"Your criticisms are completely wrong": Stallman on software patents

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/11/your-criticisms-are-completely-wrong-stallman-on-software-patents/

by markshepard • 14 years ago

274 198 14 years ago

debacle2• 14 years ago

> Speech recognition, for example, is very patent-intensive.

Speech recognition is patent-encumbered, not patent-intensive. Anyone who has done any research into the field would know that.

tankbot10• 14 years ago

Serious question: What is the difference between patent-intensive and patent-encumbered?

ericflo• 14 years ago

Encumbered is a pejorative.

thirdtruck4• 14 years ago

I would compare it to the idea of international travel as "passport intensive" or of the recording industry as "lawsuit intensive".

debacle2• 14 years ago

Patent-encumbered industries are industries where innovation is not occurring due to patent strangulation. Patent-intensive industries are those which require patent protection to protect the R&D investments of corporations and ensure innovation.

Patent-encumbered: mobile phones

Patent-intensive: artificial joints

GotAnyMegadeth• 14 years ago

> Pinned to his chest was a large white button: "Pay Cash—Don't Be Tracked."

Looking at the photo, it looks like it actually says "Don't Be Tracked—Pay Cash."

josephagoss3• 14 years ago

How long until its "Don't Be Tracked-Pay Bitcoin." :)

astrodust3• 14 years ago

Every single transaction in Bitcoin is tracked and published. Why do people think this is even remotely close to anonymous?

markshepard• 14 years ago

This is definitely an issue to be tackled. After working in a large software company I can attest to the fact that ridiculous stuff that are patented just to increase the portfolio.

tjic• 14 years ago

I'm glad to see that RMS is using his trademark good manners to reach out to the undecided middle.

nealabq• 14 years ago

If you want reform, be polite. If you want revolution, don't bother.

Tyrannosaurs3• 14 years ago

If he's not interested in converting these people then can I suggest going to a conference full of them might be a waste of his and everyone else's time?

danso6• 14 years ago

Revolutions are won by winning over the masses. So this is not an either-or dichotomy.

yungchin• 14 years ago

To be fair, the article doesn't relate what the "insults" (Stallman's words) were that provoked his reaction.

fl3tch• 14 years ago

It certainly isn't trademarked. :)

silentmars4• 14 years ago

I kind of like the image of Stallman standing up and blasting away at these legal people offering half-baked ideas for a problem they only barely understand at the 10,000-foot level.

Symmetry• 14 years ago

Yes, but by being himself he makes Google seem much less extreme and more centrist.

See http://lesswrong.com/lw/m9/aschs_conformity_experiment/

aw3c24• 14 years ago

"Streaming online would require use of [the] Microsoft Silverlight plug-in, which would pressure people to use proprietary software," explained Andrew Chin

just for the record, that statement is absolutely incorrect. you can offer streams and watch streams just fine with free and open-source software. for example with ogg theora or webm.

phaedrix• 14 years ago

Guessing they meant the conference only uses Silverlight for streaming.

aw3c24• 14 years ago

I guess so too but phrases like that are going against free software/content/everything. It gives the reader the impression of requirement of cost and proprietary technology.

worldsayshi• 14 years ago

"The crowd was told a recording would be made available later in OGG or WebM format."

Two lines down. I guess that line could have been added later..

aw3c24• 14 years ago

That line is about recordings for download, not streaming.

belorn2• 14 years ago

Richard stallman has always been eccentric and unwavering in his stand on politics around software.

Somehow, people find this odd, wrong, and or bad, and I dont understand it. On basically all political issues, unwavering is a good attribute. Even being an eccentric is better than not caring for the issue. eccentricness is often a key aspect before a change reach a critical mass.

Take a random politician opinion about abortion or nuclear power or any other common political subject. Say his/her opinion is "well, some should be able to do it, but then again there are problems so maybe not, and the issue is not one that need to be address today, and the system today do continue to work, and well, legal greyness is not that big of an issue, only for those in the courts...".

Clear, direct, and consistent opinion is a good thing. Diplomacy and "meeting half-way" has it places, but in politics, there is also times when it should be clearly avoided. In software politics, there are plenty of people working the diplomatic route. There is no shortage of diplomats, and a few eccentric and unwavering voices is then much more useful to maintain the goals of where we want to actually go without moving the goal in favor of diplomacy.

Nursie• 14 years ago

I weirdly agree and disagree with you :)

Stallman's ethical and philosophical approach is awesome, and his unwavering stand behind those things is also. I don't agree with everything the man says, but I agree with a lot of it and it's clear he's thought it all through.

I really, really, really hate this when applied to politicians though, because they ought to change their positions based on evidence. When they're crowing about how unwavering they are it's usually because they're flying in the face of common sense and raw, obvious fact.

Tyrannosaurs3• 14 years ago

This comes down to what the basis for beliefs are - as the quote goes you're entitled to your own opinion, you're not entitled to your own facts.

Politicians are an odd breed though. By the time you've made it to elected office you've almost certainly had your beliefs and how (or even whether) you can express them so warped that I almost think it's unfair to hold what they say against them. They're the product of a screwed up system - most of them are (or were) smart principled individuals until they got too close to government.

danso6• 14 years ago

> On basically all political issues, unwavering is a good attribute.

Only in the movies. In real life, this trait can be disastrous towards making any progress for the betterment of society.

tankbot10• 14 years ago

> Only in the movies.

You mean the movies made about people who were unwavering in real life? Gandhi, MLK, Lincoln are a few high-profile figures that spring to mind, but there are countless throughout history who have made a difference by standing up for what they believe in.

I understand your point, that romanticized notions rarely have a place in reality. But I think Stallman, even with all of his eccentricities, is the perfect figurehead for these ideologies. He is a believer, and that gives others permission to believe themselves. It's a very powerful thing.

bcgraham• 14 years ago

I think being unwavering in ideology is bad, but being unwavering for a policy is good - i.e., 13th amendment, civil rights act, etc.

jt2190• 14 years ago

Ironic that the parent split the rest of this conversation thread into two unwavering camps about whether "unwavering" is a good attribute or not.

If you see Stallman's role as the personification of an ideal, you probably laud his "unwavering" position. If you see his role as that of a pragmatic politician, who should try and find small wins when large wins are out of reach, you see probably find his "unwavering" as impractical.

specialist4• 14 years ago

You've lobbied? I have. With some minor successes. Being unwavering in your principles is a critical success factor.

jimbokun• 14 years ago

Name me 10 hackers who have had a bigger impact on society than Stallman and the GNU Public License. We live in a world with so much free and open source software all around us, it's easy to forget the role Stallman's unwavering advocacy has played in creating this reality.

bcbrown• 14 years ago

I would say that progress comes about when unwavering advocates win over the pragmatic people with the power to make change.

Both types are needed. Because Stallman is uncompromising, he'll never be in a position to make change. But he can pressure and try to convince those who are.

jrogers652• 14 years ago

Given the fact that this has been going on for a couple of decades now, do you think that it has been disastrous?

Personally, I think that it has had the opposite effect. OSS (both the software and the ideology behind it) has changed the world. Almost all computing appliances run OSS code or interface with other machines which do. People without much money can use state of the art software for free, leaving them more to spend on the basics. All of this has been due to an unwavering political attitude.

Perhaps it is not whether an attitude is unwavering which influences the net effect but the content itself. A good idea is a good idea whether you firmly believe in it or not. Firmly believing in a good idea has a positive impact whereas the same belief in a bad idea will have negative consequences.

rimantas• 14 years ago

  > On basically all political issues, unwavering is a good
  > attribute

If nothing changes, then yes. If situation changes and your stance does not, it may indicate less desirable things.

I'd understand Stallman's position in the world few decades ago, when almost all software was by developers for developers. In todays world it is bordering on absurd (imho).

coldpie• 14 years ago

Why, exactly? If you buy a piece of software and uncover a bug, why shouldn't you be able to pay someone to fix it? As a consumer, why wouldn't you demand this?

astrodust3• 14 years ago

I, for one, still oppose putting these "horseless carriages" on our roadways! The dangers of these contraptions are far from understood!

tedivm• 14 years ago

>On basically all political issues, unwavering is a good attribute.

The complete inability to compromise is the defining point of the republican party. I don't consider this to be a good attribute at all.

ajross3• 14 years ago

RMS is an activist, not a party. If you were to hand him control of the house of representatives, indeed, he's be pretty damaging. That doesn't mean his ideas are wrong.

I spent years in the "the FSF are unrealistic nuts standing in the way of open source" camp too. The problem, looking back on those years, is that RMS was right about pretty much everything that mattered. I give him a lot of slack these days in my personal judgements, and the occasional shouting match with a law professor seems like a small price to pay.

mkr-hn• 14 years ago

"Unwavering" is a good prefix for a lot of things. "Unwavering advocate for software freedom" is good. "Unwavering support for free software projects" is another. "Unwavering asshole" is the part that causes problems.

rogerbinns• 14 years ago

Quite frankly that is the worst possible thing. For some bizarre reason we expect politicians to have an opinion, never change it and be right. I'd much rather a politician update their opinions based on new information, evidence and research that comes in. Slavishly sticking to something despite changes in information, evidence and research is really stupid.

eggnet• 14 years ago

Unwavering means not constantly changing the weight you give to specific pros and cons which ultimately results in changing your mind about the main issue in question. It is the opposite of indecisive.

You are confusing unwavering with stubborn. A stubborn person would not react to new evidence that invalidates their beliefs. An unwavering person would.

arrrg• 14 years ago

I think Stallman’s moral worldview is wrong and misguided. That’s why I disagree with him. I also think that unwavering stubbornness is a negative trait, not a positive one, but that is rather secondary.

specialist4• 14 years ago

Stallman is an ultimatist. Just like the NRA, ACLU, NARAL, BBV, etc.

His role is to yank the Overton Window back towards rationality. Meaning his job is to create the space for a more constructive policy debate.

Stallman is not a politician or a diplomat. Nor should he be. Trading horses and compromise is someone else's problem.

belorn2• 14 years ago

Agree. I used politician to mean a person with views and driving force around political issues, and not specifically a career negotiator. Ultimatist is a good technical term for the role he commonly occupies.

justin66• 14 years ago

> Richard stallman has always been eccentric and unwavering in his stand on politics around software. Somehow, people find this odd, wrong, and or bad, and I dont understand it.

"Eccentric" is synonymous with "odd". It would be irrational if people somehow found him eccentric and not odd.

dllthomas5• 14 years ago

Unwavering philosophy, in the face of shifts in opinion: good, provided the philosophy was something we approve of in the first place.

Unwavering opinions, in the face of shifts in the situation: bad.

Sometimes, it's hard to distinguish the two.

There's a separate, important question of how much to prioritize strategy versus tactics. Probably, we need some people to keep an eye on each, but unfortunately infighting can get bitter.

pessimizer2• 14 years ago

The situation doesn't seem to have changed, other than the SaaS loophole which was accounted for in GPLv3.

moo• 14 years ago

If Stallman took a compromised path then his organization would fill with people who agreed with this compromised path. They would mouth Stallman's Free Software position knowing in action the agenda is different. People would claim to support Stallman but would have the agenda of keeping software patents but maybe controlling unhealthy patent trolls. Then Stallman would have to have purges to get rid of these people who have this alternate agenda.

demallien2• 14 years ago

Actually, I don't know about his stance being 'unwavering'. The iconic story of why he got into the whole free software things to start with was because he wanted to modify the source code of a laser printer, which is surely not a general purpose computing device. He appears to have stepped away from arguing that he should have access to firmware... Either that or he thinks that firmware should be patentable, but that you should be allowed to freely modify and distribute it anyway, which kind of defeats the purpose of patenting it.

Shorel3• 14 years ago

We simply dislike the GPL (for our projects) because we want to use more permissive licenses.

He wants everyone to only use the GPL and ignore everything that's not GPL, he even dislikes the term 'Open Source' and the rest of the Libre licenses.

That's a clash of interests and the reason for our dislike.

nicholassmith4• 14 years ago

"while Google abhors them, its arch-rival Microsoft is increasingly enthusiastic about them."

Wait, what? Google abhors patents? So all the patents they've been buying up is because they abhor them so much?

notdrunkatall• 14 years ago

I don't have a dog in this race, but the statement was that Google abhors patent trolls, not patents. If they're buying up patents with the intent to use them to build something rather than flip them, that is not inconsistent.

nicholassmith4• 14 years ago

So if Google abhors patent trolls, why would Microsoft be enthusiastic about patent trolls? The statement would be nuts.

vibrunazo2• 14 years ago

Do you think they enjoy wasting $6b of development money to avoid being sued?

nicholassmith4• 14 years ago

They can't find them that abhorrent if they're willing to be involved in the arms race at all.

gridaphobe• 14 years ago

Isn't Google one of the few corporations that hasn't started using patents offensively? Assuming that's the case, I think it would be reasonable to stockpile patents defensively, even if they abhor patents.

It's just a terrible situation, the only way for google (or any other software company) to protects themselves from certain death is to build up a defensive barrier of patents. And I think this is a great argument for abolishing software patents entirely.

nicholassmith4• 14 years ago

I think they've used their patents to go on the offensive at least once (post Motorola acquisition), and indirectly by transferring patents to HTC. So, that kind of makes me puzzled by the whole 'they find them abhorrent' aspect. If they did, they wouldn't be using any of their patents like that.

jrogers652• 14 years ago

It's all well and good that we are attempting to address the software patent system but the myth of beneficial medical patents still prevails. If you are of the opinion that medical patents are necessary, please read through this document - http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/against.h... - in particular, chapter 9. Just like software patents, medical patents have a long and rich history of stifling innovation. Don't buy the lies wholesale - look at the evidence and make your own decision.

rhizome2• 14 years ago

Medical patents are only necessary to preserve inflated pricing models intended to support the owner's (and/or licensee's) advertising campaigns.

zanny5• 14 years ago

Which means they are necessary to preserve status-quo profit margins. And the people with the microphone who control the hand of law are those who really like their status-quo.

jobu• 14 years ago

The thing is I would actually favor software patents if it required the patent applicant to submit all related source code to the public domain. Software is the only medium of creation that is essentially a double-monopoly with copyright and patent protection.

thirdtruck4• 14 years ago

You've hit on one of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to software patents: by the time you've described the "invention" at a low-enough level to actually allow replication by future patent readers, the resulting patent would be nigh-indistinguishable from actual code.

dllthomas5• 14 years ago

And/or would be math.

diminoten2• 14 years ago

"Software patents" aren't implementation specific. I can get a "software patent" on my business model, written entirely in the English language.

Literal software patents don't exist in the US system. You don't patent code, you patent what code does, so if you had to submit code, that would put an undue burden on an inventor - now I have to write code to implement my new method of delivering coffee to your house? But I don't even use any code!

fastball• 14 years ago

Stallman was the only speaker that day who wasn't streamed.

>"Streaming online would require use of [the] Microsoft Silverlight plug-in, which would pressure people to use proprietary software. Dr. Stallman considers it wrong to pressure people to do that."

Why is Silverlight necessary? http://blog.webmproject.org/2010/12/live-streaming-webm-with...

silentmars4• 14 years ago

He was likely talking about the situation in that particular conference, which was using Silverlight for its streaming.

archagon• 14 years ago

I didn't realize Stallman was licensed under the GPL!

silentmars4• 14 years ago

I read most of the transcripts of the Oracle v Google trial. This was a case where both sides had highly paid expert legal teams staffed with the best lawyers in the country that spent an enormous amount of time preparing to argue a case about patents and copyright in software.

What jumped out at me, and I imagine anyone else on HN who read these transcripts, was that despite what was a set of the optimum circumstances for lawyers dealing with software issues, none of them had the slightest idea what they were talking about. They were way off the mark. "What is an API?" - a central issue to the case. The lawyers from neither side understood the answer. "How do people use a programming language?" Again, both sides were desperately clueless (although Oracle's Boies was obviously more so, sometimes hilariously.)

So often in reading those transcripts I wanted to grab one of the lawyers and scream in his face, "you idiot!! What the hell is wrong with you?!? Are you stupid????"

The situation with software patents is the same - the same clueless legal people are having the same clueless legal discussion about it. They don't understand how software works, they don't understand what software patents really mean, they don't understand the marketplace, and they certainly don't understand programming. Unlike me, who just sits back and screams in my own head at the clueless people who are the self-appointed architects of the legal world in which software developers and entrepreneurs will live and work, Richard Stallman is standing up and screaming in their faces about it. It must feel satisfying to do that. Someone needs to.

zanny5• 14 years ago

The fault of most modern politics is that politicians are taking action on issues they have no idea about, and the only words they hear about such problems are those paid for with the largest pocketbooks.

jlgreco2• 14 years ago

I think the fault runs even deeper than that. The idea that "if lots of ignorant people work together and find common ground to agree on, something intelligent will pop out" seems to be a cornerstone that we have built our society upon. Two ignorant legal teams duking it out is not the recipe for a sensible outcome; the only thing that happens when one of them wins is that they can convince themselves that the victory must mean something profound.

The only hope for the system that I have seen so far is surprisingly intelligent and sensible judges injecting sanity into the system.. but that is hardly something to rely upon.

BenoitEssiambre2• 14 years ago

Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn't help to try to set legal precedents that extend todays extreme intellectual property obligations in software to legal documents.

When you come to think of it. A contract is very similar to a piece of code. The main difference is that it is to be executed by humans instead of machines and enforced by a legal system instead of a machine's design.

Contracts have been deemed non patentable and a high bar has been set for copyrightability compared to other text because of the requirement that contract language be well defined with particular sentences having an agreed upon interpretation based on court precedents.

This means lawyers writing contracts don't have to worry, for each sentence that they write, that it may be infringing on someone else having written a similar one. They also don't have to worry that a combination of clauses have been patented and they can't use it in their contract.

Programmers on the other hand worry about it for every new piece of code they write. The bar is so low for patentability and copyrightability that we pretty much know someone somewhere has patented a large part of the code we write. We just hope nobody with the patent is interested in going after us because we aren't worth the trouble. But there is always that feeling that if ever we become commercially successful, the trolls and wolves will be waiting to try to get a slice of our profits. This is quite an annoying disincentive to write new code or 'innovate' which in this case means just plain doing our job.

BenoitEssiambre2• 14 years ago

I was pondering this further and it would actually be conceivable with a bit of natural language processing and machine learning to build a 'verdict machine', maybe a Watson type of thing.

You would input legal documents, contracts and laws to 'program' the machine, It would read these legal documents and compile them into legal tests that depend on case facts.

Then when you needed to judge a case, you would enter the facts or fact probabilities about the case in the machine. It would then generate a verdict and tell you which legal tests passed or failed to arrive at the verdict.

Even it it was just used as support to help courts untangle cases or for law student as an educational tool, it could be a useful machine.

Here is the kicker: All contracts and laws are actually software code for this machine.

linuxhansl5• 14 years ago

So to be fair here, there were two issues at play:

1. Oracle's patents that Google supposedly violated. (And thank God most of those stupid patents were actually invalidated)

2. Oracle's copyright on its APIs that Google also supposedly violated. The API discussion involved the copyright part of the case, and here the question "What is an API" does become central, especially considering that the judge decided in the end that APIs are not copyrightable - when such a decision is made it'd better be crystal clear what is meant by an "API"

silentmars4• 14 years ago

Admittedly, the API example was not totally on point since it was dealing with copyright. However it illuminated the problem with lawyers even under the best of circumstances not understanding software and programming.

I agree that the question of "What is an API" was quite important for good reasons in that case. What was gravely concerning to me was that the lawyers from neither side had a clear idea of the answer, despite the fact that had the best possible set of circumstances for lawyers to get that kind of understanding. Specifically, their clients gave them access to some of the smartest people in the world, they had virtually unlimited time and money, and the lawyers themselves are some of the best in the country and were experienced in complex litigation with technical companies. Extend this kind of conceptual ignorance to the lawyers who are arguing about and making policy on software patents, and it's both terrifying and infuriating.

fpgeek• 14 years ago

> So often in reading those transcripts I wanted to grab one of the lawyers and scream in his face, "you idiot!! What the hell is wrong with you?!? Are you stupid????"

I can think of a couple of reasons that don't involve lawyers being stupid:

1. If the truth is against a client's interest, a lawyer is probably going to try to confuse the issue as much as possible (unless it seems tactically unwise for other reasons, of course).

2. IIRC, they were stuck with some bad precedent to work with (especially with respect to APIs). That meant they were often arguing issues in a broken frame, rather than from first principles. My understanding is they can't effectively make the first-principles argument until the appeals get to the court that created the precedent in the first place (or higher).

diminoten2• 14 years ago

> "Maybe it wouldn't be quite as good, but we would all be okay. None of us would be shafted."

So rather than reward the talented and ignore the ungifted, he'd rather punish the talented and ignore the ungifted?

dsego2• 14 years ago

stallman would be far more convincing if he would stop eating stuff from his feet (and drinking pepsi).

clux2• 14 years ago

You're saying arguments are more convincing if it wasn't for ad hominem x? Says more about you tbh.

dsego2• 14 years ago

it was more tongue-in-cheek, but whatever...

crusso2• 14 years ago

Those include creating key components of the free software system that he calls GNU/Linux (and many others call simply Linux)

I've always savored the irony of Stallman's fight to have content creators relinquish control of their creations while steadfastly refusing to let people just call Linux by the name they choose... while also attempting to steal top billing.

thirdtruck4• 14 years ago

I don't see the irony.

"The right to copy" exists only in so far as external forces limit inherent behavior. One could copy all day (as our brains do unbidden) without anyone but the copier being the wiser or needing to care.

The credit for one's labor, on the other hand, is an inherently rivalrous "good". Terms like "steal" have a place here, as it takes away from the measurable "social capital" earned by another's labor.

It's the difference between re-printing "Alice in Wonderland" and re-printing "Alice in Wonderland, Written by <Not Lewis Carroll>".

crusso2• 14 years ago

The credit for one's labor

I guess if you get to define the value and credit of one's labor, you can still maintain that there is a difference where one doesn't really exist.

The credit for one's labor, on the other hand, is an inherently rivalrous "good".

But encouraging content creators with financial incentives for creating things that consumers desire is not an inherently rivalrous good?

It's the difference between re-printing "Alice in Wonderland" and reprinting "Alice in Wonderland, Written by <Not Lewis Carroll>".

So you're okay with taking all financial rewards from the creators of content, but leave them the scraps of naming credit as though your framework is logical?

Meh... if you're going to steal from people, you might as go all the way.

Stallman is a hypocrite for demanding control of anything he creates while seeking to "free" everything everyone else creates.

riazrizvi• 14 years ago

Reduce the problem by reducing the software patent's lifespan, say to 7 years? That would force innovation to be more business-efficient and greatly reduce the number of patent trolls.

dlitz4• 14 years ago

But then when I come up with a good idea that I want to use in FOSS, I still have to keep it secret for days/weeks until it gets though a "patent-mining process" at whatever company I happen to be working for at the time.

There are a lot of costs associated with just having software patents at all, no matter what the duration. Can you demonstrate why we need patents in software so much that it justifies these costs, despite the fact that in practice, we did fine without them for 20 years?

madhadron• 14 years ago

Stallman's position on software patents is clear. It's the response from the rest of the world which is strange. There is one, simple statement that no one attempts to make and defend: "Stallman is wrong." I suspect it's because we all know that Stallman is right, many of us find it socially uncomfortable, and so there are all kinds of attempts to distance the ideas.

Personally I regard Stallman as one of the few moderate voices in software. Most discussion today is at an extreme best described as fascism: all privileges of decision and control reserved to a single person. Stallman is the moderate voice calling for a individual self-determination. He hasn't demanded any kind of social protections. Take a few minutes and imagine what the philosophy underlying the social democracies of Scandanavia would look like when applied to software.

georgemcbay• 14 years ago

I don't view Stallman as moderate at all and there are a large number of ideas he has that I disagree with, but I do agree with him on software patents.

Tloewald4• 14 years ago

So suppose I want to make a novel device, part of its functionality is software. I can't patent the software only the hardware. It's a mass market device, so I have an incentive to make the software a trade secret. I don't want people to conveniently reverse engineer my software so I design a custom CPU and store the code in encrypted form. That's a whole bunch of overhead that has been created by abolishing software patents.

Not only will this kind of thing happen, but it will become commonplace and convenient (e.g. there will be off the shelf CPU designs that support obfuscation). Imagine the digital world returning to the guild system — and the beauty of digital technology is that this could happen ridiculously fast.

Now, yes, trivial algorithms would not be worth protecting this way, and that's a Good Thing. But consider the inefficiencies and stupidity that will be created by abolishing software patents altogether. Oh and the DMCA will make any efforts to penetrate obfuscated software illegal in perpetuity.

linuxhansl5• 14 years ago

RMS has a clear definition. Software that runs on a general purpose computer should not be patentable.

bcoates5• 14 years ago

Why don't the anti-patent people use the simpler rule "Software cannot violate a patent".

So if someone makes a physical invention that does something they can patent it but if it's something a general purpose computer can be programmed to do, writing that program does not cause the computer to violate the patent.

Tloewald4• 14 years ago

So instead of getting economies of scale with general purpose computers we'll create a huge incentive to create special purpose silicon running obfuscated code. Perfect.

bcoates5• 14 years ago

That's fine. Trade secrets are already how most things work in software and it's a much better model. I don't want their dumb ideas; I don't want their bad code; and I don't care about not being able to repurpose subsidized hardware.

All I care about is removing the veto power the patent system gives random strangers have over my ability to develop things they have nothing to do with.

randomdata2• 14 years ago

Trade secrets are what patents were designed to protect against. So that current knowledge can be made available to future generations, at the cost of a short term of exclusivity to the one who holds the secret.

I feel the problem is that you can recreate many of the patents being granted today just by taking a quick glance at the implementation. What do future generations have to gain by knowing that one click can finalize a purchase on a website? Knowing what precise measurements of compounds when combined together can cure a disease has a little more merit.

Tloewald4• 14 years ago

This is a random veto power with a fixed lifespan in exchange ofr which the design is published. Trade secrets were an ongoing disaster. We're still trying to figure out how Stradivarius made violins, for example.

Yes, stupid things get patented. Yes, the system is corrupt. But don't assume some other "simple" system or non system will have no downside.

darkarmani• 14 years ago

> Not only will this kind of thing happen, but it will become commonplace and convenient...That's a whole bunch of overhead that has been created by abolishing software patents.

Which is it? Convenient or a whole bunch of overhead?

But then again, who cares? When is the last time anyone implemented a patented idea by looking at old patents? The idea is old by the time it is patented.

> Oh and the DMCA will make any efforts to penetrate obfuscated software illegal in perpetuity.

And that is worse than patent law? How would anyone know that obfuscated software was penetrated? That only comes into play when people uses snippets of firmware anyway. They already use DMCA like this, so it doesn't really matter.

The biggest problem is the John Carmack problem of sitting down to do a week of work in a domain, and creating something that you find out is already patented.

new299• 14 years ago

"Not only will this kind of thing happen, but it will become commonplace and convenient (e.g. there will be off the shelf CPU designs that support obfuscation). Imagine the digital world returning to the guild system — and the beauty of digital technology is that this could happen ridiculously fast."

Almost every embedded processor supports this kind of functionality (firmware in embedded flash can not be dumped). Encryption is also common place, as is code signing. I can't see you have much of a argument here, this stuff is already common place and used in addition (and sometimes in place of because it's actually a lot cheaper) software patents.

linuxhansl5• 14 years ago

As usually RMS is spot on. "Can a person program a new solution to a problem?" Any answer involving "no" seems a bit like insanity.

Duffy on the other hand misses the point (IMHO): "The question is, will you get very serious research that is patent-motivated?"

There is no "serious [software] research" that actually costs money. I have yet to be shown a single software patent that is the result of research and not just a spark on insight. Sparks of insights are great. The point to note, though, is that they would have happened anyway, they do not cost anything. Granting a legal monopoly on them does not benefit society as a whole.

I have no illusion that anything will change. Big companies (with the notable exception of Google) love software patents to keep the competition (especially new players) at bay. Patent trolls love patents, which they can exploit with extortion schemes. Last not least lawyers love software patents; not a single patent case is won or lost without the involved lawyers being rewarded handsomely.

randomdata2• 14 years ago

I have yet to be shown a single software patent that is the result of research and not just a spark on insight.

You could argue that every patent is just a spark of insight. However, how many sparks could be made if not for all the research that came before them?

Google's driverless car comes to mind as a well-known present-day software research project. When you boil down their achievements, they are all just small sparks of insight. But without all that funding and time put into the overall research, would those sparks have ever materialized? There is little reason for one of the algorithms they have developed to just pop into someone's head otherwise.

linuxhansl5• 14 years ago

I agree. It is not always clear cut.

I would stand by initial statement, though, that patents on software do not serve society as a whole.

cousin_it• 14 years ago

> I have yet to be shown a single software patent that is the result of research and not just a spark on insight.

For example, the MP3 and SIFT patents are based on research. Most programmers even today could not recreate these technologies starting from scratch.

PrinceGeo• 14 years ago

Software idea patents are bad for everyone, except patent lawyers.

grannyg00se• 14 years ago

"They cover common practices on the Internet, like showing an ad before a piece of content."

Why do patents like that get granted? And once they are, why aren't they extremely easy to invalidate after the fact? There is a non-trivial aspect to a patent that is supposed to be passed. It seems to me that at least enforcing that would be a nice step.

jrochkind1• 14 years ago

> Speech recognition, for example, is very patent-intensive."

The nytimes article with the guy who DID spend lots of time trying to innovate in speech recognition, recognized as a genius in the field, who was driven out by someone elses patent.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/08/technology/patent-wars-amo...

yason• 14 years ago

What we're missing is a fiscal disincentive, a cost of acquiring bad patents and suing others for violating them. Currently the equation is unbalanced, it's too cheap to harass others with patent litigation. The harmful effect of bad patents isn't factored in into the complete patenting scheme, thus the bad outcome. It's like spam.

Not that I support (software and any other) patents at all. I deliberately don't want my name on any patent. I might work on something that my employer wants to patent for they do pay for my time and creativity but I don't want my own name involved outside of that. This isn't just a principle; it has happened in reality. I wish Stallman was heard and patents were banished completely.

grellas• 14 years ago

Mr. Stallman's proposed solution is both simple and elegant: take all software that runs on a general purpose machine and legislate a "safe harbor" from patent claims for software falling in that category. This essentially would return the state of the law to what it was through the early 1990s, recognizing that software patents are fine when tied to specialized hardware or when they pertain to a special-purpose machine but not otherwise. Such a proposal is "radical" in dealing with the problem once and for all but is also remarkably conservative in only singling out for elimination the one category of patents most vulnerable to the potent objection that its retention does little or nothing to further the progress of science and hence doesn't warrant the monopoly protections afforded by the patent laws. The logic here should enable Congress to support it if it chose to reexamine the issues purely from a social and legal perspective.

Still, the practical issues remain daunting. What becomes of existing software patents, for example? Purists may say these are not "property" but massive dollars have been paid for the rights to own them and there will be huge resistance, not to mention constitutional objections, over any idea that these suddenly should be rendered worthless by legislative action. If these stay intact for the next 20+ years, what good does a safe harbor do in applying only prospectively? More important, those with a stake in the game - even relatively benign players such as Google - want to hedge and trim on the issues in order to protect their investments, and this means that inordinate pressure will be put on Congress not to single out software patents for elimination, emphasizing instead more limited measures to help fight trolls and so on.

With so much resistance, and with an apathetic public, how to build sufficient momentum to push Congress toward a true solution? Developers might lead this charge but I wonder. Founders are mostly not directly affected by software patents and neither are employees at bigger companies who are conscripted to keep churning them out. And those most directly hit in the patent wars resist reform to protect their own investments.

So Mr. Stallman finds himself alone in his position at this conference: not because his solution is bad but because of inordinately difficult practical barriers. At least we see in this conference that persons of influence in this area are finally willing to begin seeking incremental reform. If the worst of the abuses can be fixed (e.g., the troll issue), that at least is a start. And, who knows, maybe radical changes can occur after initial progress is made. Time will tell.

yuhong• 14 years ago

Or lets the courts do it via CLS vs Alice: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20121013192858600#c...

nickik• 14 years ago

>What becomes of existing software patents, for example? Purists may say these are not "property" but massive dollars have been paid for the rights to own them and there will be huge resistance, not to mention constitutional objections, over any idea that these suddenly should be rendered worthless by legislative action.

It is the same problem you have with an transistion. This was studied a lot in economics, specially around the socialist transistion.

One view is this, pay out the benefiters of the old system just so you can get the institutional change. Pull the benefiters to your side.

This could be hard with software patent but it is one way to get to institutional change.

Shorel3• 14 years ago

Stallman doesn't simply talk about a solution to a problem.

He talks about what the optimal Software Patents situation is, and why.

We are in dire straits because we ignored him 20 years ago.

It's our problem to either get to the optimal situation, or to try and fail.

beatgammit• 14 years ago

Maybe someone could patent this optimal Software Patents situation? Let's call it a design patent.

For completeness, let's patent the process of getting to this optimal Software Patent situation as well just for good measure.

numeral_two• 14 years ago

"YOUR ARGUMENT IS INVALID": RMS on most things.

http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/30612915.jpg

klrr• 14 years ago

Well, sad he act in such a fool'ish way here, raging are often resulting in that people rather trust the counter-arguments. I would acted just like that myself though, and I agree that some of the counter arguments was wrong. I highly wish RMS and the whole FSF community was more respected.

maked002• 14 years ago

Anyone who doubts the validity of getting rid of software patents need look no further than the fashion industry. Fashion cannot be patented, and there seems to be plenty of innovation and a flourishing business in that sector. The only thing that is appropriate in fashion is trademarks. It is just a bad idea to allow anyone to tax or monopolize ideas.

maked002• 14 years ago

The fashion industry does just fine without patents. Plenty of innovation and investment and profits going on there. Fashion relies on trademarks, not patents. Huge difference. We all lose when ideas/knowledge is monopolized or taxed by the few.

Shorel3• 14 years ago

As much as I dislike his GPL licences and prefer the MIT licenses because I find the GPL too limiting, I can't help but to be totally in agreement with him regarding Software Patents.

The best we can do is to abolish them.

"Your criticisms are completely wrong": Stallman on software patents

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