LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

By Jonathan Corbet
January 17, 2012

Bruce Perens wore a suit and tie for his linux.conf.au 2012 keynote for a reason, he said: it reflects our community's need to think more about how it appears to the rest of the world. Despite our many successes, he said, we have failed to achieve the goals that our community set for itself many years ago. We have failed to engage and educate our users, and are finding ourselves pulled into an increasingly constrained world. To get out of this mess, we will have to make some changes - and expand our scope beyond software and culture.

The open source (he always used that term) movement's goal, he said, was once to help a population that increasingly does everything - from entertainment to finances and voting - through computers. We wanted to enable people to do, not to be done to. But we find ourselves in a world where people are increasingly slaves to their tools. Yes, he said, tools like the iPhone empower their users, but they also constrain those users. They are designed not to allow their users to do things that might reduce the profits of their makers or of a number of related industries.

Why is this important? It matters to anybody who likes democracy. Almost all information is mediated through computers now - through computers controlled by a very small number of large corporations. That is a threat to democracy - and to freedom. But, he asked, why is it open source's job to address this problem? The answer is that the open source community is the only credible producer of software that is not bound to a single company's interest. History has given us absolutely no reason to believe that we can trust companies or governments to do that for us.

To be able to fill that role, we must continue to establish and defend our right to write and distribute open source software. In other words, he said, open source software should be legal. Things could be worse: we have been very lucky with software patents, for example. Patents could have been used to shut us down entirely by now; that has not happened - yet. But, increasingly, we find ourselves shut out of access to content, which does not help our cause.

There are also threats from new laws; increasingly, Bruce said, general-purpose computing is seen as a threat. Anti-hacking laws threaten the security of the net as a whole. SOPA-like laws threaten our tools and our infrastructure. The advent of 3D printers is going to inspire a whole new raft of laws as politicians figure out that they can be used to create weapons or other things that they do not want us to have.

We are very much on the defensive in these battles; why, he asked, do we have so much trouble being heard? The answer is that open source software has not built a relationship with "the common person" and does not have their sympathy. Instead, open source software has been co-opted and is being used to control people; thus we end up with locked-down products like the TiVo. We are, Bruce said, helping to make people into slaves of their tools. A project he worked on - busybox - is now shipped as an important component in any number of locked-down systems.

As an aside, Bruce said that, in retrospect, he should have continued to lead the busybox project.

It comes down to the fact that open source has not been able to protect its future through the reform of hostile laws. That is a result of our failure to reach the common man. We, as a community, have not achieved a sympathy for our users in the way that companies like Apple have. Some specific projects have had some success - he named Mozilla and Wikipedia - but, in general, our work is not particularly accessible to - or visible to - most users.

In fact, he said, most of us do not really even like users; we are making the software for ourselves. Demands from users who have not contributed anything are just annoying. But, he said, we need to get over that mindset; working only for ourselves is too limiting.

What about Ubuntu? It is, according to Bruce, demonstrating the necessary discipline to reach users. But, unfortunately, Ubuntu has turned itself into the intermediary between open source and its users; other open source companies, such as Red Hat, have done the same thing. We need, he said, to be more honest with ourselves about our partners. Commercial partners will always put their own business interests above any other consideration - in many countries, public companies are required to do that. They cannot work for the best interests of open source software.

So, he asked, where did we go wrong? There was a period where we held a moral high ground; that enabled political progress that we are not making any more. As for-profit corporations took over the foreground, we lost that high ground. Now we are just competitors, like any other. The commercial intermediaries represent us now, but they represent us in their own best interest. That is not surprising - it is what is expected of them - but it shows why they are wrong for this role. We really only have one tool for managing the behavior of these companies - copyright - and it is not helpful in this situation.

In dealing with companies, Bruce said, we always need to keep track of whether we are getting back something worthwhile for our efforts. Working for free to enrich Mark Shuttleworth is not a smart thing to do. We need to maintain a presence that is independent of organizations like Ubuntu. Debian, he said, does the real work of making Ubuntu; Canonical just adds the frosting. But does anybody in the wider world care about Debian at this point? We are, he said, failing at self promotion. Yes, tooting our own horn is tiresome, but if we don't do it, nobody else will do it for us.

Mobile apps are an especially big problem, he said. This is a commercial paradigm that has succeeded; that means, in particular, that the web failed. Now we are seeing open source software being sold as apps to people who don't know that they are buying something they could have for free. These apps, he said, duplicate every problem we have seen with proprietary software, only worse because these apps are meant to be ephemeral. We are going to have to find a way to change this paradigm, somehow.

Concluding this part of the talk, Bruce noted a strong trend away from generic platforms, toward proprietary, locked-down platforms. In the end, we will be left with nowhere to run free systems, and only jail environments for applications. Open source software, he said, has achieved tremendous things. But he is seeing signs that we have peaked; the locked-down platform is beating us. If we cannot find a way to address this problem, he said, it is our destiny to live in a constrained world.

Open hardware

There is a moment, far into Arlo Guthrie's epic "Alice's Restaurant," where he is required to remind the audience that, contrary to what they may think, they are listening to a song about Alice. Bruce's talk was similar; it was billed as being about open hardware, but it was only toward the end that he actually got around to talking about that subject. It is clearly Bruce's hope that a new revolution is building around open hardware, and that it may, in the end, help to save us from locked-down platforms. There are a lot of challenges in this area, he said, but he reminded the audience that the open source community has done many things that people thought were impossible.

Once upon a time, he said, people working on open hardware might have been seen as "isolated nutjobs." The good news is that, in the age of the Internet, there are no more isolated nutjobs. No matter how nutty you may be, there will always be fifty others like you on the net. In the open source world, those people got together and created tools that others could build on; things then took off from there. This history is, he said, repeating itself with open hardware.

There is a new set of enabling factors that are driving open hardware. We have the net, of course, but we also have the economic paradigms and collaboration methods developed by the open source community. But the big thing is that hardware is slowly being transformed into software; it can be developed - and shared - in much the same way. 3D printers, increasingly, let us print out solid objects that can be designed like software. Gate arrays allow the immediate implementation of complicated digital logic - at the level of a new CPU, for example. Throw in fast, cheap circuit board manufacturing and there is a lot that can be done by just about anybody.

So what is happening with open hardware? For many, the flagship project is certainly Arduino, which has found its way into many or most open hardware projects at this point. The boards can be cheap enough to (for example) throw into the LCA swag bag. There are over 250 "shields" adding interesting functionality; for any problem, there is likely to be a plugin solution out there somewhere. It has a development environment that makes it programmable by people like artists; as a result, Arduino is showing up in a lot of art applications now. And the whole thing is surrounded by an active community.

Arduino has some down sides. It does not use a 32-bit processor, so it cannot run complex software (like Linux, for example). There are a lot of alternatives out there, though, for those needing more power; the Beagleboard and Pandaboard offerings for example. Bruce also called out the Omap L138 processor in particular, calling it a dream for mobile software-defined radio applications. It has four CPUs, a lot of peripherals, and is quite affordable.

Bruce waved around a DSO Quad, a pocket-sized digital storage oscilloscope. It is all open hardware and software; it shows that one does not need a large corporation to create compelling mobile products. Then, there is the Bus Pirate, a general-purpose electronic hacking tool that can take on all kinds of tasks from programming FPGAs to sniffing data transfers from an I2C bus. Bruce also mentioned the Papilio gate array development board. This device can become almost any kind of circuit from a CPU emulator to a receiver for 20 simultaneous radio streams.

For those wanting more physical projects, there is the MakerBot, a plastic 3D printer. MakerBot leaves a lot to be desired; in particular, Bruce said, it will fall short until it has enough resolution to make high-quality Lego parts. It will be able to make anything one might want eventually; for now it is limited to "small, crappy-looking things." But it shows where things are headed. For the truly adventurous, there is OpenPCR, which allows genetic sequencing and duplication at home.

The list could probably have gone on for a long time, but Bruce had made his point - there is a lot happening in the open hardware area. There is the potential for amazing things to happen. But much depends on the legal climate, and it is clear that there are going to be legislative attacks on open hardware. We will have to be attentive if this revolution is not to be choked off before it can really begin.

[Your editor would like to thank the LCA organizers for assisting with his travel to Ballarat.]

Index entries for this article
Conference	linux.conf.au/2012

to post comments

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 17, 2012 23:01 UTC (Tue) by Zenith (guest, #24899) [Link] (80 responses)

Is it, coincidentally, just me or is this unsually, for our editor, full of inserted sentences; it makes me, quite unusually so, prone to comment upon this, to me - out of the ordinary, type of writing.
</end-wink>

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 18, 2012 0:16 UTC (Wed) by rusty (guest, #26) [Link] (79 responses)

In Firefox, type Control-F "he said" then hit Highlight All. Surely even Bruce doesn't need to be disclamed that often? :)

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 18, 2012 0:25 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (78 responses)

I'm thinking instead that Bruce has clearly gotten boring in recent times if the only discussion his words can inspire is criticism of the reporter's language...:)

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 18, 2012 1:05 UTC (Wed) by gfa (guest, #53331) [Link] (1 responses)

our community is getting less and less interested on the freedom (and political) side of free software.
i think Bruce is pointing that out.

i don't think open hardware as a future "so bright" as free software had (have?) i hope I'm wrong

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 27, 2012 16:23 UTC (Fri) by whitemice (guest, #3748) [Link]

> our community is getting less and less interested on the freedom

And, IMO, "less and less" seems to be an understatement. We are rapidly approaching "just disinterested". "open" is fine, we don't need "Open". I wonder if a lot of the push for "Open" wasn't just because that was cool and the time and now "Cloud" [a synonym, in practice, for "proprietary"] is now the cool thing. For a lot of people I believe it was just about the cool thing.

> i don't think open hardware as a future

Agree, Open Hardware is a nowhere going nowhere. Building physical things cannot be equated to developing software; it will always be a self-interested corporation building and distributing hardware.

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 18, 2012 5:25 UTC (Wed) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link] (73 responses)

Yes, he is boring and he is full of himself. But that apart, I think the whole open-source crowd -- Bruce, ESR and the rest -- as well as the free software crowd has identified the wrong problem (perhaps it was not obvious at that time).

The problem is not open source, but open standards and open access. On the one hand, there is no use in my program being open source if its document format is so opaque and poorly documented that nobody else can read it (and "read the source" is not a solution). On the other hand, I should have the freedom to install what software I like on the computer that I paid for -- whether it is open source or not.

Stallman's original problem was a closed source printer driver, but he could have written his own driver if he had the specs. Adobe's software is closed source, but the PDF format is sufficiently documented that lots of other programs can read it.

Interoperability, and the ability to use the tool of one's choice, is what we should be aiming for. It is nice that Microsoft is today extending assistance to the Samba team. These things should be encouraged. Open source fundamentalism does not help. I don't have a problem with someone sending me a Microsoft Office document anymore, because libreoffice can read it perfectly well most of the time. It would be better if the document format were an open standard, but I don't really care whether Microsoft's suite is open source or not -- in fact I don't think it would help anyone in the least if MS decided to open-source all their software today.

On the open hardware side of things, again the issue is simply that we should be allowed to do what we want with them -- not necessarily that we have the right to copy the design under an "open source"-type licence. I am opposed to software patents, on the grounds that software algorithms are just mathematical ideas, but abolishing hardware patents is an unrealistically extreme idea. Saying no to locked-down hardware, under names like DRM, "trusted computing" and the like, is not unrealistic. The manufacturers always have the weapon of voiding our warranty -- those of us who are willing to take that risk should not be prevented from doing so.

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 18, 2012 7:27 UTC (Wed) by pkern (subscriber, #32883) [Link] (6 responses)

Adobe's software is closed source, but the PDF format is sufficiently documented that lots of other programs can read it.

They might claim that they're able to read it. Given the PDF format's insanity it's actually quite hard to do it right and there are still documents that are only readable (or printable) with Adobe's software. Even if the standard might be open.

I don't have a problem with someone sending me a Microsoft Office document anymore, because libreoffice can read it perfectly well most of the time.

My experience tells me that while this is mostly true for the old binary formats, it's not the case for the new XML-based "standards". And given all the discussions I read about this so-called open standard I'm pretty sure it doesn't contain everything you need to know to implement a reader and a writer correctly. Interop is a hard problem. And while it is great to have it (and I really appreciate what the folks of Samba have done), I'd rather like a program that's sufficiently cross-platform and libre with its own file format, than MS dumping yet another file format to implement over the fence. They'll always have an advantage for years while the folks using Linux can't read those files properly, who are then often being forced to use Windows in some way, depending on the company environment.

It's not so simple...

Posted Jan 18, 2012 12:52 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (5 responses)

Given the PDF format's insanity it's actually quite hard to do it right and there are still documents that are only readable (or printable) with Adobe's software.

This happens in other direction, too - I've seen plenty of documents which were only viewable in poppler-based browser, but not in Adobe's reader. IMNSHO it just means that standard is too complex and baroque thus all implementation have bugs. It does not mean it's closed on inaccessible.

It's not so simple...

Posted Jan 18, 2012 13:12 UTC (Wed) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link] (4 responses)

Anyway, my point was that if we have enough competing programs, they are forced to be compatible with one another. Right now most people care only about Adobe Reader, but people in the free software world perhaps care only about poppler-based readers -- hence bugs on both sides.

Another example is HTML -- once upon a time, there was only one dominant browser, Netscape; then only another dominant browser, IE. There was an open standard and a standards body but the de facto standard was whatever the big guy did. That has changed thanks to competing browsers, especially on mobile platforms. The fact that two of the engines (webkit and gecko) are open source seems, to me, irrelevant, except maybe to the extent that open source developers are more mindful of standards -- but many would argue that Opera is more standards-compliant than Gecko, while webkit, though open-source, has been driven primarily by one company with a very closed-source mindset. The important thing is that there is competition and therefore interoperability is needed. It's the same thing that ensures plug points, screw pitches, pedal layout on cars, etc, are reasonably standardised.

It's not so simple...

Posted Jan 18, 2012 15:12 UTC (Wed) by jwakely (guest, #60262) [Link] (1 responses)

> The fact that two of the engines (webkit and gecko) are open source seems, to me, irrelevant

So you don't think that Safari and Chrome would use two separate engines if they hadn't started from a common, open source code base?

And the fact that you say "gecko" not "firefox" is nothing to do with the code being open source? Would you be able to choose from dozens of free browsers (midoria, galeon, epiphany etc.) and know they're render the page well because they use one of the same two engines? Would all those projects be able to rely on well-tested, standard-compliant engines if those engines weren't open source? Wouldn't they all have their own, buggy engines with slightly different behaviour, or just not exist at all?

If the browser market was split into lots of different engines no single one would ever have competed with IE's dominance, and web designers would have continued to write for IE only. The fact that gecko and webkit have a significant share, and MS were forced to make IE more standards compliant, is partly due their use in multiple different browsers, which is possible because they are open source.

It's not so simple...

Posted Jan 18, 2012 15:28 UTC (Wed) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]

Of the gecko-based browsers, only firefox counts, and of the webkit browsers, only safari and chrome count - as far as webpage designers are concerned. Even without chrome, my argument stands. Apple forked webkit from khtml, which had an insignificant presence earlier; if Apple had written their own engine from scratch, it would still have benefited standards compliance and browser neutrality among webpages.

Your Webkit history is wrong

Posted Jan 18, 2012 16:11 UTC (Wed) by robla (subscriber, #424) [Link] (1 responses)

Webkit started out life as KHTML. While Apple now has all the resources it could want, the Apple that started Webkit would never had had the resources to start a credible browser initiative from scratch. Open source mattered a great deal then, and it still does.

Apple, Google and many others collaborate on Webkit now. It's a fantastic example of why open source matters.

Your Webkit history is wrong

Posted Jan 18, 2012 16:56 UTC (Wed) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]

I know (and said in another comment) that Apple forked webkit from khtml. They also took it much further, very fast. Konqueror with khtml was just about usable, and yes I used kde at that time. I don't see a reason to doubt that the company that developed OS X and all its bundled apps could have written a browser from scratch. (Yes, I know the non-GUI core of OS X is open source too - and I used FreeBSD at the time.) Google picked up webkit much later, and seems to have focused on javascript since (which is not shared with safari) - I don't know whether they have a significant contribution to webkit itself.

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 18, 2012 10:56 UTC (Wed) by neilbrown (subscriber, #359) [Link]

Yes, open standards and open access are what we want (as well as ponies). But we don't get them by saying "please".

We get open standards by building open software that implements proposed standards. We get open access by building hardware that can be accessed openly.

Governments and businesses will only join the open-bandwagon once we have demonstrated that it works - and works better.

So open source and open hardware are a vital prerequisite to getting open standards and open access.

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 18, 2012 14:31 UTC (Wed) by Seegras (guest, #20463) [Link] (3 responses)

Open Standards will not matter if you can't get your computer to boot whatever you want, because some content-producer lobbyed DRM into everything. Or if Microsoft only "certifies" hardware if they only run windows and the hardware-producers actually implement that.

And I think you misinterpreted "open access" -- it usually means access to any scientific research, not open access to your hardware.

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 18, 2012 15:22 UTC (Wed) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link] (2 responses)

I addressed your first paragraph in my comment, if you bothered to read it. As for the second, yes, I know what open access is in research publishing, thank you.

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 19, 2012 0:53 UTC (Thu) by wdaniels (guest, #80192) [Link] (1 responses)

I assume this is what you think addressed it: "Saying no to locked-down hardware, under names like DRM, "trusted computing" and the like, is not unrealistic."?

My problem is that it becomes very difficult to "say no" if you have no viable alternative, and without open _source_ there never would have been.

I agree that the FOSS fundamentalists reach a point with mere applications that they end up uselessly fixated on the wrong problem, but I don't think it has been the wrong problem either from the start or across the board.

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 27, 2012 16:25 UTC (Fri) by whitemice (guest, #3748) [Link]

>My problem is that it becomes very difficult to "say no" if you have no
>viable alternative, and without open _source_ there never would have been.

Nail, Hammer, Hit it.

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 19, 2012 13:09 UTC (Thu) by ctg (guest, #3459) [Link]

"The problem is not open source, but open standards and open access"

yes and no. I am old enough to have been around in the 80s. And towards the the end of that period "Open Standards" were all the range.

But then I lived through the UNIX wars.

Open Standards aren't enough. You also need a reference implementation. And that needs to be Open. And complete. And usable. Then it can be properly compared with the functions of other implementations.

To my mind, I think of Open Source as being Open Standards+Implementation.
I think the two are inseparable.

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 19, 2012 19:46 UTC (Thu) by daglwn (guest, #65432) [Link] (59 responses)

> I am opposed to software patents, on the grounds that software algorithms
> are just mathematical ideas, but abolishing hardware patents is an
> unrealistically extreme idea.

Why? Hardware is just software by another name. Or vice-versa, depending on which you learned first.

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Jan 19, 2012 21:31 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (58 responses)

Software exist in entirely predictable world. If you can imagine and code something - it'll work exactly like manuals describe.

Hardware exist in real world. No matter what you'll invent you'll need to eventually build the thing and test it.

The more testing you need the more patents make sense. Pharmacy, in particular requires enormous and extremely expensive testing, but UI patents don't need any testing at all: just draw few diagrams and off you go to the patent office (if you'll need to design something sellable it's diferent story: you need to carefully select sizes, effects speed, etc - but this is not what typical UI patents cover at all).

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Jan 19, 2012 21:49 UTC (Thu) by daglwn (guest, #65432) [Link] (57 responses)

But if the argument is that software isn't patentable because it's math, then the same holds for hardware, at least for the logic design. Yes, implementation details can be patented under this view (novel cooling architectures, for example) but the underlying machine model should not be.

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Jan 19, 2012 22:32 UTC (Thu) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link] (56 responses)

The logic design of a piece of hardware is also math, and should not be patentable for the same reasons.

Now, if you were to design a novel hardware *component* for use in actual, physical circuits, that would be be an entirely different matter. In that case you've invented a novel way to use the physical properties of the universe toward a specific goal. If anything justifies a patent[1], that would. To get to this point you have to reduce your abstract ideas to practice, i.e. actually build something, or at least show that in principle the component could be constructed from real materials.

The problem with software patents in particular is that once you remove the part you didn't actually invent (the general-purpose computer), you're left with something which doesn't qualify for a patent (the software algorithm), which is pure math, which--for reasons which should be obvious--is an explicitly excluded subject.

If you were to invent a device specifically for the purpose of evaluating the algorithm you're trying to patent, you could probably get a patent on that specific device. However, that would be equivalent--putting aside the fact that the hard work was done long ago by someone else--to patenting a specific type of general-purpose computer running *specific code*. Just as you can accomplish the same goal (e.g. evaluating a given algorithm) in a *different way* without violating a normal, non-computer-related patent, even minor changes to the architecture of the computer or the low-level binary code should get around the computer+software patent. Real software patents, however, are far broader than their non-software equivalents, covering all possible ways to evaluate the patented algorithm on a general-purpose computer, not just a specific reduction of the algorithm to practice.

[1] However, nothing can justify artificial, aggression-based monopolies, so there is no real difference so far as natural law and just property rights are concerned.

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Jan 20, 2012 1:14 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (54 responses)

I find that most of what people call hardware and software is for the purposes of that discussion indistinguishable. I try to use those two words sparingly. I think maybe a lot of people don't understand what "hardware" engineering is like. You don't tinker with matter; you work at a keyboard. For the purposes of testing your invention, you use an existing, not very interesting, process to convert your software to something physical.

Drugs were mentioned above as patent-worthy because they are hardware. They're software. The part where you express a drug as a pill and put it in someone's mouth is a fairly small part of the invention process; if we could download a drug into a test subject through the retina, the drug wouldn't be much less costly to invent.

There are two fundamental functions of patents: 1) provide a way for an inventor to recover the costs of invention; and 2) provide an incentive for an inventor to disclose his invention. I don't see that hardware vs software or algorithm vs machine has any bearing on those purposes.

There already exists an obviousness test for patentability which ought to cover most of the objectionable software patents. It just doesn't seem to be implemented very well.

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Jan 20, 2012 2:52 UTC (Fri) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link] (49 responses)

> I find that most of what people call hardware and software is for the purposes of that discussion indistinguishable.

Hardware and software are quite easily distinguishable. Hardware is specific physical matter arranged into a pattern to accomplish some goal. Software is an abstract concept, which can be embodied as a pattern in matter but is not tied to any specific matter or form of representation. To use an example any child can comprehend, wooden blocks with the letters "A", "B", and "C" carved into them are hardware. The letters "A", "B", and "C" themselves are software.

> I think maybe a lot of people don't understand what "hardware" engineering is like. You don't tinker with matter; you work at a keyboard. For the purposes of testing your invention, you use an existing, not very interesting, process to convert your software to something physical.

Indeed, and any hardware produced by that method should be, in my opinion, no more patentable than software. This sort of work, while undoubtedly useful, does not advance the state of the "useful arts" patents are meant to encourage. The result is merely a new device, not a new technique.

> Drugs were mentioned above as patent-worthy because they are hardware. They're software. The part where you express a drug as a pill and put it in someone's mouth is a fairly small part of the invention process; if we could download a drug into a test subject through the retina, the drug wouldn't be much less costly to invent.

As an outsider, it seems to me that one usually doesn't patent the drug itself, but rather the process of manufacturing or administering it, or perhaps of testing for conditions where the drug is applicable. As a rule, you're not supposed to be able to patent the actual chemical structure, for much the same reasons that you're not supposed to be able to patent abstract math. Of course, alongside software, pharmaceuticals are another politically-charged area where the normal patent rules have been bent and twisted almost beyond recognition, so there may be some exceptions.

> There are two fundamental functions of patents: 1) provide a way for an inventor to recover the costs of invention; and 2) provide an incentive for an inventor to disclose his invention. I don't see that hardware vs software or algorithm vs machine has any bearing on those purposes.

I don't doubt that patents achieve those purposes (*any* reward system would, whether expressed as an outright grant or prize, or a monopoly as with patents). However, patents also have a cost. Their purpose, first and foremost, is to benefit society. If the costs of patents outweigh the benefits, it doesn't matter whether the purposes you list are achieved. It is doubtful whether most patents are actually cost-effective; studies have repeatedly shown that they tend to *inhibit* innovation rather than encourage it. However, when a patent is issued over the abstract solution which either has no need to be reduced to practice, or which anyone could reduce to practice using existing well-known methods, the benefits of disclosure are less, and the costs to society in penalizing independent discovery and incremental improvements are far greater.

> There already exists an obviousness test for patentability which ought to cover most of the objectionable software patents.

You would think so, but if the existing rules were followed we wouldn't *have* software patents. The problem (at least so far as software patents are concerned) isn't the rules, it's the application of those rules within the patent office.

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Jan 20, 2012 4:10 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (43 responses)

I find that most of what people call hardware and software is for the purposes of that discussion indistinguishable.
Hardware and software are quite easily distinguishable. ...

Yes, and what "for the purpose of that discussion" above means is that that distinction is irrelevant to the purpose of these many discussions that refer to hardware and software.

Where the distinction between hardware and software becomes relevant is in the fact that to move or copy hardware you have to move matter, but to move or copy software, you have only to move energy (and comparatively small amounts of it). That the latter is far, far less costly is responsible for most of the practical difference. So for example, I'd rather deliver a software update to my customer than a hardware update. The hardware update could be a new ROM chip containing the same bits that the software alternative would; it's still hardware. It could be a CD-ROM too.

I hear that at some level matter and energy are the same thing, so maybe if we look at it abstractly enough, even that distinction goes away.

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Jan 21, 2012 2:26 UTC (Sat) by java_developer (guest, #82469) [Link] (42 responses)

I feel like you're gerrymandering the boundary between patentable non-patentable in an unprincipled way, where you find it convenient to do so .

For instance, if one-click is valid as you say, what is it that's being patented. It's a *certain* set of processing , set in motion be triggering the javascript on the web page, which results in a *certain* state of he world- the user is (say) identified, the user's information is retrieved (say), and an order is made with no more input from the user. This is what this patent covers.

The "one clickness" only refers to the fact that only a unitary act of intentionality is needed from the user in order to trigger the javascript in the button.

OK so the patent is really about a single unitary act of intentionality triggering this javascript which then performs a series of steps. Just to be clear about this now because it's important.

So I should be able to patent across all domains of human endeavor the combination of a single expression of intentionality triggering off any process which achieves a useful end.

For instance, there should be (SNARK AHEAD!-> I mean should have been, we just didn't realize it before the IP maximalist graced the world with their penetrating vision) ... there should be a patent not just for a particular light switch but the CONCEPT of a light switch (to which all light switch inventors would pay royalties) because a light switch- as opposed to a crank say, is just exactly a useful process triggered off by a single act of intentionality which completes without the end user needing to do anything else (crank the crank a few more times for instance).

In fact, the world is littered with devices which permit a single action to achieve an ends without further user input, and we have missed a great many opportunities to impose state sanctioned monopolies and collect rents which stymie innovation, er.. wait I meant to say encourage inventors to innovate and reward inventors for their inventions.

But not to despair. Now that we live in the Age of IP Enlightenment courtesy of IP Lawyers and their associated fee structures, we can move forward into the new world and design into every single new, individual useful process a single act of intentionality to trigger it off and thus secure an unending stream of new intellectual property from which we can derive great wealth and societal benefit, almost as if we had stumbled. across a previously unknown deposit of precious metal, just waiting to be mined and entered into the market.

This is silly and it's meant to be, but it's because it's not where the simplest extrapolation of the IP Maximalist position, as embodied by the one-click patent- leads directly to.

IP lawyers politely but quite arbitrarily stop their quest to redefine everything as patentable subject matter not where the logic of the arguments they use to justify their bid for expansive re-definition bid them to by its own internal logic, but rather just outside the gates of widespread moral outrage, a point they know quite well.

For now, only software developers understand what it is they're doing and are rightfully morally outraged. As long as ordinary people can't understand the issue, then the issue can continue to be grossly misrepresented by IP maximalists to legislators and courts in ways I'm sure
everyone here is well familiar with.

After software developers have accepted their new role as serfs who live on the land and at the pleasure of what wealthy princes there may be with their patent armies and lawsuits , then they'll move on to other, greener pastures in other areas of human endeavor. It's a classic divide and conquer because if the logic behind the one-click patent were actually applied in a consistent way across all domains simultaneously, the whole edifice of IP would crumble before its own absurdity.

But please, tell me I misunderstood what was being patented. Feel free, because you have no where to start from which ends you in any better position. I assure you I dealt you the strongest, least ridiculous hand available to you in my definition of what it is exactly that's being patented in one-click.

But I'm waiting...

applicable to all types of "clicks" and "results" which increase "convenience" no matter how absurd the resulting patent appears.

For instance, consider the "click" of a mouse. This isn't *really* about clicks and the number of them, it's about the triggering of the javascript code on the web page which does X with no further input from the end user.

. the device any gesture that the computer can recognize, say a hand movement has to be included. IN fact it's not any particular device or interaction, the mouse click was just one embodiment of the user's intention. That's what's really crucial, and everything thing else is just one manifestation of that intention.

Ok so now we have a one-intention

In fact, any intentionality is just one yype f "gesturte (ignoring just for right now the fact of its painful obviousness even at the time it was "invented") , then it's fair to also make patentable

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Jan 21, 2012 2:29 UTC (Sat) by java_developer (guest, #82469) [Link]

ahh I shuold proof read.. I meant to say-

This is silly and it's meant to be, but it's NOT because it's not where the simplest extrapolation of the IP Maximalist position, as embodied by the one-click patent- leads directly to.

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Jan 21, 2012 2:34 UTC (Sat) by java_developer (guest, #82469) [Link] (40 responses)

Ahh when I type into these little text form things it never goes well... IF you're interested in what is being said, just disregard the jumbled nature of the previous post and take this next post as the correct expression of the ideas.......

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Jan 21, 2012 2:46 UTC (Sat) by java_developer (guest, #82469) [Link] (39 responses)

I feel like you're gerrymandering the boundary between patentable non-patentable in an unprincipled way, where you find it convenient to do so .

For instance, if one-click is valid as you say, what is it that's being patented?

It's a *certain* series of events, a certain process, which was set in motion by triggering the javascript on the web page. This process results in a *certain* state of the world- for instance, the user is identified, the user's information is retrieved, and an order is made with no more input from the user. These are this process's useful effects.

This is what this patent covers.

The "one clickness" only refers to the fact that only a unitary act of intentionality is needed from the user in order to trigger the javascript process embedded in the button.

OK so the patent is really about a single unitary act of intentionality triggering this specific series of steps.

Just to be clear about this now because it's important.

So I should be able to patent across all domains of human endeavor the combination of a single expression of intentionality triggering off any process which achieves a useful end.

For instance, there should be (SNARK AHEAD!-> I mean should have been, we just didn't realize it before the IP maximalist graced the world with their penetrating vision) ... there should be a patent not just for a particular light switch but also and more importantly the CONCEPT of a light switch (to which all light switch inventors would pay royalties) because a light switch- as opposed to a crank say- is just exactly a useful process triggered off by a single act of intentionality which completes without the end user needing to do anything else (crank the crank a few more times for the required level of brightness , for instance).

But not to despair. Now that we live in the Age of IP Enlightenment courtesy of IP Lawyers and their associated fee structures, we can move forward into the new world and design into every single new, individual, useful process a single act of intentionality used to trigger it off and thus secure an unending stream of new intellectual property from which we can derive great wealth and societal benefit, almost as if we had stumbled across a previously unknown deposit of precious metal, just waiting to be mined and entered into the market.

This is silly and it's meant to be, but it's not because it's not where the simplest extrapolation of the IP Maximalist position- as embodied by the one-click patent- leads directly to. Because this is where that position leads to quite directly.

IP lawyers politely, but quite arbitrarily, stop their quest to redefine everything as patentable subject matter not where the logic of the arguments they use to justify their expansive re-definition bid them to stop by those argument's own internal logic, but in rather another place which is quite unrelated to applicability of their aruments. They coyly stop just outside the gates of widespread moral outrage, a location they know quite well.

Because for now, it's only software developers who understand what it IP lawyers are doing and who are rightfully morally outraged.

As long as ordinary people can't understand the issue, then the issue can continue to be grossly misrepresented by IP maximalists to the legislators and the courts in ways I'm sure everyone here is well familiar with.

After software developers have accepted their new role as serfs who live on the land, and at the pleasure of, wealthy princes and their patent armies. l;awyers and lawsuits, then the IP lawyers will move on to other, greener pastures in other areas of human endeavor.

It's a classic divide and conquer.

If the logic behind the one-click patent were actually applied in a consistent way across all domains simultaneously, the whole edifice of IP would crumble before its own absurdity.

But please, tell me I misunderstood what was being patented in the one-click patent.

Feel free, because you have no where to start from which ends you in any better position.

I assure you I dealt you the strongest, least ridiculous hand available to you in my definition of what it is exactly that's being patented in one-click.

But I'm waiting...

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Jan 21, 2012 19:29 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (38 responses)

I feel like you're gerrymandering the boundary between patentable non-patentable in an unprincipled way, where you find it convenient to do so .

I wonder what convenience you have in mind. You must believe there is some related thing I'm trying to prove.

if one-click is valid as you say,

I didn't say that.

Incidentally, I would have liked to use a different example of a software patent. I'm not even sure 1-click is included in what people call software patents. I would have liked to use a patent that is practiced in software you acquire and run on your own computer, such as the Linux kernel, but I couldn't think of one.

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Jan 23, 2012 0:56 UTC (Mon) by java_developer (guest, #82469) [Link] (37 responses)

I am addressing you a a general proponent of sw patents. Am I wrong?

Regarding whether one-click is a sw patent, we have lately another one click type patent- the apple "slide to unlock" fiasco against Samsung. This is being covered as a sw patent, I think.

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Jan 23, 2012 16:23 UTC (Mon) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (36 responses)

I am addressing you as a general proponent of sw patents. Am I wrong?

I am not a general proponent of software patents. In fact, I don't even think the term has a clear meaning, so it would be hard to advocate for them. I'm not against them either, though. I'm saying whether an invention involves software or not should not be a factor in patent worthiness.

Thanks for the slide-to-unlock patent example; I think it's a much cleaner one.

This is an idiotic patent. It's idiotic because the public gets no benefit from it, which is because

Apple would have invented it even without the promise of patent protection, just to use it in its own products.
Using it in its products, Apple couldn't keep it secret.
Even if Apple didn't find using it in its products sufficient incentive to invent, anyone else who could benefit from it could easily invent it independently.

These factors would apply even if slide-to-unlock were implemented in logic gates, analog electronics, or clockwork, which I believe it would not be called a "software" patent.

(Incidentally, when I say idiotic, I mean from a public policy perspective. I'm not saying it is idiotic for Apple to apply for the patent, the patent office to grant it, or a court to enforce it. The law is what it is).

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Jan 23, 2012 17:56 UTC (Mon) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]

> It's idiotic because the public gets no benefit from it

That's something that should make policy makers think, and perhaps we should be voicing it harder.

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Jan 24, 2012 15:24 UTC (Tue) by java_developer (guest, #82469) [Link] (34 responses)

"I am not a general proponent of software patents. In fact, I don't even think the term has a clear meaning, so it would be hard to advocate for them.'

Smirk. Yeah this is the argument used by people who are the strongest proponents for software patents; it seeks to beg the entire issue off as a non-issue and in so doing, close off the subject once and for all.

"Hey, there is no such thing as software patents. So how can there be talk about *banning* them?"

Let me help you out.

Even if you don't *believe* in them as you say, you are still quite well aware of what other people mean when they ask you if you're for them or against them.

So if anyone asks you for your position, just say you're 100% for them. That way we all understand each other.

I am amused looking over your lists of reason why you say you're against Apple's version of Amazon's "one-click-patent", "slide-to-unlock". All your objections amount to this particular patent failing to live up to the purported raison d'etre of any patent- to promote the useful arts and sciences.

But in making this argument against this patent, you silently assume- without proof- that ALL software patents don't also fail this test.

Its not for nothing that the vast, vast majority of software developers believe they do fail this crucial test, that they in fact impede progress instead of encourage it.

That ought to fairly settle the case as to whether they should be permitted or not- the people who are purported to be *encouraged* by them experience them to be a demotivating, depressing waste of time, energy and resources and want them taken out into the woods and shot in the back of the head.

Yet for some rea$on, the proponents of $oftware patent$ think the aggregate opinion of the experts and practitioners in the field which is effected by these court decisions should be ignored.

And whose opinion should be substituted for the actual practitioner's?

The class of people who are in favor of software patents are executives of corporations, a few ideologically motivated think tanks, IP lawyers and of course trolls, like our dear friend Myron:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/07/26/138576167/when-...

If I ever wanted to throw a party for a group people who have more than earned their reputations as entities antagonistic to the long term good and general welfare of society, I'd be sure all of the above's names were on the invite list.

Study after study has found that software patents neither promote technological progress in the field nor generate economic benefit except as instruments of monopolies for specific companies, and then that benefit is only to that company, and not to the consumer or even the economy as a whole.

On a personal note, I have to say I especially enjoy seeing software patents vigorously defended in *certain* IP lawyers' blogs. Aside from the brain dead arguments presented with a 5th grader's vocabulary, and their presentation of "studies" from "reputable" sources like, oh, The Chamber of Commerce, the pictures these lawyers have up of themselves - bloated, jaws agape, vacuous looks on their faces, lead me to quite expect I'll be seeing them featured in a near-future episode of 48 Hours, identified as the person of interest in this week's Cocaine/Stripper Murder Mystery.

But maybe that's just my impression.

Well then, getting back on point... software patents are a net drain on the economy and the entities who benefit from them nothing but economic parasites as demonstrated by virtually any serious academic who takes up the issue:

http://www.bu.edu/law/faculty/scholarship/workingpapers/B...

http://esp.wdfiles.com/local--files/2008-state-of-softpat...

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1429049

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1562678

http://ssrn.com/abstract=1411328

http://www.innovation.gov.au/innovationreview/

http://writtendescription.blogspot.com/2011/06/lemley-myt...

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/07/26/138576167/when-...

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Jan 24, 2012 16:58 UTC (Tue) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (33 responses)

Even if you don't *believe* in them as you say, you are still quite well aware of what other people mean when they ask you if you're for them or against them.

No, I am not aware of what they mean, and I don't think it is clear in their own head what they mean. Every time they try to define the term, they end up with a definition that either doesn't cover the particular patents they call software patents or covers many patents they don't. Or doesn't use the term "software" in anything like the way it's normally used.

I'll give you this: as long as a patent that doesn't promote the useful arts and doesn't involve software in any way is legal, then I think a similar patent that does involve software should also be legal. Maybe that's what you mean by being a general proponent of software patents.

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Jan 27, 2012 21:39 UTC (Fri) by java_developer (guest, #82469) [Link] (32 responses)

I understand what you *mean* about hardware vs software and acknowledge it. But in so doing, notice I'm doing something *for you* that you refuse to do *for others*. That thing is- understanding what they *mean* and acknowledging it.

So the situation you expect is - everyone must acknowledge GiraffeData's position by accepting that he/she does NOT know what a software patent is and talking to him/her so as to respect his/her position, while GiraffeData will not acknowledge anyone else's position and concede he/she knows perfectly well what people *mean* when they talk about software patent.

Expecting other people to extend to you a courtesy you yourself will not extend to them has the following properties:

It is rude.

It is egocentric (only my position is deserving of respect !)

It represents an attempt to smuggle in an apriori conclusion into any discussion through forcing others to continually tacitly acknowledge your POV, while you slight theirs. So the debate will always take place using terms of discussion which favor you unfairly and in fact assume you are right and they are wrong.

Now when I said I understand what you meant and acknowledge it, notice I didn't say I agree with what you meant.

All I was suggesting in my previous post is you stop playing coy with other people when this discussion comes out. You're not standing on principle; you're slyly trying to win the debate, being egocentric and just plain rude.

Let me give you a taste of what it's like to receive what you dish out to other people in this regard.

I can suppose you don't think of a company as a machine. The "well oiled machine" metaphor is just that- a metaphor. But if someone wanted to challenge you on that , how would it go? Would you say people obviously aren't parts of a machine? They would reply with the prejudicial nature of your definition of "parts of a machine". Then wax on and on about how, just as when a part in a machine is broken and needs to be replaces, so also do companies fire people and hire new one for the exact same position. And so on and so forth in many creative but ultimately weird and obtuse ways.

In deed, a determined opponent could really give you quite a headache for quite a long time and in the end, you won't have decisively won the battle because once you start denying what's obvious to most other people, there's really nowhere you can't go with it. Whose to say what's REALLY the definition of "machine" Well, the winners of course! And who's going to win the argument? The person who is outlasts, out talks, out spends, out lobbies, and out litigates the other one ! Once you permit the parties to wander away from the obvious, largely agreed upon meanings of terms like "company" and "software" and "hardware" then there's no where you can't go.

And all the while you were arguing with this hypothetical clown, you'd be thinking -"is this person just a headcase claiming not to be able to tell the difference between machines and companies? "

Then it comes out that the person you're having this bizarre argument with has very strong financial motives for wanting to blur this otherwise clear distinction. If he can blur it, if he can get you to swallow and accept his gerrymandered definition of "company", he has a non-stop stream of extremely lucrative income he can access at will.

When programmers tell you that software is one thing and hardware another, they're having the same experience as you would be in the above, and you're doing to them what the antagonistic arguer would be doing to you.

The EU seems to have gotten down the difference between hardware and software into their laws in a consistent manner and only people on M$'s payroll are "confused" by it.

It's bullshit. We all call bullshit and we're not going to let you carry the day. Software is adequately and appropriately protected by the IP device of copyright. Plot devices in plays don't become patentable because they are "realized" by actors in a play and software isn't patentable because it's run on a machine . The specific expression of both are protected by copyright and that has served us well for a long long time in both fields.

Your "confusion" is nothing but an exercise in denying the obvious.

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Jan 28, 2012 1:24 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (31 responses)

You are amazingly certain you know what I'm thinking. It's amazing because you have so little information about me based on this tiny discussion and because you're sure enough that you can write off my direct statements as lies because they're inconsistent with what you know is going on in my head.

You really ought to follow my example and assume you don't know what other people are thinking rather than assume something that makes them jerks.

So there's no way I can carry on an argument with you about what I'm thinking, and it's off-topic anyway, but for the record, I am going to make these statements:

I am not engaging in rhetorical tricks and have no reason to because I am not trying to win a debate. I am only trying to expose readers of LWN to perspectives or analyses some of them may not be aware of.

At least that's what I was doing before you diverted the conversation into a discussion about me and about the conversation itself.

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Jan 28, 2012 7:11 UTC (Sat) by java_developer (guest, #82469) [Link] (30 responses)

No actually if you read the thread through you directly said you believe software is patentable subject matter and then you directly said that in fact there is no material difference between software patents and hardware patents.

Actually, you DID say those things and actually, they ARE the arguments used for software patent apologists. So in exposing these ideas- which you admit you hold- as fundamentally disingenuous, manipulative and really extremist, which they are, I am not laying claim to special knowledge about what's in your head beyond what you've revealed and neither am I taking this conversation about software patents off-topic.

What is the Newt Gingrich approach to debate- attack the other side when your actions are exposed and claim that calling you out on things you actually said is some form of "dirty trick"? So somehow by calling your own ideas to the floor and criticizing them I'm trying to "make it personal" ?

I am comfortable with that anyone reading this thread will agree that I kept it very much on topic and quoted you honestly while replying with ideas, facts and arguments which themselves have a great deal of merit.

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Jan 28, 2012 17:38 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (29 responses)

No actually if you read the thread through you directly said you believe software is patentable subject matter and then you directly said that in fact there is no material difference between software patents and hardware patents.

Those are fair paraphrasings of my words and statements of my beliefs for suitable definitions of "subject matter" and "software patents" and "hardware patents" (terms which I did not use myself). And I can imagine reasonable, though not necessarily useful, definitions of those that are suitable.

Where you claim to know differently than what I say about what is in my head is when I twice said in very direct language I don't know what people mean by "software patents" and each time you said that I do.

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Jan 28, 2012 18:52 UTC (Sat) by java_developer (guest, #82469) [Link] (28 responses)

I see. I see. Well I think I addressed that about as well as I can. You're talking about them right now so it's not like you heard a word and don't know what it is.

What you mean to say is not that you don't know what those crazy things are about or what people mean when they start talking about them, because obviously you KNOW what we mean.

What you mean to say (and here I am telling you what you mean, which is sure to piss you off I am aware) is something more like "I don't think there *ought* to be a distinction between software and hardware when it comes to 101ness i.e. fundamental patent eligibility."

For the record, a software patent is a patent on some software which is run on a computer. This is irrespective of whether that computer has a screen, an actuator arm or other device attached to it which changes some state of matter either internal to the computer or in the external world. No software, no matter how it intersects with the world outside or inside any machine ought to be patentable, not to say copyrightable, which almost all programmer believe is a fair application of IP, with a few notable personalities excepted.

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Jan 30, 2012 17:02 UTC (Mon) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (27 responses)

... a software patent is a patent on some software which is run on a computer.

By that definition, I am not in favor of software patents. Patenting some software is like patenting a sculpture (or a mold for a sculpture). Only inventions should be patentable, and a piece of software is not an invention.

However, I don't think that's what is controversial, because I don't think patents get issued for some software. I'm really not a patent expert, but I don't think patent claims for the patents in question include program listings or even abstract descriptions of program listings. I assume the claims of click-to-unlock (which I assume people include in the "software patent" category) talk about features of an iPhone (a piece of hardware) more than about computation steps. I doubt a code rewrite would avoid infringing it.

I believe the definition people usually use for "software patent" is something more like "a patent on an invention that is typically implemented with software." But much less vague, since there are so many kinds of software and so many ways to implement something using it.

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Jan 30, 2012 17:52 UTC (Mon) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link] (16 responses)

> I assume the claims of click-to-unlock (which I assume people include in the "software patent" category) talk about features of an iPhone (a piece of hardware) more than about computation steps.

That's "slide to unlock", and it's not a feature of the iPhone hardware, but rather a feature of iOS (software). The hardware used is completely incidental to the subject of the patent. Actually, it's more of a user-interface patent than a software patent--as you say, it's not really about the computational steps involved--but if anything, UI patents are even harder to justify than patents on algorithms. A trademark would be much more appropriate (and more limited in scope).

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Jan 31, 2012 1:25 UTC (Tue) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (13 responses)

it's not a feature of the iPhone hardware, but rather a feature of iOS (software).

I meant that the iPhone itself is a tangible item. There is a valid perspective where it the implementation is irrelevant and all you see (and buy and sell and use) is a physical box that does stuff when you touch it in various ways. It might not be relevant for patent purposes, in some views, how the builder got the machine to behave the way it does, just that the machine does.

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Jan 31, 2012 1:42 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (7 responses)

if it's a matter of the hardware, then someone who develops different hardware that uses the same gesture should not have anything to worry about.

'slide to unlock' can be implemented on any touchscreen or touchpad device. Such devices have been out for a LONG time.

so what is it that makes the apple patent on slide to unlock anything other than a software patent?

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Jan 31, 2012 2:25 UTC (Tue) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (6 responses)

I'm certainly not saying that slide-to-unlock is not a software patent. In fact, we've been using it as an example of one all along.

And I am only guessing as to what the claims of that patent are. I'd like to know, actually (not enough to read it, though).

But I'm willing to bet, still, that they don't include program listings or identify a particular piece of software, so if one's definition of software patent is a patent on some software, it isn't one of those.

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Jan 31, 2012 2:39 UTC (Tue) by jrn (subscriber, #64214) [Link] (5 responses)

Ok, here's a simple question to help flesh out what you are saying. US patent 4558302 (LZW compression) is pretty old and easy to find online. Its figures do include some code listings, though if they didn't I don't think that would change anything. It is definitely not a patent of any particular software package; it is a patent on the algorithm.

Is it, in your view, a software patent?

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Jan 31, 2012 3:03 UTC (Tue) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (4 responses)

Is it, in your view, a software patent?

I don't know. Remember, I'm the guy who says he doesn't know what the term "software patent" means.

Incidentally, though I have only a passing familiarity with patents, ISTR there is stuff in an application besides claims, like stuff that demonstrates the invention is actually complete and useful, so drawings and code listings might be in there without being part of the claims.

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Jan 31, 2012 5:32 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (3 responses)

nothing in a patent is required to be 'useful'

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Jan 31, 2012 16:08 UTC (Tue) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link]

nothing in a patent is required to be 'useful'

One thing I do remember from a class long ago is the three pillars of patentability: the invention must be new, useful, and nonobvious. I just googled that phrase to make sure I hadn't fabricated it in my mind over the years, and I got a bunch of hits.

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Feb 1, 2012 12:53 UTC (Wed) by java_developer (guest, #82469) [Link] (1 responses)

dlang a patent does have to be useful, at least in the US which may not be where you are based.

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Feb 1, 2012 19:22 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

in theory you are correct, but in theory it must also be novel and non-obvious.

in practice, the person applying for a patent doesn't even have to prove that the idea works (no working models required)

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Jan 31, 2012 3:33 UTC (Tue) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link] (4 responses)

> It might not be relevant for patent purposes, in some views, how the builder got the machine to behave the way it does, just that the machine does.

See, this right here is the real problem. Before the advent of general-purpose computer and software--and software patents--a patent did only cover a specific implementation: how the machine or process works, not the end product. You don't get a patent for steel; you get a patent for a particular process which produces steel. You don't get a patent for "devices which do X", you get a patent for "a specific, non-obvious design for a device which does X". Accomplishing the same end by sufficiently different means does not infringe the patent.

How a machine works may not be relevant from a *consumer's* point-of-view, but when it comes to patents the machine's inner workings are the entire point of the exercise. There is simply no *point* in granting a patent which monopolizes the end result without revealing anything non-obvious about how that result was achieved; such patents are 100% public cost with no public benefit.

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Jan 31, 2012 4:39 UTC (Tue) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (3 responses)

But what is internal and what is end result is a matter of perspective too. Imagine a patent for mousetraps that is for avoiding slapping your finger when you try to bait it. It claims a switch away from the trap area that locks the trap open, You unlock it from a safe distance after you're done baiting. One could say you patented the end result of a mouse trap that doesn't close while you're baiting it, or one could say you patented the end result of having a mouse trap with a remote switch, covering every possible implementation of that switch.

A slide-to-unlock switch on a pocket touch-screen device is not qualitatively different.

I don't see any point to struggling with the semantics of end result and implementation here, because the real point is the obviousness. Whether you view the obvious thing as an end result or an implementation doesn't matter; the public loses either way if someone gets the exclusive right to it.

Maybe what general purpose computers did was just make it really easy to invent really big things and messed up the balance.

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Jan 31, 2012 5:31 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

in your mousetrap example you are not getting a patent on all remotely activated mousetraps, only for your particular combination of hooks, levers, etc that you used.

software patents generally do not include code listings, at most they include pseudocode (and even then, usually as an example "this patent could be implemented like this")

It's frequently hard for the original inventor to match up the patent legalese with the description of the idea that they submitted to the legal department.

if you have never read any software patents, you really don't have any idea how bad they are.

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Jan 31, 2012 5:38 UTC (Tue) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link]

> One could say you patented the end result of a mouse trap that doesn't close while you're baiting it, or one could say you patented the end result of having a mouse trap with a remote switch, covering every possible implementation of that switch.

Either way, the real "end result" is an unclosed, baited mouse trap. You can't patent that. What you can patent is device which makes achieving that state a bit easier, provided it meets the other criteria, such as non-obviousness.

> A slide-to-unlock switch on a pocket touch-screen device is not qualitatively different.

First, there is no "switch" involved. The hardware (touch screen) is not the subject of the patent. Second, this isn't a software patent; it covers a virtual user-interface pattern, not an algorithm. This isn't so much a case of patenting what a mouse-trap does (which would be bad enough) as patenting what a mouse-trap *looks like*, which is even further outside the domain patents were intended to cover. As I said before, a trademark would be much more appropriate here.

Regarding actual software patents, however, such as a patent on a compression algorithm or a form of encryption, the qualitative difference is obvious: You build a mouse-trap, but you *evaluate* an algorithm. An algorithm is just as complete in your head, or worked out with pencil and paper, as it is running on a computer. The computer is just a tool to speed up the process, just as the pencil and paper serve to supplement your memory. The mouse-trap, on the other hand, is of no direct use to anyone until it's given physical form.

Not that any of this really matters, of course, as regular patents are just as devoid of legitimacy as software patent. They're not the same thing, but that doesn't make them any more just.

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Feb 1, 2012 13:43 UTC (Wed) by java_developer (guest, #82469) [Link]

GiraffeData said:

But what is internal and what is end result is a matter of perspective too.

What you're saying is true. It's a problem with examiners, judges and the courts that they are not equal to seeing through the distorting perspective presented to them by patent attorneys and their clients who seek to impose a distorted notion of what should be patentable subject matter for the purpose of restricting competition in the second case and siphoning off vast sums of capital for non-value producing activities in the first case.

GiraffeData said:

Maybe what general purpose computers did was just make it really easy to invent really big things and messed up the balance.

It's not a bad way of expressing it. Actually, what computers did was advance society in astronomical ways.

Later, much later, what IP lawyers did was conceive of a scheme to inject themselves, like a virus, into that value stream and create a diseased condition whose symptoms are, the creation of value is slowed to the point of extinction relative to what it had been prior; the IP attoneys extract obscene amounts of money from the creators of that value; insurmountable barriers to entry upon would-be creators of value is introduced; huge amounts of time and energy are spent warring over patents which have a net negative value to everyone but IP attorneys; would-be creators of value are discouraged from the field.

There is no reason that equally abstract things are not patented except the current regime of IP everything didn't arrive on the scene prior to their existence.

The examples are endless and everywhere.

For instance, novel plot twists clearly should be patentable - they fit the criteria: useful? - the novelist generates economic activity just because she's clever; non obvious? - by definition; advance the art? - other novelists can use variants on the new plot twist, after paying the original novelist.

Surely such a scheme must increase economic activity and increase a nation's wealth if IP Maximalist's arguments are to be believed.

So why are novel plot twists not patentable?

Ahem...

Patent #0239489023234: A Plot Twist Involving Gender Deception

An entity, in one realization a man who is in love with another entity , in one realization a woman, whereby the first entity deceives the second entity through the device of disguising their gender, using for instance a wig and makeup, for the purpose of obtaining a more intimate proximity to the second entity.

Blah blah blah,

fuckin' blah blah blah,

fuckin' blah,

fuckin' blah blah blah....

Application Number 28734897239723 Filing Date: MAR 2010 Patent Number 98247892374923784 Issue Date 6222646 Feb 1 2012

The ONLY reason society is not now jammed to the gills and floating lifeless on top of a dead stream of innovation is because there was no computer on which to realize novels and no IP attorneys looking over that computer thinking... "hmmm....it's a machine, isn't it?"

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Feb 1, 2012 13:03 UTC (Wed) by java_developer (guest, #82469) [Link] (1 responses)

nybble41 said:

Actually, it's more of a user-interface patent than a software patent--as you say,

nybble41 a user interface patent is almost always a software patent. I am not aware of any patents being placed on user interfaces which are not software based. If there such a thing out there, then it's an abomination also.

Either you're patenting the software code itself, in which case it's called a "copyright" and not a patent, or you're patenting what the thing does and and a series of steps involving abstract things, irrespective of the code that underlies it. This later case is what a software patent is.

Therefore user interface patents ARE software patents- they patent an end result , from the POV of programmers, regardless of how it's realized in code.

They are defined on things which are purely abstract in nature and can be "realized" in many different ways. So not only is slide to unlock covering the Apple interface, it's covering ALL interfaces.

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Feb 1, 2012 17:42 UTC (Wed) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link]

> nybble41 a user interface patent is almost always a software patent. I am not aware of any patents being placed on user interfaces which are not software based.

I agree that user interface patents are almost always about interfaces implemented in software. However, when I use the term "software patent", I am specifically referring to a patent on an algorithm, not the vague and likely over-broad "patent on an invention that is typically implemented with software" which was expressed elsewhere.

Something like "slide-to-unlock" can be said to contain a very simple algorithm ("if a slide gesture is recognized, unlock the device"), but the patent is really about a distinctive style (sliding vs. entering a code, or tapping a button, or any of the other means of unlocking touch-screen devices used before), not the algorithm, which ought to be rather too trivial and obvious to qualify for a patent on its own merits, even assuming patents on algorithms were generally acceptable.

> If there such a thing out there, then it's an abomination also.

Agreed, 100%.

> Either you're patenting the software code itself, in which case it's called a "copyright" and not a patent, ...

You don't "patent the software code". As you said, code is covered by copyrights, not patents. A software patent--a patent on an abstract algorithm--would cover *all possible implementations* of that algorithm in software code, including independent clean-room code written without knowledge of any other implementation or the patent itself, which is much broader than the copyright on specific code implementing the algorithm.

> ... or you're patenting what the thing does and and a series of steps involving abstract things, irrespective of the code that underlies it. This later case is what a software patent is.

I agree that this is what a software patent is, but user interface patents are something else entirely. The slide-to-unlock patent, for example, doesn't seek to monopolize the "algorithm" of sliding your finger along the screen to unlock the device (which, as an action performed directly by a human, would be rather dubious as the subject of a patent), but rather the "look and feel" of the interface presented by the device, the graphics drawn on the screen combined with the device's response to a particular input gesture, without reference to the algorithms for producing those graphics, recognizing that gesture, or actually unlocking the device.

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Feb 1, 2012 12:51 UTC (Wed) by java_developer (guest, #82469) [Link] (9 responses)

Sorry to have neglected this thread.

GiraffeData said:

However, I don't think that's what is controversial, because I don't think patents get issued for some software.

A "patent on software CODE" which is the idea you're trying to express in the above is called "copyright". Copyright is indeed issued on all code the second it's been written with no special trip to the USPTO or like needed on the part of the developer.

Most by far, although not all, software developers think copyright is OK.

GiraffeData said:

the claims of click-to-unlock (which I assume people include in the "software patent" category) talk about features of an iPhone (a piece of hardware) more than about computation steps.

Wrong. They talk about the user doing this to the interface and then that occurring as a result. They talk about the steps of the interaction and the result of the interaction and "one realization" of the patent which is what the thing actually looks like and does but is just ONE realization while the patent covers an infinitude of realizations, so it's not pinned down to any particular "realization" .

GiraffeData said:

I doubt a code rewrite would avoid infringing it.

Oh, and how right you would be. It's a patent on an abstract set of "aspects of a thing" (but one realization is provided so the examiner "knows what they mean" ) interacting on an abstract "device" in certain ways.

GiraffeData said:

This is correct.

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Feb 1, 2012 18:14 UTC (Wed) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (8 responses)

the claims of [slide-to-unlock] (which I assume people include in the "software patent" category) talk about features of an iPhone (a piece of hardware) more than about computation steps.
Wrong. They talk about the user doing this to the interface ...

The interface to an iPhone (or anything like one), as opposed to some software.

Ask any user what the touch screen is for communicating with, and he'll say the iPhone. Not iOS. He'll say "I'm going to drive into town to pick up an iPhone today because it has a slide-to-unlock feature." An Apple attorney pulls an Acme Smartphone out of his briefcase and sets it on the bar and says, "this thing practices our slide-to-unlock patent."

That's how one can see the patent claims as related to hardware at least as much as to software.

There is some level in every implementation of anything where you have to say, "variations at this level aren't part of the invention." I'm just saying there is no bright line telling you how high that line can be before the invention is not patent-worthy, so maybe whether or not the thing is implemented with software is below it.

I'm also saying it's a waste of time to try to identify kinds of inventions that are above or below the line when you can just go case-by-case by first principles (e.g. is the invention is obvious?).

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Feb 1, 2012 20:05 UTC (Wed) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link] (6 responses)

> There is some level in every implementation of anything where you have to say, "variations at this level aren't part of the invention." I'm just saying there is no bright line telling you how high that line can be before the invention is not patent-worthy, so maybe whether or not the thing is implemented with software is below it.

Whether or not the thing is implemented with software is irrelevant. The problem with software patents and the like is the nature of the thing itself: an algorithm or user-interface element, as opposed to a device or manufacturing process.

To put it simply, the proper domain of patents is *technology*: how one can take advantage of the laws of physics in a novel and non-obvious way to accomplish some useful end. They shouldn't cover something you could, in principle, do in your head (e.g. algorithms), even if in practice you make use of existing technology to speed up the process or supplement your memory. A patent on the look of a device or an abstract interaction concept is even further afield.

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Feb 2, 2012 3:19 UTC (Thu) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (5 responses)

It sounds like we agree on much, but

They shouldn't cover something you could, in principle, do in your head (e.g. algorithms)

Why is that? If it requires a significant investment to arrive at an algorithm you can do in your head, one which would others would want to use, isn't it in our best interest to offer a monopoly on use of the algorithm to the inventor? That would give him a way to recover that investment from the people who benefit from the algorithm, and thus an incentive to make the investment.

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Feb 2, 2012 3:21 UTC (Thu) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]

Because asking to regulate other peoples thoughts is unenforceable and insane?

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Feb 2, 2012 11:53 UTC (Thu) by java_developer (guest, #82469) [Link]

GiraffData said:
Why is that? If it requires a significant investment to arrive at an algorithm you can do in your head, one which would others would want to use, isn't it in our best interest to offer a monopoly on use of the algorithm to the inventor? That would give him a way to recover that investment from the people who benefit from the algorithm, and thus an incentive to make the investment.

See here's the thing with the IP Maximalist arguments of which this is a classic, absolutely sterling example (and BTW I am terribly glad you made it here because if I had presented what you said and merely claimed it was what was motivating you underneath it all, no one would have believed me..) OK here's the thing-

They represent a complete reworking of the way civilization and its members would conduct themselves down to the smallest, most invasive detail.

And they want to impose this without feeling the even the smallest duty to conduct a shred of what civilization calls "scientific inquiry" into the possible effects the imposition of their proposed program would have.

And why is this? Because they know... ladies and gentlemen they KNOWWWW... what's good for everyone else, and through the courts and legislators they've found the leverage they need to impose their vision on society.

What's the problem with arguing with a fanatic? Only this- their ideas are so fucking crazy that no one is actually prepared to address their specific claims.

Usually society is inoculated from this shit just because, without anyone having to go to the bother of working out exactly why, their ideas just get rejected by most other people.

Without the assistance of other members of society, they're going nowhere.

Maybe they become a writer with a cult following or maybe they start their own religion but they aren't getting at the levers of power in society.

Enter the IP Maximalists. If a little IP is good, then more MUST be better. This is the sum total of the proof they offer for the radical reworking of society they seek.

The gulf that exists between what they're thinking - when they reveal it- and what the average person thinks is worth remarking on.

At least they're confused about the basic nature of society. People are revolted at the idea of patenting a thought process but the IP Maximalist cheerily offers it up as a smacking good idea.

What does this say? That the IP Maximalist has no intuitive understanding about the basic nature of social interactions and what purpose those interactions serve in society.

Let's just hang a cash register and some barbed wire around everything. Nothing inherently repulsive in that! We'll hash out the *right* level of abstraction in the courts.... and that itself a fine use of societal attention, money and intelligence.

It says that IP Maximalists have a strong and narrow scope of comprehension and are good at focusing in on one aspect of reality, the value of IP, but utterly blind to the larger picture of society their ideas have to exist in.

The fact that people are offended by their ideas baffles them; the IP Maximalist looks around uncomprehending at their distress. What's wrong? What did I say? I didn't intend to offend anyone ...

OK Giraffdata, suppose we permit the patenting of algorithms that you can do in your head. What sort of regime would have to be imposed between people in order to facilitate the prosecution of violations, never mind find them?

OK GiraffeData, what effect over time would the existence of such a regime have on human intercourse and our perception of each other and attitudes towards each other?

I just got done reading a review of a study by a psychologist, you know a scientist, someone who lives under the constraint of having to PROVE her ideas are true. Of course compared to your program, each of their ideas is VASTLY more modest in scope and effect than what you're proposing for society, so perhaps this won't interest you, but nevertheless maybe other readers will see my point.

In this study she was able to show that the mere MENTION of money casually, in passing, had the effect of making the study's volunteers LESS altruistic towards strangers.

Now I can imagine all kinds of arguments being made that the idea of money makes people more altruistic because they have to cooperate to get it so the more we inject the concept of money into everything, the more altruistic people will become!

The difference is, one is just an idea, a philosophy, a hypothesis about how people will behave in hypothetical circumstances and the other is what a scientific study shows to be true about humans.

This is one study. It doesn't prove anything definitively and forever, even about people's behaviour in the rarefied and contrived circumstances which were realized in the study .

How many studies have the IP Maximalists done? Zero. Their ideas are purely exercises in inductive and, god help us, deductive reasoning using at best tangentially related statistical studies produced by academic economic departments and ideologically motivated "think tanks".

People are revulsed by the IP Maximalist program for reasons that have nothing to do with the internal logical cohesion of the myopic set of ideas they propose. They're revulsed because a few million years of evolution have left them with brains which naturally reject this kind of thing as BAD for society, even before any psychologist performs any experiment. This intuitive sense goes by different names. History or tradition or common sense or culture.

If a few million years of evolution left you with another kind of brain, then at least know that just as everyone else can understand the difference between a software patent and a hardware patent, so also everyone else finds the idea of patenting thought algorithms, play plot devices, business methods, incentive schemes, arrangements of data, arrangements of ideas, arrangements of human activity, the mere presentation or interaction order of just anything- useful and novel or otherwise, and finally, yes software, as inherently revolting and highly destructive to the fabric of society.

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Feb 2, 2012 17:01 UTC (Thu) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link] (2 responses)

> If it requires a significant investment to arrive at an algorithm you can do in your head, one which would others would want to use, isn't it in our best interest to offer a monopoly on use of the algorithm to the inventor?

As various studies have shown, it's not in our best interest to offer monopolies at all, even for things which *are* within the domain of patents.

However, to consider granting monopolies over certain patterns of thought... I'm having a hard time believing that you're serious. Among other things, it would be a very literal form of thoughtcrime, which implies not only an incredible infringement of the rights of the individual, but also that it would be impossible to enforce fairly.

Moreover, historically, algorithms have been researched because they were needed for a specific task, not because of the promise of a patent, and once used they are basically impossible to maintain as a trade secret. Consequently, no further incentives are required to encourage either the discovery of algorithms or their public disclosure. A monopoly in this case does not merely cost the public more than it benefits them, as with normal patents; it is a pure public cost which brings *no* public benefit.

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Feb 2, 2012 18:04 UTC (Thu) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (1 responses)

However, to consider granting monopolies over certain patterns of thought

Right, I was not contemplating granting a monopoly over the thinking, but rather other applications of the invention such as selling of a machine that uses the algorithm. The criterion you gave for something not worthy of a patent was that it be theoretically possible to do it in your head, not that that was the only way to profit from it. I framed the question from that definition.

If you're right that monopolies are always bad, then it follows that the algorithm invention shouldn't be patentable, but it doesn't explain why there should be a patentability distinction between algorithm and not algorithm, which I think you said there should be.

But if you're right that historically inventors of algorithms have got enough value out of the first application of the invention to repay the investment and the algorithm could not be kept secret, and your implication that that is not true of other kinds of inventions, then that's a good reason for the distinction.

I'm not sure it would be easier for a judge to determine whether an invention is an algorithm or not than it would be to simply determine whether the invention meets those two underlying criteria. I thought you were alluding to some more fundamental property of algorithms. It reminds me of an argument that preference for scholarships should be given to black students because statistics show black families have less money, and the counterargument that you could do even better by just giving preference to students whose families have less money.

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Feb 3, 2012 1:39 UTC (Fri) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link]

> Right, I was not contemplating granting a monopoly over the thinking, but rather other applications of the invention such as selling of a machine that uses the algorithm.

First, though I realize this is generally overlooked, software is merely a passive description of an algorithm, qualitatively no different from the description in the patent application. A machine storing such software is qualitatively no different than the paper the patent application was written on--a medium containing a stored description of the algorithm. It is only when the machine is actually used that you could say that the algorithm is being used--by the owner or operator of the machine, not whoever manufactured or sold it.

However, we then run into the second issue: in attempting to avoid monopolizing people's thoughts, we've codified an excessively limited interpretation of the term "thinking". Increasingly, people are integrating computers into their day-to-day lives and routinely using them to aid their own thought processes. I would hate to formalize a legal distinction at this point between "thinking" which goes on entirely in one's brain and "thinking" which incorporates technology to a greater or lesser degree.

Without that distinction, however, any time a person evaluates an algorithm on a general-purpose computer they are "thinking". Ergo, if you exclude "thinking" from actions which can infringe on the patent, you are left with very little in the way of actual monopolies.

Finally, to approach the issue from a different direction, all the novelty is in the algorithm, not the machine, which is merely a general-purpose computer. In my opinion, at least, if you're not patenting the algorithm in its own right, any novelty in the algorithm shouldn't count toward fulfilling the overall requirements. That would be rather like inventing a novel kind of transistor, using it in a textbook-standard amplifier circuit, and then being granted a patent on that standard amplifier design incorporating the new transistors. (Correct me if I'm wrong, but I certainly *hope* you couldn't a patent like that...)

> ... it doesn't explain why there should be a patentability distinction between algorithm and not algorithm ...

The novelty criteria isn't limited to software patents, of course, but software patents suffer from the systemic issue that only the unpatentable abstract algorithm is actually novel--given the algorithm, a device which implements it via a general-purpose computer is nothing new or surprising. All software patents have this problem, which is why they're singled out.

> I'm not sure it would be easier for a judge to determine whether an invention is an algorithm or not than it would be to simply determine whether the invention meets those two underlying criteria.

I think you're making it sound harder to classify something as a software patent than it really is. One simple question would do: is the invention present before you load the software? If no, it's a software patent. Still, you might be right about the cost/benefit analysis being easier in some cases. Now if only patent examiners were permitted to reject applications simply because they feel the patent fails to provide sufficient public benefit... sweet, sweet chaos. I can't imagine the examiners or the applicants tolerating that degree of subjectivity. This, of course, is part of the reason inventions are classified into patentable and unpatentable subject matter.

Algorithms, as such, are already an unpatentable subject matter (math). The real question in this debate is how to interpret "novelty" and "obviousness" when patentable and unpatentable subjects are mixed together, particularly when it's just the non-patentable part which is novel or non-obvious.

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Feb 1, 2012 23:25 UTC (Wed) by java_developer (guest, #82469) [Link]

What nybble41 said and also-- there is a very clear line to be drawn, it's just that you think we should not draw it. Let's just agree on that. I respect you think that the transformations provided by software should not be prevented from patentability. But let's nto say , "gooly there exists no line between software and hardware" because the EU fond it quite readily and canonized it into a set of laws that everyone understands. .

What's the POINT of patents again? Oh yeah, to serve a societal good. How does locking up things as this high a level of abstraction serve a societal good? The EU thinks UI and computer ONLY "inventions" are bad for progress. Maybe that's because those things were being invented a mile a minute- and by for profit companies too- before software patents were invented.

You know there are hypotheticals and there are things which can be proven. Of the types of proofs in the world, the strongest type is "the existence proof", which is, the thing stands before you, therefore, this proves it exists.

Progress in software and the associated user interfaces and purposes to which software is put went through a period of time when it was not patented. That would be when almost everything of interest was created including WIMP word processors spread sheets drawing programs etc etc etc.

This should be enough to PROVE that software innovation doesn't need patenting.

If you need still more proof, then the plethora of studies I've cited in this thread should be enough to prove that patenting software has deleterious effect on innovation and economic participation.

The thing stands before you, so let's not hear any arguments about "if we took patents away, no one would innovate anything!"

As far as the "proper" level of abstraction argument goes, if we're going patent slide to unlock then let's all go for it and start patenting every arrangement of all things universally. This is what IP maximalist actually want. We can patent everything to do with writing.. I know for a fact that directors have a set of tricks they use to make certain impressions on audiences.. they deliberately and specifically set about to build sympathy
for a leading characters using a certain set of techniques which can be quantified within a time-duration range and specified as clearly as any software patent.

There's a way to type at your keyboard, a way to organize people to get them to behave in certain ways, the universities are perpetually inventing new ways in which people things and animals can be arranged, coaxed, altered, influenced, and otherwise directed to some good end each of which is novel useful and advances the state of some art.

The reason we don't permit this is because if it's driven to its logical conclusion, everyone would see how ridiculous it all is. There is zero difference between a slide to unlock patent and an employee incentive scheme, a strategy to attack your competitors product line , a technique in the courtroom, a way of coordinating employee's activities.. why are we making software and computers the sole target of this "what level of abstraction" type arguments when there's an entire world of thing and activities that had formerly been free of IP constraints which are just waiting to be constrained?

You accuse us of arbitrarily setting the level of abstraction in some arbitrary place. With all due respect sir, look who's talking.

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Jan 20, 2012 10:01 UTC (Fri) by jrn (subscriber, #64214) [Link] (4 responses)

> To use an example any child can comprehend, wooden blocks with the letters "A", "B", and "C" carved into them are hardware. The letters "A", "B", and "C" themselves are software.

So a company selling operating system CDs is a hardware vendor, I suppose.

Software is The Glass Bead Game

Posted Jan 20, 2012 15:50 UTC (Fri) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link] (3 responses)

> So a company selling operating system CDs is a hardware vendor, I suppose.

Not unless they're selling them for about twenty cents each (the cost of a blank CD, plus handling). The CD is indeed hardware, but the value in this case isn't the hardware, it's the copy of the software embedded in it. The hardware is incidental to their business, and could be trivially replaced with any other convenient storage medium, or even no hardware at all (e.g. direct download).

Actually real price was something like $3-$5 at the time...

Posted Jan 20, 2012 16:02 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (2 responses)

Not unless they're selling them for about twenty cents each (the cost of a blank CD, plus handling).

It's not feasible to sell them for $0.2. You'll not cover even S&H costs. $3-$5 is realistic, and yes, it was done when that made sense.

Actually real price was something like $3-$5 at the time...

Posted Jan 20, 2012 16:22 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link]

When you buy a CD of something that you could download for free, because for whatever reason you want a CD, are you buying hardware or software? I think I'm buying hardware.

Actually real price was something like $3-$5 at the time...

Posted Jan 20, 2012 16:52 UTC (Fri) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link]

> You'll not cover even S&H costs. $3-$5 is realistic, and yes, it was done when that made sense.

I wasn't counting shipping in the price, just the blank CD and whatever it costs to burn data onto it. Feel free to substitute a more realistic base cost; it's been a while since I priced blank CDs, and the overhead was no more than a guess. Including S&H, $3-$5 is well within the margin of error.

In the case you cited, as giraffedata pointed out, they really were a hardware & service vendor--they were paid for the CDs and the service of filling them with third-party software (plus S&H). No one would pay them for the software itself knowing that said software is available for free.

In short, if you're making a standard retail markup over the cost of manufacturing the discs, you're a hardware/service vendor. If you're making significantly more than that, then you're being paid for the data on the disc, not the disc itself, which makes you a software vendor.

This is just crazy...

Posted Jan 20, 2012 6:04 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (3 responses)

For the purposes of testing your invention, you use an existing, not very interesting, process to convert your software to something physical.

If this is indeed existing, not very interesting, process then the patent is not needed.

Drugs were mentioned above as patent-worthy because they are hardware. They're software.

How come?

The part where you express a drug as a pill and put it in someone's mouth is a fairly small part of the invention process; if we could download a drug into a test subject through the retina, the drug wouldn't be much less costly to invent.

The part where you express drug as a pill has nothing whatsoever to do with sane drug patents. The part which explains how drug affect the patient is what is patented (I assume there are patents which explain how you can create round, square and triangle pill - these are netirely worthless). You can not express this as math because you can not express patient as math. You can design some models, etc, but ultimately you must test your model on real patients - and this is where bulk of costs comes from.

Hardware vs software

Posted Jan 20, 2012 16:46 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (2 responses)

I'm not sure what your point is, since you start with "This is just crazy," then agree with most of what the parent post said.

For the purposes of testing your invention, you use an existing, not very interesting, process to convert your software to something physical.
If this is indeed existing, not very interesting, process then the patent is not needed.

Right, the inventor does not apply for a patent on that process. Mainly because the machines that fabricate the drug are already patented (they were interesting when they were new). The patent claims cover the informational inputs to that process.

Drugs were mentioned above as patent-worthy because they are hardware. They're software.
How come?

That's what the sentences after "They're software" were intended to explain.

The part which explains how drug affect the patient is what is patented You can not express this as math because you can not express patient as math. You can design some models, etc, but ultimately you must test your model on real patients - and this is where bulk of costs comes from.

And all of that applies equally (except in degree) to one-click web ordering and to ibuprofen. Which is why I say there isn't a distinction, for the purposes of this discussion, between hardware and software.

Right. Drama and prose are the same. Law and Science are the same.

Posted Jan 20, 2012 17:42 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (1 responses)

And all of that applies equally (except in degree) to one-click web ordering and to ibuprofen.

You may as well decree that all texts are the same. Law and science, prose and verses, patents and computer programs - they all use the same 26 letters and occasional punctuation and few foreign words. There are no difference between them (except in degree)!

Which is why I say there isn't a distinction, for the purposes of this discussion, between hardware and software.

If there are no difference then why US5960411 talks mostly about client system, server system, HTML documents and other things which have no relation to the physiology of humans at all while US5288507 talks about advatages of analgetic/antacid combination over the combination of racematic ibuprofen with an analgesic? If the patent indeed is all about how human which should react on 1-click web design then surely observations of human reactions should fill the bulk of patent? And surely "novelity" and "non-obviousness" should be related to this aspect? In particular you should concentrate on the idea that less clicks will lead to larger sales and this observation (tested in real world) should be checked for novelity and non-obviousness and computer-side architecture can be confined to non-protected examples?

Right. Drama and prose are the same. Law and Science are the same.

Posted Jan 21, 2012 19:10 UTC (Sat) by java_developer (guest, #82469) [Link]

"You may as well decree that all texts are the same. Law and science, prose and verses, patents and computer programs - they all use the same 26 letters and occasional punctuation and few foreign words. There are no difference between them (except in degree)!

You're hiding. You're driving your opponent's argument into a reductio ad absurdum while hoping no one notices that for your own argument the road to absurdum is the briefest of brief, straight shots.

For the one-click patent, no part and no combination of parts exists at a level which is not purely abstract. It's not about single clicks. It's not about clicks at all. It's about a unitary intention emanating from the user.

It doesn't require mice. It doesn't require a specific input device at all. It's about any human computer interface device which transmits a humans intention to the computer whatsoever.

It's not about the specific steps executed by the javascript code. It doesn't require any language to execute any specific instructions of any machine at all.

It's about the abstract resulting end state of a set of abstract entities irrespective of the individual steps through which that ends state was achieved or what the embodiment of the abstract entities are.

This is how things USED to work...

Posted Jan 20, 2012 5:55 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Now, if you were to design a novel hardware *component* for use in actual, physical circuits, that would be be an entirely different matter. In that case you've invented a novel way to use the physical properties of the universe toward a specific goal. If anything justifies a patent, that would. To get to this point you have to reduce your abstract ideas to practice, i.e. actually build something, or at least show that in principle the component could be constructed from real materials.

Well, this is exactly how patent system was designed initially. Of course this approach worked poorly if someone wanted to use patents as a deterrent thus later these requirements were abandoned.

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 18, 2012 5:57 UTC (Wed) by sitaram (guest, #5959) [Link] (1 responses)

let me say this before this article gets too many comments...

We might need a "collapse thread" feature to the threads (or have I missed it somehow?)

Some people take an article about X and launch into a long debate about Y, and for people who don't care about Y it gets tedious paging down, and or looking at the left edge to find the next comment that is outside that sub-thread.

Actually, just printing the indentation number (perhaps in parens) next to each comment subject line would be fine; I can Ctrl-F for the next comment with the same number in parens.

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 27, 2012 6:42 UTC (Fri) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]

> Actually, just printing the indentation number (perhaps in parens) next to each comment subject line would be fine; I can Ctrl-F for the next comment with the same number in parens.

Have you mailed that in as a suggestion? I like it! =:^)

Meanwhile, IIRC there was an LWN firefox extension or at least grease monkey script. I've never tried it, but it could well have something like this, and if it doesn't, adding it should be reasonably easy, I'd think.

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 18, 2012 2:52 UTC (Wed) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link] (5 responses)

Was there no mention of Qi Hardware or Osmocom SDR?

http://qi-hardware.com/
http://sdr.osmocom.org/

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 18, 2012 16:25 UTC (Wed) by ortalo (guest, #4654) [Link] (1 responses)

I wonder if the OGP OpenGraphics qualifies as one of the oldest.
http://wiki.opengraphics.org/tiki-index.php

At least, that's probably one old open hardware project trying to address some annoying limitations of hardware (namely 3D chipsets lack of programming documentation).
It seems to me OpenCores is even older: www.opencores.org

Strange Bruce Perens does not mention them.

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 24, 2012 19:50 UTC (Tue) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

I have always considered the Open Graphics project to be very important. I hope they eventually become more than a prototype - one has to be a developer to get an OGD1. But I note that there have been no announcements since 2010.

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 18, 2012 17:43 UTC (Wed) by mtaht (guest, #11087) [Link] (1 responses)

Can I add the 'mesh potato' to the list of original innovators in the open hardware space? as well as it's predecessor, the IP04. David Rowe was way out in front here:

http://www.rowetel.com/blog/?p=27

http://villagetelco.org/mesh-potato-faq/

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 24, 2012 19:58 UTC (Tue) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

David gave his own talk, and repeated it after it won "best of conference". Of course we are working together on Codec2.

David's girlfriend kindly hosted David, myself, Jean-Marc Valin (Speex, Opus), and Tim Terriberry (Theora, CELT) at her home for several days after the conference. Jean-Marc added statistical methods to the Codec2 codebook training during the visit, making the compression about a third better at equivalent signal-to-noise.

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 24, 2012 19:46 UTC (Tue) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

It's pointless to ask why I haven't mentioned something, there was only about 50 minutes in which I gave two speeches. One can't possibly do an exhaustive list in that time.

Osmocom is interesting. I happen to have a few pf the original Ettus Research USRPs from a previous grant project, so I haven't used Osmocom yet.

Qi is interesting, but will be important if they ever manage to break out of being a nerds-only product.

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 18, 2012 3:49 UTC (Wed) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]

I am reminded of XKCD:

http://xkcd.com/743/

Again the 'slavery' non-sense.

Posted Jan 18, 2012 9:58 UTC (Wed) by fb (guest, #53265) [Link] (9 responses)

Every time I see a FOSS proponent refer to the usage of proprietary software as 'slavery', I remind myself how out of touch with reality some people can be.

That some of the most prominent FOSS people (i.e. folks who give keynote presentations in major FOSS conferences) keep -consciously- using 'slavery' to talk about usage of proprietary software is particularly depressing.

Are these people so out of touch with reality that they actually believe that using an iPhone equates to slavery to one's phone?

Don't they realize what happens to their credibility once they start spouting such a non-sense?

Or perhaps these folks are so ignorant that they don't know what slavery means? That it exists still in many places? Or they don't realize (or care) about how they are cheapening the suffering of so many by equating it to the usage of a fancy phone?

Again the 'slavery' non-sense.

Posted Jan 18, 2012 10:41 UTC (Wed) by niner (guest, #26151) [Link] (7 responses)

It's like calling someone who copies some information a pirate which a real victim of a real pirate might find inappropriate as well. But language is fluent that way. Words change or aquire new meanings which may or may not be related to the original.

Again the 'slavery' non-sense.

Posted Jan 18, 2012 11:42 UTC (Wed) by fb (guest, #53265) [Link] (6 responses)

> Words change or aquire new meanings which may or may not be related to the original.

I reckon you would have -somewhat of- a point if there were people outside of the FOSS fringe using the word 'slavery' with such a meaning. But there aren't.

Words don't change or acquire new meanings just because you decided so. Try gathering a number of friends and associating a bad word, say 'pig' (or 'slaver') with a given minority, say 'foobar', and later (assuming you get into court for it) telling a judge that: "hey, its just language! My co-worker should not feel offended, 'our' language just changed and we are using 'pig' as a synonym for 'foobar'". Sure.

BTW just like I find it deplorable to mangle concepts such as copyrights and patents into 'intellectual property' in order to obfuscate discussions and push an agenda forward; I also find it deplorable to mangle 'proprietary software' with 'slavery' in order to push an agenda forward.

Again the 'slavery' non-sense.

Posted Jan 18, 2012 20:11 UTC (Wed) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link]

> Words don't change or acquire new meanings just because you decided so.

That is essentially how it happens. Someone says so, someone else understands, understanding spreads and eventually you have a well accepted new meaning.

Again the 'slavery' non-sense.

Posted Jan 19, 2012 20:09 UTC (Thu) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link] (4 responses)

I reckon you would have -somewhat of- a point if there were people outside of the FOSS fringe using the word 'slavery' with such a meaning. But there aren't.

You've never heard anyone use the word "slave" or "slavery" metaphorically before? It's a pretty widespread phenomenon... "I'm a slave to the grind!", "He's a slave to drugs!", "I've been slaving away at this drudgery all day!", etc... You might want to check a dictionary, and you may find such uses are common enough to be listed as valid definitions for the words...

Do you also object to the naming of master/slave relationships between hardware/software?

Again the 'slavery' non-sense.

Posted Jan 20, 2012 12:06 UTC (Fri) by fb (guest, #53265) [Link] (3 responses)

> You've never heard anyone use the word "slave" or "slavery" metaphorically before? It's a pretty widespread phenomenon... "I'm a slave to the grind!", "He's a slave to drugs!", "I've been slaving away at this drudgery all day!", etc...

While that happens often in colloquial language, I've never seen it used like that in a consequent and purposeful manner in a formal setting.

Words have meanings, and these meanings have consequences. Try purposefully and consequently associating a bad word (e.g. 'slaver', 'pig') with a given minority at work to see what happens.

To me that is just the same cheap game of 'associate something you don't like with something that outrages people to get a bigger response' that is also played with 'think about the children'. Except this one is played by key FOSS advocates, associating 'proprietary software' with 'slavery'. Aren't this the same people who are so very careful when talking about word choice when it is to disambiguate 'intellectual property' and copyright and patents? Aren't this the same people who are always so careful about using GNU/Linux?

> Do you also object to the naming of master/slave relationships between hardware/software?

I can tell you, most sincerely, that I very much object such use. It appalled me the first time I read such language in a book (more than 10 years ago), and it appalls me still.

Again the 'slavery' non-sense.

Posted Jan 20, 2012 13:59 UTC (Fri) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link] (2 responses)

> Try purposefully and consequently associating a bad word (e.g. 'slaver',
> 'pig') with a given minority at work to see what happens.

I have no idea why you keep bringing this strange analogy up... How is that in any way similar? What "minority" is being insulted here? The "minority" of proprietary software? I'm pretty sure that's like calling a white male a "honkey"; no one cares or is insulted, including the white male in question!

> Words have meanings

Yes they do, and I already pointed you to a dictionary documenting some of those collequial/metaphorical meanings as being well established and accepted by most people in the world...

> To me that is just the same cheap game of 'associate something you don't
> like with something that outrages people to get a bigger response' that
> is also played with 'think about the children'. Except this one is
> played by key FOSS advocates, associating 'proprietary software' with
> 'slavery'.

And, here I somewhat agree with you... It's kind of silly, and surely there's a better metaphor... (The "rent vs. own" concept seems to work well...) However, at the same time, I also think it's silly to get all worked up over a commonly used term as if it were the most offensive thing ever uttered by another human being... It's not offensive in any way that I can see... It's just silly...

> I can tell you, most sincerely, that I very much object such use. It
> appalled me the first time I read such language in a book (more than 10
> years ago), and it appalls me still.

Well, ok, at least you're consistent... But, I still find it somewhat crazy that anyone would take offense to such a commonly used term... As someone else pointed out, it strikes me as exactly as ridiculous as RMS going all super-offended about the modern use of "piracy"... Or, someone religious getting offended over calling background server processes "daemons"... Or, once we had a customer call in VERY offended that one of our error messages mentioned something about killing a child process; apparently, they had recently lost their child, and felt the error message was insensitive to their tragic loss... We also had someone call in to complain about a message that said a command was "invalid", because they read it as the noun form of the word, and they were disabled, so felt insulted by the message...

Again the 'slavery' non-sense.

Posted Jan 20, 2012 14:55 UTC (Fri) by fb (guest, #53265) [Link] (1 responses)

> I have no idea why you keep bringing this strange analogy up... How is that in any way similar? What "minority" is being insulted here? The "minority" of proprietary software? I'm pretty sure that's like calling a white male a "honkey"; no one cares or is insulted, including the white male in question!

As I understand, the intended meaning of this comment is both that _users_ of proprietary software are 'slaves', as well as producers/sellers of such software are 'slavers'.

>> To me that is just the same cheap game of 'associate something you don't
>> like with something that outrages people to get a bigger response' that
>> is also played with 'think about the children'. Except this one is
>> played by key FOSS advocates, associating 'proprietary software' with
>> 'slavery'.

> And, here I somewhat agree with you... It's kind of silly, and surely there's a better metaphor... (The "rent vs. own" concept seems to work well...) However, at the same time, I also think it's silly to get all worked up over a commonly used term as if it were the most offensive thing ever uttered by another human being... It's not offensive in any way that I can see... It's just silly...

I don't think this is silly, as we have a group determined to associate 'slavery' with a whole bunch of honest working people.

But I think we can agree to disagree on it.

Again the 'slavery' non-sense.

Posted Jan 20, 2012 15:37 UTC (Fri) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link]

> As I understand, the intended meaning of this comment is both that _users_
> of proprietary software are 'slaves', as well as producers/sellers of such
> software are 'slavers'.

Yes... So, the "insult" (if you can call it that) is being directed at the sellers of proprietary software... I'm sorry, but I'm having a hard time viewing them as a downtrodden "minority" of any sort... The users aren't being insulted; they're being described as victims... At one point in history, perhaps calling someone a "slave" could be meant as an insult, but these days it's clearly meant to describe someone who is a victim of whatever is "enslaving" them, be it drugs, boring drudge work, or yes, proprietary software...

> I don't think this is silly, as we have a group determined to associate
> 'slavery' with a whole bunch of honest working people.

Well, it's not like they just invented the metaphorical usage of the term... They are merely carrying on a similar usage that's well established... I don't think anyone takes the usage literally, and imagines that software makers are out there with whips beating their users and chaining them to desks or something... Everyone knows it's a metaphor, even if it's somewhat of an overblown, reaching one... As I said, it seems exactly equivalent to me to calling copyright infringers "pirates"... Both are outrageous metaphorical stretches of the original meaning of the words... But, neither seems worth getting upset about...

Again the 'slavery' non-sense.

Posted Jan 24, 2012 20:21 UTC (Tue) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

The concept of man as a slave of his tools might originate in the philosophy of Herbert Marcuse or perhaps I need to dig even deeper. I first encountered a different version of it it in Glory Season, a novel by David Brin. Marcuse's use of it is that man is the slave of the economic means of production, in both the systems of capitalism and communism, Marcuse thus felt that one wasn't an improvement over the other. The use in Brin's novel was that one was a slave of one's tools if one could not understand their internal operations and thus not fully control them.

Surely our situation is not as bad as a person who is entirely a chattel. There have been many such sad souls and continue to be many. But I submit that most of us are to some extent held in bondage through economic means if not otherwise. Many Americans seem to be in some form of debt slavery. The kiting of home prices through the provision of almost-infinite credit for their purchase has resulted in many people working for their entire lives to pay for their homes, and of course the rest of the story is in the news.

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 18, 2012 10:18 UTC (Wed) by Wummel (guest, #7591) [Link] (6 responses)

Now we are seeing open source software being sold as apps to people who don't know that they are buying something they could have for free.

So did he meant to say that selling open source apps for money is good or bad? The GPL allows selling your software as long as you provide source code. So I like it when people make GPL apps and sell them for example on the android market. I still get the freedom, and the developer gets some money (if I decide not to compile the app myself).
What do you think?

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 18, 2012 13:00 UTC (Wed) by rvfh (guest, #31018) [Link]

> What do you think?
I fully agree. "Free as in free speech, not free beer."

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 18, 2012 14:58 UTC (Wed) by angdraug (subscriber, #7487) [Link] (4 responses)

It's totally ok to sell open source apps for money as long as buyers are aware that the app is open source and can with a little more effort can be used for free.

The problem is that many users of mobile apps are not made aware of the freedoms they are given, they're not given a reason to care about these freedoms, and, as it always happens with freedoms we don't care about, they gradually loose all these freedoms.

Even bigger problem is that a freedom can't exist in isolation for one person and not for everyone. When these vast majority of mobile app users (former Internet users) give up their freedoms, these freedoms are also eroded for those who do care about them. I believe that's part of the point Bruce was trying to make: we can only keep the essential software freedoms if we make everyone, not just our small and increasingly marginalized community, care about them. Scratching your own itch is not going to be enough, we gotta learn to rub other people's backs, too.

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 18, 2012 15:25 UTC (Wed) by Otus (subscriber, #67685) [Link] (3 responses)

> It's totally ok to sell open source apps for money as long as buyers are
> aware that the app is open source and can with a little more effort can be
> used for free.

More important in my opinion: aware that they can give it to their friends if they like it.

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 18, 2012 15:26 UTC (Wed) by angdraug (subscriber, #7487) [Link]

Very true.

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 18, 2012 17:19 UTC (Wed) by wilck (guest, #29844) [Link] (1 responses)

In my experience, in the Android market, app creators are using "open source" as a marketing attribute. People are made aware of openness, and some seem to actually appreciate that.

But these apps are few. Free (as in beer) apps, on the other hand, are plenty. They account for ~70% of the offerings on the android market (http://www.androlib.com), and their share in terms of downloads is even higher. With these "free" apps, ordinary people care little if they can give the app to their neighbour - after all, neighbour can download the same app for "free" any time if he wants. The freedom to improve and modify the code is only valuable for hackers, a tiny minority of users.

Whether we like it or not, the "Market" business model is attracting not only more users, but also many more developers than the FOSS model.

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 18, 2012 19:53 UTC (Wed) by fuhchee (guest, #40059) [Link]

"Whether we like it or not, the "Market" business model is attracting not only more users, but also many more developers than the FOSS model."

Money talks, and google advertising money talks loudly.
So how does one counter that?

generic vs closed platforms

Posted Jan 18, 2012 11:00 UTC (Wed) by fb (guest, #53265) [Link] (35 responses)

Bruce talked about:
> a strong trend away from generic platforms, toward proprietary, locked-down platforms. In the end, we will be left with nowhere to run free systems, and only jail environments for applications.

For computers to start being part of every aspect of our lives, not only the price has to go down but also the complexity of using it.

While a generic platform may benefit the 'hacking user', for most users the (historical) complexity of it was actually a big problem.

I believe that the simplicity and assurance trade-off that comes with the 'walled garden' of iPhones and Kindles is a net positive for most users. I'm not saying that there aren't bad points to it, just saying it is a 'net positive'

The counter example is HTC that started providing means to unlock the bootloader of its most recent phones, and Samsung that hired Cyanogen from CyanogenMod to make sure it worked on all of their phones. So perhaps, the hacking niche may also turn out to be large enough to be worth supporting (to some extent).

generic vs closed platforms

Posted Jan 18, 2012 12:19 UTC (Wed) by oever (guest, #987) [Link] (33 responses)

Let me first say that I am a strong proponent of FOSS, which is also why I subscribe to LWN. At the moment, I have an iPad at home because I am porting my software WebODF to it. The point of that is to make it easier with people that have chosen for a closed product to still use open document formats.

While I support FOSS, especially as a long term goal, I have found that it is hard to explain the advantages because most people simply lack the ability for abstract thinking required to comprehend it. An iPad has a ton of software that allows you to do many things that you cannot do with other systems, simply because the software is not available to these systems. In the short term, that makes the iPad more free for many of the things that people want to do! (freedom: the ability to do what you want to do and say what you want to say). I have browsed through the app store and testing out some of the free applications there. The content dwarfs even debian. However, testing the programs is fine, looking at how they work or improving them is not. You cannot even install software in an iPad without a developer license.

To compete with this enormous repertoire of free and cheap software at a (currently) small price in terms of money and freedom is hard. Apps are striking a chord and I think FOSS can compete if we adapt our ecossystem to make it easy to develop apps and use them anywhere. By apps, I mean small tools that do one thing right, run on mobile devices that people have and look nice and are easy to use. Android is a reasonable choice if the google market is replaced with a community driven alternative. Another option might come from Mozilla: apps for the browser and a mobile operating system based on it.

Sorry for the exclamation mark, I thought it was appropriate.

generic vs closed platforms

Posted Jan 18, 2012 15:08 UTC (Wed) by pj (subscriber, #4506) [Link]

Agreed, app stores bring the rest of the world up to debian c.1998 (in terms of ease of installation), and it's a nice thing, don't get me wrong.

I tend to use the terms 'vendor lock-in' and 'walled garden' in connection with proprietary app stores, and then point out to people that "hey, yeah, there's an app for that... but VendorX won't let it be in their appstore". This gets them on the road to thinking about the things their phone _could_ do, but _isn't allowed to_ by their vendor.... and that way lies FOSS. :)

generic vs closed platforms

Posted Jan 18, 2012 17:25 UTC (Wed) by mjthayer (guest, #39183) [Link] (18 responses)

> While I support FOSS, especially as a long term goal, I have found that it is hard to explain the advantages because most people simply lack the ability for abstract thinking required to comprehend it.
Well, you just have to see that there are much fewer advantages for people who can't programme. Despite hand-waving about how people can group together and pay programmers to improve free software, in practice most small-scale users can't get enough cash together for that, so they are just switching their dependency from proprietary developers to free software ones. Bearing in mind here that the proprietary developers tend to have a certain dependency on the cash-flow coming from users, while free software developers are often doing the thing for the fun of it, and making users happy is a lower priority. Granted, if they have a problem any free software developer can help them with it, but my feeling is that there is a short supply of sufficiently altruistic ones.

Perhaps a way of improving this would be finding more ways in which non-developers can meaningfully contribute to free software, or at least lower the bar to entry. On the one hand that would make free software more fun for them - and I think that fun is a much understated reason why people use free software - and on the other it would make programmers keener to keep them happy.

generic vs closed platforms

Posted Jan 18, 2012 18:32 UTC (Wed) by jrn (subscriber, #64214) [Link] (2 responses)

> Perhaps a way of improving this would be finding more ways in which non developers can meaningfully contribute to free software, or at least lower the bar to entry. On the one hand that would make free software more fun for them - and I think that fun is a much understated reason why people use free software - and on the other it would make programmers keener to keep them happy.

Bug reporting was traditionally one way. While bug reports in general don't seem to be in short supply these days, good ones still are.

generic vs closed platforms

Posted Jan 19, 2012 5:10 UTC (Thu) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link]

One problem with that: developers willing to accept good bug reports are also in short supply. The clever ones tend to become disinterested pretty fast.

generic vs closed platforms

Posted Jan 19, 2012 9:36 UTC (Thu) by mjthayer (guest, #39183) [Link]

> Bug reporting was traditionally one way. While bug reports in general don't seem to be in short supply these days, good ones still are.

Actually I have to admit that despite my own "hand-waving" talk above, I haven't quite given up on the idea of people getting together to offer software bounties, if the right conditions can be had. I'm actively considering trying to set up a portal for that, based on the idea that the task set should be based around a bug ticket on a project's bug tracker (so that project developers can review it and have their say/give their advice before people start putting in money, and can guide the person doing the work) and that the bounty is a bonus to the person doing the work, but almost certainly not their main motivation (perhaps they are also affected by a bug, or want to get to know a project's codebase better or to gain new experience...)

generic vs closed platforms

Posted Jan 19, 2012 10:18 UTC (Thu) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link] (14 responses)

> the proprietary developers tend to have a certain dependency on the
> cash-flow coming from users, while free software developers are often
> doing the thing for the fun of it, and making users happy is a lower
> priority.

An argument that I use in business environments: open source software might care less about happiness of its users, but it will be around much longer. Since my customers have all had the experience of important proprietary tools being abandoned within a company, or sold to some other company, or being closed down during some A&M, or being not further supported owing to some other management decision, this doesn't happen to open source products as often.

And this has been a selling point for many contracts.

It's not quite clear to me if and how that argument can be migrated to situation of private software use, but it might be a pointer towards a possible direction.

I think martinfick offered great metaphor...

Posted Jan 19, 2012 10:29 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (13 responses)

It's not quite clear to me if and how that argument can be migrated to situation of private software use, but it might be a pointer towards a possible direction.

I think martinfick offered great metaphor: when you use proprietary software you are living in a rented apartment, when you use FOSS you live in your own house. This covers pluses and minuses very well, indeed. Proprietary software is supported by it's owner till it thinks it's good business - just like most problems with your rented apartment are solved by landlord, not by you... if it makes business sense. Free software is yours - and if there are probems with plumbing you may deicde to contract someone (this will be distributors) to fix that, or if you don't know anyone who'll do it "just right" you can do it yourself.

People know difference between rent and ownership very well, indeed. IMNSHO it's much, MUCH, MUCH better anologue then slavery accusations by free software proponents.

I think martinfick offered great metaphor...

Posted Jan 19, 2012 10:58 UTC (Thu) by mjthayer (guest, #39183) [Link] (12 responses)

> Free software is yours - and if there are probems with plumbing you may deicde to contract someone (this will be distributors) to fix that, or if you don't know anyone who'll do it "just right" you can do it yourself.

Except that coming back to my original point, chances that the home owner will be able to fix the plumbing themselves or find someone to do it at an affordable price are pretty good. Chances that a non-programmer will be able to fix a bug in their free software themselves or find someone to do it at an affordable price are much lower, so they are much more dependent on the good will of others for their software fixes than said home owner for their plumbing.

I think martinfick offered great metaphor...

Posted Jan 19, 2012 18:06 UTC (Thu) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link]

>Chances that a non-programmer will be able to fix a bug in their free software themselves or find someone to do it at an affordable price are much lower, so they are much more dependent on the good will of others for their software fixes than said home owner for their plumbing.
This is, surely, merely due to the youth of the market. It should change as open source becomes more 'normal' for average people.

I think martinfick offered great metaphor...

Posted Jan 19, 2012 20:17 UTC (Thu) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link] (10 responses)

> Except that coming back to my original point, chances that the home owner
> will be able to fix the plumbing themselves or find someone to do it at an
> affordable price are pretty good. Chances that a non-programmer will be
> able to fix a bug in their free software themselves or find someone to do
> it at an affordable price are much lower, so they are much more dependent
> on the good will of others for their software fixes than said home owner
> for their plumbing.

You really think you can get a plumber to fix your pipes cheaper than you can get a freelance/contract programmer to fix some open source bug for you? Either you've got incredibly cheap plumbers locally, or incredibly overpriced programmers! Or, you're really talking about more than fixing a simple bug, and instead talking about major functional changes; in which case, you need to change your plumber scenario to the cost of ripping out and installing all new pipes throughout the house...

I think martinfick offered great metaphor...

Posted Jan 20, 2012 8:20 UTC (Fri) by mjthayer (guest, #39183) [Link] (9 responses)

> You really think you can get a plumber to fix your pipes cheaper than you can get a freelance/contract programmer to fix some open source bug for you? Either you've got incredibly cheap plumbers locally, or incredibly overpriced programmers!

I must admit that I live in rented accommodation, so perhaps I just don't appreciate the prices. But if I may call your bluff, can you point me to the web site of a reasonably priced programming shop that will fix bugs in free software for the average person?

I think martinfick offered great metaphor...

Posted Jan 20, 2012 11:29 UTC (Fri) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link] (8 responses)

There are various web sites that hook people up with freelance programmers to work on various projects:

http://www.guru.com/
https://www.elance.com/
http://www.project4hire.com/

But, you could probably find someone willing and more capable of doing it right on the project's official mailing list or something! And, let's be truthful here: most of the time, you aren't even going to need to pay them a cent to fix the bug, because they'll WANT to fix it... However, if they won't, you do have plenty of options to get it fixed...

I think martinfick offered great metaphor...

Posted Jan 20, 2012 13:34 UTC (Fri) by mjthayer (guest, #39183) [Link] (7 responses)

> There are various web sites that hook people up with freelance programmers to work on various projects: [...]

I will have a look at those when I have time to try to work out what a typical bug-fix (if there is such a thing) would cost. I would expect it to be quite high, since unless you find programmers already familiar with the project you want a fix for you have all the overhead of the programmer understanding what you want, understanding the problem and getting to grips with the code before they can even begin fixing, and the overhead of communicating with the project owners to get the fix accepted afterwards (always harder than one would naively expect, unless one has been in the shoes of the project owners before).

> But, you could probably find someone willing and more capable of doing it right on the project's official mailing list or something! And, let's be truthful here: most of the time, you aren't even going to need to pay them a cent to fix the bug, because they'll WANT to fix it...

I certainly know that we (VirtualBox) have lots and lots of open bug tickets that no one has ever even found time to look at. And I thought that we were better than average, but perhaps I am wrong there.

I think martinfick offered great metaphor...

Posted Jan 20, 2012 14:08 UTC (Fri) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link] (4 responses)

> and the overhead of communicating with the project owners to get the fix
> accepted afterwards (always harder than one would naively expect, unless
> one has been in the shoes of the project owners before).

I had kind of assumed that in the case of needing to go to an outside party to get your fixes, that this step wouldn't even be done... Ie: upstream wasn't interested in this fix (or doesn't see it as a "fix" for anything), so you're effectively taking on your own fork...

> I certainly know that we (VirtualBox) have lots and lots of open bug
> tickets that no one has ever even found time to look at.

Sure... But, if someone posted that they considered one bug in particular to be VERY serious for them, and they were willing to pay you to fix it, don't you think that might spur you into tackling it?

I think martinfick offered great metaphor...

Posted Jan 20, 2012 14:37 UTC (Fri) by mjthayer (guest, #39183) [Link] (3 responses)

> Ie: upstream wasn't interested in this fix (or doesn't see it as a "fix" for anything), so you're effectively taking on your own fork...

That means that you are either foregoing all future fixes to the software or that you are willing to pay for future maintenance of your branch - how much do your local plumbers charge?

> Sure... But, if someone posted that they considered one bug in particular to be VERY serious for them, and they were willing to pay you to fix it, don't you think that might spur you into tackling it?

Almost everyone considers their particular bug to be very serious, some even telling us that it makes the product unusable (even if no one else has ever hit it and told us) and that it is not acceptable that we don't fix it immediately. A few do suggest paying us, but we would have a conflict of interest if we took their money for a fix done on work time (maybe even out of work time?) and I am usually not convinced enough that someone would put forward enough money to make it worth sacrificing precious free time for the job - my feeling is that they tend to be thinking of one or two hundred Euros, which by the time you have fixed the problem and done proper quality assurance on the fix (not to mention administrative overhead for freelance work, as I'm not currently working freelance on other things) is too little money.

I think martinfick offered great metaphor...

Posted Jan 20, 2012 15:09 UTC (Fri) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link] (2 responses)

> That means that you are either foregoing all future fixes to the software

Lots of people are perfectly content (even happier) running out-of-date software... Look at RHEL/CentOS... As long as you've got the important fixes, especially those that actually matter to you, many are happy to live without whatever new features (and most likely new bugs) newer versions bring... Yes, there may be some fixes in there, as well; if they're important enough, they can be ported into the local version, and you can surely find someone to do it...

> how much do your local plumbers charge?

A lot... But, the point is: much like plumbing problems, hopefully the need to do future software fixes will be a fairly rare thing... Yes, if you're using a bleeding-edge version of actively developed software, it's obviously going to continue having new bugs to deal with... But, an old stable product? Hopefully, you won't run into many very often, just as your pipes hopefully won't spring new leaks every week...

> Almost everyone considers their particular bug to be very serious

Don't I know it... But, far fewer truly care enough about it to put up (much) money to fix it... You're probably right that most of them wouldn't pay enough to even make it tempting... But, that in no way implies that someone couldn't pay to get it fixed if they truly wanted to and were willing to spend the money on it... It may not be cheap, but then neither will that plumber's visit or that auto mechanic's bill... And, unlike those, there's a really good chance you might just possibly find someone willing to fix it for you absolutely free, simply for the joy of coding...

I think martinfick offered great metaphor...

Posted Jan 20, 2012 15:43 UTC (Fri) by mjthayer (guest, #39183) [Link] (1 responses)

> But, that in no way implies that someone couldn't pay to get it fixed if they truly wanted to and were willing to spend the money on it...

People really willing to spend the money are often well-served by support contracts. But due to the way that they let/make private users pool their money together (game theory anyone?) I think that proprietary projects have the edge on affordable fixes for those people - and an incentive to actively look for and make those fixes. See also [1] though for my other ideas on the subject.

[1] http://lwn.net/Articles/476077/

I think martinfick offered great metaphor...

Posted Jan 20, 2012 16:08 UTC (Fri) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link]

> I think that proprietary projects have the edge on affordable fixes for those people

Possibly, in some cases... But, there's also the possibility that the proprietary software company just doesn't want to fix your particular issue for whatever reason (they don't see it as a bug, or are worried fixing it might break compatability, or whatever)... In that case, you're completely out of luck, unless you can find someone good with a disassembler and hacking assembly code these days (and willing to break the law to do so, since that's probably illegal)... With open source, at least you have the option to go elsewhere for your fix, if you should deem it important enough to do so...

As for your other comment about the bug bounty, I think that's a great idea... It'd be cool to see a little "Donate towards getting this bug fixed!" button on every open bug tracking entry... I don't know how many would do it, but I suspect the popular ones would get quite a few people throwing a few bucks at it... Of course, it might also encourage less scrupulous programmers from adding in bugs deliberately only to claim the bounties on them later... But, hopefully that'd be seen through fairly quickly, especially in an open source project... More likely, I suspect it would encourage new contributors to join in trying to fix the popular bugs, which can only really be a good thing...

I think martinfick offered great metaphor...

Posted Jan 20, 2012 16:47 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (1 responses)

as someone who has paid for custom fixed and patches to opensource code, I'll say that getting a major change done to opensource code is significantly cheaper than getting any change done to proprietary code (through professional services).

it's not as cheap as a plumber fixing a clogged drain, but the costs compared to getting changes and fixes in proprietary code are still much lower

I think martinfick offered great metaphor...

Posted Jan 20, 2012 17:03 UTC (Fri) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link]

> it's not as cheap as a plumber fixing a clogged drain

People call plumbers for that? Other than Liquid Plumber, I mean? ;-)

I was thinking more along the lines of repairing/replacing a busted/leaking pipe in my comparison...

generic vs closed platforms

Posted Jan 18, 2012 19:53 UTC (Wed) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455) [Link] (12 responses)

It's not that hard, if you use proprietary software, you are simply renting or borrowing it. Just like renting an apartment, you likely shouldn't reroute the plumbing if you don't like it. And like borrowing a friend's car (even if for free), you shouldn't modify it to go 200MPH if you can...

So when you "buy" an Ipad, you really aren't buying it; you are renting it by paying a lump sum up front. In some cases your lease can be terminated at any moment without reimbursement of that lump sum. Sounds like a great deal huh? :)

I think the fact that most people don't really care if it is a good deal is very similar to the fact the most people don't care if they have massive consumer debt and are paying 20%APR on their credit cards... I wonder what the correlation between apple products and consumer debt is (after all, most people likely underwent a credit check to purchase an iphone)?

generic vs closed platforms

Posted Jan 18, 2012 20:40 UTC (Wed) by fb (guest, #53265) [Link] (11 responses)

> So when you "buy" an Ipad, you really aren't buying it; you are renting it by paying a lump sum up front. In some cases your lease can be terminated at any moment without reimbursement of that lump sum. Sounds like a great deal huh? :)

Ok, so you tell that to your neighbor. He says: "my oh my, say Martin, I was planning to buy a tablet. You convinced me not to get the iPad. Which one should I buy? Which one won't leave me alone in the rain?

And then? What would you answer?

- I mean that Motorola Xoom was only a 'Google device' in the USA (UK also?). IIRC Everywhere else it had a locked bootloader.
- You are going to tell him to visit XDA, hack the bootloader of some Samsung tablet and install some guerrilla Android distribution?

Or just tell him not to buy any tablet, since (AFAIK) there really isn't one that fulfills FOSS liberties?

> I think the fact that most people don't really care if it is a good deal is very similar to the fact the most people don't care if they have massive consumer debt and are paying 20%APR on their credit cards...

Look I support FOSS as much as everyone else here.

Seriously, who do you think is making the most accurate risk assessment? You or the folks buying closed software?

How frequently does the nightmare stories that FOSS proponents like to bring forward actually happen w.r.t. proprietary software?

What is the actual likelihood that Amazon will delete books from my Kindles (I own 2)? I mean divide some estimate of all digital books Amazon has sold ('licensed' if you wish) by the number of Orwell novels that were deleted, and multiply that by some "guess-timate" of the likelihood that they will do this again.

generic vs closed platforms

Posted Jan 18, 2012 21:29 UTC (Wed) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455) [Link] (2 responses)

> Ok, so you tell that to your neighbor. He says: "my oh my, say Martin, I was planning to buy a tablet. You convinced me not to get the iPad. Which one should I buy? Which one won't leave me alone in the rain?

Hey I wasn't trying to convince anyone not to buy an iPad, I was just trying to give you a more accurate way of describing the action of buying an iPad versus the action of buying an open source tablet. In one case you are renting, in the other you are buying. It's up to them if they appreciate the benefits of one over the other.

I suspect that if more people thought about using proprietary software as renting that fewer people would do it, but that doesn't mean that I am implying that those who still would rent are wrong. I own a house, I don't rent, renting makes sense for plenty of people.

You believe that buying an open source tablet is currently hard, it may be, but there are options, you just need to research them if you care. Sometimes it is hard to buy things and sometimes you are better off renting. I suspect that most people think that renting expensive tools is a good idea instead of buying them. But I also suspect that few people rent tools for any extended period of time outside of computers/software, perhaps because they don't really yet see that they are renting it?

> How frequently does the nightmare stories that FOSS proponents like to bring forward actually happen w.r.t. proprietary software?

I don't know about nightmare stories, but I know that I certainly encounter real problems which are specific to the fact that the software is not open source almost anytime I have to rely on proprietary software: I cannot easily fix a pet peeve, I cannot easily install it somewhere else, it becomes obsolete with no upgrade path, it annoys me with license agreements, it plasters marketing material all over itself, it cares more about the needs of the software maker then mine, it gathers more data about me, it costs more money (over and over and over again), it rarely is nicely integrated with other software on my computer/device. Of course, since I rarely rely on proprietary software, it would be hard for it to cause a nightmare story for me, that is the point no? I also didn't ever have any nightmare stories renting apartments in the past, but there were enough small problems that I currently prefer to own, but this doesn't mean that I usually begrudge those who rent (unless they are intolerant of my desire to own, or have habits which make it harder for me to do so).

I think this is much better analogue :-)

Posted Jan 18, 2012 22:05 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (1 responses)

I suspect that if more people thought about using proprietary software as renting that fewer people would do it, but that doesn't mean that I am implying that those who still would rent are wrong. I own a house, I don't rent, renting makes sense for plenty of people.

I like this analogue much better then slavery word thrown around. When you buy iPad or proprietary software then you don't own the device - you only own the right to use it... till the real owner (Apple, Microsoft, whatever) will decide that you no longer deserve such right. But it's really your choice: you can continue to pay the rent, buy new versions, constantly upgrade hardware for no good reason - or you can choose the software which you own and which you can continue to keep in working order even if original developers abandoned it.

Now, sometimes it's perfectly fine to rent things. You don't own them, you know the real owner have the right to ask them back - but they work and you can live with that. And in many cases rent price is low enough - but you can always keep in mind that landlord can dicide to raise it and just throw you out. Thus sometimes it's obviously wrong choice.

In particular I'm much less picky with creator's software (I can buy and use proprietary filer for videoeditor, for example), but I ubsolutely detest situation when I need to rent player, too. That's why I've stopped using MS Office long ago: I can not own it and consequently I can not be sure I own my own documents till I test them all in LibreOffice. And if I test them in LibreOffice then it's simpler to just use LibreOffice from the start. But other proprietary tools (like VTune) are perfectly Ok: if they'll become unavailable (because I decide to buy AMD-based system, for example) then I'll lose valuable tool, but all the things I've gotten till now from using it will be available to me.

I think this is much better analogue :-)

Posted Jan 19, 2012 9:27 UTC (Thu) by mjthayer (guest, #39183) [Link]

> I like this analogue much better then slavery word thrown around.

Very strongly seconded. Even some of the ways the word "freedom" is used in free software circles make me feel very uneasy.

generic vs closed platforms

Posted Jan 19, 2012 5:46 UTC (Thu) by jmorris42 (guest, #2203) [Link] (7 responses)

> What is the actual likelihood that Amazon will delete books from my Kindles (I own 2)?

The odds they will suddenly delete your content? Probably low. But consider this: Every Plays for Sure track sold by Walmart, Yahoo! and Microsoft is now dead. Every Divx disc sold by Circuit City is deader than Circuit City.

The AZW format currently used by the Kindle will eventually be abandoned for ePub and someday Amazon will abandon support for the 'legacy' format in a future product line. Assuming they even continue making hardware long term in the first place. And when Amazon abandons AZW, just remember that it is illegal for anyone else to crack one open. Thee and me would know where to go to fix that, most folks won't.

And that is why investing in closed systems is usually a losing game. Unless you only care to use the content RIGHT NOW and couldn't care less that it has no future you should avoid DRM and other closed systems. So Netflix is ok, closed books aren't. I didn't buy a DVD until Mplayer gained support. No I didn't have a PC hooked to the TV at the time, but why buy into a sealed ecosystem?

Small correction

Posted Jan 19, 2012 8:18 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Every Divx disc sold by Circuit City is deader than Circuit City.

This is not true. Back then "content providers" still felt they have some obligations thus all Divx players were unlocked before Circuit City went out of business.

Later entrants often have not bothered to offer anything similar: in the cases where they thought about the problem at all it was your resposibility to save your collection, not theirs.

P.S. I've started buying DVDs after DVD Decrypter was released - think it happened before MPlayer added DVD support. I'm not picky: I dont' mind DRM as long as I have a way to circumvent it.

generic vs closed platforms

Posted Jan 19, 2012 9:29 UTC (Thu) by fb (guest, #53265) [Link] (5 responses)

> And that is why investing in closed systems is usually a losing game. Unless you only care to use the content RIGHT NOW and couldn't care less that it has no future you should avoid DRM and other closed systems.

> Unless you only care to use the content RIGHT NOW and couldn't care less that it has no future you should avoid DRM and other closed systems.

You know whats the problem with your assessment? The only value proposition, risk and cost you are willing to factor in is the DRM.

On the example of books w/ DRM:

Right now the only way to get most books digitally is WITH DRM. So therein lies a risk, and the portability issue (between e-readers). But that is yet another factor in the equation of the value proposition between digital-books with DRM and paper books.

For one, the storage of paper books have costs. Paper books have no DRM-risk but are subject to other risks (mold, water, fire, one's kid ripping it off). Carrying books have costs (when moving to a new house, or when going on vacation).

Why don't you factor the risk of a paper book getting molded, lost or stolen when you assess the DRM risk?

Why don't you factor in the cost of storing books? The odds that I will have to give up my books because I simply can't store them anymore?

We are back to "rent v own" question...

Posted Jan 19, 2012 10:19 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Why don't you factor the risk of a paper book getting molded, lost or stolen when you assess the DRM risk?

Why don't you factor in the cost of storing books? The odds that I will have to give up my books because I simply can't store them anymore?

I think rent/own analogue covers all these cases succinctly. If you own the book (be it physical or electronic one without DRM) then you and you alone are resposible for their future (if you can not afford to keep them or lose them dues to negligence then it's your problem - but on the flip side they can never be recalled or destroyed without your consent), if you rent it (and you can not buy DRMed book, you can only rent it) then you are limited in what you can do with it, but the losses are also covered by the real owner (you can usually readownload DRMed book on different device easily).

The more I think the more I like the explanation of FOSS as when you use proprietary software you are living in a rented apartment, when you use FOSS you live in your own house: this simple analogue covers almost all the differences in one short sentence. Proprietary software is not slavery (because you can always decide to not use it, after all), but it sure does not feel like an ownership.

generic vs closed platforms

Posted Jan 19, 2012 23:27 UTC (Thu) by cmccabe (guest, #60281) [Link] (1 responses)

> Right now the only way to get most books digitally is WITH DRM

There are companies like 1DollarScan and Bookscan that will scan your physical books and give you digital copies. Or you can do it yourself, of course. Either way, it's legal and you won't have to deal with DRM.

http://www.economist.com/node/21529030

generic vs closed platforms

Posted Jan 20, 2012 0:21 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

there are also publishers (like Baen) that sell e-books without DRM.

however the 'big 6' publishers are all making the same mistakes with e-books that the big music publishers did several years ago. they haven't yet gotten to the point of suing their customers, but if they keep making the same stupid mistakes they should start doing so in a couple of years.

generic vs closed platforms

Posted Jan 20, 2012 8:15 UTC (Fri) by ekj (guest, #1524) [Link] (1 responses)

This isn't true.

The only way to *legally* get *certain* books, is with DRM. There is no lack of legal books sold without DRM, and there is no lack of illegal books without DRM.

generic vs closed platforms

Posted Jan 20, 2012 12:24 UTC (Fri) by fb (guest, #53265) [Link]

To my knowledge, most books are only available with DRM. Note that I am aware of Baen, and O'Reilly.

There is a real lack of DRM-free books. There may be no lack of such for sci-fi or computing titles, but -to the best of my knowledge- most fiction (still under copyright) is only available with DRM. Trust me, for languages other than English the situation is even worse.

How many books from the last 30 Nobel prize of literature winners are available DRM-free? (Heck, how many of the books written by the winners of any Nobel prize in the last 30 years are available DRM-free?) If you are US-minded, from the last 30 Pulitzer prize winners, how many books are available DRM-free?

generic vs closed platforms

Posted Jan 18, 2012 19:12 UTC (Wed) by dbruce (guest, #57948) [Link]

>Bruce talked about:
>> a strong trend away from generic platforms, toward proprietary, locked-down platforms. In the end, we will be left with nowhere to run free systems, and only jail environments for applications.

This worries me, too. I'm old enough to have first learned that a computer was a machine used by programmers to write and run programs. When desktop computers became everyday office and consumer appliances, there was no longer the expectation that the user would be a programmer, and most of these machines no longer even had the tools and libraries required to write software. Still, these were general-purpose computers that most certainly could be used for programming with some additional software.

Fast-forwarding to the present, the public is increasingly preferring to use a smartphone, tablet, or game console instead of a "computer". We all know these are all computers, but the public doesn't see it that way and doesn't expect these devices to be arbitrarily configurable or programmable.

So I think we are coming full circle - specialized devices are being used for specific applications, and the general-purpose computer is once again going to be just for programmers. I don't see it can really disappear, as there has to be a way to write code for all the specialized gadgets. Maybe OSS will come to dominate the desktop once the desktop is nothing more than a small niche for developers, kind of like how Linux already runs nearly all the world's fastest supercomputers.

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 18, 2012 16:35 UTC (Wed) by ortalo (guest, #4654) [Link] (8 responses)

I am not sure this is a problem of presentation only.
Maybe it's just there is now a need for more open source projects targetting general purpose applications. Very recently, I wondered a few minutes on which project I could try to help if more time was available. (Yeah, I know I was dreaming.) Well, I was hesitating between a Unix kernel security for technical fun and KMyMoney for pure usefulness as a regular user. Maybe we simply need to put more work on end-user applications.

(Fun mode ON)
BTW, maybe it means we should make applications development *much* more difficult on open-source or GNU operating systems. It would have 2 direct benefits: make proprietary applications less efficient as professional (ie. unskilled) developpers painfully try to achieve something interesting; and attract more highly skilled open source developpers due to, eh, the difficulty of the task.
(Fun mode OFF)
We probably need to think first on how to attract open source developpers to such software projects.

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 18, 2012 17:27 UTC (Wed) by aleXXX (subscriber, #2742) [Link] (6 responses)

If you want to focus on end-user applications, KDE is a good place for you :-)

Especially, with mobile devices, apps and so on in mind, Plasma Active ( http://plasma-active.org/ ), is one of the most significant projects we currently have in FLOSS. It's basically using the plasma libraries, known from the KDE desktop, to build the user interface, apps and widgets for mobile devices like tablets etc.

Alex

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 18, 2012 19:07 UTC (Wed) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (4 responses)

Are there shipping devices?

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 18, 2012 20:43 UTC (Wed) by neilbrown (subscriber, #359) [Link] (3 responses)

Yes. The GTA04 can run plasma-active.

See here: http://blog.the-leviathan.ch/?p=308

and is shipping. See here: http://www.handheld-linux.com/wiki.php?page=GTA04

(yes, this is still under development so it isn't perfect yet).

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 24, 2012 20:36 UTC (Tue) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] (2 responses)

The GTA04 is a motherboard replacement for the Neo Freerunner or the Openmoko Neo 1973. Therefore you need such a device to install the new motherboard.

I hope they get beyond having such a rarefied audience.

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 25, 2012 0:41 UTC (Wed) by neilbrown (subscriber, #359) [Link] (1 responses)

True, but you can still buy the Neo Freerunner, and you'll see at the link I posted that you can order a complete phone (not sure how many they have parts for, but > 0).

Yes, I hope they/we get beyond such a narrow audience, but you have to start somewhere, and making cases is *hard* (though there have been small successes even there e.g. http://www.shapeways.com/shops/slyon)

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 25, 2012 0:57 UTC (Wed) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

Best of luck - we really do need this.

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 18, 2012 21:45 UTC (Wed) by ortalo (guest, #4654) [Link]

Maybe I misled you. KDE or Plasma Active may have some hack value indeed, however, by citing KMyMoney, I wanted to focus on the "money" part only.
This is a useful personal finance application, for... *personal finance* (to me at least).
Maybe that's where the effort should go now: finance apps, office apps, administrative file management for... (whatever is useful for the general public), geographical apps, education, etc. There are several already, but nothing that can be as bullet proof (and varied) as for C programming, network file transfer, etc.
I am even sure these things could have some hack value if only engineers could figure easily on themselves what is truly useful.

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 27, 2012 16:31 UTC (Fri) by whitemice (guest, #3748) [Link]

> Maybe it's just there is now a need for more open source projects
> targetting general purpose applications.

+1 And we need to collaborate better. There are oh so many "lite" applications and applications that got started over and over, many in the same problem domain. If developers would collaborate more on projects rather than whipping up yet another unfinished thing and then moving on we would be SO MUCH further. I've met this many times working on some project where someone comes a long sees some detail they don't like and then goes off on their own. Getting people to contribute commonly has gotten easier with better distributed development tools - but we haven't made any progress on the human factor. And I have no idea how to approach that problem.

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 18, 2012 18:59 UTC (Wed) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link] (3 responses)

I think where open source has failed thus far is that it hasn't yet led to end users having the ability to modify their software. To a certain extent, it has led to users having the right and permission to modify their software, but not to the culture that this is something to do, nor much in the way of end-user-level information as to how to go about doing it.

I've joked that Emacs isn't *really* GPL-compatible, because the GPL requires that "the preferred form for making changes" be available, and a lot of it is only available as elisp. But I think there's a real problem when even technically-competent users of GNOME have complaints about the UI in a new version and don't just fix them.

I think that, in order for open source to truly succeed, end users will have to be brought into a culture where the normal thing to do when some application behavior annoys you is to change it. That's the only way to actually achieve the idealistic goals, and the only way to lock in a victory.

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 19, 2012 8:35 UTC (Thu) by ortalo (guest, #4654) [Link]

Nice view. I also like the way such an idea blends together tools and end-products.
But, how manage the knowledge/time gap that may exist between being able to use something and being able to build/modify it?
Anyway, from the cultural point of view, you are certainly right. Users need to give value to such freedom instead of being afraid of it.

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 19, 2012 11:45 UTC (Thu) by wookey (guest, #5501) [Link] (1 responses)

This culture developed for websites and HTML for a while (and resulted in some ugly websites!), but this has been subsumed into other tools now so most(?) website-creators have little or not clue about the underlying tech anymore.

I guess a big part of the success of HTML in this area was that the code was already there in front of you, and ultimately HTML document-writing has a lower barrier of entry than programming.

There is always a significant barrier of entry to programming and fixing your apps. You need to learn the language and the codebase. I don't think we can expect much from mass programming beyond changes to simple apps written in easy-to-read/change languages, as most people really aren't interested enough to invest more effort than that.

Easy app-development is definately key. Arduino and Android have both had wide success at least partly due to programming being made relatively straighforward.

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 19, 2012 18:27 UTC (Thu) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]

I think the key is really that pretty much every application should consist of an easy-to-read/change "policy" layer over a complex core that is less user-serviceable, but also less likely to be the area where the user needs to change something to be happy. For example, graphic designers using the GIMP should be able to change what is in what menu and toolbox to fit their work flow; they wouldn't necessarily be able to write the code for new tools, improve the image representation, or the other complicated things, but the GIMP could be a simple UI app issuing instructions to a complex engine. The answer to "The GIMP's UI doesn't work like I want" should be "Change it. If you're smart enough to use Photoshop layers, you're smart enough to rebuild the GIMP UI from pieces." (And this should, in fact, be true when someone tries.) And making GNOME 3 act like GNOME 2 (so far as the user remembers GNOME 2 and cares) should be entirely within easy-to-read/change code (for that matter, it should be possible to just run the GNOME 2 UI app against the GNOME 3-capable engine; but users should also be able to adopt GNOME 3 functionality by copy-pasting it from the official GNOME 3 UI).

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 19, 2012 17:07 UTC (Thu) by BenHutchings (subscriber, #37955) [Link] (1 responses)

The open source movement was always about the idea that opening up software development could make it more efficient (an extremely questionable idea in general). I think it's disingenuous of Bruce Perens to pretend that by promoting the 'open source' brand he was doing anything other than de-emphasising user freedom, or that this failure could not have been expected.

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 24, 2012 20:45 UTC (Tue) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

Ben,

I think Eric Raymond said "I just want software that doesn't suck", but this doesn't mean that anyone else adopted it as their official philosophy. Open Source has always been a marketing program for Free Software, intended to bring it to people that were not being reached by the then-existing Free Software campaign, especially business people. Bringing them in did mean that we did not require them to a priori accept the value of software freedom, as the Free Software campaign did, we expected them to use the software first and learn the value of freedom by doing so. Some did, some didn't. I am astonished by the conversions of some past adversaries in the business world.

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 29, 2012 23:43 UTC (Sun) by Mokurai (guest, #60808) [Link]

So, is the glass half full or half empty? Can we say that we have failed so soon? Is it true that not having reached our goals today means that we will never reach them? Yes, it has been decades since the beginnings of Free Software and Open Source, but only a few years since Linux became sufficiently user-friendly for common use. What we have today, in the words of Winston Churchill, is not the beginning of the end, but it may be the end of the beginning.

History shows that major social changes require at least 50 years to take hold and become the majority view. Votes (and many other changes in status) for women, the end of slavery in the British Empire, the end of colonial empires in general, gay rights, all are examples where the questions could not even be asked in public up to a certain point in time, and then it took fifty years more for laws to be passed and other effective actions to be taken. Some changes, such as the continuing gradual decay of racism, take much longer. Creationist resistance to the very idea of evolution and to scientific geology, astronomy, and cosmology, among other things, is now 150 years old. The Catholic Church did not rehabilitate Galileo for more than 350 years, centuries after it accepted Copernican/Galilean/Keplerian/Newtonian astronomy. Our issue is young yet.

Free Software/Open Source and Creative Commons are the answers to many questions not yet being asked by enough people.

* How can governments and the public have full control of their data? Use Free Software and genuinely open standards.

* How can the public have access to creative works in a timely manner, so that, as the US Constitution says, we "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" rather than enriching corporations? We need to change the copyright laws, but in the meantime we can encourage authors and artists to Copyleft their works under Creative Commons Sharealike licenses, and we can resist pernicious nonsense such as PIPA and SOPA.

* How can we get rid of software piracy? Give everybody Free Software.

* How can we put software into all of the languages of the world? Let the people who speak those languages do it themselves in Free Software.

* How can we end poverty and its associated ills? Give all schoolchildren computers such as the OLPC XO running Free Software with Open Education Resources.

More than two and a half million schoolchildren around the world now use OLPC XOs, Free Sugar education software, and Creative Commons content in school and at home. Do you think that these children and the hundreds of millions more whom we will reach in years to come, will be willing, after 12 years experience in their schools, to pay the Microsoft or Apple tax on everything they do as adults?

Consider a billion children at a time using Free Software, OERs, and other Creative Commons content in order to learn how to take over the world from their fossilized elders. This is the job of every generation, while the previous generation considers it to be their job to hold off the young as long as possible. You may thank the children in advance for the freedoms they will offer you in years to come, and you may join in the effort to make it happen sooner.