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How IP Law Helps FOSS Communities

Posted by samzenpus on from the strange-bedfellows dept.

dp619 writes "Fighting against software patents (New Zealand has banned them) tends to blind FOSS communities to aspects of IP law that actually serve them well. While certainly not perfect, patent, copyright, trademark, and trade secret law each has something to offer FOSS communities. Penn State law professor Clark Asay wrote a guest post for the Outercurve Foundation briefly describing some of the ways in IP law can help open source developers."

8 of 98 comments (clear)

  1. missing the point by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Open source isn't supposed to help developers. It's supposed to help USERS.

    1. Re:missing the point by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Not really. The "Users" in RMS's time WERE developers of some ability. Even when ERS took up the Open Source banner over Free Software, he was looking at it as a Developer.

      People who are strictly users don't really care. This is how the UNIX vendors, Microsoft and Apple were able to dominate their respective fields for so long. It was only people who wanted to develop extensions of closed software that Open || Free vs closed became an issue.

    2. Re:missing the point by cervesaebraciator · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Buyer vs. Seller is a zero sum game.

      That is simply false. If it were true, economic exchanges would never occur.

      In a zero sum game, the total cost of the participants gains and losses in utility--for one perhaps increasing and the other decreasing--add up to zero. One side may win, the other may lose, but both sides cannot win.

      Let's say you've developed hydrophobia want to sell your used canoe on Craigslist. Let's say that I want to buy a canoe to go camping on an island in the middle of a lake. Your asking price is $300 and I think it's a good deal. I give you the $300; you give me the canoe. You're looking at this and saying, "Well, I'm less one canoe but I've gained $300 and he's less $300 but he's gained a canoe. So, it's break even." Or worse, you might be thinking, "Ha, that sucker. I had no use for that canoe so it was clearly worthless. But I can now by a sweet raincoat with my $300."

      What you're missing here is a very basic economic reality: value is subjectively determined. Because of your hydrophobia, the canoe has no utility for you. You'd rather spend $300 on rain coats. So the exchange is a gain in utility for you. I, on the other hand, cannot make a paper boat out of three Benjamins and expect to get to my campsite. Money's use is that it can be exchange for something useful. I decide that I'll get more utility out of the canoe than $300 in the bank, so I buy it from you and from my perspective I've also gained in utility. It is, in other words, a win-win.

      Where there is no force, compulsion, coercion, rent-seeking, or other machinations involved, free economic exchanges can always be win-win scenarios. People simply wouldn't trade, buy, or sell if they didn't value what they gained more than what they gave away.

    3. Re:missing the point by tlhIngan · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Not really. The "Users" in RMS's time WERE developers of some ability. Even when ERS took up the Open Source banner over Free Software, he was looking at it as a Developer.

      People who are strictly users don't really care. This is how the UNIX vendors, Microsoft and Apple were able to dominate their respective fields for so long. It was only people who wanted to develop extensions of closed software that Open || Free vs closed became an issue.

      Back in the days, computer users were technically proficient out of necessity - either you had to know electronics and solder to build your own computers, or to write software to make it do what you want.

      The thing was, Steve Jobs realized that computers shouldn't be for just the technically minded - it was a transformative technology that could revolutionize how things were done. But to do that required getting the computer out of the hands of techies and into the general public - world-changing technologies just aren't world changing if they are locked up and not shared. (Sound familiar?)

      So fast forward to today where computers are everywhere - they are some of the most powerful tools mankind has created. Thing is, though, as a tool, it should assist the user in helping them do what they want, not be an end to itself. After all, if a tool doesn't help you, it's pointless.

      A car helps transport people - but drivers don't have to be mechanics to use them. If they had to be, we'd probably still be back in the late 19th century where cars were a rarity because the reward wouldn't be there. Likewise a computer is useful for many things - entertainment, communications, assistance, information delivery, etc.

      But you have to realize that users don't care how it works - they don't want to know because that's not reason why the computer is so useful. The computer is useful because it allows them to go about their day efficiently - perhaps to look up a tidbit of information through Wikipedia, or connect them to with like-minded individuals scattered throughout the globe. Or advanced research - things like software defined radios (these people don't care how computers work - they write their DSP algorithms and have them "magically" work - they don't care about OS updates or kernels or whatever).

      And I'm sure you'll agree that not everyone needs to know how a computer works. Your mechanic doesn't - yet they use a computer based diagnostic machine to fix your car (would you like to have your car on the stand then have the mechanic say it's going to take days because he accidentally hosed the diagnostics machine playing around with the new Linux kernel?).

  2. Ain't that a surprise.. not.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A man from foundation, which has affiliation with Microsoft, telling devs how FOSS can benefit from IP law. I see these words more like "come to the dark side, play our game...". How about abandoning stuff like software patents and we all benefit?

    1. Re:Ain't that a surprise.. not.. by AHuxley · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Expect to see a lot more efforts like that after the NZ changes.
      From sockpuppets, astroturfing to huge reports and fancy foundations ... the public has to be corrected on the NZ legal story.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  3. not a good sell by king+neckbeard · · Score: 3, Insightful

    He doesn't sell it very well. He mentions the things that each portion of law DOESN'T do as an advantage. However, said thing is often done by another portion of the law, and without those laws, FOSS communities can do anything they wanted. The closest to an actual advantage listed is the DMCA's safe harbor, which is probably less than we would have had received had a court ruled on the issue. He has somewhat of a point about trademark, but it's a mixed bag, and far from the best vehicle for source designation in its current form. All in all, though this jackass demosntrates perfect why GNU considers "Intellectual Property" a word to avoid.

    --
    This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
  4. Dubious advantages by aNonnyMouseCowered · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Imagine a mugger who claimed that he's a good mugger because he left you with enough money to catch the bus home. Should you be thankful that he didn't shoot you and that "all" you lost was a few hundred dollars, your credit card, and last year's iPhone?

    What the blog claims as the advantages of IP laws, such as DMCA's safe harbor and the limts on copyright and patents, are problems that wouldn't exist if the laws didn't exist in the first place (if the mugger didn't mug you, you wouldn't feel the need to be thankful that he spared your life).