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"Your criticisms are completely wrong": Stallman on software patents
- debacle 14y ago> Speech recognition, for example, is very patent-intensive. Speech recognition is patent-encumbered, not patent-intensive. Anyone who has done any research into the field would know that.
- tankbot 14y agoSerious question: What is the difference between patent-intensive and patent-encumbered?
- ericflo 14y agoEncumbered is a pejorative.
- tankbot 14y agoAh, I see what it is now. Thanks :)
- thirdtruck 14y agoI would compare it to the idea of international travel as "passport intensive" or of the recording industry as "lawsuit intensive".
- debacle 14y agoPatent-encumbered industries are industries where innovation is not occurring due to patent strangulation. Patent-intensive industries are those which require patent protection to protect the R&D investments of corporations and ensure innovation. Patent-encumbered: mobile phones Patent-intensive: artificial joints
- GotAnyMegadeth 14y ago> Pinned to his chest was a large white button: "Pay Cash—Don't Be Tracked." Looking at the photo, it looks like it actually says "Don't Be Tracked—Pay Cash."
- josephagoss 14y agoHow long until its "Don't Be Tracked-Pay Bitcoin." :)
- astrodust 14y agoEvery single transaction in Bitcoin is tracked and published. Why do people think this is even remotely close to anonymous?
- zalew 14y agobecause there is no PII attached.
- dlitz 14y agoUntil you buy something with it.
- josephagoss 14y agoI thinks its because the addresses are only able to link to your real self once you make a link. (buy something and have it shipped to your address, deposit real money with a exchange that requires your identity, etc..) however you could always make a new account on mtgox, send the coins to the exchange and send them out to another address you made, and I think, unless the exchange gives that transaction (That is internal to their network) to the authorities, you can begin to remove your-self from being traced. The way I see it is this, you can determine how traceable you are in Bitcoins, you can't determine easily how traceable you are with native transactions (USD, AUD, EURO, etc...) This may help you hide better
- 14y ago
- markshepard 14y agoThis is definitely an issue to be tackled. After working in a large software company I can attest to the fact that ridiculous stuff that are patented just to increase the portfolio.
- tjic 14y agoI'm glad to see that RMS is using his trademark good manners to reach out to the undecided middle.
- nealabq 14y agoIf you want reform, be polite. If you want revolution, don't bother.
- Tyrannosaurs 14y agoIf he's not interested in converting these people then can I suggest going to a conference full of them might be a waste of his and everyone else's time?
- specialist 14y agoWe're debating his ideas. In the off moments we're not arguing about his fashion choices and lack of social decorum. Who else do you know is so singularly identified with such a well defined principled point of view (whether you agree or disagree)? Paul Grugman, Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges, George Carlin? So I'd say Stallman's doing a fantastic job.
- BCM43 14y agoWho is Paul Grugman? Did you mean Krugman?
- Tyrannosaurs 14y agoBeing associated with an idea doesn't mean that you're doing anything for adoption of the idea. In the UK David Ike is strongly associated with believing the royal family are lizard people but it's doing nothing to get his views any real traction. I'd almost argue the opposite. By being so intransigent and operating outside many social norms, I think you could make a case that Stallman damages how his views are percieved.
- danso 14y ago
- aw3c2 14y ago"Streaming online would require use of [the] Microsoft Silverlight plug-in, which would pressure people to use proprietary software," explained Andrew Chin just for the record, that statement is absolutely incorrect. you can offer streams and watch streams just fine with free and open-source software. for example with ogg theora or webm.
- phaedrix 14y agoGuessing they meant the conference only uses Silverlight for streaming.
- aw3c2 14y agoI guess so too but phrases like that are going against free software/content/everything. It gives the reader the impression of requirement of cost and proprietary technology.
- worldsayshi 14y ago"The crowd was told a recording would be made available later in OGG or WebM format." Two lines down. I guess that line could have been added later..
- aw3c2 14y agoThat line is about recordings for download, not streaming.
- belorn 14y agoRichard stallman has always been eccentric and unwavering in his stand on politics around software. Somehow, people find this odd, wrong, and or bad, and I dont understand it. On basically all political issues, unwavering is a good attribute. Even being an eccentric is better than not caring for the issue. eccentricness is often a key aspect before a change reach a critical mass. Take a random politician opinion about abortion or nuclear power or any other common political subject. Say his/her opinion is "well, some should be able to do it, but then again there are problems so maybe not, and the issue is not one that need to be address today, and the system today do continue to work, and well, legal greyness is not that big of an issue, only for those in the courts...". Clear, direct, and consistent opinion is a good thing. Diplomacy and "meeting half-way" has it places, but in politics, there is also times when it should be clearly avoided. In software politics, there are plenty of people working the diplomatic route. There is no shortage of diplomats, and a few eccentric and unwavering voices is then much more useful to maintain the goals of where we want to actually go without moving the goal in favor of diplomacy.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- Nursie 14y agoI weirdly agree and disagree with you :) Stallman's ethical and philosophical approach is awesome, and his unwavering stand behind those things is also. I don't agree with everything the man says, but I agree with a lot of it and it's clear he's thought it all through. I really, really, really hate this when applied to politicians though, because they ought to change their positions based on evidence. When they're crowing about how unwavering they are it's usually because they're flying in the face of common sense and raw, obvious fact.
- Tyrannosaurs 14y agoThis comes down to what the basis for beliefs are - as the quote goes you're entitled to your own opinion, you're not entitled to your own facts. Politicians are an odd breed though. By the time you've made it to elected office you've almost certainly had your beliefs and how (or even whether) you can express them so warped that I almost think it's unfair to hold what they say against them. They're the product of a screwed up system - most of them are (or were) smart principled individuals until they got too close to government.
- nicholassmith 14y ago"while Google abhors them, its arch-rival Microsoft is increasingly enthusiastic about them." Wait, what? Google abhors patents? So all the patents they've been buying up is because they abhor them so much?
- notdrunkatall 14y agoI don't have a dog in this race, but the statement was that Google abhors patent trolls, not patents. If they're buying up patents with the intent to use them to build something rather than flip them, that is not inconsistent.
- nicholassmith 14y agoSo if Google abhors patent trolls, why would Microsoft be enthusiastic about patent trolls? The statement would be nuts.
- zanny 14y agoThe statement isn't nuts if Microsoft intends to play patent troll themselves, which they have done against Android. They have at various times gotten a fraction of smartphone sales running certain versions of Androids because they hold the patents on various trivial design decisions and algorithms.
- spodek 14y agoNot necessarily. Patents and patent trolls affect different-sized companies differently and can be competitive advantages for large and incumbent companies as barriers to entry for new companies. Bill Gates knew his competition would come from two guys in a garage (or graduate school) more than another big company, so his company would be enthusiastic about such barriers. Here's how the barrier works against potential new entrants. Large companies with large patent portfolios mutually license portfolios in exchange for not suing each other, giving them competitive advantages over small and new companies. A new company with one legally defensible patent can't use it to compete with Microsoft, who will claim the new company is infringing on several of Microsoft's thousands, or the mutually licensed ones with other companies. Any non-trivial code can reasonably be claimed to infringe on some patents. Even if it isn't, no small or new company will beat Microsoft. What about trolls who don't intend to bring a product to market and just want money? Large companies with large legal departments can defeat most patent trolls with experience and having large budgets. Paying all the lawyers may cost them money and they'll lose some, but money and experience will win most of the time. The point is it creates another barrier to entry to small companies with fewer resources to fight back. They either have to give up or pay the troll, losing profitability and ability to compete. So patent trolls still create a competitive advantage for Microsoft. Microsoft's legal costs may decrease its margins, but they remain better entrenched, improving stability and profitability overall. Why wouldn't Google like patent trolls? Google's profitability doesn't depend on selling software nearly as much as Microsoft. It profits from advertising. Software patents give them advantages over small and new companies, but not as much as for Microsoft. Take away software patents (how else to get rid of trolls?) and Microsoft will be reverse engineered away. Google will continue.
- jrogers65 14y agoIt's all well and good that we are attempting to address the software patent system but the myth of beneficial medical patents still prevails. If you are of the opinion that medical patents are necessary, please read through this document - http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/against.htm http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/against.h... - in particular, chapter 9. Just like software patents, medical patents have a long and rich history of stifling innovation. Don't buy the lies wholesale - look at the evidence and make your own decision.
- rhizome 14y agoMedical patents are only necessary to preserve inflated pricing models intended to support the owner's (and/or licensee's) advertising campaigns.
- zanny 14y agoWhich means they are necessary to preserve status-quo profit margins. And the people with the microphone who control the hand of law are those who really like their status-quo.
- jobu 14y agoThe thing is I would actually favor software patents if it required the patent applicant to submit all related source code to the public domain. Software is the only medium of creation that is essentially a double-monopoly with copyright and patent protection.
- thirdtruck 14y agoYou've hit on one of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to software patents: by the time you've described the "invention" at a low-enough level to actually allow replication by future patent readers, the resulting patent would be nigh-indistinguishable from actual code.
- dllthomas 14y agoAnd/or would be math.
- diminoten 14y ago"Software patents" aren't implementation specific. I can get a "software patent" on my business model, written entirely in the English language. Literal software patents don't exist in the US system. You don't patent code, you patent what code does, so if you had to submit code, that would put an undue burden on an inventor - now I have to write code to implement my new method of delivering coffee to your house? But I don't even use any code!
- fastball 14y agoStallman was the only speaker that day who wasn't streamed. >"Streaming online would require use of [the] Microsoft Silverlight plug-in, which would pressure people to use proprietary software. Dr. Stallman considers it wrong to pressure people to do that." Why is Silverlight necessary? http://blog.webmproject.org/2010/12/live-streaming-webm-with-wowza-server.html http://blog.webmproject.org/2010/12/live-streaming-webm-with...
- silentmars 14y agoHe was likely talking about the situation in that particular conference, which was using Silverlight for its streaming.
- archagon 14y agoI didn't realize Stallman was licensed under the GPL!
- silentmars 14y agoI read most of the transcripts of the Oracle v Google trial. This was a case where both sides had highly paid expert legal teams staffed with the best lawyers in the country that spent an enormous amount of time preparing to argue a case about patents and copyright in software. What jumped out at me, and I imagine anyone else on HN who read these transcripts, was that despite what was a set of the optimum circumstances for lawyers dealing with software issues, none of them had the slightest idea what they were talking about. They were way off the mark. "What is an API?" - a central issue to the case. The lawyers from neither side understood the answer. "How do people use a programming language?" Again, both sides were desperately clueless (although Oracle's Boies was obviously more so, sometimes hilariously.) So often in reading those transcripts I wanted to grab one of the lawyers and scream in his face, "you idiot!! What the hell is wrong with you?!? Are you stupid????" The situation with software patents is the same - the same clueless legal people are having the same clueless legal discussion about it. They don't understand how software works, they don't understand what software patents really mean, they don't understand the marketplace, and they certainly don't understand programming. Unlike me, who just sits back and screams in my own head at the clueless people who are the self-appointed architects of the legal world in which software developers and entrepreneurs will live and work, Richard Stallman is standing up and screaming in their faces about it. It must feel satisfying to do that. Someone needs to.
- zanny 14y agoThe fault of most modern politics is that politicians are taking action on issues they have no idea about, and the only words they hear about such problems are those paid for with the largest pocketbooks.
- jlgreco 14y agoI think the fault runs even deeper than that. The idea that "if lots of ignorant people work together and find common ground to agree on, something intelligent will pop out" seems to be a cornerstone that we have built our society upon. Two ignorant legal teams duking it out is not the recipe for a sensible outcome; the only thing that happens when one of them wins is that they can convince themselves that the victory must mean something profound. The only hope for the system that I have seen so far is surprisingly intelligent and sensible judges injecting sanity into the system.. but that is hardly something to rely upon.
- diminoten 14y ago> "Maybe it wouldn't be quite as good, but we would all be okay. None of us would be shafted." So rather than reward the talented and ignore the ungifted, he'd rather punish the talented and ignore the ungifted?
- diminoten 14y ago> "Maybe it wouldn't be quite as good, but we would all be okay. None of us would be shafted." So rather than reward the talented and ignore the ungifted, he'd rather punish the talented and ignore the ungifted?
- dsego 14y agostallman would be far more convincing if he would stop eating stuff from his feet (and drinking pepsi).
- crusso 14y agoThose include creating key components of the free software system that he calls GNU/Linux (and many others call simply Linux) I've always savored the irony of Stallman's fight to have content creators relinquish control of their creations while steadfastly refusing to let people just call Linux by the name they choose... while also attempting to steal top billing.
- thirdtruck 14y agoI don't see the irony. "The right to copy" exists only in so far as external forces limit inherent behavior. One could copy all day (as our brains do unbidden) without anyone but the copier being the wiser or needing to care. The credit for one's labor, on the other hand, is an inherently rivalrous "good". Terms like "steal" have a place here, as it takes away from the measurable "social capital" earned by another's labor. It's the difference between re-printing "Alice in Wonderland" and re-printing "Alice in Wonderland, Written by <Not Lewis Carroll>".
- crusso 14y agoThe credit for one's labor I guess if you get to define the value and credit of one's labor, you can still maintain that there is a difference where one doesn't really exist. The credit for one's labor, on the other hand, is an inherently rivalrous "good". But encouraging content creators with financial incentives for creating things that consumers desire is not an inherently rivalrous good? It's the difference between re-printing "Alice in Wonderland" and reprinting "Alice in Wonderland, Written by <Not Lewis Carroll>". So you're okay with taking all financial rewards from the creators of content, but leave them the scraps of naming credit as though your framework is logical? Meh... if you're going to steal from people, you might as go all the way. Stallman is a hypocrite for demanding control of anything he creates while seeking to "free" everything everyone else creates.
- thirdtruck 14y agoI guess if you get to define the value and credit of one's labor, you can still maintain that there is a difference where one doesn't really exist. "Value" distinguishes between "Someone dug a hole where I needed it" and "Someone dug a hole and filled it back up". "Credit" distinguishes between "I dug that hole" and "She dug that hole". If we're having trouble distinguishing between "value" and "credit", even before addressing principles of valuation, then I can no longer concern myself with this discussion.
- riazrizvi 14y agoReduce the problem by reducing the software patent's lifespan, say to 7 years? That would force innovation to be more business-efficient and greatly reduce the number of patent trolls.
- dlitz 14y agoBut then when I come up with a good idea that I want to use in FOSS, I still have to keep it secret for days/weeks until it gets though a "patent-mining process" at whatever company I happen to be working for at the time. There are a lot of costs associated with just having software patents at all, no matter what the duration. Can you demonstrate why we need patents in software so much that it justifies these costs, despite the fact that in practice, we did fine without them for 20 years?
- madhadron 14y agoStallman's position on software patents is clear. It's the response from the rest of the world which is strange. There is one, simple statement that no one attempts to make and defend: "Stallman is wrong." I suspect it's because we all know that Stallman is right, many of us find it socially uncomfortable, and so there are all kinds of attempts to distance the ideas. Personally I regard Stallman as one of the few moderate voices in software. Most discussion today is at an extreme best described as fascism: all privileges of decision and control reserved to a single person. Stallman is the moderate voice calling for a individual self-determination. He hasn't demanded any kind of social protections. Take a few minutes and imagine what the philosophy underlying the social democracies of Scandanavia would look like when applied to software.
- georgemcbay 14y agoI don't view Stallman as moderate at all and there are a large number of ideas he has that I disagree with, but I do agree with him on software patents.
- Tloewald 14y agoSo suppose I want to make a novel device, part of its functionality is software. I can't patent the software only the hardware. It's a mass market device, so I have an incentive to make the software a trade secret. I don't want people to conveniently reverse engineer my software so I design a custom CPU and store the code in encrypted form. That's a whole bunch of overhead that has been created by abolishing software patents. Not only will this kind of thing happen, but it will become commonplace and convenient (e.g. there will be off the shelf CPU designs that support obfuscation). Imagine the digital world returning to the guild system — and the beauty of digital technology is that this could happen ridiculously fast. Now, yes, trivial algorithms would not be worth protecting this way, and that's a Good Thing. But consider the inefficiencies and stupidity that will be created by abolishing software patents altogether. Oh and the DMCA will make any efforts to penetrate obfuscated software illegal in perpetuity.
- linuxhansl 14y agoRMS has a clear definition. Software that runs on a general purpose computer should not be patentable.
- bcoates 14y agoWhy don't the anti-patent people use the simpler rule "Software cannot violate a patent". So if someone makes a physical invention that does something they can patent it but if it's something a general purpose computer can be programmed to do, writing that program does not cause the computer to violate the patent.
- linuxhansl 14y agoIt seems it is less of a problem to patent something physical (like an engine). In modern times there are few physical things that do not involve some kind of software, so it makes sense (although I'd still prefer not to have this at all) to patent the thing as a whole.
- demallien 14y agoI've missed the party on this discussion, but I'm always fascinated when people make the argument you just made. Why should software be treated differently from hardware? Take the example of an old car engine. The spark plugs are fired by a rotating commutator switch in the distributor cap. The design of the commutator is patentable. But if I was going to implement that system today, I'd simply program a simple microcontroller to fire the spark plugs in sequence. The physical system has been replaced directly by a software system, but one is patentable, and the other isn't? In short, I would answer your question with a question. Why can hardware violate a patent and software not?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- linuxhansl 14y agoAs usually RMS is spot on. "Can a person program a new solution to a problem?" Any answer involving "no" seems a bit like insanity. Duffy on the other hand misses the point (IMHO): "The question is, will you get very serious research that is patent-motivated?" There is no "serious [software] research" that actually costs money. I have yet to be shown a single software patent that is the result of research and not just a spark on insight. Sparks of insights are great. The point to note, though, is that they would have happened anyway, they do not cost anything. Granting a legal monopoly on them does not benefit society as a whole. I have no illusion that anything will change. Big companies (with the notable exception of Google) love software patents to keep the competition (especially new players) at bay. Patent trolls love patents, which they can exploit with extortion schemes. Last not least lawyers love software patents; not a single patent case is won or lost without the involved lawyers being rewarded handsomely.
- randomdata 14y agoI have yet to be shown a single software patent that is the result of research and not just a spark on insight. You could argue that every patent is just a spark of insight. However, how many sparks could be made if not for all the research that came before them? Google's driverless car comes to mind as a well-known present-day software research project. When you boil down their achievements, they are all just small sparks of insight. But without all that funding and time put into the overall research, would those sparks have ever materialized? There is little reason for one of the algorithms they have developed to just pop into someone's head otherwise.
- linuxhansl 14y agoI agree. It is not always clear cut. I would stand by initial statement, though, that patents on software do not serve society as a whole.
- cousin_it 14y ago> I have yet to be shown a single software patent that is the result of research and not just a spark on insight. For example, the MP3 and SIFT patents are based on research. Most programmers even today could not recreate these technologies starting from scratch.
- PrinceGeo 14y agoSoftware idea patents are bad for everyone, except patent lawyers.
- grannyg00se 14y ago"They cover common practices on the Internet, like showing an ad before a piece of content." Why do patents like that get granted? And once they are, why aren't they extremely easy to invalidate after the fact? There is a non-trivial aspect to a patent that is supposed to be passed. It seems to me that at least enforcing that would be a nice step.
- jrochkind1 14y ago> Speech recognition, for example, is very patent-intensive." The nytimes article with the guy who DID spend lots of time trying to innovate in speech recognition, recognized as a genius in the field, who was driven out by someone elses patent. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/08/technology/patent-wars-among-tech-giants-can-stifle-competition.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/08/technology/patent-wars-amo...
- yason 14y agoWhat we're missing is a fiscal disincentive, a cost of acquiring bad patents and suing others for violating them. Currently the equation is unbalanced, it's too cheap to harass others with patent litigation. The harmful effect of bad patents isn't factored in into the complete patenting scheme, thus the bad outcome. It's like spam. Not that I support (software and any other) patents at all. I deliberately don't want my name on any patent. I might work on something that my employer wants to patent for they do pay for my time and creativity but I don't want my own name involved outside of that. This isn't just a principle; it has happened in reality. I wish Stallman was heard and patents were banished completely.
- grellas 14y agoMr. Stallman's proposed solution is both simple and elegant: take all software that runs on a general purpose machine and legislate a "safe harbor" from patent claims for software falling in that category. This essentially would return the state of the law to what it was through the early 1990s, recognizing that software patents are fine when tied to specialized hardware or when they pertain to a special-purpose machine but not otherwise. Such a proposal is "radical" in dealing with the problem once and for all but is also remarkably conservative in only singling out for elimination the one category of patents most vulnerable to the potent objection that its retention does little or nothing to further the progress of science and hence doesn't warrant the monopoly protections afforded by the patent laws. The logic here should enable Congress to support it if it chose to reexamine the issues purely from a social and legal perspective. Still, the practical issues remain daunting. What becomes of existing software patents, for example? Purists may say these are not "property" but massive dollars have been paid for the rights to own them and there will be huge resistance, not to mention constitutional objections, over any idea that these suddenly should be rendered worthless by legislative action. If these stay intact for the next 20+ years, what good does a safe harbor do in applying only prospectively? More important, those with a stake in the game - even relatively benign players such as Google - want to hedge and trim on the issues in order to protect their investments, and this means that inordinate pressure will be put on Congress not to single out software patents for elimination, emphasizing instead more limited measures to help fight trolls and so on. With so much resistance, and with an apathetic public, how to build sufficient momentum to push Congress toward a true solution? Developers might lead this charge but I wonder. Founders are mostly not directly affected by software patents and neither are employees at bigger companies who are conscripted to keep churning them out. And those most directly hit in the patent wars resist reform to protect their own investments. So Mr. Stallman finds himself alone in his position at this conference: not because his solution is bad but because of inordinately difficult practical barriers. At least we see in this conference that persons of influence in this area are finally willing to begin seeking incremental reform. If the worst of the abuses can be fixed (e.g., the troll issue), that at least is a start. And, who knows, maybe radical changes can occur after initial progress is made. Time will tell.
- yuhong 14y ago
- numeral_two 14y ago"YOUR ARGUMENT IS INVALID": RMS on most things. http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/30612915.jpg http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/30612915.jpg
- klrr 14y agoWell, sad he act in such a fool'ish way here, raging are often resulting in that people rather trust the counter-arguments. I would acted just like that myself though, and I agree that some of the counter arguments was wrong. I highly wish RMS and the whole FSF community was more respected.
- maked00 14y agoAnyone who doubts the validity of getting rid of software patents need look no further than the fashion industry. Fashion cannot be patented, and there seems to be plenty of innovation and a flourishing business in that sector. The only thing that is appropriate in fashion is trademarks. It is just a bad idea to allow anyone to tax or monopolize ideas.
- maked00 14y agoThe fashion industry does just fine without patents. Plenty of innovation and investment and profits going on there. Fashion relies on trademarks, not patents. Huge difference. We all lose when ideas/knowledge is monopolized or taxed by the few.
- Shorel 14y agoAs much as I dislike his GPL licences and prefer the MIT licenses because I find the GPL too limiting, I can't help but to be totally in agreement with him regarding Software Patents. The best we can do is to abolish them.