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Industrial One
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 Posted: Thu Jul 31, 2008 6:48 pm Post subject: Re: Good News! Software Patents are in Jeopardy |
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On Jul 31, 12:24 pm, Jim Leonard <MobyGa...@gmail.com> wrote:
[quote]On Jul 31, 1:07 pm, Unruh <unruh-s...@physics.ubc.ca> wrote:
Completely untrue. It is extremely difficult to "disassemble a program" to
see how it works-- simply too long and at times to complicated. Have you
ever tried disassembling a forth program for example. And software is often
lost so it cannot be disassembled.-- almost all the programs distributed on
floppies are not lost-- they are unreadable both because the floppy drives
have disappeared and because the magnetic material has degraded.
You clearly haven>t cracked games, then :-) It is relatively easy to
disassemble a program and see how certain parts of it work (you don>t
bother with all of the program, since nobody cares about how the text
handling or datafile loading works, that>s not part of the
invention). It is also easy to modify it. And as for "software is
often lost", that>s the exception and not the rule. Floppy drives
have hardly "disappeared".
[/quote]
Yeah, GAMES. Try cracking uTorrent. It>s possible despite the closed-
source but all that debugging and re-compiling takes hours per day for
weeks. Way more effort than it>s actually worth.
And people still use floppies? Wow. |
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Paulo Marques
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| Posted: Thu Jul 31, 2008 7:01 pm Post subject: Re: Good News! Software Patents are in Jeopardy |
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jules Gilbert wrote:
[quote][...]
I am amazed that each of you post and not one of you get>s it; That
researchers do 'work', just as a grocer or a mailman and that each are
due compensation for value performed. (One of you did manage to get
near this concept.)
[/quote]
The problem with software is that progress is usually made by very small
increments over existing technology and the patent system works really
bad in this progress model.
A patent serves 2 purposes:
1 - protect the invention from getting lost (or simply forgotten)
2 - protect the invention from being copied by competitors
Point 1 is guaranteed, because you can always disassemble a program to
see how it works. So, in software no invention is ever "lost".
Point 2 is already protected by copyright law. Anyone copying "the idea"
will already be too late in the game when the software is released.
Software patents have certainly been doing more harm than good and there
are several economic studies to show that.
--
Paulo Marques - www.grupopie.com
"I used to be indecisive, but now I>m not so sure." |
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Unruh
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| Posted: Thu Jul 31, 2008 11:07 pm Post subject: Re: Good News! Software Patents are in Jeopardy |
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Paulo Marques <pmarques@grupopie.com> writes:
[quote]jules Gilbert wrote:
[...]
I am amazed that each of you post and not one of you get>s it; That
researchers do 'work', just as a grocer or a mailman and that each are
due compensation for value performed. (One of you did manage to get
near this concept.)
The problem with software is that progress is usually made by very small
increments over existing technology and the patent system works really
bad in this progress model.
A patent serves 2 purposes:
1 - protect the invention from getting lost (or simply forgotten)
2 - protect the invention from being copied by competitors
Point 1 is guaranteed, because you can always disassemble a program to
see how it works. So, in software no invention is ever "lost".
[/quote]
Completely untrue. It is extremely difficult to "disassemble a program" to
see how it works-- simply too long and at times to complicated. Have you
ever tried disassembling a forth program for example. And software is often
lost so it cannot be disassembled.-- almost all the programs distributed on
floppies are not lost-- they are unreadable both because the floppy drives
have disappeared and because the magnetic material has degraded.
[quote]Point 2 is already protected by copyright law. Anyone copying "the idea"
will already be too late in the game when the software is released.
[/quote]
Copyright law protects only the actual expression, not the idea. And
copying the "idea" of the IBM bios was what made the whole clone industry
work. Far from being "too late" it drove the market.
But it is also a blunderbus. Who in the world needs 75 year protection in
the software industry?
[quote]Software patents have certainly been doing more harm than good and there
are several economic studies to show that.
[/quote]
That may well be true. But your reasons are weak. |
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Paulo Marques
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| Posted: Thu Jul 31, 2008 11:40 pm Post subject: Re: Good News! Software Patents are in Jeopardy |
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Unruh wrote:
[quote]Paulo Marques <pmarques@grupopie.com> writes:
[...]
Completely untrue. It is extremely difficult to "disassemble a program" to
see how it works-- simply too long and at times to complicated. Have you
ever tried disassembling a forth program for example. And software is often
lost so it cannot be disassembled.-- almost all the programs distributed on
floppies are not lost-- they are unreadable both because the floppy drives
have disappeared and because the magnetic material has degraded.
[/quote]
Ok, then give me an example of a worthwhile software whose brilliant
implementation has been lost and no one was ever able to recreate it again?
[quote]Point 2 is already protected by copyright law. Anyone copying "the idea"
will already be too late in the game when the software is released.
Copyright law protects only the actual expression, not the idea. And
copying the "idea" of the IBM bios was what made the whole clone industry
work. Far from being "too late" it drove the market.
[/quote]
And this is bad because?
My point is that IBM got a few years milking its BIOS invention before
clones came in, and that is all it should be entitled to do...
(and this is a very weak example, because IBM actually created the
_hardware_ that ran that BIOS, so we>re not talking only software here
anymore)
[quote]But it is also a blunderbus. Who in the world needs 75 year protection in
the software industry?
[/quote]
You won>t get any argument from me here. Copyright in software could be
just 15 or 20 years, and I don>t think it would made a big difference.
Heck, even 10 years would probably be ok.
[quote][...]
[/quote]
--
Paulo Marques - www.grupopie.com
"This version has many new and good features. Sadly, the good ones are
not new and the new ones are not good." |
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