Slashdot Mirror
Torvalds Joins Anti-Patent Attack
canuck57 sent us a story about Linus
Torvalds has joined the chorus of voices speaking out against software patents. Talks briefly about the recent patent releases by IBM & Sun, and notes that there are 'an estimated 150,000 to 300,000 registered software patents in the U.S. alone.'
Most of their patents are hardware, but they do have some software patents.
They do have a strong reliance on the open source community (Mac OS X contains a ton of open source code, as does Safari).
I'm guessing they will in the next year follow IBM's lead an open up a bit.
As to what they will make available, and what they will not, I really don't have a clue. Any guesses welcome.
I find it ironic that Slashdot is always slamming software patents, when at the same time, in their company's 10Q and 10K statements, they're discussing how they are going to profit from creating and defending software patents. Beautiful.
I don't respond to AC's.
That's the question: when do you say it's too trivial? When do you say it's complex enough to be granted patent protection? It can be determined by the courts, but the patent office makes the initial decision, and if unchallenged, sets a precedent.
A blog like any other.
It looks like the article picked a few lines out where Linus said that many of the software patents that have been issued shouldn't have, and added a lot of filler to make it look like he's saying that software patents are inherently bad.
I don't see anything in what he said that says that software patents shouldn't ever be issued, only that in a lot of cases, they were issued in violation of the USPTO's own rules.
"Joins the attack" is a bit overzealous, to say the least.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Pretty easy, if it does not exist in the patent office, try to push it through and see what happens. About all these companies do anymore. Prior art does not mean squat.
If this trend does not stop there are going to be two groups of software developed. Those corporations of large massive power who have either bought up or squashed with patent lawsuits (and then bought up) and those developers of freeware. What will that mean for consumers? Higher prices or go running for a free alternative.
Who knows, in 20 years, if all the middle competition is destroyed, companies like IBM, Solaris, etc, could go after Linux and GNU because they are cutting into their bottom line.
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
I mean, this is a political problem and I am not sure how Linus is perceived by politicians (outside Finland where he appears to be well-known).
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Torvalds was reluctant to make predictions though. "I'm the anti-visionary. I distrust people with visions," he said. "You don't see what's right in front of your face and you don't see the technical issues that face everyday users."
While I don't think he'll ever say it directly, this is as clear as he ever needs to be when it comes to his opinion of RMS.
a new business process that gives you a competitive advantage can make the difference between sink or swim.
For almost 20 years? Maybe when we're talking car engines here the "mindspace" in inventions is wearing thin enough that someone coming up with a better way of doing it should be rewarded by killing off all the other car makers, but lets take a look at Microsoft, our favorite bogeyman. How many thousands of patents do they have? When was the last time they were driven to innovate in the OS field? Win 3.11 -> Win 95? NT 3.5->4? Everything since then has just been a prettier 95, and 2000 was 95's offspring crossed with NT4's. Meanwhile, they're failing to innovate the features they've promised for Longhorn, and we're watching as Longhorn gets farther and farther away even as it sheds features like a mangy dog. Fat lot of good those thousands of patents are doing them in developing the next generation OS, maybe we should increase the patent length to 30 years so that while Microsoft does jack, they can at least stop other programmers from innovating faster than they can.