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Perens Dismisses Torvald's Patent Pool

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the he-should-start-a-non-profit-asap dept.

ficken writes "Open source activist Bruce Perens has dismissed as inadequate a new IP initiative backed by Linus Torvalds. The Open Source Development Labs' (OSDL) patent commons project is intended to provide patent protection to open source developers. Perens, speaking at LinuxWorld, compared the patent pool to "spitting in the wind" -because the patents it contained come from "the wrong people.""

3 of 286 comments (clear)

  1. Get a Life Open Source by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait
    Perens, speaking at LinuxWorld, compared the patent pool to "spitting in the wind" -because the patents it contained come from "the wrong people."

    Yes, I fear this is where the open source movement may be headed--into a nutty world where they are the chosen few, everyone else is an infidel, and Microsoft is the Great Satan. All the obsession with ideological purity we saw in French Revolution (Great Terror) or Soviet Communism (Trotsky) will be applied to software.

    These people need to "get a life." Open source is a good idea, but it isn't the Answer To Everything, nor are those who disagree necessarily evil.

    G. K. Chesterton got it right when he remarked that "When people cease to believe in God, they don't believe in nothing, they believe in anything." Open software is not even that important an "anything." It's just software. It won't give you good health. It won't give you a wonderful marriage and delightful kids. It won't cause you to wake up in the morning with a song in your heart. It's just bits and bytes on a hard drive.

    Relax, take the time to smell the roses or whatever else you find pleasant. Don't build your life around hating the "wrong people" so much you reject their donations to a patent pool.

    --Mike Perry, Untangling Tolkien

  2. Re:Because Linux sucks? by Master+of+Transhuman · · Score: 0, Flamebait


    You're a moron.

    Linux has only been capable of functioning on the desktop for the last two years or so.

    It DOES take time to get to a usable state. Did you expect Linux to be full-blown from the brow of Zeus?

    No, you're just a paid Windows troll masquerading as a Macnut.

    Fuck off, moron. Go back to Bill and tell him you lose.

    --
    Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
  3. Re:Stop the infighting by jeroenb · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Nothing like handing Microsoft some talking points, Bruce. Way to go.

    So you prefer security through obscurity? If nobody knows we can easily get screwed over it matters less?