[Fsfe-ie] Patents letter, V4

[Rory McCann]

On Tue, 25 Jan 2005 20:31:47 +0000, Glenn Strong <Glenn.Strong at cs.tcd.ie> wrote:
> On Tuesday, January 25, 2005 at 20:26 +0000, Rory McCann wrote:
> > It'd be better to compare programming to writing a novel, a more
> > familiar concept.
> 
> Yeah, I thought about that but I wondered how it would sound to a
> non-programmer. Perhaps a point could be made distinguishing
> commercial programming from hacking for fun and likening it to the
> distinction between commercial writing and, say, novel writing or
> poetry but I wasn't sure it would actually make the paragraph more
> coherent. Give it a go, though!
> 
> Also, I hoped that the program=mathematics issue would be helpful in
> identifying how software development relates to a field that has
> traditionally been recognised as patent free.
> 
> --
> Glenn Strong

I wonder how well Joe Soap understands mathematics and what
mathematicians do. I agree that mathematics is probably a better
analogy, but only if you know about maths. If one doesn't know much
about mathematics the analogy might not make a lot of sense. There is
more widespread knowledge of writing.

<Rory>