If you mean software or web pages you're developing, svn or other source control really is worth the 20 minutes or so it takes to set up the first time. Even if you're the only developer on the project. Github makes it easy to access your git repositories from anywhere if you don't have a server or dyndns.
I didn't use source control for fifteen years because it seemed like it would be a hassle. When an employee set it up, I learned it reduces hassles.
BTW, I've enjoyed this discussion, thanks. Your points are more well though-out than many posts here on Slashdot. Although I believe you are mistaken, because the court explicitly said the case shouldn't be read the way you're reading it, the fact that you have actually read the case, or at least parts of it, is refreshing.
Thanks again. I look forward to discussing a future article with you.
PPS - Nice user name. I was very excited when 4db1aef6a2b79aba4f862285c2658348e083f2b7 put my name into the kernel.
Parker v. Flook and Gottschalk v. Benson both repeat several times that the application of mathematics in a new and useful way is patentable. The math function itself isn't patentable, so you can't patent cosine(), but a use for it is patentable, under both cases. Therefore you could (if it were useful and novel) patent a ranking algorithm which included the cosine of the number of keywords in the meta tags. Here's another quote from Flook, where they specifically say they their reasoning does NOT include computer programs generally:
Neither the dearth of precedent, nor this decision, should therefore be interpreted as reflecting a judgment that patent protection of certain novel and useful computer programs will not promote the progress of science and the useful arts, or that such protection is undesirable as a matter of policy.
You assert that Flook makes programs unpatentable even though Flook specifically says the opposite, because the court knew you might make that mistake. Are you saying that the justice who wrote the opinion misunderstood his own opinion while he was writing it?
> all software is composed solely of mathematical algorithms
Proven false by the fact that most professional programmers are incapable of even high school math. (Ask a dozen professional programmers to solve a quadratic equation. Most likely, NONE will be able to.) Software is the "useful application" of logic. Is that useful application is novel etc, it's patentable under both Flook and Benson.
> Imagine if you could copyright steel designs like you can copyright software code. Would there be any need for patents anymore?
Yes, absolutely. In some ways patent and copyright are opposites. In copyright, your song can say the same thing that Beyonce's song did, but in different words, and that's fine. Copyright protects a specific _expression_ of an idea. Copyright protects the parts (the words), and specifically does not protect the whole. Patent protects an inventive mechanism or process, not the parts of which it's composed.
Let's consider an invention we're all familiar with, one with a long-expired patent, the television. Under copyright, one could replace the copper wires with aluminium wires the exterior of bakelite rather than wood to get around the patent - it's a different expression of the same invention. Patent is supposed to allow a payoff for the R&D required to create the technology, not make the ripoffs look different. (Which is why design patents are a bad idea, I think, - trademarks cover that area).
> math, by very long-standing precedent, isn't patentable
That's actually a recent misconception. The long-standing precedent is "the LAWS of nature, including the laws of mathematics".
Gravity is a "law of nature", and therefore you can't patent gravity. That doesn't mean that you could patent a specific design for a counter-balanced elevator, which is an inventive USE of a the law of gravity. Conservation of energy is a law of nature, so you can't patent it. An automobile airbag is a patentable invention which uses conservation of energy.
In Parker v. Flook, 437 U.S. 584 (1978) the court articulated this fact "Even though a phenomenon of nature or mathematical formula may be well known, an inventive application of the principle may be patented."
Similarly, this is a law of mathematics: X * (a + b) = (X * a) + (X * b)
The above, being a "law of nature, including the laws of mathematics", is not patentable. On the other hand, a method of ranking web pages for relevance, reliability, and informativeness may well be an inventive use of various mathematical tools. The search engine ranking uses mathematical laws in the same way that an elevator uses the physical laws. It's the basic laws that are not patentable. Following, or using, the laws of physics the laws of thermodynamics, or the laws of mathematics doesn't make something unpatentable. This becomes plainly obvious when you try to apply that rule to decide what _IS_ patentable. You'd end up with:
Only inventions which do not follow the laws of nature may be patented.
The problem with that is pretty obvious, isn't it?
I'm skeptical of patents on inventions made of steel, and of gears. Almost anything that can be done with a machine made of steel could also be done manually. Therefore you can't patent a new invention that does the job in a new way.
Gears aren't a new a new invention, therefore a new invention can't be made with gears. Besides, gears just multiply force. Since you can't patent the basic concept ofmultiplication, that means you can't patent an invention that USES multiplication. Gears do multiplication, so you can't patent anything that uses gears.
WTF!?! What the hell does it matter what it's made of? How the heck does the novelty of an invention have ANYTHING to do with whether it does multiplication via gears, levers, or silicon chips!? If it's a NEW way of solving a problem, that's a new invention, whether it's made of wood, , silicon, or spinning rusty iron. If it's NOT new method, than it's not a NEW invention. Wtf it's made of doesn't have anything to do with it. I can't believe that's not completely obvious to everyone.
I'm skeptical of patents on inventions made of steel, and of gears. Almost anything that can be done with a machine made of steel could also be done manually. Therefore you can't patent a new invention that does the job in a new way.
Gears aren't a new a new invention, therefore a new invention can't be made with gears. Besides, gears just multiply force. Since you can't patent the basic concept ofmultiplication, that means you can't patent an invention that USES multiplication. Gears do multiplication, so you can't patent anything that uses gears.
WTF!?! What the hell does it matter what it's made of? How the heck does the novelty of an invention have ANYTHING to do with whether it does multiplication via gears, levers, or silicon chips!? If it's a NEW way of solving a problem, that's a new invention, whether it's made of wood, metal , silicon, or spinning rusty iron. If it's NOT new method, than it's not a NEW invention. Wtf it's made of doesn't have anything to do with it. I can't believe that's not completely obvious to everyone.
So you're claiming that last year Verizon paid it's top executives a billion dollars? That is in addition to the billion that they paid to the alien federation, correct?
Except you said the exact opposite. You said it would be GOOD for a steady, sustained speed. I pointed out the opposite - it doesn't do anything unless you slow down, then speed up soon after.
I'm sorry, I got you confused with someone else. I shouldn't have insulted you, but rather provided you with a bit of information.
Remember that story on Slashdot about two weeks ago about Apple choosing to "waste" money on solar? One small group of investors proposed that Apple should skip the expensive solar panels and instead use the less expensive utility power. It went to vote and 97% of Apple stockholders voted to put "be good to humanity" ahead of profit.
What a CEO or other officer isn't allowed to do is enrich THEMSELVES at the EXPENSE of the shareholders. That is, the CEO isn't supposed to spend $100,000 of shareholder money "buying" a pencil from the CEO's wife. Rather, the board and executives work for the shareholders, so they are supposed to represent the interests of the shareholders. Interests, plural.
The Apple shareholders decided that one of their interests was to be environmentally responsible, or at least make themselves feel like they were being green. I've been involved with corporations that represent all kinds of shareholder interests. I've been on the board of one corporation that specifically avoids making any profit, their mission is to be of service, a "charitable" mission. For another corporation where I was on the board, the #1 interest of the shareholders was providing a good place to work. (The employees were all shareholders).
I take it that's a no, you have no counter-example. You can't come up with a single time or place in history when government didn't have quite a few douchebags. 200 years ago Lord Acton said "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely". It's always been true (see Caesar). Yet your solution to reduce corruption is to give them MORE power.
They'd be sued in state court. The federal law, by its terms, does not override state law. Therefore the law is pretty much meaningless, though it is certainly well-intentioned.
> Libertarianism is basically about minimal government necessary for society not minimal society. But I guess you don't care.
Or, not understand, and think your comment makes no sense. To these people, society IS government. When they say "we should help people who need it", that in no way suggests that they would EVER consider buying diapers and milk for the struggling young mother in line behind them. To them, "we" means "Washington", so "we should help" means "Washington power brokers should take your money and give it to whomever". They really and truly don't know any distinction between Washington bullying vs. ethical behavior. Personal responsibility does not exist, so society=ruling class, to them.
ps, 2013 was the best year of the last ten. In 2012, their profit was less than 3% of their capitalization. In other words, of you invested $1,000, after a year you made $30. Woohoo, huge profits!
That's a 5% return on their $200 billion investment. Historically, savings bonds have often been better than that. Instead of the risks with running a huge business, they could have just bought bonds. Around 1999-2000 profits were twice that. So it's "record profits" only if by "record" you mean "lower than average" and "less than half of what it used to be".
ou live in a place where power doesn't corrupt? Where all the bureaucrats are competent and politicians are trustworthy? Where is that? I want to move there! At the very least, I'll buy my next car there and maybe get a credit card from there, because here you can't trust used-car sales people or credit card companies.
I joke, but seriously do you have a counter-example? Is there some place where cronyism isn't common? Somewhere in the United States even, since this discussion is about US policy?
You say I'm politically partisan. For which party, do you think? Are you under the impression that there's no cronyism in the Obama administration, or that there was none in Bush administration? Which party am I criticizing when I point out that US politics centers around loyalty, which results in cronyism?
Having the intellectual honesty to acknowledge that cronyism and corruption exists isn't condoning it, quite the opposite. IGNORING it is implicitly condoning it.
I didn't say that all regulation is bad. I said that we should be careful when proposing a list of new regulations, because that often goes wrong. You're absolutely right that people coming up with new laws INTEND for the effects to be good. The person who made it illegal to "affect emissions" didn't INTEND to make hybrid conversions illegal, but they did. Their intentions were good, but so what? Does that somehow magically undo the harm people cause, because the harm was caused by reckless neglect to think things through rather than malfeasance?
That could hardly be more wrong, but I don't think it matters. Telco profits were good 15 years ago. Since then - not so much. NOBODY has made record profits in the last six years because the economy is in the shitter, if you haven't noticed. (Modulo than a few campaign contributors who get paid directly by the government for maybe building solar panels some day.)
I don't see how that matters at all, though. If Verizon and AT&T want the rules changed, it's reasonable to expect them to adjust so that the changes don't cause problems for consumers. They've always been required to provide complete coverage, historically via copper wires. If they want to provide complete coverage via fiber, wireless, or coax instead that's fine. Dropping coverage may not be okay. Their profit or loss really isn't relevant to the discussion.
In some alternate reality, where gravity pushes things apart, power doesn't corrupt, most people are highly competent at their jobs, and water is dry your comment is relevant. In this universe, lawmakers are chosen by either by a popularity contest or by whoever has the most guns. Those in power stay there by the loyalty of their friends and they reward that loyalty. In this universe, people rise to the level of their incompetence. That's not a suggestion of how it SHOULD work, that's a law how things DO work, just like the law of gravity. Wishing otherwise doesn't change anything.
I understand where you're coming from. We should be careful, though. Back in the 1970s and 1980s we had tight regulations on long distance service and the government set the rate 40 cents per minute, which is $2 / minute in today's money.
When regulations were greatly reduced and changed to promote competition rather than regulation, prices dropped to 10 cents almost immediately and then even further.
That national experiment always comes to mind when people propose a new a list of government regulations and mandates to add. Sometimes less is more, we should be cautious of mandating too much, because that normally ends mandating stupid. You mentioned "service level changes". When I lived in Denver, it was illegal to reduce the emissions of my car, and reduce it's fuel consumption. Why? Because the area was one the federal government had identified as having too much pollution, so they required the state to inspect cars for "any modification that may affect emissions". A cleaner, more efficient exhaust system would emissions (reduce them), so it was illegal.
I suspect in certain areas that would indeed be costly for the telco. They'd have to balance that cost against the cost of laying and maintaining copper if they had to cover the entire county. Would they rather keep providing copper to the whole county, or switch to providing fiber or wireless to the county? Either way, the entire county has service.
That's not a bad idea. I don't know if you meant truly universal, or "full coverage in the affected area". I think it would be fine to allow an experiment in a town that has had the POTS infrastructure already wiped out, if the town has at least two competing VoIP or wireless carriers with full coverage in the town.
If it works okay in the town that had already lost POTS due to the hurricane, the same policy could be tried elsewhere. The phone company could drop POTS service in the county only if that leaves at least two providers of phone service with full coverage in that county. (Either two wireless, two, VoIP, or both).
In theory, that would be good for everyone. According to the phone company that would be good for them because they wouldn't be forced to use antique methods for rebuilding the network in the town, then maintain it. Consumers would be guaranteed multiple choices and therefore competition. We wouldn't need the government (in cooperation with the phone company) setting rates at 28Â / minute like we had with fully regulated phone service in the 1970s and 1980s because the guaranteed competition would mean companies compete on price and service.
In summary, you said: More users is good because it results in more users.
If adding one non-contributing user has no benefit other than attracting another, the total benefit is two users multiplied by zero contribution = zero.
This user DID contribute by filing a reasonably good bug report. As to any other users who may or may not think the change is good or bad, if they didn't exist, we wouldn't get their feedback, but we also WOULDN'T CARE what non-existent people think. Therefore, the "contribution" you think they make is null. They express an opinion that matters to them, but if they didn't use the software nothing would be lost.
Authoring software helps other, so that's a contribution to the community. Authoring documentation is a helpful contribution. Maintaining the community, such as moderating a forum, is a helpful contribution. Compiling packages for use with different distributions is a helpful contribution. Careful, organized testing is a contribution that helps others. Using the software helps noone but yourself - it's inherently selfish.
You may notice that of the five ways to contribute that I listed, only one requires programming knowledge. ANYONE who can use the software can also learn to use those same features in in an organized, comprehensive way - aka testing. Therefore the idea that "I can't contribute because I'm not a programmer" is false. Anyone saying that either a) isn't well informed about the process or b) is making excuses to be lazy.
It's plainly obvious that using some software doesn't help anyone other than yourself. Having read this post, you are not uninformed about the many ways you can contribute, starting today. So now, you are either headed off to find how you're going to contribute, or you've decided to be selfish. The excuse is gone.
Slashdot Mirror
If you mean software or web pages you're developing, svn or other source control really is worth the 20 minutes or so it takes to set up the first time. Even if you're the only developer on the project. Github makes it easy to access your git repositories from anywhere if you don't have a server or dyndns.
I didn't use source control for fifteen years because it seemed like it would be a hassle. When an employee set it up, I learned it reduces hassles.
BTW, I've enjoyed this discussion, thanks. Your points are more well though-out than many posts here on Slashdot.
Although I believe you are mistaken, because the court explicitly said the case shouldn't be read the way you're reading it, the fact that you have actually read the case, or at least parts of it, is refreshing.
Thanks again. I look forward to discussing a future article with you.
PPS - Nice user name. I was very excited when 4db1aef6a2b79aba4f862285c2658348e083f2b7 put my name into the kernel.
Parker v. Flook and Gottschalk v. Benson both repeat several times that the application of mathematics in a new and useful way is patentable.
The math function itself isn't patentable, so you can't patent cosine(), but a use for it is patentable, under both cases. Therefore you could (if it were useful and novel) patent a ranking algorithm which included the cosine of the number of keywords in the meta tags. Here's another quote from Flook, where they specifically say they their reasoning does NOT include computer programs generally:
Neither the dearth of precedent, nor this decision, should therefore be interpreted as reflecting a judgment that patent protection of certain novel and useful computer programs will not promote the progress of science and the useful arts, or that such protection is undesirable as a matter of policy.
You assert that Flook makes programs unpatentable even though Flook specifically says the opposite, because the court knew you might make that mistake. Are you saying that the justice who wrote the opinion misunderstood his own opinion while he was writing it?
> all software is composed solely of mathematical algorithms
Proven false by the fact that most professional programmers are incapable of even high school math. (Ask a dozen professional programmers to solve a quadratic equation. Most likely, NONE will be able to.)
Software is the "useful application" of logic. Is that useful application is novel etc, it's patentable under both Flook and Benson.
> Imagine if you could copyright steel designs like you can copyright software code. Would there be any need for patents anymore?
Yes, absolutely. In some ways patent and copyright are opposites. In copyright, your song can say the same thing that Beyonce's song did, but in different words, and that's fine. Copyright protects a specific _expression_ of an idea. Copyright protects the parts (the words), and specifically does not protect the whole. Patent protects an inventive mechanism or process, not the parts of which it's composed.
Let's consider an invention we're all familiar with, one with a long-expired patent, the television. Under copyright, one could replace the copper wires with aluminium wires the exterior of bakelite rather than wood to get around the patent - it's a different expression of the same invention. Patent is supposed to allow a payoff for the R&D required to create the technology, not make the ripoffs look different. (Which is why design patents are a bad idea, I think, - trademarks cover that area).
> math, by very long-standing precedent, isn't patentable
That's actually a recent misconception. The long-standing precedent is "the LAWS of nature, including the laws of mathematics".
Gravity is a "law of nature", and therefore you can't patent gravity. That doesn't mean that you could patent a specific design for a counter-balanced elevator, which is an inventive USE of a the law of gravity. Conservation of energy is a law of nature, so you can't patent it. An automobile airbag is a patentable invention which uses conservation of energy.
In Parker v. Flook, 437 U.S. 584 (1978) the court articulated this fact "Even though a phenomenon of nature or mathematical formula may be well known, an inventive application of the principle may be patented."
Similarly, this is a law of mathematics:
X * (a + b) = (X * a) + (X * b)
The above, being a "law of nature, including the laws of mathematics", is not patentable. On the other hand, a method of ranking web pages for relevance, reliability, and informativeness may well be an inventive use of various mathematical tools. The search engine ranking uses mathematical laws in the same way that an elevator uses the physical laws.
It's the basic laws that are not patentable. Following, or using, the laws of physics the laws of thermodynamics, or the laws of mathematics doesn't make something unpatentable. This becomes plainly obvious when you try to apply that rule to decide what _IS_ patentable. You'd end up with:
Only inventions which do not follow the laws of nature may be patented.
The problem with that is pretty obvious, isn't it?
I'm skeptical of patents on inventions made of steel, and of gears. Almost anything that can be done with a machine made of steel could also be done manually. Therefore you can't patent a new invention that does the job in a new way.
Gears aren't a new a new invention, therefore a new invention can't be made with gears. Besides, gears just multiply force. Since you can't patent the basic concept ofmultiplication, that means you can't patent an invention that USES multiplication. Gears do multiplication, so you can't patent anything that uses gears.
WTF!?! What the hell does it matter what it's made of? How the heck does the novelty of an invention have ANYTHING to do with whether it does multiplication via gears, levers, or silicon chips!? If it's a NEW way of solving a problem, that's a new invention, whether it's made of wood, , silicon, or spinning rusty iron. If it's NOT new method, than it's not a NEW invention. Wtf it's made of doesn't have anything to do with it. I can't believe that's not completely obvious to everyone.
I'm skeptical of patents on inventions made of steel, and of gears. Almost anything that can be done with a machine made of steel could also be done manually. Therefore you can't patent a new invention that does the job in a new way.
Gears aren't a new a new invention, therefore a new invention can't be made with gears. Besides, gears just multiply force. Since you can't patent the basic concept ofmultiplication, that means you can't patent an invention that USES multiplication. Gears do multiplication, so you can't patent anything that uses gears.
WTF!?! What the hell does it matter what it's made of? How the heck does the novelty of an invention have ANYTHING to do with whether it does multiplication via gears, levers, or silicon chips!? If it's a NEW way of solving a problem, that's a new invention, whether it's made of wood, metal , silicon, or spinning rusty iron. If it's NOT new method, than it's not a NEW invention. Wtf it's made of doesn't have anything to do with it. I can't believe that's not completely obvious to everyone.
So you're claiming that last year Verizon paid it's top executives a billion dollars?
That is in addition to the billion that they paid to the alien federation, correct?
Except you said the exact opposite. You said it would be GOOD for a steady, sustained speed. I pointed out the opposite - it doesn't do anything unless you slow down, then speed up soon after.
I'm sorry, I got you confused with someone else. I shouldn't have insulted you, but rather provided you with a bit of information.
Remember that story on Slashdot about two weeks ago about Apple choosing to "waste" money on solar?
One small group of investors proposed that Apple should skip the expensive solar panels and instead use the less expensive utility power. It went to vote and 97% of Apple stockholders voted to put "be good to humanity" ahead of profit.
What a CEO or other officer isn't allowed to do is enrich THEMSELVES at the EXPENSE of the shareholders. That is, the CEO isn't supposed to spend $100,000 of shareholder money "buying" a pencil from the CEO's wife. Rather, the board and executives work for the shareholders, so they are supposed to represent the interests of the shareholders. Interests, plural.
The Apple shareholders decided that one of their interests was to be environmentally responsible, or at least make themselves feel like they were being green. I've been involved with corporations that represent all kinds of shareholder interests. I've been on the board of one corporation that specifically avoids making any profit, their mission is to be of service, a "charitable" mission. For another corporation where I was on the board, the #1 interest of the shareholders was providing a good place to work. (The employees were all shareholders).
The first few times you posted that, people informed you of your mistake. By now, you know that isn't true. Yet you still say it about once a week.
Here's a riddle:
What do you call someone who goes around saying things that they know are untrue?
I take it that's a no, you have no counter-example. You can't come up with a single time or place in history when government didn't have quite a few douchebags. 200 years ago Lord Acton said "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely". It's always been true (see Caesar). Yet your solution to reduce corruption is to give them MORE power.
They'd be sued in state court. The federal law, by its terms, does not override state law. Therefore the law is pretty much meaningless, though it is certainly well-intentioned.
> Libertarianism is basically about minimal government necessary for society not minimal society. But I guess you don't care.
Or, not understand, and think your comment makes no sense. To these people, society IS government. When they say "we should help people who need it", that in no way suggests that they would EVER consider buying diapers and milk for the struggling young mother in line behind them. To them, "we" means "Washington", so "we should help" means "Washington power brokers should take your money and give it to whomever". They really and truly don't know any distinction between Washington bullying vs. ethical behavior. Personal responsibility does not exist, so society=ruling class, to them.
ps, 2013 was the best year of the last ten. In 2012, their profit was less than 3% of their capitalization. In other words, of you invested $1,000, after a year you made $30. Woohoo, huge profits!
That's a 5% return on their $200 billion investment.
Historically, savings bonds have often been better than that. Instead of the risks with running a huge business, they could have just bought bonds. Around 1999-2000 profits were twice that. So it's "record profits" only if by "record" you mean "lower than average" and "less than half of what it used to be".
ou live in a place where power doesn't corrupt? Where all the bureaucrats are competent and politicians are trustworthy? Where is that? I want to move there! At the very least, I'll buy my next car there and maybe get a credit card from there, because here you can't trust used-car sales people or credit card companies.
I joke, but seriously do you have a counter-example? Is there some place where cronyism isn't common? Somewhere in the United States even, since this discussion is about US policy?
You say I'm politically partisan. For which party, do you think? Are you under the impression that there's no cronyism in the Obama administration, or that there was none in Bush administration? Which party am I criticizing when I point out that US politics centers around loyalty, which results in cronyism?
Having the intellectual honesty to acknowledge that cronyism and corruption exists isn't condoning it, quite the opposite. IGNORING it is implicitly condoning it.
I didn't say that all regulation is bad. I said that we should be careful when proposing a list of new regulations, because that often goes wrong. You're absolutely right that people coming up with new laws INTEND for the effects to be good. The person who made it illegal to "affect emissions" didn't INTEND to make hybrid conversions illegal, but they did. Their intentions were good, but so what? Does that somehow magically undo the harm people cause, because the harm was caused by reckless neglect to think things through rather than malfeasance?
That could hardly be more wrong, but I don't think it matters. Telco profits were good 15 years ago. Since then - not so much. NOBODY has made record profits in the last six years because the economy is in the shitter, if you haven't noticed. (Modulo than a few campaign contributors who get paid directly by the government for maybe building solar panels some day.)
I don't see how that matters at all, though. If Verizon and AT&T want the rules changed, it's reasonable to expect them to adjust so that the changes don't cause problems for consumers. They've always been required to provide complete coverage, historically via copper wires. If they want to provide complete coverage via fiber, wireless, or coax instead that's fine. Dropping coverage may not be okay. Their profit or loss really isn't relevant to the discussion.
In some alternate reality, where gravity pushes things apart, power doesn't corrupt, most people are highly competent at their jobs, and water is dry your comment is relevant. In this universe, lawmakers are chosen by either by a popularity contest or by whoever has the most guns. Those in power stay there by the loyalty of their friends and they reward that loyalty. In this universe, people rise to the level of their incompetence. That's not a suggestion of how it SHOULD work, that's a law how things DO work, just like the law of gravity. Wishing otherwise doesn't change anything.
I understand where you're coming from. We should be careful, though. Back in the 1970s and 1980s we had tight regulations on long distance service and the government set the rate 40 cents per minute, which is $2 / minute in today's money.
When regulations were greatly reduced and changed to promote competition rather than regulation, prices dropped to 10 cents almost immediately and then even further.
That national experiment always comes to mind when people propose a new a list of government regulations and mandates to add. Sometimes less is more, we should be cautious of mandating too much, because that normally ends mandating stupid. You mentioned "service level changes". When I lived in Denver, it was illegal to reduce the emissions of my car, and reduce it's fuel consumption. Why? Because the area was one the federal government had identified as having too much pollution, so they required the state to inspect cars for "any modification that may affect emissions". A cleaner, more efficient exhaust system would emissions (reduce them), so it was illegal.
I suspect in certain areas that would indeed be costly for the telco. They'd have to balance that cost against the cost of laying and maintaining copper if they had to cover the entire county. Would they rather keep providing copper to the whole county, or switch to providing fiber or wireless to the county? Either way, the entire county has service.
That's not a bad idea. I don't know if you meant truly universal, or "full coverage in the affected area". I think it would be fine to allow an experiment in a town that has had the POTS infrastructure already wiped out, if the town has at least two competing VoIP or wireless carriers with full coverage in the town.
If it works okay in the town that had already lost POTS due to the hurricane, the same policy could be tried elsewhere. The phone company could drop POTS service in the county only if that leaves at least two providers of phone service with full coverage in that county. (Either two wireless, two, VoIP, or both).
In theory, that would be good for everyone. According to the phone company that would be good for them because they wouldn't be forced to use antique methods for rebuilding the network in the town, then maintain it. Consumers would be guaranteed multiple choices and therefore competition. We wouldn't need the government (in cooperation with the phone company) setting rates at 28Â / minute like we had with fully regulated phone service in the 1970s and 1980s because the guaranteed competition would mean companies compete on price and service.
In summary, you said:
More users is good because it results in more users.
If adding one non-contributing user has no benefit other than attracting another, the total benefit is two users multiplied by zero contribution = zero.
This user DID contribute by filing a reasonably good bug report. As to any other users who may or may not think the change is good or bad, if they didn't exist, we wouldn't get their feedback, but we also WOULDN'T CARE what non-existent people think. Therefore, the "contribution" you think they make is null. They express an opinion that matters to them, but if they didn't use the software nothing would be lost.
Authoring software helps other, so that's a contribution to the community.
Authoring documentation is a helpful contribution.
Maintaining the community, such as moderating a forum, is a helpful contribution.
Compiling packages for use with different distributions is a helpful contribution.
Careful, organized testing is a contribution that helps others.
Using the software helps noone but yourself - it's inherently selfish.
You may notice that of the five ways to contribute that I listed, only one requires programming knowledge. ANYONE who can use the software can also learn to use those same features in in an organized, comprehensive way - aka testing. Therefore the idea that "I can't contribute because I'm not a programmer" is false. Anyone saying that either a) isn't well informed about the process or b) is making excuses to be lazy.
It's plainly obvious that using some software doesn't help anyone other than yourself. Having read this post, you are not uninformed about the many ways you can contribute, starting today. So now, you are either headed off to find how you're going to contribute, or you've decided to be selfish. The excuse is gone.
That's a good point. Maybe someone will post it in the ticket.