We've been over this debate here before, but I still say that intellectual property is a vexed and dishonourable area, and the territoriality of all those concerned is profoundly immoral and disgusting.

Microsoft (along with Apple, Adobe, Macromedia and all their odious cannibalistic ilk) have engaged in defensive IP protection lawsuits often enough themselves that they have to be considered fair game for this kind of crap. But that doesn't mean that the Eolas patent has any validity or should be allowed to compromise the intellectual development of our culture and species. All these hateful corporate motherfuckers are far too concerned with divvying up the software patents carcass to be concerned with anything of any actual value.

Software ideas do not happen in a vacuum. There is very little originality in software, and what there is owes so much to what has gone before -- and become part of the public domain -- that to try to claim ownership of it is profoundly evil and rude.

I am ambivalent about copyright in general -- as a creator I think I have some understanding of the ownership of one's creations, and I certainly believe that those who create something deserve the credit for doing so, and I do feel aggrieved when people use things of mine without acknowledgement -- but I also have a fervent belief in the need to set one's children free. In any case, patents go so far beyond copyright as to be, in my opinion, indefensible. They are not just pragmatically disastrous -- though they are certainly that -- but also ethically and aesthetically revolting. The very basis of them -- that by just saying something you should be able to control the ability of others to say anything related to it -- is offensive.

As Théoden says in Peter Jackson's version of The Two Towers: How did it come to this?

Software is a squillion-dollar business, but it is based on sick, sick notions. How many of you truly believe you have individually created something new and independent of what went before? Do you really think your inventions are so far beyond those of the people who taught you, and helped you, and answered your questions, and solved your problems, and shaped the foundations of what you are, that you deserve to be uniquely rewarded for them, that the whole space of ideas should be partitioned according to your pride?

If any of you do, I really don't want to know you. Fuck off.