Slashdot Mirror
Alan Cox on Patent Law and GPLv3
tykev writes "Linux kernel guru Alan Cox talks about kernel features, cooperation with hardware vendors, and software patents. From the interview: 'I don't think [Microsoft's patent threats] are the biggest danger. As Microsoft has been finding out recently it is the patent trolls, and organisations with buried patents in interesting areas that are the biggest threat in the USA. The real answer to that problem, however, is to pull the USA back into line with the majority of the world which simply does not recognize patents on software but respects them as literary works subject to copyright law.'"
You can't dismantle organically-evolved law from the top-down; that's never, ever worked in any society and always results in disaster.
but some of the shills here on slashdot, bought and paid for by microsoft, will argue that alan cox is proposing a very radical solution. They will suggest the very fundamentals of the freemarket system are at stake; to suggest dissolving what is offered in america would be akin to pullling the pubic hair from a teenage girls blissful nether regions, strand by strand, before she is able to mature. Thus denying her the chance to jump head first and stark naked into Friedman's fantastical whirlwind freemarket extravaganza.
Right.. who should we model our country after again Alan? Cuba? The former Soviet Union? Everybody knows that Alan Cox is a communist and we shouldn't listen to anything this guy says about politics. Sorry, but it's the truth.