On Wednesday 31 January 2007 22:23, M Harris wrote:
On Thursday 01 February 2007 00:02, Pascal Bleser wrote:
The problem are the software patents in the first place. Many of them are so vague that they apply to lots of pieces of software that have been written by people who never saw those patents and started from scratch.
Which is *why* many of us are pontificating, "SOFTWARE PATENTS ARE EVIL".
Depends on our definition of "obvious". If I start from scratch and write an algorithm capable of decoding an mp3 file I have done *nothing* different that writing an algorithm (text editor) that can decode a series of symbols (text) for displaying on a screen. One is called obvious and the other is called patentable... hogwash. The mp3 standard should not have a patent, nor should there be any licensing issues with *any* software based mp3 player.
Software patents must die... end of story. (We have to change this folks)
I just wrote another letter to my congressman and my two senators. I was thinking on the way into work - I knew a guy who had a patent on a tool used for fixing IBM Selectric I typewriters. He invented it in the '60s and IBM licenced it from him for the better part of a decade. It didn't make him rich, but he got credit for inventing it and was able to show the device when requested. Now - somebody please show me the MP3 algorithm. I'd like to hold it up and take a look at it.... ...I'm waiting. In any case - for the future of SUSE/Novell (and Red Hat, Mandrake, Yellow Dog, Ubuntu and the others), I hope this issue eventually gets resolved. -- kai Free Compean and Ramos http://www.perfectreign.com/?q=node/46 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org