Re: tlug: RMS and Amazon...

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

Please be aware that few economists and few developers agree with me.
That said, I'm going to post my IMNSHO anyway ;-)

>>>>> "Manu" == Manuel M T Chakravarty <chak@example.com> writes:

    Manu> Coupled with the practical infeasibility[1] of researching
    Manu> whether a given piece of software infringes on any of the
    Manu> existing software patents, there is only one way to protect
    Manu> yourself: a big patent portfolio.

This in fact doesn't necessarily work, because of the existence of
"software development firms" whose primary activity is to buy up
patent rights and whose "developers" only read the works of others
looking for potential infringement that the real principals in the
firm (the lawyers) can then act on.  Of course, a large development
company presumably has enough revenues to support the legal staff and
possibly license fees that defense against this extortion entails.  So
it works against small firms and wildcat developers in any case.

    Manu> As a result, I (and many others) believe that software
    Manu> patents are a danger to the whole software industry and even
    Manu> some big companies (most notably Oracle[2]) oppose them.

    Manu> [1] I spare you the details of why it is infeasible; others
    Manu> have written enough about that.

This is a mistake.  This is in fact the flip side of _the_ central
problem of software engineering:  efficient software reuse.  If there
were a good way to reuse algorithms, it would include a way to search
for them.  This method could also be used to index software patents.

There are many other practical aspects to patent reform, including the
fact that patent claim language is allowed to be incredibly
obfuscated, so that only a court can actually determine what it means.
So even if the indexing problem were solved technically, the software
patent system would still need drastic reform.  But that issue of
"infeasible search" really is the heart of the "software crisis".

Although watching rms's behavior with respect to XEmacs code, it's
clear that some people who know where to look, look up their own
backsides instead.  Ah well....

    Manu> [2] I think, it was Oracle...

Oracle is one of them.  See
http://www.base.com/software-patents/statements/oracle.html.  A list
of statements there:

Companies Opposed to Software Patents 

    Oracle - Oracle's position is very well thought out and written. 
    Adobe 
    Autodesk 
    Borland - Borland's public statements are very cautious due to
              ongoing litigation.
    Wind River Systems 
    Synopsis 

Companies Concerned by Software Patents 

    Sun - Sun has pointed to a number of problems that currently exist
          with software patents, but does not have a company wide
          public policy.
    Time Warner 

Companies in Favor of Software Patents 

    IBM 
    Intel 
    Microsoft - Prior to the Stac v. Microsoft verdict. 
    Taligent 
    SGI - SGI's being in favor of software patents is a little hard to
          understand.


These links are organized on a software patent page there:
http://www.base.com/software-patents/software-patents.html.  And
there's always the LPF: http://lfp.ai.mit.edu/.

-- 
University of Tsukuba                Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences       Tel/fax: +81 (298) 53-5091
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What are those straight lines for?  "XEmacs rules."
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