Jeff Post wrote:
Zoltan’s reply elaborates more on this, so I won’t repeat it here other than
to emphasize that ideas are not and cannot be “property”. It’s not just a
moral issue, it’s physically impossible to “own” an idea.
I agree, although possibly only up to a point, depending on how much
emphasis one places on the physicality test.
In some previous posts, I seemed to see software patents and software
licenses (via copyright) being lumped into the same bin.
I think Michael Abrash did a fine job summarizing the problems with
software patents over a decade ago in the intro to his article,
3-D Clipping and Other Thoughts:
http://www.phatcode.net/res/224/files/html/ch65/65-01.html
We have indeed already arrived in the future extrapolated by Abrash in
the article: “that eventually everyone will own parts of our communal
knowledge base, and that programming will become in large part a
process of properly identifying and compensating each and every owner
of the techniques you use.”
One finds it is becoming increasingly difficult to solve any interesting
programming problem, without after-the-fact discovering that one has
employed techniques that someone else claims to own.
The other day I was discussing an idea with my boss about how to
optimize the way our software deals with large bitmaps. He liked my
idea but reminded me it was the sort of thing someone may have patented.
A quick search on some random free-of-charge patent search website
revealed that indeed, Adobe has a patent on employing copy-on-write
semantics on a chunked bitmap to minimize storage requirements while
preserving deltas, and Google has a patent on demand-streaming sub-
regions of a chunked bitmap, etc.
Both of which are too close to my own idea for comfort, an idea which
I came up with in a few moments of thinking how to improve our own
software. An idea which I’m confident most any of us would have
similarly arrived at when faced with the same constraints.
Software patents are a loathsome aberration, detrimental to our
industry, and should be abolished.
In other words - Yes, I agree: it should not be possible to own ideas.
HOWEVER, software licenses (via copyright) are different enough from
patents that they should be evaluated separately.
And this is where the physicality test worries me. Some folks will
claim that a copyrighted sequence of bits is just as ephemeral as a
patented technique. And, in our age of electronic duplication that
may in some ways be true, physically speaking.
But the key difference between patented software techniques vs.
copyright is exemplified rather well in Abrash’s Frank Herbert
anecdote:
In the introduction to one of his books, Frank Herbert, author
of Dune, told how he had once been approached by a friend who
claimed he (the friend) had a killer idea for an SF story, and
offered to tell it to Herbert. In return, Herbert had to agree
that if he used the idea in a story, he?d split the money from
the story with this fellow. Herbert?s response was that ideas
were a dime a dozen; he had more story ideas than he could ever
write in a lifetime. The hard part was the writing, not the
ideas.
The hard part was the writing, not the ideas.
Anyway, this post has become more lengthy than I’d anticipated, but
essentially it is a plea not to lump patents and copyright in the
same bin in these discussions.
That said, while I personally support copyright, but loathe
software patents, I do also think some copyright reform is
warranted, due to occurrences like the following, which in my view
are straying almost entirely into patent-like territory:
http://www.thedailyswarm.com/headlines/men-work-found-guilty-plaigerizing-kookaburra-sits-old-gum-tree/
Anyway…
P.S. thanks, Sam, for SDL. 
Regards,
Bill
