OMG! by NaCh0 · · Score: 5, Funny

    A voice of sanity on slashdot. I knew it was a slow day.

  2. How open source should deal with sofware patents by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 1, Funny

    killall -9 software_patents

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
  3. The killer patent... by Eric+Damron · · Score: 2, Funny

    I think I've come up with a patent that could destroy Microsoft... Let's obtain a patent on the buffer overflow! Think about it...

    Oh damn... I forgot about prior art... Never mind...

    --
    The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
  4. Re:It's not about the royalty checks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    no, it's not as stupid as you think. The bear represents soviet russia, and the beehive is the state of utah, and... well i'm not quite sure of the details, but darl is from utah, and there are a lot of "in soviet russia" jokes on slashdot, or there were until all the SCO stories killed them off. there were still lots of these jokes when the first SCO story hit, but now you hardly see them any more. so it's really a perfect analogy when you think about it.