this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2023
280 points (97.0% liked)

Open Source

31358 readers
263 users here now

All about open source! Feel free to ask questions, and share news, and interesting stuff!

Useful Links

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon from opensource.org, but we are not affiliated with them.

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] PixxlMan@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Linux isn't a patentable thing. It's not one idea or even really a new one. I agree with your premise though. Patents, in nearly all cases, suck.

[–] fubo@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Linux isn’t a patentable thing.

Yes, that's been true so far. Are you sure it's true under the newly proposed law?

[–] AceFuzzLord@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago

I hope if the law passes, that the Linux Foundation immediately would jump on putting a patent on Linux/whatever else needed just to keep those pesky patent mongoloids from trying to kill Linux. Assuming that Linux would become patentable.

[–] PixxlMan@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

What would you patent? "A program which handles low level functionality and manages other programs?" I suppose what I mean is that there is "prior art". You can't patent something if it isn't new and the concept of Linux isn't. Linux isn't the first kernel. This law wouldn't change that. The first person to create a kernel though, under this law that might perhaps (?) have been patentable. Which would've crippled the entire software industry in it's infancy. Yay patents!

[–] luchs@feddit.de 7 points 1 year ago

Patents have been an issue for Linux before. For example, memory deduplication (KSM) was delayed and modified to avoid a patent on using hashes for this purpose, resulting in a potentially inferior implementation due to patents.