Winmodem-like solid state storage [LWN.net]

Winmodem-like solid state storage

Posted Apr 12, 2009 0:42 UTC (Sun) by dwmw2 (subscriber, #2063)
In reply to: Winmodem-like solid state storage by giraffedata
Parent article: Linux Storage and Filesystem Workshop, day 2

"So you're saying there is innovation to be done. That means there's something for someone to monopolize with a patent.
"At least with a black box, the patents are all paid for as part of acquiring the box. In contrast, when you need a patent license to run some code in your own Linux system, it usually means the code is useless."

That's a very pessimistic viewpoint. If you truly believe that the patent system is so broken and abused that it prevents all innovation, I'd recommend a career in goat-herding. You obviously wouldn't want to be involved in any form of innovative software development — either Free Software or otherwise.

Thankfully, I don't think it's a valid viewpoint either — as broken as the patent system is, I don't think it's time to throw in the towel just yet.

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Winmodem-like solid state storage

Posted Apr 12, 2009 1:33 UTC (Sun) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

So you're saying there is innovation to be done. That means there's something for someone to monopolize with a patent.
At least with a black box, the patents are all paid for as part of acquiring the box. In contrast, when you need a patent license to run some code in your own Linux system, it usually means the code is useless."

That's a very pessimistic viewpoint. If you truly believe that the patent system is so broken and abused that it prevents all innovation, ...

But I said the opposite. I suggested someone would do the innovation. And then patent it. It is not pessimistic to expect an inventor to patent his invention; they do it all the time, even for trivial inventions.

Patents seem to be anathema to the Linux world. I thought you said patents are the reason Linux and Winmodems don't get along; I'm just trying to complete the analogy.

Winmodem-like solid state storage

Posted Apr 12, 2009 2:05 UTC (Sun) by dwmw2 (subscriber, #2063) [Link]

"But I said the opposite. I suggested someone would do the innovation. And then patent it. It is not pessimistic to expect an inventor to patent his invention; they do it all the time, even for trivial inventions."

Then we need to make sure we get there first, patent it ourselves and license the patent appropriately for use in Free Software.

What's the alternative? To always assume that someone will have got there first, and that any software development that's even remotely innovative will fall foul of a patent and thus, in your words, be "useless"?

That's what I meant when I said it "prevents innovation" — I mean it prevents innovation for us, if we always assume everything interesting will already be patented. And that part of the discussion isn't really specific to modems or SSDs, is it? It applies right across the board.

"Patents seem to be anathema to the Linux world. I thought you said patents are the reason Linux and Winmodems don't get along; I'm just trying to complete the analogy."

Modems are a special case, because you need to implement precisely the patented algorithms in order to communicate with another modem using the affected standards.

For flash storage, you don't have to do that; you have a lot more flexibility to come up with something that isn't affected by patents. A closer analogy might be audio/video compression — where the Free Software world was able to come up with the patent-free Ogg and Theora codecs.