From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/4898 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Zinovy Diskin Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: Re: patenting colimits? Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 23:29:15 -0400 Message-ID: Reply-To: Zinovy Diskin NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1243435599 16470 80.91.229.12 (27 May 2009 14:46:39 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 14:46:39 +0000 (UTC) To: Dusko Pavlovic , categories@mta.ca Original-X-From: categories@mta.ca Wed May 27 16:46:35 2009 Return-path: Envelope-to: gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from mailserv.mta.ca ([138.73.1.1]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1M9KOm-00047O-3l for gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org; Wed, 27 May 2009 16:46:32 +0200 Original-Received: from Majordom by mailserv.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.61) (envelope-from ) id 1M9JgY-0004b9-Ou for categories-list@mta.ca; Wed, 27 May 2009 11:00:50 -0300 Original-Sender: categories@mta.ca Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:4898 Archived-At: Interestingly, software industry is heading in the opposite -- patent-free -- direction. It's called Open source software development, and it is tremendously popular. There are several impressive examples, such as the extremely successful Eclipse project http://www.eclipse.org, (btw, Eclipse is partly based on categorical ideas that engineers developed/reinvented from scratch). Another example is the use of open source software for commercial products by such giants as IBM. (Of course, building legal foundations for this is a separate story but somehow they managed it.) I have a feeling (though i maybe wrong), that patenting is becoming an outdated enterprise in the internet era. Z. [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]