RSSPatent roulette
Industry observers have expressed concern over the proliferation of software process patents since they became generally accepted in the mid-nineties, and some of the most egregious abusers of the over-burdened system have been the large, lawyered-up industry giants like Apple, Google, and Microsoft. The recent spectacle of Microsoft being hoisted by its own petard has provoked considerable glee in some circles, but that's not why I find it interesting. Rather, it illustrates that, increasingly, conventional on-premises software is becoming just another subset of Software as a Service (SaaS).
On the heels of the furor caused by Amazon's infamous instant recall of "1984" from Kindle devices, the injunction against Microsoft knocks away another building block in the wall surrounding traditional software delivery. If the Kindle incident showed how easy it was for providers to meddle with devices otherwise in our possession, the Microsoft decision demonstrates that such meddling may someday be more than just the amateur fumbling of a tone-deaf giant: indeed, with the capabilities in place, it may be increasingly an option in court-ordered relief in these disputes.
That's not the case in this instance, of course. What it demonstrates, however, is the absurdity of the claims made by the anti-cloud (or is it pro-on-premises?) software crowd, that you can't trust SaaS because you don't "own" it. Well, you obviously don't "own" Office or any other on-premises package you thought you purchased, either. Although the current injunction merely prevents Microsoft from supporting or continuing to sell the disputed feature in new copies of Office, that appears to be an artifact of a reasonably savvy judge being lenient; there's nothing that would have prevented the order from mandating a revocation of all outstanding Office licenses making use of the patented technology.
The irony in my making this argument may well be that it is one of the few cases where the intent, claim, and facts of the case all appear to be legitimate: i4i is not a shell company formed expressly to buy up patent rights and engage in legal warfare but a genuine software development shop which appears to have developed a real, innovative technique that was later appropriated by a much larger rival and used to push them out of the market. Protecting against that sort of exploitation is everything that the patent system is supposed to be about.
But the vague nature of the patent and the fact that a similar, competing one was also issued directly to Microsoft shows the overall weakness of the system and its susceptibility to being gamed.
My point isn't so much to do with patents, or patent problems, although they obviously affect SaaS and on-premises software alike. Rather, I wanted to draw attention to the hypocrisy of critiquing SaaS for its supposed vulnerability to provider meddling and then turning around and touting the ability to easily and automatically upgrade and patch on-premises software. That capability, now ubiquitous, can be used for ill as well as good. In a strange twist, at the same time the i4i patent case was heating up, Microsoft itself was granted a patent in that very vein. On-premises software now exhibits no real ownership advantage, and if that feature factors into your decision to stick with it, it's time to re-think your position.
