🚀 go-pugleaf

On Fri, 09 Oct 1998 15:48:33 +0100, Simon Kinahan <simonk@cadence.com>
wrote:

>Jason Clifford wrote:
>> In article <6v3328$jfu$1@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca>, Bill Unruh
>> <unruh@physics.ubc.ca> wrote [ a description of scheme involving reduced 
>> length of copyright ]
>>
>> You are simply trying to claim rights to other people's work.
>
>And fair enough I say. Copyright is not an inalienable right. There is no
>universal agreement that copying other people's work is bad. All of
>science, and a considerable amount of engineering, including that of
>software, is based on copying and modification of other people's ideas. The
>distinction between that and the copying of actaul source text seems to me
>to only be one of enforcability.
>
>I agree completely that the inventors of software deserve to benefit
>materially from their work, but I would contend that no perfect solution to
>the problem of intellectual property and software has yet been found. Many
>patents have been granted for software 'inventions' that clearly do not
>meet the criteria of novelty, due to work already in the public domain, or
>which is being simultaneously invented elsewhere, or which is blatantly
>straightforward.
>
>Copyright has a more subtle problem. By placing the binaries and source for
>a piece of software under a traditional copyright you not only grant the
>creator a monopoly on the distribution of the software, but also, because
>binaries are basically incomprehensible to humans, a monopoly over its
>maintainance, repair and modification. This is equivalent (*in* *effect*)
>to a car manufacturer forcing you to go to their garages to have your car
>repaired, something generally agreed to be legally dubious. I'd say that
>this is a more extensive monopoly than copyright law is intended to grant.
>
>Open Source software is an attempt to fix that problem. It is an attempt
>that has worked out pretty well so far, so talking about modifying
>copyright law to make it easier or more profitable does not seem absurd to
>me. 
>
>Simon

Simon I think you make some good points.  A lot of this discussion
seems to ignore that making the source code available and allowing
others to exploit it commercially are two different things.

I also agree that the laws haven't yet struck the right balance in
determining what protection to give to software.