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Yeah.... I just can't relate that to what we were talking about. Perhaps you could use a more "relevant" example that I could understand?

They are both examples of "the freedom to restrict the freedoms of others".
A better example that includes the property aspect would be a restaurant refusing to serve a gay couple. Some might say, "they have the right to choose. The market will decide", I don't agree with that view, but it's even worse with software because it's like every restaurant suddenly became a Chick-Fil-A, so if you're gay you have to learn to cook for yourself. Okay, now somehow I've become a gay chef during this post.

An indie keeping hold of their code so they can sell some games is understandable, and okay with me, but it is also the beginning of a dangerous cycle that allows bigger companies to control their users and influence governments.

This is assuming that users and governments are forced to buy use the software.

It's not a matter of distrust in government, it's the fact that achieving something on your own gives an entirely new level of gratitude. I'd rather not have a figurative 'big brother' constantly laying a hand on my shoulder, watching over everything I do and produce, and at the same time allowing anybody to take what I've worked so hard to make my own.

You lose an entire level of self. For example, if I create a new piece of music or a piece of art, the last thing I would want is somebody else (or many people, for that matter) deciphering and potentially copying every bit of what makes me unique, my style, in their own works. Programming is like a work of art; those are your ideas that make the product.



Once again, nobody is producing software with the anticipation of limited ANYBODY'S freedoms. If you don't like their product, simply don't use it. They use their own systems and their own ideas. You don't like the way they do things, nobody is forcing you to use the thing.



And since when did companies and businesses ever reveal their secrets in the first place? This isn't the start of anything. This is, and always has been, what makes each business unique. That's why we have things like patents, to protect ideas. Think if McDonald's sold Wendy's hamburgers. That'd just be absurd.

But that is exactly what you are encouraging by supporting proprietary software. If the government wanted to produce proprietary software that spies on the public then I would be against that, I only want the government to fund software libre (tired of saying "free as in freedom").
Any project needs to be managed by a central body, and if there is no financial incentive then the funds have to come from those who support the project for its own merits, and/or from taxes. Since taxes are the most effective means of raising money for non-commercial projects I am assuming the government would play a part, but they don't necessarily have to.


Why not? I can understand wanting to be compensated for the time you spent on the project, but you don't want to share the results?


No one has ever achieved anything alone.


What? You don't want anyone to be inspired by your work? You've basically destroyed all art that's ever existed with that statement.


They DO want to limit people's freedoms, that's exactly what patents do, they are there to ensure maximum control, and control comes at a cost of freedom. I feel like we're going in circles here. The "free market" rhetoric is all well and good until a corporate minority becomes too dominant, then that argument fails because there are no realistic alternatives.

I wouldn't say that.

... Go on then, you can't just leave us hanging with that.

I think I actually misunderstood the message somewhat at first. I now think this guy is fighting for a good cause.

Like most things there is a balance to be had and some software companies seem to have tilted the balance too much their way, which you would expect them to try to do. The good thing is we live in a free society and people can choose not to use products they feel are unethical, with enough consensus a real difference can be made.

So this guy promoting awareness of these issues is a good thing and it's made me think and will probably affect the way I do business in the future.

Companies like to lock customers in, sometimes it's necessary to provide certain features and sometimes it's simply to boost profits at the expense of the users.

So following an ethical path probably will lead to less profits and could leave you out of business, but I believe if you are good at something and have good ideas you will still thrive.

You skipped right over what Aaron Miller said a few posts up, where this movement is about free as in speech not necessarily free as in beer. Just because most open-source software is free for use doesn't mean that all open source software is free. IntelliJ uses a model where they supply a free community version that has limited support and some missing features but they have a full version that is paid-for with support and rest of the features. And they have one of the best Java IDEs out there, on par or better than Eclipse and they're still in business.

The modern world has started relying heavily on the computer technology. Hence the protection of such software is vital in terms of software industry unlike how we see such things happening in other businesses. In other words software patents are required for any new software developed by any individual or company.

Which is exactly why we must get rid of software patents. We can't let companies seize control of entire industries simply because they were the first to write a particular piece of software.

Software companies use the word "protection" in the same way governments use "defence". Software patents do not exist to protect developers, they exist to restrict competition and give power to one company. Whatever happened to the free market?

Free market economy and capitalism are synonymous. Take patents away from capitalism and you get a lot closer to socialism.

Patents are stupid as they are implemented currently (and just in general in my opinion).

Look, here's a new patent:

CLAIMS
- A method of user interaction
- A method by which a user can use a device to interact with a software application
- A method by which a device can "click" a spatial region

^^ I just described every kind of GUI interaction, and this kind of stuff passes.

Let's analyze what a patent does from multiple perspectives...

Does a patent help consumers?
NO. The consumer gains nothing from using patented technology except exposure to a corporation with a monopoly on an idea (and a troll face).

Does a patent help corporations?
Corporations that didn't rush to the patent office right away to describe their "ingenious" method of say doing an XOR swap ( a ^= b; b ^= a; a ^= b -- effectively three lines of code ) or performing an absolute operation on an integer ( if( a < 0 ) { a = -a; } ), can no longer implement these basic operations. Considering software is essentially speech with structure and logic (something most people seem incapable of), it's ludicrous to patent it, any part of it, at all. That's like me patenting a specific phrase like "over the rainbow."

The corporations that do gain from this approach usually make their money by being "patent trolls." The usual approach of these patent trolls is to file a bunch of patents, wait until someone violates them (and actively search for people who might do so), then sue them. Usually they'll start with small businesses and small developers because they can't defend themselves easily. Then they start targeting bigger and bigger businesses. They do this because they can point to previous court rulings if the validity of their patent is compromised/targeted by the bigger corporation.

Do patents help small developers?
NO. They take away time from the small developer who should be focusing on more important matters like ACTUALLY IMPROVING THEIR PRODUCT instead of focusing on some random routine that makes shadows look less aliased or something stupid like that.

What are patents?
Patents are a way of saying "I had an idea and I want to implement it; but nobody else can implement it because that wouldn't help me." Let me rephrase that... You have an idea, and someone else, completely unrelated to you and having no knowledge of your product, has the same idea, and you're allowed to implement yours but he's not because you registered the idea first?

First off, your idea isn't fantastic. At least, those are the odds. It's not worth patenting. It's not worth protecting. Maybe there's a better idea you haven't figured out yet because you stopped at an earlier idea and decided to try and "protect your trade secret" by telling the world about it... in a patent. Yeah, that's going to stop someone from country X from implementing your idea.

If you're trying to keep a secret then keep the secret. Don't tell the world about it by registering a publicly viewable patent.

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John Carmack "Father of the FPS"


----------------

Software Patent Debate

For Patents


In software, you can say "this is my patent" without an implementation. This feels fundamentally wrong because if you're going to patent something in software, you should have it working in practice. For actual physical or mechanical designs, this may be more difficult due to needing to come up with the appropriate materials. To remedy both if patents had to stay, I would say that having a one year research period, by which time the invention has to actually be implemented otherwise the patent expires, followed by a limited (six months to two years; depending on how complicated the design/method is) monetary period from which you may exclusively benefit is a "good" compromise.


In practice, this only happens if you catch an invalid patent before it goes through the systems or after a big company is being sued and they can afford to fight back. This process can take a long time (sometimes years). Google vs Oracle? Microsoft vs <anyone>? Apple vs <anyone>? ... <big company> vs <other big company>? They all took a long time.


Companies take advantage of this on a routine basis... They file a patent, wait for someone to do something, then take them down. The other person has no reasonable way to defend themselves against this. So yeah, that whole secrecy thing doesn't work for other companies. (I'm a firm believer that competition helps innovation. This stifles competition and therefore does not help innovation.)


That's a terribly vague justification made by people who don't write or understand software.


This is basically saying "patents are good because they are." Yeah, excellent logic.


The people at the patent office DO NOT UNDERSTAND SOFTWARE and almost everything in the field, especially thanks to the convoluted and manipulative wording of most patents, can get a patent granted. This is broken. Apparently Lodsys invented "paying from within an app." Also, Microsoft recently tried to patent "Icons". Also, here's a method of swinging on a swing -- patented.


In practice, many small developers suffer because of patents, with bigger companies benefiting. That's just the opposite of this claim.


This cites a book that I do not have access to, currently. From the sound of it though, if the federal government funds university research, that research should be placed in the public domain to actually help society progress.


"Patents are supported by international law!" - if patents actually helped, that might be a good thing!


This is a separate point but seems like it should be part of the point above. This is effectively filler on the "for patents" section.


Yeah, 'cause that happens often. I already mentioned this... in practice, this doesn't happen unless you're a big company or you catch it early on. Besides, if the patent is secretive for 18 months, how are you supposed to revoke it?


This doesn't happen much in practice.

Against Patents
Software is math.


Hinders research and development.



Cost and loss of R&D funds.



Copyright.



Software is different.




Trivial patents.



Open source disadvantage.

That is, even if you have nothing to gain but efficiency for your end-user from implementing something that was potentially patented (which is arguably everything you have ever done or will ever do), you still can't do it. Makes perfect sense.

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I look forward to a well considered response.

I have to say I agree about patents Aaron in terms of software at least. If someone breaks into your house and steals your code it's theft, if they have a similar idea and come up with a similar solution it is chance.

Give any two programmers the same problem and their solutions will be significantly different to prove the code was not copied or stolen.

There seems to be some confusion about the nature of patents. The free market is where businesses are free to compete by offering the same services, and the customers are free to choose which business they purchase from. Patents prevent competition by making it illegal to design a similar product with the same features as another.

Patent trolls are a prime example of the harm software patents cause. These people DO NOT PRODUCE SOFTWARE, they simply patent software ideas to prevent others from creating software with those features, then demand exorbitant fees from the developer.

Worth a read: http://ping.it/blog/start-ups-in-the-maze-of-software-patents/

I don't want to listen to the guy who eats something from his foot...

A person's eccentricities does not change the correctness in their words. Read up on Tesla.

That says to me that you don't have the mental faculties to judge what he says, so you use something else to judge like his behaviour or appearance.

Russian reversal:

to read what I am posting. Or you probably in a state of intoxication, because you see the words than were not written.