Re: [Fsfe-uk] Public money and freedom

[Space Bunny]

Yes, I realised I should have been more carefully in razing off that email.

So I big sorry to dasher developers for me putting out on list my poor 
recollection  that Dasher had been covered by a patent by developers/uni 
(not that this would be judgement in itself on them as this can be 
imposed by uni and/or justified given live in world with patents as 
redhat do), without contacting them to see if this is the case, not 
finding anything on brief looking on web to say either way. I should 
have left that out till I had time to to check fully.

I should find solid examples and not just put hearsay even if qualified 
as such. And especially when mixed up with other general comments.

So I know of no uni/researcher held patents for computer implemented 
ideas developed in UK universities even if code is made free software.
In fact I know nothing of any software patents held by UK unis/researchers.
And so I don't know of any uni who are holding patents; and claiming to 
be for public good,  and maybe good of free software,
with perhaps a policy similar to RedHats:
http://www.redhat.com/legal/patent_policy.html

I was just clutching at straws in throwing out my mis remembered mention 
of dasher as an example.
I hope the offence will be brief. So again sorry.

cheers,
Micah
http://j12.org/sb/

I just found these links that are of interest when comes to looking at 
public uni funded code:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/ccf.html
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/0,39020645,2109446,00.htm


Ramanan Selvaratnam wrote:

> With all respect please do not arrive at hurried judgements and post to
> lists as this risks another person (possibly me) in a hurry do magnify
> the mistakes.
>
> Dasher has  an excellent support base (a Yahoo group and and IRC channel
> on freenode) and the website has nothing bad to complain about.
>
> On Sun, 2003-12-14 at 20:29, Chris Ball wrote:
>  
>
> > > > On Sun, 14 Dec 2003 19:25:51, Space Bunny <address@hidden> said:
> > > >        
> >   > Dasher software is free software under gpl but I seem to remember
> >   > that it is covered by patent, I am not sure if patent is own by
> >   > uni or researcher himself or some other body. I tried to quickly
> >   > find some info on website and could not.
> >
> > Hi, I'm one of the Dasher developers.  Dasher is certainly not covered
> > by any patents; the inventor (the head of the research group I work in)
> > has strong beliefs both towards Free Software and against patents.

> > Also I would encourage anyone interested to look up and  read up the
> > head of the research group's beliefs. (the main reason I CC to the list)
> >
> > The whole efforts gives UK free software community a lot to be proud
> > about and we (AFFS ?) should invite them to help us, IMHO.