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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.'
Unfortunately, Linus was immediately sacked for infringing on my patent: Patent 1,234,567: Speaking against software patents in a public forum.
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.
PLEASE let that term just disappear and never be used again...
The two will likely merge, with today's spam list sellers producing software that is guaranteed to generate 100,000 software patents a day.
And don't dare to delete that spam. You will see a message in it that says "The methodology of pressing a delete screen button or similar control on a web form in order to ignore email advertising is covered under US Patent 4,005,544,202,499,003-A. If you attempt this, you will be charged with a patent violation."
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
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.
I'd say any software patent is bad, simply because they're so ambiguous. It doesn't matter if the company in question is supposedly benevolent, or that they're not actively enforcing them: all it takes is a single lawyer with no scruples to cause a lot of pain. In any organization of significant size, you can rest assured they've got at least one bastardly lawyer.
Not only that, but there couldn't possibly be that many new, patentable techniques or technologies being discovered. Is it actually good practice to patent everything? While it might be "good" for open source with IBM supporting us and all, what's it do to the smaller companies that get (potentially) shafted by such absurdity? At the very least, it increases their cost of development due to necessary research.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
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.
If this isn't the first time he's spoken out against them, then why is it news?
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
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
Hmm.....now I know why my kernel patch submission to him was rejected!
The Green Party argues that the former patent criteria, which has been abandoned, is adequate in protecting innovation. For example, there's a clause that states that an idea can't be patented if the idea is obvious to a typical practitioner in the field. I recall this from a Green Party interview in a magazine, pardon me for not providing a direct quote.
I don't think we should be able to patent processes at all.
A process is the ultimate business advantage. If you can come up with it, you deserve to reap the rewards from using it. Not from selling it to or litigating against some other group.
This is where the system breaks down. Some things are not meant to be non-freely shared around society.
Patents should return to whence they came. Physical objects.
Copyrights should return to whence they came. Expression of ideas.
Processes are neither, and therefore shouldn't be covered by either.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
I am not against software patents. I think they are a good thing. However, we seriously need to reconsider what is considered patentable. Some of the approved patents are blatantly absurd, and actually hurt commerce.
Patents are desiged to encourage innovation (as ou rightly point out). But big business has twisted gov't's arm so much that they no longer serve the interests of the people as a whole. For a ridiculous example of COPYRIGHT protection: The 'Happy Birthday' song is still protected... found this out when I wanted to add it to an app I wrote... Patents are similarly absurd.
So, like most other things I fall squarely in the middle of the two camps, and get shot at from both sides.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
where do we draw the line between complex and common
The test is that the invention (at the time it was invented) was not obvious to someone skilled in the area/field of the invention. If it was commonly known at the time then it won't qualify. There are other conditions, too, described on the USPTO website. Actually, they say it better than I did: "it may be said to be nonobvious to a person having ordinary skill in the area of technology related to the invention".
EricSome Vioxx spam humor
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.
I have to disagree somewhat.
I don't think we should be able to patent business processes or software processes at all. However manufacturing processes should be patentable.
I'll clarify that a little bit too. The process that should be patentable would be the process for say creating a specific alloy or chemical where it is not simple. Along the lines of non-obvious to someone in the field.
What shouldn't be patentable is the how do I assemble product X
Twenty years later, after a recent bumpy ride in the IT sector, investors (who generally understand little in terms of technoloy) would not invest unless they see there is some IP protection -- a.k.a. patents. Hence, the pressure for software patent legislation comming from companies that want to positively attract investor's attention. Big sharks such as M$ shouldn't really need software patents unless everybody else moves in that direction. They also probably learned a lot from big Pharma that patent everything they "discover" and then license those "discoveries" out to smaller companies. It's a different game these days, a different kind of race that, I'm afraid, the small fish (read: open-source developers) will unfortunately lose.
Yeah, it's almost like the slashdot editors are allowed to voice their own views and not follow a company line set out by the people who own the site. Imagine that, editorial freedom in a news site! What a novel idea!
It's downright unamerican!
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
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.
They will all trip over themselves at some point, and any code you write can always infringe on some software patent.
Here's a proof that any code can infringe on other code (which could be patented).
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
If software can't be copyrighted or trademarked (note I do not include patented), here is what would be legal:
I could take a companies software the day it was released, make copies of it and sell it for whatever I wanted. Think Game companies have problems now? Just wait until they can't do anything.
I could make a game called HALF LIFE 2, and sell it online and people would have to worry about buying my game vs. the original game. And the Makers of Half Life couldn't fo jack.
The GPL would become worthless as it relies on copyrights in ordeer to work. This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License.
I'll agree with you on the Patenting of software (although there might be an option for using it to a limited extent, say 3 years). But copyrights and trademarks of software are necessary.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Part of the problem is that the US Patent Office has been lax in granting patents, said Mitchell Kapor, a founder of Lotus Development and a prominent backer of the Mozilla browser. "There have been tens of thousands of bad software patents issued which never would have been issued if the Patent Office had actually been following its own rules," he said.
...
The patent laws make some degree of sense. The patent office does not. The stuff they let through is totally unbelievable.
You can either wait to be hit with an infringement case (not a lot of fun) or you can submit a reexamination request to the PTO.
The worse thing you can do is to read the patents of your competition. Once you do that, you had better react quickly. Willful infringement in the US gets you treble damages.
What a wonderful world we live in
I have often wondered how many software "inventions" would not exist today if software wasn't patentable. In other words, has the patentabilty of software resulted in any software "inventions" that otherwise would not have existed? My gut feeling (and that's all it is) is that there aren't many (any?) such "inventions". (inventions in quotes 'cause I find it difficult to think of any software as being an invention).
So, do software patents really encourage innovation? Are there clear examples of this? Or, are software patents just for the use of large corporations limiting competition from small outfits?
So, like most other things I fall squarely in the middle of the two camps, and get shot at from both sides.
;)
Please, let me
Seriously though, consider this: I write a piece of software. I'm a total geek and a math wiz and it turns out I manage to create a really nice algorythm for [insert tech word here].
I want to make money off this or maybe share it to the community, regardless it's released and distributed and one beautiful morning I'm being sued for patent violations. Turns out some big company thought of this a good 10 years ago and has a patent on doing roughly the same thing my algorythm does.
What did I do wrong? Why am I being punished? Is this fair? This wasn't an obvious thing to patent, I'm just a bright kid and stumbled across it.
This is not a "nothing is perfect"-thing, this is a serious flaw. Patents (especially in software) means no one has any rights what so ever, *unless* you happen to be the first guy figuring something out, in which case you suddenly have *all* and exclusive rights.
I'm not taking about patenting obvious things: with patents no one is allowed to invent things unless they're the first one. It doesn't matter if you figured it out all by yourself, if someone beat you to it you simply have no rights.
How is that fair?
Life is Reality
Last Nov., Linus co-authored an appeal to the EU opposing software parents. Read it at nosoftwarepatents.com. That's about as clear as you can get, I think.
(By the way, don't forget to thank Poland.)
There is, but it involves going to court.
But that is the big problem.
The whole patent system needs reforming. Patents are too easy to get, can be obtained for ideas that are trivial extensions of existing ideas (particularly in the software area)- and there's little or no downside to getting such a patent. So companies just play the percentages, get lots and lots of patents.
Meanwhile, individuals are rarely well advised to get patents- a patent is just a license to sue, but individuals often can't afford to sue anyway, so then the patent isn't worth the paper it is printed on.
There's also big problems with patents in that nobody really knows what a patent covers. Remember that patent that BT 'had' on the world wide web? It wasn't a slam dunk that they wouldn't win that one, it was close. Patents don't only cover the exact invention, they also cover similar inventions. And the web was sorta similar to their patent; but the court decided it was too far, in that case, a different court might have decided otherwise. That's what makes it all impossibly complex.
To make things worse, many software patents usually don't come with a useful description of how to actually do stuff, which is sad, since software can be documented by the sourcecode and printed.
That would be stupid- a patent application has to be written so that one 'skilled in the art' is able to reproduce the invention. Not doing that might well invalidate the patent.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"[Sorry buddy, but I already have a patent on the process of threatening someone with lawyers in order to get money from something.]
And I'm sure you are aware that you are infringing my patent on threats in italics.
When they will grant a patent for getting a cat to chase a laserpointer
I think it should be obvious that USPTO doesn't really have the ability to judge whether or not a patent is merited. How can granting patents willy-nilly help things?
For software of all things?