More detail on the FFII: its insignificance and its venality [LWN.net]

More detail on the FFII: its insignificance and its venality

Posted Sep 29, 2010 13:55 UTC (Wed) by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048)
In reply to: TRIPs obligations certainly mattered in the EU by FlorianMueller
Parent article: FSF says: USPTO should publish guidelines excluding software patents

For those who are interested in more detail on what I wrote about the FFII, here's a link to my latest blog posting. It provides conclusive evidence that the FFII's General Secretary and possibly other FFII leaders are simply guns-for-hire willing to participate in "staged drama" and other activities as long as someone pays, even if they don't believe in the cause they're pursuing.

In its efforts against ISO standardization of OOXML, certain FFII players apparently had undisclosed financial support from big business, but as far as the FFII's core agenda (anti-patent etc.) is concerned, my aforementioned posting explains that they aren't officially backed by any meaningful group of organizations.

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More detail on the FFII: its insignificance and its venality

Posted Sep 29, 2010 16:43 UTC (Wed) by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048) [Link]

Please stop FUDing Florian.

Aigars, I'm not fudding. I stopped campaigning against software patents (my current work is focused on how to deal with them since they exist anyway) because I came to the very conclusions I outlined here.

You and me both know that when push came to shove tens of thousands of small and medium businesses supported FFII and contributed to the cause of stopping software patents.

That's what we all used to think. Maybe there are tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of people willing to say they dislike software patents. But if you have to deliver evidence of harm, you have to really prove that there's suffering. The ones who rely on those patents and favor them say that they need them and that taking them away would have disastrous consequences. If you want to counterbalance that, you have to show real suffering. And you can't.

You believe there are tens of thousands of companies, but the "Economic Majority" effort I talked about was an all-out offensive before the EU's final decision and it only took a few minutes for a company to sign up. If the FFII couldn't get any noteworthy level of support at the most critical juncture, it's unconvincing if you just substitute your belief for any demonstrable numbers.

Currently the business people are in an apathy towards software patents: don't bother me until it becomes a problem for me again.

Those patents exist all over the world including in Europe. They are also upheld by European courts all the time. So if there isn't a problem now (even if you say they're weak in Europe, they're certainly strong in the US), then there isn't serious harm.

Do you have proof of companies having gone out of business because of such patents? I've never seen any. Maybe it happens very rarely, but I'm not aware of any widespread problem.

Small business, however can not stay focused on a decade long lobbbying and counter-lobbying effort - they have to work.

They could make money available and they never seriously did. If they had a big problem, they'd spend money to fix it.

Obviously some of those companies are very small. But there are also some generating hundreds of millions of euros/dollars of annual revenues. They speak out against software patents, but it's more like "I'd rather not have them" than "they're a serious problem". Therefore, some of those entrepreneurs prefer to spend money collecting Ferraris but wouldn't give someone like the FFII (or even more serious organizations) significant money.

Apparently the only time the FFII received generous financial support was in a context where it was most probably funded by a PRO-PATENT company.

More detail on the FFII: its insignificance and its venality

Posted Sep 29, 2010 17:37 UTC (Wed) by aigarius (subscriber, #7329) [Link]

FFII did just enough to defeat software patents last time they came up for discussion. Gathering and spending more money would be just a waste.

My position is that some huge companies are asking the government to grant them monopolistic powers for money. It is their burden to prove overwhelmingly and beyond any shadow of the doubt that these new patents are useful not only to them but also to the whole society (who are giving them the monopolies). The fact that some people in the US have such 'nuclear weapons of IT destruction' and have successfully threatened to use them and gotten huge sums money from companies that actually produce stuff is not a good reason to give out cheap nukes to everyone this side of the pond as well.

More detail on the FFII: its insignificance and its venality

Posted Sep 29, 2010 18:49 UTC (Wed) by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048) [Link]

FFII did just enough to defeat software patents last time they came up for discussion.

You and I and everyone else, we defeated one particular legislative proposal, but we didn't "defeat software patents."

As you can see here, the German high court now declares pretty much all software patents valid.

Or look at the European software patents mentioned in this article.

There would be a lot more like this that I could show and document, but it's more than enough to reduce your claim of "defeat software patents" to total absurdity.

The whole anti-software-patent movement in Europe has only scored defensive victories (preventing exacerbations) but there are large numbers of software patents in Europe and they are enforceable. The FFII has during 10 years of its existence not made any offensive headway -- not even one tenth of an inch -- in terms of taking initiatives that would reduce the number of software patents granted/upheld.

And why can't you get lawmakers to do anything in your favor? Why is the most this movement can achieve to prevent or delay decisions, but never any progress toward the actual goal? Because you don't have sufficient support from businesses to impress any political decision-maker that they should pass new laws based on your ideas.