Stallman Critical of OSDL Patent Project

PatPending writes to mention a News.com article about Richard Stallman's objections to the OSDL patent project. He argues that the project may actually be 'worse than nothing', as it will undermine certain legal tactics. From the article: "'Thus, our main chance of invalidating a patent in court is to find prior art that the Patent Office has not studied,' Stallman wrote. Second, patent applicants could use the prior art uncovered by the OSDL to write patent claims that simply avoid the technologies used in the tagged software. 'The Patent Office is eager to help patent applicants do this,' Stallman wrote. Finally, he wrote, a 'laborious half measure' such as the Open Source as Prior Art project could divert attention from the real problem: that software is patentable in the first place."

Comments

Aboslutly correct.

[geekoid]

"Finally, he wrote, a 'laborious half measure' such as the Open Source as Prior Art project could divert attention from the real problem: that software is patentable in the first place.""

Aboslutly correct.

Re:Aboslutly correct.

[Anonymous Coward]

> "Finally, he wrote, a 'laborious half measure' such as the Open Source as Prior Art project could divert attention from the real problem: that software is patentable in the first place.""

...and besides, it should have been called the Free Software as Prior Art project!

Re:Aboslutly correct.

[westlake]

Aboslutly correct.

We are two months from an important mid-term election, two years from a presidential election. Patent reform ranks somewhere below The Bridge to Nowhere on the national political agenda.

Re:Aboslutly correct.

[Anonymous Coward]

PatPending writes to mention a News.com article about Richard Stallman's objections to the OSDL patent project.

Aboslutly correct.

Can I get Insightful too?

Re:Aboslutly correct.

[geekoid]

It doesn't mean it's not important. Some people can work on more then one thing in their lives.
Considering how patenting software is stifling innovation, I consider it pretty important.

"Aboslutly "

you know, I proof read that and still screwed it up. sigh.

Re:Aboslutly correct.

[Anonymous Coward]

I went to the Patent Office trying to register some of my inventions.
I went to the main desk to sign in and the lady at the desk had a form that had to be filled out. She wrote down my personal info and then asked me what I had invented.
I said, "A folding bottle."
She said, "Okay, what do you call it?"
"A Fottle."
"What else do you have?"
"A folding carton." "What do you call it?"
"A Farton."
She sniggered and said, "Those are silly names for products and one of them sounds kind of crude."
I was so upset by her comment that I grabbed the form and left the office without even telling her about my folding bucket

-The mass email joke troller

Re:Aboslutly correct.

[westlake]

Some people can work on more then one thing in their lives.

The thing is, you have to be realistic. You might see a slightly more centrist Congress after November. But that is all you are likely to see.

Re:Aboslutly correct.

[Anonymous Coward]

That is because politics is consumed by non-issues, artificial issues, so we do not get to really important issues. Take for example the war in Iraq. Obviously, its important, but the foreign affairs should not play a huge role in your domestic politics so that issues like for example patent reform are completely ignored. This is precisely what happens though...

(The very same counts for news/journalism. Mostly non-issues and artificial issues.)

Re:Aboslutly correct.

[mabhatter654]

what they need to do is focus on a sourceforge type code base registry rather than actual patent applications. Rather than sourceforge working on whole projects, they could be small snips of interesting stuff, or even raw ideas fleshed out publicly so nobody else could patent them.. .or at least have a public searchable source of "we invented this" prior art for OSS projects to point to.

Re:Aboslutly correct.

[fleischdot]

Do you think elections are completely unrelated to software patents? I'm not involved, but I ask myself, who holds the license of the software used in your great election machines? If it's closed and patented, are you able to trust the patent holder?

Stallman... half right

[xtaski]

Have to disagree. For those without $1M of FSF funds to run around fighting granted, bad patents, it's much more difficult to fight in a come-from-behind position when XYZ Patent Troll Inc. already has a patent granted. Litigating patents is expensive. It's cheaper to lop off the 10% that are obvious "spam patents" before they're ever granted than to let all 10% (that would be like 4,000 these days) go through and clean up later...

Re:Stallman... half right

[cswiger2005]

It's better to lop off as many software patents as we can, agreed. Litigating patents is usually expensive, but then, having to pay a patent troll royalties for a bogus claim usually becomes expensive, too. Having prior art available to refute a patent troll's claim makes litigating bogus patents a lot easier and a lot cheaper.

I don't believe anything which could be described as an algorithm should be patentable. I also don't believe that you should patent public API's, as such "programming interfaces" are by definition intended for use by other programs; public APIs normally are widely distributed in documentation, which at least prevents others from patenting the APIs which you might release (as your release will obviously constitute prior art). I suppose that if you implement computer software which is sufficiently original, not completely obvious after 5 minutes of thought, and is not representable as a mathematical algorithm, that might deserve the protection of a patent, but for the most part, simple copyright ought to provide enough protection....

Re:Stallman... half right

[Peter La Casse]

It's cheaper to lop off the 10% that are obvious "spam patents" before they're ever granted than to let all 10% (that would be like 4,000 these days) go through and clean up later...

Perhaps it's cheaper in the short term, but if letting the worst 10% of software patents go through annoys enough people that we're able to get rid of all software patents, or the worst 90%, it would be cheaper in the long run to allow obvious "spam patents".

What's broken: the obvious "spam patents" or the system that approves them? Will getting rid of only the worst 10% solve the problem? In Stallman's eyes, not only will it not, but getting rid of the worst 10% makes the next worst 10% harder to get rid of.

It's true that for those who would be unfairly prosecuted for violating the worst 10%, but not the next worst 10%, getting rid of the worst 10% is the priority. Everyone else, though, should take the long term view.

Re:Stallman... half right

[j. andrew rogers]

I suppose that if you implement computer software which is sufficiently original, not completely obvious after 5 minutes of thought, and is not representable as a mathematical algorithm, that might deserve the protection of a patent

So was everyone asleep in that part of computational theory where they point out that everything (including hardware) is reducible to a mathematical algorithm?

Re:Stallman... half right

[cswiger2005]

So was everyone asleep in that part of computational theory where they point out that everything (including hardware) is reducible to a mathematical algorithm?

In theory, perhaps. More accurately, ideal hardware can be represented or modelled by mathematical algorithms, but real-world hardware exhibits a number of differences from ideal models, including non-perfect TTL response: real transistors aren't ideal binary on-off devices and exhibit non-linear behavior especially as they heat up or run outside of rated tolerances, not that anyone would overclock a circuit or have issues with their CPUs overheating.

Of course, you can model some failure modes, at least once you have enough data to predict the likely ones, but computer manufacturers are in the process of recalling millions of batteries outside of their predicted MTBF, just as some hard drive vendors have had to recall lots of devices because of shoddy components, and there's a whole era of AMD motherboards from the KT266 VIA chipsets through the KT400 or 600 which had those crappy electrolytic capacitors which used to fail after a year or so.

As for computer software, self-contained sections of code working over known data exhibit highly predictable results which can be predicted or modelled deterministicly, but it's easy enough to model algorithms such as the Lorentz attactor or Lyapunov exponents which may be deterministic but are sufficiently non-linear or even chaotic that their states cannot be predicted short of actually computing the results. More to the point, most software nowadays involves interactions with humans which provide more-or-less arbitrary inputs and sometimes you even gets software bugs resulting from un-expected combinations.

Thank God

[Mateo_LeFou]

I was beginning to think everyone had just accepted the idea that the patent system is just a game people will be forced to play.

Re:Thank God

[cloricus]

Oh god. I think I just read a Stallman point of view and agreed with every point. :| I didn't think that would ever happen...

I guess I'm going to be one of the people chanting "down with this project" now?

Re:Thank God

[smittyoneeach]

Keep in mind that the we're talking specifically of software patents here.
Drug and hardware patents are also problematic, but the reform had better be well considered, or the cure could be worse than the disease. The specific case of software, however, is one where we can eschew playing without destabilizing the economy too readily.

Re:Thank God

[orasio]

The problem is that the guy in the past was talking about bad things that would happen if you didn't follow his lead. He sounded a little nutty, talking about an oppressive future, for example whn he discussed Palladium, or "Treacherous Computing".
Right now, the problems he was talking about are more real, DRM, and trusted computing are real problems that affect you right now.
He hasn't changed, but the reality did change into what he said it would.
Software patents right now have a harmful effect, but they could be much worse if you let them advence further.
It's not as hard right now to imagine a future time where every free software project is effectively killed by software patents, and the only practical software available is a restricted TV-like personal computer, completely controlled by content providers.
Of course, there are countries without software patents, but for example my country will get them through an FTA with the US, and in most other places, this could happen too.

If your kitchen counter was on fire...

[xtaski]

Would you wait for the rest of the house to burn down and rebuild the entire house from scratch... or put out the fire on the counter and replace the counter...?

Re:If your kitchen counter was on fire...

[Rogerborg]

Relevant how? This is like setting fire to the curtains and saying "How do you like that, kitchen counter?"

Re:If your kitchen counter was on fire...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd wait for someone else to replace the counter, and then I'd stick the GNU label on it.

Moral correctness is not enough

[EmbeddedJanitor]

It's like saying nobody should steal, so I won't lock my car/house/whatever.

Sure, in the long term, and a perfect world, you might want to get rid of software patents. Right now however they are real and are here and measure that combat them face to face have some merit.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[geekoid]

Measures like this give they appearence that something has been fixed.
We must continue to point out that it's not only broken, but that software patents are a mistake to begin with.

You don't need the perfect world, you need to put in the efforts to take political steps to see that congress ends software patents.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[grcumb]

It's like saying nobody should steal, so I won't lock my car/house/whatever.

-1 Analogy

No it's not like that at all. It's not like anything, except the plain statement that patents, designed for finite, physical objects, should not be applied to infinitely reproducible items like software.

Software is not a house, a car or any other physical thing. Please stop pretending it is.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[Millenniumman]

Why does software not being a physical object make it less suitable to be patented? Patents are there so that if you invent something, someone else can't copy it and mass produce it cheaper than you can, without having paid anything for the development. If I invent a new software algorithm, and it is not patented, then someone can copy it (not a copy of the code, but of the process) into their own software, which they have far greater resources to distribute and undercut on price. Why should I spend time inventing new algorithms, then?

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[vertinox]

If I invent a new software algorithm, and it is not patented, then someone can copy it (not a copy of the code, but of the process) into their own software, which they have far greater resources to distribute and undercut on price. Why should I spend time inventing new algorithms, then?

Because chances are the algorithm you created was most likely neither novel nor unique to the large amounts of algorithms created before you. As in... Your algorithm had to be based on some math that everyone knows or at the most an obscure math professor came up with years ago.

You aren't writing your own language but taking from knowledge of mankind and applying it to your own methods.

Secondly, copyrights protect someone from copying your code, but not your methods because if someone can simply recreate your algorithm simply by looking at the results and not even see any of your source code then again... your algorithm was neither novel nor unique and therby not deserve a patent.

However, your effort and code should be copyrighted and protected by such methods.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[F452]

Maybe you shouldn't, if you're concerned about not getting monopoly protection. No loss to the rest of us. Someone else will do it in your place. Patents are supposed to promote innovation for the benefit of society. Software patents just stifle people who are already working on making better algorithms with no interest in idea monopolies.

----
Freedom is on the March!
http://www.movingtofreedom.org

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[aztracker1]

The fact is *VERY* little software is actually anything truly new, not derivative, original, and worthy of a patent in the first place. It all builds off of other ideas, and concepts.

I also beleive that patents in regards to software don't fit the timeframe for patents on physical devices. It would be a far different situation if patents were only valid on software concepts for 3-5 years opposed to 20.

I would seriously challenge anyone to name a software concept from the past 20 years that doesn't have prior art, AND isn't/wasn't relatively obvious.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[LordLucless]

Building on what you said: the whole basis of a patent is that of a trade. The public gives the inventory a time-limited monopoly, the inventor tells the public how his invention works. The reason this is a good deal for the public is the non-obvious clause. Patents are designed to protect things that nobody else can figure out how to do. If someone can look at your invention and think "Eh, I know how to do that", then your invention is not worthy of patent - the public would be getting a bad deal, because they're trading a monopoly for something they already know. Patents are designed so that when someone invents something really cool, he doesn't keep it as a trade secret. If he does, and he dies, then the world loses knowledge. If he patents it, then everyone knows how to do it (even if they can't use it for another ten years) and knowledge is retained. That is how patents can (and should) act towards the good. The problem now is that the USPTO is betraying their purpose by making crappy deals on behalf of the public. They're giving away monopolies like candy, and reaping the kickbacks (errr, I mean processing fees).

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[LordLucless]

inventor, not inventory. I knew there was a reason for the preview button.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[RobertCorsaro]

He(and I) is also against software licenses. What is the moral difference between this and the GPL. Using the enemies system to fight the enemy is a good idea.

Grammer nazis, please proof read this for me.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[codehead78]

Dude, cloning existing good software, assigning it a 0.1 version number, giving it away for nothing, and telling everyone they should be using the clone instead is what Open Source is all about.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[SmokedS]

Software is quite literally, an algorithm. Math. Actually, it's algorithms made up of algorithms.
Thousands upon thousands of them in a medium size program. In millions of possibly patentable combinations. I literally write hundreds of potentially patentable things every single day. Almost all of these are simple combinations of things that have been done for ages. I'm sure that many of them are patented, illegally. Writing one takes minutes. Trying to find out if it is patented would be a project taking weeks, and would not be conclusive even then. It is literally impossible to verify that a program does not infringe on patents.

Software patents favor one party and one party only. Big corporations with large patent portfolios. Such companies can literally exclude competition from the marketplace through having their army of lawyers wield their arsenal of overly broad obvious patents. SMEs simply cannot afford to fight back.

Thank goodness software patents are not legal in the EU. It would be a disaster for SMEs like my company.

A huge number of SMEs signed a petition against software patents the last time they tried to pass this crap. Now it seems we have to do it all over again.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[anarxia]

It's more like having a law that doesn't sense and instead of voting it down you have a law firm that will take cases for free.

Does the problem still exist? Yes.

Does the law firm help? Yes

I would call it a "better than nothing" measure but I wouldn't call it a solution.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[Chris Burke]

Why should I spend time inventing new algorithms, then?

The same reason you spend time writing software at all (that others with more resources may duplicate and undercut): The new algorithm solves a particular need of yours. It is useful.

This is why Sir Charles Hoare created the quicksort in 1960. It probably didn't even occur to him that this was something he should prevent others from using, and he still found it useful to invent. Thank God he did not -- could not -- patent it, or it would have been over a decade before people could have taken free advantage of the fastest-average-time general sorting algorithm known today. Imagine everyone else had been doing the same thing -- locking up merge sort, bin sort, r/b binary trees, avl binary trees, b-trees, etc etc. With all these foundations of computer science locked up in patents for 14-20 years, how much progress do you think the software world would have made compared to what it did with free access to all these ideas? Remember, we're talking about a fourth of the entire existence of computers.

Why does software not being a physical object make it less suitable to be patented?

Because software is math.

That's all it is. A program is just a series of mathematical operations performed by a computer. Now the computer is an invention. But the software is just a calculation. Patenting a software algorithm is like patenting a sequence of button pushes on your calculator, and by "like" I mean "is very literally the same".

Imagine if Sir Issac Newton had decided to lock away his Calculus? He might have had some legal troubles from Leibniz, but once they came to an amicable arangement, everyone else would have been out of luck. Is Calculus not a great invention? Of course! But like all math, it is an invention whose benefit comes from what could be built upon it. Thank goodness that Newton published his book and did not restrict others from using what it described, or you have to wonder where we'd be today.

Why shouldn't software be patentable? Because it's a patent on math, the fundamental language of the universe.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[D. Book]

It's like saying nobody should steal, so I won't lock my car/house/whatever.

Sure, in the long term, and a perfect world, you might want to get rid of software patents. Right now however they are real and are here and measure that combat them face to face have some merit.

IMHO, a closer analogy to Stallman's position would be: "it's like saying people shouldn't spend money on wireless home security cameras if it makes them neglect securing their windows and doors, and particularly if it will make them even less secure when burglars pick up the wireless signal to monitor their potential targets from a safe distance".

Stallman himself preempted your thoughts:

"If the worst thing about the project were its inability to solve the whole problem, it would still be better than nothing. But given that it can also backfire, it can be worse than nothing."

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

inventor, not inventory. I knew there was a reason for the preview button.

Been playing much RPGs lately...?

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine, if you will, software patents being the norm about 40-45 years ago. Do you realize that software design could have been held back nearly 20 years because such non-obvious constructs as "if-then-else", "while-do", "case", "repeat-until", record structures, objects, etc... would have all gotten patented by the Algol and Simula design groups and it would have been the 80s or 90s (depending on continuations) before the constructs that we all use to create software on a daily basis would have been freed up for general use.

Not to mention all of the algorithms in Knuth's books, automated parser generators, formal grammars, inherited/synthesized attributes, etc...

What's been lost already because people {have been / are afraid to be} sued?

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[vadim_t]

Because algorithms are 99% of the time invented right while you're solving a problem that could be solved with one. If somebody else is faced with the same problem, chances are they'll reinvent independently the same thing. That makes them obvious.

At a young age, having only heard superficially of what a linked list was I could easily implement one. I also came up on my own with doubly linked lists, deques, etc, without having heard of them at all. I also figured on my own that caching data is a good way to improve performance. This is because those things are obvious. Right when you're staring at the code and thinking "Hmm, searching for the previous element in a singly linked list is a pain", the solution becomes almost blindingly obvious: Add a pointer to the previous element.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[grcumb]

Why does software not being a physical object make it less suitable to be patented?

Because there are laws covering ideas and, however wrong they might be, they pass the test of applicability. Ultimately, patents were designed to present the rapid duplication of physical objects (and explicitly not ideas).

Patents are there so that if you invent something, someone else can't copy it and mass produce it cheaper than you can, without having paid anything for the development.

I'll get to development costs in a moment, because that's a valid issue. But first let's address the issue of mass production. Mass production of em is controlled by a number of very effective laws, so anyone attempting to make counterfeits of your software is subject to existing law. No recourse to patent law is required. Reproduction in digital format of your software (not the process) is subject to copyright law.

So what's left uncovered? The idea. Now you may argue that there should be legal restrictions on the use of ideas (or processes or other intellectual achievements), and some might agree. Unfortunately, governments have, in the past at least, refused to legislate exclusivity of ideas. In fairness, they have trodden dangerously close to doing so, mostly for the very reason that you give: to protect the research and development investment that people and companies make when developing new ideas.

That is a legitimate debate, and one that needs to be conducted well and fully.

But the facile conflation of the tangible and intangible, especially through analogy, is intellectually lazy and does nothing to advance this argument.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

The primary goal of patenting software is to make sure no one else can create the same software totally written in a different language. Example, the calendar program written is java verses perl. Let say that the idea of the calendar is patented in java, then no one can design the calendar software in perl without paying royalties. Even though built in different languages, in different methods, and different ways. Calendar have already been patented and locked into only one specific software and no one else can implement any calendar that resemble the likeness of it.

I even have heard someone trying to patent binary numbers 0 and 1, or bits and bytes so that they can charge royalty fees base on how much bytes you use in software programming. So let say that someone successfully get it patented. Know this person wants 1 millon dollar for each kilobyte that software uses. If you used 12 kilobytes to deliver your software they could be sued your software company for not paying the 12 million dollars fee.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[thePig]

Because, unlike other products, it is of no cost to mass produce in case of software.
It is quite easy to bring the product to fore, in case of software.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[lysergic.acid]

The advantage you should (and naturally) have is that you can put the product into production and profit from it before anyone else--sometimes that is all it takes to achieve market dominance. If you invent a new type of software, you will be the originator that everyone will see as the genuine thing or real deal. By the time others copy it, you'll have improved the product for the next release of the software. Why do you think even though there are tons of iPod knockoffs that iPods are still unrivaled as the best mp3 player? It works the same way for all technological products.

Just because you've invented something innovative doesn't mean you should be allowed to monopolize that idea and profit off of it indefinitely and charge people royalties for using that idea even if they arrived at it independently just because they got the idea after you did. If you create something innovative and want to profit from it, fine. But you can't expect others to not try to copy the idea and even improve upon it just because you thought of it first. You have to keep improving on your product in order to stay ahead of the game--that's how all industries work. Patents are just a lazy way of making money without having to work to stay ahead of the competition. It stifles innovation in so many ways that only the greedy would argue in favor of their existence.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[Millenniumman]

The iPod wasn't a new idea. It was an old idea done well.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[Millenniumman]

It is not easy at all to bring software products into popularity. First of all, due to the lack of cost to duplicate you mentioned, it is easy for a large company to sell it cheap, or even give it away, in order to gain dominating marketshare. Second of all, popular products become de facto standards and it is hard to overcome them.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[lysergic.acid]

It incorporated new ideas and innovations--the culmination of which was a new and innovative product in itself which others have tried to imitate ever since. In any case, my point still remains: having others copy your idea doesn't negate your ability to continue to profit (lucratively) from something you created first.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

Measures like this give they appearence that something has been fixed.

Indeed. Look at crypto export regulations. A lot of people now think that cryptography isn't meaningfully regulated, but in reality, only mass-market software is free from the onerous restrictions. If you start selling, say, a secure wireless keyboard over the Internet, you can still be charged with a crime. (Why do you think there are *still* no actually-secure wireless keyboards on the market?)

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

No it's not like that at all. It's not like anything, except the plain statement that patents, designed for finite, physical objects, should not be applied to infinitely reproducible items like software.

It not anything nearly that general. Or, at least, we don't know that it is. What we know is that we've tried applying patents to software, and over the last few decades, it's proven to be detrimental.

Personally, I think you should be able to file a patent on nearly any invention, but patents should be enforced in different ways, depending on how the technology is being used. If you're suing over the technology being used in software, you get nothing, or maybe enforcement for 2 years, tops. If it's in an ASIC, maybe 5 years. Pharmaceuticals, 20 years (or whatever). This would all be for the same patent, but you get monopoly power over various sectors of the economy for different times (and under different terms). Ongoing monitoring would result in regulatory changes, as necessary to promote progress.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[Soldrinero]

Not that I'm a fan of the current patent system, but patents can and should cover things other than just "things that no one else can figure out." Non-obvious doesn't mean that you can't figure it out, but that you wouldn't think of doing it. For example, I've used a set of Allen wrenches that had specially beveled ends. The way they were shaped allowed you to turn the screw even with the wrench at a significant angle, like 20 degrees or so. Now, it's not at all difficult to figure out how they work, but the idea is brilliant and extremely useful, especially on an optics table.

Patents can work for the public good by encouraging innovation through financial incentives, i.e. limited-time monopoly protection. The trick is that if patents are being used as cudgels against competitors, especially if this is because the patents are too broad, then they're no longer serving the public good. Sadly, that's the state that we're in today.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[BeeBeard]

Why shouldn't software be patentable? Because it's a patent on math, the fundamental language of the universe.

Sorry, Donald in Mathmagic Land, but your appeal to grandiose concepts has no place in this. You just argued absolutely nothing, and got modded up for it. Everything in the universe can be reduced to simpler elements that by themselves seem to defy property labels. Why have drug patents, when we're just talking about molecular interactions in the human body? Hey, why have patents on a new anything, anyway, when all we're talking about is how a bunch of atoms interact with other atoms?

You see how useless that is? It's just the same slippery slope idealistic nonsense that short-sighted beard-and-glasses wonks like Stallman pretend has some merit.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[tambo]

No it's not like that at all. It's not like anything, except the plain statement that patents, designed for finite, physical objects, should not be applied to infinitely reproducible items like software.

You are talking about the U.S. patent system, right?

I ask because the U.S. patent system has never - IN ITS ENTIRE HISTORY - been limited to "finite, physical objects." The U.S. Patent Act has had four major versions, and all of these acts affirmatively permitted patents on intangible inventions.

Patent Act of 1790, Sec. 1: Patents to be issued for "any useful art, manufacture, engine, machine, or device, or any improvement therein not before known or used..."

Patent Act of 1793, Sec. 1: Patents to be issued for "any new and useful art, machine, manufacture or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement..."

Patent Act of 1836, Sec. 6: Patents to be issued for "any new and useful art, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement..."

Patent Act of 1952, Sec. 101: Patents to be issued for "any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof..."

These classes are semantically unchanged from the original words of Ben Franklin. As a result, we've had process patents for 216 years, for every field of technology and industry. Have patents caused any industry to grind to a halt over process patents? Nope.

Even worse (for the viability of your argument): not only does your characterization not accurately reflect the U.S. patent system, it's not even a new mischaracterization. Thirty years ago, similarly misguided people were up in arms over process patents for biotechnology - making the same spurious claims that biotech would collapse under the weight of patents, that ordinary benchtop research would be blighted by the patent system, etc. Yet 36 years after Diamond v. Chakrabarty, biotech is explosively thriving, and has created a healthcare revolution.

So you're not just horribly misinformed about the nature of the patent system, you're also relying on arguments that have been proven completely false in similar contexts.

- David Stein

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

But drug patents are a patent on chemistry. See how I did that? Putting chemistry in bold makes my point vaild. PS: I hate all patents as they are a patent on reality. Reality!

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[TapeCutter]

Hey wonk, this has nothing to do with idealism. Maths is a language that describes reality and should be covered by copyright and trade secret legislation in exactly the same way as english, american, farsi, ect.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

What about design patents then? The comment "why should I spend time inventing new product designs if someone can copy them easily?" is the rationale behind them. So invalidate design patents as well? Also, what's an invention really? Has anybody invented anything that didn't use parts or processes or techniques used by anyone else? You probably can count "inventions" on one hand if you apply that as the criterion.

In addition to this grey area of "invention" that is yummy lunch for lawyers, what often happens is that someone "invents" something after a long struggle, and it becomes immediately obvious to others once they see the invention. Ever went "Now, why didn't I think of that!" on seeing something new and cool? Any invention protection law has to account for this process, 'cos it is unfair to the inventor to copy his work without compensating her, unless the inventor is ok with it. The usual patent system accepts this possibility by broadening its scope to apply to "new stuff made by putting together old stuff in new ways." It leaves the grey areas of "new" and "old" open to be decided in court.

Economics is the science of incentives. If you want to steer the economy in a direction - say fun, creativity, social benefits, don't-be-evil, etc. - just set up the appropriate incentives (not necessarily monetary). There is no point arguing about absolute morals.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

That whooshing sound that you heard? That was the point flying over your head.

Software may not be a physical thing; however, the house that they reposess from you because your unpatented software violates a *later* patent will be. Thus, it is stupid to "opt out" of the patent system by not filing for patents. Just as stupid as leaving your door unlocked because you would never steal.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[arose]

Why should I spend time inventing new algorithms, then?

Because you have a problem to solve. How many programers currently go over software patents to find a solution for their problem as opposed to find how to ovoid a patent problem?

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[Pecisk]

Maybe because you invent new algorithm to solve some software problem in first place, not to get patent on it?

It is like all that R&D cost - it is for YOUR product, for YOUR profit, so why in God's name you should give a change to patent it? Copycats? Copyright covers design, Apple already have used this deffence very frequently. Competitor's similar devices? Of course, if it is not why market is here in first place? Compete with price, features, etc.

But why patents? And don't give me a excuse that you won't have nothing to eat if you won't patent it. Yeah, right.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[Shaper_pmp]

Patents are temporary monopolies, which inherently restrict people's freedom. Even the people who originally set up the patent law in the USA understood and agreed with this.

Given patents are restrictions, patents are only allowed to exist where necessary, and solely for the "greater good" of society.

Without patents there would be no protection for inventors' inventions, so the theory says they wouldn't invent anything, and society would suffer.

Large businesses already have large cash reserves and an infrastructure to quickly begin production of any new product or invention, so the people who patents are mostly designed to protect are independant inventors and small companies.

If inventions occurred without patent protection then there would be no need for patents.

The computer industry (specifically, the software industry) has, for the last thirty or forty years, self-evidently been the single most successful and fast-developing industry we've ever seen. Innovation and inventions have come on a regular (and ever-increasing) basis, for long before patents were issued on software. In fact, there are reams and reams of documented cases where innovation has been halted by the existence of patents, and not one where a patent has been proven to have helped innovation.

Unlike most physical devices, software is not generally a discrete invention. If even basic software algorithms are allowed to be patented it will be impossible to write software, since software is basically a collection of basic algorithms re-arranged into a novel order.

Because software is hard for patent examiners to understand they habitually issue overly-broad patents to basic algorithms. Because the only way to challenge patents is in court (with all the associated fees), software patents primarily benefit large companies who can afford to cross-licence or defend their patents.

So, patents are a necessary evil, and by design and intention may be used only where necessary.

Patents are required to stimulate innovation. Except in the software industry.
Patents reward novel and non-obvious innovation. Except in the software industry.
Patents protect the small inventor. Except in the software industry.

Have I made my point yet?

You can blather on all day about the philosophy of what should and shouldn't be patentable[1], but it's irrelevent - software shouldn't be patentable because there's no need.

Patents shouldn't be issued unless there's a good reason to do so, not merely because you can't see a reason not to.

[1] FWIW I agree that algorithms are ideas/math, and that ideas/math shouldn't be patentable. If you disagree, and believe ideas or math should be patentable you might as well ask why someone can't patent a colour, or why Isaac Newton couldn't patent gravity.

Software is a few very, very basic ideas (algorithms). Software merely consists of re-arranging them in a novel order, not "inventing" anything new.

Source code is an expression of ideas, and is (rightly) copyrightable. "Software" is just ideas, and ideas simply aren't patentable.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

But if I can figure out how it works, what have I gained to pay for the cost of giving you a monopoly on that idea? Nothing. So why should I "pay" for a monopoly? You're not a communist, are you? Wanting control of markets and giving preferential treatment to "good fellas" is definitely antiethical to capitalist/free markets.

NOTE: Who pays the financial incentive? The public. So why isn't it better for the public to KEEP their money. If you want some of it, invent something I'll pay for.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[CandyMan]

> Patents are there so that if you invent something, someone else can't copy it and mass
> produce it cheaper than you can, without having paid anything for the development.

Actually no. Patents are there to provide an incentive for disclosure. You don't get the monopoly powers of a patent in order to protect your invention, you get monopoly powers in exchange for advancing the common good by revealing your methods to everyone. That is why the law (European Patent Convention, article 52a doesn't allow business methods patents, or algorithm patents. Business methods are revealed by your executing them, so the monopoly would be in exchange for nothing. And mathematics (which is what algorithms are) have their own mechanism for disclosure, which is scholarly publication.

> If I invent a new software algorithm, and it is not patented, then someone can copy it
> (not a copy of the code, but of the process) into their own software, which they have
> far greater resources to distribute and undercut on price.
> Why should I spend time inventing new algorithms, then?

The cost of inventing an algorithm (a really novel one, like the RSA encryption sheme, not bogus ones like the XOR patent for writing to screen memory) is low enough (one salary, paper, pencil, cofee) that the current system of incentives (fame as a mathematician/computer scientist, peer-reviewed publications, tenure track) is high enough to provide society with algorithms. This is not the case with physical-word inventions, where the cost of one working prototype is the price of all the physical resources that went into it, and the monopoly power of a patent, if well-tuned, can be a good incentive to publication of diescoveries that would otherwise remain trade secrets.

The software patent system does not promote investment in algorithm research, it promotes investment in patent lawyers.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

The cost of inventing an algorithm (a really novel one, like the RSA encryption scheme, not bogus ones like the XOR patent for writing to screen memory) is low enough (one salary, paper, pencil, cofee)

Three salaries. Otherwise, fair enough.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

Newton DID lock away Calculus for about 30 years; he was extremely sensitive to criticism. The only reason he published his results at all was to thwart Leibniz. Newton, being the kind of man he was, never would have come to an agreement with Leibniz about anything. You should review your history before making such bold assertions.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

That's all it is. A program is just a series of mathematical operations performed by a computer. Now the computer is an invention. But the software is just a calculation. Patenting a software algorithm is like patenting a sequence of button pushes on your calculator, and by "like" I mean "is very literally the same".

OK, let's consider the implications of your analogy.

Suppose you're in a field that requires the performance of very complicated calculations. To compute the result, you must press a few hundred thousand calculator buttons, all of them correctly and in the right order. Would having a calculator where instead you could push just a single button to give you the answer reliably have any value to you?

Your argument is effectively saying that it wouldn't. After all, it's just maths, right? Anyone can do it and we know it all already, so there's no no need to incentivise new research.

By the way, as another poster pointed out, your choice of Newton as an example is rather ironic. Try reading a little of the history of Newton and Leibniz, particularly the extensive delay in Newton publishing his work on calculus, the allegations of plagiarism, and the divide in the mathematical community that resulted.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[MBC1977]

I say keep the 'fame and prestige' and just pay me in dollars (euro, pounds, etc.)
One can't go into a supermarket on fame and get free food. Money will however.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[SpacePunk]

because software patents do not patent the exact way of achieving the end result. They patent an abstract idea of how to achieve the end result. A way which can be done literally millions of different ways in the code. It's always been said that ideas cannot be patented, but that is exactly what software patents do.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[F452]

The point with software is that somebody else can and will reduce the few hundred thousand button presses (or clicks) to a single one, without the incentive of a patent. There's no need to grant monopoly to people to come up with good software ideas. I think a more pressing need is to disincentivize the word "incentivize."

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[CandyMan]

Fame and prestige gets you better jobs in academia. If you invent an algorithm worth the paper it is written on, at least.

Software patents can also keep a large number of programmers from earning money. If you are a programmer, software patents mean you can't just write your code without worrying if any snippet is patented. Most likely some of them will be, look at the patented web shop that the FFII annotated. Programmers shouldn't have to pay rent on algorithms, never mind whether they are trivial or hard, learnt from a textbook or self-developed.

Software patents are just that: rent on mathematical ideas, expressed in a way we call "algorithms". I don't see any benefit in allowing some individuals to collect rent from all the others for a resource (ideas) that can be easily duplicated, has powerful positive externalities and very low negative internalities (their side-effects are enormously and they good cost comparatively little to produce).

The truth is that everybody needs money, and most people have to work for it. The government shouldn't give anyone monopoly powers unless they can prove society, and not the rent-seekers alone, will also benefit from the trade. Software patents benefit the limited number of people who can afford them, not the majority of society, so we should not have them. This way we can all (that includes you) have more wealth, or as you said, money.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

There's no need to grant monopoly to people to come up with good software ideas

Perhaps for mainstream applications. But there is a world full of niche software markets, where products are neither mainstream nor bespoke. I've worked in that world on many occasions, for different types of business and with different types of software. I would bet that little or none of that software would ever get written if the entire burden of doing so fell on individual customers. The economics just aren't there. The result would simply be that all of the customers' offerings were weaker, but since they're all in competition and at the same disadvantage by not having the niche software, the economics say that's what they would do.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[Chris Burke]

To compute the result, you must press a few hundred thousand calculator buttons, all of them correctly and in the right order. Would having a calculator where instead you could push just a single button to give you the answer reliably have any value to you?

Your argument is effectively saying that it wouldn't. After all, it's just maths, right? Anyone can do it and we know it all already, so there's no no need to incentivise new research.

What? You think I'm arguing that neither math nor its reliable and speedy computation are valuable? Where did you get that?

What I'm saying is that codifying mathematics into a computer program does not change the fact that it is mathematics.

In your example there, you already have the algorithm (i.e. the math), and you want to execute it quickly and reliably at the push of a button, instead of entering it in each time. Of course that has value, but that additional value beyond the math itself is 1) the specification of the math in a computer-readable form and 2) the computer to run the specification.

The first is protected by copyright, the second by patents. The math itself, which is what patenting the part of software that isn't the specific fixed representation involves, is unpatentable, and for good reason.

No need to incentivize new research? The incentive is the usefulness of the mathematics, same as it has always been. Was there no mathematics research before the creation of software patents? What about after? That's rhetorical, of course.

By the way, as another poster pointed out, your choice of Newton as an example is rather ironic. Try reading a little of the history of Newton and Leibniz, particularly the extensive delay in Newton publishing his work on calculus, the allegations of plagiarism, and the divide in the mathematical community that resulted.

I knew about the fight, but not about the 30 year delay. Learn something new every day. I just hope you realize that if the early practitioners of computer science in the 50s and 60s had locked away their creations for 30 years, we wouldn't be having this conversation today.

Math builds upon math. Science builds upon math. Engineering builds upon math. Math is the fundamental language of technological progress, and locking math up in patents is to lock up the foundation of progress.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

Words are based on letters. So should trademarks exist then? Or would you then say, "a trademark is not a patent"? Just wondering.. what I mean to say is how does your analogy hold in relation to language? (you have a good point IMO)

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[Chris Burke]

Everything in the universe can be reduced to simpler elements that by themselves seem to defy property labels.

Except you don't have to reduce software to simpler elements to call it math.

Software is math, in the same way that "3 * y^2 + (7 / 6)x = z" is math.

Now you may argue that "3 * y^2 + (7 / 6)x" is actually a series of characters that represent math, but again, that's exactly the same as software. Software is a machine-readable representation of a series of mathematical statements, while the equation I wrote is a human-readable representation of mathematical statements. Actually, some programs would be able to parse the equation, as well.

Representations of mathematical concepts, aka software, can be covered by copyright, just like a book about math can be copyrighted. The concept represented, the math that the software is intended to convey, would not be patentable if it appeared in a book, but when it appears in source code, suddenly it is.

If you don't believe software is math, you just don't understand software.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[Chris Burke]

Words are based on letters. So should trademarks exist then? Or would you then say, "a trademark is not a patent"? Just wondering.. what I mean to say is how does your analogy hold in relation to language? (you have a good point IMO)

Software is based on letters (and other characters), but it represents math. Just like the letters you just read represent the concept "Software is characters, but represents math".

So it's pretty much the same thing with regards to language. The specific form of the language, the sequence of words and letters and punctuation, is the representation, and that representation can be copyrighted. However the concept embodied in those words and letters cannot, in general, be patented or otherwise protected.

Trademark is completely different than a patent, btw. "McDonald's" isn't an invention, it's a brand name, and the motivations for protecting it are very different. Notice how the McDonald's concept isn't protected at all.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[leoboiko]

But that has nothing to do with patents. Being "sensitive to criticism" or stubbornly require attribution is very different than not letting people use your math unless they pay you.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[leoboiko]

However the concept embodied in those words and letters cannot, in general, be patented or otherwise protected.

Correct, and to extend on the analogy: to patent software is like patenting, say, "detective novels where the protagonist is bitter but easen up near the end" or "adventure fiction involving controversial references to Christianism". Software patents don't protect specific pieces of software (which is the job of copyright law); they lock up entire classes of software, even if still unwritten, which happens to have the same underlying math principles.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[leoboiko]

Your argument is effectively saying that it wouldn't.

Er, that's not what he said at all. What you described is a specific algorithm, something already covered by copyright law. The OP never said algorithms are useless. Instead, he said you shouldn't incentive algorithm research specifically with patents, which are one of several ways of funding research. A patent would not only "protect" the specific key sequence you're talking of, it would also protect a lot of related sequences trying to solve the same problem. That's very bad because, being math, they may well be discovered independently by unrelated people. That's why the OP means when he talks about math not being patentable. Protect the specific key sequence (copyright); don't lock up whole sets of key sequences at the same domain (patent).

And, as I've pointed out elsewhere, Newton's "locking up of calculus" also has nothing to do with patents whatsoever. Newton never said "you cannot solve problems with calculus or anything resembling it unless you pay me a fee", and the OP is right in pointing out we'd be in trouble if he did. Not sharing work, having fear of criticism or fighting for attribution are all orthogonal to patenting.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[Chandon Seldon]

Oh, money follows from fame readily enough. You don't get to live on licencing costs like a leach, but you definately get your choice of jobs in your field. Do you really think that Ron Rivest would have ended up begging on the street if they hadn't been able to get a patent on RSA?

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[Tharkban]

RSA, and MP3 come to mind immediately.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

What you described is a specific algorithm, something already covered by copyright law.

No, it's the implementation of the algorithm that's covered by copyright.

A patent would not only "protect" the specific key sequence you're talking of, it would also protect a lot of related sequences trying to solve the same problem. That's very bad because, being math, they may well be discovered independently by unrelated people.

Patents are only supposed to be granted for original, non-obvious things. If it's that easy for someone else to invent it independently, it shouldn't be patentable regardless of whether it's algorithmic or physical.

Not sharing work, having fear of criticism or fighting for attribution are all orthogonal to patenting.

Not really. If you hold a patent on something then it's been formally acknowledged that you were the person who originally invented it, and there was no relevant prior art.

Patents can't do much to help if someone is unwilling to share their work for fear of criticism, but they can certainly help if someone is unwilling to share their work for fear of others taking advantage and not giving due credit.

All of this does rely on patents being properly allocated, of course. I am actually against software patents as things stand today, because they evidently don't work as intended in practice. But all patents ultimately come down to the recognition that inventing/discovering/researching new and useful things can be hard work, and in order to motivate others to share the fruits of their labour for all to benefit, there needs to be some kind of protection offered in return. I really don't see how this principle applies any differently to a physical invention that took you five years to design, or a complex mathematical algorithm that took you five years to research.

Re:Moral correctness is not enough

[fleischdot]

You cannot set your car/house/whatever in correalation to software. Software always depends on shareable and basic mankind knowledge. You might implement some tricky algorithm, but as any math done in you code You're able to get it into small and handy slices, with all of them more or less known to the public. If software patents are commonly used (and successfully targeted by laywers), one could get the Idea why not to set patents over simple math algorithms or even get highschools as licensee. Common knowledge is a much bigger market than the software industry. The whole patent lobbyism will expense the cost of public knowledge in common as there are no borders between knowledge of math or even knowledge of history. Patents are futile. Just my 2 cents.

Bad Analogies aplenty in this thread

[Mateo_LeFou]

If a bunch of people or organizations were doing reckless things, and semi-advertently causing a bunch of fires, would you pour research money into new fireproofing techniques or shut the bastards down?

Re:Bad Analogies aplenty in this thread

[illuminatedwax]

So, let's get the analogies straight: it's like if someone started a fire inside my computer, would I rather pour water on it or strengthen the fireproof sprinklers inside the computer?
Or is it more like starting a fire in my house without locks on the doors or windows?
Or, wait, maybe it's like setting my lock on fire and waiting for a bunch of people or organizations to pour water into new fireproofing techniques?
Or maybe it's more like a car where the hood is welded shut and a fire starts inside it and you have the Jaws of Life but no one is inside the car?
Or maybe it's like Blockbuster video but instead of renting things you set them on fire and the drama section is like Linux and the horror section is like Microsoft and the movie candy and paraphernalia at the counter are like prior art and your Blockbuster card is like software patents?
Oh! Maybe it's like a store where you set the merchandise on fire, but then you can rent it but still not own it, but if you buy the merchandise on fire, you can keep a man warm for his whole life?

I'm confused...

Playing the odds

[Rogerborg]

I'd bet on RMS, smelly hippy though he is, being right in the mid to long term, if for no other reason than he hasn't (to the best of my knowledge) been wrong yet. In any prediction. Ever.

In purely practical terms, the OSDL patent project is like trying to put out a burning forest by standing close enough to sweat on it.

Re:Playing the odds

[Anonymous Coward]

if for no other reason than he hasn't (to the best of my knowledge) been wrong yet. In any prediction. Ever.

"640K is more memory than anyone will ever need" - Richard Stallman, 9/14/1988

Re:Playing the odds

[andrewdski]

"640K is more memory than anyone will ever need" - Richard Stallman, 9/14/1988

He can't have said that. GNU Emacs never fit in 640K.

Re:Playing the odds

[VENONA]

Giving a specific date, eight years ago, for something that suspect (systems with that much memory were already widely available), without a citation, has me thinking, "Troll!"

Re:Playing the odds

[Who235]

"640K is more memory than anyone will ever need" -Bill Gates

Re:Playing the odds

[jbrader]

1988 was 18 years ago.

Re:Playing the odds

[rkanodia]

"We're gonna build this thing called HURD, and it's gonna be just like Unix, only it'll be GNU, and it's gonna run great and there will be developers and users and all that other stuff that real operating systems have." - Richard Stallman

Re:Playing the odds

[kcbrown]

He can't have said that. GNU Emacs never fit in 640K.

Right. Instead, I think he said "$640K is more money than anyone will ever need" in response to Bill Gates saying "640K is more memory than anyone will ever need".

Or something like that...

;-)

Re:Playing the odds

[Anonymous Coward]

We're gonna build this thing called HURD, and it's gonna be just like Unix

I don't believe he'd ever compare HURD to Unix like that. HURD has only ever been intended to replace the kernel. GNU is the Unix replacemet; HURD is just (intended to be) a part of it.

Re:Playing the odds

[Epsillon]

"We're gonna build this thing called HURD, and it's gonna be just like Unix, only it'll be GNU, and it's gonna run great and there will be developers and users and all that other stuff that real operating systems have." - Richard Stallman

...but with blackjack? And hookers?

Re:Playing the odds

[dingbatdr]

Your ad hominum attack is silly. His appearance has no bearing on the absolute fact that he is one of the most important computer scientists of his generation. I use tools he wrote every work day of my life. What have you done?

Re:Playing the odds

[Anonymous Coward]

"We're gonna build this thing called HURD, and it's gonna be just like Unix, only it'll be GNU, and it's gonna run great and there will be developers and users and all that other stuff that real operating systems have." - Richard Stallman

...but with blackjack? And hookers?

Yeah, that's when Stallman said "In fact, forget the kernel!" and so we all had to use Linux instead.

Re:Playing the odds

[Just Some Guy]

Your ad hominum attack is silly.

Your over-sensitivity is silly. I'm an RMS fanboy; I've traded emails with him on numerous occasions, and he even congratulated me on writing my daughter's birth announcement in C and GPLing it. Still, RMS is the archetype of the smelly hippie hacker. That's a factual observation and not some random insult.

Re:Playing the odds

[gardyloo]

Apparently 640K wasn't enough memory for the calculation to finish correctly.

Re:Playing the odds

[Anonymous Coward]

How about this one from the GNU Manifesto:

In the long run, making programs free is a step toward the post-scarcity world, where nobody will have to work very hard just to make a living. People will be free to devote themselves to activities that are fun, such as programming, after spending the necessary ten hours a week on required tasks such as legislation, family counseling, robot repair and asteroid prospecting. There will be no need to be able to make a living from programming.

Re:Playing the odds

[jellomizer]

Like he predicted that he would be able to talk to the french president?

Face it RMS is a big blowhard. The best work he has done when he was programming and keeping his mouth shut. While I am glad some people like him exist to keep these movements running and going on a single path. But RMS doesn't deserve some of this devotion and religious zeal that some people give to him. He is wrong just as many times as anyone one else is. Just because he doesn't shower doesn't mean that he is clean.

Re:Playing the odds

[chebucto]

I was interested, so I checked, and... calc.exe takes 6,472 K on WinXP. Proof that MS only hires jeiuses to work in Redmond.

Re:Playing the odds

[Anonymous Coward]

He is wrong just as many times as anyone one else is.

Prove it (keeping in mind that, as far as I know, he did not predict he would be able to talk to the French President).

I Wanna Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro
I Wanna Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro
...
I Wanna Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro

Twit.

Re:Playing the odds

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right if no other reason than he hasn't (to the best of my knowledge) every made a testable prediction. Ever.

Re:Playing the odds

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt that most computer scientists of his generation would agree, but he has a great following among entry level programmers.

Re:Playing the odds

[Anonymous Coward]

Give it time, the robots aren't here yet.

Re:Playing the odds

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd bet on RMS, smelly hippy though he is, being right in the mid to long term, if for no other reason than he hasn't (to the best of my knowledge) been wrong yet. In any prediction. Ever.

Except of course "the sixties will never go out of fashion"...

Re:Playing the odds

[CandyMan]

> writing my daughter's birth announcement in C and GPLing it

Do you have a link? It sounds wonderfully weird and hipppy-hackerish, with a side order of baby smell (sometimes good, and sometimes bad, but babies are always smelly).

Unless you didn't really write such an announcement, in which case shame on you, and on me for biting.

Re:Playing the odds

[Just Some Guy]

Actually, I lost the exact code I sent out, but here's the original template I wrote.  The Python program I wrote when my youngest daughter was born actually compiled and ran.

---- baby.c ----
/* This code is distributable under the terms of the GPL.  However, I *
* retain full rights to its output for up to eighteen years.         */

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>

void main()
{
    void *a = malloc((size_t) weight);
    sleep(270 * 24 * 60 * 60);
    if (fork())
    {
        free(a);        /* Ouch, that hurt */
        my.weight -= 20;
        wait();
    }
    else
    {
        my.length = 18;     /* Inches */
        my.weight = 101;    /* Ounces */
        printf("Hello, world!\n");
    }
}
--------

Re:Playing the odds

[CandyMan]

You are mighty funny. Good work.

Re:Playing the odds

[jellomizer]

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/12/13 52204

Re:Playing the odds

[Rogerborg]

It's not the appearance, it's the smell. RMS smells bad. He smells so bad that it's difficult to concentrate on what he's actually saying, face to face. This is not a troll, nor repetition of a third party anecdote; it's a personal observation, based on meeting and talking to him. It annoys me that he apparently takes deliberate delight in forcing people to get past the smell (and the appearance) in order to dialogue with him. I find it childish and inconsiderate. Personal hygiene is a basic common courtesy.

patent GPL?

[delirium of disorder]

I actually agree with rms for the most part, but will play devil's advocate for a bit here. Stallman never liked conventional software licenses. He wanted to create and use free software but licenses got in the way. He could have fought all licenses and even all copyrights, and demanded that all information be free. Instead he built a license upon established copyright law, and the GNU GPL was born. Now he has a problem with software patents. Instead of supporting the free and open use of patents, he is saying that all software patents are unjust. Why does Stallman consider the OSDL patent initiative so bad? If it is unfair because it uses the same legal protections as the corporate trolls, then doesn't the GPL legitimate the unjust system of software licenses in the same way?

Re:patent GPL?

[networkBoy]

But this is *different*

Actually I think you are right (and I think the OSDL is doing the right thing), problem is there is no other way. If there was a way seperate from what the OSDL is doing then great. I don't think there is. I don't think that the establishment will allow change as massive as abolishing SW patents. Next best thing is a Db that demonstrates that everything is enough a deritive of prior art as to not be patentable.

-nB

Re:patent GPL?

[Mateo_LeFou]

One kinda important difference is that copyright automatically attaches to any software that is written. Patents do not. So getting a patent on software would be an active (evil) step to take, but getting copyright on software is totally inadvertent. And rms correctly realized that putting software into the public domain was -- well, not evil -- but not as good as it could be.

Re:patent GPL?

[illuminatedwax]

Because if someone patents something, you can't make a free version of it yourself. A software patent closes off all versions and iterations of that software completely.

Stallman's issue isn't with copyright - his issue is with people not voluntarily giving up their code to the community. He is all for copyright and ownership of code. His problem is that software is not something you should be able to patent, and that the OSDL initiative distracts from this point.

Re:patent GPL?

[DrJimbo]

Patent law and copyright law are totally different. That is why RMS insists on not using the term "Intellectual property". Use of that term throws totally different things together and causes confusion.

Suggesting that RMS should deal with patent laws the same way he dealt with copyright laws is like suggesting he use a plunger to extinguish a kitchen fire since clogged drains and kitchen fires are both "household problems".

The GPL allows software authors to publish and distribute their software in a way that keeps it free and passes on the "four freedoms" to all recipients of that software. That software cannot suddenly become non-free due to copyright law (assuming, of course the original authors GPL'ed it). If the authors created the software themselves and didn't copy it from someone else then they are free and clear with regard to copyright law.

There are many problems with software patents (or benefits, perhaps, from the perspective of large corporations). It is not practical for FOSS developers to patent the software they develop. Back in the 1980's it cost $10,000 -- $15,000 to get just one patent. Worse, even if you developed a code base from scratch, and can prove it, that does not protect you from violating software patents. It is almost impossible to unwittingly violate copyright laws but it could well be that most patent violators are totally unaware they are doing anything wrong.

If you've been paying attention to patents in the news, you would realize that it is non-trivial and expensive, even for a large corporation, to defend against charges of patent infringement, even if the patents are eventually shown to be totally bogus.

It is true that many large corporations have extensive collections of patents and have agreements with each other to not sue each other over patents. A sort of patent mutually assured destruction strategy. Unfortunately, this is not a winning strategy for FOSS developers.

To sum up. Patent laws and copyright laws are totally different. They make software non-free in totally different ways therefore the best strategies for battling them are totally different.

Re:patent GPL?

[Anonymous Coward]

Software patents protect algorighms and copyright protects the lines of code. Stallman's GNU system is all other people's existing algorithms implemented in new code. What a co-incidence.

Re:patent GPL?

[bgarcia]

Because if someone patents something, you can't make a free version of it yourself.

Sure you can... IF the patent-holder allows you to do so. That is OSDL's goal.

Stallman's issue isn't with copyright

Oh yes it is. In particular, his issue is that copyrights were meant as a concession to artists & inventors to further the public good. The public gives up its freedom to use certain arts, ideas, and inventions for a short period of time in exchange for making those things public knowledge. But nowadays, copyright is being used to benefit the businesses that employ artists & inventors, with time periods so long (& being periodically extended) that the public will never be able to make use of the ideas & inventions.

Re:patent GPL?

[illuminatedwax]

Sure you can... IF the patent-holder allows you to do so. That is OSDL's goal.

But that's the whole problem - people shouldn't be allowed to have that kind of power over software. Having a law you disagree with shouldn't be fixed by begging people not to enforce it. That kind of goal puts us at the mercy of patent holders. If you agree with Stallman, and think that software patents are bad in part because it means you can't make free software without violating patents, that basically makes the entire free software movement slaves to the grace of patent holders. There's no freedom left.

As for copyrights, Stallman simply disagrees with the way copyright is handled, not that it shouldn't exist for software. In fact, he says software patents shouldn't exist in part because copyright is strong enough to protect software. The problem with copyright time periods doesn't mean you can't use inventions - that's what patents are for.

I really think you're getting the two mixed up.

Re:patent GPL?

[laughingcoyote]

Stallman and the FSF -aren't- against software copyrights as a matter of principle. He does call for reducing the length of copyright and the scope of what it can restrict, but not for an outright abolition. On the other hand, the FSF (and incidentally I agree) regards patents as inappropriate in any case involving software. That is, in fact, their position-software should be eligible only for copyright, never for patents.

You can read more here, which probably explains it a lot more thoroughly then I do.

Re:patent GPL?

[ClosedSource]

"One kinda important difference is that copyright automatically attaches to any software that is written."

This is a cop-out argument. If you write software and choose not to protect it, the copyright is meanlingless. Putting a copyright notice on your software and thus signaling to the world that you intend to protect it (as RMS does) is just as active an act as filing for a patent.

Re:patent GPL?

[Coeurderoy]

The difference between patents and copyright is that you can build a "copyright related" licence that protect your creation and the way it is made, because it protects exactly what YOU did (wrote). If somebody else writes a similar code that does the same thing s/he can licence it differently it has no impact on your code.
This doesn't work for patents.

The FSF could create a GnuPatents, but since patents are protecting "what it does" (actually in theory the way it does what it does, but for software it actually boils down to "what it does") if you want to "GnuPatents your way to "whatsadoingnow" that you invented all on your own you might very well not be able because somebody else has a "prior patent".

And since any significant software is composed of 1000s of piece (if not million) the question is not "is part of my code allready patented by somebody evil", but will the evil guy that has a patent on some of my code find out and will I make enough money to make it worth for him/her to sue me but not that much that I will survive ?

Ugly question no ?

So repeat after me: There is no excuse for software patents, the only people that have to gain from them are people that are not involved in the software development (lawyers and general managers of very large companies), so if you feel that the IT community has a moral duty to slow down itself and give large amount of money to other people why not just add a mandatory one month hollyday without computers and a 20% income taxe to be paid out randomly to citizen world wide.
(actually if the casinos are allowed to manage the random generator and get a 10% cut we might get this, and of course the average revenue of programmers and IT specialists would certainly grow, while to cost to the general public would decline).

Re:patent GPL?

[asuffield]

Why does Stallman consider the OSDL patent initiative so bad? If it is unfair because it uses the same legal protections as the corporate trolls, then doesn't the GPL legitimate the unjust system of software licenses in the same way?

Because something like the GPL cannot work for patents. Every time the design is changed, you have to take out a new patent, which costs a large amount of money. In effect, this would be a fee for modifying the software. There is no way to construct such a system that is compatible with the goals of the FSF. Modifying software under this regime would only be possible for corporates and rich people.

Patent law is just too broken to support this kind of thing.

Publically reject 'patent pledges' too.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want to be granted use of some companies software patents, I don't want software patents to exist at all!

Re:Publically reject 'patent pledges' too.

[smilindog2000]

Ditto.

The part that really sucks is that I have to file these damned things, simply because our system allows them. I'm trying to think of just ONE software patent that made a creative invetor some money...

Re:Publically reject 'patent pledges' too.

[winkydink]

The purpose of a patent isn't to make you money. It's to give you some measure of exclusivity on your method for a period of time. Whether or not you actually make money on it is up to you and how well you take your method to market.

You're not seriously saying that no piece of patented software has made money are you?

Re:Publically reject 'patent pledges' too.

[aurelianito]

The part that really sucks is that I have to file these damned things, simply because our system allows them. I'm trying to think of just ONE software patent that made a creative inventor some money...

How about RSA? AFAIK, the three guys that invented it became rich with it. And it's an algorithm. This pattent thing is quite complicated, it's a mecanism that was originally great that has been subverted by big corporations. Maybe, only people and not corporations should be able to pattent something and charge for it.

Re:Publically reject 'patent pledges' too.

[smilindog2000]

Ok, I stand corrected. RSA made money for the inventors, and it's clearly a software patent. Of course, they used it to sue the author of PGP, but that's another matter.

Overall, software patents hamper creativity in America. Worse, it gives all the competing nations a huge boost, since they do not recognise our software patents. I know darned well my life at a tiny startup would be easier without software patents. These beasts cost us $10K-$20K each (which small companies can't afford), and all they do is hopefully allow us to exist.

Re:Publically reject 'patent pledges' too.

[BeeBeard]

That's just ignorant. Patents aren't meant to make inventors money in the first place. All a patent does is legally estop others from profiting from an inventor's idea.

Re:Publically reject 'patent pledges' too.

[squiggleslash]

I wouldn't put it like that.

A patent legally allows a patenter to prevent others from using a technology without permission that the patenter was first to discover and make public.

Note the differences:

1. Someone may profit from a technology patented by someone else as long as they have permission (or the patenter doesn't explicitly prevent them.)

2. This isn't about "an inventor's idea", it's about a technology that happens to have been discovered by an inventor. I don't think the phrase "profiting from an inventor's idea" covers, for example, me discovering, at the age of 9, without ever coming across the idea before, that a pretty easy way to show a cursor on screen without using up memory is to XOR the memory representing that cursor with a pattern. That's my damned idea. The fact someone else had the same idea before I did and managed to patent this doesn't mean I'm profiting from their idea because I never came across their idea.

A silly question

[Anonymous Coward]

One has to wonder why in the world OSS software developers don't band together and start their own collaborative patenting efforts? There would have to be the stipulation that all OSS software be givena free license to use any patents issued, of course. Particularly in the case of attacks by patent trolls.

It really seems to be the only possible defense with the current system in the U.S..

I can imagine a huge collection of such patents could be easily produced. And would be a superb way of defending against patent trolls.

Re:A silly question

[westlake]

One has to wonder why in the world OSS software developers don't band together and start their own collaborative patenting efforts?

I can see it now.

You can't use patent X unless you agree to license Y. No application that enforces DRM. No use by the military. Insert your favorite political cause here.

Re:A silly question

[DrJimbo]

Are you volunteering to supply the $10,000 or so it takes for each patent? Great! Problem solved.

Re:A silly question

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like the conditions you agree to whenever you use any of the current OSS licenses? Really, you couldn't have made a more stupid point.

Software patents aren't going anywhere

[RLiegh]

at least, not any time soon. Stallman is a great thinker, but he seems to have a reality distortion field that Steve Jobs would envy. I agree that the fact patents exist at all is a problem -but it's one which is not going to change, period. So the OSDL Patent project really is the only practical way of coping with the situation.

Re:Software patents aren't going anywhere

[Anonymous Coward]

What is it with this defeatist attitude?

Software patents are going somewhere, they are going to the bit-bucket in the sky. Do you know who's going to send them there?

We are!

I'm not saying it's going to be easy but you make the outcome sound inevitable, it isn't.

Re:Software patents aren't going anywhere

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh someone needs to wake up and realize how the world operates.

Patents are about money, as are corporations. Patents, both new and existing, will stick around until they no longer have monetary value.

If you can explain how to achieve that, I'm sure more attention will be paid to your idealistic views.

Re:Software patents aren't going anywhere

[kcbrown]

Software patents are going somewhere, they are going to the bit-bucket in the sky. Do you know who's going to send them there?

We are!

Yeah, right.

Just like we were able to defeat absurdly long copyright. Just like we were able to put the smackdown on Congress to keep them from extending copyright. Just like we managed to defeat the DMCA. Just like we we've been able to prevent warantless wiretapping, the incarceration of individuals without trial or even access to legal representation, the use of voting machines that leave no independently-verifiable audit trail, etc., etc., ad nauseum.

Wanna know what our score is versus the evils of the world? ZERO . We've won nothing. The only thing we've ever been able to do is keep evil from winning once in a while, and that's it.

So go on believing that we can and will make a permanent, significant difference. Everyone is allowed to dream, after all.

But don't be surprised, when you wake up, to find that the world is an oppressive, choking, hostile place, because that's exactly where we're headed and there's nothing anywhere in the world that looks like it can stop this headlong rush towards madness.

Re:Software patents aren't going anywhere

[radarsat1]

Wow. Now THAT was depressing.
I'm going to go stare at the corner for a while.

Re:Software patents aren't going anywhere

[DrJimbo]

It has always been this way. It has always looked this way. Life is like pinball. When we win we don't vanquish evil forever, instead, when we win all we get is a chance to play again. And yet over the years there has been a steady series of significant changes in the direction of freedom.

Two hundred years ago, liberal democracy was an oddity, now it has spread over the globe . More recently, we gained the 40-hour work week and young children no longer work in mines (in America and Western Europe at least).

The other thing that you might feel better knowing about is that despite this steady progress, the dominant pattern is a cycle. Things swing back and forth. In the 70's we stopped the bloody Vietnam war and we forced Nixon to resign in disgrace. Things had swung in the direction of freedom. Since then things have been swinging back in the opposite direction towards fascism (Godwin's rule be damned). You have incorrectly interpreted this current swing as a steady linear trend.

There are no guarantees in life but I predict we are close to the extreme and things are about to swing back in the direction of freedom. This too shall pass.

Re:Software patents aren't going anywhere

[kcbrown]

Two hundred years ago, liberal democracy was an oddity, now it has spread over the globe .

Yes. The reason it spread when it did is because two things coincided at the same time:

1. People in relatively influential positions (e.g., the founders of the U.S.) who had been deeply influenced by the intellectuals of the Enlightenment wanted to try something they thought would be better overall than totalitarianism.
2. The firepower of the average civilian was about the same as the firepower of the average soldier. That meant that popular revolution was possible without requiring the participation of an extremely large fraction of the population or of the military itself.

Both of those conditions are necessary for an internal revolution towards democracy to succeed as it did in France and the United States.

The first condition had not been true until a couple of hundred years ago. It may or may not still be true.

The second condition is certainly no longer true. The firepower of the average civilian is many orders of magnitude lower than the firepower of the average soldier. I'm not talking about raw firepower on an individual basis, but rather the average firepower after considering things like air support, ground support, advanced weaponry, etc. The average civilian, even a large group of them, cannot shoot down a heavy bomber cruising at 40,000 feet.

The end result is that what was possible 200-odd years ago is no longer possible.

The other thing that you might feel better knowing about is that despite this steady progress, the dominant pattern is a cycle. Things swing back and forth. In the 70's we stopped the bloody Vietnam war and we forced Nixon to resign in disgrace. Things had swung in the direction of freedom. Since then things have been swinging back in the opposite direction towards fascism (Godwin's rule be damned). You have incorrectly interpreted this current swing as a steady linear trend.

No, I have not. I've not been interpreting just the current trend, I've been interpreting the trend across the cycles. That is, I've been considering the very long term picture, not just the current cycle. The current cycle has taken us much closer to totalitarianism than the last cycle, and this cycle isn't even close to its upwards swing yet.

Additionally, I'm not interpeting the cycles blindly. I'm examining why and how they have happened. The current cycle will go much deeper towards fascism than previous cycles because of the technological landscape. Current technology gives much more power and control to those who already have it than to those who do not. That technology includes surveillance technology, weaponry, communications, etc. There is nothing in this current cycle that balances that out.

That is why I say that I see nothing that looks like it can stop the current trend. Because there really isn't. The people who want fascism and who would benefit from it have a much, much stronger advantage now than they have ever had in the history of mankind. They control all the money, all the resources, and all the guns, and that control gives them more of an advantage now than it ever could before. There is literally nothing of consequence standing in their way.

And so I have no reason at all to believe that this cycle will bottom out anywhere but at totalitarianism. Once that happens, there is no way back up, because it ain't the 1700s anymore.

Re:Software patents aren't going anywhere

[RLiegh]

In a fair world, your post would have hit +5. I don't have anything to add -since you stated it all so well. I just wanted to thank you for articulating so well what we all know in our hearts to be true.

How is this a bad thing?

[Tod DeBie]

The OSDL project will create more documentation on prior art, thereby in theory reducing the number of truly bad patents that are issued when prior art exists. Had the OSDL project been in place already, it may have stopped the Eolas and other patents before they were ever granted. How is that bad? Stallman is sticking his head in the sand and wishing that software patents would go away. The OSDL project is trying to improve software patents by making sure that only truly novel patents get issued. Software patents are here to stay and the OSDL project is important to help improve the quality of these patents.

Re:How is this a bad thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see how it would have affected the eolas patent one way or the other. The work at U of Cal that the eolas patent was based on was done in 1993, way before anything that would appear in the OSDL was done. Anyway, if there was anything out there pertinent to eolas, it would have turned up by now, considering the time and money that's been spent looking for such stuff.

Patents need to be fought on multiple fronts

[kcbrown]

...but it probably won't make any difference in the long run...

I'm not convinced that the effort of making it easy to present free software code as prior art during USPTO examination would somehow diminish the efforts of fighting software patents in general. It's possible, but I'm not convinced of it.

No, I think the biggest problem here is that the USPTO does not take its role of patent gatekeeper seriously. It wantonly ignores prior art and grants patents on things which are obvious even to the average person. If I'm not mistaken, it has even granted patents on things for which an expired patent already existed! It completely ignores the tests the law requires it to perform and instead defers such judgement to the courts. And anyone who believes that it does so out of mere incompetence or simply by accident is a fool.

With a patent office that does nothing but rubber-stamp patents, of what use can the OSDL effort possibly be? The OSDL effort won't help, either, if the judge ignores prior art, as some have been known to do.

No, I think this, like so many other "IP" schemes, is controlled primarily by those who have big piles of cash, because it can only be changed from the top. As with the war against civil liberties, the encroaching fascism, etc., there's really no way to win, because the people who have the ability to change it want things to remain just the way they are.

Re:Patents need to be fought on multiple fronts

[Tod DeBie]

I think the biggest problem here is that the USPTO does not take its role of patent gatekeeper seriously.

It sounds like you've never prosecuted a patent application. They take it very seriously and in almost every case they find prior art and require that the scope of the original application be limited before it can be granted. Sometimes they screw up, but that is the nature of government work.

My understanding is that the average application gets less than three days of attention in total from the USPTO. That is not a lot of time to read and understand the application, find and cite prior art and work out any final details.

If we want to reduce these errors, things like the OSDL will help, but we also need to hire more examiners and let them spend more time trying to find prior art for each application so that "bad" patents get issued less often.

RMS is against higher quality patents?

[Brett Glass]

So, let me get this straight: RMS has come out against measures which would ensure that inventions which people patented were truly new and not copies of prior art. In other words, if he has his way, it will be more likely that patents which will be issued which don't represent truly novel inventions. This is a good thing?

Re:RMS is against higher quality patents?

[geekoid]

Wow, did you twist what he said that much on purpose?

Re:RMS is against higher quality patents?

[larry bagina]

Did you learn anything from the failure of bounty quest?

Re:RMS is against higher quality patents?

[Anonymous Coward]

"RMS is against higher quality patents?"
No, RMS is against ALL software patents.

Ooh! Let me try!

[s20451]

If an emu defecates on your azaleas, do you run for President, or do you weep for all humanity?

Horns Of A Dilemna

[rumblin'rabbit]

On Stallman's (probably long) list of things he doesn't like, the following rank at or near the top:

• Software patents.
• Proprietary (that is, closed) software.

Here's the thing: Probably the best defense against having to deal with software patents is to keep the software closed. Don't make the code public and don't tell how it works. If people don't know you've violated their patent, they are not likely to sue you, and their software patent won't be worth very much.

Such a strategy is not dishonest - even when behaving with the highest integrity, inadvertent patent violation is not only possible, but likely. You should not knowingly violate patents, but you aren't required to help the patent holders identify offenders either.

By hating both simultaneously, RMS has given himself a very tough row to hoe. Open software is highly vulnerable to patent litigation.

Re:Horns Of A Dilemna

[geekoid]

Software should have copyrights, not patent.

Having open software makes it easy to see if your copyrights have been violated.

Re:Horns Of A Dilemna

[vertinox]

Probably the best defense against having to deal with software patents is to keep the software closed. Don't make the code public and don't tell how it works. If people don't know you've violated their patent, they are not likely to sue you, and their software patent won't be worth very much.

I hate to ask this, but if someone uses your code and uses it in their own... Isn't that a copyright violation?

I say this because just because you have the code doesn't make the process easy to copy. Unless of course you copy the code... Ergo... Copyright violation of the GPL.

No one can simply look at 50,000 lines of code and go... "OOOOH! I wish I had thought of that process!"

(well most of us anyways)

But chances are the programmers are going to by really tempted to use a copy and paste with their text utility before they can analyze the process and copy the end results.

That said, if you can simply copy the process by looking at the end results (and or code), chances are it wasn't worth patenting in the first place.

People shouldn't be paid for their ideas, but rather the implementation of them.

If I come up with an idea and use that to create a physical working device then I should patent the device... Not the idea of the device.

If I come with an idea and I write code then the code and the effort is copyrighted.

If I come up with an idea for a business... I should create the business and trademark it and not patent the idea to keep people from competing with my so called "idea".

The reasons behind patents and copyrights was to benefit society and give a carrot to the author or inventor.

The fact the author or inventor gets paid is a nice side effect of this part of our constitution, but it is not a god given right.

On occasion during the early history of our nation... Some patents were revoked for the beenfit of our society like the first non-hand wheat thresher because the PTO thought it too important.

Re:Horns Of A Dilemna

[rumblin'rabbit]

I'm not exactly sure what your point is, but...

if you can simply copy the process by looking at the end results (and or code), chances are it wasn't worth patenting in the first place.

Many brilliant and inventive ideas can often be implemented in a few lines of code. The Fast Fourier Transform and Quick Sort are just two examples (although neither were patented).

If I come up with an idea and use that to create a physical working device then I should patent the device... Not the idea of the device.

I'm afraid the idea is exactly what is patentable, not the device. You can, for example, patent an algorithm where a software program plays a major role in its implementation, but you can't patent the software program itself. You can only copyright that (indeed copyright is automatic).

Re:Horns Of A Dilemna

[Tod DeBie]

Probably the best defense against having to deal with software patents is to keep the software closed. Don't make the code public and don't tell how it works. If people don't know you've violated their patent, they are not likely to sue you, and their software patent won't be worth very much.

This is not a very good defense. Most software patents I have seen, and most of the famous (or infamous) software patents make it easy to determine if a given competing software application infringes on it. The Eloas, Netflix, Amazon one click and MercExchange software patents do not require one to look at the source code of a competing app to determine if they infringe. Infringement can be easily determined by just getting a simple look at what the app does.

Software patents are here to stay and cannot be avoided. This proposal for more documentation on prior art is a good thing and will make software patents better be reducing the number of patents that are granted when prior art does exist.

Re:Horns Of A Dilemna

[illuminatedwax]

And bravo to Mr. Stallman for taking such a hard line for what he considers to be freedom.

Re:Horns Of A Dilemna

[rumblin'rabbit]

The reason that some software patents are (in)famous is that (1) they have an obvious manifestation in the user interface, and (2) they are meant for public (rather than intra-company) use. One-click shopping is an excellent example.

But I would bet most software patents do not have both properties. Certainly in my industry (geophysical processing) this is the case. The very things that make patents less known also their violation less obvious. Thus the patents you are most familiar with are not necessarily typical.

Regarding the second point, I am definitely in favour of anything that would improve the quality of patents. I am appalled at some of the the quality I have seen. The biggest problem seems to be vagueness. Either you can't figure out what the patent is supposed to cover, or it appears to be far too broad. This vagueness is a great weapon - even if the patent might not stand up in court, competitors are hesitant to challenge it.

Neither Stallman nor Gates

[Daath]

I've heard it as "640K ought to be enough for anybody." and he denies having said anything like that ;)

Re:Neither Stallman nor Gates

[cp.tar]

he denies having said anything like that

So would I.

Re:Neither Stallman nor Gates

[nuzak]

Given that the 640K limit came from the hardware design of the PC, which was created before they even slapped an OS onto it, I suspect the phrase would have come from Big Blue. More likely a sarcastic comment from an anonymous third party, however.

Re:Ooh! Let me try!

[Linux Ate My Dog!]

Australian or European Emu?

Re:Ooh! Let me try!

[Afecks]

Fish.

Re:Ooh! Let me try!

[geekoid]

run for president and then watch all the people weep for humanity! MUAHAhahahahaaaa...haha

Absolutism is impractical

[RareButSeriousSideEf]

Yes, okay, sure... the Real Problem is that software is patentable in the first place. But does Stallman think that we're going to change that fact quickly just by being absolutist about it?

If not, how many ideas do we want to see slip into proprietary hands while we maintain our moral purism about software patents? This is a political issue, and political agendas live, eat, sleep & breathe half-measures. According to Stallman, "If we are not careful, this can sap the pressure for a real solution." Erm, what pressure? Where is the well-funded, politically connected lobby that's creating more pressure for a Real Solution than beneficiaries of software patents can create in the opposite direction? `Cause short of that, we all know that we're not going to see a Real Solution anytime soon.

IMO, the idea of "Open Source as Prior Art" is basically a good one that needs some tweaking. If Stallman is correct (and I have no way of knowing whether he is) that "when prior art is considered by the Patent Office during the patent-granting process, it usually loses any weight it might have had in a court case," then that might be a problem. However, I can't understand how patent holders of a variation on an OSDL-tagged thingamabob could (a) claim their idea is patentable because of some variation, and still (b) go after the FOSS-derived works. Wouldn't the very granting of the patent in spite of the OSDL art be the basis for establishing non-infringement?

Stallman wants the very idea of ideas to be irrevocably tied to freedom. That's a beautiful vision, and God bless him if he can ever pull it off; I'm (sadly) not optimistic. Meanwhile, I'll settle for having as many of them as possible stay clean from proprietary claims. Failing both, anonymous/pseudonymous coding & releasing might be our only refuge.

Re:Absolutism is impractical

[fleischdot]

> Failing both, anonymous/pseudonymous coding & releasing might be our only refuge. I don't believe that offense patent infringement can be a refuge. To keep the values of the OSDL, you need to publish and release according to given rights, otherwise no one is able to trust in it. Additionally, i assume the use of illegally released software can't be the target of the OSDL. This is exactly the point, Stallman talks about. Some european patent activists sometimes did similiar by requesting patents and releasing the software after successful patent assignation as open source under GPL. Stallmans statement of setting open source generally as prior art is a nice vision. But, this reflects his job as a visionist ;)

No, RMS couldn't be more wrong.

[BeeBeard]

Disclaimer: IAAL, but not a patent lawyer.

No, RMS is right about this only if you have no interest in profiting from the things you create, ever, or in benefiting from technological innovations in general.

The one thing RMS does--his one useful function--is to appropriate good legal arguments and twist them into idealized rhetoric commensurate with his own agenda. In that respect, he's an ideal advocate and leader. But look what just happened here. Look beyond the years of ./ zombie mind control that have taught you to accept what this walking beard-and-glasses says without question. Read the article carefully and look what RMS just did: He was on a roll, pointing out that OSDL can undermine a future prior art-based legal defense to patent infringement. He gives some great reasons why, chief among them that judges tend to be dismissive of prior art that was already considered when a patent was granted. Worse, when the patent is granted, prior art is interpreted weakly. So far, so good!

But then he goes on to decry efforts to actually make free software that already infringes upon good, valid patents more compliant. Say what? Let's not forget here that idealism is not a legal argument, and that certain free software projects of dubious legality are already in danger of having the rug pulled out from under them by legitimate patent holders. Should that happen, it would irreparably harm Stallman's movement.

I'm just baffled. Why would helping to ensure a future for free software as a legal product be all that bad, unless you really believe deep down that it's impossible to have good, free software out there that doesn't steal from others?

Then Stallman drops the bombshell: he doesn't believe a software developer should have any right to protect its intellectual property in the first place. Whoops! And with one fell statement, Stallman alienates those he is trying to appeal to. He polarizes. The IBM's, the Microsofts of the world see that it's not that Stallman wants to help them realize a tenable software patent system that works for everyone. No, he would rather no system existed at all--even though some random guy who creates an innovative way of searching XML files has just as much a right to patent his idea as Edison did the light bulb. Is this reaching across the aisle? RMS has just told us all in no uncertain terms that he doesn't believe in compromise. And we will all suffer him for it.

Re:No, RMS couldn't be more wrong.

[Elwood P Dowd]

Why would helping to ensure a future for free software as a legal product be all that bad, unless you really believe deep down that it's impossible to have good, free software out there that doesn't steal from others?

You just took a wrong turn, dude.

Then Stallman drops the bombshell: he doesn't believe a software developer should have any right to protect its intellectual property in the first place. Whoops!

Oh! You're just a troll. If that was a bombshell (him being opposed to software patents, not "intellectual property"), it was pretty well detonated in 1983.

Re:No, RMS couldn't be more wrong.

[chebucto]

YAAT. YWL. IDCIYHAND.

Re:No, RMS couldn't be more wrong.

[BeeBeard]

Is this the best that ./ can do to debate this issue?

him being opposed to software patents, not "intellectual property"

So according to you, RMS believes that a software inventor has intellectual property, but should have no right to legally protect it? And you actually believe that sums up his position? Give Stallman a little more credit than that. I said he was wrong about this particular issue, and that he views it in terms of absolutes. But you'd rather just insult the guy. According to you, he's fucking stupid. Dude.

Where is your counterargument?

[jbn-o]

Your views neglect to account for how much say Europeans have had, the history of patenting in Australia, and most importantly, what could happen if more people get involved in the decisions of their governments. Patent regimes are not natural, they are designed, proposed, and adopted (sometimes by force). It's time the people get busy and become more interested in this fight before they lose more freedom to express themselves. Software developers can tell the stories and I've found through my experience with radio that people will listen to those stories. But if those who know the stories remain silent and accept a myth that software patents are somehow inevitable and immutable, you have chosen to resign yourself to a horrible fate.

The arguments against software patents are profound and significant, particularly those from RMS whose views are at the heart of this /. thread. I'll leave it to you to visit the audio-video archive at the GNU.org website and hear him talk about them. You should familiarize yourself with them so that you can refute them and earn a +5 Insightful rating rather than just giving up, suggesting we have no counterarguments to offer, and letting oppressors have their way.

Re:Ooh! Let me try!

[BeeBeard]

I split the difference and weep for the Presidency.

Re:The GPL version 3 is basically to get google

[Anonymous Coward]

Who are not using a customized Linux? I thought that was one of the major points in using Linux, that you can customize it to fullfill your own needs. That's what I do myself (yes, also the kernel).

OK

[Quadraginta]

Multiple time-step molecular dynamics (see J. Phys. Chem. 98, 6885 (1994)).

Re:The GPL version 3 is basically to get google

[MadMidnightBomber]

We need a new linux, linux seems like it's getting stale.

You misspelt 'stable'.

"I like boring, it lasts." - Glod.

Patents? What, me worry?

[Anonymous Coward]

Every now and then I get clever ideas, but I would never dream about turning them into business, all because of the patent system. No, instead I just implement them for myself and my own needs and shut the heck up about it, to avoid the risc of fuzz. Why should I be bothered to inform the rest of the human kind about my clever stuff? You may think that it's probably just wack anyways or that I'm just boasting, and that's fine, I really dont care. It's not like you'd get to know anything anyhow.

You have never, and will never invent an algorithm

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody has ever invented any algorithm, algorithms are truths, they are fundamental facts. Nobody invents physics, math, chemistry, they just discover the truth. Most software doesn't even contain any discoveries, and none of it contains inventions.

Not entirely

[Weaselmancer]

It is correct as far as it goes, but what he's failing to realize is what is in place today.

In an ideal world, software wouldn't be patentable. But we don't live in an ideal world. Therefore, it might be good to deal with the situation at hand first.

Why shouldn't a UI component be patentable?

[dircha]

So Stallman is against all software patents? I would certainly like to read his justification of this position.

Consider the following argument for at least one category of software patents (just off the top of my head):

Supposing you recognize the legitimacy of any patents at all, it seems to me that you would agree at least that certain software UI components should be patentable.

Suppose I am tasked with operating a cog producing industrial machine. It is an enormous, clunky machine with a complex and cumbersome operator interface. One day it occurs to me that a single actuator of novel design would be capable of providing the full range of control necessary to operate such a machine, while at the same time affording intuitive, efficient operator interaction. I proceed to construct a prototype of my Novel Actuator, and upon interfacing it with the cog machine, find it to be every bit as effective as I imagined.

Now, assuming my Novel Actuator meets the other tests of patentability, and no doubt there may exist some such device which would, I may patent the Novel Actuator.

It is not difficult to reconceive the scenario above in terms of a cog producing machine operator interface fashioned of computer software rather than of iron and bolts. I see no reason to believe that there could not exist a software counterpart to the Novel Actuator. And I see no reason that, barring an explicit prohibition on software patents, the Software Novel Actuator would not be patentable.

Indeed, they are both Operator (User) Interfaces. They differ only in the medium in which they are implemented: one in iron, one in software (or more specifically, a particular magnetic pattern on metal platter).

So while I think there are certainly many bad software patents, and I tend to think that software patents may need to be for shorter terms, it seems to me untenable to maintain both that there may be patents on components implemented in iron and steel, and that there may not not be patents on components implemented in software.

The only potentially successful argument I see against software patents in scenarios such as I have described - dealing with operator interfaces - might be that allowing patents on software operator interface components will as a whole stifle more innovation than it will spur. I find this unlikely. I suspect that a combination of shorter patent terms and stricter patent office scrutiny would result in a software patent situation not essentially less beneficial to society than that of patents on traditional mechanical devices.

Now I suppose it's possible that mechanical device patents do not benefit society either, but I'll leave that question to an economist. I wonder what Stallman thinks of patents on mechanical devices. It would not surprise me if he supports them, mirroring his fragmented views of copyright. As I recall, while against traditional copyright for software, he supports traditional copyright for works such as books and music.

a grey solution is no solution

[fatcop]

Firstly I am completely convinced software patents are a big mistake and all available effort should directly to completely abolishing them, no less.

This debate has been rehashed so much, but I really get tired of hearing some things like:

"Software patents are here to stay get used to it."

Bloody hell, how defeatest is that. They aren't here to stay, but they will be if that is going to be people's attitude. Also aiming at stop gap measures is a complete waste of resources and will only give software patents more time to get a strangle hold. Allowing some "strong-er" software patents through simply opens legal loopholes and abuse.

"Richard Stallman is a raggy looking, hippy, commi, socialist, fanatic protagonist ..."

So the hell what. So people feel more comfortable hearing carefully crafted corporate messages from some clean shaven multi-millionaire in an expensive suite. It that really what makes people feel more comfortable about issues. Though I don't have to agree with all his beliefs, *each* issue deserves individual attention.

"Software patents aren't any different normal patents"

I am not going to reiterate what countless people have said about the difference. Look at the history of how patents came into being. But what about killing, is that ok? We kill animals and eat them. That is acceptable (by most), but we certainly don't condone killing humans. So don't go generalising and saying all "patents" are ok, just as we clearly don't consider all killing to be equal. Their are philosophical and logical reasons why software patents are different. If you're interesting in protecting a fairplay capitalist market in the future, don't just give into the political and corporate pressure. We lose.

(flame on)

Re:a grey solution is no solution

[SpacePunk]

Yeah, he is a hippy, but in this he's right for all the wrong reasons.

Abstraction Physics = software not patentable

[3seas]

http://threeseas.net/abstraction_physics.html

Stallman is correct that this OSDL based project is of FALSE intent.
The intent is to deceive and distract from the real issue.

When honesty of the matter (the nature of software) is dismissed via non-sequeturs and illogical irrational response, you just can't help but know what the genuine intent of the effort is.

There is no real excuse to not address the matter correctly. So why is it not being honestly addressed, but instead the presentation of so called short term detours?

There is no need for short term anything here.

read it, know it for yourself.
http://lists.osdl.org/pipermail/priorart-discuss/

And another thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should I spend time inventing new algorithms, then?

The other posts to the grandparent post are well and good, though I would like to add my own two cents.

As it turns out, lots of programmers find it very rewarding to develop new algorithms without any profit motive at all. Sure, not EVERYONE likes this, and not all of those who do ever come up with anything novel or useful. However, one need only glance at the linux community to see an example of the amounts of work that people are willing to do without pay.

Many programmers, you see, find the knowledge that what they produced was useful, and is in use by others, to be very gratifying.

So, the argument (not really stated by the GP but implied) that "without patents, nobody will innovate" does not hold water. There will always be innovators, and there will always be ways to turn an innovation into a revenue stream, without patents.

I would also like to point out that, generally speaking, patents do not do any good for individuals. They are a bit expensive, and even when an individual does obtain his patent, the process of enforcing it requires a lot of cash. Often, actually enforcing a patent is simply beyond the financial means of an individual, and the big wealthy companies win, whether they have a patent or not.

So, patents do not, generally speaking, protect the underdog. They do not act as a blanket of protection for the people, but usually, as a blanket of oppression. They deny the little guy his right to code, and that is neither morally or economically acceptable in my book.

Lastly, the definition of a "software invention" is quite vague and fuzzy around the edges. Did Microsoft invent IsNot? They sure do have a patent on it! Part of the reason the patent office gives out so many bad patents is because it is not always obvious which claims are overbroad, which part of an algorithm really constitutes a novel invention, and which parts are just necessary plumbing to make it all hang together. Often the plumbing gets patented right along with the invention, and then NOBODY can go to the bathroom. It is a serious problem, it manifests in a unique way for each "invention" (thus preventing any blanket policy changes from being able to address it), and the only real solution is to drop the idea of software patents altogether.

Re:And another thing...

[SpacePunk]

Perhaps Microsoft was just out to prove that if you give a rose any other name, it really isn't a rose.

FMI, Just read the Wikipedia article on Stallman

[Anonymous Coward]

and now I want to boot into my Windows partition. My favorite part is how he basically just rides past accomplishments to pay his way in life. Sounds like a real winner to me!

Other things on the list

[Anonymous Coward]

- Showers
- Haircuts
- Contact Lenses
- Shutting the Fuck Up after you've already done your best work

That depends

[Anonymous Coward]

That depends on whether or not the fascists currently in a ruling state think they need another phony terror attack again. They aren't above it, either, look at what happened when they needed to pass the patriot act, a convenient "anthrax attack" using us army brand anthrax. Sure did throw the ole scare into those senators didn't it? Got them to sit up and take notice who was calling the shots now, didn't it?

  I wouldn't put it past them at all to let off a baby nuke (or something spectacular along these lines), blame it on iran, and go apeshit over there, and simultaneously "cracking down" here "for security", guaranteeing them power for the next long, long, long time...and this is NOT, repeat NOT, farfetched or "tin foil hat", you have to remember, these are people who kill people every single day, directly or by proxy "orders", and in a lot of cases, just randomly selected innocents. Every single day people die a hideous death because of these guys. These are mass murderers, chronic and provable liars,obvious vote hijackers, outright thieves, and general all around goons and thugs with an unhealthy dose of completely insane end-times armageddon-ism. What's a few more thou dead, of whatever nation's people, to them, to keep control of trillions of dollars and the planet's largest military and bureaucratic setup, including the so called "law" they can choose to follow or make up on the spot or ignore?

    We could very well NOT wind up with a more alleged "centrist" government but instead be staring at guys with machine guns on every corner of every city, death squads, camps, the whole fascist deal. Look around, we are about 30 per cent of the way there right now!

    Once megalomaniacs get the power they need for their perverted existence and the get their bloodlust up, and start seeing real and imaginary 'threats' against their rule, where in history have they voluntarily and peacefully just given it up, or allowed themselves to be "honestly voted out"? It has never happened, has it? What makes anyone think it will automagically happen inside the US now? They can just "decider-ize" to pull anything they can think of to stay in power.

no patents != no IP protection

[rohan972]

So according to you, RMS believes that a software inventor has intellectual property, but should have no right to legally protect it?

Ever heard of copyright? It's part of what's called 'intellectual property' as are trademarks. Being anti-software patents is not saying programmers can't protect their IP, many people believe that copyright does this adequately and patents are inappropriate for software IP protection. Just like saying that books shouldn't be patented is not an attack on authors IP rights.

Re:no patents != no IP protection

[BeeBeard]

You've got to do better than that. I'm aware of copyrights. But this conversation, the article posting, and--fuck--pretty much everything everyone has been talking about has related to software patents. Read my original post, read the article, and just exercise some common sense. We're not talking about copyrighted source code, jackass. But thanks a ton for mentioning something that has nothing to do with anything. Hey, you know what? Trademarks constitute intellectual property, too. Let's talk about that for a while. "Coca Cola." Discuss.

Re:no patents != no IP protection

[rohan972]

You've got to do better than that. I'm aware of copyrights. But this conversation, the article posting, and--fuck--pretty much everything everyone has been talking about has related to software patents.

Better than that? You don't seem to be really aware of copyrights as IP protection for software, so let's revisit the topic being addressed again then:

You wrote "Then Stallman drops the bombshell: he doesn't believe a software developer should have any right to protect its intellectual property in the first place."

presumably referring to this comment by RMS in the article:

"Finally, he wrote, a "laborious half measure" such as the Open Source as Prior Art project could divert attention from the real problem: that software is patentable in the first place."

So RMS says he's against software patents, and you claim he's against IP protection for software. See the difference? You should, because it was pointed out by "Elwood P Dowd" in this reply to your previous post. However, instead of (or in spite of) understanding the point that copyright is IP protection for software (which all software not placed in the public domain is protected by), you claim that to not have patents for software is to have no IP protection in this reply to Elwood P Dowd's comment in which you state:

So according to you, RMS believes that a software inventor has intellectual property, but should have no right to legally protect it?

It's difficult to understand how you could make such a statement, since it is totally unsupported by either the article or the comments by Elwood P Dowd, unless you are making this mistake deliberately. This is probably why Elwood referred to you as a troll. I, however, will give you the benefit of the doubt and explain it to you again: not having software patents does not mean there is no IP protection for software as software is covered by copyright. Copyright is a form of IP protection. This is not "something that has nothing to do with anything", it directly answers your assertion that by wanting to remove software patents RMS wants to remove all IP protection from software.

However, your statement "We're not talking about copyrighted source code, jackass." perhaps reveals the point you have misunderstood, that is, binary releases of software are covered by copyright also, not just source code. If this were not the case, I could see that copyright would be inadequate IP protection. If you're not sure about this, perhaps you could ask Microsoft. Binary programs are definitely covered by copyright.

As for this comment: "Trademarks constitute intellectual property, too. Let's talk about that for a while." I mentioned that in my previous post so you would understand the point being made that "software IP protection" is not equal to "software patents".

Software does not need patents as well as copyrights. What other work covered by copyright is also covered by patents? What patented invention is covered by copyright? They are different types of IP rights designed to cover different things. The fact that software is subject to copyright should be evidence enough for anyone that it is a substantially different thing to inventions that can be patented. Having no software patents isn't removing IP protection, it is ensuring that the appropriate type of IP protection is used for the appropriate type of produced work.

Re:no patents != no IP protection

[BeeBeard]

that is, binary releases of software are covered by copyright also, not just source code. If this were not the case, I could see that copyright would be inadequate IP protection.

You're right, I did in fact misstate things while I wrote that particular statement. But of course I am and have been aware that "software" does enjoy copyright protections. Earlier, I was trying to goad the "dude" into explaining to me why a copyright is inherently better for the software industry than a patent. It would have been fun to watch him struggle, because the fact is you need both copyright and patent protections.

The patent protects the functionality of the software, among other things. That's why if you're into cloning known applications, attaching viral hippy licenses to what you've created, and then giving it away for free, you're against software patents. They are very real, very legal obstacles to your pulling that kind of crap at the expense of the original inventors.

Copyright has nothing to do with anything. The copyright and licensing restrictions are what makes it a crime to illegally duplicate and distribute the software. You seriously don't see the difference? It's stealing the actual software (copyrights) vs. stealing the functionality of the software (patents). If the article discussed software piracy, then software copyrights would have far more to do with this. Whoops!

So back to this question: What is wrong with trying to make certain free software that already infringes on legitimate patents more compliant--either through getting the blessing of patent holders or removing the infringing elements? Because that's now on the long list of things that RMS is against.

Re:no patents != no IP protection

[rohan972]

But of course I am and have been aware that "software" does enjoy copyright protections.

Oh, so you know that software has IP protection from copyrights even if it's not patented...

Then Stallman drops the bombshell: he doesn't believe a software developer should have any right to protect its intellectual property in the first place.

...but you still claimed that having no software patents would remove any rights of software developers to IP protection. You made this deliberately false assertion (in your original post)...

...I was trying to goad the "dude" into explaining to me why a copyright is inherently better for the software industry than a patent.

... in order to antagonise someone (who had not yet even posted in the discussion). But now you'd like to have a sensible discussion of the issue. Very well then:

the fact is you need both copyright and patent protections.

Actually, this is disputed by many people, and many of those are software developers. There have been many good reasons put forward in support of the view that software patents stifle innovation. Good enough for the EU, for example, to reject the software patent directive. Since you are not a software developer but a lawyer, and not a patent lawyer, it's really up to you to provide some reason why copyright is inadequate. You could start by:
1 - Addressing what patents and copyrights are for (refer to the US constitution) "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries" and showing how (if) software patents produce a net increase of innovation in software compared to not having software patents.
2 - Explaining why some-one like Bill Gates, who surely understands the issue of IP protection for software, made this statement in 1991 "If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today." if software patents help innovation.
3 - Read and refute this anti-software patent statement released by Oracle, one of the largest idependent software producers.

Really, it's fairly obvious: we have copyrights and patents to provide protection for different things. I am not aware of anything in the history of copyright and patent law that has been protected by patents and copyrights other than software. I have seen no convincing arguement that providing both copyright and patent protection to software increases the progress of "science and the arts". Indeed, everything I have heard in favour of patents focuses primarily on the developers rights, yet the rights granted to temporary monopoly through patents are a means to an end, not the end itself. Patent law/practice that give temporary monopoly to the detriment of the progess of science and the arts is unconstitutional. As you said, idealism is not a legal argument. Legal arguments can be made very effectively from the constitution though. That's what it's for.

The patent protects the functionality of the software, among other things.

This is a significant problem. It is that ideas are being patented, rather than inventions. Functionality rather than invention. Imagine if during the development of carburettors a patent had been issued for a "device that increases fuel efficiency of engines" rather than the actual improvement. The fuel injector would have been illegal! You referred to Edison patenting the light bulb - light bulbs were an invention, not an idea. He did not patent "method of producing light". If someone had come up with a different way to produce light that was equal

patent GPL?-Green Markering software.

[Anonymous Coward]

"In fact, he says software patents shouldn't exist in part because copyright is strong enough to protect software."

Piratebay and other such organizations show just how much of a lie that is.

"If you agree with Stallman, and think that software patents are bad in part because it means you can't make free software without violating patents, that basically makes the entire free software movement slaves to the grace of patent holders."

As opposed to being slaves to those who would destroy the commercial software industry.

Re:patent GPL?-Green Markering software.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks, but "protect" means "protect under the law" and therefore illegal activities aren't what we are talking about.

FLY AWAY TROLL

Re:Not Stallman's idea. Therefore bad.

[rajpatel32]

Never, he would never do that. u know that!

Have you read what RMS writes?

[patio11]

Lets pull out the GNU Manifesto, shall we?

"All sorts of development can be funded with a Software Tax:

Suppose everyone who buys a computer has to pay x percent of the price as a software tax. The government gives this to an agency like the NSF to spend on software development.

But if the computer buyer makes a donation to software development himself, he can take a credit against the tax. He can donate to the project of his own choosing--often, chosen because he hopes to use the results when it is done. He can take a credit for any amount of donation up to the total tax he had to pay.

The total tax rate could be decided by a vote of the payers of the tax, weighted according to the amount they will be taxed on."

This is bordering on insanity. It means computers will be overpriced, you'll have to keep your old machine around for longer so you don't sink more money into a tax that doesn't give you any marginal benefits, the software development budget for the *entire world* will be driven by American business users who purchase the majority (in terms of dollar amount) of new PCs, a gigantic transnational boondoggle of a tax agency would be coordinating all paid software development from here to Timbuktu, a police state to stamp out software-for-money outside of the tax system, and the most important skill a programmer could have would be the ability to write a grant proposal (if you've had any connection to how money gets distributed in the NSF, you know that scientific ability is but one small portion of what decides who gets the dough).

Ah, but lets stick to the positive predictions in the same document rather than his suggestions for the future. Was Stallman batting 100% when he predicted that the GNU Hurd would be working by the mid-90s?

Re:Have you read what RMS writes?

[aCapitalist]

What do you expect? He's just a little neo-marxist, dictator wannabe.

Re:Have you read what RMS writes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, but lets stick to the positive predictions in the same document rather than his suggestions for the future.

So you finaly decided to come back to the topic again? OP didn't talk about suggestions at all.

Was Stallman batting 100% when he predicted that the GNU Hurd would be working by the mid-90s?

HURD has been working for some time now, it's not the best kernel in the world, but it works and could be used if nothing else was available, so lay of HURD trolls. Either way there has certainly been a completely free operating system since the mid-90s mostly due to RMS' and Linus' efforts.

Say it aint so!

[novus ordo]

Critics have pointed out that many of the large companies behind patent reform efforts in the United States, such as Microsoft and IBM--both also OSDL members and supporters of Open Source as Prior Art--are the same companies aggressively pushing for software patents to be legitimized in Europe.

Umm...there is no contradiction there...let us explain...

But the truth is they WANT software patents. I don't see them lobbying to change the status quo. All they are interested in the "quality":

"OSDL supports the USPTO's drive to improve the quality of software patents."

Stallman:

"Thus, our main chance of invalidating a patent in court is to find prior art that the patent office has not studied. Furthermore, patent applicants can use this information to write patent claims that cover important activities while avoiding the known prior art that could invalidate the claims. The patent office is eager to help patent applicants do this."

Ding? If not:
IBMicrosoft: "Thank you little critters for making our patent applications the strongest on the planet. Now we can make sure that nobody will ever overturn our patent on quicksort, mergesort, bubblesort, mydickinyourassort...and don't forget the youinventedandIpatentedsort"

Backfire is an understatement...

Re:Ooh! Let me try!

[TapeCutter]

Neither, my Azaleas thrive on Emu shit.

One stupid question

[l0cust]

I know it really apppeals to the 'for-freedom' type of people (or whatever is the right term) that ideas belong to the humanity as a whole and should not be kept in kept out of reach from other people who can possibly create something out of it for the betterment of the world in some way.

I really believe in that too but can someone help me understand what happens if tomorrow the software patent system is totally revoked and all the algorithms/source codes and such are made open for others to use - how does someone who codes for a living feeds himself ? I mean why would someone pay me to write a piece of software when the company can not market it for a minimum period of time without others building something exactly similar to it and releasing it at cheaper price or possibly free. Why would anyone even think about buying any piece of software ? In old days some emperors etc. took exceptionally brilliant people under their care (some atleast) but that is not going to happen now. How many brilliant (software) people government can afford to pay a monthly sum to make sure they have some drive to come up with new ideas and not die of starvation in the process?

Perhaps I am totally missing some point here but working only for ideologies without a care of money is not something mere mortals can do. Would Isaac Newton and Einstein have done the work they did if they were dying of starvation or if they had to work at some place which asked them to put in ~50 hrs a week on back breaking work along with their research ? Public donation as a sign of gratitude is out of the question. How many of us actually donate to the authors of softwares which we use everyday for free (legally or illegally)?

Re:One stupid question

[Tod DeBie]

help me understand what happens if tomorrow the software patent system is totally revoked and all the algorithms/source codes and such are made open for others to use - how does someone who codes for a living feeds himself?

A great many software companies make a tidy profit without any patents; even when a few of the ankle biter trolls come along and extract a few bucks along the way. So it can work, or at least it has worked up to now.

Going forward, I think that the genie is out of the bottle. Most software companies will have to start building a patent portfolio to protect their work. I don't see this as a bad thing. It will drive further and deeper innovation. Better and more innovative software. I don't see this as either or: both open source and closed for profit software have done great things and will continue to do great things for the foreseeable future. The patent system is one of the key elements in what makes America great. It enables inventors to make profit on their ideas for a short time, and then anyone can use their ideas.

I understand that many people are upset by some of the high profile screw-ups by the USPTO, but the answer is not to abolish the patent system, or even just software patents. The answer is to get the USPTO to spend more time on each application to ensure that each one is truly novel, useful and not obvious. This will lead to better patents and be better for everyone on either side of the fence.

Re:One stupid question

[SpacePunk]

The poblem, as I see it, isn't that patents cover algorithm and/or source code, but an over all abstract of what the software does. It's as if someone patented a generic 'steering mechanism', wrote it in such a way to be obtuse, and expect license payment from everything from using a steering wheel to ropes attached to suspensions, etc... The sofware patents do not patent an exact method in the same way a patent on a mechanical object does.

In programming, the same end-result can be attained by using a myriad of different programming methods, and code. All software patents should be revoked, but the source code doesn't necessarily need to be released because the source code isn't the issue with software patents.

And you Sir are a foul-mouthed dickweed

[Anonymous Coward]

It's because of lawyers like you that the whole scene is in such a mess.

And you're not even among the more reasonable lawyers, with your foul mouth and no concept of reasoned discussion --- your post was not only sprinkled with blatant ad hominem attacks but full of other logical fallacies too many to mention.

In fact, no real lawyer speaks as poorly as you do, so I'm guessing you're only a wannabe at the moment. There's no doubt that you skived off the classes on logic in argument, at any rate.

Next time just write "RMS sucks and I wanna make money, so screw you all." But that would be a logically consistent position, so I guess it's currently beyond you.

That may be true...

[SanityInAnarchy]

...but I would suggest that playing by their rules may help to expose the insane number of patents that should not have been granted, should not have even been considered, should have been shredded for Fatmouse bedding long ago.

After gathering enough evidence (while, at the same time, actually protecting people from lawsuits), we will win either by actually educating patent officers to the point where it's no longer fashionable to patent a system for swinging on a swing, or something even more ridiculous in software, or we win by banning software patents. As it is, we only really have RMS rambling, which hasn't yet been enough to get people to stop using the terms "intellectual property"...

I work at OSDL...

[Bryce]

I don't actually work on this particular project, but I did contribute some of the verbage for the project's main page. Not because I particularly believe in the project, but because my best friend asked it as a favor.

Like generally EVERYONE, I believe software patents should be abolished. Like RMS, I worry this project might be a crutch for the software patent system. Part of me wants to just see the patent office fall smack on its face and be forced to drop the whole idea of software patents entirely.

But realistically, come on, that is head-in-the-sand thinking. Software patents aren't going to simply go away because we wish it so. The U.S. Patent Office itself doesn't have the authority to stop granting software patents. Getting rid of them is going to take a concerted effort by a LOT of people, and ultimately may simply come down to the whims of whomever is in control of the U.S. government. From what I've seen, most people don't care enough about software patents to put time into fighting to eliminate them. (Speaking for myself, I'd rather be fighting the U.S. government about global warming or international relations, before I'd fight about software patents.)

Despite my reservations, I'm actually glad to see OSDL taking action against bad software patents. It actually has the USPTO in good solid dialog with the community, and has engaged a wide variety of FOSS organisations like SourceForge and OSU-OSL on issues geared towards realistic, feasible approaches to mitigation of the problem. Last week OSDL held an on-site meeting with several representatives from the USPTO and various FOSS organizations to start towards some really cool solutions. While I philosophically am of the same mind as RMS about eliminating software patents entirely, I am seeing this OSDL effort making actual, tangible progress towards at least eliminating the absurd patent stories that keep appearing here on Slashdot.

That said, I wish things were this simple. My friend that was organizing this project has left OSDL to go work for Canonical on Ubuntu. While he says it's mainly because he *really* wants to contribute his efforts towards improving Ubuntu's security, I suspect secretly a part is because of his true feelings about software patents. Whatever the case, in practice this prior art effort has suffered a major setback by the loss of its primary technical person.

In the end, like always, it comes down to the rest of us. What do you think about software patents? Do you care enough to put your own time into solving the issues? Do you choose to do nothing and allow any form of software patents at all? Would you prefer to at least eliminate the bad ones? Or do you wish to devote time to getting rid of all software patents entirely? The easiest thing to do is what my friend, myself, and RMS are doing, and simply ignore it with the wish that software patents should just magically go away. The harder but probably more effective thing would be to put time into some sort of project aimed at pushing back and achieving some progress. I really respect those who have chosen this more difficult course, and suspect in the end they will be the ones that define our future situation in regards to software patents.

Re:I work at OSDL...

[SpacePunk]

Know what you can do about software patents? Do not use anything from a company that patents software. Urge everyone you know to not use patented software, and speak out against software patents every chance you get. Write your representatives, write your local newspaper, etc... Granted, most people out there could care less, but they will after they hear/read about it, and they have time to actually mentally digest the ramifications of software patenting. Just saying, "Software patents are bad... m-kay?" Ins't good enough.

Re:I work at OSDL...

[sgtrock]

Do not use anything from a company that patents software.

Not a workable solution. Virtually the entire software industry is taking out patents for defensive reasons if nothing else. Even companies that otherwise are FOSS friendly are. Who on earth, for example, would you recommend that we buy highly specialized trust account software from?

Please get some REAL news

[houghi]

This is dog bites man. That is not news. Man bites dog is news. So I am waiting for an article where Stallman DOES like something he did not think of himself.

stepping up to the plate

[Anonymous Coward]

A patent is a grant to show how a novel idea works in return for a monopoly on that invention. If the public are to give up the right to copy the idea (which is inherent in our thoughts) then we should be getting something for it.

However, if a UI component is created, it is easy to work out how it works because we can see what it is doing and replicate it. Because it is a USER INTERFACE. If you can't see it, it isn't much of an interface. So in this case, what has the public got in recompense for giving up their rights? Nothing.

If the UI does something that can't be worked out in the background (say it sorts) then that isn't the UI being patented, it's the thing it does. However, you can't patent "sort stuff quickly" so the patent has to be on the actual algorithm. But alorithms are not patentable (maths).

The reason why maths isn't patentable is because the cost of granting a monopoly on maths for even a short time is too great and is forbidden. Same as the right to kill people you don't like is fobidden because the cost of allowing that right is too expensive for society.

Stallman Critical -- Shock and Surprise!

[Anonymous Coward]

He's critical of anyone who doesn't share his worldview. He may as well lead the Taliban!

laugh

[BeeBeard]

Misspelled, hollow agreement with Stallman's idealism -- +5 Insightful
Divergent opinions that question Stallman's absolutism -- -1, Troll

Re:laugh

[Anonymous Coward]

Misspelled, hollow agreement with Stallman's idealism -- +5 Insightful
Divergent opinions that question Stallman's absolutism -- -1, Troll

You must be new here.

http://lwn.net/Articles/199838/ (n/t)

[Anonymous Coward]

http://lwn.net/Articles/199838/

Yes you can

[Anonymous Coward]

Who would pay for MBC1977 to open their new mall? Who would pay Paris Hilton to do the same thing?

Why?

One is famous, the other not.

process patents and algorithms

[Anonymous Coward]

1) an algorithm is a tool for implementing a process
patents should apply to the novel process, not a novel way of implementing the process
this damn recursion has come full circle and bitten us all in the ass

2) which of these does a chemist patent
      formula
      formulation
      recipe

Link weaver strikes!

[MarkusQ]

Oh god. I think I just read a Stallman point of view and agreed with every point. :| I didn't think that would ever happen...

Oh wait, where did I see that..ah, yes, here's the link.

Just intented as a friendly (though slightly pointed) response to your other question.

--MarkusQ

Link weaver strikes!

[MarkusQ]

Oh god. I think I just read a Stallman point of view and agreed with every point. :| I didn't think that would ever happen...

Oh wait, where did I see that..ah, yes, here's the link.

Just intented as a friendly (though slightly pointed) response to your other question.

--MarkusQ