🚀 go-pugleaf

karsh@trifolium.esd.sgi.com (Bruce Karsh) writes:

< Nearly every software product that's for sale is protected by patents or
< copyrights covering look & feel, or both.

Not entirely correct.  Copyright protection has allways been true --
illegal copying was and still is just that: illegal.

On the other hand, "Look and Feel" is a recent, and not fully
established concept.  Further, it is not yet clear if there is any
protection for pure algorithms.

< Before this protection, there was no significant software industry.  If
< intellectual property protection for software is abolished, there'll be
< very little new investment in the software industry.

"Intellectual property" is a nebulous thing.  Also the reward system
for good ideas is much different in academia than and industry.  In
academia, one in encouraged to publish your new ideas, and cite the
ideas of others.  Your reward is fame and notably tenure (a secure
job position).  On the other hand, in industry the reward is the
profit you get from a successful product.

The problem with the "software patent" is that people are trying to
play both sides of the game.  They file for a patent, publish the
idea, get fame etc. for describing a new good idea, AND THEN GET TO
TELL EVERYONE "By the way, this is still MINE and you can't use it."

Of course, when a patent is granted, the idea becomes public
knowledge, and is thus secured for the future.  This is WHY the patent
laws exist.

The problem is that usually when one of these patent-pending good
ideas appears in a journal, there is no warning that this might be
propriatary.  Other people will start to use it as if it was free
(because they don't know any differently -- it was PUBLISHED after
all), and then they find out later, AFTER THEIR PRODUCT DEPENDS ON THE
GOOD IDEA, that they can no longer use it (or SOMETIMES, but not
ALLWAYS) that they can but have to pay some amount.

So now the original person gets BOTH rewards -- one for making the
idea available, and one for keeping it propriatary.  This, I feel, is
not fair to the rest of the community.

A (perhaps radical) solution to this would be a small change in the
patent laws: if you publish before the patent is GRANTED, you loose
any claims to the idea.  Journals could also help out by requiring the
author to sign away any propriatary claims to the ideas described.
Perhaps some organization similar to the FSF should start such a
journal.

< I resent that people in my profession want to rip-off other's work and they
< want the law to approve of their rip-off.  It's a real sad commentary on
< software developers circa 1990.  Hopefully we'll get past it and go on to
< creating new software.

A few things to keep in mind: if the protection you desire were
allready in place 5 years ago, your company probably would not exist,
because the command structure and interface of UNIX would be
propriatary to AT&T.

If using recursion as a programming technique were patented, the
renewal of that patent would expire about 4 years form now.

Quick Sort, Heap Sort, Shell Sort, etc. would all be patented.  YOU
COULN'T SORT DATA WITHOUT PAYING A ROYALTY.

Associative arrays (which appear in many languages and _are_
databases) would be patented.  Maybe you could use them, maybe not.

I could go on.  The point is if the kind of protection that Bruce
seems to want were actually in place, we wouldn't be working on
computers at all, because they MIGHT have progressed past the early
60s by now, but you certianly wouldn't be able to afford to buy one
yourself.

The software industry was working along JUST FINE in 1982.  If it
ain't broke, don't fix it.

		-- Paul Placeway <pplacewa@bbn.com>