danger-of-software-patents.html - en to zh_CN translation catalogue (217 entries)

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en: The Danger of Software Patents - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation
zh_CN: 软件专利之危险 - GNU 工程 - 自由软件基金会

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en: The Danger of Software Patents
zh_CN: 软件专利之危险

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en: by <a href="https://www.stallman.org/">Richard Stallman</a>
zh_CN: <a href="https://www.stallman.org/">理查德·斯托曼</a> 著

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en: This is the transcript of a talk presented on 8 October 2009 at Victoria University of Wellington.
zh_CN: 这是 2009 年 10 月 8 日 在威灵顿的维多利亚大学所作演讲的笔录。

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en: My name is Susy Frankel and on behalf of myself and Meredith Kolsky Lewis, I'd like to welcome you to this seminar hosted by the New Zealand Centre for International Economic Law.  Brenda Chawner, who is part of the Victoria University School of Information Management, rather than the Centre I just named being part of the Law Faculty, is really responsible for bringing Richard Stallman back to New Zealand and hosting his tour of New Zealand, including this stop here in Wellington tonight.  She's unfortunately unable to be with us at this moment because she's doing what we do in universities which is teach.
zh_CN: 我叫 Susy Frankel。以 Meredith Kolsky Lewis 和我自己的名义，欢迎你们来到本次研讨会。研讨会由新西兰国际经济法中心主办。Brenda Chawner 作为维多利亚大学信息管理学院的成员，而不是法律中心教职工的成员，实际上负责让 Richard Stallman 回到新西兰并安排他在新西兰的巡回演讲，包括今晚在惠灵顿的一站。不过很遗憾，她此时此刻不能和大家在一起，因为她还在授课。

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en: So it's my pleasure to welcome you to the lecture &ldquo;The Danger of Software Patents.&rdquo; Richard Stallman has a suite of lectures that he offers, and after discussion with Brenda, I chose this topic precisely because for the first real time in New Zealand history, we have a somewhat prolonged, but important, debate about patent law reform, and many of you in the room are responsible for the debate relating to software patents.  So it seemed very topical, very timely.  So thank you, Richard, for making that offer.
zh_CN: 因此，由我高兴地欢迎大家来听 &ldquo;软件专利之危险&rdquo;。Richard Stallman 提议了一整套讲座，在与 Brenda 商讨之后，我选择此次的讲题，正是因为在新西兰历史上，我们第一次真正有了一次持久的、但是重要的关于专利法改革的讨论，而在座的很多人都负责其中软件专利的讨论。所以，这次讲座非常切题，也非常及时。感谢 Richard，提议了这个话题。

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en: Richard Stallman needs little introduction.  Nonetheless, for some of you who have not heard of him previously, he has launched the development of the GNU operating system.  I had never heard GNU said before, and I went online to YouTube (where would we be be without YouTube)&hellip;
zh_CN: 简单介绍一下 Richard Stallman。尽管有些人以前没有听说过，Richard 开启了 GNU 操作系统的开发。我以前从未听说过 GNU，我到 YouTube（没有 YouTube 怎么办）&hellip;&hellip;

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en: Oh, you shouldn't recommend YouTube, because they distribute in a patented video format.
zh_CN: 不，你不要推荐 YouTube，因为他们分发的是专利格式的视频。

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en: Good point.  I only recommend it for the point that I thought do you say G&nbsp;N&nbsp;U or GNU?
zh_CN: 提醒得好。我提到它只是要问你是说 G&nbsp;N&nbsp;U，还是 GNU？

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en: Wikipedia says that.  [The answer is, pronounce it as a one syllable, with a hard G.]
zh_CN: Wikipedia 上有说明。[答案是，它按一个音节发音，带有 G 的音。]

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en: Yes, but live I heard you say it on YouTube.  But nonetheless, the important point is that it's not proprietorial.  But the most interesting point is that Richard has received many honors for his work.  My favorite, and therefore the one that I'm going to mention, is the Takeda Award for Social and Economic Betterment, and I imagine we're going to hear a lot of that tonight, so join me in welcoming Richard.
zh_CN: 是的，但是我在 YouTube 上听到你亲自说了。不过，重点是 GNU 不是私有的。而最有意思的重点是 Richard 因此获得了许多荣誉。我最喜欢其中一个奖项，因此我要说一下，就是 Takeda Award for Social and Economic Betterment，我想我们今晚会听到不少东西，所以我们一起来欢迎 Richard。

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en: First of all, I'd like to mention one of the reasons why I'm drinking this [a can or bottle of a cola which is not coke] is there's a worldwide boycott of Coca-Cola Company for murdering union organizers in Colombia.  Look at the site <a href="http://killercoke.org">killercoke.org</a>.  And they're not talking about the effects of drinking the product&mdash;after all, the same might be true of many other products&mdash;it's murder.  So before you buy any drink product, look at the fine print and see if it's made by Coca-Cola Company.
zh_CN: 首先，我说一下我喝这个 [一罐 cola，不是 coke] 的一个原因，就是现在全世界正在抵制可口可乐公司，因为它谋杀了哥伦比亚州的工会组织者。请访问网站 <a href="http://killercoke.org">killercoke.org</a>。他们说得不是喝可乐的效果&mdash;&mdash;毕竟，很多产品的效果都差不多&mdash;&mdash;而是谋杀者。因此，在你购买饮料时，请看清楚它不是可口可乐公司的产品。

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en: I'm most known for starting the free software movement and leading development of the GNU operating system&mdash;although most of the people who use the system mistakenly believe it's Linux and think it was started by somebody else a decade later.  But I'm not going to be speaking about any of that today.  I'm here to talk about a legal danger to all software developers, distributors, and users: the danger of patents&mdash;on computational ideas, computational techniques, an idea for something you can do on a computer.
zh_CN: 关于我，人们知道最多的就是我开始了自由软件运动并领导了 GNU 操作系统的开发&mdash;&mdash;虽然大多数使用 GNU 的人错误地认为自己使用的是 Linux 并且认为那是别人在 10 年后开始的。但是我今天不会讲这些。我在这里要讲的是一个法律危险，它对所有软件开发者、发行者和用户都是危险：专利的危险&mdash;&mdash;计算想法的专利、计算技术的专利、使用计算机的专利。

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en: Now, to understand this issue, the first thing you need to realize is that patent law has nothing to do with copyright law&mdash;they're totally different.  Whatever you learn about one of them, you can be sure it doesn't apply to the other.
zh_CN: 要理解这个问题，你首先要意识到专利法和版权法毫无关系&mdash;&mdash;它们完全不同。你对其中之一的了解，完全不适用于另一个。

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en: So, for example, any time a person makes a statement about &ldquo;intellectual property,&rdquo; that's spreading confusion, because it's lumping together not only these two laws but also at least a dozen others.  They're all different, and the result is any statement which purports to be about &ldquo;intellectual property&rdquo; is pure confusion&mdash;either the person making the statement is confused, or the person is trying to confuse others.  But either way, whether it's accidental or malicious, it's confusion.
zh_CN: 例如，如果有人声称 &ldquo;知识产权，&rdquo; 那么就是在把水搅混，因为这是在把两种乃至多种法律混在一起。这些法律都是不同的，结果就是对于 &ldquo;知识产权&rdquo; 的任何论调只是导致混乱&mdash;&mdash;不是发表论调的人自己糊涂，就是他企图迷惑别人。无论如何，有意也好，无意也罢，总之是一团糟。

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en: Protect yourself from this confusion by rejecting any statement which makes use of that term.  The only way to make thoughtful comments and think clear thoughts about any one of these laws is to distinguish it first from all the others, and talk or think about one particular law, so that we can understand what it actually does and then form conclusions about it.  So I'll be talking about patent law, and what happens in those countries which have allowed patent law to restrict software.
zh_CN: 请在你的论述中避免使用该术语，以防被误解。如果要对这些法律做出有深度和清析的评论，那么唯一的办法就是首先要明确区分这些法律，讨论其中某个具体的法律，如此我们就能够明白它究竟是做什么的、然后再对它做出结论。我下面会谈及专利法，并讨论在允许专利法限制软件的国家都发生了什么事。

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en: So, what does a patent do? A patent is an explicit, government-issued monopoly on using a certain idea.  In the patent there's a part called the claims, which describe exactly what you're not allowed to do (although they're written in a way you probably can't understand).  It's a struggle to figure out what those prohibitions actually mean, and they may go on for many pages of fine print.
zh_CN: 专利做什么? 专利是一个明确的、由政府颁发的、对某种想法的垄断。在专利中，有一个部分叫权利要求，它就是要描述你不能做的事（虽然其描述方式你很难看懂）。弄明白专利禁止你做的事是什么很令人头痛，而且这些描述打印出来可能是厚厚的一沓。

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en: So the patent typically lasts for 20 years, which is a fairly long time in our field.  Twenty years ago there was no World Wide Web&mdash;a tremendous amount of the use of computers goes on in an area which wasn't even possible to propose 20 years ago.  So of course everything that people do on it is something that's new since 20 years ago&mdash;at least in some aspect it is new.  So if patents had been applied for we'd be prohibited from doing all of it, and we may be prohibited from doing all of it in countries that have been foolish enough to have such a policy.
zh_CN: 专利通常 20 年有效，这对软件来说是相当长的时间。20 年前还没有互连网&mdash;&mdash;现在大量计算机进入了一个 20 年前还无法设想的领域。因此 20 年来人们在此做的事当然都是新东西&mdash;&mdash;至少在某些方面是新东西。如果那时已经申请了专利，则我们就被禁止做这些新东西了，所有这些新东西都要在那些愚蠢到会拥有软件专利政策的国家被禁止了。

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en: Most of the time, when people describe the function of the patent system, they have a vested interest in the system.  They may be patent lawyers, or they may work in the Patent Office, or they may be in the patent office of a megacorporation, so they want you to like the system.
zh_CN: 大多数情况下，当人们描述专利系统的功能时，他们对此系统有着明确的利益。他们有的是专利律师，或者是在专利办公室工作，也可能是在大企业的专利部门上班，因此他们很想让你也喜欢专利系统。

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en: The <cite>Economist</cite> once referred to the patent system as &ldquo;a time-consuming lottery.&rdquo; If you've ever seen publicity for a lottery, you understand how it works: they dwell on the very unlikely probability of winning, and they don't talk about the overwhelming likelihood of losing.  In this way, they intentionally and systematically present a biased picture of what's likely to happen to you, without actually lying about any particular fact.
zh_CN: <cite>经济学家</cite> 杂志曾经把专利系统比做 &ldquo;一个时间彩票&rdquo;。如果你见到过公开发行的彩票，那么你应该知道它如何运作：他们会强调那个几率奇小的大奖，而不会谈论几乎注定会输的大概率。这样做，他们就有意识地为你呈现出一幅你会中大奖的画面，而不用说任何谎言。

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en: It's the same way for the publicity for the patent system: they talk about what it's like to walk down the street with a patent in your pocket&mdash;or first of all, what it's like to get a patent, then what it's like to have a patent in your pocket, and every so often you can pull it out and point it at somebody and say, &ldquo;Give me your money.&rdquo;
zh_CN: 专利系统也是这么做公关的：他们会谈到兜里揣着一个专利走在大街上的感觉&mdash;&mdash;或者先说，获得专利是什么感觉，然后再说兜里有专利是什么感觉，通常是说你可以从兜里掏出专利并对人说，&ldquo;现在掏钱吧。&rdquo;

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en: To compensate for their bias, I'm going to describe it from the other side, the victim side&mdash;what it's like for people who want to develop or distribute or run software.  You have to worry that any day someone might walk up to you and point a patent at you and say, &ldquo;Give me your money.&rdquo;
zh_CN: 为了对付这些倾向性，我决定从另一个方面来看，从受害者的一方来看&mdash;&mdash;那些想开发、传播和运行软件的人们会怎么看专利呢。你肯定会担心有一天某人上门来并掏出一份专利对你说，&ldquo;现在交钱吧。&rdquo;

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en: If you want to develop software in a country that allows software patents, and you want to work with patent law, what will you have to do?
zh_CN: 如果你在一个有软件专利的国家开发软件，而你要配合专利法，你该怎么办?

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en: You could try to make a list of all the ideas that one might be able to find in the program that you're about to write, aside from the fact that you don't know that when you start writing the program.  [But] even after you finish writing the program you wouldn't be able to make such a list.
zh_CN: 在你要写程序时，你可以试着把人们能在此程序中看到的想法都列出来，当然除了那些你在开始写之前还不知道的想法。[但是]即使在你写完之后，你也做不出这个列表。

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en: The reason is&hellip; in the process you conceived of it in one particular way&mdash;you've got a mental structure to apply to your design.  And because of that, it will block you from seeing other structures that somebody might use to understand the same program&mdash;because you're not coming to it fresh; you already designed it with one structure in mind.  Someone else who sees it for the first time might see a different structure, which involves different ideas, and it would be hard for you to see what those other ideas are.  But nonetheless they're implemented in your program, and those patents could prohibit your program, if those ideas are patented.
zh_CN: 原因就是&hellip;在你以某种方式构想程序时&mdash;&mdash;你的大脑已经开始应用你的构想。正因如此，你很难看到其他人可能看待该程序的结构&mdash;&mdash;程序对你来说不是新鲜出炉的，你在脑子里已经有了它的结构。其他人可能是第一次，他们可能会有不同的结构，其中也会包含新的想法，而你要看到别人有什么想法是很难的。但是，不管怎样程序已经实现了，如果这些想法已经有了专利，那么这些专利就会禁止你的程序。

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en: For instance, suppose there were graphical-idea patents and you wanted to draw a square.  Well, you would realize that if there was a patent on a bottom edge, it would prohibit your square.  You could put &ldquo;bottom edge&rdquo; on the list of all ideas implemented in your drawing.  But you might not realize that somebody else with a patent on bottom corners could sue you easily also, because he could take your drawing and turn it by 45 degrees.  And now your square is like this, and it has a bottom corner.
zh_CN: 例如，假设有一些图形图像想法的专利，而你要画一个正方形。然后，你发现如果专利是关于底边的，你就没法画正方形了。你会把 &ldquo;底边&rdquo; 放到你的画图软件的想法列表里。但是你没注意到另外有人关于底角的专利也很容意对你有法律影响，因为这个人会把图旋转 45 度。这样你的正方形就边成这样了，它有了一个底角。

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en: So you couldn't make a list of all the ideas which, if patented, could prohibit your program.
zh_CN: 所以说，你没有办法列出所有会禁止你的程序的专利思想。

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en: What you might try to do is find out all the ideas that are patented that might be in your program.  Now you can't do that actually, because patent applications are kept secret for at least eighteen months; and the result is the Patent Office could be considering now whether to issue a patent, and they won't tell you.  And this is not just an academic, theoretical possibility.
zh_CN: 你也许可以做的是列出你程序涉及的所有已经申请过的专利思想。但是由于专利申请至少会保密 18 个月，而专利事务所也不会告诉你他们会批准哪些专利，所以列出已有专利也行不通。这个想法只是理论上可行，没有实际操作性。

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en: For instance, in 1984 the Compress program was written, a program for compressing files using the <abbr title="Lempel-Ziv-Welch"> LZW</abbr> data compression algorithm, and at that time there was no patent on that algorithm for compressing files.  The author got the algorithm from an article in a journal.  That was when we thought that the purpose of computer science journals was to publish algorithms so people could use them.
zh_CN: 例如，Compress 程序写于 1984 年，这是一个使用 <abbr title="Lempel-Ziv-Welch">LZW</abbr> 数据压缩算法的文件压缩程序。当时并没有该算法用于文件压缩的专利。程序作者是从杂志上获得该算法的。那个时代，计算机科学杂志就是来发表算法让人们使用的。

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en: He wrote this program, he released it, and in 1985 a patent was issued on that algorithm.  But the patent holder was cunning and didn't immediately go around telling people to stop using it.  The patent holder figured, &ldquo;Let's let everybody dig their grave deeper.&rdquo; A few years later they started threatening people; it became clear we couldn't use Compress, so I asked for people to suggest other algorithms we could use for compressing files.
zh_CN: 作者完成了程序，发布了程序，而在 1985 年关于该算法的专利被批准了。但是该专利的持有人很狡猾，他没有立即告诉人们停止使用该算法和程序。他在想，&ldquo;让大家把坟坑挖得更深一些。&rdquo;几年后，专利持有人开始威胁大家，我们明白了不能再用 Compress，所以我请大家推荐其他可用的算法来压缩文件。

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en: And somebody wrote and said, &ldquo;I developed another data compression algorithm that works better, I've written a program, I'd like to give it to you.&rdquo; So we got ready to release it, and a week before it was ready to be released, I read in the <cite>New York Times</cite> weekly patent column, which I rarely saw&mdash;it's a couple of times a year I might see it&mdash;but just by luck I saw that someone had gotten a patent for &ldquo;inventing a new method of compressing data.&rdquo; And so I said we had better look at this, and sure enough it covered the program we were about to release.  But it could have been worse: the patent could have been issued a year later, or two years later, or three years later, or five years later.
zh_CN: 有人写信说，&ldquo;我开发了另一种更好的压缩算法，也写了程序，我想把它给你。&rdquo;因此我们准备发布该软件，就在要发布的一周前，我不经意看了 <cite>纽约时报</cite> 的每周专利专栏，其实我很少看&mdash;&mdash;一年也就可能看一两次&mdash;&mdash;但就是那么巧，我看到有人获得一个关于 &ldquo;发明压缩数据方法&rdquo; 的专利。我说我们最好查一下这个专利，果不其然，这个专利覆盖到我们要发布的程序。但是事情也可能更糟糕：这个专利如果晚了一年公开，或者晚了两年，甚至晚了五年呢?

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en: Anyway, someone else came up with another, even better compression algorithm, which was used in the program gzip, and just about everybody who wanted to compress files switched to gzip, so it sounds like a happy ending.  But you'll hear more later.  It's not entirely so happy.
zh_CN: 无论如何，最后另外有人有了更好的压缩算法，并用于 gzip 程序，而大家基本上都开始使用 gzip，所以结局是皆大欢喜。不过，先别高兴得太早，还有故事在后面。

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en: So, you can't find out about the patents that are being considered even though they may prohibit your work once they come out, but you can find out about the already issued patents.  They're all published by the Patent Office.  The problem is you can't read them all, because there are too many of them.
zh_CN: 所以，你无法了解到哪些专利会出来阻止你的作品，但是你可以了解哪些已经公开的专利会对你有影响。它们都公开在专利事务所。问题是太多了，你看不过来。

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en: In the US I believe there are hundreds of thousands of software patents; keeping track of them would be a tremendous job.  So you're going to have to search for relevant patents.  And you'll find a lot of relevant patents, but you won't necessarily find them all.
zh_CN: 在美国，我想会有几十万量级的软件专利，跟踪这些专利是艰巨的任务。所以你要检索的是相关的专利，你会找到很多相关的专利，但是你不必全都找到。

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en: For instance, in the 80s and 90s, there was a patent on &ldquo;natural order recalculation&rdquo; in spreadsheets.  Somebody once asked me for a copy of it, so I looked in our computer file which lists the patent numbers.  And then I pulled out the drawer to get the paper copy of this patent and xeroxed it and sent it to him.  And when he got it, he said, &ldquo;I think you sent me the wrong patent.  This is something about compilers.&rdquo; So I thought maybe our file has the wrong number in it.  I looked in it again, and sure enough it said, &ldquo;A method for compiling formulas into object code.&rdquo; So I started to read it to see if it was indeed the wrong patent.  I read the claims, and sure enough it was the natural order recalculation patent, but it didn't use those terms.  It didn't use the term &ldquo;spreadsheet.&rdquo; In fact, what the patent prohibited was dozens of different ways of implementing topological sort&mdash;all the ways they could think of.  But I don't think it used the term &ldquo;topological sort.&rdquo;
zh_CN: 例如，在 80 年代和 90 年代，有个专利是关于电子表格的 &ldquo;自然计算顺序&rdquo;。有人曾经问我要一份，我到电脑里查看了专利号。然后，我按照号码从抽屉里找到纸质版并用复印机发给他。他收到后说，&ldquo;你发给我的专利是错的。你这个是关于编译器的。&rdquo;我觉得可能是我们的文件号错了。我又查了一遍，它明确地说，&ldquo;把公式编译为目标代码的方法。&rdquo;我开始阅读该专利来确定它是否真的是错了。我阅读了权利要求，很明确它就是自然计算顺序的专利，但是它并未使用这个术语。它没有使用 &ldquo;电子表格&rdquo; 这个术语。实际上，该专利禁止的是十几种实现拓扑排序的方法，是他们可以想到的所有方法。不过，我觉得他们也没有使用 &ldquo;拓扑排序&rdquo; 这个术语。

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en: So if you were writing a spreadsheet and you tried to find relevant patents by searching, you might have found a lot of patents.  But you wouldn't have found this one until you told somebody, &ldquo;Oh, I'm working on a spreadsheet,&rdquo; and he said, &ldquo;Oh, did you know those other companies that are making spreadsheets are getting sued?&rdquo; Then you would have found out.
zh_CN: 如果你要写一个电子表格，而你要搜索相关专利，你可能会发现大量的专利。但是在你告知他人之前，你也许找不到上面的专利，&ldquo;我在写一个电子表格，&rdquo;他说，&ldquo;你知不知道有哪些制做电子表格的公司被控告了吗?&rdquo;然后你就知道问题了。

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en: Well, you can't find all the patents by searching, but you can find a lot of them.  And then you've got to figure out what they mean, which is hard, because patents are written in tortuous legal language which is very hard to understand the real meaning of.  So you're going to have to spend a lot of time talking with an expensive lawyer explaining what you want to do in order to find out from the lawyer whether you're allowed to do it.
zh_CN: 你无法搜索到全部专利，但是你可以找到很多。然后，你需要弄明白它们的含义，这很难，因为专利是用烦琐的法律术语写成的，非常难弄明白其含义。因此你要花费大量时间和昂贵的律师讨论你要做什么，以便弄明白你可以做什么。

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en: Even the patent holders often can't recognize just what their patents mean.  For instance, there's somebody named Paul Heckel who released a program for displaying a lot of data on a small screen, and based on a couple of the ideas in that program he got a couple of patents.
zh_CN: 即使专利持有人通常也不能立马看出自己的专利意味着什么。例如，有个叫 Paul Heckel 的人发布了一个在小屏幕显示很多数据的程序，其中很多想法获得了几个专利。

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en: I once tried to find a simple way to describe what claim 1 of one of those patents covered.  I found that I couldn't find any simpler way of saying it than what was in the patent itself; and that sentence, I couldn't manage to keep it all in my mind at once, no matter how hard I tried.
zh_CN: 我曾经要弄明白该专利的要求 1，想要用简单的语言描述它。我发现我无法找到更简单的语言来描术，而专利使用的语句我竟无法一下子放到脑子里，无论多么努力。

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en: And Heckel couldn't follow it either, because when he saw HyperCard, all he noticed was it was nothing like his program.  It didn't occur to him that the way his patent was written it might prohibit HyperCard; but his lawyer had that idea, so he threatened Apple.  And then he threatened Apple's customers, and eventually Apple made a settlement with him which is secret, so we don't know who really won.  And this is just an illustration of how hard it is for anybody to understand what a patent does or doesn't prohibit.
zh_CN: Heckel 自己也稿不明白，因为当他看到 HyperCard 时，他并没有看到它的程序里有这些东西。他并不知道他的专利会写成 HyperCard 的样子;但那是律师的主意，这样他威胁到了 Apple。然后，他又威胁到了 Apple 的客户，最终 Apple 和他达成了密秘和解，而我们并不知道谁是最后的赢家。这只是一个人们想知道专利允许什么和不允许什么的例子。

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en: In fact, I once gave this speech and Heckel was in the audience.  And at this point he jumped up and said, &ldquo;That's not true, I just didn't know the scope of my protection.&rdquo; And I said, &ldquo;Yeah, that's what I said,&rdquo; at which point he sat down and that was the end of my experience being heckled by Heckel.  If I had said no, he probably would have found a way to argue with me.
zh_CN: 事实上，有次我演讲的时候 Heckel 正好在下面听。说到这里的时候，他跳出来说，&ldquo;不对，我只是不知道保护的范围。&rdquo;我就说，&ldquo;是的，这正是我讲的，&rdquo;这时他坐下来，而那就是我最后被 Heckel 干扰的经历。如果我那时说得是不，那么他可能还会和我争论。

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en: Anyway, after a long, expensive conversation with a lawyer, the lawyer will give you an answer like this:
zh_CN: 无论如何，你和律师进行了长时间的昂贵讨论之后，律师大概会这样说:

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en: If you do something in this area, you're almost certain to lose a lawsuit; if you do something in this area, there's a considerable chance of losing a lawsuit; and if you really want to be safe you've got to stay out of this area.  But there's a sizeable element of chance in the outcome of any lawsuit.
zh_CN: 如果你在这方面做了些东西，那么你差不多一定会输掉案子; 如果你在那方面做了事情，那么你有很大可能性输掉官司; 如果你要保证安全，那么你不能涉足这个领域。但是对任何案件你都有点侥幸的胜机。

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en: So now that you have clear, predictable rules for doing business, what are you actually going to do? Well, there are three things that you could do to deal with the issue of any particular patent.  One is to avoid it, another is to get a license for it, and the third is to invalidate it.  So I'll talk about these one by one.
zh_CN: 现在你有了清晰的、可预见的商业规则，你该如何实际操做呢? 针对任何专利你都可以做三件事情。一是避开该专利，二是获取其专利许可，三是让这个专利失效。我会一个一个来讲。

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en: First, there's the possibility of avoiding the patent, which means, don't implement what it prohibits.  Of course, if it's hard to tell what it prohibits, it might be hard to tell what would suffice to avoid it.
zh_CN: 首先，有可能避开某个专利的，就是说，不要实现该专利禁止的东西。当然，如果很难辨认该专利禁止什么，那么怎么来避开就无从谈起。

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en: A couple of years ago Kodak sued Sun [for] using a patent for something having to do with object-oriented programming, and Sun didn't think it was infringing that patent.  But the court decided it was; and when other people look at that patent they haven't the faintest idea whether that decision was right or not.  No one can tell what that patent does or doesn't cover, but Sun had to pay hundreds of millions of dollars because of violating a completely incomprehensible law.
zh_CN: 几年前，Kodak 起诉 Sun 使用了其面向对象相关的专利，而 Sun 不认为自己侵权。法庭的决定是侵权成立; 而其他人阅读该专利时并不能看出侵权是否成立。没人可以判断该专利允许什么和禁止什么，但是 Sun 就是为此不可理解的法律支付了几千万美元。

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en: Sometimes you can tell what you need to avoid, and sometimes what you need to avoid is an algorithm.
zh_CN: 有时你可以判断需要避免哪些东西，有些时候你要避免的是一种算法。

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en: For instance, I saw a patent for something like the fast Fourier transform, but it ran twice as fast.  Well, if the ordinary FFT is fast enough for your application then that's an easy way to avoid this other one.  And most of the time that would work.  Once in a while you might be trying to do something where it runs doing FFT all the time, and it's just barely fast enough using the faster algorithm.  And then you can't avoid it, although maybe you could wait a couple of years for a faster computer.  But that's going to be rare.  Most of the time that patent will to be easy to avoid.
zh_CN: 例如，我看到过一个类似快速富里叶变化的专利，但是速度快了 2 倍。那么如果普通的 FFT 对你的应用已经够快，那么你避免该算法就可以了。大多数情况下，这些都可以成功。如果你使用普通 FFT 会运行很久，而更快速的算法会刚好够用。那么你就不能避免快速算法，虽然你也能再等几年使用更快的计算机。但是那太不寻常了。大多数情况下，专利会被轻易避免。

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en: On the other hand, a patent on an algorithm may be impossible to avoid.  Consider the LZW data compression algorithm.  Well, as I explained, we found a better data compression algorithm, and everybody who wanted to compress files switched to the program gzip which used the better algorithm.  And the reason is, if you just want to compress the file and uncompress it later, you can tell people to use this program to uncompress it; then you can use any program with any algorithm, and you only care how well it works.
zh_CN: 另一方面，关于算法的专利也可能很难避免。想一想 LZW 数据压缩算法。如我解释过的，我们找到一个更好的数据压缩算法，使用文件压缩的人都开始使用具有更好算法的 gzip 程序。原因是，如果你只是要压缩和解压文件，那么你可以告诉人们你使用的是哪个程序; 然后你关心的就只是算法如何。

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en: But LZW is used for other things, too; for instance the PostScript language specifies operators for LZW compression and LZW uncompression.  It's no use having another, better algorithm because it makes a different format of data.  They're not interoperable.  If you compress it with the gzip algorithm, you won't be able to uncompress it using LZW.  So no matter how good your other algorithm is, and no matter what it is, it just doesn't enable you to implement PostScript according to the specs.
zh_CN: 但是 LZW 也用在其他地方; 比如 PostScript 语言也有 LZW 压缩和解压的操作。使用别的更好算法就没用了，因为格式不同。它们不能兼容。如果你使用 gzip 压缩，那么你就不能用 LZW 解压。无论算法多好，无论它是什么，它不能按照规格实现 PostScript。

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en: But I noticed that users rarely ask their printers to compress things.  Generally the only thing they want their printers to do is to uncompress; and I also noticed that both of the patents on the LZW algorithm were written in such a way that if your system can only uncompress, it's not forbidden.  These patents were written so that they covered compression, and they had other claims covering both compression and uncompression; but there was no claim covering only uncompression.  So I realized that if we implement only the uncompression for LZW, we would be safe.  And although it would not satisfy the specification, it would please the users sufficiently; it would do what they actually needed.  So that's how we barely squeaked by avoiding the two patents.
zh_CN: 但是我知道用户很少让打印机去压缩东西。一般来说，人们只会让打印机解压;我也知道两个 LZW 算法的专利的描述都是说如果你的系统只解压，那么是不被禁止的。这些专利只管压缩，也有其他专利既管压缩也管解压;但是没有专利只管解压。因此，我知道如果我们只实现 LZW 解压，那么我们是安全的。虽然没有满足需求规格，但是可以满足用户;因为它做了用户所需。我们刚刚好避免了两个专利。

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en: Now there is GIF format, for images.  That uses the LZW algorithm also.  It didn't take long for people to define another image format, called PNG, which stands for &ldquo;PNG's Not GIF.&rdquo; I think it uses the gzip algorithm.  And we started saying to people, &ldquo;Don't use GIF format, it's dangerous.  Switch to PNG.&rdquo; And the users said, &ldquo;Well, maybe some day, but the browsers don't implement it yet,&rdquo; and the browser developers said, &ldquo;We may implement it someday, but there's not much demand from users.&rdquo;
zh_CN: 还有图像的 GIF 格式。它也用 LZW 算法。人们没过多久就有定义了另一种图像格式，就是 PNG，意思是 &ldquo;PNG's Not GIF（PNG 非 GIF）&rdquo;。我认为它用的是 gzip 算法。我们开始对人说，&ldquo;不要使用 GIF 格式，它是危险的。请切换到 PNG。&rdquo;用户说，&ldquo;以后吧，现在浏览器还没有实现这个算法呢，&rdquo;而浏览器开发者说，&ldquo;我们未来会实现的，但是现在用户并没有这方面的需求。&rdquo;

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en: Well, it's pretty obvious what's going on&mdash;GIF was a de facto standard.  In effect, asking people to switch to a different format, instead of their de facto standard, is like asking everyone in New Zealand to speak Hungarian.  People will say, &ldquo;Well, yeah, I'll learn to speak it after everyone else does.&rdquo; And so we never succeeded in asking people to stop using GIF, even though one of those patent holders was going around to operators of web sites, threatening to sue them unless they could prove that all of the GIFs on the site were made with authorized, licensed software.
zh_CN: 你看，发生的事情很明显&mdash;&mdash;GIF 是实际标准。要求大家切换到另一个不同的格式，而不是现有的实际标准，就象让所有新西兰人说匈牙利语。人们会说，&ldquo;好啊，大家都说匈牙利语的时候，我就学习。&rdquo;我们让人停止使用 GIF 的努力从未成功，即使其中一个专利持有者在检查网站操作者，并威胁要起诉他们，除非这些操作者可以证明网站的所有 GIF 都有授权软件。

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en: So GIF was a dangerous trap for a large part of our community.  We thought we had an alternative to GIF format, namely JPEG, but then somebody said, &ldquo;I was just looking through my portfolio of patents&rdquo;&mdash;I think it was somebody that just bought patents and used them to threaten people&mdash;and he said, &ldquo;and I found that one of them covers JPEG format.&rdquo;
zh_CN: GIF 对大部分社区都是一个危险的陷井。我们曾认为我们有了 GIF 格式的替代，就是 JPEG，不过有人说，&ldquo;我查找了我的专利&rdquo;&mdash;&mdash;我觉得有人只是购买专利并要使用它们威胁人们&mdash;&mdash;他又说，&ldquo;我发现其中一个包含有 JPEG 格式。&rdquo;

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en: Well, JPEG was not a de facto standard, it's an official standard, issued by a standards committee; and the committee had a lawyer too.  Their lawyer said he didn't think that this patent actually covered JPEG format.
zh_CN: JPEG 不是实际标准，它是一个正式标准，由一个标准组织发布的; 该组织也有一个律师。这个律师认为该专利实际并没有包括 JPEG 格式。

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en: So who's right? Well, this patent holder sued a bunch of companies, and if there was a decision, it would have said who was right.  But I haven't heard about a decision; I'm not sure if there ever was one.  I think they settled, and the settlement is almost certainly secret, which means that it didn't tell us anything about who's right.
zh_CN: 那么谁说得是对的呢?该专利持有者已经起诉了好多公司，如果有了判决，那么就有了结论。但是，我没有听到判决;我也不确定是否有一个判决。我认为他们和解了，而和解几乎总是秘密的，就是说不会告诉大家谁对谁错。

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en: These are fairly lightweight cases: one patent on JPEG, two patents on the LZW algorithm used in GIF.  Now you might wonder how come there are two patents on the same algorithm? It's not supposed to happen, but it did.  And the reason is that the patent examiners can't possibly take the time to study every pair of things they might need to study and compare, because they're not allowed to take that much time.  And because algorithms are just mathematics, there's no way you can narrow down which applications and patents you need to compare.
zh_CN: 这些还是相对简单的案子：JPEG 的一个专利，LZW 算法的两个专利用在 GIF。你可能思考为什么同一个算法会有两个专利? 本来不应该这样，但事实就是这样。原因是专利审查员可能没有时间研究和对比两个专利的不同，因为他们不被允许花那么多时间。而且因为算法只是数学，你基本没有办法对一个应用和专利进行比较。

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en: You see, in physical engineering fields, they can use the physical nature of what's going on to narrow things down.  For instance, in chemical engineering, they can say, &ldquo;What are the substances going in? What are the substances coming out?&rdquo; If two different [patent] applications are different in that way, then they're not the same process so you don't need to worry.  But the same math can be represented in ways that can look very different, and until you study them both together, you don't realize they're talking about the same thing.  And, because of this, it's quite common to see the same thing get patented multiple times [in software].
zh_CN: 在物理工程领域，他们可以通过物理特性详查。例如，对化学工程，他们可以说，&ldquo;输入物质是什么? 输出物质是什么?&rdquo;如果不同 [专利] 应用在这些方面有不同，那么它们就不是相同的过程，你也就不用担心。但是同一个的数学可能会有非常不同的表达，除非你把两者一起研究，你不会意识到它们是同样的原理。因此，[软件] 上有很多同样的东西获得了多次专利。

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en: Remember that program that was killed by a patent before we released it? Well, that algorithm got patented twice also.  In one little field we've seen it happen in two cases that we ran into&mdash;the same algorithm being patented twice.  Well, I think my explanation tells you why that happens.
zh_CN: 还记得那个还没有发布就被专利杀死的程序吗? 那个算法也被授予了两次专利。在这么小的领域我们就看到了来两个案例&mdash;&mdash;同一个算法有两个专利。我也向大家解释了原因。

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en: But one or two patents is a lightweight case.  What about MPEG2, the video format? I saw a list of over 70 patents covering that, and the negotiations to arrange a way for somebody to license all those patents took longer than developing the standard itself.  The JPEG committee wanted to develop a follow-on standard, and they gave up.  They said there were too many patents; there was no way to do it.
zh_CN: 但是一两个专利还是简单案例。如果是 MPEG2 这样的视频格式又会怎样? 我看到关于它的一个超过 70 个专利的单子，授权这些专利花费的时间比开发这个标准的时间还长。JPEG 委员会还要开发一个后续标准，后来放弃了。他们说那里已经有了太多专利了;已经没有办法再做了。

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en: Sometimes it's a feature that's patented, and the only way to avoid that patent is not to implement that feature.  For instance, the users of the word processor Xywrite once got a downgrade in the mail, which removed a feature.  The feature was that you could define a list of abbreviations.  For instance, if you define &ldquo;exp&rdquo; as an abbreviation for &ldquo;experiment,&rdquo; then if you type &ldquo;exp-space&ldquo; or &ldquo;exp-comma,&rdquo; the &ldquo;exp&rdquo; would change automatically to &ldquo;experiment.&rdquo;
zh_CN: 有时专利是一项功能，避免这种专利的唯一方法是不开发该功能。例如，Xywrite 文字处理程序的用户有次收到降级软件的邮件，这是要移除一个功能。该功能是可以定义缩写列表。比如，如果你定义 &ldquo;exp&rdquo; 为 &ldquo;experiment&rdquo; 的缩写，那么如果你输入 &ldquo;exp-space&ldquo; 或 &ldquo;exp-comma&rdquo;，&ldquo;exp&rdquo; 就会自动变为 &ldquo;experiment&rdquo;。

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en: Then somebody who had a patent on this feature threatened them, and they concluded that the only thing they could do was to take the feature out.  And so they sent all the users a downgrade.
zh_CN: 那时，有人用专利威胁他们，他们考虑到唯一的事就是把该功能去掉。因此，他们让所有的用户降级。

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en: But they also contacted me, because my Emacs editor had a feature like that starting from the late 70s.  And it was described in the Emacs manual, so they thought I might be able to help them invalidate that patent.  Well, I'm happy to know I've had at least one patentable idea in my life, but I'm unhappy that someone else patented it.
zh_CN: 但是他们也联系了我，因为我的 Emacs 编辑器在 70 年代末就有了这种功能。它写在 Emacs 的手册里，因此他们觉得这样可能会帮助他们使该专利失效。我很高兴知道我至少有了一个可以申请专利的想法，但是我对其他人申请了此专利很不满。

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en: Fortunately, in fact, that patent was eventually invalidated, and partly on the strength of the fact that I had published using it earlier.  But in the meantime they had had to remove this feature.
zh_CN: 不幸的是，事实上，该专利失效了，部分原因就是我更早发布了该功能这个有力的事实。但是同时他们也不得不移除该功能。

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en: Now, to remove one or two features may not be a disaster.  But when you have to remove 50 features, you could do it, but people are likely to say, &ldquo;This program's no good; it's missing all the features I want.&rdquo; So it may not be a solution.  And sometimes a patent is so broad that it wipes out an entire field, like the patent on public-key encryption, which in fact put public-key encryption basically off limits for about ten years.
zh_CN: 移除一两个功能可能并不是灾难。但是如果需要移除 50 个功能，虽然可以做，但人们会说，&ldquo;这个程序不行; 我要的功能都没有啊。&rdquo;所以它不解决问题。有的专利覆盖的面太广，它们会毁坏一个领域，就象公钥加密的专利那样，它实际上让公钥加密推后了十年之久。

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en: So that's the option of avoiding the patent&mdash;often possible, but sometimes not, and there's a limit to how many patents you can avoid.
zh_CN: 这就是避免专利的一个结果&mdash;&mdash;有时虽然可能，但是你要知道你能避免的专利的极限数目。

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en: What about the next possibility, of getting a license for the patent?
zh_CN: 那么另一个可能性，获取专利许可怎么样呢?

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en: Well, the patent holder may not offer you a license.  It's entirely up to him.  He could say, &ldquo;I just want to shut you down.&rdquo; I once got a letter from somebody whose family business was making casino games, which were of course computerized, and he had been threatened by a patent holder who wanted to make his business shut down.  He sent me the patent.  Claim 1 was something like &ldquo;a network with a multiplicity of computers, in which each computer supports a multiplicity of games, and allows a multiplicity of game sessions at the same time.&rdquo;
zh_CN: 专利持有者也可能不给你许可。这完全由他决定。他会说，&ldquo;我就是要你完蛋。&rdquo; 我有次收到一封来自做家庭赌博游戏生意者的来信，这些东西当然是和计算机联系在一起的，而他被一个专利持有者威胁说要让他关门。他把那个专利发给我。专利的第一个要求是 &ldquo;一个由多个计算机组成的网络，其中每个计算机都支持多元游戏，并使这个游戏的多个会话同时进行&rdquo;。

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en: Now, I'm sure in the 1980s there was a university that set up a room with a network of workstations, and each workstation had some kind of windowing facility.  All they had to do was to install multiple games and it would be possible to display multiple game sessions at once.  This is so trivial and uninteresting that nobody would have bothered to publish an article about doing it.  No one would have been interested in publishing an article about doing it, but it was worth patenting it.  If it had occurred to you that you could get a monopoly on this trivial thing, then you could shut down your competitors with it.
zh_CN: 我确信在 1980 年代有个大学已经搭建起了服务器网络室，而且每个服务器都有某种窗口应用。他们只需安装多人游戏就有可能同时显示多人游戏的会话。这种技术太简单太没有意义，而没人会为此发表文章，但是却有专利价值。如果你碰巧有这种简单东西的专利权，那么你也可能让你的竟争对手倒闭。

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en: But why does the Patent Office issue so many patents that seem absurd and trivial to us?
zh_CN: 但是为什么专利局会为如此可笑和简单的东西颁发众多专利?

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en: It's not because the patent examiners are stupid, it's because they're following a system, and the system has rules, and the rules lead to this result.
zh_CN: 不是因为专里审查员太笨，而是因为他们就是按照系统执行的，系统有系统的规则，这些规则导致了这些结果。

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en: You see, if somebody has made a machine that does something once, and somebody else designs a machine that will do the same thing, but N times, for us that's a <code>for</code>-loop, but for the Patent Office that's an invention.  If there are machines that can do A, and there are machines that can do B, and somebody designs a machine that can do A or B, for us that's an <code>if-then-else</code> statement, but for the Patent Office that's an invention.  So they have very low standards, and they follow those standards; and the result is patents that look absurd and trivial to us.  Whether they're legally valid I can't say.  But every programmer who sees them laughs.
zh_CN: 如果一个人造了一台机器，能够做一次某事，而另一个人也造了台机器，能够作 N 此那件事，那么对我们来说这不过是一个 <code>for</code>-循环，而对专利局这个就是发明。再比如，如果有台机器可以做 A，另一台机器可以做 B，有人设计了既可以做 A 又可以做 B 的机器，那么对我们来说这个不过是一个 <code>if-then-else</code> 判断，而对专利局这个又是发明。因此，标准很低，而且他们又按照标准执行，这样一来就导致有些专利看起来很可笑、很平凡。它们是否有效，我就不能判断了。但是，看到这些专利的程序员都笑了。

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en: In any case, I was unable to suggest anything he could do to help himself, and he had to shut down his business.  But most patent holders will offer you a license.  It's likely to be rather expensive.
zh_CN: 不管怎样，我无法为他提供任何建议，而他不得不关门了事。但是大多数专利持有者会给你许可。它可能会很贵。

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en: But there are some software developers that find it particularly easy to get licenses, most of the time.  Those are the megacorporations.  In any field the megacorporations generally own about half the patents, and they cross-license each other, and they can make anybody else cross-license if he's really producing anything.  The result is that they end up painlessly with licenses for almost all the patents.
zh_CN: 但是有些软件开发者发现获得专利特别简单，多数情况下。他们是超级企业。在许多领域，超级企业通常都拥有大约一半的专利，并且他们互相交叉授权，他们可以和任何其他企业交叉授权，只要你有东西拿出来。结果就是他们毫不费力地有了差不多所有专利的许可。

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en: IBM wrote an article in its house magazine, <cite>Think</cite> magazine&mdash;I think it's issue 5, 1990&mdash;about the benefit IBM got from its almost 9,000 US patents at the time (now it's up to 45,000 or more).  They said that one of the benefits was that they collected money, but the main benefit, which they said was perhaps an order of magnitude greater, was &ldquo;getting access to the patents of others,&rdquo; namely cross-licensing.
zh_CN: IBM 在其内部杂志，<cite>Think</cite> 杂志中&mdash;&mdash;我记得是 1990 年第 5 期&mdash;&mdash;谈到它从当时自己拥有的大约 9,000 个美国专利（现在超过了 45,000 个）中获得的好处。其中一个是收取专利费，不过主要的好处，可能比专利费要高一个数量级，是 &ldquo;获得其他人的专利许可，&rdquo;就是交叉授权。

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en: What this means is since IBM, with so many patents, can make almost everybody give them a cross-license, IBM avoids almost all the grief that the patent system would have inflicted on anybody else.  So that's why IBM wants software patents.  That's why the megacorporations in general want software patents, because they know that by cross-licensing, they will have a sort of exclusive club on top of a mountain peak.  And all the rest of us will be down here, and there's no way we can get up there.  You know, if you're a genius, you might start up a small company and get some patents, but you'll never get into IBM's league, no matter what you do.
zh_CN: 这就是说由于 IBM 有这么多专利，它几乎可以和任何人达成交叉授权，这样 IBM 就可以避免绝大多数专利的不利影响。这就是为什么 IBM 想要软件专利。这也是为什么超级企业一般都想要软件专利，因为他们知道通过交叉授权，他们能够坐在山顶独享风景。而我们这些人只能待在下面，无法上来。如果你是个天才，你或许能开个公司，弄些专利，但是你无法进入 IBM 的阵营，无论你怎么努力都不行。

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en: Now a lot of companies tell their employees, &ldquo;Get us patents so we can defend ourselves&rdquo; and they mean, &ldquo;use them to try to get cross-licensing,&rdquo; but it just doesn't work well.  It's not an effective strategy if you've got a small number of patents.
zh_CN: 许多公司会告诉他们的员工，&ldquo;为我们获取一些专利来保护自己&rdquo;，他们指的是，&ldquo;用这些专利争取交叉授权，&rdquo;但是这并不顺利。如果它们只有少量专利的话，这个方法不怎么有效。

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en: Suppose you've got three patents.  One points there, one points there, and one points there, and somebody over there points a patent at you.  Well, your three patents don't help you at all, because none of them points at him.  On the other hand, sooner or later, somebody in the company is going to notice that this patent is actually pointing at some people, and [the company] could threaten them and squeeze money out of them&mdash;never mind that those people didn't attack this company.
zh_CN: 假设你有个专利，这里一个，那里一个。有人用一个专利指向你。你的三个专利根本帮不上，因为它们没有指向那个人。另一方面，早晚你公司会发现一个专利指到了某个人，你可能会威胁这个人并压榨些钱财&mdash;&mdash;不管这人是否攻击了你公司。

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en: So if your employer says to you, &ldquo;We need some patents to defend ourselves, so help us get patents,&rdquo; I recommend this response:
zh_CN: 因此，如果你公司对你说，&ldquo;我们需要专利来保护自己，请获得一些专利，&rdquo;那么我建议你这么说：

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en: Boss, I trust you and I'm sure you would only use those patents to defend the company if it's attacked.  But I don't know who's going to be the CEO of this company in five years.  For all I know, it might get acquired by Microsoft.  So I really can't trust the company's word to only use these patents for defense unless I get it in writing.  Please put it in writing that any patents I provide for the company will only be used for self-defense and collective security, and not for repression, and then I'll be able to get patents for the company with a clean conscience.
zh_CN: 老板，我相信你，我知道你只会用这些专利来保护公司。但是我不知道 5 年后谁会是这个公司的 CEO。据我所知，它有可能被微软收购。所以，除非有书面承诺，我真的不能相信公司只会用专利自保的话。请书面保证我为公司提供的专利只会用来自卫和安全，而不会用于压制，这样我就能够在清晰的共识之下为公司获得专利。

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en: It would be most interesting to raise this not just in private with your boss, but also on the company's discussion list.
zh_CN: 如果不只私下和老板提出此事，而是在公司层面讨论此事就更有意义了。

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en: The other thing that could happen is that the company could fail and its assets could be auctioned off, including the patents; and the patents will be bought by someone who means to use them to do something nasty.
zh_CN: 另一件事是公司可能会失败，然后其资产会被拍卖，包括专利; 而这些专利会被别有用心的人购卖去做恶事。

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en: This cross-licensing practice is very important to understand, because this is what punctures the argument of the software patent advocates who say that software patents are needed to protect the starving genius.  They give you a scenario which is a series of unlikelihoods.
zh_CN: 因此理解交叉授权的实践活动非常重要，这是洞穿软件专利推动者论调的利器，这些人总是说软件专利是保护计算机天才不被饿死的必要措施。他们还会向你展示一个包含一系列不可能的场景。

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en: So let's look at it.  According to this scenario, there's a brilliant designer of whatever, who's been working for years by himself in his attic coming up with a better way to do whatever it is.  And now that it's ready, he wants to start a business and mass-produce this thing; and because his idea is so good his company will inevitably succeed&mdash;except for one thing: the big companies will compete with him and take all his market the away.  And because of this, his business will almost certainly fail, and then he will starve.
zh_CN: 我们来细看一下。根据他们的场景，有一个天才经过多年的独立工作发现了一个好东西，它超过了所有类似的产品。有了这个东西，天才想开始自己的公司并要大规模生产这个东西; 因为产品非常好，他的公司最终会非常成功;&mdash;&mdash;除了一件事：大公司会和他竟争并夺取其全部市场。因此，天才的公司当然会失败，然后天才就失去了饭碗。

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en: Well, let's look at all the unlikely assumptions here.
zh_CN: 现在，我们来看看所有这些不可能的假设。

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en: First of all, that he comes up with this idea working by himself.  That's not very likely.  In a high-tech field, most progress is made by people working in a field, doing things and talking with people in the field.  But I wouldn't say it's impossible, not that one thing by itself.
zh_CN: 首先，他的想法是他独立做出产品。这基本不可能。在高科技行业，大多数进步都是由在同一领域的人互相讨论并认真工作做出的。但是我不能说不可能，一个人独立成事的可能性很小。

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en: But anyway the next supposition is that he's going to start a business and that it's going to succeed.  Well, just because he's a brilliant engineer doesn't mean that he's any good at running a business.  Most new businesses fail; more than 95 percent of them, I think, fail within a few years.  So that's probably what's going to happen to him, no matter what.
zh_CN: 第二条假设是他开始自己的公司并获得成功。可是，仅仅是一个天才工程师并不能让他善长运营公司。大多数新公司会失败; 我了解，超过 95% 的新公司在几年内就失败了。因此，不管怎样，最可能的事就是他的公司会失败。

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en: Ok, let's assume that in addition to being a brilliant engineer who came up with something great by himself, he's also talented at running businesses.  If he has a knack for running businesses, then maybe his business won't fail.  After all, not all new businesses fail, there are a certain few that succeed.  Well, if he understands business, then instead of trying to go head to head with large companies, he might try to do things that small companies are better at and have a better chance of succeeding.  He might succeed.  But let's suppose it fails anyway.  If he's so brilliant and has a knack for running businesses, I'm sure he won't starve, because somebody will want to give him a job.
zh_CN: 再假设，天才不但善于工程，独立研发了优秀的产品，而且很会管理公司。如果他非常善于经营，那么公司可能不会失败。毕竟不是所有的公司都会失败，还是有某些公司会成功。如果他有经营头脑，那么他不会和大公司对着干，而是可能做好那些小公司善长的事，这样就更有机会成功。他也许成功了。但是我们还是假定公司失败了。如果他很有才干并能够管理公司，我相信他不会挨饿，因为有人会雇用他。

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en: So a series of unlikelihoods&mdash;it's not a very plausible scenario.  But let's look at it anyway.
zh_CN: 所以这是一系列的不可能&mdash;&mdash;非常不可能的场景。不过我们还是研究一下。

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en: Because where they go from there is to say the patent system will &ldquo;protect&rdquo; our starving genius, because he can get a patent on this technique.  And then when IBM wants to compete with him, he says, &ldquo;IBM, you can't compete with me, because I've got this patent,&rdquo; and IBM says, &ldquo;Oh, no, not again!&rdquo;
zh_CN: 因为他们在此想说的是专利体系会 &ldquo;保护protect&rdquo; 我们的天才不会挨饿，因为他可以为自己的技术申请一个专利。然后，当 IBM 和他竟争时，他就说，&ldquo;IBM，你不能和我竟争，因为我有专利，&rdquo;而 IBM 会说，&ldquo;不，不再是那样了!&rdquo;

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en: Well, here's what really happens.
zh_CN: 下面就是接着发生的事。

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en: IBM says, &ldquo;Oh, how nice, you have a patent.  Well, we have this patent, and this patent, and this patent, and this patent, and this patent, all of which cover other ideas implemented in your product, and if you think you can fight us on all those, we'll pull out some more.  So let's sign a cross-license agreement, and that way nobody will get hurt.&rdquo; Now since we've assumed that our genius understands business, he's going to realize that he has no choice.  He's going to sign the cross-license agreement, as just about everybody does when IBM demands it.  And then this means that IBM will get &ldquo;access&rdquo; to his patent, meaning IBM would be free to compete with him just as if there were no patents, which means that the supposed benefit that they claim he would get by having this patent is not real.  He won't get this benefit.
zh_CN: IBM 说，&ldquo;不错，你有一个专利。我们有这个专利，还有这个专利，还有那个专利，还有这个专利，等等，所有这些专利都在你的产品里出现了，如果你觉得你还可以和我们竟争，我们会列出更多的专利。我们来签署交叉授权协议吧，大家都不会受伤。&rdquo;我们已经假定天才很懂经营，因此他会明白别无选择。他会签署交叉授权协议，当 IBM 要求时，大家都会这么做。这意味着 IBM 有权 &ldquo;使用&rdquo; 天才的专利，意味这 IBM 将免费和他竟争，就象没有专利一样，这就是说所谓专利带来的好处并不存在。天才没得到专利的好处。

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en: The patent might &ldquo;protect&rdquo; him from competition from you or me, but not from IBM&mdash;not from the very megacorporations which the scenario says are the threat to him.  You know in advance that there's got to be a flaw in this reasoning when people who are lobbyists for megacorporations recommend a policy supposedly because it's going to protect their small competitors from them.  If it really were going to do that, they wouldn't be in favor of it.  But this explains why [software patents] won't do it.
zh_CN: 专利也许 &ldquo;保护了&rdquo; 我们和他的竟争，但不是 IBM 的竟争&mdash;&mdash;不是每个超级企业的竟争，这些竟争是对他的威胁。你们事先已经知道，这个推理有问题。当超级企业的游说者提议某些保护弱小竟争对手的策略时，如果这些策略真的有用，他们是不会支持的。但是以上推理还是阐明了为什么 [软件专利] 不会保护弱小的竟争者。

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en: Even IBM can't always do this, because there are companies that we refer to as patent trolls or patent parasites, and their only business is using patents to squeeze money out of people who really make something.
zh_CN: 即使 IBM 不能一直这么干，还有许多被称为专利寄生虫的公司，它们的唯一作为就是使用专利压榨那些真正做事的人。

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en: Patent lawyers tell us that it's really wonderful to have patents in your field, but they don't have patents in their field.  There are no patents on how to send or write a threatening letter, no patents on how to file a lawsuit, and no patents on how to persuade a judge or jury, so even IBM can't make the patent trolls cross-license.  But IBM figures, &ldquo;Our competition will have to pay them too; this is just part of the cost of doing business, and we can live with it.&rdquo; IBM and the other megacorporations figure that the general dominion over all activity that they get from their patents is good for them, and paying off the trolls they can live with.  So that's why they want software patents.
zh_CN: 专利律师告诉我们拥有专利是一件好事，但是在他们的领域却没有专利。并没有关于撰写和发送律师函的专利，也没有关于提交诉讼的专利，更没有关于如何说服法官或陪审团的专利，因此 IBM 也无法和专利寄生虫达成交叉授权。但是 IBM 在思量，&ldquo;竟争对手也要付这个钱的; 这是商业成本的一部分，我们可以接受。&rdquo;IBM 等超级企业认为通过专利在它们的商业活动中占有主导地位是好事，花钱搞定专利寄生虫也没什么。这就是为什么会有软件专利。

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en: There are also certain software developers who find it particularly difficult to get a patent license, and those are the developers of free software.  The reason is that the usual patent license has conditions we can't possibly fulfill, because usual patent licenses demand a payment per copy.  But when software gives users the freedom to distribute and make more copies, we have no way to count the copies that exist.
zh_CN: 有些软件开发者获得专利许可尤其困难，他们就是自由软件的开发者。其中的原因是我们很难满足普通专利许可的条件，因为普通专利许可要求按拷贝数目付费。但是自由软件允许用户自由复制和分发，我们没有办法计算究竟有多少拷贝。

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en: If someone offered me a patent license for a payment of one-millionth of a dollar per copy, the total amount of money I'd have to pay maybe is in my pocket now.  Maybe it's 50 dollars, but I don't know if it's 50 dollars, or 49, or what, because there's no way I can count the copies that people have made.
zh_CN: 如果一份拷贝的专利许可费是百万分之一美元，那么我现在就可以全款支付。也许总数是 50 美元，我不确定，或者是 49 美元，或者其他，因为我不知道人们复制了多少拷贝。

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en: A patent holder doesn't have to demand a payment per copy; a patent holder could offer you a license for a single lump sum, but those lump sums tend to be big, like US$100,000.
zh_CN: 专利持有者不必一定要按照拷贝数计费; 他也可以一次性收费，但是这个费用就比较高了，一般是 US$100,000。

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en: And the reason that we've been able to develop so much freedom-respecting software is [that] we can develop software without money, but we can't pay a lot of money without money.  If we're forced to pay for the privilege of writing software for the public, we won't be able to do it very much.
zh_CN: 我们开发了如此多的自由软件，原因是开发自由软件可以不花钱，但是我们不能在没有钱的情况下支付一大笔钱。如果我们被迫花费专利费来为公众开发软件，我们做不了太多。

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en: That's the possibility of getting a license for the patent.  The other possibility is to invalidate the patent.  If the country considers software patents to be basically valid, and allowed, the only question is whether that particular patent meets the criteria.  It's only useful to go to court if you've got an argument to make that might prevail.
zh_CN: 这个就是获得专利许可的可能性。另一个可能性是让专利失效。如果一个国家认可软件专利、允许软件专利，那么一个专利是否达到标准就是唯一的问题。如果你的论据可能获胜，那么只有到法庭上才有用。

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en: What would that argument be? You have to find evidence that, years ago, before the patent was applied for, people knew about the same idea.  And you'd have to find things today that demonstrate that they knew about it publicly at that time.  So the dice were cast years ago, and if they came up favorably for you, and if you can prove that fact today, then you have an argument to use to try to invalidate the patent.  And it might work.
zh_CN: 论据有哪些呢?你的论据必须是，在申请该专利的数年前，人们就已经知道同样的想法了。你需要找到一些现今的东西，说明人们在几年前就公开知道这个主意。所以证据在多年前就有了，如果它们对你有利，如果你再能在现在证明这些，那么你就有了让该专利失效的论据。这有可能行。

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en: It might cost you a lot of money to go through this case, and as a result, a probably invalid patent is a very frightening weapon to be threatened with if you don't have a lot of money.  There are people who can't afford to defend their rights&mdash;lots of them.  The ones who can afford it are the exception.
zh_CN: 打官司可能花费不菲，而其结果，那个可能无效的专利对家底不厚的你可是很大的威胁。有很多人无力负担保护自己的权利&mdash;&mdash;非常多的人。负担得起的人是少数。

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en: These are the three things that you might be able to do about each patent that prohibits something in your program.  The thing is, whether each one is possible depends on different details of the circumstances, so some of the time, none of them is possible; and when that happens, your project is dead.
zh_CN: 这就是你要对禁止你在程序里做事的每个专利可以采取的三个手段。实际上，这些手断是不是可行依赖于具体的细节，有时一个都用不上;如果真是那样，你的项目就是死路一条。

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en: But lawyers in most countries tell us, &ldquo;Don't try to find the patents in advance,&rdquo; and the reason is that the penalty for infringement is bigger if you knew about the patent.  So what they tell you is &ldquo;Keep your eyes shut.  Don't try to find out about the patents, just go blindly taking your design decisions, and hope.&rdquo;
zh_CN: 但是大多数国家的律师告诉我们，&ldquo;不要预先查找专利&rdquo;，原因是如果你已经知道了某专利，那么该专利侵权的惩罚会更重。因此他们会告诉你 &ldquo;闭上眼睛。不要查找专利，直接去实现你的设计，然后期待吧。&rdquo;

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en: And of course, with each single design decision, you probably don't step on a patent.  Probably nothing happens to you.  But there are so many steps you have to take to get across the minefield, it's very unlikely you will get through safely.  And of course, the patent holders don't all show up at the same time, so you don't know how many there are going to be.
zh_CN: 当然，不是每个设计都会碰到专利限制。你有可能没有碰到专利问题。但是你要在雷区行进很多步，安全通过是很难的。当然，专利持有者并不是同时现身，所以你也不知道会来多少讨债者。

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en: The patent holder of the natural order recalculation patent was demanding 5 percent of the gross sales of every spreadsheet.  You could imagine paying for a few such licenses, but what happens when patent holder number 20 comes along, and wants you to pay out the last remaining 5 percent? And then what happens when patent holder number 21 comes along?
zh_CN: 上面讲到的自然顺序计算专利的持有者曾要求 5% 的销售额作为回报。你也许会考虑支付这个专利许可费，但是后面又来了 19 个专利持有者，每个都要求 5 %，你会把整个销售额都分掉吗?然后又来了第 21 个专利持有者，你又怎么办?

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en: People in business say that this scenario is amusing but absurd, because your business would fail long before you got there.  They told me that two or three such licenses would make your business fail.  So you'd never get to 20.  They show up one by one, so you never know how many more there are going to be.
zh_CN: 商业人士看到这个场景会说太搞笑了，因为你的公司早在体验这个场景之前就结束了。他们告诉我两三个这样的专利就把一个公司搞倒了。所以你看不到 20。他们会一个接一个地出现，你永远也无法知道究竟有多少。

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en: Software patents are a mess.  They're a mess for software developers, but in addition they're a restriction on every computer user because software patents restrict what you can do on your computer.
zh_CN: 软件专利是一团糟。它们对软件开发者是一团糟，但是另外它们也限制着每个计算机用户，因为软件专利限制了用户对自己计算机的使用。

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en: This is very different from patents, for instance, on automobile engines.  These only restrict companies that make cars; they don't restrict you and me.  But software patents do restrict you and me, and everybody who uses computers.  So we can't think of them in purely economic terms; we can't judge this issue purely in economic terms.  There's something more important at stake.
zh_CN: 这个和普通专利有所不同，比如汽车的引擎。引擎的专利只限制造车的企业;它们不会限制你我这样的用户。但是软件专利却会限制你我，也限制所有使用机算机的人。因此我们不能仅从经济的角度来对待它们;我们不能只用经济的观点来做判断。它们还有更重要的危险。

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en: But even in economic terms, the system is self-defeating, because its purpose is supposed to be to promote progress.  Supposedly by creating this artificial incentive for people to publish ideas, it's going to help the field progress.  But all it does is the exact opposite, because the big job in software is not coming up with ideas, it's implementing thousands of ideas together in one program.  And software patents obstruct that, so they're economically self-defeating.
zh_CN: 即使从经济的观点看，专利系统也是自相矛盾，因为它原定的目的是促进发展。通过构建人工的激励让人们公开想法，以为它会帮助产业进步。但是它的结果却是南辕北辙，因为重要的软件工作不是公开想法，而是在一个程序里实现成千上万的想法。而软件专利阻止大家这么做，因此它们在经济上是自相矛盾。

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en: And there's even economic research showing that this is so&mdash;showing how in a field with a lot of incremental innovation, a patent system can actually reduce investment in R &amp; D.  And of course, it also obstructs development in other ways.  So even if we ignore the injustice of software patents, even if we were to look at it in the narrow economic terms that are usually proposed, it's still harmful.
zh_CN: 已经有经济研究表明了这一点&mdash;&mdash;在一个大量创新累积的领域，专利系统实际导致 R &amp; D 投入的减少。当然，它还在其他方面阻止进步。所以，即使我们不考虑软件专利的不公正性，只从狭隘的经济学观点看，专利系统还是有害的。

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en: People sometimes respond by saying that &ldquo;People in other fields have been living with patents for decades, and they've gotten used to it, so why should you be an exception?&rdquo;
zh_CN: 有人可能会反驳说 &ldquo;人们在其他领域已经采用专利制度几十年了，已经习惯了，为什么还要再来个例外?&rdquo;

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en: Now, that question has an absurd assumption.  It's like saying, &ldquo;Other people get cancer, why shouldn't you?&rdquo; I think every time someone doesn't get cancer, that's good, regardless of what happened to the others.  That question is absurd because of its presupposition that somehow we all have a duty to suffer the harm done by patents.
zh_CN: 这个问题带有一个可笑的假设。就象说，&ldquo;其他人罹患了癌症，为什么你不得呢?&rdquo; 我觉得有人没得癌症是好事，不管是不是有别人得癌症。这个问题的可笑之处在于其前提是我们大家都要忍受专利带来的伤害。

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en: But there is a sensible question buried inside it, and that sensible question is &ldquo;What differences are there between various fields that might affect what is good or bad patent policy in those fields?&rdquo;
zh_CN: 但是这里暗藏着一个敏感的问题，就是 &ldquo;各个领域的专利政策对该领域的好影响和坏影响有何不同?&rdquo;

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en: There is an important basic difference between fields in regard to how many patents are likely to prohibit or cover parts of any one product.
zh_CN: 就一个产品会有多少专利覆盖，不同的领域有重要的不同。

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en: Now we have a naive idea in our minds which I'm trying to get rid of, because it's not true.  And it's that on any one product there is one patent, and that patent covers the overall design of that product.  So if you design a new product, it can't be patented already, and you will have an opportunity to get &ldquo;the patent&rdquo; on that product.
zh_CN: 大家现在有了一个幼稚的看法，我们需要摆脱这个看法，因为它是错的。这个看法就是一个产品会有一个专利，而这个专利覆盖整个产品设计。这样如果你设计了一个新产品，那么它还没有专利，而你就有获得这个产品 &ldquo;专利&rdquo; 的机会。

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en: That's not how things work.  In the 1800s, maybe they did, but not now.  In fact, fields fall on a spectrum of how many patents [there are] per product.  The beginning of the spectrum is one, but no field is like that today; fields are at various places on this spectrum.
zh_CN: 事情并非如此。在 1800 年代，事情可能是那样，但是现在不再是了。事实上，每个产品会 [有] 多少专利是一个分布。分布的起点是 1，但是每个领域的产品都不是 1 了; 大家分布在不同的位置。

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en: The field that's closest to that is pharmaceuticals.  A few decades ago, there really was one patent per pharmaceutical, at least at any time, because the patent covered the entire chemical formula of that one particular substance.  Back then, if you developed a new drug, you could be sure it wasn't already patented by somebody else and you could get the one patent on that drug.
zh_CN: 最接近 1 的分布是制药业。几十年前，一种药真的就是一个专利，因为这个专利就是整个药物的化学成分。那时，如果你开发了一个新药，你可以确信没有人为此药申请专利，而且你可以为此药申请一个专利。

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en: But that's not how it works now.  Now there are broader patents, so now you could develop a new drug, and you're not allowed to make it because somebody has a broader patent which covers it already.
zh_CN: 不过，现在情况变了。现在专利变得更宽泛了，因此你可以开发一种新药，但是你却不能生产该药，因为已经有人用更宽泛的专利覆盖到该药了。

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en: And there might even be a few such patents covering your new drug simultaneously, but there won't be hundreds.  The reason is, our ability to do biochemical engineering is so limited that nobody knows how to combine so many ideas to make something that's useful in medicine.  If you can combine a couple of them you're doing pretty well at our level of knowledge.  But other fields involve combining more ideas to make one thing.
zh_CN: 而且有可能会有几个类似的专利同时覆盖到该药，不过不会有几百个。原因是我们的生物工程能力还比较局限，还没人知道如何把众多想法组合在一起为制药做贡献。如果你可以组合几种想法，那们你已经做得很好了。但是在其他领域你要组合更多的想法来生产一个产品。

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en: At the other end of the spectrum is software, where we can combine more ideas into one usable design than anybody else, because our field is basically easier than all other fields.  I'm presuming that the intelligence of people in our field is the same as that of people in physical engineering.  It's not that we're fundamentally better than they are; it's that our field is fundamentally easier, because we're working with mathematics.
zh_CN: 软件位于分布的另一端，我们可以在一个设计中组合比其他行业更多的想法，因为软件领域基本上比所有其他领域都简单。我假设软件行业人才的智力和物理工程人才的一样。并不是我们原则上比他们更好; 而是软件领域原则上更容易，因为我们做得是数学工作。

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en: A program is made out of mathematical components, which have a definition, whereas physical objects don't have a definition.  The matter does what it does, so through the perversity of matter, your design may not work the way it &ldquo;should&rdquo; have worked.  And that's just tough.  You can't say that the matter has a bug in it, and the physical universe should get fixed.  [Whereas] we [programmers] can make a castle that rests on a mathematically thin line, and it stays up because nothing weighs anything.
zh_CN: 程序由数学组件构成，它们都有定义，而物理对象却没有定义。物质就是物质，因此由于物质的顽固天性，你的设计可能不会按照 &ldquo;预想&rdquo; 行事。这就很麻烦。你不能说物质有缺陷，而是物理世界应该设法解决此问题。[不过] 我们 [程序员] 基于数学构建大厦，而它屹立不到因为没什么份量。

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en: There're so many complications you have to cope with in physical engineering that we don't have to worry about.
zh_CN: 物理工程需要对付很多复杂性，而我们却不用担心这些。

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en: For instance, when I put an <code>if</code>-statement inside of a <code>while</code>-loop,
zh_CN: 例如，当我在 <code>while</code>-循环中放入 <code>if</code>-语句时，

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en: I don't have to worry that if this <code>while</code>-loop repeats at the wrong rate, the <code>if</code>-statement might start to vibrate and it might resonate and crack;
zh_CN: 我无须担心 <code>while</code>-循环率会变化，而 <code>if</code>-语句因此开始震荡而可能会崩溃;

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en: I don't have to worry that if it resonates much faster&mdash;you know, millions of times per second&mdash;that it might generate radio frequency signals that might induce wrong values in other parts of the program;
zh_CN: 我不用担心循环是否震动的太快&mdash;&mdash;每秒钟数百万次&mdash;&mdash;而可能产生会导致程序错误数据的高频射频信号;

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en: I don't have to worry that corrosive fluids from the environment might seep in between the <code>if</code>-statement and the <code>while</code>-statement and start eating away at them until the signals don't pass anymore;
zh_CN: 我也无须担心来自环境的腐蚀性液体可能会渗透到 <code>if</code>-语句和 <code>while</code>-语句之间，并开始腐蚀语句直到信号无法发送;

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en: I don't have to worry about how the heat generated by my <code>if</code>-statement is going to get out through the <code>while</code>-statement so that it doesn't make the <code>if</code>-statement burn out; and
zh_CN: 我无须担心 <code>if</code>-语句产生的热量会从 <code>while</code>-语句冒出并烧掉 <code>if</code>-语句; 而且

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en: I don't have to worry about how I would take out the broken <code>if</code>-statement if it does crack, burn, or corrode, and replace it with another <code>if</code>-statement to make the program run again.
zh_CN: 我不用担心如何取出被损坏、被烧坏或被腐蚀的 <code>if</code>-语句，并用另一个 <code>if</code>-语句替换掉，让程序重新运行。

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en: For that matter, I don't have to worry about how I'm going to insert the <code>if</code>-statement inside the <code>while</code>-statement every time I produce a copy of the program.  I don't have to design a factory to make copies of my program, because there are various general commands that will make copies of anything.
zh_CN: 如此，我无须担心每次复制程序时如何在 <code>while</code>-语句中插入 <code>if</code>-语句。我也不必为复制程序设计一个工厂，因为有很多通用的命令来复制程序。

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en: If I want to make copies on CD, I just have to write a master; and there's one program I can [use to] make a master out of anything, write any data I want.  I can make a master CD and write it and send it off to a factory, and they'll duplicate whatever I send them.  I don't have to design a different factory for each thing I want to duplicate.
zh_CN: 如果我要复制 CD，那么我只须制作一个母盘; 而已经有了可以制作母盘程序，我可以写入任何数据。我可以制作一个母盘、写入数据并发给某个工厂，它就会为我复制 CD。我自己不必为每次设计开发不同的工厂。

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en: Very often with physical engineering you have to do that; you have to design products for manufacturability.  Designing the factory may even be a bigger job than designing the product, and then you may have to spend millions of dollars to build the factory.  So with all of this trouble, you're not going to be able to put together so many different ideas in one product and have it work.
zh_CN: 而物理工程经常要做这些事; 他们不得不设计便于生产的产品。设计工厂可比设计产品更艰巨，然后你还要投入数百万资金来建造工厂。有了这些难题，你不太可能在一个产品中融入大量不同的想法并做出来。

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en: A physical design with a million nonrepeating different design elements is a gigantic project.  A program with a million different design elements, that's nothing.  It's a few hundred thousand lines of code, and a few people will write that in a few years, so it's not a big deal.  So the result is that the patent system weighs proportionately heavier on us than it does on people in any other field who are being held back by the perversity of matter.
zh_CN: 包含百万量级不同设计元素的物理设计会是一个超极庞大的项目。而包含百万量级不同设计的程序却不是不是问题。那只是几十万行代码，一队人在几年之内就可以写好，所以不是大事。因此，专利系统加在我们身上的重压比其他领域大了许多，他们受到物质的干扰更多。

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en: A lawyer did a study of one particular large program, namely the kernel Linux, which is used together with the GNU operating system that I launched.  This was five years ago now; he found 283 different US patents, each of which appeared to prohibit some computation done somewhere in the code of Linux.  At the time I saw an article saying that Linux was 0.25 percent of the whole system.  So by multiplying 300 by 400 we can estimate the number of patents that would prohibit something in the whole system as being around 100,000.  This is a very rough estimate only, and no more accurate information is available, since trying to figure it out would be a gigantic task.
zh_CN: 有个律师研究了一个大型程序，就是 Linux 内核，它被我开创的 GNU 操作系统所用。这是五年前; 他发现了 283 个不同的美国专利，每个专利看来都会禁止 Linux 代码执行某种计算。那时，我曾看到一篇文章说 Linux 只占整个系统的 0.25%。因此， 我们用 300 乘 400 来估算整个系统受到的专利限制可达 100,000 以上。这只是一个粗略的估计，也没有更准确的信息了，因为真要准确估算的话会是一个巨大的工作。

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en: Now this lawyer did not publish the list of patents, because that would have endangered the developers of Linux the kernel, putting them in a position where the penalties if they were sued would be greater.  He didn't want to hurt them; he wanted to demonstrate how bad this problem is, of patent gridlock.
zh_CN: 这名律师并没有公布专利的名单，因为那样会使 Linux 内核的开发者受到危险，让他们处于可能会在控诉后受到更大处罚的境地。他无意伤害这些开发者; 他想要的是展示问题的严重性，关于专利的僵局。

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en: Programmers can understand this immediately, but politicians usually don't know much about programming; they usually imagine that patents are basically much like copyrights, only somehow stronger.  They imagine that since software developers are not endangered by the copyrights on their work, that they won't be endangered by the patents on their work either.  They imagine that, since when you write a program you have the copyright, [therefore likewise] if you write a program you have the patents also.  This is false&mdash;so how do we give them a clue what patents would really do? What they really do in countries like the US?
zh_CN: 程序员马上就可以理解此事，但是政治家通常不懂编程; 他们一般把专利想象成和版权基本类似的东西，只是更强一些。他们这样想是因为软件开发者没有受到软件版权的危险，因此也就不会受到软件专利的危险。他们这样想是因为软件作者拥有软件的版权，[因此同样的] 软件作者也会拥有软件专利。这是错误的&mdash;&mdash;我们应该怎样让他们了解专利的真正目的呢? 它们在美国这样的国家的目的?

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en: I find it's useful to make an analogy between software and symphonies.  Here's why it's a good analogy.
zh_CN: 我发现比较软件和交响乐会很有用。下面讲一下为什么这是一个好的类比。

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en: A program or symphony combines many ideas.  A symphony combines many musical ideas.  But you can't just pick a bunch of ideas and say &ldquo;Here's my combination of ideas, do you like it?&rdquo; Because in order to make them work you have to implement them all.  You can't just pick musical ideas and list them and say, &ldquo;Hey, how do you like this combination?&rdquo; You can't hear that [list].  You have to write notes which implement all these ideas together.
zh_CN: 软件和交响乐都组合了许多想法。交响乐组合了多种音乐想法。但是你无法简单挑几个想法并说 &ldquo;这是我的想法组合，你喜欢吗?&rdquo;因为要让它们工作，你必须要实现它们。你无法简单挑几个音乐想法，排列它们并说，&ldquo;你喜欢这个组合吗?&rdquo;但是你听不到 [那个排列]。你必须撰写实现所有想法的乐符。

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en: The hard task, the thing most of us wouldn't be any good at, is writing all these notes to make the whole thing sound good.  Sure, lots of us could pick musical ideas out of a list, but we wouldn't know how to write a good-sounding symphony to implement those ideas.  Only some of us have that talent.  That's the thing that limits you.  I could probably invent a few musical ideas, but I wouldn't know how to use them to any effect.
zh_CN: 困难的工作，大多数人并不善长，在于撰写这写乐符做成美妙的乐章。是的，很多人能够在列表里挑出音乐想法，但是我们不懂实现这些想法的方法，也无法写出动听的交响乐。只有某些人有这样的才能。这限制了你。我可能能发明几个音乐点子，但是我不懂如何有效地使用他们。

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en: So imagine that it's the 1700s, and the governments of Europe decide that they want to promote the progress of symphonic music by establishing a system of musical idea patents, so that any musical idea described in words could be patented.
zh_CN: 想象在 1700 年代，欧洲政府决定促进交响乐的发展，由此建立了一个音乐想法专利的体系，这样就可以把用语言描述的音乐思想专利保护。

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en: For instance, using a particular sequence of notes as a motif could be patented, or a chord progression could be patented, or a rhythmic pattern could be patented, or using certain instruments by themselves could be patented, or a format of repetitions in a movement could be patented.  Any sort of musical idea that could be described in words would have been patentable.
zh_CN: 例如，把一个特定的乐符系列做为模式可以是专利，和弦可以是专利，韵律模式可以是专利，单独使用某种乐器可以是专利，而重复性动作的格式也可以是专利。任何可以用文字描述的音乐思想都可以是专利。

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en: Now imagine that it's 1800 and you're Beethoven, and you want to write a symphony.  You're going to find it's much harder to write a symphony you don't get sued for than to write one that sounds good, because you have to thread your way around all the patents that exist.  If you complained about this, the patent holders would say, &ldquo;Oh, Beethoven, you're just jealous because we had these ideas first.  Why don't you go and think of some ideas of your own?&rdquo;
zh_CN: 想象在 1800 年代，你是贝多芬，你要写一个交响乐。你会发现编写交响乐变得非常困难，你不是会被控告就是不能写好听的音乐，因为你不得不绕开所有已知的专利。如果你有报怨，专利持有者会说，&ldquo;贝多芬，你是在嫉妒别人先有了这些想法吧。你为什么不会去想一想自己的点子呢?&rdquo;

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en: Now Beethoven had ideas of his own.  The reason he's considered a great composer is because of all of the new ideas that he had, and he actually used.  And he knew how to use them in such a way that they would work, which was to combine them with lots of well-known ideas.  He could put a few new ideas into a composition together with a lot of old and uncontroversial ideas.  And the result was a piece that was controversial, but not so much so that people couldn't get used to it.
zh_CN: 贝多芬有了自己的想法。他被认为是一个伟大的作曲家正是因为他的这些新想法、他实际使用的这些想法。他明白如何合理运用这些想法，就是把它们和已知的众多想法组合起来。他也可能把一些新思想和大量老的和不矛盾思想组合起来。结果就是一个有争议的篇章，但是也不是大家都能适应的音乐。

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en: To us, Beethoven's music doesn't sound controversial; I'm told it was, when it was new.  But because he combined his new ideas with a lot of known ideas, he was able to give people a chance to stretch a certain amount.  And they could, which is why to us those ideas sound just fine.  But nobody, not even a Beethoven, is such a genius that he could reinvent music from zero, not using any of the well-known ideas, and make something that people would want to listen to.  And nobody is such a genius he could reinvent computing from zero, not using any of the well-known ideas, and make something that people want to use.
zh_CN: 对我们来说，贝多芬的音乐听来并不好坏参半。不过我被告知，在那音乐刚出来的时期，它是有争议的。不过，因为他把新的思想和许多已知的思想组合在一起，他就让人们能够有机会拓展一下。他们确实也拓展了，这就是为什么这些思想对我们来说没什么问题。但是，没人，即使贝多芬也不能从零开始创新音乐，一点也不借鉴已有的思想，并做出一些人们爱听的音乐。也没人能够从零开始重新发明计算机，而不使用任何现有的思想，做出让人们想用的计算机。

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en: When the technological context changes so frequently, you end up with a situation where what was done 20 years ago is totally inadequate.  Twenty years ago there was no World Wide Web.  So, sure, people did a lot of things with computers back then, but what they want to do today are things that work with the World Wide Web.  And you can't do that using only the ideas that were known 20 years ago.  And I presume that the technological context will continue to change, creating fresh opportunities for somebody to get patents that give the shaft to the whole field.
zh_CN: 当技术快速变化，你的情形就是 20 年前做的东西已经完全不够了。20 年前并没有万维网。的确，人们那时也用电脑做了很多事，但是人们现在做的是关于万维网的东西。你不能只用 20 年前的思想来做这事。我预计技术还会不断改变，人们会有新的机会获取穿透整个领域的专利。

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en: Big companies can even do this themselves.  For instance, a few years ago Microsoft decided to make a phony open standard for documents and to get it approved as a standard by corrupting the International Standards Organization, which they did.  But they designed it using something that Microsoft had patented.  Microsoft is big enough that it can start with a patent, design a format or protocol to use that patented idea (whether it's helpful or not), in such a way that there's no way to be compatible unless you use that same idea too.  And then Microsoft can make that a de facto standard with or without help from corrupted standards bodies.  Just by its weight it can push people into using that format, and that basically means that they get a stranglehold over the whole world.  So we need to show the politicians what's really going on here.  We need to show them why this is bad.
zh_CN: 大企业自己就能做到这一点。例如，几年前微软决定制定一个伪开放文档标准，并打通国际标准组织的关系获得通过。但是他们制定的标准是微软已获专利的东西。微软足够大，他们可以从自己的专利开始设计一套格式或协议（不管有没有实用价值），这种东西你无法兼容，除非也使用其专利思想。因此，微软就可以让此格式或协议成为事实上的标准，无论是否要走标准组织的后门。只需凭自身的体量来硬推，人们就不得不使用其格式，这基本上就意味着他们掌握了全世界的命脉。我们有必要告诉当权者此种情形。我们应当告诉他们为什么这很糟糕。

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en: Now I've heard it said that the reason New Zealand is considering software patents is that one large company wants to be given some monopolies.  To restrict everyone in the country so that one company will make more money is the absolute opposite of statesmanship.
zh_CN: 我听说新西兰考虑软件专利的原因是一个大公司要垄断权。限制所有的人而让一个公司获得更多的利益，这绝对是当政者不该做的事。

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en: So, at this point, I'd like to ask for questions.
zh_CN: 好了，现在可以提问了。

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en: Q.
zh_CN: 问：

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en: What is the alternative?
zh_CN: 有其他的选择吗?

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en: A.
zh_CN: 答：

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en: No software patents.  I know that that works fine.  I was in the field when there were no software patents.  And that meant people developed software, and they distributed that software in various ways, and they didn't have to worry about getting sued by patent holders for doing it, so they were safe.  Software patents don't solve a real problem, so we don't need to ask what other solution is there.
zh_CN: 软件没有专利。我知道这样可以。当我从事软件行业时并没有软件专利。人们开发软件，人们用多种方法分发这些软件，他们无需担心会被专利持有者控告，因此他们很安全。软件专利不解决实际问题，所以我们不用问还有没有别的选择。

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en: How do the developers get rewarded?
zh_CN: 开发者如何获得回报呢?

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en: Many ways.  Software patents have nothing to do with that.  Remember if you're a software developer, software patents don't help you get whatever you want to get.
zh_CN: 很多方法。软件专利和这个无关。如果你是一个软件开发者，请记住软件专利不能帮你获得你所需要的东西。

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en: Different software developers want different things.  I developed some important software in the 1980s, and the reward I wanted was to see people using computers in freedom.  And I got that reward, although not totally, not everybody has freedom.  But software patents would only have stopped me.
zh_CN: 不同的软件开发者需求不同。我在 1980 年代开发了一些重要的软件，我想要的回报是看到人们有自由使用电脑。我获得了回报，虽然还不完全，并不是所有人都有了这个自由。但是软件专利却只是在阻止我做这件事。

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en: Other people developed programs because they wanted money.  Software patents threaten them, too, and still threaten them, because you're not going to make any money if patent holders demand that you give it all to them, or if they make you shut down.
zh_CN: 有人开发软件是为了挣钱。软件专利对他们也是威胁，现在还是，因为专利持有者会向他们要钱，或者要让他们关门，他们还怎么挣钱?

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en: How do you prevent plagiarism and still&hellip;
zh_CN: 如何防止抄袭&hellip;&hellip;

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en: Plagiarism has nothing to do with this issue.  It has absolutely nothing to do with this issue.
zh_CN: 抄袭和我们讨论的问题没有关系。一点关系都没有。

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en: Plagiarism means copying the text of a work and claiming to have written it yourself.  But patents are not concerned with the text of any particular work.  They simply have nothing to do with this.
zh_CN: 抄袭是说复制了一个作品的文字并声称是自己写的。但是专利并不关心某个作品的文字。专利和这事无关。

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en: If you write a work and this work embodies some ideas, which it always does, there's no reason to think that the patents covering those ideas would belong to you.  They're more likely to belong to lots of others, and half of them to the megacorporations, and they can then all sue you.  So you don't even have to worry [about plagiarism]; long before you get to the point where somebody else might copy it, you're going to be getting the shaft.
zh_CN: 如果你写了一部作品，其中包含了一些思想，当然总是这样的，人们没有理由认为包含这些思想的专利就是你的。它们更可能是其他许多人的，其中一半属于超级企业，他们会告你的。因此你都不用担心 [抄袭]; 远在有人要复制之前，你就会被盘剥了。

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en: You are confusing patents with copyrights, I'm afraid.  They have nothing in common.  I've explained to you what the patent system does to software, but I think you don't believe me because you've heard what copyrights do and you're confusing the two, so these impressions you've got about what copyrights do, you're just assuming that patents do them also&mdash;and they don't.  If you write some code, the copyright on that code would belong to you; but if your code implements ideas, if some of these ideas are patented, those patents belong to others who could then sue you.
zh_CN: 我觉得你是把专利和版权搞混了。它们没什么共同点。我已经解释了专利会如何对付软件，但是我认为你不信，因为你听到版权可以如何如和，而你把它们俩混在一起了，你觉得版权可做的事专利也可以做&mdash;&mdash;但是它们不能。如果你写了代码，代码的版权可能是你的; 但是如果代码实现了某些想法，而这些想法有专利，那么这些专利属于可能控告你的人。

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en: You don't have to be afraid, with copyright, that when you write code yourself, that somebody else already has a copyright on it and can sue you, because copyright only restricts copying.  In fact, even if you write something which is identical to what somebody else wrote, if you can prove you didn't copy it, that's a defense under copyright law, because copyright law is only concerned with copying.  But copyright law is only concerned with the details of authorship of a work [i.e., not the ideas it embodies], so it has nothing in common with patent law in terms of what it deals with, and the effects are totally different.
zh_CN: 你不必害怕，有了版权，当你自己写的代码，而有人已经有该代码的版权，他们可以告你，因为版权只限制复制。事实上，即使你写了和其他人完全一样的东西，如果你可以证明你没有复制他的东西，那么这就是对你的辩护，因为版权只管复制的事。版权法只关心作品的作者归属详情 [比如，不是作品包含的思想]，因此版权法和专利法在针对的事情上毫不相干，其效果也完全不同。

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en: Now I'm not in favor personally of all the things that people do with copyright law, I've criticized it.  But it's a totally different, unrelated issue.  If you think that patent law helps somebody who is developing software, it means that you have got a completely wrong picture of what patent law actually does.
zh_CN: 我也不完全赞同人们对版权法做的所有的事，我也曾批评过版权法。但它是完全不同的、不相关的问题。如果你认为专利法帮助了开发软件的人，那么意味着你对专利法的实际作为有一个完全错误的概念。

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en: Don't get me wrong.  I'm on your side.
zh_CN: 不要错怪我。我和你站在一边。

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en: OK, but still you've got a wrong picture.  I'm not blaming you for it, because you've just been misinformed.
zh_CN: 好的，不过你的概念还是错的。我并不责怪你，因为你一直都被蒙在鼓里。

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en: If I'm writing software for commercial purposes, do I get good protection by treating it as a black box and keeping it secret?
zh_CN: 如果我写的是商业软件，那么把它作为黑盒和密秘对我会有很好的保护吗?

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en: I don't want to discuss that question because I'm not in favor of it, I think it's unethical to do that, but that's an unrelated issue.
zh_CN: 我不想讨论这个问题，因为我并不赞成此事，我认为它是不道德的，但这个是不相关的问题。

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en: I understand that.
zh_CN: 我明白这个。

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en: I don't want to change the subject and then praise something that I think is bad.  But because it's a change of subject I'd rather not get into that.
zh_CN: 我不想改变话题，然后鼓励我觉得是不好的东西。但是因为要改变话题，我还是不要讨论此事吧。

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en: Our Foundation for Research, Science, and Technology, I think they're probably the equivalent of your National Science Foundation, provides grants for research and development and one of the things that they propose pretty actively is that ideas that they have funded should be secured if possible by patents.
zh_CN: 我们的研究、科学和技术基金会，我觉得可能和你们的国家科学基金会类似，都为研发提供资金。他们非常极积地建议的一个事情就是他们资助的想法最好得到专利保护。

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en: That shouldn't be the case in software, because software ideas shouldn't be patentable ever by anyone.  But what you are seeing there, more generally, is an example of the general corruption of our society by putting commercial aims above all others.  Now I'm not a communist and I don't want to abolish business, but when it becomes business above all, every aspect of life oriented towards business, that is dangerous.
zh_CN: 这种做法不应该用于软件，因为软件想法任何时候都不应该有专利。但是你看到的、更一般的情况是奉行商业至上的社会腐败的一个例子。我并不是一个共产主义者，我也不想摈弃商业，但是如果商业超越一切，生活的方方面面都以商业为导向，那是很危险的。

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en: So Richard, if you talk to the Foundation, perhaps you might propose that there are better ways for a small country like New Zealand to make money on software.
zh_CN: Richard，谈到基金会，可能你需要为象新西兰这样的小国推荐通过软件挣钱的更好的方法。

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en: Software patents don't help anybody make money out of software.  They mean that you're in danger of getting sued when you try.
zh_CN: 软件专利不能帮任何人从软件上挣钱。它们是要在你想挣钱时受到控告的威胁。

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en: Which makes it difficult for New Zealand as a country to build an economic base using software as part of that.
zh_CN: 这就让新西兰这样的国家想要构建以软件为部分基础的经济体变得困难。

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en: Sorry, when you say &ldquo;which&rdquo; I don't know what you are referring to.  Software patents will make it difficult for anyone.  If New Zealand allows software patents, that will make it difficult in New Zealand for anybody to develop programs and distribute them, because you'll be in danger of getting sued.  Software patents have nothing to do with developing a program and then putting it to some use.
zh_CN: 对不起，我不知道你说的 &ldquo;这&rdquo; 指什么。软件专利让大家都面临困难。如果新西兰允许软件专利，那么人们在新西兰就很难开发和分发程序，因为会受到被起诉的威胁。软件专利和开发与使用一个程序没有关系。

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en: So New Zealand, in terms of its economic development, it would be better protected by having no software patents.
zh_CN: 因此对新西兰来说，为了发展经济起见，没有软件专利会更好。

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en: Yes.  You see, each country has its own patent system, and they work independently, except that countries have signed up to a treaty that says, &ldquo;If you have got a patent in that country, you can basically bring your application over here, and we'll judge it based on the year you applied for it over there.&rdquo; But other than that, each country has its own criteria for what can be patented and has its own set of patents.
zh_CN: 对。每个国家都有自己的专利系统，它们各自独立运作，除了有些国家签署了类似 &ldquo;如果你在此国获得一个专利，你基本上可以把它带到我国，我们会根据你原来的申请日期来评判。&rdquo; 除了这个，每个国家都有自己的专利判断标准并有自己的一整套专利。

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en: So the result is if the US allows software patents and New Zealand does not, that means that everybody in the world, including New Zealanders, can get US software patents and sue us poor Americans at home.  But if New Zealand doesn't allow software patents that means that neither you nor we can get New Zealand software patents to sue you New Zealanders at home.  You can be sure that almost all the software patents will belong to foreigners who will use them to basically kick any New Zealand software developers whenever they get the chance.
zh_CN: 结果就是，如果美国允许软件专利，而新西兰不允许，那么世界上所有人，包括新西兰人，都可以获得美国软件专利并能在美国起诉可怜的美国人．而如果新西兰不允许软件专利就意味着我们都不能获取新西兰软件专利，也不能在新西兰起诉新西兰人。可以确信的是，几乎所有的软件专利都属于外国人，一有机会，他们就会使用这些专利对付新西兰软件开发者，基本上让他们无法立足。

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en: Since the Hughes Aircraft case, I think it was in the 1990s
zh_CN: 从前有个 Hughes 航空器的案子，我想是在 1990 年代。

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en: I don't know about that case.
zh_CN: 我并不知道这个案子。

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en: But basically New Zealand's had software patents.  It's not like we're going into a field where we don't already have them, we do.
zh_CN: 原则上新西兰有软件专利。我们并不是要进入一个没有专利的领域，我们是有的。

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en: I don't know, but I'm told that there's a decision being made now at the legislative level of whether to allow them.  But Patent Offices often respond to lobbying from megacorporations through WIPO.
zh_CN: 我不知道，但是有人告诉我现在大家正在决定是否要在法律层面允许软件专利。而超级企业通过 WIPO 的游说经常受到专利局的呼应。

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en: WIPO, as you can tell from its name, which is the World Intellectual Property Organization, is up to no good, because any use of that term is spreading confusion.  WIPO gets a lot of its funds from megacorporations, and uses those funds to bring officials from Patent Offices to idyllic resort destinations for training.  What they train them to do is twist the law to allow patents in areas where they're not supposed to be allowed.
zh_CN: WIPO，顾名思义，就是世界知识产权组织（World Intellectual Property Organization），不会干好事，因为使用该词的目的都是为了混水摸鱼。WIPO 从超级企业获得大量资金，而他们使用这些资金让专利局的官员到闲静的度假胜地去培训。培训的内容就是扭曲法律让它们能够在不应采用专利的领域允许专利。

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en: In many countries there are laws and court decisions which say that software as such can't be patented, algorithms can't be patented, or &ldquo;mathematical&rdquo; algorithms can't be patented (no one's quite sure what it means for an algorithm to be mathematical or not), and various other criteria which if interpreted naturally would rule out software patents, but the patent offices twist the law to allow them anyway.
zh_CN: 在许多国家，都有法律和判决宣称软件等不能有专利，算法也不能申请专利，&ldquo;数学&rdquo; 算法也不能作为专利（天知道一个算法是不是数学算法），还有许多标准如果自然解释就意味着软件无法有专利，但是专利局却扭曲法律千方百计地允许软件专利。

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en: For instance, a lot of things which practically speaking are software patents have the form where they describe a system involving a central processing unit, a memory, input/output facilities, instruction-fetching facilities, and means to perform this particular computation.  In effect they've written explicitly into the patent all the parts of an ordinary computer, and then they say, &ldquo;Well, this is a physical system which we would like to patent,&rdquo; but really it's just patenting certain software on a computer.  There are many subterfuges that they've used.
zh_CN: 例如，许多实际上就是软件专利的东西被描述为带有中央处理器、内存、输入输出外设、指令提取设备加上执行计算手段的形式。这就是明确地描述普通计算机的所有部件，然后再说，&ldquo;这是我们要申请专利的物理系统&rdquo;，但是其真正要申请的专利是计算机的软件。人们会使用很多这样的伎倆。

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en: Patent Offices will generally try to twist the law into allowing more patents.  In the US software patents were created by a court decision in 1982, in the Appeals Court that deals with all patent cases, which misunderstood a Supreme Court decision from the previous year, and misapplied it.  Now it looks like that Appeals Court has finally changed its mind, and it's come to the conclusion that it was mistaken all along; and it looks like this decision will get rid of all software patents, unless the Supreme Court reverses it.  The Supreme Court is now considering it, and within less than a year we should find out whether we've won or lost.
zh_CN: 专利局一般会扭曲法律来允许更多的专利。美国的软件专利是在 1982 年被法庭判决创建的。现在看来当时的判决法庭最后改了主意，结果就是案子被以误传误地传了下来; 看来这个结论会推翻所有的软件专利，除非最高法院推翻该判决。最高法院正在考虑这件事，在不到一年的时间里我们就会知道谁胜谁败。

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en: Should that case be unsuccessful, is there any movement in the States to take a legislated solution?
zh_CN: 如果该案落败，在美国会有什么法律活动吗?

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en: Yes, and I been promoting this for about 19 years now.  It's a battle that we fight over and over in various different countries.
zh_CN: 有的，我已经花了 19 年的时间在推动此事了。这是一个在多个国家一再进行的斗争。

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en: Where in your universe do you put the in I4i case?
zh_CN: 你如何看待 I4i 的案子?

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en: I have no idea what that is.
zh_CN: 我完全不知道你说的事。

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en: It's where Microsoft has basically almost had to shut down on selling Word, because they were found to have infringed a Canadian patent.
zh_CN: 它是关于微软基本上会停止销售 Word 的案子，因为他们侵犯了一个加拿大专利。

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en: Oh, that one.  That's just an example of how dangerous software patents are to all software developers.  I don't like what Microsoft does, but that's an issue that's irrelevant for this purpose.  It's not good that somebody can sue a software developer and say &ldquo;I won't let you distribute such software.&rdquo;
zh_CN: 是那个案子啊。那是软件专利有多危险的一个例子，对所有软件开发者。我不喜欢微软的所做所为，但那是和我们的目的无关的问题。人们起诉软件开发者并说 &ldquo;我不让你分发这个软件&rdquo; 对谁都没好处。

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en: Obviously we live in an imperfect world, and in some cases we run into the issue of software patents.  Do you think that we should allow privileges for researchers to get around patents in the same way that copyright law allows research on copyright material?
zh_CN: 显然我们生活在一个并不完美的世界，有时我们会遇到软件专利的麻烦。你是否认为研究人员应该有象版权豁免一样的专利豁免特权?

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en: No, it's a mistake to look for partial solutions, because we have a much better chance of establishing a full solution.  Everybody involved in software development and distribution and use, except the ones in the megacorporations, when they see how dangerous software patents are, they will get behind total rejection of software patents.  Whereas an exception for some special case will only win support from the people in that special case.  These partial solutions are essentially distractions.  People start by saying, &ldquo;Oh, I'm sure we can't really solve the problem, so I give up on that.  Let me propose a partial solution.&rdquo; But these partial solutions don't make it safe to develop software.
zh_CN: 不，寻找局部方案是错误的，因为我们有很大的机会构建一个完备的方案。除了超级企业，其他开发、分发和使用软件的人看清楚软件专利的危害后，他们都会完全拒绝软件专利。即使有个别例外，支持软件专利的人也只是这些例外里的人。这些局部方案基本上只是干扰。人们会说，&ldquo;我知道我们不能真正解决问题，我不追求那个。让我建议一个局部方案。&rdquo; 但是局部方案并不能让开发软件变安全。

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en: You wouldn't, however, oppose a partial solution that's not necessarily just directed at software patents, so you wouldn't oppose experimental use, which may be a good solution for the pharmaceutical patent.
zh_CN: 不过，你不会反对一个针对软件专利的局部方案，所以你不会反对试验一下，它可能对制药业是一个好方案。

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en: I wouldn't oppose that.
zh_CN: 我不会反对这个。

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en: But what you're saying is that you don't think it's applicable to software, just to clarify.
zh_CN: 不过，你是说你不觉得它可以用于软件，只是确认一下。

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en: Something that saves only a few of us, or only certain activities, or gets rid of half the software patents, that's analogous to saying, &ldquo;Well, maybe we could clear part of the minefield, or maybe we could destroy half the mines in the minefield.&rdquo; [That's an improvement] but that doesn't make it safe.
zh_CN: 只顾及部分人、只覆盖某些活动、只摆脱半数软件专利的东西就象是说，&ldquo;我们可能会排除一部分雷区，或者可能破坏掉半数地雷。&rdquo; [这很重要] 但是并不能保证安全。

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en: So you've been speaking the same thing all around the world.  How much uptake has there been? Have governments changed, or not adopted software patents?
zh_CN: 你一直在世界各地讲述此事。多少人采纳了呢? 有没有政府改了政策，或者不再接纳软件专利?

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en: Some have.  In India a few years ago, there was an attempt to change patent law to explicitly allow software patents and it was dropped.  A few years ago the US proposed a trade treaty, a free exploitation treaty, with Latin America.  And it was blocked by the president of Brazil, who said no to software patents and another nasty thing relating to computers, and that killed the whole treaty.  That's apparently the whole thing that the US wanted to impose on the rest of the continent.  But these things don't stay dead; there are companies that have full-time staff looking for some way they can subvert some country or other.
zh_CN: 有一些。几年前，印度想修改专利法明确允许软件专利，后来放弃了。美国几年前也提出一个交易条约，那是一个针对拉美的自由压榨条约。它被巴西总统阻止了，他对软件专利和另一件关于电脑的糟糕做法说了不，这就废了该条约。这些明显是美国要强加到整个美州的。但是这些东西并没有完全死掉; 有些公司雇有全职人员寻找搅乱其他国家的方法。

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en: Is there any real hard data around what happens in economic terms in the innovation communities in countries that have essentially no software patents?
zh_CN: 在原则上没有软件专利的国家，有没有什么关于此事对创新社团经济影响的实际数据?

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en: There isn't any.  It's almost impossible to measure these things.  Actually, I shouldn't say there isn't any.  There is a little.  It's very hard to measure the effect of the patent system, because you're comparing the real world with a counterfactual world, and there's no way to be sure what would happen.
zh_CN: 没有，测量这些数据几乎不可能。实际上，我不能说没有。有一点。测量专利的影响非常困难，因为你要比较真实世界和虚拟世界，所以没有办法确定究竟会发生什么事。

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en: What I can say is before there were software patents, there was lots of software development; not as much as there is now, because of course there were nowhere near as many computer users.
zh_CN: 我能说的是在有软件专利之前，已经有很多软件开发的活动; 不过没有现在这么多，因为那时的计算机用户的数量也没法和现在相比。

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en: How many computer users were there in 1982, even in the US? It was a small fraction of the public.  But there were software developers.  They weren't saying, &ldquo;We desperately want patents.&rdquo; They weren't getting sued for patent infringement after they developed their programs.  But there is a bit of [economic] research that I saw that apparently software patents resulted not in an increase in research, but [in] a shift of funds from research into patenting.
zh_CN: 即使美国，在 1982 年又有多少计算机用户呢? 那只是一小部分而已。但是还是有软件开发者的。他们并没有说，&ldquo;我们极度需要专利&rdquo;。他们开发程序也不会因为专利侵权而被告。但是我看到当时有些 [经济] 研究，它们说显然软件专利没有导致研究的增加，但是 [却] 把部分资金分散到专利方面。

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en: Do you expect that there would be any interest in trade secrets?
zh_CN: 你觉得交易密秘会有意义吗?

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en: No.  Before there were software patents, a lot of software developers kept the details of their programs secret.  But they usually wouldn't keep any of the general ideas secret, because that they realized that the big job in developing good software was not picking your general ideas, it was implementing a lot of ideas together.  So they would publish, [or] they would let their employees publish, in scholarly journals any interesting new ideas that they'd had.  So now, they'll patent those new ideas.  It has very little to do with developing a useful program, and just letting people know some ideas doesn't give them a program.  Besides, most of the ideas, the thousands of ideas you've combined in your program, are known anyway.
zh_CN: 不。在软件专利之前，许多软件开发者保持着其程序的秘密。但是他们通常不会对一般性的想法保密，因为他们意识到软件开发中的主要工作不是要拿别人的常规想法，那是要实现大量的想法。因此他们会，[或者] 他们会让雇主在学术期刊上发表他们的思想。现在，这些思想会申请专利。这个和开发出有用的程序没有关系，只是让人们在没有程序时了解这些想法。此外，大多数想法，程序中组合的成千上万的想法本来就是已知的。

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en: To back that up, I was listening to an interview, one of the founders of PayPal was interviewed, and he said that he really felt strongly that his success was 5 percent idea and 95 percent execution, and that supports your point really well.
zh_CN: 作为支持案例，我听过一个访谈，受访者是 PayPal 创始人之一，他说他强烈地感到他的成功是 5% 的想法和 95% 的执行，这个非常支持你的观点。

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en: I agree.
zh_CN: 我同意。

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en: Excellent.  Richard has here stickers which I believe are free
zh_CN: 非常好。Richard 有一些免费 [free] 的贴纸。

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en: Gratis.  And these [other items] are for sale.
zh_CN: 是免费 [Gratis]。那些 [另外的东西] 是用来卖的。

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en: So you're welcome to come down.  It's been a great debate&mdash;thank you Richard.
zh_CN: 现在你可以下来了。这是一个精彩的讨论&mdash;感谢你，Richard。

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en: This speech is published in <a href="https://shop.fsf.org/product/free-software-free-society/"><cite>Free Software, Free Society: The Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman</cite></a>.
zh_CN: 此演讲发表于 <a href="https://shop.fsf.org/product/free-software-free-society/"><cite>自由软件，自由社会：Richard M. Stallman 选集</cite></a>。

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en: Please send general FSF &amp; GNU inquiries to <a href="mailto:gnu@gnu.org">&lt;gnu@gnu.org&gt;</a>.  There are also <a href="/contact/">other ways to contact</a> the FSF.  Broken links and other corrections or suggestions can be sent to <a href="mailto:webmasters@gnu.org">&lt;webmasters@gnu.org&gt;</a>.
zh_CN: 请将有关自由软件基金会(FSF) &amp; GNU的一般性问题发送到<a href="mailto:gnu@gnu.org">&lt;gnu@gnu.org&gt;</a>。也可以通过<a href="/contact/">其他联系方法</a>联系自由软件基金会(FSF)。有关失效链接或其他错误和建议，请发送邮件到<a href="mailto:webmasters@gnu.org">&lt;webmasters@gnu.org&gt;</a>。

note: TRANSLATORS: Ignore the original text in this paragraph, replace it with the translation of these two: We work hard and do our best to provide accurate, good quality translations.  However, we are not exempt from imperfection. Please send your comments and general suggestions in this regard to <a hr
en: Please see the <a href="/server/standards/README.translations.html">Translations README</a> for information on coordinating and contributing translations of this article.
zh_CN: 我们尽最大努力来提供精准和高质量的翻译，但难免会存在错误和不足。如果您在这方面有评论或一般性的建议，请发送至 <a href="mailto:web-translators@gnu.org">&lt;web-translators@gnu.org&gt;</a>。</p><p>关于进行协调与提交翻译的更多信息参见 <a href="/server/standards/README.translations.html">《译者指南》</a>。

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en: This page is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.
zh_CN: 本页面使用 <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a> 授权。

note: TRANSLATORS: Use space (SPC) as msgstr if you don't want credits. type: Content of: <div><div>
en: *GNUN-SLOT: TRANSLATOR'S CREDITS*
zh_CN: <b>翻译团队</b>：<a rel="team" href="https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/www-zh-cn/">&lt;CTT&gt;</a>，2021。

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en: Updated:
zh_CN: 最后更新：
