"patent something to PD it" is what an open patent is.
- Makes sense. Usually folk just like to patent stuff so they can get royalties from licencees or to protect their commercial interests if they can manufacture the stuff themselves so this striked me as a surprising approach
- It might have worked, if Richard Stallman had started it at the same time as the FSF, instead of ranting pointlessly about laws that were not going to change for 20 years, and finding he had no friends who actually HAD or knew how to APPLY FOR patents. Sadly he discredited himself as a factor in this whole game. GPL didn't even put the patent rights in one patent pool as it could have, even if the only point was not to use them.
Anyway, there are major issues in required reintegration of any patent improvement, it's a complex question that needs a detailed essay of its own in the context of both self-funding and the bad copy problem which is the main reason to "patent the best way and fight bad copies".
One way to fight bad copies is to patent bad ways to do the same thing, just so no one can use them to compete with you (say if they have more money to waste to destroy you).
It seems to make more sense to deal with much more motivated people than us on this issue, and link into their scheme. If this Green Patent License thing goes ahead, whose purpose is to pool sustainable technologies for easy use all over the world even in developing nations (if they don't use these we all die!), and to prevent dangerous technology from getting out the door at all, then, we could piggyback on that. We meaning CGO of course, we're only going to lay out options here now I hope, not make the major decisions.