• irotsoma@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    Tech patents are ridiculous. Let’s end them or reduce them to 1-3 years with no renewal. Then all that’s left is the specific copyright to the technology, not lingering webs of patents that don’t make any sense anyway to anyone with detailed knowledge of the tech. All they’re good for is big companies using legal methods to stop innovation and competition. Tech moves too fast for long patents and is too complex for patent examiners or courts to understand what is really patentable. So it comes down to who has the most money for lawyers.

    • cordlesslamp@lemmy.today
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      7 days ago

      Seeing things like “slide to unlock”, “rounded corners”, and “scroll bouncing” are all patentable is ridiculous.

    • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      Yeah, but another big issue is that big companies can afford to bribe or buy out the patent holders in the first place. Ideally, the patent holders would benefit the most from everyone making their tech, but instead they benefit the most from one company being the exclusive manufacturer and highest bidder.

      The act of an agreement asking a patent holder not to sell to other manufacturers in itself should be illegal.

      • irotsoma@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        Yeah, making patents nontransferable would solve that. Ultimately, getting rid of most would be good, but if we have to keep them, then they should be dissolved if a company fails or is bought out because obviously the patent itself wasn’t enough to make a product that was viable. So everyone should get the chance to use the patent. The whole purpose of a patent vs keeping tech proprietary until the product is released was to benefit society once the patent expires. Otherwise, it makes more sense for companies to keep inventions secret if they aren’t just stockpiling them like they do now.

  • umbrella@lemmy.ml
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    7 days ago

    thanks, proprietary licenses.

    can we finally move to open standards now or will these fucks keep on losing money just to spite foss? are they that afraid we read some of their source code?

  • MehBlah@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    Good. Qualcomm refuses to make it easy to run linux on their hardware. Instead they try to hide basic information about their processors and chips in the name of selling a license for every little thing.

    • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      And so is Arm, especially their Mali drivers.

      While some go “um, ackchually, you don’t need a GPU driver for your hobby project of using a cheap SBC to run emulators”, it does affect usability a lot. Yeah, Arm also pointing at the licensors and so are licensors to Arm in this case, but it’s still not good that the only SBCs with relatively good GPU drivers for Linux are made by Raspberry Pi, and in all other case, you either need to pirate the drivers (!), use the tool that allows regular Linux to use Android GPU drivers, or just use the framebuffer-only driver with heavy limitations.

      • chakan2@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        This is textbook late stage free market ideals at work. This is how the free market always ends.

        • Final Remix@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          X - The system is broken.

          ✅ - The system is working exactly as intended and must be destroyed.

          • Petter1@lemm.ee
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            6 days ago

            There are lots of different kinds of markets, like phone market, grocery market, goldsmith market, etc.

            The governments have to interfere in many markets all the time, that there aren’t monopolies forming or Price-fixing agreement be done, which would lead to prices go ridiculously high, or last companies in markets fucking up taking tons of knowhow with them.

            • sunbeam60@lemmy.one
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              7 days ago

              Yes but the statement was “this is how free markets always end”. And I’m just wondering if the commenter has actually been around to see “free markets ending.”

              • trashgirlfriend@lemmy.world
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                6 days ago

                I think they were less talking about them ending as much as them tending towards the monopoly state over time.

                • sunbeam60@lemmy.one
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                  6 days ago

                  Got it. Saying “this is how free markets always end” if they meant “free markets tends to move towards monopolies” confused me.

              • chakan2@lemmy.world
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                6 days ago

                That’s a fair comment I guess…but it’s the reality of the game. The US was a free market through it’s early history and today is the result of that.

                It’s just how the free market ends, always. It starts with a few winners consolidating, abusing their monopoly and buying their government protections, and poof…welcome to late stage capitalism.

                “Free Market” people always disregard human nature at it’s worst. There will always be people and orgs that game the system. You simply can’t prevent that. The US is absolutely an end game free market.

        • lud@lemm.ee
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          7 days ago

          Yeah, the huge companies would dominate over small companies even more than they already do.

          • ConsistentParadox@lemmy.ml
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            7 days ago

            Copyrights and patents are literally government enforced monopolies for huge companies. Without them, there would be a lot more competition.

            • lud@lemm.ee
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              7 days ago

              Really? Calling it a government enforced monopoly seems very disingenuous.

              Good luck trying to make a movie without Disney stealing it or making an invention with really effective solar panels or something without the biggest companies stealing it and bankrupt the original creator.

              Copyright and patents protect everyone involved in creation and while there are a LOT of problems with the systems. Removing it entirely seems like the biggest overcorrection possible.

              • ConsistentParadox@lemmy.ml
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                7 days ago

                Companies such as Disney have armies of lawyers to enforce their monopolies. Copyright and patent laws are designed exclusively for the rich.

                Disney can very well “steal” other people’s work and get away with it under this system. Without such laws, everyone else would be able to “steal” from Disney as well, which would level the playing field.

                • lud@lemm.ee
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                  7 days ago

                  The playing field won’t be level without patents or copyright. Why would I an average idiot make or invent something if the exact second I show the world my invention someone takes it and mass-produces it within a week? I have no chance to raise capital to make the invention myself if you can already buy it in every store. The Chinese manufacturing industry essentially does this already but to a lesser degree. Imagine if every company did that. No small companies or individuals would stand a chance against Goliath.

                  And again the word monopoly is very misleading in this discussion, especially when it comes to copyright. There is absolutely nothing stopping anyone from making superhero movies just because Marvel/Disney owns a lot of superhero rights. You are just not allowed to make an exact copy of their movie but you are allowed to make similar movies all day long.

                  Another example is a professional photographer. Do you really think that they should be awarded no rights whatsoever to the photograph they took?

                  The same obviously applies to huge companies as well. Why make a movie if it’s available for free download literally everywhere.

                  How do you propose that the makers of content, inventions and products get paid? Donations? Get real, that won’t happen.

        • barsoap@lemm.ee
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          7 days ago

          Or trade secrets. “Perfect information” is a bitch. Not to speak of “perfectly rational actors”: Say goodbye to advertisement, too, we’d have to outlaw basically all of it.

          • frezik@midwest.social
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            7 days ago

            Trade secrets don’t need to be enforced much by law. You can create an ad hoc trade secret regime by simply keeping your secret between a few key employees. As it happens, there are some laws that go beyond that to help companies keep the secret, but that only extends something that could happen naturally.

            • barsoap@lemm.ee
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              7 days ago

              To get closer to the free market there would have to be a duty to disclose any- and everything that’s now a trade secret, no matter how easily kept. To not just get closer but actually get there we all would need to be telepathic. As said, perfect information is a bitch of a concept.

              • lud@lemm.ee
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                6 days ago

                Being free to innovate and keep your own ideas to yourself sounds like it should be part of the free market though.

                Forcing people to disclose their (mental) secrets seems bizarre.

                • barsoap@lemm.ee
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                  6 days ago

                  I’m not arguing for any policies, just explaining what would be necessary to make the theoretical model of the free market a reality in actual reality: It assumes perfect information and perfectly rational actors, it’s a tall order.

          • Peruvian_Skies@sh.itjust.works
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            6 days ago

            To be fair, we absolutely should outlaw at least 99% of all currently practiced forms of advertising and make it so that new forms of advertising have to be whitelisted by a panel of psychiatrists, sociologists, environmentalists and urban planners before they’re allowed.

          • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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            7 days ago

            Are you telling me that the axioms behind the simplistic model are wrong?? shocked-pikachu.jpg

            • barsoap@lemm.ee
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              7 days ago

              It’s not so much that they’re wrong is that they’re impossible in practice. Axioms, by their very nature, cannot be justified from within the system that they serve so “true” or “false” aren’t really applicable.

              The model does have its justification, “given these axioms, we indeed get perfect allocation of resources”, that’s not wrong it’s a mathematical truth, and there’s a strain of liberalism (ordoliberalism) which specifically says “the state should regulate so that the actually existing market more closely approximates this mythical free market unicorn”, which is broadly speaking an immensely sensible take and you’ll have market socialists nodding in agreement, yep, that’s a good idea.

              And then there’s another strain (neoliberalism) which basically says “lul we’ll tell people that ‘free market’ means ‘unregulated market’ so we can be feudal lords and siphon off infinite amounts of resources from the plebs”.

              • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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                7 days ago

                Wrong as in not sound. An argument can be valid assuming its assumptions are true. The argument is the model, which really is a set of arguments. Its assumptions which are taken axiomatically are as you say impossible, therefore they are not true (which I called wrong). So the argument is not sound. I’m not saying anything different than what you said really, just used informal language. ☺️

                • barsoap@lemm.ee
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                  7 days ago

                  Its assumptions are inconsistent with the conditions in the material world, but that doesn’t make the model itself unsound. A model is not an argument, definitely not in the political sense, it’s just a model.

                  You can also include the model in the material world, as was done, at the very least, when the paper introducing it was published and that doesn’t make the material world unsound, either: The model lives in organic computation machines which implement paraconsistent logic in a way that does not, contrary to an assumption popular among those computation machines, make those paradoxes real in the material realm they’re embedded in.

                  Everything is, ultimately, sound, because the universe, nay, cause and effect itself, does not just shatter willy-nilly. “ex falso quodlibet” would have rather interesting implications, physics-wise. For one, an infinite amount of Boltzmann brains would haunt an infinite amount of physicists.

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        What’s government enforced about it? Is ARM the only allowed chip designer for cellphones?

        • Fushuan [he/him]@lemm.ee
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          7 days ago

          license enforcement is a thing because if someone bypasses it you can sue them, which is a government interaction. Technically, claiming X means nothing if there’s no one that enforces your claim.

          • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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            7 days ago

            Yes but that rule protects you the same as it does them. They can be a monopoly if nobody else can get their chips sold but they cannot be a government enforced monopoly unless nobody else is allowed to sell chips.

            • Fushuan [he/him]@lemm.ee
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              6 days ago

              That’s your interpretation and that’s fine but I understand that they have a monopolies because their patent is broad enough to be hard to create alternatives, and the patent is government enforced. That’s how I understood it at least.

              In any case, I don’t really mind if you want to keep using your interpretation, I was just trying to rationalise what the other commenter said and explain what I though was their point of view to say what they said.

              Have a great day.

              • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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                6 days ago

                That’s not just my opinion. That’s the definition going straight back to Adam Smith.

  • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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    6 days ago

    I hope this isn’t a cartoony scheme driven by Apple honeydicking Arm with the M-series processors to tank PC and Android.

    • ziggurat@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      Arm owner softbank wants more mulah, want line goes up.

      Qualcomm thinks this is not allowed in their license contract.

      Without having read the contract, I think Qualcomm has a strong case, seams arm wants this to be settled before court in December. Qualcomm also thinks they have a strong case, so they say let the courts begin.

      But it doesn’t matter if it’s an American court, because Qualcomm is American, softbank is Asian, arm is European. So, you have home turf advantage

      • GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        the fact that you know they fucked up but don’t know how they fixed it says it all.

        even if they did “fix” it, public opinion has been settled and nobody will trust them for awhile.

        • SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org
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          6 days ago

          Good. Godot exists. Or even that weird engine from Amazon (?) they open sourced. You could make a Unity competitor out of that. Just create an asset store for it and sell stuff, give other creators a decent cut and they will come.

      • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        Yeah, iirc, at first they tried to downplay the change, then they paused it, then they walked it back entirely. I think that last step happened relatively recently, even.

        But IMO the damage was done from just trying to alter the deal like that.

        And, for me personally, I (naively) thought that ARM was an open standard. I opposed the Nvidia purchase because I thought they would do their corporate bullshit to kill off competition or for greed and thought that it getting blocked meant it would be free of corporate bullshit. This action makes it clear that it’s already got some of that going on and ARM has been mentally re-filed to a spot beside x86 and its derivatives.

        Though now I’m wondering if that’s the whole point. Do some shitty corporate stuff so that the next time someone wants to buy them out, there isn’t as much opposition and the current owners and C-suite can cash out.

  • TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee
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    7 days ago

    The amount of IP money grubbing in the IT industry is able to literally make millions out of sand, this is just more of it.

  • humanspiral@lemmy.ca
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    6 days ago

    While every comment here seems to scream “end patents”, arm has less patent bs than other tech (rounded corners) meant to sue/prevent use. Arm works hard on developing and improving architecture and designs to offer licenses at a compelling price. Qualcomm paying as much as other licensees should be preferable to Qualcomm than bankruptcy.

    • ozymandias117@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      Yeah. The crowd rooting for Qualcomm has never worked with them

      ARM has it’s problems, but they aren’t in the wrong here

    • Laser@feddit.org
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      6 days ago

      Qualcomm paying as much as other licensees should be preferable to Qualcomm than bankruptcy.

      Not saying this is wrong, but where do you get it from? The article just states that ARM considers Qualcomm’s acquisition of Nuvia a breach of license. Both companies held ARM licenses before. What’s the issue with such a purchase?

    • Doomsider@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      Oh so they aren’t as shitty as other companies so it is all good? Sounds like horseshit to me. Patents on a quickly changing area like computer technology are pretty asinine hence why people don’t like them.

      Also there is nothing preventing them from changing their behavior and turning into patent trolls in the future. In fact, enshitification pretty much guarantees they will at some point in the future.

  • frezik@midwest.social
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    7 days ago

    We shall break into the desktop and laptop market! Let’s start by severing ties with one of the most successful companies to do that so far.

  • poVoq@slrpnk.net
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    7 days ago

    I wonder if their recent bid to take over Intel, is related.

    The irony would be very thik as Qualcomm played a big role in killing Intel’s 2010er efforts to enter the mobile sector.

    • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      Qualcomm is not trying to take over Intel.

      Not only has it been denied by both parties, it would 100% not go ahead. Additionally, it would invalidate the x86 cross-licence that AMD and Intel have, meaning Intel would no longer be able to make modern x86 CPUs. Frankly it’s also somewhat doubtful Qualcomm wants to take Intel on.

      The rumour was likely someone trying to pump up the stock and sell.

      • Toes♀@ani.social
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        7 days ago

        I’m just being a little pedantic. But I believe you meant x64?

        Edit: x86_64 thanks guys

        • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          X64 doesn’t exist. Microsoft used the label for Windows for a while to distinguish from IA64 (Itanium) and 32bit x86 editions of Windows but these days Microsoft moved mostly away from those labels and only uses them when talking about ARM.

          • frezik@midwest.social
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            7 days ago

            The x86 license itself doesn’t matter much anymore. Those patents expired a long time ago. Early x86_64 is held by AMD, but those patents are also expiring soon.

            There’s more advancements past that which are held by both Intel and AMD. You still can’t make a modern x86 CPU on your own. Soon, you’ll be able to make a CPU with an instruction set compatible with the first Athlon 64-bit processors, but that’s as far as it goes.