I've been thinking about this exact question these past few days and among all of the recent improvements in software
My take on the whole "Software patents are evil" stance stems from the fact that most of the innovation in our industry is more akin to the CS theory rather than anything else. If there is a recent innovation worthy of a patent then I would award it to LMAX guys for rather specific way they solved a really thorny problem of architecting a system that can handle very high loads of business transactions. Their idea and implementation of it is certainly something that is both innovative (in the sense that it pushes some boundaries) and neither is it immediately obvious that this whole thing could work (in fact, in ome ways it runs opposite of the currently accepted way of thinking about scaling) But on the other hand, while I aplaud their achievement I would also be quite bummed if this particular invention would get patented as this would mean that uptake of this type of architecture would most likely suffer, as the <BROAD STATEMENT> We, the software engineers are mostly still Hippies at heart. The whole industry has mostly thrived by sharing the code. There was a brief era where purely proprietary software had the upper hand, but now even the once-evil MS has realized the core value of OSS, not to mention IBM and Oracle. All of these are major backers of host of OSS projects and all of them use OSS code under the covers of their commertial offerings. The empirical evidence shows clearly that sharing and working together towards a common goal works out better for everyone (Hey, wasn't that in a nutshell what Nash got his nobel prize for?) rather than bickering over licensing of patented ideas... </BROAD STATEMENT> reede, 12. august 2011 15:59.13 UTC+3 kirjutas Josh Berry: > > 2011/8/12 Cédric Beust ♔ <[email protected]>: > > Do explain. Let's say there is a 3 year deadline and no transfer right. A > > company or an inventor comes up with an idea and patents it. > > How does a patent troll take advantage of that patent? > > Of course, then the challenge becomes, how can that inventor take > advantage of their patent? A "patent troll" need only assert one of > their patents that is tangentially needed for this new invention to > take hold, a cross licensing deal is made whereby the patent troll can > also pull in a healthy revenue from the new invention. If the "patent > troll" has the heavier resources in this bargain, it is not hard to > imagine that they come out ahead. > > > I have a challenge back. Name a "software invention" that you feel is > deserving of patent protection. Specifically, one that does not cover > techniques that would have been required as soon as you entered a > field. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/javaposse/-/_GZ-1_VuN-IJ. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
