 wrote it down & spent the money & attorney fees to get it filed with the patent office."
Part of the role of those of us engaged in commerce is to educate the consumers about the kind of things that we face. As a plant breeder, I could get a knock on my door -or more likely an email- someday saying, 'You're in violation of this patent. You owe us royalties right now.' That could happen with a variety that I breed a unique trait of; because if I don't patent it then it's wide open for somebody else to. So that's why putting it in the public domain through the Open Source Seed Initiative at least gives us a base line, saying 'I've pledged this to open source. Genetics are stewarded by community...'
...a decentralized software development model that encourages open collaboration. A main principle of open-source software development is peer production, with products such as source code, blueprints, and documentation freely available to the public. The open-source movement in software began as a response to the limitations of proprietary code. ...
Open source promotes universal access via an open-source or free license to a product's design or blueprint, and universal redistribution of that design or blueprint. ... The open-source software movement arose to clarify copyright, licensing, domain, and consumer issues.
Generally, open source refers to a computer program in which the source code is available to the general public for use or modification from its original design. Open-source code is meant to be a collaborative effort, where programmers improve upon the source code and share the changes within the community. Code is released under the terms of a software license. Depending on the license terms, others may then download, modify, and publish their version (fork) back to the community.
Loxley Clovis wrote:Cool, thanks for your contribution to the commons Andrew!
What kinds of things do you like to 3D print?
I've been a GNU/Linux user & proponent myself since 2007 & the automated veggie system on my truck uses an open-source hardware "brain"