[YBA] i4i vs MS?
Shlomi Fish
shlomif at iglu.org.il
Mon Aug 17 11:11:13 IDT 2009
Hi Geoffrey!
Thanks for "trimming" my message and probably not answering to the point. I
will try to address your claims, however.
On Saturday 15 August 2009 20:50:10 geoffrey mendelson wrote:
> On Aug 13, 2009, at 6:03 PM, Shlomi Fish wrote:
> > 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.
>
> Why are software ideas different than any other ideas?
Software is a mathematical abstraction and talented people would be able to
come up with an idea for how to implement an algorithm for performing a
certain programming task relatively easily that allowing patents on
implementation of programs will do more to stifle competition, than to protect
the originator of the idea.
According to patent law, you cannot patent an idea, but its implementation. So
for example, I cannot patent the idea of a starship, but if I know a method to
achieve it, I can try patenting this method. Other people may be able to build
starships while using different method, but if they would want to use my
method, they'll need to pay me for it.
On the other hand, given a certain programming task, the algorithms needed in
the implementation are usually not hard to come by independently, and allowing
to patent them would do nothing except stifle innovation, and allow patent
trolls and other patent trollers to extort the actually productive software
developers and houses.
> Not only does
> your last statement make no sense, it discriminates against software
> developers and is totally unsubstanisated.
Discriminates *against* software developers? According to
http://producingoss.com/en/patents.html :
{{{{{{{{{{{
Surveys and anecdotal evidence show that not only the vast majority of open
source programmers, but a majority of all programmers, think that software
patents should be abolished entirely.
}}}}}}}}}}}
So who exactly am I discriminating against?
>
> While I very much support FOSS (and public domain software, which is
> what it was called before people started to make money off of it),
"Free software" (or FOSS) is not synonymous with "public domain software". A
public domain ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain ) program allows
the user to do whatever he wants with it, as long as he doesn't violate the
public domain. On the other hand a free software program abides by the Free
software definition ( http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html ) but may be
restricted (like the GPL or the LGPL). Free software under the MIT/X11 Licence
or other BSD-style Licences is still copyrighted, but under a public domain-
like, non-recursive licence.
Note that public domain software whose sources are not available and is
distributed as binary-only, is not considered free software or GPL-compatible.
However, its public-domain non-licence allows other developers to reverse-
engineer it and write similar software that is open-source, which cannot be
done with most proprietary applications.
When Richard M. Stallman coined the term "free software" his intention was not
for developers to make money off it. In fact, I recall reading on the GNU
site, an old document said that there "will still be programmers" after free
software takes over, but that they will "earn less money than they do today".
This did not happen, and open-source software turned out to be a profitable
avenue in many cases, with several good models. But nevertheless, the concept
of FOSS is not meant as a way for developers to make more money, but rather as
a way for users and co-developers to benefit from the availability of software
under a free licence, which retains their freedoms with the software.
> I
> support the right for people who invent new software to protect their
> rights.
Patents (and copyrights) are not a "right" in the same sense as the freedom of
speech, the right of life, the right to bear arms, etc. and other basic
individual and civil rights are rights. Instead, they are a society-enacted
monopoly given in order to foster innovation, the sciences and the arts. As
such, we may rule that there is no place for software patents like there is
for patents in other realms, simply because we find that they do more harm
than good.
> Copyrights do not protect them "enough", it still allows
> someone who is as smart or smarter than they are to take their idea
> and sell it.
After spending enough time in developing and perfecting the code. If someone
is smarter than me, why shouldn't he also benefit? I don't see why there
shouldn't be some healthy competition, especially if coming up with a method
for implementing a task in software is usually quite trivial.
>
> I have had many conversations with a competitors about startups that
> had interesting ideas that made them unique. The conversations always
> go something like "what makes them different is that they do xxx and
> we don't", I ask "when will you have it", and they answer something
> like "next week".
>
> Very soon everyone does it, and the startup disappears, taking with it
> the life savings of the seed investors.
I'm sure that most startups today don't end up as consuming the life savings
of anyone. There are always angel investors, and venture capital firms, or
also two people working from their house on an idea, which doesn't consume too
many financial resources. If their startup fails, they can always find a job
at a software company. According to http://www.paulgraham.com/hiring.html :
{{{{{{{{{{{{{{
Even if your startup does tank, you won't harm your prospects with employers.
To make sure I asked some friends who work for big companies. I asked managers
at Yahoo, Google, Amazon, Cisco and Microsoft how they'd feel about two
candidates, both 24, with equal ability, one who'd tried to start a startup
that tanked, and another who'd spent the two years since college working as a
developer at a big company. Every one responded that they'd prefer the guy
who'd tried to start his own company. Zod Nazem, who's in charge of
engineering at Yahoo, said:
I actually put more value on the guy with the failed startup. And you can
quote me!
So there you have it. Want to get hired by Yahoo? Start your own company.
}}}}}}}}}}}}}}
And back to what you said. Assume I work and implement an idea that will take
a competitor a week to implement. By the end of that week, I can improve my
program and have more ideas. Also, why should people know what my ideas are? I
don't need to publicise them in public? I can have my many good ideas until I
can ship the product which will take the market by storm. And then improve it
further.
> I can't speak for anyone else,
> but the people I know are relatively honest, if the startup had filled
> a US provisional patent and claimed (as their right) "patent pending
> technology" they would not.
>
From what someone told me, the software patents he had to issue were not in
order to be enforced or stifle competition, but rather because no one would
talk to him unless he had patents. Even if a software start-up issues a
patent, they could do nothing against a big company that violates this patent,
because a patent lawsuit typically costs at least 750,000 USD, which a start-
up normally cannot afford to lose. (To say nothing of lost reputation, and bad
press, etc.). Instead, the patents that start-ups issue, often get sold to
patent trolls, who later use them to sue and extort companies with deep
pockets.
> I also have had experience with people who are not as honest and do it
> anyway, but that's a different subject.
>
> It's even happened in the last few months to someone on this list,
> they announced their existance and looked for employees on this list,
> which caused a competitor who is a lurker to look at their web site
> and a week later we had the exact conversation I mentioned above. He
> has a big company, they were one or two people looking for some part
> time employees.
>
> Is that the effect on the "software industry" you wish to have?
Right now I know that most start-ups fail, and some of them succeed, with or
without software patents. As I told you before, most software developers would
like to see software patents abolished, because most software patents are
issued by large companies, who just use them to protect themselves against
possible lawsuits, or more rarely harass smaller companies, see:
* http://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft%20tom%20tom
* http://www.forbes.com/asap/2002/0624/044.html
* http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/08/23/bt_loses_hypertext_claim/
Other software patents are owned by patent trolls who use them to press
charges for patents' violation against productive and innovative companies.
Very few patents, if any, are used to protect startups from their ideas being
exploited by other companies and developers.
If a startup has an innovative idea for a software product, it can work on it
discreetly and develop it until it's ready to be shipped and make money from.
After that, they can develop it further. Their success is not guaranteed, but
issuing patents won't help their chances.
According to http://www.dwheeler.com/innovation/innovation.html :
{{{{{{{{{{{{{
One source that was not helpful for this analysis were software patents. The
reason? Software patents are actually harmful, not helpful, to software
innovation, as confirmed by a myriad of data. Those unfamiliar with software
patents may find that shocking.
There are several basic problems with software patents, compared to actual
innovation:
1. almost all truly important innovations in software were never covered by
patents, so using patents as a primary source would omit almost all of the
most important software innovations;
2. as software patentability has increased, the number of software
innovations has decreased; and
3. software patents are often granted to cover ideas that are obvious to
practitioners of the art or have prior art (even though these aren’t supposed
to be patented).
There are many reasons most of the *most important software innovations* were
never patented.
}}}}}}}}}}}}}
David A. Wheeler's list is somewhat lacking, but it's still a good list of
most important innovations and this comment is helpful.
BTW, do you think ideas for plot elements and plot devices in stories should
be patentable as well? Let's protect authors of stories from exploitation of
their ideas by similar authors! Maybe I should patent "A story about a terror
organisation where no central character is mentioned by name, but instead uses
only titles." and prevent someone from writing something similar to
http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/TheEnemy/ .
Regards,
Shlomi Fish
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/
Original Riddles - http://www.shlomifish.org/puzzles/
God gave us two eyes and ten fingers so we will type five times as much as we
read.
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