CA Releases Patents to OSS 97
simonfairfax writes "ComputerWorld reports that Computer Associates International has released 14 patents to the opensource community, following IBM's lead. From the article: 'CA said it is joining IBM in encouraging other companies to create an industrywide "patent commons" in which patents are pledged royalty-free to further innovation in areas of broad interest to developers and users of IT.'"
Matter meets anti-matter (Score:5, Funny)
Suckers
Re:Matter meets anti-matter (Score:1)
Re:Matter meets anti-matter (Score:4, Informative)
If you really cared, you'd get your opinion in early: http://www.fsf.org/Members/peterb/gplv3 [fsf.org]
Re:Matter meets anti-matter (Score:1)
Re:Matter meets anti-matter (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/free-software
Re:Matter meets anti-matter (Score:1)
Better get my facts straight eh? Thanks
MOD PARENT INFORMATIVE! (Score:1)
Re:Matter meets anti-matter (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Matter meets anti-matter (Score:5, Informative)
The only comment from fsf on this is is that you will lose your license to use a particular piece of software if you sue users/creators of that piece of software for patent infringement. Not scary at all.
Besides the comment is meaningless, since a license is for users and redistributors of your code not the creator of the code. You can't license yourself out of your own code unless you transfer ownership to another party in a contractually valid way, or release to the public domain.
-- John.
Re:Matter meets anti-matter (Score:2)
No, but in this bizarro world you'd be unable to participate in any GPLv3 project since you would no longer be the sole owner.
Re:Matter meets anti-matter (Score:1)
Re:Matter meets anti-matter (Score:1)
You're new here, aren't you? I"m betting that you inherited that 4 digit uid from your dad.
license NOT for users (Score:2)
Licenses are quite often for (against?) users. (Score:3, Informative)
Typical click-through software licenses limit what you can do with software. For example, reverse engineering is not allowed by most proprietary software. When you click, you are forming a contract, and these contracts do hold up in court as can be seen in the recent bnetd related decision.
So what the software vendors cannot control by copyright, they can instead control by contract, at least to the extent that a "
Re:Licenses are quite often for (against?) users. (Score:2)
Re:Matter meets anti-matter (Score:2)
Um, what? CA are granting royalty-free licenses for open-source projects to use their patents. That's not the same as the open-source projects holding patents themselves.
Re:Matter meets anti-matter (Score:1)
General Patent License (Score:5, Interesting)
It would be very cool to see another clause saying that organization wishing to take advantage of this patent protection must also license all of their software patents under the same (or compatible) terms.
Rather than taking RMS's short-sighted "no patents at all" approach, the GPL could use patent protection the same way it uses copyright protection to incentivise developers to open-source their software (and patents).
Such an apporach would give open-source software a huge advantage over its proprietary counterpart: not ony would OSS developers get access to a vast selection of source code, but they would have royalty-free access to use certain techniques that would otherwise not be allowed. This could have a very strong viral effect beyond the power that the GPL currently wields.
If RMS could have fought against copyright protection, he would have--after all, "information wants to be free," right? Lacking that option, he used his own copyright protection to force others to willingly give up their own. Software patents are a reality. Rather than fight impotently against the ideal, we ought to harness that protection to further the open-source cause. The earlier it takes hold, the more powerful the move will become.
I rather like the idea of the FSF patenting its more clever ideas to prevent them from being used by closed-source developers. Right now OSS makes it easier to develop open source, the effect would be better if they also made it harder to survive developing closed source software.
Re:General Patent License (Score:1, Informative)
While it might surprise you, I still think I have to say it. Sorry, but patenting software isn't allowed over here. Where? Good old Europe of course. Even though we all thought the EU would change that, they have spared us for a while. Probably the lobbyists tried to get away too cheap. Or maybe there are a few intelligent politicians over there. I don't know for sure. Anyway, the use of software patents to help the cause of OSS won't really succed as long as you can just st
Arms race is not the answer (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's great that people have the guts, stamina and principles to do what they think is the long term right thing even though it's not the easy path.
Software patents simple is a horrible and flawed idea and so it should never be acknowledged as a viable way forward.
Re:Arms race is not the answer (Score:3, Informative)
I actually disagree with you here. The only possible arms race would be from completely closed source vendors (maybe Microsoft but I even doubt it there) and a much larger community of vendors interested in protecting their investment in a common good. For this reason, I can see licenses like the Apache license getting more common, and
Re:Arms race is not the answer (Score:1)
The crystal-clear fact is that the horse is already out of the barn. There are already *thousands* of questionable software patents out there, and they troll the depths like submarines, waiting to sink any potentially disruptive (read: useful) technology that threatens somebody's bottom line. And until the open source community can organize a real and pragmatic defense (really a potential counter-o
Re:General Patent License (Score:2)
Software patents are a reality.
They are only a reality in the US and a couple of other countries.
Rather than fight impotently against the ideal, we ought to harness that protection to further the open-source cause.
Though we Americans have proven to impotent in fighting software patents, Europeans are still duking it out and for most Asians their not an issue at all. If our government continues to hamper its programmers freedoms the open source cause will continue elsewhere unrestricted.
Re:General Patent License (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:General Patent License (Score:3, Informative)
> defending them (a requirement for them to be valid)
That is for trademarks, you have to defend them to prevent the words from taking on a meaning that refers to the class of product instead of the product itself, ie "hoover" now means the same as "vacuum cleaner" and the trademark is thus lost since they didn't sue housewives for discussing their new hoovers when really they bought a hoover from Electrolux(TM) or Dyson(TM).
> infringement is much more cut and dried for copyright.
It certainl
Re:General Patent License (Score:2)
But infringement *is* more cut and dried for copyright than patents. There is no similar concept to "prior art" in copyright. Either you copied it or you didn't. And usually it is easy to show. You always have a decent shot going up against a patent holder.
Re:General Patent License (Score:5, Insightful)
- We must be consistent when we say software patents are bad.
- Patent law is not copyright law, and copyright is fairly universally accepted as applying to code.
- If you publish it correctly then your prior work invalidates future patents.
- You run the risk of turning the GPL into an unenforceable license
It's not that it's a bad idea. The problem is that it doesn't send a clear message and it just wouldn't work as well. It would be better to send the message that if you release software under the GPL you renounce the patent liability to those who make derivative works from that code. This doesn't force people to release their code, but it ensure that they are either working on a derivative (which would obviously have to be GPL), have a license from the patent holder, or are infringing if they use the patented process. This also deals with patents without supporting them in any way, and could even be combined with words that strongly state the framers' views on patents.If we accept them by trying to enforce them then we are sending a message that they should be enforced against us. This means that we're, to a degree, accepting the one click patent and others. Free software advocates accept this as well, because they know that the measures they use to keep software Free rely on copyright.
Free software advocates accept this as well, because they know that the measures they use to keep software Free rely on copyright. Patents must be obtained and this costs money, few companies would be willing to patent ideas put into free software anyhow. What they're doing now isn't quite the same, they're simply saying that they won't sue Free software developers for using their patents, and typically those are patents that aren't making them any money anyhow.
Why patent something when you'll have documented evidence of prior works? You're fronting money to try to avoid a lawsuit that shouldn't happen. If it's going to happen then you haven't saved yourself anything because they'll just try to invalidate the patent or license, or they'll claim that they had prior works of their own preceding yours.
The GPL is already questioned by some. We generally laugh these people away. However, the first time someone sues a software company that they must either release something as open source or be found guilty of patent infringement then the reasonability of the license will probably come into question. A couple bad judges and you may invalidate the license on a lot of works. If nothing else, the patent aspect may be found useless because it will probably be difficult or impossible to show that you actually incurred damages for software that is Free for all to use.
Re:General Patent License (Score:2)
To quote RMS: you have been misinformed. Of course, to "force someone to do something willingly" is an obvious oxymoron, but that is not the main issue. RMS is not forcing anyone to give up their copyright, but, in order to incorporate code into a GNU project, he does require that you
Re:General Patent License (Score:1)
Perhaps considered it better to allow them only after a careful strategy had been designed?
"If RMS could have fought against copyright protection, he would have--after all, 'information wants to be free,' right?"
Actually, it's the BSD folks who have no need for copyrights. Without copyright the GPL couldn't require distribution of modified source without copyright; people would be free to release executables based on unreleased modificatio
Re:Matter meets anti-matter (Score:2)
If this trend picks up, software patents will become one of the silliest things around... like the silly idea software patents rightfully was.
Re:Matter meets anti-matter (Score:2)
Go! (Score:1)
Re:Go! (Score:1)
Yay (Score:5, Informative)
The actual list of patents can be found at CA's website [ca.com]
Why those patents? (Score:3, Interesting)
This seems a pretty strange list to me: someone knows why they have chosen those 14 patents? They have a specific application/library in mind?
Re:Why those patents? (Score:1)
I don't know whether they have any other patents.
Re:Yay (Score:3, Funny)
Oh dear... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Oh dear... (Score:2)
I mean, "CA Releases Patents to OSS" could have as well been a non-native speaker's or half-educated native speaker's rendering of "CA Releases Patents on OSS", right?
Re:Oh dear... (Score:1)
I think it's a reflection on the sad events in recent history: we've all been burned by Microsoft, and with the SCO lunacy and patents on just about anything, it's probably how we are being conditioned.
I'm going to work out how to file a patent on "Method to file obvious techniques with USPTO in such a way that the USPTO will not recognise it as obvious or frivolous". Then the next patent Microsoft submits I can sue them over...
Re:Oh dear... (Score:1)
A long circle around (Score:5, Insightful)
What we have turned this system into, that we now engineer a ways around it now? (but at least it's actually pretty nice to see that needs and deeds of the smart remains the same over the time despite the corporate USA.)
Re:A long circle around (Score:2)
Yes, but the problem is that human nature being what it is, turned the patent system into a three-ringed circus. The process has had, or will have, the exact opposite effect than was intended. It's very encouraging to see companies that understand this, and who are making attempts to correct a very lame, and very broken system.
Good step, but not the long term answer (Score:3, Insightful)
So can OSS now change these patents? (Score:2)
or, destroy the patents, release their contents to the public domain and establish existing software as prior art to any idiot who thinks he can re-apply for the patents and then sue the open source community won't be able to.
Actually, what we need in addition to the patent database is a prior art database that deters people from applying for patents
Re:Good step, but not the long term answer (Score:3, Interesting)
a) normative: do we need a patent system for sw
b) positive: do we have to get patents under a patent system which allows them
Answers
a) no. Get organised.
b) yes
If you want to fight software patents get organised. FFII did a wonderful job in Europe.
They also have an US list with only few subscribers yet. Please get subscribed. My experience is that it is all about critical mass.
http://lists.ffii.org/mailman/listinfo/us-parl [ffii.org]
Note: there are patent reform bill discussio
A nice gesture (Score:5, Insightful)
A patent pool could possibly help if it is actively defensive. In other words, it has to be structured like the GPL -- allowing some patent-pool entity to retaliate when a patent abuser like Amazon sues to enforce One-Click BS.
It could work such that by joining the patent pool, you get the right to use all of its patents but in return you have to place all of your own patents in the pool. (Unfortunately, there are many loopholes in this system, like creating multiple corporations to bypass the responsibility provisions... Also, it does nothing to address the "patent factories" who churn out hundreds of patents on basic concepts while selling no actual product.)
Anyway, the ideal solution is to get rid of software patents entirely. There is no reason for them to exist, except to allow people to monopolize ideas and hinder true invention.
GAH!!!! (Score:1, Troll)
O_O
I read that as "Amazon uses One-Click to sue and enforce BS."
One-click suing... got me scared for a moment...
For chrissakes, stop that! (Score:1, Troll)
We Promise We Won't Sue You! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:We Promise We Won't Sue You! (Score:2, Informative)
"In order to foster innovation and avoid the possibility that a party will take advantage of this pledge and then assert patents or other intellectual property rights of its own against Open Source Software, thereby limiting the freedom of Computer Associates or any other Open Source Software developer to create innovative software programs, the commitm
Re:We Promise We Won't Sue You! (Score:2)
Actually, giving it a little thought, this is a contract with anyone who uses this patent in creating open source software; the consideration is in the software developer restricting (constraining) his/her legal rights by releasing his/her software under an Open Source license.
Re:We Promise We Won't Sue You! (Score:1)
From the same page as before:
"It is our intent that this pledge be legally binding and enforceable by any open source software developer, distributor, or user who uses one or more of the 14 listed U.S. patents and/or the counterparts of these patents issued in other countries."
http://ca.com/patents/oss/ [ca.com]
IANAL, so I don't know if the page itself is legally binding, but I'm giving them the benifit of the doubt by assuming tha
Re:We Promise We Won't Sue You! (Score:2)
Essentially, if someone promises you that you can do something without being sued by them or acts in a way that give you good reason to believe they will not sue, and you rely on that promise or act, courts in most jurisdictions (particularly common law based jurisdictions like the US) wi
Re:We Promise We Won't Sue You! (Score:1)
My take is that it's a pledge, not a contract. It can't be a contract unless there are some joint parties to sign an agreement. Consideration is not necessary but a written contract between parties is required for it to be legally binding.
My take on this pledge is that CA won't sue you, unless you sue first, and then CA will use these pledged patents as amunition, if you use any of them. It's sort of like the patent clause on GPL3.
If you want it to be legally binding, then ideally the Patent C
Re:We Promise We Won't Sue You! (Score:2)
Actually, you have it backwards... consideration is requierd in order to have a legally binding contract; there is no requirement for there to be a written contract (aside from contracts concerning specific topics defined by statute where there is a much greater risk of fraud, such as anything involving real estate or contracts which cannot be performed in one year or less).
Also, while it might seem like this is a contract to no specific person and thus is a pledge, that
Ok, now I hate patents (Score:1, Interesting)
Public Domain: Ready and Waiting for Contributions (Score:5, Insightful)
What's wrong with releasing these patents into the public domain? We have a "fourth state", beyond the mysteriously dual states of "offensive" and "defensive" patents, and the vacuum of "no patent (yet)". Why do we need "an industrywide patent commons"? Why don't IBM and CA just release these patents into the public domain? They lose no more, and the "holding company" can't later be abused to control "submarine patents" that surface to catch entrapped users.
I'm sure that IBM's and CA's patent lawyers know more about the public domain than I do. They don't need me to think this up. But since we could get everything they're promising with a "public domain release", and they're not doing it, I suspect foul play.
Public Patents - an idea that used to be common (Score:4, Insightful)
A very good point. Originally, it used to be that most research at colleges, universities, and any federal or state authorities was - by default - created as a public domain patent. But sadly this is now regarded as IP (Intellectual Property), and zealously guarded by those same institutions that used to have it be free.
Sure, open source could use the revenue - and there will be revenue - from such private patents, but if they were released into the public domain it would free up innovation.
And freeing up innovation and creation is the whole point behind having a patent process in the first place. At least in the USA when they were created as part of the Constitution.
Re:Public Domain: Ready and Waiting for Contributi (Score:2)
Re:Public Domain: Ready and Waiting for Contributi (Score:2)
In theory the USPTO would find the prior art at patent application time and refuse it on those grounds, but in practice that doesn't appear to happen.
Re:Public Domain: Ready and Waiting for Contributi (Score:2)
Re:Public Domain: Ready and Waiting for Contributi (Score:2)
My guess? IBM doesn't see Free Software as competition, but as something they can use as part of the business solutions they sell to their customers. It's in their best interest to allow legal Free development of their patented methods.
On the other hand, I doubt they have any interest in allowing, say, Microsoft or Sun to use their IP. They've worked out a solution that allows their friends everything and their enemies nothing.
F
Re:Public Domain: Ready and Waiting for Contributi (Score:2)
Now, GPL-style viral "open-patent" licenses are another story. Li
The fourteen patents are: (Score:4, Funny)
Quote (Score:2, Interesting)
Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a soap bubble?
Seems relevant.
Re:CA? (Score:1)
CA patented OSS? (Score:1, Funny)
"Graphical Display of Data" patent? HA (Score:2)
Re:"Graphical Display of Data" patent? HA (Score:3, Insightful)
while(1)
{
ask operating system for list of processes / threads
compare to previous results
diff
new things are new
missing things are missing
store list for next pass
wait()
}
It even includes the term "periodically", telling me we're talking about polling for this information, not registering cal
Re:"Graphical Display of Data" patent? HA (Score:1)
The first sentence of the background of the invention in the patent reads "The use of computers to generate graphical displays which illustrate the relationships of underlying data is well known."
Clearly you didn't read into this one at all!
Those of us who bo
This is a scam (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't support this. Vote to abolish software patents completely! If mathematics can't be patented, why can algorithms!?
Surprise! Surprise! Surprise! (Score:1)
I must say I'm surprised to see the reactions to this article.
Real world reaction to good deed news usually is:
"Let no good deed go unpunished".
"Let no good deed go without being beaten to a bloody, beaten to death annihilation".
I think this is very good news, and quite possibly the first sign of a snowball rolling down a hill. Not that a certain nameless corporation will ever contribute any of it's patents to the patent pool.
You mean like the Public Domain? (Score:2)
This is not useful! (Score:2)
That may not be a problem with the GPL, where every derivation is under the GPL as well. It gets at best murky with the LGPL, and any BSD or MIT license would be completely subverted since as soon as you have commercial derivation - which these licenses explicitly allow - you lose the right to use the patents.
This, and the release of patents by IBM is a PR stunt, nothing more, nothing less.
Re:This is not AS useful as SOME might wish! (Score:4, Insightful)
Assuming that by "commercial applications", you mean, "proprietary, non-free, closed-source, applications," then your situation is unchanged. You have no more rights to use those patents than you did yesterday, but nobody on slashdot gives a rat's ass about you anyway, so, so what?
(Actually, you are, I'm sure, perfectly welcome to negotiate a patent license with CA if you don't like the terms of their generous public donation. But I suppose it's more fun to whine on slashdot.)
Otherwise, the answer is, your commercial applications have to be free/libre/open-source commercial applications. Then there's no problem.
> any BSD or MIT license would be completely subverted
"Completely subverted?" What are you? The hyperbole fairy? Try "somewhat limited" and I might go along with you. I mean, when I've released code under BSD or MIT licenses, I've been assuming that it was so that anyone could benefit freely from the code. Not just people creating proprietary commercial derivatives. If I'd known it was just for propietary commercial derivatives, I probably wouldn't have bothered!
> The only way to clean up this mess is to overhaul the patent system (unlikely) or to release the patents to the public, *without* any restrictions.
Well, either, a) you're the kind of insane BSD fanatic who makes the Stallmanites look like moderates, or b) you're a greedy bastard who just wants other people to give him free money. I won't speculate which. But, needless to say, I disagree with you. Not that I'm not sympathetic to your point of view; but I still disagree.
The point about the impact of this (and IBM's patent grant) on BSD/MIT licenses is an important one, and I'm glad you raised the point. I just wish you hadn't resorted to such histrionics in doing so.
Now THAT's really good news! (Score:1)
Waking up today and reading this is almost as good as waking up one day and finding out that people actually care about our planet, this is a good day!
Now...if only the medicinal business did the same thing, then poverty struck third-world countries would benefit from cheaper medicines due to more innovations that would follow because of the new free flow of formulas and less restrictive patent licensing.
This doesn't help the real problem (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't matter how many 'good guys' contribute patents to a patents common, as long as there are companies that are going to use patents as weapons in the marketplace.
Even more importantly, this doesn't address the fundemental problems with using patents on software in the first place. In a world with software patents, it will eventually become almost impossible to write code w/o having a staff of patent lawyers to make sure it isn't infringing. Eventually, the cost just to make sure code isn't infringing will become another barrier to entry for software companies. Patents and software aren't like oil and water, they are like Hydrogen and Oxygen. Sooner or later, they'll blow up in all our faces.
Re:This doesn't help the real problem (Score:2)
Have you ever applied for a patent? The process has died. It's only a legal quagmire and has no longer anything to do with techology advancement. I applied for one in Jan 2001. It took
Such PR plays are an insult to intelligent persons (Score:2)
For the record, here's what I said about IBM's 500 patents in January:
NOSOFTWAREPATENTS.COM CRITICIZES IBM FOR "DIVERSIONARY TACTICS" [nosoftwarepatents.com]
By the time I issued those comments, I didn't even know that those 500 IBM patents were mostly patents on the verge of expiration, and included many patents that had little to do wit