That anti-patent pamphlet I mentioned
Niall Douglas
s_fsfeurope at nedprod.com
Fri Dec 13 16:02:05 UTC 2002
On 12 Dec 2002 at 0:42, Xavi Drudis Ferran wrote:
> Yes it is important. But you can't make that distiction with
> software. As long as all your novel and inventive stuff is
> software, the information and the machine are the same.
> That's why you can't patent software, because you can
> publicize information and monopolize it at the same time,
> and with software, machine = software = information.
The big problem with saying software is information is how easy you
can get shot down for it. Any half-witted lawyer would shred that
argument to pieces and all the protesting in the world will not help
you.
Hence the prevailing winds say software = the device. This is also
wrong and we all (I think) know it, but because these are the only
two areas known to the legal and political systems, we're getting
burned for it.
I don't know how much support there is in here for it, but I believe
software sits in a third category that needs special and distinct
legal treatment.
Oh Arnoud, I should have thought through the last email better - I
did *not* mean to say software is the same as design plans. They have
similarities yes, but design plans are not useful without human
involvement (supplying of materials for one thing). Software is
eternally true and useful without any extra contextualisation.
> The way to recover investment in software in being first to market,
> and being knowledgeable in your field. In software there are only two
> ways to compete: - having a monopoly - innovating In manufacturing you
> can compete by costs of raw materials, distribution channels,
> production capacity, etc.
I would add PR here too. If you look at Win95 vs. OS2/Warp, 95 won
mostly because of an excellent PR campaign.
> In software the marginal costs are the same for everybody, you won't
> be successful with your program if it doesn't something new or does it
> better.
I would disagree with this. Your software can do nothing new at all
and indeed do it worse than the competition, but it can still sweep
to success for all the technically wrong reasons.
> So don't tell me there's no incentive to innovate, because innovate is
> what programmers do for a living. Setting up patents to incentivate
> innovation in knowledge economy is like granting monopoly for
> tightening bolts in industrial economy.
I'd also disagree with this. Most software engineers I /believe/ work
in tying together other bits of software and producing a non-
innovative work. I have no hard figures on this, but the bespoke
software industry is mostly bread and butter programming doing
nothing new and original at all.
Cheers,
Niall
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