Now I'm just depressed. Anyone with any patent and a hatred for open source can get a developer to stop working on any open source project they like, just by filing a pointless lawsuit. Presumably they'd have difficulty filing the claim if they used the example you gave (right?) but if they have one software patent chances are they'll have no trouble filing and the developer will not even be able to afford the summary judgement to show it is pointless. But then again, I suppose that's exactly the same for copyright. At least in those situations I know what I would do, assign my copyright to the FSF and let them handle it. I'm not sure I could handle a patent issue the same way.
Here's another question. Say someone is using a patent to bully a programmer like me who makes open source software and they simply don't have a case. Say their patent was for hot dog serving implements. Surely you'd agree that would be an unloosable case. Do you need a high payed lawyer to write "my client's software has nothing to do with hot dogs" or could you actually write that yourself? I'm sorry if this seems like a stupid question, but from what you've been saying Bruce Perens and the other the-end-of-open-source-is-near crowd are right. Most developers who work on open source make nothing from it. We don't have the money to defend ourselves against nuisance cases.
Yawn, this is a feature request, not a bug. If it is so important to you pay someone to code it. Here's an idea: why not get together all the people you can find who want this feature and pool your funds?
That's the way open source works: the person with the itch does the work, be it by firing up their source code editor or by paying someone else to do it for them.
But just so everyone knows where you're coming from. You don't want this fixed enough to fix it yourself (learning how to program if necessary) or to pay someone else to fix it for you.
Obviously if a bug is 4 years old it is not very important. If it is important to you, do something about it (and no, complaining that people who are already giving you a free lunch are not putting your favourite desert on the buffet is not "doing something").
What does that even mean? Can you actually be specific cause we're all sitting over here saying "gee, that must be bad" when we have no idea what you are talking about. Statements like that just make us more ignorant.
I didn't mean to imply that you were a programmer. I was simply saying that the vast majority of programmers (like me) really don't know what we're talking about when we say it costs "a lot" to go to court.
As for how many days can I miss work, as many as I like. I have an excellent employer and a lot of accrued holidays. How many evenings can I waste? Why is it a waste to fight for what you believe is right? I spend my whole life doing that, another few months won't hurt.
Well, I own all the necessary equipment to make as many copies of anything that I like. Nevermind the fact that I never use paper in the first place.
Legal databases, yep, that's certainly an issue. However if I were sued I wouldn't actually write the legal replies myself (even though I said I would I was hoping it would be easier for you to understand) I'd get one of my legal friends to do it for me. Why would they? Because they hate people who abuse the patent system just as much as I do.
Who would I have to depose exactly? I know I havn't specified anything about the case at all but presuming that it is basically Evil Mega Corporation claims that algorithm I used in Tiny Random Open Source Application is a violation of their patent and it simply isn't, who is there to depose? Myself?
My point is, Bruce Perens and all the other the-sky-is-falling patents-are-going-to-kill-open-source people tell me to just lie down and die if a big company says I am violating their patent in one of my open source applications. If you listen to them, at some point in the future this is going to happen to me. So what should I do? Go talk to the 10 lawyers I know and ask them to donate some time to write reply briefs or bow out and let the evil megacorp win? The question is really about how much it is going to cost to put up a fight, and every time we try to talk about it we get told "oh it costs a lot" instead of actual dollar amounts and itemized costs. It almost seems like I need to go out and get myself sued so I can blog this information for others.
Ya know. I really don't think you know this first hand. You're just repeating what someone else said at some point in time and refusing to think about this rationally. Court cases take a very very long time to play out. In that whole time you're in court at the very end, maybe, if the judge hasn't completely thrown out the case by then. That would be the time to settle, not the months and months before then when you're replying to briefs and stating your case.
Can anyone answer the question please? How much does it cost to have your say if you write the reply briefs yourself? What are the court fees? The vast majority of programmers don't know a damn thing about this sort of stuff and when we go around yelling that no-one can afford to defend themselves from patents when we don't even know how much it costs we just appear ignorant.
Sigh. I specifically asked how much it costs to defend yourself from a patent infringement allegation. Not how much it will cost to hire lawyers. Not how much it will cost if you lose. Just what the costs are that you are required to pay. I'm thinking things like court fees. I'm assuming there's other fees. You don't know the answer to the question yet you're willing to say "it costs a lot" to defend yourself from a patent infringement allegation.
Just curious, would you happen to know what kind of funds you would need to prove in court that you hadn't violated someone's patent? Let's say I've got my own law degree and I think I can handle the case myself, what other costs are there? It seems that everyone is afraid of how much it costs to go to court but no-one seems to know exactly how much that is. My idea of a lot of money is probably a lot different to your idea of a lot of money. And let's forget about the cost of losing. I'm a stubborn bastard and if someone wrongfully sued me for patent infringement I'd be happy to go bankrupt if the court couldn't see the that I was right.
I really hope you're just being silly. Refactoring is defined as the process of improving a code base without modifying the essential behaviour (i.e., what the software does).
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I know this isn't what you were talking about, but that Joel article was so stupid. Bloatware isn't about file size. It isn't about the cost of disks or how much memory you have. It's about paying Microsoft $800 for Word. Assuming you actually pay for software. Word has like 10,000 features (say). At $800/10000, you're paying 8c a feature. That's unreal! Unfortunately I only use about 100 of these features. Which means I'm paying $8/feature. That's still unreal value though right! Well no, cause all of us are paying something like that. If we organised ourselves 100% of us could share the cost for those 100 features we all want. 80% of us could share the cost for those random features we use occasionally. 50% of us could share the cost of the less popular features, and 10% of us could pay for the exotic and braindead features we thought were a good idea at the time. Instead, we all have to pay for features we don't want, shit we don't need, and stuff that is just annoying and crazy.
Although I agree with what you are saying, I never said anything about lines of code. I wouldn't work for that kind of manager, but that's probably just cause I'm slack. Except for the times when I was contracting I've never had any manager assign me a task. They've asked me if I wanted to do it and I've been expected to say yes, but I've never been told "get this done or you're out of here". Why? Cause I, like many other programmers, am a primadona. Bark orders at me and I'll quit, and once you have one programmer like that on the team the rest of them quickly learn that they too can get away with murder and nothing ever gets done.
Now there are sectors of the IT industry which are not populated by these kinds of programmers. For example, people like this don't last too long in the games industry. They also don't make very good independant contractors.
There's nothing that can be achieved from a rewrite that cannot be achieved from refactoring. Nothing. Starting again from scratch is a political act. It's a "blame it all on the other guy" technique and nothing more. You wanna change the underlying architecture? Cool, do it incrementally and maintain the current code base as you do so.
Wow, what managers do you have? Every IT company I have ever worked at has had a "hands off" approach. This basically means that the engineers get paid to post on Slashdot, drink the free soda and play video games all day. Sure occasionally someone would get asked how new feature X was coming along, and maybe that'd have to fire up their favourite editor for 15 minutes and do some real work but that didn't happen that often.
Now if I was running a company that did software development I'd go through employees like 1.25 ltr bottles of coke. Basically I'd make sure every employee had tasks assigned to them and I'd monitor their progress by their CVS checkins. I know how much code is "hard work" and how much code is "slacking off". An employee would get say, 3 warnings, then they are out the door. Attempting to cheat the system is instant dismissal.
Of course, I'm sure people have started companies like this themselves. Then they quickly discovered that they didn't have enough work for the number of employees they had hired, so rather than fire the employees they just hoped they'd get more work in the future and never did. Or they just got lazy in their monitoring. Or they really just have no idea that monitoring is necessary.
More blatant stupidity I say. The vast amount of people who do a from-scratch rebuild end up with something worse than what they had. Refactoring, documentation and maintenance of software is the only way to make systems that work.
Well, duh, Microsoft Office. We don't bother pointing out concrete examples because we assume you have some experience with the IT industry before you enter into these kinds of conversations.
Struggling to get windows xp to give me a command line or show the task manager, because for some reason these are sluggish when the domain controller is down (wtf?), I sorely tempted to just nuke the drive and install ubuntu. Sure, there's that small issue of my work requiring me to use Visual Studio to do C++ development, but hey, that's what WINE is for.
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You're probably sick of arguing with me :) Good talking to you.
Now I'm just depressed. Anyone with any patent and a hatred for open source can get a developer to stop working on any open source project they like, just by filing a pointless lawsuit. Presumably they'd have difficulty filing the claim if they used the example you gave (right?) but if they have one software patent chances are they'll have no trouble filing and the developer will not even be able to afford the summary judgement to show it is pointless. But then again, I suppose that's exactly the same for copyright. At least in those situations I know what I would do, assign my copyright to the FSF and let them handle it. I'm not sure I could handle a patent issue the same way.
Here's another question. Say someone is using a patent to bully a programmer like me who makes open source software and they simply don't have a case. Say their patent was for hot dog serving implements. Surely you'd agree that would be an unloosable case. Do you need a high payed lawyer to write "my client's software has nothing to do with hot dogs" or could you actually write that yourself? I'm sorry if this seems like a stupid question, but from what you've been saying Bruce Perens and the other the-end-of-open-source-is-near crowd are right. Most developers who work on open source make nothing from it. We don't have the money to defend ourselves against nuisance cases.
I heard you. I was trying to appologize because you appeared to be insulted.
I ment no disrespect. I simply wanted to know how much it costs to not lay down and die.
That's the way open source works: the person with the itch does the work, be it by firing up their source code editor or by paying someone else to do it for them.
Obviously if a bug is 4 years old it is not very important. If it is important to you, do something about it (and no, complaining that people who are already giving you a free lunch are not putting your favourite desert on the buffet is not "doing something").
What does that even mean? Can you actually be specific cause we're all sitting over here saying "gee, that must be bad" when we have no idea what you are talking about. Statements like that just make us more ignorant.
I didn't mean to imply that you were a programmer. I was simply saying that the vast majority of programmers (like me) really don't know what we're talking about when we say it costs "a lot" to go to court.
As for how many days can I miss work, as many as I like. I have an excellent employer and a lot of accrued holidays. How many evenings can I waste? Why is it a waste to fight for what you believe is right? I spend my whole life doing that, another few months won't hurt.
Legal databases, yep, that's certainly an issue. However if I were sued I wouldn't actually write the legal replies myself (even though I said I would I was hoping it would be easier for you to understand) I'd get one of my legal friends to do it for me. Why would they? Because they hate people who abuse the patent system just as much as I do.
Who would I have to depose exactly? I know I havn't specified anything about the case at all but presuming that it is basically Evil Mega Corporation claims that algorithm I used in Tiny Random Open Source Application is a violation of their patent and it simply isn't, who is there to depose? Myself?
My point is, Bruce Perens and all the other the-sky-is-falling patents-are-going-to-kill-open-source people tell me to just lie down and die if a big company says I am violating their patent in one of my open source applications. If you listen to them, at some point in the future this is going to happen to me. So what should I do? Go talk to the 10 lawyers I know and ask them to donate some time to write reply briefs or bow out and let the evil megacorp win? The question is really about how much it is going to cost to put up a fight, and every time we try to talk about it we get told "oh it costs a lot" instead of actual dollar amounts and itemized costs. It almost seems like I need to go out and get myself sued so I can blog this information for others.
Can anyone answer the question please? How much does it cost to have your say if you write the reply briefs yourself? What are the court fees? The vast majority of programmers don't know a damn thing about this sort of stuff and when we go around yelling that no-one can afford to defend themselves from patents when we don't even know how much it costs we just appear ignorant.
Sigh. I specifically asked how much it costs to defend yourself from a patent infringement allegation. Not how much it will cost to hire lawyers. Not how much it will cost if you lose. Just what the costs are that you are required to pay. I'm thinking things like court fees. I'm assuming there's other fees. You don't know the answer to the question yet you're willing to say "it costs a lot" to defend yourself from a patent infringement allegation.
So yeah, now can you answer the question? If you're not paying anyone to help you, where does the money go?
Where does that go? That's my question.
Just curious, would you happen to know what kind of funds you would need to prove in court that you hadn't violated someone's patent? Let's say I've got my own law degree and I think I can handle the case myself, what other costs are there? It seems that everyone is afraid of how much it costs to go to court but no-one seems to know exactly how much that is. My idea of a lot of money is probably a lot different to your idea of a lot of money. And let's forget about the cost of losing. I'm a stubborn bastard and if someone wrongfully sued me for patent infringement I'd be happy to go bankrupt if the court couldn't see the that I was right.
I really hope you're just being silly. Refactoring is defined as the process of improving a code base without modifying the essential behaviour (i.e., what the software does).
I know this isn't what you were talking about, but that Joel article was so stupid. Bloatware isn't about file size. It isn't about the cost of disks or how much memory you have. It's about paying Microsoft $800 for Word. Assuming you actually pay for software. Word has like 10,000 features (say). At $800/10000, you're paying 8c a feature. That's unreal! Unfortunately I only use about 100 of these features. Which means I'm paying $8/feature. That's still unreal value though right! Well no, cause all of us are paying something like that. If we organised ourselves 100% of us could share the cost for those 100 features we all want. 80% of us could share the cost for those random features we use occasionally. 50% of us could share the cost of the less popular features, and 10% of us could pay for the exotic and braindead features we thought were a good idea at the time. Instead, we all have to pay for features we don't want, shit we don't need, and stuff that is just annoying and crazy.
Now there are sectors of the IT industry which are not populated by these kinds of programmers. For example, people like this don't last too long in the games industry. They also don't make very good independant contractors.
Because stuff that works is more important that stuff that is flashy.
There's nothing that can be achieved from a rewrite that cannot be achieved from refactoring. Nothing. Starting again from scratch is a political act. It's a "blame it all on the other guy" technique and nothing more. You wanna change the underlying architecture? Cool, do it incrementally and maintain the current code base as you do so.
Now if I was running a company that did software development I'd go through employees like 1.25 ltr bottles of coke. Basically I'd make sure every employee had tasks assigned to them and I'd monitor their progress by their CVS checkins. I know how much code is "hard work" and how much code is "slacking off". An employee would get say, 3 warnings, then they are out the door. Attempting to cheat the system is instant dismissal.
Of course, I'm sure people have started companies like this themselves. Then they quickly discovered that they didn't have enough work for the number of employees they had hired, so rather than fire the employees they just hoped they'd get more work in the future and never did. Or they just got lazy in their monitoring. Or they really just have no idea that monitoring is necessary.
More blatant stupidity I say. The vast amount of people who do a from-scratch rebuild end up with something worse than what they had. Refactoring, documentation and maintenance of software is the only way to make systems that work.
yeah I know, what kinda open source project is written in C#. Migel has a lot to answer for.
libsift and there are links to the papers on that page.
Well, duh, Microsoft Office. We don't bother pointing out concrete examples because we assume you have some experience with the IT industry before you enter into these kinds of conversations.
Struggling to get windows xp to give me a command line or show the task manager, because for some reason these are sluggish when the domain controller is down (wtf?), I sorely tempted to just nuke the drive and install ubuntu. Sure, there's that small issue of my work requiring me to use Visual Studio to do C++ development, but hey, that's what WINE is for.