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Linux creator Linus Torvalds has appealed to the EU Council to oppose a directive that would make software patentable in Europe.
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Torvalds, as well as MySQL co-founder Michael Widenius and PHP creator Rasmus Lerdorf, said in a statement Tuesday on an anti-patent Web site that software patents must not be legalized.
"In the interest of Europe, such a deceptive, dangerous and democratically illegitimate proposal must not become the Common Position of the member states," said the three open-source luminaries. "For the sake of innovation and a competitive software market, we sincerely hope that the European Union will seize this opportunity to exclude software from patentability."
Torvalds, Widenius and Lerdorf were not immediately available to confirm the statement, but MySQL co-founder David Axmark said all three had confirmed the statement by e-mail to him.
In the statement, Torvalds, Widenius and Lerdorf laid out the risks of the software patent directive--known as the Patentability of Computer-Implemented Inventions --including concerns that it could damage the European economy.
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- "Really.... Maybe Linus should have said...
"For the sake of [eliminating] innovation and a competitive software market, we sincerely hope that the European Union will seize this opportunity to [keep patent systems from eliminating the ability to copy or mimic existing software].""
So want to make it illegal for anyone else but Microsoft to make Word processor or Spreadsheet?
If you can't mimic existing software that's pretty much what will happen.
"Think about it... less protection for property means more copying and less innovation. Not the other way around."
The U.S's experience with software patents hasn't shown that to be the case. It has shown that companies will attempt to patent obvious or fundamental concepts then try to leverage them against small developers who are likely to settle and use that money to build up a war chest to go after larger companies. Then there are these companies whose sole purpose is to collect patents and license them. They don't do any development of concept themselves. The only thing software patents do is make development more expensive and a bigger legal liability. Especially if consider how many patents their are and the cost of search everyone of them. A complete patent search is pretty much impossible and certainly is reasonable for most. If you miss just one patent you open yourself up to expensive lawsuits. Really the only thing software patents do is help the big software developers shut out the little developers and reduce alternatives. If a company has a patent on given peace of software there isn't a requirement for them to license the technology or even use it, so no innovation there. - View all 2 replies
- Do you also believe...
- ... that people that built improved mousetraps should pay royalties to all the folks that invented the original mousetrap and "invented" all the parts that make up the new, improved mousetrap?
Or maybe that everyone that builds new and improved lightbulbs needs to start writing out checks to Edison's posterity?
Do you see that the creation of these frivilous patents will effect the cost of development for all software, open or closed? That the cost of development will be reflected in the price... in an astronomical way? Who do you work for, David? I appreciate your contrary opinion, I appreciate the devil's advocate, but I don't understand your logic. Anything you can do to help me understand will be appreciated.
- Patents sometimes promote investment, but not innovation
- The notion that patents (or copyright or trademarks) promote innovation is misguided.
I have yet to see a credible, academic or scientifc analyis linking these two: David, if you know of any, post a link.
What patents actually do is they create the conditions whereby someone will be willing to invest in commercializing an innovation. The innovation itself happens independently. But not the commercialization.
So its really a matter of a convenient business model: society gives you a temporary monopoly of 20 years and you have a go at investing and making a profit, comforted by the reduced risk of lacking competition.
But business models are not absolute, rather they are historic. Slavery used to be a good business model but somehow people dropped it. Same goes for feudal serfdom.
Free software companies are developing business models that do not rely on patents or restrictive copyright. While patents and investment are a good match, they are not conditional upon each other.
- You're Confused
- "Think about it... less protection for property means more copying and less innovation."
This debate isn't about "property." This is about creative works. A creative work isn't property because it is an intangible thing that can't be diminished by use or consumption. If someone sings a song and I remember it and sing it back later, have I stolen someone's property? Should my brain be confiscated because it contains someone's stolen property?
Here's what Thomas Jefferson said about the unique nature of creative works:
"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation."
Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson
13 Aug. 1813
- Let's patent words! I get "A"! 50 cents please.
- Oh please let this fail!
Copyrighting a software product is fine. Patenting a series of code libraries or fragments is ridiculous. I want to patent the "for loop" so each time it is used in any language I will get licensing fees. Ok, that is a stupid example, as it can be proven to exist and has been used everywhere. But still, someone comes up with a new algorithm for processing XML streams, or better yet they patent a XML schema. What is next patenting words? I got dibs on a!
I?m sorry but people gaining advantages over others and requiring money or monetary gain from someone for a concept will stifle innovation and creative problem solving. Sharing ideas freely means you will get a higher probability of new creative works and technology solutions. Hording and charging people into poverty only ends with slow if non-existent growth or advancement for the technology industry and mankind.
All this promotes is those with patents stay in control and the rich get richer.
That is was is wrong with America.
Why would we want it to officially be the same every where else? - Reply to this comment
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- Prior Use
- Sorry... I used "A" last week.
Your patent is invalid. - View reply
- Sharing ideas freely
- http://www.analogstereo.com/audi_owners_manual.htm
- What if..
- All the algorithms used in computing were patented?
Newton all the other scientists patented their ideas?
News flash Mr Arbogast, EVERYTHING is a derivitive work on someone elses work. Patents stifle the ability to do that.
Mr Arbogast likes patents because microsoft likes them. This is another case of him toeing the MS line. Think about that for a minute, the most, inept, uninnovative software company in the world wants patents. Why? Because they can't create but they can profit off others work while disallowing other to benefit from it.
Mr Arbogast is so clueless, he almost makes Balmer rise to the level of neandrethal. Patenting software is as ignorant as patenting literature. - Reply to this comment
- "Software Patent" is an oxymoron !!!
- Patenting software is the same as patenting literature or patenting music for that matter. The only difference is that today the general population understands literature and music but are clueless about software. The General population simply does not understand how software comes to be.
Most people can write and sing (maybe not very well but they certainly can) that is why it is obvious to them that these things can not be patented; and that they have the right to be able to continue to write and sing whatever the heck they want.
I simply don't undertand why there is a need to legally restrict me (or any other software developer) from freely writing whatever we want, just like I am writing this message.
The only explanation for allowing software to be patented and not literature and music, is that software is executable. With eBooks and MP3 players, literature and music nowadays are also executable.
You can patent an MP3 player but not the music content, You can patent an eBook reader but not the literature content. The MP3 player and eBook reader are devices designed to do such things. Now you can patent a personal computer but also the software content !!! Wasn't the personal computer designed to execute any piece of software in the first place !!! A software developer is just using it for its intended purpose, just like a musician or a writer. So why can software be patented (in the US) and not music or literature ??? - Reply to this comment
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