[Top][All Lists]
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
www/philosophy danger-of-software-patents.html
|
From: |
Jeanne Rasata |
|
Subject: |
www/philosophy danger-of-software-patents.html |
|
Date: |
Tue, 04 May 2010 14:33:12 +0000 |
CVSROOT: /web/www
Module name: www
Changes by: Jeanne Rasata <jrasata> 10/05/04 14:33:12
Modified files:
philosophy : danger-of-software-patents.html
Log message:
made RMS-approved punctuaction changes
CVSWeb URLs:
http://web.cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/www/philosophy/danger-of-software-patents.html?cvsroot=www&r1=1.8&r2=1.9
Patches:
Index: danger-of-software-patents.html
===================================================================
RCS file: /web/www/www/philosophy/danger-of-software-patents.html,v
retrieving revision 1.8
retrieving revision 1.9
diff -u -b -r1.8 -r1.9
--- danger-of-software-patents.html 25 Mar 2010 00:34:42 -0000 1.8
+++ danger-of-software-patents.html 4 May 2010 14:33:05 -0000 1.9
@@ -67,11 +67,11 @@
Coca-Cola Company.</p>
<p>I'm most known for starting the free software movement and leading
-development of the GNU operating system, although most of the people
+development of the GNU operating system—although most of the people
who use the system mistakenly believe it's Linux and think it was
started by somebody else a decade later. But I'm not going to be
speaking about any of that today. I'm here to talk about a legal
-danger to all software developers, distributors, and users, the danger
+danger to all software developers, distributors, and users: the danger
of patents—on computational ideas, computational techniques, an idea
for something you can do on a computer.</p>
@@ -81,8 +81,8 @@
doesn't apply to the other.</p>
<p>So, for example, any time a person makes a statement about
-“intellectual property” that's spreading confusion, because it's
-lumping together not only these two laws, but also at least a dozen
+“intellectual property,” that's spreading confusion, because it's
+lumping together not only these two laws but also at least a dozen
others. They're all different, and the result is any statement which
purports to be about “intellectual property” is pure
confusion—either
the person making the statement is confused, or the person is trying
@@ -100,8 +100,8 @@
<p>So, what does a patent do? A patent is an explicit, government-issued
monopoly on using a certain idea. In the patent there's a part called
-the claims, which describe exactly what you're not allowed to do,
-although they're written in a way you probably can't understand. It's
+the claims, which describe exactly what you're not allowed to do
+(although they're written in a way you probably can't understand). It's
a struggle to figure out what those prohibitions actually mean, and
they may go on for many pages of fine print.</p>
@@ -121,7 +121,7 @@
patent office of a megacorporation, so they want you to like the
system.</p>
-<p>The Economist once referred to the patent system as “a time-consuming
+<p>The <cite>Economist<cite> once referred to the patent system as “a
time-consuming
lottery.” If you've ever seen publicity for a lottery, you understand
how it works: they dwell on the very unlikely probability of winning,
and they don't talk about the overwhelming likelihood of losing. In
@@ -129,7 +129,7 @@
picture of what's likely to happen to you, without actually lying
about any particular fact.</p>
-<p>It's the same way for the publicity for the patent system. They talk
+<p>It's the same way for the publicity for the patent system: they talk
about what it's like to walk down the street with a patent in your
pocket—or first of all, what it's like to get a patent, then what
it's like to have a patent in your pocket, and every so often you can
@@ -155,7 +155,7 @@
you conceived of it in one particular way—you've got a mental
structure to apply to your design. And because of that, it will block
you from seeing other structures that somebody might use to understand
-the same program, because you're not coming to it fresh; you already
+the same program—because you're not coming to it fresh; you already
designed it with one structure in mind. Someone else who sees it for
the first time might see a different structure, which involves
different ideas, and it would be hard for you to see what those other
@@ -168,7 +168,7 @@
on a bottom edge, it would prohibit your square. You could put “bottom
edge” on the list of all ideas implemented in your drawing. But you
might not realize that somebody else with a patent on bottom corners
-could sue you easily also, because he could take you drawing and turn
+could sue you easily also, because he could take your drawing and turn
it by 45 degrees. And now your square is like this, and it has a
bottom corner.</p>
@@ -193,7 +193,7 @@
<p>He wrote this program, he released it, and in 1985 a patent was issued
on that algorithm. But the patent holder was cunning and didn't
immediately go around telling people to stop using it. The patent
-holder figured “let's let everybody dig their grave deeper.” A few
+holder figured, “Let's let everybody dig their grave deeper.” A
few
years later they started threatening people; it became clear we
couldn't use Compress, so I asked for people to suggest other
algorithms we could use for compressing files.</p>
@@ -201,7 +201,7 @@
<p>And somebody wrote and said, "I developed another data compression
algorithm that works better, I've written a program, I'd like to give
it to you." So we got ready to release it, and a week before it was
-ready to be released, I read in the New York Times weekly patent
+ready to be released, I read in the <cite>New York Times<cite> weekly patent
column, which I rarely saw—it's a couple of times a year I might see
it—but just by luck I saw that someone had gotten a patent for
“inventing a new method of compressing data.” And so I said we had
@@ -279,7 +279,7 @@
a patent does or doesn't prohibit.</p>
<p>In fact, I once gave this speech and Heckel was in the audience. And
-at this point he jumped up and said “That's not true, I just didn't
+at this point he jumped up and said, “That's not true, I just didn't
know the scope of my protection.” And I said “Yeah, that's what I
said,” at which point he sat down and that was the end of my
experience being heckled by Heckel. If I had said no, he probably
@@ -288,11 +288,11 @@
<p>Anyway, after a long, expensive conversation with a lawyer, the
lawyer will give you an answer like this:</p>
-<blockquote><p>“If you do something in this area you're almost certain
to lose a
-lawsuit. If you do something in this area there's a considerable
-chance of losing a lawsuit, and if you really want to be safe you've
-got to stay out of this area, but there's a sizeable element of chance
-in the outcome of any lawsuit.”</p></blockquote>
+<blockquote><p>If you do something in this area, you're almost certain to lose
a
+lawsuit; if you do something in this area, there's a considerable
+chance of losing a lawsuit; and if you really want to be safe you've
+got to stay out of this area. But there's a sizeable element of chance
+in the outcome of any lawsuit.</p></blockquote>
<p>So now that you have clear, predictable rules for doing business, what
are you actually going to do? Well, there are three things that you
@@ -305,7 +305,7 @@
what it prohibits, it might be hard to tell what would suffice to
avoid it.</p>
-<p>A couple of years ago Kodak sued Sun using a patent for something
+<p>A couple of years ago Kodak sued Sun [for] using a patent for something
having to do with object-oriented programming, and Sun didn't think it
was infringing that patent. But the court decided it was; and when
other people look at that patent they haven't the faintest idea
@@ -328,16 +328,16 @@
<p>On the other hand, a patent on an algorithm may be impossible to
avoid. Consider the LZW data compression algorithm. Well, as I
-explained we found a better data compression algorithm, and everybody
+explained, we found a better data compression algorithm, and everybody
who wanted to compress files switched to the program <tt>gzip</tt> which used
the better algorithm. And the reason is, if you just want to compress
the file and uncompress it later, you can tell people to use this
program to uncompress it; then you can use any program with any
algorithm, and you only care how well it works.</p>
-<p>But LZW is used for other things too; for instance the PostScript
+<p>But LZW is used for other things, too; for instance the PostScript
language specifies operators for LZW compression and LZW
-uncompression. It's no use having another, better algorithm, because
+uncompression. It's no use having another, better algorithm because
it makes a different format of data. They're not interoperable. If you
compress it with the gzip algorithm, you won't be able to uncompress
it using LZW. So no matter how good your other algorithm is, and no
@@ -361,7 +361,7 @@
also. It didn't take long for people to define another image format,
called <tt>png</tt>, which stands for “Png's Not Gif”. I think it
uses the
<tt>gzip</tt> algorithm. And we started saying to people, “Don't use
<tt>gif</tt>
-format, it's dangerous; switch to <tt>png</tt>.” And the users said
“Well,
+format, it's dangerous. Switch to <tt>png</tt>.” And the users said,
“Well,
maybe some day, but the browsers don't implement it yet,” and the
browser developers said, “We may implement it someday, but there's not
much demand from users.”</p>
@@ -369,10 +369,10 @@
<p>Well, it's pretty obvious what's going on—<tt>gif</tt> was a de facto
standard. In effect, asking people to switch to a different format,
instead of their de facto standard, is like asking everyone in New
-Zealand to speak Hungarian. People will say “Well, yeah, I'll learn to
+Zealand to speak Hungarian. People will say, “Well, yeah, I'll learn to
speak it after everyone else does.” And so we never succeeded in
asking people to stop using <tt>gif</tt>, even though one of those patent
-holders was going around to operators of web sites,
+holders was going around to operators of Web sites,
threatening to sue them unless they could prove that all of the <tt>gif</tt>s
on
the site were made with authorized, licensed software.</p>
@@ -380,7 +380,7 @@
thought we had an alternative to <tt>gif</tt> format, namely <tt>jpeg</tt>,
but then
somebody said, "I was just looking through my portfolio of patents"—I
think it was somebody that just bought patents and used them to
-threaten people—and he said "and I found that one of them covers
<tt>jpeg</tt>
+threaten people—and he said, "and I found that one of them covers
<tt>jpeg</tt>
format."</p>
<p>Well, <tt>jpeg</tt> was not a de facto standard, it's an official standard,
@@ -405,7 +405,7 @@
<p>You see, in physical engineering fields, they can use the physical
nature of what's going on to narrow things down. For instance, in
-chemical engineering, they can say “What are the substances going in?
+chemical engineering, they can say, “What are the substances going in?
What are the substances coming out?” If two different [patent]
applications are different in that way, then they're not the same
process so you don't need to worry. But the same math can be
@@ -434,7 +434,7 @@
abbreviations. For instance, if you define <tt>exp</tt> as an abbreviation
for “experiment”, then if you type exp-space or exp-comma, the
<tt>exp</tt>
would change automatically to “experiment”.</p>
-
+>
<p>Then somebody who had a patent on this feature threatened them, and
they concluded that the only thing they could do was to take the
feature out. And so they sent all the users a downgrade.</p>
@@ -451,10 +451,10 @@
<p>Now, to remove one or two features may not be a disaster. But when
you have to remove 50 features, you could do it, but people are likely
-to say “This program's no good; it's missing all the features I
want.”
+to say, “This program's no good; it's missing all the features I
want.”
So it may not be a solution. And sometimes a patent is so broad that
-it wipes out an entire field, like the patent on public key
-encryption, which in fact put public key encryption basically off
+it wipes out an entire field, like the patent on public-key
+encryption, which in fact put public-key encryption basically off
limits for about ten years.</p>
<p>So that's the option of avoiding the patent—often possible, but
@@ -465,7 +465,7 @@
<p>Well, the patent holder may not offer you a license. It's entirely up
to him. He could say, “I just want to shut you down.” I once got
a
letter from somebody whose family business was making casino games,
-which which were of course computerized, and he had been threatened by
+which were of course computerized, and he had been threatened by
a patent holder who wanted to make his business shut down. He sent me
the patent. Claim 1 was something like “a network with a multiplicity
of computers, in which each computer supports a multiplicity of games,
@@ -511,7 +511,7 @@
cross-license if he's really producing anything. The result is that
they end up painlessly with licences for almost all the patents.</p>
-<p>IBM wrote an article in its house magazine, Think Magazine—I think
+<p>IBM wrote an article in its house magazine, <cite>Think
Magazine</cite>—I think
it's issue 5, 1990—about the benefit IBM got from its almost 9,000 US
patents at the time (now it's up to 45,000 or more). They said that
one of the benefits was that they collected money, but the main
@@ -530,8 +530,8 @@
into IBM's league, no matter what you do.</p>
<p>Now a lot of companies tell their employees, “Get us patents so we can
-defend ourselves” and they mean use them to try to get
-cross-licensing, but it just doesn't work well. It's not an effective
+defend ourselves” and they mean, “use them to try to get
+cross-licensing,” but it just doesn't work well. It's not an effective
strategy if you've got a small number of patents.</p>
<p>Suppose you've got three patents. One points there, one points there,
@@ -540,12 +540,12 @@
points at him. On the other hand, sooner or later, somebody in the
company is going to notice that this patent is actually pointing at
some people, and [the company] could threaten them and squeeze money
-out of them, never mind that those people didn't attack this company.</p>
+out of them—never mind that those people didn't attack this company.</p>
-<p>So if your employer says to you “we need some patents to defend
-ourselves”, so help us get patents, I recommend this response.</p>
+<p>So if your employer says to you, “We need some patents to defend
+ourselves, so help us get patents,” I recommend this response.</p>
-<blockquote><p>“Boss, I trust you and I'm sure you would only use those
patents to
+<blockquote><p>Boss, I trust you and I'm sure you would only use those patents
to
defend the company if it's attacked. But I don't know who's going to
be the CEO of this company in five years. For all I know, it might get
acquired by Microsoft. So I really can't trust the company's word to
@@ -553,7 +553,7 @@
put it in writing that any patents I provide for the company will only
be used for self-defense and collective security, and not for
repression, and then I'll be able to get patents for the company with
-a clean conscience.”</p></blockquote>
+a clean conscience.</p></blockquote>
<p>It would be most interesting to raise this not just in private with
your boss, but also on the company's discussion list.</p>
@@ -571,11 +571,11 @@
<p>So let's look at it. According to this scenario, there's a brilliant
designer of whatever, who's been working for years by himself in his
attic coming up with a better way to do whatever it is. And now that
-it's ready he wants to start a business and mass-produce this thing;
-and because his idea is so good his company will inevitably succeed,
+it's ready, he wants to start a business and mass-produce this thing;
+and because his idea is so good his company will inevitably succeed—
except for one thing: the big companies will compete with him and take
-all his market the away. And because of this his business will almost
-certainly fail and then he will starve.</p>
+all his market the away. And because of this, his business will almost
+certainly fail, and then he will starve.</p>
<p>Well, let's look at all the unlikely assumptions here.</p>
@@ -592,7 +592,7 @@
years. So that's probably what's going to happen to him, no matter
what.</p>
-<p>OK, let's assume that in addition to being a brilliant engineer who
+<p>Ok, let's assume that in addition to being a brilliant engineer who
came up with something great by himself, he's also talented at running
businesses. If he has a knack for running businesses, then maybe his
business won't fail. After all, not all new businesses fail, there are
@@ -615,7 +615,7 @@
<p>Well, here's what really happens.</p>
-<p>IBM says “Oh, how nice, you have a patent. Well, we have this patent,
+<p>IBM says, “Oh, how nice, you have a patent. Well, we have this
patent,
and this patent, and this patent, and this patent, and this patent,
all of which cover other ideas implemented in your product, and if you
think you can fight us on all those, we'll pull out some more. So
@@ -648,7 +648,7 @@
There are no patents on how to send or write a threatening letter, no
patents on how to file a lawsuit, and no patents on how to persuade a
judge or jury, so even IBM can't make the patent trolls
-cross-license. But IBM figures “Our competition will have to pay them
+cross-license. But IBM figures, “Our competition will have to pay them
too; this is just part of the cost of doing business, and we can live
with it.” IBM and the other megacorporations figure that the general
dominion over all activity that they get from their patents is good
@@ -658,7 +658,7 @@
<p>There are also certain software developers who find it particularly
difficult to get a patent license, and those are the developers of
free software. The reason is that the usual patent license has
-conditions we can't possibly fulfil, because usual patent licenses
+conditions we can't possibly fulfill, because usual patent licenses
demand a payment per copy. But when software gives users the freedom
to distribute and make more copies, we have no way to count the copies
that exist.</p>
@@ -706,15 +706,15 @@
circumstances, so some of the time, none of them is possible; and when
that happens, your project is dead.</p>
-<p>But lawyers in most countries tell us “don't try to find the patents
+<p>But lawyers in most countries tell us, “Don't try to find the patents
in advance”, and the reason is that the penalty for infringement is
bigger if you knew about the patent. So what they tell you is “Keep
your eyes shut. Don't try to find out about the patents, just go
blindly taking your design decisions, and hope.”</p>
<p>And of course, with each single design decision, you probably don't
-step on a patent. Probably nothing happens to you. But there's so many
-steps you have to take to get across the minefield it's very unlikely
+step on a patent. Probably nothing happens to you. But there are so many
+steps you have to take to get across the minefield, it's very unlikely
you will get through safely. And of course, the patent holders don't
all show up at the same time, so you don't know how many there are
going to be.</p>
@@ -769,7 +769,7 @@
somehow we all have a duty to suffer the harm done by patents.</p>
<p>But there is a sensible question buried inside it, and that sensible
-question is, “What differences are there between various fields that
+question is “What differences are there between various fields that
might affect what is good or bad patent policy in those fields?”</p>
<p>There is an important basic difference between fields in regard to how
@@ -785,7 +785,7 @@
<p>That's not how things work. In the 1800s, maybe they did, but not
now. In fact, fields fall on a spectrum of how many patents [there
are] per product. The beginning of the spectrum is one, but no field
-is like that today; but fields are at various places on this spectrum.</p>
+is like that today; fields are at various places on this spectrum.</p>
<p>The field that's closest to that is pharmaceuticals. A few decades
ago, there really was one patent per pharmaceutical, at least at any
@@ -811,7 +811,7 @@
is basically easier than all other fields. I'm presuming that the
intelligence of people in our field is the same as that of people in
physical engineering. It's not that we're fundamentally better than
-they are, it's that our field is fundamentally easier, because we're
+they are; it's that our field is fundamentally easier, because we're
working with mathematics.</p>
<p>A program is made out of mathematical components, which have a
@@ -834,8 +834,8 @@
rate, the <code>if</code>-statement might start to vibrate and it might
resonate
and crack;</li>
-<li>I don't have to worry that if it resonates much faster, you know,
- millions of times per second, that it might generate radio frequency
+<li>I don't have to worry that if it resonates much faster—you know,
+ millions of times per second—that it might generate radio frequency
signals that might induce wrong values in other parts of the
program;</li>
@@ -858,7 +858,7 @@
of my program, because there are various general commands that will
make copies of anything.</p>
-<p>If I want to make copies on CD I just have to write a master; and
+<p>If I want to make copies on CD, I just have to write a master; and
there's one program I can [use to] make a master out of anything,
write any data I want. I can make a master CD and write it and send
it off to a factory, and they'll duplicate whatever I send them. I
@@ -872,7 +872,7 @@
trouble, you're not going to be able to put together so many different
ideas in one product and have it work.</p>
-<p>A physical design with a million non-repeating different design
+<p>A physical design with a million nonrepeating different design
elements is a gigantic project. A program with a million different
design elements, that's nothing. It's a few hundred thousand lines of
code, and a few people will write that in a few years, so it's not a
@@ -904,7 +904,7 @@
copyrights on their work, that they won't be endangered by the patents
on their work either. They imagine that, since when you write a
program you have the copyright, [therefore likewise] if you write a
-program you have the patents also. This is false — so how do we give
+program you have the patents also. This is false—so how do we give
them a clue what patents would really do? What they really do in
countries like the US?</p>
@@ -915,7 +915,7 @@
musical ideas. But you can't just pick a bunch of ideas and say
“Here's my combination of ideas, do you like it?” Because in
order to
make them work you have to implement them all. You can't just pick
-musical ideas and list them and say “Hey, how do you like this
+musical ideas and list them and say, “Hey, how do you like this
combination?” You can't hear that [list]. You have to write notes
which implement all these ideas together.</p>
@@ -943,7 +943,7 @@
a symphony. You're going to find it's much harder to write a symphony
you don't get sued for than to write one that sounds good, because you
have to thread your way around all the patents that exist. If you
-complained about this, the patent holders would say “Oh, Beethoven,
+complained about this, the patent holders would say, “Oh, Beethoven,
you're just jealous because we had these ideas first. Why don't you go
and think of some ideas of your own?”</p>
@@ -968,7 +968,7 @@
<p>When the technological context changes so frequently, you end up with
a situation where what was done 20 years ago is totally
-inadequate. Twenty years ago there was no World Wide Web. So sure,
+inadequate. Twenty years ago there was no World Wide Web. So, sure,
people did a lot of things with computers back then, but what they
want to do today are things that work with the World Wide Web. And you
can't do that using only the ideas that were known 20 years ago. And I
@@ -1140,7 +1140,7 @@
<dt>A.</dt>
<dd><p>Yes. You see, each country has its own patent system, and they work
independently, except that countries have signed up to a treaty that
-says "if you have got a patent in that country, you can basically
+says, "If you have got a patent in that country, you can basically
bring your application over here, and we'll judge it based on the year
you applied for it over there". But other than that, each country has
its own criteria for what can be patented and has its own set of
@@ -1191,7 +1191,7 @@
processing unit, a memory, input/output facilities,
instruction-fetching facilities, and means to perform this particular
computation. In effect they've written explicitly into the patent all
-the parts of an ordinary computer, and then they say “Well, this is a
+the parts of an ordinary computer, and then they say, “Well, this is a
physical system which we would like to patent”, but really it's just
patenting certain software on a computer. There are many subterfuges
that they've used.</p>
@@ -1247,7 +1247,7 @@
are, they will get behind total rejection of software patents. Whereas
an exception for some special case will only win support from the
people in that special case. These partial solutions are essentially
-distractions. People start by saying “Oh, I'm sure we can't really
+distractions. People start by saying, “Oh, I'm sure we can't really
solve the problem, so I give up on that. Let me propose a partial
solution.” But these partial solutions don't make it safe to develop
software.</dd>
@@ -1267,7 +1267,7 @@
<dt>A.</dt>
<dd>Something that saves only a few of us, or only certain activities,
-or gets rid of half the software patents, that's analogous to saying
+or gets rid of half the software patents, that's analogous to saying,
“Well, maybe we could clear part of the minefield, or maybe we could
destroy half the mines in the minefield.” [That's an improvement] but
that doesn't make it safe.</dd>
@@ -1307,7 +1307,7 @@
<p>How many computer users were there in 1982, even in the US? It was a
small fraction of the public. But there were software developers. They
-weren't saying “We desperately want patents”. They weren't
getting sued
+weren't saying, “We desperately want patents”. They weren't
getting sued
for patent infringement after they developed their programs. But there
is a bit of [economic] research that I saw that apparently software patents
resulted not in an increase in research, but [in] a shift of funds
@@ -1384,7 +1384,7 @@
<p>
Updated:
<!-- timestamp start -->
-$Date: 2010/03/25 00:34:42 $
+$Date: 2010/05/04 14:33:05 $
<!-- timestamp end -->
</p>
- www/philosophy danger-of-software-patents.html,
Jeanne Rasata <=