Forum OpenACS Q&A: Response to the dilemma of competition in development of ACS

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Posted by Ben Adida on
I'm worried that this thread will confuse a few of the issues here.
Patents and code licenses are very different! If you are a
corporation thinking about these issues, you need to consult a
lawyer who knows these issues well.

In general, OpenACS doesn't have a contract with ArsDigita other
than the implied code licenses that govern the
ArsDigita-copyrighted code we use. The only time ArsDigita
could take issue with us is if we violated the GPL on ACS prior to
4.6, or violated the ADPL on 4.6 and later. Since we have no
intention of using or even viewing v4.6 and later, we don't need to
worry about the latter. And we have no intention of ever violating
the GPL.

Now, with regards to patents: no matter what you do in software,
you're bound to get screwed by patents if you start making
serious money. That's because every stupid, obvious process
that exists has been patented in some way (that "one-click" idea
comes to mind). This has *nothing* to do with ArsDigita,
*nothing* to do with the ADPL. The license doesn't matter one
iota.

Finally, if you reveal your process to the public in a way that is
dated in a verifiable way, you are effectively creating "prior art,"
which means that no one else can patent that process (and even
you've got only one year to do it here in the US). But does that
matter? If a big company has enough money, they will use your
ideas and, if you try to sue them, they will come back with their
list of 1200 patents they own that you're infringing.

At the end of the day, you should assume that no idea you have
is unique, and you should "reveal" it when involving others fits
within your strategy.