Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1753802AbXFYWdw (ORCPT ); Mon, 25 Jun 2007 18:33:52 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751851AbXFYWdo (ORCPT ); Mon, 25 Jun 2007 18:33:44 -0400 Received: from 216-99-213-120.dsl.aracnet.com ([216.99.213.120]:52557 "EHLO clueserver.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751063AbXFYWdn (ORCPT ); Mon, 25 Jun 2007 18:33:43 -0400 Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2007 15:33:42 -0700 (PDT) From: alan X-X-Sender: alan@blackbox.fnordora.org To: Graeme Sheppard cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Patent or not patent a new idea In-Reply-To: <46804130.9010905@rillion.net> Message-ID: References: <46803772.7020408@rillion.net> <46804130.9010905@rillion.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1839 Lines: 46 On Tue, 26 Jun 2007, Graeme Sheppard wrote: > alan wrote: >> On Tue, 26 Jun 2007, Graeme Sheppard wrote: >> >>> Dear devs, >>> >>> In a moment of serendipity I thought of a concept which may be >>> advantageous >>> if incorporated into the kernel. I was going to offer it to the OIN but >>> they responded they only consider existing patents and I don't have the >>> money to afford one. >> >> How do you know it is a new idea? > > The essence of the idea is simple enough that I would have heard of it. > It isn't an arcane programming trick buried deep in code. I have heard that applied to cryptography. In almost every case someone has thought of it already and there is a good reason it is not used. Don't think that it is new and novel until you have done a whole lot of research in the field. There is a reason that the Greeks considered Hubris a sin against the Gods... As for "defensive patents", I think of them as a time bomb waiting to happen. The company that files a defensive patent is rarely the problem, it is when they go broke and someone with less ethics buys them up. The second company does not feel bound by those previous agreements and tries to squeeze all the money they can out of the purchaced patent pool. It may seem like a good idea now, but it comes back to haunt the rest of us later on down the road. -- "ANSI C says access to the padding fields of a struct is undefined. ANSI C also says that struct assignment is a memcpy. Therefore struct assignment in ANSI C is a violation of ANSI C..." - Alan Cox - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/