[Discuss] Discuss Digest, Vol 5, Issue 2

[Richard Pieri]

HYC,

You've made some pretty analogies.  Let me expand upon your latest.  Electricity in the home is a tool.  Like any tool, and like patents, it can be used correctly or it can be abused.  Do you know what we do to people who abuse tools to harm people?  We incarcerate the offenders.  Sometimes we execute them if the harm is sufficiently severe.  So, where are all of the jailed and executed attorneys from Lodsys and SCO and Righthaven and all the others?  You were just writing about fairness, so where is the fairness here?

At this point, all that you've managed to demonstrate to me is that you believe that being evil is the correct response to someone else being evil.  If patent attorneys fire missiles then fire missiles back.  That's what you're telling us to do, but that kind of escalation leads to one thing: mutual destruction.

Meanwhile, I point out what used to be open source projects fostered by Sun Microsystems are now partially or fully closed source under Oracle's care.  Having a big corporate sponsor is no panacea.  It's just a Sword of Damocles waiting for a bigger company that is hostile to the open source community to sever the thread.

--Rich P.