Applying for a new RubyForge project is harder than I thought :-), cause I have to choose a suitable license. I'd like to have a very liberal and easily understandable one like the MIT license [1] for example. But I also want to explicitly exclude companies holding software patents from this license. Do you know of any licenses with similar goals?
Regards,
Pit
Pit Capitain wrote:
Applying for a new RubyForge project is harder than I thought :-), cause I
have to choose a suitable license. I'd like to have a very liberal and
easily understandable one like the MIT license [1] for example. But I also
want to explicitly exclude companies holding software patents from this
license. Do you know of any licenses with similar goals?Regards,
Pit
Nothing exactly like that. Several licenses have patent defense clauses,
though. These clauses terminate the license if the licensee initiates a
patent infringement claim. You might check out the Academic Free License
(http://www.opensource.org/licenses/afl-2.1.php\). This is a BSD-style
license. Section 10 says
"Termination for Patent Action. This License shall terminate automatically
and You may no longer exercise any of the rights granted to You by this
License as of the date You commence an action, including a cross-claim or
counterclaim, against Licensor or any licensee alleging that the Original
Work infringes a patent. This termination provision shall not apply for an
action alleging patent infringement by combinations of the Original Work
with other software or hardware."
Lawrence Rosen wrote the AFL. His book _Open Source Licensing_ is a very
good resource if you're serious about this topic.
Pit Capitain wrote:
Applying for a new RubyForge project is harder than I thought :-), cause I have to choose a suitable license. I'd like to have a very liberal and easily understandable one like the MIT license [1] for example. But I also want to explicitly exclude companies holding software patents from this license. Do you know of any licenses with similar goals?
Regards,
Pit
Software patents have both positive and negative aspects. Anyone simply preaching that it is all bad or all good are merely displaying their ignorance.
I don't think many people look at the pros and cons of software patents. I think many just ride the bandwagon after listening to just one side of the argument (mindless sheep).
If software patents didn't exist, many fundamental software inventions would not be available to the public because companies or inventors that created them would be keeping them as TRADE SECRETS.
Companies merely HOLDING software patents can be any one of the following (and IMHO, they shouldn't be treated equally):
1. companies that hold "defensive" software patents because they filed it in order to be able to prove they invented it first--just in case another company sues them in the future. Or they may have acquired them by purchasing another software company which already owned some and have no plans to enforce them against others (but hold on to them because they represent value and a possible defense against attacking companies).
2. companies that actively enforce their patents to protect products they actually produce & sell (ie, a small startup that was afraid a Microsoft or other huge company can simply copy-cat their groundbreaking new product and crush them before they can even recover their life-savings they invested during development)
3. companies that don't produce anything except patents for the sole purpose of generating revenues exclusively from licensing. some people view this as a form of legalized extortion and i'm not sure i disagree with that opinion (this is what harms innovation).
Keep in mind that software patents are granted ONLY if the patent application provides SUFFICIENT DETAIL for an average person skilled in computer science to successfully create the described invention WITHOUT UNDUE EXPERIMENTATION. This is in addition to being non-obvious and novel (no prior art).
This means: 'give the general public a full description of your invention, and in exchange we [govt] will grant you a limited-time monopoly of about 15 years, after which everyone on the planet can copy/make/use your invention without your permission, thereby encouraging inventors to not only spend resources to invent but also to share with the public'. If we find prior art, then your patent will become unenforceable. And if people find ways to work-around your patent claims, then tough luck because you cannot stop them from making your invention.
If software patents are banished, something should be offered in its place which would:
1. encourage inventors to spend the upfront time & money to invent non-trivial software
2. to fully describe their new inventions to the general public in sufficient detail for others to successfully create the invention
Quoteing pit@capitain.de, on Thu, Jan 20, 2005 at 07:25:19PM +0900:
Applying for a new RubyForge project is harder than I thought :-), cause I
have to choose a suitable license. I'd like to have a very liberal and
easily understandable one like the MIT license [1] for example. But I also
want to explicitly exclude companies holding software patents from this
license. Do you know of any licenses with similar goals?
That might be most of the companies in the world with more than a dozen
people!
The GPL has some clauses effecting patents - if I recall correctly, if
you take GPL code and use it in an app, you have to licence all the
patents in that app to anybody who wants them. Don't know if thats
exactly what you want, though.
Cheers,
Sam
This makes any such prospective license discriminatory, and hence not
a valid Free Software or Open Source license. If your goal is to
prevent a patent holder from getting to you, licenses with a mutual
termination clause such as the MPL or the upcoming GPLv.3 (so I hear)
will serve. But what you seem to want is in violation of the essence
of what makes a license a Free/Open Source license in the first place.
On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 19:25:19 +0900, Pit Capitain <pit@capitain.de> wrote:
Applying for a new RubyForge project is harder than I thought :-), cause I have
to choose a suitable license. I'd like to have a very liberal and easily
understandable one like the MIT license [1] for example. But I also want to
explicitly exclude companies holding software patents from this license. Do you
know of any licenses with similar goals?
Thursday wrote:
If software patents are banished, something should be offered in its place which would:
1. encourage inventors to spend the upfront time & money to invent non-trivial software
2. to fully describe their new inventions to the general public in sufficient detail for others to successfully create the invention
And perhaps most importantly:
3. help protect small companies and startups from being raped by established companies who copycat their novel & non-obvious inventions and crush them with superior marketing & brand-name recognition
He wasn't preaching, he was simply stating a preference as to who else could use the code that he's releasing to the world for free. When _you_ release code to the world for free, you can set your own terms, though the tone of your post makes me guess that you're the sort of person who'd rather snipe from the sidelines than roll up his sleeves and get to work.
Francis Hwang
On Jan 20, 2005, at 9:06 AM, Thursday wrote:
Pit Capitain wrote:
Applying for a new RubyForge project is harder than I thought :-), cause I have to choose a suitable license. I'd like to have a very liberal and easily understandable one like the MIT license [1] for example. But I also want to explicitly exclude companies holding software patents from this license. Do you know of any licenses with similar goals?
Regards,
Pit
[1] http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.htmlSoftware patents have both positive and negative aspects. Anyone simply preaching that it is all bad or all good are merely displaying their ignorance.
Thursday wrote:
I don't think many people look at the pros and cons of software patents.
I've personally spent a while thinking about pros and cons, and I left a job at a medium-sized company partly because the powers that be insisted that I participate in the filing of a patent that I considered to be utterly bogus. The company used a typical "strategic warchest" defense to justify this strategy, but I don't believe they had any interest in filing quality patents. It was very much about quantity, and forget about quality.
Some companies, such as IBM, have much more stringent review boards, and they actually have fairly sane policies regarding patents (witness their patent licensing for free software projects). Unfortunately, IBM is the exception, not the rule.
If software patents didn't exist, many fundamental software inventions would not be available to the public because companies or inventors that created them would be keeping them as TRADE SECRETS.
I must challenge you to back up that assertion somehow. Software was not patentable for decades after the invention of the computer, but that did nothing to slow down progress in computer science, nor did it result in a situation where only high-powered companies had access to powerful algorithms.
If software was not patentable, companies would have trade secrets (which they still have, today, anyway), but other companies would be free to "re-invent" algorithms without fear of retribution just for using their own well-educated noggins.
There's no real value in algorithms, any more than there is intrinsic value to "E=mc^2" (and what if that had been patented?). The value is derived from the implementation and the service and all the other real work involved in selling and supporting software. Software patents are an artificial, and therefore fragile, attempt to assign value to mathematical thinking.
--
Glenn Parker | glenn.parker-AT-comcast.net | <http://www.tetrafoil.com/>
Hi Thursday,
[...]
Software patents have both positive and negative aspects. Anyone simply
preaching that it is all bad or all good are merely displaying their
ignorance.I don't think many people look at the pros and cons of software patents.
I think many just ride the bandwagon after listening to just one side
of the argument (mindless sheep).
Sorry, simply not true.
[...]
Keep in mind that software patents are granted ONLY if the patent
application provides SUFFICIENT DETAIL for an average person skilled in
computer science to successfully create the described invention WITHOUT
UNDUE EXPERIMENTATION. This is in addition to being non-obvious and
novel (no prior art).
Theoretically yes. But please do a little research and see _lots_ of
absolutely obvious patents (the e-shop by FFII is particularly entertaining:
http://webshop.ffii.org/\). I'm not saying that _necessarily_ most/all patents
are obvious, but obvious ones usually (can) do a lot of harm. And I don't see
non-obvious (I'm not even sure I've seen any of those) being
innovation-fostering.
And sorry, but I find it hilarious that without patents there won't be
innovation. Do you see companies _not_ innovating or developing new things
because they can't "protect" their "inventions"? Small bussinesses don't even
have money to file/defend patents... 
Sorry for the Off-Topic, but specially being European, I had to state that
people opposing patents aren't particularly mindless
On Thu, Jan 20, 2005 at 11:06:01PM +0900, Thursday wrote:
--
Esteban Manchado Velázquez <zoso@foton.es> - http://www.foton.es
EuropeSwPatentFree - http://EuropeSwPatentFree.hispalinux.es
Dido Sevilla schrieb:
This makes any such prospective license discriminatory, and hence not
a valid Free Software or Open Source license. If your goal is to
prevent a patent holder from getting to you, licenses with a mutual
termination clause such as the MPL or the upcoming GPLv.3 (so I hear)
will serve. But what you seem to want is in violation of the essence
of what makes a license a Free/Open Source license in the first place.
Thanks everybody for answering. It was an interesting read. I'll think about Dido's remarks and will have a look at the other licenses that were mentioned.
_pit the mindless sheep
The main problem with software patents is that it is the large companies that use them to stop small companies, not the other way around.
Patents were invented when the progress of technology was slow. Think static steam engines. In 25 years the change was quite slow. In the world of software, software patents should have a maximum lifetime of about 2 years.
Stephen
In message <J0PHd.19856$by5.515@newssvr19.news.prodigy.com>, Thursday <nospam@nospam.nospam.nospam.nospam.org> writes
3. help protect small companies and startups from being raped by established companies who copycat their novel & non-obvious inventions and crush them with superior marketing & brand-name recognition
--
Stephen Kellett
Object Media Limited http://www.objmedia.demon.co.uk
RSI Information: http://www.objmedia.demon.co.uk/rsi.html
Esteban Manchado Velázquez wrote:
Hi Thursday,
[...]
Software patents have both positive and negative aspects. Anyone simply preaching that it is all bad or all good are merely displaying their ignorance.I don't think many people look at the pros and cons of software patents. I think many just ride the bandwagon after listening to just one side of the argument (mindless sheep).
Sorry, simply not true.
How do you know it is not true?
I know it is true by talking to people and getting their opinions on this. Ask pro-patent (software) people to name some big negatives about patents. And ask anti-patent people to name some big positives. You'll frequently find both sides struggling (or unwilling) most of the time.
It is an easy test to perform.
I challenge you: name some big positive benefits of having software patents if you are anti-patent (software).
And if you are pro-patent, then I challenge you to name some big negatives of having software patents.
What are the root causes of the positives and the negatives? What are some ways to gain all the positives without incurring the negatives?
Theoretically yes. But please do a little research and see _lots_ of
absolutely obvious patents (the e-shop by FFII is particularly entertaining:
http://webshop.ffii.org/\). I'm not saying that _necessarily_ most/all patents
are obvious, but obvious ones usually (can) do a lot of harm. And I don't see
non-obvious (I'm not even sure I've seen any of those) being
innovation-fostering.
No, not 'theoretically'. The non-obviousness criteria is a specific requirement in patent law. Non-obviousnesss is an actual test that is applied by patent examiners to determine if they should allow the patent.
Patent examiners are humans and mistakes. Just like programmers being human and making mistakes.
Bad patents = mistakes made by patent examiners. Just like buggy software = mistakes made by programmer.
"hey, i found many examples of bad patents so lets ban all patents!"
On Thu, Jan 20, 2005 at 11:06:01PM +0900, Thursday wrote:
==
"hey, i found many examples of bad software so lets ban all software!".
In fact, we know of specific instances where bad software has actually cost human lives so the argument isn't silly (especially if your family members were among the victoms of bad software).
To say that patents should be banned because of examiners' mistakes is the same as saying software should be banned because of programmers' mistakes. A better approach in both cases is to fix the causes of the problems rather than throwing out the whole thing.
Imagine anti-software demonstrations by non-techs in favor of abolishing software--yes, all software--because of bugs and security problems caused by bad programmers (or good programmers not given enough time by management). Wouldn't it seem silly to programmers because they understand the benefits of software and that the problem isn't software itself--but that programmers aren't given enough training or time to accomplish their tasks? Same thing is true with patents. Patent examiners are under ridiculous pressure to examine complex patent applications in very little time. In fact, the US patent office actually generates more money than they spend (profitable!) but the extra money is drained away into other areas of the govt instead of being reinvested into the office--this is an outrage given the crappy patents that are allowed to issue--and also an outrage given the valid patents are rejected automatically on insufficient grounds because the examiner is under stress.
And sorry, but I find it hilarious that without patents there won't be
innovation. Do you see companies _not_ innovating or developing new things
because they can't "protect" their "inventions"? Small bussinesses don't even
have money to file/defend patents...
I find it hilarious too! What fool told you there would be no innovation without patents? It should be obvious there would still be some innovation without patents--but we'd probably see far fewer new drugs, medical devices, complex software of the kind that require lots of money to create.
Actually, yes. I've personally seen companies that do not develop new products they cannot sufficiently protect with patents. If you don't believe me, speak with any seasoned venture capitalist, they'd tell you an important criteria to funding both new and existing companies with money to develop products is "barrier to entry".
In the USA, a small business or individual can file provisional or regular patent application for ~$100. Legal fees can range from $500 - $50,000 for software patents if you *choose* to hire lawyers. In the USA, patent examiners are actually *required* to help inventors who do not file with the help of a patent attorney--the examiner will actually write one claim for you (usually very, very narrow in scope).
If you have a good patent (one that isn't flawed by having previously undiscovered prior art and would not be deemed obvious and claims are properly supported and...) then you can find law firms (high quality ones) that would be willing to fight on your behalf on contingency (they get paid only if you win).
Bad patents, ones that should not have been issued, have virtually no chance of winning in court. Their only worth is to anti-patent activists to showcase as examples but in court, they'd become invalidated if challenged.
Sorry for the Off-Topic, but specially being European, I had to state that
people opposing patents aren't particularly mindless
I don't think it is mindless to oppose patents. And I don't think it is mindless to favor patents.
But I think it is mindless to oppose or favor patents without understanding & considering both sides of the issue.
I say again, most (not all) people who oppose patents that I've spoken to cannot (or will not) list any major benefits of patents. And most (not all) people who favor patents that I've spoken to cannot (or will not) list any major negatives of patents. In my opinion, the former is driven by laziness in thinking and the latter is driven by greed/fear. Both are frustrating to communicate with, but sometimes they can be cured by education.
Stephen Kellett wrote:
The main problem with software patents is that it is the large companies that use them to stop small companies, not the other way around.
Patents were invented when the progress of technology was slow. Think static steam engines. In 25 years the change was quite slow. In the world of software, software patents should have a maximum lifetime of about 2 years.
It's not just the lifetime that's the problem, it's the "obviousness" of the discovery. It is really hard for an individual or a small company to successfully file a patent these days, but big corporations can just churn them out.
I recently tried out uControl, software for OS X that gives you more control over the keyboard, etc. The author had a feature in there where you could type one-handed by using the spacebar to chord / toggle keys. Unfortunately, he had to disable that feature in recent versions because of patent issues.
Many of us would think that something like that would be far too obvious to patent. In fact, it *should* be possible to successfully challenge the patent... unfortunately the odds of an individual or small business successfully defeating a patent like this are too low to make it worth the time and expense.
This is especially a pain for open source projects where nobody is trying to make any money, they're just trying to spread the goodness. If you were making money off the software, fighting dumb patents would just be a cost of doing business, but if you're doing it all for free, what can you do?
Ben
I say again, most (not all) people who oppose patents that I've spoken
to cannot (or will not) list any major benefits of patents. And most
(not all) people who favor patents that I've spoken to cannot (or will
not) list any major negatives of patents. In my opinion, the former is
driven by laziness in thinking and the latter is driven by greed/fear.
Both are frustrating to communicate with, but sometimes they can be
cured by education.
Careful; by condemning most of those who disagree with you as
lazy or greedy, you yourself may be frustrating to communicate
with. <grin>
You do seem to have proposed an interesting barrier for entry
in the discussion. While you argue from some Omniscient middle
ground straddling both sides of the argument, you've required
anyone choosing to take a side to play devil's advocate
against their position, or else be labeled lazy, greedy, or
uneducated.
As I attempted to get across in,
http://ruby-talk.org/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/122297
I believe that software patents:
- are concerned with the ownership of ideas
- are predicated on a notion of non-obviousness of
ideas, which i believe to be generally fallacious
in software development
I believe, in software development, that ideas are easy,
compared to implementations which are hard.
So, saying that one can own an idea and thus lay claim
to all possible implementations of that idea, is a concept
that I believe is fundamentally flawed.
When you say things like:
Bad patents, ones that should not have been issued, have virtually no
chance of winning in court. Their only worth is to anti-patent
activists to showcase as examples but in court, they'd become
invalidated if challenged.
Really? Ever tried it?
And what's an example of a *good* patent? JPEG?
I sincerely doubt the people at Compression Labs in 1986
were the first to ever consider the implications of
discrete cosine transform in image compression. What if
you had thought of it independently? Do you have the
resources of, "Japanese consumer electronics giants JVC,
Matsushita (Panasonic) and Ricoh; camera companies
Fuji Photo Film, Agfa, Eastman Kodak; PC makers IBM, Dell,
Apple, HP, Toshiba and Gateway; Xerox and Palm; and software
companies including Adobe, Macromedia, and JASC" who are
all being sued and who have staffs of lawyers trying to
fight the suit?
Even relativity theory was being developed by multiple
people independently. (Lorentz and Einstein, cf.
http://home.comcast.net/~xtxinc/AEIPBook.htm )
Patenting software can sound plausible in some contexts,
but I assert it is based on fundamentally flawed notions
of the role of ideas in software development.
Regards,
Bill
From: "Thursday" <nospam@nospam.nospam.nospam.nospam.org>
Bill Kelly wrote:
From: "Thursday" <nospam@nospam.nospam.nospam.nospam.org>
Bad patents, ones that should not have been issued, have virtually no chance of winning in court. Their only worth is to anti-patent activists to showcase as examples but in court, they'd become invalidated if challenged.
Really? Ever tried it?
Indeed, the cost of defending oneself in a patent lawsuit is, on average, $2-4mm. In addition, companies that challenge software patents in the U.S. face a very difficult choice. They can hire lawyers and go to court, but the price of losing a challenge is dire because they have proven themselves to be an infringing party, leaving them at a distinct legal disadvantage. Some organizations are stepping in to persue independent challenges of some well-known patents, avoiding the legal jeopardy that potential infringers face, but their efforts are limited to attacking only the most outrageous claims.
Regarding the challenge of naming something good resulting from software patent law, I can only state my understanding of the *intended* goals of the U.S. patent office. Those were to encourage investment in research and to facilitate the broad sharing of the results for the benefit of industry. In the case of software, this has not been the result. Software companies have needed no government incentive to explore advances in software. And software patents have most frequently been used to restrict the use of knowledge and to suppress competition and innovation.
Whether U.S. patent law could be modified to achieve the desired results is an interesting, but purely hypothetical question. The "facts on the ground" are too serious to ignore. If anybody is not familiar with the ten most egregious U.S. software patents, here is a list:
* One-click online shopping (U.S. Patent No. 5,960,411.)
* Online shopping carts (U.S. Patent No. 5,715,314.)
* The hyperlink (U.S. Patent No. 4,873,662.)
* Video streaming (U.S. Patent No. 5,132,992.)
* Internationalizing domain names (U.S. Patent No. 6,182,148.)
* Pop-up windows (U.S. Patent No. 6,389,458.)
* Targeted banner ads (U.S. Patent No. 6,026,368.)
* Paying with a credit card online (U.S. Patent No. 6,289,319.)
* Framed browsing; (U.S. Patent Nos. 5,933,841 & 6,442,574.) and
* Affiliate linking (U.S. Patent No. 6,029,141.)
Sources: Patents and http://www/pubpat.org/
Everybody reading this list (in the U.S.) has likely infringed on one or more of these patents. When the patent lawyers come knocking at your door, they won't be interested in philosophical arguments about how patents should be used for the good of mankind.
--
Glenn Parker | glenn.parker-AT-comcast.net | <http://www.tetrafoil.com/>