Open source software and free software are not the same thing.
Open source software under a GPL-type license permits reuse of the open code if the reuser agrees to perpetuate the same restrictions downstream - essentially to also have open code that can be incorporated by anyone that follows. It might be free, but it might not. That has a little to do with copyright, but a lot more to do with the license.
Copyright does not prevent anyone from taking the code, and modifying it for their own interest, only from copying it and reselling it. Sufficient modification is itself a derivative work, and the new parts independently copyrightable. There are just two copyrights instead of one. The old parts would, indeed, be infringing if sold. But nothing in copyright demands that you release source code. Only the license does.
Even more modification, it's beyond derivative work, and copyright does not prevent that "anyone" from reselling it with new restrictions. Patent law can. However, patent law can also prevent someone who independently comes up with the same solutions from selling their own work. That's why patent law is indifferent to open source.
I'm not saying that patent law or even patents are good. They probably aren't.
Your argument, that software shouldn't be patented because you're patenting an algorithm is very popular. But it is lazy, and flawed.
There is no f-ing difference between a paper mechanical patent, a paper electrical patent, or a paper computer science patent. In every case, the author thought up the solution to a problem and used the piece parts and tools familiar to em - four-bar linkages, op-amps, or the discrete cosine transform, whatever. In practically every case, no one ever built anything or tried it out, and it wouldn't matter if they had. All of them are completely logical and mechanistic, and all of them can be reduced to formulas - that's what a patent claim is trying to do. Nobody is patenting math or logic - they are patenting how to use that math or logic in combination with other tools to solve problems. Chemicals and biologicals are a little different. That is a process of experimentation, and even more discovery than creation.
Are there real economic problems, oh yeah. Does the enforcement of a monopoly cause disparities between big and small players - yes, both ways, and miserably. But it's not software patents that are the problem - all patents are the problem.
Do you want to work and live in a commons, and give it away, for sheer joy joy joy, and believe that cooperation makes for better design - then patents are bad. Do you want to keep it all yourself, and get more more more, and believe that competition makes for better design - then patents are good. But don't pretend that there is any difference for software patents. They are all the same.
As for the last topic, the DMCA is just stupid and the product of political influence and cash. Everyone knows that. But it is not related conceptually at all.
Your girlfriend may have had experience with another system, not the one discussed here.
1. If you look at the picture of the thing that is linked from this thread, the lens is set too far to the side for there to be any film winding mechanism other than disk film - and they have not revived that!
2. There is no practical way to store an image digitally and then write to film in a camera that size. It would mean scanning the film past a line-emitter head, or projecting the image onto film, or something, and there is no room for that.
3. etc. various other clies
That being said, I'm sure there is or will be a competing system in which they just give you the CD-rom scanned in from the developed negative of a disposable camera.
Slashdot Mirror
Um, I think you're also a little confused.
Open source software and free software are not the same thing.
Open source software under a GPL-type license permits reuse of the open code if the reuser agrees to perpetuate the same restrictions downstream - essentially to also have open code that can be incorporated by anyone that follows. It might be free, but it might not. That has a little to do with copyright, but a lot more to do with the license.
Copyright does not prevent anyone from taking the code, and modifying it for their own interest, only from copying it and reselling it. Sufficient modification is itself a derivative work, and the new parts independently copyrightable. There are just two copyrights instead of one. The old parts would, indeed, be infringing if sold. But nothing in copyright demands that you release source code. Only the license does.
Even more modification, it's beyond derivative work, and copyright does not prevent that "anyone" from reselling it with new restrictions. Patent law can. However, patent law can also prevent someone who independently comes up with the same solutions from selling their own work. That's why patent law is indifferent to open source.
I'm not saying that patent law or even patents are good. They probably aren't.
Your argument, that software shouldn't be patented because you're patenting an algorithm is very popular. But it is lazy, and flawed.
There is no f-ing difference between a paper mechanical patent, a paper electrical patent, or a paper computer science patent. In every case, the author thought up the solution to a problem and used the piece parts and tools familiar to em - four-bar linkages, op-amps, or the discrete cosine transform, whatever. In practically every case, no one ever built anything or tried it out, and it wouldn't matter if they had. All of them are completely logical and mechanistic, and all of them can be reduced to formulas - that's what a patent claim is trying to do. Nobody is patenting math or logic - they are patenting how to use that math or logic in combination with other tools to solve problems. Chemicals and biologicals are a little different. That is a process of experimentation, and even more discovery than creation.
Are there real economic problems, oh yeah. Does the enforcement of a monopoly cause disparities between big and small players - yes, both ways, and miserably. But it's not software patents that are the problem - all patents are the problem.
Do you want to work and live in a commons, and give it away, for sheer joy joy joy, and believe that cooperation makes for better design - then patents are bad. Do you want to keep it all yourself, and get more more more, and believe that competition makes for better design - then patents are good. But don't pretend that there is any difference for software patents. They are all the same.
As for the last topic, the DMCA is just stupid and the product of political influence and cash. Everyone knows that. But it is not related conceptually at all.
Your girlfriend may have had experience with another system, not the one discussed here.
1. If you look at the picture of the thing that is linked from this thread, the lens is set too far to the side for there to be any film winding mechanism other than disk film - and they have not revived that!
2. There is no practical way to store an image digitally and then write to film in a camera that size. It would mean scanning the film past a line-emitter head, or projecting the image onto film, or something, and there is no room for that.
3. etc. various other clies
That being said, I'm sure there is or will be a competing system in which they just give you the CD-rom scanned in from the developed negative of a disposable camera.