A Commonplace Book

Creativity and innovation always builds on the past.

The past always tries to control the creativity that builds upon it.

Free societies enable the future by limiting this power of the past.

Ours is less and less a free society

-- Lawrence Lessig Keynote from OSCON 2002 "Free Culture" 08/15/2002 http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/policy/2002/08/15/lessig.html http://randomfoo.net/oscon/2002/lessig/

Let's talk about software patents. There's a guy, Mr. Gates, who's brilliant, right? He's brilliant. A brilliant business man; he has some insights, he is even a brilliant policy maker. Here's what he wrote about software patents: "If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today." Here's the first thing I'm sure you've read of Bill Gates that you all 100 percent agree with. Gates is right. He is absolutely right. Then we shift into the genius business man: "The solution is patenting as much as we can. A future startup with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high. Established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors." Excluding future competitors.