Re: development snapshot

[John W. Eaton]

As I mentioned earlier, I had an appointment to speak with an attorney
from the Software Freedom Law Center last Friday.  Now that I've
spoken with him, I'd like to make the following final comments about
this topic.  After reviewing this specific patent, my technical belief
is that its claims are obvious and, thus, invalid.  Therefore, I see
no reason to remove the code from Octave that supports dispatching on
function handles.  However, we must continue to prudently respect
patent rights.  I know that many of us do not agree with software
patents, and I understand there is a case now at the Supreme Court
that may render them largely invalid, but for now we have to abide by
the law, even if we don't like it.  We must not simply assume that all
patents are invalid, nor should we assume that all patents are
definitely valid simply because they have been granted.  Patents are
to be evaluated on a case by case basis when they arise as a concern
meriting our attention.

Therefore, unless we receive or hear of a threat from the owner a
patent, our best course of action is to continue doing what are doing
(writing software) and not go out looking for patents that may be a
problem.  If we did that, we could spend all our time just looking at
patents, since there are so many software patents out there today.
If or when there is a direct threat to Octave, we will immediately
seek counsel to deal with whatever specific threat arises and we will
respect any valid patent rights that exist.  In any case, we should
not discuss the specifics of any patents on public mailing lists.  For
that reason, if you'd like to communicate with me about this, please
do so directly.  For now, let's put this matter to the side and get
back to making Octave the best program it can be.

jwe