🚀 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.

Almost entirely false.  There are a few products covered by look&feel copy-
right; most are not.  Existing copyrights on software cover the particular
program texts--not ideas, but expressions thereof, as was intended for
copyright.  Software patents are an invention of the late '80's.

> Before this protection, there was no significant software industry...

Why don't you let those of us who remember history die off before you
rewrite it, OK?  The US software industry was in better shape 15 years ago
than it is today.  Significant inventions have come about all along.  Some-
how we managed.

>...If
> intellectual property protection for software is abolished, there'll be
> very little new investment in the software industry.

Facts support the reverse conclusion:  The software industry is stagnating
as once-innovative now-ossified firms turn to lawyers to make money because
they can't manage decent engineering any more.

> 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...

I resent the fact that you're accusing people of trying to rip off when all
they want to do is sit down and write code without having a lawyer look
over every damned line.  Patent law denies the existence of independent
invention.  It denies the existence of prior discovery.

I don't want to rip anybody off.  I want to write my own code without
having somebody else take a pound of my flesh for the privilege.
-- 
Dick Dunn     rcd@ico.isc.com -or- ico!rcd       Boulder, CO   (303)449-2870
   ...Are you making this up as you go along?