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WWW8 Notes
Open-Source Software and Software Patents
7/27/1999
by Edward Piou

Open-source software and software patents were two noticeable themes at the WWW8 conference in Toronto this past May. Both the opening and closing keynote speakers - Tim Berners-Lee and Bob Metcalfe, respectively - took care to mention the open source movement, though they had different takes on its future. Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation, won a $10,000 award (partially funded by one of his frequent targets, Microsoft) at the conference, and used his acceptance speech to warn against the dangers of software patents. And attendees had a chance to meet and talk to various open source developers on the post-conference Developer's Day. This article will attempt to bring together the various open source and patent issues that came up at the conference.

(Note: a brief overview of the conference is also available.)

Keynotes

Tim Berners-Lee on Open Source and Patents

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World-Wide Web, gave a wide-ranging talk that focused mainly on the future of the web - how he hopes to see the network grow. One threat to his vision which he saw was the proliferation of patents on interesting, but non-innovative, Internet technology. "The bar for innovation, [for] a patent to be innovative, seems to be too low," he said. "When you look at them, it is very very hard to figure out which bit actually the patent filers thought was innovative." Taking a normal offline activity - for example, shopping - and putting it on the Web is not innovative, and should not be patentable, he said. But under the US Patent and Trademark Office's (USPTO's) current guidelines, that is exactly the type of thing which many companies try, and succeed in, patenting.

The result of frivolous patents, he thought, would be a great slowdown in the development of the Internet. Rather than rewarding innovation, and encouraging new and interesting ideas, he characterized the current patent process as rewarding those whose business plan is to make money by suing people and licensing obvious technology.

He held up open-source software, and open standards in general, as one way to make the Web a place where information and ideas can be easily exchanged. As examples of open-source software that help drive the web forward, he cited Amaya and Jigsaw, the open-source web browser and web server developed by the World Wide Web Consortium to serve as reference implemenations of the W3C's recommendations, as well as the libwww library, released freely by the W3C many years ago to demonstrate to programmers the technology underlying the World-Wide Web. He attributed the robustness and pervasiveness of the World-Wide Web to the free, open standards that underly it; standards which everyone is free to examine, both to determine their own implementation of it, and to point out those deficiencies which need to be eradicated for the medium to grow. This spirit of cooperation and peer review, prevalent in the academic world, is something he would like to see on the Internet in general.

He also mentioned that the W3C is looking into ways o get around the plethora of frivolous patents that are being issued, including patents on the technology underlying style sheets and P3P. "We have changed the world before," he said, "we can change it again. We change it every six months!"

Bob Metcalfe on the Death of the Open-Source Movement

Bob Metcalfe, the closing keynote speaker, was decidely less optimistic about the future of open-source software. In his speech, he gave seven predictions regarding the future of the Internet. His prediction regarding open source? "I predict it's going to fizzle." He gave several reasons for his prediction of the demise of the open-source movement, and took care to state "I'm not celebrating this, I'm predicting this."

• First, he predicted Linux, the "poster child" of the open-source movement, wouldn't take away desktop market share from Microsoft Windows. Not because people will continue to prefer Windows, but because something else, that nobody has thought of, will take over.
• Second, he felt the idealism of the movement - an anti-multinational corporation, anti-capitalism, anti-intellectual property movement, in his view - doomed it to failure. Idealism doesn't get the job done; good solutions do.
• Third, he felt that the infighting among open source proponents would distract them too much from fighting the "enemies" they have in common, and end up sinking the movement.

This prediction was met by silence from the audience. When Metcalfe asked why the silence - no booing or clapping, as had accompanied his previous predictions - an audience member replied, "We're mourning."

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