Interview with Groklaw's Creator

McSnickered writes "Linux Universe interviewed Groklaw's creator and maintainer, Pamela Jones (PJ). It's a great tete-a-tete with a paralegal who devotes her free time to poking holes in SCO's dubious claims."

Comments

PJ's an interesting figure

[0x0d0a]

PJ may be the highest-profile female member of the Linux community I'm aware of. She's doing legal work rather than coding, but damned if she hasn't done a hell of a lot for the Linux community and public perception during the last few dark months.

Someone who can come out and say "IAAL, and based on my research this person is in the wrong" is an awfully big deal. The FSF does a lot of legal work too (though in the software world it seems to stick mostly to FSF-owned software...even if it does a lot of nice technology civil rights work), but they don't often sit down and post their analyses.

The problem is that, while a lot of Linux developers are very smart, logical people, they sure as hell aren't lawyers (Linus: "I just ignore patents, since I really don't like them"). So far, most non-code help Linux has gotten (with the notable exception of documentation) has been paid by companies rather than volunteer, in the spirit of the Linux community. The legal area is one where a helping hand is terribly appreciated.

PJ is amplified by her Groklaw project. Groklaw tends to be regularly amplified in public awareness by Slashdot. Slashdot reaches people on both sides of the SCO issue (reading IBM's filings sounds suspiciously like PJ's work is helping them out) as well as in the mainstream media. CNN and the AP regularly use Slashdot as an "early warning" system for things that might be interesting to check out.

PJ is probably currently the single most influential person combatting Linux *legal* FUD. It used to be technical FUD was the only issue that Linux had to worry about, and folks did a pretty good job at shooting it down. Legalisms, however, left folks at a loss, and resulted in massive semiinformed arguments on Slashdot and other forums (which I certainly am guilty of taking part in).

Thanks, PJ. You've probably done more for Linux's marketshare in the last few months than anyone putting out, say, a VM patch.

Re:PJ's an interesting figure

[Demona]

It was my understanding that Linus does not ignore patents becaues he doesn't like them, but because it is his opinion that engineers and developers who attempt to research patents in the hope of avoiding trouble actually increase their risk of liability.

Re:PJ's an interesting figure

[swillden]

It was my understanding that Linus does not ignore patents becaues he doesn't like them, but because it is his opinion that engineers and developers who attempt to research patents in the hope of avoiding trouble actually increase their risk of liability.

What's really sad is that no one seems to recognize what ought to be obvious to everyone: The patent system is not working.

The goal of the patent system is to increase the flow of ideas by giving inventors a way to get their ideas out in the open without losing control of them. If the system worked, you should expect to see all software developers searching the patent databases on a regular basis, looking for published solutions to the problems they're trying to solve.

Imagine:

Programmer: Hey! I found a patent that describes a perfect solution to our problem. Dude, it's *really* clever, I never would have thought of it in a hundred years and it's a perfect fit. If we can license it for a reasonable cost, I can probably have it implemented and tested in about a month. Maybe less if the patent owner has an implementation he'll license to us. If not, all the detail I need to build it is in the patent publication.

Manager: A month? That's fantastic! We had a man-year budgeted for researching an approach to that. Give me the patent holder's info and I'll ring him up. Given that it'll save us a bundle and get us to market several months sooner, we can almost certainly afford whatever license fees he wants. Give me a couple of days to see if the deal's going to come together, and then I'll give you the green light. In the meantime, why don't you hit the patent database and look for...

Instead, the system is so badly broken that developers are advised *not* to look at the patent database for fear of what they might see. And it's not just Linux developers either. Every big software company tells its developers the same thing: "Tell us about anything you invent that might be patentable, but don't bother looking patents up. We have attornies to take care of that. If you write something that infringes, we'll decide how to handle it when the issue arises."

Have you *ever* heard someone suggest a patent search to find ideas to use? Patents are severely broken.