🚀 go-pugleaf

.edu> greeny@top.cis.syr.edu (J. S. Greenfield) writes:

   >   And this is no small point.  If you look at most of the programming tools that
   >   you talk about as "basic" or "fundamental" that you are worried about having
   >   to license, you will see that the vast majority are old enough that, even if
   >   they had been patented, they would be public domain now.
   >
   >Like a host-independent byte order, or hashing to find a match
   >in LZ77 compression ?

   Who said that nothing *useful* would be under patent?

   Some people were claiming that the face of programming would be changed forever
   as the most fundamental techniques which all programmer's use (like quicksort,
   for example) would require licensing.  I hardly think that the two examples
   that you cite can be considered, at this time, to be fundamental techniques
   that all (or most) programmer's can be expected to use.


HUH !?

I independently (re-)discovered both of these techniques without
even thinking about it. It's not algorithms; it's like patenting
the addition operator.

   I really think we need to inject some reality here--the reaction I see here
   seems to border on hysteria over the "patent menace."

What if someone painted a painting of an apple, and forbade
everyone else to paint apples. That's the kind of patents we
get now. However, using the EXACT SAME apple (hash function,
communications protocol) could be protectable without too many
problems.

   As I have said before, I do *not* know how patents should (or should not) be
   applied to algorithms, but let's try to deal approach the question with
   rational expectations.

That's what I'm doing, by showing what's wrong with the present
situation (and what some in the industry want to move towards)

-- 
- I have decided that it is not boxes but my lack of skill that's the problem.
- Traitor! This kind of attitude will get you nowhere around here. If you must
  know, it's not your boxes that are the problem, it's your lack of a
  sufficient number of boxes. Go out and buy something.