Slashdot Mirror
City of Munich Freezes Its Linux Migration
Jan0815 writes "Yesterday I received disturbing news from the CTO of Munich, Wilhelm Hoegner. As previously mentioned, there is a rising concern that software patents could stifle development of open source worldwide. FFII has complete coverage of what is going on in Europe." (FFII stands for Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure.) Reader jmt(tm) writes "The call for bids was supposed to be published in late July, but the Munich Green Party had pointed out about 50 possible patent conflicts which the city wants to evaluate before moving on."
This is a nice clear-cut example of software patents stifling the market. And one would hope that this little lesson might help people re-evaluate the idea of having software patents. But that's probably too much to hope for.
Would this to be anything to do with all the SCO crap from recent months? The effect of which is being seen here?
How can facing the saem problems with patents as closed source stop the installation..
Sounds like FUD to me..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
The European patent office has been interpreting the patent laws very loosely, which would explain why these kind of patents got in.
The European Parliament/commission/ministers are trying to fix these holes, but they tend to take advice from the wrong people, who create more holes that would actually allow true software patents. (almost everyone in EP/EC sais their intention is to stop true software patents, but there's a lot of discussion about so called "computer implemented inventions", which just means software that drives machines/...)
Ask yourself: Why would the FFII do this research if it hinders the proces of linux in Munich? Altough their document has the following statement: In May the EU Council and Commission have reached "political agreement" to legalise software patents and reject all limits of patentability for which the European Parliament had voted in September 2003., software patents aren't already decided, the newly elected european parliament have to have their say and I think this is an effort to keep everybody focused. I'm thinking this focused maily on the ministers of the member states,last meeting they had this was past silently, but lateron the Dutch minister got some noise from the Dutch parliament. Now seeing Munich has much the same coalition as the German government, this might be directed to the German minister who's in that meeting.
It just goes to show that business is more powerful than Government - but hey we all knew that anyway.
----
Or, it is a case of idealism running smack into the wall of reality.
No reason to lie.
The decision to freeze the project is more of a political statement to force the federal government to take a clear stand on the EU patent directive.
The green party wants to point out what harm a law that allows software patents can have for small and mid sized companies.
***Quis custodiet ipsos custodes***
That's crazy. After OSRM making a bad (public relation) move, this thing!
Some one please enlighten us. HOW CAN A OPEN SOURCE USER BE MORE LIABLE THAN A CLOSED SOURCE USER?
The good news about Linux is that as a distributed, non-owned asset, its difficult for owners of 'intellectual property' to pursue lawsuits that would prevent further kernel development. Who do you sue? Linus? If so, someone else will take over stewardship. If its problematic in the US and Germany, move repositories and organisations to Canada or Italy or Thailand...who cares?
The next generation of spurious lawsuits will be targeted at users of the technology. Without a blanket organisation to indemnify (sp?) the users, I suspect widespread adoption will slow very quickly. I was hoping IBM or a big player would step into this space (as per the one-off SCO lawsuit situation re: HP) but right now the scope of lawsuits is so vast that it would be suicide to do so in a blanket fashion.
When I buy and deploy MS, at least I know that EOLAS won't/can't come after me. Linux however faces increasing paralysis as this 'death by a thousand cuts' discourages widespread adoption.
Can anyone comment on the largest linux deployment in the world? How many large scale deployments exist? I'll ask people to ignore academic installations, as they are rarely relevant to corporate/government environments which drives the IT industry.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
because problem is became so obious. It's not about will you or not use open source if software patents will be granted in US. You simply won't. Imagine all the good things what open source brings - Apache, PHP, MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc. INCLUDING BSD operational systems, will be hard to use in the work and in enivorements you would like to. Even I guess Mozilla Firefox and OpenOffice.org could be in harm. It's time to stop program patents, NOW. There's no discussion about half-backed solutions. It must be stopped.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
I just wasted someone's bandwith downloading a pdf in a language I do not speak or read. A simple change in the story headlines labeling it as german would have prevented this. Hint.
Anyway, I wonder why people are surprised. Too much under the table cash available to not have software patents become "the law" everywhere, no nation or group of nations is immune to corruption in government. In fact, I'd go so far as to state as it's more fact than not that all governments are by default corrupt. Anytime you have individuals in charge of making a decision, and there are billions of *monetary units* in the mix, some of those units will change hands to get reality morphed. "Government" is just as much a for-sale business as any other human endeavor. Altruism basically only exists in the dictionary, it doesn't exist in the global marketplace, especially in the markets known as "governments". Patents, DRM other sorts of schemes will continue to increase in scope, all over. In fact, I'd say things like the SCO deal going on right now are just the first of many that will make it harder and harder to have free and open source software of any quality, it's only a matter of time before the developers start finding themselves in court. Big international software business is not going to remain passive, even with a few large companies giving the illusion of support for FOSS right now. That is temporary, and the proof is that you see zero efforts by those billion buck companies to lobby for any change in the laws. If they were serious, you'd see them sponsoring and lobbying for a change to the IP patent laws, and they aren't.
Europe doesn't have patent law on software yet, they are making a point to stop the patent law on software going through.
I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said: "I drank what?" - Chris Knight (Val Kilmer)- Real Genius
For the FSF and Open Source Software organizations to begin filing patents for any applicable technology. You can't fight this by not holding any.
mbbac
The problem isn't software patents. The problem is that some software patents are just rediculous and they should be given to someone that at least tries to implement the idea.
Just imagine, you spend years coming up with something that ou think is great. Some big company sees it and copies it. They have the money to promote it and they corner the market. You've wasted a couple of years without any return.
Most of the patent litigation that gets reported on slashdot is usually the other way around, heck most of it is just the potential of a patent to be used in a bad way, but there are cases where the little guy that poured his heart and soul into something was able to prevent a bigger company from ripping him off.
Granted, if you're just someone who doesn't innovate, just copies other ideas, then you don't want software patents.
Open Source Java DAO Generator
That of course didn't stop the european patent offices from granting thousands of software patents even though they are illegal.
They're not illegal, they're just not legally enforceable; there's a big difference.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
The FFI press release says "Software patents are considered the greatest danger to the usage and development of Linux and other Free Software."
However, it is MUCH worse than that. Software patents are a danger to ALL software development, particularly software done by small firms or in-house, which is where most of the software development is done. If software is patentable, and if all those obvious patents are granted and upheld. No-one will be able to develop any software for fear of being sued.
I hope the software patents issue is not seen to be only an issue for Open Source and Linux. It's not. It's a danger to all of us. Even if companies will still create new software, it will be much more expensive due to research and defense of possible patent infringement, patent fees, and additional coding to work around expensive patents.
I wonder - what's their responsability for doing something illegal (assuming it is technically "illegal")? Could they be taken to court? Or could patent infringment claims be even considered since their not officially recongnized (as yet anyways)?
AC comments get piped to
actually i see it more as idealism trying to build a wall against reality. the reality is that patents promote greed not science/knowledge/research, and the reality that people really can come up with the same idea in the same context without ever knowing about the other person's work. (!shock!)
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Looks like SCO has managed to create enough of a fuss to get things like this looked at. IMO software patents are the devil and here is one result of them.
Lets consider tabbed browsing, and 169 degre opening doors on these new Nissan Titans.
My company spends millions building this door, the hinge is a peice of work requireing many hours of effort and testing. We pantent it all of course and are awarded it and people buy our trucks for it's superior way of opening vs say a ford with the same feature.
Tabbed browsing should be considered in this same light. Everyone should be able to implement tabbed browsing. Company X could code it one way and Company Y would code it another way. Both have tabbed browsing, one's method is superior, provides more features, and the code size and memory footprint per tab is lower than the competitor.
Just blindly posting patents for the idea is wrong. Software patents should be more specific and not on the general idea. Yes you can have a patent on a tabbed browser but not on the tab metod itself just your way of coding it.
I wouldn't exactly call the Microsoft XML patent issue an exaggeration - Microsoft themselves claim patents over their XML file formats, so I'd expect whatever patents they have also relate to similar document types, such as the ones used by OpenOffice.
Or, it is a case of idealism running smack into the wall of reality.
But it's a reality that doesn't have to exist.
Linux being abandoned in Europe because software patents "have" to be introduced would be a bit like the cure for cancer being discovered and promptly suppressed because cancer "has" to be incurable.
There is no sight more demoralizing for the idealist than seeing work on the construction of the wall of reality speed up as he approaches.
If my theory is correct, it is an incredibly dangerous game they are playing. However, if it helps stop software patents in Europe it is worth it, even if it means losing Munich to Microsoft. It would be losing a battle to win the war.
All operating systems run the risk of infringing upon patents. How can anyone choose one system over another based on the same type of risk?
Since Windows is much bigger (code-wise) than *BSD/Linux/Amiga/etc., would that not mean that it has a higher chance of running into patent issues?
Would the users be immune to the issue since they did not infringe (the software developer(s) did)? Eolas did not go after the users but Microsoft.
I disagree the problem is software patents. Patenting ideas is just too general purpose and the same idea tends to be come up with hundreds to hundreds of thousands of times all over the world without anyone knowing about the patent. Software patents just give a monopoly to the first person to get the idea patented no matter how many others come up with it.
Nobody comes up with ideas on their own since none of us is on an island completely seperated from the rest of humanity. You added your small piece to the idea of many others and that should not give you any right to control that.
Look at how many came up with stuff like read-copy-update stuff. Things are independently come up with so many times in so many places that software patents are just not a good idea. We all build our stuff on the backs of others and when we get to a certain level of knowledge as a whole the same idea will be come up with in many places.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
I thought that big linux companies like Novell and Sun announced that they would indemnify their customers a long time ago. Why shouldn't it be safe for Munich to go on with the bidding process as long as they ensure that the bidder must indemnify them from patent claims on linux source code.
They should NOT be painting this as just a Linux problem.
They need to immediately do an excruciatingly thorough search for software patents that Microsoft software may be infringing. Be sure to include ALL of the software in the Microsoft package - from Windows to Office to Media Player to Outlook and Exchange to Microsoft IIS webserver to PowerPoint to Internet Explorer, everything.
Presuming they find a few, then obviously the EU needs to "freeze" any Microsoft purchases as well.
Oh, and while they are at it, IBM has a couple of active software patent infringments against SCO in court right now. So if by some odd chance some EU government office is dealing with SCO software, well I guess they'll just have to "freeze" that too. Chuckle.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
You have to look at the cost-benefit comparison of patents and see how it relates to software:
Cost:
people can't use an idea for a certain amount of time without paying the inventor (this time is incredibly long in any high tech field, including software)
Benefit:
- it encourages spending on research and technology (the software patents we hear about didn't require much of this other than writing the code - the "invention" was just a natural result of the design of the product)
- it encourages inventors to disclose their inventions (while this may be useful for things like manufacturing processes that would otherwise be trade secrets, software almost inherently discloses the invention when the software is released)
I think that the cost side for software patents outweighs the benefit side. IOW software patents give less to society than they take away.
So, yes, they are doing the right thing. Let's pray it works out.
The only time I have seen anything about this issue in the newspaper, is when a minister was called to task by our national parliament for lying about how he voted on this matter. Even so, normally this would be cause for a big row in parliament, but the subject of software patents wasn't something to get all worked up about, apparently.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
So, you patent your idea and turn it into a product. However, some big company comes along and "steals" you idea. You contact your lawyer, who contacts their lawyer to get Big Company to pay for a license fee. Unfortunately, it turns out that your own product infringes on 53 of Big Company's patents, so your lawyers agree that the best solution is a cross-licensing deal, where they get to use your patent, and you get to use their 53. In the end, the only winner is: patent lawyers.
Have any such examples? One?Remember, patents exist to promote innovation -- to allow inventors to spend their time working on inventions that wouldn't be possible if you couldn't prevent others from copying it. What kind of software innovation is only possible thanks to software patents?
Please alter my pants as fashion dictates.
Is it maybe you the one who is not thinking clearly? What the greens are doing in this case is rising awareness about a very important issue for the OS/FS community. They are not against Linux - on the contrary.
Next time you post, read first, breath twice, and then write.
The only protection any software needs is a copyright. A copyright protects the owner's right to the expression (code). You can't copyright an idea (As shown in that texas case posted earlier, having thoughts of a program grants no rights, only writing the code implies copyright. This may have been part of the grounds for the ruling.)
When you really think about it, that is what software is, it's the expression of whatever you're coding (a tab, a purchase order, an email sorter).
So what needs to be decided is this: Is software an artistic expression of a concept (copyright) or is software an invention (patent)?
I tend to think of my software as an art form, expression of a concept (copyright). No one can copy my code, but anyone can see a program and say "hey that's a good idea, let's do something like that". This is how ideas evolve, ultimately benefitting society.
Imagine if some music artist patented the C chord, how much would music suffer if no other artist could use that sound? However, the sequence of sounds (like software code) is rightfully protected by copyright.
The general /. consensus has always been that a software company can copyright its code, but should not be allowed to "patent" an idea. In other words, Microsoft should be free to claim ownership of their DoCrazyStuff() function, but should not be granted exclusive rights of "providing an method on a computer by which crazy stuff may be facilitated".
[I couldn't find his email at a cursory glance - maybe someone can 1) email him and 2) post a reply saying they did so he doesn't get 20000 emails]
1. Please be aware that there are a great many people who are invested in helping you be able to roll out linux in Munich.
2. Assuming that EU patent law bears some similarity to US law and that the body of software patents bears some similarity, the key to destroying poorly issued software patents is prior art.
3. A call from you for us to help you find prior art would meet with tremendous response. Even moreso if you could arrange to translate the list of probable patent violations into English.
thank you.
[Really, anyone with appropriate linguistic capabilities could put up a webboard for discussion and translate the patent pdf]
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
Any program of any size will infringe on dozens to many thousands of them. I don't think you can even write hello world in any language without infringing on at least a few patents. Stuff like java,python,perl,php, slashdot, mozilla, opera, kde, windows, probably violate thousands of patents and realistically you can be sued at any time for any of those since neither open or closed stuff gives you any kind of warranty from that kind of stuff and realistically they can't.
Software patents are a mine field. Anyone using//developing software is in a huge minefield and no matter where you step there is a landmine. The odds are when you put your foot down the mine will not explode but it is still a minefield. Once you are in the middle of the minefield it is too late to worry about violating software patents. Overall the only real option is just to ignore software patents and never look them up or learn much about them. At least then you can not be found to violate the patent on purpose which lessens the penalty and it makes it easier to disprove the patent.
Work needs to be done to throw out software patents but until then ignoring them seems to be best.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
you are right, the greens are generally counted to the left wing. on a national level they are against software patents, and imho this was not a bad move from them. They only raised the question what will happen to the migration if the EU passes software patents. The migration is at a point where going back isn't really an option given the money which was spent already, and the money which is available (which is next to none). Therefore it raises awareness about the whole issue and shows the average politician the link between software pantents and FOSS.
The paradox about this is, that the german domestic department recommends using FOSS in public service, whereas the department of justice voted for software pantents in the EU. Should stir some people up, me thinks.
I think what the Greens meant to do was highlight the problems with software patents, not to stop the Linux migration. Unfortunately, in classic Green fashion, their method of doing so was to point a rather large gun directly at their foot, take careful aim, and pull the trigger.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
A patent isn't for an idea, it is for an method to implement a feature.
You own your hinge, if someone else wants a wide opening door they would have to develop a new method not to infringe.
If tabbed browsing was patented, and someone wanted to group multiple web pages under one logical window, they would have to create their own new method.
It is the specific solution that is patented, be it a fancy hinge or tabs to show the web pages.
Think wide opening doors and grouping web pages as the goal. Fancy hinge and tabs as the method to accomplish it.
I think your fears are real,the timing for this is shit. Everybody's on holiday and the only thing that really gets anybody's attention these days is who'll be the new commissionars and what assignments will they get. Furtermore is still some more weeks untill the EU parliament convenes in it's new form.
For copyright violation.
"...and yet when it comes time for Linux to lift ideas from Microsoft, /.rs get really mad because they don't think Microsoft should be allowed to own it's ideas."
It's patented ideas.
Really - I cannot understand what is the matter with the moderators this morning - this drivel isn't even factual and rational, let alone insightful.
The only way to slow down the proliferation of LINUX is to tie it up in litigation. Even if there is no basis, the software can be tied up in court so long that no-one can use it. At that point developers tend to go away and we are left with nothing to work towards. The problem isn't software patents, the problem is trivial software patents. This lets big companies such as MS and others eliminate other products by owning so many software patents that new-comers cannot get a foot in the door. MS has a push for 3000 patents next year I hear. Even if a programmer comes up with the same idea, chances that there will already be something so similar that the big company can make the introduction of the competition too costly and time consuming, and the new-comer will go away.
- Use of browsers for eCommerce (Oracle patent)
How is this issue specific to linux?
The problem isn't software patents.
No. Even non-rediculous software patents are a problem. MAYBE software patents would be OK if software had always been patentable... but it hasn't! We've been writing software since 1960, but people only started trying to patent it in the 1990s.
That's 30 years of time when many inventions were made, but no patents were filed. So tons of software ideas were invented, used or not, and then programmers moved on, leaving old ideas free to be patented decades later by someone who wasn't really the first at all.
Just imagine, you spend years coming up with something that ou think is great. Some big company sees it and copies it.
Just imagine, you spend years coming up with something that ou think is great. You write a program, self-publish it, and the shareware-fees begin to roll in. Then IBM calls you and says they patented it years ago. Sure, they never brought it to market- they just have lawyers who patent every little idea that crosses their engineers' heads, without checking if it's practical or profitable.
But now that you've generously done the work of building a market for their patent, they'll be happy to drop the lawsuit against you, as long as you cease your business immediately. You took a big risk, it paid off, and you lost!
You've wasted a couple of years without any return.
The argument that patents protect little inventors from big corporations is mostly backwards today. Filing patents costs money, but it's something a big corp can handle easier than a little guy (by rolling the price of a dedicated IP lawyer into the overhead).
Patents are useful in some fields like pharmaceuticals, but not in software.
Granted, if you're just someone who doesn't innovate, just copies other ideas,
Note that copying other's ideas is the foundation for capitalism...
Now let's run this through a real life example. You spend years creating something completely different. Something new enough that it truly deserves a patent (say something on the order of public key encryption), and you create a product and start to market it. The big software companies, especially Microsoft, immediately set to work cloning your work, and within a year they have competing products.
However, you have a patent on the really clever bits, right? So you are saved.
Wrong! Instead, when you approach Microsoft and friends about licensing your patents they simply show you 20 patents of theirs that you violate. Microsoft has patented the double-click, for crying out loud. Your patent lawyer then advises that you sign a cross-licensing deal with these companies, and asks you for a big fat paycheck. So now you have spent years creating the software, and tens of thousands of dollars patenting your ideas and you are still screwed.
The only way for the little guy to win with patents is to see where the market is going, patent ideas that are likely to block upcoming software innovation, and then sit back and wait. The trick is to write absolutely no software. That way you don't violate anyone else's patents. In fact, that's what a lot of companies are doing. They don't actually create any software, they just lay out landmines for the folks that are actually doing the real work.
Don't tell me that promotes innovation, because I don't buy it.
To slightly adapt the old adage: when your preferred tool is a hammer, you try to make everything into a nail.
s/some/most. Yes, I do have read software patents. A lot of them. A few cases of a little guy winning is not enough to justify a system that has tons of negative effects for the economy and society as a whole. Oh please. First of all, if someone manages to monopolise a mere idea, he's the one stealing from everyone else (which is in fact the case with most software patents). Secondly, whether or not you copy is completely irrelevant as far as patents are concerned.Copyright protects you from plagiarising (and that's a lot more than just literal bit-by-bit copying), patents are also enforceable if someone else came up with exactly the same thing entirely on his own. And, surprise, this happens an awful lot in software development. That's not just my opinion, that's what the National Research Council wrote (search for "But there is little or no market in software components") in its book titled "The Digital Dilemma - Intellectual Property in the Information Age".
Donate free food here
Really?
And please explain to me how it would be better not to raise issue now? How is it better to simply wait for it to pop up later in the form of an actual patent lawsuit after the EU passes the Software Patent Directive?
The worst case scenario is that the Munich Linux project gets killed now rather than later by actual patent suits. The best case scenario is that raising the issue now will dissuade the EU from legitimatizing software patents in the first place.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I agree that software patents aren't the problem. In fact, I'm unaware of any actual patents on software. There are patents on methods or algorithms that are implemented in software, but that's justifiable. For example, if I made a control systems algorithm that I implemented mechanically or electronically it would certainly be patentable, so why shouldn't it be patentable if I implement it in software?
What seems to be the problem is the defacto removal of patent restrictions regarding obviousness and prior art, along with the patent duration. Very obvious things are getting patented in software. It's like patenting a plastic doll because it now has a new hat.
But my biggest concern with this Munich thing is why the concern over Linux specifically? Patent violations are just as, or more, likely in proprietary software. In fact, all litigation I'm aware of for so-called "software" patents have been between proprietary software companies and there have been no lawsuits over Linux violations yet. Plus it is quite obvious that Linux developers would be quick to make new "non-violating" implementations very quickly if anything was found. In other words, the reasoning behind slowing Linux implementation in Munich makes no sense to me.
# US5819281: Notification of aspect value change in object-oriented programming (owned by EDS)
# US5983227: Dynamic page generator (Yahoo)
# US6025810: Hyper-Light-Speed antenna (also accelerates plant growth)
# US05443036: Exercising a cat with a laser pointer (note that it took two people to think of this )
So, it doesn't even have to be cool, it seems....
Inane PatentsThe wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
Fuck you, man, thinkers got to eat. They shouldn't have to hope nobody else can figure out what they're doing and sell it better than they can (which wouldn't be hard...inventors are as bad at marketing as markeeters are at invention). And "hey, we developed the same thing at the same time, what a coinky-dink" isn't an excuse -- if it were, there'd be less impetus to publish ideas, resulting in less knowledge. Anybody could read the journals and claim coincidental development. It's impossible to prove somebody didn't have an idea unless they get it out in the open, known to you and I as "Prior art." Without patents, you'd have even more secrecy and even more backbiting, because you'd have to rely on copyright (which is worse) or trademarks.
Or maybe you didn't realize that every published patent includes detailed information on how to reproduce the invention being patented...thus guaranteeing documentation of a process for future generations in exchange for a few years of possible profit. No need to reverse engineer the process -- just wait.
Maybe you also didn't realize that very few of the broad patents issued recently have been successfully held up in court. Shit, it takes specific infringments of specific implementations -- like the LZW algorithm -- to even make it to court. Unisys' LZW patent didn't stop a hundred variant dictionary compression utilities to pop up (RAR, ZIP, ARC, ACE, MOO etc), nor did their lock on GIF prevent the development of PNG, SVG, etc. If a patent is too broad, it will be struck down. That's how patent law is set up...courts, not patent clerks, decide enforcability. A patent clerk could give you the patent to printing on cardboard, that doesn't mean you'll be able to successfully sue Kellog's.
Finally, maybe you didn't realize just how easy it is to work around most patents, especially if you're aware of them. Which is easy to do...they're freakin' published! Read their published docs and improve on key components, and patent it yourself.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Not really... I'm saying patents are good because it gives those people the time to do what they want to do without having to work at starbucks.
It's easy to take advantage of people like that that are happy to do what they love. The patent system should help protect them. Somewhere along the way, things went wrong. That doesn't mean patents are bad, the patent system needs major work.
Open Source Java DAO Generator
The real issue is the totally stupid "software" patents issued by ignorant offices.
I.e. the "one click buy" patent, the tabbed browsing and even methods for embedding "something" in a browser are examples of ignorance and stupidity.
There are 1000 ways to code "one click buy" commerce functionality - but only ONE patent for it. That's what's wrong. It should be the code and the algorithms there where the target for patents NOT the method. As an example I could file for a method for making a car move. That would be the engine, and that would be ridiculous in the eyes of engineers. Such a patent would never make it trough the patent offices. Of course there would be prior act, but in many situations prior act is forgotten or the little man are afraid of the battle with the "mastodont" - an whole other issue.
Therefore I must conclude that the people patenting software methods and functionality are somehow not fit for the job.
It is then up to us citizen of the world, to raise a flag saying that the entire world will be in state of limbo if the current insane software patent wave continues.
Next time I file a patent it should be for bad endings in novels!
In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.
That's because there aren't enough moderation options. This poster is maybe OVERRATED but only because s/he was rated in the first place. They aren't TROLLing. You want to give them some credit for an opposing view (to keep the discussion "fair/balanced" (yeah, right)).
What we need is a MISINFORMED or IGNORANT moderation option.
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
I have to agree that this seems like "Suicide Bomber" politics.
1) Mix Free Software Politics with Local Politics
2) Push a Linux Migration based on Values like "openness" rather than traditional cost/ROI.
3) Publicly shoot down Steve Ballmer's sales efforts
4) Become the showpiece project for Linux desktop migration.
5) Start to solve a lot of the intractable problems with moving away from Windows
(BOOM) Kamikaze your own project with Patent FUD.
Apparently they failed to understand that hardly anyone sees Linux on the Desktop as logical and as inevitable as they do, so people were paying close attention to their progress. From an advocacy standpoint, it was critical that Munich would be a "Success Story" and not a "Martyr".
I think this gets back to the Open Source/Free Software divide in the community -- is Linux a superior platform because of its Openness, or is just part of a whole ideological ball of wax that wants to overthrow the Intellectual Property system? Once you go with the latter, you lose most of your potential IT audience who just wants solutions and not revolution.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
I'm pretty certain it's the latter, even if you yourself can't see that. Ask yourself, what have you done that is truly new and innovative in software that noone else in the industry didn't already think of or would find obvious if they were working towards similar goals.
That I, an average programmer, an average thinker, of average creativity, am always coming up with things that violate patents, just in the normal course of my job, tells me that most of these patents are obvious. That this is such a problem for software developers tells me that patents on software is inherently flawed.
And as for my saying, "go fucking die", I was just responding to you being a complete asshole. You were the first to start throwing "fuck you"'s around.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
... because the Bureaucrats are now being stung by it.
You make a lot of assumptions. I work for a non-contract software company with definite products in a specific market. I won't tell you what products or what market, because I haven't cleared this post with my boss and he's very stern about giving our competitors any ideas. See, there's a lot of cloning that goes on in niche markets...company A builds a product, then company B builds a product that does exactly the same thing in exactly the same way for $100 less. This isn't really fair, because most of our budget (as I've mentioned) is R&D. If we had the ability to take somebody else's program and make one that just did that, we could afford to sell our software for $100 too (and indeed we've done that in the past)...but in that model of development, the people who had the idea in the first place are never compensated. Which makes having ideas a libaility, not an asset.
Ask yourself, what have you done that is truly new and innovative in software that noone else in the industry didn't already think of or would find obvious if they were working towards similar goals.
I don't have to ask myself that. It isn't what patents are about. Patents are about protecting development of specific products so other people can't do the exact same thing. We spent a long time researching the most intuitive way to handle the differences between our clients' address databases. There were at least seven different entry methods used, some of them broke out addresses, some of them broke out names, some of them used fields for things other than what they claimed to...basically, there was a lot of different information, and they needed to merge it all. What we did was build an on demand contextual data mapper...it performs fuzzy searches on the fields of these databases, and "clumps" them together based on the percentage of matching fields and the exactness of the match. Nothing new, nothing somebody else couldn't think up if they were good with regular expressions, Tries and SQL -- but nobody did. And it's driving the sales of our product, because it cuts the work to associate records -- many of our clients no longer have to hire temps to spend weeks pruning bad data.
There's a strong amount of "Gee, I could have thought of that" in software, because good software works exactly how you think it should. But the fact is, they didn't think of it, and if they did, they didn't do anything about it. Thanks to patent law, they can't just do what we did and charge $100 less...they have to do it a different way, and hope it's better. This helps insure that competition is based on innovation, and not just undercutting prices. It helps protect R&D which helps those who make new products.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
...then only outlaws will use Linux! Seriously this could be one of the outcomes if the craziness of software patents continues to spread. Because let's face it, many if not most of us using Linux are going to keep using it regardless of the outcome of current litigation. And in many companies Linux came in through the backdoor anyway.
So what does that leave us with? I don't expect to patent holders to come sniffing around every single company that may be using Linux somewhere, especially since no one will be widely advertising its use in a hostile patent environment. And of course continued development of Linux will work around the patent problem and continue as before.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
Face it, unless there are some drastic changes in how we are governed GNU/Linux will be basicly dead in five or ten years.
Do not forget this: It is the goal of the richest people of this world to retain and increase their wealth by whatever means they can. They hire "digital sharecroppers" to create ideas that are kept in peonage. They get laws passed that will keep others from competing with their unjustly gained bounty. Those individuals that create the works with the greatest monetary value rarely share in the wealth that is gained from them. Bill Gates is the richest man around but how much of his code is still in use today?
IMO we need to end software and business model patents and let people create in freedom.
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST
If your company cannot comepte in the market without patents, then your company deserves to go down in flames.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
software patents in closed source software are just wrong. with the software being closed source, nobody gets to see the algorithms anyway. infact patenting something could be interpritted as a way of saying "here's how we do it, you cant do it this way".
"Fuck you, man,"
Fuck right the hell off, man.
"thinkers got to eat."
How does primate requirements apply to the issue? So does everybody else - in fact, the explicit justification for IP is the notion (unproven and demonstrated to be false by current corporate behavior) that patents will allow IP to be developed specifically to assist the species to gain access to new knowledge. The actual effect has been the opposite.
"They shouldn't have to hope nobody else can figure out what they're doing and sell it better than they can"
Why? Other people have to eat, too. Where in human evolution is it stated that "thinkers" should be immune from evolution and primate competition like everybody else?
Also, "thinkers" should be smart enough to hire people who CAN market their stuff - which is the way it's actually done, if you haven't noticed.
"(which wouldn't be hard...inventors are as bad at marketing as markeeters are at invention)"
Which is why they hire marketers to market their inventions - which is done anyway.
Your arguments are ruminant evacuation.
Intellectual property is an oxymoron and an attempt to extend contract principles over basic property principles - in other words, an attempt to use coercion to justify monopoly profit without effort.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Patents are useful in some fields like pharmaceuticals, but not in software.
...and yet, I'd say that both (a) and (b) above are ideal cases: we don't want people to suffer and die prematurely, and if they have to, we'd prefer that everyone gets treatment, not just the wealthy, even though simplistic supply-and-demand wisdom would suggest that limiting drug access to the wealthy would be more likely to turn a profit and thereby enhance chances for future cures.
I don't even like the idea of patents in medicine. Aside from the fact that the only possible use for patents in medicine is to limit the distribution of cures to those who can pay for it, thereby callously disregarding the value of human life, there's a deeper concern.
There are several arguments that run along the same thread, but all of them is a permutation of profits driving interest in further R&D:
- If we don't let them patent, and thereby profit, what's to encourage future cures being developed?
- If everyone can get the cure for cheap or free, why will anyone pay the prices necessary to help the developers recapture their investment?
These for me are just a bit to close to saying that we need to keep people dying so that the medical industry can keep making money. After all, isn't the ultimate goal to put the medical industry out of business? I'd like to think that the goal (however unrealistic) is a world in which people are so healthy that drugs and complex medical products are no longer needed for the most part.
So long as we continue to reason along the lines of, "But who will support the drug companies, and how will they make a buck?" we are espousing a mentality that needs continued suffering and death, because a) if people aren't suffering and dying of diseases, there's no impetus to develop drugs because there's no market, and if people aren't suffering and dying because a drug is b) so freely available, there's no motivation for the wealthy who can afford it to actually pay for it...
I'm just not sure patents in general are ever a good idea.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
I have two problems with patents. First, they abuse prior art attempting to make distinctions where in many if not most cases none exist as all ideas borrow and build on earlier ideas. Second, the big dogs use patents as weapons against the small who have few resources. A fair hearing on the merits rarely occurs as the small are forced to fold prematurly. This strategy seems to foul the idea of fairness leaving society the poorer.
"As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously."
-Ben Franklin
- I live the greatest adventure anyone could possibly desire. - Tosk the Hunted
From your website:
SCHOOLIN' BA English Lit & Rhetoric
GPA 2.71
And you think you're qualified to have an opinion because?
Software patents do stifle progress. As a concrete example, lookup the Marching Cubes Algorithm. It's a pretty obvious thing, and it solves a very common Computer Graphics problem, but some people are wary of implementing it because it's patented.
I don't think you have a very strong background in common CS algorithms (something you'd like to patent). If you did, you'd see how little software patents give us and how much confusion, doubt, and fear they inspire.
Mmmm... I often find that when I read the words of a 'thinker', it reminds me of the contributions of other great thinkers in history:
Like Einstein:
"Fuck you man, I'm tellin' ya - E=mc^2"
Or Gauss:
"Shit man - I think I'm gonna call this coinky-dink li'l theorem the Theorema Egregium"
Or Blake:
"Oh Rose, thou art freakin' sick man"
I suggest you return to Earth - you are not a thinker - you are a run-of-the-mill programmer, tossing off mundane and trivial little algorithmic ideas that are no more than programmatic expediencies which only an absurdly inflated ego could possibly describe as the works of a thinker. If the abstract ideas embodied in patented software inventions were were worth according their authors the title "thinker", then it would be essential that they not be patentable. As it is, they are at least abstract ideas and like the ideas in a complicated proof, or the component ideas of a literary narrative, or of a musical work, they belong to the mental, not the physical world and it is absurd and obscene to make them patentable inventions.
Ethics aside, your economically based arguments are hopelessly flawed. The opposition to software patentability in the U.S. was led by some of the most successful software entrepreneurs of the time but you would have us believe that you know better? Your penultimate paragraph is beyond reason - you would promote progress and innovation by dragging every incremental new idea in software through the courts? You know full well that the innovators you pretend to speak for will never be able to afford that privilege anyway.
You claim these software idea patents are somehow necessary for the progress of the useful art of software development, yet the software industry flourished long before they existed. Hundreds of thousands of professional programmers disagree with you. Scientists, economists and the representative organisations of 2 million European businesses disagree. Show us your patented ideas so that we can see what a truly patent-worthy software idea really looks like.
You condemn trade secrecy and say how much better to have these marvellous inventions public knowledge, that they may be used "a few years later". Perhaps you meant decades, which would've been nearer the truth - and a substantial fraction of the entire history of the field. But more importantly; you have it backwards: Trade secrecy would be ideal for these mundane and incremental inventions, at least for proprietary software.
With your final comment, you sweep away all free software and the community of hobbyists, enthusiasts - professional and amateur alike - that have rediscovered a more vigorous, productive and engaging way to develop software. You would have them "work around patents" or "improve on key components" of existing patents. But in the former case it is often simply not possible - an official standard for example or a whole field sewn up with fundamental patents, like fractal compression. And in the latter case, you'd force the free software developer to somehow find the license fees for the original patent anyway. But perhaps you are not really interested in the genuine development of new and varied software - real software that is - not just the idea of it. Perhaps you are only interested in promoting the stagnant and fruitless trade in the already myriad and burgeoning software patent pool, that large and wealthy corporations are so fond of.
and Munich stops their deployment to show how stupid those laws are
That's where the politicos have miscalcuated. People generally don't remember things that didn't happen. If there is no Munich Migration, there's no positive case for either Desktop Linux or Patent Reform. There is only What Ifs and a thick cloud of FUD spread against Linux by its own supporters.
Believe it or not, most people (even in the IT industry) don't care about how something might affect Linux users. See IBM.
(Now, I understand the patent issue is open in the EU, so Munich might just be bluffing. But if they aren't, its useless martyrdom. Install Linux and invite yourself to get sued.)
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.