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Re: overloaded function handles


From: Jaroslav Hajek
Subject: Re: overloaded function handles
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2009 08:32:31 +0200

On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 10:38 PM, Robert T.
Short<address@hidden> wrote:
> Jaroslav Hajek wrote:
>>
>> I would stretch it even a little farther - I wouldn't like the feature
>> to be removed or severely crippled (yes, performance also matters)
>> just to workaround a US patent (and I still say workaround would be
>> darn hard), because I want to use it. OTOH, I understand that this may
>> be a really big problem for users from USA, so maybe we should really
>> fork. This particular patent is fairly broad (intentionally, no
>> doubt), but even if it can be worked around, future patents may not
>> be.
>>
>> Finally, one more, slightly silly idea: What position would the
>> Mathworks take on this matter? Maybe they wouldn't actually mind to
>> make some sort of license disclaimer, giving Octave users from USA the
>> license to use the feature? Or at least for non-commercial use
>> (provided that it's not automatically guaranteed by the law)?
>>
>
> Well, I am a U.S. citizen and have never felt unfortunate.  I also am OK
> with the idea of software patents, but this one seems to egregiously
> violate the obviousness criteria.  The U.S. patent system has gone kind
> of whacko in recent years to the point that the U.S. Congress and the
> USPTO are really rethinking the problem.  Unfortunately this patent has
> already been issued.
>
>
> I don't think we should cripple octave for some silly U.S. issue.  I am
> meeting with my patent attorney for some other matters in the next few
> weeks and we have put this on the agenda.  I will get some formal
> advice.  I will ask him about the whole problem including remedies and
> penalties, but for the short term here is what I think we should do.
>
> First, Jaroslav (and anybody else working this problem), just do the
> work so that this feature is available.
>
> Second, I don't think a simple compile-time flag is enough.  However
> suppose you leave some critical piece of the code out so the feature
> can't simply be compiled back in.  Then create a patch that is available
> only from a non-U.S. web site that enables the code.  For example, maybe
> just pull the parser section out or brain-damage the data structure or
> something that makes it nontrivial for a U.S. user to recreate the
> feature.  The patch will not be available in the U.S. and so I think we
> have demonstrated a willingness to abide by the U.S. patent laws.  If
> this isn't enough, I will get real advice on how to proceed.
>
> Of course, we can't prevent U.S. residents from downloading the patch,
> but I don't think that is really our problem.  This is not a new issue.
> The debian distribution used to (still does?) have a nonus portion of
> the archive mostly because of encryption and other export issues.
>
> I would really like to avoid a whole fork.  That may be the best way to
> manage it, but it seems like a small set of patches would suffice.
>

To me, having a separate branch seems much simpler. It would be a real
burden to always reapply a set of patches when rebuilding Octave (and
I do that often). A patent-free branch could be hosted on Thomas
Weber's site, for instance. The main point is, that while I like
developing Octave, I'm really not willing to scan through the US (or
any other, for that matter) patent database for possible
infringements, so I can't guarantee that I won't create more
infringements in the future.


>
> If anybody else has access to the appropriate attorney types it wouldn't
> hurt to get some other advice.  Also, even though I think it unlikely,
> would it hurt to ask the Mathworks folks about some sort of
> permissions?

The problem is whom the permission would be given to, and how. I think
it can't be made part of the license, because then it couldn't be
limited to non-commercial usage (due to GPL).

I think we just see the negative effect of software patents in
reality. If there was always an easy way out, they wouldn't be such an
issue.
So, I would like to warn any Octave users whom it may concern, that
the development archive of Octave infringes certain US software
patents (this might have been true even before, but now it's almost
sure), with all possible implications for users of Octave in USA.

-- 
RNDr. Jaroslav Hajek
computing expert & GNU Octave developer
Aeronautical Research and Test Institute (VZLU)
Prague, Czech Republic
url: www.highegg.matfyz.cz



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