Legal/Permission Question

[Walter Bright]

Don Clugston wrote:
> Walter Bright wrote:
>> David B. Held wrote:
>>> it is not a defense against patents (not sure if Walter has any 
>>> patents on any D stuff, or if anyone does, but this seems like the 
>>> smaller risk for you).
>>
>> There are no patents on D technology that I am aware of, and I don't 
>> plan on filing any. I personally believe that software should be 
>> unpatentable.
> Did you know, that the only reason why software technology is patentable 
> at all, is because in the 1800's, some guy was granted a patent for a 
> (paper) opera ticket that could be folded in multiple ways, and modern 
> courts successfully argued that it was an algorithm.
> So this whole situation exists just because some stupid patent office 
> once granted a patent for origami. It's absurd.

I didn't know that.

Patents are supposed to exist in order to encourage innovation. The 
reality of software patents is they do nothing of the kind, they 
discourage it. Before 1989, software wasn't patentable, and there was a 
tidal wave of software innovation.