software, lawsuit, and patentable

Software patents have always been a controversy and much worse they are not understood by most of the people. Even the lawyers are paid to decode them. The most obvious reason is the way in which they are developed, maintained and shipped unlike the other products like refrigerators, motors etc..

Any standard or protection law need not go to the extent of encouraging innovation. But atleast it should not curtail it. The nature of software being such a fluid idea, lacks clarity even to the person who developed it, the idea is nothing but asking for trouble. And as Stallman says, it;s just a pure math and that math could be formulated in many ways resulting in similar ideas. So, taking the ownership for the way of math doesn’t make much sense.

And the idea of cross licensing is another matter of concern. It behaves simply as a trade tool and nothing else. Obviously makes the world of software a pure business that doesn’t give room for innovation or new ideas. More seriously, It affects the small companies entering the market. If i have to publish a software idea, there is most likely a similar math already patented. If i am a big corporation then i am likely to be noticed by the cunning patent holder but even in that case i can fight it out with my lawyers. It becomes a story of lawyers and lawsuit.

Registered patents under US Patent could be read online. Just a Google search will take you there. It’s fun to read them and definitely the inverse when we understand that we are troubled by the same.

Head First Series HTML, CSS and XHTML

I have always felt difficult to understand HTML elements and most importantly the attributes. HTML basics have never been my core strength even though i have tweeked html’s many a times without knowing them in detail.

Last Saturday i decided to get deep in to html and know the basic of structuring the document. I remember Vijay asking me to give Head First Design Patterns a try. So went to landmark city center to look for some good html books. I thought a little odd about my idea to buy a html/css book in the world of tiddley wikis. But still i thought i must try one book rather than just visiting websites and w3schools site.

I bought Head First Series of HTML, CSS and XHTML. Just in one night i am almost done with half of the book. I never felt like reading a technical book. It is an interesting way of writing and with lot of pictorial explanations. Even though it looked like a lighter read, i must tell, there is one section called “No Dumb Questions Please” where the author lists all possible FAQ’s and makes us think. It’s not just reading but also understanding in detail. And there is a cross word section every topic. It’s a pretty good model to quiz.

I would suggest all readers to try this book. And you don’t need to be fundu in web. Because each and every element is well explained with neat pictures. And i remember my father quoting program learning methodology in which the reader is asked about a unknown scenario and is made to think about it. Later in some part of the essay the reader is given the answer. So that he gets the point right on his head.

I would suggest Ranga to give this book a try. One can even read this book like a novel and what is needed is a pencil to answer crosswords.

If you want to read a chapter as trial, visit http://www.headfirstlabs.com/ and look for some free chapter(s)

To Make, Ant and MSBuild

I am not sure if we can assume Ant as the replacement for Makefiles. But i feel they are good in their own ways. Makefiles are extensively used in opensource projects where in one can utilize the power of shell commands and rich set of options.

But the downside of Makefile is the availability of developers to write the build files and maintain. Even in my own experience i have seen many stumbling to resolve build issues. Esp. people who are not much into Unix. But still there are millions of code being compiled using Makefiles and it is definitely there to live long.

On Contrary there is a need for scripts which are easier to maintain/understand/cross-platform. And as always it is, xml is the answer. And build tools like Ant and MSBuild have acquired some reasonably good space share.

There are even cases where Ant to execute a MSBuild (after all just a native OS call considering the .NET framework installed) and MSBuild executing an Ant script.

All said, both the styles are there to remain long until we see a total drift in the way the projects and dependencies are handled. One best benchmark i would say for Makefile is the GNOME project. I guess it would have crossed 110 modules by the time now.

A must read article on Automake in FSM suggested by Ranga.