Curiouser and Curiouser!

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Wherein Matt Mower (aka rubymatt on FreeNode) rambles about technology, the love of a good MacTop, ruby coding, rails, topics, knowledge management and learning, and politics.

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Curiouser and Curiouser! on open-standards http://matt.blogs.it/ RSS feed for topic open-standards Copyright 2006 Matt Mower Squib/0.1 self@mattmower.com self@mattmower.com en-gb Patenting over our right of way Wed, 17 Sep 2003 13:06:37 +0100 <div style="margin-left: 40px;"><a href="http://www.docuverse.com/blog/donpark/2003/09/16.html#a895">Patents</a>. </div> <a href="http://tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/09/15/SWPatents">Tim Bray confesses about having two patents</a> in the pipeline and goes on to talk about software patents. I also have a couple of security-related patents in the pipeline. To me, it's not the software patents but patents that violate public's right of passage. GIF patent was legit but Unisys was standing there and charging toll on what most of us considered public road. What is public road and what is not? The distinction is simple. If your enforcement of the patent hurts your public relations more than it adds to your bottomline, then you are standing on a public road. To be more precise, if your patent gives your solution advantages in quality of service, then it's legit. But if your patent leads to the only solution, then you are a troll. If your patented formula makes cars go faster, I am fine with that. If you patented the idea of automobiles, I am not all right with that and all for public's right to steamroll over such patents. My justification is this. Since patent laws can be changed or even banished by the people, the people has the right to selectively change or banish any specific patent it chooses. Implementation is problematic, but the principle is sound IMHO. <div style="margin-left: 40px;"> [<a href="http://www.docuverse.com/blog/donpark/">Don Park's Daily Habit</a>] </div> Don's really captured my feelings on patents. It's like toll-roads over here.  In principle I'm okay with private money being used to build toll-roads to relieve congested public roads.  On the other hand if it was suggested that a toll-road be the only way to get from A to B then I'd have a big problem with that (like for example what happened on the <a href="http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/ray_shields/bnews.htm">Isle of Skye</a>). So it is with patents. A few days ago Simon Phipps was <a href="http://www.webmink.net/2003_08_31_oldblog.htm#106279620209462444">talking</a> about the problem of patents retroactively breaking established standards (in the light of the EOLAS patent dispute).  As Don says the issue of implemting a sensible approach to overriding patents is complex, but I think it's necessary if we are to keep building. The case in Europe doesn't look great.  It seems the vested interests are wielding their mighty chequebooks as effectively over here as they do in Washington. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001625.html Say no to Plaxo (fix the real problem) Mon, 03 Nov 2003 10:04:39 +0000 This Plaxo thing is insidious. I just got an email from someone I spoke to a while ago which says "I'm just updating my address details, please can you confirm or correct what I have?"  The email is automatically generated by Plaxo and shows a neat card that indicates this guy doesn't really have have my details.  So I think "Okay."  And trott off using the link provided to go update them. But as I'm there I'm thinking "hey... if I change my details again, i've got this work to do again.  And maybe for each person who keeps my details in Plaxo."  He's put the burden of updating my details on to me.  Fine for him, not fine for me.  Of course Plaxo offer the carrot "If you get Plaxo too then you won't have to do this.  We'll do it for you." Of course then I'm signed up for the Plaxo service.  They'll want something in return (and I still have no solution for the other people who will not be using Plaxo).  Some people might call this clever marketing, but I think it's a bit like being blackmailed and I don't like it. For my money  <a href="http://www.kunekt.com/nie/index.php">Kunekt</a> have (or had, I'm not sure if the service is still supported) a better approach.  I keep my details on their server and they provide an RSS feed that can be used to be notified when I make changes.  Two key differences: <ol> <li>The architecture is open, it's just RSS.</li> <li>It doesn't bother you unless you want to use it (and even then it doesn't bother you).</li> </ol> For me, no. 2 is not just an option. If the authors of mail & PIM clients got their acts together even the Kunekt style service wouldn't be needed.  I don't need them to host my contact details.  I already do that in Outlook.  If Outlook could generate & consume contact details feeds that would be all I would need.  Oh happy day! (Of course Plaxo could still play if they would be able to subscribe to my contact details feed.  Of course, whether there is still a need for Plaxo in such a world...) http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001694.html