Debian, SFLC Publish Patent Advice For Community Distros

An anonymous reader writes "The Debian Project is pleased to announce the availability of the Community Distribution Patent Policy FAQ, a document meant to educate Free Software developers, and especially distribution editors, about software patent risks. The FAQ has been prepared by lawyers at Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) at the request of and with input from the Debian Project. While the document does not constitute legal advice, it provides insights on dealing with software patents, which might be applicable to other community-driven Free Software distributions. The Debian Project maintains a critical stance towards software patents: we consider software patents a threat to Free Software and we believe they provide no advantages in promoting software innovation."

Comments

What's wrong with software patents?

[Anonymous Coward]

The basic idea behind the patent system is sound. There's no economic incentive for individuals and small to medium-sized businesses to invent things when a big company can just take the idea and easily outcompete due to greater resources. And without the patent system, there's no incentive to release inventions into the public domain rather than try to protect them as trade secrets.

This applies just as much to software as to physical objects. Suppose I came up with a method to dramatically increase a car's gas mileage. What's the difference if the method is a change in the physical structure of the engine or an improved algorithm in the car's software? The same logic applies: if my method is not protectable by patent law, I lack economic incentive to put the necessary time and effort into developing the invention.

I understand (and agree with) arguments that the patent time should be less for software, that the thresholds for patentability and enforcement are far too low, and that the whole system in general is being abused and needs major changes.

But I have yet to see a rational argument for why physical inventions but not virtual inventions should be patentable.

Re:What's wrong with software patents?

[Lanteran]

Patenting software is more akin to patenting, say, plot elements in a book than actual physical inventions. Copyright is all that should apply to software. Besides being incredibly stifling with such long lifetimes in terms of software, they are overly broad, usually incredibly obvious, and almost never provide the information to replicate what is described in the patent. I think the book analogy is a good one, so I'll go with it. What if someone patented, say, the scifi or fantasy generas, plot elements, etc.? It'd be nearly impossible to write a book, regardless of whether you had the ideas independently or not. Besides my issues with copyright term, I've got no problem with copyright alone applying to software- you can protect the code you wrote, while not being able to sue someone who independently came up with similar code.

Re:What's wrong with software patents?

[martin-boundary]

The basic idea behind the patent system is sound. There's no economic incentive for individuals and small to medium-sized businesses to invent things when a big company can just take the idea and easily outcompete due to greater resources. And without the patent system, there's no incentive to release inventions into the public domain rather than try to protect them as trade secrets.

No, the basic idea is not sound at all. It's a repugnant form of thought control. The problem is that someone on the other side of the country can pay the government to stop you personally from freely practicing the thoughts in your head. Worse, you don't know that you're infringing until you get sued, and then you're guilty even though it was entirely your own idea. Patents are antithetical to the ideals of a free society: The only guaranteed safe way of not being attacked by patent trolls is to never think up anything that might even remotely be considered novel.

There are plenty of ways that patent systems could be reformed into something less damaging to society, but as it stands, the system is pure evil.

Re:What's wrong with software patents?

[rtfa-troll]

But I have yet to see a rational argument for why physical inventions but not virtual inventions should be patentable.

There are lots of clear rational arguments against software patents

Freedom of speech;

Software source code is a form of Speech; it is a method of communication from one programmer to another about mathematical concepts and their usage. Free software, in particular (though probably not most "Open Source" software) is often political speech. As such, under the UN Convention on Human Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights and the Constitution of the USA, it is the most highly protected form of free speech. Software patents attempt to interfere with that and are clearly criminal.

mathematics / algorithms

A program is; simply; a large integer. Running a program is, exactly running a series of mathematical operations on that large integer. Mathematics is explicitly recognised as non patentable in most patent regimes.

A similar argument can be stated in terms of algorithms. Software patents always claim a "method and aparatus". The reason for this that a pure algorithm is recognized as not patentable, only things with

the nature of software development

Software is developed differently from bridges electronics and other areas of physical engineering. In other areas we much more start with a design, apply known techniques and get to a given end. New forms of bridges come out of separate explicit research where prototypes are built and actual work is done separately from the development process. This means that advances come more slowly and explicitly from research to development. In software, every new software development effort includes and should include new ideas explicitly. Once these ideas are developed it is very easy to package them up into libraries and make them available. The same ideas are re-invented repeatedly. At the same time, it is almost unheard of for a software developer to benefit from reading a software patent. Finally, a bridge builder will probably take days or weeks to consider a single idea. A programmer will probably use a hundred patentable ideas in a single day. The only reason that the programmer is able to work at all is that software patents are a new idea so 99.9% of those ideas will already have been used by someone else. In other areas, a patent search taking several days may be done for every new idea.

• there is no need for patents because ideas are continually re-invented;
• software ideas are cheap; the loss of one single new idea is not a big worry
• patents do not provide the benefit they should to the software development process.
• software can be developed by home developers who can't afford patent lawyers.
• the cost of patents to software development is much higher than to other areas
• handling software patents properly would need 1000 lawyers for every programmer

I'm not nearly the first person to put these forward. If you haven't heard them before, then you might want to have a look at Groklaw, the league for programming freedom. There is a long list of reasons given on the end software patents web site.

Re:Patents != Monopoly

[rtfa-troll]

Monopoly 1 exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action 2 exclusive possession or control 3 a commodity controlled by one party

Definition 2 definitely doesn't need market power. Please don't confuse a "monopoly" (english language word) with being found guilty of abusing an "illegal monopoly" (legal term) which requires a much more stringent standard.

The danger of software patents.

[archebyte]

Richard Stallman's lecture on patents is worth listening to get an understanding of the real issue and some history on how some software patent cases have played out. http://audio-video.gnu.org/audio/#2011 Scroll to 'The danger of software patents.'