Re: [Patents] newsscan: Software patent limits 'go too far'

[Jean-Baptiste Soufron <jbsoufron@free.fr>]

> Our activism should have come 15 years earlier, indeed.  You have a
> point here, but ...

How could have it been possible? Software patents were not such an
important issue for all of us at that time! Now it is and now is the
time to do something. 
 
> > and not put the blame on lawmakers whose job is not to guess
> > what's right and wrong put to translate interests in words
> > compatible with the existing legal system.
> 
> ... it is still the job of courts to apply the written law and, if
> they stretch it by interpretation, then better on the basis of right
> and wrong than just on the basis of the interests that they are
> seeing.

Well, what's good for someone is always bad for someone else. What is
good for us is bad for software patents lobbyists and vice versa... It's
often a matter of interests and judges are not gods. They can't guess
what will be really bad or good in a long term. They can just decide
cases by cases and then, make law evolve step by step following the
requests that come to court. 

> And, as said, there are limits to stretching.  The limits were seen
> quite clearly in the 70s and 80s.  See e.g. the manual of patent law
> by Rudolf Krasser, which says where these limits were.  Or the text of
> M. Vivant, all quoted on
> 
>       http://swpat.ffii.org/analysis/epc52/
> 
> It would be nice to have a translation of Krasser.

Yes, but software patents were not so important at that time. They are
now and thus, people fight to control them.

> > As far as I remember, the GPL was created in 1984 and the importance
> > of open source and free software only begun to spread around 1995.
> > We are only 8 years later.
> 
> Better mention the creation of the League for Programming Freedom,
> which was supported by most of the US software industry, in the late
> 80s.  The debate has little to do with the GPL.

Agreed, let's say people begun to take interest in the late 80s.