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| Authored by: PJ on Tuesday, June 12 2012 @ 11:19 AM EDT |
But math... think about it. Is it an invention?
Seriously think about a monopoly on *math*.
You know what happens? People can't do even
basic calculations at some point. And the sad
thing is, we've already reached that point, and
yet people don't see it. The software industry
is being destroyed. There is no other way to
say it. And two or three companies will remain
and they will crush Linux to death with patents.
They intend to.
And yet you stand still and refuse to see how
big this problem is.
If you want a world where there can never be another
Internet or another GNU/Linux operating system,
keep patenting software, and you will surely
achieve it. We are the canaries in the mine
telling you that we are at a critical point,
and if you continue, it will be fatal to the
US economy. I think it's just that serious.
So, please put on your high beams, and look at
a bigger picture, and include FOSS in that
picture, or it will die, and you will be one
of the ones responsible. I like you a lot,
Michael, but this is the truth, and somebody
has to tell people before it's too late.
You have a deeper responsibility than most
to speak out, in that the US Supreme Court
listens to you, to a point. What an honor that
is, but it is also a deep responsibility not
to ignore these voices and make sure that their
message is not belittled, ignored, or excluded
from the conversation. Currently only corporate
interests get to speak. And do they ever, with
their briefs and with money to Congresscritters
whose integrity is not reliably certain.
And they are killing software development, and
FOSS in particular, in that FOSS development is
inimical to patents and can't exist in a patent
encrusted world. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, June 12 2012 @ 11:34 AM EDT |
The facts are that patents do not provide an incentive for writing software;
they never have. Bill Gates agreed that they didn't. Donald Knuth says they
don't.
But they do HURT the development of software by preventing people from using
well-known techniques.
So the facts are that I care about making sure people develop new mathematics to
use on general purpose computers -- and you DON'T because you're ignoring what
is actually preventing people from developing it.
And a major thing which is preventing people from developing it is patents on
mathematics -- software patents.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, June 12 2012 @ 12:02 PM EDT |
You really don't get it, do you, Mr. Risch? You want math to be patentable just
because... you want it to be patentable? We know that patenting math hurts
mathematical research. It's never *been* patentable, throughout history. It's
entirely abstract. Patenting it precludes entire fields of research. Yet you
want it to be patentable because of your ideological prejudice in favor of
patents?
Your pro-patent-ideology-based arguments demand that music be patentable too
(yes, music can be useful -- consider military drum codes, music used for
hypnosis, music used to 'soothe the savage beast', music used for dancing).
Your arguments lead to making textbooks patentable too (also useful), and
accounting systems (also useful), and legal arguments (also useful), and even
laws themselves.
(Hell, I should try that one: if I patent various schemes for writing
anti-abortion laws despite Roe v. Wade, then I can prevent the states from
passing that type of anti-abortion laws by suing them for patent infrignment!)
We've already seen the mess created by software patents turn into the mess of
'business method patents'. Don't you see where this is going?
None of these are patentable and for very good reasons -- they're extremely
abstract with low captial cost of development, so patenting hurts research
massively.
There's lots of innovation involved in new accounting systems, but NO
PATENTABILITY.
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, June 15 2012 @ 05:45 PM EDT |
You don't think it is important
that humans spend time and money to
develop new uses of
general purpose computers. I do
Wow, that is a
huge assumption on your part, that the GP did not say or
imply.
There are people who say nothing should be
copyrighted
because 1,000,000 monkeys typing at random will eventually
write
everything that has been written.
I challenge you to produce such
a person. I have never heard anyone make an argument like this and if you can
find such a person, I am sure they are way off the beaten path.
Do
we follow the open source model, where people get together and come up with
solutions, and maybe they get paid and maybe they don't?
This is
an inaccurate characterization of the open source model. Generally, people (or
companies) are scratching their own itch. They are willing to share code, so
that they can get the benefits of others sharing code also. Share and Share
alike. No one is forced to join in, they can keep their code proprietary, by
using a non open source license.
Do we rely on companies to pay
salaries?
I lot of open source is being produced by companies
paying salaries. So, I am not sure what you point is. The decision to go open
source has to do with if a company believes they will benefit from the open
source community or not. It is not about whether they pay
salaries.
Do we reward new and nonobvious solutions with
patents?
Here is where the real difficulty lies. What constitutes
non-obvious? B-trees are not, what I would have called obvious. To see that
they work, you have to use math. You have to, in fact, use math to drive an
generalized tree structure from a binary tree. Thank goodness that Boeing could
not apply for a patent in 1971 for the B-tree. All modern file systems would
have to use some less efficient structure or pay royalties (though I suppose the
patent would have run out by now).
I have not seen a definition of
non-obvious that would be workable (I am sure you realize this being a lawyer),
because they are all too vague. Well, maybe we have a different definition of
workable. I think workable would mean that law suits would be reduced, not
increased.
Copyright was in the past enough protection for software
companies to make money and I believe copyright is still enough protection for
software. The patent system clearly does not work for software and not matter
how badly you or others want the patent system to work for software, it will
never work well.
So, instead of arguing about whether applied math should be
patentable, you should be helping remove software as patentable subject matter.
So, that companies can spend their money innovating instead of
litigating.
As a side note, I do not believe and purely process patents
should be allowed. I mean business process patents. Trade secrete laws should
cover such things.
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