My Bluesky thread-writing tool is getting pretty close to something I’d let other people use, as you can see from this thread.#
22 Dec
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Scripting News Annex 
Posted by Chris on December 22, 2006 at 10:04 am
If it’s the “work of others,” it cannot be patented.
I think you’re having a kneejerk reaction because you see “Microsoft,” “RSS,” and “patent” together. Have you actually read the patent?–it takes close reading, but it does seem novel to me, novel in the patent sense. Where’s the prior art?–for the specific claim they are actually making, in the patent application?
If it’s been done before, then all you need to do is show an implementation to the patent office that can be proven to have preceded the date of the patent application, or rather the date of the invention by Microsoft, as long as they filed the application within one year of that.
Posted by Jacob Levy on December 22, 2006 at 10:12 am
C’mon Dave, its time to stop asking for respect from people you don’t respect 🙂
Seriously though, this kind of contempt is great. It gives software developers like you and me more room to operate, outside the center of attention of the press. You’ve done it in the past — create surprises that none of them saw coming and now their livelyhood depends on them (I’m thinking about RSS for example) — this just gives more space for surprises. Don’t you always say zig when they zag?
Posted by mat on December 22, 2006 at 11:44 am
did you notice that Ian Douglas has you tagged as “Bill Winer”?!
Posted by Larry Borsato on December 22, 2006 at 4:38 pm
You may not hold patents but you work is clearly an example of prior art. There is no way on earth that Microsoft should get a patent for something you – or anyone else – clearly created.
Posted by jack on December 22, 2006 at 11:24 pm
sad to see the BBCriver and NYTriver taken down, I checked them pretty regularly so I know this was a recent change. I guess I jumped the gun on SN formatting also, musta got lucky with a graphic and the paragraph formatting of that day. =/ Oh well… I see what ya mean about the time it takes to maintain such rivers, though I’ll [b]deeply[/b] miss using them for the nicely packaged content streams they were.
Posted by John Handelaar on December 23, 2006 at 6:22 am
The Guardian’s blog post is really not a “piece”. Nothing at blogs.guardian.co.uk has appeared in the newspaper. ‘s just a blog post. Post a comment.
[Oh, and Jack “Al Jazeera’s running Microsoft’s IIS/5.0 on Linux” Schofield is not exactly revered over here.]
Posted by Chris on December 23, 2006 at 9:42 am
As John says, it’s a blog post. If they were “professional” sounding even in their blog posts, you’d be criticizing them for not catching the cluetrain. Blogs are supposed to be the raw voice of a real person, right? This particular real person at the Guardian thinks you’re an excitable jerk, that’s all.