Re:Show HN: Browsh – A modern, text-based browser
by bryanrasmussen on Tuesday July 10, 2018 @03:38AM
(#17496072)
actually one problem you have here, and you're probably realizing from the responses, is a problem I had with a personal project that could be used to build lots of things that people wanted, but in itself was not a thing people want. In order to monetize you need to build one of the things people want, but in doing so you put focus into one area and stop improving the generic base of everything, as well as not producing many little toy examples of the possibilities of your technology.
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Re:Show HN: Browsh – A modern, text-based browser
by jacquesm on Tuesday July 10, 2018 @06:50AM
(#17496944)
This is typical for infrastructure and foundation libraries. Nobody made money on jpeg, but jpeg powered entire industries.
Re:Show HN: Browsh – A modern, text-based browser
by C4stor on Tuesday July 10, 2018 @07:25AM
(#17497120)
While your point stands, you may be interested to know that a company actually successfully sold a patent for jpeg at some point, and made about $100M doing so. So I wouldn't say nobody made money on jpeg !
But it's also interesting for the OP, maybe there's something patentable in there ?
Re:Show HN: Browsh – A modern, text-based browser
by jacquesm on Tuesday July 10, 2018 @07:32AM
(#17497147)
If you're referring to Forgent: they were patent trolls and their patent was invalidated due to prior art. Unfortunately not before a bunch of companies paid up.
Fraunhofer is a better example of an institute that made good money on tech patents with merit, as well as 3M and lots of other tech companies.
But as a rule these things are hard to monetize and while I'm not happy that it will be hard to monetize the work that went into this particular project at the same time I think it is good that patents are most likely a closed avenue.
Patents are - in my opinion - a net negative and the sooner they are abolished the better.