Blink a LED? Then live your life in fear of lawyers and software patents.

Time permitting I participate in the Open Source board layout software project PCB. A recent exchange in the patch tracker brought to light just how scared developers have become of lawyers. Why must we live in fear of these leaches on society?

At issue is one of the developers put a lot of effort in to a enhancement that would 'blink' the difference between two revision of the board layout, to make the changes stand out. To which I raised the potential issue of a user having Photosensitive Epilepsy. This is where certain light patterns can induce seizures in people prone to this problem (it is also being looked at as a 'non-lethal' weapon by the military; watch the movie Looker someday). The end result is that Bert, the developer, decided 'blinking' was unsafe because of the potential for lawyers to appear. How many times have you blinked a LED in that widget you are developing? Now you too can live your life in fear of lawyers. I'll let Bert explain his case, taken from the patch tracker:

Hi Bob,

Thanks for the warning.

The default delay value is 50, which means 50 centi-seconds, which equals to toggling every 0.5 seconds, which gives 2 Hz.
On my laptop it takes even longer than 0.5 seconds for the default value to toggle (twice a second).

The above UK site mentions:
[quote]
  Most people with photosensitive epilepsy are sensitive to 16-25 Hz. Some people may be sensitive to rates as low as 3 Hz and as high as 60 Hz.
[quote]

Nevertheless the user can still inflict some damage upon him/herself by changing the delay parameter, or tuning/modifying the software, their computer, or whatever.

My gut feeling (legal adviser) says it's better to withdraw any patch for any blinking whatsoever, due to the way the US legal system regarding injuries and lawsuits functions.

Bear in mind that the upstream pcb repository resides on US soil.
3 Hz is just to close to 2 Hz for me to feel comfortable.

Put in other words: risk = probability * effect --> I take zero chance and rather have no effect.

This leads us to the issue of software patents and patent trolls. Lindsay Blakely, on the staff at Inc.com, recently wrote the piece How Much It Costs to Fight a Patent Troll, describing what happens to us 'little guys' that don't have teams of leaches, sorry, lawyers, on staff.

See also The Private and Social Costs of Patent Trolls by James E. Bessen, Jennifer Ford, and Michael J. Meurer of Boston University School of Law.

I've been making my case against software patents for years with the example of R++, a mathematical process (that is not patentable), that would allow us to have far safer systems. What is R++ ?:

R++ is ''rules in C++''. R++ is an extension to C++ that bridges the gap between object-oriented programming and data-driven (rule-based) programming. Programs written in R++ have all the facilities of C++ plus a new programming construct: a rule. A rule is like an ''IF-THEN'' statement, but it sits apart from the procedural code and is triggered automatically upon changes to the data that it monitors. In effect, rules monitor object memory and react when their ''IF'' clause becomes true.

What are rules useful for?

• Applications can use rules to help maintain model integrity by enforcing invariants and detecting constraint violations in the model.
• Applications that monitor a physical system (such as a telephone switching system) can use rules to detect and react to critical states.
• Applications that are primarily reactive (such as an elevator controller) can use rules to express state transitions.
• Applications that apply engineering guidelines (such as in equipment configuration) or business policies (such as in loan analysis) can use rules to apply the guidelines/policies when each situation arises.
• As a software engineering aid, rules can be used as a kind of non-procedural exception mechanism for detecting and handling illegal states.

The problem is that through mega mergers, sellouts, and buyouts, no one can actually figure out who owns what. Lucent has a patent on the technology in R++ but AT&T owns the production version of the software. Commercial use of R++ is a bit more tricky. Neither Bell Labs Research nor AT&T Labs Research are in the business of distributing research generated software for commercial use. I was able to get a principal at Lucent on board with open-sourcing R++. However any contact at all with AT&T got a me a referral to the legal department voice mail. Despite repeated attempts at email and phone messages, I've never been contacted by anyone from AT&T. Is it any wonder they are so hated by most (cell-)phone users?

There is a Federal Register notice, Request for Comments and Notice of Roundtable Events for Partnership for Enhancement of Quality of Software-Related Patents, that the US Patent Office would like to form a partnership with the software community to figure out how to 'enhance' the quality of software patents. To that end, they are looking for comments and there will be two roundtble events sponsored by the USPTO, one in Silicon Valley, Tuesday, February 12th, and one in New York, Wednesday, February 27th. If you plan on attending you must register by Feb 4th. The USPTO plans to make the roundtable events available via Web cast. Web cast information will be available on the USPTO's Internet Web site before the events. Grok Law has more on the issue, and a copy of the relevant Federal Register pages may be found at IP Watchdog.

Leave a comment if you think you can make it to one of these events, and give us a first hand report, please.

Philway board house fire. One year later.

One year ago this week, Jan/19/2011, the board house Philway burned to the ground. Philway was the oldest continually operating board house in the US. It was also my preferred PCB vendor, sharp people and good quality for the rugged environments I deal with.

At the time Philway burned down, they were not sure if they were going to rebuild. Over the last year I'd kept in touch with Doug Clark at Philway. Seemed the biggest hold up was that their insurance company, which he never named, would not let them back on the grounds for almost four months! So its time for all of us to go check with our insurance agents what kind of treatment we'd get in a similar situation.

As time passed, Doug stopped answer emails, then stopped answering the phone, and in the end the phone was disconnected.

Last week my curiosity drove me to contact Evan S. at the Ashland Area Council for Economic Development, to see what happened. Seems the owner of Philway now lives in Akron and did not want to rebuild in Ashland, despite generous tax rebates etc. and did not want to commute to Ashland anymore. The owner also indicated that they could not find "good managers" in Ashland. I took that more to mean people with good technical management backgrounds from the context of our conversation. A new board house may arise like a Phoenix in Akron someday, but it won't be the same Philway without the same institutional knowledge that made it a great place to do business with.

The lesson here for all of us, is disasters do happen to good places and good people at any time. Do you have a workable recovery plan in place in case one hits you and yours? Will your insurance company help you out, or help you go under faster?

DigiKey's new "Scheme-it" on line schematic capture tool.

Anyone tried this new Scheme-it thing on DigiKey?:

"Scheme-it is an online schematic and diagramming tool that allows anyone to design and share electronic circuit diagrams. The tool includes a comprehensive electronic symbol library and an integrated Digi-Key component catalog that allows for a wide range of circuit designs. Additionally, a built-in bill of materials manager is provided to keep track of parts used in a design. Once a schematic drawing is complete, users can export it to an image file or share it via email with others. Scheme-it works natively in all major web browsers without requiring the use of any plugins. Only users registered at www.digikey.com are able to share and save designs."

What would make it awesome would be the ability to export a netlist that could be used for PCB layout, and symbols that have a friendly license, to use in other CAD packages.

Meta State Machine Polygons of the Boost Book

I have mentioned the book Introduction to The Boost C++ Libraries by Boris Schäling here in the past.  The book is now available in three languages Chinese from the work of Albert Lai and his team of translators, in English and the original in German.


While on the subject of the Boost C++ Libraries, I want to mention that the new release, version 1.44, has added two new libraries:

 
• Meta State Machine: High-performance expressive UML2 finite state machines, from Christophe Henry.
 
• Polygon: Booleans/clipping, resizing/offsetting and more for planar polygons with integral coordinates, from Lucanus Simonson.

The MSM/UML library looks interest for doing some embedded code, while the Polygon library might be the start of a new circuit board layout program.

Soldering Defect Database: How many ways can a solder joint fail? More than you might think.

The National Physical Laboratory (NPL), in the UK, has opened their Defect Database to the public. Of specific interest to us is the Soldering Defects Database.

When you go to the Soldering Defects Database, you are asked for an email address (not sure why?), once entered a set of pull-down menus is shown, allowing us to narrow the filed of defects that we want to search. If you want to see all of the defects simply hit "Submit Query", without selecting anything. This brings up a long page of pictures of the various types of defects.

NPL is also accepting submissions of solder defects not already covered.

An entry in the IPC Blog Introducing Defect of the Month from NPL and IPC: Toe Fillet Defects, introduces the new Defect of the Month video series; Gimpel Software's Bug of the Month comes to mind.

Steve Ciarcia, of Circuit Cellar Magazine, has been known to say that his favorite programming language was solder. Consider these defects to be the 'compiler errors' of the hardware realm.