[OT] MPlayer is in trouble - All my thoughts go with you.

[Eric Dunbar]

As a preamble Derick -- you need more paragraphs. I (and, I'm sure
many others) skim posts and tend to skip really long blocks of text
(there's a lot of chaff on them thar internet boards).

On Mon, 28 Mar 2005 12:09:10 -0500, Derick Centeno
<aguilarojo at verizon.net> wrote:
> I'm surprised at some people's attitude about this.
> 
> There appears to be no question as to the fact that artwork is
> recognized as belonging to one individual.  I never heard of anyone in

<snip>

> Software, is one more category of recognized talent and achievement.
> Whether it is of a cooperative corporate nature or strictly small
> business, respecting and acknowledge the efforts of prior work is only

> appropriate.  If one is however going to use, apply, borrow or outright
> steal work of others and put that into so called Free Software that is
> not what either GPL or any self-respecting programmer should be doing
> in the first place.

> If a company or any author of any work chooses not
> to participate in the GPL or Open Source environment that is a choice
> to be respected.  In consideration of the nature of Open Source and the
> spirit of the GPL some companies expand the manner in which they

<snip lots of extraneous stuff>

<slightly off topic>
I don't think any GPL programmers or fan(atics) are advocating the
theft of intellectual property in the form of copyright. Copyright is
there to protect people's work and does an extremely over-zealous and
(for those capitalism lovers out there) anti-capitalist job of
protecting people's work (150 years copyright and other such nonsense
in far too many jurisdictions. The best solution is to give copyright
back to the people and limit it to 50 years or so and then require the
payment of NON-TRIVIAL amounts of money to retain that copyright for
another, let's say 100 years... this will allow the public to reap the
rewards of granting these TEMPORARY monopolies and allow rights
holders to receive fair and just compensation while they are alive).
</slightly off topic>

> Corporate individuals as such and by definition all individual
> inventors have the right to choose how they will behave and approach
> the Open Source issue and the opportunity and challenge it represents.

<slightly off topic>
Corporations do not deserve rights since they have no responsibilities
and until that time comes can be dismissed as "rights holders" in
ethical arguments... unfortunately, that is not a legacy of which the
US can be proud.
</slightly off topic>

But, that's a whole different issue, not immediately pertinent to
European efforts (in the face of the corporate US and European
interests) to keep the software IP world unencumbered by Oracle,
Microsoft, Apple, Sony and whoever else has vested interests in
closing down legitimate progress .

Patents are an issue separate from copyright Derik. To me it seems you
were going on about copyright and copyright holder issues far more
than patent.

In most societies, SOCIETY (through government) grants patents and
copyright and SOCIETY gets to choose how those IP rights are treated.

In the US Congress has repeatedly dropped the ball (on behalf of its
citizenry as "representatives" (not of big business as they are now))
and allowed corporate interests to override societal interests in the
development of patent and, related copyright laws.

The EU has an opportunity to learn from America's mistake and enact
appropriate legislation regarding software patents -- that is the
battle that is going on there. It is not about forcing anyone to give
away their work under the GPL. It's about protecting society from
Microsoft and any other patent holders that seek to stiffle creativity
and progress. I've not been keeping up-to-date on the arguments for
LIMITED software patents but I'm sure there are some that can be made.

What they really ought to push for is a severe curtailment of the
terms of patents granted or (better still) keep them out of software
entirely. Software patents don't protect R&D like they do in the
physical world so they don't make much sense to begin with -- eBay's
(or is that Amazon's) one-click shopping is a prime example of bad
patent law in the US.

Short absolute monopolies can and should be accepted by society to
foster new development (five, perhaps even 10 years) but long
monopolies HARM society unnecessarily by limiting what can be done
with computers, and are also fundamentally UNFAIR to patent rights
holders. Only if your patent covers an obvious thing (like eBay's
farcical one-click patent or CSS) can you ever dream of seeking
damages. If your "legal" patent covers something "obscure" without an
obvious output then you'll have little success enforcing it (e.g. you
invent an extremely rapid way of decompressing JPEGs).

Anyway, that's a lot more than my two cents worth.

Eric.