Tim O'Reilly (US): “We Need Some Serious Reform on Software Patents.”

Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2011-06-03 18:33:22 UTC
Modified: 2011-06-03 18:33:22 UTC

Photo by Robert Scoble, former Microsoft AstroTurfer ("Evangelist")

Summary: Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly fame (the publisher) joins the tongue lashing against software patents; Techrights commends him.

Tim O'Reilly has had a mixed bag when it comes to techrights, in which he commented before. We appreciate the work he did bringing Open Source to the public's awareness as the books his company publishes definitely help adoption of Free/Open Source software (we have an interview about that coming). The main Issue that we have had with O'Reilly is that he is inclusive to the point where even hostile intrusions (notably by Microsoft) get tolerated and funding from Microsoft is allowed to have impact [1, 2, 3, 4]. Another issue with the company and not the person is its recent deal with Microsoft and also some neglect of "Openness" at the code level, not to mention standards. APIs are not really "openness", they are an invitation to become dependent on someone else.

At any rate, we wish not to berate O'Reilly. Rather, we strive to highlight areas where there is room for debate and hopefully better understanding. We agree with Tim on many of the points he makes, including his important denunciation of software patents in this tweet where he says "I'm with @fredwilson: Enough is enough http://bit.ly/kfXXMV We need some serious reform on software patents." Some people who work for O'Reilly, notably Andy, are actually pro-software patents. Maybe that will change.

Yes, software patents are now being fought against also by Tim (we don't say O'Reilly as that would cause confusion w.r.t. the company/person), who is very influential in the United States. Fred Wilson himself is very pleased with the attention he got for speaking out against software patents the other day:

Clearly this is a hot topic. It's got me hot and it's got a few others hot too. That's a good thing. It's clear that we need to do more to fix the software patents mess and the reaction to yesterday's post is a strong signal to me on that front.

We can second that as Techrights grew very fast since it started covering software patents in 2006. Now more than ever we see software patents doing a lot of harm everywhere in the news, so proprietary software developers -- not just Free software developers -- speak out against these. Let's keep up the fight. The SCOTUS cannot betray the people for too long.

More Confirmatory Rumours Regarding "Massive" Red Hat Layoffs: Ecosystem and sales said to be targeted
Office Meetings Are Most Useful to the Least Productive Workers: In my "office life" days I really didn't like meetings
Claim That the Board of Directors at IBM Isn't Happy With How the Company is Run: IBM tries to project an image of strength to the whole world, especially to its clients
'Cancel Culture' Doesn't Work (in the Long Run): Despite all the attacks, I'm enjoying life, I'm keeping productive, and our audience continues to grow
GNU/Linux Still up (statCounter Says to 6%) in Bosnia And Herzegovina: Let's see where it is at year's end
Making Layout Changes: Feedback can be sent to us
IBM Quiet About Its Plan for Red Hat Amid Accelerated Bluewashing: Something is going on at Red Hat
The "Alicante Mafia" - Part V - It Seems Like Some People Are Already Leaving "The Mafia": they have a rough idea of what's coming
Microsoft Means War, Microsoft is on the Side of ICE: Microsoft, people-ready
Proprietary UNIX is What We'll Have If IBM Red Hat Gets Its Way: IBM Red Hat wants to control everything, even if that means killing everybody
Free Software in Times of Peace (and Times of War, Too): GAFAM and IBM are war companies
Founder of GNU/Linux (RMS) Speaks in US University (College) This Week: The auditorium has very high capacity and this is his "college comeback" talk in the United States
LinuxSecurity and Linuxiac Are Still Slopfarms, Even Anthony Pell Does It: We suppose waiting another month or another year won't change a thing
Links 18/01/2026: Legal Trouble for xAI, Climate Concerns, Data Breaches and More: Links for the day
'Vibe Coding', Chatbots, and Other Bots (e.g. "Agents" Disguised as "Superintelligence") Aren't Saving You Time: False marketing, FOMO marketing tactics
Gemini Links 19/01/2026: Analog Cameras and Plucker in 2026, US Losing Acceptability in Europe: Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...: GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, January 18, 2026: IRC logs for Sunday, January 18, 2026
Links 18/01/2026: The "Deepfake Porn Site Formerly Known as Twitter" and Turkey to Block Kids' Access to Social Control Media: Links for the day
Gemini Links 18/01/2026: Against English as Language of the Net, "Symposium of Destruction": Links for the day
You Would Expect This Kind of Misleading Narrative Shortly Before Microsoft (or GAFAM) Mass Layoffs: misleading PR
FOSDEM 2026: democracy panel, GNOME & Sonny Piers modern slavery experiment: Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Pump-and-Dump With IBM Shares, Courtesy of People Who Stand to Gain From the 'Pump': "3 Reasons to Buy IBM Stock Right Now"
IBM: Spying on Staff Like Never Before and Implementing Silent Layoffs This Month, Say Insiders: what we heard from whistleblowers seems to corroborate
IBM is Not a Free Software Company (It Never Was): Red Hat's main product, RHEL, is full of secret sauce and has 'secret recipes' (it is basically proprietary)
IBM Turning Up the 'RTO' (Stress) and 'PIP' (Fear) Heat on Workers, Rebellion May be Brewing: Sometimes it feels like today's executives at IBM view IBM workers as a liability
Links 18/01/2026: Indonesia Against Comedy, Media-Hostile (Censors Comedians) Convicted Felon in White House Defecting to Opponents of NATO: Links for the day
Behind an Economy of Fake 'Worths' and Fictional 'Valuations' or 'Market Caps': They normalise white-collar crime and say "everyone is doing it!"
Links 18/01/2026: "South Africa is Running Out of Software Developers", Companies Spooked to Find Slop is a Major Liability: Links for the day
Eventually the Joke (and Financial Fraud) is on Microsoft, Stigmatised for Slop: Is Microsoft trying to commit suicide?
GNU/Linux Leaps to All-time Highs in Virgin Islands: it seems to have started around the "end of 10"
Place Your Bets: Who Will Die First? Microsoft or IBM?: Not even joking; make a guess
Making and Keeping the Sites Accessible: Sometimes less does mean "more" (or "MOAR")
The "Alicante Mafia" - Part IV - How Europe's Largest Patent Office Recruited Drug Addicts, Antisemites, and People Who Absolutely Cannot Do the Job (But Know the 'Right' People): To better overlap industrial actions we might delay/postpone/pause this series for a bit
Restoring Professional Pride in the Tech Sector: Rejecting slop isn't being a Luddite
Benefiting by Adding Presence in Geminispace: As the Web gets worse, not limited to bloat as a factor, people seek alternatives
Google News Recently Started Syndicating Another Slopfarm, Linuxiac: Even if Google is aware that there is slop there, it's hard to believe that Google will mind
Slop Bubble "Is Worse Than The Dot Com Bubble": Edward Zitron Says It like it is
Software Patents and USMCA (or NAFTA): We recently pondered going back to issuing 2-3 articles per day about patents and common issues with them
IBM Sued Over PIPs: PIPs are "performance improvement plans"
Sites With "Linux" in Their Name That Are in Effect Slopfarms and Issue Fake Articles: We try to name some of the prolific culprits
Gemini Links 18/01/2026: Raising Notifications From Terminal and Environmental Sanity: Links for the day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, January 17, 2026: IRC logs for Saturday, January 17, 2026
Over at Tux Machines...: GNU/Linux news for the past day
Links 17/01/2026: Internet Blackout Normalised, Russian Attacks Civilians by Causing Massive Blackouts: Links for the day
Microsoft Lunduke Keeps Distracting From the Real Problems With Rust: Microsoft Lunduke is stigmatising critics
Linuxiac Has Become a Slopfarm, Calling Them Out Isn't Fixing That: What a shame. A once-decent site about "Linux" bites the dust.
Luzern Lion Monument, Albanian Female Whistleblowers: Swiss jurists were cowards: Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
The Splinternet is Already Here, Owing to the Militarisation of Technology (Slop, Social Control Media, Back Doors, and More): you know what's gonna happen next...
Stack Ranking Against IBM/Red Hat Staff and a Signal of Mass Layoffs (RAs) Justified by Red Hat and IBM as Poor Performance/Misconduct/Other: Working in an atmosphere like this sounds like a nightmare
Gemini Links 17/01/2026: Slow computing and Environment Leak: Links for the day
Links 17/01/2026: US Censorship and Violence Crisis, Growing Anger Levels Against Slop Sold as "Intelligence": Links for the day
Microsoft's "valuation depends on infrastructure that does not exist.": Indeed
The Typical Trajectory: Datamation Began Experimenting With LLM Slop for Fake Articles. Then Datamation Died. (Last Month): It's always ending up this way
Accounts or Devices (e.g. Phones) That Get 'Burnt' Have Many Pitfalls: Embassies and consulates habitually fail at this
Avoiding the Spooks (Nobody Watches the Watchers, They're Practically Unaccountable): If more people adopt encryption, it'll be easier for us to deal with whistleblowers
Protecting Whistleblowers Requires Technical Knowledge/Skills: even the highest media judges aren't aware of how to protect sources
At Least 5 Women Quit Brett Wilson LLP in Recent Months. It's the Firm That Attacked My Wife and I on Behalf of Americans (One of Them Strangled Women).: It seems like good news that the women escape this workplace
Slop About Slop and Slop About "Linux": In short, avoid slopfarms
Report/Benchmark Says 'Vibe Coding' Results in Security Holes: There are risks they don't like talking about
EPO Abuses Covered in Spanish: Knowing what we know (and heard/saw), the sinister silence of the media is perceived by some to be complicity of the lower order.
Richard Stallman Encourages "ICE Out For Good" Protests, His Opponents Do Not (Passive and Uncaring About Human Rights): He has done a lot philosophically, politically, and so on
Record Traffic in Geminispace or Over Gemini Protocol: it's never too late to join
The "Alicante Mafia" - Part III - Europe's Second-Largest Organisation on Strike, Protests, Other Industrial Actions to Come Impacting Over 95% of the Workforce: The EPO's management is highly evasive, weak, and vulnerable
Claim That IBM Marked 15% of its Workforce for Potential Layoffs: No wonder we keep hearing from Red Hat people who say they hate IBM
Over at Tux Machines...: GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, January 16, 2026: IRC logs for Friday, January 16, 2026

Tim O'Reilly (US): “We Need Some Serious Reform on Software Patents.”

Recent Techrights' Posts