From: Glenn Parker Date: 2005-01-21T03:55:21+09:00 Subject: Re: [OT] Open Source Licenses against Software Patents Thursday wrote: > > I don't think many people look at the pros and cons of software patents. I've personally spent a while thinking about pros and cons, and I left a job at a medium-sized company partly because the powers that be insisted that I participate in the filing of a patent that I considered to be utterly bogus. The company used a typical "strategic warchest" defense to justify this strategy, but I don't believe they had any interest in filing quality patents. It was very much about quantity, and forget about quality. Some companies, such as IBM, have much more stringent review boards, and they actually have fairly sane policies regarding patents (witness their patent licensing for free software projects). Unfortunately, IBM is the exception, not the rule. > If software patents didn't exist, many fundamental software inventions > would not be available to the public because companies or inventors that > created them would be keeping them as TRADE SECRETS. I must challenge you to back up that assertion somehow. Software was not patentable for decades after the invention of the computer, but that did nothing to slow down progress in computer science, nor did it result in a situation where only high-powered companies had access to powerful algorithms. If software was not patentable, companies would have trade secrets (which they still have, today, anyway), but other companies would be free to "re-invent" algorithms without fear of retribution just for using their own well-educated noggins. There's no real value in algorithms, any more than there is intrinsic value to "E=mc^2" (and what if that had been patented?). The value is derived from the implementation and the service and all the other real work involved in selling and supporting software. Software patents are an artificial, and therefore fragile, attempt to assign value to mathematical thinking. -- Glenn Parker | glenn.parker-AT-comcast.net |