Re: Software patents ...

[Paul Wouters <paul () xtdnet nl>]

On Mon, 22 Nov 2004, Gadi Evron wrote:

> > I've googled around and not found any obvious published version
> > of the alleged list of allegedly 228 (or 229?) patents.  I've also
> > asked around a bit and not heard of anyone else who's seen the list.
>
> It somewhat makes sense that it is no-where to be found. I remember a story 
> where someone else claimed that BSD was using original "unix" code (both 
> shall remain nameless until I find a link or someone else who remembers 
> more).

Yes, they're trying to 'pull a SCO'.

> Basically, they looked into the allegations, and it ended up they were using 
> ~four files (I think) from the "original".
>
> They simply re-wrote those files and were over with it.

Or worse, in the sco case these were parts of the POSIX definitions.

> I suppose the same could theoretically happen with the open source community, 
> and then this list of patents wouldn't be worth much.

The problem is, it is not targetted at us. It is targetted at anyone who is
now building hardware and needs software to run on it, and for which opensource
software is the best choice. They are scared into buying Windows CE. Even if the
claims are dismissed in two years, that is two precious years in which they
strengthened their product base, in an attempt to get and keep a monopoly like 
they got on PC's. Once the monopoly is in place, there is no more need for these
scary tactics, then they can just bully.

Paul, who should really do something with his domain suenix.org
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