FOSS dev's campaign against software patents moves ahead

Sam Varghese
Tuesday, 20 December 2011 11:32

Opinion and Analysis

When it comes to software patents, Melbourne developer Ben Sturmfels is sure of one thing: his campaign to end them in their entirety will succeed in the long run.

But he is also equally sure that there is a very long road to be traversed before this objective is achieved.

Sturmfels (pictured below) has made some progress in his campaign, one which began with the collection of signatures last year to submit to federal parliament.

Though he is a free software advocate, Sturmfels campaign against software patents extends to all genres of software. Patents can affect proprietary software as much as they do free and open source software, he pointed out when I met him recently.

In February, Sturmfels' petition was accepted by the government's Petitions Committee, in three batches. "Collecting 1000 signatures on paper is a hard task and a huge one in terms of the amount of paper needed," he said with a grin.

The signatures were presented to the House on February 21 and 28, and May 28.

Sturmfels and much of the rest of the computer industry was unaware of the response period for a review of patentable subject matter done by the Advisory Council for Intellectual Property last year.

But, acknowledging this, a late submission was allowed and the views of software developers were acknowledged in the ACIP report thus:

"A recent petition to the Minister signed by members of the computer software industry argued that patents are not necessary to encourage innovation in their industry, that the term of a patent (20 years) is too long, and that the cost involved (in avoiding infringing patents, and defending against patent lawsuits) is not viable, particularly for small to medium-sized businesses."