[ale] [ot] Was Monitoring

[Jim Kinney]

If GM received funds to develop something that come from US taxpayers, slap
it under a PPG patent license.

Just like GPL doesn't prevent making money from or using code without the
responsibilities of openness, open patents work much the same way. But
using public money to develop something that gets locked up in private
licensing and private profiteering really, REALLY stinks.

I like the whole concept of the GPL. I like the GPLv3 more than GPLv2 or
earlier. We all benefit from "standing on the shoulders of giants".
However, I suspect that patent trolls taste a lot like pond scum and no
amount of hot sauce can cure that.


On Thu, Oct 10, 2013 at 3:11 PM, JD <jdp at algoloma.com> wrote:

> On 10/10/2013 02:59 PM, Ron Frazier (ALE) wrote:
> > As far as I know, there are a huge number of patents on research paid
> for by tax money from national labs, universities, and maybe even NASA.
>  Average people like us cannot use the research without paying huge
> licensing fees.
>
> When I worked at NASA-JSC, inside the Software Technology Lab, we knew that
> patenting our work was not allowed. Basically, anyone who asked who was a
> US
> citizen could have access to the source code.  Freedom of information act -
> unless it was classified work, then different rules applied. Some of the
> work we
> did is used constantly today for military AND non-military applications.
>  You've
> probably never heard of ISP - information sharing protocol. It is how
> MMOGS work
> to share data with millions of players concurrently.  Invented at NASA.
>
> I looked for links, but with the Fed gvmt shutdown, none worked. ;)  BTW,
> I was
> working there during the 1995 shutdown. As contractors, we had been
> pre-paid a
> few months and continued working, but all the "NASA sponsors" were sent
> home.
>
> If NASA pays a contractor to create something, then that contractor **can**
> copyright and patent it. There is a difference that wasn't/isn't clear to
> me as
> to when that happens. I'd guess it was something to do with NASA expertise
> being
> involved or not, but I really don't know. The US Government buys Hummers
> from GM
> (or used to), does that mean that any technology inside a Hummer cannot be
> patented?
>
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-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III
*
*Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain
at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his own tail.
It won't fatten the dog.
- Speech 11/23/1900 Mark Twain
*
http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/
*
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