Ah, see, but that's covered too. In an online sale or auction environment like eBay, if people do not trust you, you cannot participate in online transactions without first putting up money as a guarantee.
So, if you're an untrusted buyer, you would put a certain amount of money in an online trust 'bond'. If the seller provides the goods, and you don't pay, the matter is arbitrated, and the bond money goes to the seller anyway.
A bond becomes unnecessary once your 'cyber-identity' is well-known. Then, it is assumed that it's not worth your while to rip people, as the damage to your reputation would cost you more money than you would make by defrauding the buyer.
As I understand the Common Criteria specifications, EAL 4 is the highest level of security that can be achieved without becoming cost prohibitive.
This FAQ provides a good summary of the EALs, and says:
EAL4 is the highest level at which it is likely to be economically feasible to retrofit to an existing product line.
Anything higher involves stricter controls on the original development process, ie. Microsoft would have had to go back and develop from scratch under a controlled development environment.
It sounds like only Government legislation can fix these patent problems. Once people (and their lawyers) 'smell the money', the only way to prevent abuse is to close the loopholes.
At a minimum, the government should legislate that the patent holder must prove there is a 'case to answer' before any defendents have to touch their wallets. Maybe small businesses should even be exempt from patent claims altogether.
This whole thing reminds me of a recent set of high-profile cases where Australian local councils paid $100,000s for people tripping on a crack in the sidewalk!
Once people figured out that it was generally cheaper for councils to pay them $10k to shut them up than to fight the claim, everyone jumped on the bandwagon, hoping for a 'lottery win' payout.
The patent system will remain broken until the 'lottery win' mentality no longer applies.
Dual-licensing is not a problem -- in fact, I think it should be encouraged. To maximise the benefits of GPL software development, and in particular to attract corporate investment, it should be possible for companies to take code and use it commercially (which generally means closing the code to some extent).
This does not cause the code abuse and forking that might be expected. Simply put, if companies were to fork Blender, they would lose most of the benefits of being part of the Open Source community. Subsequent changes to the core project would not be able to be be rolled into their project without extensive work, checking, etc.
Generally, it's far more productive to submit your own changes to the core project, and get them incorporated. After that, you not only have the features you wanted, but you get all the new features contributed by others.
Look at the Mozilla licensing scheme -- it is not GPL either. Instead, it is a combination of up to four licenses -- the GPL, LGPL, MPL and NPL.
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Ah, see, but that's covered too. In an online sale or auction environment like eBay, if people do not trust you, you cannot participate in online transactions without first putting up money as a guarantee.
So, if you're an untrusted buyer, you would put a certain amount of money in an online trust 'bond'. If the seller provides the goods, and you don't pay, the matter is arbitrated, and the bond money goes to the seller anyway.
A bond becomes unnecessary once your 'cyber-identity' is well-known. Then, it is assumed that it's not worth your while to rip people, as the damage to your reputation would cost you more money than you would make by defrauding the buyer.
As I understand the Common Criteria specifications, EAL 4 is the highest level of security that can be achieved without becoming cost prohibitive.
This FAQ provides a good summary of the EALs, and says:
EAL4 is the highest level at which it is likely to be economically feasible to retrofit to an existing product line.
Anything higher involves stricter controls on the original development process, ie. Microsoft would have had to go back and develop from scratch under a controlled development environment.
Hence the current push for Palladium & the TCPA, which would prevent both the technologies you describe above.
At a minimum, the government should legislate that the patent holder must prove there is a 'case to answer' before any defendents have to touch their wallets. Maybe small businesses should even be exempt from patent claims altogether.
This whole thing reminds me of a recent set of high-profile cases where Australian local councils paid $100,000s for people tripping on a crack in the sidewalk!
Once people figured out that it was generally cheaper for councils to pay them $10k to shut them up than to fight the claim, everyone jumped on the bandwagon, hoping for a 'lottery win' payout.
The patent system will remain broken until the 'lottery win' mentality no longer applies.
This does not cause the code abuse and forking that might be expected. Simply put, if companies were to fork Blender, they would lose most of the benefits of being part of the Open Source community. Subsequent changes to the core project would not be able to be be rolled into their project without extensive work, checking, etc.
Generally, it's far more productive to submit your own changes to the core project, and get them incorporated. After that, you not only have the features you wanted, but you get all the new features contributed by others.
Look at the Mozilla licensing scheme -- it is not GPL either. Instead, it is a combination of up to four licenses -- the GPL, LGPL, MPL and NPL.