[YBA] i4i vs MS?

[Shlomi Fish]

On Thursday 13 August 2009 14:35:43 geoffrey mendelson wrote:
> >> The cost == cost of writing, issuing, enforcing
> >
> > and licensing! Don't forget that one.
> >
> >> The benefit == increased revenue to the company
>
> Shachar, licensing is a cost,  but it's also a benefit. If you happen
> to be the person using someone else's work for profit it's a cost. If
> you happen to be the person who did the work, or invested their money
> to create the work, it's a benefit.
>
> Do you not believe that you (or anyone else) should be fairly
> compensated for their ideas and efforts?
>

Ideas by themselves are a dime-a-dozen, require very little effort to come by 
and generate very little value to society. An illustrative table I once saw 
said that:

Stage                  Amount of Effort         Amount of Value

1. Idea stage -        1                        1

2. Development         10                       10

3. Mass Production     100                      100

4. Mass Distribution   1000                     1000

It's great to have good ideas, but you should invest some effort in pushing 
them forward through development, production and distribution, before they  
truly become worthwhile.

Back to software, let's suppose I have an idea for a good application (let's 
suppose it's an SQL database). I can assume that several people already had 
this idea by now, or will have it soon. But I take the time to develop it and 
bring it to a usable state. After the product is good enough, I can do with it 
what I want:

* I can sell it as commercial, non-FOSS software, and hope to get some money. 
(e.g: Oracle, Informix, MS SQL)

* I can distribute it under a copyleft licence, and allow open-source users to 
take advantage of it free of charge, but still possibly require exemption in 
case one wishes to use it in proprietary contexts. (e.g: MySQL)

* I can distribute it under a permissive, BSD-style licence, and possibly have 
some indirect revenue from it, or just be content that I've made a useful 
contribution to the public well-being. (e.g: PostgreSQL, SQLite).

Now, if I made some money from my idea by developing it into a program and 
then licensing it, then I've benefited. All of this without using or depending 
on patents. It's possible other people will develop similar programs after my 
product has shipped, but by that time, hopefully I can move forward and 
enhance my application so it will be even more attractive to potential 
customers. And those who compete against me will have to catch up.

I'm all for making money out of good ideas, but I still think that people need 
to take the necessary effort in taking these ideas forward, instead of just 
issuing vague, generic and/or trivial software patents that prevent people 
from developing similar programs. Copyrights gives enough protection for 
software and for making money of it, while software patents tend to do more 
harm than good.

Naturally, I'm not very familiar with the effect of patents on other 
industries, and accept the fact that some companies issue software patents as 
a way to defend themselves, which may be necessary given that they are still 
legal.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

> Geoff.

-- 
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Shlomi Fish       http://www.shlomifish.org/
Rethinking CPAN - http://xrl.us/bjn7p

God gave us two eyes and ten fingers so we will type five times as much as we
read.