Posted on 02/20/2012 8:07:57 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
February 19th, 2012
The Debian Project announces the availability of its patent policy for the Debian archive.
The Debian Project maintains a critical stance towards software patents: we consider software patents to be a threat to Free Software and an obstacle to the Debian mission of providing an entirely Free operating system for everyone's use. We believe software patents provide no advantage in promoting software innovation and we encourage our upstream authors to object to software patents.
At the same time, given the de facto possibility of patenting software-related ideas in several countries around the world, it is important to neither underestimate nor overestimate software patent issues. We are particularly concerned about patent FUD and we have worked to improve clarity on the subject.
After the publication of the Community Distribution Patent Policy FAQ, the availability of a patent policy for the Debian archive is our next step in coping with the software patent system that we hope to see abolished. We thank lawyers at the Software Freedom Law Center for working with us on this policy.
Patent Aggression is widespread throughout the information technology industry at present
, said Eben Moglen, founding director of the Software Freedom Law Center. Parties have spent billions of dollars trying to use patent monopolies to halt innovation and threaten innovators. With the adoption of this patent policy Debian prepares to defend its developers and users more effectively, forcefully, and knowledgeably.
Debian Project Leader Stefano Zacchiroli said The Debian Project has a long tradition of standing up for users' rights to an entirely Free operating system. Patent fears, uncertainties and doubts undermine this. A patent policy and a contact point for related issues in the Debian archive will help reducing patent FUD among our users.
The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of volunteers from all over the world work together to create and maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal operating system
.
For further information, please visit the Debian web pages at http://www.debian.org/ or send mail to <press@debian.org>.
Protecting your intellectual property is so passe to Socialists and Communists and Progressives of all stripes.
Don’t you know we all need equal outcomes!
I think you need to look into some of the patents that have been granted before you dismiss the concerns.
Software patents are pretty much a racket, used to keep small players out of the market. I say this as a developer whose company was threatened by a patent troll, who did not realize his supposed “invention” came years after our product was already developed.
I agree with B Knotts.
Real innovation is something to protect. But MANY patents are absurd.
For example...in Linux/Unix, when you work at a terminal and want to run a program as administrator, you put the “sudo” command before the command. That elevates your rights to “super user”. For example, if you wanted to run Firefox as root (administrator), you type “sudo firefox”. It will then prompt you for an administrator password and run the program.
As far as I know, this type of command is not used anywhere in Windows. When I worked with DOS many years ago, there was no need for it because any user could execute any command at any time.
Nevertheless, Microsoft decided to patent a command that functioned as a “rights elevator”. And the patent was granted!
Now, is this innovation? Is it right that someone decides that something that has been in use for decades is now their property, and exploits a computer-illiterate patent office to punish their competitors? I know that Unix variants have been around since 1969. Bill Gates was 14 at the time.
I have no problem protecting real innovation...in fact, if you don’t protect innovators, innovation goes away. Software patents aren’t the way to go on this, though. Many software patents are used to try to cut the legs out from under competitors, many of which have already used the same tools for years because they were considered commonplace. That’s the OPPOSITE of encouraging innovation.
http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/68652.html
In related news, the scrollbar had been patented as of 2004. By Lexmark.
http://www.prior-ip.com/patent/27128737/
About time. I’d been using it royalty free since at least 1990.
Oh, and I almost forgot the double click, patented in 2002: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/12/30/double_click_patent_lawsuit_attacks_apples_iphone_ipad.html
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