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Software Patents Stopped in India
piyushranjan writes "Indian parliament deleted the section from the patents bill regrading the software patents as left parties prevailed over the Government on the issue. This may be a major victory for free software foundation(fsf) which has been lobbying hard against the bill."
But also our president has openly suggested to our schools, universities, defence and government organizations to switch to open source. He's one president I really admire. A very learned and very humble man.
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
If software patents aren't legal in India, would a company over there be able to fearlessly provide web services/applications that infringe on US patents?
e.g. could a company over there build a search engine using Google's patented page rank algorithm with out having to pay an licensing fee?
If so, it would seem that India would be an ideal place for most such companies, as they can operate over there with out fear of patent litigation. Also, hopefully something like this would put pressure on the US to reform our current system in order for local companies to be more competitive.
Great news, I needed a bit cheering up. Just yesterday I read that Ericsson has started to threaten the Swedish government that research and development will be moved out of Europe to countries that "respect software patents" (the spokesman mentions Japan and the US).
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
You actually have a good point though.
What India has over the United States is that they not only have our technical jobs but they also have no legal restrictions on taking any technology learned during that "cultural" exchange.
Technology is what keeps a superpower on top. The Masons knew it, that is why they exist(ed). (Technological) Secrets make a nation thrive and the fact that the United States and Europe will restrict software developers with draconian laws makes our chances nill. If we continue to lead the way in innovations they will be copied at will overseas making *only* our citizens the ones to pay the price for intellectual property. Where will that leave us?
Our patents won't mean a thing when India and China make up most of the computer/internet users and developers. I'm afraid that we will be trying to play fair while others won't - reminds me of the game show "Friend or Foe", everyone must agree or everyone loses. I'm drunk, but look more into China and Russia's copying of CDMA technology to learn more about how we can lose...
Get your Unix fortune now!
Yes but usage is not really under the juristiction of copyright, distribution does. So long as your copy was legally distributed (and it is) there is nothing illegal about using it in ways that do not fall under the jurisdiction of the limited privs granted by copyright law to content providers.
Do not mistake the terms in EULAs for laws. Copyright does not grant the content provider the right to the restrictions they require in EULAs, that is why they need you to sign them over in a contract. For it to be a legal contract they must give you something of value in turn (purchasing gave you the right to use the material however you please without a contract), Microsoft gives you $5 worth of data loss protection IF you can successfully sue them for it. Aren't they swell?
Growing yes, innovating hardly.
For now. They don't have to innovate to be successful at this point, because business is flowing in. That will stop as the standard of living in India raises accordingly. When this happens, you'll have lots of smart, capable programmers who know how things are done, and will be able to build upon others' ideas to make new ones. I don't think the cultural differences people often cite are significant enough to stop smart people from doing great things.
Of course, the companies that start to innovate will be the ones with a lot of money in the first place, and if my grasp of political theory serves me well, those companies will have bought legislators by then to get the software patents they'll want to restrict competition. Ain't democracy grand? I hope they prove me wrong.
One of the great ironies of the current patent scope expansion (and copyright extension) wars is that the proponents of ever stronger and broader Government protection invariably portray themselves as capitalists and free marketeers. This further irony of having to rely on the support of traditional Communists to counter the enormous political pressure towards an Orwellian style oligarchical collectivism (corporate Communism) is almost too much to bear.
The ORBIS flying eye hospital came to Delhi a few weeks ago and he dropped in to see it (here's a picture of him on the plane). He did the required politcal duty as required. But he also asked intelligent questions about the set-up and figured out there was a bottleneck in comms (the aim of the flying eye hospital is to spread knowledge about eye treatments, but they could only arrange for local broadcast of the videos of the surgeries). The President said he'd try and do something about it.
Shortly afterwards - blam! - we had a satelite uplink so that the surgery teaching sessions were broadcast via satelite to hospitals all over India.
Just think about it - Kalam could have done nothing and no-one would have begrudged him it. But he actually went beyond the polite chit chat, did some figuring out, and then went out his way to actually ease things in a way which make most political leaders seem like whiny midgets. No wonder he is one of the most-loved people in India, and no wonder people think he honours the office of president, rather than the other way round.
Public education in America was never intended to be for the 'public good'. It has always been intended to provide an educated labor pool.It has always been intended to maintain the status quo and socialize children's behavior to insure a stable work force. They don't teach you to think in public schools - they teach you to behave and accept their version of reality. Which I guess now is that evolution is a theory with about the same chance of validity as devine creation. They even have stickers in the textbooks for proof. There is a reason school teachers and policeman are so low on the pay scale. You get what you pay for.
billy - who worked hard to slip through the cracks