Letter to the Patent Office From Professor Donald Knuth (1994)

Re:Letter to the Patent Office From Professor Donald Knuth (... by higherpurpose on Saturday June 28, 2014 @04:25PM (#7959231)

'If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today’s ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today.' Mr. Gates worried that 'some large company will patent some obvious thing' and use the patent to 'take as much of our profits as they want.'

Bill Gates in the early 90's [1]. Pretty similar line of thought, no? Unfortunately, now Bill Gates is a defender of Intellectual Ventures [2] and Microsoft extracts billions of dollars every year from open source software by asserting "infringement" on such software patents that should've never been granted, and doing the very thing that Gates was condemning when Microsoft wasn't in the abuser's position.

[1] - http://www.networkworld.com/article/2230877/microsoft-subnet...

[2] - http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/08/bill-gates-still-...

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Re:Letter to the Patent Office From Professor Donald Knuth (... by dredmorbius on Saturday June 28, 2014 @05:31PM (#7959414)

Patent trolling is the final stage of the evolution of a software or tech company, before dissolution or death-merger.

E.g., Sun, SCO, Wang.

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Re:Letter to the Patent Office From Professor Donald Knuth (... by frandroid on Saturday June 28, 2014 @10:06PM (#7960129)

And clearly, with its 15 different billion-dollar a year businesses, Microsoft is at the edge of collapse.

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Re:Letter to the Patent Office From Professor Donald Knuth (... by dredmorbius on Sunday June 29, 2014 @06:15PM (#7962693)

Microsoft ceased being a growth company in the late 1990s / early 2000s. It's now a mature to late-mature tech company.

As pg called it, Microsoft lost its dominance over the tech world by the early-mid 2000s. It was no longer mandatory to have "a Microsoft strategy" (e.g., partner, out-compete, be bought out). Today the pace is set by Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook. In about that order. The Economist's cover from a year or so back highlighted this.

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Re:Letter to the Patent Office From Professor Donald Knuth (... by pistle on Saturday June 28, 2014 @06:38PM (#7959600)

Apple, Google, Facebook subsidiaries, Samsung, etc.

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Re:Letter to the Patent Office From Professor Donald Knuth (... by dredmorbius on Saturday June 28, 2014 @06:57PM (#7959651)

I wouldn't consider those to be dead or dying.

Yet.

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Re:Letter to the Patent Office From Professor Donald Knuth (... by frozenport on Saturday June 28, 2014 @07:02PM (#7959664)

A distinction should be made between buyers and sellers. As we understand the trolls buy the stuff.

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Re:Letter to the Patent Office From Professor Donald Knuth (... by CamperBob2 on Saturday June 28, 2014 @06:48PM (#7959630)

Be careful about criticizing Gates on here, especially if you point out contradictions between his past and present behavior. I lost a ton of karma in another recent thread simply by agreeing with another poster that the "DOS isn't done 'til Lotus won't run" mentality that ruled Microsoft's early days wasn't exactly a shining example of business ethics.

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Re:Letter to the Patent Office From Professor Donald Knuth (... by cududa on Saturday June 28, 2014 @10:38PM (#7960189)

I'm just curious, what value do you place in Internet karma. Conceptually I get why people give a damn about it- but why do you, personally, care about imaginary Internet points?

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Re:Letter to the Patent Office From Professor Donald Knuth (... by CamperBob2 on Sunday June 29, 2014 @01:37PM (#7961781)

I don't place any value on "Internet karma" (and I can certainly afford the hit, in any event). But I do enjoy HN and respect its goals, and I hate to see it attacked by what amounts to moderation abuse. The Internet doesn't need another echo chamber or another game room.

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