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If you read the rest of my response, you'd see my response to his clarification: "What's not OK is artificial technical, legal, or institutional barriers (like
by niggler 14y ago
If you read the rest of my response, you'd see my response to his clarification:
"What's not OK is artificial technical, legal, or institutional barriers (like closed-source code) that prevent a good solution from being re-used and force people to re-invent wheels."
If it weren't for LZW patent enforcement, we wouldn't have formats like PNG ... (I guess, "necessity is the mother of innovation")
- mindcrime 14y agoIf you read the rest of my response, you'd see my response to his clarification: Of course I read all of your response. The second part seems, to me, to be addressing a different issue altogether. You claim to strongly disagree with "no problem should be solved twice" but your statement about why you disagree jibes with what ESR himself said. I'm not sure what it is you disagree with him about in the general sense. The second part, sure, you are saying that patent enforcement can result in better solutions due to the "necessity being the mother of invention" factor, whereas Raymond completely objects to "artificial barriers". But that's just a detail, surely?
- belorn 14y agoIf necessity is the mother of innovation, then maximizing necessity should be our goal right? This line of thought would however turn silly quite fast, with "lets have wars!", and "lets have random barriers everywhere". If there weren't patents on formats, people would still make new formats. Crappy energy inefficient and data expensive algorithms get replaced when basic research (unaffected by patents mind you) show that better ways exist. Here is a thought: figure out a new algorithm that lower the bandwidth use of Google by 25%. They would surely pay you with heaps of money no matter if there is a patent involved or not.