Re: GDL2 on MacOS X

[Pascal Bourguignon]

Each and  every sentense written by  Nicola is one  more point showing
that software  patents are  a bad  thing.  US patents  are not  to the
advantage of the  US people, since they could  prevent them to benefit
from the  work of the  rest of the  world (and vice-versa  of European
patents for Europeans, etc). They're  not even to the advantage of the
patent  holders, and  are  clearly nefarious  to  the patent  holders'
customers.   Their  effect is  to  impose  to  the patent  holders  to
contract armies of patent lawyers, thus increasing their costs and the
price for  their customers.   And then, as  FUD generator,  they would
even prevent third parties to  develop software and systems that would
help the patent holders to difuse their products.  What a shame!


Nicola Pero writes:
> 
> >    How are you dealing with the fact that EOModel and EOEditingContext 
> > are patented (6,085,197; 5,956,728; 5,873,093)?
> 
> Almost anything in the computer science world is patented - from telnet to
> software managing installation of other software to anything else.  Just
> browse the US patent archive for a list.
> 
> I'm not involved in the development of EOF2, and I'm not sure if the
> actual authors are aware of the patents, but as far as I can say, there is
> a lot of previous art making those patents invalid.  If you look on old
> mailing lists on the net, I remember someone posting a detailed,
> documented list of quite a few books and papers published before the
> patents were filed, describing precisely the concepts implemented by the
> patents.  There is nothing particularly new in those patents (from a
> computer science research point of view), really.
> 
> gdl2 was also, for the most part, developed in Europe, where - I think -
> such patents (being US patents) do not hold.
> 
> I also think there are quite a few EOF-like clones on the market already
> (look on the web for Java stuff).  Apple has not sued any of them.  I'm
> not a lawyer, but if I remember correctly, the widespread existence on
> market of products infringing patents invalids the patent after a while if
> the patent holder does not sue the infringing products.
> 
> The FSF, and GNUstep, are not for profit organizations - there is no money
> to win for Apple from a litigation with the FSF - just a lot of bad
> marketing and a very bad feeling for OSX developers or porters to OSX.  
> Btw, Apple itself is using and distributing *a lot* of copyrighted FSF
> software in its own MacOS X system.
> 
> There is a lot of demand for good Objective-C database tools.  Rather than
> writing new tools from scratch, forcing everyone to learn a new API, I
> think it's a good idea that the gdl2 people are making the new tools
> compatible with the EOF2 API, which people like and love.  The tools would
> be usable on Apple OSX as well, and I could even see an interest from
> Apple in having them ... providing a good database set of tools for OSX at
> no cost for Apple, since Apple does not pay FSF developers - they work for
> free.
> 
> I can't guess Apple's behaviour, but gdl2 running on OSX is just a new
> useful library to run on your newly bought Apple OSX system.  The people
> writing gdl2 and porting it to Apple are likely Apple users, customers,
> supporters and providing good software for the Apple community.  I can't
> see Apple suing them for those old invalid patents - also considering that
> Apple is not selling an Objective-C version of EOF2 themselves ... what's
> the point ?  the gdl2 authors are just providing free quality software to
> run on Mac OSX ...  I'd expect Apple, as an operating system and hardware
> provider, to actually defend vendors providing good software to run on
> their platform ... rather than suing them on muddy and incertain basis,
> with muddy and incertain advantages to gain.  Of course, gdl2 runs on
> GNU/linux (and probably Windows!) as well - but that's IMO all to gain for
> Apple, to disperse its reputation for locking software developers into a
> single platform (its own), and maybe dropping it at some point (as it
> happened with openstep in the past), leaving developers in a miserable
> situation.
> 
> Anyway - this was just my personal rant - everyone has to make his own
> legal evaluations and choices.
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
__Pascal_Bourguignon__                   http://www.informatimago.com/
----------------------------------------------------------------------
There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not
want merely because you think it would be good for him.  -- Robert Heinlein