🚀 go-pugleaf

>I think we must allow inventors strong protection for their work. A
>copyright is a very weak protection in many areas. For example if I find
>a new way to sort data it might make my database program run better,
>however a copyright will not prevent my competitor from using the
>algorithum in their database program.

So what?  If you like, it's well within your rights not to publish the
algorithm or code.  You don't have to tell anybody about it.  If it
gives you a competitive advantage, keep it to yourself.

But just because the idea popped into your brain five minutes before
somebody else thought of it shouldn't give you the right to prevent
that person from doing the same.

If you develop a nifty new light switch, all somebody
needs to do to copy it is crack it open and take some measurements.
Patents make some kind of sense in this case, since the cost of copying
is so much smaller than the cost of developing.

Algorithms can be hidden much more easily than the design for a new
light switch.  Disassembly of an algorithm from machine code is a difficult
problem, and programs can be encrypted.  Any algorithm sufficiently simple
that it can be understood from reading a disassembled binary is too simple
to patent (IMO).  So patents make much less sense for software algorithms,
since algorithms can be effectively hidden from copiers.