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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."
Fairly sure patent applications cost money, so this point is a bit mute.
Yep, it leaves me speechless.
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.
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.
Yes, he may indeed disagree but nothing in the summary (or the links) says whether he does or not.
The rather torturous sentence "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." is only saying that Ben Sturmfels disagrees. It says nothing about the views of anyone else mentioned there.
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.
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Stallman is not mentioned in the article. He's just mentioned in the slashdot description as additional click-bait.
The person we should be talking about is this "inventor" Ric Richardson. This guy patented the free trial/shareware/try and buy concept that required a unique unlock code to activate its software. In 1993, this concept may have been novel (perhaps, thought I doubt it), but the fact that the patent was granted at all is ridiculous.
Since some magazines were already distributing freeware inside of floppy disks with their magazines, it's not much of a stretch to think that it was just a matter of time that a number of those developers would start distributing shareware-like software that required an unlock code to activate it.
And I don't know if this guy got all the money he wanted out of it, since the verdict was overturned so many times over these last twenty years, but this guy's patent is the perfect example of a stupidly obvious idea that's only designed to stifle innovation, not promote it in any way.
It's restrictive on purpose and those restrictions are exactly why people in the industry, including myself, use it. The GLP slogan is "Free as in Freedom" for a reason, and its "infectuous" nature is great for preserving that. On top of that it's extremely clever in changing how copyright works - retaining rights to grant different licenses to the actual author/rights holder of the software while effectively nullifying copyright on the base distrobution. That means anybody who wants to use GPL source closed can still be granted a license for it and the authority to grant such a license is in the hands of the actual authors of the source - but otherwise there's no way people can just steal the source like they could under the BSD/MIT/etc. licenses.
The GPL forces freedom and still gives me rights over my code - and that is exactly what I and many other people in the industry want.
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.
Fairly sure patent applications cost money, so this point is a bit mute.
Yep, it leaves me speechless.
Yes, he did mean moot, as in irrelevant. We're not all prefect[sic].
Try to let non-essentials slide. There's a lot of people on this planet whose first langauge is not Anglais. Would you prefer to try out your Polish, Cyrillic, Kanji, Thai, ...?
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
... "for anybody who can just go faster than the next person" would be a good thing for software.
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There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
A sort of 'appeal to authority by association'.
Or alliteration.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
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!
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.
Stallman's not a gawd. He has come up with some brilliant ideas. No, I don't agree with him on most things (especially politics), but wrt proprietary protocols, he's bang on! Lawyers and tort law flaws are destroying the US. RMS is the bleeding edge of reform of both. He points the way that you ought to go.
I don't care what he smells like or what he has between his toes. On the things he cares about, usually he's right. He's Arisotelian ("things as they could, and should, be"), which is all I ask of anybody. YMMV, and if so you suck, IMO.
Rock on Richard. Give 'em hell. No, I won't vote for you. I will follow you.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Dear humor impaired /.er, you should not use 'sic erat scriptum' when you are not quoting anyone, because there was nothing erat scriptum. Also don't mix languages and scripts. My native language isn't English, but that doesn't mean I have a free pass to commit every possible mistake.
Try to let harmless humorous attempts slide, perhaps you'd even have fun.
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
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.
This guy patented the free trial/shareware/try and buy concept that required a unique unlock code to activate its software. In 1993, this concept may have been novel...
It wasn't. I can remember trying shareware back in the mid '80s that had limited functionality until you paid for it and entered the code. Sometimes, instead of that, the code unlocked addtional features that the authors hoped were worth the cost.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
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 !
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.
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)
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.
:)
This reminded me of when a dog is looking for his toy and you point in its direction, and the dog keeps looking at your finger. I better go sleep.
We use lots of Latin expressions because they are useful, have a very strict meaning, and have a usual form. I don't think I've ever read the full "sic erat scriptum", neither "exempli gratia", nor "id est"... et cetera (this is the only one that I remember having read in full). But "so" doesn't make sense alone, it is there to say "and so it was written". Meaning there was something that erat scriptum.
Sic sorry to disappoint you, but "[sic]" is to be used only when quoting, as both definitions you pasted explicitly said.
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
Quick patent every silly software idea you have so the big corps cant!
How's that supposed to happen when most is clone of software that already exists?
FTFY.