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Revision as of 21:52, 24 November 2011

Archives: Talk:Discuss this wiki/archive-2009

To ask a question, click the "[+]" along the top of this page (or the "edit" and scroll to the bottom).

This is a page for general discussion about en.swpat.org. People looking to contribute might find interesting starting points at:

Fostering an inclusive community

There's a big long discussion about women in free software on LWN.net, which got me thinking (more than any previous discussion of the topic did). I never would have thought that swpat.org could seem unfriendly to women, but from the women in that LWN discussion, I guess having no visible problem doesn't make a project "friendly", it just makes it "not necessarily unfriendly", which equates to "potentially unfriendly".

It also seems, from that discussion, that to make a project "friendly", we just have to write a policy that sexist comments will not be accepted, and that comments shouldn't assume everyone is male, and enforce it. Seems reasonable, and it seems to be just putting in writing what we would have done anyway.

I've previously avoided making policies for swpat.org because I see policies on Wikipedia mostly being used to revert new users, which makes people feel unwelcome, but this sort of policy wouldn't have that problem. Instead, it might make a lot of people feel more welcome.

Any comments or suggestions for what policy to adopt? What examples are there? What's better, a policy explicitly to prevent exclusion of women, or a general policy of civility with no specific mention of women but which would obviously imply that sexist comments aren't allowed? Ciaran 11:57, 28 August 2009 (EDT)

Another thing which might be useful is advice on keeping discussions friendly. On other wikis, I've noticed that questions on Talk: pages are sometimes met replies which start with an overly definitive "no". Such assertive/aggressive replies are used in competitive/saturated projects (like the Linux-kernel mailing list, and what some parts of Wikipedia have unfortunately become) to push people away from reviewing/developing certain areas of a project. Doing it on swpat.org could never be useful. So maybe what would be useful is more of a "How to be nice" guide. It might even be worth considering a two or three line statement under the edit box as well as or instead of writing rules/advice on a page. Ciaran 18:24, 20 September 2009 (EDT)
Here's the sort of thing I think could go in a good code of conduct: We have so much work to do, we need all the help we can get. Cooperation can be difficult sometimes but politeness, respect, and compromise are part of building as big a community possible for the fight for freedom. Ciaran 22:39, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Describing "failing" initiatives

I'm wondering how to best name the collection of non-abolition initiatives launched or considered to reduce or solve the problems of software patents.

Some are complete failures (e.g. using antitrust law, buying litigation insurance), and others have very minor benefits but will never get us where we want to be (e.g. defensive patent pools, invalidate the most harmful), and others are partial victories (e.g. abolishing business method patents or securing an exclusion from patent infringement when the reason is compatibility/interoperability).

The current name is too kind: "Steps that don't bring us closer to our goal but might give some temporary protection", but the only other name I can think of is probably too harsh: "failing solutions".

In reality, there's a spectrum, and some are closer to the former name and others closer to the latter.

The dangers of being too kind are more serious (readers might think we endorse those methods as solutions) than the dangers of being too harsh (contributors to those projects might be offended).

What name could better represent the situation?

Or should the division be refactored by changing the "Arguments" page to "Arguments for abolishing software patents", and then have a page for "non-abolition initiatives" which could list all the failing and minimally useful initiatives, with a clear note at the top of each such page about why we think that initiative is not worth focussing on.

(I just thought of that last idea while writing this question, and I'm starting to like it) Ciaran 09:35, 7 September 2009 (EDT)

I still like that last idea, but "non-abolition initiatives" is too vague - it could even include pro-swpat campaigns. What description could convey that these initiatives were launched to save people from the dangers of software patents, without letting the reader think that they are what we support? We need a succinct name for "Initiatives which were proposed as solutions, but which didn't aim for abolition and thus failed". Ciaran 14:52, 7 September 2009 (EDT)
"Palliatives" would fit the bill, unless you want to emphasise the "failing" bit. Palliatives ease the symptoms for a time, they do not cure. Or is that too high-falutin' a word? steelpillow 16:47, 7 September 2009 (EDT)
Maybe it could be one part of a two-name title. If there was a word for failed attempts at solving a problem, then we could have "Palliatives and $OTHERWORD". We might have to go with a long descriptive title in the end. Ciaran 17:14, 7 September 2009 (EDT)
"Palliatives and failed efforts to fix the problem"? (but then that could included "failed" abolition campaigns - but maybe I'm being too demanding here) Ciaran 17:18, 7 September 2009 (EDT)
Other possibly useful words: stopgap, mitigating, attenuating, alleviate, lessen, limit. (with help from dict.org) Ciaran 17:25, 7 September 2009 (EDT)
"Palliatives and failed remedies"? steelpillow 14:54, 8 September 2009 (EDT)
Ok, let's start with that. Palliatives and failed remedies. Ciaran 07:50, 5 October 2009 (EDT)
The falutin' of "palliatives" is a little high. I still haven't thought of a replacement word, but here's a dump of my thoughts: "crutch" is good, but not really descriptive enough. Is there a word to describe something that a badly wounded boxer or soldier gets so they can continue to fight just a little longer, while incurring more and more damage the whole time? Is there a word for putting nice coat of paint over something that's rotten and rotting? Or if we look for something that's purely descriptive, is there a slightly shorter way to say "Expensive, inefficient, minor help and failed remedies". Ciaran 18:36, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
We use chewing-gum or sticky tape for a temporary fix, patch or lash-up, but those don't necessarily imply ultimate failure. For that, we talk of "painting over the cracks" or "short-term patches". Nostrums and snake oil are quack medicines, but is "nostrum" is as high-falutin' as "palliative"? How about "Patch-ups and snake oil"? steelpillow 13:29, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
Then again, what about "bad", "dud" or "broken" ideas, as in say "Patch-ups and broken fixes" steelpillow 17:33, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
I like "duds". Most of those initiatives were launched with great fanfare (and many were surely just PR stunts), and duds describes what they've turned out to be. I've moved it to Duds and non-solutions now. Ciaran 15:01, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

About new accounts being created

In the create user log, there are two entries:

  • 10:18, 15 January 2010 Jenhongcai (Talk | contribs | block) created new account User:Acai (Talk | contribs | block)
  • 10:17, 15 January 2010 Jenhongcai (Talk | contribs | block) New user account

I don't know what the top message means. How does one user create another?

Other thing: where's the creation entry for User:ciaran and User:steelpillow?

There have been a few accounts made recently and never used, so I'd like to understand this a bit more, in case there's a new spam tactic in preparation. Ciaran 11:49, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

One user creates another
I replicated this by:
  1. While logged off, go to Log in/Create new user.
  2. Open it again in a second tab and log in as usual. The system now knows who my broswer session belongs to.
  3. While still logged on, go back to the first tab and create the new user. Result, as you now see in the User creation log.
The suspect accounts are so recent, it's hard to say whether foul play is involved. People do sometimes create sock puppets for themselves, or accounts for friends, for legitimate reasons.
steelpillow 13:36, 16 January 2010 (UTC)
Interesting. Slightly unintuitive behaviour from MediaWiki. Could be harmless alright. It got my attention because the name of the creator catches the eye more than the name of the created account does, so it could be used as a way to try to reduce the chances of an account being created. Ciaran 00:38, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
Missing log entries
I created my own account back in May 2009, while the current User creation log only goes back to November 2009. Something appears to have (accidentally or knowingly) purged the log. Possibly someone may have done it while carrying out system maintenance? If not, it could be due to malware purging the log entries recording its own naughtiness. steelpillow 13:36, 16 January 2010 (UTC)
AFAIR, there was a MediaWiki upgrade done in November alright. Probably that. Ciaran 00:38, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

References (citations and facts)

I've made Template:reference needed and Help:Adding references, to mirror Wikipedia's way of requesting references.

The only change is that instead of using Wikipedia's terminology - where the three terms fact-reference-citation are all used but with no difference - I've used the term "reference" for everything.

Using one term is simpler. My prefered term of the three is probably citations, however, there's no convenient way to rename the <ref> tags, and "references" isn't a bad second, so I suggest we unify on "references". Ciaran 14:26, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

I'd agree. Citations are really just a particular kind of reference, while the "fact" tag is a way of requesting a reference. BTW, sorry I'm not helping much at the moment, but am v. busy on other things. steelpillow 22:12, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
No problem. I'll try to keep the evolutions logical and I'll continue to mention things here if they seem to need explaining. Your help has already been great.
I put in the request to get ParserFunctions installed. It's just taking some time because I put in a number of other sys admin requests at the same time. We should have ParserFunctions features to mess with in a few days. Ciaran 11:13, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Possible changes to category names

Some categories are "out growing" their names. Nothing urgent, but here are some observations. Currently, the only way to change category names is the tedious way, so I won't make any changes until they seem logical and defined. That sort of tedious work doesn't bother me at all actually, but as the wiki grows, that work grows at least linearly, so I'd like to get it as right as possible in these "early" stages. Ciaran 09:37, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

There is no need for sub-categories to be mutually exclusive or to be carefully planned in advance. Sub-categorisation can (and sometimes should) also be recursive - think more "related" than "sub". The hierarchy we have stuck with so far is beginning to creak at the seams. Perhaps the time has come to move on to richer cross-linking. If a particular category seems like a good idea, just create it, link it to any suitable parent category/ies, and move any suitable articles and child categories over. This usually keeps the work manageable. steelpillow 21:19, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Category:People

Might have to be split up, but I'd split it as minimally as possible, just into two, three, or four subcategories.

Category:Organisations has parallel issues. It might be good to do the same for both, e.g. create cats for "Campaingers against swpats" and "Organisations against swpats" at the same time; both could then be sub-cats of each other and of "Campaigning" as well. steelpillow 21:19, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Category:Arguments

A large portion of this is now filled with "indirect arguments", for example, articles about problems with the current patent system such as Costs of defending are astronomical for developers and SMEs. They're useful for pointing out problems, but it's a "direct" argument only for reducing the costs of filing/litigation/defence. They only become directly an anti-swpat argument when put in a context that explains that the costs will never become low enough or that there are so many of these practical problems that they're unsolvable. If someone sees these are our "arguments", they'll think we've misjudged the solution. I don't know if this category should be split in two (is a clear split even possible?) or if it should be renamed to something more general "Arguments and problems"?

I guess we have a similar issue with Category:Why it matters. I think it's useful to keep them both as they are, for direct issues of principle, law, etc. By all means have an indirect category, perhaps something like "Problems with the current system", and move the indirect stuff over. steelpillow 21:19, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
Yeh, the more I think it through, the more sense it makes to start making a clear distinction between fundamental problems and practical problems. Pages on the latter could then have a note at the top explaining that they're not the core issue (but that, in context, they do for part of a core issue). I'm tied up with other work today, but I think I'll implement this later this week.
I'm not sure what direction to take with Category:Why it matters. An idea which would appeal to logical categorisers would be to make it the union of the fundamental and practical problems, but from a communications point of view that would be a mistake. People will be able to see that info just by looking at the two categories, so it would be a trivial convenience and would lead to people missing the vital distinction between fundamental and practial problems.
Another possibile use would be to house articles such as Why consumer organisations should be involved and Why tech groups should be involved (but that comes with the caveat that, given their weakly developed state, those articles might change in the future), and the cats for fundamental and practical problems would be sub-categories. Any ideas? No rush - I doubt this will be resolved this week, probably not even this month. Ciaran 18:32, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
Category:Campaigning also could do with some lovin. The campaigning info on the wiki is generally higgledy piggledy. I'll try to turn Organising a campaign into a kind of parent article for this topic. Ciaran 06:16, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
That is partly my fault. I got muddled as to whether it was about news of campaigning activity, how to conduct a campaigns, campaigning organisations, or topics that come up during campaigns. steelpillow 15:14, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Category:Patent infringement suits

Update May 2010: this cat has been replaced by Court cases and litigation

I was going to make a category for articles about case law and patent office practice in the USA (and another for the EU would surely follow). Category:Patent infringement suits already contains many of the articles that would go in these categories (some wrongly, since for instance, there's no litigation in in re Bilski - it's a grant rejection dispute). I guess that category is useful because it can include cases that were filed but which were then settled before the ruling (thus no case law created, so wouldn't be in the new case law categories), so we'll have two largely overlapping categories, but still, that seems the right thing to do.

Yes, largely overlapping cats is fine, because they have different focus and are not wholly overlapping. It's how the category system is meant to work. steelpillow 21:19, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Obama administration

Which category should it go in? People? Organisations? something new for political entities?

Both People and Organisations, of course. Maybe by creating new sub-cats for "politicians" and "political organisations" as with my campaigners example above. steelpillow 21:19, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Adding a "series" navigation aid

I've been doing a stock take of all the articles: User:Ciaran/temp-frontpage

The original goal was to update the front page, but I was wondering if there's also another way to use this organisation effort. My first thought was we could have a box for each of the ~20 sections (which I'll call "series" since "sections" already has a MediaWiki meaning), with 10-30 articles. The relevant box could be included at the bottom of each article. So, for every article about a person, there would be a box with a list of all articles about people, and at the end of every article about a court case, there'd be a box with a list of all the articles about court cases, etc.

But, this is a bit bulky, and it might overshadow the categories.

My current idea is to make an overview page for each of the ~20 series. This already exists for some/most, like Countries and litigation. And, for each series we could also have a template that gets included and is diplayed at the top-right of the article, like the box that's currently on Bilski v. Kappos (2009, USA).

This seems maintainable and useful. My hope is that when people land on a page from a search engine, be it a good page or a poor one, they should easily see ways to look for other interesting topics. Ciaran 15:14, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I think the overview pages with lists of links is a good idea. But it needs some care:
  • Some pages may want to end up in more than one series.
  • On the overview page the link list should probably go near the top, on the other pages it might be better along the bottom as you first thought - that way, a couple of them on a schizophrenic page would not clutter the main content.
What shape to make the link lists? See my rough hack of a possible main page layout. The lists run horizontally, and could easily be templated as tasteful boxes.
I think this system would be flexible enough and have about the least maintenance overheads.
Meanwhile, there might be some scope for bringing the categories a little more in line with your series titles. Don't be afraid of overshadowing the categories - if they fall out of favor, it might be for good reason.
steelpillow 22:06, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
I like your Test2 hack. When we have overview pages for each of the ~20 "series" (maybe 20 is too many), I think that style will be the way to go. What's holding me up is that there are still a few articles to sort into the series, and there are some series (e.g. "Arguments and problems") that might be split or differently defined. Should be ready in a week or so.
I want to limit as much as possible the repetition of pages between series, but yeh, articles like Bilski-v-Kappos will have to go in series Bilski and series Case law. Categories provide the navigation functionality of having multiple ways to find an article - so I want "series" to offer a different way to navigate, but I won't let purity get in way of being useful. Ciaran 13:56, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Standard sections for pages on organisations

(I haven't forgotten any discussions, IIRC, but the ACTA leak has distracted me.)

Most types of pages can't be made uniform, but it hit me that maybe the pages about companies, or about all organisations, could all include these sections (even if they just say "no known info"):

  • Patent acquisition history
  • Litigation by and against
  • Lobbying and consultation responses

Just what's in my mind. Ciaran 13:29, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. What about templating some of the key highlights in a box, say type of organisation, pro/anti/neutral stance and country of origin? Also not thinking deeply. steelpillow 19:26, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
Yeh. I think that's a logical way to go, but I can't think of how to word it. Summarising positions is very difficult:
  • Google - I'd say anti-swpat, but they sure do a good job hiding it! They're also stockpiling a lot of worrying patents, so it might be misleading to put them in the "with us" category.
  • Novell - I'd say strongly pro-swpat, but I've never actually found evidence that they lobbied or pushed for software to be patentable. I have a memory of some from the EU lobbying around 2004, but I've no proof.
  • Oracle - currently pro-swpat, but previously anti-swpat. The current stance is obviously more important, but do we weaken our case by oversimplifying their position?
But maybe my problem is tunnel vision. Maybe there's a better way to summarise things than simply "for/against". Ciaran 19:46, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
Maybe one thing that can have a one word answer is "Has used software patents aggressively: "
On it's own, it wouldn't make for an interesting box, but it's a start :-) Ciaran 22:59, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
Rather than have a statement which must then be true/false, I think it better to have a descriptor and a short summary. For example "Position on swpats: " can then be "for", "against" or "Not known". Stockpiling patents is not an indicator - the FSF (or an associate?) does that. I think it's worth including some detail, for example Oracle could be "For swpat, previously against". Quotations, links, etc. can then go in the body of the article. steelpillow 15:37, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Could Template:navbox vertical go on every page?

I've shrunk the size of Template:navbox vertical and I think it might now be ready to be put on every page.

Remaining problems:

  • It doesn't work well with text-based browsers (like lynx) - you see all the navbox contents, hundreds of lines, before you see the page.
    • Possible solution #1 (best): could we use some <div> taggery with float properties to put the template at the end of the text but have it displayed at the top? Maybe by putting the whole article in one tag, and then having the template on its own in another tag just after? (I've tried in vain, but I'm no wizard)
    • Possible solution #2: copy the table code, making "newtable" with a way to have the box only displayed if the browser is gecko/webkit/ie.
  • I wonder if this will also cause problems with how search engines categorise the page contents (but, this can't be much of a problem since a lot of news site pages are overloaded with crap and they get indexed okay).
  • I've no idea if this might cause problems for browsers used by blind people.
  • I still have to develop a method of keeping it up to date. I think this will require writing a few scripts and maintaining a table with all the articles and what series they're in.

The goals of the navbox are:

  • Make it easier for first-time visitors to see our other pages
  • Mention "End Software Patents" - build the campaign's reputation
  • Mention it's publicly editable
  • Link to Finding things on en.swpat.org
  • On rare occasions, it could be used to display big announcements

Anyone got comments on the readiness of Template:navbox vertical? Or insight on the problems above? Ciaran 08:54, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

I've made Template:welcome a redirect to Template:Navbox vertical, just for a trial, so it can be seen in action on the pages which use Template:welcome: Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Welcome.
One other thing: some pages also need their own box. I'm not sure yet how to combine this one with another. Ciaran 10:26, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Some thoughts:

  • The only way using div tags would be to create a whole column for the navbox. There is no way to do this without adding the div code to every page. Might as well use a table.
  • But not doing that leaves it all before the main body.
  • How about dropping it (or something like it) into the left hand menu space that is served with every page? Sorry I don't know how this is done. Say between the search box and the toolbox. Or would that put it ahead of the main content for text browsers too?
  • You could put a horizontal navbar along the bottom of every page.

Sorry that doesn't help much. - steelpillow 20:58, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Damn. The div tags idea might have been wishful thinking :-) Putting it in the left-hand column is probably the long term way to go. AFAICT, that will require a sys-admin patching some file, so I'll put it in my queue of sys-admin requests (but, the state of Parserfunctions gives an indication of how quickly that queue moves). I'll look into the broswer detection idea - that might be doable without any sys-admin intervention. I'll give the bottom-horizontal bar a try, maybe it would work if it was like a set of tabs with multi-colum lists, but it might not be prominent enough. Thanks for the sanity check and new ideas. Ciaran 23:11, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
I just realised that the real solution would be to have one thing (short list of links) displayed when javascript's disabled, and another (navbox) when it enabled. I think HTML might have tags for doing that. Will take a look... Ciaran 08:08, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
I did look into this, but found no solution. I've made notes about the problems and possible solutions at Template:Navbox. Ciaran 13:23, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Reorganising example patents

For these articles:

I was thinking of making the commonality clearer by renaming them to all to "Effects of patents on insert-topic-here", etc. The last one might get renamed soon to something about "multi-touch" rather than its current very general name. Ciaran 12:58, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Lengthy titles are seldom good. I'd be inclined to keep the "Xxxx patents" form, even change Phone patent litigation to Phone patents. That way the title stays relevant even though the focus of individual articles currently differs. It might be worth creating a category for "Effects of patents" or "Technology patents" or similar, if nothing suitable exists yet. steelpillow 20:00, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
Or maybe "Patents on xxxx"? That would be almost as short, and it would still be more noticeable that there's a connection between these articles. Ciaran 23:55, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
Not sure I have an opinion either way. Go for it. steelpillow 20:19, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Right. I think I'll go ahead with that, and make the category. And then a second set of articles that I'd like to make more uniform is:
And maybe there are more with that kind of focus - specific patents or specific sets of patents owned by a single entity. Ciaran 08:08, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Restating the problem

What I'm wondering about is how to break down this list into two, three, or four "sets" of articles:

  1. Micro-blogging patents
  2. XML patents
  3. micro-blogging patents
  4. audio-video patents
  5. Webpage and web service patents
  6. Image processing patents
  7. Phone patent litigation
  8. Divine e-commerce patents
  9. MPEG video formats (Maybe this should be "MPEG-LA's video patents")
  10. Microsoft FAT patents
  11. DE10232674 (More or less the same thing was granted in the USA as US2003226110 - two articles wouldn't make sense, so what's the best way to do this? A descriptive title with two redirects and put the redirects into categories so that DE10232674 will appear somewhere?)
  12. jpeg
  13. JPEG 2000
  14. Ogg Theora

There's surely more but that's probably enough to show the range. For 1-7, I'd say they're articles about the affects of patents on a *domain*. 8-11 are about specific idea (patented in one or more countries) or sets of patents owned by a single entity - number 11 is about a specific patent granted in a specific country, not sure if it still fits in. 12-14 are specific standards. But is that breakdown right enough to be worth formalising?

If it's useful, they can also be put in a kind of hierarchy:

No rush, any comments welcome. Ciaran 18:05, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

My instinct is to split them into two kinds of space - one for technology areas and one for patent owners. Your hierarchy might serve as the germ of two new articles, each organising the relevant detailed articles. Some articles would appear in both lists. That way, there is no need to allocate each article to a given space. steelpillow 20:44, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
For an article about patent owners, patent trolls should also be added.
But for now I'm thinking about the technology areas. What do we want readers of the above list of articles to see? I think they should show the harms of software patents through real world examples. I'm not sure what change this implies, but I just feel that this set of articles lacks a direction, so I wanted to juggle them around here a bit to see if anything emerges... And now that I think of it, maybe court cases should then be a subset of this "effects" series (but because court cases are so important, they would still get treated as a top-level set).
For individual patents (example DE10232674), I think a short article just for that patent would be fine - even if it was just a template that displays where to view that patent on the various websites that show patents, plus links to articles we have and third-party articles mentioning that patent. But, an individual patent isn't necessary an "effect", so maybe the minimal articles about individual patents should be separate.
Then, threatening use of a patent could get an article such as "Divine e-commerce patents" (or "Divine threatens e-commerce"?), and if there was litigation, either a new article could be started for the case, or the "threatens" article could be turned into a "court case" article depending on what's appropriate. And then articles such as Micro-blogging patents would be "Threats to micro-blogging".
What got me thinking is that I was telling someone that at en.swpat.org, they could find all the necessary example of the harm done by software patents. Then I started looking at our current structures, and I think this aspect is actually missing. The Arguments page tries to cover it, but the examples angle could be better. Ciaran 00:16, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
Another twist: Trend Micro v. Barracuda (2008, USA). Trend attacked Barracuda. A law suit was filed. They settled out of court. Now Trend is in dispute with Fortinet over the same patent. A Separate Trend Micro v. Fortinet article wouldn't make sense. How to organise these situations into articles? (I think this confirms that court cases are a subset of real world effects) Ciaran 03:08, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
I'm looking into this again. NetApp's filesystem patents is an article that also deals with multiple litigations over the same patents. Maybe the current "court cases" should be split in two: aggression and rulings. Bilski v. Kappos is only interesting from the ruling point of view. NetApp v. Sun is only interesting from the look-what's-happening point of view. I'll check if all cases can be split into these two groups. Ciaran 20:18, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
This might be a good idea. One set would have names like "Bilski v. Kappos ruling (2010, USA)" and the others would be "NetApp litigation against Sun and others (2010, USA)". Ciaran 22:32, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
Nah, "litigation" is the wrong word. We need something that includes threats and other ways of forced licensing. "NetApp patent aggression against Sun and others"? Ciaran 22:34, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

July 2010: splitting case law and litigation

I haven't gotten the perfect name but I'm going to go ahead with the splitting of court cases into case law and "litigation" for want of a better name. Doing this will allow us to have a "legal" ("governance"?) section of the wiki which will have case law, legislation, patent office practice, legal wordings and other stuff, and we'll be able to have a "real world harm" section which will include articles about litigation where software patents cost developers money. Ciaran 12:33, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Recent Changes Cleanup

The Recent Changes Cleanup extension has been installed, which allows (admins only, I think) edits to get tagged as coming from a bot.

When someone spams the wiki, and I block them and undo their spam, leaving three useless entries in the Special:RecentChanges list. The extension makes this page Special:RecentChangesCleanup, from which those three edits can be tagged bot, so they don't appear on RecentChanges by default. If anyone wants to see those changes, they can click "Show bots".

Nothing major. Not even sure how much I'll bother with it, but I wanted to mention it in case it seems weird that edits disappear etc. Ciaran 12:13, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Reorganising arguments

So arguments can be stated as refutations of myths, and vice versa, so I guess arguments and myths should be under the same umbrella. The other obvious thing to try is to split arguments between practical problems with current software patent regimes and fundamental problems that will always exist as long as software is patentable.

I haven't gotten far in the planning of this reorganisation, but I'll flesh some ideas out here. Ciaran 16:25, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

(Previous discussion on this: #Category:Arguments)

Maybe the correct approach of this is think of it in terms of a future legislative proposal. Which arguments could be nullified by the sort of reforms that IBM might push for (anti-troll measures, increase the speed, lower the cost, etc.), and which can only be nullified by abolition. And then myths are a third subsection. Ciaran 16:39, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't think "myths" is a great term. "False [counter-]arguments", or "false claims" would be better. Ciaran 17:58, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

First try at splitting this list on fundamental/implementation problems.

First, the fundamental problems:

Implementation problems:

False claims (refuted):

Looking at this list also makes me wonder if some of these should have more descriptive names to describe why they're specific to, or at least particularly problematic for, software.

  • All businesses are targets --> All businesses use software, all have risk

? Ciaran 19:31, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

My first reaction is to ask if there is a difference between legal arguments and other kinds such as moral, pragmatic (implementation) or factual. Broadly, Software is math is a legal argument, Patent ambush a moral one, Low risk pragmatic and Software patents harm SMEs factual. OTOH, many fall across several of these classifications.
Then, every argument has its counter-argument. Should false claims that "X is so" be presented in reverse, as "Why xxx is not so", or maybe go the other way and treat "Insurance against patent litigation doesn't work" as the false claim for "Insurance against patent litigation". Either way, I'd like consistency.
steelpillow 20:08, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
Yeh, I think software is math and Just a Use of the Patented General Purpose Computer shouldn't be here, or at least should be renamed. They are currently arguments for how to abolish software patents. If an article was called, "Software patents block people from using math", then that would be an argument. (I'll reply again later to the rest) Ciaran 21:48, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
"Why xxx is not so" makes complete sense. It seems obvious now that you say it, but it never crossed my mind. In "arguments", these articles could be in a subsection "refutations" (for want of a better name - they're also "counter arguments", but in the context of an anti-swpat wiki, that would sound like counter-arguments to our own arguments, which they're not).
For what remains, which I split in two (fundamental/implementation) and you split in three (moral/pragmatic/factual), my goal is to prepare for upcoming legislative battles. I'm worried that instead of the "us versus them" battle that we fared very well in in the EU, our coming battles will be over what change to make: should governments abolish software patents or just tweak the numbers to make trolling unprofitable. I think there'll be a lot of support for making trolling unprofitable, including among people whose software patent problems don't come from trolls. I think our challenge will be to explain why aiming for "reform" is wasting an opportunity. So, the goal of the division in this particular case isn't so much to help readers find things, as it is to highlight why abolition is the solution.
This goal is also more important than perfect coherency. For example, the 20 year term of patents, is that reformable or not? Well, technically it is, but in reality it's very unlikely to get reformed, so it's a grey area for where to place it, but I'd rather have grey areas and explain the reform/abolition distinction than eliminate the grey areas but lose the above point. Ciaran 01:15, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Messing with fonts, styles

I'm doing some work to unify the styles of:

In general, I'm using en.swpat.org as the starting point and modifying the other sites to fit it, so there won't be too much change here.

The fonts here will be made bigger. (update: done)

I want the three sites to look as similar as possible, which means I have to avoid differences that would make users change their local settings. If fonts are small here and big on another site, the readers will enlarge the text here, shrink it on the other site, and in the process they'll knock design elements such as the background image out of sync. Ciaran 16:45, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Template:Cite_web almost working

Template:Cite_web is, IMHO, a very important wiki-feature. It formats stuff nicely for inside <ref></ref> tags. We currently just put URLs in the ref tags, but with Cite_web we can give those links titles, authors, dates, add quotes from the linked document, etc. More documentation is at:

So, where we currently do this:

David Kappos gives talk about copyright.<ref>http://www.uspto.gov/</ref>

We can now do this: (if and when we like)

David Kappos gives talk about copyright.<ref>{{cite web
|url=http://www.uspto.gov/
|title=USPTO homepage
|quote=USPTO Director David Kappos among the featured speakers at a public meeting to discuss copyright policy}}</ref>

Which should put this into the references section:

  1. "USPTO homepage". "USPTO Director David Kappos among the featured speakers at a public meeting to discuss copyright policy"

The only remaining glitch I've spotted is that the URL is currently printed after the link. That doesn't happen on wikipedia. I'm looking into it, but it's for another day. Cite_web is already safe to use. Ciaran 01:33, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

New argument: software innovation has to happen fast

It's kinda just a new way to state the existing argument about patents being too slow, but I wonder how/where it's best to develop the argument that computer security (and responding to users requests) requires innovation to happen quickly.

Responding to an oil leak is a question of logistics, procurement, decision making.

Responding to a virus that exploits a security weakness can requiring rethinking the security architecture or rethinking the user interface. Ciaran 13:56, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

One example (kinda) is Trend Micro v. Barracuda (2008, USA). That's not an emergency situation, but Barracuda was helping people respond to a security problem. Ciaran 14:12, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

External links per-section

I often want to add some links which only have relevance for a section of an article. When I put them in "External links" at the end, their relevance is lost, but if we spread external links across the whole article, they're harder to find. So I was thinking of adding section-specific external links sections (only in occasionally, when useful), and giving all the external links sections a background colour so that they're still easy to find at a glance.

The downside is that this requires some html <div> tags before and after the links, which is annoying because I prefer to keep the techy markup to a miniumum. Either:

{{ext links start|

}}

Or:

{{ext links start}}

{{ext links end}}

The second seems better - less chance of unpredicted interaction between the links and the tag. Ciaran 18:56, 1 December 2010 (EST)

Planned changes to structure

Nothing radical, but I'd like split court decision analyses out from the other pages that collect info about court cases. Two initial examples:

I'll make a category for them, then start to look for existing articles that should be renamed in this way.

I'm also looking at how to split the arguments up into fundamental problems and the unsolveably numerous practical problems. Ciaran 20:08, 24 November 2011 (EST)