Why do people fear Free software 13248
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DFS Why is it 'more likely'? I suppose you think everyone has your lack of principles. You can't prove Stallman...
In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Kier wrote on 25 Oct 2005 15:13:21 -0700
Freedom in this context is a very strange concept. Admittedly, I prefer it to the alternative, but there are some very strange issues here. For example:
1 A patent holder is trying to protect his idea. buttuming a competent USPO (I think they need more staff!), this isn't such a bad thing, although 17 years is a bit long nowadays. Of course, the current USPO appears overwhelmed right now.
DFS BIOS, maybe. But there's no way of avoiding that - and he would if there was. As for the rest - how do you know what video card he has, and what driver it...
2 An artist conjures up a brand new sound, and wants to protect that.
3 A computer developer is selling his wares -- compiled binaries of his source code, for the most part. Should we protect his intellectual property, or just let some hacker with more time than sense disbuttemble it, recreate it, and undercut the original developer?
4 And of course, the poor user, or maybe developer, who has to sift and sort through all this crap, to determine whether it's legal for him to do what he thinks needs doing -- whether it be making a personal copy of his favorite songs to a CD for "traveling music" or making thousands if not millions of copies of a subroutine-library-utility he picked up on the Net, either for sale, or just because he loves to develop utilities and share.
At least with GPL he can distribute software without fear, although patents throw an interesting wildcard into the mix.
rest snipped
-- It's still legal to go .sigless.