.NET going open source(sort of)

[Stephan Rose]

On Thu, 2007-10-04 at 13:38 -0500, James Hawkins wrote:
> On 10/4/07, Brian Vincent <brian.vincent at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 10/4/07, Stephan Rose <kermos at somrek.net> wrote:
> > > But just because code, that implements the same functionality looks
> > > similar?? Well of COURSE it looks similar...it is trying to do the same
> > > thing!
> > >
> > > I mean seriously, how does any of this stuff have legal ground? Is the
> > > US system seriously that screwed up?
> >
> > I shouldn't bother responding.. however..
> >
> > Let's say you're a huge pharmaceutical company and you manage to
> > develop an AIDS vaccine.  At the end of the day you've probably spent
> > billions and billions of dollars and all you really end up with is a
> > chemical formula.  That chemical formula then takes several more
> > billions of dollars in order to be tested and certified for use.
> > Should some other company be allowed to just come along and copy that
> > chemical formula after the other company has invested so much time and
> > energy?  Most people generally agree that wouldn't be fair.
> >
> > Now, regarding software design, I think there needs to be strict
> > limits on what qualifies as software patents, etc.  I would think if
> > Google wanted to show everyone their code it would unfair if someone
> > came along and started their own search engine based on it.
> > Fortunately I'm too dumb to have a solution so I don't have to worry
> > about such things.
> >
> 
> In defense of Stephan, I'm pretty sure he was referring to the case
> where two companies independently arrive at the same solution to a
> problem.  In the case of pharmaceutical companies, that means both
> companies each invested billions of dollars in strikingly similar or
> exact vaccines.  Concerning MS and, say, Mono, the implementation of
> the .NET interface may be strikingly similar, enough to cause patent
> concerns, yet they hopefully arrived at the implementations
> independently.  The biggest difference is timing.  Who patented first,
> etc?  I believe this is the problem with the US patent system referred
> to by Stephan.

Yup that's pretty much what I meant. 

Stephan