Still only USA based companys or persons are affected by software patents, they dont exist outside of the US. I dont know where the 'owner' of roundcube lives. but I dont think the patent would be a problem.
Michiel
Thomas Bruederli wrote:
Nice discussion so far. It's good that we started to talk about patents but let's not be scared too much by them. Since RoundCube is not commercial, there's not much to get out of it by any patent holders.
Just implement new cool features and if somebody wants us to remove it again, we will do it.
In general I like the idea of having GMail-like conversations even if I prefer the "classic" threads. Pablo, fee free to start implementing it. We will surely not deny your patches if they are good enough but please note that for 0.1-stable we will not include more features.
I suggest to keep your sandbox up-to-date in order to be able to create a patch for the current Trunk version at any time.
Please also read the brand new Development Guidelines http://trac.roundcube.net/trac.cgi/wiki/Dev_Guidelines
Regards, Thomas
Sam Nilsson wrote:
Pablo Manuel Rizzo wrote:
Software patents does not exists in my country and the same is valid for many other countries around the world. If software patents are legal in some country and the patent exists, that feature could be disabled for that countries, but *only* after Google complaints. Conversation grouping could be an installable module.
That's why I don't care. Software patents should not stop Free Software developers :-)
Good point. This doesn't exactly follow your argument, but:
A lack of commitment from the roundcube devs on this feature should not stop Free Software either! If you were to build and offer a nicely integrated gmail-like threading feature for roundcube as free software, I would support adding it to the project and probably others would as well. I like how roundcube is simple, but gmail-style threading is a very unique and well liked feature AFAIK.
Unless roundcube has patent lawyers that they can consult in the states, there isn't much that a small development group can do about potential patents. Someone could ask google if they hold any related patents I suppose, but volunteer geeks can't very well screen their work for patent violations because there are too many patents that would need to be examined. It just doesn't seem practical to me. For all I know roundcube could be "violating" any number of patents as we speak.
Anyone agree? Disagree?
Peace,
- Sam Nilsson