Free?

Chante udontspamme at never.will.u
Thu Oct 27 19:04:53 PDT 2011


Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
> On Wed, 26 Oct 2011 15:28:21 -0400, Kagamin <spam at here.lot> wrote:

>>> Add that to the fact that software
>>> patents are *rarely* beneficial to the community.
>>
>> Does the community want benefits at the expense of the inventor?
>
> The *point* of patents is to benefit the community.  The price society
> pays to the inventor is granting a monopoly.  I'd argue that a 17-year
> monopoly on software technology and algorithms is too high a price to
> pay for knowing a "secret" you can't use until it's very obsolete. 17 
> years ago was 1994, Windows 3.1 was all the rage.  Do you really
> think society is now going to benefit from using the patented
> technologies from then? When the LZW patent expired, it was a mere
> amusing footnote, as we had all moved on to better compression
> technologies long before then.

What you are describing is "group feeding frenzy". "The group" will 
devour an inventor's inventions in short order for their short-term 
needs. If an inventor was smart enough to invent something that good, 
wouldn't it be good to let him build upon that and do more good instead 
of just feeding the paranas for a day? This whole "concept" of "benefit 
to society by giving it away to the entitled" is severly flawed 
reasoning.




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