You Sir (or Madam), are an ignoramus (first class), and the irrelevance is all yours: Emacs, as Neal Stephenson once said; "outshines all other editors as the noonday sun does the stars" - and it still does. Of course if you don't know why it does so, you'd probably be better off using a tool designed for less smart people anyway:) More importantly, it is quite possible - likely even - that there would be no such thing as FOSS if it were not for RMS, and the world would be a much worse place for intelligent and inquisitive tech./sci./math minded people.
You are confusing 2 very different things...[+ other nonsense] Yes indeed. Looks like my nose for this sort of thing temporarily failed me: I seem to have taken a post from a wilfully ignorant anti-evolution nut to be a post from someone merely innocently ignorant.
It's a long stretch to call evolution a "fact," and I'm not even talking from a religious standpoint here. No, it isn't a stretch at all. Here is the 'official', scientific view:
Because of this immense body of evidence, scientists treat the occurrence of evolution as one of the most securely established of scientific facts.
For more than a century and a half, scientists have been gathering evidence that expands our understanding of both the fact and the processes of biological evolution. and in summary...
Is Evolution a Theory or a Fact? It is both. But that answer requires looking more deeply at the meanings of the words "theory" and "fact"... In science, a "fact" typically refers to an observation, measurement, or other form of evidence that can be expected to occur the same way under similar circumstances. However, scientists also use the term "fact" to refer to a scientific explanation that has been tested and confirmed so many times that there is no longer a compelling reason to keep testing it or looking for additional examples. In that respect, the past and continuing occurrence of evolution is a scientific fact. Because the evidence supporting it is so strong, scientists no longer question whether biological evolution has occurred and is continuing to occur. Instead, they investigate the mechanisms of evolution, how rapidly evolution can take place, and related questions. http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11876
Since then we've seen the emergence of Google as a powerful challenger to Microsoft. This is one example among many of a company whose entire existence, much less its massive success, is dependent upon a patent (# 6285999, in Google's case).If Google had not been able to patent its major innovation, then Microsoft could easily have co-opted the idea, and it would have dominated search as well as operating systems and office suites. Your argument is badly flawed: even if it were true that Google's success depended on a single patent, rather than lead-time advantage, network effects etc. Google could've used trade secret, and that last sentence is a non sequitur. Furthermore, such anecdotes are of little value as a basis for considering overall patent system policy.
How to fix this?... we should recognize that many patents are not valid and end the presumption of validity. I expect that any proposal to remove the presumption of validity would be met with extreme hostility from the pharmaceutical industry and elsewhere. More seriously and from a purely economic point of view; although you may be right about 'bad' software patents making the situation somewhat worse, it is by no means clear that their elimination would - even if practically possible - substantially mitigate the problems caused by the extension of patentable subject matter to software: http://researchoninnovation.org/
This is different from a company like Microsoft, that creates and sells other products, and is therefore stuck in a mutually-assured-destruction situation that prevents them from suing others for key patents. The MAD stalemate may well be a fair description of the situation between large patent portfolio holders but it doesn't apply in the asymmetric case. Microsoft's VP of IP, Marshall "Father of the IBM Tax" Phelps, would probably consider it a failure if he had to drag some small company into Court* - and that is actually true of most patent trolls too - but Microsoft has just as aggressive a patent licensing strategy as IBM did when Phelps was there.
* "I'm not running a litigation shop, I'm running a licensing shop." -- Marshall Phelps.
Some European states' POs may be better than the USPTO but the EPO certainly isn't. The EPO grants software and business method patents and, like the USPTO, it has no qualms about enabling its customers to engage in speculative extortion: http://webshop.ffii.org/ and outright theft: http://www.ffii.org.uk/archives/28 (a theft of ideas outlined in the X Consortium's ICCCM standard).
"We're now back to "software patents if you can show a technical effect", which is enough to block most stuff which gets patented in the US/Japan." Perhaps that would be true if "technical effect" meant something but it doesn't: http://www.ffii.org.uk/archives/28 The EPO is determined to allow 'pure' software patents and - as is also clear from that patent - to enable its customers to engage in extortion and theft.
Unfortunately, those most directly affected by the patent system are also often the least knowledgeable about it and often the most infected by its peculiarly virulent myths and fallacies. Asking some of the right questions, as you have done, is a good start but the patent system - esp. w.r.t. software patents - has been a hot topic in economics and elsewhere for some time now and you might be interested in some of the more recent stuff than that found at the LPF site:
"It seems like that if you are against software patents you must be against patents in order for it to make sense..."
It may seem like that but only if you have little if any knowledge of the patent system - its history, economics and law - and an extremely distorted view of what the opposition to software patents is all about.
It is also important to realise that the Patent Offices are not and never can be the arbiters of what constitute the great inventions of the day. The patent system is not some prize-giving system, only granting patents to the truly worthy inventors, and in order to be fair and objective, the P.Os can only - at best - reject the truly meritless or clearly unpatentable applications. It may be possible to raise the "inventive step" a little and improve patent quality a little but only in hindsight and in the subjective opinion of some is the 1-click patent a "stupid" patent. In fact a case can easily be made that it was more desirable from the point of view of the economic rationale of the patent system to grant the 1-click patent than it was to grant the RSA patent. The salient point though is that it was neither necessary nor efficient to grant either patent in order that society, the economy and the progress of the sciences and useful arts would benefit from those inventions.
As others have pointed out, it is not true that Microsoft has never used patents offensively. It is also a fact that the vast majority of patent disputes never end up in Court: licensing or cessation of infringement are the only economically realistic options for most alleged infringers. Finally, as Microsoft's VP of IP, Marshall "Father of the IBM tax" Phelps could tell you, a company with a large enough patent portfolio can gain more from the dysfunctional patent system than it loses. In fact it can derive a significant strategic advantage.
"Nobody is going to sue MomAndPop.com for patent infringement because its not profitable. They sue the Microsofts and the Apples who have the deep pockets to shell out big settlements."
Not true. UncleAndAunt.com will sue MomAndPop.com and even BroAndSis.org. (cf. KAM v. JMRI). Out and out litigation is just the tip of the iceberg btw: far more usually, licensing fees or cessation of infringement is demanded. EvilPatentTroll.com or AnyCorp.com with an aggressive IP licensing program will also attack MomAndPop.com - especially with weak patents they would risk losing if they attacked a company large enough to fight back in Court (cf. SBCL v. Museum Tours).
"They can't get the patent because someone else has it."
Sadly, the POs are incapable even of identifying relevant prior art in there own databases, let alone the vast wealth of non-patent material in the software realm. There are many duplicate and overlapping patents.
"Either of the other two cases means that they can do whatever they were planning on doing without worry of getting sued for millions upon millions of dollars."
Sometimes yes. But Microsoft spends around $100,000,000 every year defending itself against some 30-40 patents and it just isn't possible to protect yourself from patents - not even if you have the legal resources of a Microsoft:
"If you think that's easy, then you should be aware that Microsoft tried to use an LZ77/LZRW1/etc variant, specifically designed not to infringe existing patents, in its MS-DOS V6 operating system, and ended up having to pay Stac about $80m in the resulting patent lawsuit." -- Ross Williams.
"If they are such great ideas they will profit from licensing fees."
Not necessarily. Unless they are non-practising entities, if they assert their patents against a large company, they will quite likely end up paying an offset fee in recognition of the larger company's much more extensive portfolio and, of course, lose the benefit of exclusivity of their own patents.
"Willfully choosing to not use the system means willfully choosing to not benefit from the protections and advantages it was designed to offer."
To assume that it will, as a matter of course, offer such benefits and advantages would be economically naïve. To assert that it does so would be simply fallacious.
Provided the ingredients are good, the simplest breakfasts are best. I like a couple of large succulent bacon sandwiches (grilled back bacon and fresh granary or wholemeal bread, generously buttered) and a mug or two of strong Ceylon tea sweetened with a teaspoon of honey to wash 'em down. Fried egg sandwiches are good too (fresh free range eggs fried in hot butter spooned over the yolks until they're cooked just right and then sprinkled with a little ground black pepper and salt).
"Start in the table of contents and you will find the conclusion is on a single page. It's on page 283."
No it's not. That's only the conclusion page for section 12, "Appendix 2: Report on user-level productivity and relative cost of FLOSS / proprietary software." The executive summary is the where the overall conclusions can be found in this paper. The whole thing is considerably more than just a TCO study.
Re:Implementations (lack of)
on
Lisp and Ruby
·
· Score: 1
"There is not a good Lisp free implementation that runs on several platforms including Windows and that not makes all the code I write there GPL instead of the license I would like."
I know you are trolling - and I won't even bother to address the mouse-brained ignorance of your comments about Emacs etc. - but in case any casual reader might be put off using Common Lisp by it, the above statement is (of course) complete and utter nonsense.
Re:Performance, anyone?
on
Lisp and Ruby
·
· Score: 4, Informative
"I mean, take Lisp and its performance. Compare it to Ruby's."
Which Lisp? One which (as most implementations of Common Lisp do these days) appropriately and reasonably gets compared to the output of a C compiler?:
Remember when BT patented the hyperlink? But they didn't just patent it; in a bid to become the worst patent troll the world has ever known, they actually tried to enforce it.Both BT and Microsoft lobby for software patents here in Europe, but if Microsoft says it is interested in improving quality and only applies for junk patents defensively, it is at least believable. When British Telecom does the same, as it did recently in its submission to the Gowers Review:
Equally, we are supportive of all efforts by Patent Offices to improve the rigour of
their searching and examination of patent applications, to ensure a strong system
that precludes users from obtaining patents of dubious validity in any area of
technology. Such dubious patents can hinder the development of competing products
and damage the interest of all companies large and small. We look forward to
contributing to the recently announced Patent Office consultation on inventive step
requirements for patentability.
I haven't looked at those papers (and haven't time to now) but the video clip looked very like stuff that's been done before - a reinvention of the wheel even;-)
"While many software patents have been granted illegally in Europe and as much as some people would like it to be so, they are still not enforceable - which was my main point."
The two different issues of granting legality and subsequent enforceability (presumably you mean enforceability in its restricted sense here, i.e. by legal process) of software patents are nowhere near as clear cut as that. I will say no more (it is a complex matter) and instead suggest you ask someone from the FFII (try #bxl-ffii on freenode or email someone such as the very smart and well informed Jonas Maebe). But I would not be the first to observe that a patent granted - no matter how "illegal" or invalid it is - is far from being practically and usefully not enforceable anyway.
We have had good news in the UK recently and it is possibly the safest and sanest place in Europe at the moment, but it will all come to nothing if the EPO et al have their way. From what I've heard, EPLA is their "one ring" so I'm glad you're aware there's still a fight on:)
"Do you have any evidence to back that up? The remainder of your comments seemed to be based on this assumption.
To my knowledge, US software patents are only valid in the US, possibly Japan and some Asian countries"
The remainder of my comments were not based on that "assumption" (which isn't an assumption but a well known fact anyway), but that you even need to ask for evidence is somewhat odd: the European situation and the great political battles over the EPO's granting of software patents, ridiculous and otherwise, has featured prominently on/. and elsewhere in the media over the last few years. Where have you been? Perhaps you are also unaware that it is standard practice to apply for patents as widely as possible, either under the PCT or individually at the EPO, JPO, USPTO etc. (depending on one's resources)? That is why the USPTO granted patents of large corporations, especially multi-nationals of course, can be expected to have their equivalents in the EPO database. and elsewhere. So, sadly, it is quite correct but tautological and irrelevant to say that US patents are only valid in the US.
With the threat of EPLA now hanging over us here in Europe, things are getting worse. Perhaps I should not expect that everyone else should follow these matters as closely as I do and I am sorry if I sound a bit peevish (I am getting very sick of the groundhog day nature of/. discussions on this (and other) subjects;-) but even if you are not familiar with the software patent situation in Europe and latest developments, you really should've read the conclusions of the paper you yourself linked to! As it happens, the EPO Board of Appeal just recently (and infamously) made a very big deal - a "spit in the eye of the enormous opposition to its reckless US-style granting practice" kind of big deal - of its allowance of an appalling Microsoft clipboard patent.
"And we haven't even discussed the very large US corporates with a vested interest in FOSS who wouldn't like to see this happen."
To see what happen? You think they will shed tears over patents used (by whoever) against users of FLOSS, effectively excluding competitors who cannot afford to indemnify their customers or wield their own large patent portfolios as these large corporates can? And that is only one of the many, many insidious ways in which software patents can act to the detriment of FLOSS (and other software, of course).
"Aren't these ridiculous software patents only valid in the US?"
No. And a patent usually only has to be granted before it can realise its potential anyway. Despite what most people seem to imagine, and the fact that there has actually been an explosion of patent litigation in the US, most patent interactions (threats, disputes, resolutions and licensing agreements etc.) never end up in a Court. The reasons for this are rather obvious if you think about it.
"Given that most large OSS projects have copyrights held by developers all over the world, how exactly would it be feasable to stop a project if you couldn't go after all of its developers and codebase?"
The rights given to a patent holder include the rights to exclude others from distributing and using. A software project forced underground - off sourceforge etc. - and made effectively undistributable by the major distros would be unlikely to thrive. And although it is quite easy for a patent holder to demand that a project not infringe its patent, backed by a credible threat of forcing it to shut down (and it has happened), it is more likely (at the moment anyway) that a patent holder would wish to use its patents to encourage corporate / institutional users to prefer its own software over some FLOSS equivalent or to demand patent license fees from them.
"Can anyone out there go through this piece and tell me why it might be wrong?... The author of the Telegraph piece is Christopher Monckton, a retired journalist and former policy advisor..."
What more do you need to know? The UK newspapers and other news media, including the so-called "science" journals (cf. New Scientist's recent EMdrive farce), are so bad now that there's just no point in taking anything they say or write seriously. One of the reasons I stopped reading the UK newspapers some time ago was because I was so sick of being bombarded every day by appalling pseudo-science and relentless scientific "controversy" building in the name of "journalistic balance". UK media types are notorious for being scientifically illiterate and innumerate - and proud of it.
Slashdot Mirror
You Sir (or Madam), are an ignoramus (first class), and the irrelevance is all yours: Emacs, as Neal Stephenson once said; "outshines all other editors as the noonday sun does the stars" - and it still does. Of course if you don't know why it does so, you'd probably be better off using a tool designed for less smart people anyway :) More importantly, it is quite possible - likely even - that there would be no such thing as FOSS if it were not for RMS, and the world would be a much worse place for intelligent and inquisitive tech./sci./math minded people.
Silly me!
It is both. But that answer requires looking more deeply at the meanings of the words "theory" and "fact"...
In science, a "fact" typically refers to an observation, measurement, or other form of evidence that can be expected to occur the same way under similar circumstances. However, scientists also use the term "fact" to refer to a scientific explanation that has been tested and confirmed so many times that there is no longer a compelling reason to keep testing it or looking for additional examples. In that respect, the past and continuing occurrence of evolution is a scientific fact. Because the evidence supporting it is so strong, scientists no longer question whether biological evolution has occurred and is continuing to occur. Instead, they investigate the mechanisms of evolution, how rapidly evolution can take place, and related questions. http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11876
Some European states' POs may be better than the USPTO but the EPO certainly isn't. The EPO grants software and business method patents and, like the USPTO, it has no qualms about enabling its customers to engage in speculative extortion: http://webshop.ffii.org/ and outright theft: http://www.ffii.org.uk/archives/28 (a theft of ideas outlined in the X Consortium's ICCCM standard).
Unfortunately, those most directly affected by the patent system are also often the least knowledgeable about it and often the most infected by its peculiarly virulent myths and fallacies. Asking some of the right questions, as you have done, is a good start but the patent system - esp. w.r.t. software patents - has been a hot topic in economics and elsewhere for some time now and you might be interested in some of the more recent stuff than that found at the LPF site:
http://researchoninnovation.org/
http://www.si.umich.edu/~kahin/kahinpubs.html
"That's the BBC's business you know. They are not a public service"
Heh! So very true. ;-)
...but not enough broad and trivial software and business method patents:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=0&f=S&l=50&TERM1=Yahoo&FIELD1=ASNM&co1=AND&TERM2=&FIELD2=&d=PTXThttp://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=0&f=S&l=50&TERM1=Yahoo&FIELD1=ASNM&co1=AND&TERM2=&FIELD2=&d=PTXT
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/E/D/yahoo_144_70kb.pdf
"Sure - it's not perfect, ..."
It was even less 'evil' once:
http://web.archive.org/web/20060426151241/http://www.siam.org/siamnews/mtc/mtc593.htm"Well, if your read the patent, it's for triply-linked lists,"
No it isn't. Tertiary pointers aren't mentioned until the (rather spurious) second claim.
"the purpose for which I can only fathom."
If it wasn't obvious, which it is, you could read the patent and discover that it's for more easily traversing lists in different sequences.
"It seems like that if you are against software patents you must be against patents in order for it to make sense..."
It may seem like that but only if you have little if any knowledge of the patent system - its history, economics and law - and an extremely distorted view of what the opposition to software patents is all about.
It is also important to realise that the Patent Offices are not and never can be the arbiters of what constitute the great inventions of the day. The patent system is not some prize-giving system, only granting patents to the truly worthy inventors, and in order to be fair and objective, the P.Os can only - at best - reject the truly meritless or clearly unpatentable applications. It may be possible to raise the "inventive step" a little and improve patent quality a little but only in hindsight and in the subjective opinion of some is the 1-click patent a "stupid" patent. In fact a case can easily be made that it was more desirable from the point of view of the economic rationale of the patent system to grant the 1-click patent than it was to grant the RSA patent. The salient point though is that it was neither necessary nor efficient to grant either patent in order that society, the economy and the progress of the sciences and useful arts would benefit from those inventions.
As others have pointed out, it is not true that Microsoft has never used patents offensively. It is also a fact that the vast majority of patent disputes never end up in Court: licensing or cessation of infringement are the only economically realistic options for most alleged infringers. Finally, as Microsoft's VP of IP, Marshall "Father of the IBM tax" Phelps could tell you, a company with a large enough patent portfolio can gain more from the dysfunctional patent system than it loses. In fact it can derive a significant strategic advantage.
"Nobody is going to sue MomAndPop.com for patent infringement because its not profitable. They sue the Microsofts and the Apples who have the deep pockets to shell out big settlements."
Not true. UncleAndAunt.com will sue MomAndPop.com and even BroAndSis.org. (cf. KAM v. JMRI). Out and out litigation is just the tip of the iceberg btw: far more usually, licensing fees or cessation of infringement is demanded. EvilPatentTroll.com or AnyCorp.com with an aggressive IP licensing program will also attack MomAndPop.com - especially with weak patents they would risk losing if they attacked a company large enough to fight back in Court (cf. SBCL v. Museum Tours).
"They can't get the patent because someone else has it."
Sadly, the POs are incapable even of identifying relevant prior art in there own databases, let alone the vast wealth of non-patent material in the software realm. There are many duplicate and overlapping patents.
"Either of the other two cases means that they can do whatever they were planning on doing without worry of getting sued for millions upon millions of dollars."
Sometimes yes. But Microsoft spends around $100,000,000 every year defending itself against some 30-40 patents and it just isn't possible to protect yourself from patents - not even if you have the legal resources of a Microsoft:
"If they are such great ideas they will profit from licensing fees."
Not necessarily. Unless they are non-practising entities, if they assert their patents against a large company, they will quite likely end up paying an offset fee in recognition of the larger company's much more extensive portfolio and, of course, lose the benefit of exclusivity of their own patents.
"Willfully choosing to not use the system means willfully choosing to not benefit from the protections and advantages it was designed to offer."
To assume that it will, as a matter of course, offer such benefits and advantages would be economically naïve. To assert that it does so would be simply fallacious.Provided the ingredients are good, the simplest breakfasts are best. I like a couple of large succulent bacon sandwiches (grilled back bacon and fresh granary or wholemeal bread, generously buttered) and a mug or two of strong Ceylon tea sweetened with a teaspoon of honey to wash 'em down. Fried egg sandwiches are good too (fresh free range eggs fried in hot butter spooned over the yolks until they're cooked just right and then sprinkled with a little ground black pepper and salt).
"Start in the table of contents and you will find the conclusion is on a single page. It's on page 283."
No it's not. That's only the conclusion page for section 12, "Appendix 2: Report on user-level productivity and relative cost of FLOSS / proprietary software." The executive summary is the where the overall conclusions can be found in this paper. The whole thing is considerably more than just a TCO study.
"There is not a good Lisp free implementation that runs on several platforms including Windows and that not makes all the code I write there GPL instead of the license I would like."
I know you are trolling - and I won't even bother to address the mouse-brained ignorance of your comments about Emacs etc. - but in case any casual reader might be put off using Common Lisp by it, the above statement is (of course) complete and utter nonsense.
"I mean, take Lisp and its performance. Compare it to Ruby's."
Which Lisp? One which (as most implementations of Common Lisp do these days) appropriately and reasonably gets compared to the output of a C compiler?:
http://www.lrde.epita.fr/cgi-bin/twiki/view/Public ations/200606-IMECS
I wouldn't have thought that would be a very fair comparison to make for Ruby.
Remember when BT patented the hyperlink? But they didn't just patent it; in a bid to become the worst patent troll the world has ever known, they actually tried to enforce it.Both BT and Microsoft lobby for software patents here in Europe, but if Microsoft says it is interested in improving quality and only applies for junk patents defensively, it is at least believable. When British Telecom does the same, as it did recently in its submission to the Gowers Review:
Equally, we are supportive of all efforts by Patent Offices to improve the rigour of their searching and examination of patent applications, to ensure a strong system that precludes users from obtaining patents of dubious validity in any area of technology. Such dubious patents can hinder the development of competing products and damage the interest of all companies large and small. We look forward to contributing to the recently announced Patent Office consultation on inventive step requirements for patentability.
it is pure hypocrisy.
I haven't looked at those papers (and haven't time to now) but the video clip looked very like stuff that's been done before - a reinvention of the wheel even ;-)
http://www.math.su.se/~jesper/research/wheels/
"While many software patents have been granted illegally in Europe and as much as some people would like it to be so, they are still not enforceable - which was my main point."
The two different issues of granting legality and subsequent enforceability (presumably you mean enforceability in its restricted sense here, i.e. by legal process) of software patents are nowhere near as clear cut as that. I will say no more (it is a complex matter) and instead suggest you ask someone from the FFII (try #bxl-ffii on freenode or email someone such as the very smart and well informed Jonas Maebe). But I would not be the first to observe that a patent granted - no matter how "illegal" or invalid it is - is far from being practically and usefully not enforceable anyway.
We have had good news in the UK recently and it is possibly the safest and sanest place in Europe at the moment, but it will all come to nothing if the EPO et al have their way. From what I've heard, EPLA is their "one ring" so I'm glad you're aware there's still a fight on :)
"Do you have any evidence to back that up? The remainder of your comments seemed to be based on this assumption. To my knowledge, US software patents are only valid in the US, possibly Japan and some Asian countries"
The remainder of my comments were not based on that "assumption" (which isn't an assumption but a well known fact anyway), but that you even need to ask for evidence is somewhat odd: the European situation and the great political battles over the EPO's granting of software patents, ridiculous and otherwise, has featured prominently on /. and elsewhere in the media over the last few years. Where have you been? Perhaps you are also unaware that it is standard practice to apply for patents as widely as possible, either under the PCT or individually at the EPO, JPO, USPTO etc. (depending on one's resources)? That is why the USPTO granted patents of large corporations, especially multi-nationals of course, can be expected to have their equivalents in the EPO database. and elsewhere. So, sadly, it is quite correct but tautological and irrelevant to say that US patents are only valid in the US.
With the threat of EPLA now hanging over us here in Europe, things are getting worse. Perhaps I should not expect that everyone else should follow these matters as closely as I do and I am sorry if I sound a bit peevish (I am getting very sick of the groundhog day nature of /. discussions on this (and other) subjects ;-) but even if you are not familiar with the software patent situation in Europe and latest developments, you really should've read the conclusions of the paper you yourself linked to! As it happens, the EPO Board of Appeal just recently (and infamously) made a very big deal - a "spit in the eye of the enormous opposition to its reckless US-style granting practice" kind of big deal - of its allowance of an appalling Microsoft clipboard patent.
"And we haven't even discussed the very large US corporates with a vested interest in FOSS who wouldn't like to see this happen."
To see what happen? You think they will shed tears over patents used (by whoever) against users of FLOSS, effectively excluding competitors who cannot afford to indemnify their customers or wield their own large patent portfolios as these large corporates can? And that is only one of the many, many insidious ways in which software patents can act to the detriment of FLOSS (and other software, of course).
"Aren't these ridiculous software patents only valid in the US?"
No. And a patent usually only has to be granted before it can realise its potential anyway. Despite what most people seem to imagine, and the fact that there has actually been an explosion of patent litigation in the US, most patent interactions (threats, disputes, resolutions and licensing agreements etc.) never end up in a Court. The reasons for this are rather obvious if you think about it.
"Given that most large OSS projects have copyrights held by developers all over the world, how exactly would it be feasable to stop a project if you couldn't go after all of its developers and codebase?"
The rights given to a patent holder include the rights to exclude others from distributing and using. A software project forced underground - off sourceforge etc. - and made effectively undistributable by the major distros would be unlikely to thrive. And although it is quite easy for a patent holder to demand that a project not infringe its patent, backed by a credible threat of forcing it to shut down (and it has happened), it is more likely (at the moment anyway) that a patent holder would wish to use its patents to encourage corporate / institutional users to prefer its own software over some FLOSS equivalent or to demand patent license fees from them.
"Can anyone out there go through this piece and tell me why it might be wrong? ... The author of the Telegraph piece is Christopher Monckton, a retired journalist and former policy advisor..."
What more do you need to know? The UK newspapers and other news media, including the so-called "science" journals (cf. New Scientist's recent EMdrive farce), are so bad now that there's just no point in taking anything they say or write seriously. One of the reasons I stopped reading the UK newspapers some time ago was because I was so sick of being bombarded every day by appalling pseudo-science and relentless scientific "controversy" building in the name of "journalistic balance". UK media types are notorious for being scientifically illiterate and innumerate - and proud of it.