End Software Patents Project Comes Out Swinging 205
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."
Re:Defining software patents (Score:3, Informative)
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 strains of viruses (heard of staph? how bout sars?)
but yeah! let's show those pharm companies who is boss. I mean Michael Moore said so, so it must be true, right?Apparently there is.... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Defining software patents (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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.
Re:Halfway house works really well. (Score:2, Informative)
Mind you, there is nothing wrong with inventions where software is used to control stuff, but the inventive step must not reside in the software, otherwise you're granting patents for software despite Art. 52(2) EPC.
Bert
Who thinks that the halfway house is in practice a 3/4 way house.
Re:FSF and RMS (Score:3, Informative)
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 new ways of doing things in order to better achieve their goals, patents or not.