Of course, I don't think that the way patents are currently treated in the US is the best way to handle it... and I think it's very safe to say that the interests of the public software crowd are very far from the hearts and minds of the people in charge of dealing with those issues. However, there are a couple of issues to keep in mind:

Just because these guys charge money to MSFT doesn't mean they have to charge money to the Moz team. The idea that it has to be the same price for everyone is a myth. Not only that, but MSFT couldn't turn around and use the fact that the Moz team is getting it for free as evidence that they should get it for free either. Price differentials based on the customer is a time-honoured tactic.

OTOH, they would ALSO be free to turn around and charge AOL for their branded version of Mozilla. Just because the software codebase is basically the same doesn't mean that there aren't in fact two different entities involved.

In fact, this is pretty much how I expect it to play out.

Of course, if these guys do get rapacious, then perhaps it can be a catalyst for getting the current very dumb approach to patent and IP in general in the US changed.

I've pretty much moved on to the place where I think "bring on the abuses... work it ever harder boys" with the idea that the sooner the greedheads overload the system, the sooner it will break down and become obvious to everyone but the pathologically greedy that the pathologically greedy need to be taken in hand.

--\n-------------------------------------------------------------------\n* Jack Troughton                            jake at consultron.ca *\n* [link|http://consultron.ca|http://consultron.ca]                   [link|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca] *\n* Laval Qu\ufffdbec Canada                   [link|news://news.consultron.ca|news://news.consultron.ca] *\n-------------------------------------------------------------------

... it will be time to move the project offshore to somewhere with a more reaonable IP regimen, and cut the ties with AOL.

Might give some people pause... as I said... my pov on all this now is "bring it on"... the sooner the bullshit meter cranks on up to new heights of insanity the sooner people will no longer be able to ignore it and start dealing with the elites as needed.

The elites here seem to have forgotten that really rampant abuse of our systems like this tend to result in the long run with the elites swinging from trees (and I'm not necessarily being metaphorical about this either... it's not like it hasn't happened before, nor recently (cf Rumania)). I don't think the current crop is going to (re)learn that lesson until some of them ARE swinging from trees... so the sooner that some of them end up in the aforementioned trees the sooner we're likely to start seeing reasonable behaviour from them again.

You pointed out earlier about how the current administration is largely staffed by people with a lot of experience in replacing democratic regimes with authoritarian ones. However, there are some major differences.

One: is the US army going to go and suppress fellow Americans in the streets? They may do it once or twice, but after that... there will be desertions, and there will be hell to pay.

Two: They're going to try and be authoritarian with a very large group of people that aren't accustomed to that, don't like it, and have a lot of guns. There is a huge part of the US population that hasn't been heard from at all in this entire debate. If they get pissed off, they will make themselves heard, and forcefully.

However, if they really mean it, I have no doubt that it will make for some very unpleasant years in the US... and for its neighbours, which explains my interest in it.

--\n-------------------------------------------------------------------\n* Jack Troughton                            jake at consultron.ca *\n* [link|http://consultron.ca|http://consultron.ca]                   [link|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca] *\n* Laval Qu\ufffdbec Canada                   [link|news://news.consultron.ca|news://news.consultron.ca] *\n-------------------------------------------------------------------