Alan Cox on Patent Law and GPLv3

tykev writes "Linux kernel guru Alan Cox talks about kernel features, cooperation with hardware vendors, and software patents. From the interview: 'I don't think [Microsoft's patent threats] are the biggest danger. As Microsoft has been finding out recently it is the patent trolls, and organisations with buried patents in interesting areas that are the biggest threat in the USA. The real answer to that problem, however, is to pull the USA back into line with the majority of the world which simply does not recognize patents on software but respects them as literary works subject to copyright law.'"

Comments

How to compete?

[rolfwind]

We let manufacturing jobs slip into other countries, and are told to be reassured - we get to keep the good engineering jobs. Yet they also set up the system that does not promote innovation, but rather one that is stacked in favor of the big players but with "good" intentions came the unintended consequences - like how leechers game the system.

How can people stay positive on an economy that seems neither ultimately market-based rather than litigation based and where what used to be virtues (hard work, creativity, taking a chance) are punished by the government and unworthy trolls/big_players get the gains instead?

Re:Alan Cox can suck it

[ScrewMaster]

We aren't talking about "organically-evolved law", the implication being that such laws evolved over a substantial amount of time and are so ingrained into a society that changing them causes significant disruption. We are talking about recent corruptions/subversions/perversions of organically-evolved law, and such things can be repealed. And they need to repealed soon, before they do become ingrained.

Simplify the whole thing

[stony3k]

Someone had earlier posted about the four different types of "intellectual properties" - patents, copyright, trademark and trade secrets. I always find it pretty amazing that software seems to be the only field where all 4 protections could be available on the same piece of code.

A piece of code can be protected by patents, can be copyrighted, trademarked and even held a trade secret (closed source). What's so special about software that it mandates so much protection? I'd love to see just one protection available for software. For instance, if it's trade secret (closed source) then you don't get patent or copyright protection. If it's open source, then you get only copyright protection. For really core and non-obvious algorithms, you can get patent protection, but you will lose copyright protection in that case (say you will need to submit the code as part of the patent application, making it public domain).