🚀 go-pugleaf

    >Apple spent way over 50 million dollars to develop that software, and
    >they didn't just steal it from Xerox PARC (they *licensed* it from
    >Xerox).

That's not what Xerox says--they sued Apple!  (Fortunately for the
rest of us, Xerox lost.  If Xerox had won, not just Apple but all of
us would have to get Xerox's permission to make window systems.)
Maybe Apple licensed something, but it must have been something else.

      And if it isn't reasonable for them
    >to own the particular way that their user interface looks (which has
    >become the trademark of their systems), then how are they supposed to
    >recover the investment they made in developing it?

Speaking personally, I don't think the question matters.  But since
not many people agree with me on that, it might be more relevant to
mention what the LPF says, since that is addressed to people who do
think that selling software and recovering investments is ok.

The LPF would ask you what was the insufficiency in the way Apple
*did* recover their investment.  They made loads of money.  So it
seems that you are citing a hypothetical problem that isn't part of
reality.

Besides, Apple *made the decision* to develop the Mac knowing full
well that, at the time, everyone agreed that interfaces could not be
copyrighted.  So you can't say people won't make that kind of
investment without more monopolies.

      I think that patenting algorithms is *worse* than
    >copyrighting a UI, because it is easy to tell when you are making a UI
    >which is just like someone else's, and it it not nearly so easy to
    >know if you are unknowingly infringing on someone's algorithm patent.

I agree that patents are the worse problem.

    >Because of this, why doesn't the FSF/LPF boycott all of the companies
    >which are patenting algorithms?  Wouldn't that be symmetric?

It would be symmetric, but it wouldn't make sense as a plan of action.
Every major company in the computer field (both computer makers and
software companies) has patents, and many smaller ones too.
Boycotting everyone is not practical.

But if a computer company actually sues someone for patent
infringement by software, it might make sense to boycott them.  (It
would have to be a case-by-case decision.)  Not many companies will
actually do this, so we would not boycott very many companies in this
way.

      I'd just rather that we tried to
    >write good alternative software, rather than worrying about how we
    >might be at legal crosspurposes several years from now, when we
    >actually have a GNU OS!

Unfortunately, if stop worrying about the legal monopolies and just
write good software, we will later learn that most of it is illegal
for one reason or another.  So it will have been a waste of time.