You have some interesting ideas in there, but unfortunately you've also lumped in things like polls.
April 2003: An Empirical Look at Software Patents (Bessen&Hunt) (BH03):
Software patents have in the US resulted in a transfer of R&D money to obtaining patents
That in particular is an interesting idea to consider. The slice of the research pie for patent lawyers has grown. However, did Bessen and Hunt also check whether the size of the whole pie had grown, meaning the amount for research was bigger despite its share being smaller?
Consider this analogy for what it's worth: A farmer working with his hands can spend all his work hours in the fields, but a farmer with a plow and oxen has to spend time maintaining the plow and caring for the oxen. The share of his time in the field has been reduced, but the total amount of work done in the fields has gone up.
Would you grant that it's possible that patents have just grown the pie of money for software research, even after the money spent on maintaining the patents is subtracted out?
You still haven't answered the question of when innovation actually gets hindered.
You don't even know whether I support them or oppose software patents, even, so you can't answer a specific question about their efects by making generic swipes at them.
Is there any evidence that innovation in software is being hindered by patents? OSes, server applications, programming languages and environments, user interfaces, network protocols, security infrastructure, and other areas seem to be improving as fast as ever.
In fact, the only time I've seen a patent cause real trouble is in KDE, where some people attempted to blatantly copy a Mac OS feature only to find it was patented. In this case the patent worked as intended.
It's a problem, but I'm not sure if it's a serious problem. I think it's a serious problem if those nuisance patents are easily enforced and hard to overturn, but I don't see part-time amateurs having the money to cause that kind of trouble.
No, patents draw a line between creators and imitators. It is to be expected that part-time amateurs come up with ideas years after professional innovators invented them and file them with USPTO.
So where in your scenario does the actual innovation stop?
Big companies innovate. Little guys sometimes profit with submarine patents. Users pay a slightly higher price but still do get the innovations in the end.
Yes, these submarine patents are an imperfection in the system, but an occasional failure is not proof that the whole system is rotten.
"Amateur volunteer developers hacking away on weekends will never achieve the level of a funded, employed business entity who has a financial reason to develop the best software out there."
Care to back up the stated and implied assertions here?
1. Existing software houses have a financial reason to develop the best software out there.
The belief comes from a common misunderstanding of what the freedom of free software gives you. Having that freedom allows you to fix the bugs you want when you want them, independent of the whims of some corporation, for as long as you use the software. It does NOT just automatically fix bugs, though, regardless of how many mailing lists, bugzillas, and CVS browsers you have set up.
"Doesn't the government have better things to do?"
Not since FDR it doesn't. Now the government can do EVERYTHING that the people want right now at the moment. The thinking since him is summed up nicely by what our "conservative" president said: "When somebody hurts, government has a responsibility to move."
Computers haven't "mastered" chess in the sense that heuristics or rules have improved their play enough. The key ingredient is the brute-force search.
That's why IBM built Deep Blue, to show off their hardware doing the searches.
The 19x19 board of a standard go game combined with the fact that a play on most points is legal at any time basically rule out such searches.
OK, what is the developer body exactly going to do to override the ftp-masters from a decision not to distribute package X? Ask them to stop distributing Debian?
Er, what is the Project Leader exactly going to do to override the ftp-masters from a decision not to distribute package X? Ask them to stop distributing Debian?
Slashdot Mirror
You have some interesting ideas in there, but unfortunately you've also lumped in things like polls.
That in particular is an interesting idea to consider. The slice of the research pie for patent lawyers has grown. However, did Bessen and Hunt also check whether the size of the whole pie had grown, meaning the amount for research was bigger despite its share being smaller?
Consider this analogy for what it's worth: A farmer working with his hands can spend all his work hours in the fields, but a farmer with a plow and oxen has to spend time maintaining the plow and caring for the oxen. The share of his time in the field has been reduced, but the total amount of work done in the fields has gone up.
Would you grant that it's possible that patents have just grown the pie of money for software research, even after the money spent on maintaining the patents is subtracted out?
You still haven't answered the question of when innovation actually gets hindered.
You don't even know whether I support them or oppose software patents, even, so you can't answer a specific question about their efects by making generic swipes at them.
Is there any evidence that innovation in software is being hindered by patents? OSes, server applications, programming languages and environments, user interfaces, network protocols, security infrastructure, and other areas seem to be improving as fast as ever.
In fact, the only time I've seen a patent cause real trouble is in KDE, where some people attempted to blatantly copy a Mac OS feature only to find it was patented. In this case the patent worked as intended.
It's a problem, but I'm not sure if it's a serious problem. I think it's a serious problem if those nuisance patents are easily enforced and hard to overturn, but I don't see part-time amateurs having the money to cause that kind of trouble.
Never mind.
example.invalid, not example.com.
No, patents draw a line between creators and imitators. It is to be expected that part-time amateurs come up with ideas years after professional innovators invented them and file them with USPTO.
So where in your scenario does the actual innovation stop?
Big companies innovate. Little guys sometimes profit with submarine patents. Users pay a slightly higher price but still do get the innovations in the end.
Yes, these submarine patents are an imperfection in the system, but an occasional failure is not proof that the whole system is rotten.
"Patents are killing inovation"
In what field?
If you don't intend to honor your agreements, you have no business taking money for your work.
Yeah, go ahead and be free of patents, but don't expect to be paid for the work.
"Amateur volunteer developers hacking away on weekends will never achieve the level of a funded, employed business entity who has a financial reason to develop the best software out there."
Care to back up the stated and implied assertions here?
1. Existing software houses have a financial reason to develop the best software out there.
2. Existing software houses will be amateurs.
Ah, but do they have fog machines and control over the passage of time?
That only happens if you reverse the polarity of the warp chamber conduits.
The belief comes from a common misunderstanding of what the freedom of free software gives you. Having that freedom allows you to fix the bugs you want when you want them, independent of the whims of some corporation, for as long as you use the software. It does NOT just automatically fix bugs, though, regardless of how many mailing lists, bugzillas, and CVS browsers you have set up.
In the 1932 campaign FDR also advocated balancing the budget, rather than starting massive spending and expansion of the government.
WORN disks should do it: Write Once Read Never.
"Doesn't the government have better things to do?"
Not since FDR it doesn't. Now the government can do EVERYTHING that the people want right now at the moment. The thinking since him is summed up nicely by what our "conservative" president said: "When somebody hurts, government has a responsibility to move."
If I recall correctly, a majority of the readership does use MS Windows, you know.
I'd not be surprised if the percentage here that has assembled a computer from scratch is below 10.
Thank Kerry/Edwards, both the trial lawyer side and the anti-trade side.
That's basically what the content producers are doing: so many girls get surgically altered to look the same.
So why do you read slashdot if you can't handle "zealotry"?
Computers haven't "mastered" chess in the sense that heuristics or rules have improved their play enough. The key ingredient is the brute-force search.
That's why IBM built Deep Blue, to show off their hardware doing the searches.
The 19x19 board of a standard go game combined with the fact that a play on most points is legal at any time basically rule out such searches.
They would smartly ignore the outcome of any vote whose implementation would expose them to legal problems. Or does Debian indemnify them?
OK, what is the developer body exactly going to do to override the ftp-masters from a decision not to distribute package X? Ask them to stop distributing Debian?
Er, what is the Project Leader exactly going to do to override the ftp-masters from a decision not to distribute package X? Ask them to stop distributing Debian?
Or hope Leonard Nimoy is in town doing a show.