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From: Dru D. <dr...@ya...> - 2003-09-18 16:11:53
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> 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. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com |