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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.
Which they will if they get sued into oblivion.
TW
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
You most certainly can be sued for patent infringement by simply releasing source code, but probably only for contributory infringement (although in case of program claims, the source code may event directly infringe on the patent).
Donate free food here
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?
That won't really help, since developers and users of supposedly infringing software in the US could still be sued. Also attempts to get software patents ratified (by the back door, against the wishes of the electorate) in Europe are well documented and ongoing.
If they can't get the developers, they can get the users.
Patent violation isn't a creation issue, its a use issue as well.
The best solution is for individual developers to get a patent on something stupid and use it as a form of nuclear detente. If they can't do it, grant the copyright to an organization like EFF that can handle patent cross licensing. Until the whole concept is thrown out, writing software and not being armed with something you can threaten back with is like walking into a minefield.
And the need for software developers to have a patent portfolio for defense just makes the situation worse.
What corporation wants to take the brunt of the backlash when they successfully sue an OSS provider ?
..only to have some major Net functiionality suddenly become unavailable?
The IP sharks who will do most of the suing don't care about their public image. They are just there to make money.
Again, they won't give a @#*&, as long as they make a few $million out of it.
againist MSFT? hundreds. Eolas comes to mind. of course most simply settle for a couple hundred million.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
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.
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.
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.
The big suits settled a bit more than 10 years ago, but Robert Kearns, inventor of the intermittent windshield wiper, fits the description.
>The closest we have come to having no voting rights was the last predential ellection, where the liberal parts of Ohio had far too few voting booths
Closer than that: http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=385 . Pick a largely African-American district near a military base. Do a mass mailing there. Mark the envelopes "Do not forward". Collect the bounces from the addresses of African-Americans who are in Iraq. Build a spreadsheet of them. You now have the ability to walk into the election offices and say that everyone on the list doesn't really live at their registered address. If the would-be Democratic voter walks into a polling station, they can still fill out a provisional ballot. If still overseas, their absentee ballot will be treated as invalid and simply not counted.
You also have no voting rights if someone opaquely controls the counting of the votes.
I have never sold patent insurance, nor am I associated with the company that attempted to create a patent insurance business any longer. It might have helped protect us if that business had actually been able to sell patent insurance, but that has not worked so far.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
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
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.
I checked just now, and have made $5.36 so far. That is about what the site normally makes on is other articles, this particular article is not getting ad hits. The site has operating expenses of $500/month for the paid editor and the dedicated server, and if it breaks even this month that will be the first time in 10 years.
Unfortunately, I can't control slashdot's editing, only that on Technocrat.net
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
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.