Re: [Fsfe-uk] Software patent MEP response

[Richard Smedley]

On Mon, 2003-05-19 at 14:32, Alex Hudson wrote:

> I think the last four or so speakers did very well to work within the 
> time constraints we had, I'm also glad we got to hear from everyone.

Yes, a big thank you to all the speakers for
a very entertaining and informative day :-)

[snip]
> >     Pick a random half-decent hacker and give him the
> >     patent application.  She has 24 hours in which to read
> >     and understand it, and produce a working
> >     implementation.  If she can do it, the patent is
> >     deemed NP-Obvious and thrown out.
> 
> Him/she? Some hacker ;) (I believe 'he' is the neutral term, isn't it? 
> Richard would probably know...)

<waffle mode="Please don't drag me into this, I'm just a hack">

Well, until a few decades ago everyone just said he,
and that correlated in their heads with a "he"
anyway. 
Languages change, and here the change is driven by a
social (or, if you like, political - ``the personal /is/
the political'') agenda. He/she looks better on the page
as S/he, I also let the odd "he" through, but work on the
priciple that I will continue to put "she" until it
doesn't seem strange to anyone.
So, no, he as a neutral term is archaic - but you
won't find an opinion on this which is neutral or
objective :-/

Oh well, it makes a change from C style flame wars ;-)

</waffle>

> [deletia]he idea (as I understand it) is that the idea should be non-obvious 
> before someone is shown the patent application. But to me, that doesn't
> mean that it would be non-obvious if J Random Hacker wasn't able to 
> conceive of it. I'm not sure how you could ever judge whether something
> is 'obvious', which is probably part of the problem.

Indeed, any grey area will also come under the most pressure
from the loudest voices (and deepest pockets). Regardless
of which, these soi-disant, non-obvious, innovative patents
would cause as many problems to software development as
the more random nonsense we find in the pages of patent
horror stories :-(

 - Richard


-- 
Richard Smedley
Production Editor, LinuxUser & Developer
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