What would the FSF best action be here? The kernel team's opinion seems to be that we should be ignoring the patent situation in favor of contributions from companies who have lawyers who will take the broadest possible interpretation when assessing patent scope. (http://lwn.net/Articles/200422/)
I can understand the kernel team point of view, and FSF. Both is valid approaches, but at the end you got to pick which devil you want to fight against. Currently, I dont see any patent agreements being levied against FOSS users, nor do I see any patent owners trying to claim ownership of the linux kernel. Maybe the GPLv3 patent agreement clause wasn't needed, or maybe the linux kernel is an exceptional project. I will need more data before claiming which "side" is right, or if both are.
Right, in personal use software, I can essentially ignore the existence of software patents; however there's an ongoing chilling effect if I distribute the software, and especially if I choose to sell services around it.
I would personally prefer something as destructive as patent be extinguished along with the only institution capable of enforcing it, but that seems like a stretch goal.
I implement all sorts of things personally which I'm only comfortable sharing with friends, which is the real problem. I'm not sure the FSF has any leverage to help people in the free software community freely express their implementations of various restricted technologies.
I have no idea what the FSF should be doing, and it seems they don't have much more of an idea.
The state impose the fact that there is software patents. FSF don't want software patents. Ignoring software patents resulted in the Novell deal and Microsoft "be very afraid tour". The tour which is explained by (http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9019238/Update_Micros...) and (http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2007/05/microsoft_foss_.html).
What would the FSF best action be here? The kernel team's opinion seems to be that we should be ignoring the patent situation in favor of contributions from companies who have lawyers who will take the broadest possible interpretation when assessing patent scope. (http://lwn.net/Articles/200422/)
I can understand the kernel team point of view, and FSF. Both is valid approaches, but at the end you got to pick which devil you want to fight against. Currently, I dont see any patent agreements being levied against FOSS users, nor do I see any patent owners trying to claim ownership of the linux kernel. Maybe the GPLv3 patent agreement clause wasn't needed, or maybe the linux kernel is an exceptional project. I will need more data before claiming which "side" is right, or if both are.