An effort by the Open Source Development Labs to help developers defend themselves against software patents has come under fire from FSF founder Richard Stallman, who believes that the plan could backfire. The controversy centers on the issue of patents on software processes, which many believe could threaten the future of open-source software and software innovation in general. Because software processes are abstract, critics say such patents effectively let companies monopolize ideas, without which software can’t be developed.
Let’s just shutdown the software industry. There’s more money to be made in flipping burgers than writing software that every tom dick and harry can copy and distribute.
I don’t think he’s talking about that but an actual software process such as :
“The ability to output to a printer a representation of the layout of a given image or document”
Now if MS got that, they could charge a licence (or sue) all other WYSIWYG word processors and any paint programs (on any platform) just so they can print!
Times that by 200 very greedy patent trolls and you can see the damage that could be done.
Forget Free software, we need Free burgers. Only with Burger Freedom can our society advance. All burgers must come with a Free plate, Free wrapper, Free napkins and of course Freedom fries.
Free burgers may not be placed on the same plate as patent encumbered burgers. (no secret sauce)
Edited 2006-09-20 01:44
Free software is about free as in freedom. Free burgers would mean having the recipe for the burgers, and being allowed to make your own.
so to compare it to the RMS argument, it would be as if mcdonalds had a patent on all burgers:
“method for creating a flat, hot, piece of minced meat”
and then starting to sue ever household thats doing a back yard bbq using the familys own recipie thats been passed down the generations.
Now scare these families into thinking this could actually happen… and they’ll find better uses for their foil than backyard bbq.
As far as Software Patent strategies being MAD, Open Source doesn’t have to file for any patents. There are businesses that have a stake in Open Source that can countersue if someone tries to sue an OS project.
There are businesses that have a stake in Open Source that can countersue if someone tries to sue an OS project.
Again, this is not any sort of solution to the problem. It doesn’t stop a vague software algorithm being patented and misused, and it doesn’t solve the issue of whether software is patentable at all. The problem is the patent system itself with regard to software, and the overturning of patents already awarded.
My point was that there is no danger to Open Source. It’s just FUD used to support the lame argument that ALL patents are bad.
My point was that there is no danger to Open Source. It’s just FUD used to support the lame argument that ALL patents are bad.
Well yes, fear is being used primarily to enforce patents, so from that point of view there is a danger. A way of removing that fear so that open source projects can continue offering useful functionality to people needs to be sought. Nothing less than total patent reform with regards to software is acceptable.
Free software is about free as in freedom. Free burgers would mean having the recipe for the burgers, and being allowed to make your own.
And we all know that would bring about the destruction of human civilization….according to some around here!
Well if Torvalds says it then it MUST be true and right compared to the crazy nut RMS. Makes you wonder how and why Torvalds bothered with using the GPL if the purpose/meaning of that license was so repulsive to him.
Let’s just shutdown the software industry. There’s more money to be made in flipping burgers than writing software that every tom dick and harry can copy and distribute.
The moment you’ve finished writing that small, 1000 lines utility, you have already stepped on 3 or 4 patents without even knowing it. Your a$$ is mine. Unless…
Have a look at a libertarian’s (not mine) point of view:
http://www.paulgraham.com/softwarepatents.html
He acknowledges the problem but claims things aren’t that bad in practice (for now, at least).
The main problem is not the existence of software patents but rather the abuse of them e.g. patenting trivial things that are bound to be reinvented again, and again, and again.
The main problem is, that the patent law does not differentiate between the different uses of an algorithm.
You could probably create a compression/decompression algorithm for matrices which allows in-place invertion of the matrix without decompressing it.
Well, that is fine and maybe the inventor had spent 5 years developing this, and I think most of us would agree that the inventor should get a reward (like a temporal monopoly).
Now let us assume, this invention was made by Microsoft, and gets rewarded a patent. As we all can see from Microsofts previous behaviour, Microsoft has a good reason to bind its customers to its current office product. If all MSOffice formates are now changed to use this patented compression technic, the customers would have to buy MSOffice for another 20 years to access their own files legally, because nobody else would be allowed to decompress the files, as they would need the same decompression algorithm as MS has a patent on.
But in effect, the thing that got closed down was no algorithm, it was a language, because that was what the algorithm was used for.
The patent laws were created to lure the inventors into publishing their knowledge, benefiting both the inventor and society. Anything that likely is reenvented without the original inventor disclosing anything, should not get a patent.
Patents are beneficial to society if:
1) Invention to market times and costs are high.
2) The patented thing is easily definable, if a nomenclature uniquely defines the thing.
3) The exiting patents can be easily searched from others in the field.
Patents are bad for society if:
1) Invention to market times and costs are low.
2) The patented thing can ave thousands of different names.
3) The existing patents cannot be easily checked up.
Pharmaceutical Products fall entirely into the first category, software and business methods entirely into the second.
RMS is right when he states that ALL software patents are bad, not only the bad ones. But maybe all these efforts to get rid of bad software patents has the advantage, that one day the politicians will listen to someone who says: We tried to repair the system, but it simply does not work. We still loose 50% of our revenue to fight off patent trolls.
> Let’s just shutdown the software industry.
In EU we’re doing quite fine without SW patents, and the SW industry is very much alive, thank you.
Do you understand the difference between patents and copyright? Somehow I doubt that.
In France, software isn’t patentable. I don’t think that’s “killing” the software industry.
He goes to the extreme, because to patent something companies must prove they made it first.
A patent gets invalidated if is proved that it was invented before for some one else, so if he fears someone will take GPL software and try to patent it then he is to paranoic.
Now if what he wants is to be protected if some Open Source Software try to make something already patented then he is trying to be above the law.
But there is the chance to innovated to something new and don’t use something already made and patented.
All dependes on how you look at it.
remember, you do not patent implementations, but ideas.
you copyright implementations (atleast for software).
that double-wammy of protection is unique for software as you cant patent a work of art, and you cant copyright an idea.
i think what he fears is that someone will look at GPL or other open source software, go hmm, and patent the idea contained within. then they go about suing anyone that earns money on using said GPL or other software.
Thank you Richard, we’ll get back to you if we need your input…
So, how worthy is your input here?
I dont know why RMS argue logic with Open Source advocate and the OSDL , time as shown that if you wait a couple of months they will change there mind or have disapeared and be irrelevant as always …
They get closed , bought and disapear , that is the way of Open source.
“Open Source Development Labs”
Should be renamed to Open Source Destruction Lawgroups
They have more lawyers then developpers and driver and code and software. Its not a lab its a policy marketing Law firm in disguise.
Beside Torvald every good engineer run away from them because they whont be able to work in that environment.
Coming up with some patent protection scheme such as the OSDL one, or the whole silly cross-patent open source protection thing (started by Novell I think – I would appreciate a link) merely legitimises the patenting of software.
Accepting the so called MP3 patent, when it doesn’t actually patent MP3 as a clearly defined format but defines a vague method of encoding and compression, merely makes the problem worse. Hopefully, Sandisk will go some way to highlighting this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5312696.stm
Notice the vagueness of the comments when defending patents like these:
“By definition you have to follow the standard,”…”It is just not possible to do it any other way,”
That’s what you have to defend against, and legitimising them through patent protection schemes doesn’t help one bit.
Coming up with some patent protection scheme such as the OSDL one, or the whole silly cross-patent open source protection thing (started by Novell I think – I would appreciate a link) merely legitimises the patenting of software.
No, the force of law legitimizes software patents.
That’s what you have to defend against, and legitimising them through patent protection schemes doesn’t help one bit.
We’ll see how much your strange notion of “legitimacy” matters when open source devs get sued for violating software patents.
I agree, when you get sued in court will be a bad day, I would always heed the patents.
I do believe it has gotten out of control to a degree.
I believe the current theory on software patent litigation is this: M.A.D: Mutually Assured Destruction. You see, everyone has a bunch of software patents, and most of them are vague and give them ownership on how the majority of software is built: So, since everyone can call patent claims on everyone else… Once one person starts it they all end up sueing, and you have software patent World War 3.
So, basically, it’s like nuclear weapons: They’re big and ugly, but you can’t use them so they’re hardly an asset.
I have to agree with Stallman on this one: The danger is the legitimate software patents; the ones that patent ideas which have no prior art. They’re still software patents, and therefore a second form of IP on the same piece of IP (that should sound confusing because it makes no sense, but it’s the law), but if you can’t fight them with prior art you have nothing.
We need to be standing against software patents in general. Copyright protects software, we don’t need a secondary form of property rights for software.
Well, I’m not a person of strong faith but I do believe that software patents are as evil as it gets:
patents on a thought, really.
I can somehow understand that some method of processing oil for example, which has cost billions to develop, can be patented. But software which is essentially extending thoughts to computers? No way!
It really leaves me worried what sort of society we live in if software patents got this far.
Luckily, I’m living in the EU.
No, the force of law legitimizes software patents.
Law has very little to do with enforcing patents at all. Patents are enforced by fear of the law being brought against potential violators. Whether the law would then legitimise the patent in court is an entirely different matter. Most people cannot and will not go that far and spend the money required, and those making the money know this.
We’ll see how much your strange notion of “legitimacy” matters when open source devs get sued for violating software patents.
You’re falling into the trap. Just by writing that you’re actually legitimising patents being used against open source software, through the use of fear. How many open source projects are being sued today through this, or is it just the fear of the whole thing that is making people act irrationally by coming up with totally ineffective patent protection schemes?
What open source software needs is not some cross-patenting system to use a patent pool as a threat, or what the OSDL is doing. What it requires is an initiative by interested parties to get the entire process for patenting software changed completely, and challenge whether software algorithms can be patented at all.
Law has very little to do with enforcing patents at all.
So, if not law, what governs the courts?
You’re falling into the trap. Just by writing that you’re actually legitimising patents being used against open source software, through the use of fear.
I think it’s reasonable to take precautions against known threats. Patent infringement lawsuits are a serious threat. Just because you haven’t seen a lot of them against the open source community today doesn’t mean you should ignore the threat. You call it fear. I call it reasonable caution.
What it requires is an initiative by interested parties to get the entire process for patenting software changed completely, and challenge whether software algorithms can be patented at all.
No offense, but I don’t think you’re going to be successful. The current patent system is managed and regulated by Congress, according to the U.S. Constitution. And, given that the Congress shows no sign of eliminating software patents (it’s not even on their radar) and money (the kind provided by commercial concerns) is the mother’s milk of politics, you’re in for an uphill battle.
… and use the funds to buy a clue. Software patents aren’t going away, despite your best wishes. Consequently, if open source advocates don’t put their own stakes in the ground to counter those of private industry, they will get steamrolled; possibly, not today, but eventually it will happen.
Perhaps they aren’t going away (that remains to be seen), but on the other side they are not spreading either.
Software patents in Europe are as dead as they can ever be.
Personally I think RMS is overdoing it here. So far there haven’t been a single idea in the history of mankind that hasn’t had some sort of prior art. There is ALWAYS prior art. It’s only a matter of recognizing that truth.
> Software patents aren’t going away, despite your
> best wishes
USA, being unsuccessful at enforcing SW patents upon EU, will have to follow suit or accept that whatever is patented in USA can be legitimately used without fear of patent infridgement in EU.
USA, being unsuccessful at enforcing SW patents upon EU, will have to follow suit or accept that whatever is patented in USA can be legitimately used without fear of patent infridgement in EU.
So what. As soon as any violating product is used in the United States, the author is subject to a patent infringement lawsuit. So, what happens? Does the author add a paragraph to the license which forbids its use in the United States? Um, sorry, but that’s going to have a serious chilling effect on development.
There’s a wide enough market for SOHO sw in EU that doesn’t need to be exported to USA. Incidentally, USA SW companies that wanted to export their SW to EU would be in direct competition with thousand of other SW makers, unlike in USA. It, in fact, in their best interest to force sw patents upon EU – which they tried, keep trying, and have failed at so far.
We’re doing quite fine without SW patents, the SW industry is alive, many small business can live in EU centered on SW production, not so in USA. SW patents are therefore demonstrated to be harmful.
One issue with software patents is that they have to be proved invalid which is a very expensive proposition for Free Software developers. This is why patents are especially dangerous to Free Software. Counter suing doesn’t fix this.
Having said this, I am not sure what the best course of action is.
Seth
———-
“The project could backfire, according to Stallman, making it “worse than nothing.” He asserted that when prior art is considered by the Patent Office during the patent-granting process, it usually loses any weight it might have had in a court case.
“Thus, our main chance of invalidating a patent in court is to find prior art that the Patent Office has not studied,”
———-
———-
Second, patent applicants could use the prior art uncovered by the OSDL to write patent claims that simply avoid the technologies used in the tagged software. “The Patent Office is eager to help patent applicants do this,” Stallman wrote.
———-
Since it seems most people didn’t bother to read that or the article at all.
The free software developers in general do not own patents that could match the arsenals of patent trolls. For the typical patent troll business model it never could, as those companies are not developing software, they are writing lawsuits based on their patent portfolios.
One potential deterrence technique against such patent trolls is the threat of invalidating patents wielded against us by uncovering prior art that wasn’t considered by the patent office during the examination of the claims. RMS’s point is that by enumerating potential prior art beforehand, we’re needlessly showing our cards and allowing the patent office and their litigous customers to cirumvent our defenses.
The deterrence technique doesn’t work because we have prior art on every software patent filed away in a cabinet/wiki somewhere at OSDL. It largely worked so far because of the high uncertainity for patent trolls attached to attacking the free software community.
Not to mention, there are basically two groups to sue:
1.) The guy who is developing code in his free time. He owns his home, and a couple cars. All-in-all he might have a net worth of a half million dollars: It’ll cost you as much to sue him as you’ll get from him.
2.) Corporations like Novell, who can afford lawyers, and will defeat you in court on your lack of merit in making use of your patents (You can’t hold a patent and not use it, this negates your patent rights).
Oh, sorry, I’d like to add the group who is probably in danger:
3.) Recent startups who’ve made quite a bit of money from their software. They might be able to afford lawyers, but they’ll be out of their league trying to find one anyway. This group doesn’t even need to be shipping FOSS to get sued, and they’re vital to the software industry.
Edited 2006-09-20 14:58
from TFA:
> Stallman argues that the workshop focused on the wrong
> issues and that low-quality patents–those for which
> prior art exists and which shouldn’t have been issued
> in the first place–aren’t the main problem.
They are not only a great problem, but also a great chance. While “Open Source as Prior Art” ensures that prior art is recognized when it exists, another project could collect patents in areas where no prior art exists and where F/OSS projects made the first inventions. This would put real pressure on companies trying to enter the same area, and provide a certain amount of safety (since nobody really wants the nuclear patent war to break out).
How is it possible for a patent office to grant patents without owning the patent to patenting and if said office holds that patent, where did they get their patent from ?
[ no this is not a serious question ;D ]