[Sprawler-general] Re: [Sprawler-devel] Indexing ideas

[Dru D. <dr...@ya...>]

> Yes, we could - that's not a bad idea, and I can't
> think of anything 
> that would deter us from that.  The source is open,
> and free to use 
> under the GPL.  My only concern is that I (and
> others) would post their 
> "great new ideas" and [insert evil company name
> here] copies our idea 
> and patents it, and then possibly we get sued.  Does
> "prior art" protect 
> us against this?  Do we not worry about it, and just
> move on and hope 
> for the best?
> 
> Eric

If everyone thought like an Open Source individual,
then we would not have anything to worry about, but we
have the SCO's of the world that really don't care
about helping out the Open Source community and just
care about pleasing their investors and will stop at
nothing to make their stock go up one more $1 (which
is how I feel many corporations work). Don't you think
if we come up with some revolutionary ideas and start
posting them to the forum, Google or any of the other
popular search groups will more then likely discover
them and patent it themselves then tell us we can't
use it? They already have the money for lawyers so it
probably wouldn't take them long to patent it. We
might be able to prove that we thought of it first,
but why risk it. I feel we need to keep this stuff
private and should seek a patent on it if it's as good
as Eric believes it is. 

Disclaimer: I'm an internet security professional, so
it's my job to be paranoid and think worst case scenario.

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