Banning software patents....

I have been fighting against software patents for years.   It's upsetting to see things like this happening:

http://www.widgetpress.com/defense

And this:

http://developers.slashdot.org/story/11/07/16/1152252/UK-Developers-Quit-US-App-Store-Over-Patent-Fears

Doesn't the US realize that we are killing our software industry by doing this?   You can't even say that big business believes in software patents anymore since large companies in the US are now also turning against  them.

The EU and the UK both rejected software patents for a very good reason.  Because they realized that abstract ideas should not be patentable.   Software is fundamentally reducible to mathematical algorithms.   It is incremental in it's nature and, many times, there is only one way to do things.  For all of these reasons and many more.

Most companies today, especially small ones, are forced to patent certain things they do because they need to maintain a patent portfolio.   They do this to defend themselves.   So, like nuclear weapons, patents proliferate in a sort of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) approach.

As an incentive to reform I would like to see the USPTO take a dose of what it is creating.  The USPTO should be required to pay a fine for every patent which is found invalid with the money going towards a fund to pay restitution to those who've lost money due to the USPTO's negligence.  In addition, it should be an option to sue the USPTO for issuance of a bad patent by either the party holding the patent or the party which was sued due to the issuance of the patent or both.

Ultimately, it is the USPTO putting these weapons of mass destruction in everyone's hands.  They should be forced to reap what they've sown.

Building clang for use with GNUstep

1) Build using the instructions here: http://clang.llvm.org/get_started.html

2) Once that's done, download the latest version of Hans Boehm's garbage collector here: http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Hans_Boehm/gc/

3) Untar, Build and install boehm-gc.... it should be gc-7.1.tar.gz
    build it with clang like so:
              ./configure CC=clang LD=gcc && make CC=clang LD=gcc
          make install
    NOTE: You only need to do step 2 & 3 if you want garbage collection, if not you can skip it.

4) Build gnustep-make like so and install it:

              ./configure CC=clang LD=gcc && make CC=clang LD=gcc

          make install

5) Build libobj2 and install it:

              make CC=clang CXX=clang++ LD=gcc

         make install

              

6) Build base, gui and back and install them:

         ./configure CC=clang CXX=clang++ LD=gcc && make CC=clang CXX=clang++ LD=gcc messages=yes

         su

         . /usr/GNUstep/System/Library/Makefiles/GNUstep.sh && make GNUSTEP_INSTALLATION_DOMAIN=SYSTEM install

That should be all there is too it.  Not much, but a few little details which might serve to make it enough of a pain to discourage some people.