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Stallman Unimpressed by Nokia Patent Pledge
Joe Barr writes "NewsForge is running a commentary by Richard Stallman on the recent PR blitz by Nokia concerning their promise not to enforce patent claims against the Linux kernel project. Stallman's take? "In effect, Nokia is lobbying the European Union to give Nokia and many others a new kind of weapon to shoot at software authors and users with--and telling the legislators, 'Don't worry, it's safe to let private armies carry these guns, because we promise that our gunmen won't shoot anyone in that building.'""
...and Hitler promised that he would stop after annexing the sudetenland. Appeasment and promises never work. I hope the EU doesn't give in. We've seen what happens when they (europeans) do. (Of course, we aren't talking about World War 3 here, but still, we've seen what happens)
I have this really funny quote that I like to put here. Unfortunately, there's this really annoying thing called a char
Previously unenforced laws suddenly being enforced has historically led to massive resentment and revolution. Some of the taxation that was collected prior to the american war for independence had been on the books for some time. Imagine what would happen in the us if police routinely started pulling people over for speeding only a few miles over the speedlimit. (provided that they, of course, removed the uncertainty from the guestimation of the speed of trave)l.
On the other hand, reminds me a bit of the 'patriot' act. Oooh, don't worry, we'll only use it for the terrorists (which we now include people who disagree with the president).
Lack of enforcement is a tricky tricky thing. I've always thought that regulations should represent how things work, not the way we wish they worked. Saves this kind of doublespeak from occurring.
The patent pledge is important: it removes the uncertainty that Nokia might find its (already) patented tech in Linux, and sue; Nokia guarantees they wouldn't. But it's mostly important to Nokia. I'm not aware of any credible evidence that any Nokia tech is actually in the kernel, so it's really more of a gesture. And a way to warn off future inclusion of their tech in kernels, by saying "we were generous before, don't exploit your friends".
But Stallman is right about the other Nokia stance on European patents. They're bad, for Nokia like everyone else in the long run. They prevent Nokia from improving on innovation elsewhere. With a big company that can't take risks like small developers, Nokia benefits from unimpeded traffic in software. And as a hardware vendor, more software sells their products, with a protected base that can be protected by valid, traditional hardware patents.
Stallman's also right that Nokia's "harmless" patent guarantee is more important as propaganda to mollify the Linux community, their most dangerous opponent in the EU patent debate. We should accept their guarantee on its own merits, but not grant an inch on the meritless demands to chain innovation.
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make install -not war
What Stallman should do instead is put together a LARGE portfolio of patents based on GNU software. I'm sure there's a ton of patentable inventions in FOSS, and I'm also sure many developers wouldn't mind patenting their stuff to protect it from being ripped off by large corporations, given that FSF holds the patent and provides a perpetual, royalty free license to whoever wants to use it for developing open source, GPL/LGPL licensed software.
Let's face it, software patents as ridiculous as they are, are here to stay. This is why to stay in the game an organization like FSF needs a large protective patent portfolio (kinda like the one Microsoft has).
This also creates some money making opportunities for FSF, because they could sue the most vehement opponents of FOSS software pretty much at will for infringement on FSF and its contributors' "intellectual property" and request ridiculous sums of money in damages.