Re: tlug: RMS and Amazon...

["Manuel M. T. Chakravarty" <chak@example.com>]

"Scott M. Stone" <sstone@example.com> wrote,

> On Wed, 15 Dec 1999, Manuel M. T. Chakravarty wrote:
> > > Have you done any on the stuff you've written,
> > > Mr. Professional Programmer Scott, Sir?  If not, your
> > > professional ethics are, ah, questionable.  Can't afford
> > > it?  Tough---what happens if an infringement is proved,
> > > and some of your customers have to take down their systems
> > > or pay extortionary license fees?
> > 
> > I am actually always a bit surprised when a skilled software
> > engineer is ignorant of the problem, while at the some time
> > is becomes more difficult with each day to implement any
> > kind of sizeable software without infringing on some patent.
> 
> well, some of us software types don't like reading patent law... we leave
> that to managers.  That would be true for me and people like me who are
> the kind that will probably never be in business for ourselves :)

Sorry, but you just don't get it.  This is not about reading
patent law, neither is it entirely about reading the patents
themselves.  To be honest, I guess, you don't really
understand the difference between patent and copyright
protection.  

Copyright is predictable in that you usually don't copy
stuff code accidently.  Not so with patents.  If you happen
to have the same idea as some patent holder of whom you have
never heard and who's patent you have never seen, you are
liable if you use _your_ idea.  Even if you _do_not_ sell
the thing.  Coupled with the practical infeasibility[1] of
researching whether a given piece of software infringes on
any of the existing software patents, there is only one way
to protect yourself: a big patent portfolio.  Which
basically means that only very big cooperations have a
chance to survive if heavy use it made of software patents.
As a result, I (and many others) believe that software
patents are a danger to the whole software industry and even
some big companies (most notably Oracle[2]) oppose them.

Manuel

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

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