Openmoko keyboard mockup

[Arthur Marsh]

Chris Samuel wrote, on 2009-01-13 18:42:
> On Fri, 9 Jan 2009 5:11:45 am Stefan Monnier wrote:
> 
>>> [1] - which is ironic given that they were invented to encourage people
>>> to publish their ideas rather than keep them secret.
>> Actually, not so ironic: it basically means that rather than keeping
>> them as internal secrets, they get to lock them in
>> a government-provided vault.
> 
> Where everyone can read them and the protection expires after a time.
> 
> Don't get me wrong, I think patents are bad, especially these days where the 
> techniques are often obsolete before the patent expires. :-(

But the software patent is undecipherable gobbledegook rather than 
GPL-mandated copy of source code in its usual form for editing and 
development including sensible variable names, comments, makefiles, 
build scripts and everything that is not already available in other GPL 
packages to make it run.

Arthur (trying to give the black knight of software patents another 
flesh wound).