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| Larry Rosen Responds to Your Comments |
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Friday, September 15 2006 @ 10:26 AM EDT
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Larry Rosen has read all your comments to the article about the International Characters business model proposal, and he thanks you very much for letting him pick your brains. In true Groklaw fashion, he'd like to respond now to the comments you left.
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Dear Groklaw fans:
I want to thank everyone who took the time to comment on IC's proposed business model. Most of what you said is not entirely unexpected. That means we have to explain ourselves better, and partly that means we have to do a better job of convincing you that "patent" need not be a dirty word for free and open source software. I've been involved with open source for many years, and I knew ahead of time that such things can cause some people to foam at the mouth. Thanks to most of you for not foaming.
Consider for a moment: It is an accident of history and a decision of Congress that made software copyrightable, and another accident of history and a decision of Richard Stallman that it became licensable under the GPL. When the GPL and other early free and open source licenses were written, copyright was all that mattered. At that time, we needed a license to take copyrighted works and turn them into copyleft works, to guarantee that they are and remain free software. That license and other open source licenses work just fine for copyrighted works, and I am confident the new GPLv3, however it turns out, will do even better.
Orthogonal to copyrights is another form of intellectual property, patents. It is also an accident of history and a decision of Congress that software, at least in the U.S., is patentable. Even GPLv3 now recognizes the existence of patents; the FSF's current draft contains a patent covenant also. There is no modern free or open source license that dares avoid patents.
International Characters is proposing a different form of covenant, one not tied to specific copyrighted software, but authorizing *all* of our patent claims for embodiment in *any* free and open source software. We have larger goals in mind, however, than the GPL and other open source licenses. We seek to encourage three forms of technology knowledge development, including (as one of you noted derisively), through the use of patents to secure exclusive rights and thereby "promote the progress of science and useful arts." (U.S. Const., Art. I § 8.) Congress has authorized us to take advantage of patents, and we intend to do so in a way that promotes free software.
Whether through GPLv3 or the IC Covenant, free software ultimately runs up against that set of orthogonal patent rights, including authority to control the "making, use, sale, offer for sale, importation, licensing or distribution" of software that embodies patents. We must learn to live with that condition for now, because Congress has decided.
And so International Characters decided that it is time to come up with an appropriate copyleft for patents (terrible phrase!), one that solves a problem that copyleft licenses handle awkwardly through complex derivative work and source code provisions. Instead of that, and in order to support software research and development at universities and other research institutions that fund our work, certain types of commercial uses must pay for the use of our patented technology. No longer should we have to stretch to answer the question, "How do you make money by giving it away." The answer is: "We give it away for free and open source software, but we don't give it away for commercial uses involving proprietary software, hardware, or combinations of hardware and software. Everyone else pays."
Some open source projects may not want to implement our patents because it will mean that our patent covenant encumbers their software. But our covenant permits everyone else to take that free and open source software and add our patented technology to it if there's value to doing so. Experimentation and research are free. If the resulting modified software embodies our patents, our Covenant applies to it—but so does the original open source license! If the modified software remains open source under its original license, we'll be nowhere to be seen. But we reserve the right to collect royalties if that software is combined with hardware in a commercial product or in a secretly-modified application.
I'll try to respond to other comments in this Groklaw article inline as time permits. But I wanted to stand up for what we're trying to do, and not leave the impression that we need our mouths washed with soap just because we spoke out about a way to make patents work for open source.
/Larry
Lawrence Rosen
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| Authored by: lordshipmayhem on Friday, September 15 2006 @ 10:27 AM EDT |
| So they can be found quickly [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: lordshipmayhem on Friday, September 15 2006 @ 10:29 AM EDT |
Please make links clickable: <a
href="http://www.example.com/">Like this</a>
And change post mode to HTML[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, September 15 2006 @ 11:28 AM EDT |
Software patents are injust. The overwhelming majority (>90% in all polls and
studies I have seen) of the people how are actually affected by them hate them
and want them to go away and that's what the ultimate goal should be.
Here
in Europe, we have so far managed to hold legislation that would make software
patents possible at bay, but make no mistake, we are under siege. That's why I
would like to see a stronger opposition in the US against software patents in
general. I know you guys have a much tougher battle than we do but even if you
don't have immediate impact, it could help us here to keep developers free from
the patent menace and in the long run, maybe our effort will help you to free
yourself too since software patents are an innovation inhibitor and I don't
think the US will in the long run, once they realize it, keep their business
chained.
So sure, any effort to mitigate the problem is appreciated but
please make sure that you don't make the impression that the problem is solved,
because it isn't.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: cduffy on Friday, September 15 2006 @ 11:34 AM EDT |
See, the problem here is that this license means that the Free Software
landscape becomes more complex because software which was previously available
for commercial use (without proprietary relicensing) suddenly is no longer under
those terms.
This hurts.
My last several employers (startups and
small companies all) have paid me to be Mr. Open Source Dude for them. I take
3rd party code and customize it, generating bugfixes and patches which get
submitted upstream, and integrations into local proprietary stuff that don't.
The public (including the project maintainers) win, because they get bugfixes
and patches and such. I win, because I get paid. My employer wins, because I
work cheap.
This latter bit is important. My employers are cheap.
If they need to pay for a given tool for it to be included in my toolkit (as
opposed for the time I spend honing that tool), chances are good it's just plain
not going to happen -- and I'm not going to spend my own hours working on a tool
I can't use the rest of the time.
So -- from my perspective, having to
check not only the copyright license on each piece of software I'm working with
but also for any potentially encumbering patents is a loss. Admittedly, I'm also
opposed to software patents in general until such time as independant invention
becomes a valid defense to infringement -- but this is a much more real and
immediate thing, because it makes open source software which according to its
copyright license and per the intent of its maintainers is available for
commercial use into a completely different variety of beast. Further,
without an independent invention defense, arbitary OSS could without any
knowledge or overt action on the part of its maintainers become so encumbered --
a situation which I find simply abominable.
So, there's my concern.
Using patents to protect against use of your method in proprietary software?
Sure; knock yourself out; my employers do the same thing. Using patents to
encumber OSS such that it no longer meets the free-for-any-use provisions of the
Open Source Definition? I really can't condone it. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: mtew on Friday, September 15 2006 @ 11:42 AM EDT |
Hmm.
You still haven't addressed the distribution mechanism for your
agreement.
GPL and the other copyright license mechanisms (including
propriatary) have a tracable (although often tenuous) connection between user
and originator that is at least theoreticly tracable.
The text of that
license can be attached to the material being distributed.
There may not be
any such path from the user to you;
someone else really could have come up with
the idea independently.
There will also be cases where the idea is only
similar but still would be covered by your patent.
How is the user to
know, without conducting an expensive patent search, that your patent applies to
their code?
How will they even know to look?
The stuff you have
patented may appear to be compleatly trivial to
them.
Note:
the above must be answered in order to have a
real constructive impact;
If you can not come up with a workable mechanism,
your
patent becomes just another land mine in the field of land mines known as
software patents, although a less destructive one than most.
While I think
you are correct that the U.S. congress did in fact address the copyright of
software,
could you (or anyone who knows the answer) please cite the act where
the U.S. congress addresssed the patenting of software; I was under the
impression that it was a court generated fiat rather than a legislative
one.
---
MTEW [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Marc Mengel on Friday, September 15 2006 @ 12:16 PM EDT |
I guess the part I find really confusing here is the issue of
distributing the
software with a piece of hardware. How do you draw the line?
- I ship
software for hardware the user already has (i.e. a PC)
- I sell the user a PC
with the software preloaded (is this a hardware/software combination for which
we pay royalties?)
- I distribute software for an existing palm-pilot-ish /
mp3-player-ish device that the user already has
- I sell a pre-existing
palm-pilot-ish / mp3-player-ish device with the software preloaded on it.
- I
design a new piece of hardware whose intended use is to run your software, and
sell it with your software preloaded.
It sounds to me like you're trying
to draw the line somewhere near the last item in the above list, but I really
have trouble seeing how one makes the distinction in practice.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: meshuggeneh on Friday, September 15 2006 @ 12:18 PM EDT |
Silence about the hardware problem. There are a lot of hardware related
projects out there, and there seems to be no provision that allows development
in that field without losing the protection of the agreement.
There seems also to be no attempt to connect the hardware utility to the patent:
if you sell any hardware at all you lose protection, not just hardware that
employs the patented software.
What do you have against people making hardware that you would wave your
software-patent club over their heads?
There is a trend toward embedded systems your proposal stands in the way of. It
also stops anyone trying to offer complete solutions. POS, network hardware,
desktop computers, robots--these and more one cannot sell because a software
patent exists for something the vendor is using (it doesn't appear to be
required that the software is used in the hardware being sold, either.)
Maybe I've got this wrong and you have elaborated on the hardware connection
somewhere I missed.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, September 15 2006 @ 01:15 PM EDT |
I sysadmin in a health services agency (a branch of government).
I sometimes
deploy Free Software on our servers. I can do this
without having to jump
through the hoops of tendering or purchase
order approval or
whatever.
Sometimes I have to hack the Free Software to make it compile,
or
fix bugs where the software hasn't been tested on our proprietary
platforms
(OpenVMS or TRU64 Unix). I feed back patches if I
feel they are any good.
If
my hacks are brittle and kludgy or are specific to our business,
I won't feed
back.
Would I be able to continue to work like this without having
to pay
fees to patent holders?
Would the situation be different if I worked in a
bank or an
insurance company?
What happens when a FLOSS project has many
contributions from
hundreds of different patent holders?
Licensing such a
project for proprietary or even commercial use
would seem to be impractical
unless there were some sort of
machinery, a sort of "Patent Holders Association
of America",
something similar to how Radio / TV stations pay copyright fees
I
would imagine.
It would bring us into a strange new world.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, September 15 2006 @ 01:38 PM EDT |
"It is also an accident of history and a decision of Congress that
software, at least in the U.S., is patentable."
I am under the
impression that software became patentable by court decisions that stretched
patent law into new areas that Congress had never passed legislation about.
"We give it away for free and open source software, but we don't
give it away for commercial uses involving proprietary software, hardware, or
combinations of hardware and software. Everyone else pays."
We do
not make that distinction. Therefore software which is covered by both an Open
Source license and your patent covenent has a more restricted distribution list
than software only covered by an Open Source
license.
---------------------
Steve Stites
[ Reply to This | # ]
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- 3rd point - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, September 15 2006 @ 01:47 PM EDT
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, September 15 2006 @ 01:55 PM EDT |
It doesn't matter how you put it, I think the basic goals are at variance.
Your goal is to make money from your software patents.
My goal, and I believe many other people's, is to get rid of software patents
entirely.
By the way, it is not just people involved in free and open source (see how many
small closed source companies signed the petitions against software patents in
Europe for example), who are against software patents.
Eventually, we want to get the laws changed. In the meantime, we'll do our best
to help overturn the most annoying patents by researching prior art. I certainly
can't see people who feel like I do, giving you are free research to help you
strengthen your patents.
I'm afraid I don't see any room for compromise.
The fact that the laws of copyright and patent, are, you say, orthogonal, is
irrelevant to us. The camp that I am in, doesn't want patent restrictions on
software, period.
Quatermass
IANAL IMHO etc
P.S.
I'm disappointed with your follow-up
As far as I can see, it clarify the kinds of questions that were asked in
response to the earlier story.
- What about mixing free software and hardware in a commercial environment. Are
they protected by your covenant or not?
- What about an organization using and modifying free software internally, but
not distributing the changes?
- What about an organization mixing GPL and proprietary software internally (but
not distributing the changes). This is perfectly legal if they have permission
from the copyright holder for the proprietary software. Is this protected or
not?
- What about BSD code (which is an approved open source license), used inside a
proprietary product?
- What about a copyright holder dual-licensing their code under the GPL and a
commercial license?
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, September 15 2006 @ 02:12 PM EDT |
But we reserve the right to collect royalties if that software is
combined with hardware in a commercial product
Lets keep it simple:
What does this do to companies who 1) purchase a PC, 2) purchase a linux boxed
set from a linux vendor, 3) install the linux on the box, 4) install their own
proprietary software on the box, and 5) resell it to a customer as a turnkey
solution?
Is this not "software [...] combined with hardware in a
commercial product", which will cause such companies to have to fork over patent
royalties because some of the software in the Linux distribution (for which this
company is not even responsible) falls under one of your licensed
patents?
If so that makes said software non-free, as far as I can see.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: martianmike on Friday, September 15 2006 @ 03:03 PM EDT |
| I share the skepticism of many others who have replied here. At first reading,
I was very interested in your proposed covenant.
I think that a small
modification in your criteria for charging a royalty would make all the
difference. Currently you emphasize that those taking a profit should pay.
This is dramatically different from open source software licenses and not in any
way aligned with several OS licenses. Open source lets you make a profit
without restriction as long as you share your work.
Consider a different
version of your covenant. Anyone who freely publishes the source related to
their software only product is promised safe-haven. I think you have this
mostly covered already. Next, anyone who produces a combination of hardware and
software that embodies your patent, or a pure hardware embodiment of your patent
is subject to claims of infringement, UNLESS that producer also freely provides
the modified software and the necessary technical information (schematics,
circuit templates, fpga image source, asic design, specifications, etc) needed
to build a competing, functionally equivalent embodiment of your patent. This
technical information must be provided unencumbered by further restriction,
except that additional patent claims are permitted as long as they are subject
to the same covenant of openess. If the same covenant of openess is provided,
this producer is also given safe-haven.
This change in focus means that you
and others like you (and me) can profit in direct financial terms from anyone
who wishes to keep secrets (proprietary use), and benefit by seeing general
improvements to an invention and its use enter the market place as long as it's
used in an open way.
Personally, I think the modified covenant I just
suggested reflects the intent of the original patent provisions in the U.S.
constitution. It makes inventions widely available. It creates a direct
financial incentive for invention. It creats a less direct incentive in terms of
recognition adn improving the common good. It means that those who are willing
to release their work to the public can benefit without fear of those who would
prefer to keep secrets or control knowledge and/or the application of
knowledge.
I sincerely hope that you can find a way to legally represent the
ideas I've expressed here. I also hope you can see that this slightly less
"greedy" form of your covenant will work for you. I think this is the
equivalent to a dual licensed pure software work using the GPL and a proprietary
license. Since only the copyright holder can dual license, the copyright holder
gets what financial advantage proprietary houses can provide, while still
offering the "free" community access to innovation and free use. It is not
biased for or against the profit of others. It is only biased against the
"closedness" of others. With respect to improving the art, patents are better
that trade secrets, but an "open convenant" as I intend to describe here is
better than a patent, in my opinion.
IANAL, these are ideas for you to find
a way to express in legal form.
---
Heinlien's Mike from Mars grokked something in fullness, he could "just
disappear it". If we fully grok SCO? [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, September 15 2006 @ 03:09 PM EDT |
Either read this as a troll, or me being honest, up to you.
Firstly,
"Copyleft" has a specific meaning: those freedoms which are granted cannot be
undone. This patent licence has nothing to do with that, and is not "copyleft
for patents". This is a completely different idea.
Second, the exact law we
choose to protect free software is irrelevant. Because it has a free copyright
license doesn't make the software free if the patent license is not
free.
Rosen: you're attempting to address the elephant in the room (funding
software development by selling software). Fundamentally, that is at odds
with free software. If you think it's valid that authors of free software
should be compensated for commercial usage, it's a point of view but it is
incompatible with free software.
This is nothing to do with the
word "patent". It is to do with the idea of using a law to restrict software
freedoms. It doesn't matter if it's copyright or some other law, and I think you
know that full well. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: phaoUNTOtom on Friday, September 15 2006 @ 03:21 PM EDT |
Your statement "No longer should we have to stretch to answer the question, 'How
do you make money by giving it away.' The answer is: 'We give it away for free
and open source software, but we don't give it away for commercial uses
involving proprietary software, hardware, or combinations of hardware and
software. Everyone else pays.'
Am I misunderstanding you . . . are you
confederate with those who want to destroy free software? With our current
situation it isn't necessary to stretch to answer on how we make money. That
has been answered many time before: We providing services to those who choose
and support end users who wish it. This cash flow concept is simple to
understand.
What software is useful if it doesn't work with hardware?
Letters and characters as software on a page are of no benefit to anyone unless
they are put into hardware and applied.
Almost everyone will be using
a commercial hardware device (RAM, Hard Drive, PDA, Memory, etc.). Is not this
Dell computer in front of me a commercial hardware device? How many people will
sidestep the "commercial" to build their own hardware devices that your patents
won't extract a toll with? Is this what you mean by "Everyone else pays"? Your
patents will cover most everyone on the planet if they are applied to
"commercial uses involving proprietary software, hardware, or combinations of
hardware and software." In my eyes that will destroy the open source software
movement and its benefits.
I don't want some other company asserting
they own a patent for something that was definately developed in my mind and put
into a software package and applied using a hardware device.
P.S. I
also don't buy your founding statement (it is both unstable and incorrect) that
it was an "accident of history and a decision of Congress that made software
copyrightable." Decisions of Congress are made as a result of
lobbying--certainly not an accident. Furthermore, the GPL was created "To
prevent free code from being proprietarized in this manner in the future, [so]
Stallman invented the GPL." See Here. Again, this is not by
accident. Though the patent/software debacle continues and widens are you are
doing here, Stallman
continues to
understand that patents and software should not mix when he constantly says
"software patents and even software users are threatened by software patents."[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: BitOBear on Friday, September 15 2006 @ 03:58 PM EDT |
These words, comming from your (keyboard), they make no sense to me...
Some years back, the president(?) of AT&T (famously?) made the comment:
"There are millions of dollars passing through our 800 service every day, I
want to find a way to get a piece of each of those transactions." And a
while latter the 900-service was invented.
It was a hideous flop for every purpose, except, of course, porn.
Someone somewhere has mis-lead you to beleive that there should be "some
way to get a pice of the money passing through Open Source software." They
were wrong, and you persist in chasing that wrong.
Free software exists with its own financial model, and nowhere in that model is
there a provision for taking a toll on the software. Check the words,
"free" and "toll", see how they are incompatable.
Virtually nobody making open source software is in the business of making
"open source software." The forth language, for example, was invented
by an astronomer who wanted to control a telescope with commodity hardware. For
the most part, Apache is the product of people who want to serve web pages, not
people who want to write web server software.
The advent of people being paid to introduce, implement, and improve Open Source
software is an important evolutionary event.
And when a project gets sufficent momentum, it can evolve into a foundation or
company. That company sells "manpower" not "software". The
manpower is delivered in the form of software support and evolution.
The ENTIRE REASON this model works is because the public contributors
"already sold" the software to the public, and "already
bought" the related material from the public.
The way I explain this to business people is simple: When you license Windows
CE from Microsoft you pay cash, and enter into an agreement. When you license
Open Source software you pay in zero-or-more (however many you may make)
modifications that you return to the common pool, and enter into an agreement.
The former is up-front cost and has a fixed domain (known absolute and relative
magnitude), the latter is a liability-cost and has no fixed domain but it is all
work you would have to pay for anyway so the cash value of that cost is
amortized into your normal business. (e.g. there is _no_ cash cost that
exclusively and directly goes into internal open source development that you
weren't going to pay anyway, so it is "effectively free". The true
cost is that you don't get to hoard your changes.)
So you want to make the following change to the financial model of open source:
From:
Proprietary costs money and agreement.
Open Source costs future enhancements and agreement.
To:
Proprietary costs money and agreement.
Open Source costs money and future enhancements and agreement.
Yea... you just priced yourself out of your own market.
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| Authored by: rsteinmetz70112 on Friday, September 15 2006 @ 04:41 PM EDT |
I'm not sure what the problem they are trying to address is.
If they granted an OpenSource covenant if someone implement their tenchology in
a closed system, either hardware or software that person would need a license,
that could be a paid license.
The "combined hardware" part seems needlessly murky, unless the intent
is to charge a license for turnkey systems.
The use of terms like "propriataty" and "commercial" seem
further to muddy the application.
Why couldn't a simple covenant for Free Software, not fixed in hardware, be just
as applicapible and if someone wanted to take BSD code closed, they would need
to negotiate a patent license. If someone wanted to fix the code in hardware
however you might define that that could be another license.
One of the problem with the hardware part is that there is very little
difference between hardware and software any more.
---
Rsteinmetz - IANAL therefore my opinions are illegal.
"I could be wrong now, but I don't think so."
Randy Newman - The Title Theme from Monk
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| Authored by: jo_dan_zukiger on Friday, September 15 2006 @ 09:45 PM EDT |
(Speaking pedantically to Rosen, Cameron, et. al.)
The problem is how to distinguish users from users.
It's an ambiguous line that the GPL doesn't clarify because it can't, and you're
trying to validate the patenting of software based on that line that can't be
pinned down. MySQL has gamed the ambiguity successfully, without
antagonizing too many of there customers, but in the process they have
reduced their access to external developers. That's their prerogative.
The open source business model must be service oriented.
Hmm. Maybe I should back up and unpack some ideas.
Users. How do you distinguish between an end user who knocks off at five (?)
from his paying job and goes home to hack in his spare time, an end user
hacking at his desk on company time to build tools only he uses, either of the
former distributing his work among colleagues, either of the former
extending his distribution to include trade-for-kind, and either of the former
extending his distribution for monitary considerations?
And then there is the consideration of the user using your software to
distribute or provide a completely different set of services or goods for
consideration. How much profit has to made before your bean counters are
going to start trying to use your license to horn in on it, even though the
goods/services being exchanged only pass through the pipes of a machine
you claim is yours because some patent office official misunderstood about
the term intellectual propery having no Constitutional basis?
(This is true of any license which lays obligation on the users without properly
identifying the user. In the typical EULA, there is a bribe being paid to the
owner of the software, in the form of a purchase price, and the users feel
secure because they've paid the bribe, whether they shoud feel secure or not.)
Inflammatory phrasing aside, how do I, as a potential user of your
technology, feel safe in doing anything with it? As long as your license asserts
that you own something happening in the intellectual processing devices of
the user, unless I like to gamble, I must negotiate with you on every use I
make of your tech if it has any potential to generate value for me.
(Blame the IRS for eliminating non-monetizable value from the economic
infrastructure.)
Remember, Intellectual Property is a misnomer. All forms of what we call
intellectual property are grants against part of the public commons, primarily
pieces of the market. They are not property of the intellect.
Seriously. Even trying to explain why the term "intellectual property"
is an
oxymoron requires using what is presently considered by many as prejudiced
and inflammatory language: You can't own what another person thinks. Can
you name any tyrannical institution that has not been built on the attempt to
control what someone else thinks? Can you name any such institution that
has become stable (in other words, has avoided self-destruction) without
backing off the attempt to control?
(And then we introduce the computer -- wheels for the mind. One of the
issues with patenting software is specifically the problem of defining the line
of separation between using a computer to aid one's thought processes and
using a computer to automate business activities which have in the past been
automated with less re-programmable machinery.)
With real property, what is traded is tangible. You can't sell the same piece of
land over and over without buying it back before you sell it again. Value is
preserved.
With agricultural products, the same is true, although agricultural products
are both generated and consumed. You can sell wheat from the same field
many times, but there is time and a lot of work in between sales. Thus, value
is preserved, at least relative to population.
With tangible manufactured products, again, you can't sell the same thing
over and over again. Work has to go into the production, and the product is
consumed, used up, worn out. Value is preserved (again, relative to
population).
If a patent, or a copyright, or a trademark were intellectual property, we
would have a conundrum. Each person with a brain can, within his own mind,
reproduce the product. But the work is not done by the owner of the patent, it
is done by the thinker. Value in the market place must be preserved, so what
must happen is that a person's own thought processes would become
encumbered.
As long as a person can alienate himself from a piece of property,
commutative ownership can be prevented from becoming tyranny. You can't
alienate yourself from your thoughts. QED, when Intellectual Property
becomes law, it becomes the foundation of tyranny.
In the computer industry, we have put up with temporary tyrannies for some
perceived value. Microsfort has been endured specifically because they were
willing to make available tools that others wanted to keep captive, even if
captive only to principle.
Exmple of keeping things captive to principle: e-mail is very handy in
communication, but it is very sparse in the sort of informational noise that
makes physical documents certifiable, a subject that should be close to your
technology. Until Microsoft entered the field, there was a tacit agreement that
electronic documents would not be promoted as certifiable documents until
some method of reliably adding such noise was developed. We haven't
successfully developed such methods yet, although we think cryptography
and cryptology ought to provide bases for it.
Anyway, we knew e-mail would end up in court if we made it accessible to the
PHBs. We knew it wasn't ready. Microsoft pushed ahead anyway. Not
coincidentally, they are now attempting to make their insufficient attempts at
electronic documents legally certifiable even though neither they nor we have
the means yet to make them certifiable in fact.
The only way to do it without the means of adding the required noise is to
make it illegal to behave as if electronic documents are not certifiable. That
is
the reason so many members of the industry are foaming at the mouth about
patents -- they want to use patents as a Constitutional loophole to force
people to behave as if something which is not true is.
First, International Characters' business license tries to trade on the very
concept that is at the core of this attempt to set up tyranny. Second, it does
so without resolving any of the core issues in any way that will prevent the
tyrannical use.
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, September 15 2006 @ 10:11 PM EDT |
Copyrights were designed to protect written works, such as books, lyrics,
stories, etc.
Patents were designed to protect manufactured goods, such as valves, engines,
tools, etc.
Software is not manufactured but written and therefor should be solely protected
under copyright NOT patent. You can't manufacture software. There is no
blueprint. You can't build a prototype and have it demonstrated. Manufactured
goods need not have another device to support them. Software requires a
computer for it to function. Manufactured goods a formed from materials such as
plastics, metals, rubber, etc. Software is someones idea written in words. It
is a recipe, a method of doing something. You don't patent a recipe, a lyric.
A piece of software is no different then a cake recipe. One uses a computer to
take input and produce a result, the other uses human hands to take input and
produce a result, sometimes that result isn't what was expected.
A patent product is reproduceable from a blueprint, a software program isn't
reproduceable from a blueprint, there isn't one.
I will never ever consider or accept software patentability. It is wrong headed
and flies in the face of what a patent was designed to do and that is to protect
a manufactured prototype that has a blueprint to support its design.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, September 15 2006 @ 11:34 PM EDT |
"No longer should we have to stretch to answer the question, "How do
you make money by giving it away.""
You assume that open source developers are stretching to answer this. Not. OSS
developers just shake their head at the question.
The only people asking the question are those who wish to "monetize"
open-source. I notice that its rarely the developers. Developers who think like
that aren't writing OSS in the first place. Those who are asking, and
stretching to answer seem to be those who want to profit from someone else's
source.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, September 16 2006 @ 05:11 AM EDT |
Comments that show a lack of understanding of the
covenant are answered
clearly. Comments that explain
why the FOSS community do not want IC's covenant
have
so far been ignored.
People chose the GPL to prevent others from
imposing a
license fee on GPL work. The reward for using GPL is
the right to
use GPL software. Instead of spending 90%
of my time re-inventing the wheel, I
can simply link to
some GPL libraries.
The GPL was written before
software patents were
legalised. As a result, it is possible to extort money
from people who distribute any software (FOSS or
proprietary) that may
infringe a patent.
IC's proposed business model exploits this weakness
in the GPL so that IC can profit from other people's
GPL contributions without
IC having to properly contribute
under the spirit of the GPL.
There is
another company featured on this web site
that tried to profit from the GPL
without contributing.
Perhaps Mr Rosen should read their recent
10Q.
Version 3 of the GPL is intended to block IC's
proposed abuse. The
mechanism works like this:
If a distributor pays a license fee to IC for a
patent
on GPL V3 software, that distributor is required to
obtain a licence
for everyone to re-distribute the
software for free under the terms of version
3 of the GPL.
IC's attempt to 'monetize' software that the authors
chose to distribute for free was predicted, and AFAICT
a remedy is already
available for projects that can
switch to version 3. The remedy may already
apply to
software distributed under "version 2 or any later
version". [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: jjs on Saturday, September 16 2006 @ 06:20 AM EDT |
| The problem is your covenant results in the SW losing it's open source status -
because you try to make money if they do. That violates Clause 6 of the Open Source
definition:
6. No Discrimination Against Fields of
Endeavor
The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in
a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from
being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.
Rationale: The major intention of this clause is to prohibit license traps that
prevent open source from being used commercially. We want commercial users to
join our community, not feel excluded from it.
Maybe you can
focus on being the best at providing the service, or you can dual license the
technology. Of course, if the patents are on Software or methods:
a. You
have no protection outside the US
b. You face major challenges to the patent
in the US, from those who don't believe in SW/business methods patents
(including myself)
jjs
---
(Note IANAL, I don't play one on TV,
etc, consult a practicing attorney, etc, etc)
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| Authored by: lrosen on Saturday, September 16 2006 @ 06:54 PM EDT |
The previous commenter wrote:
The problem is your covenant results
in the SW losing it's open source status - because you try to make money if they
do. That violates Clause 6 of the Open Source definition: ....
I
support the Open Source Definition. I served as general counsel of OSI for many
years and even wrote a book about this topic. I am aware that the OSD prevents
discrimination against "fields of endeavor." Our Covenant does not restrict the
*use* of free and open source software in any field of endeavor that the
mind of man can create.
Software never loses its open source status because
of the International Characters Covenant. It can continue to be distributed
under the terms of the exact same license it was originally under, even with our
patented technology in it. It is the combination of software with
hardware, or the secret modification of open source software for
commercial purposes, that results in a royalty payment.
The OSD does
not address patents. At the time it was written, patents weren't very important.
I remember, though, attending a meeting with open source leaders, in around 1999
or 2000, when everyone present identified patents as the biggest threat to free
and open source software. Many of us have been working since then to create ways
that patents can coexist with and support free and open source software rather
than harm it. There are lots of efforts underway, including covenants, licenses
and projects by Sun, Microsoft, IBM, OSDL, Red Hat and many others to make sure
that patents don't hurt us. The International Characters Covenant is proposed as
one of those ways.
We are in effect giving away *all* of our patents
for free and open source software. We have chosen, however, to seek compensation
from appropriate places in the stream of commerce where our patents are used for
commercial gain:
- Where patented software and hardware are combined and
sold as "smart hardware." Just because our value-add is intelligence
rather than dials and switches shouldn't mean it is free. Free software
costs money to produce and distribute, and it should be compensated. We are free
to set our price for our patents in hardware products that contain software, as
long as we permit free and open source software to be used for any endeavor
whatsoever.
- Where the software is modified in secret and is no longer free.
Some people believe that secret software remains free regardless of whether it
is distributed. I don't agree. I don't believe that a caged bird is free just
because it was born in the wild.
Reasonable people can and do have
different opinions about these matters. I hope that you come to appreciate that,
even though we're re-mapping the economic turf, the entire world of free and
open source software can implement our patents for free if you want.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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- OSD #6 - Authored by: PJ on Saturday, September 16 2006 @ 08:21 PM EDT
- OSD #6 - Authored by: jjs on Sunday, September 17 2006 @ 06:07 AM EDT
- OSD #6 - Authored by: jjs on Sunday, September 17 2006 @ 06:15 AM EDT
- OSD #6 - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, September 17 2006 @ 05:33 PM EDT
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| Authored by: fempisces on Wednesday, September 20 2006 @ 10:22 AM EDT |
While my comment may not add anything further in content (many of my feelings
have already been noted) I felt I should respond somewhere to all this & I
am surprised that after being a major part of the OSI you seem to have missed
the nature of open source.
I have worked for various sized companies that
use FOSS & not only do they tend to pay for services from somewhere like
Redhat, but they also tend to have people employed specifically to run/develop
systems on that software. The majority of the time the developers send back the
bug fixes, work arounds or improvements they've made, which benefits users,
developers & providers equally as well as providing a good arena for those
learning the trade to practice & contribute.
Whilst I understand what
you are trying to do in bridging the gap between FOSS & patents I do not
agree with it. Having checked the FSF GPLv3 site &
re-read the preamble again I would like to quote:
"Finally, every
program is threatened constantly by software patents. States should not allow
patents to restrict development and use of software on general-purpose
computers, but in places where they do, we wish to avoid the special danger that
redistributors of a free program will individually obtain patent licenses, in
effect making the program proprietary. To prevent this, the GPL assures that
patents cannot be used to render the program non-free.
Correct me if
I am wrong, but the covenant seems an unnecessary addition to the GPL as they
are themselves addressing the issue in the GPL license & as such I feel this
additional covenant will confuse matters. I would also be surprised if the same
kind of re-drafting/provisioning is not happening for other licenses like
apache, BSD etc.
I personally strongly oppose all software patents as do
many people here. The covenant is a hinderance to those in other countries
trying to prevent them from taking up software patents as it will be used by
lobbyists in favour of patents as an example of how they will not harm FOSS,
when clearly they do & as such will make it easier for the law makers to
justify the inclusion of software into patent law. Like many others I would tend
to aviod software under this covenant for while it may be law in the US (who
have now bullied Australia into partial submission) there is an entire world
outside of the US where software patents are not enforcable & we do not want
them to be.
My last point is that the FOSS community has always rewarded
both financially & by way of recognition for hard work on a good piece of
software rather than those out to exploit others for financial gain. Everyone
should give as much as they can & take what they need in return, it may be
an idealistic point of view & sadly among business an out dated one, but it
does work & it makes the world a nicer place to live. ---
What if
life was for free & work was for fun? [ Reply to This | # ]
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