Re: [Patents] copyright scope

[iriXx <iriXx@iriXx.org>]

the other difficulty with patents is you can't do anything like the GPL 
- which takes the existing principles of copyright and works within them 
to create freedom. there is no way that patent law can be made to do 
this sort of thing... not that i can see...

so therefore if you can't use patents to make 'free' patents, like you 
can use copyright law to make Free (libre) licenses, then i dont think 
any form of patenting is good for the Free Software community at all.

m~

Hartmut Pilch wrote:
> Roland Orre wrote:
>
>
> > About software patents: I don't agree with rms that software can be
> > patentable. As I have understood, rms (nowadays) has a similar view as
> > Greg that obvious software ideas should not be patentable, but I
>
>
> huh??
> where did RMS say that software should be patentable?
>
>
> > consider no software to be patentable. Software should be possible to
> > copyright but a reimplementation in another language should not infringe
> > the copyright.
>
>
> > Of course this view has consequences: it implies that it would be
> > perfectly all right for M$ to steal the [ref Ballmer] "viral" GPL
> > programs and reimplement them in C# for instance. This feels wrong,
> > but it's less bad than having the "idea" of a GPL program
> > copyrighted or patented.
>
>
> Just rewriting in C# is a copyright infringment.
>
> Only clean-room implementations are not.
>
> If you are so close to an original that the original's errors or
> individual peculiarities show up in your program, then you are a plagiator
> and have violated copyright.


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