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Software Patents Good For Open Source?
schliz writes "The Australian software patent system could be used by open source developers to ensure their inventions remain available to the community, a conference organized by intellectual property authority IP Australia heard this week According to Australian inventor Ric Richardson, whose company came out on top of a multi-million dollar settlement with Microsoft in March, a world without software patents would be 'open slather for anybody who can just go faster than the next person.' Software developer Ben Sturmfels, whose 2010 anti-software-patent petition won the support of open source community members such as Jonathan Oxer, Andrew Tridgell, and software freedom activist Richard Stallman, disagreed."
Quick patent every silly software idea you have so the big corps cant! Fairly sure patent applications cost money, so this point is a bit mute.
Stallman may disagree, but he has shown the world how to write a "free" software license GPL3 that's so restrictive nobody in industry wants to use it.
"Jonathan Oxer, Andrew Tridgell, and software freedom activist Richard Stallman, disagreed." *Click link, ctrl-f stallman, oxer, tridgell*, no matches found. Stop wasting my time with links that are inappropriate to the sentence they claim to be linking about.
In theory I could see how the argument could work, but in practice, the patent system is both prohibitively expensive and incredibly slow. The cost and delay renders it mostly only usable by big players. Exacerbated by big companies having gigantic, practically unknowable portfolios at their disposal (many companies have a practice of making employees try to patent anything they can think of, regardless of plans to actually implement them, leaving a company with gobs of patents no one even really knows about....
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I am not sure what an 'open slather' is, but it wasn't that long ago in the US that there were NO software patents. Is this what the software market was like back then? Was there more or less innovation compared to now? I am interested if anyone knows of a useful comparison, especially after the ridiculous Microsoft v. Motorola case
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...that large multinationals tend to "Mine the Harbour" when they patent things. What does that mean? It means that Big-Capital dont't patent "One Particular Approach to the Problem". They typically patent THE BEST & MOST EFFICIENT APPROACH TO SOLVING A PARTICULAR PROBLEM + THE 3 - 6 MOST LOGICAL WORKAROUNDS TO THE METHOD. So when you try to find a way around a particular "PATENTED BEST METHOD", you wind up slamming into a minefield of "PATENTED LOGICAL WORKAROUNDS TO THE BEST METHOD", which the patent owner doesn't even put to any use. Those patents are intended to MINE THE HARBOUR, so nobody else's ship can get in or out of the harbour without running into a PATENT MINE. ------ There are often workarounds to even those Patents. But finding them can involve a lot of costly R&D + time consuming TRIAL AND ERROR. And even then, your PATENT-CLEARING WORKAROUND TO PATENTED WORKAROUNDS may be a very unelegant, complex, slow or unreliable method. --------- If it's Hardware you are developing, your hardware may wind up costing 2 - 3 times what Sony, Nokia et cetera pay for their method. If its software you are developing, it may take 18 months instead of 8 months to deliver you software to market. ---------- Either way, "Mining the Harbour" typically causes you to jump through extra R&D hoops, spend extra money, take extra time, deliver to market slow/late, and deliver with a much slimmer potential profit-margin because of your increased cost. -------- Your solution, as a result, may stand no chance of competing with the solutions of the "PATENT-PREDATOR BIG BOYS", and may not be worth delivering to market in the first place. ------ In this case, healthy competition in the market fails, because there is NO GOOD/EFFICIENT ALTERNATIVE APPROACH to what the BIG BOYS have "mined" with pre-emptive patents.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
if you want to ensure it's free - why the fuck just not release it?
just release the damn thing. it's prior art after that.
if you assemble a patent portfolio and assign them to an "open source" company, that company might be bought and the patents used to force forks to die. that's the only thing the patents could be used apart from using them in suits against commercial competitors(just purely offensive or for defensive if getting sued by said commercial competitor).
the business week article in one of the linked articles is dead btw. some guy who netted 300+ mil from having a patent thinks sw patents are good? news?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
a world without software patents would be 'open slather for anybody who can just go faster than the next person.'
Well, yes -- that is pretty much the essential nature of "Open." Anyone who has the skill, time, and energy can build whatever they want, even if it is based on someone else's work. It has its ups and downs, but saying the software world would be more Open if it were more restrictive is an internally inconsistent statement. It is logically self-contradictory.
There are those who believe that using the system against itself is better than changing the system. Some believe the GPL is better than would be the elimination of software copyright. I actually fall into this camp (though I do believe in reducing the strength and duration of patent and copyright). But it would not be more Open. Open has some shortcomings, and that may lead a rational person to believe that absolute Open-ness is less efficient than some degree of Closed-ness. But that does not mean you can redefine Open to mean partially Closed. Just say you believe in a balance between Open and Closed. It's OK to believe in shades of gray.
Not every question demands an absolutist answer, but rational discourse does rely on words like Open having a clear and unequivocal meaning in a given context. Dilute your hard-core ideology, not the terminology you use to describe it.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
The problem with patents is that it at the core cuts one human freedom, the freedom to think, and open source is all about freedom. Given one problem, you won't be able to solve it in the ways you think if those paths are being taken by patents all around the field. If i want to go to the second floor, i could build stairs, or an elevator, climb, and a few more options, if all those solutions (or close/similar enough) are patented, you can't solve that problem, no matter how you indepently got that solution.
There are a point in attribute the authorship of an idea to the first one that got it or published it, but that should not limit others to get that idea too. Getting it verbatim and trying to make a profit from someone's else idea is one thing, reaching the same conclusion indepently or even evolving/improving it is another. And if that attibution is "being able to make profit" that should not stop open source to implement that idea for no profit.
Here is the point made:
None of these techniques benefit open source, they only try to limit the damage done by software patents, fighting fire with fire.
The core of the summary is this:
What a joke! Let me guess, Bates wants people to pay him to check patent applications for OSS. Prior art invalidates a patent. Simply publishing or releasing your software open source makes it prior art therefore preventing someone from claiming an "inventive step" - the usual requirement for a patent. Save your money.
This patent nosense is making lawyers get a lot of money as parasites of software development. We developers must work in improving AI to make the lawyers each time less necessary, so any CEO, CFO can use the expert system and minimize the need of lawyers. Same for patents. With clear and strict rules (also aimed at using only patents only when extremely necessary), less litigation would be needed.
... "for anybody who can just go faster than the next person" would be a good thing for software.
---------
There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
All the arguments so far on the benefits of software patents come from the rich.
A man who was award millions of dollars from patents says they are good. Government that makes millions of dollars from patents say they are good!
How does a small , non rich, developer do this, or small open source project get patent protection.
It cost 1000's upon 1000's of dollars just to put in applications. (Not including the legal mumbojumbo and hoops you need to jump through.)
Then when you've blown 80% of your development budget on government fees, the Apple, Oracle or Microsoft types come along and steal your idea anyway, and now you need millions of dollars to fight them in court. (In the mean time they throw their patents at you, ie you used a "software button" or "bouncing icon" etc, so they claim millions of dollars in damages from your $2 company)
Software patent are killing many open source projects and smaller development, limiting innovation in general.
No one can write even the simplest of program without breaching someones so-called patent.
Software should be protected under copyright law, in that the code itself, and the graphics are protected. If someone rewrites software to do exactly the same thing but without using any of the original code then that should be good.
Patents should be only for mechanical physical devices, and even then should only be for a couple of years to give the inventor time to utilise. If they don't then bad luck, its open for all!
In reality small developers have to simply ignore the patent system and hope they aren't targeted by Apple and co if they happen to create something profitable or too popular!
It is as if someone is trying to create the impression there is an ongoing 'debate' about about the pros and cons of software patents. There is no debate. Software patents are harmful nonsense. and this is the general consensus amoung people who write software (supposedly the people that these patents 'protect'). I'm sure you could scrape up some guy who swears blind that smoking cured his sinus problems but that doesn't mean an article 'Smoking - good for your health?' should hit the front page.
Even if it were possible to keep track of all software patents the difficulty of writing any program without infringing some patents becomes exponentially harder the more patents there are. Large corporations might still think they can win in this "game", not by not infringing patents but by suing other companies, but even this is becoming a more and more pointless, tyring and expensive strategy. Basically, it just keeps companies from innovating and ties up their resources.
And then, of course, there are other issues like the total lack of control about prior art, the fact that you can take known mathematical methods, disguise them, and get a patent for it, patent portfolios whose only purpose is MAD, etc.
Programming is a creative activity not unsimilar to, say, writing (I do both, so I can compare them). It is based on combining small building blocks into larger ones in a logical way. Nobody should be allowed to patent such building blocks. You shouldn't be allowed to patent plots and storylines of books, rhyme patterns in poems, or how to boil an egg. And for the same reason there should be no software patents.
So to answer the question of the headline: No.
Patents only hinder software development. Technically, open software developers don't even invent anything, they develop things. They fit components together with a little glue to fill specific needs. One could argue that's invention, but I don't see it that way. Where would you draw the line. The entire document editor gets patented, so no one else can create a software document editor? The specific undo implementation gets patented? How you link the undo action to the document? Isn't a software document editor mostly a format shifted physical document editor. Why should someone have to patent his/her implementation on every format. Anything physical can be emulated by software and it's possible (though much more difficult) to create fully mechanical devices that mimic software products. Will we have to repatent everything on quantom computers? All that's not worth the trouble.
Software is already covered by copyright and the GUI can be covered by design patents. Most software patents I've seen aren't novel or non-obviouse. Just because it's obvious doesn't mean someone has done it before. For example, Amazon's single-click patent. It's obviouse to many people that doing a bunch of actions (selecting default address, shipping, and payment options) through a single click is faster than having to go through each indivitual step. However, many people saw the potential for accendital purchaces and decided the trade-off wasn't worth implementing a single-click buy option. Selecting a different component to fit your needs isn't patent worthy when others had to make the same choice, saw the same components, but selected to better fit their needs.
If you want to argue a patent for some awesome new algorithm, that's applied math and not patentable.
> open slather for anybody who can just go faster than the next person
That already happens with software patents. The person who moves fastest tends to have the most money and completely fucks the other guy, no matter who developed it first. Really, it doesn't even matter who moved fastest, just who has the most money, 'Oh you did it first? No, we did. Willing to spend a year of your life in court trying to prove otherwise?'
Perfection is not particularly important when you consider language as nothing more than a tool to share ideas and communicate. If the job is done, we all go home happy. Even native English speakers screw up, it's just not as important as the language nerds will have you believe.
Still, points to the AC the non-standard execution. :)
seem to remember reading about Richard Trevithick working on steam engines, a patent lawyer came to him and said he violated one on Watts (I guess) patents, ....
He tied a rope to him and put him down a well. Never had any problems with lawyers after than I think
Software patents are bad.
Patents on life/DNA/etc are evil.
Generally patents are bad over all and should only be granted for VERY short periods, say five to seven years at most. If you can't make money with your monopoly by then get out of the way so someone else can use it.
Fact is, many people come up with the same ideas. Most patents are obvious and should never be granted.
But as far as i'm aware these hes opposed to them: http://archive.org/details/Patent_Absurdity
Sure, software patents are good for open source, like HIV is good for fidelity.
What sickens me is that people still try to sell their poor ideas with moralization.
Using categories like "good/bad" or "nice/evil" is the typical way it's used.
This way, if you disagree with my opinion, you are "bad/evil", while I'm "nice/good".
BTW, I think that software patents are a huge waste, both of time and money.
All this energy is spent on trying to defend ideas, but ideas are unlimited and patents are limited.
Instead of trying to protect your ideas, try to find new ideas !
What sickens me is that slashdot posted this piece of crap.
Just more evidence that slashdot has jumped the shark.
I (Ben Sturmfels) am saying is that software patents are bad for the whole software industry and the Australian public. Software patents inhibit innovation for *both* proprietary software and free software/open source businesses. Getting rid of software patents is something the entire software industry should be working towards.
later in his talk, he explained how War Is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength.
-a world without software patents would be 'open slather for anybody who can just go faster than the next person.'
Isn't the point of patents :"...to promote the progress of science and useful arts"? By the logic of the original post, patents are supposed to do the opposite.
a world without software patents would be 'open slather for anybody who can just go faster than the next person.'
That contradicts a lot of anecdotal evidence.
Netscape wrote the first widely-available browser. Most of its features were not patented. Microsoft was late to the game, and yet somehow they were able to crush Netscape.
Facebook crushed MySpace. Again, most of the features were not patented. Again, the first guy to market lost.
However, if you have enforceable patents, then the first guy to market is very often the winner. Just look at the pharmaceutical industry.
It's much more realistic to say that in a world WITH software patents, it's open slather for anybody who can just go faster than the next person.
Also, software is a very creative endeavour. So if the original quote was true, then it would also be true for many other creative endeavours (literature, art, etc.) that are not subject to patent. For example, if somebody writes a book before I do, he would have "open slather" over me. If someone creates artwork before I do, he would have "open slather" over me. The original quote is completely nonsensical, and collapses under the most shallow examination.
Stallman may disagree, but he has shown the world how to write a "free" software license GPL3 that's so restrictive nobody in industry wants to use it.
You misunderstand the purpose of the GPL (and I did too until recently). GPL exists to make the software free. Something like BSD is meant to make the people free. Different licenses for different purposes.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
...Isn't fraud good for business?
Keep the software patent disease contained within the USA and preferably eliminate it there at some point. The only advantage software patents give over normal copyright is as an extra weapon for those with large legal departments against those that don't. That skews the playing field towards those that are already well established and stifles innovation - which is exactly the opposite of what patents are supposed to do.
Imagine a world with no new Microsofts?
"Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word 'no'"
Unless it's part of a hardware solution, essential for it to work, Australia doesn't have and has no intention of having pure software patents.
Troll OP I guess. Possibly not an Australian or if so, not very well informed.
Australia doesn't have software patents. Question was asked in parliament about October last year and Roxon's department replied there was no plans of changing that. Ever.
Pure software is not patentable in Australia.
We just need to be patient, and keep publishing good code.
It takes decades to teach Government new tricks. At this point, it is barely aware that software exists. But, it is learning. It just takes time and lots of informed input.
Judge Alsup (the current judge in Oracle vs Google) is an example for our future. Once Government is seeded with individuals that understand software, we will finally see changes that make sense.
It is inevitable that eventually the Patent Office will acknowledge Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) as a partner. Both have the same general objective: To Advance Art and Science. Patents are an ancient tool. Patents are a poor tool for software. Patents are optimised for the physical world. FOSS is a modern tool that is optimised to properly handle societies need to advance the art and science of Software.
In the field of software, FOSS is a superior solution. FOSS provides all the goals of patents without the enormous costs of patents. FOSS provides: Publication; Implementation; and Motivation. FOSS creates stable and enduring infrastructure. All cheap and self organising. And without a crippling burden on the legal system.
The end-game is certain. Eventually Patents will not constrain FOSS. Probably we will see a statement along the lines of: FOSS has an automatic license to all patents. Therefore FOSS can not be sued for patent infringement. The only bit of uncertainty is the time-frame. It could be decades. It could be centuries.
The future for proprietary software is less simple. Proprietary software appears to be in need of patents. Proprietary software doesn't Publish. Society can't inspect Proprietary implementations. Society can't learn from and extend Proprietary software. And, any Proprietary software infrastructure can vanish in the blink of a vendor's eye. There are good reasons to keep Proprietary Software shackled to the Patent Office.
Miles
I love the way software patents advocates present dystopian hypotheticals as a form of argument when we already KNOW what the world looks like without software patents.
It's a world of Turing Machines (1936) and von Neumann architecture (1945), machine language and assembly language (1951), compilers (1952) and loops and switch and if / then statements and LISP (1958) and packet switching (1960s).
It's a world with operating systems and databases and word processors and spreadsheets and browsers and web pages.
It's a world with the ARPANET, TCP/IP, the internet and HTTP and FTP and DNS.
In other words a world where the most fundamental, most visionary, most complex, most resource intensive, most ambitious and most beneficial contributions to humankind are conceived, created, disseminated, taken up and used in creating incalculable social, scientific and economic benefit for all.
So just remember this next time you hear someone going on about what a bad place the world will become if we abolish software patents.
And please, give generously each year. Your continued ability to pay your bills depends on it.
http://www.ffii.org/Donations
https://www.eff.org/
Patent systems were originally put in place to stop inventors hoarding ideas that would help society at large. Open source is the ultimate share - there is inherently no hoarding taking place. So, if you manage to release something under a recognised open source license, should the work be immune from patent claims anyway? Sometimes wonder what the world would be like if patent systems were all killed off completely anyway, but that's a longer story.
Having used up all my karma points yesterday, I can only second this. With one clarification: even for mechanical physical devices contemporary patent system is a scam designed to protect rich crooks / big corps, protect them from competition of small inventors and rip small inventors off their work. Newest "achievments" in patenting-everything-under-the-sun field seem for me even to be designed to block progress, so estabilished big fat corporation would do nothing (except of "cost cutting" a.k.a. externalities), yet earn their God-given big fat profits.
I've seen harm from patent system first hand - it bankrupted two small inventors just because they were naive enough to try playing to the rules. They invented quite significant efficiency improvement (exceeding 10% according to their calculations) to combustion engines. They filed patent applications in some more important regions and this thing alone drained them financially to the point they were unable to do anything else - it seems that cost awarding patent on single invention in important patent offices is in order of hundreds of millions of dollars and can easily exceed a million. At this point those folks were unable to do any real work on it, so they've sent offers to a few car producers. Car producers responded with offering them 10% of that they've paid for patent applications and decided to sit down and wait until those folks (indebted at this point) will become desperate. Those folks had no other way - shoud they omit an important patent regime, some big fat will patent their invention here and effectively block them from trying to sell invention to anyone else, sit down and wait until they give away all their work for pennies on the dollar. You see - either way you end up in the same fucked up position of bankrupcy (for them it effectively means debt serfdom as our local bankrupcy laws are so broken).
This is how this system works. It is designed to royally fuck every small inventor and protect corporate scums who prefer raping small investors who happen to be naive enough to play by the rules. It is designed to transform small investors into modern debt serfs or to give away their valuable inventions to big fat cats. In some areas, like medicine it is even more egregious - it allows corporations to patent publicly funded research results, it allows patenting substances that can be used to research/produce medicaments that can save lives, it allows patenting genes and blocking further research on them. It propably costs us hudreds of thousands of lives a year and hudreds of billions (if not trillions) dollars every year.
Given amount of propaganda spewed by virtually every media outlet I can understand why so many people still think patent system is so great. I also understand that some individuals are smart enough to find loopholes and profit from it (that's why you have professors living off patents they've granted using financial support of their universities - but in most cases not pursuing any meaningful work after they've awarded a patent). But in terms of ways patent system impacts our everyday life - I would say it actually harms it in a huge way. Getting rid of it in its entirety (not just software patents) would make so many important things developing much, much faster.
Patents could be useful to open source - in theory. If open source held patents on all useful techniques, we could force all closed source software to die immediately. (Release into the open and live - or don't release at all)
But the example is contrived, and even if it were true - how would open-source people take the closed-source world to court? Open source doesn't generate money directly, so cannot directly support litigation.
No, we are better off without software patents. Patents may be useful for car engines that take years of research to develop before they can be mass-produced. A software patent should perhaps be granted for five months to give roughly the same effect. A new idea in software comes as sudden inspiration, and then it take only a few days to code up! (Software development can take years, but that is mostly pretty user interfaces and large scale integration, - not the "new great idea itself") Direct copying of software programs is already covered by licencing, no patents needed there.
You (Ben Sturmfels) must live under a rock or just be exceptionally ignorant. We do not have software patents mate. Glad that you (Ben Sturmfels), are so observant that you (Ben Sturmfels) would label something that is a threat to the Australian public including yourself (Ben Sturmfels) that doesn't even exist. This is even more amusing because you (Ben Sturmfels) are a supposed free software advocate, someone you'd hope would understand the politics of your own nation before spouting about them. All the time spent dwelling on US forums has caused you (Ben Sturmfels) to think you are a yank perhaps.
Thanks for the insight Ben Sturmfels.
good thing nobody gives a rats ass who you are or what you think
Please Ben read this article: http://www.1place.com.au/1P/blog1p/?p=2843
"If the job is done"
Quite a big "if".
"If the job is done"
Quite a big "if".
It depends on the intended goal of the user. Language's true value is for communicating ideas and information. However, it can also be used to entertain, show off, humiliate, and abuse. As everyone knows, "We've always been at war with ..." Doesn't mean it's true, or actually reflects reality.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
"It depends on the intended goal of the user."
Which only makes the "if" even bigger.
"Language's true value is for communicating ideas and information"
So if doesn't get to this, it's a failure.
"However, it can also be used to entertain"
Never got a failured joke?
"show off, humiliate, and abuse."
Doesn't hurt he who wants to, but he who can, etc. This thread started with someone lessening value to some other's failure to comunicate -on the premise that as long as the intend is achieved is all well and good. I just pointed out that's not so easy goal -each and every "whooosh" here in slashdot is my witness.
It depends on the intended goal of the user.
Which only makes the "if" even bigger.
If the user intended to communicate, and they had any amount of competence, their intent would be clear (barring language difficulties), yes? If they intended otherwise (ie., show off, humiliate, or abuse), that too should be clear, oui?
So if doesn't get to this, it's a failure.
I suspect English is not your first language, correct? Yet I think I understand you. It takes two to communicate. Someone yesterday offered the example of two people in a bar. You smile at her, she smiles back. Request to send, clear to send, ... Great analogy. :-)
Never got a failured joke?
QED (there I go using that dead language again!). Was that supposed to be funny? I don't know.
This thread started with someone lessening value to some other's failure to comunicate -on the premise that as long as the intend is achieved is all well and good.
Yes, and we all need to accept there are limitations inhibiting all of our attempts (sending and receiving). I suck at most languages other than English. I'm more than willing to try my damndest to understand others' less than stellar attempts to communicate in the one language I do know well. You all enrich me with your every attempt. Thank you.
I just pointed out that's not so easy goal ...
Not everything *has* to be complicated. Humans are not computers. We can screw up a lot communicating without anything going BOOM. Computers, not so much. They're way more fragile. In a computer, that's a good thing. It's not a good thing in human to human communication.
It's after noon and I ought to be watching baseball, yet here I am wasting my day playing philosophy with geeks on the other side of the planet. Gahd, what a life. :-|
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Any lawyer who says that software patents or patents on business processes are a good thing show them this. There is no doubt that they will change their mind.
http://www.google.com/patents?id=ZUUNAAAAEBAJ&pg=PA4&dq=Jury+selection+Mock+Trials&hl=en&sa=X&ei=b8K5T6vsK5TJiQLG_aj4Bg&sqi=2&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=Jury%20selection%20Mock%20Trials&f=false
This was clearly an April Fools article. Right? Wait I get it... patents are good, because Big Biz is incompetent about how patents and software work together (because they don't) - and so, patents are good for open source, because even a tactical nuke is useless when misfired? Except it's not.
Every trollism an AC posts is prefixed, in my mind, with "A. Coward whined, in a weak and cowardly voice:"