[Opensim-dev] How Was OpenSim "Born"?

Tue Feb 16 04:24:05 UTC 2010

*> **That is true there should be no reason to have patents for stuff *
*> that shouldnt be there but if you dont you got pigs stealing*
*> everyones food.*

It's a dog-eat-dog world.  If you haven't figured out how capitalism works,
that's part of life.

Do you think the Chinese care about U.S. patents?  <Rolling my eyes>

It's a global market, and we can't compete (because of our own silly laws).

Heck, the Chinese even bring their reverse engineered products back to the
U.S. and begin filing patents of their own (claiming to have "improved" the
product that they reverse engineered, and stolen) and now they have a valid
patent (a utility patent) and they're selling their "patented" products, and
it's just another slap in the face to American engineers.

It makes no sense at all.  The whole system is completely broken, just do
away with it.  5 year limits, after that... it's public domain.

5 years gives the competition plenty of time to improve upon your idea, and
come out with a product of their own.  So if you want to stay in the market,
you better bring your "A-game" and continue to develop and improve your
product (and make sure that it continues to be the best product out on the
market).

Increased competition, lowers prices.  If you had 20 cable providers to
choose from, you certainly wouldn't be paying $50-$150/month for cable
television, or $60 for a slow DSL connection (simply because there are no
other choices other than dial up).  Increased competition drives down
prices, and breaks up the large monopolistic enterprises (i.e. Microsoft,
etc.)

OpenSource Projects help create affordable alternatives (i.e. Open Office,
Linux, MySQL, Apache, OpenSim, etc.)  Look at the quality of most open
Source projects, and you'll see that Open Source really is a viable
alternative, and community projects and Open Source software (and open
standards) are good for society.  I've seen many OpenSource community
projects give large corporations a run for their money (as far as developing
high quality products).  Firefox beats the pants off of any browser that
Microsoft has ever developed.  Apache is still much thinner, and performs
just as well (if not better) than IIS.  Compare the number of crashes on a
Linux system to the "Blue Screens of Death" that were quite common on
computers during the 1995-2004 era.  Just compare the stability of a Linux
distro to Microsoft's Windows Millenium Edition.  ;-)

You could donate an old computer to some hungry third-world kids in West
Papua, but they couldn't even afford to pay Microsoft's crazy licensing fees
just to turn the computer on.  Open Source is a good thing, it gives people
alternatives.

               Mark

On Mon, Feb 15, 2010 at 9:29 PM, Domain Admin <admin at glscripting.org> wrote:

> That is true there should be no reason to have patents for stuff that
> shouldnt be there but if you dont you got pigs stealing everyones food.
>
>
> On Mon, Feb 15, 2010 at 7:26 PM, Mark Malewski <mark.malewski at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>>
>> > Doing some researching for a patent here in Norway a few
>> > years back I found that it was near impossible (here) to get a > patent
>> unless what you made was revolutionary new.
>> > Anything that would be considered the next step was not >enough for a
>> patent.
>>
>> Our system in the U.S. is so screwed up, it's basically worthless.  It's
>> only good for the "patent troll" attorneys that spend their days just
>> looking for people to sue.
>>
>> As far as doing anything for anyone (other than lawyers) they're useless.
>>  It's turning into "nuclear arms" race type of warfare, and the whole system
>> just needs to be done away with.
>>
>> Software patents are a bad idea, and they need to be abolished.  I like
>> your system in Norway, it seems to make more sense (and eliminating 80% of
>> the silly nonsense patent crap in the U.S. would really help innovation and
>> development.
>>
>> Our patent system is complete garbage, and it's just a form of "corporate
>> warfare" that is used by large companies to strong arm one another, and to
>> stifle off any competition (or kill off any small startups or young
>> companies that don't have the "deep pockets" to afford large legal battles).
>>
>>
>> I'd abolish at least 70-80% of the system, and toss the DMCA crap out as
>> well.  Our whole patent/copyright system needs some serious work.  There
>> needs to be some "fair use" clauses (for educational, research, and
>> development purposes) and also patents should only be good for a maximum of
>> 5 years, that's it.
>>
>> After 5 years, it's public domain.  That would help bring an end to all
>> this silly stupidity (and expensive litigation costs, and silly legal
>> battles).  If you can't bring your product to market (and a 5 year head
>> start is not enough time for you) then you don't deserve to have a patent
>> anyways.
>>
>> Too many clowns file patents just for the purpose of suing others.
>>  Completely useless, and just use it as a means to litigate and kill off
>> competition.  The large corporations do it just to bully other companies
>> around (with legal threats) and they all just build up "arsenals" of patents
>> that they can use against one another.
>>
>> It's a silly game, and it needs to be abolished.
>>
>> *> It *should* have a block against patenting things that *
>> *> are a natural evolution of existing technology.*
>>
>> Agreed.  Now just try explaining that to the patent examiner's office.
>>
>>                        Mark
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 2:28 AM, Tedd Hansen <tedd at nimbustech.no> wrote:
>>
>>>  Hi
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Actually the patent system should work fine and encourage innovation. It
>>> **should** have a block against patenting things that are a natural
>>> evolution of existing technology.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Sadly, as with all things, the US justice system seems to allow any party
>>> to sue any part for anything and I think that has rubbed off on patenting
>>> (imho). Now companies are patenting everything just to avoid getting sued.
>>> We see examples of this in IBM, Microsoft, etc where they patent it just to
>>> release it to everyone. (Anyone remember the MS-patent for “Dynamic loading
>>> and binding of modules” I found researching for script engine? ;) )
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Doing some researching for a patent here in Norway a few years back I
>>> found that it was near impossible (here) to get a patent unless what you
>>> made was revolutionary new. Anything that would be considered the next step
>>> was not enough for a patent.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Br,
>>>
>>>  Tedd
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *From:* opensim-dev-bounces at lists.berlios.de [mailto:
>>> opensim-dev-bounces at lists.berlios.de] *On Behalf Of *Mark Malewski
>>> *Sent:* 12. februar 2010 06:01
>>>
>>> *To:* opensim-dev at lists.berlios.de
>>> *Subject:* Re: [Opensim-dev] How Was OpenSim "Born"?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *> I honestly believe that the patent system, by its very nature, *
>>>
>>> *> is the worst thing ever when it comes to stifling innovation*
>>>
>>> *> and technological advancement.*
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Agreed.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Opensim-dev mailing list
>>> Opensim-dev at lists.berlios.de
>>> https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/opensim-dev
>>>
>>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Opensim-dev mailing list
>> Opensim-dev at lists.berlios.de
>> https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/opensim-dev
>>
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Opensim-dev mailing list
> Opensim-dev at lists.berlios.de
> https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/opensim-dev
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://opensimulator.org/pipermail/opensim-dev/attachments/20100215/c7db4a5d/attachment-0001.html>