Slashdot Mirror
On Software Patent Lawsuits Against OSS
Bruce Perens writes "We've warned you for a decade. Now the monster has finally arrived: patent holders are filing suit against OSS developers." From the article: "We should not be confident that we will continue to have the right to use and develop Open Source software. A coordinated patent attack by a few companies, or even one large company, could completely destroy Open Source in the United States and cripple it in other nations. Funds and patent portfolios that have been established to help defend Open Source would not be sufficient to defend it. Only legislative changes to the patent system can fully protect Open Source and maintain it as a viable source of innovation for our future."
The only thing that can destroy Open Source is if people stop writing Open Source Software.
Boy, what a paranoid slippery-slope "please think of the children" bit of FUD. How the hell do you "completely destroy" open source, even assuming a successful patent attack?
Bruce Perens is usually a very balanced and reasoned thinker, but he needs to stay out of the sun for a few days.
"Only legislative changes to the patent system can fully protect Open Source and maintain it as a viable source of innovation for our future." Legislative changes to the patent system are needed to protect innovation not just the Open Source community. How can anyone continue to innovate if they have to wade through an endless array of patents just to see if their idea isn't covered by some ridiculous patent.
[an error occurred while processing this sig]
It costs too much money to buy patent reform from congress. The only true path to Patent Reform involves reforming the USPTO into a pile of rubble.
Badass Resumes
Oh, FFS, can we have ONE discussion regarding patent issues without a libertarian troll that fails to look at the downsides of minimalist government?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Because all those IP lawyers making millions would be out of a job and 'ol George Bush doesn't want the unemployment rate to rise!
Thank you for the sponsored article written by yourself.
Thank you for the google ads all over your page.
Thank you for the dupe on the previous slashdot story!
This article was written by Bruce Perens, immediately invalidating its duplicate status.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
I understand that people don't like to say Free Software because it causes confusion between software that costs nothing (the archetypal example being IE), and software that can be used freely for any purpose (e.g. all GPL'ed programs).
But Open Source is an even more ambiguous term. If I have some commercial software, then all I need to do in order to call it Open Source is provide some source code. Which does not, by itself, make the program free. For example, you can get most of the Java source, but Java's not free software. You can get all of the source for commercial SSH, and that's not free software either. What is the point of having source code if you cannot use it freely?
Is there no other terminology that could be used for this - to state unambiguously that we are referring to genuinely free software?
So let me get this straight: if we make the government (who you say is backing large companies in "enforcing" IP) get out of the way so that the large companies are unfettered to do so themselves... what's different? Open Source still gets crushed. OK, so it's a different lawyer at the controls.
Granted, the whole mess isn't taxpayer funded anymore. But innovation still dies, and we aren't going to be getting a tax rebate anytime soon. The government will just put their money elsewhere (such as, foe example, picking up the tab at strip clubs for victims of natural disasters).
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
The important thing about 'software' is 'can you service it'.
I can't service proprietary software. I can service free software. If you prevent me from using free software I will have to go back to pencil and paper.
So let me get this straight- you'd rather have only the Republican or Democratic view?
That seems equally as alarming.
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
We communists agree, the government must be removed (together with other entities with huge powers, like big corporations)
I completely agree that a liberatarian stance is probably what's best for our freedom.
On the other hand, one must realize that the United States as a nation does *not* have an unbreakable economy, and as much as it *isn't* the US government's job to give breaks to big business through IP, and subsidies to corn farmers, and allow for mass abuse of the consumer at large, if it keeps up consumer confidence and keeps the money domestic, so be it. Personally, I think that we'd have a much better time keeping the dollar strong if we stopped outsourcing or put domestic workforce quotas on companies, but eh.
+5, Truth
Maybe this is a good time to move projects from bloated Sourceforge to Berlios (in Germany).
Just saying.
If the big fears come to pass on this, perhaps an anonymous development model could be made using currently-developing P2P encryption models. Regardless of if software patents are a political problem that may or not be fixed in the long run - the idea that a good person CAN ethically have need to become anonymous in their development of software may change the debate. Right now, the public concept of anonymous development is left to virus developers and other black-hat-types - it would be interesting if your child's educational software, or in this case model railroad software had to be developed behind the veil of secrecy.
Ryan Fenton
All of the Open Source software will be written outside of the US where US patent law doesn't hold. And as Open Source people aren't SELLING the software into the US its going to be tough to sue them.
This would of course be bad news until we think that Linus and Alan Cox aren't from the US anyway and Open Source is really taking off in European Govs.
Come on folks, move to Europe, claim political asylum.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
I'm NOT advocating this, but I'm curious: just what does it take to get people to revolt?
I hear story after story about Americans losing, or put at risk of losing, their freedoms. Freedom to create (stifled by patents, copyright, trademark). Freedom from federal income tax (which is alleged to never have been legislated). Freedom from unreasonable search (illegal NSA wiretaps). Gerrymandering and political lobbying that reduce the voting power regular citizens. Etc.
Do we just grumble about these things and suck it up? Are we suffering from how-to-boil-a-frog syndrom, as the majority of German citizens did when the Nazi party seized power before WW2?
Don't get me wrong - I am *not* advocating violence or illegal activity. But I am curious about why peope haven't gotten pissed-off enough to revolt.
Red Hat should pursue the judgde to conduct a simple test of obviousness of the patent:
Invite a bunch of new comsci grads who are unfamiliar with the patent and ask them to solve the specific problem in hand: mapping relational data to objects and see what they come up with. I am certain that most of them will have some sort of an automated object mapper.
I have 'invented' this technique a few times over the course of my working life in different projects. 10 years ago, 7 years ago, 4.5 years ago, each time for a different platform and each time it was fully automated (the last one was called a Persistance Facade, it was a Java implementation with objects being populated by reflection from database and database being populated from objects, everything was done automagically with an XML file that drove the conversion, and this XML file could also be generated automagically either from the DB or from the objects.)
It is just a ridiculously obvious idea and anyone familiar with basics of programming (not even necessarily OO, flat structures can be populated the same way and I had to do that 10 years ago in C,) and databases should be able to come up with some sort of a workable solution in quite a short time period.
I bet 99.99% of all patents are just as obvious for the people trained in the field in question.
You can't handle the truth.
Well, first off, that's a small-l libertarian, not a capital-L-Libertarian. Big difference, and doesn't queste to Republican/Democrat. Second, I'd rather if there was a libertarian post on the topic, that they even bothered to discuss the downsides of libertarianism in the case, or even acknowledge that there are some. It's been discussed enough that any even casual reader of Slashdot has seen the same discussion dozens of times.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
-Software Patents will make it impossible to create a non-infringing application unless you are as big as MS or IBM.
-Patent litigation will become part of the development process.
-Overseas competition will be able to release their version much sooner because they don't bother playing the SW patent game.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
If you invent something, you have every right to it. If the OSS developers want to develop software, they should be innovative rather than stealing someone elses ideas.
What part of "there's prior art" do you not understand?
Just curious: if OSS basically became illegal (either by civil or criminal law) in your home country, would you be willing to move to some other country where you could be free to create?
Would you move from America to...
Canada? (Close, same language, but America's bitch in IP legislation issues)
Sweden? (Far away, different language, more intellectual freedom)
China? (Farther away, different language, sometimes repressive and corrupt government)
What is this kind of freedom worth to you?
s/OSS/microsoft/
This really seems to me to be the core of what's wrong with US (and soon, possibly EU, according to the article) IP law.
If it is a technical invention - a new technology - then you file a patent. That way you can profit from your innovation.
If it is something creative - something that anybody could have done, but you did it in your particular way and thus created something unique - then you are protected by copyright and thus are legally identified as the creative source, so you can be credited for your creativity.
Software falls between the cracks of the law, and so is protected by both. You have a category of products that you can't mimic without paying for it and that you can't replicate period. As far as I can see, this is only an issue because that which is protected by copyright - information - is now completely free to reproduce thanks to technology.
So, the whole problem boils down to exactly the same thing as music and DRM. It's just that the litigiousness of the US has brought it rapidly to a financial and legal head there. The only way it can be resolved while maintaining society's appetite for innovation is to come up with a new way of classifying the rights of the originator of information - be it technical or creative.
I am not the person to come up with that solution, but I do wish people would stop banging on about the brush-fire conflicts and start trying to figure out a solution to the cause of the problem.
Meta will eat itself
Again I posted these questions and actions to take before. Who are these companies? Companies are made up of people. Find out who they are. Form an organization that tracks this stuff of these companies trying to pull this kind of cr_p. Then go after them legally not just the company but the actual people that try this stuff. Hit them where it hurts the most in the wallet. Publicize what there company is trying to do. Make an example out of them. You may not win a suite but it sure will cost them allot to defend against it. Maybe they will get the hint its not worth it.
This one is really bad.
Almost every serious OO developer who starts working with databases comes up with their own object-relational mapping implementation.
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
Rent seeking.
Not even the big corps can avoid infringing. They may be able to work around the infringement was the lawsuit arrives, but can you image the cost and time it takes? Big guys usually don't take just a few days to make a few fixes, release, and distribute the fixes. It is going to sting both small and big developers.
http://buddytrace.com/
IT would if it was not full of the "smoke pot" activists.
Every single Libertarian rally or other event degrades into the "pot must be free!" fight which scares most people away.
Sorry but it's the truth. they need to get rid of their advanced ideas and shut the hell up until they are in power on the free dope for all platform and the other way out there ideas.
Yes I DO understand it and I agree with it but most do not and talking about the shock and awe topics only drives people away from the Lib party.
Some companies create software that they want to patent, but many more companies are starting to actually *use* FOSS.
Apache, Python, Perl, Samba, etc. Public institutions as are becoming increasingly dependent on FOSS as well: computer science / physics departments use Linux. City governments are playing around with OpenOffice.org and Linux. Even various military systems are now based on a complete FOSS stack: Linux, GCC, etc.
So here's my hope: the politically influential organizations that *use* FOSS will out-muscle the Microsofts and IBMs of the world who advocate for software patents. And when a showdown occurs, software patents will go away.
Another possibility is that India and China will start producing far more softare patents than the US does. I think we'd see the U.S. government take a far weaker stance regarding international IP treaties.
A coordinated patent attack by a few companies, or even one large company, could completely destroy Open Source in the United States and cripple it in other nations.
No. Absolutely wrong.
Such a coordinated attack would cripple commercial uses of open source software.
We mere guys-in-the-trenches would carry on writing and using itas though nothing had changed.
And yes, before someone says it - That might well make us "criminals"... In the same way speeding, copying CDs, "experimenting" with weed in college, and getting a BJ in Georgia does.
We all count as criminals for something already... One more nail in the government's coffin won't make much difference.
A couple of years ago I made some data collecting prototype application in C++. In order to encapsulate the database access I made an abstract "Database object" interface with methods like Save, Load etc. From that interface I derived all the entity objects, thus having a clean interface for database operations, aswell as keeping the code communicating with the database, in a seperate layer.
Isn't this mapping relational data to objects?
This is silly. Mapping a relational database to objects is a pretty logical and obvious approach, when you need to work with a database in an object oriented language.
That's true, but I read his part of it on Technocrat.net, where it was posted first.
:-)
I like technocrat because it has less crap stories, and I have a four digit number there.
v4sw6PU$hw6ln6pr4F$ck 4/6$ma3+6u7LNS$w2m4l7U$i2e4+7en6a2X h
What if an OSS project comes up with a technique or technology first? What if an OSS project comes up with an idea, but never pursues a patent; then a company comes along later and attempts to patents the same idea not knowing the OSS project got there first?
When the company attempts to assert patent rights over the OSS project, can the OSS project invalidate the patent by proving they came up with the idea first?
How can anyone continue to innovate if they have to wade through an endless array of patents just to see if their idea isn't covered by some ridiculous patent.
or,
How can anyone continue to attract the investment they use to hire and pay software developers in a not-yet-making-money startup if, after investing all of that money, someone else can just skip the investment part and go right into making money off the finished work? If you have no chance of some much larger (or just slipperier) operator simply walking away with, and running a business powered by what you're investing in - how can you afford the investment?
The usual answers here would be variations on:
1) No one would just take someone's idea, that would be too obvious.
2) There are no new ideas.
3) No one should be allowed to make money from ideas.
4) Trade secrets want to be free.
5) What would RMS(tm) do?
6) Patents are great, if it's my idea.
7) Someone else's patent sucks if they thought of my idea first.
8) Patents are fine, as long as they're not just there as a lawsuit weapon. Hmmm - this last one actually makes sense, but it's a little hard to nail down in court.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
You can toss a big boulder into the path of a river and -- guess what -- the river doesn't stop. It routes around the problem. That is what open source projects will do. Patent suit says stop using method X, well we just invent method Y to do the same thing without infringing the patent. Project goes ahead. You cannot stop this with patent suits.
In fact, this is not endemic to open source; it happens in all areas. If you block something with a patent that people want bad enough, they will route around it, whether legally or illegally (c.f. the motion picture industry). This often leads to quality patented inventions falling into disuse because the patentholder is a bully. Something else is quickly invented to fill the same market niche and well all go happily on our way.
Now of course the trick is that rational settlements may not be possible, e.g., ACME Patent Troll Co. sues Poor Developer Harold for $1 billion in damages and won't settle for his ceasing to use the method. Even if it turns out favorably for PDH, he could be bankrupted by the proceedings. That is what we need legislation about -- the bullying of persons and families by giant corporations with near-infinite legal funds, where the cost of defending against their allegations by itself is a de facto award of damages: trial and conviction without due process.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
I have a small business where I use MLS data to provide websites for real estate agents. I had been using Google maps to display the homes, along with properties nearby, on a map. This seems to infringe on this patent: The summary is here Now, I am interested in the court case about obvious inventions. Prior to this, the MLS data existed as did maps....I do not see were, as technology improved, this would not be an obvious combination. Sexton
Patent http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fs rchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5032989.PN.&OS=PN/50329 89&RS=PN/5032989
Summary
http://www.directionsmag.com/article.php?article_i d=2031
Someone should get the patents that apply to the US Patent and Trademark Office site and database system and sue them!
AFAIK this has been considered before, namely: version control repositories, bugtrackers, logs valid as evidence in court (just like firewall logs are valid evidence).
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
I think this statement, taken very litterally, is the crux of the matter. There should be a lot of freedom to create new software, even if it does the exact same thing as existing (even patented?) software. It's the old mouse trap situation: you can patent a new kind of mouse trap, but not the idea of a mousetrap.
I guess I've been hanging around academic crowd too long. In academia, people come up with parallel or independant discoveries all the time, and no one is crying foul here. Makes me wonder about academic patents. . .
350 years ago, Newton would have patented calculus and sued the pants off of Leibniz. The case would probably still be in court! Then again, Leibniz would have patented his notation, and we'd all have to pay his decendents royalties any time we wanted to find out how fast we're going (dx/dt).
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
The main problem here is that it's rare that you can do anything innovative that is completely independent and not based on the innovative work of others. Innovation breeds more innovation. The present patent system, which was supposed to encourage innovation, does the opposite of that. It inhibits innovation.
Well there is your problem. The real issue is that the vast majority of the abuses being allowed by gov. is being granted by the right-wing fasists.
And btw, the libertarians are not after any single party. I have been in the party since the early 90's. I have watched the neo-con republicans start to inflatrate us. Time to stop it. We do not need nor want you.
I mean, I always thought Open Source was pretty much a setup where someone wrote a program, and then gave away the source code. Then anyone could modify the code, since the code was freely available. Modifications that were popular ended up getting rolled into the base "product".
But since it's all free (isn't it?), and the modifications are done by volunteers (isn't it?), who are you going to sue? What's to stop people from anonymously making and modifying free software in the future?
Even if the free programs DO violate patents or copyrights, if they are published anonymously, who's to stop them?
What's the big deal?
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Didn't IBM and other large players pledge their patent portfolios to FOSS in case of cases like this?
I can only see one way software patents could be fixed. The heads of 5 of the biggest software companies would have go to congress and tell them they need software patents abolished. That way congress could finally see the reality that the only people benefiting from software patents are the patent lawyers.
This shouldn't seem like an impossible idea either. Every major software company is loosing millions on software patent litigation.
I am patenting a process whereby an aggrieved party can seek redress and remuneration via something I will call a "suit." Anyone who violates my patent will have to pay me through the nose.
...But I digress. TREMBLE PUNY HUMANS!ONE DAY MY SPECIES WILL DESTROY YOU ALL!
OSS software is like the water that's seeped into the rock. (The rock being the IT and software developemnt world.)
Freeze the water, shatter the rock.
While not being overtly optimistic about its chances of success, the Peer to patent project is an initiative that has good support from the industry, seems able to lobby the USPTO efficiently and could drastically reduce the number of obvious patents actually granted.
In two words, they propose to use web tools such as wiki and comment areas to let anyone involved in the patent world (inventors, lawyers, competitors...) comment and annotate patent applications before they are reviewed by the patent examiner.
This seems a nice balance to me between ease of implementation (very few changes to the law and practice of the patent office are required to implement this initiative) and likelyhood of improving the situation.
Looks like we have a dumb group of mods today if this got moded interesting.
The problem seems to stem from applying laws made to deal with non-abstract tangible mediums that are not very tractable to software, a non-abstract medium which is *highly* tractable. Software needs a unique set of laws, since its distinctly different from both material property or intellectual property. It could be argued that software is one of the most tractable of all mediums, other than pure imagination.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
If the US doesn't reform its patent system, how long will it be before we see a lot of Chinese and Indian patent trolls? Think it can't happen? newsforge mentions that the IETF's attempt to standardize syslog has been held up by Huawei patent claims.
Don't forget that there's been much work towards patent law harmonization between nations, via the WIPO. It's naive to think that the multinationals who benefit from absurd patent laws won't do their best to get them spread elsewhere, regardless of continent and nation. Even if they haven't had much success in Europe as of now, they'll just keep trying until eventually they succeed.
So just moving development to Europe (or China, or India, or Singapore, etc.) isn't the answer. The very same problems will soon follow wherever open source development may take place.
Notice I put the additional information link at the bottom. Probably no one will look at it, that's why it's at the bottom. The Amicus Brief I inlined. Since it is being heard by the supreme court, it's a Washington issue and more likely to actually be of interest to those inside the beltway.
To be fair, no one looks at the downside of anything when they are arguing for the upside. Many other people argued that the current system was broke but had no solution. At least this poster offered some sort of solution. I would agree there are downsides to the libertarian way of fixing the problem but I also feel there are more downsides to the current model.
Slashdot +1 funny -4 Insightful +1 informative -2 Redundant
Karma: Somewhere between SCO and Microsoft
that the real danger is that patent lawsuits tend to be expensive. They tend to be extremely technical, require a lot of expert testimony, and so forth. For this reason, the mere *threat* of a patent lawsuit may force people to give in to the demands of patent holders.
It seems to me that there are several options. The most obvious solutions include an open source patent pool (which Apache and IBM have both been developing for some time) and a community legal fund. The community legal fund seems to me to be the most important aspect because even an open source patent pool will not prevent the threats from having an extortion-like influence.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Free as in speech, or free as in beer? I can't see the Libertarians supporting a free as in beer mechanism.
they need to get rid of their advanced ideas and shut the hell up until they are in power on the free dope for all platform
Still assuming that we are talking about personal freedom, and not welfare-pot: if the Libertarians cave on personal freedom and don't promise to end the Drug War, they have nothing to offer anyone.
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
Yes, they can. Problem is, the cost of lawyers and such will probably force the OSS project to throw in the towel before that can happen unless the project is well funded.
The title is misleading, the fact is that viable software development activities for any company or individual who dont have millions in the bank or a big patent portfolio to counter-intimidate with, open or closed source, are under attack by holders of software patents that cover obvious or fundamental operations. Yesterdays software innovations are todays status quo practices, citing the object relational bullshit in the article as a perfect example - that is if you believe there isnt prior art in the first place. Perhaps we should make the patent officers liable for damage caused by stupid patent approval, i bet theyd get thier shit together then.
I was crazy back when being crazy really meant something. (Charles Manson)
So far, there are no concrete examples of prior art.
Slashdotters? Find some !!!
Not even the big corps can avoid infringing. They may be able to work around the infringement was the lawsuit arrives, but can you image the cost and time it takes? Big guys usually don't take just a few days to make a few fixes, release, and distribute the fixes. It is going to sting both small and big developers.
Except that the big corps have their own portfolio of patents. You want to sue IBM for infringemnet? No problem, they'll dust of their patents and find the 100 or so that you are infringing with your software. Can you say "Settle and cross license?"
As for ofshoring work - that's fine, except you'll have to forgo the US market unless you want to be sued along with your customers; and you should ptobably avoid countries with similar patent systems to the US.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
I do not think it means what you think it means.
/. crowd to grasp, but perhaps this example will help:
There's prior art--big whoop. That, and five bucks, will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks.
Prior art isn't some silver bullet that will lay waste to any patent. Prior art is just that: any work existing prior to the work included in the patent relating to the art of the work included in the patent.
The existence of prior art does not automatically invalidate the patent. I don't think I'm going too far out on a limb to say, if it is not the case that all patents include prior art, then it certainly true of 99%+.
For example, I've invented an internal combustion engine which utilizes an innovative, non-obvious process to enable me to build a car which gets 100 miles to a gallon of extra virgin olive oil. However my process only works with oil produced by a specific method. In fact, it only works with oil from a special method that has been patented.
That special, patented olive-oil-producing method is prior art for my invention and would be included in my patent application, but has no bearing on whether my work is patent-worthy or not.
And let's say the implementation of my new engine is in a car with a specific type of existing transmission. That also would be prior art. And that also would have no bearing on the validity of any patent granted for my work.
I don't know why the concept of prior art is so hard for the
Is every computer program the intellectual property of the creator of the language used to write the program? You can't write the program without the language--it's prior art. If you were documenting a program, you'd certainly include some reference to the programming language used--it's prior art.
But you could certainly devise some innovative, non-obvious implementation of that language that would allow you to say, "this is my program."
In the course of human history, the people who have risen to power and want the government to be active in public life are almost always greedy, power-hungry, very easily corrupted people. I'm sick of the idealists who believe that we're going to change that. If you can't change basic facts about social organization, including the propensity to corruption in government and law, in the past 5,000 years, you can't change it in the next 5,000 years.
Abolish every aspect of law and government that isn't strictly needed to keep people from killing each other or others from invading if you want a government that might actually be run by people who will say to Microsoft, Apple, IBM, etc. "not my job to promote your business." The very reason that we have fights over things like software patents is that the federal government got so powerful that there was major influence to peddle. Get rid of the power, you get rid of a significant avenue by which corporations can legally shaft you.
Corporations are created by law. We could easily get rid of corporate abuse of power by getting rid of the laws that create corporations. The resulting depression should be enough to explain why laws were passed to create corporations.
The only way found in the long sad course of human history of limiting the damage from greedy, power-hungry and corrupt people is to spread power out, to limit it. Now if we the people decided to restrict government as you propose, but leave corporate power alone, then the center of power would shift to corporate hands. Power-hungry, greedy and easily corruptible would seek corporate office as they do today. Or did you notice the stock option backdating? What would limit their power? Not fair competition, as that is currently enforced by anti trust law. Not accounting standards, as these are also currently enforced by law. What would set the limits of corporate power if not government?
There are many examples of "natural monopoly". The oldest is irrigation water. The owner of a natural monopoly has power by right of ownership of the monopoly. Question to libertarians: how can the power of natural monopolies be limited?
And think about this: Suppose you went into a time warp and found out that 100 years from now the governments of the world were limited what was "strictly needed to keep people from killing each other or others from invading", but that MegaSoftXP owned the Internet, world wide. To connect to the Internet you needed to buy a computer with a HexiumXP processor running Doors4XP, all MegaSoftXP products. MegaSoftXP selected judges, required that governments pass specific laws, owned most real estate, electric power, water, railroads, roads, buildings, houses, farms, mines, airlines, and controlled most media other than a crazy guy trying to pass out papers on the street corner until MegaSoftXP security arrested him for trespassing and littering. Governments might be limited, but MegaSoftXP isn't. Compete with MegaSoftXP? Exactly how?
--- sig? what is a sig? --
Did you read the "Related Stories" section right under te summary?
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Go ahead and sue me. I'm not gonna stop.
te? Apparently typing with one hand while holding a month old baby in the other isn't conducive to good spelling.... :/
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Like the multiple desktops common to most OSS desktop managers? I use WindowMaker - please tell me what's in there that got stolen from Microsoft.
Oh? Did the court decide that Microsoft wasn't a monopolist, after all? Guess I missed that one.
"All"? You're 100% sure of that? And many of those that do (or don't, for that matter) include Konqueror, Opera, and others as well - none of which you're required to install in order to use the OS - whereas you can't run MSIE except on Windows (unless you use something like WINE), and you can't run Windows without MSIE (not easily or well, at any rate).
I can (and do) use Firefox on Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, and Windows. It works great on all of them, and it doesn't act as a conduit for viruses, trojans, or spyware.
Closed media players and codecs, closed in order to force you to use the One True Media Player (and OS). And for those of us who don't live in the US (quite a large number, last time I checked), we're not "circumventing" any laws, because they don't apply out here in the real world.
This has diddley-squat to do with OSS.
I use OSS. I don't pirate music or videos. Hell, I don't even use any P2P filesharing apps.
Again this has nothing to do with OSS. But it's most likely being made by people you never get to hear on commercial media, which is geared towards the lowest common denominator. Which is why Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake get wads of cash, and most interesting artists and performers are with small independents, or self-publish.
Not even a good troll. Bah.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
In a free market, supply and demand set the rules and the prices. Competing manufacturers create goods, and customers decide based on quality, price and personal preference. That system worked for decades. Maybe centuries, depending on how far you want to stretch.
In comes the patent. And here's where it gets ugly. While, as the article said, patents were supposed to push innovation and competition, they harm both: A normal innovator cannot afford a patent, and competition is stifled because who holds the patent may dictate who may produce.
In the world of software it's even worse than in the real world. Frivulous patents for the equivalent of a toothpick aside, there are many things that can be done "right" only one way. There is often only one good algo for a certain task, with all the others falling behind. Should a company own the patent to a, say, search algo that is magnitudes faster than competing algorithms, this company has the monopoly on databases, if they so desire.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is as anti-capitalist and anti-free market as it gets. Our market system relies on the equilibrium between supplyer and demander, on the fact that price is made at the market by the rules of supply and demand. If one side has the power to overrule this and create monopolies to dictate price or, worse, competition, the free market is dead.
It's not much different with DRM, btw, where the format providers may dictate what kind of devices may be created. BluRay as well as HDDVD devices only get the ok (and the key) if they agree to implement a secure data path. You MUST NOT create a device that has none. Now, you could of course create a "free" format, but then those machines that play HDDVD/BluRay must not play your format, and the content industry will not provide content on your format (out of self interest). -> free trade dead.
As long as patents exist in the current form, we're going to steer towards something that caused the downfall of the Soviet Regimes. They, too, produced goods the consumer did not want. They had different reasons, but the result is essentially the same: The goods manufactured do not match the demand of the users. And so far, there is no law that force us to buy AT ALL.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Also, no one in the US would be able to use free software without paying a fee to some big dumb company. The cost to the US economy for this will dwarf even Perens' 140 billion dollar estimate of the cost of defending the Linux kernel alone.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The problem is "stealing someone else's ideas". Do you think that the OSS developers actually went out and "stole" the ideas? No - they independently came up with the same method of doing something, because it was basically obvious. The standard for obviousness is clearly far too low. How would you do it at all if not through an O-R mapping? Actually, I think that copyright is sufficient to protect software in general, but that's another argument.
I agree with you. The reason it frustrates me so much though is that it's been rehashed a million times on every patent article. The single-subject posters (like a lot of the libertarians on slashdot) have the knee-jerk response of espousing libertarianism as a panacea for legal & social issues no matter how tangentially it relates to the article.
:))
I'm all for discussion of potential solutions, but real discussion about possible, near-future solutions is far more important, to me, than pie-in-the-sky "what if government just butted out" discussions. The libertarian vision will never come to pass in the US, and discussion of it is pretty much a waste of time (and mod points
Of note, I share a lot of opinions with libertarians in re: personal liberties.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
The problem is "stealing someone else's ideas". Do you think that the OSS developers actually went out and "stole" the ideas?
No - they independently came up with the same method of doing something, because it was basically obvious. The standard for obviousness is clearly far too low. How would you do it at all if not through an O-R mapping?
Actually, I think that copyright is sufficient to protect software in general, but that's another argument.
the people in power, the people making these patent laws, operate in a global theatre. The US can go to hell for all they care. Heck, they're looking forward to it, it means more cheap labor.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
There are plenty of big dumb companies who will be happy to license your ability to use and improve free software. M$ and IBM and other companies pushing for software patents will be happy to claim ownership of everyones' hard work. That's what this is really about, isn't it?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Actually, sir, you're an anarchist.
Communism is about setting up a large entity (Government or otherwise) to control production and resources as common property of all citizens.
The Sun is proof that we can't even do fire properly.
Americans CLAIM to love freedom. But we really love convenience. We pay lip service to wanting lots of choices, but so long as the few choices we have are accessible and provide immediate gratification, why should we care about some other clunky alternatives that we don't have?
So Microsoft spies on us while we use windows. So what? I don't actually notice. It doesn't inconvenience me in any direct way. And windows works the way I expect it to. I don't have to learn nearly as much as I do in order to use Linux, and all my games play on it out of the box. Oh, and I don't even have to install it...it comes on my computer. Convenience all around, so that's where my money winds up going.
The list of candidates to vote on is usually kept quite small. Sure, the two party system eliminates options, and our method of voter tallying is statistically absurd, but it is so darn CONVIENANT. For most of us, there is an obvious choice...the party choice. I don't have to bother listening to platforms or researching relevant issues...I just vote for my party and suddenly I am a good patriot with a license to complain. Isn't convenience wonderful?
Sure airport searches are a bit inconvenient if I am the one who gets searched...but the odds are low. Usually its some other guy who gets searched, and that makes me feel safer. Maybe they record and traffic my personal information, but I don't really feel any sting for that (for the most part, I don't even know its going on). I can fly anywhere and feel like my interests are safely guarded by the government. The convenience of this feeling far outweighs the minor inconveniences of the occasional long wait to get in the airplane.
So I can't copy DVD's. Oh well, I guess I will just pay them again. An extra fifteen bucks won't kill me. Breaking the law and risking punishment just so I can make personal backups is just a bit too inconvenient. Region encoding? What's that? I've never felt it's sting, because I buy my DVD's at Wall mart...not from some weird store way out in Europe...the shipping time alone is just too much, not to mention the extra cost. What I have got is convenient enough, and the added convenience you geeks talk about seems a little superfluous and way too much work to obtain. Nah, I like things the way they are.
So what if my cell phone calls are monitored and my position is tracked? So what if the providers are overcharging a bit because they can get away with it? Cell phones are an exemplar of convenience. So what if my internet usage is tracked and recorded? All they would ever do is prevent me from breaking the law anyway, right? That's ok with me. So long as the only people who get their rights abused by all this monitoring and information-tracking are a few social rabble-rousers, and not me, there really is no problem. I like all this convenience much better than the pains of actually making myself aware of what's going on and making sacrifices to ensure my continued privacy and freedom.
Power is a lot of work to keep hold of. Far too inconvenient. Let the politicians and big corporations fight over it. I am better off without any of it at all. Good riddance.
And God bless America!
1) People in EVERY political district idealistic enough that they fully believe that they can and want to change the system for the good of the people and 2) people to vote for them. 1 is relatively easy, if you can get them to run. Getting them on the ballot is hard because of the voting laws. And it gets harder as you move up in political power because the "traditional" parties (you know the two I'm talking about) are the only ones that get press. Think about the "presidential debates" people see on tv. How many candidates do you see there? Two. How many actual presidential candidates are there? About half a dozen.
2 is a bigger problem though, because there are LOTS of people who refuse to vote outside their party. Not to mention how many many people vote on how much they like or dislike the candidate, which has absolutely nothing to do with how they should be voting. No research to see whose policies stand out among the rest, nothing. Its just another one of the circuses to them. And many of the people wise to their schemes don't even vote! And you'll find a lot of them right here on slashdot! Consider this: If the 30-40% of the people in the US who don't vote in each election did vote for someone outside the two party system, where would we be then? We'd be the majority party, that's where we'd be, since the D's and R's are usually split right down the middle, give or take a few percent.
So, so many people have an optimistic view of the "intellectual property" system -- i.e. that our representatives contemplate the costs & benefits of a copyright extension, or of a *major expansion of patent scope (to software), etc. Sorry, it rarely works that way. You want changes in law, you plunks down yr money.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Why are you guys going nuts. If people who write open source software openly steal stuff from comemrcial companies and pout it in open software the company that got stolen from has every right to sue.
So your saying if a robber came into your house and stole something and sold it on the net you wouldnt get himn arested?
The US, moreso than China, at least, is a democracy. I'm keeping my feet in my home country, and voting for what I belive in.
Our system may have been corrupted by uncontrolled corporate power in collusion, if I may add, with the current Republican party, but it doesn't mean that we can't fix it. If I moved every time the government did something I disagreed with, I would have left town during the Clinton administration, or the Papa Bush regime- their slow reaction to the situations in Bosnia and Rwanda were scandalous.
Democracy is Greek for "stay and fight"
Just days before the European Commission's next hearing on patent policy that is still being hatched despite the last directive's overwhelming defeat in Parliament, several recent publications discuss developments of the law on Tux' home continent, and successful steps to avert software patents: The huge new book on "The War over Software Patents in the European Union" by the founder of NoSoftwarePatents has just been released for download. If you prefer a few hundred pages less, see the latest issue of the International Journal of Law and Information Technology for a scholarly article.
Will be a cease and desist order, once someone acquires the patent for an algorithm.
An example of how daft patents are is the A* search algorithm. If I remember my AI course correctly, it can be proven to be the most efficient search algorithm in certain situations. A patent on it would do measurable harm to other peoples ability to program.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
I think this would confer a huge advantage on companies in countries that don't allow software patents. Not only are US companies already at a disadvantage against, say, China, due to the less expensive labor in China but they'll also have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for functionality that the Chinese companies will be able to get for free. But if that's how we want to throw away our economic superpower status, that's fine with me...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
OK - the government(s) have allowed this patent fiasco to persist. Change the GPL so that any software that is the subject of a patent challenge may no longer be used by any government. It (the GPL) is after all a license and we can put whatever restrictions we want on it.
Been there, done that, paid for the T-shirt
and didn't get it
You got a lot of blind men on the top of your head, are telling you to kill OSS.
No matter, Come in Europe, better in Italy were i live.
We'll give to all you guys:
- good food
- nice weather
- everything you want
- no patents
We just need some IT specialists, a lot of R&D, tech, software and good ideas, OSS is cool and we use a lot of it
I'm your supporter and great fan but in this case... Go US, go for it, i'll piss on every suit coming from there
Have fun
Ben.
"Oh, FFS, can we have ONE discussion regarding patent issues without a libertarian troll that fails to look at the downsides of minimalist government?"
*looks at "score 0: flamebait"*
I'd say no we couldn't.
Maybe the best restraint for now is that any legit company that threatens patent infringement lawsuits can be threatened with countersuits. Mutual Assured Destruction. Open Source has a patent commons to help with such an approach.
Companies whose only current business is a patent portfolio (SCO, NTP) are a bit harder to nail that way. Those who think they have nothing to lose are harder to dissuade. They're the North Koreas of the software world. I would love to see SCO bankrupted, and their officers thrown in jail for racketeering, extortion, and barratry. Slime is rarely confined to one area-- probably could also get them on something else like stock manipulation or tax evasion. But nailing McBride on some unrelated charge would not be as persuasive. Anyway, even if that happened, it would only be a minor battle won that might actually make things worse, rather like nuking North Korea until it's a glowing hole in the ground, or step 1. invade Iraq 2. ??? 3. Democracry! The real victory would be disarmament, which is a lot more possible in law than in reality. Patents are entirely artificial weapons founded on no basis other than fiat, and can be neutralized in an instant by removing that fiat. Cut the ground out from under patent trolls by repealing the changes in the law (or interpretation thereof) that allowed this mess of software patents in the first place.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
http://www.drummajorinstitute.org/ has information and voting records about policies affecting the middle class (and its continued existence).
Watch closely for legislation that changes the rate at which people enter the middle class from below (college financial aid, or the chance to start a business without being wiped out by a patent troll), stay in the middle class (health insurance, bankruptcy law changes), and enter the middle class from above (inheritance tax).
What's important here isn't the comfort of being in the middle class. Societies made up of just the poor and the hereditary aristocrats don't sustain democracies.
that Intellectual Ventures was founded by a former Microsoft Exec?
I smell a rat. A big, fat and ugly one.
"Actually, I think that copyright is sufficient to protect software in general, but that's another argument."
Covered in this book.*
*Hint: It depends on a couple supporting definitions.
How do you verify closed-source software doesn't (supposedly) infringe on any patents?
Remember, you cannot see inside. Reverse-engineering is forbidden by the EULA.
It can't be due to ignorance. You potentially have tens if not hundreds patent infringements in Windows alone.
The software patent nonsense in the U.S is going to halt techincal innivasion in the U.S at the end. It has already slowed down alot becose of this monopoly system. But patents are nothing but a monololy over an idea and how to peform it or use it.
Submitted to my congressguy (who knows if he'll read it):
I've written to you before on the topic of patent reform. I asked you to seriously consider the complete destruction of software patents because they hurt innovation.
Your answer was that the patent system is needed to allow a lone inventor or a small company to make an invention and enjoy that invention while preventing others from stealing it.
I assure you that that is never the case anymore.
What is the patent system? It is an incentive-- a way of fostering innovation by providing to an inventor the promise that his invention will belong to him long enough to allow him to profit from it. At least, that's what it *was.*
Nowadays, anyone creating software must seriously consider developing a patent portfolio or at least hiring a patent lawyer to do research on patents that cover increasingly obvious inventions in their domain. Who must hire these lawyers? Your small company, your lone developer trying to make a dent in a larger market. Who holds these patents? Your large companies, the ones who can afford to draft and submit hundreds of patents a year, in hopes that most will be granted (and most are).
We knew the system would crash on us one day. With no help from Congress, which has seemingly turned a blind eye to a strong industry with a clear call for reform, many of the key patent-holders have tried to begin their own reform. They have tried to competely nullify the patent system with covenant agreements-- essentially, promises not to sue over patents unless sued first. The Free Software Foundation, dedicated to the freedom of people to create, use, and re-create software as they see fit, has placed a clause in their most popular license, the GPL, to do the same:
=============== QUOTE
11. Licensing of Patents.
When you distribute a covered work, you grant a patent license to the recipient, and to anyone that receives any version of the work, permitting, for any and all versions of the covered work, all activities allowed or contemplated by this License, such as installing, running and distributing versions of the work, and using their output. This patent license is nonexclusive, royalty-free and worldwide, and covers all patent claims you control or have the right to sublicense, at the time you distribute the covered work or in the future, that would be infringed or violated by the covered work or any reasonably contemplated use of the covered work.
=============== ENDQUOTE
We all see this as a good thing, and we should know. We know that the software industry cannot survive when innovation is stifled by a system that has completely failed in its task.
Where do we see those failures? I have given examples before, in the licensing of LZ compression and JPEG compression. Now we see a small company trying to assert a patent on RedHat, a leader in free (as in freedom) software development (see the articles above). A product that drives growth in the industry may be stopped for a proprietary solution that has not seen a release in three years, all over an idea that was old when it was filed.
You may not care about these individual instances. I daresay you don't, based on your responses in the past. Here is a scenario that may make it more "real" to you:
1. Software development in the United States has grown hazardous. The patent system has grown so monstrous, so useless, that it stops the very innovation it was designed to promote.
http://technocrat.net/d/2006/6/30/5032
"These two attacks are the tip of the iceberg, thousands more
are possible as software patent holders turn to enforcement as
an income producer and away from the patent cross-licensing
détente exercised by large companies until the mid-1990s."
So WTF are they doing under that opressive regime? At least the ppl living in east Germany and Soviet *tried* to escape...
It may not be just to up and move, but hell, freedom has to be worth something? And there is littel to none anywhere in the US (just the citizens misuse of the word - it does not mean what you parrot!). This goes for a hell of a lot more than just this isse btw.
You don't read well do you... He is saying that with a minimalistic government there would be no IP or patents so corporations would have no ammunition against OSS.
Using your name and scare tactics to generate hits to your site.
What an amazing coincidence that this starts to happen shortly after you get advertising.
It is under review, that is all.
You should get 'recognized' people in the indutry to help advise congress and the USPTO.
Patents do work. This business of Software and business patents are obusive of the Patent intent and should be abolished, the idea of patent is a good one.
As someone who had a company try to use something I patented, I was able to defend my patent. So I may be biased. I wouldn't want to cloud anyones opinion with fact and real world examples though.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
- certainly not in many other countries. It begins to look like, if you want enjoy the freedom to create programs, you have to live in, say, China or some other country where being rich doesn't automatically mean being right no matter what.
Serously though, this sort of thing illustrates exactly what is wrong with patents; and I feel fairly confident that the more we see of big companies suing people for thinking and breathing, so to speak, the more likely is it that the patent system will be scrapped or changed in some fundamental way. Perhaps not in the US, where money equals truth, but in the rest of the world. Can you imagine Europe, China or Russia simply rolling over, saying 'Oh well, all meaningful ways of programming and all useful genes are owned by US companies, so all we can do is give up'? If so, would you mind sharing whatever you have been smoking?
In a way it is a good thing, because it has been obvious for years that the idea of patents is severely out of date.
You know, I think it's all clear to me now.
/why/ people liked to write free software. I figured it was just the geek factor. People wanting to prove they could do it.
See, all along, I figured Open Source Software was just another word for freeware. People want free software, and some coders were happy to write it.
I never really thought about
But now, it's clear - people write free apps for the satisfaction AND recognition. I'm cool with that.
But it raises an interesting question in my mind. If, in fact, what was written duplicates what someone else has already done, why should you get or want recognition for that? Just because you did it for free? Don't the people who came up with the original idea deserve the recognition? I don't know the answer yet.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
... by writing OSS and fighting for your freedom
The USPTO is completely overworked (everyone trying to patent everything), the patent examiners do not have any real knowledge of software prior art nor access to a good database (they basically search the patent database), and rely on the "good faith" of the patent submitter to list prior art. Add to that the USPTO's system that they only get paid for ACCEPTED patents, and you get our current mess.
Moreover, our system is a "first to invent", which means the first person to come up with the idea can get a patent, even if someone else beats them to the marketplace. However, you have to prove that you were the first to invent, and have a window of 1 year from the first public demonstration of the invention. So, practically this means that unless you have documentation that you invented something at least 1 year before the other person's patent submission, you can still lose out.
Once a patent is granted, there is a presumption that the patent is valid, which means that challenging the patent means an uphill battle in court to show that the patent should never have been granted in the first place (publically known prior art, witholding prior art on patent application, etc).
Also, two fundamentals parts of the patentability test are being ignored: (which everyone talks about) and Which is completely lacking in software patents. The typical software patent just says "'X' can be done on a computer!" and has NO DETAIL WHATSOEVER as how to accomplish 'X'.
And, it's been a while since I heard about it (and can't find a link right now), but there was a backdoor effort to change the US patent system from "first to invent" to "first to file".
This would mean that someone could come up with a neat piece of software, post it in sourceforge, and have someone come along and patent it. They did not invent it first. They did not invent it AT ALL. But they would have a valid patent and could shutdown / collect royalties from anyone. Oddly enough, Microsoft was in favor of this legislation.
Bill
A small software writer who distributed model railroad software is taken to court by some outfit claiming he violated their patent despite the fact that there is prior art and substantial reason to believe the suit may be without merit. This poor guy is going to lost in court.
A large software firm distributes an Open Source operating system and is taken to court by some outfilt claiming they violated their inteleectual property despite the fact that there is prior art and substantial reason to believe the suit may be without merit. This company is going to prevail in court.
What's the difference? The first guy is one man devoting a lot of his time to something he loves. The second company is IBM fighting off SCO.
What's the lesson? A. Justice is for sale in the United States and $DEITY help you if you get sued and can't affod a full-time teal of lawyers.
First things first. Before said "robber" comes in and "steals" from said company, said company claims de facto ownership of something that is intangible and that is easily reproduced by someone in the field, due to its obviousness. It's like saying, "I saw that applying a directed stream of air to an object will make it move under certain conditions - before anyone else recognized it (or anyone was dumb enough to admit that they recognized something to obvious) - I now own that idea."
Note that "ownership" here is entirely subjective - it is not based on the physical acquisition or development of a tangible object, but on something defined by law. Ownership of "ideas" and "methods" does not exist in any kind of natural sense, so in order for this notion to carry any weight, this sense of ownership of things of an intangible nature had to be created and expanded by men with vested interests.
Remove the government and some other organization, like the corporation, will jump in to fill the power gap. That's the problem with "libritatianism", it seeks to remove tyrany by removing the government but doesn't provide any protection against other would by tyrants.
When are OSS authors going to get off their asses and start suing on their own? There are a ton of companies out there distributing OSS software, mainly in Linux-embedded devices, who blatantly violate the GPL and thumb their noses at anyone who complains. When are OSS authors going to get off their asses and sue some of these bastards for copyright violation? Don't tell me about gpl-violations.org. Harald Welte (he of iptables fame) has done yeoman's work but has very little to show for his efforts. For every 10 complaints made to the GPL Violations mailing list Harald is able to resole maybe 1. Not good enough. There are many, many people who have a share of the copyright that goes into so many OSS projects such as (esp. in the embedded world) BusyBox and uClibc, not to mention all the other utility programs that are often included with such devices, such as wireless tool extensions, strace, tcpwrappers, crond and Linux itself. Companies are quite literally thumbing their noses at the authors of these programs and the authors are too happy to let somebody else worry about it.
When someone comes after you for violating a patent you will wish you had sued to protect your copyrights. It might even have gained you a few dineros to defend yourself with against claims against you.
It just makes me sick that OSS authors don't stand up for themselves and their rights. It will be the death of OSS.
The alternative would be first-to-file, in which case you would not be considered to have made the invention until the patent filing date. The problem with first-to-invent is that it allows you to eavesdrop on the mailing list of a standards group, and file pre-dated patents on the stuff going into the standard.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
FireStar Software, Inc. .. today announced a go-to-market agreement with Microsoft,
.. has been a consultant to .. Microsoft ..
Mark Eisner, CTO, FireStar
davecb5620@gmail.com
He who forsees misfortune suffers it twice.
Open Source destroys America!
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Yes, then he posted it here to generate hits for his site.
Coincidentally, his site now has advertising.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I do this from time to time. This (late) guy, Phil Salin, has written the most amazing article on sofware patents. It is an absolute *MUST* read for everyone, I am totally dead serious.
http://www.philsalin.com/patents.html
Look at how people(hint:Corps are run by people) will abuse things to gain some extra savings. Now imagine how abusive they could get under the libertarian way.
That should stop libertarianism.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
To all the lawyers outthere who think they can sue everyone:
I am using Object Relational Mapping EVERY day. I have written my own multiple times using various technologies. Some of my code is running on production servers to sustain businesses.
Bring the non-sense in! Sue me! Sue everyone!
it is very likely that they will fall behind China and India in terms of innovation.
Sorry, but I think you misspelled "already fell".
Well, here's a more chilling thought... what would happen if China forbade its companies to EXPORT to the US for some indefinite period of time?
.... yet.
A Chinese boycott of sales to America is the least of their power.
China is the main financier of the American government's debt. Yes, that $400 to $500 billion Baby Bush has put us in the hole for fighting his family's personal vindetta in Iraq at America's expense (both in tax dollars and human lives).
If China gets really annoyed with us, they can simply stop buying US Bonds and put the government (and the economy) into freefall overnight. Yes, thanks to Bush's unprecedented deficit China could engineer the complete collapse of our economy, and probably our ability to govern, that easily.
If they decide they don't want to go that far, they could do anything from a boycot more limited than you describe (refuse to export some product we really need and watch our economy spasm without actually collapsing), to invading and annexing Taiwan (goodbye affordable computing for the next 5-10 years).
Really, Bush has put us so far into hawk to the Chinese that they really can call the shots, anytime they like. They just haven't seen any advantage in doing so so blatently or crassly
But with America's current diplomatic and strategic incompetence, one is forced to wonder how much longer it will be, and conclude "probably not much."
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
This is just your typical issue with regards to insane rulings and laws with regards to these issues like responsibility. Would this happen its likely to cripple OSS in the US but I honostly doubt that other countries would suffer from all this, apart from the fact that they might lose a few programmers.
I mean; this really isn't something new here. Just compare it to running a business. Would I open up a coffee bar and start selling cups of coffee in the US I take an awfull risk if the cups don't say "WARNING: This is HOT STUFF and if you use the contents of this cup to pour over your body you're bound to end up with burn marks" but that doesn't mean that not doing this will influence other oversea companies. It would make doing business in the US a little harder, but thats not difficult to overcome. Or what about the SCO case, you can read about the latest development. In the US that smokescreen was actually taken seriously and now, several months later, a judge ruled a lack of evidence. In Europe it wouldn't even have been accepted in court, as has been proven by a German judge calling FUD on SCO after they tried to sue several companies for their precious license violation.
IMO this is just a typical issue of some American people finally becoming aware what risks need to be taken to do certain things in the US, all thanks to those insane rulings. This is exactly the same sort of reason why last years F1 only started with 3 cars.
So in this case, being a European citizin, I'd say bring it on!
Indeed, some of the patents in the patent commons can be withdrawn at any time. It seems to be a half-hearted effort. Why? Look at the companies on OSDL's board. They are the ones that most profit from software patenting.
If you want to understand the truth about the patent commons, start at LWN's coverage of their disclosures.
There is another project called Open Innovation Network, started by Novell, that is supposed to contain patents that really are dedicated for defensive use.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Ownership of physical objects doesn't exist in a natural sense either, and it too had to be created and expanded by men with vested interests. The fact that it happened long enough that it now intuitively "seems" natural to you doesn't make it any more or less legitimate than property rights created by more recent laws.
Personally I think a right to property based on the fact that the owner of that property created it purely through the intellect is a lot more legitimate than a right to property based on the fact that you can trace ownership back to a chain of sales and inheritances which began with someone at some point taking that property (or the capital used to produce it) from someone else by force.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
I was referring to code that would be considered an infringement on IP.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Europe doesn't need even more Americans. A few loud obnoxious ones is enough.
Sure, as Wat Tyler would tell you, having had a fairly large part in the... what was it called again?
[puts in Wikipedia link - cynical attempt at getting "Informative" mod]
And besides, don't tell me you haven't heard the line "The peasants are revolting"?
[puts in bad joke - cynical attempt at getting "Funny" mod]
when someone uses "prior art" in this manner, it is logically inferred that it PERTAINS to the alledged invention itself.
if you disagree, stop your ranting about an unrelated issue issue and explain, EXACTLY, why the alledged prior art isn't relevant.
that wouldn't be a waste of everyone's time.
what can't you get logical inferences?
Why not do away with patents completely. Let the free market truly rule. Why are we granting a monopoly for a set number of years? I thought we were capitalist? Why the fuck don't we behave that way?
(Sorry, I have heard a little too much from libertarians recently.)
It's about time that we start to be able to patent legal procedure and legal argument next to business methods and software. See how the lawyers feel when their favorite argument gets patented by their competitor.
Well, it's not stopping capitalism...
The advantage libertarianism has over the current US system is that along with the monied control of government, you'd get a little personal freedom to make you feel better at being bent over all the time.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Societies that have a small middle class or no middle class are like the feudal societies of the 10th century.
There is no innovation, no new tech or even any concepts of tech (think farming in the landlords fields/mines etc.) and you live in shacks owned by the landlord and you are in permanent debt/servitude.
It is a vicious self-reinforcing cycle of poverty (it took centuries and violent revolutions to change that system, why would we want to embrace it again?
The rich and power full benefit from the current software patent system mess, just like they benefit from moving tech and manufacturing offshore while the wages paid here in north America diminish and the middle class is shrinking.
Eventually, at some point, the system will break down, either with wars of hemisphere domination and resource wars.
We really will need open source tech as we are rapidly approaching an age of cheap self assembling nanotech and we will need the ability of people to be able to use p2p etc, to exchange designs for new nano-based products. The new nanotechnology age will make the current times look like the stone age. WE will have banished aging, we would make old people young again, we could customize our looks without primitive current plastic surgery, we will be growing our own homes, cars, computers, anything that we currently need a factory for we could manufacture cheaply on a local scale.
We will need the open source model to survive for this to happen in our lifetimes (baby boomer's take note, you have only the next two decades to make this possible, after all, we spend 1 trillion dollars/year world-wide on military (thats 1000 billion or 1 million X 1-million dollars/year, think about that!)).
Feudal societies -- of all centuries, they've been quite common in history -- are always an attractive society, for the people in power. No system maintains the powerful quite as well as a feudal society: as you've mentioned, it usually takes a full revolution to overthrow one. I have even seen some socio-historians claim that all societies eventually degenerate into a feudal state.
I'm not sure Open Source will help this, actually. It's a slight mitigating influence on the trend, yes, and is good for other reasons, but I think Open Source could probably be rolled into a feudal society quite easily. (Provided the powerful can control enough of the rest of the resources.)
'Sensible' is a curse word.
Let's show this by historical example.
In the 19th century, there was heavy competition for the implementation of the telephone system. Edison wanted to enter the market. But Bell had already patented the system! What Edison did, then, was to invent a new way by which sounds can be inputted and outputted, and using his own, new system, managed to challenge Bell. Hence, patents in this case directly drove innovation.
But what if Bell had recieved a software patent? Then the patent would not cover, as in this case, the process by which his telephone worked. Instead, he would be able to patent the idea of long distance voice communication. Edison would not be able to enter the market, even if he improved on the implementation.
Software patents aren't patents. They are ways of making money by preventing innovation.
I wish I had some modpoints to mod you up informative. :P
The current world of development will give way to lack of tolerance. As more developers and hobbyists push tools to their limits and come up with TRULY innovative and stunning applications (desktop OR web-based, or even a combo of the two), the courts will entertain and bring on nothing short of a revolution, insurrection, or outright contract jobs against those who'd interfere with the little man trying to make a living.
At some point, permitting rampant patent filing by too many large companies or a few predatory startups (you know the type we're thinking about) will be akin to allowing the patent holders of the hammer to seek royalties from users of the hammer, even though it's beyond the scope of the hammer maker.
I'm developing things, and I DARE SAY that NO court will enjoy, preclude, disrupt, or make illegal my use of old technology to revamp the image of even older or even newer tools that DON'T Serve my needs. I'm using closed-source applications to prototype something I've been developing over 4 years and which I will eventually release to Open Source. If ti takes off, a LOT of "turf owners" will be pissed. Too bad.
I'm NOT going to THROW IT AWAY just to placate some greedy f*ck of a corp or individual. I need to make a living, and do it in a non-theft way. If I parallel the incumbents, too bad. We've got up to 500 types of combs, knives, forks, tooth brushes, automobile tires, screw divers, TV sets, DVD and VCD players, word processors, databases, digital art applications, music players EACH.
Newer, independently-thinking types in college now or to be born will NOT tolerate some corp-friendly court or country to simply say, "Ahh, well, our job is not to interpret the law but to enforce it. Your only choices are to shelve your idea/s, or sell it to them, or pay them royalties, even though you invented or modified it years before they filed and even though they got tipped off to your activities and our-resourced you before you could even file. That's the way it works..."
BRING IT ON!
Slash image word: reputes
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
I have seen and implemented OR mappers several years before this patent was filed, lots of people knew about it at the time, and it's an obvious idea anyway.
The only saving grace to this patent is that OR mappings are probably a bad idea anyway; if these patents stand up in court, maybe that will finally spur some real innovation in the database market.
Red Hat should pursue the judgde to conduct a simple test of obviousness of the patent:
Given the nature of so many software-oriented patents these days, it seems that an idea has to be EXTREMELY obvious before a patent application is rejected. Prior art may be a better way to go. The patent in question was filed in 1998, and the folks who developed PostgreSQL (originally Postgres, an "Object Relational" database) might protest at the idea of ORM being a novel idea. I'm sure the original UC Berkley project did a lot of research/study around the concept.
I remember hearing a quote from back around 1900 (maybe earlier?) to the effect that "I don't expect many more patents to be issued because everything that can ever be invented probably already has been". I guess the US Patent office doesn't seem to agree anymore--if the rate of invention slows we'll just re-define "invention"...
If I came back in 100 years and saw that, I would ask what physical force was used and / or where is the politician that took the bribes and passed the restrictions that caused that.
Corporations don't create monopolies, the government does. While I do agree that there are a few, very few, natural monopolies, they are the exception. Utilities, cable, the post office, etc are government created monopolies, as well as the private company monopolies created via the patent office.
Unnatural monopolies never succeed in the long run. If profit margins are high, competition will come in. Monopolies also get lazy. Look at Microsoft. They have had a great run, but they can't get out a new os any more. Here comes Mac, Ubuntu, RedHat, et al taking market share.
Politicians are corruptable, the free market is not.
878659 - yep its prime.
Yes, you can.
Stop and think for a moment. What if there was a patent for a filesystem? A legit patent, that is, back when there was no prior art?
That just about kills Linux right there. I dare you to come up with an operating system that doesn't use a filesystem, but is still useful. I can just about guarantee that anything you come up with (say, using a database instead) is covered by the filesystem patent.
The problem is, computer science is still moving much too fast for our current patent system. Even something like that filesystem patent would take far too long to expire to save the open source movement.
Think of it this way -- Let's pretend real-world patents last a thousand years. And let's pretend that someone patents the idea of a horseless carriage.
We'd be driving steam-powered cars now. They'd cost as much as a small plane, only the very wealthy would have them, and they'd burn far too much wood to be considered an environmental advantage over internal combustion. You'd be riding a bicycle to work -- assuming that bicycles weren't covered by "horseless carriage". Or maybe we'd just all be forced to use mass transit for everything -- trains are not carriages.
Yes, you can find other ways of doing it, but all too often, computer patents are of things for which an alternative way of doing the same thing will either always be covered by the patent, or is absurdly difficult to implement and use.
Which would make sense, if computer patents only lasted a few months or a year. But patents typically last 20 years. That means that today, we can finally start using ideas which were patented in 1986. I was born in 1987.
I can understand wanting to patent a truly new idea. Suppose id had patented using textures in a first person shooter? It would have prevented competition from all of the lame Doom clones, like, say, Duke Nukem 3D. But imagine how much FPS graphics would suck today if Half-Life 2, Doom 3, and Quake 4 weren't allowed to use textures? Actually, if someone wants to do the research, I can't figure it out, but you probably can completely disable textures in one of these games, if you really want to.
Point is, routing around a boulder isn't always an option, because it may result in something that's no longer a river. Or, because that metaphor is really being strained, it's not always easy or even possible to find a better way of doing something that can be covered by a patent.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
So, corporate abuse of patents is caused by... welfare! People who try to help the less fortunate are really trying to destroy open source software!
It's very simple: Are you against social services, or are you for Nazi Germany?
True Patent reform would start with forcing them to COMPLETELY open the database. IBM and Oracle need to drop the hatchets, fund raiding of the USPTO database, and making searches MUCH, MUCH easier than ever before. The classification and group system needs to be tweaked, and a better search (Google, anyone?) needs to be grafted onto the existing data until the magic solution is arrived at. That database ought to belong to the PEOPLE for inspection and bypassing purposes. As it is, it is a pseudo-cloaked minefield, where those with resources to mine it effectively can avoid being blown up (litigated to death) in the first two years, can litigate the hell out of the weaker legit inventors, or can obstruct or deter would-be patent seekers..
Searching the USPTO database as an individual without time and money, and without a government-approved template to rapidly and CHEAPLY file a patent iare the two biggest hurdles to small people (such as myself) from even wanting to participate in the patent process. It is kind of unctuous, contemptible, and continues to serve a thriving cottage ^^^ increasingly-pro-litigious industry that bristles at the idea of small people doing their own patents ien masse. Of ALL countries, the USA is too goddamn litigious -- BECAUSE of greed and because of the existing backlog, besides priorities of patent trolls.
Ultimately, patents need to be rethough. the world is increasingly becoming CROWDED, and at some point, patents WILL just be IN THE WAY of progress. Patent trolls need to be hung out to dry.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
All of the Open Source software will be written outside of the US where US patent law doesn't hold.
That wouldn't work. Because of the Berne Convention and/or other agreements including the WTO, basically all countries will have to enforce patents issued by other countries. As in China, US sets up office dedicated to fight against piracy
FalconShould there be a Law?
I have about 2 1/2 years to go before I can retire and move anywhere I want to. If anyone can recommend a place with decent weather, a libertarian outlook, and a government that isn't run by corporations...oh, never mind.
It's a beautiful dream, though.
If a software license is irrevocable, and the author simply walks away from it, how does the software then get "deleted"? Let's say I'm an OSS author, and I get sued. I disavow any further connection with the software that's being challenged. What then?
IBM did not make the law. IBM did not donate to any political party for the law to be made; IBM never does.
Seriously, if you are doing a good amount of OSS work, setup a corporation. It is very cheap to get a coporate license. Then you have all the copyrights assigned to that copmany. If someone tries to sue you, they can only go after the company. The company has no real assests, so what will the patent trolls gain?
Use the corrupted corporate systems to fight the corrupted corporate systems.
General, you are listening to a machine! Do the world a favor and don't act like one.
I think its kind of funny that all the ancestors (or even parents) of people born in the US are here because they didn't like where they were and wanted to "leave it behind" (bad blanket statement, I guess, but whatever) Things that come to mind are the 16-18th century catholic church and european monarchies, and just general poverty and economic disasters.
Now, their descendants in the US have created such an unpleasant corporate/political juggernaut that we're considering moving away from it... and some of the options are those places that we left, which in the meantime have been hammered straight by the people who stayed.
In contrast, keep in mind the middle-east situations, where (as I've heard it told) the large Jewish populations moved out of the area after WWII to re-found israel and evade the nutty militant islamic folks... who then (with much less opposition) reshaped the government into the crazy stuff we see in Iran and Iraq and etc. So keep in mind that "all that is needed for evil men to succeed, is for good men to do nothing"(or leave).
So the real answer, of course, is for us to take a stand and etc blah blah blah etc ... which we aren't going to do since we're all thoughtful non-assertive computer nerds. Perhaps the best strategy would be to work on changing the non-assertive part? The EFF does this, but they don't seem to carry enough political clout to get things done. Maybe we need some sort of system (communications software/website, social networking something-or-other) that can help us actually lobby for things? I apologize for this thought ending in unanswered questions, but I think we all need to be asking these questions instead of wondering whether we should move.
And one last note about China... I think China has a certian appeal that people overlook. Yes, they've got a tyrannical government and people don't have any say in what happens, but at the same time... there's a human element to it. When I see America, I see a machine. A giant uncontrolled machine that doesn't really have any goal other than going faster. It finds that going downhill makes it go faster, and so it does, regardless of whether it wants to be at the bottom of the hill later on, or how unpleasant the crash will be.
China, on the other hand, knows where it is going (at least for the next couple decades). It strives to "be better". To have an technological revolution to put it on par with America. China has a self-image that it wants to improve. If a set of laws doesn't benefit the country, they aren't used. If communism isn't going to give them the economy they want, they use parts of capitalism and free market. If they have to control how many children a person has to save the nation from collapse, they do it. If China wants to brag that they have all their own software and aren't dependant on American stuff, then the government supports its development.
I can't really say any of those things about America. If some small-time developer in America comes up with a great idea and gets sued over stupid patent laws, they go down in flames, and the rest of us sit around like nascar fans and say "wow, look at that crash! It didn't affect my beer though, so I guess I have nothing to complain about". If the big (and important to the economy) corporations get massively sued, people sit around and fantasize that it could be them some day "and then, I'll invent something cool and MS will steal it, and I'll be like WHAM, B***, EAT THAT". meanwhile nobody is looking after the health of the economy, or health of innovation, or health of the environment, or doing any planning of big things in general.
I wish... that the role of President was superceded by a new role called "National Visionary". This person would look for things wrong with the nation, and try to propose solutions to them. He would be given power and authority to put things before congress, and help shape where the attention in Washington is focused. This per
Mark of the Coder fades from you. You perform Opening on World of Warcraft. Warcraft crits GPA for 4. GPA dies.
In 1997 the following paper was presented at the 6th International Python Conference: "Persistent Storage of Python Objects in Relational Databases" by Joel Shprentz (http://www.python.org/workshops/1997-10/proceedin gs/shprentz.html)
This paper describes exactly what the Firestar patent claims to invent. Appears that the patent office is: A) Lazy, B) un-informed, C) unable to keep up with the imense amount of discovery that is going on, and/or D) an out of touch wreck that is going to destroy inovation in the civilized world.
I am a small software developer that was recently forced to abandon a very promising project that I spent 2 years on. This, brought about by a patent troll in NY city. I could not afford the $Millions they wanted or the cost of defending myself against an absurd patent that they bought from the ashes of a bankrupt company. My attorney sugested that I just let it go and not bring my product to market. Oh yes! The patent office is promoting inovation left and right.......in the field of creative litigation.
Perhaps, instead of changing the patent office, we should elect people to office that can change the court system in this country to force the people who file un-warrented law suits to pay the legal costs of the defendants, should the suit be shown to be without merit.
Can you be sued in American courts? Can they prevent the distribution in America?
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
Using digital signatures, wouldn't it be possible to establish a secure-but-anonymous identity?
Combine that with securely-signed endorsements between identities (i.e. a person endorsed in the following text by contributor X -- no one can prove whether it is or is not contributor X or that he even knows who contributor X is -- will be speaking at a conference), and it might be possible to get some degree of useful recognition anonymously. That way you maybe do not have the police waiting at the door as they were for Sklyarov.
And it would seem possible to have books published, etc. by related identities to be able to claim that book X was written by a major contributor to project Y.
This doesn't solve the problem that eventually the contributor whose work has been criminalized will be hunted down and stopped and commercial entities in countries behind the Intellectual Protectionist Curtain can be easily prevented from using it, but if it were to become more common and Freeneted, who knows the degree of success you might have with the model.
Ownership of physical objects doesn't exist in a natural sense either, and it too had to be created and expanded by men with vested interests.
No, but possession does. Laws merely define the circumstances under which someone might lawfully possess something.
Personally I think a right to property based on the fact that the owner of that property created it purely through the intellect
That "creation" process rarely happens. It's not that people are claiming ownership of truly innovative "discoveries," but of every last crumb of potential implementation. The last example I can think of where this process might have been labeled legitimately so, is the research at Xerox PARC that revolutionized the manner in which people interact with computers.
I wonder if it would make sense for an individual developer to defend himself in one of these cases. If someone sued me for my purely volunteer OSS work, I certainly wouldn't want to hand them $100K's. But I probably couldn't afford an attorney either.
I would think that such a person, who hadn't profited from the software, could appear sympathetic to a judge or jury.
It's no bit secret that incumbent IP industries (software, movies, music, television, etc) are frightened to death of the concept of "free". Giving away some items to encourage the purchase of others. I.e., free cartoons, mp3s, etc on web pages with links to buy tshirts, cups and stickers, free software with offers to purchase support. This is a healthy and (can be) sound business practice, but it flies in the face of the entrenched industrie's business model.
What to do?
Change business model to compete?
Noooo
Legislate against FREE!!!
It's so simple. Why didn't we think of this before?
MjM
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
I have seen all kinds of crazy stories about patents being used to extort companies into royalties since the court battle would cost more - and thes lawyers are getting fat doing it. Acacia and others are out of control. It's good that these issues come to light so we can possible have some change! Want a really funny / scary feed? This one site (http://www.freshpatents.com/) has an rss feed of a few new patentlty applied for eveyday. and I have seen some crazy stuff that may get a apatent from unkonwing out of touch patent officee clerks who don't know that the "technique to display multiple video conference attendies simultaneously with audio-text" is nothing new to be patented - it's been done, by many others already.