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The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

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True of music as well | 343 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Holding a Program in One's Head (2007)
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, December 08 2012 @ 05:37 PM EST
I've always thought of the code I write and maintain as a 'picture' in my head.
It's a familiar landscape I can navigate like driving around town or walking in
the countryside where I live. If someone comes to me with an issue, I can almost
always think for a few seconds and say 'yes ... that problem must lie in
<whatever piece of code>', and often I can say 'ah! ... I can understand
why that happens'. I don't ever really think in any detail about where the issue
may lie, it just somehow seems obvious.

It's a pity I can't tie my own shoelaces :-)

hairbear (not logged in)

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Ding ding ding, We have a winner! N/T
Authored by: OpenSourceFTW on Saturday, December 08 2012 @ 10:35 PM EST
N/T

---
I voted for Groklaw (Legal Technology Category) in the 2012 ABA Journal Blawg
100. Did you? http://www.abajournal.com/blawg100. Voting ends Dec 21.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

True of music as well
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, December 09 2012 @ 02:11 AM EST
Music is an aural space the composer immerses in using measured units of
frequency (notes), modified by various frequency generators (instruments,
voices, synthsis) to fill that space in a particular arrangement.

He can copyright the arrangement, but thankfully, can't patent it yet.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Holding a Program in One's Head (2007)
Authored by: yscydion on Sunday, December 09 2012 @ 09:07 AM EST

"A good programmer working intensively on his own code..." is a clear statement of the limitations of the observation. If this is intended to be an argument that patents should not apply to software then it is very weak and perhaps even unhelpful.

The 'on his own code' implies that this is someone working as an individual rather than as part of a team - whether that is some commercial project or any non-trivial open source project.

'Intensively' implies the luxury of being able to work exclusively on that code without the distraction of having to do other work - to earn a living perhaps - and that this is new code and not something the individual wrote months or even years ago and has not worked on in the interim.

Most of the value of free and open source software comes from being able to build on the work of others - specifically not 'his own code'. Exchanging ideas with other developers and building something collaboratively that no individual could do alone is also a major advantage of the free and open exchange of ideas as well as code.

Most of the worst patents are attempting to protect small, sometimes trivial, additions to other people's work. Arguing that new individual work should not be patentable will, of course, be twisted into an argument that that is all that should not be patentable. That is the very opposite of what we need.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Holding a Program in One's Head -- not too convincing
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, December 09 2012 @ 03:05 PM EST
PJ wrote, "Thanks to Hacker News for finding this gem. After
reading it, do you still think software should be
patentable?"

The article by Paul Graham makes sense also in the context
of carpentry, metalwork, any skilled work, really. Who
likes to be interrupted? It's always good to form
intuitions, use your imagination before doing anything
physical -- not a phenomenon you find only in the world of
software development. Large groups will normally have
management hurdles, independent of the area.

On the other hand, the Graham article does not talk about
which kind of software is being developed. Lots of software
is written based on outside requirements. Many times,
figuring out the requirements themselves is half the
problem.

The article does not mention patents.

So I don't think this makes for a good argument against
software patents.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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