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Commenting on my own post: "Patents are good" is meant in the context of this case. For my opinion about software patents in general, see http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/en/m/intro/index.html

Just one annoying blogger trying for ad impressions.

Since Slashdotters have more than once tried to dismiss this guy as some troll or just some blogger, perhaps you should do a little research. Florian Muller is the founder of the NoSoftwarePatents campaign, fighting the EU's directive on the patentability of computer-related inventions, which they eventually rejected. He's received several awards for his intellectual property activism and is considered one of the most influential in the field.

But yeah, because this is a potentially negative Google submission, people around here are going to attack the messenger and try to dismiss him outright, because they're biased toward pro-Linux companies like Google. This site's comment section is becoming a real trash heap.

Seriously, this is the best opinion piece on open source and patents that I've read in a long long time. And as the founder and former director of the NoSoftwarePatents campaign and author of the FOSS Patents blog, I read (and write) a lot about that subject.

There's a precedent to this settlement in which Red Hat definitely paid royalties: when it settled the FireStar case. It published a misleading FAQ on its website trying desperately to divert attention from what really happened. The non-confidential part of that settlement was published and leaves no doubt that Red Hat entered into an obligation to pay (even Groklie arrived at that conclusion, a website that I very rarely agree with). That payment was probably not on a per-unit basis. They might have made a one-off payment, or a royalty on revenues/profits, or some combination of both.

Concerning Moglen's discouraging anti-software-patent lobbying, it's interesting that he gets away with it (other than Bruce Perens criticizing him for it now) while I get bashed all the time for calling on people to be pragmatic. The first time I met Eben Moglen (back in 2004 together with a MySQL VP), he told us not to lobby against software patents. Instead he wanted money for his patent-busting efforts, which failed miserably (Microsoft's FAT patents are still in force).

I tried very hard to fight against software patents (in the EU) at the legislative level. I said on my new blog several times that at some point (more than four years ago, in fact) I couldn't help but arrive at the conclusion that it's impossible. It won't happen simply because the collateral damage caused to other industries is huge (you either have to do away with the largest part of the patent system, or you have to live with software patents) and there simply isn't any serious, meaningful support for the anti-software-patent cause by businesses. On LWN I gave an example by quoting what a staffer of the conservative group in the European Parliament once said: unless you bring in those middle-aged closed-source entrepreneurs with beards, bellies and glasses talking about how they suffer from software patents and how they may have to lay off employees because of software patents, there's no way that a political majority will do what the FOSS community asks for.

While my focus is on how to deal with the most important threat (exclusionary strategic use of software patents), Moglen never talks about that because he's been loyal to IBM throughout his professional life and gets funded by them. Instead, he always talks about IBM's (and consequently, his) favorite bogeyman, which is the wrong focus.

> This court ruling was a win.

How so? The lower court wanted to force patents to be put through the "particular machine or transformation" test. The Supremes said, well, sure THIS patent is too abstract... but we're not sure about that test. So we'll make a narrow ruling and discourage people from using that test, which could be used to eliminate software patents wholesale, unless they can start convincing the courts to buy trivial "transformations" like the hard drives doing their thing.

In short, nobody got what they wanted, but we ended up with less than we started with. Seriously. Read Patently-O or one of the sites where they love patents. They hated the test imposed by the lower court, but they're somewhat relieved that this decision wasn't as bad as they feared it could be.

> So why does Mueller continue to lie and spread fud? It's what he does - he's a lobbyist. Not a programmer.

You mean like how he lobbied the EU against software patents? And he did program a lot more in the C64 days, but he has credits in Warcraft II - Tides of Darkness, Diablo I and Starcraft I's German version, though it says something about translation so I'm not sure about the details.

Believe it or not, he's not out to destroy FOSS. Yes, PJ hates his guts. But that doesn't make him a bad person. She hates almost everyone who disagrees with her, after all.

It's 2010, why is Glyn of all people still talking about selling software instead of using it? Is this a fumble like in 1999 when he mistook deIcaza for a FOSS developer? Are we all so far down the Microsoft money pit that no one is even allowed to think about using the software?

That's what it's all about as far as many are concerned: using the software. Even the opening stipulation in the GPL and the GNU Manifesto are about using the software.

Volkswagen, last I checked, was a contributor to the linux kernel and a user of many other components. It has a market cap of over 32 billion. Amazon, though recently targeted for knee-capping by Microsoft goombas, has a market cap of around 55 billion. Juniper Networks was using open source, at least prior to taking on Microsofters, and had a market cap of around 10 billion. Even Apple, which seems to be succumbing to Microsoft made its comeback around GNU/Darwin. How long they can keep doing that before Microsoft party members can sabotage the company or inject their toxic personnel is anyone's guess.If you look around, it's not hard to find large companies with market caps in the range of many tens of billions of dollars that are using Free and Open Source Software to make lots of money.

The patent office is full of inept halfwits

It wouldn't matter if the patent office was full of Einsteins, it's the patent office itself that is the problem. Patents need to go away.

My Large American Multinational employer has a similar scheme .... and every 6 months or so the scheme's administrators send out a company-wide rah-rah email talking up the scheme, its benefits for the company, and the m-o-n-e-y an employee will get for dreaming up a patent.

I just ignore them every time, cos it's i-m-m-o-r-a-l, and amounts to sickening bribery in an attempt to get you to participate in their thought-crime, and it isn't even clever - here's one my employer successfully filed : "A method for remotely administrating a computer by installing a web-server implementing a web form into which the sysadmin enters the commands to be executed using the web browser on her workstation" ...... oh please.

Propaganda :
http://www.softwarepatents.co.uk/intro/no_software_patents.html
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/en/m/intro/index.html

Paraphrasing the second link slightly :

"If [your country legitimises software patents], you will pay dearly. [The] software industry will fall victim to unscrupulous extortioners. A cartel of large corporations will crush smaller competitors. Consequently, we will all pay more money for less good and less secure software. You personally, your household, your company, your government, all of us."

I urge you to ignore these parasitic crooks in future, and refrain from taking their money. You'll feel better about yourself if you do.

[...] there are no software patents allowed in the UK.

That's what I was thinking, but upon checking found that a recent High Court decision might allow software patents after all. There's certainly a lot of confusion over the subject and an apparent disparity between the UK Patent Office and the European Patent Office. See the IPKat blog:

[...] the UK-IPO has highlighted Mr Justice Patten's decision of today [...] to overturn the UK-IPO's decision to refuse an application by Symbian, on the grounds that it consisted solely of a computer program.

The judge drew attention to the split between the attitudes of the UK-IPO and the EPO, since the EPO has already allowed the patent to be granted.

The blog post mostly echos the press release from the UK Patent Office, who plan to appeal due to the judge failing to apply the Aerotel/Macrossan test.

So it does seem that, medium to long-term, the BBC might have made a big mistake.

As for software patents in general, I believe the only way to truly be rid of the scourge is to get the US to declare software as unpatentable. The US government, and the lobbyists from its companies have tremendous power and influence around the world, and they are pushing hard for software patentability. Even though it's obviously a bad idea, and most software developers are strongly opposed to it, more countries seem to be considering it. No real sources for this last paragraph as it's only my opinion, take it or leave it. :)

Notice the silence from the GNU crowd over software patents (an unspeakable evil when used by companies like Microsoft)

Oh, the silence...

In Patent Absurdity, Stallman discusses the impact of software patents by using literary patents as an example. Next month, the European Parliament will vote on the issue of whether to allow patents covering software, so now is an especially important time to share information about their dangers.

The Danger of Software Patents: This speech will be accessible to all audiences and the public is encouraged to attend. Richard Stallman will explain how software patents obstruct software development.

It is difficult to find organizations that officially speak up against software patents. There are many that should do so but are under the control of large corporations.: The Free Software Foundation and its European arm are clearly against software patents

Saving Europe from Software Patents: Imagine that each time you made a software design decision, and especially whenever you used an algorithm that you read in a journal or implemented a feature that users ask for, you took a risk of being sued.

FSF Europe: No software patents in Europe

Richard M Stallman: Software Patents- Dangers to development

GPL: Finally, every program is threatened constantly by software patents. States should not allow patents to restrict development and use of software on general-purpose computers, but in those that do, we wish to avoid the special danger that patents applied to a free program could make it effectively proprietary. To prevent this, the GPL assures that patents cannot be used to render the program non-free.

Does GPLv3 have a "patent retaliation clause"?In effect, yes. Section 10 prohibits people who convey the software from filing patent suits against other licensees. If someone did so anyway, section 8 explains how they would lose their license and any patent licenses that accompanied it.

FSF annual members meeting: "As we expected, 2006 is proving to be a pivotal year for the Free Software Movement. With the release of the GPLv3, we have brought to focus the debate on the threats posed by Digital Restrictions Management, Software Patents and Treacherous Computing.

FSF releases the GNU General Public License, version 3: But even more importantly, these different groups have had an opportunity to find common ground on important issues facing the free software community today, such as patents, tivoization, and Treacherous Computing

Boycott Amazon!: The boycott can also indirectly help change patent law--by calling attention to the issue and spreading demand for change

Fighting Software Patents - Singly and Together: Software patents are the software project equivalent of land mines: each design decision carries a risk of stepping on a patent, which can destroy your project.

Software Patents and Literary Patents: On July 6, 2005, the European Parliament will vote on the vital question of whether to allow patents covering software--a policy that would restrict every computer user, and tie software developers

No, all software patents should be shot down. Patents should only be given to inventions which operate in the physical world — mechanical devices, tools, electronic equipment, and so on. Patenting software is (more or less) patenting algorithms, and therefore to patenting mathematics; on the other hand, research works much better if information is shared freely. Also, software is already covered by copyright, so protecting it with patents also is overkill. Also... well, there are many reasons why software patents are a terrible idea. Everybody with an interest more than casual in the subject whould get familiar with the arguments given in http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/.

One of the most important difference of software compared other tangible products is, it doesn't cost to duplicate once a software product is developed. The other major difference is, it doesn't even cost to distribute even if to the whole world thanks to peer-to-peer (P2P) networks.

A minor, student or single person can easily infringe one or many software patents by writing a small computer program. That is, you don't have to be a company to violate Software Patents.

Software Patents are the single most danger faced today by the students, end users, software developers, scientists, companies especially small ones, etc.

Therefore, Software Patents strongly discourage if not completely stop innovation and advancement of science and technology.

Software Patents allow few big companies to earn money with following two dangers to the public:
1. Software Patents holder has no obligation to give a license to others.

2. Even if Software Patents holder agrees to give a license to others, there is no obligation for them to give at price affordable for others.

By using either or both above points they can simply cutoff others from implementing a technology or advancement of a technology. Please note, the technique used is cutoff, not compete.

Today I'm sitting on a product that I developed by advancing the technology using innovative ideas, but I cannot release it to the world either free or at fee unless I violate one single patent owned by a large company.

I wrote to that company asking how much royalty do I have to pay, there is no reply from them. They want us to violate the law and sue us later. They do not want to compete with us, they simply want to cutoff us from competition.

By being a victim of Software Patents, my suggestion is software should be managed by Copyright laws, not by Patent laws. If somebody does not want to given me a license for a software product, I can still sit and develop a functionally equivalent one as if I'm writing a new book without violating law.

This is how major industries such as music, movie, book publishing operates.

Sagara W

Following links may give you a better understanding of this Software Patents issue:
1. Public Patent Foundation ( http://www.pubpat.org/ )
2. http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/
3. Software Patents vs Parliamentary Democracy ( http://swpat.ffii.org/index.en.html )
4. Petition for a Software Patent Free Europe ( http://petition.eurolinux.org/index_html )
5. Software Patents Gone Bad ( http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1666755,00.as p )

Both patents and pirate downloads are driven by greed. It will not stop. A revolt won't help.

It seems to work here in Europe: after a big campaign of small IT businesses and citizens, the European Parliament rejected a proposal for introducing software patents in the EU.

Sure, the "war" is far from over, but we have won each "battle" so far. But I fear that we have a big probability of losing, unless software patents are challenged also in the rest of the world.

So, please, if you live in the USA or in Japan write to your MPs and tell them why sw patents are absurd and should never be granted, you will help yourself and us in Europe too! Don't think it's impossible: try!

More references:

• http://www.ffii.org/
• http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/

Keep in mind that software patents hold little sway over the rest of the world. Taxing Linux in the US will just push Linux development and perhaps use abroad. It will also ensure that fewer countries will be willing to adopt software patents. This could be could news for the ongoing battle in the EU.

Software patents are a bit of a grey area in the EU. They should be excluded but various national patent bodies have allowed the issue to become blurred and there is a ris k of them creeping in. See here for details.

Just days before the European Commission's next hearing on patent policy that is still being hatched despite the last directive's overwhelming defeat in Parliament, several recent publications discuss developments of the law on Tux' home continent, and successful steps to avert software patents: The huge new book on "The War over Software Patents in the European Union" by the founder of NoSoftwarePatents has just been released for download. If you prefer a few hundred pages less, see the latest issue of the International Journal of Law and Information Technology for a scholarly article.

I would say that the networks should really start looking into it -- in about 20 years all the politicians are going to be people who lived through the shutdown of napster, the lawsuits, and the general stupidity.

RIM's Chairman recently said he will work to bring an end to Software Idea Patents.

It would be great to see RIM financially support initiatives like NoSoftwarePatents.org and SWPat.ffii.org, whose aims are to stop the legalized extortion by the Patent Leeches and Patent Mafia.

RIM's Chairman recently said he will work to bring an end to Software Idea Patents.

It would be great to see RIM financially support initiatives like NoSoftwarePatents.org and SWPat.ffii.org, whose aims are to stop the legalized extortion by the Patent Leeches and Patent Mafia.

RIM's Chairman recently said he will work to bring an end to Software Idea Patents.

It would be great to see RIM financially support initiatives like NoSoftwarePatents.org and SWPat.ffii.org, whose aims are to stop the legalized extortion by the Patent Leeches and Patent Mafia.

Or maybee they just don't remeber why software patents SUCK. http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/

Instead of crying over the stolen $612.5M, RIM should have pro-actively spent a small fraction of that sum to make the patent system fair in the US. Instead, they allowed the Patent Cartel to fund this monster of a legal system, which of course rewards its creators.

Software Idea Patents are a form of legalized extortion encouraged by the US government. It was put in place in order to protect monopolies like Microsoft, who has recently threatened to sue users and developers of open-source software, including Linux. No wonder the US government intervened on behalf of Microsoft in its European anti-trust case -- Microsoft and the Patent Mafia has Uncle Sam in their pocket. Too bad Europe is heading there too.

Instead of crying over the stolen $612.5M, RIM should have pro-actively spent a small fraction of that sum to make the patent system fair in the US. Instead, they allowed the Patent Cartel to fund this monster of a legal system, which of course rewards its creators.

Software Idea Patents are a form of legalized extortion encouraged by the US government. It was put in place in order to protect monopolies like Microsoft, who has recently threatened to sue users and developers of open-source software, including Linux. No wonder the US government intervened on behalf of Microsoft in its European anti-trust case -- Microsoft and the Patent Mafia has Uncle Sam in their pocket. Too bad Europe is heading there too.

Instead of crying over the stolen $612.5M, RIM should have pro-actively spent a small fraction of that sum to make the patent system fair in the US. Instead, they allowed the Patent Cartel to fund this monster of a legal system, which of course rewards its creators.

Software Idea Patents are a form of legalized extortion encouraged by the US government. It was put in place in order to protect monopolies like Microsoft, who has recently threatened to sue users and developers of open-source software, including Linux. No wonder the US government intervened on behalf of Microsoft in its European anti-trust case -- Microsoft and the Patent Mafia has Uncle Sam in their pocket. Too bad Europe is heading there too.

Instead of crying over the stolen $612.5M, RIM should have pro-actively spent a small fraction of that sum to make the patent system fair in the US. Instead, they allowed the Patent Cartel to fund this monster of a legal system, which of course rewards its creators.

Software Idea Patents are a form of legalized extortion encouraged by the US government. It was put in place in order to protect monopolies like Microsoft, who has recently threatened to sue users and developers of open-source software, including Linux. No wonder the US government intervened on behalf of Microsoft in its European anti-trust case -- Microsoft and the Patent Mafia has Uncle Sam in their pocket. Too bad Europe is heading there too.

No, I am quite sure it is you who is 100% wrong. Patents on software is very much not fine. In every case I can think of, it's actually quite absurd. nosoftwarepatents.com outlines the issue well (read the dangers of software patents in particular).

The problem with software patents is that they are incredibly restrictive in an industry that requires freedom and rapid innovation. As pointed out on the page I linked to, something that was innovative in the early days of modern computing would still be patented. A few carefully chosen software patents could have crippled the advancement of computer software, possibly to the extent that the Internet would not exist today (or at least the way we think of it now). Your example of patenting World of Warcraft actually is dumb. First, it's already protected by copyright and trademark laws; someone cannot just copy WoW, call it World of Warcrack and sell it. Thus there is no need to patent it in the first place. The truly chilling concept would be that a patent on WoW would likely be a patent on MMORPGs in general. Imagine that: 20 years of no MMORPGs besides World of Warcraft. Some players might be happy with that, and I'm sure it's VU's wet-dream but for the rest of the world it would be fucking tragic .

Of course there is plenty of prior art in that case so it's not an issue but hopefully that illustrates the problem well. Twenty years ago, no one had even thought of the idea of a MMORPG, now it seems to be the new trend in computer gaming. All those thousands of programmers coding for these games could easily change the face of gaming many times in twenty years. For all we know, gaming might be in a completely virtual reality in five or ten years. How likely is that to happen if only one company or patent holder could create software using that patent? Software patents just do not make sense.

No, I am quite sure it is you who is 100% wrong. Patents on software is very much not fine. In every case I can think of, it's actually quite absurd. nosoftwarepatents.com outlines the issue well (read the dangers of software patents in particular).

The problem with software patents is that they are incredibly restrictive in an industry that requires freedom and rapid innovation. As pointed out on the page I linked to, something that was innovative in the early days of modern computing would still be patented. A few carefully chosen software patents could have crippled the advancement of computer software, possibly to the extent that the Internet would not exist today (or at least the way we think of it now). Your example of patenting World of Warcraft actually is dumb. First, it's already protected by copyright and trademark laws; someone cannot just copy WoW, call it World of Warcrack and sell it. Thus there is no need to patent it in the first place. The truly chilling concept would be that a patent on WoW would likely be a patent on MMORPGs in general. Imagine that: 20 years of no MMORPGs besides World of Warcraft. Some players might be happy with that, and I'm sure it's VU's wet-dream but for the rest of the world it would be fucking tragic .

Of course there is plenty of prior art in that case so it's not an issue but hopefully that illustrates the problem well. Twenty years ago, no one had even thought of the idea of a MMORPG, now it seems to be the new trend in computer gaming. All those thousands of programmers coding for these games could easily change the face of gaming many times in twenty years. For all we know, gaming might be in a completely virtual reality in five or ten years. How likely is that to happen if only one company or patent holder could create software using that patent? Software patents just do not make sense.

Why not just get rid of patents?

RTFA. He spends a fair amount of time on exactly this.

That's what results from patents being legal for software. You people should really try to reform the system there. Europe got the point and luckily refused the proposal to legalise software patents. More info on http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/

MPEG4 and therefore XVID has patents up the wazoo, if you are such a firm believer in free formats, why not ask for Ogg Theora or something?

See legal issues on for instance XVID all over Google for details. Wikipedia could be a good place to start. (Hint: Why no binaries?)

http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/

We live in a world of IP and patents

Not a world, just a country.
In Europe, we are still free from software patents.

I would like to further stress the vital importance of voting on this one. As Florian says:

Richard Stallman, Tim O'Reilly, Alan Cox, Rasmus Lerdorf and Monty Widenius endorse Florian Mueller's candidacy "because he runs on a NoSoftwarePatents ticket, and that is the message we want to reinforce"

Say what you want about Stallman, but I think it should be clear that this is a very important issue.

Or what about: a Microsoft-sponsored price ending up in the hands of FFII, one of their dearest enemies if we win (RTA)? :-)

On a more formal note, I'm especially concerned as the phrasing of the /. summary may give an impression that things are less urgent than they, in fact, are. (And winning this vote is very important, in order to help things shift direction.)

I am not sure how many votes are going into EV50, but I believe we'd better be on the safe side. The fight for the EV50 votes is not in any way over; for the sake of the future climate in the software business, I think it will be costly for us to miss an opportunity like this.

See for yourself what it is about - from the articles it's clear to me that if you're against software patents, this should be a pretty straightforward vote in every sense. (*)

So please consider things, talk to others and vote ! (Remember, everyone is allowed.)

Less than a month remaining, come on guys and gals, a little effort from you - together we're strong!

(*) FINE PRINT:

Some may see a problem with the vote requirements (e.g. mandatory selections); I for one don't (others have explained my reasoning here pretty well).

I would like to further stress the vital importance of voting on this one. As Florian says:

Richard Stallman, Tim O'Reilly, Alan Cox, Rasmus Lerdorf and Monty Widenius endorse Florian Mueller's candidacy "because he runs on a NoSoftwarePatents ticket, and that is the message we want to reinforce"

Say what you want about Stallman, but I think it should be clear that this is a very important issue.

Or what about: a Microsoft-sponsored price ending up in the hands of FFII, one of their dearest enemies if we win (RTA)? :-)

On a more formal note, I'm especially concerned as the phrasing of the /. summary may give an impression that things are less urgent than they, in fact, are. (And winning this vote is very important, in order to help things shift direction.)

I am not sure how many votes are going into EV50, but I believe we'd better be on the safe side. The fight for the EV50 votes is not in any way over; for the sake of the future climate in the software business, I think it will be costly for us to miss an opportunity like this.

See for yourself what it is about - from the articles it's clear to me that if you're against software patents, this should be a pretty straightforward vote in every sense. (*)

So please consider things, talk to others and vote ! (Remember, everyone is allowed.)

Less than a month remaining, come on guys and gals, a little effort from you - together we're strong!

(*) FINE PRINT:

Some may see a problem with the vote requirements (e.g. mandatory selections); I for one don't (others have explained my reasoning here pretty well).

Claiming that I returned when we were on the winning track is the opposite of what happened. On June 20, the Legal Affairs Committee of the European Parliament voted on the software patent directive, and many essential amendments to the proposed bill (in order to exclude software from the scope of patentable subject matter) fell through. When the members of the committee voted at the end whether the parliament should accept or reject the bill (accepting meaning that it would still have gone back to the EU Council and possibly to conciliation), 16 voted for and only 10 against the proposal.

In that precarious situation, a group of companies actually did provide the kind of support that I became involved again for the last two weeks before the plenary vote. Like in almost all parliaments, it's the plenary that takes the actual decision, and the committee sort of prepares the plenary vote (in some parliaments, if the committee decides in a certain way, it's practically a done deal because people in the plenary just take the official party position, but in the European Parliament, the plenary may still decide differently).

I didn't position myself as the leader of our movement in the European Parliament at that stage. I took some initiatives and met various politicians and aides, and the FFII was really in charge.

Someone is not a "glory hog" because several independent juries nominate him for certain awards and honors. There's some information on those awards and honors toward the bottom of my backgrounder page on the NoSoftwarePatents.com site, and especially about how I personally view those nominations. I also explained that at great length in an email that the FFII sent out to all of its registered supporters.

http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ Never!

There are some suggestions on the NoSoftwarePatents site, if you're really stuck for choice. Obviously, read the justification under each one and see if you agree...

The competence of the author(s) with respect to the software industry must be seriously called into question, as the article says that companies selling open-source company are pro-patent, and then a Novell person is quoted. Novell only derives about 4% of its revenues from open source (the SuSE acquisition is a near-total failure). In contrast, Red Hat, MySQL AB, Mandriva, JBoss and other (real) open-source companies have publicly spoken out against software patents. It wouldn't have taken much research effort, even if only performed by a person with an extremely limited understanding of the software industry, to track down those statements. They're all over the Web, and in case of Red Hat and MySQL AB, they're on the corporate websites (plus those two companies co-sponsored my NoSoftwarePatents.com campaign, which is also easy to find out).

I'm also wondering why a publication that calls itself "The Economist" can't give serious consideration to economic studies (such as Bessen/Hunt) that take a much more critical perspective on the implications of today's patent regime. It seems that the Economist was under strong PR influence from Microsoft in this case because there are some typical MSFT points in it, such as this claim that software patents are needed in order to be adequately protected when publicizing information (which MSFT says in reference to governmental demands to disclose source code).

The Economist article is fundamentally flawed, but this has to be attributed to the fact that the pro-patent forces like Microsoft make an incessant effort, day in day out, to pitch journalists with their story of patents and how they serve innovation. From time to time, they find an impressionable or credulous author who serves their purposes (or a journalist whose goodwill is easy to get by just inviting him somewhere for a week or whatever). In contrast, those companies and organizations which are critical of software patents have been relatively inactive since the European Parliament's decision on 6 July. As long as we were making an aggressive and professional PR effort ourselves, we also got better results. Nothing comes from nothing, it's as simple as that.

At least there is one activity going on these days: We're very likely to win the Internet poll for the "EV50 Europeans of the Year", the EU's premier political award. By pushing our candidates through (I'm also running in two categories myself) and preventing pro-patent politicians from winning anything, we can get another publicity opportunity for our cause and demonstrate to politicians that our movement is still to be reckoned with. The "EV" in "EV50" means "European Voice", an EU-focused publication that belongs to the Economist publishing group, and one of the three main sponsors is Microsoft :-)

Richard Stallman, Tim O'Reilly, Alan Cox (Linux kernel maintainer), Rasmus Lerdorf (PHP) and Monty Widenius (MySQL) have made a public statement in which they call on the FOSS community worldwide to participate in that Internet poll:
ag-IP-news: Luminaries Call on Worldwide Community to Vote Against Software Patents

They have specifically endorsed our voting recommendations. Please read those voting recommendations and give serious consideration to supporting our cause that way.

The competence of the author(s) with respect to the software industry must be seriously called into question, as the article says that companies selling open-source company are pro-patent, and then a Novell person is quoted. Novell only derives about 4% of its revenues from open source (the SuSE acquisition is a near-total failure). In contrast, Red Hat, MySQL AB, Mandriva, JBoss and other (real) open-source companies have publicly spoken out against software patents. It wouldn't have taken much research effort, even if only performed by a person with an extremely limited understanding of the software industry, to track down those statements. They're all over the Web, and in case of Red Hat and MySQL AB, they're on the corporate websites (plus those two companies co-sponsored my NoSoftwarePatents.com campaign, which is also easy to find out).

I'm also wondering why a publication that calls itself "The Economist" can't give serious consideration to economic studies (such as Bessen/Hunt) that take a much more critical perspective on the implications of today's patent regime. It seems that the Economist was under strong PR influence from Microsoft in this case because there are some typical MSFT points in it, such as this claim that software patents are needed in order to be adequately protected when publicizing information (which MSFT says in reference to governmental demands to disclose source code).

The Economist article is fundamentally flawed, but this has to be attributed to the fact that the pro-patent forces like Microsoft make an incessant effort, day in day out, to pitch journalists with their story of patents and how they serve innovation. From time to time, they find an impressionable or credulous author who serves their purposes (or a journalist whose goodwill is easy to get by just inviting him somewhere for a week or whatever). In contrast, those companies and organizations which are critical of software patents have been relatively inactive since the European Parliament's decision on 6 July. As long as we were making an aggressive and professional PR effort ourselves, we also got better results. Nothing comes from nothing, it's as simple as that.

At least there is one activity going on these days: We're very likely to win the Internet poll for the "EV50 Europeans of the Year", the EU's premier political award. By pushing our candidates through (I'm also running in two categories myself) and preventing pro-patent politicians from winning anything, we can get another publicity opportunity for our cause and demonstrate to politicians that our movement is still to be reckoned with. The "EV" in "EV50" means "European Voice", an EU-focused publication that belongs to the Economist publishing group, and one of the three main sponsors is Microsoft :-)

Richard Stallman, Tim O'Reilly, Alan Cox (Linux kernel maintainer), Rasmus Lerdorf (PHP) and Monty Widenius (MySQL) have made a public statement in which they call on the FOSS community worldwide to participate in that Internet poll:
ag-IP-news: Luminaries Call on Worldwide Community to Vote Against Software Patents

They have specifically endorsed our voting recommendations. Please read those voting recommendations and give serious consideration to supporting our cause that way.

This decision is quite funny. A couple of months ago, Slashdot was running a story about a piece by Richard Stallman where he made the analogy with the works of Victor Hugo being covered by patents on literary plots. Then there were some posters who thought Dr. Stallman was making an absurd comparison, and that patents on literature would never happen.

Well, well...

Meanwhile, in Europe, we have chosen another road. After the victory on July 6, when the European Parliament rejected the software directive, we now have a chance to get one of our activists to win the title "European of the Year" in an open Internet poll organized by a big business magazine.

Please feel free to go to NoSoftwarePatents.com for instructions on how to vote, while you contemplate this latest madness by the US patent establishment.

In the meantime, there has been remarkable progress on most of those fronts. The two individuals who deserve most of the credit on the campaigning and lobbying side are Rufus Pollock and Gavin Hill of the FFII UK. Gavin is the "someone" who contacted me last year. In fact, that contact resulted from a slashdot discussion. And in parallel to the political stuff, we've now seen some really good rulings by Judge Prescott of the High Court of England and Wales who has already invalidated a few software patents.

Someone said in this thread that people should make suggestions for how to make political decision-makers more aware. Here's a suggestion:
Vote Against Software Patents / Vote For Your Right To Program

We're doing this online campaign and we've already had a very good start. This is about the most important political award series in the EU, and if our camp once again demonstrates its Internet campaigning power (we're trying hard!), then this will make politicians, press and the public more aware of the software patent issue.

In the meantime, there has been remarkable progress on most of those fronts. The two individuals who deserve most of the credit on the campaigning and lobbying side are Rufus Pollock and Gavin Hill of the FFII UK. Gavin is the "someone" who contacted me last year. In fact, that contact resulted from a slashdot discussion. And in parallel to the political stuff, we've now seen some really good rulings by Judge Prescott of the High Court of England and Wales who has already invalidated a few software patents.

Someone said in this thread that people should make suggestions for how to make political decision-makers more aware. Here's a suggestion:
Vote Against Software Patents / Vote For Your Right To Program

We're doing this online campaign and we've already had a very good start. This is about the most important political award series in the EU, and if our camp once again demonstrates its Internet campaigning power (we're trying hard!), then this will make politicians, press and the public more aware of the software patent issue.

Is this discussion available online for the entertainment of all intelligent life in space? ;-)

Sadly not. It began on a mailing list but I just checked and the list archive is private. Maybe one day I'll get whatever permissions are necessary and put together a web page.

Also be sure to propose including this with the next SETI transmission - and before we know it, aliens from all across the galaxy should come rushing to earth for a laugh.

Despite our differences I've found the UKPO man concerned and his colleagues deserve respect for their competence and rigour and I knew all along there was very little chance they'd granted the patent as it appears in the EPO database.

Last Monday, the FFII and NoSoftwarePatents.com jointly won the CNET award for Outstanding Contribution to Software Development in Europe.

This award for the anti software patents movement is both very welcome and very well deserved. When the European Parliament rejected software patents on July 6, it was a great victory. Not only for the open source movement, but for all European businesses that use or produce software. It is nice to see this recognized in this manner.

One To Win

We also have a chance of winning another award in recognition of all activists who have spent countless hours on making the swpat victory happen.

The founder of NoSoftwarePatents.com Florian Müller has been nominated as a candidate for the title "European of the Year" in an open Internet poll organized by The European Voice, a weekly magazine that focuses on EU politics.

If he wins either the big "European of the Year" award, or the category "Campaigner of the Year" where he is also nominated, it would be a nice PR victory for the anti-swpat movement.

Also nominated in the "MEP of the Year" category is Michel Rochard, the former French Prime Minister who championed our cause as rapporteur in the European Parliament, where we won on July 6.

If you want to donate a few mouseclicks to the fight against software patents, you can go to and register your vote. Only one vote per person.

Note that you have to vote in all the categories, or your vote will be disqualified. For the most part it doesn't matter who you choose in the other categories, but there are a few bad apples (from an anti-swpat perspective), so here are some suggestions. But it's Campaigner, MEP, and European of the Year that are the important ones.

1) Commissioner of the Year:
Don't vote for Charlie McGreevy, who is the commissioner who tried to ram software patents down Europe's throat.

2) MEP of the Year:
Vote for Michel Rochard, who won for us in Parliament.

3) Statesman of the Year:
Avoid Blair, Schröder, and Juncker because of how their respective governments behaved over the directive (especially Juncker, Luxembourg). This leaves the candidates from Italy, Poland or Spain to choose from.

4) Diplomat of the Year:
Don't vote for Nicolas Schmitt, who is part of the Luxembourg government that handled the swpat issue so disgracefully and anti-democratically during the Luxembourg EU Presidency.

5) Campaigner of the Year:
Vote for Florian Müller, NoSoftwarePatents.com

6) Business Leader of the Year:
Pick one.

7) Journalist of the Year:
Pick one.

8) Achiever of the Year:
Pick one.

9) Non-EU Citizen of the Year:
Pick one.

10) European of the Year:
Vote for Florian Müller, NoSoftwarePatents.com
Although one could argue that Michel Rochard would be just as worthy from our perspective, I think it sends a stronger and clearer message if one of our activists wins the award, rather than a politician that is involved in many other issues as well. As it would be very damaging to our chances of winning the most prestigious of the awards if the anti-swpat vote is split on two candidates, my recommendation is Florian Müller only.

For more information about the nominees, see the presentations at the award site here. The poll closes on November 11, and the award will be handed out at a gala dinner hosted by former EU Parliament president Pat Cox later that month.

This website offers nice rebuttals and arguments against software patents or "computer-invented inventions" as they're popularly called by their proponents:

http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/en/m/intro/index. html

I urge everyone to mail this link to every co-worker and IT-knowledgeable person you know. First, all the geeks must unite, then the knowledge will spread from the knowledgeable to the ignorant.

A link to /. might even make you more competitive, since you're already wasting time reading it! ;-)

It is never too late! The costs of maintaining a broken system is greater than fixing it, no matter when you finally decide to do it!

For the record, here's what I said about IBM's 500 patents in January:
NOSOFTWAREPATENTS.COM CRITICIZES IBM FOR "DIVERSIONARY TACTICS"
By the time I issued those comments, I didn't even know that those 500 IBM patents were mostly patents on the verge of expiration, and included many patents that had little to do with software, including various medical (!) technology patents.

Like Bruce Perens, I also criticized the recent OSDL announcement:
eWeek: OSDL Begins Open-Source Patent Commons

What's the point in those patent pledges? The only "value" in it is minimal. It's that some companies which are friendly toward OSS anyway make some formal promise not to use certain patents against certain open-source programs under certain open-source licenses, if not under certain circumstances. Companies either give away patents of hardly any value (like IBM did) or they tie their pledge to an open-source license that hardly anybody uses (like SUN did). Some of those pledges are legally pretty meaningless because of some loopholes that leave lots of room for interpretation.

The only meaningful contributions of patents to OSS would be donations of patents that serve the purpose mutually assured destruction, i.e.
(i) they are irrecovably made available for use by open-source developers or a trusted open-source entity against potential aggressors;
(ii) they constitute monopolies on technical features that would really be hurtful to a company like Microsoft; and
(iii) are not already subject to cross-licensing agreements between large corporations.

Anything less than that is of very little value and on the bottom line even negative because it diverts attention from what really needs to be done. Let's face it: No OSS developer is really going to look up something like an OSDL patent pledge database to find out which patents one is allowed to use. That's not practical. The problem is that too many critical patents are held by entities that are hostile toward OSS and are never ever going to pledge even a single patent.

An HP executive actually made a suggestion that potentially meets the criteria I outlined:
Moving on With Patents and Open-Source Software

I don't want to count any chickens before they're hatched, and with a highly complex legal issue like this it always depends upon a careful analysis of the specific terms an conditions, but HP's proposal to build up a patent arsenal that OSS can use for retaliatory purposes is infinitely more compelling that all of those patent pledges combined. It deserves further discussion and thought.

Maybe it's the open source community that needs to really look at some of the things that MySQL ab has done in the past

Over here in Europe, we had that heated debate over the software patent directive. The European Parliament has to date not been lobbied nearly as aggressively on any legislation as on that one. The FFII and a campaign that I founded (and later gave to the FFII) succeeded in mobilizing citizens as well as small and medium-sized companies in all 25 member states of the European Union. Some MEPs claimed to have received about 75,000 E-mails on this issue. More importantly than that, lots of people went to Brussels (basically the EU capital) and Strasbourg (where the parliament has most of its votes) to meet with politicians.

Is there any active opposition to the BSA in the United States? The EU directive that the European Parliament voted down on 6 July was actually drafted by the BSA as the meta information in the European Commission's Word document showed (it contained the name of the BSA's European public policy director as an author).

By "active opposition" I mean a core group of activists who mobilize people throughout the United States. A free software or digital rights organization would be viewed as a bunch of idealists and not be taken nearly as seriously by a Congressman as a number of voters and employers from his constituency.

Why does it matter what M$ thinks about a proposed new anti-spam bill - or any bill, for that matter?
Shouldn't the only thing that matters be what the people of New Zealand think?

It's actually just disturbing, or sad - (except for utter sarcasm) there is no fun in these affairs whatsoever.

Why does it matter what M$ thinks about a proposed new anti-spam bill - or any bill, for that matter?
Shouldn't the only thing that matters be what the people of New Zealand think?

It's actually just disturbing, or sad - (except for utter sarcasm) there is no fun in these affairs whatsoever.

I reacted with similar comments to the OSDL announcement as Bruce, who BTW held a great speech on open source and software patents at a conference in the European Parliament last November. My comments were published on various IT websites, such as News.com.

I just established a criterion: It will only be helpful if and when they gather patents with which they could, for instance, countersue an organization like Microsoft.

The so-called patent pledges that IBM, Sun and Nokia made were attempts to fool those who don't know exactly how the patent game is played (and who don't read the fine print of those terms). Not a single one of those patents could be turned against a company like Microsoft because the holders of those patents already have, as Bruce noted in his comments, cross-licensing agreements in place that are non-aggression pacts with respect to those patents. Apart from that, those patent pledges have lots of strings attached. In some cases, the respective patents are not even valuable (for instance, IBM pledged some medical technology patents). Even if they are, the pledges are tied to certain open-source programs (Nokia's pledge only relates to the Linux kernel, only a small part of Linux itself, and even Linux is just a small part of open source) and/or licenses (that's the problem with Sun's pledge). Then there are clauses in there that talk about exceptions, such as if a company needs to defend itself, and those vague wordings are loopholes that can render an entire pledge useless when push comes to shove.

If any of those large companies are serious about building a protective shield for open source against its competitors, then they have to provide a trustworthy and truly independent open-source body with patents that can be used for retaliatory strikes (i.e., are not part of any existing cross-licensing deals) and consequently are a basis for forcing potential aggressors into cross-licensing agreements to protect all of open source. Simply put, if you have a few dozen patents that could be used to stop the distribution of Windows, then you have a bargaining position. Everything else is useless.

Note that a patent arsenal like this wouldn't work against patent trolls with no products of their own, and an aggressor could hide behind a remote-controlled troll like some suspected in the SCO case.

If people like Bruce Perens and I criticize those patent pledges, we don't do it to hurt our common cause nor to be in the media, but because the patent game is a tricky one and there's a lot of eyewash and brainwash going on. It's important to educate journalists and the community how to take a more knowledgeable perspective on those initiatives. It would be a major mistake to accept totally pointless PR tricks instead of insisting on real solutions. Our criticism is ammunition for the positive forces inside those organizations to ask for truly meaningful measures.

The only definitive solution of the patnet problem is at the legislative level, and until that happens, the only form of defense that makes any sense is the threat of mutually assured destruction.