Speaking in London last week, Richard Stallman, founder of GNU, argued passionately against the legalisation of what he calls “software idea patents”. The core of Stallman’s argument is that if companies are allowed to patent software ideas, big business will ride roughshod over the smaller players, and the free software movement will be effectively strangled.
When people like Stallman go out and speak. Surely politicians thinks there is something fuzzy going on. I think what they wanna restrict is him rather than software.
This won’t be the end of free software, he says. But it will kill off much of the community. “Sure there’ll still be some of us left,” Stallman noted. “But that’s like saying its OK if millions of Africans dies of AIDS because there are loads of Africans left.”
Patents is definitely a problem, I think everyone can agree to that, but free software like Apache, Open Office or PostGree will still be around for sure.
Besides, it’s pretty confusing talking about free software since what the issue is really about is small independent developers and their work no matter if they charge for it or give it away for free. It’s david vs goliath. Not Marx vs Bill Gates like certain people tries to describe it (RMS hidden agenda is not hidden anymore).
I was the first one to right it
You just lost all credibility with that spellunk.
Well, I’m pretty sure that Sesame Street has prior art on the letter “E” and number “14” 😉
Besides, it’s pretty confusing talking about free software
And yet, RMS is the leader and progenitor of the “Free Software Movement”. This is his life’s work. Do you reasonably expect him to talk about anything else.
since what the issue is really about is small independent developers and their work
Its about the entire software industry. Remember, MicroSoft got famous for Bill Gates dumpster diving to grab code to a Basic interpreter. If the technology for that interpreter was patented, we’d most likely not have MicroSoft as it is today (for good and bad). The fact that software patents are often just patents on “ideas” is whats alarming. Patenting “ideas” is not allowed for any other industry; why the exception?
no matter if they charge for it or give it away for free.
In the old days, before wide-spread internet access, the FSF charged for the tape of its archives. There is no legal or moral conflict with selling Free software.
It’s david vs goliath. Not Marx vs Bill Gates like certain people tries to describe it (RMS hidden agenda is not hidden anymore).
I’ve never seen a hidden agenda from RMS, and I’d like to see you prove it.
But patents didn’t just roll out the door yesterday. They have been in effect in the USA for decades and history proves you wrong in that I have yet to see them stomping out free software.
I think the hidden message here is that people like Richard don’t like the ‘big players’ like IBM picking up the ball and running with it. The truth is that their doing so opens market opportunities for the smaller players. And since they invest billions into the market you can’t expect them not to protect their interests.
It has always been futile competing with a market segment saturated by big players. One doesn’t start up a call center with 5 people in a garage – there is no way to compete. Instead one adds value to what the larger players are doing by carving a niche or filling a market segment that one can compete in and make a profit in. This is freeking business acumen 101. Adapt or die, and don’t expect everything handed to you on a silver platter if you whine hard enough.
Or is it ok for the little guy to make a profit but not the big guy?
This sounds like subsistance farming for computing. And we know what that leads to – starvation and dead crops.
Having said this, the patent office still is in dire need of an overhaul. One doesn’t need removal of patents, one needs better regulation of what patents are assigned for, and legislation to prevent big companies filing thousands of patents just to monopolize the market.
I did spot me mistake after I posted, pity there is nowhere here to edit your posts. People will think I am retarded.
Anyway, Oosync, sesame street was not first, they started in 1975, and I was born in 1967, I was writing when I was 5, which would have been 1972, therefore I was first !
You use the number 14 once and the letter E 12 times in your post, you will of course be expecting a letter from my lawyers telling you to cease this practise
hehehehehe
“Patenting “ideas” is not allowed for any other industry; why the exception?”
Really? I always thought that protecting ideas is _exactly_ what patents are for. The problem with software patents is that the ideas that get patented are frequently also come up with by others, which then cannot legally use the idea, because the patent holder has been awarded a monopoly to the idea. They may or may not allow you to use your idea in exchange for royalties.
This problems in not strictly unique. It also occurs in any other field – the only criterion is that two persons come up with the same idea and one of them patents it, thereby locking out the other one. I find this an unacceptably unfair system, and therefore oppose all patents.
“I think the hidden message here is that people like Richard don’t like the ‘big players’ like IBM picking up the ball and running with it.”
I don’t think that is the hidden message at all. If you look at the way the big players USE the patents, only then is the “hidden message” revealed, IMHO. Big players use patents as a defense tactic against others, particularly those who may threaten their markets. For instance, it would be silly for Microsoft to file a suit based on patent violations against IBM. IBM would simply file a suit against Microsoft in return, claiming Microsoft is in violation of numerous IBM patents. This is fine in a situation where the big players are suing each other and both have the financial means to bankroll the lawsuits.
Where the problem comes is in is if a big player files a patent suit against Joe or Jane Developer, who doesn’t have the large bankroll to finance his/her defense. The big player can then use various legal tactics to drag the lawsuit out, until the defendant has no more money left to defend themselves. This is the real worry, IMHO. In an ideal world, the serving of justice would not be dependent on how much money you have in the bank, but in the real world, this is the case.
Well, after you know that MS has already patented such things like double clicking with a mouse button (which they didn’t even develop first), you cannot say that RMS is very wrong in his worries.
Summa summarum: I much rather support Richard Stallmann and GNU philosophy than the stupidities of unrestricted sofware patents and their non-ethical, greedy supporters like MS.
…that software patents are taken so seriously by the world.
I mean, come on, its all just a series of 1s and 0s once all is said and done – I mean, what, did someone patent the sequence of 00010?!
Personally, I wish this would all be brought to a-head with a software patent lawsuit that spins out of control and shows people just how ugly this mess really is. Nobody’s going to believe it until they see how destructive it is first-hand, and there’s nothing like a media circus to make THAT happen…
“Like I have said here before, I hate the US policy of GREED”
It’s not greed, it’s called freedom. We enjoy a life where governemnt works for us and intrudes as little as possible in out lives, for better or worse. We have concluded long ago that concepts like free speech, regardless of what it is (e.g. hate speech), should be protected at all costs. Same goes for the rights granted creators of ideas. It is better to allow one individual the right to grow an industry around his idea then to force him out because others can forego the costs of R&D and skip right to production without paying the creator anything for his idea. Sure some people will try to take advantage of systems like this but you don’t throw throw out the whole system simply because one or two cogs are not working properly; you fix the system by repairing the problem.
Patents where an idea to protect the inventor… but they becoming a stupid idea where the big guys can sue the start-up companies to bankrupcy…
Just look at this story from 1980’s IBM: http://www.forbes.com/asap/2002/0624/044.html
Think what you want, but I think that patents and copyrights, while great ideas at the start, are no longer there for their created purposes…
“Where the problem comes is in is if a big player files a patent suit against Joe or Jane Developer, who doesn’t have the large bankroll to finance his/her defense.”
Which exposes a flaw in the legal system, where the person that should win doesn’t always have the means to do so. In a system where the winner is compensated for expenses, this wouldn’t be a problem.
Patents are for protecting Implimentations of an idea.
I can patent a design for a mousetrap, but I can’t make a patent for “Any object that traps mice”. Similarly, I couldn’t get a patent on using a spring for particular individual use.
However with software the issue is that many things that have been patented are pieces of software that are often taught in school (the use of equation x for purpose y sort), and patents on a broad idea “Any software that uses one click to purchase an item”
“Really? I always thought that protecting ideas is _exactly_ what patents are for. The problem with software patents is that the ideas that get patented are frequently also come up with by others, which then cannot legally use the idea, because the patent holder has been awarded a monopoly to the idea. They may or may not allow you to use your idea in exchange for royalties.”
Actually, to get a patent for a physical item it is not the idea that is patented, but the design. One can not go into the patent office to request a patent without having the blueprints and such for the design, and then that is patented. That is the problem with software patents as they stand today. Software is covered under both copyright and patents now, and ideas are copyrighted. Allowing them to now be patented is the mistake. An example is if I were to think of a nifty new feature for a word processor that I was writing from scratch. Problem is they can now patent that idea of “A program that takes words from the user and has the ability for the user to format them how they want”. So, now, I can not legally write a word processor as the idea is patented. That is how the software patents are working, and why they are a bad idea.
Patents have been part of business in the U.S. for many decades. If you care to do business in the states you do it with those terms in place, or you plain and simple don’t do it at all. RMS had to have known this years ago.
There is really nothing new to about it; RMS deciding to rant doesn’t change one damn thing. All of these laws were in place before he was a twinkle in his fathers eye. It’s already a done deal in the U.S., he/we can’t change something that has gone this far forward as it’s just too damn late.
I absolutely loath the entire idea of being able to patent processes, means to an end, and software in general likely far more than most of you; However those just happen to be the rules we have to follow in the U.S., and likely coming soon in the EU also.
Unfortunatey people; Computer geeks don’t make the rules, they simply get forced to follow them.
Software patents exist in the U.S. since 1981 [1]. That’s long enough. They didn’t work. Time to abolish them.
[1] http://www.bitlaw.com/software-patent/history.html
“But patents didn’t just roll out the door yesterday. They have been in effect in the USA for decades and history proves you wrong in that I have yet to see them stomping out free software. ”
why do you think redhat doesnt supply a mp3 player despite having several free coded implementations.
proprietary software is there for years too. rms decided to implement free software as a goal and he did succeed in a modest way if you consider gnu and stuff
You missed the point of my posts, this is just a ploy by talentless people to scam off the work of others.
Everyone here is still using the word “THE” even though in my first post I claimed the IP on the word. It is up to your lawyers to prove that I do not own it. If you can’t then my lawyers will be suing you.
Can you all not see how silly the whole thing is ?
Not that it matters… but the CTW (Childrens Television Workshop) and Sesame Street started in 1971 😉
However… “right” could have been appropriate spelling if you thing about it 😉
Unfortunatey people; Computer geeks don’t make the rules, they simply get forced to follow them.
But aren’t laws and rules made to protect things from falling over and keep things in order?
There’s supposed to be sensibility and reason behind law making. There are reasons why we must pay taxes and why we can’t drive 180 mph on the roads, why we can’t pour acids into the oceans and why we can’t steal cars.
Of course there are laughable and silly laws, but making laws in order to basically halt development in an industry for the small business man is absolute nonsense. Sitting behind a desk, writing laws about something you have no knowledge of, being whispered in the ear by a specific party without listening to the other parties is incredibly dangerous.
I hear some Americans speak of sw-patents as “yeah, we have them, they’re a pestilence, but we live with them”.
Doesn’t that mean it’s time to get rid of such laws?
Europe has done fine for more than 30 years without software patents. It’s the last thing we need now.
One question: Where does the most open source software development take place, in Europe or in the US?
“It’s not greed, it’s called freedom. We enjoy a life where governemnt works for us and intrudes as little as possible in out lives, for better or worse. We have concluded long ago that concepts like free speech, regardless of what it is (e.g. hate speech), should be protected at all costs. Same goes for the rights granted creators of ideas.”
No, far out. In this case it is the freedom of one entity to be defined more important than the freedom of other people to use the same method. Thus, these laws do NOT protect the freedom of a ultra-huge majority.
The above makes no distinction between one’s creation as theory (invention, patent) or practice (software, copyright) nor does it address any misusage of the patent law we’re discussing (for example so-called patent farms, broad patents or innovations).
Basically the fact person X thought of doing Y, means person A, B, C, D, E etc may not do Y or something like Y. What you say? “Freedom”? You have not understood any bit of the saying “Your freedom stops where that of another starts” nor have you understood that granting these rights obstructs another’s freedom.
Thanks raver and quack! for appreciating the joke. That was firmly tongue-in-cheek.
“RMS had to have known this years ago.
There is really nothing new to about it”
Another American who doesn’t know the difference between the United States of America and the European Union. Perhaps, maybe, RMS isn’t very satisfied with the way software patents work (or do not work) in the USA? Hmm, that could just as well be possible!
It doesn’t matter.
If you are fighting a war against Bigcoland, and their patent offices issue a patent to the Bigco-Army for the idea of shooting projectiles to kill the enemy, do you say, “Ohh shoot, welp, it is patented, I guess we’d better lay down our arms and figure out another way to win this war.” No, of course not. You laugh at them and you kill before you are killed.
Laws and regulatory systems have no power unless the people they control all believe they have power. Take a look at the copyright situation with MP3 traders.
Whether you see it or not, we are in a war right now.
Richard Stallman misses the point entirely. Instead of fighting the war, he moans and groans about the rules of war and makes his army look like a bunch of whining babies.
There are a few types of revolutionaries…
1) the guy who is a loser in the current system, and rather than figuring out how to do something worthwhile he throws a tantrum.
2) the hobbiest radical who is bored and finds the drama of pretending to fight for something more exciting than sitting around eating chips.
3) the guy who doesn’t want to cause a problem for anyone, but sees a situation that he has no choice but to alter. So he goes about altering it in the most quiet, and easiest way possible as to not disrupt peoples lives.
Richard, what Europe or any other country decides on intellectual property is of no importance. Systems and laws are not written by a central authority… they are written by the behavior of the population.
Don’t worry, if regulatory strings become so tangled that free software projects are being stopped. They can simply disappear from the surface. Then the public can await as anonymous source mysteriously appears in P2P environments.
The system evolving from the Internet environment will show no respect for anything the old governing bodies decide. It will grow the way it wants to grow, and if you wan’t to influence it you’ll have to use the new ways for doing so. The old methods, such as patenting systems, will have no relevance.
As has been pointed out by others, patents are allowed in all other industries as a means to protect physical products. They are not allowed for formulas, algorithms, numbers, or letters (sorry, raver, no licensing money for you
).
While I agree that useful implimentations of software algorithms should be protected so that their inventors can profit, it appears that copyrighting is designed for this. A problem with allowing algorithms to be patented is that all subsequent implimentations are then legally disallowed without a license. I think this goes too far.
The only way I could see software patents being a truly good thing (for the entire software industry) is if they carried a much-reduced lifetime, say 3-5 years. It is currently 20 years, IIRC. Since patents require full disclosure in the application, it means other implimentations are allowed after the patent expires. However, the beauty is that the original inventor still has the copyrights to all of his implimentations and can still use them for profit. The inventor also retains the trademarks on any popular names for his or her creation, thus allowing him or her to differentiate and establish their invention.
As it stands, the patent holder has too much power as they own both the copyright to an implimentation and the patent over all impliementations.
“Everyone here is still using the word “THE” even though in my first post I claimed the IP on the word. It is up to your lawyers to prove that I do not own it. If you can’t then my lawyers will be suing you.”
Don’t need lawyers, since in my 1928 Websters dictionary the word is there. Unless you are Webster?
And yet, you seem to miss the point that RMS is not just sitting around whining, he’s lobbying his views. We only hear about what he thinks because someone thinks his views have merit, otherwise, he’d be guy #3, going about his quiet work in near obscurity.
Its also false to claim that what happens in Europe does not affect the US or other parts of the world. The recent extension of US copyrights is, in part, to bring the US copyright laws closer to the European copyright laws. Some very large corporations who do business in the US and Europe thought this would help them out, namely, but not limited to, Disney.
Patents, copyrights, and trademarks (the so-called IP laws) have a very good place in our societies. However, their affects in particular industries and on society as a whole must be evaluated. Its just simply too easy to abuse software patents and some serious reforms need to be taken. The reforms will be much more difficult in the US if the Europeans adopt US-like software patents.
Perhaps you don’t like RMS or how he addresses the issues, but how about Lawrence Lessig? Much of his work is how the open exchange of ideas (prevented by software patents) helps all of society flourish (this includes businesses).
http://www.lessig.org
“Richard Stallman misses the point entirely. Instead of fighting the war, he moans and groans about the rules of war and makes his army look like a bunch of whining babies.”
He fights the war but in a different way then you’d like to see it.
“Systems and laws are not written by a central authority… they are written by the behavior of the population.”
Therefore…?
“Don’t worry, if regulatory strings become so tangled that free software projects are being stopped. They can simply disappear from the surface. Then the public can await as anonymous source mysteriously appears in P2P environments.”
I some extend you’re right. However i disagree this is a viable alternative. It means vendors & people who abide the law in respect to copyright and/or patent law (i cannot name one which does not) cannot provide this source and/or binaries based on this source. This leads to all kind of “patching” after the user has installed their distribution which is besides inconvenient also most likely not user-friendly. And it is not legal. The more of this, the worse for the user. The vendors of Linux distribution instead aim to provide a pico bello castle as end user alternatieve as easy as it can get, not some kind of ruine the user needs to patch up.
See the problems on Playfair, Bnetd and many other projects. Did it made the project’s availability more easier? Obviously, no.
Instead of what you’re suggesting i suggest to keep this number of projects -as unfortunate as it is- as low as possible. The path Stallman and organisations like FFII drive (activism / lobbying) is a path which is currently possible, can still make a difference, hence the one i prefer. At least we tried!
After that, illegal paths againt softpats (and DMCA/EUCD, don’t forget these) are still wide open.
PS: Also see Eben Moglen: http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu
“Richard Stallman misses the point entirely. Instead of fighting the war, he moans and groans about the rules of war and makes his army look like a bunch of whining babies.”
I wouldn’t be so quick to make this statement. At some point in the future, I would not be surprised to see some patents and/or copyrights overturned, due to prior art that may well exist in existing GNU software.
i recall a story that phillips got started makeing cheap lightbulbs based on edisons designs and patents as the european nations at that time didnt have an agreement to respect us issued patents…
patnets are there to give you a return on development investments. problem is that software isnt a physical object. ones its compiled you dont have any creation costs other then the feeding of the coder while he codes it. after the code is done you can compile and copy the source and binary a 1000000 times in a second.
so in my view patenting software is like patenting a way to build a house. your patenting a technique, not a final product. and if you look at it that way you start to see how stupid it is. i wonder what would have happend to the industry if the original user of the assembly line had patented his idea. oh i forgot, you cant patent a way to make a product, just the end product. or can you?
then there is the timeframe of this stuff, how long does a patent last these days? and how long does a the original product based on that patent stay on the shelfs?
in todays world we see turnarounds that are so fast that you dont have time to patent something before its obsolete or common knowledge. i see the need for a original creator to get compensated for the work he have done but we are in a world where ideas from the far east can get to london, paris or new york in minutes while the laws that are in effect are based on a world where it would take days, weeks or months. its a new world out there and its lightning fast!
“after the code is done you can compile and copy the source and binary a 1000000 times in a second.” hobgoblin
Yes you can duplicate it many times as second. But how many copies per second can you sell? How much per copy does it cost to sell the product? There are many other cost to putting software in to a customer’s hands:
Marketing Costs
Sales staff
Sales transaction costs
Tech support (usually free for a period after sale)
General Overhead
(If selling boxes of software)
Packaging and Materials
Warehousing
Transportation
(If selling over the internet)
Web hosting costs
Disk storage space
Data Communications
Meanwhile your development staff is getting paid to right the next product or upgrade.
All of these things cost money and a company (big or small) will want to insure that a competitor isn’t going to copy the product and steal market share at will. Essentially patent law if applied intelligently can level the paying field for all developers big and small.
“Another American who doesn’t know the difference between the United States of America and the European Union. Perhaps, maybe, RMS isn’t very satisfied with the way software patents work (or do not work) in the USA? Hmm, that could just as well be possible!”
When you come down from your mountain consider for just one second 99% of the world has no clue who the hell RMS is in the first place.
It doesn’t matter a bit if he is satisfied or not…..
Like it or not, your in for a very big muddied up mess if you choose to follow the direction of RMS.
“Software patents exist in the U.S. since 1981 [1]. That’s long enough. They didn’t work. Time to abolish them.”
Not going to happen in your lifetime…
End of the story……
Stallman has the right to say whatever he wants(well, with some of europes draconian anti-free speech laws, who knows), but he’s probably not the best person in the world to articulate why certain classes of software idea patents are a bad thing.
I mean, if I was a european lawmaker and saw this american long-haired hippy type start rambling on about software patents and then go into some long diatribe about how close-source software is evil, I might be inclined to vote the opposite way of what he is espousing.
“I mean, if I was a european lawmaker and saw this american long-haired hippy type start rambling on about software patents and then go into some long diatribe about how close-source software is evil, I might be inclined to vote the opposite way of what he is espousing.”
I really hope Stallman is reading this; If might serve as motivation for him to take a class in public speaking and human relations. It’s not apparent to me he has skills in either of those areas, among others.
“When you come down from your mountain consider for just one second 99% of the world has no clue who the hell RMS is in the first place.
It doesn’t matter a bit if he is satisfied or not…..”
Relatively many people on this world will take his views into account. You know, people who use Linux, people who read /. and Newsforge, people who develop software. It all starts from down to up and if the discussion is made up open, more people will at least learn more about the subject itself. Which is the point; not RMS. He is just one of the many messengers.
I’m quite sure the actions on the Internet all have contributed to more publicity, and things like demonstrations (offline / IRL), columns, discussions all contribute to it more or less.
Above here is described a practical form of grassroot activism based on purely legal grounds.
“Like it or not, your in for a very big muddied up mess if you choose to follow the direction of RMS.”
You aren’t in a muddy mess since your straw is everywhere, mr. Strawman.
“I really hope Stallman is reading this; If might serve as motivation for him to take a class in public speaking and human relations. It’s not apparent to me he has skills in either of those areas, among others.”
I sincerely hope he’s not wasting time reading the low-level quality discussion here since it (imo) isn’t worth his time.
Anyway:
“american”
Doesn’t mean he’s not credible.
“long-haired”
Neither.
“hippy”
Neither. (And your perception of his character.)
It’s the message which counts, not the person saying it. Mostly. One could argue he should have stated some of his sentences or views in a different way, go ahead. Here you’re just looking on the outside, and i can only hope the bEUrocrats don’t look much to that since it is of lil’ concern.
“You aren’t in a muddy mess since your straw is everywhere, mr. Strawman”
Your absolutely correct; I don’t believe in the preachings of RMS, and never will.. When you really stop for a second and think about what he says; a damn good share or it sounds like poppycock.
I know i am absolutely correct in defining that last line of yours a straw man fallacy. Thus, arguments based on this have no value to me. Even less when taking into account you continue with even more fallacies (ad hominem, another straw man). Goodbye Verbatim wish you good luck with your fallacy-preachings.
The problem is that they are patenting things that don’t warrant patenting. “One click shopping” is not a patent deserving “innovation.” If patents were done correctly there would be few patents. Patents on things like MP3 would likely exist while Microsoft’s requests for an XML based configuration system would be rejected on that grounds that “everybody thought of that when xml first became well known, DUH!”
The problem with too many patents is simply that it’s untrackable. If you give out 10 million absurd patents no one will be able to keep track of them. And seemingly randomly someone will use something patented and make their fortune. Then the patent holder will sue.
The second problem is large companies patenting everything they can and using it to hold out competition.
Patents have always been a system of Government granted monopolies, and they will remain that way. IMO, patents may be applicable. But they should be short. A mechanical patent, like a new engine design (say even more radical than rotary) could last for as long as 5 years (I believe it’s 20 in the US right now). Software should be 6 months, no more. Why do I say that? Because within 6 months a lot can happen, and within 20 years look what has happened. Anybody still use their XT motherboards? Does anyone have a Lisa?
RMS’ concern is likely that there will be no room for the small competitor because he won’t be able to snatch up patents quickly enough. Europe is opening up Oklahoma to settlers and saying “claim it and you own it.” The problem this time is that big business will own OK and the rest of us ‘settlers’ (maybe you will liken it to Indians on reservations) will be thrown out on our butts to live elsewhere.
Patents defend an invention, not an innovation. The term innovation is much more broad (and subjective as well).
Stallman also had a talk here today, at U of Edinburgh, Scotland.
In the second half of the talk, he mentioned a lot about software patent and its situation in Europe right now.
There’s also a candidate from the Scottish Greens Party shown up in the talk, saying if he did elected as a European MP he will work out against this thing (obviously, he came in the talk for promote himself
.. but that’s ok. since he did it nicely.)
not surprise. he did talked a lot about GNU, why we have to sez it “GNU/Linux” (or if it’s too long, just call it “GNU”), etc, etc, .. and Emacs
(he called himself a St. GNU of Emacs church or something like that … very good joke
)
To quote myself:
So some software company happens on a neat algorithm that’s been floating around the Universities for ages. So some software company decides to get a return on those Universities’ investment in education. So some software company is hostile to anybody else researching that same algorithm, let alone benefitting from its total lack of any hard work.
So basically, said software company induces the Patent Office into a conspiracy for the restraint of trade.
Those is the legal terms we should be using to discuss this matter – restraint of trade.
And I used to be in Mike Moore’s electorate – yes, before he became the WTO head. I think I may have to pester him a bit, over this matter.
He’s a good guy, and I think he’d blow a fuse over the idea that the small guy is being crucified to the bigger company’s unrestrained greed.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
-Margaret Mead
Go RMS.
Most software patents are a bad idea. Most developments in the software industry are very closely related derivative works of what has gone before. Such derivative works can by their nature be reproduced by many people working completely independently but towards similar goals.
Only original ideas that require of the original inventor some great insight or feat of genius should earn the inventor a patent.
the only problem is see is that your looking at the world tru microsoft glasses where the only way to code is to do it prepackaged. coders can survive on codeing software on order, surviveing on writeing solutions after the specs of the people that want it rather then writeing a a4 package and then trying to shovel it to everyone out there. and haveing a open source framework to work from is then just perfect as you dont have to invent the wheel over and over again…
a few years ago, a little girl invented a device for cooking bacon in a microwave. what was special about the device was that the bacon was hung from suspended bars, allowing the grease to run off the meat while it was being cooked into a reservoir in the base of the device. the idea was you would have bacon that wasn’t so bad to eat. the device was patented by the little girl.
the little girl and her family made a profit off this invention, right?
wrong.
the little girl’s family took the idea to a company that supposedly supplied the captial to market inventions, for a cut of the profits. what happened was the company took the idea, modified it enough to avoid being sued, and marketed it themselves. the little girl’s family got exactly 0% of the profits for an idea and device that she came up with, and didn’t have the resources to fight it.
does this sound like something a certain software company has been doing for years? what i described above is what stallman is talking about. it’s about the big players taking a dump on the little guy, and getting away with it. the patent system needs a serious overhaul.
Good old Dick Stallman is not the best person to fight software patents in the EU…or is he? The man needs to either stay in his closet in front of his amber monitor coding or like has been already suggested take some classes in public speaking. Hell just a haircut and a shave would do wonders for his argument.
I think what is needed is a “Patent Expropriation Act”.
This act would permit the government to essentially buy out a patent and release it for public use. There would still be a comittment to rewarding those that develop valuable ideas but within certain limits.
The act would authorize the seizure of a patent in several cases:
(1) to protect free and open source products
(2) to end troublesome patent disputes
(3) to prevent patent holder from abusing its patents (e.g. Eolas holding web hostage)
(4) to release patents critical to the common good (e.g. cancer drug so generics would be available faster)
(5) to end monopolization of key patents (where patent availability impedes compettition)
The government would determine the amount to pay the patent holder based on serveral criteria:
(1) estimated value of possible licences in a free and fair market
(2) resources expended by the holder to find and develop the idea
(3) the availablility of equivalent technology
(4) any abuse or misuse of patents by the holder in the past
“I Agree
By Smartpatrol (IP: —.co.us.ibm.com) – Posted on 2004-05-28 15:11:50
Good old Dick Stallman is not the best person to fight software patents in the EU”
Hint: this kind of childish remarks using the hostname of your employer makes not only you laughable.
Hint: this kind of childish remarks using the hostname of your employer makes not only you laughable.
Hint: The opinions i post here on this forum has absolutely nothing to do with the company i currently work for. If you were half as smart as you and RMS think you are you would realize this fact.
“Hint: The opinions i post here on this forum has absolutely nothing to do with the company i currently work for.”
Personally, i do perceive it as such. What are you gonna do against that?
“If you were half as smart as you and RMS think you are you would realize this fact.”
Oh, you go ad hominem. There are a lot of stupid people like me on the Internet who perceive it alike
))
How was it in Iraq anyway, buddy?
“Good old Dick Stallman is not the best person to fight software patents in the EU…or is he? The man needs to either stay in his closet in front of his amber monitor coding or like has been already suggested take some classes in public speaking. Hell just a haircut and a shave would do wonders for his argument.”
Not in the mind of DPI and the religious following. The logic behind 99% of what Stallman says is little more than antique BS.
To most Stallman was nothing more than another crazed sci-fi freak looking for fame at Groom Lake.