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Business Software Alliance Writes European Regulations?
Holger Blasum writes: "The European Commission's proposal for a directive on software patents making software patentable in Europe is announced today (the commission's proposal still will have to pass council and parliament). MSWord's "Author" field suggests that it comes straight from the BSA's director of public policy. See the Eurolinux press release for a brief summary, more details can be found at the FFII website. Or, if you
prefer French, zdnet.fr has some coverage too." The EC's site has several webpages about the proposal: a main page, FAQ, and the official copy of the proposal. Comparing the proposal-as-released with the draft obtained by Eurolinux, many sections are identical, some sections are nearly identical and a few sections have been completely rewritten.
Its funny, that the image the petition is using as its logo is the Statue of Liberty, which is a United States object. Well, I suppose it came from france.
Exactly the same as for, say a magazine article which you might write.
That means, in effect that nobody else could legally copy your code, unless you allowed them to, however, somebody else could write a program that did the same as yours, but using their own code.
IMO this is a very healthy state of affairs for the software industry, because it means that rival applications have to compete on price/features/stability/ease of use, etc. rather than somebody just inventing an algorithm and patenting it and locking everyone else out.
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Do you actually belive that Europe is less govern by corporate interest? Why do you think EU was invented? It sure wasn't for the citizens... We will see this go through since no european politician have any common sense left.
Software patents are good in theory, but bad in practice. At least the american type of patents.
Patents are often broad and trivial:
I mean, "one click shopping" for crying out loud!
Patents protect Big Corps more than startups and individuals. This renders the entire concept of patents useless. Supposedly, the meaning of pathents is to protect innovators from 800pound (soon to be 400kg, unfortunately) gorillas.
The combination of obvious, overly broad patents and increased Big Corp influens will obviously not favor innovation, since the Big Corps can patent everything and it's uncle no matter how trivial it is (they have the money to do so) and just sit back on their asses and collect money from other peoples work.
And trying to fight a Big Corp in court is next to useless if you are not a Big Corp yourself. More money generally beats less money...
This is not how things should be.
Stop this madness!
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
MSWord's "Author" field
I love the convenience of M$ Office. It is so wonderful that I named my children after the components..."Quit painting the cat, Excel!!!" "Hey, Outlook, you don't look so good."
Actually, the "Author" field can be meaningless. I've edited files that other people started, and I don't get any credit. The meta-data in M$ Word just isn't very consistent over the life of the document.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
In the computer age of patents, you wouldnt patent a lightbulb, you'd patent a 'Method of Producing Light By Artificial Means', and simultaneously patenting every method of artificially producing light.
You wouldnt patent a specific way of copying paper, you'd patent 'copying paper', wether done by hand, by photocopier, by taking a photo of the paper or by typesetting it and printing it several times.
Patents no longer cover specific methods of doing things, they cover every way of achieving a specific goal, something never intended by the idea of patenting in the first place.
Even assuming you have a patent office staffed with geniuses gifted with eidetic memories, software patents mean that _every programmer_ must know the _entire patent base_ (6-7 figures already), and keep up (hundreds of applications per day)! Since this is obviously impossible, every piece of code ever written becomes a ticking time bomb of patent litigation. In American civil court, these cases take years (sometimes decades!) and cost hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars to defend.
They are, in short, nothing other than a naked gift to large companies, with no demonstrable or even plausible public benefit. They are a versatile weapon, with which Microsoft, and a few others, can bludgeon their competitors and enemies.
I was shocked to see the EU contemplating them... but apparently things aren't so different from one hemisphere to the other.
We're on the road to Tycho.