Slashdot Mirror
Software Patents Good For Open Source?
schliz writes "The Australian software patent system could be used by open source developers to ensure their inventions remain available to the community, a conference organized by intellectual property authority IP Australia heard this week According to Australian inventor Ric Richardson, whose company came out on top of a multi-million dollar settlement with Microsoft in March, a world without software patents would be 'open slather for anybody who can just go faster than the next person.' Software developer Ben Sturmfels, whose 2010 anti-software-patent petition won the support of open source community members such as Jonathan Oxer, Andrew Tridgell, and software freedom activist Richard Stallman, disagreed."
Fairly sure patent applications cost money, so this point is a bit mute.
Yep, it leaves me speechless.
Yes, he did mean moot, as in irrelevant. We're not all prefect[sic].
Try to let non-essentials slide. There's a lot of people on this planet whose first langauge is not Anglais. Would you prefer to try out your Polish, Cyrillic, Kanji, Thai, ...?
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
I (Ben Sturmfels) am saying is that software patents are bad for the whole software industry and the Australian public. Software patents inhibit innovation for *both* proprietary software and free software/open source businesses. Getting rid of software patents is something the entire software industry should be working towards.