[YBA] i4i vs MS?
Shlomi Fish
shlomif at iglu.org.il
Mon Oct 5 12:42:52 IST 2009
On Monday 17 Aug 2009 12:15:20 geoffrey mendelson wrote:
> On Aug 17, 2009, at 11:11 AM, Shlomi Fish wrote:
> > Thanks for "trimming" my message and probably not answering to the
> > point. I
> > will try to address your claims, however.
>
> That's a matter of opinion. I thought I hit your point exactly.
>
> > 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.
>
> The whole point of a patent is to limit, or to use your word stifle
> competition. Competition is only good if you are on the receiving end
> of the benefit. If you are the one who invested the money a limit on
> competition is better for you so you can realize a return on your
> investment.
>
Why should there be a limit on the competition? If you invested the money and
became profitable for a while being the only player, then you can invest
further money on staying on top and doing further innovations. Otherwise, you
should be out-competed. That's how Capitalism works and should work. Mandating
that someone retains their monopoly despite being anti-competitive stands
against free competition.
> It comes back to your idea of whom should fund research. The "people"
> who take the invention itself as the return on investment or the
> investors. If there was unlimited comptition with no protection of
> ideas only things which would did not need money to be developed would
> be invented. Even if they were invented, they would never be realized.
>
In software? A lot of software out there requires very little money to be
developed and maintained. See all the great high-quality open-source software
out there. Most software developed in the world has no sale value (in-house
software, embedded software, home-grown customisations, etc.). See:
http://catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/magic-cauldron/ar01s03.html
{{{{{{{{{{{{{
First, code written for sale is only the tip of the programming iceberg. In
the pre-microcomputer era it used to be a commonplace that 90% of all the code
in the world was written in-house at banks and insurance companies. This is
probably no longer the case—other industries are much more software-intensive
now, and the finance industry's share of the total must have accordingly
dropped—but we'll see shortly that there is empirical evidence that
approximately 95% of code is still written in-house.
This code includes most of the stuff of MIS, the financial- and database-
software customizations every medium and large company needs. It includes
technical-specialist code like device drivers. Almost nobody makes money
selling device drivers, a point we'll return to later. It includes all kinds
of embedded code for our increasingly microchip-driven machines - from machine
tools and jet airliners to cars to microwave ovens and toasters.
.
.
.
When I speak at technical conferences, I usually begin my talk by asking two
questions: how many in the audience are paid to write software, and for how
many do their salaries depend on the sale value of software. I generally get a
forest of hands for the first question, few or none for the second, and
considerable audience surprise at the proportion.
}}}}}}}}}}}}}
Or:
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001294.html
{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{
The statistics that surround COBOL attest to its huge influence upon the
business world. There are over 220 billion lines of COBOL in existence, a
figure which equates to around 80% of the world's actively used code. There
are estimated to be over a million COBOL programmers in the world today. Most
impressive perhaps, is that 200 times as many COBOL transactions take place
each day than Google searches - a figure which puts the influence of Web 2.0
into stark perspective.
}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}
Such code will be written because people need it. It's like you or I will
write some scripts for our system because we need them.
Note: it's hard for me to tell whether your claim is true about other fields
of technology besides software, because I am not as knowledgeable about them
as I am on software. But they are besides the point of software and play by
different rules, and should not be confused. We are discussing *software*
patents right now, and please stick to the subject.
> As an experiment, walk around your home or office and look at
> everything, from the cucumber sandwich in your lunch, to the computer
> you are reading this on, to the clothes that you wear. Assign a value
> to you for them, and a value to the inventions and work involved in
> making them happen as it were. How many of them would have succeded to
> the point that they would have had to be there if there was no private
> investment and return on that investment.
>
We're not talking about non-software patents here.
> > 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.
>
> I'll assume you are speaking about patent law in general, not a
> specific country. ok.
>
Yes, I am.
> > 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.
>
> WTF? Where do you get that? There's a lot of suppositions in there.
> The way I read that, is "I want to be able to use your ideas for free".
>
I got that from experience. I am a programmer, and I have done a lot of
programming in the past:
http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/
Often I ran into problems that I needed to solve in my programs, and came up
with solutions shortly afterwards, often immediately. It's probable a lot of
my software "infringes" on many existing patents (most of which probably have
prior art), but it's probably inevitable that it does.
Now, "I want to use your ideas for free" - why should not I? They are just
ideas and comprise 1/1,111 of effort and value to society. Here are some
quotes about them:
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
"If you have the same ideas as everybody else but have them one week earlier
than everyone else then you will be hailed as a visionary. But if you have
them five years earlier you will be named a lunatic."
-- http://www.answers.com/topic/jones-barry-1
Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.
-- http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
So I came up with some trivial ideas for a software technique on my own, after
someone patented them a few years back.
> >> 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.
> > }}}}}}}}}}}
>
> ROTFL. A survey of 49, that's right FOURTY NINE programers at a
> conference FIFTEEN YEARS AGO is the only thing you can use to justify
> your claim?
>
> To quote the authors "The remaining 49 constitute a rather small
> polling sample." How many programers are there in the world? 50?
> 1,000? 10,000? 100,000? a million? and you expect me to believe that
> 50 longer ago than most people on this list have been programing are
> relevant?
>
> I even wonder what was the point of the survery, it was limited to
> people who stopped by their booth and were willing to take the survey.
> If you want anecdotal evidence, then my anecdote is that most
> programmers would not have stopped by and few answered the survey
> judging by the miniscule number of people who took it.
>
OK, granted. Here are what some prominent programmers say about patents:
http://www.ericsink.com/articles/Intellectual_Property.html :
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
4. Patents are absurd.
A patent is the strongest form of intellectual property protection. Patents
are used to protect a method or technique, regardless of its expression.
With copyrights, accidental infringement is more or less impossible. If I
start selling a spreadsheet product which is byte-for-byte identical to
Microsoft Excel, nobody is going to believe me when I claim that I just
happened to come up with the same string of bits that Microsoft did.
In contrast, accidental infringement of a patent is quite possible. Microsoft
Excel is probably covered by a whole bunch of patents. If I create a
spreadsheet product, the likelihood that I may use a patented technique is
rather high.
.
.
.
I am not opposed to software patents in principle, but I do believe patent law
needs to be reformed. Patents carry a 17 year term, which is far too long for
software. Patents are being granted for "inventions" which are obvious.
Patent trolls should be banned and violators should be sentenced to a lifetime
of driving around Boston. The current situation is absurd.
Obtaining a patent is even more costly and time-consuming than a registered
trademark. Plan to spend $25,000 or more.
Patents can be valuable, but a Micro-ISV can have a long and healthy life
without ever obtaining one.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Eric Sink runs his own Micro-ISV which sells commercial, proprietary software
and competes against a lot of other proprietary and even open-source
alternatives. And yet he says that about software patents.
Here is what a different ISV owner (Joel Spolsky) says here:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000074.html
<<<<<<<<<
The trouble with build-a-better-mousetrap is that there's not a lot of
evidence that it works. First of all, many of the most successful software
companies (Microsoft and Oracle, for example) don't really "innovate" in the
sense that they are not really solving problems that haven't been solved
before. In any market, it is exceedingly rare that you get to keep your
invention to yourself. Everybody has competition. Wall Street Weenies and
lawyers starting high tech companies tend to think they can protect themselves
from this with patent protection. Ha! I can hardly think of a single case of a
company successfully protecting themselves from competitors because of a
patent. (Stac is the only case I can think of, and where the heck are they?)
>>>>>>>>>
Paul Graham wrote an entire essay about software patents:
http://www.paulgraham.com/softwarepatents.html
His article rests on this:
<<<<<<<<<
One thing I do feel pretty certain of is that if you're against software
patents, you're against patents in general. Gradually our machines consist
more and more of software. Things that used to be done with levers and cams
and gears are now done with loops and trees and closures. There's nothing
special about physical embodiments of control systems that should make them
patentable, and the software equivalent not.
>>>>>>>>>
I think that's software-technocracy. You cannot cure AIDS or cancer using
software alone, or put a man into space using software alone, or implement
many other innovations that we as software developers are oblivious to.
Later on in his article, he describes how software patents are a net evil on
the software world, with patents trolls, and them just being used for the
"mating" between startups and larger companies that buy them. He later on
claims that abolishing patents will cause an increase in secrecy, but as I
demonstrated, we are not talking about patents in general, but about software
patents, for which transparency is obvious and a given thing.
What else? I already mentioned http://producingoss.com/en/patents.html , which
is written from the perspective of a prominent open-source programmer. There
are also:
* http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/
* http://eupat.ffii.org/players/ibm/
(see especially http://www.forbes.com/asap/2002/0624/044.html )
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patent
> > So who exactly am I discriminating against?
>
> Anyone who invents computer software and wishes to avail themselves of
> patent protection. By quoting anecdotal evidence (which is not really
> evidence at all, but hearsay) and a single survey that even the
> authors doubted the value of, you are attempting to deprive them of
> something they want and IMHO deserve).
>
"Anyone" - very vague. Software patents do not help:
1. Open source projects and developers - they cannot afford to issue them, and
may not be able to use them due to licence constraints (e.g: GPL, Apache,
etc.). And they are kept being used to prevent people from implementing
technology or using their products.
2. Micro-ISVs - they cannot afford to issue patents for their products and
larger companies and patent trolls may end up extorting money or preventing
them to compete against them.
3. Startups - they may need to issue software patents which cost a lot of
resources just to get people to talk with them. Usually, they do not get sued
for damages, because there's nothing to gain really, but after they are bought
by a larger and more resourceful company, the law-suits tend to happen:
http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/open_source/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=215800439
4. Large software vendors - they need to accumulate a lot of patents to
protect themselves (which is a net monetary loss), and they always risk being
sued by patent trolls or other more litigious companies. Maybe they can gain
some money by behind-the-doors threats (like MS vs. Tom-Tom), but as a general
rule they do not gain anything.
----
So who benefits from software patents? Only software patent trolls, which
nobody seems to like or think they should exist.
Please tell me how I as an independent open-source developer can benefit from
software patents? I cannot afford to spend the 25 KUSD for issuing a patent.
If I come up with an innovative technique for my code I'd rather just write it
there and possibly blog about it and put the innovation into the public
domain, rather than issue a 25 KUSD patent that will not benefit me.
And even if I could afford to issue a patent, there's no way I could afford to
sue someone for litigation over it. This will completely drain my resources
and time.
>
> That's the danger of posting a link, someone might actually read it.
>
Well, I guess we need a more comprehensive online survey for what people think
of software patents.
> > 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
>
> Considering the income he has made over the years by releasing his
> software as FOSS and then having people pay him money to lecture,
> donating to his cause, etc, not only any advancement at MIT because of
> his postition, I think he did quite well from it.
>
> There are lots of people on this list, and elsewhere in the world who
> make good livings with their support and add-ons to free software.
>
Right.
> > 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.
>
> You keep claiming that, but you have offered no proof. In fact, you
> have offered no viable evidence. You should change that to be honest,
> which would be "we claim there is no place for software patents .....
> because we claim they do more harm than good". Good here being defined
> as the ability of anyone, at any time to copy someone else's ideas for
> free.
>
Have I offered enough proof above, now?
> > 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.
>
> Ok, are you willing to take a cut to $1 a day because there are lots
> of people in China who are smarter than you, or more willing to work
> harder than you to copy your idea? The problem is that you define
> healthy competition as not causing you to go out of business, or loose
> your investment, but do nothing at all to limit that competition to
> your definition of healthy. You are expecting people to stay within
> you vaguely defined limit of "healthy", while decrying software
> patents because you claim they are vague (or vaguely enforced, which
> is not a fault with the patents).
That's part of healthy competition. I don't see most U.S. or Israeli startups
under threat by the "lots of people in China", who seem unable to copy their
idea directly, and to compete with them. That's because implementing something
from scratch is hard and by the time someone did it, you've already would have
made more progress - if you're smart.
And how exactly can I sue the many people in China for violating my patent,
when software patents are illegal there (and it tends to be quite oblivious to
international laws)? U.S. companies can also not sue Israeli companies for
software patents violation yet.
And yes, I think that if someone is brighter than me, he should be able to
out-compete with me. And assuming that if someone is larger than me or
apparently has more resources, then they can out-compete me is a bit naïve.
See:
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law
* http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html :
<<<<<<<<<<<
If you want to make money at some point, remember this, because this is one of
the reasons startups win. Big companies want to decrease the standard
deviation of design outcomes because they want to avoid disasters. But when
you damp oscillations, you lose the high points as well as the low. This is
not a problem for big companies, because they don't win by making great
products. Big companies win by sucking less than other big companies.
If you want to make money at some point, remember this, because this is one of
the reasons startups win. Big companies want to decrease the standard
deviation of design outcomes because they want to avoid disasters. But when
you damp oscillations, you lose the high points as well as the low. This is
not a problem for big companies, because they don't win by making great
products. Big companies win by sucking less than other big companies.
>>>>>>>>>>>
>
> > 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.
>
> Sorry, it does not work that way. In order to get money from an angel
> investor or a VC, you have to make a pitch. That takes time and money
> and often angel investors are small investors who do put their house
> up, retirement fund or life savings.
>
That may be true of other fields besides software (and we're not talking about
non-software patents ehre) and especially the Internet where everyone can
start a startup with very few resources:
http://weblog.raganwald.com/2008/07/brief-history-of-dangerous-ideas.html
<<<<<<<<<<<<
Web applications are dangerous. Never mind the fact that they make desktop
applications obsolete. The people who built desktop applications just go and
get jobs writing web applications. Same people, different shit. But as Giles
Bowkett pointed out, web applications just might make venture capital
obsolete! When you don’t need hundreds of programmers and distribution
channels and all the other friction-managing elements of a company that ships
old-school software, you need a lot less money to start a business.
>>>>>>>>>>>>
I have known a few teenagers who have their own sites or servers on the
Internet, with web applications and ads and other stuff. Sourceforge,
Berlios.de, Google Code, Github, etc. accounts are free-of-charge for open-
source projects which may also prove of profit. An Internet connection only
costs this much. If they can do it, so can you without needing too many
monetary resources.
So while you probably need more resources in order to start an electronics
company or a hardware company or bio-technology company or whatever (where
patents may be more appropriate) in the software and Internet, you need
practically none. I'm paying less than 500 ILS a year for my hosting, and
there are even cheaper hosting packages. I can use it to open a commercial
web-site or market a commercial application (FOSS or otherwise, etc.), or earn
money from my online writing, etc. And I haven't raised any venture capital
yet, nor do I need to. Welcome to the 21st century.
Regards,
Shlomi Fish
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/
Original Riddles - http://www.shlomifish.org/puzzles/
Chuck Norris read the entire English Wikipedia in 24 hours. Twice.
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