PHP may be infinging patents

[whackaxe]

if you visit PHP.net youll notice the latest headline about PHP may be infinging on patents in the futer. the consequences of such a law (affecting the OSS community in general) would be disasterous. would this mean that anyone wanting to program server side would have to buy ASP? what do you all think?

P.S this only affects europe, but still.

[raf]

P.S this only affects europe, but still.
realy apreciate your sollidatity :D
would this mean that anyone wanting to program server side would have to buy ASP
No. Unless Microsoft has the pattent on "server side coding". And even then, ASP doesn't cost anything since it's a language. If someone writes an apache plugin for ASP's with VBscript or Jscript as a coding language, then you could keep coding for free.
Unless Microsoft also has the pattent on "webservers" or "parsing"
what do you all think?
I think i'll wait and see. Billy already said that Linux had implemented ideas MS had pattented but i don't see them take any action. (It's hard not to be a monopolist when enforcing your pattents ...)

[whackaxe]

Originally posted by raf
realy apreciate your sollidatity :D

eh? it would affect me seeing as live in france. i <3 PHP! (and mySQL). anyway, wouldnt that mean, itd would be illegal o have PHP in europe, wich would mean you get hosted in america? it would pretty much impossible to enforce on anybody apart from hosts as well.

[allida77]

I never realized how many things were patented (http://swpat.ffii.org/patents/txt/ep/index.en.html) . It seems that it is getting to (or probaly past) the point of ridiculousness. The Amazon "one-click" is a perfect example. How is the ability to automatically click on an item and check out something that is so creative and wonderful that it should be patented? The site never really talked about what existing licenses php would be infringing. I dont think that php will get touched by this but future OSS development will be. It seems like patents are going to be like buying and holding corporate domain names for $$ were in the 90s.

[raf]

that site is clearly violating my "bad layout - slow loading - unwanted language switching" patent.

I'm also not smart enough to open these patents. Anyone found out how to open them (links in the 'pat' -column)

wouldnt that mean, itd would be illegal o have PHP in europe, wich would mean you get hosted in america? it would pretty much impossible to enforce on anybody apart from hosts as well.
I don't know if the hosting-location is that relevant. If you are a europeen developer, and your company is based in europe, then these laws will probably apply to you. Regardles of where your hosting-firm is based.

[mordred]

whackaxe, for now I think you can relax. The current development regarding software patents is not threatening PHP developers per se. You're still save to continue developing applications in PHP, unless... someone in future sues you because you use a certain technique that he has patented. The ridiculousity starts if you see what patents are already filed. If I'm not mistaken, the standard progressbar is already on it's way to become patented.

Software patents are such a dumb idea. Whom do they really serve? The big winners will be lawyers who manage the whole patenting process and who handle the lawsuits against infringing OSS projects. To illustrate how grotesque such a situation becomes a good read is the FAQ of comp.compression, whicht lists a great amount of granted (US) patents on compression algorithms. Some of them cover algorithms you learn in your first half year of Computer Science study. The creator of the gzip utility made a very impressive statement (http://www.gzip.org/#faq11):


I have probably spent more time studying data compression patents than actually implementing data compression algorithms. I maintain a list of several hundred patents on lossless data compression algorithms, and I made sure that gzip isn't covered by any of them. In particular, the --fast option of gzip is not as fast it could, precisely to avoid a patented technique.


This sums the idiocy of software patents nicely up. For the next european election, I'll research each party's stance on software patents and if they are either indifferent or positive to it, they become instantly unelectable for me, and I'll tell them.

[allida77]

Yeah raf that site is hurting. It took forever for the pages to load it is probaly getting a good number of hits this morning because of php.net. I just clicked on the year and waited forever for it to load.

The one thing I dont understand is how strict on enforcing can these patents be? Going back to the Amazon idea, I have a site that sells widgets. Customers have requested to be able to bypass all the forms and "checkout" and allow them to just click and purchase. Giving my users what they want I create this. I dont call it "One Click" but the code to perform a "One Click" type action is on my site.

So am I violating Amazons patent?

[whackaxe]

Originally posted by mordred
For the next european election, I'll research each party's stance on software patents and if they are either indifferent or positive to it, they become instantly unelectable for me, and I'll tell them.

when are they? if they are past september 24 2004, ill be able to vote :) ill definatly take the same stance, companies don't liek OSS as its very good competition and extremly cheap.

[bcarl314]

Originally posted by raf
that site is clearly violating my "bad layout - slow loading - unwanted language switching" patent.



Well, I just have to trust that no one is violating my "if ... then " patent in thier code! :D

[raf]

Well, I just have to trust that no one is violating my "if ... then " patent in thier code!
Haah! Someone probably did, but you'll have to catch them first. (i only do serversided so ...)

I can assure you that this can be quite frustrating. I suspect that my "error message dialog window" patent is broken dialy by Microsoft users all over the world, but Bill keeps insisting that not even one Microsoft user has ever encountered or reported an error up till now. I wish these Microsoft products weren't that good ...


Anyway, couldn't OSS project, that develop some groundbreaking feature or technologie, get a patent on that ? I always here people shouting how open source often is more innovatif then big commercial firms.
Maybe they just need/needed to pay more attention to patenting there technologie. Billy already more a less admitted that Microsoft had some pattents on stuff that originaly was OSS

[whackaxe]

bah.... everyone has broken my patent on computers, patented by my great great grandfather :D i wish, that would help me cashflow. i think patents on computers is ridiculous. there are so many different ways to get the same result that you could sue anyone for anything.

[mordred]

Originally posted by whackaxe
when are they? if they are past september 24 2004, ill be able to vote :) ill definatly take the same stance, companies don't liek OSS as its very good competition and extremly cheap.

Unfortunately you have bad luck, unless I'm mistaken, the next european election will be held in June 2004. But you could write your representative anyway and tell them your opinion. I'm actually considering doing this right now, but I have to cool down my temper first. ;)

[scroots]

can you not email a politician, that way awareness could be raised via a website and people could email them. An example message could also be provided.

scroots

[SDP2006]

Don't scare me like this

IS PHP GOING UNDER?:(

[whackaxe]

read the link on php.net also on gimp.org

[SDP2006]

Well, if this does happen, will it still be available in the United States?

Does this effect the whole world?

[joh6nn]

anymore, everything effects the whole world. especially intellectual property laws.

someone made mention of the ridiculousness of software patents, but it goes even further than that. whole business models have been patented recently. the US patent office has stopped doing its job in the last few years. It will grant a patent to nearly anyone who applies, regardless of how obvious an idea it is, or how much evidence there is of prior art. i'll not even go into my thoughts on the problems with US copyright laws.

and because the US has such a large sway over what the rest of the world does, the rest of the world will likely move towards compliance with these obviously flawed systems.

someone mentioned not voting for certain parties, if they don't have reasonable views on software patents, but i think this is only the first step. as important as our individual votes are, the only way to change things is to alert the public to what's going on, and how the sad state of intellectual property laws will effect them. Unfortunately, i've no idea how to get media exposure, or i'd have begun a campaign already.

[SDP2006]

Didn't answer my question

-- Will it still be available in the US?

[Roy Sinclair]

Software patents are definitely causing trouble, look at this (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A46480-2003Aug11&notFound=true) article about the jury that just awarded 500 Million dollars from MS to a patent holder. While those who hate MS may think that's a good thing the fact is that the patent in question also happens to cover things like Flash, SVG, Acrobat, RealPlayer and a host of other controls that people commonly use on the internet.

The implications of how this patent will affect the internet are quite severe.

More information:

http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3070591

http://www.w3.org/2003/08/patent