[R] RE: SCO & R

[Berton Gunter]

My $.02 (sorry, couldn't resist).

This is but one skirmish in the whole vexatious battle on "intellectual property
rights," which extends from software to many other venues, one of the most
interesting of which is patents on human genes. An example I heard on the radio
this morning was eHarmony.com patenting their algorithm for matchmaking, which,
the commentator said, is based on a 431 item questionnaire (yet another reason to
celebrate my long marriage; 431 questions -- yikes!) ! Needless to say, the
potential fodder for editorializing both for and against this intrusion of
"scientific method" into romance seems limitless. Do you think support vector
machines or neural nets lurk in the background of their "algorithm"?

Anyway, the only predictions that I think it safe to make are: (1) We have only
begun to fight -- and, yes, seeming samaritans (or is it samurai?) like R and GPL
may yet have to engage; (2) advances in technology will only turn the heat up and
pose yet more problems, as we move relentlessly from "thingy" inventions running
our world to 'idea-y" inventions running it.

Matchmaking, anyone?

(Thanks for your indulgence).

Cheers,
Bert

"Siddique, Amer" wrote:

> SCO is grasping for straws. and is now gasping. vexatious lawsuits will only
> drive so far before puttering out. eventually the curtain gets pulled back
> on glorified attempts at racketeering. cheers.
>
> Message: 76
> Date: Thu, 27 May 2004 21:08:12 -0500
> From: Deepayan Sarkar <deepayan at stat.wisc.edu>
> Subject: Re: [R] SCO & R
> To: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
> Message-ID: <200405272108.12664.deepayan at stat.wisc.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain;  charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> On Thursday 27 May 2004 20:18, Greg Tarpinian wrote:
>
> > Actually, it was very recent.  I pulled the electronic version of the
> > article from the Forbes website:
>
> I would think twice before taking forbes articles too seriously. For
> instance, they seem to think that protecting intellectual property
> rights are all right when it's some big commercial company doing the
> protecting, but not when they are on the other side of the table. See
> this article from last year:
>
> http://www.forbes.com/2003/10/14/cz_dl_1014linksys.html
>
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--

Bert Gunter

Non-Clinical Biostatistics
Genentech
MS: 240B
Phone: 650-467-7374


"The business of the statistician is to catalyze the scientific learning
process."

 -- George E.P. Box