Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2010/11/15/perens-on-patents.html
Bruce Perens and I often disagree
about lots of things. However, I urge everyone to read what Bruce
wrote
this weekend about software patents. I’m very glad he’s looking
deep into recent events surrounding this issue; I haven’t had the time
to do so myself because I’ve been so busy with
the launch
of my full-time work at
Conservancy this fall.
Despite my current focus on getting Conservancy ramped up with staff,
so it can do more of its work, I nevertheless still remain frightfully
concerned about the impact of software patents on the future of software
freedom, and I support any activities that seek to make sure that software
patent threats do not stand in the way of software freedom. Bruce and I
have always agreed about this issue: software patents should end, and
while individuals with limited means can’t easily make that happen
themselves, we must all work to raise awareness and public opinion against
all patenting of software.
Specifically, I’m really glad that Bruce has mentioned the issue of
lobbying against software
patents. Post-Bilski,
it’s become obvious that software patents can only be ended with
legislative change. In the USA, sadly, the only way to do this
effectively is through lobbying. Therefore, I’ve called on businesses
(such as Google and Red Hat), that have been targets of software patent
litigation, to fund lobbying efforts to end software patents; such funding
would simultaneously help themselves as well as software freedom.
Unfortunately, as far as I’m aware, no companies have stepped forward to
fund such an effort, and they instead seem to spend their patent-related
resources on getting more software patents of their own. Meanwhile,
individual, not-for-profit Free Software developers simply don’t have the
resources to do this lobbying work ourselves.
Nevertheless, there are still a few things individual developers can do
in the meantime against software patents. I wrote a
complete
list of suggestions after Bilski; I just reread it and confirmed all
of the suggestions listed there are still useful.