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LWN.net Weekly Edition for June 13, 2013

A report from pgCon 2013

Little things that matter in language design

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MySQL Founders: Kill All the Patents (eWeek)

[Posted April 20, 2005 by ris]

eWeek talks with MySQL founders David Axmark and Michael "Monty" Widenius about MySQL 5.0 and software patents. "The duo sat down with Database Editor Lisa Vaas after their opening keynote at MySQL AB's third user conference Tuesday. They were bullish on the upcoming enterprise-class features of 5.0 and on their beloved community, upon which the company relies for scrupulous bug fixing, but they also had some choice words for what they consider the undemocratic notion of software patents."

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Posted Apr 20, 2005 22:18 UTC (Wed) by chant (subscriber, #20286) [Link]

That article has to have been the least readable articles I have ever read.
It is littered with poor quote editing, and many of the resulting sentences are gibberish.

"Widenius: A lot of people store e-mail in [the MySQL] database and use full text search to find it. They couldn't use that in proprietary [databases]."

It also adds nothing to the Software Patent discussion.

Ironically, Databases are one area where Software Patents, if they were properly granted (no prior art, non-obvious) could be useful to the community.

Consider the recent hubbub with PostgreSQL and the IBM caching patent.
I am no expert with databases, and I am not sure if that patent is non-obvious. But if it is, I am much happier that IBM felt comfortable enough to publish the algorithm rather than keep it a trade secret. The algorithm obviously generated a lot of thought and comment among PostgreSQL developers. The alternatives were weighed, and a different algorithm was eventually selected on its own merits, even without the patent consideration. Perhaps the new algorithm would not have come forth had it not been for the discussion of the old one.

This is not to say that I am for software patents, especially not for the durations that they are granted now. Also, we must be weary of patents that are obvious, or patents where prior art exists. However, I am against the notion that patents for non-trivial algorithms are without at least a small degree of merit.

Knuth on patents

Posted Apr 20, 2005 22:30 UTC (Wed) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link]

I have not had the time to search the patent literature systematically; indeed, I decry the current tendency to seek patents on algorithms. If somebody sends me a copy of a relevant patent not presently cited in this book, I will dutifully refer to it in future editions. However, I want to encourage people to continue the centuries-old mathematical tradition of putting newly discovered algorithms into the public domain. There are better ways to earn a living than to prevent other people from making use of one's contributions to computer science.

-- Donald E. Knuth
The Art of Computer Programming, Volume III

MySQL Founders: Kill All the Patents (eWeek)

Posted Apr 21, 2005 14:49 UTC (Thu) by cdmiller (subscriber, #2813) [Link]

Patenting mathematical algorithms is simply wrong at many levels.

MySQL Founders: Kill All the Patents (eWeek)

Posted Apr 21, 2005 16:57 UTC (Thu) by cpm (guest, #3554) [Link]

I wholeheartedly agree. The very idea presupposes a *LOT* of stuff
that falls into the domains of philosophy and theology. It's a BAD
IDEA. I'd love it if someone would publish a decent paper in
favor of this practice so I could understand the rationale outside
of the obvious.

MySQL Founders: Kill All the Patents (eWeek)

Posted Apr 21, 2005 12:19 UTC (Thu) by huffd (guest, #10382) [Link]

Great article about the benefits of open source with comments about the advantages of having hundreds of thousands of users vs. a hundred or thousand testers. Don't let the pigsquattl troll above dissuade you from reading the article. Monty is *always* worth the read.