[Nel] Copyright, Patents and the GPL

Wed, 04 Jul 2001 15:10:14 +0200

Wow, I'm out of town for three days and I miss all the fun ! :)
+Anyway, here goes my 0.02$.
+
+About the "game rules" issue:
+John and Dave pretty much hit the nail on the head, so I won't go into an 
+extended rant. I'll only add that although you could probably (as Dave 
+mentionned) patent your rules *in the US*, it would most certainly be a bad 
+idea as it is very expensive and time consuming to fill such a patent and 
+numerous countries will not recognize it anyway.
+Keep in mind that software and business method patents are highly 
+objectionable in the first place. You can read more about this subject here:
+http://www.freepatents.org/
+and here:
+http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/Patents/against-software-patents.html
+
+European citizens should also consider signing the petition against 
+software patents:
+http://petition.eurolinux.org/index.html?LANG=en
+
+As for the Pro/Anti GPL debate:
+Stephane Craux, I'm afraid you are *completely* missing the point of Free 
+Software. If you are genuinely interested in learning about it and 
+understanding what it stands for, I strongly suggest you spend some time 
+reading the texts on the GNU project's "philosophy" page:
+http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/
+But I suspect you're only trolling... :(
+
+Finally, for those who still have questions about NeL's license, don't 
+forget: the GPL FAQ is your friend !
+http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl-faq.html
+
+Hope this helps !
+
+O.
+
+
+
+
+
+-- Nevrax --
+Olivier Lejade
+CEO and co-founder
+www.nevrax.com
+
+
+