Free?

Steven Schveighoffer schveiguy at yahoo.com
Wed Oct 26 05:39:37 PDT 2011


On Tue, 25 Oct 2011 00:04:18 -0400, Chante <udontspamme at never.will.u>  
wrote:

>
> "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.

Books require design, sometimes elaborate design, and engineering of  
sorts.  What an author puts into writing a book is not unlike what an  
entity puts into writing software.

>> 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.

Software is not unlike math.  It achieves something based on an abstract  
concept of the world.  It has practical uses.  But math is not patentable.

>
>> 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.

Music and art are both different from software and the same.  They are  
different because there are no rules for creating valid music or art.  I  
could bang on the wall randomly with a pipe, and try to sell that as music  
(and ironically, I might succeed).  But they are the same because writing  
music and creating art that *is good* is a difficult thing that requires  
careful thought, planning, and execution.

-Steve


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