Re: [TRAD GNU] stallman-mec-india - 2e morceau

[Therese Godefroy <godef.th AT free.fr>]

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"POT-Creation-Date: 2011-07-14 04:30-0300\n"
"PO-Revision-Date: 2011-07-27 09:26+0100\n"
"Last-Translator: Therese <godef.th AT free.fr>\n"
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#. type: Content of: <p id="conf6">
msgid "<strong>Contourner les brevets qui vous menacent</strong>"
msgstr ""

#. type: Content of: <p>
msgid "First let's consider avoiding the patent.  Well in some cases that's is easy.  You know Unisys was frightening people using the patent on LZW compression which is have to find another data compression algorithm or we can avoid that patent.  Well, that was somewhat difficult because there are many other patents covering lots of other data compression algorithms.  But eventually we found one that was not in the area that those others' patents cover, eventually we did.  So that program was implemented. It actually gave better compression results and so we now have GZIP and a lot of people use GZIP.  So in that one case it was, there was considerable work and we were able to do it to avoid that patent."
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#. type: Content of: <p>
msgid "But in the 80's Compuserv defined an image format called GIF and used LZW compression algorithm in defining it.  Well, of course once the uproar about the patent become known, people defined another image format using a different compression algorithm.  They used GZIP algorithm and that format is called the PNG format which I suppose to mean that PNG is Not GIF."
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#. type: Content of: <p>
msgid "But there was a problem: lots of people have already started using GIF format and there were many programs that could display GIF format and produce GIF format but they couldn't display PNG format.  So the result was people felt it too hard to switch.  You see when you are dealing with a data compression program used by somebody who says &ldquo;I want to compress some data or you can give them a data compression program&rdquo;.  If he can get sued for using this one and you give him another one he will switch."
msgstr ""

#. type: Content of: <p>
msgid "But what you want to do is make images that can be displayed by Netscape, then he can't switch unless Netscape handles the other format, and it didn't.  It took years, I think, before Netscape started to handle PNG format.  So people essentially said &ldquo;I can't switch, I just haven't&rdquo; and so the result was the society had invested so much in this one format but the inertia was too great for a switch even now there was another superior format available."
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#. type: Content of: <p>
msgid "So even when a patent is rather narrow, avoiding it can be very hard.  Postscript specifications includes LZW compression which we and our implementation of a postscript cannot implement.  We supported another kind of compression in some sense that's not correct even though it does the useful job.  So even a narrow patent is always feasible to avoid."
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#. type: Content of: <p>
msgid "Now, sometimes a feature gets patented.  In that case, you can avoid the patents by taking out that feature.  In the late 80's the users of the word processor XyWrite got a downgrade in mail.  That word processor had a feature where you could define a short word or sequence as an abbreviation.  Whenever you type in that short sequence and then a space it would turn into a longer expansion.  You could define this anywhere you write.  Then somebody patented this and XyWrite decided to deal with the patent by removing the feature.  They contacted me because in fact I had put a feature like that into the original Emacs editor back in the 70's &mdash; many years before that patent.  So there was a chance that I could provide evidence would enable them to fight the patent."
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#. type: Content of: <p>
msgid "Well, this at least showed me that I had at least one patentable idea in my life.  I know of it because someone else patented it.  Now, of course you can respond to these patented features by taking the features out.  Once your program starts missing several features that users want, it might be useless as a program."
msgstr ""

#. type: Content of: <p>
msgid "Now you may have heard of Adobe Photoshop.  We have a program called the GIMP which is more powerful and general than Photoshop.  But there is a one important feature that it doesn't have which is pantom color matching, which is very important for people who want actually print the images on paper and get reliable results.  This feature is omitted because it is patented.  And as a result, the program for one substantial class of users is crippled.  If you look at programs today you see that they often provide many features and what the users demand is features.  If any important feature is missing, well, it is easy to leave it out.  But the results may be very bad."
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#. type: Content of: <p>
msgid "Of course, sometimes a patent is so broad that is impossible to avoid it.  Public key encryption is essential for computer users to have privacy.  The whole field was patented.  That patent expired just four years ago, so they could dream now Free Software in the US for public key encryption.  Until then many programs free and non-free were wiped out by the Patent Office.  And in fact that the whole area of computing was held back for more than a decade despite strong interest.  So, that is the possibility of avoiding the patents."
msgstr ""

#. type: Content of: <p id="conf7">
msgid "<strong>Obtenir des licences d'exploitation</strong>"
msgstr ""

#. type: Content of: <p>
msgid "Another possibility that is sometimes available is to license the patent.  Now the patent holder is not required to offer you a license that's his.  The patent holder can say &ldquo;I am not licensing this, you are just out of business.  Period&rdquo;."
msgstr ""

#. type: Content of: <p>
msgid "In the League for Programming Freedom we heard in the early 90's from somebody whose family business was making casino games, computerized of course, and he had then threatened by somebody who have a patent on a very broad category of computerized casino games.  The patent covered a network where there is more than one machine and each machine support more than one type and they can display more than one game in progress at time.  Now one thing you should realize is the patent office thinks that is really brilliant.  If you see that other people implemented doing one thing and you decided to support two or more.  You know if they made a system that plays one game and if you make it able to play more than one game that's an invention.  If you can display one game and you decided to setup so that display two games at once that's an invention."
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#. type: Content of: <p>
msgid "If he get with one computer and you do it with network having notebook computers that's an invention for them.  They think that these steps are really brilliant.  Of course we in Computer Science know this is just a rule that we can generalize anything from one to more than one.  So most obvious principle there is.  So every time you write a subroutine that's what you're doing.  So this is one of the systematic reasons why the patent system produces and then oppose patents that we would all say are ridiculously obvious.  You can presume just because it's ridiculously obvious that they wouldn't be upheld by a court.  They may be legally valid despite the fact that are stupid.  So he was faced with this patent and the patent holder was not even offering him the chance to get a license.  &ldquo;Shutdown!&rdquo; &mdash; that's what the patent holder said, and that's what he eventually did.  He couldn't afford to fight it."
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#. type: Content of: <p>
msgid "However many patent holders will offer you chance of a license.  But it cost you dearly.  The owners of the natural order recalculation patent would be demanding five percent of the gross sales of every spreadsheet and that I was told was the cheap pre-lawsuit price.  If you insisted on fighting over the matter they would be charging more.  Now you could, I suppose, sign a license like that for one patent, you could do it for two, you could do it for three.  For what I think twenty different patents for your program and each patent holder wants five percent of the gross sales.  What I have said twenty &mdash; one of them disagrees, then you are pretty badly screwed."
msgstr ""

#. type: Content of: <p>
msgid "But actually business people tell you that two or three of such patents would be such a big burden that they would make the company fail in practice, even if in theory it might have a chance.  So a license for a patent is not necessarily a feasible thing to do, and for us, the Free Software developers, we're in the worst position because we can't even count the copies and most licenses domain in the field for copying so that's absolutely impossible for us to use one of these licenses.  You know that if a license charged one millionth part of a rupee for each copy, we would be unable to comply because we can't count the copies.  The total amount of money that I might have in my pocket, but I can't count it so I can't pay it.  So we suffer some special burden occasionally."
msgstr ""

#. type: Content of: <p id="conf8">
msgid "<strong>Les licences croisées</strong>"
msgstr ""

#. type: Content of: <p>
msgid "But there are one kind of organizations for which licensing patents works very well and that is the large multinational corporations and the reason is that they own many patents themselves and they use them towards cross licensing.  What does that mean? Well, essentially the only defense against patents is deterrence, you have to have patents of your own.  Then you hope that somebody points a patent you, you will be able point a patent back and say &ldquo;don't sue me, because I'll sue you&rdquo;."
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#. type: Content of: <p>
msgid "However, deterrence doesn't work as well for patents as it does with nuclear weapons and the reason is that each patent is pointed in a fixed direction.  It prohibits certain specified activities.  So the result is that most of the companies that are trying to get some patents to defend themselves with.  They have more chance of making a success.  They might get a few patents that might get a patent that points there and they might get a patent that points there.  And then if somebody over here threatens this company what are they going to do? They have a patent pointing over there, so they have no defense."
msgstr ""

#. type: Content of: <p>
msgid "Meanwhile, sooner or later, somebody else will wander over there and the executive of the company will think &ldquo;gee, we're not as profitable as I would like, why don't I squeeze some money out of them&rdquo;.  So they first get this patent for defensive purposes.  But they often change their minds later when a victim wants to buy.  And this, by the way, is the fallacy in the myth that the patent system &ldquo;protects&rdquo; the &ldquo;small inventor&rdquo;."
msgstr ""

#. type: Content of: <p>
msgid "Let me tell the message in the myth of the starving genius.  If somebody who's been working in isolation for years and starving has a brilliant new idea for how to do something or other.  And so, now, he's starting a company and he is afraid some big companies like IBM will compete with him and so he gets a patent and this patent will &ldquo;protect him&rdquo;.  Well, of course, this is not the way of things work out in fields.  People won't make this kind of progress in isolation. It is where you are working with other people and talking with other people and developing software usually.  And so the whole scenario doesn't make sense and besides, if there's such a good computer scientist there is no need for him to starve.  He could have got a job at any time if he wanted."
msgstr ""

#. type: Content of: <p>
msgid "But let's suppose this happened, and suppose he has this patent, and he says &ldquo;IBM, you can't compete with me because I have got this patent &rdquo;.  But here is what IBM says: &ldquo;well, gee, let's look at your product, hmm, I have this patent, this patent and this patent and this patent and this patent that your patent is violating.  So how about a quick cross-license?&rdquo;.  And the starving genius says &ldquo;hmm, I haven't had enough food in my belly to fight these things, so I better give in&rdquo; and so they sign a cross-license and now guess what."
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#. type: Content of: <p>
msgid "IBM can compete with him &mdash; he wasn't protected at all.  Now IBM can do this because they have a lot of patents.  They have patents pointing here, here, here, everywhere.  So that anybody from almost anywhere that attacks IBM is facing a stand-off.  A small company can't do it but a big company can."
msgstr ""

#. type: Content of: <p>
msgid "So IBM brought an article. It was in Think magazine, I believe issue number five of 1990, that's IBM's own magazine &mdash; an article about IBM's patent portfolio.  IBM said that they have two kinds of benefits form its 9000 active U.S patents.  One benefit was collecting royalties from licenses.  But the other benefit, the bigger benefit, was access to things patented by others.  From mission to not to be attacked by others but with their patents through cross licensing.  And the article said that the second benefit was an order of magnitude greater than the first."
msgstr ""

#. type: Content of: <p>
msgid "In other words, the benefit of IBM is to make it things freely, not being sued, was ten times the benefit of collecting money from all their patents.  Now the patent system is lot like a lottery, in that what happens with any given patent is largely around them and most of them don't get bring benefits of their owners.  But IBM is so big that these things average out over the scale of IBM. So you can say IBM is measuring what the average is like.  What we see is, and this is a little bit sudden, the benefit of IBM of being able to make use of ideas patented by others is equal to the harm that the patent system would have done to IBM if there were no cross licensing."
msgstr ""

#. type: Content of: <p>
msgid "If the IBM were really prohibited from using all those ideas that were patented by others, so what I said is the harm that the patent system would do is ten times the benefit, on the average.  Now, for IBM though, this harm doesn't happen. Because IBM does have 9000 patents and thus forces licenses and cross-licenses and avoids the problem.  But if you were small, then you can't avoid the problem that way and you will really be facing ten time as much trouble as benefit.  Anyway, this is why the big multinational corporations are in favor of software patents and they are lobbying governments around the world to adopt software patents and saying naive things like &ldquo;this is a new kind of monopoly for software developers that has to be good for them, right?&rdquo;"
msgstr ""

#. type: Content of: <p>
msgid "Well, today, after you have heard my speech I hope you understand why that isn't true.  You have to look carefully at how patents affect software developers to see whether they are good or bad, and explaining that is my overall purpose."
msgstr ""

#. type: Content of: <p id="conf9">
msgid "<strong>Contester la validité d'un brevet</strong>"
msgstr ""

#. type: Content of: <p>
msgid "So, that is the possibility of licensing a patent.  The third possible option is to go to court and challenge the validity of the patent.  Now the outcome of this case will depend largely on technicalities, which means essentially on randomness."
msgstr ""

#. type: Content of: <p>
msgid "You know, the dice were rolled a few years ago and you can investigate and find out what the dice came up saying and then you will find out you have got a chance.  So its mainly historical accident that determines whether the patent is valid.  The historical accident of whether precisely which things people happen to publish and when.  So, sometimes, there is a possibility of invalidating.  So even if a patent is ridiculously trivial sometimes there is a good chance of invalidating and sometimes there is not."
msgstr ""

#. type: Content of: <p>
msgid "You can't expect the courts to recognize that it is trivial, because their standards are generally much lower than we would think are sensible.  In fact, in the United States, this is been a persistent tendency.  I saw a supreme court decision from something like 1954 which had a long list of patents that were invalidated by the Supreme Court starting in the 1800's.  And they were utterly ridiculous like making a shape of door-knob out of rubber when previously they've been made out of wood.  And this decision rebuked the patent system for going far far away from the proper standards, and they just keep on doing it."
msgstr ""

#. type: Content of: <p>
msgid "So you can expect sensible results from that, but there are situations where when you look at the past record, you see there is a chance to invalidate a certain patent.  It is worth the try, at least to investigate.  But the actual court case is likely to be extremely expensive."
msgstr ""

#. type: Content of: <p>
msgid "A few years ago, one defendant lost and had to pay 13 million dollars of which most went to the lawyers on the two sides.  I think only 5 million dollars was actually taken away by the patent holder and so then there were 8 million to the lawyers."
msgstr ""

#. type: Content of: <p id="conf10">
msgid "<strong>On ne peut pas tout réinventer</strong>"
msgstr ""

#. type: Content of: <p>
msgid "Now, these are your possible options.  At this point, of course, you have to write the program.  And there the problem is that you face this situation not just once but over and over and over because programs today are complicated.  Look at a word processor; you'll see a lot of features.  Many different things each of which could be patented by somebody, or a combination of two of them could be patented by somebody.  British Telecom has a patent in US on the combination of following hypertext links and letting the users dial up through a phone line.  Now these are two basically separate things, but the combination of the two is patented."
msgstr ""

#. type: Content of: <p>
msgid "So, that means if there are a 100 things in your program there are potentially some five thousand copairs of two that might be patented by somebody already and there is no law against patenting a combination of three of them either.  So that's just the features, you know, there are going to be many techniques that you use in writing the programs, many algorithms they could be patented too.  So there are lots and lots of things that could be patented and the result is that developing a program becomes like crossing a field of land mines.  Sure, each step probably will not step on a patent, chances are it will be safe.  But crossing a whole field becomes dangerous."
msgstr ""

#. type: Content of: <p>
msgid "The best way for a nonprogrammer to understand what this is like is to compare the writing of these large programs with another area in which people write something &mdash; very large symphonies.  Imagine if the governments of Europe in the 1700's had wanted to promote progress in symphonic music by adopting a system of music patents.  So that any idea that could be described in words could be patented if it seem to be new and original.  So you'd be able to patent, say your three note melodic motive which is too short to be but it would have been patentable and may they could have patented a certain chord progression and maybe patented using a certain combination of instruments playing at the same time or any other idea that somebody could describe."
msgstr ""

#. type: Content of: <p>
msgid "Well, by 1800 there would have been thousands of these music idea patents.  And then imagine that you are Beethoven and you want to write a symphony.  To write a whole symphony, you are going to have to do lots of different things and at any point you could be using an idea that somebody else has patented.  Of course, if you do that, he'll say &ldquo;oh! You are just a thief, why can't you write something original&rdquo;.  Well Beethoven had more than his share of new musical ideas.  But he used a lot of existing musical ideas.  He had to, because that is the only way to make it recognizable.  If you don't do that, people won't listen at all.  Pierre Boulez thought he was going to totally reinvent the language of music and he tried and nobody listens to it because it doesn't use all the ideas that they were familiar with.  So you have to use the old ideas that other people have thought of."
msgstr ""

#. type: Content of: <p>
msgid "Nobody is such a genius that he can reinvent the entire field of software and do useful things without learning anything from anybody else.  So in effect, those people were patent holders and their lawyers, they were accusing us of being cheaters because we don't totally reinvent the field from scratch.  We have to build on previous work to make progress and that is exactly what the patent system is prohibits us from doing.  We have to provide features that the users are accustomed to and can recognize where they'll find our software just too difficult to use no matter how good it is."
msgstr ""