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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, June 12 2012 @ 02:59 PM EDT |
But maybe it wouldn't have taken decades if we gave them a
patent.
Maybe they would have done it 30 years ago, and the
patent would have expired
after 20 years, and we would have
had the results 10 years earlier than we do
now. :)
I know you are joking here, but honestly, those creators
would be insulted to hear something like that. It took them decades because it
was hard. Patents would either have no effect (because they would ignore the
whole stupid system) or just discourage them from ever doing it in the first
place.
You should really watch that documentary. Its about people who
started out as pirates, cracking and illegally distributing computer software.
And they started competing with each other to make the most impressive "intros"
to put on their illegally-distributed software (boasting of their achievements).
And they discovered that making and sharing those, was actually more
interesting than the cracking or the games being cracked. And so they switched
to just making and sharing art.
Nobody doing this was ever motivated by
money, or by patents, or even by recognition from the world at large (because
most of the world can not even comprehend how hard it is to do what they do, or
comprehend their motives for doing it). They do it because they are
driven to do it, just like any great artist is driven to create. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, June 12 2012 @ 03:13 PM EDT |
Even after decades, those crazy programmers are
still
discovering new things they can do with old machines like
the Commodore 64
and Nintendo Gameboy. The machines were
always capable of doing these things,
but it took *decades*
of effort by the programmers to discover how to
instruct
them to do it!
But maybe it wouldn't have taken decades
if we gave them a
patent. Maybe they would have done it 30 years ago, and
the
patent would have expired after 20 years, and we would have
had the results
10 years earlier than we do now. :)
That is pure speculation
without any supporting evidence. Look at how many companies that do patent
searches these days. Look at how much funds go into defending against patent
trolls. What are the actual evidence that software patents accelerate the
process?
All the evidence speaks for that if there had been software
patents 30 years ago then the innovative stuff happening then would not have
happened. Your hypothetical beneficial situation is pure fantasy since with
software patents the patent deadlock we see today would have suffocated the
software industry and the building steps need for advances seen today would not
have happened until the software patents expired. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: RMAC9.5 on Wednesday, June 13 2012 @ 04:50 AM EDT |
Anonymous said
But just because I had to do hard work,
and
discover novel algorithms or think up new ideas, in order to
come up with a
sequence of instructions that make the
computer do what I wanted -- that doesn't
mean my
instructions should be patentable. They are copyrightable.
And it also
doesn't mean my computer has a new "capability".
It means I have discovered a
set of instructions that makes
it exercise a capability it always
had.
mrisch said
I agree with you on all of this
- to this point: "that
doesn't mean my instructions should be patentable." I
won't
rehash why, that's been covered.
Thank you Mr Risch for
participating in this discussion. I have been really, really impressed with your
patience and the amount of time you have spent in replying to our comments.
Please try to listen and understand our comments and concerns because we
(collectively) are the "person having ordinary skill in the art"; the
true computer software experts who aren't being listened to; and, as PJ
mentioned in a comment to you, the "canaries in the coal
mine".
I have been an application software developer for over 35
years and completely agree with you that my "hard work, novel algorithms, and
new ideas" deserve to be protected. I once wrote a program which
read text description and data files; used the description files to create
simple data bases and load programs; loaded the data bases from the data files
and finally listed the data base contents so that users could verify that their
text data had been loaded correctly. Was I proud of this program? You betcha!
Did it deserve software copyright protection? You betcha! Did it deserve
software patent protection? Heck no! My program was written for a specific
computer language, operating system, and hardware combination. To prevent
other developers from using "my idea, my invention, my solution" for their
language, operating systems, and hardware combinations is wrong, wrong,
wrong.
As I mentioned in an earlier post that you replied to,
software patents (as currently written, filed, and litigated in today's world)
paint with a brush which is way too broad for a healthy, competitive, and
innovative software environment. The little guys, the true inventors and
innovators who created the Internet and the wonderful Information Age that we
now live in, will be frozen out by the mega-corporations and patent trolls who
control these software patents. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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