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Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) on Patents and Free Software.
,----[ Quote ]
| This pamphlet had a good effect. Gov'r.
| Thomas was so pleas'd with the construction
| of this stove, as described in it, that he
| offered to give me a patent for the sole
| vending of them for a term of years; but I
| declin'd it from a principle which has ever
| weighed with me on such occasions, viz.,
| That, as we enjoy great advantages from the
| inventions of others, we should be glad of
| an opportunity to serve others by any
| invention of ours; and this we should do
| freely and generously.
|
| An ironmonger in London however, assuming a
| good deal of my pamphlet, and working it up
| into his own, and making some small changes
| in the machine, which rather hurt its
| operation, got a patent for it there, and
| made, as I was told, a little fortune by it.
`----
http://www.ghabuntu.com/2010/03/benjamin-franklin-1706-1790-on-patents.html
Multimedia Codecs and Moral Quandaries
,----[ Quote ]
| Patented multimedia codecs, however, are a
| little different from proprietary drivers
| and firmware, for reasons discussed in my
| first post on the topic. There are peopleâ
| for example, a commenter on a previous post
| named markitâwho remain passionately opposed
| to the use of restrictively licensed codecs
| and can make well reasoned arguments to
| support their stance, particularly since
| fully functional GPL-friendly equivalents
| are available for multimedia codecs.
|
| The arguments against the use of patented
| codecs are not without merit. By using
| formats like MP3 and MPEG-2 rather than
| GPLâd alternatives, users perpetuate
| dependence on proprietary software, which is
| antithetical to the Ubuntu philosophy.
|
| The obvious response to such arguments, of
| course, is that while it would be nice to
| use only patent-free codecs, thatâs not a
| realistic goal for most people. You canât
| send .ogg files to Windows users and expect
| them to know how to open them, and you wonât
| have many friends if you refuse to accept
| data in non-free formats.
`----
http://www.workswithu.com/2010/03/01/multimedia-codecs-and-moral-quandaries/
Recent:
Ben Franklin, the first Open Source advocate
,----[ Quote ]
| Benjamin Franklin is known in American history as a founding father and a
| inventor. One interesting fact is that he did not approve of patents. Martin
| Streicher of IBM points out in his article of 10 tips for sensible systems
| administration that Benjamin Franklin would more than likely approve of Open
| Source software.
`----
http://industrialengineertools.blogspot.com/2009/03/ben-franklin-first-open-source-advocate.html
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