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NASA To Auction Automated Code Generation Patents
coondoggie writes "NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center said it is set to auction an exclusive license to five patents it holds for automated software development on November 11, 2010. NASA said the technology was originally developed to handle coding of control code for spacecraft swarms, but it is applicable to any commercial application where rule-based systems development is used."
i was kind of thinking that since, you know, WE payed NASA to invent stuff.. the public already owned it.
THL phish sticks
Blast! There goes my plan to file a patent for "Method for auctioning patents".
Curse you, Prior Art!
Anybody want my mod points?
Gosh, tax-payer funded research going to be held against taxpayers, software patents, corporate subsidies, NASA budgets - what could possibly go wrong?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I guess NASA has already calculated that they would profit more by selling their patent rather than licensing it. Let's just hope that licensing the patent after selling it won't cost them more than they've earned in the end.
but the headline makes it sound like NASA has patented Make and is auctioning it off to the highest bidder.
revelation. Billions of dollars in TARP spending and two wars heavily funded without so much as an eyebrows raise...but one of the foremost scientific research and exploration communities in the united states, dare i even say the world, which recently help design the rescue and recovery vehicle for trapped mine workers, now has to hold the equivalent of a technology "bake sale" for funding. when does this stop?
Good people go to bed earlier.
I'm sure we were not the first, nor as sophisticated, but in 1994 we wrote a program to write programs.
The port for sending commands to a robot was physically missing. The RS232 port was reserved for the terminal. So we connected a serial cable up to the robot controller and a pc. Then we wrote a program that would send the keystrokes to open a file for editing, edit it, save the program, and execute it. So when the pc would get a signal, it would calculate a trajectory for the robot, open the file on the controller, write the program, close it, then run it. Around 10 times a second.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
but does it convert back and forth from english to metric
.... One company for $250,000 can prohibit the application of this idea to systems that do not pay up.
This is what is wrong with this deal, off the top of my head:
1) NASA would have developed this technology anyway, one must assume, as they haven't auctioned patents in the past (at least, not that I know of). In any case, how could the patent have been a motivator to do the work? Wouldn't it have been the problem they needed to solve? And who believes 250K is enough of a motivator for NASA anyway?
2) Now that we have the innovation done, all the patent is going to do is prevent its application for 20 years
3) Many companies have been generating test cases from Rules for years. Isn't there a prior art issue here?
4) Why should we fund government research only to tie it up with IP on a restrictive basis for only 250K? How is this a good deal for the Tax Payer? (It would be different if the income to government was big enough to offset the Taxes we pay, but this doesn't do that)
5) Software Patents! Evil! They are most certainly a mechanism to patent ideas rather than implementations, as there are far too many ways to implement an algorithm in software to restrict the patent to an actual invention.
NASA hurts it's own reputation horribly by auctioning software patents rather than holding them for the public trust and acknowledging the obvious: software patents are incompatible with a software industry.
They then compound the insult by taking advantage of some suckers paying cash for something that is legally questionable in light of Bilksi and that may soon have explicitly no value at all.
It's an obvious fact. The sooner we stop denying it and explicitly repudiate software patents as a matter of policy (as most every advanced nation already does), the sooner the damage to our economy stops.
Tired of Political Trolls? Opt Out!
Why are we in a rush to sell everything we own? These should be leased out for the good of the nasa with the proceeds going to their yearly budget not one company/purchaser.
Is it just me or does this sound like the dangerous part - "spacecraft swarms"
And they are only expecting $250,000 for it??? I wonder how much the purchasing company will make from it? I'm betting a hell of a lot more. Why don't they just license it out, and have a continuous income from it?
euphemism for BOTNETS!!!!
Yours In Osh,
K. Trout
It seemed weird that the US government should be in the patent game, so I did a little homework.
This document shows the number of patents held by US government agencies. The total is over 30,000 -- as usual, Slashdot is posting old news! The majority are held by the armed forces; DOE and NASA hold several thousand each.
At first, this seems appalling: why should the US gubmint, which we're paying taxes to support, make patents to keep us from using the products of its research? But think about it from a different perspective: if US agencies' inventions went into the public domain, than anyone who wanted could pick them up for free and potentially make billions off them, without doing a bit of R&D on their own. Isn't it more fair to ask the people who want to use government inventions for profit to pony up some cash? It's not like that money's going to pay for the NASA chief's next yacht: it's going right back into more research at NASA Goddard. Net result: more inventions!
It's really the same idea as patents held by universities. Patentable inventions are not their primary focus, but they do naturally arise from the universities' activities. If they *don't* patent them, the ideas get snapped for free by some undeserving entrepreneur who's spawn camping the university. If they do patent them, the license profits go to improving teaching and research at the university.
Doesn't that describe the Heathkit Hero robot?
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Hey NASA,
As a recent graduate of an aerospace engineering program, I would like to ask you to reconsider auctioning this software, or the patent for it, out to a private company. Engineering students are already forced to choose between shelling out a ton of money for commercial software (Matlab) or working with something less applicable in industry (Scilab). As a result, students who have extra cash get the opportunity to tack "Matlab experience" on their resume, while students without extra cash have to spend half their interview explaining why a free, open-source alternative is just as good as the industry standard. Some universities help bridge this gap by buying commercial licenses for industry software and implementing it on student computers. However, the licensing fees simply serve to drive tuition costs up and, as a result, quality education favors aspiring professionals with more cash from the start.
Thus, I would request that, rather than create more commercially available software, please release the software referenced under the patents under an open license instead. Toss the source code into the wild somewhere (sourceforge or whatever) and encourage universities to start integrating it into the educational process. This software was developed with tax-payer money. There is no reason that the highest bidder company should get a zero R&D product based on your work. Rather than encouraging expensive industrial software, please use this opportunity to encourage open software to help current and future students gain a better education by working with professionally developed tools.
Sincerely,
A former engineering student.
I'll be sending that letter to the Goddard Spaceflight Center this afternoon by post as well as e-mail. Anyone who wants to copy and modify the letter themselves in order to voice their concerns is welcome to do so.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
So you created a .bat file. Well done. It's not even in the same league.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Other have already stated this, but should these patents be placed in the public domain? This is truly sad when NASA is selling patents to private trolls. Bollocks!
"The laws of science be a harsh mistress." --Bender
Email your rep. I did. Be clear and stay on this specific issues. Do not drift into a patents are evil rant. save that for a different email. Explain why you feel the patents should be made public and not auctioned.
It just so happens that my rep is on the Committee for science and technology. But let them know.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If they want to damage us, wont be more efficient to just change the curse of an asteroid so it hits earth?
Oh, the need the money, but dont carre about damege then? auction nukes then, or spy satellites. There are less evil people looking for buying nukes than patent trolls by now, but still they could manage to get a sell.
I wonder who will buy the patent for the tool that generates code that confuses feet with meters?
Proverbs 21:19
"Algorithmically-generated self-modifying code" was commonplace when developing video games for 8-bit systems, especially cartridge consoles (a generic single-banked Atari 2600 cart: 6 *KB* of data). The practice was well-established when I started writing video games in *1988*.
so like... its code from the future? Nov 11, 2010?!
I'm sure we were not the first, nor as sophisticated, but in 1994 we wrote a program to write programs.
Yo dawg!
I'm sure (at least I hope) the patent is more specific than code that writes code....but isn't most web development just writing code (PHP/ASP/etc) that produces other code (HTML/javascript).....
For that matter wouldn't most compilers actually disqualify any generalized patent on code that generates code.....
What justification is there for the licenses to be exclusive rather than non-exclusive?
Oops, it accidentally opened Outlook and sent the commands to 200,000 recipients. Don't drop the soap in the Spammer Slammer.
Table-ized A.I.
"WE" paid for the research, so WE should own the intellectual property. We paid for it. If the Universities want to own it outright, don't take public money!
Do you want people with official looking badges handcuffing you?
This is a prime example of why software patents are bad.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/151.html
The top marginal tax rate in the early '60s was 91%.
Under Reagan it went from 70% down to 50%.
Following the Bush tax cuts, the maximum marginal tax rate is 35%.
Fiscally speaking, the lunatics have been in charge of the asylum for 20 years, which is why I have a hard time taking 'high tax' talking points seriously. Budget deficits and continually increasing income inequality, anyone?
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
Any software like this must be limited to writing specific classes of programs. Godel's Theorem says there is no such thing as a general algorithm to write *any* algorithm. See "The Emperor's New Mind". Unrelated aside: why can't we have [I] and [/I] type shorthand for formatting on /.?
But in the meantime, where's our country?
Oh wait, it just hit me... we're living on it. So I guess all we have to do is tell Washington, DC that since they seceded, we don't have to!
Seastead this.