this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2023
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Two pieces of technology are behind the Internet as we know it today.
Neither one is patented.
They are TCP/IP and Linux.
All the network traffic runs over TCP/IP.
95%+ of the servers run Linux. So do the Android phones and Chromebooks.
Clearly, patent protection in software is not required for society to benefit greatly from technological innovation in software.
Linux isn't a patentable thing. It's not one idea or even really a new one. I agree with your premise though. Patents, in nearly all cases, suck.
Yes, that's been true so far. Are you sure it's true under the newly proposed law?
I hope if the law passes, that the Linux Foundation immediately would jump on putting a patent on Linux/whatever else needed just to keep those pesky patent mongoloids from trying to kill Linux. Assuming that Linux would become patentable.
What would you patent? "A program which handles low level functionality and manages other programs?" I suppose what I mean is that there is "prior art". You can't patent something if it isn't new and the concept of Linux isn't. Linux isn't the first kernel. This law wouldn't change that. The first person to create a kernel though, under this law that might perhaps (?) have been patentable. Which would've crippled the entire software industry in it's infancy. Yay patents!
Patents have been an issue for Linux before. For example, memory deduplication (KSM) was delayed and modified to avoid a patent on using hashes for this purpose, resulting in a potentially inferior implementation due to patents.
TIL UDP Traffic runs on TCP.
"TCP/IP" is conventionally used to indicate the whole protocol suite; including UDP, ICMP and sometimes even ARP.
Technically the parent protocol is IP.
In all my years I have never heard someone suggest that TCP is a catch all term.
I've seen many references to TCP/IP as meaning IP + everything-on-top, usually when talking about other networking technologies like UUnet, OSI, etc. Also as the TCP/IP stack, usually meaning the (Free)BSD networking code used in other systems.
It's not that TCP is a catch-all term, but "TCP/IP" is often used that way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_protocol_suite
For that matter, the classic networking text by Douglas Comer is Internetworking with TCP/IP and it does cover UDP, ICMP, ARP, DHCP, DNS, etc.
Psh. UDP isn't used at any scale anymore. /s
I use it all the time
I use it all the time
I use it all the time
I use it all the time
It does it you want to be sure it is delivered!
Wut
Psh