[Foundation-l] Google Wave and Wikimedia projects

[Ray Saintonge]

Milos Rancic wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 9:44 PM, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
>   
>> It says that as long as we follow Google's protocol standard, they
>> won't sue us for infringing on their patents ("patents necessarily
>> infringed by implementation of this specification").  Oh, how very
>> generous.  But what if we want to implement some of their features
>> in MediaWiki without following their protocol?  That is where we
>> should be worried.  What exactly is it that they have patented?
>>     
> What if we want to implement any of patented features in MediaWiki?
>
> BTW, I am really skeptical about the idea that one large Internet
> company sues Wikimedia or MediaWiki developers for their patents. It
> would be a really bad PR for them.

The history of lawsuits often shows that protecting vested interests is 
more important than PR, and that PR departments devote themselves more 
to building justifications for lawsuits.  In the last few years the 
recording and movie industries have appeared quite foolish in their 
prosecutions of those who share music and films.  Even when they win in 
court they inspire others to seek ways to work around the obstacles.

Ec