Patent Case With FOSS Implications

ThousandStars writes, "SCOTUSBlog posted about the liklihood that the Supreme Court will review whether an organization can get around software patents by completing the work in other countries. This case has huge implications for OSS projects with coders in the U.S., as it may inhibit, among other things, the ability of American coders to contribute to projects that violate U.S. software patents." The Patently-O blog gives background on the case.

Comments

Re:Can a US company circumvent US laws?

[Lockejaw]

There may be for some illegal acts, but it seems perfectly legal for companies to move "pay the workers less than $5 per hour" offshore.

The Dumbing-Down of America

[FFFish]

"...it may inhibit, among other things, the ability of American coders to contribute to projects..."

Yup, indeed it will.

And the USA will not be as competitive in the world of software development.

Bullet, meet foot.

How do you learn to create software ?

[quiberon2]

'Software patents' are likely to turn 'programming' into a purely commercial endeavour.

That's likely to make it hard to teach the next generation how to program computers; that will be 'education', and I will not be teaching anyone if there is any chance that someone will slap a patent law suit on me. (Nor will I be paying for a patent licence).

And if the next generation don't know how, there will be no-one to fix the bugs after the current generation retires.

And we'll lose it.

Re:Microsoft is behind this!

[jZnat]

Microsoft is one of the companies that hates software patents and only seems to get them in case someone tries to sue them over patent infringement (defencive patents).

Step back......

[whoever57]

I can understand that a law exists that prevents items that violate US patent law from being exported, but why does the US have such a law? All it does is harm US manufacturers. It only makes sense for patents to apply where the product is actually used.

Assume a product is used in country A. There are no patents in country A that affect this device. The only patents on this device exist in the USA. Now, every country on the globe can build and ship this device to country A, EXCEPT the USA. How does this law make sense.

Patenting software is like patenting literature

[mark-t]

There's already a form of IP to protect both... it's called Copyright.

Re:Microsoft is behind this!

[Kjella]

As much as slashdot is too focused on OSS, it's missing the bigger picture. In global corporations, most every piece of anything contains some component that is developed in the US. If that component "taints" the rest of the software so that all US patents apply, then there's countless billions to be had in patent licenses from all major coroporations. In practise it makes US patents valid world-wide, because it's impossible to have a european branch of the software, developed separately, which can implement the patented parts without creating US liability. The only viable option would be to not implement those features, hence a global monopoly to the patent holder.

Anonymous Contributors

[PWNT]

Just open up some anoymous proxies, for American developers. Let quality speak for itself, should OSS become illegal due to patents, will that stop joe six pack for downloading the best new OS 4 years from now, especially when it's free? Enterprises will be screwed, but who cares about them? Not me, i'll continue to work on whatever platform I like.

Re:Anonymous Contributors

[Lehk228]

no need to be anonymous, with digital certificates the submitted patches could be verified to come from a single source, without identifying that source

Re:Bullet, meet scrotum.

[fotbr]

MS now has a free version of visual studio 2005, so touting open source as the only cheap development environment is a load of horse-hockey. The previous "academic" versions that were priced at $199 (for visual studio 6.0 in 1998 and visual studio.net 2003 in 2003 -- I skipped the first vs.net) were not "extremely limited" -- they were the exact same thing as the "professional" package (one step down from their "enterprise" which didn't have many features a beginning programmer would use anyway) with a much cheaper price for students and faculty. And if thats still too pricey for students, there's the option for students to use their school/college/university labs.

A lot of your points are true, BUT most of them are not affected by this situation -- the only "downside" is that it might limit US programmers' abilities to contribute to open source projects that violate patents. Not everything has to violate patents, even though its trendy to bash any and all uses of the patent system.

In any case, you need to update your arguments as far as development environments - that may have been the case at one point, but it is no longer true.

Re:Bullet, meet scrotum.

[knorthern knight]

> MS now has a free version of visual studio 2005, so touting open source
> as the only cheap development environment is a load of horse-hockey.

Next thing you're going to tell me is that the "free version of visual studio 2005" runs on a free version of Windows XP (or Vista), on a PIII with 128 megs of RAM... oops.