Perens Dismisses Torvald's Patent Pool

ficken writes "Open source activist Bruce Perens has dismissed as inadequate a new IP initiative backed by Linus Torvalds. The Open Source Development Labs' (OSDL) patent commons project is intended to provide patent protection to open source developers. Perens, speaking at LinuxWorld, compared the patent pool to "spitting in the wind" -because the patents it contained come from "the wrong people.""

Comments

Some FUD spreading perhaps?

[cc-rider-Texas]

He noted open source infringes on "tens of thousands" of patents granted in the US and that companies taken to court over these would "lose some of the cases."

I sure wish he would have given some examples of these "tens of thousands" because IMHO that is just a thrown out figure aka FUD.

Re:Some FUD spreading perhaps?

[Russ Nelson]

A patent only gives you the legal right to sue somebody. It doesn't give you the resources to succeed in your suit. Nor does bringing suit prevent the plaintiff from implementing a work-around for the patent. Look at what Keith Packard did with his font renderer. It avoids Apple's TrueType patent by rendering the font in a non-infringing manner.

Patent infringement isn't a serious problem for open source projects. It might be a problem for open source companies, but that's their problem.
-russ

Re:Only the bravest of people...

[LewsTherinKinslayer]

...submit stories that read as flamebait on slashdot.

Flamebait is also known as the catalyst to heated debate. And while there is a difference between something being said just to stir up the bee hive and constructive pondering and comments, I think its important that people don't automatically dismiss a subject with "strong" proponents and opponents as flamebait.

Re:Stop the infighting

[Master of Transhuman]

I agree.

Perens is simply keeping his name in the press.

While some of his remarks may be partially correct - namely, that it's not terribly useful to have a patent portfolio built from people who already support OSS - his primary mission here is simply to denigrate some useful work.

Where are his solutions to the problem? I see lots of criticism and no ideas from him.

Eben Moglen, at LinuxWorld this past week, outlined a program involving not merely the Patent Commons Project, but attempts to change patent laws and to actually reverse patents that are of particular threat to OSS.

Perens concentrates only on the Patent Commons Project, and ignores the rest. This proves his only motive is to start a flame war.

Nothing like handing Microsoft some talking points, Bruce. Way to go.

Proper attribution, please

[Dachannien]

Unless "ficken" is "Gavin Clarke in San Francisco", a writer for The Register, "ficken" didn't write it at all. He just copied and pasted it verbatim from the article without providing attribution.

Article submitters need to give proper attribution when they quote another article, and /.'s editors really need to make sure that the articles they approve provide that attribution when the submission does nothing more than quote another article verbatim. You editors do read the linked pages before you approve the articles, right?

Re:Stop the infighting

[BillyBlaze]

Maybe it's time some large company does launch a patent missile. Frankly I'd prefer a patent winter to what we have now. All the fallout might convince Joe Public to oppose software patents.

OT: Re: possession

[MerlinYoda]

Rules for showing possession aren't that complicated people. :-)

You only have to ask 2 questions:
1) Is this a this word singular or plural?
2) Does this word already end in 's'?

1) Singular
2) No
Result: add " 's " to the end of the word
Example: My dog's squeek toy is gross. (pronounced like "dogs")

1) Singular
2) Yes
Result: add " 's " to the end of the word
Example: Mr. Jones's pen is leaking. (pronounced like "Joneses", sort of a redundant 's' sound)

1) Plural
2) No
Result: add " 's " to the end of the word
Example: The alumni's party bus was missing. (pronounced like "alumneyes")
Note: This is naturally somewhat rare since we don't tend to have many words in English that are not pluralized by adding 's'.

1) Plural
2) Yes
Result: add " ' " to the end of the word
Example: The Jones' House is a mile down the road. (pronounced like "Jones", no redundant 's' sound)

As you can see, you're safe most (roughly 75%) of the time with adding " 's ", just don't forget the exception because it is important. It shows that the word is possessive *and* plural as adding " 's " would signify it as being singular (i.e. The Jones's pen is owned by "The Jones" ... as was pointed out in the previous post).

This post is dedicated to grammar instructors and grammar police everywhere :-).

Re: infighting? no. publicity stunt? yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, before I read any of the comments my first thought was: this is a publicity stunt designed to spark debate in order to raise awareness. i.e. Bruce's intent is to make people aware of the effort by pretending to be against it. Debates/arguments bring out emotion and cause you to form a strong(er) opinion on something, even if you had never heard of it before.

Anyway, it looks like his little trick worked. They've got everybody on slashdot arguing about it. Now you're more likely to talk about it around your non-tech friends and they'll help spread the meme to the right people. :-)