Free Software Magazine comes to their senses: software patents are good

[housetier]

and they even go as far as to defend software patens in a long article. Usually these free software zealots are against everything non-free, but this time they have gotten it right:

In this article I’ll try to explain why software patents are necessary, and in the sake of fairness I’ll look at the other side of each argument. Here is the “defense of Software Patents”. I report, you decide.

[mouser]

That is very surprising to hear.  Software patents are extremely controversial, and as you say, the free and open source software advocates are rarely in support of them.. I'll have to read this (and the comments to the article) closely.

I think it's important to say that this is an article by someone at the magazine making a case for Software Patents -- I don't think that it represents an "official position" of the magazine.

i guess i was confused by the title and housetiers comments about the article which i took to be saying that the authors were actually making the case for software patents.  it seems they are not taking a position but just putting forward some arguments on both sides.  if anything, they are NOT in favor of software patents.

[housetier]

You should really read the article.

[mouser]

so basically having read it, it seems the article is not really in favor of software patents, it summarizes the cases for them, and then puts forward cases against them.

and my reading is that they are basically come down against software patents, though in a very round about way.

then the article concludes by basically saying nothing and taking no point on the matter.

my summary of the article:
1) read it for the interesting pro and cons
2) ignore the title, ignore the conclusion
3) ignore houseteirs comments about the article and especially the title of his post, which really confused me.

[housetier]

call it what it is: misleading

[Renegade]

In this article I’ll try to explain why software patents are necessary, and in the sake of fairness I’ll look at the other side of each argument.

Bull****. (As per the first comment.)

The article is little more than a quick argument followed by zero support for it and lots of debunking it. The author is CLEARLY against software patents.

I report, you decide.

That was completely disingenuous to say the least.

The title, "In defense of software patents," would better be written as, "There is no defense for software patents."

I'm not taking a side, but that article was SOOOO slanted that it wasn't even funny. It was a very very thin veil...