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Torvalds And Cox Write EU Parliament On Patents
replicant_deckard writes "Linus Torvalds and Alan Cox have sent an open letter to the members of the European Parliament. They ask for strict limitations to software patents, argue for open standards and ask the members of the parliament to follow FFII's voting recommendations. Vote on the controversial software patents directive will be on Wednesday and it is expected to be a very close one. Well, do you believe these guys have any impact in Brussels?"
Daer UE,
Patanst r teh suckzorz!!!! Say ON TO TEHM!!!
Loev,
Anonimouse cowerd
I understand that one can patent a process for doing something, but one can also patent an end-product. A program is an end-product of the source code used to compile it, so wouldn't software patents, in effect, cause the much feared "functionality similarity" disputes to become more substantive in the legal system?
Esoteric reference.
Before you start the main purpose and body of the letter you might explain why you are a crediable person to listen to. If they aren't particularly technically inclined then they may have no idea who you are. Tell them who are are, why you are important, and why they should listen to you. Without that, you usually loose your influence.
-Foxxz
Well, do you believe these guys have any impact in Brussels?
I don't know - how big a check are they including with their letter?
Given that Linux is generally stronger in Europe than the US (where MS pretty much rules all), comments from the likes of Torvalds and Cox will carry more weight than they would in the US.
Then again, hefty campaign donations from rich software firms probably carry a fair amount of weight too...
It should be interesting to see what happens.
Jedidiah
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
"Subject: Open Letter on Software Patents from Linux developers
Date: Sun, 21 Sep 2003 13:31:12 -0700 (PDT)
From: Linus Torvalds
Open Letter to
the Honourable Pat Cox, the President of the European Parliament,
members of the European Parliament:
Dear Mr. Cox,
We have been following with growing concern that Europe has been
extending patentability to computer programs. Now European Parliament
is about to vote on a directive that could put a stop to this
development, or make it worse, depending on how it is amended by the
Parliament.
US experience shows that, unlike traditional patents, software patents
do not encourage innovation and R&D, quite the contrary. In particular
they hurt small and medium-sized enterprises and generally newcomers
in the market. They will just weaken the market and increase spending
on patents and litigation, at the expense of technological innovation
and research.
Especially dangerous are attempts to abuse the patent system by
preventing interoperability as a means of avoiding competition with
technological ability. Standards should never be patentable! Likewise,
patents should never be used as means for preventing publication of
information - the whole idea of patents is to provide time-limited
monopoly in exchange for publication of the invention.
Software patents are also the utmost threat to the development of
Linux and other free software products, as we are forced to see every
day while we work with the Linux development. We want to be able to
provide the world with free high class, high quality, highly
innovative software products that really empower the users and offer
the best and only real chance to narrow the digital divide. Please do
not make this harder to us that it already is! In conclusion, we would
recommend You to vote for such amendments that
* clarify limits of patentability so that computer programs,
algorithms and business methods really cannot be patented as such;
* make sure that patents cannot be abused to avoid technical
competition by preventing interoperability of competing products; and
* ensure that patents cannot be used to prevent publication of
information.
To that end we would suggest following FFII's voting recommendations
on this directive (see www.ffii.org).
Sincerely,
Linus Torvalds Alan Cox"
The whole issue is running so bad (or meanwhile so good) because none of the members of the parliament was aware of the troubel.
... so what? It is canceled in less then 5 years because of the trouble we will get here in europe with EXISTING foreign software patents.
The new directive where brought up and prepared "silently", only noticed by the OS community. For the members of the parliament it was just a standard, "lets see that directive, and if nothing comes up we pass it" business.
Now with all those demonstrations and arguments and prominent people sending letters and making visits, its unlike the directive passes.
And if it does
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Now im all for this non-violent, direct action stuff, but if Linus and Alan are going to around defacing patents, im not sure i understand the relevance of 'EU Parliament'.
Perhaps it would be better to stick with the classics, "Linux and Alan woz ere" or "Linux rules OK?" for example.
Politicians don't like being criticised, you should be nice to them then suggest something slightly different to their proposals. Criticise them and they go on the defensive.
Open letters are read by everyone else, sure... people on the street might take a look, journalists might use them as an easy out when they're looking for something to write this weeks column about, but does anyone have any evidence to suggest that politicians even know these letters exist?
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
We can and have made a difference - but we haven't won the battle yet. If you live in the EU and care about these issues take the time to contact your MEP and see where they stand on this issue - but remember:
I think it should be pretty clear by now (given the passage of the EU version of the DMCA, among other things) that the EU parliament and other European governments are very much in the pockets of corporations just like the U.S. government is. It's more a matter of degree than anything else.
That's why I don't think we who value our basic liberties have much time left. Others might ask why I haven't moved (I live in the U.S.), without realizing that there really isn't any place on the globe worth moving to. As far as I know, there isn't a single government on the planet that cherishes liberty and works towards maximizing that for its people. And even if there were, chances are most people wouldn't be able to go there anyway because of strict immigration laws.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Would you take a chocobo's advice on patent law?
You: So, Mr. Random Chocobo, what are your recommendations for changing the law as it currently stands with regard to patents?
Chocobo: Kweh?
You: Or do you think that no change is necessary?
Chocobo: Wark!
You: What's that? You want me to give you some greens? I seeeeeeeeee...
graspee
Linus has always maintained his reputation as a simple hacker-- someone not concerned with politics but rather technology.
.sig
This is the second such letter bearing a Torvalds
Is this the start of a new (albeit, not necessarily bad) trend of more coders voicing their opinions on IP law and its current state of affairs?
Dear Alan and his friend Linus,
I've used your operating system once. It is slow, it crashed once with my Mozilla browser taking a minute to open, and none of my digital camera drivers worked with it.
Till then I suggest you improve your softwares. And Alan, tell Mom I said hi.
Love,
Pat Cox
EU President
First, I want to say that it is fantastic that both Linus and Alan saw the importance of getting involved in this issue. It is very politically important after the disaster with "software" patents we've had in the United States.
And I normally don't publicly criticize anyone about the mechanics of their message because I spent my time playing Dungeons & Dragons in high school rather than paying attention to grammar and spelling, but I really wish that they had run this by a 12th level grammarian with +2 red pencil before widespread open publication. I think that the letter itself will have a large impact, but I wish it were just a bit more refined.
Addressing the letter to "the Honourable Pat Cox" but opening with a salutation of Mr. instead of President.
Leaving out definite articles. Using a mixture of technological, legal, and political terminology but not spelling out or giving background on the different terminologies. Not saying it's wrong or unclear, but just that it might have benefitted from a bit more clarity.
I am really proud of the Linux leaders for doing something so important and inspiring. If not to the leaders of the European parliament then to me at least. I just wish I had no reservations about the form it takes.
I dont know much about the European system but I expect that anything that has taken this long to draw up will pass in some form.
I think that the right thing to do is to demonstrate that the new rules hurt the EU because the only benifit big multinationals that can shift workers to whichever far corner of the globe is cheapest and they hurt small EU software companies.
I think also that we need to convince the EU to have tight rules on what can be patented. Personally, my big wish is to prevent patents of things like file formats (e.g. LZW patent, MPEG patent) and communications protocols and APIs.
Also patents like the patent that prevents e.g. the GIMP from supporting print output options (CMYK or whatever it is)
Keep quiet?
You have to be fucking kidding me. Didn't the last civil war teach you people about living in the "land of the free"?
When some draconian law gets proposed, or your government wants to do something more restrictive with your country, if you don't say anything at all, you're open to everything, good and bad.
It's about time more people noticed the groundswelling of anti-corporate/bush/ashcroft "patriotism" that has been building since at least the year 2000, and did something about it. You can't remain quiet about that! You need to discuss the issues, not hide behind some "Patriot Act" or TIA mandate, or hell, use the DMCA as a club to beat your rights to death.
I don't even like the united states, but I can respect the need for change. The winds of change are building. Listen to what they have to say. Pass it on.
user@host$ diff
I don't think that Linus or Alan has any IP law skills enough to help. Well, it's good that they have sent the letter anyway. But the real guy who must help is RMS. We heard so many IP law related arguments from him, so many battles he was in the middle. Why isn't he there now? Or is he?
Less is more !
The second most significant problem is that they give them a hyperlink to indicate what they can do to address these issues. They need to SPELL OUT what an MEP can do to help the anti-swpat cause. This means saying "this URL contains a list of amendments which are essential if this proposal is to protect competition and innovation in the European software industry".
Every additional second it takes for an MEP to figure out a) Why they should agree with you? or b) Given that they agree with you, what do they do? costs us votes.
The problem with patenting software is because there is so little tangible form that the patent takes.
With software patents, the court doesn't seem clear at all about what constitutes the "form" of the item being patented. It's not restricted to an instruction by instruction implementation. It's not limited to the particular computer language it's submitted in. It's down to the point of being so vague that now even just an abstract idea of something is enough to patent the item. It's to the point that one can patent an idea rather than an implementation.
At least with razor blades and railroad car hitches, it was clear that no one was patenting the "idea" of "trimming hair on the human body" or "connecting railroad cars". The limits of their legal footing are clear. If I saw a way to make a cheaper, better, a meaningfully different item to cut human hair I can see where I might conflict with the Gillette company today. If I don't, then I can apply for protection of my implementation.
In the world of software patents, the original patent has much more power. Everything that claims to do what the original patent does (no matter the implementation) conflicts with the first patent. In addition, if I come up with an intellectually better implementation, and the idea has already been "patented" by an older method, I don't want to try to patent or in any way reveal my methods because they won't get protection. The only way I can keep them is with closed source, trade secret methods.
It would be hard to implement software patents based on implementation ("He wrote his patent in C? We'll write ours in Intel Assembly!") because it would be trivial to create an implementation of the same logic in another form. But the answer is not to allow patenting of ideas which appears to be what software patents have evolved into.
Theo will have to speak for himself to this point, nevertheless I have talked with Theo about patenting software and Theo said that there has never been a case of a US firm suing a Canadian individual over patent violations because the way the system works is that in order to do so, the company must pay both sides legal bills. [Theo is very much against software patents as is everyone else that I know with a couple exceptions (and they IMHO are very naive)].
...companies such as IBM, TI, and M$ basically get this for themselves via their cross licensing agreements.
I personally think this argument does not hold water and I hope it is not Theo who becomes a target.
At the time I brought up the idea of we developers in the open source community starting to build a sheaf of our own patents by each of us joining an association and paying say $100 bux per year in order to fund the registration of our patents as well as to litigate infringment.
At the same time, membership in the organisation should give each and every person access to any patents and software held by the organisation while at the same time excuding any companies that want to double dip.
This would mean that if IBM for instance decided to join, then all IBM software patents would become available on a cross licensing basis. Meanwhile if Microsoft choses not to join, then they would be prohibited from using anything "we" might control by way of our patents and agreements.
I feel in very short order the opensource community would hold all the relevant patents.
Of course, there are developers who wish to do proprietary work - these are the startups and small to mid sized companies that Torvalds and Cox warn will be harmed the most by software patents. I suppose that membership in our group could be extended to them. I see no real reason why one could not have 2 classes of software within the patent group: open and closed. So maybe we can solve the problem in this fashion. Remember that the purpose of such an organisation is to create a free patent zone that includes all of Planet earth.
I will point out that I do see a danger here as well. At some point the organisation could control so many patents that they can force every person on earth who owns a computer to join, in which case it is a licence to essentually tax and who knows - maybe it will grow into a world government eh? haha.
[back to reality] Anyone who thinks this is a good idea is welcome to email me. But remember that if this is going to fly people are going to have to put their money where their opinions are because we will have to hire competant legal staff in perhaps several juridictions.
I agree that software patents are a bad idea and I would like to do something to stop Europe from having software patents.
However, I'm not a citzen of the EU.
I don't expect politicians to care about the opinions of those who can't vote in their country.
But perhaps someone with more knowledge of the situation can suggest a way for me and other Americans to help.
There goes my karma, but I don't care. ;)
Vote.. really. What planet were you on during the last US election?
Bush wasn't voted into office. He was selected. With his brothers help. With lots of money.
The united states of embarassment is going to hell in a handbasket. And the sad thing is, that Europe wants to be JUST LIKE EM by passing ridiculous laws that further curtail human rights.
On a planet that has over 6 billion people, where at least half are living well below the poverty line, there is a country being run by a body of officials who allow corporations to secretly tell them what to do, how to do it, and where to do more of it, and people still are not clued in.
It's truly sad. Yes, I agree that voting is one very good option. However, I think it's gone far past this now, and it's time to bring power back to the people. I say this because any civil war in the united states will affect the lives of everyone on this planet, directly or indirectly.
Instead of trying to carve up Europe and dictate how other coutnries are run, the united states should be dealing with its own problems first and foremost, for a change.
Were you aware that the national debt of the US is now over 6.7 TRILLION dollars? That works out to 23 thousand+ USD per registered citizen of america. At a rate of 1.6 billion dollars a day EXTRA, I seriously doubt spending more money on things like Patriot act II, Iraq (87 billion.. ), and ignoring the problems on your own soil will do the world any good.
Wake up. Spread the word. Do something.
user@host$ diff
Is it just me, or does anyone else find the grammar, scanning and structure of this letter as very, very poor indeed?
Not only is there no explanation as to who the signatories are but also a number of the sentences scan very badly indeed.
I realise that LT is not a native English speaker, but really, it doesn't come across as very well thought through IMHO...
Invoicing, Time Tracking, Reporting
First, the interaction between patent law and antitrust law needs to be adjusted. If you have a dominant market position, you should't be able to use a patent to prevent interoperability with your de-facto standards. This is an antitrust issue because it's only a big problem when someone has market dominance. Interoperability with Microsoft Word is important. Interoperability with AbiWord is not.
This is not totally out of reach politically. Current antitrust law in the US and the EU arguably support this position, but enforcement is hard. A bright-line standard would help here.
Second, it needs to be clearly established that Government-mandated standards (ANSI, ISO, DIN, EU) preempt patents unless patent holders object prior to the issuance of the standard. The government standards organizations should be directed to adopt policies preventing the use of patented technology in standards unless the patent holder waives their rights under patent for all users of the standard.
Finally, "business method" patents seem to have been a mistake. However, the first one (4,346,442, the Merrill Lynch Cash Management Account, attaching a credit card to a brokerage account) has already expired.
These things do time out, and soon enough that it matters. The GIF patent has expired. The RSA patent has expired. The SyncSort patent has expired. All those technologies are still in use.
Software patents are bad for Linux.
-Linus
bite my glorious golden ass.
Not just vote, but personally, I'd vote for the non-incumbants in everything just to keep things fresh. If you keep new people in goverment and get rid of the old cruft (Strom Thurmon, anyone?) You've got a much better chance at having new ideas introduced and embraced. Unfortunately it's still money driven, but voting in new people will at least change where the money's coming from.
"The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."
The not-for-profit organization IP Justice has a great summary of the isssue up at www.ipjustice.org and a collection of useful links here.
Take a look. They also oppose the Directive on software patents.
to emphasize:
EU-Parlament: elected every 4th year by the people.
EU-Commision: selected by the governments (that are elected by each country's people)
EU-Council: based on a theme, representatives of the governments from each country gather (again they are elected by each country's people).
The discussion about EU's (or to come soon, the European Federation) parlament is that they have no real power, but they keep discussions happening, which could influence the commisions and/or the councils. But remember that EU is an experiment, not a script to follow. (I hope) We are not to become a new-roman empire like other federations.
(yes this can be compared with sex)
WRONG
therefore are not responsible to you (i.e., the people who pay the bills)
WRONG
WRONG
Of course the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) who are now deciding on the issue of Software Patents do have to worry about being re-elected (cf. Article 190 of the Treaty establishing the European Community: each term is limited to five years).
Neither most of them nor most of their voters may now understand the importance of preventing software patents, but there is one thing to be made clear to the MEPs:
The impact of software patents (and this includes any compromise claiming to avoid them while leaving plenty of loopholes to grant them nonetheless) will be felt by the public at large, and as software patents hurt companies large and small , and force them to eliminate jobs all across Europe, on election day the people will know for sure who made the mistake.
Contact as many MEPs as you can right now, with a reasoned statement explaining to them why software patents are bad for you and bad for them. You should also remind the MEPs that despite all the spin-doctoring by the software patents' proponents, software patents are not about protecting intellectual property, but about artificially creating an intellectual property interest in typically trivial, individual steps of software development, which relies on and owes all of its progress to gradual innovation, and about assigning this made-up monopoly interest mostly to foreign megacorporations - to the detriment of everyone else. For this reason, however, it is all the more important not to allow the EPO to grant software patents in the first place, for if thoughts are turned into intellectual property and then people realise that this has been a mistake, there is no cheap and easy fix by simply repealing the law (technically, a software patents directive and its implementations), as this means to disown those who have been granted an unjust proprietary ownership of ideas - i.e. those who received such undeserved gifts will cry for compensation as then what they hold title to has to be taken away from them.