[[Benjamin Franklin]] never asked for any remuneration for any of his inventions or discoveries, all of which he cheerfully placed in the [[public domain]]. His theory was that [[God]] ordained the principles by which anything, even a thing devised by man, worked, and therefore asserting ownership of an invention was an attempt to assert ownership of God. Were he alive today, Franklin would no doubt be promulgating a General Public License for hardware, just as [[Richard Stallman]] promulgates the General Public License for software. [[Thomas Edison]] did not think in those terms, and probably holds the record for the highest number of patent applications filed by a single person. | [[Benjamin Franklin]] never asked for any remuneration for any of his inventions or discoveries, all of which he cheerfully placed in the [[public domain]]. His theory was that [[God]] ordained the principles by which anything, even a thing devised by man, worked, and therefore asserting ownership of an invention was an attempt to assert ownership of God. Were he alive today, Franklin would no doubt be promulgating a General Public License for hardware, just as [[Richard Stallman]] promulgates the General Public License for software. [[Thomas Edison]] did not think in those terms, and probably holds the record for the highest number of patent applications filed by a single person. |