Hmm this is very disturbing. I'm against silly software patents like the one described in the article, but not patents in general.
I'm an inventor. I've recently invented a new telephone queue system that allows callers to hang up, then call back without losing their place. It makes people really happy, it's genuinely novel, and there's no way I could commercialise/benefit from my invention without the protection of a patent (which has already been granted in the U.K.). One of the big telcos would just pinch it, I'm sure. Full details at http://www.orderlyq.com/ for those interested.
I'm also a coder, and a big fan of Open Source. For this reason I've implemented my invention using a variety of open-source tools, including Asterisk, Tomcat, Apache, PHP, Linux and PostgreSQL (though it could equally well be implemented as a hardware device). I'm strongly committed to the Open Source movement - and to give something back to the community, I've released the telephony application server I wrote to facilitate implementation of my invention as Open Source. I could probably have sold it - lots of developers are using it, but I really wanted to give something back.
Does this mean inventors like me are going to be penalised by the new GPL, just because I've chosen to implement my invention with Open Source tools?
How am I supposed to protect myself and my company, and get a return on the investment I have made, without a patent?
Why shouldn't inventors be able to use Open Source tools to implement their invention? Surely this is against the spirit of Free Software, where usage is supposed to be unrestricted? Wouldn't this mean that GPL'd software is no longer Free?
Surely what's needed here are more stringent requirements for grant by the US patent office (like we have here in the U.K.), not blanket retaliation from the FSF...
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Hmm this is very disturbing. I'm against silly software patents like the one described in the article, but not patents in general.
I'm an inventor. I've recently invented a new telephone queue system that allows callers to hang up, then call back without losing their place. It makes people really happy, it's genuinely novel, and there's no way I could commercialise/benefit from my invention without the protection of a patent (which has already been granted in the U.K.). One of the big telcos would just pinch it, I'm sure. Full details at http://www.orderlyq.com/ for those interested.
I'm also a coder, and a big fan of Open Source. For this reason I've implemented my invention using a variety of open-source tools, including Asterisk, Tomcat, Apache, PHP, Linux and PostgreSQL (though it could equally well be implemented as a hardware device). I'm strongly committed to the Open Source movement - and to give something back to the community, I've released the telephony application server I wrote to facilitate implementation of my invention as Open Source. I could probably have sold it - lots of developers are using it, but I really wanted to give something back.
Does this mean inventors like me are going to be penalised by the new GPL, just because I've chosen to implement my invention with Open Source tools?
How am I supposed to protect myself and my company, and get a return on the investment I have made, without a patent?
Why shouldn't inventors be able to use Open Source tools to implement their invention? Surely this is against the spirit of Free Software, where usage is supposed to be unrestricted? Wouldn't this mean that GPL'd software is no longer Free?
Surely what's needed here are more stringent requirements for grant by the US patent office (like we have here in the U.K.), not blanket retaliation from the FSF...