To me, software patents are a tricky area to argue. For one exec from Red Hat however, it is actually pretty black and white. They are against them, pure and simple. Fair enough, but I would want to hear both sides before passing total judgment.

San Francisco (InfoWorld) - Santa Clara, Calif. — A Red Hat executive speaking at the MySQL Users Conference 2005 event here on Tuesday heaped scorn on the issuance of software patents, saying they stifle innovation.

The executive, Michael Tiemann, vice president of Open Source Affairs at Red Hat, also criticized Microsoft’s “Shared Source” approach to open source. The Shared Source program lets users look at code but not modify it, he pointed out.

Panning patents, Tiemann described them as a challenge to enabling massive change.

“Every time a software patent blooms, it’s a promise to cease innovation in that space for 20 years,” Tiemann said.

An audience member agreed that patents can limit innovation. “I do see it as a big issue,” said Cornelius Sybrandy, software engineer at custom development shop Concurrent Technologies.[Read the rest]