Free?

[Chante]

"Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy at yahoo.com> wrote in message 
news:op.v3u2chz6eav7ka at localhost.localdomain...
> On Mon, 24 Oct 2011 10:39:54 -0400, Kagamin <spam at here.lot> wrote:
>
>> Chante Wrote:
>>
>>> While I haven't thought it through (and maybe don't have the 
>>> knowledge  to
>>> do so), elimination of software patents was something I had in mind 
>>> as a
>>> potential cure for the current state of affairs (not a cure for viral
>>> source code though). Of course, noting that first-to-file is now the
>>> thing, it appears (to me) that Big Software Corp and Big Government 
>>> are
>>> on one side, humanity on the other.
>>
>> Patents are seen to exist for humanity. Elimination of patents is 
>> equivalent to elimination of intellectual property. You're not going 
>> to  succeed on that. But GPL3 at least protects you from patent claims 
>> from  the author, so you'd better use it. You're afraid of others, but 
>> GPL can  also protect *your* code.
>
> Patents are to foster innovation.  Software innovation needs no patent 
> system to foster it.  Nobody writes a piece of software because they 
> were  able to get a patent for it.
>
> I feel software patents are a completely different entity than material 
> patents.  For several reasons:
>
> 1. Software is already well-covered by copyright.

Software, though, is not like a book: it's not just text. There is 
inherent design, architecture, engineering represented by source code.

> 2. With few exceptions, the lifetime of utility of a piece of software 
> is  well below the lifetime of a patent (currently 17 years).
> 3. It is a very slippery slope to go down.  Software is a purely 
> *abstract* thing, it's not a machine.

Maybe literally "abstract", but those flow charts, layers, 
boxes-and-arrows actually become realized (rendered, if you will) by the 
source code. The text really isn't important. The "abstraction" is.

> It can be produced en mass with  near-zero cost.  It can be expressed 
> via source code, which is *not* a  piece of software.  There is a very 
> good reason things like music, art,  and written works are not 
> patentable.

Music and art don't "do" anything except titilate the senses. Software, 
OTOH, does do things of practical utility.