Patent Concerns Unlikely To Nix Munich Linux Plan

MonkeyDev writes "Yahoo is reporting that Munich is ready to move forward with plans to 'abandon Microsoft Windows in favor of upstart rival Linux. The council is expected to take a calculated risk and vote through the move, despite concerns about possible software patent infringements in the face of coming European Union legislation that caused months of delay.' Not everyone is excited about it. A software developer at MySQL claims 'Linux violates 283 U.S. software patents.' How does the Linux community respond to these claims?" (Florian Mueller, the MySQL developer mentioned, isn't opposed to Munich using Linux, though -- just the opposite.) Update: 09/29 02:22 GMT by T : Marten Mickos of MySQL AB writes with a correction: "Florian Müller is an independent software developer and entrepreneur. He is ALSO an advisor to MySQL AB but he does not work for the company. He is presently engaged in coordinating opposition against software patents in EU, and thereby doing all of us within free software and open source a great favour."

Comments

claims ?

[Anonymous Coward]

A software developer at MySQL claims 'Linux violates 283 U.S. software patents.' How does the Linux community respond to these claims?"

Hmmm, easy answer : back up your claims, show us the list.

Re:claims ?

[zyridium]

Bad bad idea... If they are publicly identified then they have to be defended....

These are US software patents

[virgil_attack]

Why would these guys in Munich be concerned with violating US software patents? Just as long as they don't become European software patents (although that doesn't look like happening).

re violation of n US patents

[pfriedma]

I wish that developers would, instead of noting that such violations exist, correct them. Now... this is not always possible... for instance, I'm sure that a patent or copyright exists for "displaying multiple pages through the use of a clickable scroll bar" and undoubtedly, more than one OS has this functionality. Perhaps the issue will boil down to not whether or not parts of Linux violate copyrights but rather, whether or not said copyrights are even enforceable in the first place?

Re:re violation of n US patents

[ThogScully]

That's the point... largely, software patents don't deal with truly clever ways of accomplishing things. They deal with obvious things that are practically accepted as standard methods of doing things. They are written to prevent other projects from achieving interoperation without stepping on patents.

If software patents only covered truly novel ideas like the patent system was initially designed to do, then no one would have a problem with them.

I look at it like this... good patents cover the way something is accomplished and bad patents cover the accomplishment. A good patent something like a particular method of preparing a chemical that is particuarly difficult normally to prepare. A bad patent is patenting that chemical, regardless of how it's prepared, as if that chemical's existence is owed to the patent holder.

It's hard to make up a good example of this with software, because any program you use, you're only seeing the output, but that may well be the patented methods, like a scrollbar in your example, which could be implemented many different ways of course.

-N

Upstart?

[Slapdash X. Hashbang]

when does Linux stop being an "upstart" in the popular press? It's getting on to 15 years old, and it's quite prevalent already.

Re:Upstart?

[pHatidic]

An operating system is upstart when someone you know is using it, it becomes prevalent when you yourself start to use it.

Re:Can someone explain software patents?

[evslin]

I doubt it. The thing is ... how many lines of code go into a Linux distribution, and can you expect that the general public is gonna go through all of the source on their own and try to determine if any of it was stolen? Even if you looked through the kaleidescope long enough and tried to make it look like they were receiving stolen property, that'd be a tough mountain for the prosecution to climb if something like this went to court.

linux patent violation #1:

[deathcloset]

How about Math.

Please explain to me why a computer program is not simply a gigantic math problem?

Can it's processing not be broken down into nothing more than binary operations of a function. A formula that some determined individual may write out longhand?

Sure, that blackboard may stretch to the moon (and be made of carbon nanotubes), but it is an equation nonetheless.

is it not?

I mean, it takes input values, and returns output values.

It's just a really useful math problem.

When did we suddenly become able to patent Mathematics?

Re:linux patent violation #1:

[torokun]

If you reduce any machine or process to inputs, *a function* and outputs, you could say they're all mathematics.

But the difference in function has meaning to us, practical meaning, as humans. Software that can reliably pinpoint tumors in medical images is not "just mathematics." It has meaning and it has social ramifications.

You are trying to look at the issue, as many of the people here on slashdot try to do, completely objectively. That is, you are tending in the direction of trying to see the universe as it is without any subjective human categorizations. But human life and human society do not and cannot function this way.

There are distinctions that we can make between software and mathematics. The fact that you can generalize and generalize until everything is mathematics says nothing about what the practical attributes of software are.

In other words, you are looking at the uber-parent class's properties and methods instead of the ultimate derived class's properties and methods.

According to this logic, you might argue that all english textual trademarks are just letters, and letters are just information which can be represented in binary, which means they are all just numbers, so there's no reason to prefer any one number over another. To paraphrase, "Since when did we get to register numbers as trademarks?" Clearly, by this point, you've lost all concept of the actual properties of various trademarks in the human environment.

I think I'll just stop here. ;)

The Linux Community's Answer

[Featureless]

'Linux violates 283 U.S. software patents.' How does the Linux community respond to these claims?'

You pulled 283 out of your ass. Those are just the ones you know about. You know why you pulled that number out of your ass? It's impossible to review the whole patent database and screen it against the whole of Linux. Humanly impossible. 283 is a made up number. May as well say 2,830 or 283,000.

An exact count of how many software patents are violated by Microsoft Windows, for instance, would be equally impossible - nay, more, because they keep their source code a secret; however, it is incontravertibly a similar if not higher number.

If you try to follow the U.S. software patent system you won't even be able to power a pocket calculator without a half-million dollars for attorneys and payoffs. Yes, you think I'm exaggerating, don't you.

That's why 100% of Americans ignore their own system. Everybody knows its ridiculous. Even SP's major proponents are afraid to use them because they fear the whole system will unravel if they test it, so all they do is occasionally shake people down, hit and run once and a while. They want to sue Linux over patents; they've been desperate to do it for years, and they're too scared of how badly it will backfire. They're probably right. So they're reduced to backdoors like SCO. And we see how well that cleverness works for them.

No so fast

[deadline]

Linux violates 283 U.S. software patents

If some one said this to me, I would take the "Groklaw Approach". I would ask them first, what are the specific patents and second, how can he be sure that Linux violates all these patents. It would seem to me that to do a fair assessment of 283 patents would take a fair amount of time. So let's see the details.

My guess is that his answers would consist of words like "I", "don't", and "know".

Re:Wrong Job

[jdhutchins]

Linux using patented ideas may or may be a great problem. Some of these patents are probably in code contributed by companies. When you open up code under the GPL, you are also saying you won't use those patents against derivatives of that code (that's part of the GPL). So 'violating' may be the wrong word in this case, becuase is (hopefully all) of the cases, they've been given to the Linux movement.

Besides, I'm sure Microsoft has looked into patents that Linux might violate, becuase they're looking to destroy Linux, and a legimate patent claim would certaintly help. If they had found something, I'm sure they would have used it by now.

But everyone doesn't have patents

[MCRocker]

That's how the (software) patent game works. It's virtually impossible to avoid violating patents due to the very nature of software. When challenged, the big guns go through their patent portfolio and can usually find something that the challenger violates in some way. Then, a cross licensing agreement is hammered out. Thus, the big fish are protected, but any small fry can't compete.

So, yes, everyone is guilty, but the IBM's of this world can weather the war just fine, while everyone else gets wiped out. In fact, the war is already in full swing and has simply become part of doing business.

I think RMS covers this in his speech The dangers of software patents.

If patents applied to law practices...

[MCRocker]

It's interesting to note that patents apply to all sorts of unlikely things like software and business processes, but not to legal strategies, practices or processes. It seems as if the lawyers realized how badly that would muck them up and haven't applied the patent pricipals to their own field. I guess that there's lots of money to be made from messing up everyone else's business, but not their own.

It would be very bizarre to hear an objection to a legal argument because someone else owned the right to make arguments of they style that the motion used. Perhaps only Johny Cochraine could "play the race card" or something like that. Every other law firm might have to pay him a royalty to use the argument.

If someone could come up with a clear demonstration showing that software patents are as sensible as legal strategy patents, then I'll bet that the supreme court would overturn the current incarnation of the patent laws in a heart beat.

Re:Wrong Job

[AstroDrabb]

Besides, I'm sure Microsoft has looked into patents that Linux might violate, becuase they're looking to destroy Linux, and a legimate patent claim would certaintly help. If they had found something, I'm sure they would have used it by now.

Well, the only thing MS could sue over would be patent violations of MS patents. Florian Müller who claims to have examined _all_ of the Linux kernel and found 283 patent violation, might not have found any MS held patents. Howver, I doubt Florian Müller's claims are correct on the number of patent violations. It would take tons of research not to mention complete knowlege of all US software patents to know what to even look for. That is why I doubt Florian Müller's claims.