The US can't even make a smartphone any more. Or electrical distribution equipment. Or telephone central offices. Or TV sets. Next to go, cars. (Chrysler just exited the car business. Minivans only now.)
We also have Intel, and a pretty great rocket company.
And yet you all wish you didn't. Well, maybe not everyone, but it's the dominant view.
This brings back a memory of a HN comment from a little over a decade ago:
I'll just quote it in full:
<quote cite='natural219'>
If you want to track the death of the cultural vision of Silicon Valley -- the belief that some people, at least, can rise above petty human squabbling and competition and are legitimately working to better humanity -- look no further than this thread. Every top comment is a skeptical one. "This is clearly a great PR move, but has no teeth." "How do you enforce this guarantee?" Etc.
These are reasonable questions, but as Shaw said, all progress comes from unreasonable men. I cannot help but be fundamentally depressed as I read these comments. In my view, Elon Musk has, moreso than any other human except maybe Bill Gates, given every absolute inch of human effort and genius to fight to solve the world's biggest problems. And all we have for him, after benefiting freely from the fruit of his labor, is skepticism. We want more. It's not enough. It's never enough.
Yes, Tesla Motors is a company operating in a media-hyped 2014 America. I know some of you are butthurt that he engages in the same "dishonest" PR tactics that other companies do. GET THE FUCK OVER IT. The end product he's producing will save humanity. That all of America has not rallied behind Musk and Tesla as the most important movement and achievement in the last 100 years of human history absolutely blows my mind.
Not only do we not recognize his goals or his achievements, we actively try and bring him down and shit on his accomplishments. "Well, they invented a pretty cool electric motor, sure, but they were kind of dishonest in that one press release that one time."
Go fuck yourself.
I want to say "I'm done with Hacker News", but we know that's not true. I'm supremely disappointed in all of you. Godspeed, Musk. I thought this was a great announcement, and I'm behind you 100%. I just hope you can finish your work before our shitty, myopic, destructive society tears you down. Here's to faith.
</quote>
Elon Musk may have changed for the worse since then, but nowhere near as much and as fast as our "shitty, myopic, destructive society", and in particular the Internet commentariat.
To conform to it you must not have:
"asserted, helped others assert or had a financial stake in any assertion of (i) any patent or other intellectual property right against Tesla or (ii) any patent right against a third party for its use of technologies relating to electric vehicles or related equipment;"
In case you do not understand, Tesla is stating that for Tesla to not assert patent rights, you must not assert patent and copyright and trademark rights against Tesla as seen by the inclusion of "or any other intellectual property right" beyond the statement of just "any patent...right". This is a exclusive and intentional carveout for Tesla in particular as explicitly identified in (i). All other parties are governed by (ii) which only states you must not assert applicable patent, and only patent, rights against non-Tesla parties.
They then make double plus sure that it is clear that Tesla is uniquely allowed to assert their copyright and trademark rights against you as seen by the third clause:
"marketed or sold any knock-off product (e.g., a product created by imitating or copying the design or appearance of a Tesla product or which suggests an association with or endorsement by Tesla) or provided any material assistance to another party doing so."
To gain access to Tesla patents, you must give Tesla access to your patents, copyrights, and trademarks. The sheer audacity to call that a "patent pledge" is astounding. No person with even a cursory knowledge of law and contracts, as required for any business executive, could mistake it. As such, it can only be a deliberate and intentional deception in a attempt to launder credibility by aping the name. It is truly unfortunate that it seems to work on people such as yourself.
[1] https://www.tesla.com/legal/additional-resources#patent-pled...