Slackers, all very admirable but I need some convincing it would actually work. Yes we'd still have Linux but how would companies make money if their IP wasn't protected for some period of time? I think it would lead to companies massively cutting down on R&D, and hoping someone else do it for them...
Jesus researching this stuff makes for depressing yet interesting reading. Apple to my eyes have quite blatantly become a bunch of cunts - extremely intelligent, creative and successful cunts but cunts nonetheless, obsessed with trying to dominate a market for its own good to the detriment of everyone else - it could be a market in anything, it wouldn't matter.
Think I'll stick with Android for the app and try to persuade the app designer to hold the apple version in mothballs. Maybe get it patented then if someone brings out anything similar we can hit them up with a lawsuit
As far as I understand on some of these things, Android and I think Linux contain plenty of unlicensed patented tech.http://www.linux-mag.com/id/7325/However, most owners of these patents don't persue thier use in open source projects. It's not until they are used comercially that the owners chase for license fees. So this is why the andriod hardware vendors are chased for the patent license costs, rather than google.
(In addition to the link aLICErOBERTSfANkLUB posted earlier) Jurors admit they ignored prior art.
The thing is, you're all just slagging off apple for stuff other companies do all the time.
Faster software development, more eyes looking at code, quicker bug fixes, benefits everyone and no need to piss around in courts making lawyers richer.
Nah, nothing that you've written convinces me that hardware is any different to software in respect of patents.
Convergence on the same solution can happen with hardware just as easily - Christian Reithmann and Alphonse Beau de Rochas are thought to have independently developed the 4-cycle combustion engine, for example.
And the pace of hardware development has been very rapid in recent years. I guess I don't need to explain Moore's law to you
Also, there's a reason this forum doesn't have a hippy smiley. The hippies lost.