The Dangers of a Patent War Chest 125
Timothy B. Lee writes "I've got an article in the New York Times in which I make the case against software patents. Expanding on a point I first made on my blog, I point out that Microsoft has had a change of heart on the patent issue. In 1991, Bill Gates worried that 'some large company will patent some obvious thing' and use it to blackmail smaller companies. Now that Microsoft is a large company with a patent war-chest of their own, they don't seem so concerned about abuse of the patent system. I then describe how Verizon's efforts to shut down Vonage are a perfect illustration of Gates' fears."
Principals and Profits (Score:2, Interesting)
I mean I sure as hell don't think their ought to be a tax break for owning a home but you can sure as hell bet that I'm going to take that deduction so long as it's the law and I expect others to behave the same way. Campaigning to make the rules of the game more fair is one thing, but refusing to use the rules as they are just delays reform (hides problem) and puts you at an unfair disadvantage to all of those using the current rules.
Since Bill Gates seems to still be pushing for patent reform I'm not sure what their is to fault him on about this. Sure we might resent him because we want to win and he is using a stupid rule to get ahead but he is doing nothing immoral. In fact his fiduciary duty to MS shareholders means it might very well be immoral not to use patents against his competitors.
Admittedly if Gates started using MS patents to go directly after free software itself (getting injunctions on linux distribution) that starts to get a bit more grey. However, so long as he is just going after distributors and making them sign cross-licensing agreements it's just part of the corporate game. After all the primary thing that MS gets out of the Novell deal is assurance from novell not to sue for patent infringements, i.e., a defense against the assertion of patents by free software vendors.
As a strategy matter I think the open source movement's failure to accumulate a large centralized patent warchest is hurting us. If the GNU/FSF people actively accumulated a centralized patent warchest I suspect we could have made a deal with MS not to sue for patent infringement. We need to lobby for changes to the patent laws but until then we, just like MS, need to play using the current rules.
undisclosed balance-sheet liability .. (Score:4, Interesting)
How many companies apart from Microsoft make allegations that Linux violates their patents.
every Linux customer has an undisclosed balance-sheet liability [virtuallinux.org]
was Re:who's suing who?
Re:F*** Microsoft. (Score:1, Interesting)
Microsoft doesn't have to open source anything to show you what they have patented. All they have to do is show you the patent. In fact, they don't even have to do that. If the open source community were really that concerned, they'd hire a lawyer to dig through the patents that Microsoft controls. They are, after all, a matter of public record.
However, none of you people who complain so loudly will ever do that because all you want is to have some reason to bash someone else to make yourself feel better.
The whole world does not have to be open sourced, and it shouldn't be. Some very worthwhile pieces of software that are well worth the money aren't open sourced and it would be suicide for the companies who produce them to make them open source because they get all of their money from sales.
Yes, open source is nice. Yes, some companies who produce open source code succeed. No, it doesn't work for everyone.
To turn your argument on yourself - learn a little bit about how things really work. Until then, STFU. Otherwise, all you do is make yourself look like a fool and alienate yourself from the rest of the world, including people who used to be strong proponants of the community until it started acting more and more like this.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, a patent costs $3,650 over 12 years (Score:1, Interesting)
small entity:
basic filing fee $150
fee after 3.5yrs: $450
fee after 7.5yrs: $1150
fee after 11.5 yrs: $1,900
total: $3,650
Is $3,650 spread over 12 years an onerous charge?
Can you write your own patent? absolutely. I've done it 5 times.
I would normally agree, but ... (Score:2, Interesting)
After my problems with Vonage I did some research and found countless complaints against Vonage and there deplorable behavior in there treatment of customers. Doing a simple Google or Yahoo search for complaints against Vonage and the tactics they use you find the number is overwhelming. I even found out that Vonage's membership in the BBB was revoked, because of there practices, and now along with Texas, California and other states class action lawsuits are being brought against Vonage.
In the case of Vonage it seems this is the only way to get some justice. Even if using patient war chest is not a good idea. It is made necessary, because of all the underhanded, sympathetic judges, mostly Republican, backward dealing, that goes on with these billion dollar empires to circumvent the law and take away the consumers rights.
"Evil does as evil gets"
Re:who's suing who? (Score:1, Interesting)
In my opinion, it looks like Microsoft wants companies to think about what will happen when open source software violates somebody's patent. Microsoft says they have 235 patents that seem to be violated, so it's pretty likely that there are other people out there who have patents on components of the GNU/Linux system.
When Dell and Gateway were sued by Alcatel-Lucent for infringing on its MP3 patents, Microsoft stepped in. Dell and Gateway won't be paying the $1.5 billion in damages, Microsoft will. Who would step in when Dell gets sued for patent infringement in Ubuntu? (IANAL, but from my understanding, patents can only cover the software that is actually installed or executing on a machine; so a Windows install CD doesn't violate any patents, but Dell might be by installing it on a physical machine.)
In a way it is FUD. But anyone with a significant amount of money should think about the issue of software patents with all software that they use. With Microsoft software you can be reasonably sure that Microsoft will be sued before you will (and MS has explicit agreements with companies that would be likely targets, such as Dell and Gateway). If you develop your own software you know that you will be fully responsible for any patent lawsuits (e.g., building your own website that violates Amazon's 1-click patent). With Linux I think there is a bit of uncertainty over who will take responsibility. Will it be the end-user, the distributor, or the original developers?
techliberation and a grain of salt. (Score:1, Interesting)
I like what Lee says about pattents but the Communist era graphics are offensive. Mass murder [rotten.com] was committed under posters like that and many of the victims are still alive. Free software is NOT communism because software and ideas are not property, so the imagery is inappropriate to begin with.
Oh wait, look "WHERE WE WORK"
A large grain of salt should be taken when reading their stuff. When the Cato Institute brings out yellow stars on red backgrounds, they are usually flaming someone.
Other people [gnu.org] have also written about the dangers of software patents from a more fundamental perspective. It's not enough to say that software patents can be economically harmful because they are also morally and legally wrong. If we apply tests like that, we can avoid the financial harms later. When we don't we end up where we are.
You have to realize... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:techliberation and a grain of salt. (Score:2, Interesting)
Even for you, twit(ter) that is a pretty bold self-contradictory sentence.
Microsoft blah blah blah (Score:2, Interesting)
Regardless of what Microsoft's escaped zoo animals say, it has absolutely no interest in interoperability, their interest is to remain the only desktop and server software vendor, and NOTHING else.
I would also suggest that open source developers don't actually need Microsoft's help or money, but if Microsoft wants to help they can grant patent rights to implementations of NTFS or SMB, including modifications and all future users of those modifications. Those are valid patents I'm sure, the rest is invalid, you can't patent universal ideas.
Re:One of the big problems (Score:3, Interesting)