On Sun, Sep 01, 2002 at 03:28:23AM +0300, Richard Braakman wrote: RB> I do think that discouraging the use of patent-encumbered RB> "standards" is a useful way to fight patent oppression. It sends RB> the message that a patented standard is a dead standard. Maybe RB> companies will review their habits in that light.
As a one who lives in a post-communist dictatorship, I have a different moral position on this issue. Discouraging use of patent-encumbered technologies is the same as political emigration: it is the easy way out of the oppression, but it is nothing else but a defeat, and when you are fleeing to another country, this defeat will follow you there. If you want to fight oppression, you should fight where you stand, and not run away until you're locked in a corner. When you are retreating in such a way, you agree to abandon things that are important to you: useful technologies become casaulty to patents and your home and friends become casaulty to politics. Thus, you suffer major immediate damage, while damage you deliver to oppressor is minor and, honestly speaking, merely potential. Even worse, the fact that you retreat without a fight actually encourages further oppression, both on the territory you left and on territory you enter. Instead, I would try to do some actual damage to the oppressors, in this case by finding or creating such a way to ignore their limitations that will not put the whole Debian project in a danger. I think making patents practically unenforceable over free software would deliver much stronger message. Quoting Declan McCullagh: "Put another way, who made a bigger difference: Yet another letter-scribbling activist or Phil Zimmermann?" If you want to make a difference, don't just take your ball and walk away: they don't need your ball. -- Dmitry Borodaenko
