Red Hat CEO decries software patents

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Software patents are a terrible idea

I disagree with both the Open Source people *and* those who argue for software patents. How's that for proding the hornet's nest?

First off, patents protect *ideas*, not *implementations*. Once you patent a broad enough idea, there's no coding around it, so those saying that open source will remove the patent offending code are overlooking the possibility that *NO* code could be written to replace the infringing code, because it isn't the code that's the problem--it's the act doing whatever the code accomplishes that's protected!

And that's why patents are stupid. When patents protect hardware they're very much like copyright. Patents on hardware protect a particular way of implementing a function. Further, it's fairly straightforward (relatively) to tell if a hardware patent has been infringed.

In software's case, it's not so straightforward. What if, for example, someone had patented the idea of a file system. *Today* that would be impossible, granted. But it wouldn't have been impossible back in the early days (50's). Had IBM patented the idea of storing files (and they came up with it) everyone else would have been screwed.

Second, unlike hardware any program is going to use tens of thousands of ideas (potentially patentable) in its construction. Couple that with a 17 year window for patent protection and you have a real problem. How many programs are *you* using that are 17 years old?

I'm all for copyright (well, at least copyright that's limited to the author's lifetime, or 70 years, whichever is longer ) (or 70 years for corporate copyrights) but software patents will destroy the industry.

I have no doubt that Linux (distros) do indeed infringe at least 243 patents. Now, whether those patents can be struck down by open source I very much doubt. Challenging patents is *expensive*. Even if the patents could be challenged, does *anyone* have enough money to run 243 (or more) patent trials? *Maybe* Bill Gates does but I doubt it.

I'm actually wondering if MS wants to see software patents go bye-bye and is using the open source community as a cats paw? Remove the threat of patent litigation, and deep pockets corps could relax. And who has the deepest pockets and recently got stung to the tune of a billion and a half dollars?

See, I can spin conspiracy theories too.

To sum up, revoke all software patents. Period. It is insane to treat software as a physical good, the differences are simply too huge. That's why we have copyright as well as patents in the first place.

Posted by: wolf_z   Posted on: 05/23/07 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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