Re: [Patents] pooling patents, version 2

[Peter Vandenabeele <peter.vandenabeele@mind.be>]

On Fri, Jan 03, 2003 at 10:52:02AM +0100, Simo Sorce wrote:
> On Thu, 2003-01-02 at 23:49, riel@nl.linux.org wrote:
[...]
> otherwise if you build a defense based on patent grants you (3) possibly
> corrupt free software in nature. How can you couple Free Software with
> patent grants? You can't! If you put limits on distribution it is not
> free software anymore.

You are 100% right in the current definition of "Free SW" and e.g. GPL as
one implementation of it. If the concept of SW patents is allowed, it is 
not possible anymore to build a Free SW "codebase" that is guaranteed Free.
All freedoms that you can ensure with Copyright, can be taken away again 
through patenting. This is the painfull reality and that is the motivation 
to fight SW patents, but also to think of other defenses.

> The net gain is that you will end converting free
> software to freeware, a horrid idea.

In my understanding of definitions, it is not really "freeware" in 
the sense of freeware as software that you can freely use, but you do 
not have the source code of. It is software that is protected by other 
mechanisms than only Copyright.

It is partially protected by a body of Copyrighted software and 
patents that are used as a countermeasure. But, the threatening from our 
side, based on a patent pool and to end of the license on a large body of 
Copyrighted SW, does not hold back a small extortionist from still using 
patents against a large, succesfull project. So that is a major weakness 
of that model.

And as was suggested before, companies would probably spin-off their 
patents to an empty shell, that would then effectively act as an 
extortionist, producing nothing itself and thus not beeing vulnerable to 
this counter attack.

But still we need to do something, in those countries where SW patents are
legal. And also, if we gain some money from it, at least we can use the
money to fight SW patents in the way that is deemed best (by defending
attacked persons and taking over the responsibility, by lobbying, by ...).
So, even if it is not fun, we may have to start this, even if the only 
purpose is to harras established systems that much, that politicians 
eventually see the non-sense of SW patents and turn back that decision.

Peter
  
> IMHO, Simo.
> 
> -- 
> Simo Sorce - simo.sorce@xsec.it
> Xsec s.r.l.
> via Durando 10 Ed. G - 20158 - Milano
> tel. +39 02 2399 7130 - fax: +39 02 700 442 399