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And immediately patents it... so no one else can use it. EDIT: and for some other methods: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unum_%28number_format%29 https://en.wi
by speps 9y ago
And immediately patents it... so no one else can use it.
EDIT: and for some other methods: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unum_%28number_format%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unum_%28number_format%29, particularly the latest one being the Posit method: http://superfri.org/superfri/article/download/137/232 http://superfri.org/superfri/article/download/137/232
EDIT2: of course other people can license it, but the other way to bring a new floating point to the scene would be through the same process that happened with IEEE 754. There are plenty of people who wouldn't touch anything patented at all, sometimes even with a patent clause.
- neilsimp1 9y agoI mean, it's unfortunate, but can you blame him?
- InclinedPlane 9y agoYes.
- turc1656 9y agoWhy? I'm genuinely curious why you blame him for patenting his work.
- dboreham 9y agoBecause it would be nice if someone, somewhere would do the right thing rather than whatever stupid nonsense benefits them personally the most.
- bringtheaction 9y agoBecause the whole patent system is broken and everyone who partakes in it shares blame.
- dekhn 9y agoThis is an absolutist position that permits no subtlety. But the patent system is a subtle incentivization which seeks to balance a number of forces (in particular, it incentivizes people to invent new things that they can profit from, while also avoiding trade secrets).
- wolfgke 9y ago> This is an absolutist position that permits no subtlety. Where is the problem with such positions?
- dekhn 9y agoSimple: you are unlikely to affect any change by taking an absolutist position. Beyond making it look like you're inflexible, patents have extensive pre-existing legal support, so it's really unlikely anybody is going to change their mind just because you feel strongly. It's better, when you're arguing on the internet, to limit yourself to reasonable arguments that people are receptive to, and working to convince people. I used to feel very strongly about patents (that they were "wrong") but, over time I've come to believe they are the least unreasonable protection for IP that also encourages long-term sharing. Trade secrets are worse because society as a whole doesn't get to benefit.
- Spivak 9y agoIf he didn't patent his work someone else will and collect the royalties resulting in 0 additional freedom. There is nothing gained by not playing.
- mrob 9y agoIf he publicly discloses it then (theoretically) nobody else can patent it.
- rocqua 9y agoIf you want to keep others from patenting you work, you need to patent it yourself.
- simonh 9y agoNo you just need to publish it, then it becomes prior art.
- coding123 9y agoWould you still feel this way if this was just a run of the mill patent by intel?
- Nullabillity 9y agoOf course.
- golergka 9y agoIt's fortunate and we should praise him. I understand backlash against patent trolls, but this is pure bullshit.
- DoofusOfDeath 9y agoHere's how I'm inclined to reason about it: It depends on whether he would consider the filing's "invention" to be within a reasonable definition of what should be patentable. If yes, then he's just playing his part in our society's overall machinations for technical progress, and there's nothing really blameworthy about the filing. If no, then he's being deeply selfish: He's capitalizing on the government's unjustified encroachment on our individual liberties, via the patent system, for his own personal gain.
- turc1656 9y agoHe's an inventor. Inventors usually work towards patents. Also, it's not so "no one else can use it". It's so that he can license out his work to a company like Intel. The patent is to protect him from a company like Intel going "sweet, thanks for the fix." And then profiting off his work. Or do you expect this guy to work for free?
- f4rker 9y ago>"Or do you expect this guy to work for free?" Yes. Remember, we're on The Peoples Republic of the Internet. Capitalism and money are the worst thing ever.
- vec 9y agoI don't expect him to work for free, but I do want Intel (and AMD, ARM, NVIDIA, TI, and anyone else who makes a floating point module) to go "sweet, thanks for the fix" as quickly and, almost more importantly, as collectively as possible. I want this guy to be compensated, but I'd prefer this guy be compensated in a manner that doesn't prevent third parties from fixing their hardware. In general, I think bounties are a good solution to this. Failing that, there are plenty of trade groups and nonprofits and regulatory bodies that could be tasked (and funded) with acquiring and freely redistributing this class of innovation if we wanted to.
- Eyas 9y agoPatents are the way the government allows the inventor to require compensation. Ideally, that would be how patents are "supposed" to be use: An idea you patent can be used by others in exchange for a royalty fee. In reality, that happens quite a bit, but we also get anti-competitive tech companies who wish to keep advances to themselves, and patent trolls who wait on violations to sue.
- sirclueless 9y agoYou're living in a fantasy world. You're looking at the status quo: some guy has invented a better floating point circuit, and you think there are two options. 1) The guy releases it to the public for general use, or 2) the guy patents it and holds a monopoly over its use. Obviously 1) is a greater public good than 2), but in reality these are not the only options. Here's some other realistic situations: 3) With no incentives to make things public, this guy either stops working on this much earlier, doesn't tell anyone, or throws it in the garbage. 4) This guy goes and talks to Intel about his design. They quietly pay him some money or hire him and implement it in secret. Two years from now they launch a processor with this feature and for the indefinite future, until their competitors spend costly time reverse engineering the secret hardware, only Intel processors have this circuit. 5) Same as 4) except Intel says, "Haha, thanks for being a sucker" and doesn't pay anyone. This is the patent system at its best: incentivizing some guy to work on this invention, then publish his work and describe it in detail. For the next 20 years, he can license it to anyone he wants and profit from his work. After that point everyone can implement it as a public good.
- dekhn 9y agoPatents don't necessarily mean nobody else can use it. For example, he could license the technology which means people have to pay to use it.
- wyldfire 9y agoHe's even able to make more creative licensing terms: royalty free license or "royalty free if you use the BFPF trade organization logo."
- wolfgke 9y agoAnd what about programmers that care about free as freedom?
- matt4077 9y agoThey're "free as in freedom"[0] to publish their inventions without applying for a patent, or to license their patents in any way they see fit, including free-as-in-everything. [0]: The original "Free as in speech" seems to be a much better way to express your sentiment.
- dekhn 9y agoWhat about them? You're free to discover new things, and not patent them, instead publishing them. If you have a problem with patents, take it up with the legislature and the judicial system, but there's no reason to attack inventors for using a common legal system for protecting their intellectual property.
- wolfgke 9y ago> If you have a problem with patents, take it up with the legislature and the judicial system, but there's no reason to attack inventors for using a common legal system for protecting their intellectual property. Many people attack companies that use tax loopholes even though the government does "allow" these loopholes. So if one is opposed to something, but it is formally allowed, one should attack both sides: The people doing it and the government.
- api 9y agoI understand the downside, but how else would he ever get paid for this?
- Tenobrus 9y agoUnder a different system that doesn't incentivize holding back global progress for small amounts of individual enrichment. There's a reason Linux and GNU utilities are so massively widely used, and overall they've probably provided billions in economic value. They do that freely, for any human to use, and in fact that's part of their main value proposition. Both were born out of the legal nightmare that was UNIX at the time. How should he get paid for this? In a very-ideal world, people and corporations that used his idea and had spare capital would voluntarily give him donations. In a better-than-this world, governments (or some other entity) would pay bounties to inventories out of a pool of tax money, based on both perceived usefulness of the invention and how widespread its use came to be.
- kbenson 9y ago> Under a different system that doesn't incentivize holding back global progress for small amounts of individual enrichment. Patents don't hold back global progress any more than capitalism keeps people in poverty. If we went back a few hundred years and impose alternatives, would we be better off today? I doubt it. The whole point of the patent system is to foster innovation, and free exchange of ideas. Without the patent system, people are incentivized to keep their inventions secret, and hide how they work, but patents require publishing the details. Some companies don't patent some things just so they can keep it secret. The problem with the patent system is not the concept of patents, but what they've been allowed to apply to and how long the terms have increased. Him patenting the idea meanshe has control over his options. It also prevents another entity, such as Intel or AMD discovering it and patenting it. If he wants, he can make it free to use for non-profiting or open source entities. Edit: The capitalism / poverty comparison is meant to infer communism, as the alternative to a competition and financially motivated system. I don't think it's contentious to say capitalism ended up being the better system for getting people's standard of living raised, even is communism sounds good on paper. I don't think the relation to the patent system in comparison to some ideal sounding solution where people get some money somehow for giving their ideas to the world immediately is all that strained.
- dmm 9y agoAt least patents expire someday.
- DoofusOfDeath 9y agoSo far. That statement used to be true of U.S. copyrights as well.
- dekhn 9y agoI don't think this is going to change any time soon. the last time patent lifetime was changed, it was to make it consistent with the rest of the world (20 years). It's unlikely we (US) would change that; it would be a huge international battle for something that people have more or less accepted.
- Chaebixi 9y ago> There are plenty of people who wouldn't touch anything patented at all, sometimes even with a patent clause. Then that's their loss. This seems like the ideal scenario for patent protections: small inventor developing a genuinely novel and useful invention that big, rich companies would otherwise shamelessly copy.
- RaleyField 9y agoIdeal scenario are inventions that _require_ billion dollar investments to be discovered (aka big pharma). Anything that can be reinvented by chance independently without much effort if there is demand for it shouldn't be patentable. Probably everything concerning representation of floating point numbers should fall in this category.
- msla 9y agoAlso, keep in mind that patents don't mean the invention works, and they certainly don't mean the invention is useful for anything. https://ploum.net/working-with-patents/ https://ploum.net/working-with-patents/ > Note that by « valid », I mean that the Patent Office didn’t found a trivial prior art for this. It doesn’t mean that there is no prior art or that I’m the real inventor or that my invention works. An example of an insane patent: https://www.google.com/patents/US6960975 https://www.google.com/patents/US6960975 > Space vehicle propelled by the pressure of inflationary vacuum state US 6960975 B1 (via https://www.metabunk.org/do-patents-mean-the-invention-works.t194/ https://www.metabunk.org/do-patents-mean-the-invention-works... )
- koliber 9y agoYou don't patent things so that no one can use them. You patent things so that others have to pay you for using them. Patent holders often want others to use their inventions, and pay them money.