5 ms·

So this posting is by someone who thinks software patents are a good thing and still contributes to open source software? How does this cognitive dissonance wor

by panzi 13y ago

So this posting is by someone who thinks software patents are a good thing and still contributes to open source software? How does this cognitive dissonance work out? Is he not aware that many open source licenses have exactly such terms in order to fight software patents? This isn't something new or outrageous.

jwecker 13y ago
Giving a perpetual royalty free license to anything you may ever patent for the rest of your life because of a subtle loophole in a license that people aren't generally aware of is, IMO, new and outrageous, irrespective of the utility (or lack thereof) of software patents.
- nknighthb 13y ago
  A "subtle loophole in a license" is practically a contradiction in terms. Courts don't enforce unlikely interpretations that run counter to the reasonable (and documented!) expectations of most if not all parties concerned just because some lawyer walks into a courtroom and announces they want to interpret it that way. Law is not a programming language, and it's not enforced by computers. If anything, the change that was made by the company here is even worse because it's obviously ambiguous. What exactly does it mean for a patent claim to "exist"? Are we talking about patents already granted? Patents filed? Patents that might be filed?
itistoday2 13y ago
I'm sorry, but how did you get that impression? Here is a direct quote from the paper from which this blog post was made: Also, software should not be patentable.18 19 20 21 22 The practice should be abolished immediately for the good of mankind and whomsoever disagrees with me on this owes me $1 billion in royalties because I patented the concept of being an asshole. https://www.taoeffect.com/other/nupic/#conclusion https://www.taoeffect.com/other/nupic/#conclusion EDIT: Mirrors: Paper: http://cdn.taoeffect.com/other/nupic/index.html#conclusion http://cdn.taoeffect.com/other/nupic/index.html#conclusion Blog post: http://cdn.taoeffect.com/other/apache/index.html http://cdn.taoeffect.com/other/apache/index.html
SEMW 13y ago
> many open source licenses have exactly such terms in order to fight software patents This misses the point. If you want an atypically wide patent grant (covering not just patents infringed by your contributed code, but also to future contributions by other people which infringe a patent of yours), then that should be done openly and explicitly. Not by the backdoor with a clause that doesn't appear to do that but could be interpreted as doing do if you took it to its logical conclusion. (Though it's pretty clear that doing do wasn't actually their intention, given their FAQ denies that interpretation - see DannyBee's post)

by panzi 13y ago

jwecker 13y ago

Giving a perpetual royalty free license to anything you may ever patent for the rest of your life because of a subtle loophole in a license that people aren't generally aware of is, IMO, new and outrageous, irrespective of the utility (or lack thereof) of software patents.

nknighthb 13y ago
A "subtle loophole in a license" is practically a contradiction in terms. Courts don't enforce unlikely interpretations that run counter to the reasonable (and documented!) expectations of most if not all parties concerned just because some lawyer walks into a courtroom and announces they want to interpret it that way. Law is not a programming language, and it's not enforced by computers. If anything, the change that was made by the company here is even worse because it's obviously ambiguous. What exactly does it mean for a patent claim to "exist"? Are we talking about patents already granted? Patents filed? Patents that might be filed?

itistoday2 13y ago

I'm sorry, but how did you get that impression? Here is a direct quote from the paper from which this blog post was made: Also, software should not be patentable.18 19 20 21 22 The practice should be abolished immediately for the good of mankind and whomsoever disagrees with me on this owes me $1 billion in royalties because I patented the concept of being an asshole. https://www.taoeffect.com/other/nupic/#conclusion https://www.taoeffect.com/other/nupic/#conclusion EDIT: Mirrors: Paper: http://cdn.taoeffect.com/other/nupic/index.html#conclusion http://cdn.taoeffect.com/other/nupic/index.html#conclusion Blog post: http://cdn.taoeffect.com/other/apache/index.html http://cdn.taoeffect.com/other/apache/index.html

SEMW 13y ago

> many open source licenses have exactly such terms in order to fight software patents This misses the point. If you want an atypically wide patent grant (covering not just patents infringed by your contributed code, but also to future contributions by other people which infringe a patent of yours), then that should be done openly and explicitly. Not by the backdoor with a clause that doesn't appear to do that but could be interpreted as doing do if you took it to its logical conclusion. (Though it's pretty clear that doing do wasn't actually their intention, given their FAQ denies that interpretation - see DannyBee's post)