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www/philosophy danger-of-software-patents.html
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From: |
Pavel Kharitonov |
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Subject: |
www/philosophy danger-of-software-patents.html |
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Date: |
Mon, 14 May 2012 17:38:02 +0000 |
CVSROOT: /web/www
Module name: www
Changes by: Pavel Kharitonov <ineiev> 12/05/14 17:38:02
Modified files:
philosophy : danger-of-software-patents.html
Log message:
Minor cleanup.
Remove commented out list of translations.
Use consistently “, ”, and —.
Capitalize GIF, PNG, JPEG, MPEG2.
Fix a few typos.
CVSWeb URLs:
http://web.cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/www/philosophy/danger-of-software-patents.html?cvsroot=www&r1=1.20&r2=1.21
Patches:
Index: danger-of-software-patents.html
===================================================================
RCS file: /web/www/www/philosophy/danger-of-software-patents.html,v
retrieving revision 1.20
retrieving revision 1.21
diff -u -b -r1.20 -r1.21
--- danger-of-software-patents.html 20 Sep 2011 08:15:36 -0000 1.20
+++ danger-of-software-patents.html 14 May 2012 17:37:50 -0000 1.21
@@ -203,9 +203,9 @@
became clear we couldn't use Compress, so I asked for people to
suggest other algorithms we could use for compressing files.</p>
-<p>And somebody wrote and said, "I developed another data compression
+<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
+it to you.” So we got ready to release it, and a week before it was
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
@@ -366,38 +366,38 @@
would do what they actually needed. So that's how we barely squeaked
by avoiding the two patents.</p>
-<p>Now there is gif format, for images. That uses the LZW
+<p>Now there is GIF format, for images. That uses the LZW
algorithm also. It didn't take long for people to define another
-image format, called png, which stands for “Png's Not
-Gif”. I think it uses the gzip algorithm. And we
-started saying to people, “Don't use gif format, it's
-dangerous. Switch to png.” And the users said,
+image format, called PNG, which stands for “PNG's Not
+GIF”. I think it uses the gzip algorithm. And we
+started saying to people, “Don't use GIF format, it's
+dangerous. Switch to PNG.” 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>
-<p>Well, it's pretty obvious what's going on—gif was a
+<p>Well, it's pretty obvious what's going on—GIF 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 speak it after everyone else does.” And so we
-never succeeded in asking people to stop using gif, even
+never succeeded in asking people to stop using GIF, even
though one of those patent holders was going around to operators of
web sites, threatening to sue them unless they could prove that all of
-the gifs on the site were made with authorized, licensed
+the GIFs on the site were made with authorized, licensed
software.</p>
-<p>So gif was a dangerous trap for a large part of our
-community. We thought we had an alternative to gif format,
-namely jpeg, but then somebody said, "I was just looking
-through my portfolio of patents"—I think it was somebody that
+<p>So GIF was a dangerous trap for a large part of our
+community. We thought we had an alternative to GIF format,
+namely JPEG, 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 jpeg format."</p>
+said, “and I found that one of them covers JPEG format.”</p>
-<p>Well, jpeg was not a de facto standard, it's an official
+<p>Well, JPEG was not a de facto standard, it's an official
standard, issued by a standards committee; and the committee had a
lawyer too. Their lawyer said he didn't think that this patent
-actually covered jpeg format.</p>
+actually covered JPEG format.</p>
<p>So who's right? Well, this patent holder sued a bunch of
companies, and if there was a decision, it would have said who was
@@ -406,8 +406,8 @@
certainly secret, which means that it didn't tell us anything about
who's right.</p>
-<p>These are fairly lightweight cases: one patent on jpeg,
-two patents on the LZW algorithm used in gif. Now you might
+<p>These are fairly lightweight cases: one patent on JPEG,
+two patents on the LZW algorithm used in GIF. Now you might
wonder how come there are two patents on the same algorithm? It's not
supposed to happen, but it did. And the reason is that the patent
examiners can't possibly take the time to study every pair of things
@@ -434,10 +434,10 @@
explanation tells you why that happens.</p>
<p>But one or two patents is a lightweight case. What
-about mpeg2, the video format? I saw a list of over 70
+about MPEG2, the video format? I saw a list of over 70
patents covering that, and the negotiations to arrange a way for
somebody to license all those patents took longer than developing the
-standard itself. The jpeg committee wanted to develop a
+standard itself. The JPEG committee wanted to develop a
follow-on standard, and they gave up. They said there were too many
patents; there was no way to do it.</p>
@@ -527,7 +527,7 @@
megacorporations. In any field the megacorporations generally own
about half the patents, and they cross-license each other, and they
can make anybody else cross-license if he's really producing anything.
-The result is that they end up painlessly with licences for almost all
+The result is that they end up painlessly with licenses for almost all
the patents.</p>
<p>IBM wrote an article in its house magazine, <cite>Think</cite>
@@ -849,7 +849,7 @@
<p>A program is made out of mathematical components, which have a
definition, whereas physical objects don't have a definition. The
matter does what it does, so through the perversity of matter, your
-design may not work the way it "should" have worked. And that's just
+design may not work the way it “should” have worked. And that's
just
tough. You can't say that the matter has a bug in it, and the
physical universe should get fixed. [Whereas] we [programmers] can
make a castle that rests on a mathematically thin line, and it stays
@@ -1081,7 +1081,7 @@
always does, there's no reason to think that the patents covering
those ideas would belong to you. They're more likely to belong to
lots of others, and half of them to the megacorporations, and they can
-then all sue you. So you don't even have to worry [about plagiarsm];
+then all sue you. So you don't even have to worry [about plagiarism];
long before you get to the point where somebody else might copy it,
you're going to be getting the shaft.</p>
@@ -1102,7 +1102,7 @@
if you can prove you didn't copy it, that's a defense under copyright
law, because copyright law is only concerned with copying. But
copyright law is only concerned with the details of authorship of a
-work [i.e., not th ideas it embodies], so it has nothing in common
+work [i.e., not the ideas it embodies], so it has nothing in common
with patent law in terms of what it deals with, and the effects are
totally different.</p>
@@ -1181,9 +1181,9 @@
<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
+that 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
+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 patents.</p>
@@ -1393,7 +1393,7 @@
<dd>Gratis. And these [other items] are for sale.</dd>
<dt>SF:</dt>
-<dd>so you're welcome to come down. It's been a great debate - thank
+<dd>So you're welcome to come down. It's been a great debate—thank
you Richard.</dd>
</dl>
@@ -1431,35 +1431,11 @@
<p>Updated:
<!-- timestamp start -->
-$Date: 2011/09/20 08:15:36 $
+$Date: 2012/05/14 17:37:50 $
<!-- timestamp end -->
</p>
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