| From: | Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> |
|---|---|
| To: | "Marc G(dot) Fournier" <scrappy(at)postgresql(dot)org> |
| Cc: | jclift(at)digitaldistribution(dot)com, Greg Sabino Mullane <greg(at)turnstep(dot)com>, pgsql-www(at)postgresql(dot)org |
| Subject: | Re: [webmaster] online demonstration against EU Software |
| Date: | 2004-04-12 13:42:41 |
| Message-ID: | 9383.1081777361@sss.pgh.pa.us |
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| Lists: | pgsql-www |
> On Mon, 12 Apr 2004, Justin Clift wrote:
>> This is not really a political issue. It's looking after our own long
>> term interests.
It certainly is a political issue, but I agree that it's in our long
term interests to worry about it. Being apolitical in this situation
is unilateral disarmament: we can be as apolitical as we like, but
that's not going to stop the lawyers from putting us out of business.
"Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy(at)postgresql(dot)org> writes:
> Nobody has yet mentioned how this is the case ... how would such a patent
> affect us?
By making it illegal or dangerous for European software developers to
work on Postgres.
It doesn't take a lot of imagination to think that Microsoft is pushing
this (behind the scenes of course). Bill Gates is on record as seeing
"cut off your opponent's air supply" as legitimate competitive behavior.
In this case the air supply he's hoping to cut off for open source is
the availability of developers. If people are afraid to contribute at
all, or spend all their time researching patent issues instead of doing
productive coding, then open-source development dies.
regards, tom lane
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