Free?

[Steven Schveighoffer]

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.
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.  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.  Free speech is at odds with  
software patents.
4. Unlike a physical entity, it is very likely a simple individual,  
working on his own time with his own ideas, can create software that  
inadvertently violates a "patent" with low cost.  To restrain free-thought  
like this goes against the spirit of the patent system.  The patent system  
when it was designed, protected the little guys who have good ideas from  
the giants who were the only ones capable of stealing them.  Software  
patents are the other way around, and serve as a barrier to entry more  
than a system to foster new ideas.  By the time you are able to "build on"  
an expired patent's ideas, the technology is long obsolete.
5. The patent office does *NOT UNDERSTAND* software, so they are more apt  
to grant trivial patents (e.g. one-click).

My take:  Either software patents should be *elminiated* entirely, or  
reduced to a reasonable software lifetime (e.g. 2 years).

-Steve