Comments on: New Doctoral Thesis Explores the Effects of Software Patent Policy on the Motivation and Innovation of Free/Libre and Open Source Developers

By: Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Dr. Roy Schestowitz — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 06:11:54 +0000

Not much reverse engineering would be needed if standards were adhered to.

By: Jose_X

Jose_X — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 00:07:28 +0000

From the overview of the dissertation, it seems a result of the study was the confirmation that when the risks to create go up (when you can have your hard work made illegal), you are more likely to want to spend less mental energy while trying to achieve something more certain, which is the case when we reverse engineer. In reverse engineering, we are also sort of getting back at the unfair system.

By: Jose_X

Jose_X — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 00:01:51 +0000

PJ wrote up a great piece here: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20100522202326865#comments (warning: it is a bit long).

What I got from this story is that, though it might take a while for bad laws to be repealed, the odds of it happening grow over time.

I can look forward to being on the right side, even if the courts and legislators may take time to get the idea.

By: Jose_X

Jose_X — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 23:51:36 +0000

If something brings in more money as a trade secret, then it will stay a trade secret.

On the other hand, if the trade secret had marginal value, then the patent route is a blessing.

But worse, patent authors want broad patents to maximize the gains from patents, and this leaves lots of room to keep all your implementation details a trade secret (assuming you even have implementation details since others might be doing a much better job than you in this area) AND still get the broad patent monopolies!

Supporters of the patent system want legislators and the public to believe they have amazing trade secrets.. and that these will be divulged with patents.

Hogwash.

In any case, for software, the general functionality of something can be discovered through various degrees of achievable reverse engineering as a worse case, so society does not need to sell its heart, soul, and wallet granting patents.

What is difficult to do is to master the totality of precise details necessary to interoperate acceptably with a large product. Software has many “moving parts” each of which generally requires a high degree of precision that is tough to achieve without an honest effort to achieve clarity and transparency by parties developing at opposite sides of interface points. Patents absolutely do not get this information from inventors. And those wanting to keep the trade secrets purposefully go out of their way to obfuscate and keep a moving target.

On so many levels software patenting fails that it really is remarkable the staying power of these legal WMD.

I hope Bilski brings some long-term sanity. Otherwise, lots of wasted effort and money will keep being poured into the WMD race.

By: Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Dr. Roy Schestowitz — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 19:44:31 +0000

Let’s remember that software patents are bad for small companies regardless of whether they produce Free software or not.

By: satipera

satipera — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 15:25:53 +0000

I would encourage people to read this, it does contain some interesting points such as how the patent holders are not living up to their making information public side of the deal because of the way patents are described. This also makes me wonder why patent holders are allowed to enforce their patent rights then use NDA’s which completely go against the spirit of public disclosure required by patents.

The author also goes into some detail about what should qualify as innovation in order to measure it. There is very little about the quality of patents and how and why industry players are enforcing and not enforcing their patents to achieve market dominance.

The scope of the dissertation is actually very narrow. SW patents are just one of the motivations looked at in relation to FLOSS developers. The real damage being done by software patents to software development at the industry rather than individual level and the way it causes the distorted market to operate are outside its scope and the cause of disappointment.

By: Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Dr. Roy Schestowitz — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 06:09:58 +0000

I thought the patent system was to subsidize (if inefficiently) the small folk…

Someone once rebutted/corrected me by arguing that the patent office was designed to encourage publication of ideas in exchange for a temporary monopoly (so that ideas don’t die with their inventor who uses trade secrets).

By: Jose_X

Jose_X — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 03:06:58 +0000

Alright, software patents have not been enforced heavily against open source developers (part of the reason is that software patents are very indecent and more so when attacking open source developers, and also patent owners have not yet gotten enough courage to attack directly too much because of shaky legal ground and fear of backlash); however, it’s important for competition’s sake (and consumers’ sake) that commercial entities supporting FOSS also not be vulnerable to patents assuming that noncommercial FOSS got an exception.

Does it make sense to protect the large commercial companies against competition from smaller commercial groups? When essentially all products violate many patents (as is the case for software), the big folks win hands down. I thought the patent system was to subsidize (if inefficiently) the small folk against the larger in a time where there were fewer education, collaboration, inventions, etc, and everything moved much slower (heck, there was no email, “overnight” snail mail, or even one-month snail mail in some cases)?

Software patents abridge (US) First Amendment rights. Monopolies are stifling. The US law is extremely broken (eg, hurts progress much more than other saner implementations of patents would). Creating artificial scarcity (the concept of it) is likely a very bad deal for society especially when people can work side by side in competing solutions without taking away from each other (and actually feeding each other) except in minor indirect ways that are actually seen as a positive of competition (competition for talent and for consumers). ..However, it’s good to get more research support along the lines of measuring software patents’ potentially very very stifling effects.