white hat patents?

[da - dan ancona <da@vizbang.com>]

well, this sun/xlink thing is certainly willie inducing.  it may be a
ways off, but one of the things i'm really excited about is eventually
doing an xLink implementation in vizbang.  i hope this will be ironed
out by the time i get to that point.

an idea that i had for white hat patents, and perhaps something sun
might consider: donate the patent to a standards organization.  that way
they still get a win from it, if only a PR boost.

as for the patent issue itself - i've faced it with my work a couple of
times now.  my conclusion so far has been that a brilliantly amazing,
paradigm destroying, world upending good old fashioned great idea and
US$3.00 will get you - exactly - a double latte and not a thing beyond
that.  execution really is everything.

maybe this is more apparent to people in small underfunded companies, as
opposed to big companies with already established herds of lawyers.  and
i'm not closing myself off to the idea permanently, and it's certainly
been proposed, but i have made the decision to try to steer clear of
that path to the best of my ability.  and i think there are solid
business reasons that should appeal to companies of any size to do the
same.

da