On Sun, 11 Aug 2002, Larry McVoy wrote: > > This issue is more complicated than you might think.
No, it's not. You miss the point.
> Big companies with > big pockets are very nervous about being too closely associated with > Linux because of this problem.
The point being that that is _their_ problem, and at a level that has nothing to do with technology.
I'm saying that technical people shouldn't care. I certainly don't. The people who _should_ care are patent attourneys etc, since they actually get paid for it, and can better judge the matter anyway.
Everybody in the whole software industry knows that any non-trivial program (and probably most trivial programs too, for that matter) will infringe on _some_ patent. Ask anybody. It's apparently an accepted fact, or at least a saying that I've heard too many times.
I just don't care. Clearly, if all significant programs infringe on something, the issue is no longer "do we infringe", but "is it an issue"?
And that's _exactly_ why technical people shouldn't care. The "is it an issue" is not something a technical guy can answer, since the answer depends on totally non-technical things.
Ask your legal counsel, and I strongly suspect that if he is any good, he will tell you the same thing. Namely that it's _his_ problem, and that your engineers should not waste their time trying to find existing patents.
Slashdot Mirror
On Sun, 11 Aug 2002, Larry McVoy wrote:
>
> This issue is more complicated than you might think.
No, it's not. You miss the point.
> Big companies with
> big pockets are very nervous about being too closely associated with
> Linux because of this problem.
The point being that that is _their_ problem, and at a level that has
nothing to do with technology.
I'm saying that technical people shouldn't care. I certainly don't. The
people who _should_ care are patent attourneys etc, since they actually
get paid for it, and can better judge the matter anyway.
Everybody in the whole software industry knows that any non-trivial
program (and probably most trivial programs too, for that matter) will
infringe on _some_ patent. Ask anybody. It's apparently an accepted fact,
or at least a saying that I've heard too many times.
I just don't care. Clearly, if all significant programs infringe on
something, the issue is no longer "do we infringe", but "is it an issue"?
And that's _exactly_ why technical people shouldn't care. The "is it an
issue" is not something a technical guy can answer, since the answer
depends on totally non-technical things.
Ask your legal counsel, and I strongly suspect that if he is any good, he
will tell you the same thing. Namely that it's _his_ problem, and that
your engineers should not waste their time trying to find existing
patents.
Linus
I've seen no mention of it yet. Simple, useful,
and ingenious.
Now that's surprising. --