Re: OT - Curl & patents

[Christopher Barber <address@hidden>]

Jeffrey Siegal <jbs@quiotix.com> writes:

> Christopher Barber wrote:
> > > Clearly, Curl, Inc, is a very lawyer-centric place.
> > 
> > Most companies are, but please don't judge the product by this.
> 
> It is pretty clear tha the original poster was suggesting *in comparison
> to other companies*.

What other companies?  Have you read the legalese from Microsoft, Applet and
Sun?

>> As an engineer, I have mixed feelings about software patents, but given that
>> the law allows them to exist, it makes business sense for Curl to try to
>> protect our stockholders considerable investment.
> 
> It *may* make business sense, to the extent that taking such an approach
> does not, directly or indirectly, alienate to many potential customers.

We have no intention of alienating customers if we can help it.  Of course,
there are a small subset of people that object to the commercialization of any
programming language and will hate us no matter what we do.  That is too bad,
but we cannot do anything about it.  There may be some people that will refuse
to use Java, Flash, or any of the Microsoft languages because the companies
that produce them have software patents, but that has not prevented those
languages from flourishing.  How many people here refused to use Applet or
Harlequin's versions of Dylan because of those companies' software patents?

- Christopher