{"id":357,"date":"2012-11-03T19:46:00","date_gmt":"2012-11-03T19:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/2012\/11\/03\/end-software-patent-wars-by-making-it-always-legal-to-run-code-on-a-general-purpose-computer-richard-stallman\/"},"modified":"2012-11-03T19:46:00","modified_gmt":"2012-11-03T19:46:00","slug":"end-software-patent-wars-by-making-it-always-legal-to-run-code-on-a-general-purpose-computer-richard-stallman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/2012\/11\/03\/end-software-patent-wars-by-making-it-always-legal-to-run-code-on-a-general-purpose-computer-richard-stallman\/","title":{"rendered":"End software patent wars by making it always legal to run code on a general-purpose computer – Richard Stallman"},"content":{"rendered":"

[I love this idea. -egg]
End software patent wars by making it always legal to run code on a general-purpose computer – Richard Stallman<\/a>:
Writing in a special Wired<\/em> series on patent reform<\/a>, Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman proposes to limit the harms that patents do to computers, their users, and free\/open development by passing a law that says that running software on a general purpose computer doesn’t infringe patents. In Stallman’s view, this would cut through a lot of the knottier problems in patent reform, including defining “software patents;” the fact that clever patent lawyers can work around any such definition; the risks from the existing pool of patents that won’t expire for decades and so on. Stallman points out that surgeons already have a statutory exemption to patent liability — performing surgery isn’t a patent violation, even if the devices and techniques employed in the operation are found to infringe. Stallman sees this as a precedent that can work to solve the problem. Though it seems to me that it might be easier to define “performing surgery” than “operating a general purpose computer.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

This approach doesn\u2019t entirely invalidate existing computational idea patents, because they would continue to apply to implementations using special-purpose hardware. This is an advantage because it eliminates an argument against the legal validity of the plan. The U.S. passed a law some years ago shielding surgeons from patent lawsuits, so that even if surgical procedures are patented, surgeons are safe. That provides a precedent for this solution.<\/p>\n

Software developers and software users need protection from patents. This is the only legislative solution that would provide full protection for all.<\/p>\n

We could then go back to competing or cooperating \u2026 without the fear that some stranger will wipe away our work.<\/p>\n

\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Let\u2019s Limit the Effect of Software Patents, Since We Can\u2019t Eliminate Them<\/a><\/p>\n

(Image: DSC09309<\/a>, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0)<\/a> image from 25734428@N06’s photostream<\/i>)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[I love this idea. -egg]End software patent wars by making it always legal to run code on a general-purpose computer – Richard Stallman: Writing in a special Wired series on patent reform, Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman proposes to limit the harms that patents do to computers, their users, and free\/open development by passing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3pfIY-5L","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}