🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <58830@bbn.BBN.COM>, cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell) writes:
> pplacewa@bbn.com (Paul Placeway) writes:
> }Quick Sort, Heap Sort, Shell Sort, etc. would all be patented.  YOU
> }COULN'T SORT DATA WITHOUT PAYING A ROYALTY.
> 
> ...
> The dumb sorts would surely all be unrestricted.  Oh... you don't want
> to USE the dumb sorts: you want to use one of the fancy, more efficient
> ones... no problem: just pick the one that best fits your needs and
> buy/license it; is that _such_ a blasphemy?  Why is that any different
> than your building something using any other kind of technology.  Say,
> instead of selling something that sorts a list you want to sell
> something that padlocks a box shut.  well, if you want to take
> advantage of Medeco's or Sargent's or whoever's innovations, you're
> free to buy one of theirs or license the technology.  If you don't want
> to do that, you can find an unrestricted type of locking mechanism, or
> you can invent your own.  The idea that you could take one of their
> locks apart [or read their advertising copy where they describe how it
> works] and then go and make, and sell, a knock off is outrageous.

I can go to the hadware store and buy a useful, serviceable Master padlock
for under $10 that I can take home and hang on my gate with no
modifications to the lock or the gate to make them work. I have no need to
copy or make anything. I'll concede your point when you tell me where I can
get a quicksort for $10 that I can drop into my program without
modification to the quicksort or the program and it will do exactly what I
want. Your answer should be general to this entire class of problem, not
just quicksort.

I thought not.

The problem is that an algorithm is a lot less like the plans for a
padlock or a carbuerator, and more like a formula or equation. People that
read things in software journals aproach them the same way a mathemetician
or a physicist aproach the journals in their field, not like an engineer.

Also, not that there are a lot more different kinds of locks than there are
of sorts (realize that of the sort algorithms you could name MANY are
variations on the others). An algorithm is more like a mathematical
principle than like a kitchen appliance. They are more discovered than
invented. If one person doesn't discover an algorithm, another will,
probably fairly soon, because the discoverer of an algorithm generally adds
one or two new twists to existing methods.

Example (something I'm having to learn about right now): Bezier curves were
discovered independently within a few years by applied mathematicians
working for Renault and Citroen. Bezier got all the credit because while
Citroen kept de Castlejau's work secret (he was first, BTW), Renault
allowed Bezier to publish. 

This work is the basis for most surface modeling used today. Certainly big
companies could have licensed it, but not all work on the theory and
application was done by big companies. Note that you can't simply classify
this as mathematics, the original de Casteljau evaluation of a Bezier is an
algorithmic description, NOT simply a formula.

Had these techniques not been widely available, I think 3D CAD would be
much less mature than it is today. If it were simply kept secret (what you
say would happen without patent protection), it simply would have been
discovered by someone else (after all, it DID happen that way to start
with). But by restricting the use of these formulas/techniques, you would
have stunted the development of the entire field of Computer Aided Graphics
Design, which relies heavily on Bezier curves and surfaces.
-- 
Terry Poot <tp@mccall.com>                The McCall Pattern Company
(uucp: ...!rutgers!ksuvax1!mccall!tp)     615 McCall Road
(800)255-2762, in KS (913)776-4041        Manhattan, KS 66502, USA