Programs are mathematical proofs. If maths cannot be patented, software can’t be, either.
Proofs can be represented as programs, not the other way around. Also, USA allows for algorithm parents, and algorithms are maths. While I agree with you, your reasoning is not correct.
No, the proof - program correspondence is in both directions.
Correspondence is quite a weak relation. Very far from one being another.
I’d say if you ask a mathematician, they would disagree with you. But maybe that depends on how far they have gone into maths from common sense
Correspondence is not correlation.
That’s why it’s also called Curry-Howard isomorphism.
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Judges and Justices are not that precise. They aim to preserved public order before anything else. If a whole industry is based on a questionable interpretation of patent, they is a lot of chances that judges would agree on it. Even in countries where you could not patent algorythm, industries patent the documentation, the “software design”, the brand name, the illustrations used, and aggregates everything together, to say they own it. And it works.
TL;DR : Class Justice
You can hear a more detailed explanation on VLC’s stance from the man himself (JB Kempf) in the FOSS pod S1E11 episode around 22:10.
Basically:
- Not that many threats become lawsuits
- Patent trolling is countered with publicly accessible prior art
- Having no money is also a good deterrent
Thanks for the heads up about FOSS pod. Had not heard of it before.
This is all well and good, and where’s the Traffic Cone!?!
Under Santa’s hat
Asking the real questions here.
The cone is the logo for their most popular project (VLC media player), but this is a message from the organization as a whole, which has the logo you currently see. It is not specifically about that one project.
Wait, I thought all countries followed US laws???
What are these “other country” things you mention? You mean the place where war happens and immigrants come from? I didn’t know they had computers there.
Can confirm, here in Norway there’s both civil and uncivil war at the moment. The uncivil part is against sweden. The country ran out of hamburgers last week, and the hamburger mines have been sabotaged. The only productive diplomatic channel with sweden has been utilized to agree on forming a donkey-caravan across the atlantic ocean into Mexico where humanitarian efforts will provide us with sombreros and crime for our trip north towards the US border. I am posting this from the last steam powered telefax which still has enough coal to run. Wish me luck.
Damn I imagined this
We need a movie about it
They have computers, but only a privileged few know how to use them: https://youtu.be/IrCQh1usdzE?t=944
They’re probably talking about Puerto Rico.
Please be sarcasm… Please be sarcasm… Oh I pray to the dark void of the universe that this is sarcasm.
it absolutely is, take it from an autistic person.
(autstic people often don’t recognize or can’t properly replicate sarcasm, which is why i often use /s)
Yeah, but I’ve also met several (Americans, usually) who had takes like these and… Uh… Unfortunately meant it.
To some extent this can be mitigated by therapy. I’m serious.
Or we leave people be how they are?
Therapy is about leaving people more “how they are” than before. It’s not about making them behave according to expectations.
I know very well what therapy is about. Decades of experience. Being an autistic person and working through a life of internalized ableism and discrimination works wonders for recognizing it. Not being able to understand sarcasm or other subtext is no problem for me, it is a problem for my surroundings so they can go to therapy for it. I go to therapy to learn to not accept being ousted for being different.
Well, for me it’s only 2 months of experience, being 28.
I go to therapy to learn to not accept being ousted for being different.
That’s right too.
EDIT: I meant - when you are not permanently suppressed by the things which you don’t need, like trying to not be yourself, you may have easier time understanding sarcasm and subtexts too.
While the mistake is a common one, all countries have actually agreed to jointly follow bird law in these sorts of matters.
AFAIK european laws only allow to patent “inventions”. Software is considered to be a series of “words” in whatever programming language you’re using and, like sentences, it’s not an invention and can’t be patented.
On the other hand, software-assisted inventions can be patented as a whole.
With that said, software can still be considered a “work” protected by copyright laws.
And that’s fine. VLC does their own implementation of codecs so that’s not an issue. It’s the patents that make it an issue.
Can someone elaborate?
They don’t recognize or value software patents because they aren’t recognized by the government where the project is run from.
Vive la France!
Seeing the last law on immigration :/
We got fucked real bad but we are coming for our rulers and will take down their previous work
Valid.
French laws don’t recognize software patents so videolan doesn’t either. This is likely a reference to vlc supporting h265 playback without verifying a license. These days most opensource software pretends that the h265 patents and licensing fees don’t exist for convenience. I believe libavcodec is distributed with support enabled by default.
Nearly every device with hardware accelerated h265 support has already had the license paid for, so there’s not much point in enforcing it. Only large companies like Microsoft and Red Hat bother.
They bother because they are US based and can be hounded by the patent
trollsholderslet’s not go too far though… the holders of h264/h265 did put a lot of money and effort into developing the codec: a new actual thing… they are not patent trolls, who by definition produce nothing new other than legal mess
On the other hand, Fraunhofer is obnoxious enough about licensing and enforcement that companies like Google invested similar money and effort into developing open-source codecs just to avoid dealing with them.
There are good FOSS codecs and there are good proprietary codecs. The latter are being standardized where the former may not, and pushed where they are not needed.
It’s not a market choice.
Additionally, companies doing business in the US also follow US laws. If they don’t, they could still be sued overseas (or stop doing business over there).
America has the odd idea that software is considered patentable. Since the developers of VLC are French, and software isn’t considered patentable in France, they’re saying “Va te faire enculer” to people who want to sue them.
Why is it odd to be able to patent software specifically? I don’t see how it’s different from medicine or anything physical. To clarify, I’m not arguing the merits of patents in general, just asking why software is different.
You can copyright software code, just like any other written work, to protect you from people literally copy and pasting your work, but the idea that you could patent things like “slide left to unlock” is just stupid, as it’s a fundamental concept and software is full of fundamental concepts.
Compression algorithms being patentable is even more stupid, as it would be like somebody claiming they own Pi, just because they figured it out first. Imagine not being able to compute the circumference of a circle without paying somebody for the privilege.
Like auto update and auto driver installation? They expired for sure, but especially the auto driver installation patent is hilarious. Like no shit sherlock: Check internet for driver with the device md5 hash and the version of the driver installer. Download driver if it’s a newer version. Install driver if md5 hash matches. Repeat for all devices, and that’s fucking it. Plus an irrelevant figure that shows a computer connected to a printer, scanner and the internet. 3 pages in total, of which 1 page is a copy of another page, so only 2 real pages in total.
Who the heck thought these should’ve been approved and why?
That’s the issue with software patents. Everything is obvious at a certain level of knowledge
Also if my understanding of US patents is correct (chances are low, but still) you can use sha1 instead of md5 and change some other minor thing and it’ll not infringe that patent ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
“slide left to unlock” is just stupid, as it’s a fundamental concept
Without arguing the benefits/drawbacks of software patents, isn’t slide to unlock only a fundamental concept because Apple invented and popularized it? To me, it only seems trivial because it’s ubiquitous, whereas that might not have been the case before the iPhone.
Compression algorithms being patentable is even more stupid, as it would be like somebody claiming they own Pi
I don’t see why this is unique to software. As long as the proof is convoluted enough, how would it differ from making a physical D-pad? Both are made from already discovered axioms/materials, and both are transformed via known ways in a unique order into new tools to accomplish a particular task. If a D-pad patent should be allowed, why not a compression algorithm?
Without arguing the benefits/drawbacks of software patents, isn’t slide to unlock only a fundamental concept because Apple invented and popularized it? To me, it only seems trivial because it’s ubiquitous, whereas that might not have been the case before the iPhone.
Software patents that boil down to “real life action, but we did it on a computer” are just obnoxious. Sliding a bolt to unlock something is something we’ve been doing for centuries, but suddenly Apple put it on a screen and gets to prevent anybody else from doing it? That makes no sense.
I don’t see why this is unique to software. As long as the proof is convoluted enough, how would it differ from making a physical D-pad? Both are made from already discovered axioms/materials, and both are transformed via known ways in a unique order into new tools to accomplish a particular task. If a D-pad patent should be allowed, why not a compression algorithm?
Hardware patents make sense, as it’s actually possible to come up with multiple solutions to the same problem. You can create a D-pad multiple different ways, as proven by the many different D-pad patents, as the goal is just to create an interface between electronic inputs and a logical physical shape. How you do it doesn’t matter as long as the result is reliable and satisfying for the end-user. The 4-directional shape of the d-pad wasn’t the patent, it was how the d-pad worked. Sure some people have preferences to one design or another, but that’s where they made the innovation.
But there isn’t multiple ways to create Pi. Pi is Pi. Just because you discovered a math equation to define it first doesn’t mean you get to claim dibs on it. You could claim that you wrote code that calculates Pi more quickly on a specific computer chip or something, but that’s copyright, not a patent. Patents shouldn’t be used for things that can be copyrighted, and vice versa.
There’s a reason why we have separate systems for copyrights, trademarks, and patents. Copyrights protect creative authorship, ways to express things. Trademarks protect identification, how people recognize you and your creations. Patents protect invention, novel processes to accomplish an action.
Patents are for protecting the processes you develop, not the resulting actions. You can’t patent boiling water to create steam, but you can patent the steps you took that led to water boiling and becoming steam.
To bring it back, what process did Apple develop for slide to unlock? Slide to unlock itself is an action, not a unique method of solving a problem. Like patenting the mere action of putting a key into a hole, instead of how the mechanics of the key itself actually opens the lock. They wrote code that interpreted “Box moving from position A to Position B allows access”, but that’s a copyright. Nobody would argue that they should be able to copy what Apple wrote to make that happen. But why does Apple get to claim that the action of moving a box is something they invented? Because the user can use a human finger on a screen now? Apple didn’t invent the capacitive touchscreen, somebody else did, and Apple paid them or a licensor of the tech for using their patent, they didn’t invent anything there. So all you’re left with is the action, moving a box with a finger, which shouldn’t be patentable. And the code that interprets the action, which should be a copyright not a patent.
I get why slide to unlock is wishy-washy, but I don’t understand why you use the example of Pi. There may be only 1 way to generate Pi, but there are numerous ways of approximating it. Likewise, there are many ways to compress a file into a smaller one. If what matters is a procedure from going from A to B (e.g. taking a physical input from a human and turning it into electrical signals for directional input), and a compression algorithm takes you from A to B in a new way, the compression algorithm should be a patentsince it’s a novel process, and the proofs and implementations of said patent would be copyrightable, no?
Because approximate is how you get shoddy results and failures. Math is math. If you do it wrong, it doesn’t work. Something like Pi can’t be approximated in any manner, as that can have huge implications on your calculations.
Because software is math, and like math, it’s basically a way of expressing things that are true about the universe. Allowing only some people to say those things would be nonsense.
Imagine if someone patented Pythagora’s Theorem and only they were allowed to use it. You couldn’t even begin to count the ways in which it would be impractical. Similarly, audio or video codecs for example are just ways of describing sound waves or images more efficiently.
Yes, there is work that goes into finding these algorithms, just like there is work that goes into new mathematical theorems and proofs, but that work gets rewarded and protected in other ways (copyright etc.)
I get it now, but moreso because of the argument that another person made. I don’t get your argument that “math can’t be patented.” If that were the case, anyone discovering a new drug through software couldn’t patent it because it was made in software, and since software is just math using a combination of known axioms, theorems etc, that drug was derived from axioms, and therefore that drug wouldn’t be patentable. It’s like saying you can’t patent a wheel, not because the wheel was invented a number of times, but because the wheel was made out of wood. Patented tech, by nature, has to be produced by existing things regardless of whether those things are patented. It shouldn’t matter if the invention is inherently physical or not.
You can patent things made with software, just not the software algorithms themselves.
You can patent things made with software, just not the software algorithms themselves.
I understand that it’s possible, but I don’t understand why, legally speaking, a distinction is made. US courts don’t seem to know either as they use the same argument that you gave (software is math), except they allow complicated software to be patented.
Crucially, the article mentions that drug patents would still be strongly enforced in the EU, Japan, and the US. It’s great that India is making drugs more accessible, but I don’t see how it’s relevant to the differences in hardware and software for patentability.
I don’t understand why, legally speaking, a distinction is made.
You don’t understand why the law distinguishes between a piece of digital art and Photoshop itself? Come on, dude.
What it means is that ultimately it’s all politically and commercially motivated. If a country wants to make it possible to patent something they’ll do it, even if it’s nonsense (software) or cruel and exploitative (drugs).
That logo design hurts my heart… https://cdn.cnc-comm.com/theme//assets/images/wslogo.png
Fuck that, I like that it’s different. I feel a lot of the logos are too similar and boring.
This one has the retro feel to it.
I don’t think they were complaining about the design. It invoked a memory of a beloved video game studio from the past that had a similar logo (Westwood Studios) and they are a bit heartbroken. I didn’t take their comment as an actual complaint against VideoLAN’s logo.
correct!
graphic design is my passion
That’s not their stance, that’s French law
I think it both. Not all software or codec provider aim to apply the EU and French laws. Quite the contrary
Utterly based.
