Maybe Software Patents Won't Kill FOSS After All

Roblimo writes "Lawrence Rosen, attorney for the Open Source Initiative, doesn't seem to be as worried about software patents' effects on open source development as some Slashdot readers. In this article he says, 'Don't be too paranoid about the patent problem. It's a real problem, but not a catastrophe. Any patent owner that tries to assert its patents against open source software has many hurdles to leap before the royalty checks start to arrive.'"

Comments

Patents are already annoying!

[Blymie]

Yeah, right.

And with messages like these in programs:

http://etrade.malformed.org/Screenshot.png

Things aren't going to get any better! Damn patents.

Re:It's not about the royalty checks

[dasmegabyte]

And why shouldn't they?

Some of these companies have put millions of dollars into research and development of their programs which do useful things. All it takes to destroy the marketability and the return on that investment is a handful of OSS developers who decide they don't want to pay a lot for that muffler and clone the interface.

It's happened -- already -- to iTunes with Linspire's clone. It took Apple years to build a really great jukebox utility, one that's driving the sales of their most profitable ventures. And it took Linspire a couple months to rip it off. Fair? No. That's why patents were invented!

The Open Source community seems to think that because they CAN do a thing, that they should be legally justified in DOING that thing. This is bullshit. A development philosophy does not give you the right to ruin peoples' businesses through unfair anti-competetive practices, nor does it give you the right to use other peoples ideas just because you want to. Sharing of code and ideas is great -- when they're your ideas and your code. The sharing of OTHER people's IP is, and always will be, wrong. Isn't that why the GPL is viral -- to prevent people from stealing your ideas without giving something back?