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On Mon, 14 May 2007 16:10:27 +0100 Neil Williams <linux@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > "Personally, I think that if Microsoft ever does starts with a patent > smackdown, it won't be 235 patents, it'll be two or three, the > strongest ones they can find, and 90 minutes after the plaintiff(s) > is/are served the infringing code will be history, and we'll go back to > living our lives as normal." There is a problem there - care has to be taken to distinguish patents (MS) from copyright (SCO). This is NOT SCO mark 2 because the two cases are fundamentally different. Copyright infringment - SCO - taking code from one application into another as a block. Can be countered (once the alleged infringement is clear) by rewriting the code. Patent infringement - MS - implementing an idea in code that is covered by a patent. You cannot always rewrite your way out of these because they cover things like "escalation of user privileges for execution of a task as administrator" (sudo), "superimposition of a digital image on a simulated 3D area as a method to associate the image with an action" (icons on buttons). Take a look at some of the comments posted on The Register for this story: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/14/microsoft_oss_patent_number/comments/ > It is better to have a machine that doesn't do everything than to have > a machine that makes you liable for a lawsuit. Whether or not the > patents are valid, individual free software developers are not going to > be able to fight the claims in court (especially as these are American > courts). Far more likely that the code will be rewritten and what > cannot be rewritten (because we don't have the source code) will be > dumped. This is what makes software patents so fundamentally wrong - in most cases you can't simply rewrite the code to avoid them because the patent covers the entire purpose of the code. >>From the FFII FAQ: "Isn't is possible to work around software patents and use alternative methods? For example Ogg/Vorbis instead of MP3? In some cases it is really possible. The Ogg/Vorbis developers have done patent research and hope their format won't violate patents in the USA. On the other side, there are many areas where patents are so central and broad that working around them is impossible (e.g. panorama images). But you can never be sure: patent research is not reliable. Even JPEG was believed for many years not to be covered by any patents. Now courts have to decide whether this is indeed true. At least it is always a competitive drawback if you have to work around a file format which has been established as a de facto standard. Especially in the software sector, interoperability is very important." http://www.ffii.org/Frequently_Asked_Questions_about_software_patents#head-a88ad8d23e92e04470a1004689486008497f8604 http://webshop.ffii.org/ Possible candidates for the actual patents in question include things like, Virtual desktop manager, Technique which utilizes a probabilistic classifier to detect "junk" e-mail by automatically updating a training and re-training the classifier based on the updated training set (spam filter to you and me), FAT long filenames (digital camera cards, USB sticks etc.) and Administrative security systems and methods (sudo). Now think how you can rewrite a USABLE OS without those. (And anyway, which company wrote the software that has been exploited to run the spam botnets that make spam filters necessary in the first place?) Everyone with even the slightest interest in free software of any kind MUST be made aware of the threat of software patents and although the current Microsoft FUD is making things a little harder to understand, it is bringing the issue to the attention of many users who would never have thought about it before. The only answer is the abolition of software patents across the world and the irreversible exclusion of all forms of software from patentability. No patent should be deemed applicable to any form of software. The very fact that a patented idea can be expressed as software should actually be a reason to turn down or invalidate the patent itself. There needs to be a recognition in corporate minds across the world that software can never infringe on a patent of any kind because software is only ever a combination of speech and mathematics - neither of which are patentable, anywhere. "What should happen instead? Since software patents have been proven to have a negative impact on the economy they should not be granted at all. A revision of the patent laws should make this clear. In practice a more narrow definition of the word “technical” is necessary." http://www.ffii.org/Frequently_Asked_Questions_about_software_patents#head-e955075994ba6402876ef2351ed8572711afd4ee Source code simply expresses mathematical formulae in pseudo-English. If that is patentable, so is this email. http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://www.ffii.org/ -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
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