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I think it smells a bit like a SCO-case.

It's interesting to see which open source companies that gets sued. Quite interesting.

Wait until open source companies start suing other open source companies. The code might be open, but the business is still a business.

We'll see. Some licenses handle such matters, other licenses don't.

But if you have complied with the license(s) in a safe manner you'll be on the safe side. The question here is: How do you comply in a safe manner? Aahh.. lawyers... the plague of humanity...

> I remember weeks ago that Oracle's boss was pissed
> off when Red Hat bought JBOSS.

Oracle could simply buy Red Hat if they wanted JBoss. And if they did, they would get their own Linux distro in the process as an added bonus. Oracle has been talking about creating a Linux distro for a while. And since Red Hat is the only officially supported distro on which Oracle products run...

I'm not sure the JBoss purchase was such a good idea for Red Hat. It left them very drained of cash.

Even if Red Hat won't sell, they are so drained right now, a hostile takeover might be possible.

Just for the record, Oracle officially supports more than just Red Hat in the Linux arena...

http://www.oracle.com/technologies/linux/index.html

Yet another law suite bought about by some pathetic nobody company in the middle of no where, with no products, no profits, and hoping to use this as a last ditch attempt to get bought out by Red Hat or find some source of money.

Hopefully this will not succed this time. Borland and other did similar things somewhere in the early bit age. The patent is also rather obvious, so it should not be patentable.

The problem is that, when lawyers need to trust expert A, B and C that all have different view on obviousness, and if prior art actually was prior art, and they havn't a clue of what either of them are talking about, and the jury have even less of a clue, the outcome of cases like this could be rather random.

This is a problem for the whole software industry, as patents introduces an uncertainty that might make it harder to get funding for software projects.

> I'd love the day when they finally get rid of
> software patents.

Software patents will become more common. Not less common. And they are a necessary evil.

Think about it from a commercial software company's point of view. You spend millions of dollars on R&D to develop something, only to have what you developed become commoditized shortly after you release because open source "idea leaches" clone the idea and release a free version.

Software companies can no longer protect their investment at the product level because of open source cloning of commercial products. So they are left with no option except to protect their products at the intellectual property level.

I'm not saying software parents aren't abused. Many times they are. But they are a necessary evil, that will only become more necessary as open source / free software becomes more common.

Edited 2006-07-01 14:05

I'm not saying software parents aren't abused. Many times they are. But they are a necessary evil, that will only become more necessary as open source / free software becomes more common.

Why are they necessary evil?
Ignoring for a second the OSS line (which seems reasonable enough to me, though) that Software patents impeded development and innovation and that, by design, software patents allow big software companies to abuse the law and patent obvious software algorithms (Microsoft IsNot patent rings a bell?), there's a third issue, which is, in my eyes, the biggest problem of all:
All major enterprises have been stockpiling 100's, if not 1000's of useless patents (Microsoft's "Use an icon to notify when update is present") that serve one purpose: Create a MAD-like situation where no-one is stupid enough to open a patent war, as it risk all-out war.
However, here's the problem, when playing the MAD game, all you need is a single stupid player, who no longer gives a ***k to start an all out wat.
SCO already tried it (assuming SCO wasn't Microsoft sock puppet... and I doubt it)... we just got lucky.

Oh, here's another point for you.
Most of the software patents were patented in the U.S. If this ridicules situation continues, it is very unlikely that Europe, let alone Asia will continue to accept U.S. patents, making things even worse.

Cheers,
Gilboa

> that Software patents impeded development and innovation

Well, we can't ignore this. And in fact, the opposite of what OSS claims is in fact, the reality. Inability to patent stuff is whatt impeeds development and innovation. Why? One word: Money. For the most part, money is what drives R&D. And the incentive to spend money on R&D comes from the fact that patents allow someone who invests a great deal of time and money in R&D to captialize on that investment. If the protection that allows them to capitalize on that investment is removed, then R&D spending will stop. Since no company is going to want to be the one that spends all the money on R&D only to be ripped off by all the leaches when their investment finally results in a breakthrough.

> patents allow big software companies to abuse the law

Patents also allow little companis to protect themselves against big ones. The case of Stac Electronics is an excellent example. Stac succesfully sued Micrsoft after Microsoft bundled doublespacee with MS DOS. Doublespace infringed on patents that Stac Electronics held for their flagship product.

> Most of the software patents were patented in the U.S. If
> this ridicules situation continues, it is very unlikely that Europe,
> let alone Asia will continue to accept U.S. patents, making
> things even worse.

I doubt it. The consequences of ignoring international patent laws would be way too high.

Edited 2006-07-01 15:43

"Patents also allow little companis to protect themselves against big ones. The case of Stac Electronics is an excellent example. Stac succesfully sued Micrsoft after Microsoft bundled doublespacee with MS DOS. Doublespace infringed on patents that Stac Electronics held for their flagship product.

Stac didn't patent fresh new way to compress file system. They didn't patent a revolutionary algorithm that enabled 5 to 1 compression. Did patented that mere idea of having a compressed file system. As much as I hate Microsoft, Microsoft should have never lost the case.
What's next? Let winzip patent file compression, killing all ZIP, BZ2, ACE and RAR products? Patent "use of mouse to navigate menus" killing all GUI OS'? Patent the conditional statement "If" (Microsoft wasn't far from that), killing all programing languages starting from Batch, SH to c, cpp, java and C#? Where does it end? Where do you draw the line?

"I doubt it. The consequences of ignoring international patent laws would be way too high."
Software patents are anything but international. E.g. Neither Europe nor Asia accept U.S. software patents.

Oh... I just wonder, why didn't you attack my main point ("Creating a MAD like
situation will undoubtedly trigger an all out patent war that may/will kill the
software industry.)

> Oh... I just wonder, why didn't you attack my main point
> ("Creating a MAD like situation will undoubtedly trigger an all
> out patent war that may/will kill the software industry.)

I agree there are a lot of useless patents out there:

* Amazon's one click order patent
* Apple's Genie Effect patent
* Ask.com's pending patent on the "binocular javascript"

But getting rid of the whole patent system is not the answer. See my example I posted in another comment. If I invent a struture for storing data in relational database, and a new search algorithm that makes retrieving data 50 times faster than any other known system. I should be able to patent that specific design. Copyright law alone, is not enough to protect software since there are usually many ways to write high level code that will generate the same machine code instructions.

Sadly enough, I fail to see how you can prevent a patent system, -any- patent system, from being abused by Amazon/Google/Microsoft/etc.

As it stands right now, the current patent system is so broken; so riddled with holed and ridicules patents, that I doubt that there's any way to fix it.

> Sadly enough, I fail to see how you can prevent a patent system,
> -any- patent system, from being abused by Amazon
> /Google/Microsoft/etc.

You can prevent it by making sure the people approving software patents at the patent office actually know what they are doing. In otherwords, they should be software engineers / computer scientists themselves. That's part of the main reason why it is broke right now. The people approving the patents don't even understand what it is they are approving because they do not have sufficient training in the field.

International patent laws do not protect the US patents.

We do not have software patents in Denmark, and US patents on software are not valid outside USA (with exception of countries having software patents). There is no international protection of software patents. And software patents are invalid in all of EU.

Think about it from a commercial software company's point of view. You spend millions of dollars on R&D to develop something, only to have what you developed become commoditized shortly after you release because open source "idea leaches" clone the idea and release a free version.

The obvious solution would be to allow softwarepatents for a very limited amount of time; say about 5 years (the way copyright used to work in the US). That way patent-trolling would still be a problem, but less of a problem, and only a temporary problem. And to top it off: innovations wouldn't be left to rot in a dark corner if a single company doesn't manage to make use of it; aka industry innovation would be boosted on average.

Think about it from a commercial software company's point of view.

You spend millions of dollars on R&D to develop something, only to have what you developed become worhless because of companies that specializes in patent lawsuits, without having any products of their own, meaning that mutual destruction pacts won't work.
You just have to pay up.

The problem with software and patents is that writing software really is a way of expression, just like writing a novel. This means you can put many different words on the same thing. This makes searching for existing patents more or less hopless.

Even if you actually could find all the patented parts of your software, you would find tha t large parts of your program would allready be patented, usually by something overly broad or obvious. You would then have to decide if you should pay or risk having a fight in court.

Yet another problem is that your developer wouldn't know if he was writing patentable code. When you code something it is almost always obvious to the programmer or team who is coding it.

No, software patents doesn't offer the protection you want. They just introduces more risks.

> companies that specializes in patent lawsuits, without having
> any products of their own, meaning that mutual destruction pacts
> won't work.

Patent holding companies have to go. I agree.

> No, software patents doesn't offer the protection you want.
> They just introduces more risks.

Again, I will point out the case of Stac Electronics. The only reason the tiny little company was able to successfully protect themselves against Microsoft is because of patents.

I'm not saying that all software patents are valid. But here is an example:

What I should not be able to patent:
"The general capability to search a relational database for results."

What I should be able to patent:
"A specific algorithm and data storage scheme for allowing data in a database to be searched 50 times faster than any other currently known system, and that I have spent 3 years developing."

After all, the fact that "My database from my tiny software company with 5 employees will allow you to perform searches 50 times faster than Microsoft SQL Server" may be the only competitive advantage I have against the software giant.

The problem with the argument that "Copyright is enough. Patents are not needed" is that there are usually many many different ways to write high level code that will generate the same machine code instructions, and ultimately end up performing the exact same operations. So copyright law simply isn't sufficient to protect software.

Edited 2006-07-01 15:57

FireStar was founded in 2001, they are suing over Hibernate, an ORM, and if you look up ORM on wikipedia they mention the Enterprise Objects Framework from NeXT. According to wikipedia NeXT released the first version in 1994, how dose that support your argument?

So far I haven't seen any lawsuits over software patent infringements that appeared sane, and I don't blame the layers, they just do their job and represent their client but I'm starting to think they would sue a dog if the client had the will and money to pay for it.

You also totally discount that research happens in Universities not just Corporations and totally blow the effect of Open Source out of proportion. Most successful open source projects are formed around basic infrastructure and Red Hat doesn't sell anything groundbreakingly new, just basic infrastructure that's been available in one form or another for over a decade. If you can't make your profit in the first ten years after you develop something in the computer world you probably never will.

> According to wikipedia NeXT released the first version in 1994,
> how dose that support your argument?

Oracle also had an ORM framework before this paent. So the overall concept of patenting ORM technology in general is probably a lost cause.

I think the bigger concern here is the part about generating database schema and queries automatically based on object models. That's the only part I can see where there might be a leg to stand on.

> So far I haven't seen any lawsuits over software patent
> infringements that appeared sane,

You must have slept through Stac Electronics vs. Microsoft Corporation then. That was a very sane and very legitimate software patent lawsuit.

Edited 2006-07-01 15:53

That battle wasn't sane.
They used each other ideas and stole code from eachother.
Both companies won and lost. Two very stupid cases.

No, they are not a necessary evil.

Just because USA is getting more and more corrupted with each passing day doesn't mean the rest of us have to be corrupted as well.

If you don't want to "spend millions of dollars on R&D to develop something" alone on a hidden project, then don't hide the project, and develop the project with somebody else.

It'll lower your cost, increase your competition level, and lead to faster development cycles.

Patents are monopoly on ideas, which is unacceptable, since these ideas are not unique in any way.

Patents are expensive which means that few companies apart from large US-companies can afford them, giving them supreme control over the rest of us.

Thank you, but no. Never.

Ah... Now the truth starts to come out. It's a "I hate the USA because I am jealous that they spend more money on R&D than any other country in the world, and thus reap more rewards from it". issue.

Basically, just more America bashing and America hating.

I'm the last european to hate USA (USA isn't the entire America btw). However, I prefer competion and freedom over monopolies, and lack of competition and freedom. USA has some internal problems and calling critical voices for communist and stuff like that isn't going to solve the problems.

I am aware that many europeans have a lot against USA. I don't share their sentiments, but I must admit that USA is slightly offensive against it's allies from time to time. You wouldn't believe how often I've been bashed because I've defended the actions of USA.

You can find many US-citizens fighting against software patents. Are they communistic non-patriots? You sound like you think that. Could it be that persons can be fine with USA and it's citizens, while having second thoughts about the laws of USA?

So the acticvity where 80% of the time and money is spent is what you are telling people they cannot protect. And that is what is unacceptable.

It's a result of their own actions. It doesn't have to be that way. It's their actions and they have to suffer the consequences of their own actions. They must adapt to the situation or vanish. That's the spirit of the free market. I won't leave democracy behind just to give you the right to oppress me.

Except how do you adapt to a system where you cannot protect your R&D investment? I will tell you how. You simply kill your R&D budget. And you stop R&D.

We got along in the computer industry without software patents for forty years - the forty years in which most of the innovation in software was done.

The trend in R&D spending, by the way, is the other direction. Most companies spend far less now on software R&D than they did fifteen years ago, and the numbers have been declining steadily since the late '80s.

> We got along in the computer industry without software patents
> for forty years - the forty years in which most of the innovation
> in software was done.

False conclusion. You cannot prove a cause effect relationship here. In fact, this is a common pattern in any new industry. There is an explosion of innovation, followed by a period where not much really changes. Simply because the idea well runs dry. Or because the ideas we have are so incredibly complex that implementing them is beyond our current knowledge of math and computer science. Or lack of understanding in other areas. Example, we fall way short at implementing a true human AI because we don't even understand what it is that makes us human.

I would also argue that a lot of the reason R&D at commercial software companies has slowed down is because of budget shortfalls. And sometimes those budget shortfalls are caused by the fact that their flagship products have been comoditized by open source. Commercial UNIX competes with Linux, Web app servers complete with tons of free versions, databases compete with MySQL and Postgres, etc.

Edited 2006-07-01 19:12

... Company AB example ...

That's why I say getting rid of software patents will stop innovation. Not foster it like the OSS people like to claim.

And that is why you're dead wrong. Most of companies (involved with R&D) I know, never filled single patent, but never left R&D.

Now, what is the problem with patents? First example it comes to my mind:
That company A "patents credit card sized appliance for storing personal data", never does any R&D or product. Waits for Palm to create that appliance, sues them and earns 64mio$

Why in the world did Palm spent all that money on R&D? Did they stopped with R&D? Both, no. Did they get screwed by your R&D holly bread aka. patents? Yes.

Now explain your "company A&B" claim on this example please.

> Most of companies (involved with R&D) I know, never filled
> single patent, but never left R&D.

You must not know of very many companies invovled in R&D then. Lets take a look at a few and see how many patents they hold, shall we? Some on this list I bet will surprise you.

Red Hat: 6 patents (Yeah. That's right. Even Red Hat has software patents)
Google: 21 patents
Yahoo: 48 patents
IBM: 43,135 patents
HP: 15,848 patents
Novell: 269 patents
Microsoft: 5,179 patents
Oracle: 770 patents

I could keep going... But you get the point. Unless you have never heard of any of these companies, then you have have heard of companies involved in R&D that have filed multiple patent applications. So it seems the only one here that is dead wrong is you.


> A "patents credit card sized appliance for storing personal data",
> never does any R&D or product. Waits for Palm to create
> that appliance, sues them and earns 64mio$

You don't know very much about the patent system do you? (Either that or you are just intentionally trying to spread FUD).

You cannot patent something that generic. You have to provide supporting documentation showing that you really did come up with a design. That is it is "not trivial, and not obvious", etc. That means you have to provide things like lab notes, formulas, mathematical proofs, schematic diagrams, etc.

> Why in the world did Palm spent all that money on R&D? Did
> they stopped with R&D? Both, no. Did they get screwed by your
> R&D holly bread aka. patents? Yes.

You do know that Palm holds over 200 patents that came out of their R&D work right?

> Now explain your "company A&B" claim on this example please.

I don't see how I could have explained it any clearer then I did.

Edited 2006-07-01 22:57

Sorry, I'm answering you twice.

But I forgot the most amusing trivial patent ever.

Pantone named colors. It is a patented naming convention where colors represented with numbers are represented with pattern like name.

Yep, that one had to be ingenious inventor (and imagine how much secretary R&D has gone to provide all those named constants on the list) to be able to name the colors by a simple naming pattern

btw. This is not to be confused with Pantones main line of work, mixing inks. That one has no dispute from me. I wouldn't mind their patents, if they wouldn't patent the value color representations in other color spaces. But now it is just like that in case of computers

constant Pantone something = CMYK (X:Y:Z:W)

is not allowed to be used without paying them for using this constant.

Just to set the record straight.

I am not a socialist. I find the accusation very offensive and insulting. I am an ultraliberalist/quasi-libertarian. Therefore the accusation leaves me in a rather agitated state, so you will have to wait for my reply till I have reached a calmer state of mind.

I will however add that you have grossly misquoted me. Prepare for a lecture later.

> I am not a socialist.

I didn't say you were. I said the ideas you are promoting are socialism.

> Therefore the accusation leaves me in a rather agitated state

That says more about you then it does about me. It's a bit like a religious person who gets all agitated when anyone challenges their beliefs... Well, if they get agitated that easily, then how secure can they really be in their own beliefs?

This is going to be difficult, but I will do my best to remain calm. I will however have to set the record straight as the first thing.

I am not a socialist, and I find the accusation of being one highly insulting and offensive.
If you've read my profile you'd know that I am the president of the Danish Progress Party's Youth Organisation and have been so for more than 5 years, and is the administrative editor of the Progress Party's member magazine (Bladet Fremskridt - The Magazine Progress). The party is ultraliberalistic, quasi-libertarian and the most anti-socialistic party in Denmark, probably in whole Scandinavia.
I want to abolish the income taxes, multimedia taxes (paying for the right to have a tv, radio or tuner (be it in a PC)) and general abolishment of any kind of restrictions imposed on the individual.
I have received death threats and have been attacked from extreme socialistic movements, due to my work against Socialism. My friends have been attacked and have received death threats because of their work against Socialism. My family have received threats. So don't call me a socialist or imply it.

I agree with you about the problems of Socialism in regard to economy, but do not forget the restrictions imposed on individuals, nor should you forget the means whereby these restrictions are imposed. Governmental enforcement (laws etc.)
USSR broke down partly in due to lack of intelligent economical politics (working harder for less will never return good a performance/benefit-value), and in part due to the lack of individual freedom.

Your claim that all opponents of software patents are socialists is highly offensive and inaccurate. There are many anti-socialistic U.S.-citizens fighting against software patents, and you can easily find socialists supporting software patents. You should know better.

Except the system you are promoting is not democracy. It is socialism. It is a system where everyone is required by law to work for the good of everyone else. Now tell me... Which one is more opressive? I argue it is a system where the government tells me I do not have the right to protect something I spent a lot of money, and a lot of time coming up with against exploitation by others who didn't spend any money, and instead, just sat around to see what others were going to come up with and what they could rip off.

My idea is not Socialism. I do not support a society where people are required by law to work for the good of everybody else. Such a law would be completely unacceptable. Nor do I support a law that tells you, you cannot protect something you have made. Of course you should be allowed to protect your interests with any resources of your own.
1* I challenge you to quote me for saying or implying that there should be a law which requires you to work for the good of everybody else.
2* I challenge you yo quote me for saying or implying that there should be a law which prohibits you from protecting your interests, being it an investment in an idea or anything else.

I'm sure you cannot quote me for anything like that. Because all I did was saying that laws should be removed, not that new laws should be made. I agree with you that it would be very oppressing if the government told you, you could not protect your interests. It's like saying you are not allowed to lock your door. Protection against exploitation of your work can be done in several ways. Obfuscating the binaries, using DRM, using undocumented proprietary protocols and other methods to hide what your idea is. You will of course have to accept that there will be no DMCA, meaning that other individuals or groups of individuals are allowed to break through that protection. Whether or not you succeed depends on how well you protect yourself and your interests.

In the long term your company would most likely not survice such a strategy. And there is only one reason for that. Your development model is inferior to the competition.

Except how do you adapt to a system where you cannot protect your R&D investment? I will tell you how. You simply kill your R&D budget. And you stop R&D. And you wait to see what your competitor is going to come up with in the R&D department so that you can copy it. You let them do all the expensive and hard work for you, and then you exploit their efforts once you find out what they have done. And since you didn't ahve to spend all the R&D money, you can undercut them greatly on price since your development costs are much lower.

Only problem with this strategy? Your competition is implementing the exact same strategy... They kill their R&D budget as well, and wait around to see what you are gonna do so they can exploit you.

So now what do we have? In programming terms, we have what is called a deadlock. Both entities in question are waiting on data from the other until they will start working. And the data needed cannot be produced by either entity until it has the data from the other entity. So we are deadlocked, and thus, no work gets done.

That's why I say getting rid of software patents will stop innovation. Not foster it like the OSS people like to claim.

You are talking nonsense and you know it. I will give you a rudimentary lecture in economics.
No law should prevent you from protecting your R&D investment. No law should prevent competitors from competing with you or enhancing your idea.
No law should prevent your competitors from protecting their R&D investments. No law should prevent you from competing with them or enhancing their ideas.
No law should be protecting your R&D investment. You will have to protect your idea yourself. It can be very difficult when you're selling products based on that idea (because the idea is sort of floating around by then - the products reflects the idea), but at the very least you can make it difficult for the competitors to figure out how you did it. And vice versa.

[continued in PART TWO]

(Continued from PART ONE)

When you pay for a patent, you are not protecting your idea. You are paying the government to protect your idea. You are buying a government granted monopoly thereby restricting other individuals. You are basically bribing the government so it will stiffle competition and circumvent the free market.

Getting a patent isn't your right, but merely an option the government has. The government should not have the right to receive bribes and oppressing individuals that way, stiffling competition and innovation and violating the rules of the free market.

Put another way: You are free to protect your investment with any resource you have yourself. But you do not have the right to stiffle competition by law (that would be oppressing other individuals). You must use other means to protect your idea.

In a society where there are no laws preventing people from working together the result will be lower R&D expenses because more people are sharing these expenses. That's what happens in Joint Venture projects. Open Source projects based on the bazaar-model is merely an open, rather informal form of Joint Venture.

The expenses of R&D can be calculated in this way:
expenses_per_participant EQUALS total_expenses DIVIDED BY number_of_participants

This means that if you develop something alone you will have high expenses and cannot sell cheap. If you develop with somebody else you will have lower R&D expenses and can sell cheaper. It's simple math and a natural part of the free market. If you make the decision of developing on your own - completely alone - that is your choice, and the consequenses are a result of your own actions.

The closed single-participant development form is very incompetitive with Joint Venture projects and Open Source bazaar-style projects. But you can only blame yourself. No laws are forcing you to develope alone, and no laws are forcing you to develope with somebody else. However, the nature of the free market, and the nature of math will make it a wiser long-term choice if you work with somebody else. But the decision is entirely yours.

Your claim that companies would kill their R&D budget is obviously flawed. They wouldn't kill, merely reduce it or start more projects for the same money. Redhat sure as hell have a R&D budget, so does Novell. The fact that development is cheaper does not stiffle innovation. On the contrary. It creates more innovation.

A small lecture:

* INNOVATION is provided by COMPETITION
* COMPETITION is provided by FREEDOM
* FREEDOM is provided by LACK OF LAWS

- Therefore LACK OF LAWS provides COMPETITION
- Therefore LACK OF LAWS provides INNOVATION

PATENTS removes FREEDOM

- Therefore PATENTS stiffles COMPETITION
- Therefore PATENTS stiffles INNOVATION

LACK OF PATENTS provides FREEDOM

- Therefore LACK OF PATENTS provides COMPETITON
- Therefore LACK OF PATENTS provides INNOVATION

Internet Explorer is one of the good examples of this. When the competition (Netscape) was eradicated, IE ceased to innovate. When the competition reemerged (Mozilla), Microsoft began work on IE, using ideas from other closed development projects (Opera) as well as Open Source bazaar-style projects (Mozilla).

Your claim that Open Source projects are ripping off the ideas from companies or persons using the closed development model is highly offensive and insulting. You are very good at insults. I think that is a bad trait in your personality. You probably want to do something about that. Soon.

There is no evidence of "ripping off" - there is evidence of mutual influence between products developed following the cathedral model, and products developed following the bazaar model. But the "ripping off" or copying ideas and enhancing them goes both ways.

There is no evidence that Open Source projects following the bazaar model haven't innovated. Au contraire! There is plenty of such evidence. The linux desktop contains many elements not present in Windows XP and 2K3. However some of these elements will be implemented in Vista (unless they will be removed as well as pretty much everything else).

The reason why you want to have software patents is because you cannot compete on the free market with your development model. You are afraid of the competition. That's why you want to bribe the government so it will protect your idea by prosecuting those who enhance your idea.

You know what? Keep your model and vanish or adapt to the market. If you do not adapt you will suffer the fate of the dinosaurs. But it's your call. The society you want is what I call "Authoritarian Conservatism". The socialists would call it "Fascism" but that is very inaccurate. "Authoritarian Conservatism" is much more correct. But neither ideology is any good for the individual.

> Put another way: You are free to protect
> your investment with any resource you have
> yourself. But you do not have the right to
> stiffle competition by law (that would be
> oppressing other individuals).

Oh please... Give me a break...

You do not have the right to tell someone they cannot drive 200 Mph down the highway. Cause that opressing them.

You do not have the right to tell them they cannot rob a bank. Cause that is opressing them.

You do not have the right to tell them they cannot vandalize property. Cause that is oppressing them.

Please tell me what world you live in where society can function without placing some restricrtions on what people can and cannot do?

> * INNOVATION is provided by COMPETITION

Not when competition is totally unregulated as to how bad they can steal your efforts and clone.

> * FREEDOM is provided by LACK OF LAWS

Is it? So if we have no laws that say it's illegal to murder your fellow man, your freedom is protected? I don't think so.

> - Therefore PATENTS stiffles COMPETITION

You have not been able to prove this in any way shape or form. And you have not even provided any supporting evidence for your claims. And you have utterly failed to debunk the evidence I have provided for mine.

Again, I don;t need a lecture from you. You clearly are not qualified to give one.

And I was wrong... you are not a socialist. But you are not a libertarian as you claim either. You are an anarchist.

Good day to you.

Profeessional developers spend 80% of their time doing research, and 20% of their time writing code.

If by 'research' you mean debugging what they've written, then yes. But as an industry the average amount of time on R&D by developers is closer to 1%.

> f by 'research' you mean debugging what they've written, then yes.
> But as an industry the average amount of time on R&D by developers
> is closer to 1%.

No. I mean time spent in the planning stage. Unless you want a project to end in disaster, you don't just start writing code and pull stuff out of thin air as you go along.

No. I mean time spent in the planning stage. Unless you want a project to end in disaster, you don't just start writing code and pull stuff out of thin air as you go along.

And this would have what in common with R&D. R&D is R&D, planing is planing. Two completely separate parts.

R&D is about getting new (not yet) things/methods done.
Planing is a project when you plan how to achieve result with already known methods. (Research part in planing problem has nothing in common with R&D, it is only involved in problem or goal research)

Example:
Lets say I code for .net. I have to plan my distributed app to work remote. After long and carefull consideration I decide on using Remoting (which I wouldn't). Did I create remoting? No. I only decided on using remoting during my project planing.

MS R&D software department made remoting.

This is common difference between R&D and planing.

Edited 2006-07-01 20:31

> R&D is about getting new (not yet) things/methods done.

Wrong. R&D is also about things like usability studies, customer need studies, etc.

Based on what evidence? the patents, like I said, are extremely generalised; its like me going off to patent a 'this is a piece of technology that is in liquid form, it is used to improve the growth of plants, helps humans survive and can conduct electricity to an acceptable level', and going by the STUPID situation in the US regarding patents, I would have successful just patented water, and virtually any other liquid that fullfills that description.

Take UNIX, for example - all the specifications are open to every tom, dick and harry to implement, we have opensource implementations of the UNIX specficiation, and yet, the UNIX vendors around the world are quite able to continue on innovating, adding to their product, and turning a profit, even with this so-called 'leeching effect'.

How is it also bad for someone to re-implement the technology? most cases in the technology world, if a technology is implemented, its for compatibility reasons NOT so that they can leech off technology, as the respective company already has, what they believe as a SUPERIOR solution to the competitors technology.

Simba, going by your logic, Apple is leeching WMA technology off Microsoft simply because they offer a WMA importing facility in itunes, which is further form the truth which one can get. Apple includes WMA support (along with mp3) to allow consumers to migrate to the 'superior' technology.

Take the opensource world, WMA and faad/faac support is provided and yet, most people normally use those as migration tools to convert their music to mp3, ogg or some other unencombered encoding technology.

To say that there is all out technology leeching is missing the point of software design altogether; 9/10, if a oompany has encroached onto someone elses patented technology, it would have been done unintentially or simply for compatibility reasons; if these said companies who sue had a decent product, people who be using their product irrespective of what products others put out.

All it tells me is when I see these cases, it is a bad case of sour grapes; the RIM suite is the prime example of this; some half baked company pissed off that their product hasn't gotten the same limelight as the blackberry, so the trumpet up their extremely openended patent description as justification for a suit-a-thon.

Edited 2006-07-01 23:31

> the patents, like I said, are extremely generalised; its like me going
> off to patent a 'this is a piece of technology that is in liquid form,

You can't patent something that generic. You've never actually filed a patent application have you? I have. You have to provide tons of supporting documentation.

> and yet, the UNIX vendors around the world are quite able to continue > on innovating, adding to their product, and turning a profit,

Please show me one commercial UNIX vendor that is profitable anymore (And IBM doesn't count since they are not primarily a UNIX vendor). Some of them aren't even in businesss anymore before of FOSS alternativves. BSDi for example.

> How is it also bad for someone to re-implement the technology?

Simple. Because it destroys the competitive advantage that someone spent a lot of money and time researching and developing.

Again, take my database structure example. If I spend a ton of money and time developing a database structure and search algorithm that is 30 times faster than anything else out there right now, and I don't patent it. How long do you think it will be before I lose my competitive advantage and most of my R&D investment because Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, MySQL, etc. all copy my algorithm / structure?

> Simba, going by your logic, Apple is leeching WMA technology
> off Microsoft simply because they offer a WMA importing facility
> in itunes, which is further form the truth which one can get

You obviously don't understand my argument. And no, that is not my logic at all.

> most cases in the technology world, if a technology is
> implemented, its for compatibility reasons NOT so that they
> can leech off technology

Wrong. the OSS world has leached tons of stuff from commercial companies in such a way that commercial companies have seen their profits very damaged. Take Web application servers for example. You can't sell one anymore because OSS has leeached all the ideas and copied them. Take ReactOS. It's an attempt to clone Windows because people are too cheap to pay for Windows. (I still predict ReactOS gets sued out of existence if they ever get to the point where Microsoft considers them a threat).

> if these said companies who sue had a decent product, people
> who be using their product irrespective of what products others
> put out.

No, they would not. And that has been more than proven. Again, look at Web application servers. The commercial servers offer more features because so far, OSS has not been ablee to clone everything. Only a subset. But guess which ones people are using? The OSS ones. Because they are cheaper / free. And many of the once large application server vendors are barely making it anymore because of open source leaching.

> All it tells me is when I see these cases, it is a bad case of
> sour grapes;

Sometimes it is abused. But other times it is not. if you rip off my ideas that I spend years and and millions of dollars in research dollars to come up with, and you release a clone of something I did, which you can sell much cheaper than I can because you didn't have any R&D expenses, then I have every right to sue you for patent infringement.

Edited 2006-07-02 00:06

Please show me one commercial UNIX vendor that is profitable anymore (And IBM doesn't count since they are not primarily a UNIX vendor). Some of them aren't even in businesss anymore before of FOSS alternativves. BSDi for example.

Sun is turning a profit; take away the 'paper' asset downgrades as they shrink the size of property, they're actually making a profit without any problems. IBM's UNIX division makes a profit, sure, its part of a 'larger organisation' but it still is turning a profit, because as you know, in IBM, the divisions must operate profitably like a standalone business.

Again, take my database structure example. If I spend a ton of money and time developing a database structure and search algorithm that is 30 times faster than anything else out there right now, and I don't patent it. How long do you think it will be before I lose my competitive advantage and most of my R&D investment because Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, MySQL, etc. all copy my algorithm / structure?

Why would they do that? it would be better for them to improve their own products than it would be to copy you; if they wanted your technology and the people who created it, they could buy you out, but if they do implement the technology, it'll be compatibility reasons.

I've yet to see a single vendor copy a technology simply so that they can 'beat' a competitor; it makes no sense; you're going to beat your competitor with the same technology which they offer? thats stupid.

Wrong. the OSS world has leached tons of stuff from commercial companies in such a way that commercial companies have seen their profits very damaged. Take Web application servers for example. You can't sell one anymore because OSS has leeached all the ideas and copied them. Take ReactOS. It's an attempt to clone Windows because people are too cheap to pay for Windows. (I still predict ReactOS gets sued out of existence if they ever get to the point where Microsoft considers them a threat).

No, they would not. And that has been more than proven. Again, look at Web application servers. The commercial servers offer more features because so far, OSS has not been ablee to clone everything. Only a subset. But guess which ones people are using? The OSS ones. Because they are cheaper / free. And many of the once large application server vendors are barely making it anymore because of open source leaching.

Which is false; Websphere is selling quite nicely, SAP's application server is still growing at a great pace; so where is this cannibalisation which you claim is occuring by the OSS community?

As for ReactOS, why would they get sued? I doubt ReactOS will EVER get even CLOSE to compatibility with Windows 2000 let alone get Windows XP compatibility; its a nice proof of concept project for the wine developers to look upon, but I doubt it'll go beyond that.

Oh, and going by your logic, Microsoft has killed off Webservers because they include it with Windows, or Microsoft killed off payed-for media players because of the inclusion of Mediaplayer with Windows, or Microsoft killed off TCP/IP stack makers like Trumpet software, because they included it with Windows.

Please, those companies who go under, go under because they have no vision, no imagination, and crap marketing; those companies who are successful are able to carve out a niche, even in a market full of free software - Microsoft seems to be able to do it with their software, people are still purchasing Windows for servers, even though FreeBSD + JBoss could do the same thing.

All that is happening now, customers are now demanding MORE from their software vendors, demanding that software vendors JUSTIFY the prices they charge their customers via better customer support, more feature rich products, better response times to security and updates.

I don't know about you, but I love this new competition, its keeping companies on their toes, constantly looking over their shoulders, making sure that they're investing sufficient funds in ensuring that the software they're selling has compelling enough features to make people purchase it.

I'm sorry, but the vendors who do sell software, sell it for MASSIVE prices; do I care? nope; too long these companies have leeched us consumers for more and more money each year, demanding that we upgrade for a massive fee simply to get one or two crummy half baked features.

I'm sorry, but consumers like me have had enough; we aren't going to be price gouged and demanded to pay $800-$1200 for office suites, graphics suites and the like; I'm not going to pay Microsoft $699-$999 for a copy of Microsoft Office 2004 when a cheaper alternative like iWork is available, I'm not going to pay IBM $100,000+ for Websphere when JBoss or SUN Application Server can do the same thing, when including setup costs, 1/10000 the price of which IBM is charging.

You may like to get price gouged, and mini-monopolies setup on each technology to allow people to exploit their very jubious claims of innovation, but I for one, are not going to be lead down the garden path of the Microsoft enspired bullshit that opensource is destroying commercial software - as you claim.

Edited 2006-07-02 01:11

I don't know where you get your financial data from. Sun reported a $217 million dollar loss for the fiscal third quarter.

And obviously you can't disguish between paper loss and actual loss. If a company makes a $200million asset right down, they haven't physically lost $200million off their profit, but it is reported as such.

In terms of money in/out of Sun, they' have continuously made a profit, their revenue may decline, but they have remained profitable.

I suppose next you are going to try to tell me they are making a profit on OS/2 as well? No, IBM is not making a profit on AIX.

Bullcrap, when you add the AIX sales plus the hardware sales plus the service sales that go with that, they come out infront. When you add all the things they sell as part of the AIX/POWER picture, they come out ok.

Websphere profit growth rates are down nearly 70% from what they were a few years ago because of competition from open source and the fact that Web Apps servers have been comoditized.

And obviously you know very little about business. The profit growth rates were up because of issues external to the commoditisation of application servers, then it flattens off once a wall has been hit - hint, it isn't the free application servers, they lack the same muscle which Websphere has.

As for the rest, I don't care if you lose your job, quite frankly its time you moved out of your comfy job and did some hard slog rather than sitting behind your nicely padded chair dictating to the world that all those mere mortels should tremble before the almighty programmer and pay that individual thousands per year.

I know the bullshit that gets pulled; this crap programmers try to pull that some how, what they do is some sort of mystical, special skill that only a few have a capability to understand.

I've been in IT, and quite frankly, thank god I no longer work in the field, the parastic nature of the people, the dishonesty of management and those who work in the industry, I've seen more integrity in the mafia than I've seen in the IT industry.

Sorry to break the 'cone of silence' but there is nothing magical about programming, nothing special about system design, nothing amazing about what the software companies do; its no more special than a person who can speak two languages.

Edited 2006-07-02 04:17

> In terms of money in/out of Sun, they'
> have continuously made a profit, their revenue
> may decline, but they have remained profitable.

Citation please?

You are simply WRONG! Sun is NOT profitable right now. I mean haven't you been following the Sun story at all?

> Bullcrap, when you add the AIX sales plus the
> hardware sales plus the service sales that go
> with that, they come out infront.

Citation please?

> And obviously you know very little about
> business. The profit growth rates were up because
> of issues external to the commoditisation
> of application servers.

Citation please?

Apparently Wall Street Journal and other publications known nothing about business either then. It was widely reported in trade publications that the reason for loss of profitablity was that open source had commotized app servers. The only one here who knows nothing about business is you. And you apparently don't keep up on industry news very well.

> I know the bullshit that gets pulled; this
> crap programmers try to pull that some how, what
> they do is some sort of mystical, special skill
> that only a few have a capability to understand.

It IS a specialized field, and it DOES take a lot of training and practice to become good at it... Now please tell me.. Why is it that you think I (and other developers for that matter) have skills that do not have monetary value? Why are we any less entitled to get paid for our skills then a police man? Or construction worker? or plumber? Or electrician? or whatever?

> I've been in IT, and quite frankly, thank god I
> no longer work in the field,

And you clearly don't understand the field anymore either, and are out of touch with it.

> Sorry to break the 'cone of silence' but there
> is nothing magical about programming

There is nothing magical about medicine or rocket science either. That DOES not mean that everyone has the training an experience necessary to be able to do it.

> its no more special than a person who can speak
> two languages.

You clearly don;t know the first thing about programming if you think you can simplify it that much. Programming is NOTHING at all like learning a new language. In fact, learning the syntax of a programming language is virtually trivial compared to learning the techniques etc.

And now that you hae gone out of you way to insult all programmers and try to claim that their skills have no monetary value, and that idiots can write software, I don't think I wish to talk to you anymore. you clearly don't have a clue, and have just resorted to completely wild ass statements to justify your position.

Personally, I'm starting to think you are just one of the washouts who couldn't cut it in IT. And that is why you don't work in it anymore, and why you have such vile words for those of us that do. And now you are just bitter and that is why you think no one should be able to make money at it, and why you try to claim it's not a highly skilled profession, etc. If you can't make money at it, no one should be able to. Right?

Edited 2006-07-02 04:46

You are being so childish.

Just because somebody can implement a system better and cheaper than you can, you get all nasty.

Wrong. the OSS world has leached tons of stuff from commercial companies in such a way that commercial companies have seen their profits very damaged.

Oooh... sooooo saaad. Competition is too strong so all I can do is whining about the "leechers". Hmm.. why do you think the are so few steam locomotives these days? Could it be because they were too expensive?

Could it be that companies have lost money because they cannot sell their product because people figured out how to work together, making products cheaper?

You should be wiser than to whine about the competition.

Boo-hoo.

Please show me one commercial UNIX vendor that is profitable anymore (And IBM doesn't count since they are not primarily a UNIX vendor). Some of them aren't even in businesss anymore before of FOSS alternativves. BSDi for example.

The vast majority of commercial Unix implemetations never made any money. They were, and remain, enabling technology, a necessary cost of selling the hardware that was their company's real product.

The vast majority of commercial Unix vendors got out of Unix because of competition from PCs eroding their hardware margin at the same time as competition from Microsoft eroded the amount of their Unix development costs they could recover by charging for their Unix implementation.

Even those still in the Unix business, such as HP are only there because they need the Unix implementation to sell to an installed customer base.

Fragmentation killed the Unix business, and the battle between AT&T and one side and OSF on the other was its death knell. Linus didn't even start on Linux until that was over, nor did UC Berkeley settle with AT&T.

You can't patent something that generic. You've never actually filed a patent application have you? I have. You have to provide tons of supporting documentation.

Having filed a patent does not make one an expert on patent law. The supporting documentation you are talking about is to establish priority in the event of attempts to patent similar ideas, not to document the idea at all.

Once upon a time a patent required a working model but that requirement was dropped a long time ago.

And yes, people get "generic" patents all the time. Any good patent attorney will tell you that the patent application should be as broad as possible while still perserving novelty and priority.

They are not a necessary evil.

The companies in question can just adobt the new development model. This will make their products cheaper to develop and speed up development while making their products better.

Rather than trying to keep an inferior development model alive they ought to adapt to the situation.

If you don't want your idea to be commoditized, then don't release the products reflecting your idea. Your idea will be secret. You won't earn any money, but your idea will be safe. Unless somebody else has a similar idea. That happens quite often.

Nobody are forcing the companies to use a closed development model. They can only blame them self.

Simba,

If this is true, please explain to me why it is proprietary software companies suing other proprietary software companies over patents?

In-fact, why is it, 99% of the time, companies that DON'T EVEN MAKE PRODUCTS, OR HAVE STOPPED MAKING PRODUCTS, that are doing the suing because it is a more lucrative business model and easier than actually having to compete?

Why is it small companies like Opera are opposing software patents, while bigger companies in the exact same field that have sat on their ass and done absolutely nothing with their product for 5 years (Microsoft) want them?

Check any of the NSF reports on R&D for the last ten years. This is pretty well known stuff.

Or look at HP's 10K for the last ten years, where the budget for HP Labs has declined steadily.

> This is pretty well known stuff.

If it's well known stuff, you shouldn't have a hard time citing a specific reference should you? So come on. Where's the citation? I want a specific reference for your claim.

> This is pretty well known stuff.

If it's well known stuff, you shouldn't have a hard time citing a specific reference should you? So come on. Where's the citation? I want a specific reference for your claim.

Well, as you're the person who started making claims without support, if you want the references, provide your own.

I'll be happy to move this from random internet chat to formal argument as soon as you do. State your thesis, show your support, and I'll happily provide you with a documented rebuttal.

> Well, as you're the person who started making claims without
> support, if you want the references, provide your own.

I did support my claims. I made arguments and presented evidence and ideas to support them. You have not done the same. All you have done is make claims of "fact" that you have not even provide ancedotal evidence to back up.

> Well, as you're the person who started making
> claims without support, if you want the references,
> provide your own.

I did support my claims. I made arguments and presented evidence and ideas to support them. You have not done the same. All you have done is make claims of "fact" that you have not even provide ancedotal evidence to back up.
[i]

Would you care to provide a few URLs showing where in this tread you presented evidence, because I sure missed it.

I, on the other hand, have pointed you to the NFS reports on research spending and to HP's 10ks as evidence.

Oh, and mentioning that Ritchie et al and McKusick et all never did what [i]you claim is "research" is, indeed, anecdotal evidence. Shall I point you to Dennis' web site for his papers on research, or do you think you can look up the Bell Systems Journal articles describing Unix research on your own?

I did not say I cited my claims. I said I provided a valid argument for my claims You can look through the thread for them.

Actually, what you did say was:

I did support my claims. I made arguments and presented evidence and ideas to support them.

You have, as far as I can tell, presented no evidence.


> I, on the other hand, have pointed you to the NFS
> reports on research spending and to HP's 10ks as
> evidence.

You did not cite a specific reference.


Which part of "HP's 10ks" isn't specific?

The claim was that HP's spending on HP labs has declined steadily over the last decade. The evidence consists of looking at HP's 10Ks and seeing what their spending on HP labs was. That's known as checking the primary source.

I've read quite a few of his papers. But that's not relevant to this discussion at all. It's a diversionary tactic.

You claimed a meaning for "R&D". I cited, as a counter example, Dennis Ritchie and his team at Bell Labs, who among them never did any of the things you were claiming as R&D. Citing the most successful OS research team in history as an example of actual R&D is very relevant to countering a bogus claim about what R&D is.