Software Patents Good For Open Source? 150
schliz writes "The Australian software patent system could be used by open source developers to ensure their inventions remain available to the community, a conference organized by intellectual property authority IP Australia heard this week According to Australian inventor Ric Richardson, whose company came out on top of a multi-million dollar settlement with Microsoft in March, a world without software patents would be 'open slather for anybody who can just go faster than the next person.' Software developer Ben Sturmfels, whose 2010 anti-software-patent petition won the support of open source community members such as Jonathan Oxer, Andrew Tridgell, and software freedom activist Richard Stallman, disagreed."
Missing freedom (Score:2, Interesting)
The problem with patents is that it at the core cuts one human freedom, the freedom to think, and open source is all about freedom. Given one problem, you won't be able to solve it in the ways you think if those paths are being taken by patents all around the field. If i want to go to the second floor, i could build stairs, or an elevator, climb, and a few more options, if all those solutions (or close/similar enough) are patented, you can't solve that problem, no matter how you indepently got that solution.
There are a point in attribute the authorship of an idea to the first one that got it or published it, but that should not limit others to get that idea too. Getting it verbatim and trying to make a profit from someone's else idea is one thing, reaching the same conclusion indepently or even evolving/improving it is another. And if that attibution is "being able to make profit" that should not stop open source to implement that idea for no profit.
Not a story (Score:3, Interesting)
The core of the summary is this:
What a joke! Let me guess, Bates wants people to pay him to check patent applications for OSS. Prior art invalidates a patent. Simply publishing or releasing your software open source makes it prior art therefore preventing someone from claiming an "inventive step" - the usual requirement for a patent. Save your money.
Re:Stallman is anti-freedom (Score:4, Interesting)
Stallman may disagree, but he has shown the world how to write a "free" software license GPL3 that's so restrictive nobody in industry wants to use it.
Stallman's not a gawd. He has come up with some brilliant ideas. No, I don't agree with him on most things (especially politics), but wrt proprietary protocols, he's bang on! Lawyers and tort law flaws are destroying the US. RMS is the bleeding edge of reform of both. He points the way that you ought to go.
I don't care what he smells like or what he has between his toes. On the things he cares about, usually he's right. He's Arisotelian ("things as they could, and should, be"), which is all I ask of anybody. YMMV, and if so you suck, IMO.
Rock on Richard. Give 'em hell. No, I won't vote for you. I will follow you.
GNU software is free, not people (Score:5, Interesting)
Stallman may disagree, but he has shown the world how to write a "free" software license GPL3 that's so restrictive nobody in industry wants to use it.
You misunderstand the purpose of the GPL (and I did too until recently). GPL exists to make the software free. Something like BSD is meant to make the people free. Different licenses for different purposes.
Re:In theory... (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem, as usual, is not with the technicals, but with the business.
Software Patents solve a business need; that of investors to feel reassured that the thing they're investing in is worth the investment they're making.
An investor usually has no technical chops, so cannot determine if a software startup is doing something clever, innovative or hard-to-replicate. They're buying a stake in some Intellectual Property, and need to know that the property they're buying is 'real'. The first question asked of a software startup is 'what's your protection strategy for your IP?', because if there's no protection there's nothing 'real' that they can invest in. Patents are currently a good answer to this question.
This view is changing, slowly. Lean Startup http://theleanstartup.com/ [theleanstartup.com] (amongst others) is beginning to get people used to the concept that execution is more important than ideas, that IP is not a static thing that remains constant and can be owned like a piece of land. A business's IP should be changing the whole time, old ideas and executions discarded behind it as they become irrelevant in a changing market, new executions being constantly tested against the current market.
With this worldview, investors invest in people, not ideas, and the whole patent system becomes irrelevant.
Of course, as long as there's a valid business model for patent trolling then there'll be a set of businesses using that model to make money. But it becomes more and more visibly broken and hopefully we can get the politicians to see that.
Re:In theory... (Score:2, Interesting)
+5 insightful!
The idea of not having any software patents is attractive, since if one is an inventor/developer and one comes up w/ an idea on his/her own, it's ridiculous that one should be penalized if someone else had patented a similar idea. Until one gets to see the person who first patented a similar idea.
As you point out, if software patents did not exist, investors would feel less comfortable financing the person who comes up w/ the idea, since before long, any number of other people will come up w/ similar ideas, and some w/ better implementation practices. So the result of that would be innovation being a higher risk, and less likely, since the investors would feel that there's less financial protection for what the inventor is coming up w/, and also, the inventor himself would stand to be upstaged by people who took his idea, improved a few things about it, and ate his lunch. Those opposed to software patents are doing a terrific job protecting the rights of the latter, but a pathetic one by jeopartizing the chances of success of the former.
That brings us to the subject of obvious ideas that should never have been granted patents. Well, the more obvious the idea, if it is granted a patent, the value of the inventor's idea goes up for the investors, and he's likely to have a high probability of success in what he does. If it is not granted, the inventor has to patent something less obstructing about anyone who wants to duplicate his invention, driving that value down.
I too had been opposed to software patents, particularly obvious ones, but I was looking from the pov of just the other people trying to duplicate the inventions. But seeing this argument for the rights of the original inventors, I am more supportive of all patents - software or otherwise. Maybe, patent laws, rather than putting an expiry date on a patent, can cap the value of a license (be it a certain percentage of the value of a product/service) so that it's not prohibitively expensive for people who want to enter the market, but at the same time, protects the income stream of the original inventors.