61–70 of 186 posts
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Now imagine what would happened if Euclid's books (and Newton's Principia) were Copyrighted until today.
That's confusing copyright with patents. The right to publish Newton's books is separate from being able to apply the knowledge which a patent protects. Note that math equations cannot be patented.
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Most large open-source projects banning AI contributions have been doing it for social and technical reasons, not legal. As for the copyright infringement angle, it’s well and truly too late for that to be a meaningful problem, socially and politically. It’s easily in “too big to fail” territory now—any striking down of the “fair use” exemption claim would kill the entire industry dead , because every one of them wou…
You are wrong about why open-source projects are banning AI contributions. While vibe-coded slop is obviously a pain, many are banning even their own well-known contributors from using A.I to write large parts of code due to legal concerns. I'm sure the patent/copyright trolls care a lot about the "industry." It is still the early days but eventually they will come on knocking.
Are patents a necessary evil?
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Very much this. The incentive to create and invent is often largely financial, however that incentive need not be constructed as “winner takes all” rather we should lift each other up in our mutual accomplishments. Unfortunately in my own ruminating on the topic the only practical alternatives seem to be one or more variations on the scary boogey man of socialism.
> The incentive to create and invent is often largely financial, however that incentive need not be constructed as “winner takes all” rather we should lift each other up in our mutual accomplishments. The Wrights definitely were in it for the money. The government project was the Langley Prototype, which cost 20 times more than what the Wrights spent, and fell into the Potomac like a sack of wet cement. > the scary b…
There aren't many pure socialist countries like there aren't many (any?) pure capitalist countries. Most of Europe operates in mixed mode, half socialist. Some countries are very bad (and against) at implementing any measures that directly benefit the lower classes (as opposed to the typical capitalist "trickle-down economics") so they vilify anything that has even the faintest smell of socialism.
> They're always running out of other peoples' money.
I wish people would stop parroting this as some sort of deep insight. Capitalists don't run out of other people's money but they do collect all of it. Ask the capitalists who sink other people's investments with no recourse. Ask the capitalists who get funded from people's pension funds, with "interesting" IPO strategies. Don't turn a blind eye for the sake of a remark which was witty a few decades ago and sounds just ignorant today.
Are patents a necessary evil?
So I see it as unavoidable evil. The patent system makes it lawful evil as opposed to chaotic evil, which is strictly speaking an improvement.
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I think this was the final patent on it that was valid anywhere, so now the status changes from "someone has a patent globally and we need to consider this" to "no one has a patent." If you're distributing something globally, even one market that still has the patent might stop you from default shipping a driver touching on it, or you might have to worry about court orders at least. It's hard to avoid jurisdictions o…
Right, but I thought it matters only if you sell something globally. Linux is distributed for free, so the burden of patent compliance is on the user, isn't it?
Brazil? Why a Brazilian patent is of such a significant interest elsewhere?
I think this was the final patent on it that was valid anywhere, so now the status changes from "someone has a patent globally and we need to consider this" to "no one has a patent." If you're distributing something globally, even one market that still has the patent might stop you from default shipping a driver touching on it, or you might have to worry about court orders at least. It's hard to avoid jurisdictions o…
Are patents a necessary evil?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The incentive to create and invent is often largely financial, however that incentive need not be constructed as “winner takes all” rather we should lift each other up in our mutual accomplishments. The Wrights definitely were in it for the money. The government project was the Langley Prototype, which cost 20 times more than what the Wrights spent, and fell into the Potomac like a sack of wet cement. > the scary b…
> Socialism's track record is pretty bad However the track record for developed countries communally sharing "intellectual property" is much much better. Universities, open source, and public domain all have some crossover with the ideals of socialism. Yes, communism has repeatedly failed spectacularly. The softer socialism of public welfare has worked (so far) for many countries including the US. Although I'm skepti…
When you force people to pitch, share, cooperate, etc, things start to don't work out so well and you start getting people that takes advantage of a system that mandates others to work for a cause no matter what, as well as people that will do whatever they can to not do their work.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this was the final patent on it that was valid anywhere, so now the status changes from "someone has a patent globally and we need to consider this" to "no one has a patent." If you're distributing something globally, even one market that still has the patent might stop you from default shipping a driver touching on it, or you might have to worry about court orders at least. It's hard to avoid jurisdictions o…
Right, but I thought it matters only if you sell something globally. Linux is distributed for free, so the burden of patent compliance is on the user, isn't it?