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Comment by acg | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps not FUD, but I think not releasing what exactly is infringing is suspicious to many.

I've not noticed that Google is particularly litigious: perhaps as the company gets older it will enter the ethos.

I can understand software patents when your competition poaches your staff, but it seems a little unjustified years later because you happened for have an idea first.

Imagine if Novell acted this way.

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"Perhaps not FUD, but I think not releasing what exactly is infringing is suspicious to many"

Why? Think about it from the patent licensee's point of view. You are paying a patent owner money for permission to practice one or more of their patents.

Why would you want to tell your competitors what those patents are? So they can look at them and make sure they work around them, and so don't end up having to license them, and so get to offer their competing products at a lower cost than yours?

If those patents could be circumvented for less than you paid for them, you made a lousy deal. If they could be licensed for less than the cost of circumventing them, your competitors made a bad deal.

Anyway, enabling FUD is bad for everyone. Microsoft's threats over Linux (therefore Android) decrease the value for everyone in this ecosystem.

That could be a little inaccurate. In this case you create a product using and open-source product and an industry player comes along saying Linux infringes on it's patent portfolio heavily. But this infringement was unproven: Microsoft may not have a case.

This looks like extortion--- where product makers rather than face down Microsoft, accept that they must pay. It it likely that HTC does not think it has too much choice as part of the market for their phone is windows mobile.

Many patents could be claimed on any device built now, you don't see IBM, Novell and Oracle lining up.

Well, I think software patents are inherently broken anyway. But I can't fault a company for trying to leverage that type of thing if the system allows it.

You most certainly can. Just because something is allowed by "the system" does not mean it is OK. A dick move is just that, even if it isn't against the rules.

Businesses are chartered to maximize shareholder value. One may not like dealing with a business because of their policies or the quality of their products, but it's hard for me to see how anthropomorphizing companies and complaining about how "evil" they are [not that you're doing that, but it's so often done] does anything but obscure that it is in fact the system that allows, and often requires, "dickish" behavior.

I notice some similar thinking in this respect about politicians, too: in both cases people complain about them and wish for a day when we'd just have "good" ones. (And often lament a non-existent past where they were good.) Companies are intended to always act in their interests and politicians almost universally (and since time immemorial) act in whatever way they think best helps their reelection because if either entity didn't generally act in this manner, they'd cease to exist and be replaced by an instance that would. The system selects for companies and politicians that act in their interests. Understanding and internalizing this fundamental fact about these entities' nature seems to me key to helping us effect the change we want to see.

So, either anthropomorphizing companies is bad, or its ok. In your first paragraph you criticize people who do so, but the second is about how companies act in their own self interest.

Second, the only reason a company does something is the people there make decisions to do so. These people are perfectly capable of being evil and being dicks, and frequently are. Since they are the decision-makers and act on the company's behalf, and cause others to do so as well, just assume people saying 'company x is evil' is shorthand for 'the decision makers and people who carry out actions in the name of company x are creating evil by this coordinated action'.

Third, I accept that most institutions act in their own self interest, this really doesn't require too much deep insight. I have been voting with my dollar and my cooperation for a long time.

Finally: I was not suggesting anything other than what you said, I was disagreeing with the "can't fault a company for...". This is totally doable. It is a dick move, and may or may not have long term ramifications. Self interest is different than lazy "greediest move available now".

Perhaps. Many people believe there is a place for ethics in both business and politics. Without ethics and principles everything must be regulated or tested in law. Loose regulation and reliance on just market-forces does not always result in the best outcome long term.

Banks for instance advocated the loosening of regulation to act just as you suggest. Now many blame them for breaking western economies.

They reached an agreement over standing patents with one of their business partners. That's hardly a dick move. Now, if they'd sued a 50 person startup into oblivion over a questionable set of patents, that's a different story. But that's not what they did.

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