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End Software Patents Project Comes Out Swinging
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Sat Mar 01, 2008 09:30 PM
from the amicus-populorum dept.
from the amicus-populorum dept.
Linux.com is reporting that the End Software Patents project is launching several new initiatives to help drive support for their cause. Among the new methods are a web site, a report on the state of patents in the US, and a scholarship contest promising to award $10,000 "for the best paper on the effects of the patentability of software and business methods under US law." "The project is being launched with initial funding of a quarter million dollars, supplied primarily by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). Under the directorship of Ben Klemens, a long-time advocate of software patent abolition best-known for the book Math You Can't Use: Patents, Copyright, and Software, the project is being supported by the FSF, the Public Patent Foundation, and the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC). One of ESP's goals is to enlist support from academics, software developers, legal experts, and business executives. Its initial supporters show that the project is already well on its way to building such a coalition."
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FSF and RMS (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't wait for it to happen in the states as I predict it will also trigger the fall in the few countries that also allow software patents.
From a Linux desktop standpoint alone it would finally allow for built in support of DVD, MP3s, etc. Some projects such as GIMP won't have to work around patents to get the features they want built in. Open source driver support might increase..
Even from a closed source perspective Microsoft wouldn't have to worry about getting sued and having to purchase massive amounts of patents to defend itself. They could focus of providing a better user experience without restrictions that patents encumber you with.
Everyone wins... apart from the lawyers..
Re:FSF and RMS (Score:5, Insightful)
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I think the real problem with software in general is that it typically has a 5 to 10 year lifespan. Most projects in operation that long aren't using any of their original code by that time.
Re:FSF and RMS (Score:5, Insightful)
What this does is that any company not in the patent cross licensing network gets forced out of business, and any innovations they do have on a work that is claimed to be patented end up being able to be used by the holder.
Last, there are companies out there who buy obscure patents looking for something that related so a company's mainstay. The small company then sues the large company. Almost always, this is settled secretly for lots of money before it goes to court. Even if the patent is questionable, the larger company is on the defensive because if for some reason it does get upheld in a court, its the end of their business.
I used to have faith in the patent system, where people who were infringing were doing so deliberately, similar to people who made counterfeit software boxes. Now, the barrier for tripping over some obscure patent is so low, almost any company is at risk.
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I'm not 100% convinced this is true. On the surface it seems good, but I'm sure there's secondary fallout that's not being considered. Analogous (but obviously not exactly like) to the: if you can't patent drugs, sick people can get more drugs... but now the incentive and funding to research drugs has dropped dramatically, so there's a cost for that to ever
Re:FSF and RMS (Score:5, Insightful)
I think everyone with an ounce of sense will agree that:
What does this tell us? Most of Europe doesn't allow software patents, and the U.S. didn't prior to 1981, so clearly patents were not a necessary incentive for companies to innovate in the software space. Q.E.D.
Further, software is the only field that is protected by both patents and copyright. That's simply unreasonable, and there is no good reason for this to be the case. Drop one. We need to tell the corporate software world that if you don't mind giving up copyright protection, you can keep your patents. I dare say not a single company will choose that route, as copyright is a far more valuable tool for corporate software manufacturers.
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Re:FSF and RMS (Score:5, Interesting)
In fact, I'd go so far as to say that all of the major innovations in the field of computer software were created prior to the U.S. allowing patents, including:
When you get right down to it, my computer still basically works the same way as System 1.0 Mac, just with color graphics, a lot more general UI polish, and a lot more features. The basic overall feel, however, is still pretty much the same, only faster. Under the hood, most operating systems still work basically the same way as UNIX did in the 1970s. Computer hardware has gotten much faster and smaller, which has allowed lots of things to be possible that weren't feasible at the time, but even most of the things we think of as "new" like digital video editing date all the way back to the early 1970s, albeit on specialized computer hardware that would fill your entire garage. The only giant leaps since the 80s have been in hardware designs. and, to a limited degree, in the software necessary to support advancement in the hardware.
Where, then, are the huge leaps that software patent proponents promised? Why did those leaps basically dry up as software patents became entrenched in the U.S.? Outside of a few specialized areas like computer graphics and voice recognition, the computer industry basically has been stagnant since software patents became legal. Worse, most of the "revolutionary" ideas since then have either been evolutionary dead ends like NUMA and ccNUMA or have taken absurdly long to catch on like touch screens, which first appeared commercially in the early 80s, but outside of POS systems and PDAs/smartphones, are still almost nonexistent in the marketplace.
If you need proof that patents don't inherently result in increased innovation (at least in computers), the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Would the innovation slowdown have occurred in the same way if we didn't have patents? Maybe, but I can tell you that there is a lot less pure research being done in major tech companies now than at any time in the past couple of decades. If patents are supposed to encourage research spending, they are sure doing a lousy job of it.
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Journaling: I believe Ingres had it in the mid 70s
Parallel programming: Burroughs D825 (1962)
Distributed computing: OK - I'll concede that's fairly recent (mid 90s?), but that's more to do with networking improvements making it feasible than any other factor
Functional programming: LISP (1958)
OOP: Simula 67 (1967)
All old, old technology.
Software patents do nothing except enrich trolls and lawyers, and the fact of the matter is that people will continue to invent ne
Re:FSF and RMS (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you be sure of that? Most basic medical research is financed with government funds. Pharmaceutical companies generally finance only the last step of the research. That is, they do the testing necessary to bring a promising drug to market. Certainly if pharmaceuticals didn't handle the last step other sources would open up--likely more government funding. If that were the case it seems likely to me many more drugs would be studied including many that pharmaceuticals wouldn't bother with.
One also needs to factor in roadblocks to research when scientists hide their work until they can file for a patent. And consider the extra costs researchers encounter when they have to pay royalties on patented research techniques and patented source materials.
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Re:FSF and RMS (Score:4, Informative)
Well, look at it this way. We had lots of research going on in computer software, and then patents happened in the 80s, and since then, the research spending has basically dried up and real innovation (as opposed to mere incremental improvement) has dramatically slowed. Granted, we don't have a control group, so we can't definitively say that the slowdown was caused by patents, but we have seen enough examples of innovation being hampered by patents and enough research driven predominantly by the desire to get more patents instead of being driven by a desire to improve the state of the art that we can pretty clearly conclude that patents have a deleterious effect. The only thing that isn't clear is the extent to which this is the case, IMHO.
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What utter drivel. Copyright (which lasts far longer than patents) are the domain of software. Why is it that software of all "innovations" (God I hate that term) is the only one privileged enough to
Lobby groups (Score:2, Insightful)
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Congress didn't give us software patents. A judge did. Congress gave us a special court to argue it out though.
So far these folks have their heads up their arses (Score:4, Interesting)
Take the ten thousand dollars, multiply it by ten thousand, and use that to fly congressmen and women and senators to luxury resorts; buy the kids and grandkids of same tuition to ivy league universities; get them jobs on the boards of major corporations that pay big money with little or no responsibility... etc. etc. etc. If that doesn't work use the remaining money to find the weaknesses of same and exploit them. Just like the people who are paid to advocate software patents to legislators. Then you will get rid of the software patents. You have to fight fire with fire.
Nice polite little information campaigns and essay contests talking about giving it to the 'man' won't do squat. The only people who will listen to those are the people who already agree with you.
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Defining software patents (Score:5, Interesting)
This confirms what I already suspected - it is brutally difficult to define a software patent. It's one of those problems that seems easy at the onset, but gets more and more complicated the more you think it through.
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This prohibits far more than software patents - some types of medical treatments, manufacturing processes, and so on. That might be a good or bad thing, depending on how you look at it.
How would that be a bad thing? It would mean, A) Cheaper medicine (because you can buy the generic ones rather then the patented name-brand ones) B) Cheaper goods (because they could use more effecent manufacturing methods) and of course C) We might (actually) innovate past 2000 in software. I really don't see how that can be a bad thing.
Re:Defining software patents (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Defining software patents (Score:4, Informative)
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A) Cheaper medicine (because you can buy the generic ones rather then the patented name-brand ones)
complete drying up of AIDS research (who the hell wants to spend their life researching or fund researching it if there is not money in it?)
Feel free to insert some blurb about people's good nature, goodness, good intentions and whatever else you think they work for other than the money.
complete drying up of Alzheimer's research
complete drying up of obesity research... ok, that might be a plus since we might reconsider our diets.
no development of anti-biotics that would fight the newly emerging strai
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Patents are only 20 years. Copyrights are 100+ years. What do you want your drugs to be under?
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Who the hell wants to spend their life on developing free open source software? That's right, lots of people. Some people actually can and will care more about the human kind than themselves. And some people might even want to find a cure for someone they know.
Optimal solution would be that all countries would give money into same pool, where money would then be shared for research projects that would
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Of course, this has its issues, a manufacturing process would be hard to send a prototype of, other than perhaps the before, during, and after stage.
Re:Defining software patents (Score:4, Interesting)
What does this have to do with software patents, though? The problem isn't so much that ideas are patented (since one could send in source code of a program using the idea) but the insane crap that gets patented. Theoretically no patents are supposed to be awarded for obvious extensions of previous patents, but it seems more and more software patents are being awarded for things that are simply a different way of looking at things.
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Luckily, that's an implementation detail that can be sidestepped in a number of ways. For example, we could allow patenting things mostly as is done now, but make patents unenforceable against software by adopting the following rule: If something would not be infringing if its software were removed, then it is not infringing.
i thought i was out (Score:2)
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Math can't be patented for the same reason things like gravity can't be patented.
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And yet the evidence says otherwise...
They have a website? (Score:2, Funny)
Unique time to be alive (Score:5, Interesting)
Where can I make a donation? (Score:2)
Apparently there is.... (Score:5, Informative)
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A web site? (Score:5, Funny)
Why not just enforce the rules already in place? (Score:3, Insightful)
Analogy (Score:3, Insightful)
Software patents are against the nature of .... (Score:3, Interesting)
A similar slashdot story was just the day before see: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/29/0344258 [slashdot.org]
Honestly, this call for papers and award is along the lines of asking for more on top of what we already have, proof that going against nature will bring you harm.
i.e. step off the empire state building...you will fall and die. Drive a car into a solid wall @ 500 mph, you will die.
Make software patentable and you will suffer the consequence of contradicting nature just the same.
People are born everyday with a blank slate of knowledge, but do all these new people do things that kill themselves, so to find out it will kill them? NO!
So how much do we need to harm ourselves with software patents before those making it possible to patent software and contradict nature, learn?
see:Abstraction Physics [abstractionphysics.net] as the subject matter is fundamentally NOT about politics or economics, as organized crime has both a good economy and politics, but it doesn't make it honest and genuinely in touch with physical reality such that you can drive a car into a wall @ 500mph and live.
This software patent matter is really getting to be stupid on stupid. Software classification is not a human choice, but a human mental characteristic, and even stupid proves it.
Has anyone shown proof that driving a car into a wall @ 500mph will kill you, to those allowing software patents?
If not, then why are they not finding out for themselves?
If so then someone should point out that they should try 499mph to find out if it makes a difference. (re: all the abstract possibilities of proof for or against software patents)
Its really amazing how much money is being spent on such distorted efforts rather than producing the proof that software is not of patentable qualities.
Re:So, the basic argument against SW patents is... (Score:5, Insightful)
In short, I can get a patent for making a vacuum cleaner (minus prior art and such) but most software patents try to patent "a cleaning device using suction" and many of them decide to then go for "a *insert adjective* device using suction" and "a cleaning device using *insert word here*". And that is what makes software patents different.
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Re:So, the basic argument against SW patents is... (Score:5, Interesting)
http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/2059 [lambda-the-ultimate.org]
Maybe we could start with the birth of, say, Unix and pick our way forward in time, cataloging the various ideas, a la Aristotle. I think a graph of the count of genuinely new discoveries per year would drop off at a brisk pace.
But I don't think the USPTO can handle that sort of truth. Truth has deleterious effects on business models, you know.
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Re:So, the basic argument against SW patents is... (Score:4, Interesting)
We have to remember, it was a court ruling that added software patents to the system, not a well constructed law laying out definitions and boundaries. Our fearless (US) leaders decided it would be better to just create a court for disputes instead of defining some things that seriously seem to be out of whack. The result is the often trolled and abused system we take for granted today.
The so called "good guys" spent too much time fighting the process in an attempt to get some sanity to the ordeal. Now it seems that they have to play catch up and suffer the role of quarterback and getting sacked in the game that shouldn't need to be played while they build up their defensive line. And seeing how no analogy would be complete without a referece to a car, they drove a red car to the game.
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Re:So, the basic argument against SW patents is... (Score:4, Interesting)
He's trapped in the past. I'm sure there'd be an argument for why programming innovations of the last 10 years aren't really interesting or aren't as important as his Golden Age, just as there are people who think you can mathematically prove that rock was perfected in 1968. At best, you can make it work with a very narrow definition of what qualifies, just as you can prove that modern music has little innovation if you decide that only Gregorian Chant really qualifies as music.
Meanwhile, the world moves on and a generation of programming pioneers trades their vision for early admission to Future Fossil Fuels university.
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Re:So, the basic argument against SW patents is... (Score:4, Informative)
The baby is a baby cobra, so yes, we should throw it out.
Having no software patents at all would still be a massive improvement over what we currently have. And we don't know how to build a better system.
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Software is built from limited sets of CPU instructions. For 99% of the tasks that a computer has to do, there is one most efficien
Re:So, the basic argument against SW patents is... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, that's not the argument.
The argument used to justify any patents is that they promote progress. Our experience with patents in the specific case of software is that they actually hinder progress. Therefore, in order to promote progress, software patents should be abolished.
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Re:So, the basic argument against SW patents is... (Score:5, Interesting)
All software is a form of math, one technique can have completely different looking math but produces the same results such as the prior example. You can not patent math because you didn't invent anything, you just discovered the formula which was already there.
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Of course you can implement a computur program that implements the RSA algorithm... that is a little different.
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software patents AT the very least, should NOT APPLY TO OPEN SOURCE PROJECTS.
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Re:Obscurity (Score:4, Interesting)
That's not true. Very frequently, the scenario operates like this:
Person A has a need for a piece of software to do X.
Person A creates a piece of software to do X.
Person A is now in possession of a piece of software to do X, and has gained from it - he is "paid" by having something to do X, which he did not have before. He created it purely because he needed it. But he's still got that software. He doesn't need to bury it in a hole. So he releases it for other people to use, and in no way does this cost him anything.
Person B has a need for a piece of software to do X and Y. He takes person A's software, and extends it to do Y as well.
The cycle continues. Each person involved benefits from the existence of the software that they need, which would not otherwise exist. Since they all would have had to create the software anyway (since they needed it and it didn't exist), it costs them nothing to let other people use it. And all of them are better off because they have shared the work, rather than each one duplicating it themselves: giving it away has actually gained them something, it hasn't cost them something.
Behind most successful free software projects is a cycle of individual need and gain like this one.
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