Ron Parker <ron### [at] povrayorg> wrote:
: Unfortunately, last time I checked that algorithm was patented.

  IMHO those who invent some algorithm and immediately patent it are fools.

  For example, let's take the fractal image compression algorithm. The author
patented it immediately after finding it. What happened? How many fractal
compression programs have you seen or used? How many programs has fractal
compressed image support? Just a handful. How much has the algorithm been
developed? Not very much, as far as I know. How much money has the author
received from licenses? I would guess that not very much.

  Let's take a free image format like PNG. It's very popular (perhaps the
most popular format in the internet after JPG) and gaining more popularity
every day. Most modern image processing programs support it. It's becoming
a de-facto standard in many places. Would this have happened if PNG was
patented? Certainly not.
  GIF was patented and began to lose popularity very fast.

  Patenting an algorithm will just make sure that it will not become popular
and that it will not be developed much further. It will also not get you
lots of money.

  I don't want to offend americans, but I think that they are fools because
they allow patenting of algorithms (or almost anything else). It's like
patenting hot water or a fork.
  Here you can have the copyright of a program, but you can't patent it.

-- 
main(i,_){for(_?--i,main(i+2,"FhhQHFIJD|FQTITFN]zRFHhhTBFHhhTBFysdB"[i]
):5;i&&_>1;printf("%s",_-70?_&1?"[]":" ":(_=0,"\n")),_/=2);} /*- Warp -*/

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