logoalt Hacker News

ReactiveJellytoday at 2:11 AM2 repliesview on HN

That's why we should enforce copyleft


Replies

fluoridationtoday at 3:18 AM

That has nothing to do with anything. If you publish a copyleft paper, that doesn't compel someone who makes a product based on your paper to publish more papers.

show 1 reply
DonHopkinstoday at 6:40 AM

Ha ha, I snail mailed RMS a Copyleft (L) sticker in 1984. My handwriting was sloppy so it took him a couple years to figure out what it really meant.

https://www.gnu.org/graphics/copyleft-sticker.html

  From: [email protected] (Richard M. Stallman)
  Date: 25 June 1986 at 18:45:28 GMT+2
  To: a2deh@ai

  I figured out what a copyleft is.
  It's the sort of thing that I put on GNU software and manuals.
  The left-wing version of the copyright that rightists use
to exploit the masses.

But copyrights are not patents, and the opposite of "patent" is "latent", so we need a Latent Office that protects inventions from the people who claim to have invented them, and issues warnings to patent trolls:

  LATENT (L)
  All rights unreserved.
  This invention may already exist, but hasn’t become obvious yet.

  Latentleft — publish the invention, conceal the monopoly.

  Latent Pending — the idea is out there somewhere.

  Latent Troll — remains dormant until an industry becomes profitable.