The basic idea of the patent system is... extraordinarily confused. The arguments about the benefits of monopolies of ideas vs. free trade in knowledge have been going on for at least 150 years if not longer. Let's get one thing clear: software patents are exactly like all other patents in that they control the use of an idea. There is no inherent difference between the patent for a steam engine and the patent for a linked list.
Patents on steam engines held back the industrial revolution by 20 years. Patents on planes almost crippled the US airforce in WWi. All patents are anti-innovative in nature and by definition, because innovation is a collective act. No-one innovates in a vacuum, and the myth of the "lone inventor" is largely propaganda created by the patent industry.
All the conventional arguments for patents (that they promote innovation, help disclosure, protect small inventors, reward investment, etc.) are almost trivially disproven by the large body of historical evidence. Not least in the software industry. You have to be extraordinarily obtuse to maintain any of these arguments as true, without evidence.
What remains as the sole plausible benefit to society is documentation. Yes, patents seriously hurt the transport industry in the early 19th century, but today you can build a working steam engine from patents. Documentation is, plausibly, worth the significant pain that patents cause society.
And it's here that software patents fail completely. No patent is as good as source code, and in the age of Wikipedia we do not need the patent system to bribe busy people to document their work.
I've been making my software GPLd since 1991. If someone uses it, for free, and makes a derived work, and then tries to stop others from sharing that work, they are ethically and intellectually challenged.
This is not a test case for the GPL, it's a straight-forward copyright violation case, where AVM is taking the work of tens of thousands of people, using it under a license that permits remixing, and then attempting to ignore those license conditions.
This has been a long, long fight between the patent lobby and the rest of society. The sad thing is no-one really represents society, today, except civil society groups. Government has long become a tool for big business to get laws it thinks it needs, and the big software business (often, US firms like MSFT) still believes (wrongly) that it needs software patents.
Coincidentally I just started learning to develop mobile apps last week. I'm using Sencha Touch and PhoneGap, Eclipse, and the Android SDK. The combination works pretty nicely, and lets me build fairly pretty pseudo-native apps, working in JavaScript. Best, they will run on iOS and any future mobile device with WebKit.
Actually, it's quite easy to prove (with current and past examples) that government is an essential aspect of a free society. That is, without the State, inevitable conflicts of interest (over water, land, women, power) degenerate into cycles of violent conflict that can last for generations. This is the extreme symptom. More generally the State can act as a neutral (or at least more neutral than any alternative) authority to settle disputes, regulate trade, and thus allow economic freedom, and the growth of wealth.
Quite simple to prove: historically, solid government always preceded the growth of wealth.
Taxes are the least painful and most equitable method of funding such a State (the alternatives include theft of resources, e.g. Libya).
Oh, give me mod points. Thanks, it's annoying and boring to read anti-GPL shills with their "but but but Stallman wants to steal my freedom to rip off other people!" crap.
There were (and still are) four objections to the [inducement to disclose] argument. First, since most ideas develop simultaneously and independently in different places, no single disclosure is worth very much. Second, technological secret are hard to keep for long in any case. Third, when inventors think they can keep their techniques secret, they will not claim patents at all since competitors will be unable to duplicate the technique. Lastly, the patent system creates a disincentive for inventors to publish their ideas early on, since premature publication can ruin the chances of getting patents. So, rather than promote disclosure, the patent system actually hurts it.
Morons on slashdot constantly make that assertion but never actually say why or how things would work without it. And even worse, the stupidity of such statements completely destroys massive segments of the world economy and brings a halt to innovation in the technology communities.
Starting your argument with an ad-hominem attack, and then moving to unfounded claims of disaster don't really convince. You use a faith-based argument, which is predictable since copyright is basically medieval economic voodoo. Create barriers and friction, and magically you will create wealth! Bzzzt... wrong. Remove barriers and friction, and you will, scientifically, create wealth. Except it won't be in the hands of a powerful minority, won't be as visible, and won't make the politicians leap with joy because there won't be cushy jobs afterwards.
The massive bulk of the world economy cares not a crap for copyright, and does very fine. Some of the most innovative segments, such as electronics in China, exist in copyright and patent-free zones. And historically this has always been the case. Swiss pharma grew from French paint companies fleeing oppressive IP. Dutch electronics giant Philips started as a light-bulb KIRFer. The US printing industry grew on pirated texts. And so on, and on.
I just watched episode two of Pioneer One, and part one of Zenith, both movies from Vodo, which does not depend on copyright to control distribution, but instead, file sharing and word of mouth. And I paid, happily, to both production groups, to help them make their next episodes.
You seem to be claiming that copyright is the basis for a successful economy. You also seem to believe that society has an obligation to feed its artists, musicians, computer programmers, and actors. Lastly, and most amusingly, you seem to claim that the copyright system currently reward these groups, rather than, for example, executives, lawyers, marketing directors, and CEOs.
Firstly, economies work (or fail) on the basis of specialization and trade. This is a basic mechanism, like natural and sexual selection are basic mechanisms for evolution. Economies depend on people dividing up larger problems into smaller ones, and trading solutions. You make bread, I'll make beer, we'll trade. Money of course allows abstraction of this trade, and consequent scaling. Copyright plays no roles in this system except to limit its efficiency, and create friction. There is no benefit to society in individuals or groups owning any part of the culture needed. It is in fact the opposite.
Second, and I'm a computer programmer, but nonetheless: society has no obligation to feed any particular sector except those who cannot look after themselves. Artists, musicians, programmers, writers, and those who would fashion bushes into amusing topiary choose their professions, and do not merit special treatment. The Netherlands tried this. It did, and still does, pay registered artists to produce works. The result is wharehouses filled with junk art. The fact here is that not only do creative people merit no special treatment, but they actually only create valuable works when they are hungry and fairly desperate.
Third, there is no evidence that copyright law helps these people you care about, just as patent law doesn't help "inventors". All forms of privatised culture benefit only those with lawyers and muscle. This also should be obvious, either from studying history (who actually lobbied to create these laws, starting in the 15th century), or by deduction (any law is only tested in the courts, and since these are civil laws, contested between parties, which party will always win? Indeed, it's the one with more and better lawyers and more taste for lawsuits).
It's not the job of the legal system to feed artists, nor inventors, nor entrepreneurs. We all live or die off our ability to create value for others.
As for "all culture should be free" being nonsense and fantasy, realize that the vast majority of culture is free, and always has been. As I wrote in my previous post, your very ability to argue that owning culture is somehow a good thing depends on the massive free sharing by others of their work.
Reasonable middle grounds are fine. But the problem here is that there is no safe dividing line. It's just as with software patents. There is no objective line to be drawn between "good" and "bad". Once you allow some, no matter how hard you try to limit the scope, any defined line will move inexorably. It's obvious, really. If you accept the (and this really is the fantasy) argument that privatised culture is more valuable than shared culture, you will always accept a little more. If one patent is good, two is better and a million even better. If 14 years' copyright is good, 15 is better, and 100 is even better.
It is rather like smallpox. There's no reasonable middle ground. Eradication, abolition of privatized culture (and technology and ideas) is the only sustainable long term situation, and though it's far from an inevitable outcome, it's one worth fighting for.
Note: I really do believe that copyright is as bad as patents. Yes, I release all my software under the GPLv3, which depends entirely on copyright law, but it's a hack. In the ideal digital world, sharing of culture would not be optional. Areas of industry without copyright-like protection - like fashion - are hugely successful. Copyright is a 15th century concept designed to stop the free sharing of information. Copyright originated as censorship.
To those who will argue, inevitably, that without patent and copyright, people will not produce, kindly either look at history, or the real world. Competing through production is not an option. It takes a Soviet-style destruction of private property to dissuade us to produce. In every study, the more law tries to encourage "innovation" by privatising our culture, the less we produce. This would be obvious to the advocates for such privatisation if they actually produced anything of value, ever, in their own lives.
Culture and ideas and technology and works of art are "private property" only in the warped mindset of an intellectual property lawyer. I challenge that advocate to invent his own alphabet and language, build his own Internet and browser, and come back when his ability to speak nonsense is not entirely dependent on the culture freely shared by others.
And as the world flattened, and the West lost its historical advantages over the rest of the world, one hope remained. The Internet. Anglophone, agile, it offered a future where the talent and skills of Europe and America could earn their keep in a world starving for digital products. Sure, export all your industrial capacity to Asia. But they'll be importing their digital services from the West. Win-win.
Except it didn't happen like that. Patents and copyright, originally designed to protect the rights of a few, spread like cancer in the new digital economy. The "rights holders" and their lawyers wielded disproportionate influence over politicians. The newer digital businesses, though larger, didn't focus exclusively on control, lobbying, political influence, and protectionism.
One by one, the startups failed. The cost and risk of doing business was just too high. The Internet, once a lawyer-free zone, became the hunting ground for a new breed of legal parasite that used Google to search its prey. Society itself, which in the 21st century found itself heavily digitised, became captive to the "rights owners" and their lawyers.
One by one the digital businesses forced themselves to become involved in politics. It was only in 2024 in Europe, and a full decade later in the USA that the first pro-digital political parties took control of major power blocks. In the 21st century, there was no left, no right. There was only forwards, and backwards.
It's not so much about genetic strength as about power. Here is the explanation in evolutionary psychology terms.
Male pattern baldness is an evolved feature that relies on hormonal pathways to trigger. Evolved, meaning it gives an advantage in terms of more success with women, more kids, kids who live longer, and do better.
Why would going prematurely bald give a man success? The reason is, IMO, about power. Men instinctively trust older men (who know more, have survived, are worth listening to). Premature baldness makes a man look older than he really is. That's a sneaky way to grab power. It demands intelligence, because unless you're smarter than your peers you can't fool them into following you. So there's an inherent association between baldness and smartness.
I once studied the 100 most powerful people in the UK (Economist report). 4 were women, 96 were men. Of the 96, a significant number were bald, but there was no correlation between baldness and age. I.e., as many younger men with power were as bald as older men.
Now, as to why men worry about losing their hair? I'd guess, insecurity. Going bald is a gambit, a risk. Obviously you lose attractiveness to women who are looking for a long term partner. You're unlikely to find a woman who wants to settle and raise a family. But if you can pull it off, and get men to follow you, you get power, and a lot of women find that irresistible.
So the anti-baldness industry caters to insecure men, just as the beauty industry caters to insecure women. Another reason for being proudly bald, it shows not only that you're a born leader of men, smarter than average, and the latest in a long line of winners, but also that you're confident.
Further, Microsoft has lobbied extensively in Europe for a software patent regime, funding numerous attempts to modify the current situation where a patent has to be litigated in each country separately. If they were being defensive, they would not do this, the current European patent system favors defense.
And further, Microsoft has pushed very hard, for many years now, to find a way to extract a toll on Linux, via patents.
They are not a patent troll, mainly because they delegated that job to Intellectual Ventures, a pure patent troll firm. They are repeatedly attacked by firms who hold patents, though often it seems Microsoft stole the technology, and the small firms are justified in seeking compensation. But they do abuse their patents, and they do abuse the patent system in an attempt to fight competitors like Linux and Android that they can't beat on technical merit.
The irony of you writing your lies about how research works using an Internet, perhaps the largest ever research project undertaken by mankind, and born out of a scientific community unhampered by patents... is massive.
The arguments for and against the patent system haven't changed in over 100 years. In those days pseudoscience like protectionism could be excused. Today, we know that's a fraud, and patents are a fraud, and blanket condemnation isn't enough. The patent system is a parasite, careful to not kill its host but sucking as much blood as it can get otherwise.
"Software patents serve no one but giant companies, and only to stifle innovation. Exactly the opposite of their stated purpose."
However, that was always their purpose. It's always been the largest firms (particularly IBM pre-2000 and Microsoft post-2000) that expanded patent law into software, and that bought the most patents. Small firms have never mixed innovation with patenting, it's contradictory. You can either hold patents and sue others, or you can make products and avoid patents. Trying both means you are sued systematically unless you are in a field with practically no patents, e.g. a technical patent on a fashion item like a shoe.
Patents are inherently anti-competitive, this is well known in the patent industry, where people who actually make products and innovate are considered as a kind of food source for higher level patenting predators.
In software, the food source seems endless, which is why no-one's worried. But in other industries, it's already tipped so far that basic research is throttled in the US, EU, and Japan, and other countries are easily taking a lead.
All patents are bad, they all allow one entity to control the use of an idea in the market, they all act to restrict competition and they are all inherently anti-free market. There are no good patents.
Nokia has suffered really badly from a split personality over the years, where its patent-driven business clashed with its open source business. The end result is that Nokia was unable to make use of open source in any real way, even though it had years to get it right. Consequence: Android easily beats Nokia. Now Apple is in a better position but it still has trouble making use of large chunks of the open source world, again because of conflicts with their patent-driven business.
So it may well still end in oblivion. It really does come down to sheer ability to compete and move rapidly, and patents don't help this, they are essentially a 19th century anti-competition anti-trade device aimed at giving a firm 20 years in which to not have to compete. Not an excellent strategy in the 21st century.
Any firm that has to resort to patent lawsuits is already dead.
Actually, if you read/. regularly you'll know that Microsoft precisely accuses Google, via proxies, of literally copying code. They are attacking Android heavily because they think this will turn producers away from it, and towards their "safer" alternative. All this is about trying to scare Chinese producers into staying away from Android. It won't work. There is just too much money in Android and too little in WP7.
You're either a bad troll, or just badly informed. Small firms do not take patents unless they are non-product entities. Even owning a few patents makes small firms targets for hostile action aimed at grabbing their patents. The vast bulk of software patents are bought by large firms, and are used to keep small competitors out. It is idiotic to confuse a desire for no software patents with no copyright, no sane person in IT wants this. Copyright is the basis of the software industry, both closed and open source.
You are also wrong to suggest that patents somehow cripple Microsoft's ability to innovate. Their focus on patents does that, along with their structural stupidity and large doses of arrogance.
But, I'm sure you're not here to have your mind changed.
It's hard to know if you're serious when you say "Windows works good" but okaay....
You kind of miss the point about how open source teams organize. Competition is 80% of the reason for writing software as a sport. The infighting and hatred you see in these FOSS communities are the flip side of their creativity. Whereas the same infighting and hatred in a business setting is toxic.
FOSS communities that are polite, fully collaborative, kind, and patient, will die. They won't attract people who have emotional ties to the work they make; their contributors won't defend their works against criticism, won't defend them at conferences and in blogs.
I'm very happy each time I see these arguments. They are the best sign that FOSS is not just alive and healthy but an intrinsic expression of creativity that will never go away, and will continue to feed me an endless supply of alternatives.
The fight over what this goes back ages and is intensely political, given the sums of money involved. Internet, open standards. GSM, captive standards. No argument which generated more value, but which was more profitable for the people controlling the technology?
Here is an analysis of why firms like those the BSA represents want to capture computing standards, and how they do it.
419 scams depend on finding someone greedy; one original form was to find a house who's owner had left on holiday, bribe the watchman for the keys, and then sell it to another person on the basis of "OK, we've had a few good parties here, you know I'm a great guy, but suddenly I have to leave the country and need $10,000 real quick", at which the mark realizes this is a great opportunity (the house is easily worth ten times that), and offers to buy it.
Houses in Lagos, Nigeria (when I worked there) sometimes had "419! Not for Sale!" painted on their walls, when their owners were away.
However, social engineering depends on decent peoples' trust; head hunted calling the receptionist and asking, "who's your best Java developer?", or emailing the tech support from a hacked account so you look like the boss, and asking, "hey, give me ssh access and a new password, ok?"
What this guy did was more like simple robbery, getting money by force.
The Revolving Door is always bad. It's a major tool for vested interests to bribe law makers and regulators to be nice to them. Play nice while you're in office and you get a lucrative gig afterwards. This is why Wall St. isn't in jail, because SEC regulators know they will get million dollar jobs later on. It's why Europe's regulators kowtow to large foreign businesses, over the heads of the economic majority of small-to-medium European firms, because it's how they get lucrative consultancy work afterwards.
So it's bad, yes. Even if this particular appointment isn't worse than any other, it's the signal it sends. "$1.2 per year, be nice and you too could get this".
That pays for a whole lot of college fees for the kids or grandkids.
Slashdot Mirror
Invite is heading your way now...
The basic idea of the patent system is... extraordinarily confused. The arguments about the benefits of monopolies of ideas vs. free trade in knowledge have been going on for at least 150 years if not longer. Let's get one thing clear: software patents are exactly like all other patents in that they control the use of an idea. There is no inherent difference between the patent for a steam engine and the patent for a linked list.
Patents on steam engines held back the industrial revolution by 20 years. Patents on planes almost crippled the US airforce in WWi. All patents are anti-innovative in nature and by definition, because innovation is a collective act. No-one innovates in a vacuum, and the myth of the "lone inventor" is largely propaganda created by the patent industry.
All the conventional arguments for patents (that they promote innovation, help disclosure, protect small inventors, reward investment, etc.) are almost trivially disproven by the large body of historical evidence. Not least in the software industry. You have to be extraordinarily obtuse to maintain any of these arguments as true, without evidence.
What remains as the sole plausible benefit to society is documentation. Yes, patents seriously hurt the transport industry in the early 19th century, but today you can build a working steam engine from patents. Documentation is, plausibly, worth the significant pain that patents cause society.
And it's here that software patents fail completely. No patent is as good as source code, and in the age of Wikipedia we do not need the patent system to bribe busy people to document their work.
I've been making my software GPLd since 1991. If someone uses it, for free, and makes a derived work, and then tries to stop others from sharing that work, they are ethically and intellectually challenged.
This is not a test case for the GPL, it's a straight-forward copyright violation case, where AVM is taking the work of tens of thousands of people, using it under a license that permits remixing, and then attempting to ignore those license conditions.
Take them to the cleaners, Harald!
Ironically, the French patent establishment largely launched the notion of 'intellectual property' in the late 18th century.
This has been a long, long fight between the patent lobby and the rest of society. The sad thing is no-one really represents society, today, except civil society groups. Government has long become a tool for big business to get laws it thinks it needs, and the big software business (often, US firms like MSFT) still believes (wrongly) that it needs software patents.
Coincidentally I just started learning to develop mobile apps last week. I'm using Sencha Touch and PhoneGap, Eclipse, and the Android SDK. The combination works pretty nicely, and lets me build fairly pretty pseudo-native apps, working in JavaScript. Best, they will run on iOS and any future mobile device with WebKit.
Actually, it's quite easy to prove (with current and past examples) that government is an essential aspect of a free society. That is, without the State, inevitable conflicts of interest (over water, land, women, power) degenerate into cycles of violent conflict that can last for generations. This is the extreme symptom. More generally the State can act as a neutral (or at least more neutral than any alternative) authority to settle disputes, regulate trade, and thus allow economic freedom, and the growth of wealth.
Quite simple to prove: historically, solid government always preceded the growth of wealth.
Taxes are the least painful and most equitable method of funding such a State (the alternatives include theft of resources, e.g. Libya).
Oh, give me mod points. Thanks, it's annoying and boring to read anti-GPL shills with their "but but but Stallman wants to steal my freedom to rip off other people!" crap.
The whole point of a patent is to grant a temporary monopoly in exchange for teaching your 'art' to the world.
The 'trade secrets' argument is a crafted legend that was debunked in the 19th century.
tl;dr:
There were (and still are) four objections to the [inducement to disclose] argument. First, since most ideas develop simultaneously and independently in different places, no single disclosure is worth very much. Second, technological secret are hard to keep for long in any case. Third, when inventors think they can keep their techniques secret, they will not claim patents at all since competitors will be unable to duplicate the technique. Lastly, the patent system creates a disincentive for inventors to publish their ideas early on, since premature publication can ruin the chances of getting patents. So, rather than promote disclosure, the patent system actually hurts it.
Morons on slashdot constantly make that assertion but never actually say why or how things would work without it. And even worse, the stupidity of such statements completely destroys massive segments of the world economy and brings a halt to innovation in the technology communities.
Starting your argument with an ad-hominem attack, and then moving to unfounded claims of disaster don't really convince. You use a faith-based argument, which is predictable since copyright is basically medieval economic voodoo. Create barriers and friction, and magically you will create wealth! Bzzzt... wrong. Remove barriers and friction, and you will, scientifically, create wealth. Except it won't be in the hands of a powerful minority, won't be as visible, and won't make the politicians leap with joy because there won't be cushy jobs afterwards.
The massive bulk of the world economy cares not a crap for copyright, and does very fine. Some of the most innovative segments, such as electronics in China, exist in copyright and patent-free zones. And historically this has always been the case. Swiss pharma grew from French paint companies fleeing oppressive IP. Dutch electronics giant Philips started as a light-bulb KIRFer. The US printing industry grew on pirated texts. And so on, and on.
I just watched episode two of Pioneer One, and part one of Zenith, both movies from Vodo, which does not depend on copyright to control distribution, but instead, file sharing and word of mouth. And I paid, happily, to both production groups, to help them make their next episodes.
You seem to be claiming that copyright is the basis for a successful economy. You also seem to believe that society has an obligation to feed its artists, musicians, computer programmers, and actors. Lastly, and most amusingly, you seem to claim that the copyright system currently reward these groups, rather than, for example, executives, lawyers, marketing directors, and CEOs.
Firstly, economies work (or fail) on the basis of specialization and trade. This is a basic mechanism, like natural and sexual selection are basic mechanisms for evolution. Economies depend on people dividing up larger problems into smaller ones, and trading solutions. You make bread, I'll make beer, we'll trade. Money of course allows abstraction of this trade, and consequent scaling. Copyright plays no roles in this system except to limit its efficiency, and create friction. There is no benefit to society in individuals or groups owning any part of the culture needed. It is in fact the opposite.
Second, and I'm a computer programmer, but nonetheless: society has no obligation to feed any particular sector except those who cannot look after themselves. Artists, musicians, programmers, writers, and those who would fashion bushes into amusing topiary choose their professions, and do not merit special treatment. The Netherlands tried this. It did, and still does, pay registered artists to produce works. The result is wharehouses filled with junk art. The fact here is that not only do creative people merit no special treatment, but they actually only create valuable works when they are hungry and fairly desperate.
Third, there is no evidence that copyright law helps these people you care about, just as patent law doesn't help "inventors". All forms of privatised culture benefit only those with lawyers and muscle. This also should be obvious, either from studying history (who actually lobbied to create these laws, starting in the 15th century), or by deduction (any law is only tested in the courts, and since these are civil laws, contested between parties, which party will always win? Indeed, it's the one with more and better lawyers and more taste for lawsuits).
The point is not that startups are infringers. The point is that startups don't have lawyers and even the threat of a lawsuit can break them.
It's not the job of the legal system to feed artists, nor inventors, nor entrepreneurs. We all live or die off our ability to create value for others.
As for "all culture should be free" being nonsense and fantasy, realize that the vast majority of culture is free, and always has been. As I wrote in my previous post, your very ability to argue that owning culture is somehow a good thing depends on the massive free sharing by others of their work.
Reasonable middle grounds are fine. But the problem here is that there is no safe dividing line. It's just as with software patents. There is no objective line to be drawn between "good" and "bad". Once you allow some, no matter how hard you try to limit the scope, any defined line will move inexorably. It's obvious, really. If you accept the (and this really is the fantasy) argument that privatised culture is more valuable than shared culture, you will always accept a little more. If one patent is good, two is better and a million even better. If 14 years' copyright is good, 15 is better, and 100 is even better.
It is rather like smallpox. There's no reasonable middle ground. Eradication, abolition of privatized culture (and technology and ideas) is the only sustainable long term situation, and though it's far from an inevitable outcome, it's one worth fighting for.
Note: I really do believe that copyright is as bad as patents. Yes, I release all my software under the GPLv3, which depends entirely on copyright law, but it's a hack. In the ideal digital world, sharing of culture would not be optional. Areas of industry without copyright-like protection - like fashion - are hugely successful. Copyright is a 15th century concept designed to stop the free sharing of information. Copyright originated as censorship.
To those who will argue, inevitably, that without patent and copyright, people will not produce, kindly either look at history, or the real world. Competing through production is not an option. It takes a Soviet-style destruction of private property to dissuade us to produce. In every study, the more law tries to encourage "innovation" by privatising our culture, the less we produce. This would be obvious to the advocates for such privatisation if they actually produced anything of value, ever, in their own lives.
Culture and ideas and technology and works of art are "private property" only in the warped mindset of an intellectual property lawyer. I challenge that advocate to invent his own alphabet and language, build his own Internet and browser, and come back when his ability to speak nonsense is not entirely dependent on the culture freely shared by others.
And as the world flattened, and the West lost its historical advantages over the rest of the world, one hope remained. The Internet. Anglophone, agile, it offered a future where the talent and skills of Europe and America could earn their keep in a world starving for digital products. Sure, export all your industrial capacity to Asia. But they'll be importing their digital services from the West. Win-win.
Except it didn't happen like that. Patents and copyright, originally designed to protect the rights of a few, spread like cancer in the new digital economy. The "rights holders" and their lawyers wielded disproportionate influence over politicians. The newer digital businesses, though larger, didn't focus exclusively on control, lobbying, political influence, and protectionism.
One by one, the startups failed. The cost and risk of doing business was just too high. The Internet, once a lawyer-free zone, became the hunting ground for a new breed of legal parasite that used Google to search its prey. Society itself, which in the 21st century found itself heavily digitised, became captive to the "rights owners" and their lawyers.
One by one the digital businesses forced themselves to become involved in politics. It was only in 2024 in Europe, and a full decade later in the USA that the first pro-digital political parties took control of major power blocks. In the 21st century, there was no left, no right. There was only forwards, and backwards.
It's not so much about genetic strength as about power. Here is the explanation in evolutionary psychology terms.
Male pattern baldness is an evolved feature that relies on hormonal pathways to trigger. Evolved, meaning it gives an advantage in terms of more success with women, more kids, kids who live longer, and do better.
Why would going prematurely bald give a man success? The reason is, IMO, about power. Men instinctively trust older men (who know more, have survived, are worth listening to). Premature baldness makes a man look older than he really is. That's a sneaky way to grab power. It demands intelligence, because unless you're smarter than your peers you can't fool them into following you. So there's an inherent association between baldness and smartness.
I once studied the 100 most powerful people in the UK (Economist report). 4 were women, 96 were men. Of the 96, a significant number were bald, but there was no correlation between baldness and age. I.e., as many younger men with power were as bald as older men.
Now, as to why men worry about losing their hair? I'd guess, insecurity. Going bald is a gambit, a risk. Obviously you lose attractiveness to women who are looking for a long term partner. You're unlikely to find a woman who wants to settle and raise a family. But if you can pull it off, and get men to follow you, you get power, and a lot of women find that irresistible.
So the anti-baldness industry caters to insecure men, just as the beauty industry caters to insecure women. Another reason for being proudly bald, it shows not only that you're a born leader of men, smarter than average, and the latest in a long line of winners, but also that you're confident.
"Microsoft never has attacked other companies"
Microsoft files rare patent lawsuit against Salesforce.com
Microsoft Slaps Motorola with Patent Lawsuit over Android
Microsoft wins big on PND patent lawsuit
Microsoft Files Patent Lawsuit Vs TiVo Again
Patent Lawsuits Filed by Former Microsoft CTO’s Firm
Further, Microsoft has lobbied extensively in Europe for a software patent regime, funding numerous attempts to modify the current situation where a patent has to be litigated in each country separately. If they were being defensive, they would not do this, the current European patent system favors defense.
And further, Microsoft has pushed very hard, for many years now, to find a way to extract a toll on Linux, via patents.
They are not a patent troll, mainly because they delegated that job to Intellectual Ventures, a pure patent troll firm. They are repeatedly attacked by firms who hold patents, though often it seems Microsoft stole the technology, and the small firms are justified in seeking compensation. But they do abuse their patents, and they do abuse the patent system in an attempt to fight competitors like Linux and Android that they can't beat on technical merit.
The irony of you writing your lies about how research works using an Internet, perhaps the largest ever research project undertaken by mankind, and born out of a scientific community unhampered by patents... is massive.
Do you actually know the history of the patent system? Here is a little story of how the French created 'intellectual property' in the late 18th century.
The arguments for and against the patent system haven't changed in over 100 years. In those days pseudoscience like protectionism could be excused. Today, we know that's a fraud, and patents are a fraud, and blanket condemnation isn't enough. The patent system is a parasite, careful to not kill its host but sucking as much blood as it can get otherwise.
"Software patents serve no one but giant companies, and only to stifle innovation. Exactly the opposite of their stated purpose."
However, that was always their purpose. It's always been the largest firms (particularly IBM pre-2000 and Microsoft post-2000) that expanded patent law into software, and that bought the most patents. Small firms have never mixed innovation with patenting, it's contradictory. You can either hold patents and sue others, or you can make products and avoid patents. Trying both means you are sued systematically unless you are in a field with practically no patents, e.g. a technical patent on a fashion item like a shoe.
Patents are inherently anti-competitive, this is well known in the patent industry, where people who actually make products and innovate are considered as a kind of food source for higher level patenting predators.
In software, the food source seems endless, which is why no-one's worried. But in other industries, it's already tipped so far that basic research is throttled in the US, EU, and Japan, and other countries are easily taking a lead.
All patents are bad, they all allow one entity to control the use of an idea in the market, they all act to restrict competition and they are all inherently anti-free market. There are no good patents.
Nokia has suffered really badly from a split personality over the years, where its patent-driven business clashed with its open source business. The end result is that Nokia was unable to make use of open source in any real way, even though it had years to get it right. Consequence: Android easily beats Nokia. Now Apple is in a better position but it still has trouble making use of large chunks of the open source world, again because of conflicts with their patent-driven business.
So it may well still end in oblivion. It really does come down to sheer ability to compete and move rapidly, and patents don't help this, they are essentially a 19th century anti-competition anti-trade device aimed at giving a firm 20 years in which to not have to compete. Not an excellent strategy in the 21st century.
Any firm that has to resort to patent lawsuits is already dead.
Actually, if you read /. regularly you'll know that Microsoft precisely accuses Google, via proxies, of literally copying code. They are attacking Android heavily because they think this will turn producers away from it, and towards their "safer" alternative. All this is about trying to scare Chinese producers into staying away from Android. It won't work. There is just too much money in Android and too little in WP7.
You're either a bad troll, or just badly informed. Small firms do not take patents unless they are non-product entities. Even owning a few patents makes small firms targets for hostile action aimed at grabbing their patents. The vast bulk of software patents are bought by large firms, and are used to keep small competitors out. It is idiotic to confuse a desire for no software patents with no copyright, no sane person in IT wants this. Copyright is the basis of the software industry, both closed and open source.
You are also wrong to suggest that patents somehow cripple Microsoft's ability to innovate. Their focus on patents does that, along with their structural stupidity and large doses of arrogance.
But, I'm sure you're not here to have your mind changed.
It's hard to know if you're serious when you say "Windows works good" but okaay....
You kind of miss the point about how open source teams organize. Competition is 80% of the reason for writing software as a sport. The infighting and hatred you see in these FOSS communities are the flip side of their creativity. Whereas the same infighting and hatred in a business setting is toxic.
FOSS communities that are polite, fully collaborative, kind, and patient, will die. They won't attract people who have emotional ties to the work they make; their contributors won't defend their works against criticism, won't defend them at conferences and in blogs.
I'm very happy each time I see these arguments. They are the best sign that FOSS is not just alive and healthy but an intrinsic expression of creativity that will never go away, and will continue to feed me an endless supply of alternatives.
The fight over what this goes back ages and is intensely political, given the sums of money involved. Internet, open standards. GSM, captive standards. No argument which generated more value, but which was more profitable for the people controlling the technology?
Here is an analysis of why firms like those the BSA represents want to capture computing standards, and how they do it.
419 scams depend on finding someone greedy; one original form was to find a house who's owner had left on holiday, bribe the watchman for the keys, and then sell it to another person on the basis of "OK, we've had a few good parties here, you know I'm a great guy, but suddenly I have to leave the country and need $10,000 real quick", at which the mark realizes this is a great opportunity (the house is easily worth ten times that), and offers to buy it.
Houses in Lagos, Nigeria (when I worked there) sometimes had "419! Not for Sale!" painted on their walls, when their owners were away.
However, social engineering depends on decent peoples' trust; head hunted calling the receptionist and asking, "who's your best Java developer?", or emailing the tech support from a hacked account so you look like the boss, and asking, "hey, give me ssh access and a new password, ok?"
What this guy did was more like simple robbery, getting money by force.
The Revolving Door is always bad. It's a major tool for vested interests to bribe law makers and regulators to be nice to them. Play nice while you're in office and you get a lucrative gig afterwards. This is why Wall St. isn't in jail, because SEC regulators know they will get million dollar jobs later on. It's why Europe's regulators kowtow to large foreign businesses, over the heads of the economic majority of small-to-medium European firms, because it's how they get lucrative consultancy work afterwards.
So it's bad, yes. Even if this particular appointment isn't worse than any other, it's the signal it sends. "$1.2 per year, be nice and you too could get this".
That pays for a whole lot of college fees for the kids or grandkids.