Re: code server patent

[Chris Pickett <chris pickett mail mcgill ca>]

Mark Mielke wrote:

On Wed, Sep 10, 2003 at 08:23:05PM -0400, Chris Pickett wrote:
  

It was filed for in 1991.  At the time there was no prior art as far as 
he could tell (certainly the U.S. patent office has been known to make 
mistakes though).  My dad talked to Sun about it in the summer of 1992, 
and claims that this had an effect on Java as we know it today. 
    

Perhaps this will be a more direct question:

Why would an open source community, and open source products, *choose*
to make use of a technology protected by a patent, where the apparent
patent holder has made it clear that their first intention is *not* to
allow the technology to be used for free?

As for Java, I suspect that what is being referred to may include the
ability for a Java source file to demand load classes from a jar file
that is downloaded during execution, and loaded during execution.

Other products perform similar tasks. Why should we do your homework
for you? If you want to find somebody to sell the use of your patented
technology too, do your own research. I won't help you. I believe you
are trying to capitalize on the fact that your dad managed to slip a
patent through the patent office, and that in this regard, you remind
me of the executives at SCO. Why do you deserve money for something so
obvious or basic? It is *your* task to prove this. Not ours. You can't
sit back and say 'I don't want to offer more details.' Since you, or your
dad apparently owns the patent, it is up to you, or your dad, to defend it.

If you don't defend it, you've already lost it.

Look, I know this Mark.  Obviously you (the open source community -- and it's more like "we") aren't interested in helping some patent holders make money just to get nothing out of it!  Why should you be???  It's pretty clear that Sun and Microsoft *are* infringing upon the patent.  It's hazy as to whether or not there is prior art, this wasn't the most basic thing in 1991.  What I was wondering was if there would be any reason to give this patent away (read my original email).  I guess not from your response.  I was just thinking that the open source community might be interested in this, especially if used effectively against someone like Microsoft (e.g. MS is charging for use of this technology, when actually it's free, and they cannot do that -- or something to that effect).  I also think that implementing some of these ideas freely could help change/improve the way code is distributed and installed (which is why I posted to this list) -- I've yet to see an open source project that does this for compiled code, or a reason why it's a bad idea.  Yes, money is obviously a question (as it is in many of the large open source projects), but there's lots of different ways to make money than through sale of software (as we all know).  Finally, I'm not saying, "I don't want to offer more details" -- there's nothing to hide here!  I apologize if I've angered you or anyone else over this.

Chris