Is The Lone Coder Dead? 809
CyNRG writes "The little guy. The one-person software company. Can it still exist today? That's me. I'm once again, after many years, writing my own commercial software to sell. A few things have changed: the patent feeding frenzy. This is my main concern. My perception is that one must verify that you don't infringe on any patents when developing new cool software, and that the explosion of patents granted by the USPTO has reached epic proportions. If this perception is true, then that makes it almost impossible for the Lone Coder to create something new that doesn't infringe on other patents. The amount of money required to perform the due diligence research seems like it would be greater than the amount of money needed to develop the software, or even the total revenues that the software could ever generate. Please someone tell me I'm wrong!" Is he?
Of course not (Score:5, Informative)
Not if you're Jeff Minter (Score:5, Informative)
So... no. That said, I know lots of other people that have two-three person teams that make a nice bit of cash here and there from coding.
As long as your code is good, it doesn't crash, and my grandma can use it without resorting to profanity, you'll make a nice piece of money.
Not alot, but maybe enough if you hire a good enough marketer.
Economist article (Score:5, Informative)
http://economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?sto
Re:I am not a lawyer (Score:3, Informative)
Remember, ignorence is no excuse in court.
Re:I am not a lawyer (Score:5, Informative)
Spiderweb software, and others... (Score:5, Informative)
See http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/ [spiderwebsoftware.com].
Thomas Warfield, author of Pretty Good Solitaire, Pretty Good Majongg, etc., is also a Lone Coder.
See http://www.asharewarelife.com/ [asharewarelife.com].
See generally discussion on "micro-isvs" at http://www.microisv.com/ [microisv.com].
Re:I am not a lawyer (Score:3, Informative)
That's kinda the point. With all the ridiculous software patents, it's a minefield in which you could unwittingly step on an existing patent unless you do some research beforehand.
Re:Bittorrent (Score:1, Informative)
"I maintain BitTorrent for a living. This is my only job."
what's not clear?
Re:I am not a lawyer (Score:5, Informative)
Damned if you do. Damned if you don't.
You are not wrong (Score:2, Informative)
This is why in Europe both, the free software community and the small and middle sized corporations are all fighting hard to prevent software patents: http://kwiki.ffii.org/SwpatcninoEn [ffii.org]6 078,00.htm [builder.com] of not researching what patents you might infringe will help you a bit by possibly avoiding punitive damages when/if you get sued, since you can claim not to have infringed willfully on a patent. But it won't decrease your lawyer bills for defending yourself in the slightest and neither will it decrease the future licensing costs. So if you are stepping on any big corporation's toes or are in the same business as another, failing company (*cough*SCO*cough*), it is highly likely you might get sued successfully for infringement
The Linus defense http://uk.builder.com/manage/work/0,39026594,2027
No, the Lone Coder is not dead (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not to worry... (Score:5, Informative)
Hmmmmn,
1) Some algorithms are easy to spot - you don't need the code.
2) Some patents cover business methods & possibly looknfeel.
3) The DMCA does not make all reverse engineering illegal.
I think patents are definitely a problem for all small software shops - closed or open.
Re:Not to worry... (Score:5, Informative)
Second, according to the DMCA reverse engineering is NOT illegal. Breaking copy encryption is.
Re:Bittorrent (Score:1, Informative)
Been there, done that. (Score:1, Informative)
So, dont look, start coding, and go nuts.
If you create a good product, people will buy it, and you will make money. The problem comes when you become successful, because someone either wants to buy you, or put you out of business. And in either case, all those patents that you ignored come up to bite you in the ass.
The only way you will have an exit strategy is if your product was good enough (i.e. pulling in enough $$$) that it forced the acquirer to ignore the potential patent problem and buy you anyway.
Luck.
Re:Who's going to sue you (Score:3, Informative)
And they didn't sue a 12 year old child, either. The ISP account wasn't in the kid's name, it was in the parent's name. If the parent isn't monitoring the kids, they deserve what they get.
Re:ok - you are wrong! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Bittorrent (Score:5, Informative)
Blizzard is the one using bittorrent to distribute its patches, and their implementation of it is exceedingly poor.
Willful Infringement (Score:1, Informative)
If you're going into something, you probably don't want to do research into patents to see if other people's patents cover it. If you do do research, make it a point to make it look like you didn't. Even if you see someone's patent and decide that your work doesn't infringe, you can still get hit with the 3x damages for willfull infringement if a court decides that you actually did infringe upon the patent. The best bet is to just go for it and then claim ignorance after the fact, and try damn hard to argue your case against them. That way you won't get hit with the willful infringement and you still have a slight shot in the dark of getting out of it.
Not at all (Score:1, Informative)
Recently I was asked to do a bit of business research in a certain area of software; I went to download.com and the other usual places and discovered that the niche market for a certain utility was handily covered by 4 or so products, which upon investigation through whois and finding the owners of various LLC's from various State's Secretary's of State turned out to all be Lone Coders. All of them were real people who would answer email and two were willing to chat on the phone.
One issue raised in this post is that the existence of so many patents puts a huge financial burden on the individual who does something new, because "due diligence" requires them to do a lot of research.
I question this. I've read a lot of patent law ( http://uscode.house.gov/download/title_35.php ) but I don't recall seeing any such requirement.
The phrase "due diligence", in Law, generally refers to giving the same diligence to certain tasks involving other people's money that you would give to the same task involving your money -- an example would be a company officier who cares so little for his shareholder's money that he doesn't ask for multiple bids when renovating the company's building, but he gets 4 bids and bargins with all of them when he uses HIS money to renovate his own house. Does it even make sense to talk about "due diligence" when you are a Lone Coder, by definition risking your own time and money ?
economist: Return of the homebrew coder (Score:3, Informative)
It's too late, or never late enough. (Score:1, Informative)
His basic conclusion is that every significant piece of software infringes on some patent, so get over it.
Do they offer Corporation Registration Service ? (Score:4, Informative)
Physically, I doubt that Sealand can hold many a lone-coder, for they are just the size of a football field, in the middle of nowhere.
Virtually, maybe I can get my domain / website to be hosted there, and no one has the legal right to confiscate my server. But this still doesn't offer enough protection.
So we go to the third option - Legal
Unless Sealand is a internationally recognized sovereign country, anything registered there, whether be corporate entity or not, will NOT be recognized anywhere else.
The money made by corporation registered on Sealand - if they offer that - will be deemed "black money" in the rest of the world, and legal agencies from the Tax Department to FBI will harrass you whenever you transfer money out of your Sealand account into your local account.
So
On Mac, he/she still lives (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.lemkesoft.de/ [lemkesoft.de] Adrian Lemke, Author of Graphics Converter.
You meant single coders, those guys are single coding. I know more like 2-3 coder guys/gals , also use/buy their software.
What about RAR "labs"? We know its a single guy coding (Alexander Roshal)
If people buy the stuff they use, there will be many more "lonely coder" guys.
Re:ok - you are wrong! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Count me as a fellow Lone Coder (Score:3, Informative)
At any rate, all of *your* code is still BSD, and if someone wanted to create a BSDed fork of your code, they'd only have to remove the GPLed code and either leave the functionality out, or write (or obtain) a BSDed implementation. If you later find some BSDed code that does the same thing the GPLed code does, you can simply swap them, and you suddenly can release the entire package as BSD, not just your portion of it. Note that this does not somehow make the *collective work* "your work", but it does follow the licensing agreement of all the component parts.
I'll easily agree with you that licenses like BSD, MIT, the old X11 license, etc., are more "free" than GPL. Personally, all of the code I release is GPLed (or LGPLed). I'm selfish. Some of us want to maintain a little more control of our code.. Is that so wrong? Is it so wrong that we've put hours of our free time into some of this stuff, not getting paid one whit for it, but still want some amount of control over what people do with it? You apparently don't care what people do with your code, and I applaud you for being so selfless. But some of us do, and as long as we have some form of copyright law, you are bound to respect that.