decoration decoration
Stories

GROKLAW
When you want to know more...
decoration
For layout only
Home
Archives
Site Map
Search
About Groklaw
Awards
Legal Research
Timelines
ApplevSamsung
ApplevSamsung p.2
ArchiveExplorer
Autozone
Bilski
Cases
Cast: Lawyers
Comes v. MS
Contracts/Documents
Courts
DRM
Gordon v MS
GPL
Grokdoc
HTML How To
IPI v RH
IV v. Google
Legal Docs
Lodsys
MS Litigations
MSvB&N
News Picks
Novell v. MS
Novell-MS Deal
ODF/OOXML
OOXML Appeals
OraclevGoogle
Patents
ProjectMonterey
Psystar
Quote Database
Red Hat v SCO
Salus Book
SCEA v Hotz
SCO Appeals
SCO Bankruptcy
SCO Financials
SCO Overview
SCO v IBM
SCO v Novell
SCO:Soup2Nuts
SCOsource
Sean Daly
Software Patents
Switch to Linux
Transcripts
Unix Books

Gear

Groklaw Gear

Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.


You won't find me on Facebook


Donate

Donate Paypal


No Legal Advice

The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

Here's Groklaw's comments policy.


What's New

STORIES
No new stories

COMMENTS last 48 hrs
No new comments


Sponsors

Hosting:
hosted by ibiblio

On servers donated to ibiblio by AMD.

Webmaster
Truth vs. money | 354 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Truth vs. money
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, November 25 2012 @ 07:48 AM EST
It sounds like the conference was a classic split between
those who love truth vs. those who love power and money. It
seems there is basically no one who understands computers
and programming who thinks software ought to be patentable,
except for a few folks with tech backgrounds who have gone
over to the dark side.

The "software is math" argument is only compelling as long
as the legal system sticks to the axiom that algorithms and
other math cannot be patented. We may eventually get judges
and congressmen to understand that computers can do nothing
but computation, and that patents on software are indeed the
very patents on mathematical algorithms that are in theory
disallowed. The problem is that with so much money on the
other side, we may get new laws that say "OK, got it.
Software is math. So what. It can still be patented
because we said so".

RMS' appeal to basic rights of expression is much more
compelling - "If someone programs a new solution to a
problem, how can it be justifiable to allow someone else to
prevent such an activity?"

IMHO what we need is wider public recognition of the fatal
flaws of software patents, so that any public official who
supports such patents will start to be worried that he/she
is seen to be beholden to corporate scam artists who are out
to rip off the public. We saw that public opinion can have
an effect in the SOPA episode.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

  • Truth vs. money - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, November 25 2012 @ 05:45 PM EST
Groklaw © Copyright 2003-2013 Pamela Jones.
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners.
Comments are owned by the individual posters.

PJ's articles are licensed under a Creative Commons License. ( Details )