Bernard Lang writes: > - I definitely need a detailed commented list of free projects, > everywhere, that have been stopped because of patents. It's not a question of a project being stopped. Only a very small minority of patents are "basic" patents -- that is, that cover every possible method one might use. What happens, though, is that people have to do extra effort to work around patents. For example, the public key cryptography patent referred to in other posts was a basic patent. If you wanted to do legal open source public key cryptography, you had to wait or figure out a way to use licensed software. On the other hand, the LZW (aka "GIF") patent was not a basic patent. Other compression algorithms could and were devised. > there have been software patents in the USA and Japan for 20 years > (their number ... it is actually more like 10 years, I think) > but free software is still doing well in both countries. > > How do you answer that? I point out that Free Software Businesses haven't earned an awful lot of money yet. Until we get really rich, or else cause somebody else's riches to be threatened, there's no point in trying to sue us for patent infringement. The real trouble here is that nobody has any idea how many, or what patents are being infringed. There are too many patents to know what they all do. Essentially, the people who make that point are saying "Well, those open source developers have been walking around in a minefield for 20 years, and not a one of them has blown up yet." That's as foolish as the guy who jumps out of a 100-story building and says at the 50th floor "So far so good!" Sooner or later, some open source developer is going to be sued, and bankrupted. THEN you will see how bad software patents are. I hope that never happens, but there is every reason to expect it to happen. -- --My blog is at angry-economist.russnelson.com | Freedom means allowing Crynwr sells support for free software | PGPok | people to do things the 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-323-1241 cell | majority thinks are Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | +1 212-202-2318 VOIP | stupid, e.g. take drugs.