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Yeah, if you read about it more, it's the bad gap on silicon pv that sets the limit at 29%. You simply can't do better with simple silicon cells, because they don't have a way to capture some of the range of photons.

The carnot limit is easier to understand (and is definitely well established science fact), here are a couple of places you can read if interested:

http://trappist.elis.ugent.be/ELISgroups/solar/projects/springer.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell_efficiency#Thermodynamic_efficiency_limit
http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=44807

People use different conditions when they calculate the carnot limit, but the most generous but vaguely reasonable ones put it at 95%, which is only about double the current state of the art at ~45%.

His 1934 masterpiece, the Traité de documentation, was reprinted in 1989 by the Centre de Lecture publique de la Communauté française in Belgium. The original edition has recently been digitized ( https://archive.ugent.be/handle/1854/5612 ). Unfortunately, neither the Traité nor its companion work, "Monde" (World) has been translated into English so far. In 1990 Professor W. Boyd Rayward published an English translation of some of Otlet's best writings (available at http://hdl.handle.net/2142/4004 ).

This is great news!

Now I won't have to start endless discussions with people not liking PDF because it is 'proprietary', an argument that IMHO made no sense because Adobe has always allowed developers to use the PDF Reference as described in section 1.4 of the PDF Reference.

The only downside: I have just published a book about PDF saying PDF is a de facto standard as opposed to the ISO standards PDF/X and PDF/A (read the third chapter that is available for free). If I had known this was coming, I could have asked to wait for a month and a half before printing it ;-)

• dozens of existing Cobol dialects coupled to the sheer absence of open source Cobol software (to experiment with)
• lack of a decent (free) IDE or some other infrastructure to start tweaking
• lack of an unambiguous Cobol parser
• Cobol's sheer unlimited number of features

• dozens of existing Cobol dialects coupled to the sheer absence of open source Cobol software (to experiment with)
• lack of a decent (free) IDE or some other infrastructure to start tweaking
• lack of an unambiguous Cobol parser
• Cobol's sheer unlimited number of features

• dozens of existing Cobol dialects coupled to the sheer absence of open source Cobol software (to experiment with)
• lack of a decent (free) IDE or some other infrastructure to start tweaking
• lack of an unambiguous Cobol parser
• Cobol's sheer unlimited number of features

We started a project along the lines of Interface Builder with a Java Swing implementation for our master's thesis in 2005. It's called GINAC, as in GUI Is Not Application Code.

As I really hate designing GUI's in code, I've started working on it again lately, currently implementing something along the lines of cocoa bindings. If anybody is interested in helping out, let me know!

Not exactly what you asked for, but this site might be helpful.

Hmmm my last sentance got chopped off so here is the link to the SciAm article it originally contained. That last sentance was supposed to read: "It is calculated that a single small (10KTon) HANE would destroy virtually all satellites in LEO."

Not exactly. That doesn't factor in time it takes to compress or time it takes to decompress.
Something like http://www.elis.ugent.be/~wheirman/compression/ does a better job at it.
Nor does your test factor in the many different options, like http://studwww.ugent.be/~jdebock/gimp_source_compr ession_test.htm

Lest we not forget to use the right tool for the right job. Rars are great for moving large files across unstable mediums and patching them up with pars to deal with any quality loss. The compression ratio on rar is really great too, but at the same time its just impossible[*] to stream. Thats why we use gzip or deflate for webservers.
Now if only we can teach people to stop zipping their 300mb movies. Its fine if you're including your source material in it (demos/maps/textures for game movies f.e), but most of the time its just so they can include a readme.

[*]It's technically possible to stream content inside of rar files if the medium allows jumping around in the file. For example you can play a movie from inside a rar with mplayer if you have it all locally, or are on a network mount that can deal with seeking

Not exactly. That doesn't factor in time it takes to compress or time it takes to decompress.
Something like http://www.elis.ugent.be/~wheirman/compression/ does a better job at it.
Nor does your test factor in the many different options, like http://studwww.ugent.be/~jdebock/gimp_source_compr ession_test.htm

Lest we not forget to use the right tool for the right job. Rars are great for moving large files across unstable mediums and patching them up with pars to deal with any quality loss. The compression ratio on rar is really great too, but at the same time its just impossible[*] to stream. Thats why we use gzip or deflate for webservers.
Now if only we can teach people to stop zipping their 300mb movies. Its fine if you're including your source material in it (demos/maps/textures for game movies f.e), but most of the time its just so they can include a readme.

[*]It's technically possible to stream content inside of rar files if the medium allows jumping around in the file. For example you can play a movie from inside a rar with mplayer if you have it all locally, or are on a network mount that can deal with seeking

Systemizing occupations

• Executative, managerial, adminstrative such as financial managers, analysts, etc.
• Professional: architects, engineers, etc.
• Technicians

Empathizing occupations

• Professional: nurses, speech therapists, teachers, counselors

The only way to "back up" execution is to save your state as you go.
This is only true in as much as it is tautological: ie if your computing device is reversible then by definition you have an effective way of recovering all previous states, ie they are 'saved'.
In fact, Richard P Feynman, in his Lectures on Computation, talks a lot about reversible computation. the way to do this is to use reversible logic gates: instead of AND and NOT, there are 3 gates, NOT, CONTROLLED NOT, and CONTROLLED CONTROLLED NOT. These 3 can perform any logic operation that can be done using AND and NOT. The difference is that they each have the same number of input and output lines; CONTROLLED NOT has two of each, CONTROLLED CONTROLLED NOT has 3 of each. Their effects are all reversible: if you know the 2 outputs of CONTROLLED NOT, you can recreate the unique possible inputs, in the same way that if the output from a NOT gate is 1, you know the input was 0.
If you use these, rather than conventional logic gates to build a computer, then you automatically can recreate its past states. There's no need to have 'save' data about the current state of the machine to external output
This is apparently being done (or at least researched) at the University of G(h)ent

First off, lots of European software companies own patents.

75% of already granted European software patents are owned by US and Japanese companies. European companies have only something like 20% of all granted software patents.

Not specifically on software, but on processes.

US companies also patent processes implemented in software (to buy something with one click of a mouse, to load certain kinds of XML information, ...), and not individual computer programs.

A very nice report was published recently by the European Parliament's Directorate General on Economic and Social Policy, which completely debunks the "computer-implemented inventions are entirely different things that software", and which confirms that the European Patent Office's practice is not all that different from US practice.

The report is linked at the bottom of this PR.

These are permitted. Say for example an new process for compressing an image, or for searching. That is patentable, whheter it's software or not.

Compressing an image is generally plain maths, and "mathematical processes" are not (should not be) patentable in Europe. Of course, the EPO (with the help of enterprising lawyers appealing to its Technical Board of Appeals) has found ways to interpret the European Patent Convention to get around this. I'm also not sure how you can say in general that "searching" is patentable.

Secondly, most of these European software companies also patent their inventions in the US, and are thus protected by US law against infringment of their patents in the US.

I'd be very interested in seeing any numbers you have on this. Also, whether or not we have software patents in Europe is completely independent of those companies' abilities to get software patents in the US.

Thirdly, If a US company does the same, and patents their inventions in Europe, under the European system, and then nationalises their patent in any of the European countries, they are protected against infringment in the contries they have nationalised in. Thats fair enough isn't it?

Patents are not about fairness, patents are economic means which can be used to correct an economic system running haywire due to relentless imitation. You do not introduce artificial monopolies in an economic sector because it's "fair".

Finally, what we are talking about are property rights, which are generally protected in our western societies.

You might want to look at this presentation by a lawyer and law scholar specialised in software patents on that. Trying to paint it as a "communists vs capitalists" is sooooo last 5 years (although Bill Gates doesn't seem to know that yet either).

Lile most valuable posessions (wealth), thoes who have them, want them, thoes who don have their own want to take others!

Even if you unconditionally believe that any sort of intellectual creation should be associated with the broadest possible form of property rights, there's still the problem that software patents conflict with the property rights of software authors, granted to them by copyright. They prevent the normal exploitation of their works, which is even in conflict with the often cited TRIPs agreement.

In Europe, I hope we are sophisticated enough in our appreciation of the compeating rights involved to be able to balance theese rights and accept that there is a place for patent laws that incentivise and reward creative thinking.

Again, this has nothing to do with rewards, respect for work or whatever. It's

is my idea not my property?

Banning software patents cuts both ways. It erases any built up patents large companies have amassed but it also strips any independent or small developer from the protection he needs when he implements his idea or algorithm.

The small company protecting its assets with a patent from a large company generally simply doesn't work in practice. Suppose you do have the funds for a court case, even then the other side (e.g. IBM) will probably have ten times as many patents your programs infringe on, so they'll countersue you if you don't want to settle.

Have a look at how they treated Sun this way in the eighties...

It's worse than that IIRC. "Technical effect", "computer-implemented invention" and the like are not phrases used by any computer professional I know. They are code-phrases for "'pure' software". "Technical effect" is not the same as "physical effect", one-click (TM) has a technical effect but who (in their right mind) argues it is a good patent? Write to your minister, your MP and your MEPs clarifying this (for their own benefit. of course). The argument is:

'To be patentable, an invention must have technical character. This means that the invention must relate to a technical field and solve a technical problem. A computer program has a technical character if it causes a technical effect when run on a computer. This effect must be more than the "normal" physical interaction between program and computer. In practice, this requirement is rarely a problem for inventions that use software for their realization. So it should not come as a surprise that there are many European patents covering software-related inventions.' [Ius mentis]

"See No ePatents and No to swpats for sensible arguments.

Now I don't want to interrupt your rant *but* the council consists of ministers of the different EU countries. These governments are democratically elected so the council is democratic.

In case of the software patents directive, those faceless bureaucrats are the same people that conduct the day to day operations of the European Patent Office. The same EPO that introduced software patents. They are mostly delegates from the various national patent offices.

And of course, the ministers don't decide how to vote on texts by themselves, they have advisors. You can have two guesses who those advisers generally were in this case.

Because the Council operates so intransparently, it's very difficult for the national Parliaments to keep their governments in check. Further, the Council itself does not operate democratically at all. Just look at how Poland is being bullied by the Dutch Presidency to accept a directive it does not like at all.

Even better we should ask ourselves why the "more European" institution -the parliament- is apparently more interested in the good of the people than the council of national governments, which -following the accepted logic around here- are less removed from the local concerns and therefore somehow superior.

It was on /. a few months ago but I don't remember exactly and I'm lazy so perhaps someone else could look it up). Me thinks we should be less concerned about what is wrong with the EU and more about what is wrong with our national governments.

(doesn't mean that there aren't enough things that are wrong with the EU. Unfortunatly the constitution which would solve some of them -e.g. a more powerful parliament- has no chance of surviving the British referendum)

what happens if somebody sues a Chinese company. Can't China just claim that they will not honor any software patents on any software or on Linux specifically? It's not like they have a history of respecting other countries IP rights.

Listen to this speech (mp4 audio, 3.9 MiB) given by David Martin from M-CAM at the FFII conference on software patents from last week. His company is specialised in assessing the value of patent portfolios and technology transfers. Here's part of a transcript of his speech:

For the last five years, the United states has had a very active policy of actually the alleging the Chinese steal things. They steal things, they're bad people because they steal things. That's a very funny position, and it's couched in the "you don't respect intellectual property".

So what you have is, you know Chinese don't respect intellectual property, therefore they steal things, therefore because MPAA and RIAA say that they steal things, we have to all tell the masses "yes, in fact, they steal things".

There's a funny reality unfolding. The funny reality is that the Chinese are actually saying "I wonder if you can pull the pin out of the grenade and throw it back". And by that I mean this: what if the patents that are being asserted to be stolen or copied or infringed aren't actually worth the paper they're being printed on and what if the Chinese using their sovereign rights actually challenge those patents.

What would happen then? Well let's play that tape for a little bit more because I think at last calculation 43% of the US currency is actually owned by the Chinese, because we are very fond of debt. We're extremely fond of debt, so much so that we've sold our currency to the Chinese and they currently own our debt.

Now add to that the fact that they also have a lot of people and a lot of resources to call into question the due process of all bad patents. Guess what happens. Who wins? I'm gonna submit to you that everybody loses.

Listen to the rest of his speech for more. I guarantee you it'll be worth your while. For the record, he concludes his speech with

"If we don't actually confront the integrity problem, which says that we are stimulated to issue garbage (...), we're rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic."

Nice to hear that from someone in the field, isn't it?

Poland just recently decided against supporting software patents in the EU. Does that mean they will not respect other countries' patents on software or just that they will not go along with Europe issuing them?

Unlike in the US, the introduction (or not) of software patents in Europe is being handled via a legislative process (as opposed to purely via case law). For an overview of the legislative process, have a look here. The bottom line is that it's currently the turn of the European Council of Ministers, which has to reach a qualified majority for one text or another. The current text is hardcore pro-unlimited patentability.

Now Poland has confirmed they do not support that text (they weren't even formally asked after a break in a meeting in May where some fake compromise amendments were introduced, and where a political agreement was reached). Together with a change of voting weights that went into effect on 1st November (because of the expansion of the EU), this means there is no longer a qualified majority for the current text.

So it has nothing to do with not respecting other countries' patents. Besides, a patent is always only valid in the country it has been granted in, that's how pat

Maybe... but how would it burst?

That person is specialised in figuring out the real value of patents (that's what his company does), and the picture he paints is not a pretty one. Not by a long shot. And it's confirmed by the talk given by Ian Lewis given afterwards (sorry, don't have an extract from that, you'll have to download the full Tuesday panel 3 discussion for that). He's from one of the largest UK insurance companies. He told the audience that every single insurer that offers "IP-insurance" is turning in a loss on those insurances, despite the exorbitant rates they charge.

There is something very rotten in patent land. And as far as the current European situation is concerned: extending the scope of patentability is not the solution.

Listen especially from 2m40 on, to learn why this whole "IP exportation" stuff is already backfiring tremendously today.

At FFII, we've written a 4-page leaflet that debunks most claims made in the UKPTO brochure. You can find it here.

Because the kind of hard work and knowledge and investigation and thought that goes into devising a solution to a difficult problem in matter-space is exactly the kind that goes into devising a solution to a difficult problem in information-space. One type of problem solving shouldn't be protected more than the other simply because you need bolts and motors and lubricant to implement it.

1. Are patents necessary to get enough investments in the IT-sector?
2. Are the positive effects of granting software patents larger than their associated negative effects?

And there are differences between the software world and other sectors which change the effects that patents have there, see e.g. this text (under the black box) from the US National Research Council.

Why not? Should Xerox not have been granted a patent on the xerographic photocopy process, but rather only a copyright on their machine's manufacturing bluep

The economy is exactly why software patents should exist.

Not all large companies may favor software patents (particularly those who have not invested heavily in IP protection);

but lots of money has gone into developing software *because* of software patents.

It is good for startups too, who can protect an idea and attract capital from investors.

Investors like property rights.

It seems to me that patent rights in software can co-exist with open source. They co-exist now

It would be much better to simply properly reform the patent system and to limit it again to what is was originally designed for in the 15th century, instead of keeping these artificial extensions (by courts, not by lawmakers!) into fields it was never intended to cover and for which it simply does not work.

It is not a problem of examination, it is a problem of subject matter with which the patent system simply cannot deal. The European Patent Offices tries to deal with software patents by demanding "further technical effects" in the "technical contribution" of the "inventive step", but it results in almost exactly the same patents as in the US, just slightly differently worded.

If you reduce any machine or process to inputs, *a function* and outputs, you could say they're all mathematics.

Of course, if you use your software executed by a computer to steer an external device, then you may have to take into account the physical properties of this device. But that is completely independent from the fact that you use software. You'd have to take into account exactly the same things if you steered it mechanically or manually.

My point is that whether or not you use software should be completely irrelevant as far as patentability is concerned. If people think that great mathematical algorithms should be patentable because they can be used to find tumors in medical images, then why on earth only make them patentable when implemented in software? Where is the difference in investment or the beneficial effect to the economy that suddenly warrants the patent monopoly?

Either you think they should be patentable, or you don't, but the fact is that software automagically makes a lot of otherwise unpatentable stuff (such as business methods and mathematics) suddenly patentable.

But the difference in function has meaning to us, practical meaning, as humans. Software that can reliably pinpoint tumors in medical images is not "just mathematics." It has meaning and it has social ramifications.

Software is also merely a description of something, just like the technical manual. It does not make sense to allow patents on descriptions (although software patents do forbid certain forms of descriptions, which is probably one of the reasons software patents do not include source code: otherwise, a patent itself could infringe on other patents!). It also does not make sense to change the patentability of something depending on whether it's described in non-technical English or in C. There are no economical arguments for such a differentiation.

According to this logic, you might argue that all english textual trademarks are just letters, and letters are just information which can be represented in binary, which means they are all just numbers, so there's no reason to prefer any one number over another.

I think the only argument one could possibly make to justify software patents, would be in case they demonstrably would have lead to more innovation and a healthier economical situation in the software sector (or even in the economy as a whole, since software is not just used by software developers). They don't.

I disagree - patents provide protection to the inventor.

They prevent your idea being ripped off.

There is no difference between software and hardware (you can design hardware using the VHDL programming language) - so you either accept patents or you dont.

You have to look at the actual achievement that the patent is monopolising. When considering software, that achievement is not the software (that part is protected by copyright), but often either plain mathematics or a business method. Similar with most semiconductors (except for the business method part I suppose).

For some reason, when written down in plain English in a non-machine understandable form, these things are not patentable. But when you write them down in C or VHDL, they do become patentable. That does not make sense. Either you are in favor of mathematics and business method patents (regardless of how they are formulated), or you aren't.

It's plain silly to only allow them on those things when they are described in a way that a computer can understand. The difference in investment between the two is already covered by copyright. Some things you simply cannot monopolise, because that's deemed to be bad for the economy. Tough luck, you'll have to try your chances at this new fangled thing they call "competition" based on arcane concepts such as "quality", "brand recognition", "human capital", "customer satisfaction" etc.

And that's why software patents are perverted: they allow you to patent stuff which normally is not patentable, but which suddenly does become patentable if you say that you describe it in a machine-understandable form.

It has nothing to do with "technical fields", except in the TRIPs treaty (which is why the European Parliament simply stated that "data processing does not belong to a field of technology", although of course the means with which you perform data processing can).

Yes, there are lots of trivial software patents. But that wasn't my point. There are also lots of technical patents that are implemented in software, such as DSP algorithms for processing sensor data in medical devices.

My point was that the original wording implied that the patents are intended to protect non-technical inventions. I found that surprising. I suspect that they are intended to protect inventions (as other patents), but that there's a reporting bias that assumes all software patents are non-technical.

One does not need patents on "computer-implemented inventions" to keep real inventions patentable when they are described using software. A computer program is just an instruction manual in a language that can be interpreted by a machine. A computer program executed by a computer that steers lab equipment to perform a chemical reaction, is functionally identical to a technical manual describing the same thing.

Even though the chemical reaction could be patentable, the technical manual can't be and publishing it cannot constitute a patent infringement. Additionally, the fact that the chemical reaction is described using words in a book does not make the reaction itself unpatentable.

Consequently, similar rules were made for patentability regarding software in the European Patent Convention (EPC) of 1973: achievements described using software may be patentable, but the fact that software is used to describe them does not have any influence on their patentability, and the software itself is not patentable either

One only needs software patents (or patents on "computer-implemented inventions" as defined by the Commission proposal) in order to be able to patent achievements which are currently npatentable, such as mathematical algorithms and business methods. Along with computer programs, these are all achievements which are currently excluded from patentability by the EPC. Software patents are used to get around these exclusions, in direct contradiction with the law.

Note that the fact that you do something in software and you patent that, does not make the result a software patent. I mean, controlling a weaving machine is obviously always done using computers nowadays. If you find a new positioning of the blades so they can cut threads more easily, and all you have to do for that is change the value of one variable in the program, then a patent on this is not a software patent.

After all, your achievement is finding how the blade has to be positioned, not the software itself. In case of a DSP algorithm, the achievement is the mathematics, which are not patentable. The only thing that automagically makes it patentable, is the fact that it's implemented in software (because a computer suddenly makes everything technical).

Not to mention, RMS suggests that one must constantly search one's software for potential infringements. Does anyone really think this is how reality works??

No, and I'm quite sure RMS is aware of that as well. The reason it's not how reality works, is that it's completely unfeasible to do so. Large companies count on their defensive patent portfolio to be able to get a cross licensing deal should they get notified of infringing someone else's patent, and small companies count on not being noticed. After all, if you check whether you infringe patents, you may even be convicted to pay treble damages in court because of willful infringement.

The fact that this kind of ostrich strategy is the only feasible one, is one of the signs that the system is not working.

When someone notifies you of infringement, you check it out, and decide whether you want to avoid it, go to court, or license the patent

An average court case to invalidate an invalid patent costs US$ 1,500,000 to US$ 2,000,000. Many small companies can't "decide" to go that way. Avoiding is also often quite difficult, since many software patents are basically patents on the simple fact that you do something (selling via the internet, distributing video data over a network, ...), with very little if any details on how. In general, you don't have to reverse-engineer a program to check whether or not it infringes on a software patent. The Stac vs MS case is the exception to this rule.

Licensing is often the only really viable option to small companies.

The ONLY argument against software patents that I consider serious is the economic argument that individual inventors or writers of free software don't have the funds to patent their works

That's indeed the main argument, and given that patent law is a purely economical law, I don't see how it can be discarded.

Basically, that patents and patent litigation are too expensive to allow free software to properly flourish. If this is true, it's a problem, but I see many arguments against it,

Then I would suggest you to check this out.

and disallowing software patents is not a solution to me

Why not?

It may not be the best way, but then again, he didn't think of it first, did he??

So? There is no inherent exclusive moral right to something you thought of first. That's the big difference between patents and copyright. The latter also recognises a natural moral right of a creator to his creation, the former doesn't. It's pure economics. Have a look at this presentation by a law scholar who wrote a study on software patents for the JURI Committee of the European Parliament.

You see, patents are about making money from an invention. Most coders simply don't care about money, so they get shafted day after day, year after year.

And spending several man years on developing a program, trying to sell it and then being prohibited from doing that because apparently you infringe some software patent is not getting shafted?

One man's protection is another man's limitation. You're shortsighted if you only look at the chances that you might win the patent lottery, and consider the downsides of the resulting monopolies as irrelevant and per definition less harmful than the positive effects of the patent system in a particular sector.

It's the same as any other speculative endeavor. Real estate, business, it's all the same.

The software patent system indeed has become some kind of gambling market. Some businesses have even optimised their business model to it, such as EOLAS

Not to mention, RMS suggests that one must constantly search one's software for potential infringements. Does anyone really think this is how reality works??

No, and I'm quite sure RMS is aware of that as well. The reason it's not how reality works, is that it's completely unfeasible to do so. Large companies count on their defensive patent portfolio to be able to get a cross licensing deal should they get notified of infringing someone else's patent, and small companies count on not being noticed. After all, if you check whether you infringe patents, you may even be convicted to pay treble damages in court because of willful infringement.

The fact that this kind of ostrich strategy is the only feasible one, is one of the signs that the system is not working.

When someone notifies you of infringement, you check it out, and decide whether you want to avoid it, go to court, or license the patent

An average court case to invalidate an invalid patent costs US$ 1,500,000 to US$ 2,000,000. Many small companies can't "decide" to go that way. Avoiding is also often quite difficult, since many software patents are basically patents on the simple fact that you do something (selling via the internet, distributing video data over a network, ...), with very little if any details on how. In general, you don't have to reverse-engineer a program to check whether or not it infringes on a software patent. The Stac vs MS case is the exception to this rule.

Licensing is often the only really viable option to small companies.

The ONLY argument against software patents that I consider serious is the economic argument that individual inventors or writers of free software don't have the funds to patent their works

That's indeed the main argument, and given that patent law is a purely economical law, I don't see how it can be discarded.

Basically, that patents and patent litigation are too expensive to allow free software to properly flourish. If this is true, it's a problem, but I see many arguments against it,

Then I would suggest you to check this out.

and disallowing software patents is not a solution to me

Why not?

It may not be the best way, but then again, he didn't think of it first, did he??

So? There is no inherent exclusive moral right to something you thought of first. That's the big difference between patents and copyright. The latter also recognises a natural moral right of a creator to his creation, the former doesn't. It's pure economics. Have a look at this presentation by a law scholar who wrote a study on software patents for the JURI Committee of the European Parliament.

You see, patents are about making money from an invention. Most coders simply don't care about money, so they get shafted day after day, year after year.

And spending several man years on developing a program, trying to sell it and then being prohibited from doing that because apparently you infringe some software patent is not getting shafted?

One man's protection is another man's limitation. You're shortsighted if you only look at the chances that you might win the patent lottery, and consider the downsides of the resulting monopolies as irrelevant and per definition less harmful than the positive effects of the patent system in a particular sector.

It's the same as any other speculative endeavor. Real estate, business, it's all the same.

The software patent system indeed has become some kind of gambling market. Some businesses have even optimised their business model to it, such as EOLAS

If you want an overview of studies on software patents, have a look here. Clickable links to the referenced studies are provided in the bibliography at the end.

Some takes my idea and runs with it and pays me for using my invention.

That seems fair doesn't it? This is probably the closest thing I can come to to software patents. This isn't some tangible product like a pot that drains your spaghetti. It's a formula to mix some chemicals under certain conditions.

What I don't get is how most software developers don't put a value to their ideas.

Some takes my idea and runs with it and pays me for using my invention.

That seems fair doesn't it? This is probably the closest thing I can come to to software patents. This isn't some tangible product like a pot that drains your spaghetti. It's a formula to mix some chemicals under certain conditions.

What I don't get is how most software developers don't put a value to their ideas.

I agree that software patents aren't the problem. In fact, I'm unaware of any actual patents on software. There are patents on methods or algorithms that are implemented in software, but that's justifiable. For example, if I made a control systems algorithm that I implemented mechanically or electronically it would certainly be patentable, so why shouldn't it be patentable if I implement it in software?

Next, in case of a mechanical construction, you do not get a patent on "X implemented in a mechanical way", but on "a mechanical construction which works like this and this (and which thus does X)". I.e. you generally do not get a patent on what the construction does, but how the construction is built. And that's logical, because that's the only way there is to protect your construction work from copying.

In case of software, the way you constructed your program to do X is already protected by copyright. The patent is generally simply on "doing X in software".

Finally (and most importantly), there is no inherent "inventor's right". This is in stark contrast with copyright, where there is an inherent moral right of the creator on his creation. Patent law is a purely economical law. You should allow patents in a field if there are serious indications it will encourage innovation there and benefit society as a whole, and otherwise you shouldn't.

Case in point: there are tons of studies which show that software patents are unnecessary to stimulate innovation in the software field (the main driving force is competition there), and even detrimental. There's only one economical study I know of that claims software patents are generally beneficial.

What seems to be the problem is the defacto removal of patent restrictions regarding obviousness and prior art, along with the patent duration. Very obvious things are getting patented in software. It's like patenting a plastic doll because it now has a new hat

But my biggest concern with this Munich thing is why the concern over Linux specifically? Patent violations are just as, or more, likely in proprietary software.

In other words, the reasoning behind slowing Linux implementation in Munich makes no sense to me.

Yes it makes it stiffles the market for open source software

but it gives the person that came up with the idea a fair shot of making money out of it.

The problem isn't software patents.

To slightly adapt the old adage: when your preferred tool is a hammer, you try to make everything into a nail.

The problem is that some software patents are just rediculous and they should be given to someone that at least tries to implement the idea.

Most of the patent litigation that gets reported on slashdot is usually the other way around, heck most of it is just the potential of a patent to be used in a bad way, but there are cases where the little guy that poured his heart and soul into something was able to prevent a bigger company from ripping him off.

Granted, if you're just someone who doesn't innovate, just copies other ideas, then you don't want software patents.

Copyright protects you from plagiarising (and that's a lot more than just literal bit-by-bit copying), patents are also enforceable if someone else came up with exactly the same thing entirely on his own. And, surprise, this happens an awful lot in software development. That's not just my opinion, that's what the National Research Council wrote (search for "But there is little or no market in software components") in its book titled "The Digital Dilemma - Intellectual Property in the Information Age".

Yes it makes it stiffles the market for open source software

but it gives the person that came up with the idea a fair shot of making money out of it.

The problem isn't software patents.

To slightly adapt the old adage: when your preferred tool is a hammer, you try to make everything into a nail.

The problem is that some software patents are just rediculous and they should be given to someone that at least tries to implement the idea.

Most of the patent litigation that gets reported on slashdot is usually the other way around, heck most of it is just the potential of a patent to be used in a bad way, but there are cases where the little guy that poured his heart and soul into something was able to prevent a bigger company from ripping him off.

Granted, if you're just someone who doesn't innovate, just copies other ideas, then you don't want software patents.

Copyright protects you from plagiarising (and that's a lot more than just literal bit-by-bit copying), patents are also enforceable if someone else came up with exactly the same thing entirely on his own. And, surprise, this happens an awful lot in software development. That's not just my opinion, that's what the National Research Council wrote (search for "But there is little or no market in software components") in its book titled "The Digital Dilemma - Intellectual Property in the Information Age".

Bit patterns and ideas of a truly unusual level of originality, unobviousness (even in the face of a transformative technology like the Internet that makes all kinds of things suddenly obvious) and technical complexity generally should be able to be matters of economic commerce, otherwise those people creating ideas and bit patterns will ultimately fail to be able to afford real estate.

Too bad for Apple if someone steals their (good) idea for spring loaded folders or the ipod's click wheel.

And why is the monopolisation of ideas not allowed? Because patent law is not there to allow companies to maximise their ROI, but it's a deal between society and innovators. Society gets a description of how to build something, and in return the innovator gets a temporarily monopoly.

One problem with software patents is however that more than half the time the given description could be gotten just as easily from looking at the innovation itself (e.g. spring loaded folders and all business method patents), so the company gets a monopoly for free and society gets screwed over.

Some more info on the idea-innovation dichotomy can be found in this presentation.

It seems like any time compression is brought up, somebody brings touts bzip2 as the uber-compression scheme.

Bzip2 provides a modest to moderate decrease in file size at the expense of huge increases in compression/decompression time. A nice comparison can be found at http://www.elis.ugent.be/~wheirman/compression/. Gzip seems to occupy a nice sweet-spot between file size and avoiding thumb-twiddling.

You still haven't answered the question of when innovation actually gets hindered.

Is there any evidence that innovation in software is being hindered by patents?

OSes, server applications, programming languages and environments, user interfaces, network protocols, security infrastructure, and other areas seem to be improving as fast as ever

And then there's the problem with patent thickets, the fact that software patents pretty much nullify most protection an author gets from copyright (one software patent can completely forbid you from exercising your author's right), the inherent problem of trivial patents, legal uncertainty, ...

In fact, the only time I've seen a patent cause real trouble is in KDE, where some people attempted to blatantly copy a Mac OS feature only to find it was patented. In this case the patent worked as intended.

Keep in mind that patent law is not a law designed to allow innovators to rightfully profit from their work. This is in contrast with copyright, where there is a moral right associated with the creative work of an author. Patent law is merely an economic law, and is supposed to be only applied if it results in a general benefit to society (after all, it's society that grants a monopoly, so it's only in the interest of society to do that if society will benefit from it, be it under the form of more innovation, better economic situation, ...).

Anyways, all the halting problem implies is that an optimizer will never be able to find every situation where a particular optimization is applicable. But the exceptions might be obscure corner cases. But in any case it doesn't imply that converting from recursion to iteration is impossible, or even difficult.

Here's a hint - that second @ symbol is not actually part of the email address! People trying to send you important things will be confounded by this. Here, your address should look like this: jonas.maebe@ugent.be

This should enable a lot more people to send you email, I wouldn't be surprised if your email traffic picked up 100%!

Really strange, this is what I get.

Shouldn't that be Danish yellow?.

The danes were making roquefort cheese untill this law came around and they had to name it something else.

Probably they even voted "yes" themselves for that directive...hehe

The hard work of transparent windows is not to come up with the idea, but to implement proper support for it in your windowing system. By using transparent windows in your system, you automatically publish it, thus there is little or no value in the patent publication. Same with business methods: by using them, you make them known.

The patent system was never designed to allow monopolisation of every cool idea (otherwise we'd also have patents on book plots and drawing styles), because that results in blocking all independent creators who build something based on that idea. Of course, big businesses love that, because a patent on an idea is much broader than a patent on a particular implementation/invention and thus gives them a much broader monopoly, but it's bad for the free market and society as a whole.

Have a look at this presentation for more on the idea/invention difference, the goals of the patent system and how software patents work against them.

FWIW, I'm posting this from my iBook and my other computer is a G4, waiting to be replaced by a G5. So I'm definitely not some anti-Apple zealot, many would even claim the reverse :)

ObOntopic: software patents lead to Outsourcing. Indeed, rather than run the risk of being sued for patent infringment, software companies will prefer to outsource their actual development to places (such as India) where there are no software patents yet, rather than do it in their homecountry, and expose themselves to potentially expensive patent litigiation.

There is something rotten in the State of Denmark

Ok, no matter what the issue is: please consider your national pride, your national dignity! Do you really value representatives that let themselves be shoved around, and give an easy yes, rather than defending your country's best interests?

But the good news is, there is still a way out. Yes, changing your vote now may be viewed as an admission that you (you're representative) screwed up, or didn't know the subject matter. But it also shows courage and the willingness to correct errors once they become known.

Ok, as a Luxembourg I must admit that I sit in a glasshouse here. I hereby encourage my countrypeople to do something about it, and contact our ministry of economy about the matter, and encourage them to review their vote.

Remember: we are only two votes short of winning, and every country, no matter how small can make a difference, be it Denmark, Luxembourg, or even Malta!

Besides, what kind of dorky attitude is it that nobody should be allowed to build on an idea for twenty years?!? Imagine that somebody has had a trivial idea and you get the same idea from elsewhere, and build something much larger on it. Well, you cannot use your ideas for the next twenty years if the first person has patented it.

This concept can be held to any kind of patent. From engines to circuit boards to anything.

• Circuit boards aren't generally patentable either in Europe (we have a sui generic right for chip design protection)
• A normal patent is on an invention, not on an idea like with most software patents. Patents were never designed to protect ideas.

So, your saying there should be no patents. No IP protections.

As you can see on a newswiki in addition to the abstentions of Belgium (5 votes), Luxembourg (2 votes), there are some positive statements from some eg Italian, Slovenian, Spanish etc politicians too, but it is very much in your interest keep the in touch with your government today and on Monday too (Discussion/Voting in the Council scheduled for Tue 18 May; calculate for some time for transmission of your local govt's opinion to Brussels representative!). More help (including pointer to irc) here.

You should only be able to patent physical process (algorithms, products) and not ideas.

I thought that was called "copyright". The whole idea with patents is to monopolize ideas, not specific products which is copyright's domain.

Finally, copyright is not for products, but for literary works and works of art. In general, one says only "expressions" can be copyrighted. There are also several other kinds of protection, such as one for chip designs (because they are deemed not creative enough to fall under copyright, and neither inventive enough to fall under patents) and drawings and models rights (for technical schematics/miniatures of constructions).

There is explicitly no protection foreseen for mathematical formula's, business methods etc, because the resulting monopolies would hinder followup innovation more than that they would encourage it and/or because the resulting disclosure is not very useful (as in case of business methods: by using them, you disclose them). There's of course always the "industrial secret" which you can use in certain cases.