Talk:Software patents and free software

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[edit] More refs needed

I'm done for today, but I'll try to find more refs and more free software people and organisations another day to back up the claim that opposition to software patents is widespread in the free software community. If others have such refs, please note them here or add them to the article. And thanks to User:Edcolins for some initial review and for tagging sentences that need references. Gronky 17:36, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Particularly, I remember hearing an audio recording of a talk that Alan Cox gave that was against software patents, but I can't find that now. The venue was somewhere in the UK or maybe the west of Ireland. As for the year, I could only say it was between 2000 and 2005. IIRC "open source" was in the title - I seem to remember starting by saying he'd've prefered "free software". Gronky 17:41, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Novell deal needs mentioning

The MS-Novell deal of 2006 should get a paragraph at least. Gronky 21:54, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Anything wrong with the External links section?

Someone has tagged the "External links" section as needing cleanup, but they have given no information about why, what, or how. So the only thing we can do is look at that section, and make our own decision of what, if any, further work is required. I've done this and it seems that that section is now fine, so I will remove the tag.

Tagging articles is a useful function, but please remember to give information about what is wrong, what needs to be fixed, in what way things could be better. I, and I assume others, welcome detailed criticisms. Gronky 15:34, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your note and sorry for the lack of explanation.
Yes, something's wrong with the External links section. The listed links all appear to present one point of view, against software patents, i.e. the opinion that software patents are a threat to free software. The section is therefore objectionable under WP:EL#Avoid undue weight on particular points of view. Besides, articles by Richard Stallman are linked several times, and blogs, self-published sources, and web sites of possible doubtful merit are listed.
"Adding external links can be a service to our readers, but they should be kept to a minimum of those that are meritable, accessible and appropriate to the article." I just don't think the current list of links is appropriate. Does it help the readers to have these links? Not really. Under WP:EL#Links normally to be avoided ("1. Any site that does not provide a unique resource beyond what the article would contain if it became a Featured article [should be avoided].") and WP:Bold, I am removing them all. --Edcolins 17:54, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Neutrality

The introduction should be balanced and should present the various positions on the subject, including the position of the proprietary software (non-free software) "community", companies or developers (e.g. the position of Microsoft on the subject - see WP:NPOV). --Edcolins 20:12, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't have time to do a good job but I just made some improvements. I removed some vague statements and added a bit about MS's opinion. The intro is now overly focussed on MS now though, so more text is needed. Gronky 17:43, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, it is better now. --Edcolins 18:40, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] IP Innovation LLC or IP Innovations?

Right now, we have a link that is supposedly for "IP Innovation LLC", but when I follow it I arrive at the web page for "IP Innovations". Are they the same? 62.181.255.64 09:07, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Should mention the OSRM "283 patents" study

The study by (now-dead) Open Source Risk Management which found that the Linux kernel could potentially violate 283 not-proven-in-court patents, should be mentioned. Anyone got some good links which can be used as the basis for this? --Gronky 12:30, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Google patent promise?

Google have a lot of patents and do a lot of work with free software, but the article says nothing about whether they've made a patent non-agression pledge to free software. Does anyone have any info about this? Thanks. --Gronky (talk) 13:07, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] South Africa minister quote

There's a notable comment here from Fraser-Moleketi, the South African minister of public service and administration, criticising software patents and praising free software:

http://www.tectonic.co.za/?p=2304

But I can't decide how to mention it in Wikipedia. Should it go in this article, or in the software patent debate article. Hmmm. --Gronky (talk) 01:05, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Portal:Free software: SP+FS is now the selected article

Just to let you know. The purpose of selecting an article is both to point readers to the article and to highlight it to potential contributors. It will remain on the portal for a week or so. The previous selected article was Wireshark - a packet sniffer which was previously called Ethereal.

For other interesting free software articles, you can take a look at the archive of PF's selectees. --Gronky (talk) 12:23, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm glad to see this article has attracted attention while being highlighted on Portal:Free_software. Meanwhile, the new selectee is gNewSense, a GNU/Linux distribution which focusses on being completely free-as-in-freedom. gNewSense recently celebrated it's 2.0 release "Delta H". --Gronky (talk) 08:58, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Expansion and cleanup

In response to a question by User:Gronky on my talk page...

I tagged this article with two templates: {{cleanup}} and {{expand}}. I used {{cleanup}} for a number of reasons, the most significant of these being the short, choppy blocks of three or four sentences, each under their own heading. A number of sections in the article read like proseline. The more significant tag, however, was {{expand}}. This article is absolutely full of references (a good thing!), but it is fairly short. Every sentence has a reference on it, which is good for a featured article but unnecessary for an article of this size. Furthermore, some of the sections (like "Positions from the community" and "Infringement claims") are oversummarized and need additional details. I believe that we could squeeze some more content out of the references we have now.

Of course, feel free to revert me if you disagree. « Aaron Rotenberg « Talk « 02:37, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't disagree at all :-) Since I wrote large parts of the article, it's sometimes hard for me to see what's wrong with it, so I'm always interested in constructive criticism. I'll look into expanding the short sections, particularly the two you highlighted. --Gronky (talk) 08:39, 13 May 2008 (UTC)