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.)

Comments

Re:Make more prior art

[Anonymous Coward]

At the very least, PUT A DATE ON YOUR STUFF. If you have webpages from college where you explain what you did for your senior project, make sure it is clearly dated. If you have a PDF of a research paper you wrote, freaking date the thing on the first page. If you maintain a FAQ for a ubiquitous software concept, keep a "updated on: " line in each section.

You won't know it when you're cited in an examiner's rejection of a patent, but I promise you that many times an examiner finds a great piece of art on the internet that they would love to use except it isn't dated. There are mountains of people's research papers in PDF form that are on the internet but do not clearly display a date. If it doesn't have a date, it's useless to the examiner.

This is the number one thing that "everybody" can do to help prevent questionable patents and it only takes a tiny bit of time.

Re:in case it gets slashdotted

[Gorath99]

The European Transvestite Parliament voted a year ago to reject software patents conclusively.

*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.

RMS focuses on what he knows: computer software.

[jbn-o]

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:

The reason is that in other fields people have to deal with the propensity of matter. When you are designing circuits or cars or chemicals, you have to face the fact that these physical substances will do what they do, not what they are supposed to do. We in software don't have that problem and that makes it tremendously easier. We are designing a collection of idealised mathematical parts which have definitions. They do exactly what they are defined to do.

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.