[ILUG] Re: [IIU] Re: CAI query - patentability of software

[Paul Jakma]

On Sat, 11 Jun 2005, Paul O'Malley wrote:

> With that last piece in mind, I really do wonder if this is what 
> Charlie McCreevy and those who may wish to influence his judgement 
> really want.

To be honest, I don't think it's feasible to change any politicians 
minds. The bulk of them have either legal or business background. Any 
academic knowledge they have of patent or copyright law will have 
been either of the "It's great, it lets us charge fees" or "it's 
great, it lets us 'innovate' and make money in royalty" fees. Any 
professional opinions they'll have heard since then will be similar.

What *is* feasible is to pull the same trick Stallman did with the 
GPL. Use the law to your advantage to create a commons.

We're *starting* to see this happen. IBM sort of gave a grant to a 
bunch of patents for use by (iirc) the Linux kernel (though, not 
particularly relevant patents), and Nokia gave that "We won't sue 
Linux kernel contributors for infringing <this> list of patents, but 
only for certain versions" (which is strange, given the GPL wouldn't 
have allowed them to claim patent encumberances if they were to 
distribute Linux with that new toy of theirs, but hey). At some stage 
very very soon a certain other company will also be releasing patents 
(more specifically implementations thereof, in an OS) with 'commons' 
style licencing.

So that's the answer really. Build up a pool of 'Free' patents 
through corporate sponsorship or contribution. Get it big enough and 
you're immune. That's how the big companies do it, that's how Free 
Software needs to do it.

This does of course require the right licence. The current version of 
the GPL doesn't really do much to advance goal of a patents commons. 
The CDDL does, hopefully GPLv3 can learn from it..

regards,
-- 
Paul Jakma	paul at clubi.ie	paul at jakma.org	Key ID: 64A2FF6A
Fortune:
Space tells matter how to move and matter tells space how to curve.
 		-- Wheeler