For years I've argued against ridiculous software patents: While I'm a fervent believer of the innovation fostering environment provided by IP protection and rights, the stream of trivial software patents has reached a torrential pace. We're now at a point where it's impossible to create any software solution or website without infringing upon the trivial "IP" of hundreds of patent holders, leading to the unintended consequence that innovation is suppressed because of the natural litigation risk presented by patent trolls.

One of the more recent abusers of the patent system is none other than Microsoft. They're even patenting methods they're taking from other products now (sure, Microsoft's patent wouldn't hold up during the course of a real lawsuit, but few opponents would have the resources to even bring it that far).

Such a comment inevitably summons the Microsoft-does-no-wrong defenders who repeatedly declare that Microsoft is different, and that these were defensive patents. Microsoft, we are told, is just building a patent shield in case a patent troll comes gunning for them (ignore the absurd foundation of the whole "defensive patent" argument -- patent trolls seldom have any interest in cross-licensing, and they seldom have published products that a target can counter-assault with dubious patents).

Maybe not.

When Microsoft's growth curve seemed limitless, they overlooked casual piracy (which is how they gained dominance), had limited invasive copy protection mechanisms, and played nicely in the software development community. As their hegemony has faced real competition, some of it coming from the open source world (given that capitalist competitors were easy to squash), and their growth has been stagnant and has the potential of reversing course in the coming years, Microsoft has changed for the worse. Now they're enlisting jackbooted squads of anti-piracy teams, and infesting their products with activation and "genuine advantage" bugs.

Now they're starting to threaten competitors, and worse the customers of competitors, with their patent trolls.

The risk presented by Microsoft's so-called "defensive" patents is exactly what is happening. They've been offensive patents all along.

Expect it to only get worse.

Over the past 24 hours I've logged several hundred inbound visitors vectored over from http://www.dzone.com (I swear that I seldom check the stats -- honest to goodness cross my heart -- but I just happened to right after getting up this morning. It caught my eye as it wasn't one of the usual suspects). Fairly interesting programming-specific Digg/Reddit-like site, with a useful collection of links.

Just thought I'd mention it for those readers looking for something different. This isn't a reciprocity link, but rather that I truly found it a decent site with different content than the regulars.

Sidenote: One thing that I've always found fascinating about sites like that is the incredibly small percentage of users who actually "vote". I've been Digg'd, Slashdotted, Reddit'd, and now dzone'd, and I'd say that less than 5% of users who follow the links actually declare their feelings (in the case of Digg I would put the percentage even lower). While some of the sites don't allow for a negative vote, Reddit does but even there less than 1 in 10 link navigator expresses their feeling one way or the other.

I recently finished the book Dreaming in Code, grabbing a copy after it started appearing in all of the "customers who bought this book also bought"* sections for other books I was contemplating.

Wonderful book.

It documents the progress (or lack thereof) and missteps that occurred during the lengthy birthing of Chandler, an open source Outlook/Exchange "Killer".

Started with a lengthy, largely abstract wish list, and an ability to use whatever technologies and techniques that they wanted -- financed by the deep pockets of the undemanding Mitch Kapor -- Chandler was the sort of project that developers dreamily contemplate while analyzing the patterns on their cube wall, imagining how much better it would be than the tight confines and demanding deliverables of their current reality.

Chandler was the sort of project where the only apparent limitation seemed to be the collective imaginations of the contributors. The sky was the limit!

The result of such free reign and lack of demands can only be classified as a disaster: After a long period of development by a fairly large and expensive team, the releases thus far have been a rather dubious calendar product, in a very alpha state, and a server product that backtracks on many of the initial goals (for instance the "P2P solves everything" silver bullet).

It's difficult to categorize this book: It really isn't a how-to book at all. Nor is it really a book for a layman, as it frequently goes into a level of detail that could be daunting (sometimes the level of technical detail seems a bit like filler, not really playing a part in the telling of the story. Unnecessary detail for the story, but too little detail to be of interest for a technical analysis).

Really it's a how-not-to book: A reporting of many of the classic mistakes of software development happening in a real, visible project, and how they impacted the progress. The OSAF (Open Source Applications Foundation) team certainly isn't the first to make these mistakes, and they certainly won't be the last, but they had an uncommon honesty and openness to allow a reporter to document their every step.

I would imagine Mitch figured this would all turn out quite a bit differently, with Chandler rocketing to Firefox-like success, and this book documenting the new age approach to software creation.

This book came to mind yesterday when I hit publish on the "Most Destructive Metric In Software Development" entry. In that entry I mentioned that developers abhor using other people's code when they have the option of spinning something "original" themselves, and this materializes several times during the Chandler project. After eliminating the Zope ZODB (a Python object database) from consideration, for instance, and going off and going through several iterations of their own database, the individual behind the decision declared that they "never really looked at ZODB".

Classic.

* - Around four years ago we bought the great book "The Baby Name Wizard", and found it to be a helpful in choosing names for our first child. We're now a month away from welcoming our third child, and have begun the name contemplation game, and I just received a "People who bought the Baby Name Wizard also like..." email from Amazon. Their system has more inputs than I imagined.