Paul Graham On Software Patents

time to read 2 min | 254 words

Paul Graham has a great article (as usual) about parents, which contains the following quote, that got a bona fide Laugh Out Load from me:

...when you're saying something that Richard Stallman and Bill Gates would both agree with, you must be perilously close to tautologies.

This is nice as well:

Instead of the canonical "could you build this?" maybe the corp dev guys should be asking "will you build this?" or even "why haven't you already built this?"

The nicest part is at the very bottom, but it has a comment that has all the sentiments of a slashdot reader:

If they [big business] agreed among themselves never to do business with any firm employing anyone who had worked for a patent troll, either as an employee or as outside counsel, they could probably starve the trolls of the lawyers they need.

I must say that I agree with this sentiment, although I don't see how enforcable this is.