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  • #21
    Originally posted by daedaluz View Post
    Software patents are illegal at least in EU and Russia. You can't patent mathematical expressions either and that's exactly what software is.
    It's not quite that clear cut in practice. It's certainly much harder to get them in the EU, but there are patents that have been issued and held up in court in the EU which are 'software patents' by any reasonable definition.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softwa...ent_Convention has a decent discussion. Note, for instance: "According to the jurisprudence of the Boards of Appeal of the EPO, a technical effect provided by a computer program can be, for example, a reduced memory access time, a better control of a robotic arm or an improved reception and/or decoding of a radio signal. It does not have to be external to the computer on which the program is run; reduced hard disk access time or an enhanced user interface could also be a technical effect."

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    • #22
      Originally posted by Veerappan View Post
      Honestly, I think that Redhat's in the right here. Legally, Redhat cannot distribute certain patented software without signing a licensing agreement with whoever owns the patents. If they distribute the software without getting a license to the patents first, they are opening themselves up to getting sued for willful infringement. They are a US-based company, and the US (sadly) recognizes software patents. The EU (where Canonical is based) doesn't recognize nearly the same number of software patents as the US does (you can still get them, but not nearly as easily).

      In this case, the US is NOT the free world. Hate to say it, but true... and this is coming from a professional software engineer. Industrial/Manufacturing patents are all fine and good, but software is mathematics, which is NOT patentable. The fact that software patents are being issued and upheld is offensive to myself, and to many other engineers I know. We'd all just rather advance the state of the art instead of bickering over who has the legal right to do what.
      Veerappan, that's why I use fedora, not only it provides free software, fedora help the upstream projects; and help create free alternatives like nouveau.

      The patent system should change; if a patent is infringing this should not become an extortion means like we have now. Instead the patent holder must inform and give the infringer a month's time to remove the patent code; even after being informed, if the infringer does not removes the patented code, then the patent holder may claim for damages. That would be ideal in a fair world. But currently patents are designed to loot others.

      What Redhat is doing is the redhat's right; but I was answering about why ubuntu is popular and not who is right or wrong.

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