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March 30, 2005
FFII and nosoftwarepatents.com to Join
In a disappointing announcement this morning, FFII and nosoftwarepatents.com are joining forces. While I am not a big fan of the whole movement, I have been pleasantly surprised by some comments posted on this blog by some FFII members. After peeling away a thin veneer of rhetoric, most of the comments by FFII members have tried to make a reasonable, logical, and well thought out points (even if I don’t agree with all of them).
My biggest complaint about the software patent movement in Europe is the inflammatory rhetoric that twists facts and mischaracterizes the situation in dire and drastic terms. This turns what should be a civilized and thoughtful discussion into a shouting match where neither side listens to the other and the value is not on making logical sense, but only on how loud your bull horn is.
In the US, we have an old nursery story about Chicken Little who runs around shouting that the sky is falling, which never comes to pass. nosoftwarepatents.com seems to be Chicken Little in a pretty web interface.
While FFII appears to be attempting to build plausible arguments in support of its position, nosoftwarepatents.com makes no such attempt. What little credibility FFII was gaining in my mind through the valiant efforts of a couple commenters to this blog was not bolstered by this announcement.
There actually is some common ground between those for and against software patents: the patent system suffers when patent quality goes down. Software developers have many, many options in how to use the patent system to solve the problems they perceive. For example, if they believe that some patents are not valid, the patents can be challenged one at a time. If they think there is a large database of prior art that might be patented by some big nasty company, they could make that database available and searchable to the patent offices around the world. Such a database may protect the small businesses that allegedly back FFII when the patent holders assert their patents. There are several other suggestions written in this blog and others. If such strategies where implemented by FFII, they would be surprised by the interest of patent holders and non-patent holders alike.
FFII and others could be working a multi-pronged approach while still fighting for the end of software patents. These approaches could serve as a contingency plan should software patents be allowed (which is very likely). In the end, these groups could be doing something positive and constructive.
Posted by krajec at March 30, 2005 11:33 AM
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Comments
Caught that Chicken Little reference. Hey, pal, you're stealing my riffs! (from my posting about PubPat spits at Microsoft) ;-)
Posted by: Gary Odom at March 31, 2005 05:22 PM