Re: [ox-en] [ox] Guardian 2002-03-12: Patent Nonsense (fwd)
- From: Graham Seaman <graham seul.org>
- Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2002 09:51:50 -0500 (EST)
On 3 Apr 2002, grok wrote:
On Tue, 2002-03-12 at 18:16, Graham Seaman wrote:
The article just got onto slashdot
http://slashdot.org/articles/02/03/12/1956208.shtml?tid=155
So far the replies are all in favour of patents (in general, not for
software, and with quite a few people making an exception for '3rd world'
countries where food or medicine is concerned).
I think it's pretty clear by now that the Free Software -- or GPL --
Movement is still laboring under the influence of rampant neo-liberal
libertarian thought (brought on like gangbusters thru the 'dotcom'
speculation bubble)
My impression is there's pretty much the same range of opinions among
developers as among everyone else... and I think rms and the FSF as a
whole might be a bit surprised to find themselves lumped in with
Ayn Rand libertarians!
-- whether that's been given a Left or anarchist
tinge lately. Many of these people are still in the process of finding
out what a complete crock the kult of Ayn Rand Thought actually is...
This lack of consistency only demonstrates IMO a lack of thinking things
thru. Marxists like myself may not be knowledgeable enuff on many
matters -- but we at least know that marxism is inherently able to
'self-correct'; eventually anyway (its being really a true science).
Well, there's a challenge ;-) Marx lived through a massive debate on
whether patents should exist or not (and they actually were abolished
in some countries for a while). And as far as I know, he never mentioned
it one way another. So, what do you think a Marxist view on patents
might be? (seriously, I'm not flaming).
Graham
-- grok.
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