NoSoftwarePatents.com launches [LWN.net]

Expensive software development ??

Posted Oct 20, 2004 16:19 UTC (Wed) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link]

Easy: The premise is wrong.

It is obvious that one can write an incredible amount of software without actually selling it. Just look at the heap of software on any Linux distribution CD.

As for research: Just look at how many programs started out as University research projects, THEN got patented. Somebody has their cause-and-effect relations twisted up.

Expensive software development ??

Posted Oct 20, 2004 20:37 UTC (Wed) by hppnq (subscriber, #14462) [Link]

It's not that easy.

Companies that develop a non-trivial application, that cannot be slapped together from prior art, obviously have to invest money in development. They see patents as a way to ensure their investment will pay itself back.

The same, alas, goes for some of the research conducted at universities and especially research labs (think biotechnology for instance).

Expensive software development ??

Posted Oct 20, 2004 23:34 UTC (Wed) by DonDiego (subscriber, #24141) [Link]

Ideas are cheap and plentiful in computer science. It is developing products out of them that is the hard part. That is the problem with software patents. They protect the ideas and put a tax on development.

The league for programming freedom has given an excellent analysis about software patents (and why they are bad) in general and this very point in particular:

http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/Patents/industry-at-risk.html

Expensive software development ??

Posted Oct 21, 2004 15:25 UTC (Thu) by ccchips (subscriber, #3222) [Link]

I know what the LPF *says.* What I want to know is; how do we get this across to Government bodies, in such a way as to prevent the corrupt members of those bodies from getting their way, and insure that the honest ones do instead?

There must be some compelling way to get these points across, because, as people have said here, they are based on bogus philosophy. A lot of *other* patents are, too, but I won't go into that right now.

NoSoftwarePatents.com launches

Posted Oct 20, 2004 16:45 UTC (Wed) by error27 (subscriber, #8346) [Link]

It doesn't take a lot of money to think up good ideas. It takes a lot of money to patent stuff and to fight legal battles to protect it. Small companies cannot afford to get patents.

At work we had a hardware device that we could have patented, but my boss said we didn't have the cash. This was for a legitimate hardware idea.

Patents and especially software patents favour large companies over small companies.

NoSoftwarePatents.com launches

Posted Oct 20, 2004 16:47 UTC (Wed) by edmundo (guest, #616) [Link]

Software patents make it even more incredibly expensive, and
risky, to develop software. How would that help, exactly?

Patents unnecessary for software R&D

Posted Oct 20, 2004 17:06 UTC (Wed) by sdalley (subscriber, #18550) [Link]

To put it simplistically, *software research* is the process of coming up with ideas. We can do three things with ideas:
- protect them by keeping them trade secrets,
- publish them for the benefit of all, with the probable side effect of having the ideas improved by other interested parties at no expense to ourselves, or
- patent them. Patenting, in practice, becomes an arms race in which only the deep-pocketed can participate, and the rest of us have the privilege of stumping up after we've had a patent gun pointed at us, or had a leg blown off by a patent mine.

*Software development* is working out the expression of those ideas. Expression is exactly what copyright is intended to protect. This is how software companies throve and prospered in the years before software patents ever became a problem.

Neither for research nor for development do we need software patents.

Effectively zero money is needed for software research and development

Posted Oct 20, 2004 18:13 UTC (Wed) by Max.Hyre (subscriber, #1054) [Link]

Sure, you can sink big bucks into SW R&D, as Xerox PARC does, but too many of the new ideas and new implementations come from individuals or small companies.

VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet, was implemented by Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston, after Bricklin came up with the basic design and state diagrams. Bricklin was an MBA student at the time, with zero support.

Michael Shrayer invented Electric Pencil on his own, to simplify writing technical documentation. The idea was taken to wider vistas (read: WordStar) by Seymour Rubenstein and Rob Barnaby (same link as above). ``[Rubenstein] left to start MicroPro ... with only $8,500 in cash ....''

Spacewar: ``Steve Russell ... led the team that created the first computer game. It took the team about 200 man-hours to write the first version of Spacewar.'' Or, if staff and hours are interchangeable, about five weeks of one-person effort, or twenty weeks if only ten hours per week are available.

All the above are from one convenient website. Almost every software advance from the beginning of computers until the early 1980s was done by one person or a small team who were being paid to do something else, or weren't paid at all. Any talk about the expense of software invention is so much malarkey. Any claim otherwise hasn't a leg to stand on.

NoSoftwarePatents.com launches

Posted Oct 20, 2004 21:29 UTC (Wed) by job (subscriber, #670) [Link]

It is at least as expensive to produce a hit song or a bestseller book.
As much as those publishers probably would love to have a patent on
"detective story", not you nor me thinks that it is a good idea to stifle
innovation by forbidding other storys/implementations to use the same
idea.

It is simply not necessary. There is plenty of reward in creating the
first product. There is no need to further restrict competition. The
situation is different when producing physical products, as opposed to
ideas, those means of production can be pretty expensive and there is
plenty need to be able to get further funding or outsource production.

With software there is no production stage. The blueprint is the product.
And since it is a creative work, it is very well protected by copyright.
Physical products don't enjoy this so they have a weaker position to
start with.

NoSoftwarePatents.com launches

Posted Oct 20, 2004 23:02 UTC (Wed) by hppnq (subscriber, #14462) [Link]

Did you know that "Yesterday", arguably one of the most succesful songs in history, was composed by Paul McCartney while he was sleeping?

Money put into research is unimportant

Posted Oct 21, 2004 3:48 UTC (Thu) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

Patent system was not created to enable people to get the money back for the research they've done. That's just one of the modern interpretations that suits big corporations and it is a complete side-effect. Put simply, patents are are tradeoff: publish for monopoly.

In other words, the only important question is:

If software patents didn't exist, would the society be worse off (i.e. would the fact that those "inventions" are now kept secret affect us all)?

Or, put into the context of software:

What have we learned by software patents being published that we wouldn't otherwise know?

AFAIK, judged by the history of software development, the answer to this question is: nothing (or close to it). Programmers have been able to come up with solutions to the problems without diving into published patent databases. Knowing this, it should be fairly easy to show that software patents are completely useless to the society. Therefore, they shouldn't exist.

Note that one can easily show exactly the opposite for copyright (which is a different tradeoff: creation of original works for monopoly). The history shows that proprietary software people have been motivated to create the works, driven by monetary rewards enabled through copyright. The history also shows that free software (i.e. copyleft) people have been motivated to create the works, driven by recognition of the fact that every software creator is more of a consumer than a creator anyway (in terms of using other people's works). So, we do in fact get more original works through the existence of copyright, which means that this monopoly works.

Review your facts, please

Posted Oct 22, 2004 12:33 UTC (Fri) by hppnq (subscriber, #14462) [Link]

It looks like you're wrong, I'm afraid. See for instance this paper on the history of patent law.

Patents have always been about money, the argument "patents benefit society" seems to have been bolted on later, as an excuse rather than a principle. I understand that it is very tempting to adopt this argument and then falsify it by showing that patents are not benificial to society, but you're fooling yourself.

It would really be much better if we could find a way to reform the current patent system, since it is obvious that right now we're in the middle of a huge mess that doesn't benefit anyone except the IBMs and Microsofts in this world, as well as companies that build their entire business on the hope of patenting the jackpot.

Trying to dismiss the patent system on false grounds is not going to work. Our case is better served by solid arguments and facts, diplomacy and reasonable lobbying than crashing head-first into the bureacratic wall.

Review your facts, please

Posted Oct 23, 2004 2:01 UTC (Sat) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

When you post a link to a paper, it is usually good to read that paper. If you didn't, here is a quote from it:

"As noted above the original English approach, which was followed in the American Constitution, was to place emphasis on the advantage to society as a whole of developing new inventions."

American and Australian patent systems flow directly from Statute of Monopolies. And yes, the emphasis is on the benefit to society. That's what most laws are about anyway.

More to the point, the only reason why an inventor is granted is a monopoly is to publish his invention for the benefit of the whole society. In return, the law gives the inventor limited monopoly, all in the name of promotion of more inventions. All this "we need to pay for the research" business actually came much, much later. And that is just an excuse for the patent system. The real intention is benefit to society.

Review your facts, please

Posted Oct 24, 2004 2:36 UTC (Sun) by hppnq (subscriber, #14462) [Link]

When you post a link to a paper, it is usually good to read that paper. If you didn't, here is a quote from it:

Agreed. I'd like to add that not quoting out of context is usually considered a good practice as well.

Review your facts, please

Posted Oct 23, 2004 2:04 UTC (Sat) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

Oh, one more thing - where did I say that the patent system should be dismissed? All I said was that "software patents" should be dismissed for a very obvious reason. They don't stand the most basic and simple of tests. By having the them, the society is not better off.