Re: Spring Loaded Folders Reloaded

[Julien Olivier <julo altern org>]

Le dim 02/03/2003 à 18:38, Knut Neumann a écrit :
> Am Sam, 2003-03-01 um 18.11 schrieb Julien Olivier:
> > I'd say that when a law is ridiculous you're not forced to obey it. This
> 
> Would you? Come on, what if I think the GPL [1] is ridiculous, you would
> really think it would be ok to steal code from eg nautilus giving no
> credit?
> 

The fact is that it's common sense that a law forcing people to pay in
order to creat FREE software is ridiculous. That even breaks the
principle of contract where both parts should give/receive things of the
same value. I mean that you (the free software developer) must pay to
get a right that you already should have (The right to make free code
and to distribute it freely). GPL doesn't prevent anyone from creating
free apps.

What I really mean is not that software patents are a stupid law in
itself but it is common sense that it can't be applied to FREE software
development.

> Ok, why not do the following (though I assume someone already started on
> that - like alex?) and wait:
> 
> * See if this patent (at a fist glance) applies to spring loaded folders
> * Have some foundation member contact apple if they would license those
> folders to the open source community
> * If not, maybe have some lawyer check the patent and see if it at a
> deeper look still applies
> * Have further discussion (on the base of some more and substantial
> information)
> 

Well, that's the "least bad" solution...

> > is the case here. We should NEVER respect software patents because
> > respecting them reinforces them. I really think it's our duty not to
> > respect them.
> 
> You might want to replace respect with accept, I might be willing to
> agree then..(while for me accept means you would not do anything against
> something and respect means that you would not do  something (like
> illegal actions) against something)
> 

Well, as a French citizen, I don't see what I could do more than voting
for the politicians that promised not to vote for software patents
(which I did). I mean that, in Europe, such laws don't exist so, in
fact, we can only hope the USA will change their law.

> -Knut
> 
> 
> [1] I could come up with a some more - even harder - examples
> 
> > -- 
> > --
> > "Marriage is the alliance of two people,one of whom never remembers
> > birthdays and the other never forgets them." - Ogden Nash
>