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Not naivete. I don't keep up with the open source projects with the exception of VRML/X3D and that only by reading that mail list. I don't know which have been shut down or what patents were enforced. If projects are shut down due to enforcement, that emphasizes why a patent policy is necessary, and why it should be flexible. Underfunding is not an excuse to break the law any more than lack of knowledge is a reason for any group to get a patent. One might want to dig a little deeper into the subject of software patents to uncover what values make one defensible and another not. Sun gets to keep the patent that affects XPointer despite the obvious prior art because no one is willing to pay the money to take them on and because they granted RF RAND. len -----Original Message----- From: Amy Lewis [mailto:amyzing@t...] Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2001 6:27 PM To: Bullard, Claude L (Len) Cc: David Brownell; Jeff Lowery; xml-dev@l... Subject: Re: Re: W3C ridiculous new policy on patents On Wed, Oct 10, 2001 at 03:28:28PM -0500, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote: >Patents are a fact of life and law. We have to >deal with it. I have to wonder whether or >not open source implementations are violating >any existing patents and if so, who gets nailed. Is this deliberate naivete? A number of "hot" open source projects have been shut down due to enforcement of patents ... sometimes patents that are defensible, but more often, since most software patents are indefensible on their faces, not.
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