Microsoft patents Sudo command??

[Windrunner]

So software developers that invest huge amounts of time into a program using many of the same techniques as inventors should not receive protection nor compensation for their work?

Programmers should be the starving artists?

A program is not a product, a virtual machine?

Just as surely as a combustion engine is a machine that converts fossil fuels into kinetic energy, a program is a machine that changes the values of bits, interprets them, and changes them to great effect. I'd be willing to bet that your web browser is more complicated than a car's engine, and that barring the OS the other programs you have running now took more engineering than that car.

So why are programs patented as ideas?

Well if you put the source code up, it'd be a lengthy battle of reverse engineering the sudden tidal wave of 'competing products' ( and reverse engineering is a legal gray area ) that launched.

Instead it's safer for the company and largely effective to patent them in a way that just borders qualitative.

Then there are other cases, where research has been done to create a theoretical product but the company just doesn't have mass manufacturing capabilities. So the theoretical product is patented and the company tries to sell licenses to the patent. Times are changing and it's becoming easier and easier to get parts produced by companies with fab plants.


Of course, in this case M$ is just being a *word that won't get me banned that describes MS here please!* and I doubt that the order to get this patent came from someone very high up in the company. It's likely that someone's going to lose their job over this, as well they should, unless this is an older patent. ( I can't be bothered to check the date ).


Creative was well within their rights in that case to tell ID that they could not use their patent at all. They could have said "Tough luck, we don't want to deal with you what-so-ever, release the game and we'll sue you into oblivion." Instead they forced ID to license tech from them.

Developing a software algorithm can be about like developing the theory of relativity. e=mc^2, simple here, but coming to it was a LOT of work and a LOT of expertise.

[Ned Slider]

Thats to specific, something along the lines of the concept of a biological membrane exchanging molecules with an unspecified gas.

See, you could get a job in patent law

[Spankin Partier]

Personally as a designer, I don't like patents. Yes, I've had my ideas stolen by other, larger companies too. So the company that I worked for did lose some short term sales. But it forced us to keep being innovative. So we continued to develop our products, and we ended up regaining all the customers we lost. But the best thing, we ended earning the trust and respect of our customers. So in the end, it was probably a good thing.

But the worst thing, I have to worry that someone else has thought up a similar idea as to what I have. Thats where I end up worrying. I don't have the time or the resources to go checking though the maze of patents just to see if I've violating one. And I'm sure I've violated a few. Not that I did it intentionally, its just that my answers to problems just seemed logical to me so chances are they were logical to someone else already.

[Ned Slider]

Exactly.

And even if you do patent your invention, as a small company do you have the money to pursue litigation against some multinational who just blatantly steals your idea and has a legal department 5 times the size of your whole company? Of course not so patents are worthless to you. About the only thing a patent will enable you to do is become an attractive target for a buyout if your invention really is that good and thus another small innovative company gets swallowed up by another large multinational company that has no idea how to innovate for itself.

[Pixels303]

not everyone spends time developing ideas and patenting them. Some just steal idea's, while others conveniently release idea's freely only to later on enforce licensing on everyone who used their idea in their own stuff.

We are talking about Microsoft here.. they are guilty of stealing idea's from the word go. Lets not be naive and tell single sided "Did you hug your Patent office rep today" stories. As I understand Ned Slider, whoever provides the best service will win, and whoever plays hardball with exploiting trademarks will win.

[Ned Slider]

What Microsoft does is use the threat of litigation to extract licensing from companies based on their patent portfolio as recently seen in the Microsoft vs TomTom case. Very few, if any of these cases will ever see the light of day in a court room thus we will likely never know if these patents would stand up in court. It's not in Microsoft's interests to have it's patents tested in court so long as they can continue to successfully extract licensing on the mere threat of litigation.

TomTom took a stance against Microsoft's tactics, and then did a deal before it had a chance to get interesting. Microsoft tends to only pick on those companies it suspects will cave in - I don't see them filing suits against Red Hat for infringing the same patents

If Microsoft were right then every Linux user would be paying them royalties (or their Linux vendor would on their behalf), but as that isn't happening and I don't believe Microsoft are the type of company to let slip such a business opportunity, I can only conclude Microsoft know they don't have a case so just continue to do what they do best in continuing to propagate FUD to further cloud already murky waters.

[crjackson]

You know what? I'm ashamed that I used to use MS products willingly. I think at this point I would rather give up on computing rather than ever pay MS another penny. I know that's a pretty bold statement but it's truly how I feel.

[Windrunner]

Luckily I don't pay MS a penny and I get all their software for absolutely free as a graduation gift.

It is frusterating to see stupid stuff happen, but they're a large corporation and arguably the most powerful corporation in the world. As far as percentages go, they're at least as reliable and honorable as any other corporation. They're just bigger.

We'll see this stuff happen with other corporations soon enough. *Coughgooglecough*. The 'honeymoon' will be over so to speak. So vote with your dollars, and very loudly pay into OSS what you would pay for CSS. That's the activist-consumer thing to do and is what'll influence change.

[Ned Slider]

We'll see this stuff happen with other corporations soon enough. *Coughgooglecough*. The 'honeymoon' will be over so to speak.

Agreed.

So vote with your dollars, and very loudly pay into OSS what you would pay for CSS. That's the activist-consumer thing to do and is what'll influence change.

But I don't necessarily agree with this. Many OSS projects just don't need or don't know what to do with monetary donations and money alone isn't necessarily going to make them more productive or successful.

Earlier this year I started an open source project (elrepo.org), developing kernel drivers for Enterprise Linux. Unless we could attract enough donations to employ a full time developer (or pay me to work full time on the project), any monetary donations are more likely to get spent funding developer get together(s) going on flights, hotels, beer etc. What we really need is folks to volunteer time and resources, and we mostly have that already. We have companies willing to give us servers and bandwidth to host the project, and we have developers willing to give their time and testers with hardware willing to test their efforts. Most smaller OSS projects are in exactly the same position - even some bigger ones [1]. Plus, it's the more glamorous projects who always attract the donations - people don't mind donating $10 to K3b because it's cheaper than buying Nero, but they aren't likely to donate $10 for a device driver because they are traditionally free.

[1] Look at the CentOS Project - it has an estimated 6 million users and has been taking donations for years, yet recently it transpired that only the project founder ever had access to the account and no one knows how much money was ever donated or what happened to it.

[Windrunner]

It isn't so much that I think the OSS people will make good use of it, but that CSS will see other people getting money and get jealous.

[Spankin Partier]

*Coughgooglecough*. The 'honeymoon' will be over so to speak.

They've been on my 'grey' books for a couple of years now. I'd say the honeymoon has been long since over.

[Ned Slider]

It isn't so much that I think the OSS people will make good use of it, but that CSS will see other people getting money and get jealous.

Indeed, Microsoft already lists the likes of Red Hat as competition in it's financial reports.

[Jackal]

my two cents........

Software (today) is much like music........If any developer thinks he's the ONLY one to ever use an if/then/else statement, he's mistaken, much like any musician that plays a "G".......

However, he may be the only one to put them in a specific order, producing a unique outcome. BUT..........

He/She is using a tool, that someone else created, unless of course they are programming in pure machine language.

That said, NO software patents should NOT be allowed, just as patents on music.

THAT said, the use of that software, certainly should require a license, and a fair fee to be charged, UNLESS the creator of said "unique" software chooses to provide it for "free".

THAT SAID......define "fair"............

[Spankin Partier]

They've been on my 'grey' books for a couple of years now. I'd say the honeymoon has been long since over.

Here's one reason why they are in my 'grey' book:
http://www.dump.com/2009/11/25/spot-the-difference/

Yes, its not Google that wanted to create this difference, but its the fact that they can and do control such massive sources of information. They can single handedly make or break a lot of companies out there.

[Pixels303]

Wow. Spankin, couldn't secret societies use this type of filtering to influence what people interpret about news or information? If this is done carefully, it could be mathematically applied to influence people to further secret objectives.