During a surprise guest appearance at Novell’s annual BrainShare user conference, the Finnish open-source guru took part in a question-and-answer session with the networking-software company’s chief executive and chairman Jack Messman and vice chairman Chris Stone. Linux creator Linus Torvalds says that non-technical issues such as software patents constitute the single biggest threat to the future success of the open-source OS.
Torvalds: Outside threats to Linux
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…seeing that software patents are a thread to everything. They basically work around the “you cannot patent thoughts”-rule and thusly making progress impossible once a real patent war breaks out.
http://slashdot.org/articles/04/03/23/037250.shtml?tid=126&tid=143&…
Finally, mj01nir writes “According to Miguel de Icaza’s web log, Chris Stone just announced that Novell will be moving the whole company to OpenOffice by the end of the year, and to Linux on the desktop a year after.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5177704.html
But Torvalds did reveal that his immediate focus would be on managing the input from the Linux community following the release of version 2.6 of the Linux kernel last December. He also claimed that his attention for the next few years will be firmly on developing the Linux desktop; a commitment echoed by Novell’s Stone who revealed that his company is planning to migrate 50 per cent of its internal staff off of the Windows desktop by mid-summer, with plans for a full migration by the end of this year.
Huh? I am drunk? (:
He (referring to Linus) also claimed that his attention for the next few years will be firmly on developing the Linux desktop.
I wonder what exactly this entails. I wonder if there is ever a time when Linus works on some userspace stuff. Maybe X or something.
In worst case patents expire after 17 years. Sure – it’s long time. But I think the evolution of software is going to hit a wall just as CPU speed will allowing OSS to catchup.
In worst case patents expire after 17 years. Sure – it’s long time. But I think the evolution of software is going to hit a wall just as CPU speed will allowing OSS to catchup.
Sorry, but I disagree here. In worst case, the patent is invalidated via a court case that goes on for years and costs millions of <enter currency here> while the SME that is involved goes bankrupt and the larger corporation goes out of the case with a smile (and the leftovers of the SME in their pocket).
Softwarepatents just as Biopatents (anyone remember the Basmati Patent?) are an indicator that our society as a whole is doomed. One of the other indicators is the widespread corruption literally everywhere.
Just giving an OSS project a name could become a threat. KIllustrator team was sued – although not directly by Adobe – because the word “KIll” makes Illustrator look bad or something.
I don’t think I have enough fingers on my hands to count the number of name changes Fire– fox? Has gone through. Ok so this isn’t a serious threat. I would put it under “annoying.” It annoys me that all the big companies own the really cool names.
Those are trademarks, not patents. Same problem, two different things.
“Linux creator Linus Torvalds says that non-technical issues such as software patents constitute the single biggest threat to the future success of the open-source OS.”
As mentioned in one of the Halloween documents.
Although I believe that Linus had a slightly different view, when patents were first mentioned as an issue.
compare the software world to what it was 5 years ago, and what it was then to 5 years before that. About every 5 years, it’s a whole new world. 17 years represents about 3-4 software generations, by my unscientific estimation.
Linus and the rest of the OSS crowd need to learn that patents and trademarks are not a threat to the OSS movement–the real threat is from within, when bickering happens, code trees fork, and things like the new XFree86 4.4 license cause ruffled feathers. It’s not MS, it’s not patents, and it’s not trademarks, it’s internal strife and egos that really cause the problem…
…that and a lack of high-quality documentation.
Hi
Forks are a means to innovate the project. Look how many forks have actually been beneficial. the gcc/egcs fork for example. Xfree86 license fork will not harm the end user in anyway. freedesktop.org has a new project incorporating an earlier rc before the license change and work will continue. of course flame wars and bickering will occur.thats the same everywhere.
Good OSS documentation is available. Look at some of the stuff at tldp.org, gentoo.org or several others. Some documentation could be improved but its not like documenation is a major problem.
Patents on the other hand is a very big issue. 17 years of monopoly hold is just too much. around 2 to 3 years might be a good compromise.
trademarks has never been called a threat at all. dont lump it together. redhat and mozilla are two examples of OSS projects actively enforcing trademarks and logos.
regards
Rahul
I think SOME software patents should be there some of the patents are just ridiculous (like the plugins)
If i created something really innovative regrading software—I want my IP protected I want to be successful not have a million open source projects copy me and make my effor worthless.
But I do agree to some extent.. However, the problem is that I really cant think of anything else that could be patented regrading software that is truly inventive/innovative that hasn’t already been done.
I think 17 years is perfectly fine if they let you have a good patent, but just some stupid patent will that’s uncalled for.
I also never thought of Red Hat being an open source project I thought they were more of a “OSS Service” Company or a company who releases linux but also takes code from apache’d and BSD’d applications like postgres and and turn it into an enterprise app. But yeah I guess it is an open source project.
Patents are NOT a good thing.
The thing about software patents is that its often not the people who invent things that get the patent, but the first company to implement it. Consider — what in the .NET CLR should be patentable? There isn’t anything in there that isn’t either obvious, or hasn’t been done before decades ago.
What would be entertaining is if the academics started patenting all their innovations. If McCarthy had patented his innovations in Lisp (garbage collection, s-expressions, among other things) programming language design would have slowed down greatly. Heck, if it hadn’t taken the corporate world so damn long to pick up on these things, they might have ben hit by the patents when they tried to. If Dijkstra had patented semaphores and mutexes, multi-threaded OSs would also have been delayed for two decades. The functional language guys should patent formal verification of programs, so when Microsoft finally gets around to copying it in another decade, they can squeeze some cash out of them.
I guess I’ll be the one pissing against the wind, but I think patents (including software) are a good thing. I mostly disagree with the way the law defines patents and protects them. However, if someone truly comes up with a new innovative idea, one that deserves a patent, it is just as wrong for Open Source to steal this idea without paying for it as it is for Microsoft and IBM. I can see why open source really hates it, it would make it impossible to give away something free, if it has a cost in making it, but patents exist for a good reason. As flawed as the system has been, we’ve moved from riding horses to landing on Mars in a few hundred years. And who knows, Linux might one day force Microsoft to actually innovate so that it can protect itself from Linux.
Linus: “The things that tend to worry me are software patents. When non-technical issues can be used to stop software development–that for me is the scariest part.”
Darl: “…we are determined to see these cases through to the end because we are firm in our belief that the unchecked spread of Open Source software, under the GPL, is a much more serious threat to our capitalist system than U.S. corporations realize.”
http://www.osaia.org/letters/sco_hill.pdf
Both sides agree: the revolution that Stallman started and Linus didn’t mean to further now seems inevitable. Free Software is now a major force driving capitalist societies to rethink their assumptions about corporations, private property, and the “rights” granted these.
17 years ago only a few people had a CD-Player. No DVD, no audio compression, no video codecs. How fast was a PC then? no mobiles for the masses. no WWW. how fast was a modem in 1987?
if a product idea requires alot of time, money and other resources to realize, not to mention possible manufacturing and distribution costs. The development of a new drug would be a example. Or maybe a plan for a commercially viable fusion generator.
New software ideas, however, can move from inception to realization fairly rapidly by comparison, and the “manufacturing” and distribution costs are extremely low, so the time needed to recover your investment and make a tidy profit with your legal monopoly should be much shorter. I think anything longer than 2 years would be pushing it.
The worst thing about these patents is when cool-but-trivial-to-implement ideas get protection. I’m thinking about the patent Apple got for spring-loaded folders. This is a great usability idea, but what did it cost Apple to implement? A few programmer-days and the cost of the patent application, most likely. How would you even measure the effect it has had on Apple profits or market share? Yet no other desktop system producer can implement their own version of this for however many years. (I don’t know the length of the patent.)
Anyway, there’s my $0.02.
Free Software is now a major force driving capitalist societies to rethink their assumptions about corporations, private property, and the “rights” granted these.
Maybe you’re too young to remember, but there was free software way before the FSF or GPL was a twinkle in Stallman’s eye. The only thing that is new is the internet as the means of distribution and the coordination of development effort.
Nobody is rethinking anything. If free software works for business then it’ll be used, if not then it won’t. I know you want Free Software to be some big philosophical movement, but it never will be except in the minds of RMS and his minions.
Hi
GPL is a fairly radical license which has innovated the use of free software. RMS is an idealogist. You may not agree with him but he deserves the credit for what he has done. GPL is a license that directly implements the idea of a software commons. The idea of free software is not new at all. Proprietary was actually a late idea by comparison.
regards
Jess
Some of you want to allow patents for non-material things.
No copyrights but patents. Ill logic.
Algorithm is a solution for some problem. A way to do things. An idea, nothing else.
If patenting those is allowed then I should be able to patent movie and book plots, some catchy melodies, religions, idea of flying machines, idea of automobile and whatever.
One thing I don’t get about Linus Torvald, and thats his opinion of IA-64 (Itanium processor Family) as against x86.
As the Kernel designer, could it be that Linus has no HAL underneath the OS to make a major shift to a new processor architecture a painless process… ??
Can anyone with better information than myself tell us if there are many x86 specific assumptions made in the Linux kernel. Has Linus programmed this OS “too close to the metal” of x86 ??
Linux has been ported to other architectures with some success. I ran Debian GNU/Linux on my SPARCstation for a few months a few years ago, and it was tolerable. Linux has also made inroads in the embedded market. Getting it running on the Itanium is not out of the question — getting excellent performance, on the other hand, would be difficult.
Linux doesn’t have a formally specified HAL, but the architecture dependent code is well abstracted from the architecture independent code. Linux itself is highly portable. For example, Debian runs on:
x86, motorola 68000, sparc, alpha, powerpc, arm, mips, pa-risc, ia-64, IBM’s s/390, amd-64, and hitachi super-h.
There was a time when Linux was full of lots of i386-isms, but those bits were all removed after the first port to the Alpha.
Hi
Itanium is a processor that will be entirely owned by Intel unlike x86 commodity processors with competition from multiple vendors
Itanium was first marketed as a entirely new line of processors breaking compatibility. AMD added a 64 bit processor without breaking compatibility. Intel later added these instruction sets following AMD without mentioning AMD anywhere at all
What linus criticised was the way Intel marketed this product without giving credit at all. He has no reason to worry about portability at all now
from the debian faq
“m68k: this covers Amigas and ATARIs having a Motorola 680×0 processor for x>=2; with MMU.
alpha: Compaq/Digital’s Alpha systems.
sparc: this covers Sun’s SPARC and most UltraSPARC systems.
powerpc: this covers some IBM/Motorola PowerPC machines, including CHRP, PowerMac and PReP machines.
arm: ARM and StrongARM machines.
mips: SGI’s big-endian MIPS systems, Indy and Indigo2; mipsel: little-endian MIPS machines, Digital DECstations.
hppa: Hewlett-Packard’s PA-RISC machines (712, C3000, L2000, A500).
ia64: Intel IA-64 (“Itanium”) computers.
s390: IBM S/390 mainframe systems.
The development of binary distributions of Debian for Sparc64 (UltraSPARC native) architectures is currently underway. ”
regards
Rahul
I am not exactly the biggest fan of Linux in the world, but you’ve got some pretty wacky ideas about it.
Modern Linux kernels are very portable. There is no need for a HAL. As one other poster said, Linux is divided rather cleanly into both machine dependant (MD) and machine independant (MI) code, the vast majority of it being common to all architectures (MI). The BSDs are the same way.
Microkernels and HALs are definately cool ideas (FWIW, I favor message passing kernels over monolithic ones like FreeBSD and Linux), but niether is needed for portability.
Time limited hardware or product patents might not be a bad thing and provide protection to help increase innovation. Innovators and creators need these protections. However, the process to apply for a patent should them be simple and easy and free so everyone has an equal chance to get one.
However, patents and copyrights and trademarks that cover general and basic ideas create a barrier to entry for new innovators and harm the free market. It is my suggestion that patents be applied to a very limited subset of the products that need protection.
Software evolves. As it does it needs to flow fluidly from the creators and testors into the machines us end users and production operators use. If it doesn’t we are left vulnerable to security and stability flaws that we write into our own products.
Or is it more important to capitalists to have a whole new market of software insurance and protection from problems that wouldn’t otherwise exist with our quality secure low-cost professional open solutions? But where’s the money in that? Where’s the money in anything? Is life just not worth living if it ain’t profitable enough for you?
I think we need to focus more on the quality of life than the frivilous details like cost. What life costs is our time. We’ll spend all of it here so there’s no point in arguing about cost. But if we spend it working together maybe we’ll get a lot more free time, which is like money, that we can spend however we choose.
The issue I have with Software Patents is largely this:
I am a big fan of TLOTR. Tolkien uses semi-therianthropes; humans with big fangs – orcs.
Therianthropes are a tradition in European literature. I myself have taken aspects of both Tolkien’s orcs and this self-same European literary tradition to write some stories, one of which is appearing in the May edition of Antipodean SF at the antisf.com website.
If Tolkien had patented the idea of therianthropes – which by the logic of the late twentieth century and early twenty first century American business community, he could’ve done – and the rights to all his works had passed – as it has done so – to the Tolkien Estate – and they had maintained their patents far beyond the standard twenty years of the English patent system – I would be prohibited from writing anything about therianthropes.
Just imagine how happy Hollywood would be if it had to pay millions per view per human with big fangs they put on their screens.
Just think how big the fines Hollywood would be forced to pay, and how loud their collectives screams about the injustice of the whole situation.
Just imagine how quickly the United States Congress would move to outlaw the patenting of ideas. They know which side their bread is buttered on – on the side that doesn’t hit the floor.
Ummm…that’s “copyright”, not “patents”. Other than that, yes I think copyright is getting absurd too.
Other than that, yes I think copyright is getting absurd too.
The whole idea that ideas are property or can be dealt with as if they were is one of the great unfortunate evils of our time.
It’s morbidly ammusing to take a break from your little, insignificant part in this world and look upon your fellow monkeys from as much of an outside point of view as you can muster, and really see how ridiculous humanity really looks.
Not only do we, like any other life, fight over the limmited physical resources we need to survive, but we also must invent things to fight over and attept to control, regardless of all the unneeded extra suffering that this artificial state of affairs has brought into the lives of everyone in this world.
Step back, take a breath, look around, see ourselves for the small, frail, foolish things that we really are, and laugh at the idiocy of it all.
“The whole idea that ideas are property or can be dealt with as if they were is one of the great unfortunate evils of our time. ”
Patents protect the “implimentation” of an idea, and there are limits on what one can patent. Anyway as long as it takes, “time and effort” to execute “ideas” then expect patents and copyright to continue. That’s the pact society made with those who create, and despite the abuse “some” have wrecked upon the ideal. It would be in our best interest as a society, not to break that pact, but punish those who abuse it. Baby, bathwater and all that.
Anyway as long as it takes, “time and effort” to execute “ideas” then expect patents and copyright to continue.
Correction, as long as humans are small, petty, greedy beings…
That’s the pact society made with those who create
Never happened. It was a system forced upon us, as it is to this day. Whenever ordinary folks try to make the people who really profit from this system fulfull their end of this so called pact, they change the rules, denying what should rightfully be ours over, and over again. It has nothing to do with protecting innovation or invention, and everything to do with greed.
It would be in our best interest as a society, not to break that pact, but punish those who abuse it.
And trade one silly situation for another? THWTI.
I agree with you. I seriously believe that we need a major overhaul of the whole copyright & patents system but I believe we should still allow software patents. Great ideas ain’t THAT common and we don’t live in a communist world, after all. However, the law should be very strict (i.e. not granting patents to trivial stuff) and the patents granted shouldn’t last more than a few months as the computing world is evolving too fast.
I understand the concerns of Linus and it’s very true that they’re a threat to free software. Then again, the lack of patents could be a threat to proprietary software as everybody would be able to leech the discoveries of innovative companies. Some might say it’s good but they must understand that not the entire world share their values.
I’m afraid I do know what I’m talking about. I did a quick study of the whole idea of patents and patenting ten years ago when I had something I wanted to patent.
The documents were emphatic that patents only covered the manufacturing etc., implementation of an idea, never the idea itself. And copyright covered the artistic, literary or so expression of ideas, not their use as manufacturing details.
The thing with the current patent landgrab is that the very ideas themselves can be patented – you know, the infamous one-click patent?
As it stands, today a business can patent the equivalent of a writer patenting werewolves and goblins – in spite of the fact that these creatures have existed in folklore for most of recorded history. That’s what a software patent is.
“Linus and the rest of the OSS crowd need to learn that patents and trademarks are not a threat to the OSS movement–the real threat is from within, when bickering happens, code trees fork, and things like the new XFree86 4.4 license cause ruffled feathers. It’s not MS, it’s not patents, and it’s not trademarks, it’s internal strife and egos that really cause the problem…”
Big companies have the same problem, probably more so.
If McCarthy had patented his innovations in Lisp (garbage collection, s-expressions, among other things) programming language design would have slowed down greatly.
And what’s it worth if every nerd out there knows that C++ is the one and only good language? If a language that is nothing more than readable assembly has ruled the scene for so long that its major competitor is readable assembly for dummies (Java)?
Well, C# is there with gc and a promise of block closures. But how many will use it as more than a C++ for dummies?
My point was that if McCarthy had patented GC, then it would delay the invention of Self by 17 years, which would mean it would be 2010 by the time Java got around to copying it!