Apple Rolls Out WebKit2, But No Linux Love Yet

[yotambien]

There are three issues I have with your reasoning. The first is that you are talking about patents in general terms without making any distinction between fields. The second is your point about the fact that knowledge builds up upon past concepts. The third is that I don't quite understand your concept of "ideas".

Let's see. Imagine that somebody gets a patent for some chemical process of some sort, let's say to produce some product in an innovative way which offers better yields, avoids the use of some nasty reagents or whatever. The amount of work to do this is huge--certainly worth several years and usually involving at least one PhD or post-doc to do the actual hands-on stuff. The costs in tems of equipment, materials, lab space and grants/salaries are quite big. With this in mind, I don't think it would be fair to let the guys from the company next door implement this work without the original authors being rewarded for their effort. I'm all for University-business links, but not for the siphoning of public money into private hands, but I digress. Perhaps if you imagine an example where the authors of the patent belong to a start-up company you are more likely to agree with me. As I see it, the key point is that patents covering physical things are granted to extremely complex inventions that were only achieved by putting an enourmous amount of work and resources on them. A temporal monopoly for the exploitation of these inventions can actually be an incentive for their production. This is not the case of patenting "touchpad gestures", "one-click pay" or some other nonsense like that.

Next, it's true, although irrelevant, that in order to get to the point where you can patent something, you are using massive amounts of accumulated knowledge. Of course, we all give for granted that we are "resting on the shoulders of giants". This doesn't make new inventions or discoveries any less valuable, ingenious or respect worthy, and again, depending on what they consist and the amount of work needed to produce them it may be on the general interest to grant some temporal protection to their authors. Sure, in the example above, the authors would be using anything from basic chemistry to quantum mechanics to produce their new process. I don't see why this obvious fact changes anything.

Lastly, I don't get your notion of new "ideas" as something somebody can have while having a shower or cooking, as simple concepts that can be readily encapsulated in a couple of sentences and be shown to the world. While there may be something remotely resembling this, I can't think of any example. I believe, instead, that any new "idea" worth a patent is going to be fairly complex, and probably involving not just one "idea" or step, but several of them combined together to generate something valuable. The exception again, of course, being certain software patents, which are simply ridiculous. Perhaps this is just a question of language, I just don't see what is gained by making any distinction between the "original spark" or "idea" and the whole process involved in developing something new that can be commercially exploitable.

Now, irrespective of how much work, time and money was needed to produce, say, a patentable biotech discovery, I do think that the profits of the likes of Monsanto are not above the general well-being of millions of people. If the absence or deliverate infringement of patents in this field means that a lot of private research will be never carried out, then the public is to fund it for the common good. This kind of objection is completely different to the ones against software patents, and putting them on the same level doesn't sound right to me.

[perpetualrabbit]

Ah, there's your problem: that's not true at all. Big ideas come from weeks or months of concerted thinking effort, often by large groups of people. During these weeks and months, these thinking people occasionally need to eat. After all, if they can't eat, they'll probably decide to stop thinking, go out and find some lunch.

It logically follows that someone needs to pay them money to do this thinking, or they starve to death, get cold, get wet, or otherwise have a pretty hard time. And for someone to ba able to pay them money, that someone has to make money from the stuff they're thinking about. Is this train of thought making sense?

Surely, the world in which no ideas of any complexity are ever had is the world in which patents don't exist.

Of course you are right that good ideas deserve reward. I'm not so sure about the "big ideas". You are talking more about the effort of working something out than about the original spark, which almost always is something simple. Usually based on other ideas that went before, but the new creative step is usually a simple one. And very often the idea comes not to just one person, but to many roughly at the same time. Because the time was ripe for it, or it "hung in the air". Look at the invention of book printing or special relativity, the ideas that went before were already there. Book printing was invented independantly in the west and in China. If not Einstein, then someone else would have come up with special/general relativity. And still other people would have found it too, not knowing that it already existed.

That is one reason I think patents are nonsense. Another is that the reward for creative effort, or the harder work of working it out, actually make it useful, should not be an exclusive right. Inventors will have to organize their own rewards, by being first to market with something that works, have enough business sense or work with someone who has. The small time inventors will always be at a disadvantage against the big guys. With patents because the big guys will have all of them and have the money to litigate, and without patents because they can take an idea from a small inventor and make money off it. At least without patents the small guy can still make his product, maybe something better.

Now about complexity. Why do you think that ideas of large complexity can only be had by groups of people? Complex things by definition are composed of many parts. And only single people have ideas, groups do not magically have distributed minds.

Do you remember the scene in Space Oddisey 2001 were the proto-human picks up a bone to use as a tool, throws it in the air and then this rotating bone is replaced by a rotating spaceship in the next shot?

It beautifully exemplifies that complex ideas are only complex because they are built upon miriads of other ideas, until you get to the first tool users, the first conscious thought.

Complex ideas are always only about the next step. This next step does not deserve an exclusive right anymore than all the previous ones.

That is my biggest reason I think patents are nonsense. Copyright law is more than protection enough against copycats. People who make something similar but better, like iPhone -> nexus one, well more power to them. There is no part at all in an iphone that is in itself innovative or original. The whole thing is more than the sum of its parts, which is what made the iphone innovative.
But there are better phones now, so in this case Apple must either get out of the way or make an even better phone. Not get in the way of progress by litigating.

[nanonyme]

Ah, there's your problem: that's not true at all. Big ideas come from weeks or months of concerted thinking effort, often by large groups of people. During these weeks and months, these thinking people occasionally need to eat. After all, if they can't eat, they'll probably decide to stop thinking, go out and find some lunch.

The ironic part of it is though that the best ideas tend to come while you aren't trying to think of them. This leads to the illusion that you produce the most ideas if you do arbitrary non-related stuff all the time which obviously isn't true since having the ideas in the first place needs quite a bit of background knowledge on the subject.
Also I kinda suspect you're mixing actually having the innovative idea with sparring the idea long enough with other people that you manage to get together a practical implementation of it. Having big ideas is easy, doing innovations is not.

[Wingfeather]

Ideas freely come to people...

Ah, there's your problem: that's not true at all. Big ideas come from weeks or months of concerted thinking effort, often by large groups of people. During these weeks and months, these thinking people occasionally need to eat. After all, if they can't eat, they'll probably decide to stop thinking, go out and find some lunch.

It logically follows that someone needs to pay them money to do this thinking, or they starve to death, get cold, get wet, or otherwise have a pretty hard time. And for someone to ba able to pay them money, that someone has to make money from the stuff they're thinking about. Is this train of thought making sense?

Surely, the world in which no ideas of any complexity are ever had is the world in which patents don't exist.

[perpetualrabbit]

Every example you give is duplication. None of it is innovation. I'm not defending patents at all but saying they stifle innovation is an oxymoron. Copying features and functions is not innovating, it's duplicating.

I'm sorry I went a bit on a history rant there. To stay on-topic: the duplication was done by Apple. There is hardly any innovation by them. They often do make a better implementation of (long-)existing ideas: amelioration. But then they patent them, and that means they say they were first. They were not. They use their patents in order to try and stop HTC/Android/Google. If they are succesful (no chance, I think, but who knows what will happen), android will suffer: hindering progress.

Linux already suffers because Apple's enforcing of some trivial font-related patents means that fonts under linux look less good than they could look. The code for font-hinting and other things is there, but often not compiled in out of fear for Apple. Tell me how that is not hindering innovation in Linux.

Conversely, the development and deployment of linux in the server market has shaken out most of the old UNIX dinosaurs (HP, SUN, SGI) or forced them to be more agile and cheaper: open solaris, solaris on x86 hardware, opening up of sparc platform. Microsoft is forced to innovate in order to compete with linux. If patents can be used to make linux houses pay royalties, this means Microsoft will have to innovate less to compete.

Patent do stifle innovation. Imitation is good. Amelioration is better.

[BlackStar]

Pfff Apple. Maybe the only thing I like in the computer culture of my country is the fact that Linux is considered a bigger player than Apple. Hmmm Apple is not considered a player at all...

Ever been near a university lately? Apple is gaining marketshare at an alarming rate. Based on my experience at the NTUA, Macbooks are way past the 10% mark right now.

I've yet to see anyone using Linux at the library, either (apart from myself). No wonder, I guess, considering the main PC lab is running on vanilla Debian/Gnome - which is a sure-fire way to turn people off from Linux forever.

But we are getting off topic. Truth is, WebKit2 will gain Linux support sooner or later but you can bet that Apple won't be the one doing that. In fact, they'd like nothing better than see Linux die: it's their main (only) competitor in the "smartphone" segment and it is eroding their attempts at a walled, DRM-protected ad/music/video/ebook/app ecosystem.

Unfortunately, Apple seems to be gaining ground right now...

I find it very difficult to feel any sympathy towards Adobe, they're a real bastard of a company in my book. But Apple has actually managed to do it for me.

My feelings exactly! Much as I hate Adobe, Apple has scraped the bottom of the barrel with their new developer license. Banning high-level languages from the iPhone? This is like marketing dictating which programming language to use for your next major application, only worse (if you know what I mean).

There's a very special place in hell reserved for those people.

Q: How can you tell a native obj-c iPhone application from one written in C#/MonoTouch?
A: The C# one doesn't leak memory.

Great job, Apple, great job for alienating a significant part of your developer base. You are obviously thinking you have achieved critical mass to achieve lock-in to your inferior tools. Did you ever consider that those very developers might simply move on to Android and WinMo7?

One of them just did.

[perpetualrabbit]

Every example you give is duplication. None of it is innovation. I'm not defending patents at all but saying they stifle innovation is an oxymoron. Copying features and functions is not innovating, it's duplicating.

There were only so many ways to create a fire for the pre-historic humans. What if for every fire you made, or pottery you baked or iron they wrought our ancestors needed permission or pay taxes to some other group of people? Civilization would never have gotten of the ground.

What about independently re-inventing the same thing, why should one have to pay royalties? You shouldn't, is the right answer.

Ideas freely come to people and should be given away freely to all mankind. There is no such thing as stealing an idea. Duplication is good. Amelioration (improving upon) is better. The old greek idea of progress was something like imitation, emulation, amelioration.

Patents are like putting fences around little pieces of land and forcing everyone who has to pass over it to reach the next place to pay up. Pretty soon, it is no longer economical to move anywhere, unless you are one of the big landlords, who make cross-agreements. The little people were unfree. That is feudalism, and it was a time of slavery. Only people living near coastlines or in big cities had some measure of freedom.

Patent only hinder people to get to the next idea, if you pay them any heed. Patents are modern feudalism in the space of ideas. Apple, IBM, Sony, Microsoft and others are the feudal lords in idea-space.

I think patents are unethical and immoral. Software, genetic and pharmaceutical patents are the worst of all.

[krazy]

Every example you give is duplication. None of it is innovation. I'm not defending patents at all but saying they stifle innovation is an oxymoron. Copying features and functions is not innovating, it's duplicating.

What about when a patent is part of a standard, and you are required to duplicate functionality in order to meet the standard? H264 comes to mind. x264 wasn't "cut 'n pasted" from somewhere else, but because if provides patented functionality it can't be freely distributed.

This is the major problem with patents IMHO. If x264 can't be freely distributed then something is being stifled. Isn't "creating efficient code to meet a standard" innovation?

[deanjo]

Really? Well for instance touchscreens, including experiments with multitouch have been around for almost as long as the mouse. Any gestures you can make on a (multi-)touch screen as well. Yet Apple has patented multitouch and gestures like pinching, which is completely trivial.

So they are in effect stifling innovation. And in fact they do this by duplicating things that already existed long before. Even if the Apple engineers re-invented some of those things independently, they should never have gotten a patent for it.

Patent only ever were somewhat useful when used by single inventors or small shops long ago. Back when the automobile and the telegraph were invented. Nowadays the stream of new ideas is so much larger, there are so much more engineers, and there is so much big money behind it that patent do not help innovation, but they hinder it.

They should be abolished altogether, if only to get rid of patent trolls (company who only buy patents for litigation but make no products themselves).

Every example you give is duplication. None of it is innovation. I'm not defending patents at all but saying they stifle innovation is an oxymoron. Copying features and functions is not innovating, it's duplicating.

[perpetualrabbit]

So I guess openCL, Grand central, cups, LLVM don't exist then in your limited vision.

I never said they are not an open source citizen of some sort. They do contribute some things to the common good. But not much compared to what they take, and negligible compared to what is given to them. Also cups is a bad example. They just bought the CUPS company, and of course it is still GPL. But as a sysadmin I can tell you that not much is improved about CUPS since it changed hands to Apple. I wish someone would fork it to accelerate the development of CUPS. It is sorely needed. Mac clients are not even completely compatible with a Linux CUPS server. They do not support CUPS classes for instance.

But ok, OpenCL is a good contribution, I don't know much about grand central (it is some kind of queuing scheduler for many small threads) or LLVM (some kind of compiler useful for GPU's).

Apple is not the only 'bad apple' among software or hardware companies, or other big companies in the world. It is all cut-throat competition. I know that. I just don't like what Apple does and they are getting way too powerful.

The open source community still does not fully understand the danger coming from Apple, still happily port all Linux's best software to OS X. That undermines the market for free operating systems.

On the other hand, Linux needs to get graphics (X, video, 3D), audio, and api infrastructure in order yesterday. There are far too many problems with it.