Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2010/07/07/producing-nothing.html

I sought out the quote below when Chris Dodd paraphrased it on Meet
The Press on 25 April 2010. (I’ve been, BTW, slowly but surely
working on this blog post since that date.) Dodd
was quoting Frank
Rich, who wrote the following, referring to the USA economic
system (and its recent collapse):

As many have said — though not many politicians in either party
— something is fundamentally amiss in a financial culture that
thrives on “products” that create nothing and produce nothing
except new ways to make bigger bets and stack the deck in favor of the
house. “At least in an actual casino, the damage is contained to
gamblers,” wrote the financial journalist Roger Lowenstein in The
Times Magazine last month. This catastrophe cost the economy eight million
jobs.

I was drawn to this quote for a few reasons. First, as a poker player,
I’ve spend some time thinking about how “empty” the gambling
industry is. Nothing is produced; no value for humans is created; it’s
just exchanging of money for things that don’t actually exist. I’ve
been considering that issue regularly since around 2001 (when I started
playing poker seriously). I ultimately came to a conclusion not too
different from Frank Rich’s point: since there is a certain
“entertainment value”, and since the damage is contained to
those who chose to enter the casino, I’m not categorically against poker
nor gambling in general, nor do I think they are immoral. However, I
also don’t believe gambling has any particular important value in
society, either. In other words, I don’t think people have an
inalienable right to gamble, but I also don’t think there is any moral
reason to prohibit casinos.

Meanwhile, I’ve also spent some time applying this idea of creating
nothing and producing nothing to the proprietary software
industry. Proprietary licenses, in many ways, are actually not all
that different from these valueless financial transactions.
Initially, there’s no problem: someone writes software and is paid for
it; that’s the way it should be. Creation of new software is an
activity that should absolutely be funded: it creates something new
and valuable for others. However, proprietary licenses are designed
specifically to allow a single act of programming generate new revenue
over and over again. In this aspect, proprietary licensing is akin to
selling financial derivatives: the actual valuable transaction is
buried well below the non-existent financial construction above
it.

I admit that I’m not a student of economics. In fact, I rarely think
of software in terms of economics, because, generally, I don’t want
economic decisions to drive my morality nor that of our society at
large. As such, I don’t approach this question with an academic
economic slant, but rather, from personal economic experience.
Specifically, I learned a simple concept about work when I was young:
workers in our society get paid only for the hours that they
work. To get paid, you have to do something new. You just can’t sit
around and have money magically appear in your bank account for hours
you didn’t work.

I always approached software with this philosophy. I’ve often been
paid for programming, but I’ve been paid directly for the hours I spent
programming. I never even considered it reasonable to be paid again for
programming I did in the past. How is that fair, just, or quite
frankly, even necessary? If I get a job building a house, I can’t get
paid every day someone uses that house. Indeed, even if I built the
house, I shouldn’t get a royalty paid every time the house is resold to
a new owner⁰. Why
should software work any differently? Indeed, there’s even an argument
that software, since it’s so much more trivial to copy than a
house, should be available gratis to everyone once it’s written the
first time.

I recently heard (for the first time) an old story about a well-known
Open Source company (which no longer exists, in case you’re wondering).
As the company grew larger, the company’s owners were annoyed that
the company could
only bill the clients for the hour they worked. The business
was going well, and they even had more work than they could handle
because of the unique expertise of their developers. The billable rates
covered the cost of the developers’ salaries plus a reasonable
profit margin. Yet, the company executives wanted more; they wanted
to make new money even when everyone was on vacation. In
essence, having all the new, well-paid programming work in the world
wasn’t enough; they wanted the kinds of obscene profits that can only be
made from proprietary licensing. Having learned this story, I’m pretty
glad the company ceased to exist before they could implement
their make money while everyone’s on the beach plan. Indeed, the
first order of business in implementing the company’s new plan was, not
surprisingly, developing some new from-scratch code not covered by GPL
that could be proprietarized. I’m glad they never had time to execute
on that plan.

I’ll just never be fully comfortable with the idea that workers should
get money for work they already did. Work is only valuable if it
produces something new that didn’t exist in the world before the work
started, or solves a problem that had yet to be solved. Proprietary
licensing and financial bets on market derivatives have something
troubling in common: they can make a profit for someone without
requiring that someone to do any new work. Any time a business moves
away from actually producing something new of value for a real human
being, I’ll always question whether the business remains legitimate.

I’ve thus far ignored one key point in the quote that began this post:
“At least in an actual casino, the damage is contained to
gamblers”. Thus, for this “valueless work” idea to
apply to proprietary licensing, I had to consider (a) whether or not the
problem is sufficiently contained, and (b) whether software or not is
akin to the mere entertainment activity, as gambling is.

I’ve pointed out that I’m not opposed to the gambling industry, because
the entertainment value exists and the damage is contained to people who
want that particular entertainment. To avoid the stigma associated with
gambling, I can also make a less politically charged example such as the
local Chuck E. Cheese, a place I quite enjoyed as a child. One’s parent
or guardian goes to Chuck E. Cheese to pay for a child’s entertainment,
and there is some value in that. If someone had issue with Chuck
E. Cheese’s operation, it’d be easy to just ignore it and not take your
children there, finding some other entertainment. So, the question is,
does proprietary software work the same way, and is it therefore not too
damaging?

I think the excuse doesn’t apply to proprietary software for two
reasons. First, the damage is not sufficiently contained, particularly
for widely used software. It is, for example, roughly impossible to get
a job that doesn’t require the employee to use some proprietary
software. Imagine if we lived in a society where you weren’t allowed to
work for a living if you didn’t agree to play Blackjack with a certain
part of your weekly salary? Of course, this situation is not fully
analogous, but the fundamental principle applies: software is ubiquitous
enough in industrialized society that it’s roughly impossible to avoid
encountering it in daily life. Therefore, the proprietary software
situation is not adequately contained, and is difficult for individuals
to avoid.

Second, software is not merely a diversion. Our society has changed
enough that people cannot work effectively in the society without at
least sometimes using software. Therefore, the
“entertainment” part of the containment theory does not
properly
apply¹,
either. If citizens are de-facto required to use something to live
productively, it must have different rules and control structures around
it than wholly optional diversions.

Thus, this line of reasoning gives me yet another reason to oppose
proprietary software: proprietary licensing is simply a valueless
transaction. It creates a burden on society and gives no benefit, other
than a financial one to those granted the monopoly over that particular
software program. Unfortunately, there nevertheless remain many who
want that level of control, because one fact cannot be denied: the
profits are larger.

For
example, Mårten
Mikos recently argued in favor of these sorts of large profits. He
claims that to benefit massively from Open Source (i.e., to get
really
rich), business
models like “Open Core” are necessary. Mårten’s
argument, and indeed most pro-Open-Core arguments, rely on this
following fundamental assumption: for FLOSS to be legitimate, it must
allow for the same level of profits as proprietary software. This
assumption, in my view, is faulty. It’s always true that you can make
bigger profits by ignoring morality. Factories can easily make more
money by completely ignoring environmental issues; strip mining is
always very profitable, after all. However, as a society, we’ve decided
that the environment is worth protecting, so we have rules that do limit
profit maximization because a more important goal is served.

Software freedom is another principle of this type. While
you can make a profit with community-respecting FLOSS business
models (such as service, support and freely licensed custom
modifications on contract), it’s admittedly a smaller profit than can be
made with Open Core and proprietary licensing. But that greater profit
potential doesn’t legitimatize such business models, just as it doesn’t
legitimize strip mining or gambling on financial derivatives.

Update: Based on some feedback that I got, I felt it
was important to make clear that I don’t believe this argument alone can
create a unified theory that shows why software freedom should be an
inalienable right for all software users. This factor of lack of value
that proprietary licensing brings to society is just another to consider
in a more complete discussion about software freedom.

Update: Glynn
Moody wrote
a blog
post that quoted from this post extensively and made some interesting
comments on it. There’s some interesting discussion in the blog
comments there on his site; perhaps because so many people hate that I
only do blog comments on identi.ca (which I do, BTW, because it’s the
only online forum I’m assured that I’ll actually read and respond
to.)

⁰I
realize that some argue that you can buy a house, then rent it to others,
and evict them if they fail to pay. Some might argue further that owners
of software should get this same rental power. The key difference,
though, is that the house owner can’t really make full use of the house
when it’s being rented. The owner’s right to rent it to others,
therefore, is centered around the idea that the owner loses some of their
personal ability to use the house while the renters are present. This
loss of use never happens with software.

¹You
might be wondering, Ok, so if it’s pure entertainment software, is it
acceptable for it to be proprietary?. I have often said: if all
published and deployed software in the world were guaranteed Free
Software except for video games, I wouldn’t work on the
cause of software freedom anymore. Ultimately, I am not particularly
concerned about the control structures in our culture that exist for pure
entertainment. I suppose there’s some line to be drawn between
art/culture and pure entertainment/diversion, but considerations on
differentiating control structures on that issue are beyond the scope of
this blog post.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2010/07/07/producing-nothing.html

I sought out the quote below when Chris Dodd paraphrased it on Meet
The Press on 25 April 2010. (I’ve been, BTW, slowly but surely
working on this blog post since that date.) Dodd
was quoting Frank
Rich, who wrote the following, referring to the USA economic
system (and its recent collapse):

As many have said — though not many politicians in either party
— something is fundamentally amiss in a financial culture that
thrives on “products” that create nothing and produce nothing
except new ways to make bigger bets and stack the deck in favor of the
house. “At least in an actual casino, the damage is contained to
gamblers,” wrote the financial journalist Roger Lowenstein in The
Times Magazine last month. This catastrophe cost the economy eight million
jobs.

I was drawn to this quote for a few reasons. First, as a poker player,
I’ve spend some time thinking about how “empty” the gambling
industry is. Nothing is produced; no value for humans is created; it’s
just exchanging of money for things that don’t actually exist. I’ve
been considering that issue regularly since around 2001 (when I started
playing poker seriously). I ultimately came to a conclusion not too
different from Frank Rich’s point: since there is a certain
“entertainment value”, and since the damage is contained to
those who chose to enter the casino, I’m not categorically against poker
nor gambling in general, nor do I think they are immoral. However, I
also don’t believe gambling has any particular important value in
society, either. In other words, I don’t think people have an
inalienable right to gamble, but I also don’t think there is any moral
reason to prohibit casinos.

Meanwhile, I’ve also spent some time applying this idea of creating
nothing and producing nothing to the proprietary software
industry. Proprietary licenses, in many ways, are actually not all
that different from these valueless financial transactions.
Initially, there’s no problem: someone writes software and is paid for
it; that’s the way it should be. Creation of new software is an
activity that should absolutely be funded: it creates something new
and valuable for others. However, proprietary licenses are designed
specifically to allow a single act of programming generate new revenue
over and over again. In this aspect, proprietary licensing is akin to
selling financial derivatives: the actual valuable transaction is
buried well below the non-existent financial construction above
it.

I admit that I’m not a student of economics. In fact, I rarely think
of software in terms of economics, because, generally, I don’t want
economic decisions to drive my morality nor that of our society at
large. As such, I don’t approach this question with an academic
economic slant, but rather, from personal economic experience.
Specifically, I learned a simple concept about work when I was young:
workers in our society get paid only for the hours that they
work. To get paid, you have to do something new. You just can’t sit
around and have money magically appear in your bank account for hours
you didn’t work.

I always approached software with this philosophy. I’ve often been
paid for programming, but I’ve been paid directly for the hours I spent
programming. I never even considered it reasonable to be paid again for
programming I did in the past. How is that fair, just, or quite
frankly, even necessary? If I get a job building a house, I can’t get
paid every day someone uses that house. Indeed, even if I built the
house, I shouldn’t get a royalty paid every time the house is resold to
a new owner⁰. Why
should software work any differently? Indeed, there’s even an argument
that software, since it’s so much more trivial to copy than a
house, should be available gratis to everyone once it’s written the
first time.

I recently heard (for the first time) an old story about a well-known
Open Source company (which no longer exists, in case you’re wondering).
As the company grew larger, the company’s owners were annoyed that
the company could
only bill the clients for the hour they worked. The business
was going well, and they even had more work than they could handle
because of the unique expertise of their developers. The billable rates
covered the cost of the developers’ salaries plus a reasonable
profit margin. Yet, the company executives wanted more; they wanted
to make new money even when everyone was on vacation. In
essence, having all the new, well-paid programming work in the world
wasn’t enough; they wanted the kinds of obscene profits that can only be
made from proprietary licensing. Having learned this story, I’m pretty
glad the company ceased to exist before they could implement
their make money while everyone’s on the beach plan. Indeed, the
first order of business in implementing the company’s new plan was, not
surprisingly, developing some new from-scratch code not covered by GPL
that could be proprietarized. I’m glad they never had time to execute
on that plan.

I’ll just never be fully comfortable with the idea that workers should
get money for work they already did. Work is only valuable if it
produces something new that didn’t exist in the world before the work
started, or solves a problem that had yet to be solved. Proprietary
licensing and financial bets on market derivatives have something
troubling in common: they can make a profit for someone without
requiring that someone to do any new work. Any time a business moves
away from actually producing something new of value for a real human
being, I’ll always question whether the business remains legitimate.

I’ve thus far ignored one key point in the quote that began this post:
“At least in an actual casino, the damage is contained to
gamblers”. Thus, for this “valueless work” idea to
apply to proprietary licensing, I had to consider (a) whether or not the
problem is sufficiently contained, and (b) whether software or not is
akin to the mere entertainment activity, as gambling is.

I’ve pointed out that I’m not opposed to the gambling industry, because
the entertainment value exists and the damage is contained to people who
want that particular entertainment. To avoid the stigma associated with
gambling, I can also make a less politically charged example such as the
local Chuck E. Cheese, a place I quite enjoyed as a child. One’s parent
or guardian goes to Chuck E. Cheese to pay for a child’s entertainment,
and there is some value in that. If someone had issue with Chuck
E. Cheese’s operation, it’d be easy to just ignore it and not take your
children there, finding some other entertainment. So, the question is,
does proprietary software work the same way, and is it therefore not too
damaging?

I think the excuse doesn’t apply to proprietary software for two
reasons. First, the damage is not sufficiently contained, particularly
for widely used software. It is, for example, roughly impossible to get
a job that doesn’t require the employee to use some proprietary
software. Imagine if we lived in a society where you weren’t allowed to
work for a living if you didn’t agree to play Blackjack with a certain
part of your weekly salary? Of course, this situation is not fully
analogous, but the fundamental principle applies: software is ubiquitous
enough in industrialized society that it’s roughly impossible to avoid
encountering it in daily life. Therefore, the proprietary software
situation is not adequately contained, and is difficult for individuals
to avoid.

Second, software is not merely a diversion. Our society has changed
enough that people cannot work effectively in the society without at
least sometimes using software. Therefore, the
“entertainment” part of the containment theory does not
properly
apply¹,
either. If citizens are de-facto required to use something to live
productively, it must have different rules and control structures around
it than wholly optional diversions.

Thus, this line of reasoning gives me yet another reason to oppose
proprietary software: proprietary licensing is simply a valueless
transaction. It creates a burden on society and gives no benefit, other
than a financial one to those granted the monopoly over that particular
software program. Unfortunately, there nevertheless remain many who
want that level of control, because one fact cannot be denied: the
profits are larger.

For
example, Mårten
Mikos recently argued in favor of these sorts of large profits. He
claims that to benefit massively from Open Source (i.e., to get
really
rich), business
models like “Open Core” are necessary. Mårten’s
argument, and indeed most pro-Open-Core arguments, rely on this
following fundamental assumption: for FLOSS to be legitimate, it must
allow for the same level of profits as proprietary software. This
assumption, in my view, is faulty. It’s always true that you can make
bigger profits by ignoring morality. Factories can easily make more
money by completely ignoring environmental issues; strip mining is
always very profitable, after all. However, as a society, we’ve decided
that the environment is worth protecting, so we have rules that do limit
profit maximization because a more important goal is served.

Software freedom is another principle of this type. While
you can make a profit with community-respecting FLOSS business
models (such as service, support and freely licensed custom
modifications on contract), it’s admittedly a smaller profit than can be
made with Open Core and proprietary licensing. But that greater profit
potential doesn’t legitimatize such business models, just as it doesn’t
legitimize strip mining or gambling on financial derivatives.

Update: Based on some feedback that I got, I felt it
was important to make clear that I don’t believe this argument alone can
create a unified theory that shows why software freedom should be an
inalienable right for all software users. This factor of lack of value
that proprietary licensing brings to society is just another to consider
in a more complete discussion about software freedom.

Update: Glynn
Moody wrote
a blog
post that quoted from this post extensively and made some interesting
comments on it. There’s some interesting discussion in the blog
comments there on his site; perhaps because so many people hate that I
only do blog comments on identi.ca (which I do, BTW, because it’s the
only online forum I’m assured that I’ll actually read and respond
to.)

⁰I
realize that some argue that you can buy a house, then rent it to others,
and evict them if they fail to pay. Some might argue further that owners
of software should get this same rental power. The key difference,
though, is that the house owner can’t really make full use of the house
when it’s being rented. The owner’s right to rent it to others,
therefore, is centered around the idea that the owner loses some of their
personal ability to use the house while the renters are present. This
loss of use never happens with software.

¹You
might be wondering, Ok, so if it’s pure entertainment software, is it
acceptable for it to be proprietary?. I have often said: if all
published and deployed software in the world were guaranteed Free
Software except for video games, I wouldn’t work on the
cause of software freedom anymore. Ultimately, I am not particularly
concerned about the control structures in our culture that exist for pure
entertainment. I suppose there’s some line to be drawn between
art/culture and pure entertainment/diversion, but considerations on
differentiating control structures on that issue are beyond the scope of
this blog post.

Post Syndicated from Oglaf! -- Comics. Often dirty. original https://www.oglaf.com/balcony/

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2010/06/30/bilski.html

Lots of people are opining about
the USA
Supreme Court’s ruling in the Bilski case. Yesterday, I participated
in
a oggcast
with the folks at SFLC. In that oggcast, Dan Ravicher explained most
of the legal details of Bilski; I could never cover them as well as he
did, and I wouldn’t even try.

Anyway, as a non-lawyer worried about the policy questions, I’m pretty
much only concerned about those forward-looking policy questions.
However, to briefly look back at how our community responded to this
Bilski situation over the last 18 months: it seems similar to what
happened
while the Eldred
case was working its way to the Supreme Court. In the months
preceding both Eldred and Bilski, there seemed to be a mass hypnosis that
the Supreme Court would actually change copyright law (Eldred) or patent
law (Bilski) to make it better for freedom of computer users.

In both cases, that didn’t happen. There was admittedly less of that
giddy optimism before Bilski as there was before Eldred, but the ultimate
outcome for computer users is roughly no different in both cases: as we
were with Eldred, we’re left back with the same policy situation we had
before Bilski ever started making its way through the various courts. As
near as I can tell from what I’ve learned, the entire “Bilski
thing” appears to be a no-op. In short, as before, the Patent
Office sometimes can and will deny applications that it determines are
only abstract ideas, and the Supreme Court has now confirmed that the
Patent Office can reject such an application if the Patent Office knows
an abstract idea when it sees it. Nothing has changed regarding most
patents that are granted every day, including those that read on software.
Those of us that oppose software patents continue to believe that software
algorithms are indeed merely abstract ideas and pure mathematics and
shouldn’t be patentable subject matter. The governmental powers still
seems to disagree with us, or, at least, just won’t comment on that
question.

Looking forward, my largest concern, from a policy
perspective, is that the “patent reform” crowd,
who claim to be the allies of the anti-software-patent folks,
will use this decision to declare that the system works.
Bilski’s patent was ultimately denied, but on grounds that leave us no
closer to abolishing software patents. Patent reformists will
say: Well, invalid patents get denied, leaving space for the valid
ones. Those valid ones, they will say, do and should include
lots of patents that read on software. But only the really good
ideas should be patented, they will insist.

We must not yield to the patent reformists, particularly at a time like
this. (BTW, be sure to read
RMS‘ classic and still relevant essay,
Patent
Reform Is Not Enough, if you haven’t already.)

Since Bilski has given us no new tools for abolishing software patents,
we must redouble efforts with tools we already have to mitigate the
threat patents pose to software freedom. Here are a few suggestions,
which I think are actually all implementable by the average developer,
to will keep up the fight against software patents, or at least,
mitigate their impact:

• License your software using the
  AGPLv3,
  GPLv3,
  LGPLv3,
  or Apache-2.0.
  Among the copyleft
  licenses, AGPLv3
  and GPLv3 offer the
  best patent
  protections; LGPLv3
  offers the best among the weak copyleft
  licenses; Apache
  License 2.0 offers the best patent protections among the permissive
  licenses. These are the licenses we should gravitate toward,
  particularly since multiple companies with software patents are
  regularly attacking Free Software. At least when such companies
  contribute code to projects under these licenses, we know those
  particular codebases will be safe from that particular company’s
  patents.
• Demand real patent licenses from companies, not mere
  promises. Patent promises are not
  enough⁰. The Free Software
  community deserves to know it has real patent licenses from companies
  that hold patents. At the very least, we should demand unilateral
  patent licenses for all their patents perpetually for all
  possible copylefted code (i.e., companies should grant, ahead of
  time, the exact same license that the community would get if the
  company had contributed to a yet-to-exist GPLv3’d
  codebase)¹. Note
  further that some companies, that claim to be part of the
  FLOSS community, haven’t even given the
  (inadequate-but-better-than-nothing) patent promises.
  For example,
  BlackDuck holds a
  patent related to FLOSS, but
  despite saying
  they would consider at least a patent promise, have failed to do
  even that minimal effort.
• Support organizations/efforts that work to oppose and end
  software patents. In particular, be sure that the efforts
  you support are not merely “patent reform” efforts hidden
  behind anti-software patent rhetoric. Here are a few initiatives that
  I’ve recently seen doing work regarding complete abolition of software
  patents. I suggest you support them (with your time or dollars):
  • End Software
    Patents (a project of
    FSF),
  • FFII
    (European-specific), and
  • APRIL
    (France-specific).
• Write your legislators. This never hurts. In the
  USA, it’s unlikely we can convince Congress to change patent law,
  because there are just too many lobbying dollars from those big
  patent-holding companies (e.g., the same ones that wrote
  those nasty
  amicus
  briefs
  in Bilski). But, writing your Senators and Congresspeople once a year
  to remind them of your opposition patents that read on software simply
  can’t hurt, and may theoretically help a tiny bit. Now would be a good
  time to do it, since you can mention how the Bilski decision convinced
  you there’s a need for legislative abolition of software patents.
  Meanwhile, remember, it’s even better if you show up at political
  debates during election season and ask these candidates to oppose
  software patents!
• Explain to your colleagues why software patents should be
  abolished, particularly if you work in computing. Software
  patent abolition is actually a broad spectrum issue across the
  computing industry. Only big and powerful companies benefit from
  software patents. The little guy — even the little guy
  proprietary developer — is hurt by software patents.
  Even if you can’t convince your colleagues who write proprietary
  software that they should switch to writing Free Software,
  you can instead convince them that software patents
  are bad for them personally and for their chances to succeed in
  software. Share the film,
  Patent
  Absurdity, with them and then discuss the issue with them
  after they’ve viewed it. Blog, tweet, dent, and the like about the
  issue regularly.
• (added 2010-07-01 on tmarble‘s
  suggestion) Avoid products from pro-software-patent
  companies. This is tough to do, and it’s why I didn’t call
  for an all-out boycott. Most companies that make computers are
  pro-software-patent, so it’s actually tough to buy a computer (or even
  components for one) without buying from a pro-software-patent company.
  However, avoiding the companies who are most aggressive with patent
  aggression is easy: starting with avoiding Apple products is a good
  first step (there are plenty of other reasons to avoid Apple anyway).
  Microsoft would be next on the list, since they specifically use
  software patents to attack FLOSS projects. Those are likely the big
  two to avoid, but always remember that all large companies with
  proprietary software products actively enforce patents, even if they
  don’t file lawsuits. In other words, go with the little guy if you
  can; it’s more likely to be a patent-free zone.
• If you have a good idea, publish it and make sure the great
  idea is well described in code comments and documentation, and that
  everything is well archived by date. I put this one last on
  my list, because it’s more of a help for the software patent
  reformists than it is for the software patent abolitionists.
  Nevertheless, sometimes, patents will get in the way of Free Software,
  and it will be good if there is strong prior art showing that the idea
  was already thought of, implemented, and put out into the world before
  the patent was filed. But, fact is,
  the “valid”
  software patents with no prior art are a bigger threat to software
  freedom. The stronger the patent, the worst the threat, because
  it’s more likely to be innovative, new technology that we want to
  implement in Free Software.

I sat and thought of what else I could add to this list that
individuals can do to help abolish software patents. I was sad that
these were the only five six things that
I could collect, but that’s all the more reason to do
these five six
things in earnest. The battle for software freedom for all users is not
one we’ll win in our lifetimes. It’s also possible abolition of
software patents will take a generation as well. Those of us that seek
this outcome must be prepared for patience and lifelong, diligent work
so that the right outcome happens, eventually.

⁰ Update: I
was asked for a longer write up on software patent licenses as
compared to mere “promises”.
Unfortunately, I
don’t have one, so the best I was able to offer
was the interview I did
on Linux Outlaws, Episode 102, about Microsoft’s patent
promise. I’ve also added a TODO to write something up more completely
on this particular issue.

¹ I am not
leaving my permissively-license-preferring friends out of this issue
without careful consideration. Specifically, I just don’t think it’s
practical or even fair to ask companies to license their patents for
all permissively-licensed code, since that would be the same as
licensing to everyone, including their proprietary software
competitors. An ahead-of-time perpetual license to practice the
teachings of all the company’s patents under AGPLv3 basically makes
sure that code that’s eternally Free Software will also eternally be
patent-licensed from that company, even if the company never
contributes to the AGPLv3’d codebase. Anyone trying to make
proprietary code that infringed the patent wouldn’t have benefit of
the license; only Free Software users, distributors and modifiers
would have the benefit. If a company supports copyleft generally,
then there is no legitimate reason for the company to refuse such a
broad license for copyleft distributions and deployments.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2010/06/30/bilski.html

Lots of people are opining about
the USA
Supreme Court’s ruling in the Bilski case. Yesterday, I participated
in
a oggcast
with the folks at SFLC. In that oggcast, Dan Ravicher explained most
of the legal details of Bilski; I could never cover them as well as he
did, and I wouldn’t even try.

Anyway, as a non-lawyer worried about the policy questions, I’m pretty
much only concerned about those forward-looking policy questions.
However, to briefly look back at how our community responded to this
Bilski situation over the last 18 months: it seems similar to what
happened
while the Eldred
case was working its way to the Supreme Court. In the months
preceding both Eldred and Bilski, there seemed to be a mass hypnosis that
the Supreme Court would actually change copyright law (Eldred) or patent
law (Bilski) to make it better for freedom of computer users.

In both cases, that didn’t happen. There was admittedly less of that
giddy optimism before Bilski as there was before Eldred, but the ultimate
outcome for computer users is roughly no different in both cases: as we
were with Eldred, we’re left back with the same policy situation we had
before Bilski ever started making its way through the various courts. As
near as I can tell from what I’ve learned, the entire “Bilski
thing” appears to be a no-op. In short, as before, the Patent
Office sometimes can and will deny applications that it determines are
only abstract ideas, and the Supreme Court has now confirmed that the
Patent Office can reject such an application if the Patent Office knows
an abstract idea when it sees it. Nothing has changed regarding most
patents that are granted every day, including those that read on software.
Those of us that oppose software patents continue to believe that software
algorithms are indeed merely abstract ideas and pure mathematics and
shouldn’t be patentable subject matter. The governmental powers still
seems to disagree with us, or, at least, just won’t comment on that
question.

Looking forward, my largest concern, from a policy
perspective, is that the “patent reform” crowd,
who claim to be the allies of the anti-software-patent folks,
will use this decision to declare that the system works.
Bilski’s patent was ultimately denied, but on grounds that leave us no
closer to abolishing software patents. Patent reformists will
say: Well, invalid patents get denied, leaving space for the valid
ones. Those valid ones, they will say, do and should include
lots of patents that read on software. But only the really good
ideas should be patented, they will insist.

We must not yield to the patent reformists, particularly at a time like
this. (BTW, be sure to read
RMS‘ classic and still relevant essay,
Patent
Reform Is Not Enough, if you haven’t already.)

Since Bilski has given us no new tools for abolishing software patents,
we must redouble efforts with tools we already have to mitigate the
threat patents pose to software freedom. Here are a few suggestions,
which I think are actually all implementable by the average developer,
to will keep up the fight against software patents, or at least,
mitigate their impact:

• License your software using the
  AGPLv3,
  GPLv3,
  LGPLv3,
  or Apache-2.0.
  Among the copyleft
  licenses, AGPLv3
  and GPLv3 offer the
  best patent
  protections; LGPLv3
  offers the best among the weak copyleft
  licenses; Apache
  License 2.0 offers the best patent protections among the permissive
  licenses. These are the licenses we should gravitate toward,
  particularly since multiple companies with software patents are
  regularly attacking Free Software. At least when such companies
  contribute code to projects under these licenses, we know those
  particular codebases will be safe from that particular company’s
  patents.
• Demand real patent licenses from companies, not mere
  promises. Patent promises are not
  enough⁰. The Free Software
  community deserves to know it has real patent licenses from companies
  that hold patents. At the very least, we should demand unilateral
  patent licenses for all their patents perpetually for all
  possible copylefted code (i.e., companies should grant, ahead of
  time, the exact same license that the community would get if the
  company had contributed to a yet-to-exist GPLv3’d
  codebase)¹. Note
  further that some companies, that claim to be part of the
  FLOSS community, haven’t even given the
  (inadequate-but-better-than-nothing) patent promises.
  For example,
  BlackDuck holds a
  patent related to FLOSS, but
  despite saying
  they would consider at least a patent promise, have failed to do
  even that minimal effort.
• Support organizations/efforts that work to oppose and end
  software patents. In particular, be sure that the efforts
  you support are not merely “patent reform” efforts hidden
  behind anti-software patent rhetoric. Here are a few initiatives that
  I’ve recently seen doing work regarding complete abolition of software
  patents. I suggest you support them (with your time or dollars):
  • End Software
    Patents (a project of
    FSF),
  • FFII
    (European-specific), and
  • APRIL
    (France-specific).
• Write your legislators. This never hurts. In the
  USA, it’s unlikely we can convince Congress to change patent law,
  because there are just too many lobbying dollars from those big
  patent-holding companies (e.g., the same ones that wrote
  those nasty
  amicus
  briefs
  in Bilski). But, writing your Senators and Congresspeople once a year
  to remind them of your opposition patents that read on software simply
  can’t hurt, and may theoretically help a tiny bit. Now would be a good
  time to do it, since you can mention how the Bilski decision convinced
  you there’s a need for legislative abolition of software patents.
  Meanwhile, remember, it’s even better if you show up at political
  debates during election season and ask these candidates to oppose
  software patents!
• Explain to your colleagues why software patents should be
  abolished, particularly if you work in computing. Software
  patent abolition is actually a broad spectrum issue across the
  computing industry. Only big and powerful companies benefit from
  software patents. The little guy — even the little guy
  proprietary developer — is hurt by software patents.
  Even if you can’t convince your colleagues who write proprietary
  software that they should switch to writing Free Software,
  you can instead convince them that software patents
  are bad for them personally and for their chances to succeed in
  software. Share the film,
  Patent
  Absurdity, with them and then discuss the issue with them
  after they’ve viewed it. Blog, tweet, dent, and the like about the
  issue regularly.
• (added 2010-07-01 on tmarble‘s
  suggestion) Avoid products from pro-software-patent
  companies. This is tough to do, and it’s why I didn’t call
  for an all-out boycott. Most companies that make computers are
  pro-software-patent, so it’s actually tough to buy a computer (or even
  components for one) without buying from a pro-software-patent company.
  However, avoiding the companies who are most aggressive with patent
  aggression is easy: starting with avoiding Apple products is a good
  first step (there are plenty of other reasons to avoid Apple anyway).
  Microsoft would be next on the list, since they specifically use
  software patents to attack FLOSS projects. Those are likely the big
  two to avoid, but always remember that all large companies with
  proprietary software products actively enforce patents, even if they
  don’t file lawsuits. In other words, go with the little guy if you
  can; it’s more likely to be a patent-free zone.
• If you have a good idea, publish it and make sure the great
  idea is well described in code comments and documentation, and that
  everything is well archived by date. I put this one last on
  my list, because it’s more of a help for the software patent
  reformists than it is for the software patent abolitionists.
  Nevertheless, sometimes, patents will get in the way of Free Software,
  and it will be good if there is strong prior art showing that the idea
  was already thought of, implemented, and put out into the world before
  the patent was filed. But, fact is,
  the “valid”
  software patents with no prior art are a bigger threat to software
  freedom. The stronger the patent, the worst the threat, because
  it’s more likely to be innovative, new technology that we want to
  implement in Free Software.

I sat and thought of what else I could add to this list that
individuals can do to help abolish software patents. I was sad that
these were the only five six things that
I could collect, but that’s all the more reason to do
these five six
things in earnest. The battle for software freedom for all users is not
one we’ll win in our lifetimes. It’s also possible abolition of
software patents will take a generation as well. Those of us that seek
this outcome must be prepared for patience and lifelong, diligent work
so that the right outcome happens, eventually.

⁰ Update: I
was asked for a longer write up on software patent licenses as
compared to mere “promises”.
Unfortunately, I
don’t have one, so the best I was able to offer
was the interview I did
on Linux Outlaws, Episode 102, about Microsoft’s patent
promise. I’ve also added a TODO to write something up more completely
on this particular issue.

¹ I am not
leaving my permissively-license-preferring friends out of this issue
without careful consideration. Specifically, I just don’t think it’s
practical or even fair to ask companies to license their patents for
all permissively-licensed code, since that would be the same as
licensing to everyone, including their proprietary software
competitors. An ahead-of-time perpetual license to practice the
teachings of all the company’s patents under AGPLv3 basically makes
sure that code that’s eternally Free Software will also eternally be
patent-licensed from that company, even if the company never
contributes to the AGPLv3’d codebase. Anyone trying to make
proprietary code that infringed the patent wouldn’t have benefit of
the license; only Free Software users, distributors and modifiers
would have the benefit. If a company supports copyleft generally,
then there is no legitimate reason for the company to refuse such a
broad license for copyleft distributions and deployments.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2010/06/30/bilski.html

Lots of people are opining about
the USA
Supreme Court’s ruling in the Bilski case. Yesterday, I participated
in
a oggcast
with the folks at SFLC. In that oggcast, Dan Ravicher explained most
of the legal details of Bilski; I could never cover them as well as he
did, and I wouldn’t even try.

Anyway, as a non-lawyer worried about the policy questions, I’m pretty
much only concerned about those forward-looking policy questions.
However, to briefly look back at how our community responded to this
Bilski situation over the last 18 months: it seems similar to what
happened
while the Eldred
case was working its way to the Supreme Court. In the months
preceding both Eldred and Bilski, there seemed to be a mass hypnosis that
the Supreme Court would actually change copyright law (Eldred) or patent
law (Bilski) to make it better for freedom of computer users.

In both cases, that didn’t happen. There was admittedly less of that
giddy optimism before Bilski as there was before Eldred, but the ultimate
outcome for computer users is roughly no different in both cases: as we
were with Eldred, we’re left back with the same policy situation we had
before Bilski ever started making its way through the various courts. As
near as I can tell from what I’ve learned, the entire “Bilski
thing” appears to be a no-op. In short, as before, the Patent
Office sometimes can and will deny applications that it determines are
only abstract ideas, and the Supreme Court has now confirmed that the
Patent Office can reject such an application if the Patent Office knows
an abstract idea when it sees it. Nothing has changed regarding most
patents that are granted every day, including those that read on software.
Those of us that oppose software patents continue to believe that software
algorithms are indeed merely abstract ideas and pure mathematics and
shouldn’t be patentable subject matter. The governmental powers still
seems to disagree with us, or, at least, just won’t comment on that
question.

Looking forward, my largest concern, from a policy
perspective, is that the “patent reform” crowd,
who claim to be the allies of the anti-software-patent folks,
will use this decision to declare that the system works.
Bilski’s patent was ultimately denied, but on grounds that leave us no
closer to abolishing software patents. Patent reformists will
say: Well, invalid patents get denied, leaving space for the valid
ones. Those valid ones, they will say, do and should include
lots of patents that read on software. But only the really good
ideas should be patented, they will insist.

We must not yield to the patent reformists, particularly at a time like
this. (BTW, be sure to read
RMS‘ classic and still relevant essay,
Patent
Reform Is Not Enough, if you haven’t already.)

Since Bilski has given us no new tools for abolishing software patents,
we must redouble efforts with tools we already have to mitigate the
threat patents pose to software freedom. Here are a few suggestions,
which I think are actually all implementable by the average developer,
to will keep up the fight against software patents, or at least,
mitigate their impact:

• License your software using the
  AGPLv3,
  GPLv3,
  LGPLv3,
  or Apache-2.0.
  Among the copyleft
  licenses, AGPLv3
  and GPLv3 offer the
  best patent
  protections; LGPLv3
  offers the best among the weak copyleft
  licenses; Apache
  License 2.0 offers the best patent protections among the permissive
  licenses. These are the licenses we should gravitate toward,
  particularly since multiple companies with software patents are
  regularly attacking Free Software. At least when such companies
  contribute code to projects under these licenses, we know those
  particular codebases will be safe from that particular company’s
  patents.
• Demand real patent licenses from companies, not mere
  promises. Patent promises are not
  enough⁰. The Free Software
  community deserves to know it has real patent licenses from companies
  that hold patents. At the very least, we should demand unilateral
  patent licenses for all their patents perpetually for all
  possible copylefted code (i.e., companies should grant, ahead of
  time, the exact same license that the community would get if the
  company had contributed to a yet-to-exist GPLv3’d
  codebase)¹. Note
  further that some companies, that claim to be part of the
  FLOSS community, haven’t even given the
  (inadequate-but-better-than-nothing) patent promises.
  For example,
  BlackDuck holds a
  patent related to FLOSS, but
  despite saying
  they would consider at least a patent promise, have failed to do
  even that minimal effort.
• Support organizations/efforts that work to oppose and end
  software patents. In particular, be sure that the efforts
  you support are not merely “patent reform” efforts hidden
  behind anti-software patent rhetoric. Here are a few initiatives that
  I’ve recently seen doing work regarding complete abolition of software
  patents. I suggest you support them (with your time or dollars):
  • End Software
    Patents (a project of
    FSF),
  • FFII
    (European-specific), and
  • APRIL
    (France-specific).
• Write your legislators. This never hurts. In the
  USA, it’s unlikely we can convince Congress to change patent law,
  because there are just too many lobbying dollars from those big
  patent-holding companies (e.g., the same ones that wrote
  those nasty
  amicus
  briefs
  in Bilski). But, writing your Senators and Congresspeople once a year
  to remind them of your opposition patents that read on software simply
  can’t hurt, and may theoretically help a tiny bit. Now would be a good
  time to do it, since you can mention how the Bilski decision convinced
  you there’s a need for legislative abolition of software patents.
  Meanwhile, remember, it’s even better if you show up at political
  debates during election season and ask these candidates to oppose
  software patents!
• Explain to your colleagues why software patents should be
  abolished, particularly if you work in computing. Software
  patent abolition is actually a broad spectrum issue across the
  computing industry. Only big and powerful companies benefit from
  software patents. The little guy — even the little guy
  proprietary developer — is hurt by software patents.
  Even if you can’t convince your colleagues who write proprietary
  software that they should switch to writing Free Software,
  you can instead convince them that software patents
  are bad for them personally and for their chances to succeed in
  software. Share the film,
  Patent
  Absurdity, with them and then discuss the issue with them
  after they’ve viewed it. Blog, tweet, dent, and the like about the
  issue regularly.
• (added 2010-07-01 on tmarble‘s
  suggestion) Avoid products from pro-software-patent
  companies. This is tough to do, and it’s why I didn’t call
  for an all-out boycott. Most companies that make computers are
  pro-software-patent, so it’s actually tough to buy a computer (or even
  components for one) without buying from a pro-software-patent company.
  However, avoiding the companies who are most aggressive with patent
  aggression is easy: starting with avoiding Apple products is a good
  first step (there are plenty of other reasons to avoid Apple anyway).
  Microsoft would be next on the list, since they specifically use
  software patents to attack FLOSS projects. Those are likely the big
  two to avoid, but always remember that all large companies with
  proprietary software products actively enforce patents, even if they
  don’t file lawsuits. In other words, go with the little guy if you
  can; it’s more likely to be a patent-free zone.
• If you have a good idea, publish it and make sure the great
  idea is well described in code comments and documentation, and that
  everything is well archived by date. I put this one last on
  my list, because it’s more of a help for the software patent
  reformists than it is for the software patent abolitionists.
  Nevertheless, sometimes, patents will get in the way of Free Software,
  and it will be good if there is strong prior art showing that the idea
  was already thought of, implemented, and put out into the world before
  the patent was filed. But, fact is,
  the “valid”
  software patents with no prior art are a bigger threat to software
  freedom. The stronger the patent, the worst the threat, because
  it’s more likely to be innovative, new technology that we want to
  implement in Free Software.

I sat and thought of what else I could add to this list that
individuals can do to help abolish software patents. I was sad that
these were the only five six things that
I could collect, but that’s all the more reason to do
these five six
things in earnest. The battle for software freedom for all users is not
one we’ll win in our lifetimes. It’s also possible abolition of
software patents will take a generation as well. Those of us that seek
this outcome must be prepared for patience and lifelong, diligent work
so that the right outcome happens, eventually.

⁰ Update: I
was asked for a longer write up on software patent licenses as
compared to mere “promises”.
Unfortunately, I
don’t have one, so the best I was able to offer
was the interview I did
on Linux Outlaws, Episode 102, about Microsoft’s patent
promise. I’ve also added a TODO to write something up more completely
on this particular issue.

¹ I am not
leaving my permissively-license-preferring friends out of this issue
without careful consideration. Specifically, I just don’t think it’s
practical or even fair to ask companies to license their patents for
all permissively-licensed code, since that would be the same as
licensing to everyone, including their proprietary software
competitors. An ahead-of-time perpetual license to practice the
teachings of all the company’s patents under AGPLv3 basically makes
sure that code that’s eternally Free Software will also eternally be
patent-licensed from that company, even if the company never
contributes to the AGPLv3’d codebase. Anyone trying to make
proprietary code that infringed the patent wouldn’t have benefit of
the license; only Free Software users, distributors and modifiers
would have the benefit. If a company supports copyleft generally,
then there is no legitimate reason for the company to refuse such a
broad license for copyleft distributions and deployments.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2010/06/30/bilski.html

Lots of people are opining about
the USA
Supreme Court’s ruling in the Bilski case. Yesterday, I participated
in
a oggcast
with the folks at SFLC. In that oggcast, Dan Ravicher explained most
of the legal details of Bilski; I could never cover them as well as he
did, and I wouldn’t even try.

Anyway, as a non-lawyer worried about the policy questions, I’m pretty
much only concerned about those forward-looking policy questions.
However, to briefly look back at how our community responded to this
Bilski situation over the last 18 months: it seems similar to what
happened
while the Eldred
case was working its way to the Supreme Court. In the months
preceding both Eldred and Bilski, there seemed to be a mass hypnosis that
the Supreme Court would actually change copyright law (Eldred) or patent
law (Bilski) to make it better for freedom of computer users.

In both cases, that didn’t happen. There was admittedly less of that
giddy optimism before Bilski as there was before Eldred, but the ultimate
outcome for computer users is roughly no different in both cases: as we
were with Eldred, we’re left back with the same policy situation we had
before Bilski ever started making its way through the various courts. As
near as I can tell from what I’ve learned, the entire “Bilski
thing” appears to be a no-op. In short, as before, the Patent
Office sometimes can and will deny applications that it determines are
only abstract ideas, and the Supreme Court has now confirmed that the
Patent Office can reject such an application if the Patent Office knows
an abstract idea when it sees it. Nothing has changed regarding most
patents that are granted every day, including those that read on software.
Those of us that oppose software patents continue to believe that software
algorithms are indeed merely abstract ideas and pure mathematics and
shouldn’t be patentable subject matter. The governmental powers still
seems to disagree with us, or, at least, just won’t comment on that
question.

Looking forward, my largest concern, from a policy
perspective, is that the “patent reform” crowd,
who claim to be the allies of the anti-software-patent folks,
will use this decision to declare that the system works.
Bilski’s patent was ultimately denied, but on grounds that leave us no
closer to abolishing software patents. Patent reformists will
say: Well, invalid patents get denied, leaving space for the valid
ones. Those valid ones, they will say, do and should include
lots of patents that read on software. But only the really good
ideas should be patented, they will insist.

We must not yield to the patent reformists, particularly at a time like
this. (BTW, be sure to read
RMS‘ classic and still relevant essay,
Patent
Reform Is Not Enough, if you haven’t already.)

Since Bilski has given us no new tools for abolishing software patents,
we must redouble efforts with tools we already have to mitigate the
threat patents pose to software freedom. Here are a few suggestions,
which I think are actually all implementable by the average developer,
to will keep up the fight against software patents, or at least,
mitigate their impact:

• License your software using the
  AGPLv3,
  GPLv3,
  LGPLv3,
  or Apache-2.0.
  Among the copyleft
  licenses, AGPLv3
  and GPLv3 offer the
  best patent
  protections; LGPLv3
  offers the best among the weak copyleft
  licenses; Apache
  License 2.0 offers the best patent protections among the permissive
  licenses. These are the licenses we should gravitate toward,
  particularly since multiple companies with software patents are
  regularly attacking Free Software. At least when such companies
  contribute code to projects under these licenses, we know those
  particular codebases will be safe from that particular company’s
  patents.
• Demand real patent licenses from companies, not mere
  promises. Patent promises are not
  enough⁰. The Free Software
  community deserves to know it has real patent licenses from companies
  that hold patents. At the very least, we should demand unilateral
  patent licenses for all their patents perpetually for all
  possible copylefted code (i.e., companies should grant, ahead of
  time, the exact same license that the community would get if the
  company had contributed to a yet-to-exist GPLv3’d
  codebase)¹. Note
  further that some companies, that claim to be part of the
  FLOSS community, haven’t even given the
  (inadequate-but-better-than-nothing) patent promises.
  For example,
  BlackDuck holds a
  patent related to FLOSS, but
  despite saying
  they would consider at least a patent promise, have failed to do
  even that minimal effort.
• Support organizations/efforts that work to oppose and end
  software patents. In particular, be sure that the efforts
  you support are not merely “patent reform” efforts hidden
  behind anti-software patent rhetoric. Here are a few initiatives that
  I’ve recently seen doing work regarding complete abolition of software
  patents. I suggest you support them (with your time or dollars):
  • End Software
    Patents (a project of
    FSF),
  • FFII
    (European-specific), and
  • APRIL
    (France-specific).
• Write your legislators. This never hurts. In the
  USA, it’s unlikely we can convince Congress to change patent law,
  because there are just too many lobbying dollars from those big
  patent-holding companies (e.g., the same ones that wrote
  those nasty
  amicus
  briefs
  in Bilski). But, writing your Senators and Congresspeople once a year
  to remind them of your opposition patents that read on software simply
  can’t hurt, and may theoretically help a tiny bit. Now would be a good
  time to do it, since you can mention how the Bilski decision convinced
  you there’s a need for legislative abolition of software patents.
  Meanwhile, remember, it’s even better if you show up at political
  debates during election season and ask these candidates to oppose
  software patents!
• Explain to your colleagues why software patents should be
  abolished, particularly if you work in computing. Software
  patent abolition is actually a broad spectrum issue across the
  computing industry. Only big and powerful companies benefit from
  software patents. The little guy — even the little guy
  proprietary developer — is hurt by software patents.
  Even if you can’t convince your colleagues who write proprietary
  software that they should switch to writing Free Software,
  you can instead convince them that software patents
  are bad for them personally and for their chances to succeed in
  software. Share the film,
  Patent
  Absurdity, with them and then discuss the issue with them
  after they’ve viewed it. Blog, tweet, dent, and the like about the
  issue regularly.
• (added 2010-07-01 on tmarble‘s
  suggestion) Avoid products from pro-software-patent
  companies. This is tough to do, and it’s why I didn’t call
  for an all-out boycott. Most companies that make computers are
  pro-software-patent, so it’s actually tough to buy a computer (or even
  components for one) without buying from a pro-software-patent company.
  However, avoiding the companies who are most aggressive with patent
  aggression is easy: starting with avoiding Apple products is a good
  first step (there are plenty of other reasons to avoid Apple anyway).
  Microsoft would be next on the list, since they specifically use
  software patents to attack FLOSS projects. Those are likely the big
  two to avoid, but always remember that all large companies with
  proprietary software products actively enforce patents, even if they
  don’t file lawsuits. In other words, go with the little guy if you
  can; it’s more likely to be a patent-free zone.
• If you have a good idea, publish it and make sure the great
  idea is well described in code comments and documentation, and that
  everything is well archived by date. I put this one last on
  my list, because it’s more of a help for the software patent
  reformists than it is for the software patent abolitionists.
  Nevertheless, sometimes, patents will get in the way of Free Software,
  and it will be good if there is strong prior art showing that the idea
  was already thought of, implemented, and put out into the world before
  the patent was filed. But, fact is,
  the “valid”
  software patents with no prior art are a bigger threat to software
  freedom. The stronger the patent, the worst the threat, because
  it’s more likely to be innovative, new technology that we want to
  implement in Free Software.

I sat and thought of what else I could add to this list that
individuals can do to help abolish software patents. I was sad that
these were the only five six things that
I could collect, but that’s all the more reason to do
these five six
things in earnest. The battle for software freedom for all users is not
one we’ll win in our lifetimes. It’s also possible abolition of
software patents will take a generation as well. Those of us that seek
this outcome must be prepared for patience and lifelong, diligent work
so that the right outcome happens, eventually.

⁰ Update: I
was asked for a longer write up on software patent licenses as
compared to mere “promises”.
Unfortunately, I
don’t have one, so the best I was able to offer
was the interview I did
on Linux Outlaws, Episode 102, about Microsoft’s patent
promise. I’ve also added a TODO to write something up more completely
on this particular issue.

¹ I am not
leaving my permissively-license-preferring friends out of this issue
without careful consideration. Specifically, I just don’t think it’s
practical or even fair to ask companies to license their patents for
all permissively-licensed code, since that would be the same as
licensing to everyone, including their proprietary software
competitors. An ahead-of-time perpetual license to practice the
teachings of all the company’s patents under AGPLv3 basically makes
sure that code that’s eternally Free Software will also eternally be
patent-licensed from that company, even if the company never
contributes to the AGPLv3’d codebase. Anyone trying to make
proprietary code that infringed the patent wouldn’t have benefit of
the license; only Free Software users, distributors and modifiers
would have the benefit. If a company supports copyleft generally,
then there is no legitimate reason for the company to refuse such a
broad license for copyleft distributions and deployments.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2010/06/30/bilski.html

Lots of people are opining about
the USA
Supreme Court’s ruling in the Bilski case. Yesterday, I participated
in
a oggcast
with the folks at SFLC. In that oggcast, Dan Ravicher explained most
of the legal details of Bilski; I could never cover them as well as he
did, and I wouldn’t even try.

Anyway, as a non-lawyer worried about the policy questions, I’m pretty
much only concerned about those forward-looking policy questions.
However, to briefly look back at how our community responded to this
Bilski situation over the last 18 months: it seems similar to what
happened
while the Eldred
case was working its way to the Supreme Court. In the months
preceding both Eldred and Bilski, there seemed to be a mass hypnosis that
the Supreme Court would actually change copyright law (Eldred) or patent
law (Bilski) to make it better for freedom of computer users.

In both cases, that didn’t happen. There was admittedly less of that
giddy optimism before Bilski as there was before Eldred, but the ultimate
outcome for computer users is roughly no different in both cases: as we
were with Eldred, we’re left back with the same policy situation we had
before Bilski ever started making its way through the various courts. As
near as I can tell from what I’ve learned, the entire “Bilski
thing” appears to be a no-op. In short, as before, the Patent
Office sometimes can and will deny applications that it determines are
only abstract ideas, and the Supreme Court has now confirmed that the
Patent Office can reject such an application if the Patent Office knows
an abstract idea when it sees it. Nothing has changed regarding most
patents that are granted every day, including those that read on software.
Those of us that oppose software patents continue to believe that software
algorithms are indeed merely abstract ideas and pure mathematics and
shouldn’t be patentable subject matter. The governmental powers still
seems to disagree with us, or, at least, just won’t comment on that
question.

Looking forward, my largest concern, from a policy
perspective, is that the “patent reform” crowd,
who claim to be the allies of the anti-software-patent folks,
will use this decision to declare that the system works.
Bilski’s patent was ultimately denied, but on grounds that leave us no
closer to abolishing software patents. Patent reformists will
say: Well, invalid patents get denied, leaving space for the valid
ones. Those valid ones, they will say, do and should include
lots of patents that read on software. But only the really good
ideas should be patented, they will insist.

We must not yield to the patent reformists, particularly at a time like
this. (BTW, be sure to read
RMS‘ classic and still relevant essay,
Patent
Reform Is Not Enough, if you haven’t already.)

Since Bilski has given us no new tools for abolishing software patents,
we must redouble efforts with tools we already have to mitigate the
threat patents pose to software freedom. Here are a few suggestions,
which I think are actually all implementable by the average developer,
to will keep up the fight against software patents, or at least,
mitigate their impact:

• License your software using the
  AGPLv3,
  GPLv3,
  LGPLv3,
  or Apache-2.0.
  Among the copyleft
  licenses, AGPLv3
  and GPLv3 offer the
  best patent
  protections; LGPLv3
  offers the best among the weak copyleft
  licenses; Apache
  License 2.0 offers the best patent protections among the permissive
  licenses. These are the licenses we should gravitate toward,
  particularly since multiple companies with software patents are
  regularly attacking Free Software. At least when such companies
  contribute code to projects under these licenses, we know those
  particular codebases will be safe from that particular company’s
  patents.
• Demand real patent licenses from companies, not mere
  promises. Patent promises are not
  enough⁰. The Free Software
  community deserves to know it has real patent licenses from companies
  that hold patents. At the very least, we should demand unilateral
  patent licenses for all their patents perpetually for all
  possible copylefted code (i.e., companies should grant, ahead of
  time, the exact same license that the community would get if the
  company had contributed to a yet-to-exist GPLv3’d
  codebase)¹. Note
  further that some companies, that claim to be part of the
  FLOSS community, haven’t even given the
  (inadequate-but-better-than-nothing) patent promises.
  For example,
  BlackDuck holds a
  patent related to FLOSS, but
  despite saying
  they would consider at least a patent promise, have failed to do
  even that minimal effort.
• Support organizations/efforts that work to oppose and end
  software patents. In particular, be sure that the efforts
  you support are not merely “patent reform” efforts hidden
  behind anti-software patent rhetoric. Here are a few initiatives that
  I’ve recently seen doing work regarding complete abolition of software
  patents. I suggest you support them (with your time or dollars):
  • End Software
    Patents (a project of
    FSF),
  • FFII
    (European-specific), and
  • APRIL
    (France-specific).
• Write your legislators. This never hurts. In the
  USA, it’s unlikely we can convince Congress to change patent law,
  because there are just too many lobbying dollars from those big
  patent-holding companies (e.g., the same ones that wrote
  those nasty
  amicus
  briefs
  in Bilski). But, writing your Senators and Congresspeople once a year
  to remind them of your opposition patents that read on software simply
  can’t hurt, and may theoretically help a tiny bit. Now would be a good
  time to do it, since you can mention how the Bilski decision convinced
  you there’s a need for legislative abolition of software patents.
  Meanwhile, remember, it’s even better if you show up at political
  debates during election season and ask these candidates to oppose
  software patents!
• Explain to your colleagues why software patents should be
  abolished, particularly if you work in computing. Software
  patent abolition is actually a broad spectrum issue across the
  computing industry. Only big and powerful companies benefit from
  software patents. The little guy — even the little guy
  proprietary developer — is hurt by software patents.
  Even if you can’t convince your colleagues who write proprietary
  software that they should switch to writing Free Software,
  you can instead convince them that software patents
  are bad for them personally and for their chances to succeed in
  software. Share the film,
  Patent
  Absurdity, with them and then discuss the issue with them
  after they’ve viewed it. Blog, tweet, dent, and the like about the
  issue regularly.
• (added 2010-07-01 on tmarble‘s
  suggestion) Avoid products from pro-software-patent
  companies. This is tough to do, and it’s why I didn’t call
  for an all-out boycott. Most companies that make computers are
  pro-software-patent, so it’s actually tough to buy a computer (or even
  components for one) without buying from a pro-software-patent company.
  However, avoiding the companies who are most aggressive with patent
  aggression is easy: starting with avoiding Apple products is a good
  first step (there are plenty of other reasons to avoid Apple anyway).
  Microsoft would be next on the list, since they specifically use
  software patents to attack FLOSS projects. Those are likely the big
  two to avoid, but always remember that all large companies with
  proprietary software products actively enforce patents, even if they
  don’t file lawsuits. In other words, go with the little guy if you
  can; it’s more likely to be a patent-free zone.
• If you have a good idea, publish it and make sure the great
  idea is well described in code comments and documentation, and that
  everything is well archived by date. I put this one last on
  my list, because it’s more of a help for the software patent
  reformists than it is for the software patent abolitionists.
  Nevertheless, sometimes, patents will get in the way of Free Software,
  and it will be good if there is strong prior art showing that the idea
  was already thought of, implemented, and put out into the world before
  the patent was filed. But, fact is,
  the “valid”
  software patents with no prior art are a bigger threat to software
  freedom. The stronger the patent, the worst the threat, because
  it’s more likely to be innovative, new technology that we want to
  implement in Free Software.

I sat and thought of what else I could add to this list that
individuals can do to help abolish software patents. I was sad that
these were the only five six things that
I could collect, but that’s all the more reason to do
these five six
things in earnest. The battle for software freedom for all users is not
one we’ll win in our lifetimes. It’s also possible abolition of
software patents will take a generation as well. Those of us that seek
this outcome must be prepared for patience and lifelong, diligent work
so that the right outcome happens, eventually.

⁰ Update: I
was asked for a longer write up on software patent licenses as
compared to mere “promises”.
Unfortunately, I
don’t have one, so the best I was able to offer
was the interview I did
on Linux Outlaws, Episode 102, about Microsoft’s patent
promise. I’ve also added a TODO to write something up more completely
on this particular issue.

¹ I am not
leaving my permissively-license-preferring friends out of this issue
without careful consideration. Specifically, I just don’t think it’s
practical or even fair to ask companies to license their patents for
all permissively-licensed code, since that would be the same as
licensing to everyone, including their proprietary software
competitors. An ahead-of-time perpetual license to practice the
teachings of all the company’s patents under AGPLv3 basically makes
sure that code that’s eternally Free Software will also eternally be
patent-licensed from that company, even if the company never
contributes to the AGPLv3’d codebase. Anyone trying to make
proprietary code that infringed the patent wouldn’t have benefit of
the license; only Free Software users, distributors and modifiers
would have the benefit. If a company supports copyleft generally,
then there is no legitimate reason for the company to refuse such a
broad license for copyleft distributions and deployments.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2010/06/30/bilski.html

Lots of people are opining about
the USA
Supreme Court’s ruling in the Bilski case. Yesterday, I participated
in
a oggcast
with the folks at SFLC. In that oggcast, Dan Ravicher explained most
of the legal details of Bilski; I could never cover them as well as he
did, and I wouldn’t even try.

Anyway, as a non-lawyer worried about the policy questions, I’m pretty
much only concerned about those forward-looking policy questions.
However, to briefly look back at how our community responded to this
Bilski situation over the last 18 months: it seems similar to what
happened
while the Eldred
case was working its way to the Supreme Court. In the months
preceding both Eldred and Bilski, there seemed to be a mass hypnosis that
the Supreme Court would actually change copyright law (Eldred) or patent
law (Bilski) to make it better for freedom of computer users.

In both cases, that didn’t happen. There was admittedly less of that
giddy optimism before Bilski as there was before Eldred, but the ultimate
outcome for computer users is roughly no different in both cases: as we
were with Eldred, we’re left back with the same policy situation we had
before Bilski ever started making its way through the various courts. As
near as I can tell from what I’ve learned, the entire “Bilski
thing” appears to be a no-op. In short, as before, the Patent
Office sometimes can and will deny applications that it determines are
only abstract ideas, and the Supreme Court has now confirmed that the
Patent Office can reject such an application if the Patent Office knows
an abstract idea when it sees it. Nothing has changed regarding most
patents that are granted every day, including those that read on software.
Those of us that oppose software patents continue to believe that software
algorithms are indeed merely abstract ideas and pure mathematics and
shouldn’t be patentable subject matter. The governmental powers still
seems to disagree with us, or, at least, just won’t comment on that
question.

Looking forward, my largest concern, from a policy
perspective, is that the “patent reform” crowd,
who claim to be the allies of the anti-software-patent folks,
will use this decision to declare that the system works.
Bilski’s patent was ultimately denied, but on grounds that leave us no
closer to abolishing software patents. Patent reformists will
say: Well, invalid patents get denied, leaving space for the valid
ones. Those valid ones, they will say, do and should include
lots of patents that read on software. But only the really good
ideas should be patented, they will insist.

We must not yield to the patent reformists, particularly at a time like
this. (BTW, be sure to read
RMS‘ classic and still relevant essay,
Patent
Reform Is Not Enough, if you haven’t already.)

Since Bilski has given us no new tools for abolishing software patents,
we must redouble efforts with tools we already have to mitigate the
threat patents pose to software freedom. Here are a few suggestions,
which I think are actually all implementable by the average developer,
to will keep up the fight against software patents, or at least,
mitigate their impact:

• License your software using the
  AGPLv3,
  GPLv3,
  LGPLv3,
  or Apache-2.0.
  Among the copyleft
  licenses, AGPLv3
  and GPLv3 offer the
  best patent
  protections; LGPLv3
  offers the best among the weak copyleft
  licenses; Apache
  License 2.0 offers the best patent protections among the permissive
  licenses. These are the licenses we should gravitate toward,
  particularly since multiple companies with software patents are
  regularly attacking Free Software. At least when such companies
  contribute code to projects under these licenses, we know those
  particular codebases will be safe from that particular company’s
  patents.
• Demand real patent licenses from companies, not mere
  promises. Patent promises are not
  enough⁰. The Free Software
  community deserves to know it has real patent licenses from companies
  that hold patents. At the very least, we should demand unilateral
  patent licenses for all their patents perpetually for all
  possible copylefted code (i.e., companies should grant, ahead of
  time, the exact same license that the community would get if the
  company had contributed to a yet-to-exist GPLv3’d
  codebase)¹. Note
  further that some companies, that claim to be part of the
  FLOSS community, haven’t even given the
  (inadequate-but-better-than-nothing) patent promises.
  For example,
  BlackDuck holds a
  patent related to FLOSS, but
  despite saying
  they would consider at least a patent promise, have failed to do
  even that minimal effort.
• Support organizations/efforts that work to oppose and end
  software patents. In particular, be sure that the efforts
  you support are not merely “patent reform” efforts hidden
  behind anti-software patent rhetoric. Here are a few initiatives that
  I’ve recently seen doing work regarding complete abolition of software
  patents. I suggest you support them (with your time or dollars):
  • End Software
    Patents (a project of
    FSF),
  • FFII
    (European-specific), and
  • APRIL
    (France-specific).
• Write your legislators. This never hurts. In the
  USA, it’s unlikely we can convince Congress to change patent law,
  because there are just too many lobbying dollars from those big
  patent-holding companies (e.g., the same ones that wrote
  those nasty
  amicus
  briefs
  in Bilski). But, writing your Senators and Congresspeople once a year
  to remind them of your opposition patents that read on software simply
  can’t hurt, and may theoretically help a tiny bit. Now would be a good
  time to do it, since you can mention how the Bilski decision convinced
  you there’s a need for legislative abolition of software patents.
  Meanwhile, remember, it’s even better if you show up at political
  debates during election season and ask these candidates to oppose
  software patents!
• Explain to your colleagues why software patents should be
  abolished, particularly if you work in computing. Software
  patent abolition is actually a broad spectrum issue across the
  computing industry. Only big and powerful companies benefit from
  software patents. The little guy — even the little guy
  proprietary developer — is hurt by software patents.
  Even if you can’t convince your colleagues who write proprietary
  software that they should switch to writing Free Software,
  you can instead convince them that software patents
  are bad for them personally and for their chances to succeed in
  software. Share the film,
  Patent
  Absurdity, with them and then discuss the issue with them
  after they’ve viewed it. Blog, tweet, dent, and the like about the
  issue regularly.
• (added 2010-07-01 on tmarble‘s
  suggestion) Avoid products from pro-software-patent
  companies. This is tough to do, and it’s why I didn’t call
  for an all-out boycott. Most companies that make computers are
  pro-software-patent, so it’s actually tough to buy a computer (or even
  components for one) without buying from a pro-software-patent company.
  However, avoiding the companies who are most aggressive with patent
  aggression is easy: starting with avoiding Apple products is a good
  first step (there are plenty of other reasons to avoid Apple anyway).
  Microsoft would be next on the list, since they specifically use
  software patents to attack FLOSS projects. Those are likely the big
  two to avoid, but always remember that all large companies with
  proprietary software products actively enforce patents, even if they
  don’t file lawsuits. In other words, go with the little guy if you
  can; it’s more likely to be a patent-free zone.
• If you have a good idea, publish it and make sure the great
  idea is well described in code comments and documentation, and that
  everything is well archived by date. I put this one last on
  my list, because it’s more of a help for the software patent
  reformists than it is for the software patent abolitionists.
  Nevertheless, sometimes, patents will get in the way of Free Software,
  and it will be good if there is strong prior art showing that the idea
  was already thought of, implemented, and put out into the world before
  the patent was filed. But, fact is,
  the “valid”
  software patents with no prior art are a bigger threat to software
  freedom. The stronger the patent, the worst the threat, because
  it’s more likely to be innovative, new technology that we want to
  implement in Free Software.

I sat and thought of what else I could add to this list that
individuals can do to help abolish software patents. I was sad that
these were the only five six things that
I could collect, but that’s all the more reason to do
these five six
things in earnest. The battle for software freedom for all users is not
one we’ll win in our lifetimes. It’s also possible abolition of
software patents will take a generation as well. Those of us that seek
this outcome must be prepared for patience and lifelong, diligent work
so that the right outcome happens, eventually.

⁰ Update: I
was asked for a longer write up on software patent licenses as
compared to mere “promises”.
Unfortunately, I
don’t have one, so the best I was able to offer
was the interview I did
on Linux Outlaws, Episode 102, about Microsoft’s patent
promise. I’ve also added a TODO to write something up more completely
on this particular issue.

¹ I am not
leaving my permissively-license-preferring friends out of this issue
without careful consideration. Specifically, I just don’t think it’s
practical or even fair to ask companies to license their patents for
all permissively-licensed code, since that would be the same as
licensing to everyone, including their proprietary software
competitors. An ahead-of-time perpetual license to practice the
teachings of all the company’s patents under AGPLv3 basically makes
sure that code that’s eternally Free Software will also eternally be
patent-licensed from that company, even if the company never
contributes to the AGPLv3’d codebase. Anyone trying to make
proprietary code that infringed the patent wouldn’t have benefit of
the license; only Free Software users, distributors and modifiers
would have the benefit. If a company supports copyleft generally,
then there is no legitimate reason for the company to refuse such a
broad license for copyleft distributions and deployments.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2010/06/30/bilski.html

Lots of people are opining about
the USA
Supreme Court’s ruling in the Bilski case. Yesterday, I participated
in
a oggcast
with the folks at SFLC. In that oggcast, Dan Ravicher explained most
of the legal details of Bilski; I could never cover them as well as he
did, and I wouldn’t even try.

Anyway, as a non-lawyer worried about the policy questions, I’m pretty
much only concerned about those forward-looking policy questions.
However, to briefly look back at how our community responded to this
Bilski situation over the last 18 months: it seems similar to what
happened
while the Eldred
case was working its way to the Supreme Court. In the months
preceding both Eldred and Bilski, there seemed to be a mass hypnosis that
the Supreme Court would actually change copyright law (Eldred) or patent
law (Bilski) to make it better for freedom of computer users.

In both cases, that didn’t happen. There was admittedly less of that
giddy optimism before Bilski as there was before Eldred, but the ultimate
outcome for computer users is roughly no different in both cases: as we
were with Eldred, we’re left back with the same policy situation we had
before Bilski ever started making its way through the various courts. As
near as I can tell from what I’ve learned, the entire “Bilski
thing” appears to be a no-op. In short, as before, the Patent
Office sometimes can and will deny applications that it determines are
only abstract ideas, and the Supreme Court has now confirmed that the
Patent Office can reject such an application if the Patent Office knows
an abstract idea when it sees it. Nothing has changed regarding most
patents that are granted every day, including those that read on software.
Those of us that oppose software patents continue to believe that software
algorithms are indeed merely abstract ideas and pure mathematics and
shouldn’t be patentable subject matter. The governmental powers still
seems to disagree with us, or, at least, just won’t comment on that
question.

Looking forward, my largest concern, from a policy
perspective, is that the “patent reform” crowd,
who claim to be the allies of the anti-software-patent folks,
will use this decision to declare that the system works.
Bilski’s patent was ultimately denied, but on grounds that leave us no
closer to abolishing software patents. Patent reformists will
say: Well, invalid patents get denied, leaving space for the valid
ones. Those valid ones, they will say, do and should include
lots of patents that read on software. But only the really good
ideas should be patented, they will insist.

We must not yield to the patent reformists, particularly at a time like
this. (BTW, be sure to read
RMS‘ classic and still relevant essay,
Patent
Reform Is Not Enough, if you haven’t already.)

Since Bilski has given us no new tools for abolishing software patents,
we must redouble efforts with tools we already have to mitigate the
threat patents pose to software freedom. Here are a few suggestions,
which I think are actually all implementable by the average developer,
to will keep up the fight against software patents, or at least,
mitigate their impact:

• License your software using the
  AGPLv3,
  GPLv3,
  LGPLv3,
  or Apache-2.0.
  Among the copyleft
  licenses, AGPLv3
  and GPLv3 offer the
  best patent
  protections; LGPLv3
  offers the best among the weak copyleft
  licenses; Apache
  License 2.0 offers the best patent protections among the permissive
  licenses. These are the licenses we should gravitate toward,
  particularly since multiple companies with software patents are
  regularly attacking Free Software. At least when such companies
  contribute code to projects under these licenses, we know those
  particular codebases will be safe from that particular company’s
  patents.
• Demand real patent licenses from companies, not mere
  promises. Patent promises are not
  enough⁰. The Free Software
  community deserves to know it has real patent licenses from companies
  that hold patents. At the very least, we should demand unilateral
  patent licenses for all their patents perpetually for all
  possible copylefted code (i.e., companies should grant, ahead of
  time, the exact same license that the community would get if the
  company had contributed to a yet-to-exist GPLv3’d
  codebase)¹. Note
  further that some companies, that claim to be part of the
  FLOSS community, haven’t even given the
  (inadequate-but-better-than-nothing) patent promises.
  For example,
  BlackDuck holds a
  patent related to FLOSS, but
  despite saying
  they would consider at least a patent promise, have failed to do
  even that minimal effort.
• Support organizations/efforts that work to oppose and end
  software patents. In particular, be sure that the efforts
  you support are not merely “patent reform” efforts hidden
  behind anti-software patent rhetoric. Here are a few initiatives that
  I’ve recently seen doing work regarding complete abolition of software
  patents. I suggest you support them (with your time or dollars):
  • End Software
    Patents (a project of
    FSF),
  • FFII
    (European-specific), and
  • APRIL
    (France-specific).
• Write your legislators. This never hurts. In the
  USA, it’s unlikely we can convince Congress to change patent law,
  because there are just too many lobbying dollars from those big
  patent-holding companies (e.g., the same ones that wrote
  those nasty
  amicus
  briefs
  in Bilski). But, writing your Senators and Congresspeople once a year
  to remind them of your opposition patents that read on software simply
  can’t hurt, and may theoretically help a tiny bit. Now would be a good
  time to do it, since you can mention how the Bilski decision convinced
  you there’s a need for legislative abolition of software patents.
  Meanwhile, remember, it’s even better if you show up at political
  debates during election season and ask these candidates to oppose
  software patents!
• Explain to your colleagues why software patents should be
  abolished, particularly if you work in computing. Software
  patent abolition is actually a broad spectrum issue across the
  computing industry. Only big and powerful companies benefit from
  software patents. The little guy — even the little guy
  proprietary developer — is hurt by software patents.
  Even if you can’t convince your colleagues who write proprietary
  software that they should switch to writing Free Software,
  you can instead convince them that software patents
  are bad for them personally and for their chances to succeed in
  software. Share the film,
  Patent
  Absurdity, with them and then discuss the issue with them
  after they’ve viewed it. Blog, tweet, dent, and the like about the
  issue regularly.
• (added 2010-07-01 on tmarble‘s
  suggestion) Avoid products from pro-software-patent
  companies. This is tough to do, and it’s why I didn’t call
  for an all-out boycott. Most companies that make computers are
  pro-software-patent, so it’s actually tough to buy a computer (or even
  components for one) without buying from a pro-software-patent company.
  However, avoiding the companies who are most aggressive with patent
  aggression is easy: starting with avoiding Apple products is a good
  first step (there are plenty of other reasons to avoid Apple anyway).
  Microsoft would be next on the list, since they specifically use
  software patents to attack FLOSS projects. Those are likely the big
  two to avoid, but always remember that all large companies with
  proprietary software products actively enforce patents, even if they
  don’t file lawsuits. In other words, go with the little guy if you
  can; it’s more likely to be a patent-free zone.
• If you have a good idea, publish it and make sure the great
  idea is well described in code comments and documentation, and that
  everything is well archived by date. I put this one last on
  my list, because it’s more of a help for the software patent
  reformists than it is for the software patent abolitionists.
  Nevertheless, sometimes, patents will get in the way of Free Software,
  and it will be good if there is strong prior art showing that the idea
  was already thought of, implemented, and put out into the world before
  the patent was filed. But, fact is,
  the “valid”
  software patents with no prior art are a bigger threat to software
  freedom. The stronger the patent, the worst the threat, because
  it’s more likely to be innovative, new technology that we want to
  implement in Free Software.

I sat and thought of what else I could add to this list that
individuals can do to help abolish software patents. I was sad that
these were the only five six things that
I could collect, but that’s all the more reason to do
these five six
things in earnest. The battle for software freedom for all users is not
one we’ll win in our lifetimes. It’s also possible abolition of
software patents will take a generation as well. Those of us that seek
this outcome must be prepared for patience and lifelong, diligent work
so that the right outcome happens, eventually.

⁰ Update: I
was asked for a longer write up on software patent licenses as
compared to mere “promises”.
Unfortunately, I
don’t have one, so the best I was able to offer
was the interview I did
on Linux Outlaws, Episode 102, about Microsoft’s patent
promise. I’ve also added a TODO to write something up more completely
on this particular issue.

¹ I am not
leaving my permissively-license-preferring friends out of this issue
without careful consideration. Specifically, I just don’t think it’s
practical or even fair to ask companies to license their patents for
all permissively-licensed code, since that would be the same as
licensing to everyone, including their proprietary software
competitors. An ahead-of-time perpetual license to practice the
teachings of all the company’s patents under AGPLv3 basically makes
sure that code that’s eternally Free Software will also eternally be
patent-licensed from that company, even if the company never
contributes to the AGPLv3’d codebase. Anyone trying to make
proprietary code that infringed the patent wouldn’t have benefit of
the license; only Free Software users, distributors and modifiers
would have the benefit. If a company supports copyleft generally,
then there is no legitimate reason for the company to refuse such a
broad license for copyleft distributions and deployments.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2010/06/30/bilski.html

Lots of people are opining about
the USA
Supreme Court’s ruling in the Bilski case. Yesterday, I participated
in
a oggcast
with the folks at SFLC. In that oggcast, Dan Ravicher explained most
of the legal details of Bilski; I could never cover them as well as he
did, and I wouldn’t even try.

Anyway, as a non-lawyer worried about the policy questions, I’m pretty
much only concerned about those forward-looking policy questions.
However, to briefly look back at how our community responded to this
Bilski situation over the last 18 months: it seems similar to what
happened
while the Eldred
case was working its way to the Supreme Court. In the months
preceding both Eldred and Bilski, there seemed to be a mass hypnosis that
the Supreme Court would actually change copyright law (Eldred) or patent
law (Bilski) to make it better for freedom of computer users.

In both cases, that didn’t happen. There was admittedly less of that
giddy optimism before Bilski as there was before Eldred, but the ultimate
outcome for computer users is roughly no different in both cases: as we
were with Eldred, we’re left back with the same policy situation we had
before Bilski ever started making its way through the various courts. As
near as I can tell from what I’ve learned, the entire “Bilski
thing” appears to be a no-op. In short, as before, the Patent
Office sometimes can and will deny applications that it determines are
only abstract ideas, and the Supreme Court has now confirmed that the
Patent Office can reject such an application if the Patent Office knows
an abstract idea when it sees it. Nothing has changed regarding most
patents that are granted every day, including those that read on software.
Those of us that oppose software patents continue to believe that software
algorithms are indeed merely abstract ideas and pure mathematics and
shouldn’t be patentable subject matter. The governmental powers still
seems to disagree with us, or, at least, just won’t comment on that
question.

Looking forward, my largest concern, from a policy
perspective, is that the “patent reform” crowd,
who claim to be the allies of the anti-software-patent folks,
will use this decision to declare that the system works.
Bilski’s patent was ultimately denied, but on grounds that leave us no
closer to abolishing software patents. Patent reformists will
say: Well, invalid patents get denied, leaving space for the valid
ones. Those valid ones, they will say, do and should include
lots of patents that read on software. But only the really good
ideas should be patented, they will insist.

We must not yield to the patent reformists, particularly at a time like
this. (BTW, be sure to read
RMS‘ classic and still relevant essay,
Patent
Reform Is Not Enough, if you haven’t already.)

Since Bilski has given us no new tools for abolishing software patents,
we must redouble efforts with tools we already have to mitigate the
threat patents pose to software freedom. Here are a few suggestions,
which I think are actually all implementable by the average developer,
to will keep up the fight against software patents, or at least,
mitigate their impact:

• License your software using the
  AGPLv3,
  GPLv3,
  LGPLv3,
  or Apache-2.0.
  Among the copyleft
  licenses, AGPLv3
  and GPLv3 offer the
  best patent
  protections; LGPLv3
  offers the best among the weak copyleft
  licenses; Apache
  License 2.0 offers the best patent protections among the permissive
  licenses. These are the licenses we should gravitate toward,
  particularly since multiple companies with software patents are
  regularly attacking Free Software. At least when such companies
  contribute code to projects under these licenses, we know those
  particular codebases will be safe from that particular company’s
  patents.
• Demand real patent licenses from companies, not mere
  promises. Patent promises are not
  enough⁰. The Free Software
  community deserves to know it has real patent licenses from companies
  that hold patents. At the very least, we should demand unilateral
  patent licenses for all their patents perpetually for all
  possible copylefted code (i.e., companies should grant, ahead of
  time, the exact same license that the community would get if the
  company had contributed to a yet-to-exist GPLv3’d
  codebase)¹. Note
  further that some companies, that claim to be part of the
  FLOSS community, haven’t even given the
  (inadequate-but-better-than-nothing) patent promises.
  For example,
  BlackDuck holds a
  patent related to FLOSS, but
  despite saying
  they would consider at least a patent promise, have failed to do
  even that minimal effort.
• Support organizations/efforts that work to oppose and end
  software patents. In particular, be sure that the efforts
  you support are not merely “patent reform” efforts hidden
  behind anti-software patent rhetoric. Here are a few initiatives that
  I’ve recently seen doing work regarding complete abolition of software
  patents. I suggest you support them (with your time or dollars):
  • End Software
    Patents (a project of
    FSF),
  • FFII
    (European-specific), and
  • APRIL
    (France-specific).
• Write your legislators. This never hurts. In the
  USA, it’s unlikely we can convince Congress to change patent law,
  because there are just too many lobbying dollars from those big
  patent-holding companies (e.g., the same ones that wrote
  those nasty
  amicus
  briefs
  in Bilski). But, writing your Senators and Congresspeople once a year
  to remind them of your opposition patents that read on software simply
  can’t hurt, and may theoretically help a tiny bit. Now would be a good
  time to do it, since you can mention how the Bilski decision convinced
  you there’s a need for legislative abolition of software patents.
  Meanwhile, remember, it’s even better if you show up at political
  debates during election season and ask these candidates to oppose
  software patents!
• Explain to your colleagues why software patents should be
  abolished, particularly if you work in computing. Software
  patent abolition is actually a broad spectrum issue across the
  computing industry. Only big and powerful companies benefit from
  software patents. The little guy — even the little guy
  proprietary developer — is hurt by software patents.
  Even if you can’t convince your colleagues who write proprietary
  software that they should switch to writing Free Software,
  you can instead convince them that software patents
  are bad for them personally and for their chances to succeed in
  software. Share the film,
  Patent
  Absurdity, with them and then discuss the issue with them
  after they’ve viewed it. Blog, tweet, dent, and the like about the
  issue regularly.
• (added 2010-07-01 on tmarble‘s
  suggestion) Avoid products from pro-software-patent
  companies. This is tough to do, and it’s why I didn’t call
  for an all-out boycott. Most companies that make computers are
  pro-software-patent, so it’s actually tough to buy a computer (or even
  components for one) without buying from a pro-software-patent company.
  However, avoiding the companies who are most aggressive with patent
  aggression is easy: starting with avoiding Apple products is a good
  first step (there are plenty of other reasons to avoid Apple anyway).
  Microsoft would be next on the list, since they specifically use
  software patents to attack FLOSS projects. Those are likely the big
  two to avoid, but always remember that all large companies with
  proprietary software products actively enforce patents, even if they
  don’t file lawsuits. In other words, go with the little guy if you
  can; it’s more likely to be a patent-free zone.
• If you have a good idea, publish it and make sure the great
  idea is well described in code comments and documentation, and that
  everything is well archived by date. I put this one last on
  my list, because it’s more of a help for the software patent
  reformists than it is for the software patent abolitionists.
  Nevertheless, sometimes, patents will get in the way of Free Software,
  and it will be good if there is strong prior art showing that the idea
  was already thought of, implemented, and put out into the world before
  the patent was filed. But, fact is,
  the “valid”
  software patents with no prior art are a bigger threat to software
  freedom. The stronger the patent, the worst the threat, because
  it’s more likely to be innovative, new technology that we want to
  implement in Free Software.

I sat and thought of what else I could add to this list that
individuals can do to help abolish software patents. I was sad that
these were the only five six things that
I could collect, but that’s all the more reason to do
these five six
things in earnest. The battle for software freedom for all users is not
one we’ll win in our lifetimes. It’s also possible abolition of
software patents will take a generation as well. Those of us that seek
this outcome must be prepared for patience and lifelong, diligent work
so that the right outcome happens, eventually.

⁰ Update: I
was asked for a longer write up on software patent licenses as
compared to mere “promises”.
Unfortunately, I
don’t have one, so the best I was able to offer
was the interview I did
on Linux Outlaws, Episode 102, about Microsoft’s patent
promise. I’ve also added a TODO to write something up more completely
on this particular issue.

¹ I am not
leaving my permissively-license-preferring friends out of this issue
without careful consideration. Specifically, I just don’t think it’s
practical or even fair to ask companies to license their patents for
all permissively-licensed code, since that would be the same as
licensing to everyone, including their proprietary software
competitors. An ahead-of-time perpetual license to practice the
teachings of all the company’s patents under AGPLv3 basically makes
sure that code that’s eternally Free Software will also eternally be
patent-licensed from that company, even if the company never
contributes to the AGPLv3’d codebase. Anyone trying to make
proprietary code that infringed the patent wouldn’t have benefit of
the license; only Free Software users, distributors and modifiers
would have the benefit. If a company supports copyleft generally,
then there is no legitimate reason for the company to refuse such a
broad license for copyleft distributions and deployments.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2010/06/30/bilski.html

Lots of people are opining about
the USA
Supreme Court’s ruling in the Bilski case. Yesterday, I participated
in
a oggcast
with the folks at SFLC. In that oggcast, Dan Ravicher explained most
of the legal details of Bilski; I could never cover them as well as he
did, and I wouldn’t even try.

Anyway, as a non-lawyer worried about the policy questions, I’m pretty
much only concerned about those forward-looking policy questions.
However, to briefly look back at how our community responded to this
Bilski situation over the last 18 months: it seems similar to what
happened
while the Eldred
case was working its way to the Supreme Court. In the months
preceding both Eldred and Bilski, there seemed to be a mass hypnosis that
the Supreme Court would actually change copyright law (Eldred) or patent
law (Bilski) to make it better for freedom of computer users.

In both cases, that didn’t happen. There was admittedly less of that
giddy optimism before Bilski as there was before Eldred, but the ultimate
outcome for computer users is roughly no different in both cases: as we
were with Eldred, we’re left back with the same policy situation we had
before Bilski ever started making its way through the various courts. As
near as I can tell from what I’ve learned, the entire “Bilski
thing” appears to be a no-op. In short, as before, the Patent
Office sometimes can and will deny applications that it determines are
only abstract ideas, and the Supreme Court has now confirmed that the
Patent Office can reject such an application if the Patent Office knows
an abstract idea when it sees it. Nothing has changed regarding most
patents that are granted every day, including those that read on software.
Those of us that oppose software patents continue to believe that software
algorithms are indeed merely abstract ideas and pure mathematics and
shouldn’t be patentable subject matter. The governmental powers still
seems to disagree with us, or, at least, just won’t comment on that
question.

Looking forward, my largest concern, from a policy
perspective, is that the “patent reform” crowd,
who claim to be the allies of the anti-software-patent folks,
will use this decision to declare that the system works.
Bilski’s patent was ultimately denied, but on grounds that leave us no
closer to abolishing software patents. Patent reformists will
say: Well, invalid patents get denied, leaving space for the valid
ones. Those valid ones, they will say, do and should include
lots of patents that read on software. But only the really good
ideas should be patented, they will insist.

We must not yield to the patent reformists, particularly at a time like
this. (BTW, be sure to read
RMS‘ classic and still relevant essay,
Patent
Reform Is Not Enough, if you haven’t already.)

Since Bilski has given us no new tools for abolishing software patents,
we must redouble efforts with tools we already have to mitigate the
threat patents pose to software freedom. Here are a few suggestions,
which I think are actually all implementable by the average developer,
to will keep up the fight against software patents, or at least,
mitigate their impact:

• License your software using the
  AGPLv3,
  GPLv3,
  LGPLv3,
  or Apache-2.0.
  Among the copyleft
  licenses, AGPLv3
  and GPLv3 offer the
  best patent
  protections; LGPLv3
  offers the best among the weak copyleft
  licenses; Apache
  License 2.0 offers the best patent protections among the permissive
  licenses. These are the licenses we should gravitate toward,
  particularly since multiple companies with software patents are
  regularly attacking Free Software. At least when such companies
  contribute code to projects under these licenses, we know those
  particular codebases will be safe from that particular company’s
  patents.
• Demand real patent licenses from companies, not mere
  promises. Patent promises are not
  enough⁰. The Free Software
  community deserves to know it has real patent licenses from companies
  that hold patents. At the very least, we should demand unilateral
  patent licenses for all their patents perpetually for all
  possible copylefted code (i.e., companies should grant, ahead of
  time, the exact same license that the community would get if the
  company had contributed to a yet-to-exist GPLv3’d
  codebase)¹. Note
  further that some companies, that claim to be part of the
  FLOSS community, haven’t even given the
  (inadequate-but-better-than-nothing) patent promises.
  For example,
  BlackDuck holds a
  patent related to FLOSS, but
  despite saying
  they would consider at least a patent promise, have failed to do
  even that minimal effort.
• Support organizations/efforts that work to oppose and end
  software patents. In particular, be sure that the efforts
  you support are not merely “patent reform” efforts hidden
  behind anti-software patent rhetoric. Here are a few initiatives that
  I’ve recently seen doing work regarding complete abolition of software
  patents. I suggest you support them (with your time or dollars):
  • End Software
    Patents (a project of
    FSF),
  • FFII
    (European-specific), and
  • APRIL
    (France-specific).
• Write your legislators. This never hurts. In the
  USA, it’s unlikely we can convince Congress to change patent law,
  because there are just too many lobbying dollars from those big
  patent-holding companies (e.g., the same ones that wrote
  those nasty
  amicus
  briefs
  in Bilski). But, writing your Senators and Congresspeople once a year
  to remind them of your opposition patents that read on software simply
  can’t hurt, and may theoretically help a tiny bit. Now would be a good
  time to do it, since you can mention how the Bilski decision convinced
  you there’s a need for legislative abolition of software patents.
  Meanwhile, remember, it’s even better if you show up at political
  debates during election season and ask these candidates to oppose
  software patents!
• Explain to your colleagues why software patents should be
  abolished, particularly if you work in computing. Software
  patent abolition is actually a broad spectrum issue across the
  computing industry. Only big and powerful companies benefit from
  software patents. The little guy — even the little guy
  proprietary developer — is hurt by software patents.
  Even if you can’t convince your colleagues who write proprietary
  software that they should switch to writing Free Software,
  you can instead convince them that software patents
  are bad for them personally and for their chances to succeed in
  software. Share the film,
  Patent
  Absurdity, with them and then discuss the issue with them
  after they’ve viewed it. Blog, tweet, dent, and the like about the
  issue regularly.
• (added 2010-07-01 on tmarble‘s
  suggestion) Avoid products from pro-software-patent
  companies. This is tough to do, and it’s why I didn’t call
  for an all-out boycott. Most companies that make computers are
  pro-software-patent, so it’s actually tough to buy a computer (or even
  components for one) without buying from a pro-software-patent company.
  However, avoiding the companies who are most aggressive with patent
  aggression is easy: starting with avoiding Apple products is a good
  first step (there are plenty of other reasons to avoid Apple anyway).
  Microsoft would be next on the list, since they specifically use
  software patents to attack FLOSS projects. Those are likely the big
  two to avoid, but always remember that all large companies with
  proprietary software products actively enforce patents, even if they
  don’t file lawsuits. In other words, go with the little guy if you
  can; it’s more likely to be a patent-free zone.
• If you have a good idea, publish it and make sure the great
  idea is well described in code comments and documentation, and that
  everything is well archived by date. I put this one last on
  my list, because it’s more of a help for the software patent
  reformists than it is for the software patent abolitionists.
  Nevertheless, sometimes, patents will get in the way of Free Software,
  and it will be good if there is strong prior art showing that the idea
  was already thought of, implemented, and put out into the world before
  the patent was filed. But, fact is,
  the “valid”
  software patents with no prior art are a bigger threat to software
  freedom. The stronger the patent, the worst the threat, because
  it’s more likely to be innovative, new technology that we want to
  implement in Free Software.

I sat and thought of what else I could add to this list that
individuals can do to help abolish software patents. I was sad that
these were the only five six things that
I could collect, but that’s all the more reason to do
these five six
things in earnest. The battle for software freedom for all users is not
one we’ll win in our lifetimes. It’s also possible abolition of
software patents will take a generation as well. Those of us that seek
this outcome must be prepared for patience and lifelong, diligent work
so that the right outcome happens, eventually.

⁰ Update: I
was asked for a longer write up on software patent licenses as
compared to mere “promises”.
Unfortunately, I
don’t have one, so the best I was able to offer
was the interview I did
on Linux Outlaws, Episode 102, about Microsoft’s patent
promise. I’ve also added a TODO to write something up more completely
on this particular issue.

¹ I am not
leaving my permissively-license-preferring friends out of this issue
without careful consideration. Specifically, I just don’t think it’s
practical or even fair to ask companies to license their patents for
all permissively-licensed code, since that would be the same as
licensing to everyone, including their proprietary software
competitors. An ahead-of-time perpetual license to practice the
teachings of all the company’s patents under AGPLv3 basically makes
sure that code that’s eternally Free Software will also eternally be
patent-licensed from that company, even if the company never
contributes to the AGPLv3’d codebase. Anyone trying to make
proprietary code that infringed the patent wouldn’t have benefit of
the license; only Free Software users, distributors and modifiers
would have the benefit. If a company supports copyleft generally,
then there is no legitimate reason for the company to refuse such a
broad license for copyleft distributions and deployments.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2010/06/30/bilski.html

Lots of people are opining about
the USA
Supreme Court’s ruling in the Bilski case. Yesterday, I participated
in
a oggcast
with the folks at SFLC. In that oggcast, Dan Ravicher explained most
of the legal details of Bilski; I could never cover them as well as he
did, and I wouldn’t even try.

Anyway, as a non-lawyer worried about the policy questions, I’m pretty
much only concerned about those forward-looking policy questions.
However, to briefly look back at how our community responded to this
Bilski situation over the last 18 months: it seems similar to what
happened
while the Eldred
case was working its way to the Supreme Court. In the months
preceding both Eldred and Bilski, there seemed to be a mass hypnosis that
the Supreme Court would actually change copyright law (Eldred) or patent
law (Bilski) to make it better for freedom of computer users.

In both cases, that didn’t happen. There was admittedly less of that
giddy optimism before Bilski as there was before Eldred, but the ultimate
outcome for computer users is roughly no different in both cases: as we
were with Eldred, we’re left back with the same policy situation we had
before Bilski ever started making its way through the various courts. As
near as I can tell from what I’ve learned, the entire “Bilski
thing” appears to be a no-op. In short, as before, the Patent
Office sometimes can and will deny applications that it determines are
only abstract ideas, and the Supreme Court has now confirmed that the
Patent Office can reject such an application if the Patent Office knows
an abstract idea when it sees it. Nothing has changed regarding most
patents that are granted every day, including those that read on software.
Those of us that oppose software patents continue to believe that software
algorithms are indeed merely abstract ideas and pure mathematics and
shouldn’t be patentable subject matter. The governmental powers still
seems to disagree with us, or, at least, just won’t comment on that
question.

Looking forward, my largest concern, from a policy
perspective, is that the “patent reform” crowd,
who claim to be the allies of the anti-software-patent folks,
will use this decision to declare that the system works.
Bilski’s patent was ultimately denied, but on grounds that leave us no
closer to abolishing software patents. Patent reformists will
say: Well, invalid patents get denied, leaving space for the valid
ones. Those valid ones, they will say, do and should include
lots of patents that read on software. But only the really good
ideas should be patented, they will insist.

We must not yield to the patent reformists, particularly at a time like
this. (BTW, be sure to read
RMS‘ classic and still relevant essay,
Patent
Reform Is Not Enough, if you haven’t already.)

Since Bilski has given us no new tools for abolishing software patents,
we must redouble efforts with tools we already have to mitigate the
threat patents pose to software freedom. Here are a few suggestions,
which I think are actually all implementable by the average developer,
to will keep up the fight against software patents, or at least,
mitigate their impact:

• License your software using the
  AGPLv3,
  GPLv3,
  LGPLv3,
  or Apache-2.0.
  Among the copyleft
  licenses, AGPLv3
  and GPLv3 offer the
  best patent
  protections; LGPLv3
  offers the best among the weak copyleft
  licenses; Apache
  License 2.0 offers the best patent protections among the permissive
  licenses. These are the licenses we should gravitate toward,
  particularly since multiple companies with software patents are
  regularly attacking Free Software. At least when such companies
  contribute code to projects under these licenses, we know those
  particular codebases will be safe from that particular company’s
  patents.
• Demand real patent licenses from companies, not mere
  promises. Patent promises are not
  enough⁰. The Free Software
  community deserves to know it has real patent licenses from companies
  that hold patents. At the very least, we should demand unilateral
  patent licenses for all their patents perpetually for all
  possible copylefted code (i.e., companies should grant, ahead of
  time, the exact same license that the community would get if the
  company had contributed to a yet-to-exist GPLv3’d
  codebase)¹. Note
  further that some companies, that claim to be part of the
  FLOSS community, haven’t even given the
  (inadequate-but-better-than-nothing) patent promises.
  For example,
  BlackDuck holds a
  patent related to FLOSS, but
  despite saying
  they would consider at least a patent promise, have failed to do
  even that minimal effort.
• Support organizations/efforts that work to oppose and end
  software patents. In particular, be sure that the efforts
  you support are not merely “patent reform” efforts hidden
  behind anti-software patent rhetoric. Here are a few initiatives that
  I’ve recently seen doing work regarding complete abolition of software
  patents. I suggest you support them (with your time or dollars):
  • End Software
    Patents (a project of
    FSF),
  • FFII
    (European-specific), and
  • APRIL
    (France-specific).
• Write your legislators. This never hurts. In the
  USA, it’s unlikely we can convince Congress to change patent law,
  because there are just too many lobbying dollars from those big
  patent-holding companies (e.g., the same ones that wrote
  those nasty
  amicus
  briefs
  in Bilski). But, writing your Senators and Congresspeople once a year
  to remind them of your opposition patents that read on software simply
  can’t hurt, and may theoretically help a tiny bit. Now would be a good
  time to do it, since you can mention how the Bilski decision convinced
  you there’s a need for legislative abolition of software patents.
  Meanwhile, remember, it’s even better if you show up at political
  debates during election season and ask these candidates to oppose
  software patents!
• Explain to your colleagues why software patents should be
  abolished, particularly if you work in computing. Software
  patent abolition is actually a broad spectrum issue across the
  computing industry. Only big and powerful companies benefit from
  software patents. The little guy — even the little guy
  proprietary developer — is hurt by software patents.
  Even if you can’t convince your colleagues who write proprietary
  software that they should switch to writing Free Software,
  you can instead convince them that software patents
  are bad for them personally and for their chances to succeed in
  software. Share the film,
  Patent
  Absurdity, with them and then discuss the issue with them
  after they’ve viewed it. Blog, tweet, dent, and the like about the
  issue regularly.
• (added 2010-07-01 on tmarble‘s
  suggestion) Avoid products from pro-software-patent
  companies. This is tough to do, and it’s why I didn’t call
  for an all-out boycott. Most companies that make computers are
  pro-software-patent, so it’s actually tough to buy a computer (or even
  components for one) without buying from a pro-software-patent company.
  However, avoiding the companies who are most aggressive with patent
  aggression is easy: starting with avoiding Apple products is a good
  first step (there are plenty of other reasons to avoid Apple anyway).
  Microsoft would be next on the list, since they specifically use
  software patents to attack FLOSS projects. Those are likely the big
  two to avoid, but always remember that all large companies with
  proprietary software products actively enforce patents, even if they
  don’t file lawsuits. In other words, go with the little guy if you
  can; it’s more likely to be a patent-free zone.
• If you have a good idea, publish it and make sure the great
  idea is well described in code comments and documentation, and that
  everything is well archived by date. I put this one last on
  my list, because it’s more of a help for the software patent
  reformists than it is for the software patent abolitionists.
  Nevertheless, sometimes, patents will get in the way of Free Software,
  and it will be good if there is strong prior art showing that the idea
  was already thought of, implemented, and put out into the world before
  the patent was filed. But, fact is,
  the “valid”
  software patents with no prior art are a bigger threat to software
  freedom. The stronger the patent, the worst the threat, because
  it’s more likely to be innovative, new technology that we want to
  implement in Free Software.

I sat and thought of what else I could add to this list that
individuals can do to help abolish software patents. I was sad that
these were the only five six things that
I could collect, but that’s all the more reason to do
these five six
things in earnest. The battle for software freedom for all users is not
one we’ll win in our lifetimes. It’s also possible abolition of
software patents will take a generation as well. Those of us that seek
this outcome must be prepared for patience and lifelong, diligent work
so that the right outcome happens, eventually.

⁰ Update: I
was asked for a longer write up on software patent licenses as
compared to mere “promises”.
Unfortunately, I
don’t have one, so the best I was able to offer
was the interview I did
on Linux Outlaws, Episode 102, about Microsoft’s patent
promise. I’ve also added a TODO to write something up more completely
on this particular issue.

¹ I am not
leaving my permissively-license-preferring friends out of this issue
without careful consideration. Specifically, I just don’t think it’s
practical or even fair to ask companies to license their patents for
all permissively-licensed code, since that would be the same as
licensing to everyone, including their proprietary software
competitors. An ahead-of-time perpetual license to practice the
teachings of all the company’s patents under AGPLv3 basically makes
sure that code that’s eternally Free Software will also eternally be
patent-licensed from that company, even if the company never
contributes to the AGPLv3’d codebase. Anyone trying to make
proprietary code that infringed the patent wouldn’t have benefit of
the license; only Free Software users, distributors and modifiers
would have the benefit. If a company supports copyleft generally,
then there is no legitimate reason for the company to refuse such a
broad license for copyleft distributions and deployments.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2010/06/30/bilski.html

Lots of people are opining about
the USA
Supreme Court’s ruling in the Bilski case. Yesterday, I participated
in
a oggcast
with the folks at SFLC. In that oggcast, Dan Ravicher explained most
of the legal details of Bilski; I could never cover them as well as he
did, and I wouldn’t even try.

Anyway, as a non-lawyer worried about the policy questions, I’m pretty
much only concerned about those forward-looking policy questions.
However, to briefly look back at how our community responded to this
Bilski situation over the last 18 months: it seems similar to what
happened
while the Eldred
case was working its way to the Supreme Court. In the months
preceding both Eldred and Bilski, there seemed to be a mass hypnosis that
the Supreme Court would actually change copyright law (Eldred) or patent
law (Bilski) to make it better for freedom of computer users.

In both cases, that didn’t happen. There was admittedly less of that
giddy optimism before Bilski as there was before Eldred, but the ultimate
outcome for computer users is roughly no different in both cases: as we
were with Eldred, we’re left back with the same policy situation we had
before Bilski ever started making its way through the various courts. As
near as I can tell from what I’ve learned, the entire “Bilski
thing” appears to be a no-op. In short, as before, the Patent
Office sometimes can and will deny applications that it determines are
only abstract ideas, and the Supreme Court has now confirmed that the
Patent Office can reject such an application if the Patent Office knows
an abstract idea when it sees it. Nothing has changed regarding most
patents that are granted every day, including those that read on software.
Those of us that oppose software patents continue to believe that software
algorithms are indeed merely abstract ideas and pure mathematics and
shouldn’t be patentable subject matter. The governmental powers still
seems to disagree with us, or, at least, just won’t comment on that
question.

Looking forward, my largest concern, from a policy
perspective, is that the “patent reform” crowd,
who claim to be the allies of the anti-software-patent folks,
will use this decision to declare that the system works.
Bilski’s patent was ultimately denied, but on grounds that leave us no
closer to abolishing software patents. Patent reformists will
say: Well, invalid patents get denied, leaving space for the valid
ones. Those valid ones, they will say, do and should include
lots of patents that read on software. But only the really good
ideas should be patented, they will insist.

We must not yield to the patent reformists, particularly at a time like
this. (BTW, be sure to read
RMS‘ classic and still relevant essay,
Patent
Reform Is Not Enough, if you haven’t already.)

Since Bilski has given us no new tools for abolishing software patents,
we must redouble efforts with tools we already have to mitigate the
threat patents pose to software freedom. Here are a few suggestions,
which I think are actually all implementable by the average developer,
to will keep up the fight against software patents, or at least,
mitigate their impact:

• License your software using the
  AGPLv3,
  GPLv3,
  LGPLv3,
  or Apache-2.0.
  Among the copyleft
  licenses, AGPLv3
  and GPLv3 offer the
  best patent
  protections; LGPLv3
  offers the best among the weak copyleft
  licenses; Apache
  License 2.0 offers the best patent protections among the permissive
  licenses. These are the licenses we should gravitate toward,
  particularly since multiple companies with software patents are
  regularly attacking Free Software. At least when such companies
  contribute code to projects under these licenses, we know those
  particular codebases will be safe from that particular company’s
  patents.
• Demand real patent licenses from companies, not mere
  promises. Patent promises are not
  enough⁰. The Free Software
  community deserves to know it has real patent licenses from companies
  that hold patents. At the very least, we should demand unilateral
  patent licenses for all their patents perpetually for all
  possible copylefted code (i.e., companies should grant, ahead of
  time, the exact same license that the community would get if the
  company had contributed to a yet-to-exist GPLv3’d
  codebase)¹. Note
  further that some companies, that claim to be part of the
  FLOSS community, haven’t even given the
  (inadequate-but-better-than-nothing) patent promises.
  For example,
  BlackDuck holds a
  patent related to FLOSS, but
  despite saying
  they would consider at least a patent promise, have failed to do
  even that minimal effort.
• Support organizations/efforts that work to oppose and end
  software patents. In particular, be sure that the efforts
  you support are not merely “patent reform” efforts hidden
  behind anti-software patent rhetoric. Here are a few initiatives that
  I’ve recently seen doing work regarding complete abolition of software
  patents. I suggest you support them (with your time or dollars):
  • End Software
    Patents (a project of
    FSF),
  • FFII
    (European-specific), and
  • APRIL
    (France-specific).
• Write your legislators. This never hurts. In the
  USA, it’s unlikely we can convince Congress to change patent law,
  because there are just too many lobbying dollars from those big
  patent-holding companies (e.g., the same ones that wrote
  those nasty
  amicus
  briefs
  in Bilski). But, writing your Senators and Congresspeople once a year
  to remind them of your opposition patents that read on software simply
  can’t hurt, and may theoretically help a tiny bit. Now would be a good
  time to do it, since you can mention how the Bilski decision convinced
  you there’s a need for legislative abolition of software patents.
  Meanwhile, remember, it’s even better if you show up at political
  debates during election season and ask these candidates to oppose
  software patents!
• Explain to your colleagues why software patents should be
  abolished, particularly if you work in computing. Software
  patent abolition is actually a broad spectrum issue across the
  computing industry. Only big and powerful companies benefit from
  software patents. The little guy — even the little guy
  proprietary developer — is hurt by software patents.
  Even if you can’t convince your colleagues who write proprietary
  software that they should switch to writing Free Software,
  you can instead convince them that software patents
  are bad for them personally and for their chances to succeed in
  software. Share the film,
  Patent
  Absurdity, with them and then discuss the issue with them
  after they’ve viewed it. Blog, tweet, dent, and the like about the
  issue regularly.
• (added 2010-07-01 on tmarble‘s
  suggestion) Avoid products from pro-software-patent
  companies. This is tough to do, and it’s why I didn’t call
  for an all-out boycott. Most companies that make computers are
  pro-software-patent, so it’s actually tough to buy a computer (or even
  components for one) without buying from a pro-software-patent company.
  However, avoiding the companies who are most aggressive with patent
  aggression is easy: starting with avoiding Apple products is a good
  first step (there are plenty of other reasons to avoid Apple anyway).
  Microsoft would be next on the list, since they specifically use
  software patents to attack FLOSS projects. Those are likely the big
  two to avoid, but always remember that all large companies with
  proprietary software products actively enforce patents, even if they
  don’t file lawsuits. In other words, go with the little guy if you
  can; it’s more likely to be a patent-free zone.
• If you have a good idea, publish it and make sure the great
  idea is well described in code comments and documentation, and that
  everything is well archived by date. I put this one last on
  my list, because it’s more of a help for the software patent
  reformists than it is for the software patent abolitionists.
  Nevertheless, sometimes, patents will get in the way of Free Software,
  and it will be good if there is strong prior art showing that the idea
  was already thought of, implemented, and put out into the world before
  the patent was filed. But, fact is,
  the “valid”
  software patents with no prior art are a bigger threat to software
  freedom. The stronger the patent, the worst the threat, because
  it’s more likely to be innovative, new technology that we want to
  implement in Free Software.

I sat and thought of what else I could add to this list that
individuals can do to help abolish software patents. I was sad that
these were the only five six things that
I could collect, but that’s all the more reason to do
these five six
things in earnest. The battle for software freedom for all users is not
one we’ll win in our lifetimes. It’s also possible abolition of
software patents will take a generation as well. Those of us that seek
this outcome must be prepared for patience and lifelong, diligent work
so that the right outcome happens, eventually.

⁰ Update: I
was asked for a longer write up on software patent licenses as
compared to mere “promises”.
Unfortunately, I
don’t have one, so the best I was able to offer
was the interview I did
on Linux Outlaws, Episode 102, about Microsoft’s patent
promise. I’ve also added a TODO to write something up more completely
on this particular issue.

¹ I am not
leaving my permissively-license-preferring friends out of this issue
without careful consideration. Specifically, I just don’t think it’s
practical or even fair to ask companies to license their patents for
all permissively-licensed code, since that would be the same as
licensing to everyone, including their proprietary software
competitors. An ahead-of-time perpetual license to practice the
teachings of all the company’s patents under AGPLv3 basically makes
sure that code that’s eternally Free Software will also eternally be
patent-licensed from that company, even if the company never
contributes to the AGPLv3’d codebase. Anyone trying to make
proprietary code that infringed the patent wouldn’t have benefit of
the license; only Free Software users, distributors and modifiers
would have the benefit. If a company supports copyleft generally,
then there is no legitimate reason for the company to refuse such a
broad license for copyleft distributions and deployments.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2010/06/30/bilski.html

Lots of people are opining about
the USA
Supreme Court’s ruling in the Bilski case. Yesterday, I participated
in
a oggcast
with the folks at SFLC. In that oggcast, Dan Ravicher explained most
of the legal details of Bilski; I could never cover them as well as he
did, and I wouldn’t even try.

Anyway, as a non-lawyer worried about the policy questions, I’m pretty
much only concerned about those forward-looking policy questions.
However, to briefly look back at how our community responded to this
Bilski situation over the last 18 months: it seems similar to what
happened
while the Eldred
case was working its way to the Supreme Court. In the months
preceding both Eldred and Bilski, there seemed to be a mass hypnosis that
the Supreme Court would actually change copyright law (Eldred) or patent
law (Bilski) to make it better for freedom of computer users.

In both cases, that didn’t happen. There was admittedly less of that
giddy optimism before Bilski as there was before Eldred, but the ultimate
outcome for computer users is roughly no different in both cases: as we
were with Eldred, we’re left back with the same policy situation we had
before Bilski ever started making its way through the various courts. As
near as I can tell from what I’ve learned, the entire “Bilski
thing” appears to be a no-op. In short, as before, the Patent
Office sometimes can and will deny applications that it determines are
only abstract ideas, and the Supreme Court has now confirmed that the
Patent Office can reject such an application if the Patent Office knows
an abstract idea when it sees it. Nothing has changed regarding most
patents that are granted every day, including those that read on software.
Those of us that oppose software patents continue to believe that software
algorithms are indeed merely abstract ideas and pure mathematics and
shouldn’t be patentable subject matter. The governmental powers still
seems to disagree with us, or, at least, just won’t comment on that
question.

Looking forward, my largest concern, from a policy
perspective, is that the “patent reform” crowd,
who claim to be the allies of the anti-software-patent folks,
will use this decision to declare that the system works.
Bilski’s patent was ultimately denied, but on grounds that leave us no
closer to abolishing software patents. Patent reformists will
say: Well, invalid patents get denied, leaving space for the valid
ones. Those valid ones, they will say, do and should include
lots of patents that read on software. But only the really good
ideas should be patented, they will insist.

We must not yield to the patent reformists, particularly at a time like
this. (BTW, be sure to read
RMS‘ classic and still relevant essay,
Patent
Reform Is Not Enough, if you haven’t already.)

Since Bilski has given us no new tools for abolishing software patents,
we must redouble efforts with tools we already have to mitigate the
threat patents pose to software freedom. Here are a few suggestions,
which I think are actually all implementable by the average developer,
to will keep up the fight against software patents, or at least,
mitigate their impact:

• License your software using the
  AGPLv3,
  GPLv3,
  LGPLv3,
  or Apache-2.0.
  Among the copyleft
  licenses, AGPLv3
  and GPLv3 offer the
  best patent
  protections; LGPLv3
  offers the best among the weak copyleft
  licenses; Apache
  License 2.0 offers the best patent protections among the permissive
  licenses. These are the licenses we should gravitate toward,
  particularly since multiple companies with software patents are
  regularly attacking Free Software. At least when such companies
  contribute code to projects under these licenses, we know those
  particular codebases will be safe from that particular company’s
  patents.
• Demand real patent licenses from companies, not mere
  promises. Patent promises are not
  enough⁰. The Free Software
  community deserves to know it has real patent licenses from companies
  that hold patents. At the very least, we should demand unilateral
  patent licenses for all their patents perpetually for all
  possible copylefted code (i.e., companies should grant, ahead of
  time, the exact same license that the community would get if the
  company had contributed to a yet-to-exist GPLv3’d
  codebase)¹. Note
  further that some companies, that claim to be part of the
  FLOSS community, haven’t even given the
  (inadequate-but-better-than-nothing) patent promises.
  For example,
  BlackDuck holds a
  patent related to FLOSS, but
  despite saying
  they would consider at least a patent promise, have failed to do
  even that minimal effort.
• Support organizations/efforts that work to oppose and end
  software patents. In particular, be sure that the efforts
  you support are not merely “patent reform” efforts hidden
  behind anti-software patent rhetoric. Here are a few initiatives that
  I’ve recently seen doing work regarding complete abolition of software
  patents. I suggest you support them (with your time or dollars):
  • End Software
    Patents (a project of
    FSF),
  • FFII
    (European-specific), and
  • APRIL
    (France-specific).
• Write your legislators. This never hurts. In the
  USA, it’s unlikely we can convince Congress to change patent law,
  because there are just too many lobbying dollars from those big
  patent-holding companies (e.g., the same ones that wrote
  those nasty
  amicus
  briefs
  in Bilski). But, writing your Senators and Congresspeople once a year
  to remind them of your opposition patents that read on software simply
  can’t hurt, and may theoretically help a tiny bit. Now would be a good
  time to do it, since you can mention how the Bilski decision convinced
  you there’s a need for legislative abolition of software patents.
  Meanwhile, remember, it’s even better if you show up at political
  debates during election season and ask these candidates to oppose
  software patents!
• Explain to your colleagues why software patents should be
  abolished, particularly if you work in computing. Software
  patent abolition is actually a broad spectrum issue across the
  computing industry. Only big and powerful companies benefit from
  software patents. The little guy — even the little guy
  proprietary developer — is hurt by software patents.
  Even if you can’t convince your colleagues who write proprietary
  software that they should switch to writing Free Software,
  you can instead convince them that software patents
  are bad for them personally and for their chances to succeed in
  software. Share the film,
  Patent
  Absurdity, with them and then discuss the issue with them
  after they’ve viewed it. Blog, tweet, dent, and the like about the
  issue regularly.
• (added 2010-07-01 on tmarble‘s
  suggestion) Avoid products from pro-software-patent
  companies. This is tough to do, and it’s why I didn’t call
  for an all-out boycott. Most companies that make computers are
  pro-software-patent, so it’s actually tough to buy a computer (or even
  components for one) without buying from a pro-software-patent company.
  However, avoiding the companies who are most aggressive with patent
  aggression is easy: starting with avoiding Apple products is a good
  first step (there are plenty of other reasons to avoid Apple anyway).
  Microsoft would be next on the list, since they specifically use
  software patents to attack FLOSS projects. Those are likely the big
  two to avoid, but always remember that all large companies with
  proprietary software products actively enforce patents, even if they
  don’t file lawsuits. In other words, go with the little guy if you
  can; it’s more likely to be a patent-free zone.
• If you have a good idea, publish it and make sure the great
  idea is well described in code comments and documentation, and that
  everything is well archived by date. I put this one last on
  my list, because it’s more of a help for the software patent
  reformists than it is for the software patent abolitionists.
  Nevertheless, sometimes, patents will get in the way of Free Software,
  and it will be good if there is strong prior art showing that the idea
  was already thought of, implemented, and put out into the world before
  the patent was filed. But, fact is,
  the “valid”
  software patents with no prior art are a bigger threat to software
  freedom. The stronger the patent, the worst the threat, because
  it’s more likely to be innovative, new technology that we want to
  implement in Free Software.

I sat and thought of what else I could add to this list that
individuals can do to help abolish software patents. I was sad that
these were the only five six things that
I could collect, but that’s all the more reason to do
these five six
things in earnest. The battle for software freedom for all users is not
one we’ll win in our lifetimes. It’s also possible abolition of
software patents will take a generation as well. Those of us that seek
this outcome must be prepared for patience and lifelong, diligent work
so that the right outcome happens, eventually.

⁰ Update: I
was asked for a longer write up on software patent licenses as
compared to mere “promises”.
Unfortunately, I
don’t have one, so the best I was able to offer
was the interview I did
on Linux Outlaws, Episode 102, about Microsoft’s patent
promise. I’ve also added a TODO to write something up more completely
on this particular issue.

¹ I am not
leaving my permissively-license-preferring friends out of this issue
without careful consideration. Specifically, I just don’t think it’s
practical or even fair to ask companies to license their patents for
all permissively-licensed code, since that would be the same as
licensing to everyone, including their proprietary software
competitors. An ahead-of-time perpetual license to practice the
teachings of all the company’s patents under AGPLv3 basically makes
sure that code that’s eternally Free Software will also eternally be
patent-licensed from that company, even if the company never
contributes to the AGPLv3’d codebase. Anyone trying to make
proprietary code that infringed the patent wouldn’t have benefit of
the license; only Free Software users, distributors and modifiers
would have the benefit. If a company supports copyleft generally,
then there is no legitimate reason for the company to refuse such a
broad license for copyleft distributions and deployments.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2010/06/30/bilski.html

Lots of people are opining about
the USA
Supreme Court’s ruling in the Bilski case. Yesterday, I participated
in
a oggcast
with the folks at SFLC. In that oggcast, Dan Ravicher explained most
of the legal details of Bilski; I could never cover them as well as he
did, and I wouldn’t even try.

Anyway, as a non-lawyer worried about the policy questions, I’m pretty
much only concerned about those forward-looking policy questions.
However, to briefly look back at how our community responded to this
Bilski situation over the last 18 months: it seems similar to what
happened
while the Eldred
case was working its way to the Supreme Court. In the months
preceding both Eldred and Bilski, there seemed to be a mass hypnosis that
the Supreme Court would actually change copyright law (Eldred) or patent
law (Bilski) to make it better for freedom of computer users.

In both cases, that didn’t happen. There was admittedly less of that
giddy optimism before Bilski as there was before Eldred, but the ultimate
outcome for computer users is roughly no different in both cases: as we
were with Eldred, we’re left back with the same policy situation we had
before Bilski ever started making its way through the various courts. As
near as I can tell from what I’ve learned, the entire “Bilski
thing” appears to be a no-op. In short, as before, the Patent
Office sometimes can and will deny applications that it determines are
only abstract ideas, and the Supreme Court has now confirmed that the
Patent Office can reject such an application if the Patent Office knows
an abstract idea when it sees it. Nothing has changed regarding most
patents that are granted every day, including those that read on software.
Those of us that oppose software patents continue to believe that software
algorithms are indeed merely abstract ideas and pure mathematics and
shouldn’t be patentable subject matter. The governmental powers still
seems to disagree with us, or, at least, just won’t comment on that
question.

Looking forward, my largest concern, from a policy
perspective, is that the “patent reform” crowd,
who claim to be the allies of the anti-software-patent folks,
will use this decision to declare that the system works.
Bilski’s patent was ultimately denied, but on grounds that leave us no
closer to abolishing software patents. Patent reformists will
say: Well, invalid patents get denied, leaving space for the valid
ones. Those valid ones, they will say, do and should include
lots of patents that read on software. But only the really good
ideas should be patented, they will insist.

We must not yield to the patent reformists, particularly at a time like
this. (BTW, be sure to read
RMS‘ classic and still relevant essay,
Patent
Reform Is Not Enough, if you haven’t already.)

Since Bilski has given us no new tools for abolishing software patents,
we must redouble efforts with tools we already have to mitigate the
threat patents pose to software freedom. Here are a few suggestions,
which I think are actually all implementable by the average developer,
to will keep up the fight against software patents, or at least,
mitigate their impact:

• License your software using the
  AGPLv3,
  GPLv3,
  LGPLv3,
  or Apache-2.0.
  Among the copyleft
  licenses, AGPLv3
  and GPLv3 offer the
  best patent
  protections; LGPLv3
  offers the best among the weak copyleft
  licenses; Apache
  License 2.0 offers the best patent protections among the permissive
  licenses. These are the licenses we should gravitate toward,
  particularly since multiple companies with software patents are
  regularly attacking Free Software. At least when such companies
  contribute code to projects under these licenses, we know those
  particular codebases will be safe from that particular company’s
  patents.
• Demand real patent licenses from companies, not mere
  promises. Patent promises are not
  enough⁰. The Free Software
  community deserves to know it has real patent licenses from companies
  that hold patents. At the very least, we should demand unilateral
  patent licenses for all their patents perpetually for all
  possible copylefted code (i.e., companies should grant, ahead of
  time, the exact same license that the community would get if the
  company had contributed to a yet-to-exist GPLv3’d
  codebase)¹. Note
  further that some companies, that claim to be part of the
  FLOSS community, haven’t even given the
  (inadequate-but-better-than-nothing) patent promises.
  For example,
  BlackDuck holds a
  patent related to FLOSS, but
  despite saying
  they would consider at least a patent promise, have failed to do
  even that minimal effort.
• Support organizations/efforts that work to oppose and end
  software patents. In particular, be sure that the efforts
  you support are not merely “patent reform” efforts hidden
  behind anti-software patent rhetoric. Here are a few initiatives that
  I’ve recently seen doing work regarding complete abolition of software
  patents. I suggest you support them (with your time or dollars):
  • End Software
    Patents (a project of
    FSF),
  • FFII
    (European-specific), and
  • APRIL
    (France-specific).
• Write your legislators. This never hurts. In the
  USA, it’s unlikely we can convince Congress to change patent law,
  because there are just too many lobbying dollars from those big
  patent-holding companies (e.g., the same ones that wrote
  those nasty
  amicus
  briefs
  in Bilski). But, writing your Senators and Congresspeople once a year
  to remind them of your opposition patents that read on software simply
  can’t hurt, and may theoretically help a tiny bit. Now would be a good
  time to do it, since you can mention how the Bilski decision convinced
  you there’s a need for legislative abolition of software patents.
  Meanwhile, remember, it’s even better if you show up at political
  debates during election season and ask these candidates to oppose
  software patents!
• Explain to your colleagues why software patents should be
  abolished, particularly if you work in computing. Software
  patent abolition is actually a broad spectrum issue across the
  computing industry. Only big and powerful companies benefit from
  software patents. The little guy — even the little guy
  proprietary developer — is hurt by software patents.
  Even if you can’t convince your colleagues who write proprietary
  software that they should switch to writing Free Software,
  you can instead convince them that software patents
  are bad for them personally and for their chances to succeed in
  software. Share the film,
  Patent
  Absurdity, with them and then discuss the issue with them
  after they’ve viewed it. Blog, tweet, dent, and the like about the
  issue regularly.
• (added 2010-07-01 on tmarble‘s
  suggestion) Avoid products from pro-software-patent
  companies. This is tough to do, and it’s why I didn’t call
  for an all-out boycott. Most companies that make computers are
  pro-software-patent, so it’s actually tough to buy a computer (or even
  components for one) without buying from a pro-software-patent company.
  However, avoiding the companies who are most aggressive with patent
  aggression is easy: starting with avoiding Apple products is a good
  first step (there are plenty of other reasons to avoid Apple anyway).
  Microsoft would be next on the list, since they specifically use
  software patents to attack FLOSS projects. Those are likely the big
  two to avoid, but always remember that all large companies with
  proprietary software products actively enforce patents, even if they
  don’t file lawsuits. In other words, go with the little guy if you
  can; it’s more likely to be a patent-free zone.
• If you have a good idea, publish it and make sure the great
  idea is well described in code comments and documentation, and that
  everything is well archived by date. I put this one last on
  my list, because it’s more of a help for the software patent
  reformists than it is for the software patent abolitionists.
  Nevertheless, sometimes, patents will get in the way of Free Software,
  and it will be good if there is strong prior art showing that the idea
  was already thought of, implemented, and put out into the world before
  the patent was filed. But, fact is,
  the “valid”
  software patents with no prior art are a bigger threat to software
  freedom. The stronger the patent, the worst the threat, because
  it’s more likely to be innovative, new technology that we want to
  implement in Free Software.

I sat and thought of what else I could add to this list that
individuals can do to help abolish software patents. I was sad that
these were the only five six things that
I could collect, but that’s all the more reason to do
these five six
things in earnest. The battle for software freedom for all users is not
one we’ll win in our lifetimes. It’s also possible abolition of
software patents will take a generation as well. Those of us that seek
this outcome must be prepared for patience and lifelong, diligent work
so that the right outcome happens, eventually.

⁰ Update: I
was asked for a longer write up on software patent licenses as
compared to mere “promises”.
Unfortunately, I
don’t have one, so the best I was able to offer
was the interview I did
on Linux Outlaws, Episode 102, about Microsoft’s patent
promise. I’ve also added a TODO to write something up more completely
on this particular issue.

¹ I am not
leaving my permissively-license-preferring friends out of this issue
without careful consideration. Specifically, I just don’t think it’s
practical or even fair to ask companies to license their patents for
all permissively-licensed code, since that would be the same as
licensing to everyone, including their proprietary software
competitors. An ahead-of-time perpetual license to practice the
teachings of all the company’s patents under AGPLv3 basically makes
sure that code that’s eternally Free Software will also eternally be
patent-licensed from that company, even if the company never
contributes to the AGPLv3’d codebase. Anyone trying to make
proprietary code that infringed the patent wouldn’t have benefit of
the license; only Free Software users, distributors and modifiers
would have the benefit. If a company supports copyleft generally,
then there is no legitimate reason for the company to refuse such a
broad license for copyleft distributions and deployments.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2010/06/30/bilski.html

Lots of people are opining about
the USA
Supreme Court’s ruling in the Bilski case. Yesterday, I participated
in
a oggcast
with the folks at SFLC. In that oggcast, Dan Ravicher explained most
of the legal details of Bilski; I could never cover them as well as he
did, and I wouldn’t even try.

Anyway, as a non-lawyer worried about the policy questions, I’m pretty
much only concerned about those forward-looking policy questions.
However, to briefly look back at how our community responded to this
Bilski situation over the last 18 months: it seems similar to what
happened
while the Eldred
case was working its way to the Supreme Court. In the months
preceding both Eldred and Bilski, there seemed to be a mass hypnosis that
the Supreme Court would actually change copyright law (Eldred) or patent
law (Bilski) to make it better for freedom of computer users.

In both cases, that didn’t happen. There was admittedly less of that
giddy optimism before Bilski as there was before Eldred, but the ultimate
outcome for computer users is roughly no different in both cases: as we
were with Eldred, we’re left back with the same policy situation we had
before Bilski ever started making its way through the various courts. As
near as I can tell from what I’ve learned, the entire “Bilski
thing” appears to be a no-op. In short, as before, the Patent
Office sometimes can and will deny applications that it determines are
only abstract ideas, and the Supreme Court has now confirmed that the
Patent Office can reject such an application if the Patent Office knows
an abstract idea when it sees it. Nothing has changed regarding most
patents that are granted every day, including those that read on software.
Those of us that oppose software patents continue to believe that software
algorithms are indeed merely abstract ideas and pure mathematics and
shouldn’t be patentable subject matter. The governmental powers still
seems to disagree with us, or, at least, just won’t comment on that
question.

Looking forward, my largest concern, from a policy
perspective, is that the “patent reform” crowd,
who claim to be the allies of the anti-software-patent folks,
will use this decision to declare that the system works.
Bilski’s patent was ultimately denied, but on grounds that leave us no
closer to abolishing software patents. Patent reformists will
say: Well, invalid patents get denied, leaving space for the valid
ones. Those valid ones, they will say, do and should include
lots of patents that read on software. But only the really good
ideas should be patented, they will insist.

We must not yield to the patent reformists, particularly at a time like
this. (BTW, be sure to read
RMS‘ classic and still relevant essay,
Patent
Reform Is Not Enough, if you haven’t already.)

Since Bilski has given us no new tools for abolishing software patents,
we must redouble efforts with tools we already have to mitigate the
threat patents pose to software freedom. Here are a few suggestions,
which I think are actually all implementable by the average developer,
to will keep up the fight against software patents, or at least,
mitigate their impact:

• License your software using the
  AGPLv3,
  GPLv3,
  LGPLv3,
  or Apache-2.0.
  Among the copyleft
  licenses, AGPLv3
  and GPLv3 offer the
  best patent
  protections; LGPLv3
  offers the best among the weak copyleft
  licenses; Apache
  License 2.0 offers the best patent protections among the permissive
  licenses. These are the licenses we should gravitate toward,
  particularly since multiple companies with software patents are
  regularly attacking Free Software. At least when such companies
  contribute code to projects under these licenses, we know those
  particular codebases will be safe from that particular company’s
  patents.
• Demand real patent licenses from companies, not mere
  promises. Patent promises are not
  enough⁰. The Free Software
  community deserves to know it has real patent licenses from companies
  that hold patents. At the very least, we should demand unilateral
  patent licenses for all their patents perpetually for all
  possible copylefted code (i.e., companies should grant, ahead of
  time, the exact same license that the community would get if the
  company had contributed to a yet-to-exist GPLv3’d
  codebase)¹. Note
  further that some companies, that claim to be part of the
  FLOSS community, haven’t even given the
  (inadequate-but-better-than-nothing) patent promises.
  For example,
  BlackDuck holds a
  patent related to FLOSS, but
  despite saying
  they would consider at least a patent promise, have failed to do
  even that minimal effort.
• Support organizations/efforts that work to oppose and end
  software patents. In particular, be sure that the efforts
  you support are not merely “patent reform” efforts hidden
  behind anti-software patent rhetoric. Here are a few initiatives that
  I’ve recently seen doing work regarding complete abolition of software
  patents. I suggest you support them (with your time or dollars):
  • End Software
    Patents (a project of
    FSF),
  • FFII
    (European-specific), and
  • APRIL
    (France-specific).
• Write your legislators. This never hurts. In the
  USA, it’s unlikely we can convince Congress to change patent law,
  because there are just too many lobbying dollars from those big
  patent-holding companies (e.g., the same ones that wrote
  those nasty
  amicus
  briefs
  in Bilski). But, writing your Senators and Congresspeople once a year
  to remind them of your opposition patents that read on software simply
  can’t hurt, and may theoretically help a tiny bit. Now would be a good
  time to do it, since you can mention how the Bilski decision convinced
  you there’s a need for legislative abolition of software patents.
  Meanwhile, remember, it’s even better if you show up at political
  debates during election season and ask these candidates to oppose
  software patents!
• Explain to your colleagues why software patents should be
  abolished, particularly if you work in computing. Software
  patent abolition is actually a broad spectrum issue across the
  computing industry. Only big and powerful companies benefit from
  software patents. The little guy — even the little guy
  proprietary developer — is hurt by software patents.
  Even if you can’t convince your colleagues who write proprietary
  software that they should switch to writing Free Software,
  you can instead convince them that software patents
  are bad for them personally and for their chances to succeed in
  software. Share the film,
  Patent
  Absurdity, with them and then discuss the issue with them
  after they’ve viewed it. Blog, tweet, dent, and the like about the
  issue regularly.
• (added 2010-07-01 on tmarble‘s
  suggestion) Avoid products from pro-software-patent
  companies. This is tough to do, and it’s why I didn’t call
  for an all-out boycott. Most companies that make computers are
  pro-software-patent, so it’s actually tough to buy a computer (or even
  components for one) without buying from a pro-software-patent company.
  However, avoiding the companies who are most aggressive with patent
  aggression is easy: starting with avoiding Apple products is a good
  first step (there are plenty of other reasons to avoid Apple anyway).
  Microsoft would be next on the list, since they specifically use
  software patents to attack FLOSS projects. Those are likely the big
  two to avoid, but always remember that all large companies with
  proprietary software products actively enforce patents, even if they
  don’t file lawsuits. In other words, go with the little guy if you
  can; it’s more likely to be a patent-free zone.
• If you have a good idea, publish it and make sure the great
  idea is well described in code comments and documentation, and that
  everything is well archived by date. I put this one last on
  my list, because it’s more of a help for the software patent
  reformists than it is for the software patent abolitionists.
  Nevertheless, sometimes, patents will get in the way of Free Software,
  and it will be good if there is strong prior art showing that the idea
  was already thought of, implemented, and put out into the world before
  the patent was filed. But, fact is,
  the “valid”
  software patents with no prior art are a bigger threat to software
  freedom. The stronger the patent, the worst the threat, because
  it’s more likely to be innovative, new technology that we want to
  implement in Free Software.

I sat and thought of what else I could add to this list that
individuals can do to help abolish software patents. I was sad that
these were the only five six things that
I could collect, but that’s all the more reason to do
these five six
things in earnest. The battle for software freedom for all users is not
one we’ll win in our lifetimes. It’s also possible abolition of
software patents will take a generation as well. Those of us that seek
this outcome must be prepared for patience and lifelong, diligent work
so that the right outcome happens, eventually.

⁰ Update: I
was asked for a longer write up on software patent licenses as
compared to mere “promises”.
Unfortunately, I
don’t have one, so the best I was able to offer
was the interview I did
on Linux Outlaws, Episode 102, about Microsoft’s patent
promise. I’ve also added a TODO to write something up more completely
on this particular issue.

¹ I am not
leaving my permissively-license-preferring friends out of this issue
without careful consideration. Specifically, I just don’t think it’s
practical or even fair to ask companies to license their patents for
all permissively-licensed code, since that would be the same as
licensing to everyone, including their proprietary software
competitors. An ahead-of-time perpetual license to practice the
teachings of all the company’s patents under AGPLv3 basically makes
sure that code that’s eternally Free Software will also eternally be
patent-licensed from that company, even if the company never
contributes to the AGPLv3’d codebase. Anyone trying to make
proprietary code that infringed the patent wouldn’t have benefit of
the license; only Free Software users, distributors and modifiers
would have the benefit. If a company supports copyleft generally,
then there is no legitimate reason for the company to refuse such a
broad license for copyleft distributions and deployments.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2010/06/30/bilski.html

Lots of people are opining about
the USA
Supreme Court’s ruling in the Bilski case. Yesterday, I participated
in
a oggcast
with the folks at SFLC. In that oggcast, Dan Ravicher explained most
of the legal details of Bilski; I could never cover them as well as he
did, and I wouldn’t even try.

Anyway, as a non-lawyer worried about the policy questions, I’m pretty
much only concerned about those forward-looking policy questions.
However, to briefly look back at how our community responded to this
Bilski situation over the last 18 months: it seems similar to what
happened
while the Eldred
case was working its way to the Supreme Court. In the months
preceding both Eldred and Bilski, there seemed to be a mass hypnosis that
the Supreme Court would actually change copyright law (Eldred) or patent
law (Bilski) to make it better for freedom of computer users.

In both cases, that didn’t happen. There was admittedly less of that
giddy optimism before Bilski as there was before Eldred, but the ultimate
outcome for computer users is roughly no different in both cases: as we
were with Eldred, we’re left back with the same policy situation we had
before Bilski ever started making its way through the various courts. As
near as I can tell from what I’ve learned, the entire “Bilski
thing” appears to be a no-op. In short, as before, the Patent
Office sometimes can and will deny applications that it determines are
only abstract ideas, and the Supreme Court has now confirmed that the
Patent Office can reject such an application if the Patent Office knows
an abstract idea when it sees it. Nothing has changed regarding most
patents that are granted every day, including those that read on software.
Those of us that oppose software patents continue to believe that software
algorithms are indeed merely abstract ideas and pure mathematics and
shouldn’t be patentable subject matter. The governmental powers still
seems to disagree with us, or, at least, just won’t comment on that
question.

Looking forward, my largest concern, from a policy
perspective, is that the “patent reform” crowd,
who claim to be the allies of the anti-software-patent folks,
will use this decision to declare that the system works.
Bilski’s patent was ultimately denied, but on grounds that leave us no
closer to abolishing software patents. Patent reformists will
say: Well, invalid patents get denied, leaving space for the valid
ones. Those valid ones, they will say, do and should include
lots of patents that read on software. But only the really good
ideas should be patented, they will insist.

We must not yield to the patent reformists, particularly at a time like
this. (BTW, be sure to read
RMS‘ classic and still relevant essay,
Patent
Reform Is Not Enough, if you haven’t already.)

Since Bilski has given us no new tools for abolishing software patents,
we must redouble efforts with tools we already have to mitigate the
threat patents pose to software freedom. Here are a few suggestions,
which I think are actually all implementable by the average developer,
to will keep up the fight against software patents, or at least,
mitigate their impact:

• License your software using the
  AGPLv3,
  GPLv3,
  LGPLv3,
  or Apache-2.0.
  Among the copyleft
  licenses, AGPLv3
  and GPLv3 offer the
  best patent
  protections; LGPLv3
  offers the best among the weak copyleft
  licenses; Apache
  License 2.0 offers the best patent protections among the permissive
  licenses. These are the licenses we should gravitate toward,
  particularly since multiple companies with software patents are
  regularly attacking Free Software. At least when such companies
  contribute code to projects under these licenses, we know those
  particular codebases will be safe from that particular company’s
  patents.
• Demand real patent licenses from companies, not mere
  promises. Patent promises are not
  enough⁰. The Free Software
  community deserves to know it has real patent licenses from companies
  that hold patents. At the very least, we should demand unilateral
  patent licenses for all their patents perpetually for all
  possible copylefted code (i.e., companies should grant, ahead of
  time, the exact same license that the community would get if the
  company had contributed to a yet-to-exist GPLv3’d
  codebase)¹. Note
  further that some companies, that claim to be part of the
  FLOSS community, haven’t even given the
  (inadequate-but-better-than-nothing) patent promises.
  For example,
  BlackDuck holds a
  patent related to FLOSS, but
  despite saying
  they would consider at least a patent promise, have failed to do
  even that minimal effort.
• Support organizations/efforts that work to oppose and end
  software patents. In particular, be sure that the efforts
  you support are not merely “patent reform” efforts hidden
  behind anti-software patent rhetoric. Here are a few initiatives that
  I’ve recently seen doing work regarding complete abolition of software
  patents. I suggest you support them (with your time or dollars):
  • End Software
    Patents (a project of
    FSF),
  • FFII
    (European-specific), and
  • APRIL
    (France-specific).
• Write your legislators. This never hurts. In the
  USA, it’s unlikely we can convince Congress to change patent law,
  because there are just too many lobbying dollars from those big
  patent-holding companies (e.g., the same ones that wrote
  those nasty
  amicus
  briefs
  in Bilski). But, writing your Senators and Congresspeople once a year
  to remind them of your opposition patents that read on software simply
  can’t hurt, and may theoretically help a tiny bit. Now would be a good
  time to do it, since you can mention how the Bilski decision convinced
  you there’s a need for legislative abolition of software patents.
  Meanwhile, remember, it’s even better if you show up at political
  debates during election season and ask these candidates to oppose
  software patents!
• Explain to your colleagues why software patents should be
  abolished, particularly if you work in computing. Software
  patent abolition is actually a broad spectrum issue across the
  computing industry. Only big and powerful companies benefit from
  software patents. The little guy — even the little guy
  proprietary developer — is hurt by software patents.
  Even if you can’t convince your colleagues who write proprietary
  software that they should switch to writing Free Software,
  you can instead convince them that software patents
  are bad for them personally and for their chances to succeed in
  software. Share the film,
  Patent
  Absurdity, with them and then discuss the issue with them
  after they’ve viewed it. Blog, tweet, dent, and the like about the
  issue regularly.
• (added 2010-07-01 on tmarble‘s
  suggestion) Avoid products from pro-software-patent
  companies. This is tough to do, and it’s why I didn’t call
  for an all-out boycott. Most companies that make computers are
  pro-software-patent, so it’s actually tough to buy a computer (or even
  components for one) without buying from a pro-software-patent company.
  However, avoiding the companies who are most aggressive with patent
  aggression is easy: starting with avoiding Apple products is a good
  first step (there are plenty of other reasons to avoid Apple anyway).
  Microsoft would be next on the list, since they specifically use
  software patents to attack FLOSS projects. Those are likely the big
  two to avoid, but always remember that all large companies with
  proprietary software products actively enforce patents, even if they
  don’t file lawsuits. In other words, go with the little guy if you
  can; it’s more likely to be a patent-free zone.
• If you have a good idea, publish it and make sure the great
  idea is well described in code comments and documentation, and that
  everything is well archived by date. I put this one last on
  my list, because it’s more of a help for the software patent
  reformists than it is for the software patent abolitionists.
  Nevertheless, sometimes, patents will get in the way of Free Software,
  and it will be good if there is strong prior art showing that the idea
  was already thought of, implemented, and put out into the world before
  the patent was filed. But, fact is,
  the “valid”
  software patents with no prior art are a bigger threat to software
  freedom. The stronger the patent, the worst the threat, because
  it’s more likely to be innovative, new technology that we want to
  implement in Free Software.

I sat and thought of what else I could add to this list that
individuals can do to help abolish software patents. I was sad that
these were the only five six things that
I could collect, but that’s all the more reason to do
these five six
things in earnest. The battle for software freedom for all users is not
one we’ll win in our lifetimes. It’s also possible abolition of
software patents will take a generation as well. Those of us that seek
this outcome must be prepared for patience and lifelong, diligent work
so that the right outcome happens, eventually.

⁰ Update: I
was asked for a longer write up on software patent licenses as
compared to mere “promises”.
Unfortunately, I
don’t have one, so the best I was able to offer
was the interview I did
on Linux Outlaws, Episode 102, about Microsoft’s patent
promise. I’ve also added a TODO to write something up more completely
on this particular issue.

¹ I am not
leaving my permissively-license-preferring friends out of this issue
without careful consideration. Specifically, I just don’t think it’s
practical or even fair to ask companies to license their patents for
all permissively-licensed code, since that would be the same as
licensing to everyone, including their proprietary software
competitors. An ahead-of-time perpetual license to practice the
teachings of all the company’s patents under AGPLv3 basically makes
sure that code that’s eternally Free Software will also eternally be
patent-licensed from that company, even if the company never
contributes to the AGPLv3’d codebase. Anyone trying to make
proprietary code that infringed the patent wouldn’t have benefit of
the license; only Free Software users, distributors and modifiers
would have the benefit. If a company supports copyleft generally,
then there is no legitimate reason for the company to refuse such a
broad license for copyleft distributions and deployments.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2010/06/30/bilski.html

Lots of people are opining about
the USA
Supreme Court’s ruling in the Bilski case. Yesterday, I participated
in
a oggcast
with the folks at SFLC. In that oggcast, Dan Ravicher explained most
of the legal details of Bilski; I could never cover them as well as he
did, and I wouldn’t even try.

Anyway, as a non-lawyer worried about the policy questions, I’m pretty
much only concerned about those forward-looking policy questions.
However, to briefly look back at how our community responded to this
Bilski situation over the last 18 months: it seems similar to what
happened
while the Eldred
case was working its way to the Supreme Court. In the months
preceding both Eldred and Bilski, there seemed to be a mass hypnosis that
the Supreme Court would actually change copyright law (Eldred) or patent
law (Bilski) to make it better for freedom of computer users.

In both cases, that didn’t happen. There was admittedly less of that
giddy optimism before Bilski as there was before Eldred, but the ultimate
outcome for computer users is roughly no different in both cases: as we
were with Eldred, we’re left back with the same policy situation we had
before Bilski ever started making its way through the various courts. As
near as I can tell from what I’ve learned, the entire “Bilski
thing” appears to be a no-op. In short, as before, the Patent
Office sometimes can and will deny applications that it determines are
only abstract ideas, and the Supreme Court has now confirmed that the
Patent Office can reject such an application if the Patent Office knows
an abstract idea when it sees it. Nothing has changed regarding most
patents that are granted every day, including those that read on software.
Those of us that oppose software patents continue to believe that software
algorithms are indeed merely abstract ideas and pure mathematics and
shouldn’t be patentable subject matter. The governmental powers still
seems to disagree with us, or, at least, just won’t comment on that
question.

Looking forward, my largest concern, from a policy
perspective, is that the “patent reform” crowd,
who claim to be the allies of the anti-software-patent folks,
will use this decision to declare that the system works.
Bilski’s patent was ultimately denied, but on grounds that leave us no
closer to abolishing software patents. Patent reformists will
say: Well, invalid patents get denied, leaving space for the valid
ones. Those valid ones, they will say, do and should include
lots of patents that read on software. But only the really good
ideas should be patented, they will insist.

We must not yield to the patent reformists, particularly at a time like
this. (BTW, be sure to read
RMS‘ classic and still relevant essay,
Patent
Reform Is Not Enough, if you haven’t already.)

Since Bilski has given us no new tools for abolishing software patents,
we must redouble efforts with tools we already have to mitigate the
threat patents pose to software freedom. Here are a few suggestions,
which I think are actually all implementable by the average developer,
to will keep up the fight against software patents, or at least,
mitigate their impact:

• License your software using the
  AGPLv3,
  GPLv3,
  LGPLv3,
  or Apache-2.0.
  Among the copyleft
  licenses, AGPLv3
  and GPLv3 offer the
  best patent
  protections; LGPLv3
  offers the best among the weak copyleft
  licenses; Apache
  License 2.0 offers the best patent protections among the permissive
  licenses. These are the licenses we should gravitate toward,
  particularly since multiple companies with software patents are
  regularly attacking Free Software. At least when such companies
  contribute code to projects under these licenses, we know those
  particular codebases will be safe from that particular company’s
  patents.
• Demand real patent licenses from companies, not mere
  promises. Patent promises are not
  enough⁰. The Free Software
  community deserves to know it has real patent licenses from companies
  that hold patents. At the very least, we should demand unilateral
  patent licenses for all their patents perpetually for all
  possible copylefted code (i.e., companies should grant, ahead of
  time, the exact same license that the community would get if the
  company had contributed to a yet-to-exist GPLv3’d
  codebase)¹. Note
  further that some companies, that claim to be part of the
  FLOSS community, haven’t even given the
  (inadequate-but-better-than-nothing) patent promises.
  For example,
  BlackDuck holds a
  patent related to FLOSS, but
  despite saying
  they would consider at least a patent promise, have failed to do
  even that minimal effort.
• Support organizations/efforts that work to oppose and end
  software patents. In particular, be sure that the efforts
  you support are not merely “patent reform” efforts hidden
  behind anti-software patent rhetoric. Here are a few initiatives that
  I’ve recently seen doing work regarding complete abolition of software
  patents. I suggest you support them (with your time or dollars):
  • End Software
    Patents (a project of
    FSF),
  • FFII
    (European-specific), and
  • APRIL
    (France-specific).
• Write your legislators. This never hurts. In the
  USA, it’s unlikely we can convince Congress to change patent law,
  because there are just too many lobbying dollars from those big
  patent-holding companies (e.g., the same ones that wrote
  those nasty
  amicus
  briefs
  in Bilski). But, writing your Senators and Congresspeople once a year
  to remind them of your opposition patents that read on software simply
  can’t hurt, and may theoretically help a tiny bit. Now would be a good
  time to do it, since you can mention how the Bilski decision convinced
  you there’s a need for legislative abolition of software patents.
  Meanwhile, remember, it’s even better if you show up at political
  debates during election season and ask these candidates to oppose
  software patents!
• Explain to your colleagues why software patents should be
  abolished, particularly if you work in computing. Software
  patent abolition is actually a broad spectrum issue across the
  computing industry. Only big and powerful companies benefit from
  software patents. The little guy — even the little guy
  proprietary developer — is hurt by software patents.
  Even if you can’t convince your colleagues who write proprietary
  software that they should switch to writing Free Software,
  you can instead convince them that software patents
  are bad for them personally and for their chances to succeed in
  software. Share the film,
  Patent
  Absurdity, with them and then discuss the issue with them
  after they’ve viewed it. Blog, tweet, dent, and the like about the
  issue regularly.
• (added 2010-07-01 on tmarble‘s
  suggestion) Avoid products from pro-software-patent
  companies. This is tough to do, and it’s why I didn’t call
  for an all-out boycott. Most companies that make computers are
  pro-software-patent, so it’s actually tough to buy a computer (or even
  components for one) without buying from a pro-software-patent company.
  However, avoiding the companies who are most aggressive with patent
  aggression is easy: starting with avoiding Apple products is a good
  first step (there are plenty of other reasons to avoid Apple anyway).
  Microsoft would be next on the list, since they specifically use
  software patents to attack FLOSS projects. Those are likely the big
  two to avoid, but always remember that all large companies with
  proprietary software products actively enforce patents, even if they
  don’t file lawsuits. In other words, go with the little guy if you
  can; it’s more likely to be a patent-free zone.
• If you have a good idea, publish it and make sure the great
  idea is well described in code comments and documentation, and that
  everything is well archived by date. I put this one last on
  my list, because it’s more of a help for the software patent
  reformists than it is for the software patent abolitionists.
  Nevertheless, sometimes, patents will get in the way of Free Software,
  and it will be good if there is strong prior art showing that the idea
  was already thought of, implemented, and put out into the world before
  the patent was filed. But, fact is,
  the “valid”
  software patents with no prior art are a bigger threat to software
  freedom. The stronger the patent, the worst the threat, because
  it’s more likely to be innovative, new technology that we want to
  implement in Free Software.

I sat and thought of what else I could add to this list that
individuals can do to help abolish software patents. I was sad that
these were the only five six things that
I could collect, but that’s all the more reason to do
these five six
things in earnest. The battle for software freedom for all users is not
one we’ll win in our lifetimes. It’s also possible abolition of
software patents will take a generation as well. Those of us that seek
this outcome must be prepared for patience and lifelong, diligent work
so that the right outcome happens, eventually.

⁰ Update: I
was asked for a longer write up on software patent licenses as
compared to mere “promises”.
Unfortunately, I
don’t have one, so the best I was able to offer
was the interview I did
on Linux Outlaws, Episode 102, about Microsoft’s patent
promise. I’ve also added a TODO to write something up more completely
on this particular issue.

¹ I am not
leaving my permissively-license-preferring friends out of this issue
without careful consideration. Specifically, I just don’t think it’s
practical or even fair to ask companies to license their patents for
all permissively-licensed code, since that would be the same as
licensing to everyone, including their proprietary software
competitors. An ahead-of-time perpetual license to practice the
teachings of all the company’s patents under AGPLv3 basically makes
sure that code that’s eternally Free Software will also eternally be
patent-licensed from that company, even if the company never
contributes to the AGPLv3’d codebase. Anyone trying to make
proprietary code that infringed the patent wouldn’t have benefit of
the license; only Free Software users, distributors and modifiers
would have the benefit. If a company supports copyleft generally,
then there is no legitimate reason for the company to refuse such a
broad license for copyleft distributions and deployments.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2010/06/30/bilski.html

Lots of people are opining about
the USA
Supreme Court’s ruling in the Bilski case. Yesterday, I participated
in
a oggcast
with the folks at SFLC. In that oggcast, Dan Ravicher explained most
of the legal details of Bilski; I could never cover them as well as he
did, and I wouldn’t even try.

Anyway, as a non-lawyer worried about the policy questions, I’m pretty
much only concerned about those forward-looking policy questions.
However, to briefly look back at how our community responded to this
Bilski situation over the last 18 months: it seems similar to what
happened
while the Eldred
case was working its way to the Supreme Court. In the months
preceding both Eldred and Bilski, there seemed to be a mass hypnosis that
the Supreme Court would actually change copyright law (Eldred) or patent
law (Bilski) to make it better for freedom of computer users.

In both cases, that didn’t happen. There was admittedly less of that
giddy optimism before Bilski as there was before Eldred, but the ultimate
outcome for computer users is roughly no different in both cases: as we
were with Eldred, we’re left back with the same policy situation we had
before Bilski ever started making its way through the various courts. As
near as I can tell from what I’ve learned, the entire “Bilski
thing” appears to be a no-op. In short, as before, the Patent
Office sometimes can and will deny applications that it determines are
only abstract ideas, and the Supreme Court has now confirmed that the
Patent Office can reject such an application if the Patent Office knows
an abstract idea when it sees it. Nothing has changed regarding most
patents that are granted every day, including those that read on software.
Those of us that oppose software patents continue to believe that software
algorithms are indeed merely abstract ideas and pure mathematics and
shouldn’t be patentable subject matter. The governmental powers still
seems to disagree with us, or, at least, just won’t comment on that
question.

Looking forward, my largest concern, from a policy
perspective, is that the “patent reform” crowd,
who claim to be the allies of the anti-software-patent folks,
will use this decision to declare that the system works.
Bilski’s patent was ultimately denied, but on grounds that leave us no
closer to abolishing software patents. Patent reformists will
say: Well, invalid patents get denied, leaving space for the valid
ones. Those valid ones, they will say, do and should include
lots of patents that read on software. But only the really good
ideas should be patented, they will insist.

We must not yield to the patent reformists, particularly at a time like
this. (BTW, be sure to read
RMS‘ classic and still relevant essay,
Patent
Reform Is Not Enough, if you haven’t already.)

Since Bilski has given us no new tools for abolishing software patents,
we must redouble efforts with tools we already have to mitigate the
threat patents pose to software freedom. Here are a few suggestions,
which I think are actually all implementable by the average developer,
to will keep up the fight against software patents, or at least,
mitigate their impact:

• License your software using the
  AGPLv3,
  GPLv3,
  LGPLv3,
  or Apache-2.0.
  Among the copyleft
  licenses, AGPLv3
  and GPLv3 offer the
  best patent
  protections; LGPLv3
  offers the best among the weak copyleft
  licenses; Apache
  License 2.0 offers the best patent protections among the permissive
  licenses. These are the licenses we should gravitate toward,
  particularly since multiple companies with software patents are
  regularly attacking Free Software. At least when such companies
  contribute code to projects under these licenses, we know those
  particular codebases will be safe from that particular company’s
  patents.
• Demand real patent licenses from companies, not mere
  promises. Patent promises are not
  enough⁰. The Free Software
  community deserves to know it has real patent licenses from companies
  that hold patents. At the very least, we should demand unilateral
  patent licenses for all their patents perpetually for all
  possible copylefted code (i.e., companies should grant, ahead of
  time, the exact same license that the community would get if the
  company had contributed to a yet-to-exist GPLv3’d
  codebase)¹. Note
  further that some companies, that claim to be part of the
  FLOSS community, haven’t even given the
  (inadequate-but-better-than-nothing) patent promises.
  For example,
  BlackDuck holds a
  patent related to FLOSS, but
  despite saying
  they would consider at least a patent promise, have failed to do
  even that minimal effort.
• Support organizations/efforts that work to oppose and end
  software patents. In particular, be sure that the efforts
  you support are not merely “patent reform” efforts hidden
  behind anti-software patent rhetoric. Here are a few initiatives that
  I’ve recently seen doing work regarding complete abolition of software
  patents. I suggest you support them (with your time or dollars):
  • End Software
    Patents (a project of
    FSF),
  • FFII
    (European-specific), and
  • APRIL
    (France-specific).
• Write your legislators. This never hurts. In the
  USA, it’s unlikely we can convince Congress to change patent law,
  because there are just too many lobbying dollars from those big
  patent-holding companies (e.g., the same ones that wrote
  those nasty
  amicus
  briefs
  in Bilski). But, writing your Senators and Congresspeople once a year
  to remind them of your opposition patents that read on software simply
  can’t hurt, and may theoretically help a tiny bit. Now would be a good
  time to do it, since you can mention how the Bilski decision convinced
  you there’s a need for legislative abolition of software patents.
  Meanwhile, remember, it’s even better if you show up at political
  debates during election season and ask these candidates to oppose
  software patents!
• Explain to your colleagues why software patents should be
  abolished, particularly if you work in computing. Software
  patent abolition is actually a broad spectrum issue across the
  computing industry. Only big and powerful companies benefit from
  software patents. The little guy — even the little guy
  proprietary developer — is hurt by software patents.
  Even if you can’t convince your colleagues who write proprietary
  software that they should switch to writing Free Software,
  you can instead convince them that software patents
  are bad for them personally and for their chances to succeed in
  software. Share the film,
  Patent
  Absurdity, with them and then discuss the issue with them
  after they’ve viewed it. Blog, tweet, dent, and the like about the
  issue regularly.
• (added 2010-07-01 on tmarble‘s
  suggestion) Avoid products from pro-software-patent
  companies. This is tough to do, and it’s why I didn’t call
  for an all-out boycott. Most companies that make computers are
  pro-software-patent, so it’s actually tough to buy a computer (or even
  components for one) without buying from a pro-software-patent company.
  However, avoiding the companies who are most aggressive with patent
  aggression is easy: starting with avoiding Apple products is a good
  first step (there are plenty of other reasons to avoid Apple anyway).
  Microsoft would be next on the list, since they specifically use
  software patents to attack FLOSS projects. Those are likely the big
  two to avoid, but always remember that all large companies with
  proprietary software products actively enforce patents, even if they
  don’t file lawsuits. In other words, go with the little guy if you
  can; it’s more likely to be a patent-free zone.
• If you have a good idea, publish it and make sure the great
  idea is well described in code comments and documentation, and that
  everything is well archived by date. I put this one last on
  my list, because it’s more of a help for the software patent
  reformists than it is for the software patent abolitionists.
  Nevertheless, sometimes, patents will get in the way of Free Software,
  and it will be good if there is strong prior art showing that the idea
  was already thought of, implemented, and put out into the world before
  the patent was filed. But, fact is,
  the “valid”
  software patents with no prior art are a bigger threat to software
  freedom. The stronger the patent, the worst the threat, because
  it’s more likely to be innovative, new technology that we want to
  implement in Free Software.

I sat and thought of what else I could add to this list that
individuals can do to help abolish software patents. I was sad that
these were the only five six things that
I could collect, but that’s all the more reason to do
these five six
things in earnest. The battle for software freedom for all users is not
one we’ll win in our lifetimes. It’s also possible abolition of
software patents will take a generation as well. Those of us that seek
this outcome must be prepared for patience and lifelong, diligent work
so that the right outcome happens, eventually.

⁰ Update: I
was asked for a longer write up on software patent licenses as
compared to mere “promises”.
Unfortunately, I
don’t have one, so the best I was able to offer
was the interview I did
on Linux Outlaws, Episode 102, about Microsoft’s patent
promise. I’ve also added a TODO to write something up more completely
on this particular issue.

¹ I am not
leaving my permissively-license-preferring friends out of this issue
without careful consideration. Specifically, I just don’t think it’s
practical or even fair to ask companies to license their patents for
all permissively-licensed code, since that would be the same as
licensing to everyone, including their proprietary software
competitors. An ahead-of-time perpetual license to practice the
teachings of all the company’s patents under AGPLv3 basically makes
sure that code that’s eternally Free Software will also eternally be
patent-licensed from that company, even if the company never
contributes to the AGPLv3’d codebase. Anyone trying to make
proprietary code that infringed the patent wouldn’t have benefit of
the license; only Free Software users, distributors and modifiers
would have the benefit. If a company supports copyleft generally,
then there is no legitimate reason for the company to refuse such a
broad license for copyleft distributions and deployments.