[ Thanks to Tim
Hanson for this link. ]
Day Two of “The GPL Under Siege” at LinuxToday, with a response
to Craig Mundie by Linus Torvalds, who says “when Mundie wants you
to think about all the work that companies have done in order to
get patents, he also wants you to forget about all the work done by
people like Einstein, Rutherford, Bohr, Leonardo da Vinci and a lot
of other people who have done a lot more for humanity than most
companies have ever done.”
“I wonder if Mundie has ever heard of Sir Isaac Newton? He’s not
only famous for having basically set the foundations for classical
mechanics (and the the original theory of gravitation, which is
what most people remember, along with the apple tree story), but he
is also famous for how he acknowledged the achievement:”
“If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood
on the shoulders of giants”.