Bonum Certa Men Certa

Software Patents Not a Done Deal in New Zealand, Mozilla Weighs in





Direct link



Summary: InternetNZ and other groups that actually represent New Zealand's population speak out against software patents; Mozilla's Robert O'Callahan offers words of wisdom

THE patent situation in New Zealand is an important matter because few countries other than the US and Japan actually accept software patents (although there may be loopholes). The "software patent debate rages on," says this new report from IDG which quotes InternetNZ:

The question of software patents looks unlikely to go away soon, with significant lobbies forming on both sides and a wealth of comment in live forums, letters to the Minister by InternetNZ and the NZ Computer Society, in Computerworld’s own online comment space and on Twitter and Slashdot.

Official bodies and individual commentators are not easily letting go of an apparent reinterpretation of a Select Committee’s wishes regarding a clause excluding software from patent in the Patents Bill. In some quarters the argument is sliding over into one of openness in the legislative process and who truly represents the local ICT industry.

Committee member and Labour ICT spokesperson Clare Curran is uncomfortable with what she calls the “revisiting” of the clause. At last week’s OpenGovt2010 “unconference” she cited the incident as a good example of how the lawmaking process is sometimes less than open or transparent. She referred to “how legislation gets made and the discussions that go on behind closed doors” – discussions that should, she said, “happen in a more transparent environment”.

[...]

NZICT’s most prominent members are multinational ICT companies, like IBM and Microsoft – companies used to having their intellectual property stringently protected.

[...]

In its own letter to Power, InternetNZ has called for the “changes” in the Patents Bill on software to be referred back to the select committee, with an opportunity for further input by “those who originally made submissions”. Ironically, this would cut out NZICT, who did not make a submission. To get a representative point of view the committee may be forced to open submissions more generally.


As we explained before, the "NZ" in NZICT is deceiving because NZICT is a front for multinationals [1, 2, 3, 4, 5].

The following text has just come from New Zealand's Robert O'Callahan (Microsoft boosters quote someone as saying that he is "work[ing] for Mozilla full-time as an employee of Novell in New Zealand"). Although not a formal response from Mozilla, the following is worth quoting:

Mozilla produces the Firefox Web browser, used by more than three hundred million people around the world. Firefox is open source and is the result of a collaboration of a large group of paid developers and volunteers. In fact, Mozilla funds a team of paid developers in New Zealand working on core Firefox code; some key innovations in Firefox, such as HTML5 video, are the work of our New Zealand team. The work we do is some of the most highly skilled and high-impact software development to be found anywhere in the world. I write about software patents in my personal capacity as one of Mozilla's senior software developers, and manager of our Auckland-based development team and also our worldwide layout engine team. I also formerly worked for three years at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center where I participated in the filing of several software patents based on my research.

[...]

The patent system was designed to promote invention and especially the disclosure of "trade secrets" so that others can build on them. Research casts doubt on whether it has succeeded at those goals (see an example), but even if it did, in software development --- especially open-source software development --- it is clear that no patent incentive is needed to encourage innovation and publication of our work.

[...]

Software development is uniquely able to have huge impact on the world because copies can be made available to users for free. If we had charged users for each copy of Firefox there is no doubt we would not be nearly as successful as we have been, either at changing the world or even at raising money --- Mozilla has substantial revenues from "tie-ins" such as search-related advertising. The patent system threatens this business model, because most patent licensing arrangements require the licensee to pay a per-unit fee. This is not necessarily a problem for traditional manufacturing, where there is a per-unit manufacturing cost that must be recouped anyway, but it completely rules out a large class of software business models that have been very successful.


So basically, every coder is an inventor and all the inventions are published in the form of source code. This is not a statement from Mozilla, just an employee's blog.

Recent Techrights' Posts

The 'Culture Wars' in Free Software Have Gone Out of Control
Social control media amplifies such utterly infantile discourse
10 Out of 10: RMS Attracts Massive Audience in Göteborg, Sweden (All Seats Occupied, Some People Standing)
a 55-second clip of his talk
The Lawsuit by Clients of Brett Wilson LLP Against Brett Wilson LLP is Officially On, It is Progressing, The 'Experts' Pick Outside Law Firms (RPC and Mills & Reeve) to Spare Them From Litigants in Person
So it is probably quite potent
Slopwatch: Plagiarism and "Linux" Articles by Bots
Sites that do this won't survive; many of them rely on slop services (suppliers) that will cease to exist after the bubble bursts
 
Geminispace is Very Large
The word continues to spread and the number of participants grows
Teaser: To Compensate for the Fact Our Clients Are Terrible Human Beings Who Strangle Women (While on Microsoft's Payroll) and We Get Paid by Mystery Parties We Bombard You and Your Wife With Almost 10 Kilograms of Legal Papers
If you can't win an argument, then drown the other side with papers?
Another Wave of Microsoft Layoffs, This Time During National Day Holiday
This time it's China again
Staying Happy in Times of Crackdowns on Civil Society
Optimism in this sort of "new reality" or "new normal" seems like something for the irrational person
"Nobel" Exploited Posthumously for "AI" Hype, Now They Do the Same With "Quantum"
ere have been many jokes about "Nobel" for peace (often granted to pro-war people) and a fake one for "Economics" (establishment propaganda)
Distinguished Lecture by Richard Stallman This Coming Monday in Rome
After "Free software, Crucial for Freedom in a Digital World"
Links 10/10/2025: Putin Admits Russia Downed Azerbaijan Airlines Jet, More New Heat Records
Links for the day
Noteworthy Claim That IBM is Firing a Lot of Lawyers This Week (RAs in the Legal Department)
A lot of what they do is patent 'trolling' or lawyering up against their own staff (e.g. HR disputes)
Links 10/10/2025: US Judge Bars Attacks by ICE On Journalists and Protesters; “We Took The Freedom of Speech Away” Says the President
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Serial Sloppers, Google News Gifting Slopfarms, and Fake News/Plagiarism About "Linux"
Google itself is a slop pusher these days
Qualcomm, the New Owner of Arduino, Blasted for Its Software Patents Tax on 'Smartphones'
A lot of Qualcomm's patents are on software. We wrote about this in prior years.
XBox Layoffs Rumours, Downtime, and Criticism From XBox Co-Founder
"everyone is ditching the xbox."
Links 10/10/2025: Honoring The Legacy Of Robert Murray-Smith, Many Articles on the Hey Hi (AI) Bubble
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: October Gothic and Reading Middle Earth Role Playing; C and Ada
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 09, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 09, 2025
Links 09/10/2025: Farewell to Jane Goodall, California Bans Algorithmic Price-Fixing
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: Lost Wages and a Saga Of Continuing To Use Palm PDAs
Links for the day
Richard Stallman's Talk in Helsinki is Done. Tomorrow Göteborg.
There are scarce details in Finnish about Dr. Stallman's talk
New XBox Leaks Probably Serve to Confirm XBox's Collapse (Many More Layoffs)
It's very much consistent with what many other sites have reported lately
The Slop Song
The train wreck marches on
LLM Slop/Advanced Plagiarism Flooding the Zone With Capital That Does Not Exist
Many publishers out there still participate in this bubble instead of calling it what it is
Links 09/10/2025: Sacked Microsoft Workers Make "Sackbird", IBM Taps CockroachDB for PostgreSQL
Links for the day
"Happy Hacking Day" Richard Stallman Talk This Afternoon (From 14:00 to 16:00) at Haaga-Helia University in Pasila
Richard Stallman in Helsinki, Finland
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 08, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 08, 2025
Links 09/10/2025: Impact of Microsoft Layoffs, More Data Breaches
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: Autumn Blues and C IRC Bot
Links for the day
Slopwatch Appreciated by Real Authors of GNU/Linux Articles
We do try to keep on top of those things
Upgraded R.R.R.R.R.R. Today
The Web of 2025 is full of garbage, not limited to slopfarms
Freedom From Proprietary Prisons
Forking always an option
IBM's Watson Died in 1956, Now Watson Dies Again
IBM is becoming just a reseller of GAFAM and other stuff
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, UbuntuPIT, and Google News
We've also just noticed more slop from UbuntuPIT
Microsoft Says That Constant Mass Layoffs Are Success, the Media Isn't Buying This Microsoft Narrative Anymore
If people in the media feel an obligation to repeat whatever lies Microsoft tells, what point will there be to the media?
Links 08/10/2025: "Mali Puts Free Speech on Trial" And Apple Enforces Dictatorship
Links for the day
Links 08/10/2025: ‘Death to Spotify’ and Law to Ban Loud Commercials on Streaming (Dis)Services
Links for the day
Links 08/10/2025: Real Innovation and Nina.chat is Dead
Links for the day
Links 08/10/2025: Y2K38 Bug is a Vulnerability, Chat Control in Europe a Threat
Links for the day
Microsoft Windows is No Longer an Operating System, It's Surveillance Project
Why is this even legal to preload on PCs outside the US?
How and Why Once-Legitimate Sites Turn Into Slopfarms
Many sites will go offline and many social control networks will shut down once they realise or even openly admit they spend money and time gardening a bunch of bots and slop
UbuntuPIT Became a Slopfarm and Gnoppix Tarnishes Its Own Brand With Slop
It fits all the characteristics of mildly-edited (if at all) slop
Slopwatch: Linux Journal and Other Slopfarms
GAFAM needs to go the way of the dodo
Gemini Links 08/10/2025: "Seek Seek Revolution" and Gradient Backgrounds
Links for the day
Qualcomm Arduino Takes Aim at Raspberry Pi
Qualcomm is a Microsoft partner
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 07, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 07, 2025
Stagnation of the Economy and What Free Software Can (or Could) Do For It
If your economic model is based on a pyramid of lies, it won't last very long
Social Control Media is Sinking
it would rightly seem like the era of centralised "social" sites (they're not social, they're about controlling the users) is ending, not overnight but gradually