Slashdot Mirror
Making the Case Against Software Patents?
heretic108 asks: "I'm an open-source developer in a small western nation, which is slowly starting to take interest in Open Source, but whose (still MS-dominated) government is currently considering adopting a software patents regime similar to USA. This nation boasts a smart and feisty IT community, who have been terribly under-represented in government. I have a meeting in a week with a prominent member of the legislature (who has IT portfolio interests), during which I will have the opportunity to put the case against software patents. I'm asking for help in assembling information for use in the anti-patents case. Thank you dearly for any and all help you are able to provide here."
(Also, if anyone can find the source of the quote attributed to Bill Gates arguing that the modern patents regime, if it existed decades ago, would have slowed the industry to a standstill).
Also very desirable will be testimonials from senior staff of small to medium R&D and body-shop houses, truthfully showing the negative effects patents have had on their ability to compete.
And, very importantly, any brief testimonials from indepenedant developers who have not intentionally stolen intellectual property, but have actually been squashed under patent laws."
"I'm looking for references that cover the following subjects:
- Triviality of some patents
- Patents as anti-competitive instrument
- Patents' discriminatory nature - difficulty faced by smaller developers with patent enforcement
- Costs of patent searches, and their impact on the creative flow of software development
- Clear evidence that a software patents regime is squeezing small and independent players out of the industry and creating an oligopoly for the largest players
- Clear evidence that under the software patents regime, the entire 'space' or public commons of programming concepts is being subsumed into private ownership
- Clear evidence and examples of patent law being abused and having a net anti-innovation effect
- Anything else you have bookmarked, or can google upon, which can help build the most solid case.
(Also, if anyone can find the source of the quote attributed to Bill Gates arguing that the modern patents regime, if it existed decades ago, would have slowed the industry to a standstill).
Also very desirable will be testimonials from senior staff of small to medium R&D and body-shop houses, truthfully showing the negative effects patents have had on their ability to compete.
And, very importantly, any brief testimonials from indepenedant developers who have not intentionally stolen intellectual property, but have actually been squashed under patent laws."
Good. Looks like I'm not the only one who doesn't buy this guys load of crap. Could he be a little more vauge. What is he afraid that his communist regime will come to his house and kill him or something? Sounds more like a college student needs his thesis written for him.
well, the point of my post was that this is a go-nowhere "news" article which, as the other responder noted, is likely some college kid wanting his thesis written for him. At best its just a clever troll.
I'm only calling 'em as I see 'em. Not all trolls are as obvious as "so and so is a gay". Karma shmarma, I'll lip off to anyone talking out of the wrong orifice.
Now then, that said..
You can answer your own question by going to the patent office site and seeing whos applying for and being granted patents.
Unless your definition of "large corporation" includes everything bigger than the lemonade stand you ran when you were 6, you'd see your statement is more a knee-jerk reaction than it is an argument based in fact.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Knuth and Gates are wrong.
Progress would not be at a standstill if patents had been in force for all of software development history.
It would be slowed, and for 17 years (or so) each invention would be expensive, but the value would go to the inventor, whereas now it goes to those who use the invention.
The way Bill Gates does, to shovel in money paid for broken software that does just enough to keep people in pr0n and stolen music.
And most basic patents on software (all of Knuth's books, in fact) would be expired.
With a strong history of patents, software development would be the lucrative profession it promised to be, instead of a cattle-call of hackers kludging a line or two each into some half-baked mob-developed crock.
Open source would still be viable. You just get the patents and donate them to the public, the way Dennis Ritchie did with the setuid bit lo these many reboots ago.
Owning intellectual property is a *good* thing. It produces economic flows. Which is something that existed before the first computation and will exist long after computation ceases to be significant.
--Blair