Slashdot Mirror
RMS On How To Fight Software Patents
rimberg writes "Richard M. Stallman has a article on NewsForge talking about ways to fight software patents. It mentions the Public Patent Foundation (and why it's a good idea), but argues that fighting patents one by one will never eliminate the danger of software patents, any more than swatting mosquitoes will eliminate malaria." (Newsforge, like Slashdot, is part of OSTG.)
Even though I haven't read it.
This involves watching public affairs and politics closely, however, not an easy thing to do now that croporations have managed to make democracy look bad during the last 20-25 years...
"but argues that fighting patents one by one will never eliminate the danger of software patents"
May I helpfully suggest tactical nukes?
That's what I've been telling everybody, you have to put all the masquitoes in a jar and then through that giant jar in a fire.
I like suggestions, but I don't like contributing towards them.
Yes and no. You can't litigate 100,000 patents, but challenging just a few from time to time could have a massive deterrent effect. It costs a little to file a patent; it costs a lot to go to court over one. One of the key problems with the present system is that it costs too little to file frivolous patents.
Shoot your local politicians and establish anarchy.
What, I'm just pointing out the easier option;)
LOL... See, this is the kind of weird shit that stallman says that makes people outside the tech industry go:
"What the fuck is that guy talking about?".
To make a part of the castle safe, you've got to do more than kill the monsters as they appear -- you have to wipe out the generator that produces them.
But you'd get a lot more experience points if you leave the generator running and ambush the monsters one-by-one as they emerge.
And this Stallman guy thinks he's a geek. Sheesh!
are what happens when our legislators make laws about things they know nothing about. It seems utterly ridiculous to me that someone could claim that, without a doubt, they are the first person to have come up with a certain algorithm. I mean, only brilliant people actually come up with anything that's worth patenting, yet somehow some lines of code, a for loop or some such stupid thing, ends up getting patented which sums up ranges of numbers. It's beyond me why any software patent exists unless it is a truly outstanding piece of work (i.e. cryptography algorithms, non-obvious sorting algorithms, etc).
Gotta get me one of these!
- The patent is accepted and you can invalidate all patents that follow (as they cover ground your patent now owns). No more software patents!
- The patent is rejected because of prior art. Subsequently, all software patents that follow that piece of prior art should also be invalidated. No more software patents!
The only thing you have to prove is that your patent for the turing machine describes all other possible software patents....Nothing this brief note says is unique to software. Stallman might as well be arguing that any time you design a machine, you might infringe someone's mechanical patent without knowing.
The patent system didn't cause the collapse of the entire Industrial Revolution due to patent infringement, so it seems more than a bit like crying wolf to assume it will be any more harmful with software.
Other than that point, the article is empty of content other than "Software patents are bad; we must have zero of them". No useful tips on how to go about achieving that goal, as the summary promises.
The fact that the patent generation is separate from invention and discovery is one of the main things that will destroy the machine. Personally, I think the solution to the patent process is not to stage a revolution against property rights but to continue to drive the issue that the system for issuing titles for intellectual property is out of kilter.
Fighting and pointing out the absurdities of patent abuse are a very good first step.
BTW, I suspect the typical car has more than 300 patents involved in its creation and manufacture. However, the shear number of patents developers face is a good method to show the problems faced by small businesses...as it is next to impossible to design any idea without touching on a patent of some sort.
You bastard! Copying copyrighted works into Slashdot! Have you no shame! Look it says:
Copyright 2004 Richard Stallman.
Fool.
Hmmm.... wait..... Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article are permitted worldwide without royalty in any medium provided this notice is preserved.
Uh, hmm..... er.... cannot comprehend this use of copyright...
[corporate head explodes]
Fellowship 9/11
All this talk about software patents made me do a little digging, and I found a (pretty good) site relating to them:
http://www.bitlaw.com/software-patent/
Gotta get me one of these!
All patent attorneys know that they can take an application to the board of appeals (or higher) if they want to bother. The only reason they wouldn't is if the examiner builds an airtight case that convinces the attorney that it would be a waste of his time to try. The attorneys know that the people who sit on the board of appeals are patent law experts but not software experts.
If you want to stop software patents, you need to lay off the examiners (they agree with half the stuff said on Slashdot and the other half isn't even close to accurate) and focus on the patent attorneys and the appeal process. Any examiner who has been at the USPTO has issued patents for ideas they believe they have rejected but the board doesn't agree that "simultaneous" means the same thing as "doing two things at once" or some garbage like that. So the patent gets issued and from a legal standpoint, it's a perfectly valid patent. The examiner hates to do it, but the examiner doesn't have a choice.
If you want to fix software patents, focus on the attorneys and the appeal process. The examiners are just trying to do their job without being burnt out by the moronic arguments they deal with on a daily basis.
If more people published more good ideas in the public domain, businesses would have less room for silly software patents. This publication process would need to work with, educate, and support patent examiners -- making it easier for them to deny the more egregious claims before they are issued. And if thousands OSS fanatics can't come up with the idea to keep it out of the clutches of patent-happy companies, then perhaps it was sufficiently innovative and original that it merits a financial rewards of a patent.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Nothing in RMS's argument is specific to software patents. Clearly he believes that all patents should be abolished. That won't get passed in many countries this century!
It is also important to take a two pronged defense/attack on software patents. Giving the analytical arguments against patents, educating developers, and trying to give businesses a real business case why patents neither protects them, nor helps them competitively is the first approach, and a very important one. The second approach is the quantative and qualitative approach giving real figures and projected outcomes. A scientific approach. Here in Aus we are trying to set up a patents watch, now that we are locked into US style patents legislation. This means that in a year, or two years, we have real data on the amounts of trivial patents being attempted, and can realistically speculate on the impact of suh patents if they had been granted. Plus we get the open source community working directly with the people who need help in filtering patents.
:( We can't convince them just with argument, we need to give them proof they can't argue against.
A good eg of what is current in Australian patents:
> Australian Application Number 2004205327
> Title Programming interface for a computer platform
Through this we can hopefully prove that patents should simply not apply to software methods. It makes no sense, stifles innovation, and is an anti-competitive too of the most scary dimensions
raising a war on something that cannot be defeated sounds like bush. might as well wage war on apathy or how about sadness? eh? maybe even A WAR ON DRUGS!
That's funnier than the time I flew some planes into some buidings.
Am I dead yet?
Note that the Gates Foundation is doing much more than swatting the mosquitos one at a time. Note that even They are fighting Malaria by taking out the generator that makes them is an effective technique for other mosquito born diseases:
Interesting how the Open Source community learns mosquito killing techniques from video games, and Gates does for real life. Mean anything?--sounds like a good idea. Make it public enough so that examiners reference it all the time, and make sure they have the URL for it. And send the reference to every patent attorney and politician out there. Making a large repository of prior "thoughts and ideas" might help to mitigate patent frenzy. You could have a sub section where prior art that tends to argue against already issued patents as well. Wiki style is well understood, I would think a lot of developers might drop interesting ideas there just to keep them from getting patented. there's no way to fight industries with boatloads of cash, they are the only ones who can actually apply and get patents by the hundreds, but establishing the prior art is as easy as mashing the "submit" button on your idea, and much cheaper to pull off. Sort of a peer review wiki, concentrating on IP ideas.
Maybe someone with the bandwith and interest can host it, and maybe some legal geeks can write up the mission statement and goals, etc.
Killing off entire generations of mosquitos with
cheap insecticides like DDT could save hundreds of
thousands of lives each year. Unfortunately donor
nations, such as the U.S., tend to balk at paying
for DDT, which is banned in the U.S. Thus, lives
are lost.
The ideal future scenario is that PubPat should
accumulate a massive arsenal of patents, and then
take legal action against infringers throughout
industry, settling only when they agree to
cross-license their patents to the public at large.
By attacking the most eggregious abusers of the
patent system, PubPat could play a role akin to
that of DDT in Malaria abatement.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
1) Shouldn't that be GNU/* 2) You can't fight the smell you have to go after the generator and bathe him. 3) Where's my free beer? 4) Having software patents makes you more free than not.
"The important thing is to educate the politicians. Make them understand why the issue is so important and make them understand what the legislation before them really says." and "Get writing!"
Just as soon as I get through writing uber documentation for this great piece of OSS.
I know I will get crucified and I am by no means an expert but I can't see how "One click", which in my view is completely an absurd patent can be held on the same level as the RSA public/private key patent which seems to hold some validity (at least at a gut feeling level)
-Nuke the moon
YHL. HAND
I don't have a problem with RMS and I even agree with him on a lot of issues outside of IP law (where I, in the interest of full disclosure, mostly do not agree with him).
Richard is, despite what many people say, a good speaker and a good rhetoric. That's not the problem. The problem are those analogies and euphemisms that made pretty much anybody outside of IT go 'ummm. yeah... great...".
IT is not a text-based dungeon game and this is not 1986. You need to sell your ideas, you're not helping if you focus on R&D terminology (I'm not saying there's anything wrong with R&D, it's just not your target audience).
This is one of the reasons businesses don't take us seriously. Wake up - it's no longer us vs. them. If you want to convince people to switch to Linux you need to be professionell.
Sigh. Moderators, please *read* before modding up. Geez. This is one of the "post the article text but with a few changes" jobs.
Note the "European Transvestite Parliament" bit? That's not usually what we call them, and although what they may do on their own time is their own business, I know most of them were conventional attire for their sex at parliamentary sessions.
And note also that we are European, we're not likely to give a fuck if some guy does happen to wear a dress on a hot summer's day anyway. Americans have such strange hangups. No, mustn't show even a hint of tit on screen, but people's heads getting blown up is A-OK. Nutters.
Yes it's insightful to say that RMS is smart. It would be even more insightful to ask ourselves "Why do we treat him the way we do?" then.
Is it possible to use the patent system against itself, in the same way that the GPL counteracts the principle of copyright using copyright law itself?
For example, a public foundation dedicated to holding patents in the public interest. Anyone with an idea could submit it to them; they would then obtain a patent on it, and license it freely to the public, with the exception of companies who use their patent portfolios offensively.
Also, as an attack against software patents, would it be possible for a free developer to patent their own algorithms/widgets etc, and license it *only* for use in GPL'd software?
Is the above legally possible? There's an obvious problem in that most FOSS developers have neither the time nor the expertise, nor the money to apply for patents, but if an organisation could be formed to do that part, I have no doubt that the intellectual citizens of the world can out-invent the corporations obtaining patents.
[I am personally convinced that patents per se are a very bad thing, in any field of endeavour. They run contrary to the spirit of scientific endeavour, and they create a "tragedy of the commons" on a global scale. They also lead to monopolies. Pragamatically, one might make a special exemption for pharmaceutical patents, on the grounds of the huge investment required up front, but even then, such patents should be unenforceable in the 3rd world on grounds of humanitarian necessity.]
Anyone else find it ironic that there is a microsoft add on this page ;)
Actually, the disaster is already here, at least in the USA- have you _seen_ the state of the US software industry lately? It's nearly all lawsuits now instead of just people writing new code.
The only reason the disaster mightn't get to europe is BECAUSE people like RMS and the thousands of europeans supporting the FFII DON'T "shut the fuck up" and DO work to fight the encroaching evil. And, being normally functioning adult humans for the most part, we can do that part-time and continue to code too, funny enough.
Theres only so many ideas out there, and most of them are already known. The key is that not everyone has the time to develop some of the ideas. Its like allowing Ford to patent the tire on cars. www.geocities.com/James_Sager_PA
God spoke to me.
Perhaps I should send this guy a screenshot of a Versalife bathroom ( Deus Ex ) filled with bodies of every killable NPC in the Chinese area. I should really apply this attitude to my current Icewind Dale II game. Those damn shopkeepers and town guards just wanted to cheat me anyway!
*Sigh* RMS isn't that undiplomatic. While AFAICT the rest of the article is a verbatim copy, this is a good reminder of why you shouldn't trust these "in case it gets slashdotted" copies.
Every stage is a crucial stage. If you don't win the first stage - you lose. If you don't win the second stage - ditto. When you are fighting the establishment, you only need to lose once to be comprehensively beaten. Every stage is a knockout round. And the next one is crucial.
RMS will have to trademark those three letters soon, or cede their use to his favorite software giant.
Any tin-foil hatters out there want to say that MSFT chose those three letters on purpose?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Right to read
This article appeared in the February 1997 issue of Communications of the ACM (Volume 40, Number 2).
(from "The Road To Tycho", a collection of articles about the antecedents of the Lunarian Revolution, published in Luna City in 2096)
For Dan Halbert, the road to Tycho began in college--when Lissa Lenz asked to borrow his computer. Hers had broken down, and unless she could borrow another, she would fail her midterm project. There was no one she dared ask, except Dan.
This put Dan in a dilemma. He had to help her--but if he lent her his computer, she might read his books. Aside from the fact that you could go to prison for many years for letting someone else read your books, the very idea shocked him at first. Like everyone, he had been taught since elementary school that sharing books was nasty and wrong--something that only pirates would do.(poisoning of our school system, remember BSA?)
And there wasn't much chance that the SPA--the Software Protection Authority--would fail to catch him. In his software class, Dan had learned that each book had a copyright monitor that reported when and where it was read, and by whom, to Central Licensing. (They used this information to catch reading pirates, but also to sell personal interest profiles to retailers.) The next time his computer was networked, Central Licensing would find out. He, as computer owner, would receive the harshest punishment--for not taking pains to prevent the crime. (DRM-OS! Any takers for palladium?)
Of course, Lissa did not necessarily intend to read his books. She might want the computer only to write her midterm. But Dan knew she came from a middle-class family and could hardly afford the tuition, let alone her reading fees. Reading his books might be the only way she could graduate. He understood this situation; he himself had had to borrow to pay for all the research papers he read. (10% of those fees went to the researchers who wrote the papers; since Dan aimed for an academic career, he could hope that his own research papers, if frequently referenced, would bring in enough to repay this loan.)(Per use licensing! Bill Gates and the RIAA hoos probably masturbate to this every day!!!)
Later on, Dan would learn there was a time when anyone could go to the library and read journal articles, and even books, without having to pay. There were independent scholars who read thousands of pages without government library grants. But in the 1990s, both commercial and nonprofit journal publishers had begun charging fees for access. By 2047, libraries offering free public access to scholarly literature were a dim memory.(The OTHER 1984)
There were ways, of course, to get around the SPA and Central Licensing. They were themselves illegal. Dan had had a classmate in software, Frank Martucci, who had obtained an illicit debugging tool, and used it to skip over the copyright monitor code when reading books. But he had told too many friends about it, and one of them turned him in to the SPA for a reward (students deep in debt were easily tempted into betrayal). In 2047, Frank was in prison, not for pirate reading, but for possessing a debugger.(Well well.. INDUCE ACT?)
Dan would later learn that there was a time when anyone could have debugging tools. There were even free debugging tools available on CD or downloadable over the net. But ordinary users started using them to bypass copyright monitors, and eventually a judge ruled that this had become their principal use in actual practice. This meant they were illegal; the debuggers' developers were sent to prison.(Up to 10 years for downloading a mp3 today under the PIRATE act, 'nuff said!)
Programmers still needed debugging tools, of course, but debugger vendors in 2047 distributed numbered copies only, and only to officially licensed and bonded programmers. The debugger Dan used in software class was kept behind a special firewall so that it could be used only for
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
Perhaps a good way to stop software patents is to demand as taxpayers that every line of code in government software is not infringing, so that patentholders will not sue. That means that every line of ASP, VBA, javascript, html, C++ should be checked before deployment. A good way to start is to check government website for patent infringement. This might destroy the machine from the inside.
You can't patent something that's already been conceived by someone else. You simply need to invent an idea and describe it in extreme detail. Consider all the ways that thing can be used. Just describing the widget isn't enough; describe the widget's potential uses. Commit this to paper, note the inventors and dates, preferably notarized, and publish it to the web in a very public way for all to see. Voila, that thing can never be patented.
If enough people did this, especially in a centralized place like a devoted website, we'd have a lot less stupid business method/software patents. Head them all off at the pass, starting now!
RMS speaks quite carefully with respect to focusing on patents that cover algorithms used in computer software. If you read what RMS says about software patents, you'll see that he recognizes how, for example, automobile patents don't have the same social effect as software patents. Software programmers don't have to deal with all the complexities of physical product designers all the time.
Part of what he says about patents in other fields versus software patents:
He doesn't think the same things about all patents. Read more or hear him talk about patents in other fields and you'll find that he focuses on his expertise.
Digital Citizen
Yes, everyone knows the European Transvestite Parliament is actually in Transylvania.
But someone can take it, add something to it ("on the internet", "with a computer" or "wireless") and patent the whole thing.
at least practically. Our current economic system is brilliant. You've got a small middle class, a huge poor class, and a sliver of Kings. The system encourages the poor to waste their energy becoming middle class and the middle class to waste their energy on not becoming poor. Meanwhile the rich are laughing all the way to the bank. You don't need to look far to see the evidence. People are too busy living their lives to care about patents and copyrights. You don't spend 50+ hours a week getting by and then the rest of your time mailing letters off to your congressman. You spend that time relaxing, or with your kids, or your hobbies. The key is to always hold out the promise that things will be better, if only you'll just work a little harder....
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
... we have plenty examples from teh patenting of the wheel to swinging sideways on a swing...
To tell us that its not what the subject or a patent application is but rather how it is written out, how it is made to appear or sound novel and all the other things that are required to qualify as a patentable object.
SOOOO.... and likewise, writting the same subject out in a manner using terms of that which is not patentable can invalidate patents. This can go as far as root or core subjects in software that can then cause a casscading effect thru any number of patents.
Of teh subject matter that is not patentable, you have natural law, physical phenomenon and abstract ideas. (these are the top three)..... Now how about the natural laws of teh physical phenomenon of abstraction creation and use?
have doubts? then see my home page and follow towards the virtual interaction configuration. Or do a google search on - MS book Software factories - and read my comments and follow the links I give..
If a town has only one lawyer, then (s)he starves. If the town has two lawyers, then they're both rich. The moral of the story is that lawyers know how to create work for themselves, and they are carving our a new niche in the software industry.
Perhaps you should collect data on how all the lawyer expenses are just a ball and chain around the industry. Thus, the numbers of $$$ spent on patent attorneys, legal fees, court cases and such.
Then you can argue that other than killing innovation, creating artificial barriers to entry and a software oligarchy, the industry is also spending $$$ on this complete waste of time.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Look, the basic ideal is "nobody can patent ideas". The very concept is foreign to the concepts of patent in the first place: Patents place "ideas" in the public domain. Nobody is allowed to duplicate the exact implementation, but somebody who improves on the "idea" can patent their specific "implementation" of that "idea".
Software patents seem to concentrate on patenting "ideas", not on patenting "implementations". And that's wrong!
It has been a belief of mine that if we can't fight to get rid off software patents, maybe we could use them to our advantage.
Bascically, the plan would to patent every thing under the sun we developers could think of, then release all the patents to the public domain, thus protecting everyone's right to use the ideas freely and protecting the ideas from being patented by others and used against us.
"In contrast, implementing a new idea in software costs very little and requires no skills beyond those of the average programmer, and communication is very fast."
You're partially right. A programmer may be able to impliment the idea. That's NOT the same thing as discovering the idea. There's a reason Computer Science exists. Someone has to discover the ideas, that programmers impliment.
Copyright 2004 Richard Stallman.
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article are permitted worldwide without royalty in any medium provided this notice is preserved.
Gotta how RMS makes his own information free, but only with the conditions HE agrees to.
Either it's free, or it's not.
Steve
Gotta how RMS makes his own information free, but only with the conditions HE agrees to.
Either it's free, or it's not.
That's the nature of the GPL as well. The information / code is free. It's *you* who are limited , in that you can't take away that freedom.
The fact that no one understands you doesn't mean you're an artist.
It is simply because he doesn't want to be quoted out of context. I recall there being some problems with this in the past.
Umm, It's already here.
Personally, I am not sure that software patents are the overarching threat that people make them out to be. IANAL, though I have done some reading into patent law and have been thinking about the role of patents in the software industry for quite a while. I used to be afraid of them, but not anymore. Here is why:
1) The really dangerous patents (say, required to interop with Microsoft software) may be vulnerable to court-ordered licensing in terms useable by the competition as per anti-trust law. (Again, IANAL).
2) Although the theoretical danger of software patents partially revolves around the fact that nearly every software patent will be obsolete long before it expires, this actually serves to kill encumbered technology (such as GIF) because people are realizing that they don't want to be tied to dead-end technology. With unencumbered technology legacy integration is far more straightforward, and the cost is usually lower too. So encumbered technology only lasts a couple years before it is superceded by "good enough" unencumbered technology. By encumbered, I mean software technology with comparitively onerous patent licensing conditions.
Look at the popularity of GIF today compared to PNG. Compare to where everyone was when Unisys decided to pursue their patent rights. This is a case in point regarding how patent encumbrance kills encumbered technology.
3) Patents are *expensive* to enforce. After a few such suits and the fact that in the end they won't get much in the way of damages, companies will decide that suing open source projects over patents is simply not worth it and will go away.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I was thinking of some sort of website, done in PHP and MySQL or something. It would allow for people to file ideas, any ideas that they can think of. These would of course get stored in a database, which would then be available to the public. People could then comment on the ideas, come up with better ideas, etc.
Should Exist might interest you.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Wow, I would have assumed France!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
...any more than you can expect to kill every monster in a video game: sooner or later, one is going to defeat you...
Not if I activated the god code!
Probably because the patent system then still paid more than lip-service to the terms "new" and "non-obvious" as necessary conditions for a valid patent.
This problem is not unique to software - see http://www.inventored.org/inventors/Kearns/patents .html for someone who is proud to have several patents on something that was almost certainly not new nor non-obvious (variable intermittent screen wipers) yet was upheld by the courts.
I think Linux too needs an foundation which can
file patents on behalf of linux developers. These
pool of linux patents should then be used a
weapon against companies who file patent
infringment suits against linux users.
For example, a public foundation dedicated to holding patents in the public interest. Anyone with an idea could submit it to them; they would then obtain a patent on it, and license it freely to the public
This isn't necessary. All you have to do to accomplish this is to publish the information. In a paper, on the net, wherever, as long as it's dated.
Once published, something can never be patented.
That comment reveals a major misconception. You assume that if the pols knew what was best for the country, they'd do it.
It's very difficult to get elected to Congress. The rewards for getting elected are huge, so there's a lot of competition (at the stage where it matters - getting nominated by the incumbent party). You have to be very smart to succeed.
You may be thinking, "But pols are always saying stupid things, so how can they be smart?" Understand the answer to that question, and you will understand a lot about modern politics.
What a politician says has nothing to do with what he/she believes. A politician says whatever is most likely to result in re-election.
Educating pols is pointless. They're smarter than you, and better informed. Your only chance is to persuade voters to vote for better pols. That's extremely difficult, because corporate dollars are always against you. But it's always harder to do something effective than to do something pointless.
That actually looks a lot like a software program to me, the only difference being the language it's written in.
Now, wouldn't there be patents that describe algorithms that are actually used in the lawbooks too? That way, you could either make the lawmakers see that patenting software is like patenting lawmaking, or, if the lawmakers argue that the important thing here is the different language the laws are written in, then you could write a Law-to-C translator, that translates algorithms described in a law-like language to C (or any other computer-language).
Is to make ordinary people who aren't involved with IT care about the issues.
RMS started the free(dom) software movement because he was losing a lifestyle he cherished.
Big money corporate players are starting to use their influence on the goverment to curb open source. The only way the free(dom) and open source people can stop this is to get strengt in numbers......ordinary people.
Ordinary people are not acquainted with all of this stuff and if they were they don't have a non-abstract reason to care. It is just not part of their world.
The best way to get them to care..........enough to yell at their representatives if the government pulls a fast one..........is to give them software that they love.
That means easy to use.........not what a geek considers to be "easy enought"....and user support communities without an attitude about people who have no desire to make computers their avocation.
A good offense. The free software movement should apply for patents on methods used in its own source code.
When threatened with legal action for violation of a software patent, having a portfolio of our own patents would provide a means of defense. The company threatening us could be told to lay off, or we will search our own portfolio for patents that their software is using without a license.
IBM, Microsoft, Sun, et. al., use this defense themselves. For-profit vendors of software are in a constant state of violation of one anothers patents. None of them seek enforcement, because it is a situation of mutually assured destruction.
It is not logically inconsistent for the free software movement to oppose software patents and at the same time patent its own methods as a means of defense, so long as software patents continue to exist.
When Richard first mooted his ideas (widely reported at the time by Byte) we all nodded and said "yes, this is how it ought to be" and stood by and ignored him. Don't *ever* dis that guy. He's got more balls than 100 of us together in the same room.
If he didn't exist we'd have to invent him. The bad guys *have* to have demons to fear too don't you think?
Personally, I hope and pray that someone sends RMS, ESR Guido and a few others on a world tour
around universities so they can really kick ass...
It would beat hearing Deep Purple from Lykavitos
any day...
Just my 0.02 euro...
(Hey Paul, fund them please (quick Allen joke)).
Or the Highway. Richard wants the whole world to think as he does and for some reason thinks shoving his philosophy down the throats of others will be helpful. I don't disagree with what he is saying, I just wish he'd stop trying to get back at MIT for letting The Man take away his programming buddies. He would come across as much more rational if he let the chip on his shoulder slip off.
Having read thru the threads, it seems we should put all of the patentable ideas that we might have into an open central dated source. Publishing in this manner establishes a compendium of "prior art". To do this well, we should ask the examiners @ USPTO how to organize and link categories. Then we should have inventors and engineers tell us how it could be useful to them. It then becomes a centralized resource for examiners to review while allowing those interested in sharing ideas an effective resource. See related topics: Ask The USPTO, Patent Generators, Make More Prior Art
Lost in space at an early age. Survived the vacuum. Now rebuilding castle in air.
Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks: temporary loans from the Public Domain, not real property ("intellectual" or otherwise)
Tinfoil hat alert. Better get yours now. Oh, and buy gold.
Did you even read the parent post?
[ I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance ] -- Isaac Asimov
- Include the submission date and any other date the author supplied
- Request (or, better yet, require) within their submission guidelines that authors include dates in their submissions
in the interest of invalidating or at least shortening future patents, this might take care of itself. I don't know enough about the ACM or IEEE or their journals to know if they care or are corrupt, but...Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks: temporary loans from the Public Domain, not real property ("intellectual" or otherwise)
And note also that we are European, we're not likely to give a fuck if some guy does happen to wear a dress on a hot summer's day anyway. Americans have such strange hangups. No, mustn't show even a hint of tit on screen, but people's heads getting blown up is A-OK. Nutters.
Well if they'd been wearing dresses and shown a bit of tit then we'd have not had to see their heads getting blown up.
(Though the lack of concern in Europe for men wearing dresses and tits on the telly may explain away their apathy for real world matters such as terrorist bombings. "Oh who cares if a few Jews got blown up. We're not allowed to see their mangled carcasses anyhow and I'd much rather continue watching these cute transexuals showing their tits. Tell me if the Jews shoot a terrorist before he can blow them up and I'll tear my eyes away form the telly long enough to express my outrage.")
Hey! That article you copied was copyrighted!:
You infriged on the copyright by not including the following (copied from http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html)
Copyright 1996 Richard Stallman
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved
Say I hire 100 top computer scientists for a year and they find a way to sort text strings in O(n*log(log(n))) time instead of O(n*log(n)) for the average text in real life programs (If you think that's impossible, radix sort is O(n) for small integers).
After the project is finished, I am $10M in the red just by paying $100K salary which is not unreasonable for a talanted individual in Bay Area. Add health insurance, office rent, bank interest and it can be easily double that amount. How do you propose I cover that cost? An $20M government grant is not a sure thing for something relatively obscure. Asking people to work for free and starve their families doesn't sound right. Maybe charge $1/copy to a spreadsheet developer who wants to use faster sorting time as an edge over Excel? Hmm, we might have something here.
This is not justifying ridiculous patents like Amazon's 1-click or Apple's iPod scroll wheel. Also, the reason patents are published is to promote further innovation, so there has to be an exception for free software used for non-profit purpose. But if you want to abolish the whole instituation, you better prepare to cough up tax for those $20M grants.
Another stupid slashdotter agreeing with whateva RMS says.
bloody user... not an inventor.
From your friendly patent attorney
And that's precisely *why* we need software patents. Not all algorithms have been discovered. The primary reason people are against software patents is that they believe that *all* software patents are merely algorithms which are "obvious to experts in the field". That's simply not true.
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
... and every software patent unjustly restricts how you use your computer ...
More serious, the key issue - IMHO.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)