No, this analysis is about five years out of date. There is zero chance that vendors will lock-down their computers to Microsoft's requirements, because Linux has become extremely well-established in large companies, in the server room. If any manufacturer made a chipset that did not run Linux, they would get into serious trouble.
It is absolutely obvious that Microsoft has accepted that Linux will dominate, eventually, and is making plans for keeping its business afloat even after Windows has lost its grip on the market. Patents play a crucial role in this - you may want to run Linux on your machines but you'll have to pay Microsoft a patent royalty.
We're past the stage where Microsoft thinks it can shut-out FOSS. Actually, I expect that Microsoft has already made contingency plans for moving its core products onto either a Linux or a BSD kernel, much like Apple did.
There is no other reason to explain Microsoft's fanatical lobbying for software patents in Europe; it's not because the vendor thinks it'll suddenly be able to out-portfolio IBM, it's because it knows that it only needs 1 (one) valid patent on any key aspect of Linux (one that cannot be recoded), and it has won its game.
They will fail, in this as well, mainly because they are starting to get the whole IT sector lined up against them, with the exception of their puppy Linux vendors, and Intel, who fear Linux because it breaks their monopoly (Linux being totally portable is the ultimate monopoly killer).
Microsoft are doing what they do best, divide and conquer, with FUD and money. The good news is that by attacking the open source community, they have shifted into "FIGHT" phase (ignore, mock, fight, lose, as Gandhi said). Microsoft will not win, for the simple reason that the open source community is unlike any business they have crushed before.
We can't be divided, we are already utterly fragmented and internecine. Our strength is that we can never be absorbed; once open (and especially if GPLd) the code can never be killed.
Microsoft will try, and try, and try to divide the FOSS community, and each time they'll just make it stronger. Eventually the attempts will change Microsoft; the only real way it can fight and beat FOSS is to become FOSS.
Nothing Microsoft can do, no amount of money, patent blackmail, FUD, ISO corruption and bribery, not even murder and assassination, can stop the Community, because FOSS is not a business, it is a better technology, and like MSN/1.0 in 1995, where Microsoft thought, "let's beat the Internet by making our own private network", you cannot fight better technology. You use it, or your competitors do, and either way it survives.
Of course, in the meantime, Microsoft can and will cause a lot of pain and damage and destroy many careers and corrupt many officials, and mis-educate millions of young people. It's very sad. But in the long term, makes no difference.
Guess who owns "a" patent on the touch screen keyboard. Actually, on a supposed improvement to the touch screen keyboard. This is the lovely thing about patents in general and software patents in particular; you can claim so many patents for the same thing.
The humble network plug is covered by about 45 patents iirc. At least that's a finite number.
But the average humble user interface is covered by hundreds, thousands of patents, each for minor improvements (if at all) on other peoples' work.
Software patents are designed for one thing only: to allow lawyers to parasite off engineers./me waits for the patent lawyers to reply to this post, telling me how utterly wrong I am, and how without software patents no-one would write software.
It's pretty easy to predict the future. The hard part is the timing.
Anyhow, here goes:
- most of the world gets online and fully integrated into the digital revolution - wireless networks everywhere - more and more services get online - large-screen video conferencing in every living room - digital glasses that overlay the real world with maps, wikipedia pages, everything - facial recognition for *everyone* you meet, pops up their wikipedia page - no more queues at the post office - every interaction with the state will go online - movies will, eventually die, and be replaced with something like scripted video games - virtual worlds will become a major front-end to the internet - rising energy costs will define how we use transport - poorer nations will be strongest adopters of ecological technologies - we'll see 'fabricators', able to make any product out of a digital design - the *AA will crack down on design sharers - cities will reject the automobile and become a lot nicer places to live in - pharmaceutics will go digital and we'll be exchanging digital drug designs - some bright kid will hack a drug fab to produce artificial life - the church and the *AA will crack down on DNA design sharers - the country as a notion will die and be replaced with the online community - big, big changes in political structures
This bill is a small tweak of the system that cures the worst symptoms but does not fix the disease. It's at best a recognition that the US patent system is not perfect, and at worst a band-aid that will delay real reform.
There's no substantive changes, no change of the economic incentives that drive specialists to claim every plausible invention in the name of speculative future profits. As long as experts can claim exclusive ownership of the software commons, the patent system is broken, and it'll continue to punish real innovators by creating unpredictable risk.
What is needed is a total review of what patents are for, why society should grant them, and how this should operate in a post-industrial world. Compare, for example, the trademark system (an industrial-age protection) with the domain name system (proper digital age protection of the same thing), and you see what could be possible.
The patent system is poison for research publication. I heard a remarkable comment from the EU Commission (DG Research) who were boasting that they were collecting a great patent portfolio, and only had one problem: the tendency of their researchers to publish articles, thus sabotaging the patent collection process. But, they have a solution, namely to educate researchers to publish less.
The horrid irony of it all is that the only valid basis for the patent system is to encourage people to publish in cases where they would otherwise keep precious designs secret.
There is absolutely no justification for patents in areas where people publish spontaneously. Except, of course, greed, and the lust for money above all.
Pieter's rule #1: when a Slashdot poster writes "you guys", it's a Microsoft astroturfer. Pieter's rule #2: when a Slashdot poster says, "Google does it, how come you (guys) don't complain", it's still a Microsoft astroturfer.
Just for information, "Otter 3800", how much Microsoft dollars were spent on buying that lovely low user id?
Anyhow, to answer your question, Google is just "not evil yet". Do you think anyone really trusts Google with all that private data? Not for a second. The big difference is that Google has demonstrated several times that it is reasonably ethical. While your employer, on the other hand, demonstrates the ethics of a psychopathic puppy torturer having a bad crack day.
Microsoft has such a cynically exploitative view of the market that they truly prove that large corporations can be psychotic.
While the rest of the economy maintains some kind of pretense of "ethics", Microsoft seem to have decided that not a single rule counts. They mock the EU's anti-trust actions, they rape the ISO process, and they screw their loyal customers more often than that guy in Oz.
No-one is going to shed a tear when they are up against the wall.
Yes, I had the same idea. I think we'll see "fabricators" that can make lots of different consumables out of basic parts, fabrics, ceramics, electronics. There are already prototypes for such things.
Once the industrial production line is turned into a commodity, all that's left is the design. This will, as you say, be copied, hacked, mixed, shared ruthlessly, and the establishment will fight back with patents.
Capitalism is not based on the scarcity of goods, no. It's based on the ability to specialise and solve problems better by that. So even in a purely digital economy, we make money by dividing the problem, solving it separately, and trading the solutions.
The reason why certain good (digital or not) and services are worth money is because it's cheaper to buy them than make them yourself.
In fact, your dream scenario of "make anything you want at home" would lead to a new explosion of capitalism, just as free software has exploded the software market.
Although the process is slow, policy makers do eventually catch up with new realities. Or rather, they retire and die and are replaced by younger minds that think differently.
What we're looking at, IMO, is the transition of social, economic, and finally, political power from the industrial revolution to the digital revolution. People like Rufus are today defining the theoretical basis for laws that will be enacted in twenty or fifty years' time.
What is happening, broadly is that a new society is forming around the digitalisation of culture. This society is vast and now includes perhaps half the world's population (3bn SIM cards are in use globally). The new society drives new businesses like Google and Ebay, and in a decade, this digital economy will have become more important than the industrial economy. And at some stage the digital economy will reach for political power.
This happened before, in the industrial revolution, and at that time the old upper class - landowners - tried to stop the growth of the new industrial middle class with laws like the Corn Laws. They ultimately failed, and the urban middle class finally got the vote.
My prediction is that the digital revolution will culminate in a transfer of power from the old political / industrial elite (who are the ones that made today's copyright and patent laws) to a new elite that will create new models of property that suit it much better.
It is feasible to already implement 14-year copyright today, by private contract. E.g. this could be implemented in a GPL-style license. It may be that private legal systems like the GPL become the laws of tomorrow.
Rufus has done a brilliant work in turning the "more is better" dogma of IP upside down and giving us a tool to quantify exactly what is needed.
I believe, technically, it's only if the murder occurs on EPO grounds, which are like embassies, beyond the reach of local national law. If an EPO employee committed a crime on German or Dutch soil, I believe he would be answerable to the local police. Also, an examiner gone postal would probably be arrested if he stepped outside the EPO's gates. However the independent sovereign status of the EPO does mean that its top-level staff can make a lot of money by escaping taxes; these advantages would be reduced if the EPO became an EU office. There is a lot of economic self-interest behind the politics.
The EPO is half right but it's important to understand where the situation is in Europe. The EPO grants more software patents than ever, but uses mystical jargon to disguise these so that it can claim, with a straight face, "Software cannot be patented in Europe". One of the speakers at the conference, Mr Beresford, a patent attorney, wrote a book called "How to patent software under the European Patent Convention" (since it is, strictly speaking, not allowed).
Those who want software patents and business method patents are: the patent industry, and specific software firms like Microsoft and SAP, and some consumer tech firms like Philips. The EPO is in a bind because the explosion of demand for software patents is destroying it from the inside: internal strife over the money is now breaking the EPO apart little by little.
Politically, there is a big fight between the EPO and the EU over who controls the patent system. The EU wants a Community Patent and the EPO (esp. Switzerland) has been sabotaging this because it means the end of a good business. The pro-swpat lobby has been trying to get software patents in via the back door through an EPO plan called "EPLA", but this is failing because of the EU vs. EPO fight. The UK courts meanwhile are rolling back patent law to discard pure software patents (which annoyed Mr Beresford immensely). Within the EPO, national patent interests try to weaken the EPO's management, and try to inflate the patent system so they can pump more money out of it. The EPO management gets all the flak, and lobbies hard to make friends in Brussels. MEPs are still sensitive from the Software Patent Directive, especially those who lost.
It is intensely political, and almost the only thing all parties can agree on is that it's not the right time to attack the question of software patents again. That is basically what came out of the conference.
However - this is not a closed matter. IBM recently came out on the side of the FFII (my association) with a proposal that calls for a "European Interoperability Patent", which basically is a patent that does not damage open standards and (maybe) open source. The EIP is immature and just one idea among many but it's part of IBM's realignment with the FOSS economy, and away from the old industrial economy that so loves patents.
And when IBM moves, the patent world follows.
What was most interesting from the EPO conference, and what is missing from their report, is the way the EPO is getting ready for change. With a new president - Alison Brimelow - and a huge set of problems to deal with, there is a good chance that the old EPO, which sold patents as the cure for everything will start to become a kinder, gentler kind of parasite.
Of course, the FFII, which fought against software patents from 1999 to 2005, is still here, and growing stronger. The question of how to stop the patent system from destroying the FOSS economy is still there and it will come back onto the agenda in a big way, when the time is right.
Yes, Microsoft are moving heaven and earth to get OOXML stamped as an ISO standard.
One example: in Italy's technical committee a few weeks back there were 11 organisations. When Microsoft had finished mobilising their partners, there were 70. No surprise that Italy will vote "yes" on the OOXML vote. It is disgraceful; ISO will become a "made in Redmond" rubber-stamping tool that helps Microsoft sell upgrades and kick away ODF.
Linux (and all the free software it supports) is a compelling technology that underpins huge new markets. Microsoft wants to tax these markets. It has been accumulating patents, and lobbying for software patents in Europe, and investing in Intellectual Ventures, to create the necessary tools. It has decided the time is right to move. Its strategy is to divide and conquer the Linux community, by making deals with the commercial vendors. The deals don't need to be patent deals, they just need to allow Microsoft to pump some money into the companies in question, so they become slaved to Microsoft's policies. This is a standard operating procedure for MSFT.
The real targets are the large Linux users - big business. These firms will be asked politely but with force to pay a MS tax on Linux, in the name of "interoperability" and "intellectual property". The carrot will be interoperability with Microsoft's stacks, the stick will be that wallet of "infringements".
Above all, Microsoft wants to make life hard for IBM: its fear and loathing of IBM underpins its strategy in the Linux space.
There are two big problems with Microsoft's strategy:
One, it has moved too soon and too aggressively, probably scared by the GPLv3, and has created serious anger with those large firms it's supposed to be gaining as "Linux customers".
Second, it is playing games with an industry - the patent industry - that is more evil even than Microsoft. By feeding the trolls, it's sowing the seeds of its own departure from the software business.
Three, it is forcing IBM to move to action against Microsoft. The Open Invention Network (OIN) can be seen as a direct counter to Intellectual Ventures, which although highly secretive about its investors, most likely runs on MSFT cash.
Red Hat will, IMO, eventually make a deal with Microsoft, as will Canonical. The deal won't mention patents at all, but it will come to the same: cash flowing from Microsoft to Linux vendors, in sufficient quantities that they will be forced to play nice with Microsoft's plans.
... divide the Linux community, starting with the smallest weakest firms. Build up a credible patent claim against Linux (where "credible" means "incredible but nonetheless believable if you are borderline insane, as many firms are"). Attack Red Hat, and avoid annoying IBM directly.
Microsoft is doing a classic patent ambush on the Linux community, and it's significant. We're not seeing an attach on Linux, but on the Linux market. Microsoft wants to own the market.
I'd be surprised if MS actually threatened any FOSS developers, and I'd expect eventually MS to start supporting some free software projects, and eventually even the GPL, if it does get its planned iron grip on the Linux market via its unnamed patents. Free software is so much cheaper to build than the classic kind. Eventually, MS will port its stack of patent-protected lock-in technologies to a BSD or Linux core.
The weakness in Microsoft's armour is those unnamed patents. If they were to be named, they would be disarmed, and Microsoft's entire gambit would fail. In the US there is no need to detail a patent infringement claim. In Europe, Microsoft's claims come very close to illegal unfair competition; IIRC there is a clause in the European Patent Convention that says a claim of patent infringement must be backed by details of what patents are concerned.
"People being enriched is a good thing... Of course, the patent system has an administrative cost, but it is well worth the price."
That is excellent. Can I quote you? Even though you argue well (it's your job, maybe), the patent system is absolutely not about enrichment, nor about solving the (strawman) "free-rider" problem. It is only about exchanging a limited monopoly in return for documentation on new techniques that would otherwise be kept secret. Show me a single example of a "free-rider" problem in the software sector, please. Just one case where government intervention in the form of software patents is justified. Pretty please.
Today's patent system - whatever the merits of the patent per-se as a social bargain - fails completely to deliver value for money for society, it serves only people who can play the system, and punishes the rest. Nowhere is this more clear than in the software sector. However elsewhere it's also failed.
Explain to me why agriculture - based on free exchange of knowledge - has managed to prevent famine since the 1950's (famine still being caused by natural disaster, politics, and war), while pharmaceutics, entirely based on your vaunted monopoly, has left hundreds of millions cursed by malaria, dengue fever, and other diseases.
The excesses of the modern patent system will go down in history as a monstrosity. You can defend those excesses - and many people do - on the basis of "well, it makes money for me", just as people have defended a hundred other evils.
Actually the figure is probably much too low, if one considers the abuse of patents as "intellectual property crime".
Some examples:
* The way patent offices globally have turned the patent system into a pyramid scheme for their friends, printing coupons that are not backed by any state bank and yet are used as collateral to secure huge credits. * The shakedown of numerous small businesses and large customers for "patent violations" based on legal instruments created by a mafia-style clique of lawyers. * The wide use of patent "licensing deals" to create cartels that would be illegal and criminal under normal competition law. * The use of patent "licenses" to tax the use of technology by the public, even though very often the public subsidised the original research. * The use of "intellectual property laws" (designed and paid for by content industries) to prevent content falling into the public domain. * The use of said laws to create artificial barriers to free trade, so prices can be raised in specific geographic areas. * The use of the global patent system to keep the costs of medicines artificially high (even at the cost of millions of deaths) * The use of the global patent system to prevent free competition in many markets. * The use of the global patent system to stop alternative energy technologies being developed. * The use of patents to create conflict and litigation than enriches lawyers and specialists.
And on and on and on... the cost of "intellectual property crime" surely runs into the trillions...
Of course we're supposed to think that when corporations abuse the law, it's a different thing than when individuals do it. Corporations can buy laws, individuals usually can't.
In 1985 or so, the company I worked for built a reservation system for tour operators. This system included the ability to search for hotels in specific hierarchical geographic areas (called 'countries' and 'resorts'). Very much the same idea. Obvious. Widely implemented.
More fundamentally, this 'invention' is wholly self-disclosing, and benefits society not an iota by being patented. A patent system that grants patents that do not benefit society is corrupt, and self-destructive.
Patents should only be granted where there are real secrets that must be documented or they are lost to society. It is not about rewarding inventors, no matter how much people wish it were; it is about collecting documentation of prior art, and allowing inventors to divulge secrets without loss, in the same way copyright lets creators divulge content without loss.
I'll answer by explaining the route I took for licensing my work. I've been writing gratis/open software for 25 years, and started distributing tools as shareware with source code around 1990. I released my first major tool (Libero) under the GPL in 1992, believing this was the "best" license for simple reasons; the FSF was behind such marvels as gcc, and this was their license. Some time later I switched to a BSD-style license, because I realised that the GPL conditions were stopping people using my work, and I wanted the widest possible distribution. Anonymity, not theft, is the main threat to most creators.
In the late 90's or so, we started to realise that our very permissive license was unfair. It was a gift to commercial projects, who took our (very useful) libaries, enhanced them, and did not give us anything back. RMS wrote about this, explaining why the LGPL was less effective than the GPL, and I agreed with him.
We switched to GPL for everything, libraries and tools, and provided commercial projects the option of paying for a commercial license (with no GPL conditions). The commercial licenses were not expensive, nor restrictive, and we did sell enough of them to make it worthwhile.
What we've learned over this long period is that BSD-style licensing is good when you are determined to spread your work as far as possible, and do not expect any return from anyone. If you want to make any money from your software, but still want to make it open, the GPL in combination with a commercial alternative works. In that case you also need to be pedantic about copyright; any contributions from other people must be granted back to you. Mixed copyrights are poisonous to any commercial leverage of GPL'd code.
Now, as regards theft of code, people seem to respect the deal. After all, it's fair. No serious firm is going to release products with tainted copyright, if they can avoid it. So offering a commercial license alternative for GPL'd code is important: it keeps people honest.
The GPL is very powerful: it lets us publish our code, which is how we find our markets, and still lets us build a business around it. It is ironic that RMS, who appears to hate the capitalist system (though this may be somewhat for show) was the brain behind such an elegant commercial tool.
My firm makes its money thanks to the GPL. If we did not use that license - for which RMS has earned my eternal gratitude - firms would simply steal our free software without giving anything back. The GPL ensures that we can earn money from our hard work by selling commercial licenses. What kind of business model do you see for "the community" you claim to be part of...?
As for "the tatters of our credibility", you are blaming RMS for a problem that is not there. Free software has never had a higher credibility.
I'll tell you who has lousy credibility... it's ACs who pretend to be part of a community. GNU-slash ruined Debian for you, did it? I'm so sorry for your fragile world.
Look at how hard the Microsoft drones have tried to discredit GPLv3 here. There is a steady stream of propaganda: "GPLv3 takes away your rights, RMS is evil, why limit freedom..."
If we - those who are meant to swallow such crud - are worth talking to, then we're not powerless. Microsoft cannot make an infinite number of enemies in a networked world. At some stage it needs friends. And it's got so few left, it now has to buy them.
I'm really waiting for the day when Microsoft looks at Apple's and Google's share prices and realises "being nice could actually make us more money than being evil bastards that everyone hates."
With Novell, Microsoft subsidised Novell Suse licenses. With Xandros, Microsoft is doing a deal to provide "patent covenants", which means protection being sued by Microsoft for patent claims that Microsoft has not actually specified.
The game is to knock down the commercial Linux vendors, one by one, and establish them all as clients of Microsoft's "intellectual property". You can bet that the pressure on Red Hat to settle is quite intense. First, their competitors are being subsidised. Second, their clients are being blackmailed.
I've written a more detailed analysis on this. Microsoft is using software patents to try to take ownership of GNU/Linux and all free software / open source that would be distributed along with it.
Divide and conquer. At the end, the volunteer distros will be left alone to do their work, contributing to the shiny new future, while Microsoft makes sure it gets its 10%.
GPLv3 is being seen as many in the industry as the answer. I think that's wishful thinking. The real answer here is a lawsuit from the government for abuse of monopoly power, where Microsoft is using its monopoly in the desktop area to interfere in the server OS market.
On a related tangent it seems that the Redmond astro-turfing drones are out in force, insulting RMS, calling the GPLv3 all kinds of names, claiming that "freedom" includes the right to abuse other people. Well, drones, suck it. Doesn't matter how much you scream and rant, how much your managers pay you to mess with ISO and push OOXML, Microsoft is either going to learn to "do no evil", or it's going to sink like the Titanic.
What is really, really sad is when people deliberately (or ignorantly) confuse freedom to make life better with freedom to make it worse.
Freedom of expression does not extend to harassment of minorities.
Freedom of movement does not extend to other people's bathrooms.
Freedom of software does not extend to patent ambushes.
Microsoft is cynically exploiting fear of patent infringement to ambush the work done by millions. This is no "pissing war", it is a fight for survival, at least a fight for survival according to the old rules. If Microsoft were respecting the free software community, or even just ignoring it, that'd be fine. But what it's doing is saying, "nice business you have here, Guv, pity you've gone and installed that free stuff everywhere, cause it infringes on our [unspecified] patents, and it'd be a real shame to see a lawsuit happen here..."
Linux is now mainstream, and Microsoft wants to own it. That is what is going on here.
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No, this analysis is about five years out of date. There is zero chance that vendors will lock-down their computers to Microsoft's requirements, because Linux has become extremely well-established in large companies, in the server room. If any manufacturer made a chipset that did not run Linux, they would get into serious trouble.
It is absolutely obvious that Microsoft has accepted that Linux will dominate, eventually, and is making plans for keeping its business afloat even after Windows has lost its grip on the market. Patents play a crucial role in this - you may want to run Linux on your machines but you'll have to pay Microsoft a patent royalty.
We're past the stage where Microsoft thinks it can shut-out FOSS. Actually, I expect that Microsoft has already made contingency plans for moving its core products onto either a Linux or a BSD kernel, much like Apple did.
There is no other reason to explain Microsoft's fanatical lobbying for software patents in Europe; it's not because the vendor thinks it'll suddenly be able to out-portfolio IBM, it's because it knows that it only needs 1 (one) valid patent on any key aspect of Linux (one that cannot be recoded), and it has won its game.
They will fail, in this as well, mainly because they are starting to get the whole IT sector lined up against them, with the exception of their puppy Linux vendors, and Intel, who fear Linux because it breaks their monopoly (Linux being totally portable is the ultimate monopoly killer).
Microsoft are doing what they do best, divide and conquer, with FUD and money. The good news is that by attacking the open source community, they have shifted into "FIGHT" phase (ignore, mock, fight, lose, as Gandhi said). Microsoft will not win, for the simple reason that the open source community is unlike any business they have crushed before.
We can't be divided, we are already utterly fragmented and internecine. Our strength is that we can never be absorbed; once open (and especially if GPLd) the code can never be killed.
Microsoft will try, and try, and try to divide the FOSS community, and each time they'll just make it stronger. Eventually the attempts will change Microsoft; the only real way it can fight and beat FOSS is to become FOSS.
Nothing Microsoft can do, no amount of money, patent blackmail, FUD, ISO corruption and bribery, not even murder and assassination, can stop the Community, because FOSS is not a business, it is a better technology, and like MSN/1.0 in 1995, where Microsoft thought, "let's beat the Internet by making our own private network", you cannot fight better technology. You use it, or your competitors do, and either way it survives.
Of course, in the meantime, Microsoft can and will cause a lot of pain and damage and destroy many careers and corrupt many officials, and mis-educate millions of young people. It's very sad. But in the long term, makes no difference.
Guess who owns "a" patent on the touch screen keyboard. Actually, on a supposed improvement to the touch screen keyboard. This is the lovely thing about patents in general and software patents in particular; you can claim so many patents for the same thing.
/me waits for the patent lawyers to reply to this post, telling me how utterly wrong I am, and how without software patents no-one would write software.
The humble network plug is covered by about 45 patents iirc. At least that's a finite number.
But the average humble user interface is covered by hundreds, thousands of patents, each for minor improvements (if at all) on other peoples' work.
Software patents are designed for one thing only: to allow lawyers to parasite off engineers.
Come on, make my day, patent punks!
It's pretty easy to predict the future. The hard part is the timing.
Anyhow, here goes:
- most of the world gets online and fully integrated into the digital revolution
- wireless networks everywhere
- more and more services get online
- large-screen video conferencing in every living room
- digital glasses that overlay the real world with maps, wikipedia pages, everything
- facial recognition for *everyone* you meet, pops up their wikipedia page
- no more queues at the post office - every interaction with the state will go online
- movies will, eventually die, and be replaced with something like scripted video games
- virtual worlds will become a major front-end to the internet
- rising energy costs will define how we use transport
- poorer nations will be strongest adopters of ecological technologies
- we'll see 'fabricators', able to make any product out of a digital design
- the *AA will crack down on design sharers
- cities will reject the automobile and become a lot nicer places to live in
- pharmaceutics will go digital and we'll be exchanging digital drug designs
- some bright kid will hack a drug fab to produce artificial life
- the church and the *AA will crack down on DNA design sharers
- the country as a notion will die and be replaced with the online community
- big, big changes in political structures
Etc.
This bill is a small tweak of the system that cures the worst symptoms but does not fix the disease. It's at best a recognition that the US patent system is not perfect, and at worst a band-aid that will delay real reform.
There's no substantive changes, no change of the economic incentives that drive specialists to claim every plausible invention in the name of speculative future profits. As long as experts can claim exclusive ownership of the software commons, the patent system is broken, and it'll continue to punish real innovators by creating unpredictable risk.
Real innovators don't even seek patents. 80% of VC-funded software firms don't claim patents within four years of being funded. The whole patent system is a fraud, a tax on the consumer, and a blight on high-tech industries. This bill just perpetuates the fraud a little longer.
What is needed is a total review of what patents are for, why society should grant them, and how this should operate in a post-industrial world. Compare, for example, the trademark system (an industrial-age protection) with the domain name system (proper digital age protection of the same thing), and you see what could be possible.
The patent system is poison for research publication. I heard a remarkable comment from the EU Commission (DG Research) who were boasting that they were collecting a great patent portfolio, and only had one problem: the tendency of their researchers to publish articles, thus sabotaging the patent collection process. But, they have a solution, namely to educate researchers to publish less.
The horrid irony of it all is that the only valid basis for the patent system is to encourage people to publish in cases where they would otherwise keep precious designs secret.
There is absolutely no justification for patents in areas where people publish spontaneously. Except, of course, greed, and the lust for money above all.
Time for reform of the global patent system.
Pieter's rule #1: when a Slashdot poster writes "you guys", it's a Microsoft astroturfer.
Pieter's rule #2: when a Slashdot poster says, "Google does it, how come you (guys) don't complain", it's still a Microsoft astroturfer.
Just for information, "Otter 3800", how much Microsoft dollars were spent on buying that lovely low user id?
Anyhow, to answer your question, Google is just "not evil yet". Do you think anyone really trusts Google with all that private data? Not for a second. The big difference is that Google has demonstrated several times that it is reasonably ethical. While your employer, on the other hand, demonstrates the ethics of a psychopathic puppy torturer having a bad crack day.
Otter 3800, you just made my foes list.
Microsoft has such a cynically exploitative view of the market that they truly prove that large corporations can be psychotic.
While the rest of the economy maintains some kind of pretense of "ethics", Microsoft seem to have decided that not a single rule counts. They mock the EU's anti-trust actions, they rape the ISO process, and they screw their loyal customers more often than that guy in Oz.
No-one is going to shed a tear when they are up against the wall.
Yes, I had the same idea. I think we'll see "fabricators" that can make lots of different consumables out of basic parts, fabrics, ceramics, electronics. There are already prototypes for such things.
Once the industrial production line is turned into a commodity, all that's left is the design. This will, as you say, be copied, hacked, mixed, shared ruthlessly, and the establishment will fight back with patents.
Capitalism is not based on the scarcity of goods, no. It's based on the ability to specialise and solve problems better by that. So even in a purely digital economy, we make money by dividing the problem, solving it separately, and trading the solutions.
The reason why certain good (digital or not) and services are worth money is because it's cheaper to buy them than make them yourself.
In fact, your dream scenario of "make anything you want at home" would lead to a new explosion of capitalism, just as free software has exploded the software market.
Although the process is slow, policy makers do eventually catch up with new realities. Or rather, they retire and die and are replaced by younger minds that think differently.
What we're looking at, IMO, is the transition of social, economic, and finally, political power from the industrial revolution to the digital revolution. People like Rufus are today defining the theoretical basis for laws that will be enacted in twenty or fifty years' time.
What is happening, broadly is that a new society is forming around the digitalisation of culture. This society is vast and now includes perhaps half the world's population (3bn SIM cards are in use globally). The new society drives new businesses like Google and Ebay, and in a decade, this digital economy will have become more important than the industrial economy. And at some stage the digital economy will reach for political power.
This happened before, in the industrial revolution, and at that time the old upper class - landowners - tried to stop the growth of the new industrial middle class with laws like the Corn Laws. They ultimately failed, and the urban middle class finally got the vote.
My prediction is that the digital revolution will culminate in a transfer of power from the old political / industrial elite (who are the ones that made today's copyright and patent laws) to a new elite that will create new models of property that suit it much better.
It is feasible to already implement 14-year copyright today, by private contract. E.g. this could be implemented in a GPL-style license. It may be that private legal systems like the GPL become the laws of tomorrow.
Rufus has done a brilliant work in turning the "more is better" dogma of IP upside down and giving us a tool to quantify exactly what is needed.
Immunity from civil damages after traffic accidents... "official activities".... OMG! Now we know how the EPO bumps off its noisy opponents.
:-) Keep that black Merc away from me...
Just kidding! We LOVE the EPO!
I believe, technically, it's only if the murder occurs on EPO grounds, which are like embassies, beyond the reach of local national law. If an EPO employee committed a crime on German or Dutch soil, I believe he would be answerable to the local police. Also, an examiner gone postal would probably be arrested if he stepped outside the EPO's gates. However the independent sovereign status of the EPO does mean that its top-level staff can make a lot of money by escaping taxes; these advantages would be reduced if the EPO became an EU office. There is a lot of economic self-interest behind the politics.
There's a short summary of the EPO's origins and motives on the Digital Majority web site.
The EPO is half right but it's important to understand where the situation is in Europe. The EPO grants more software patents than ever, but uses mystical jargon to disguise these so that it can claim, with a straight face, "Software cannot be patented in Europe". One of the speakers at the conference, Mr Beresford, a patent attorney, wrote a book called "How to patent software under the European Patent Convention" (since it is, strictly speaking, not allowed).
Those who want software patents and business method patents are: the patent industry, and specific software firms like Microsoft and SAP, and some consumer tech firms like Philips. The EPO is in a bind because the explosion of demand for software patents is destroying it from the inside: internal strife over the money is now breaking the EPO apart little by little.
Politically, there is a big fight between the EPO and the EU over who controls the patent system. The EU wants a Community Patent and the EPO (esp. Switzerland) has been sabotaging this because it means the end of a good business. The pro-swpat lobby has been trying to get software patents in via the back door through an EPO plan called "EPLA", but this is failing because of the EU vs. EPO fight. The UK courts meanwhile are rolling back patent law to discard pure software patents (which annoyed Mr Beresford immensely). Within the EPO, national patent interests try to weaken the EPO's management, and try to inflate the patent system so they can pump more money out of it. The EPO management gets all the flak, and lobbies hard to make friends in Brussels. MEPs are still sensitive from the Software Patent Directive, especially those who lost.
It is intensely political, and almost the only thing all parties can agree on is that it's not the right time to attack the question of software patents again. That is basically what came out of the conference.
However - this is not a closed matter. IBM recently came out on the side of the FFII (my association) with a proposal that calls for a "European Interoperability Patent", which basically is a patent that does not damage open standards and (maybe) open source. The EIP is immature and just one idea among many but it's part of IBM's realignment with the FOSS economy, and away from the old industrial economy that so loves patents.
And when IBM moves, the patent world follows.
What was most interesting from the EPO conference, and what is missing from their report, is the way the EPO is getting ready for change. With a new president - Alison Brimelow - and a huge set of problems to deal with, there is a good chance that the old EPO, which sold patents as the cure for everything will start to become a kinder, gentler kind of parasite.
Of course, the FFII, which fought against software patents from 1999 to 2005, is still here, and growing stronger. The question of how to stop the patent system from destroying the FOSS economy is still there and it will come back onto the agenda in a big way, when the time is right.
Yes, Microsoft are moving heaven and earth to get OOXML stamped as an ISO standard.
One example: in Italy's technical committee a few weeks back there were 11 organisations. When Microsoft had finished mobilising their partners, there were 70. No surprise that Italy will vote "yes" on the OOXML vote. It is disgraceful; ISO will become a "made in Redmond" rubber-stamping tool that helps Microsoft sell upgrades and kick away ODF.
There is an online petition with 16,000 signatures and a lot more information on the noOOXML.org site.
Everyone who cares about open standards needs to sign this petition.
This has been clear for ages. See my article on Digital Majority.
Linux (and all the free software it supports) is a compelling technology that underpins huge new markets. Microsoft wants to tax these markets. It has been accumulating patents, and lobbying for software patents in Europe, and investing in Intellectual Ventures, to create the necessary tools. It has decided the time is right to move. Its strategy is to divide and conquer the Linux community, by making deals with the commercial vendors. The deals don't need to be patent deals, they just need to allow Microsoft to pump some money into the companies in question, so they become slaved to Microsoft's policies. This is a standard operating procedure for MSFT.
The real targets are the large Linux users - big business. These firms will be asked politely but with force to pay a MS tax on Linux, in the name of "interoperability" and "intellectual property". The carrot will be interoperability with Microsoft's stacks, the stick will be that wallet of "infringements".
Above all, Microsoft wants to make life hard for IBM: its fear and loathing of IBM underpins its strategy in the Linux space.
There are two big problems with Microsoft's strategy:
One, it has moved too soon and too aggressively, probably scared by the GPLv3, and has created serious anger with those large firms it's supposed to be gaining as "Linux customers".
Second, it is playing games with an industry - the patent industry - that is more evil even than Microsoft. By feeding the trolls, it's sowing the seeds of its own departure from the software business.
Three, it is forcing IBM to move to action against Microsoft. The Open Invention Network (OIN) can be seen as a direct counter to Intellectual Ventures, which although highly secretive about its investors, most likely runs on MSFT cash.
Red Hat will, IMO, eventually make a deal with Microsoft, as will Canonical. The deal won't mention patents at all, but it will come to the same: cash flowing from Microsoft to Linux vendors, in sufficient quantities that they will be forced to play nice with Microsoft's plans.
... divide the Linux community, starting with the smallest weakest firms. Build up a credible patent claim against Linux (where "credible" means "incredible but nonetheless believable if you are borderline insane, as many firms are"). Attack Red Hat, and avoid annoying IBM directly.
Microsoft is doing a classic patent ambush on the Linux community, and it's significant. We're not seeing an attach on Linux, but on the Linux market. Microsoft wants to own the market.
I'd be surprised if MS actually threatened any FOSS developers, and I'd expect eventually MS to start supporting some free software projects, and eventually even the GPL, if it does get its planned iron grip on the Linux market via its unnamed patents. Free software is so much cheaper to build than the classic kind. Eventually, MS will port its stack of patent-protected lock-in technologies to a BSD or Linux core.
The weakness in Microsoft's armour is those unnamed patents. If they were to be named, they would be disarmed, and Microsoft's entire gambit would fail. In the US there is no need to detail a patent infringement claim. In Europe, Microsoft's claims come very close to illegal unfair competition; IIRC there is a clause in the European Patent Convention that says a claim of patent infringement must be backed by details of what patents are concerned.
"People being enriched is a good thing... Of course, the patent system has an administrative cost, but it is well worth the price."
That is excellent. Can I quote you? Even though you argue well (it's your job, maybe), the patent system is absolutely not about enrichment, nor about solving the (strawman) "free-rider" problem. It is only about exchanging a limited monopoly in return for documentation on new techniques that would otherwise be kept secret. Show me a single example of a "free-rider" problem in the software sector, please. Just one case where government intervention in the form of software patents is justified. Pretty please.
Today's patent system - whatever the merits of the patent per-se as a social bargain - fails completely to deliver value for money for society, it serves only people who can play the system, and punishes the rest. Nowhere is this more clear than in the software sector. However elsewhere it's also failed.
Explain to me why agriculture - based on free exchange of knowledge - has managed to prevent famine since the 1950's (famine still being caused by natural disaster, politics, and war), while pharmaceutics, entirely based on your vaunted monopoly, has left hundreds of millions cursed by malaria, dengue fever, and other diseases.
The excesses of the modern patent system will go down in history as a monstrosity. You can defend those excesses - and many people do - on the basis of "well, it makes money for me", just as people have defended a hundred other evils.
Actually the figure is probably much too low, if one considers the abuse of patents as "intellectual property crime".
Some examples:
* The way patent offices globally have turned the patent system into a pyramid scheme for their friends, printing coupons that are not backed by any state bank and yet are used as collateral to secure huge credits.
* The shakedown of numerous small businesses and large customers for "patent violations" based on legal instruments created by a mafia-style clique of lawyers.
* The wide use of patent "licensing deals" to create cartels that would be illegal and criminal under normal competition law.
* The use of patent "licenses" to tax the use of technology by the public, even though very often the public subsidised the original research.
* The use of "intellectual property laws" (designed and paid for by content industries) to prevent content falling into the public domain.
* The use of said laws to create artificial barriers to free trade, so prices can be raised in specific geographic areas.
* The use of the global patent system to keep the costs of medicines artificially high (even at the cost of millions of deaths)
* The use of the global patent system to prevent free competition in many markets.
* The use of the global patent system to stop alternative energy technologies being developed.
* The use of patents to create conflict and litigation than enriches lawyers and specialists.
And on and on and on... the cost of "intellectual property crime" surely runs into the trillions...
Of course we're supposed to think that when corporations abuse the law, it's a different thing than when individuals do it. Corporations can buy laws, individuals usually can't.
In 1985 or so, the company I worked for built a reservation system for tour operators. This system included the ability to search for hotels in specific hierarchical geographic areas (called 'countries' and 'resorts'). Very much the same idea. Obvious. Widely implemented.
More fundamentally, this 'invention' is wholly self-disclosing, and benefits society not an iota by being patented. A patent system that grants patents that do not benefit society is corrupt, and self-destructive.
Patents should only be granted where there are real secrets that must be documented or they are lost to society. It is not about rewarding inventors, no matter how much people wish it were; it is about collecting documentation of prior art, and allowing inventors to divulge secrets without loss, in the same way copyright lets creators divulge content without loss.
It's a good question. Does the GPL stop theft?
I'll answer by explaining the route I took for licensing my work. I've been writing gratis/open software for 25 years, and started distributing tools as shareware with source code around 1990. I released my first major tool (Libero) under the GPL in 1992, believing this was the "best" license for simple reasons; the FSF was behind such marvels as gcc, and this was their license. Some time later I switched to a BSD-style license, because I realised that the GPL conditions were stopping people using my work, and I wanted the widest possible distribution. Anonymity, not theft, is the main threat to most creators.
In the late 90's or so, we started to realise that our very permissive license was unfair. It was a gift to commercial projects, who took our (very useful) libaries, enhanced them, and did not give us anything back. RMS wrote about this, explaining why the LGPL was less effective than the GPL, and I agreed with him.
We switched to GPL for everything, libraries and tools, and provided commercial projects the option of paying for a commercial license (with no GPL conditions). The commercial licenses were not expensive, nor restrictive, and we did sell enough of them to make it worthwhile.
What we've learned over this long period is that BSD-style licensing is good when you are determined to spread your work as far as possible, and do not expect any return from anyone. If you want to make any money from your software, but still want to make it open, the GPL in combination with a commercial alternative works. In that case you also need to be pedantic about copyright; any contributions from other people must be granted back to you. Mixed copyrights are poisonous to any commercial leverage of GPL'd code.
Now, as regards theft of code, people seem to respect the deal. After all, it's fair. No serious firm is going to release products with tainted copyright, if they can avoid it. So offering a commercial license alternative for GPL'd code is important: it keeps people honest.
The GPL is very powerful: it lets us publish our code, which is how we find our markets, and still lets us build a business around it. It is ironic that RMS, who appears to hate the capitalist system (though this may be somewhat for show) was the brain behind such an elegant commercial tool.
Like I said, my eternal gratitude.
Bizarre. IHBT, but I'll bite.
My firm makes its money thanks to the GPL. If we did not use that license - for which RMS has earned my eternal gratitude - firms would simply steal our free software without giving anything back. The GPL ensures that we can earn money from our hard work by selling commercial licenses. What kind of business model do you see for "the community" you claim to be part of...?
As for "the tatters of our credibility", you are blaming RMS for a problem that is not there. Free software has never had a higher credibility.
I'll tell you who has lousy credibility... it's ACs who pretend to be part of a community. GNU-slash ruined Debian for you, did it? I'm so sorry for your fragile world.
No, ranting and raving won't do a thing.
However no monopoly is an island.
Look at how hard the Microsoft drones have tried to discredit GPLv3 here. There is a steady stream of propaganda: "GPLv3 takes away your rights, RMS is evil, why limit freedom..."
If we - those who are meant to swallow such crud - are worth talking to, then we're not powerless. Microsoft cannot make an infinite number of enemies in a networked world. At some stage it needs friends. And it's got so few left, it now has to buy them.
I'm really waiting for the day when Microsoft looks at Apple's and Google's share prices and realises "being nice could actually make us more money than being evil bastards that everyone hates."
With Novell, Microsoft subsidised Novell Suse licenses. With Xandros, Microsoft is doing a deal to provide "patent covenants", which means protection being sued by Microsoft for patent claims that Microsoft has not actually specified.
The game is to knock down the commercial Linux vendors, one by one, and establish them all as clients of Microsoft's "intellectual property". You can bet that the pressure on Red Hat to settle is quite intense. First, their competitors are being subsidised. Second, their clients are being blackmailed.
I've written a more detailed analysis on this. Microsoft is using software patents to try to take ownership of GNU/Linux and all free software / open source that would be distributed along with it.
Divide and conquer. At the end, the volunteer distros will be left alone to do their work, contributing to the shiny new future, while Microsoft makes sure it gets its 10%.
GPLv3 is being seen as many in the industry as the answer. I think that's wishful thinking. The real answer here is a lawsuit from the government for abuse of monopoly power, where Microsoft is using its monopoly in the desktop area to interfere in the server OS market.
On a related tangent it seems that the Redmond astro-turfing drones are out in force, insulting RMS, calling the GPLv3 all kinds of names, claiming that "freedom" includes the right to abuse other people. Well, drones, suck it. Doesn't matter how much you scream and rant, how much your managers pay you to mess with ISO and push OOXML, Microsoft is either going to learn to "do no evil", or it's going to sink like the Titanic.
"Fiasco"?
"Infecting patent deals"?
Who's bitch are you, exactly?
What is really, really sad is when people deliberately (or ignorantly) confuse freedom to make life better with freedom to make it worse.
Freedom of expression does not extend to harassment of minorities.
Freedom of movement does not extend to other people's bathrooms.
Freedom of software does not extend to patent ambushes.
Microsoft is cynically exploiting fear of patent infringement to ambush the work done by millions. This is no "pissing war", it is a fight for survival, at least a fight for survival according to the old rules. If Microsoft were respecting the free software community, or even just ignoring it, that'd be fine. But what it's doing is saying, "nice business you have here, Guv, pity you've gone and installed that free stuff everywhere, cause it infringes on our [unspecified] patents, and it'd be a real shame to see a lawsuit happen here..."
Linux is now mainstream, and Microsoft wants to own it. That is what is going on here.