Letters: Defense of U.S. patent system

Kevin Loughrey's letter assailing the entire patent system was way off-base. Loughrey's company, A Perfect PC, provides services for Linux computers, so he clearly is not approaching this from an unbiased viewpoint.

Just because Microsoft has decided to leverage a legal structure (patents) as a business strategy should not indict the entire patent system. Both patents and regulated monopolies -- that is really what a patent is -- have clearly benefited society (utilities, for example). The United States has one of the strongest patent systems and also a very high degree of innovation. Does Loughrey see no correlation between the two? Economists have linked the two. Why do new drugs originate in the United States? The argument about "obvious art" is a valid one that is revisited and tested routinely. The confusion over software "obvious art" will work itself out, and truly innovative "art" will continue to be patented and will benefit society.

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Defense of U.S. patent system

Kevin Loughrey's letter assailing the entire patent system was way off-base. Loughrey's company, A Perfect PC, provides services for Linux computers, so he clearly is not approaching this from an unbiased viewpoint.

Just because Microsoft has decided to leverage a legal structure (patents) as a business strategy should not indict the entire patent system. Both patents and regulated monopolies -- that is really what a patent is -- have clearly benefited society (utilities, for example). The United States has one of the strongest patent systems and also a very high degree of innovation. Does Loughrey see no correlation between the two? Economists have linked the two. Why do new drugs originate in the United States? The argument about "obvious art" is a valid one that is revisited and tested routinely. The confusion over software "obvious art" will work itself out, and truly innovative "art" will continue to be patented and will benefit society.

Stephen Funk Lansing, Mich.

Howard's end

I read Howard Anderson's article on open source and agree with his assessment, except in regards to an early stage independent software vendor (ISV) dependent on open source software (OSS) libraries and platforms to get a product out the door without burning bank account on proprietary licenses.

As you are aware, before the late '90s most software development depended on purchasing third-party libraries to get most products to customers in a reasonable period.

It was possible for a start-up to build a few key libraries, market them and build a business. Now many of those libraries are open source and thus the businesses have gone away. Great for the user, but terrible for small entrepreneurs and worse for the developers who no longer have those wonderful lifestyle companies.

The major backlash to proprietary licensing came about in part because of the cost of Web and application servers that had costs in the $100,000 range per server. It was silly, and so OSS solutions came in as the dominant Web server (Apache) and application server (JBoss and Tomcat) of choice.

Then team-styled Web applications, those developed by an ISV on top of an application server and deployed to a customer site, became much less expensive to develop and license, because the application server could be acquired for nothing, and the vendor could continue charging the old licensing fee with a much larger margin.

I used OSS solutions in a number of projects, including at a company I founded called Visible Measures in Cambridge. The company couldn't have happened if it wasn't for OSS cutting the development cost down to just my time.

Andy Wilson Manchester, N.H.

Answers to a burning question

In regards to Mark Gibbs' column "Virtual Rip and Burn", I feel your pain about wanting to convert iTunes downloads into portable files; in fact, I never download music partly for that reason (and mostly because I can't download uncompressed originals). When it gets time to do the ripping, though, look at Exact Audio Copy.