🚀 go-pugleaf

I could understand most of David Chase's article, even if I didn't agree
with it.  But this statement:

> Current patent law/practice may be badly flawed, but the
> solution to this is better patent law/practice, not no patents.

in its context, of talking about algorithms, i.e., software patents, I
think is fundamentally wrong.  As I saw in someone's .signature, ``You
can have software patents or you can have computer science, but you
can't have both, not for long'' (no doubt somewhat misquoted).  No doubt
you've already read the LPF's position papers and so on and so forth, so
it is fruitless to reiterate those arguments.

But if software patents are ok (your position, I guess; some people's,
anyway), and if they are abolished, then what will be lost?  Some patent
lawyers will be out of work.  IBM and a few other companies will not
make quite as much money.  I don't think you can seriously argue that
there will ``no more innovation'' in computer science, since there was
certainly no lack of innovation before the late 80's, when software
patents started coming thick and fast.

On the other hand, if software patents are fundamentally flawed (my
position), and if they remain, what will be lost?  New software
companies won't be able to start, since they won't have a backlog of
patents to cross-license, nor will they have the big bucks for the
licenses.  Not-for-profit software, e.g., GNU, X, TeX, will be illegal.
Computer science research at universities won't be possible, since all
nontrivial programs infringe many patents.

I know which error I'd rather make.

karl@cs.umb.edu