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) -- Kind regards, M Harris <>< -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org