Re: [Fsfe-uk] Young Greens moving on FS

[Ian Lynch]

On Tue, 2004-11-23 at 18:36, Richard Smith wrote:
> On Tue, 23 Nov 2004, Ian Lynch wrote:
> 
> > > P.S.  Lumping copyright & patent law together is a mistake --- they should
> > >        be considered separately
> >
> > In sprcific cases, but they do have the common property of protecting
> > intellectual property.
> 
> According to RMS, your thinking that these very different laws have
> anything in common could be a *result* of your using the term
> 'intellectual property'.

Whatever, life is too short and E-mails too laborious to give detailed
legal descriptions and to think up new terminology. I do know the
difference between copyright and patents. Intellectual property, ideas,
whatever you want to call it has been around well before copyright or
patents. Copyright and patenting are constructs that exist so its
difficult to avoid using terms in common usage when discussing them,
even if RMS disapproves of the them!

I disapprove of software patents, I don't disapprove of patents in
general. I do thnk that copyright should last no longer than the life
time of the originator or say 30 years whichever is the shorter and for
software it should be say 5 years to reflect the speed of development
but I doubt this will happen any time soon.
-- 
Ian Lynch <address@hidden>
ZMS Ltd