Steve Stites

I agree with David Spalding's comment.

Also, open source is a way of creating something positive and useful. As far as I can see the Occupy Wall Street movement is much more akin to the anti-industrialization Luddite movement than to the Open Source movement. I see Occupy Wall Street as destructive, not constructive.

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Steve Stites

Patent trolls are a special problem only for companies that have amassed large, expensive software patent portfolios. These expensive portfolios are meant to be weapons in the software patent wars which are used to attack the products of enemy companies. Patent trolls have no products to attack with patents so large software patent portfolios are worthless in defending against a patent troll.

Companies which do not rely on massive software patent portfolios in the software patent wars do not see any difference in the threat of patent rolls and the threat of competing companies that make a product. For these companies defending against patent trolls is no more difficult than defending against a patent aggressor with products.

Software patent portfolios are expensive. A company which can find a cheap way to successfully defend themselves in the software patent wars without spending massive amounts on a software patent portfolio will have a large competitive advantage over the companies which spend billions trying to build an overwhelmingly large software patent portfolio.

I suggest that money spent on lobbying the government to abolish software patents is much more productive than money spent on lobbying to rein in patent trolls.

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Steve Stites