Seems logical that a venture capitalist would see the absurdity in software patents.
Is it? Patents protect profits. If a VC invests in a company that has patented their tech and the product is a hit, the patents would definitely prevent predatory competitors (like MS) from eating a big, fat slice of the profits. So it is illogical for a VC to not support patents unless he is investing in a product that is not very innovative.
To make a car analogy of the ridiculous suggestions of these VCs: "car accidents cause death and injury. Therefore cars should be banned." Software patents should not be banned. Instead they should be made more stringent to prevent creation of "junk patents" and accidental infringement that the VCs are complaining about.
Software patents are a vital requirement to allow for the survival of startups from predatory competitors and as such must be allowed as they are allowed in other fields of technology. Why the heck should software companies not get the same protection as hardware companies?
You can't copyright an engine. You can only copyright artistic works, like books, movies or paintings.
Wrong again, any creative work can be copyrighted. Or are you one of those soulless corporate drones who thinks technical work is only performed to satisfy customer needs and earn a paycheck, but not creative?
No, all software is not obvious and easy. But very little of it is creative;
And those little creative bits are mighty important to the success of any product, so as to need patent protection from predatory competitors who want to piggyback profits off someone else's hard work.
Since the function and behavior of an engine can be represented mathematically, why was the engine granted a patent when it was created, since math is not patentable?
Presumably, because it is not the function and behaviour of an engine that's patented, but the specific method to achieve that function and behaviour (what parts are used, what materials they consist of, how they are put together, etc).
Wrong, you are describing a copyrighted engine, which is quite easy for a competitor to clone without breaking the law, which is why inventors seek patents. A patented engine is much broader than a copyrighted engine. So, it wouldn't matter what cylinder arrangement you used, what the method of fuel injection is used, what parts you used. If you were to use ANY of the below, you would be infringing:
fuel and air, ignited by some means
a cylinder where fuel is ignited to generate energy
a crank shaft to output energy to the transmission
IMO, it's not obvious how you use mechanical parts to, say, increase the fuel injection by 3% for every degree below optimum temperature of the motor. There must be a number of non-obvious ways to do it using different mechanical parts and different materials.
Yes, but such an invention still depends and infringes on the original engine patent, which must be licensed if not expired.
But it IS obvious how to do the same thing in software. You can do it with a formula, with a series of if-then statements, with a switch statement, with a table, or some other programming construct, but all these methods are obvious once you've defined the problem.
If it were so obvious and easy, software tools and algorithms would have long ago reached a state of perfection/saturation and you would see no more change, except perhaps graphics style in today's products, and programmers would be out of jobs. But that is not case, newer products are usually more innovative than the previous ones. Therefore, your statement that all software is obvious and easy is false.
While individual software statements like if-then and assignment are easy, the large, patentable concepts connecting thousands of such statements together is neither easy, nor obvious.
The use of software in a control system is so old that it is probably not patentable on its own.
You fail to grasp the core abstract argument: the algorithm (mechanism) for engine control using mechanical means is patentable. Then why is engine control using software not patentable since the concepts are the same?
I'm trying to express that all inventions are algorithms at their core. They use a network of components that work step-by-step, like an algorithm, to achieve the desired result.
Think of C, C++, VHDL, Verilog, mechanical components as various programming languages and platforms. You call software inventions algorithms, electronic inventions state machines and mechanical inventions mechanisms. But in essence they are all the same, i.e., subroutines, state machines and mechanical machines are all implementation of mathematical algorithms. The algorithm spec of a car engine is:
Since the function and behavior of an engine can be represented mathematically, why was the engine granted a patent when it was created, since math is not patentable?
Software patents are stupid, eh? Let's take a car analogy. Before software was widely used, the http://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Engine_control_unit/Engine Control Unit (ECU) mechanism (algorithm) to control ignition, air and fuel mixture was implemented using patented mechanical and pneumatic sensors and actuators. Nowadays, ECUs are implemented using software and CPUs. Can you tell me why the mechanical ECU should be patentable, but the software ECU not? Calling the software ECU unpatentable is stupid, IMO.
The stupidity of the US patent system has now spread like the virus it is here.
As opposed to the stupidity of OSS, where smart-as-hell programmers make $0 for their work while sysadmins and support people and companies like RedHat rake in $$$$$? We don't want a retarded, evil communistic world where programmers and inventors make nothing while sysadmins and support people make money. Sorry but mathematically speaking, this should be structure of money paid for work:
patent > design > programming > testing > support
Difficult, rare and creative work like patents should obviously be worth more than something any programmer can do. Therefore, an inventor should be paid more than rest of the staff.
A lot of my work involves formal logic and methodology and I can't wait for the day when I'll publish a scientific paper that unbeknown to me infringes on some patent and then get sued for it. If this software patent idiocy continues, it will be impossible to teach any higher mathematics at university in 200 years from now without violating someone's patents
The problem of accidental infringement (and patent trolls) can be somewhat rectified by making the "non-obvious" component of a software patents more stringent. That is, a glorified swap algorithm written in convoluted legalese should not be granted a patent. If a dozen people accidentally re-invent an algorithm within a short period of time, the patent is obvious and should not have been granted in the first place.
If the problem of obvious patents were to be somehow solved, it would be a win-win for people both for and against software patents, since patents were designed to prevent willful infringement, not accidental use.
The "it protects the little guy" notion was just a means of silencing the opposition. Patents only protect little guys in theory. In practice the little guys don't have enough money to litigate in defense of their patents, and wind up losing them anyway.
Not sure if that's 100% true. Several attorneys will work for free, provided they get a percentage of the settlement if they sue and win against the infringing party. If there's money to be made, no smart attorney will refuse to handle the case.
The fact that (for software) copyright is "less broad" than patents is (IMHO) a GOOD thing.
Only if you take the view that consumers are somehow magically more important than people who manufacture and provide goods to them. Without patents, the inventor of this hammer may not even bother spending months, years and thousands of dollars introducing his product to the market. He knows he will get ripped off by copycats who have more capital and marketing experience. So he'll give up and the invention won't reach the market at all and that would be a BAD thing.
Is that because you'll never create anything worthy of a patent? Or because you like to undersell yourself and give the value of your efforts to your boss or your customers?
Software is already copyrightable; there's no need for it to be patentable as well
People who say that usually don't understand the difference between copyright and patents. Copyright protection is weak because it protects only the exact representation of the product. Patents, however, are much broader and protect the entire concept behind the idea. Think of it this way: if you copyright a wooden handle hammer, I can defeat it with a metal handled hammer. But if you were to patent the concept of a hammer, it would be harder/impossible for copycats to eat your marketshare for hammers.
Because an algorithm/piece of software is essentially just a mathematical formula. And formulae are not patentable.
Not always. Sometimes software is just connections from widget Foo to Bar and from Bar to FBar, just like many mechanical or electrical inventions. Just because such connections are represented in code that looks vaguely like mathematics does not make it a formula, let alone mathematics. Most software patents fall into this connection-based category and not the math category. Math category algorithms are created by smart PhDs with deep understanding of computers and math: eg: quicksort, bubblesort, etc.
Your garden variety software inventions has little to do with math. Rather it consists of "how to do X" by connecting existing widgets in interesting ways.
software runs off math. So no, software should not be patentable. It's not a sequence of 1's and 0s, it's binary math.
Software, like engineering, is applied math. Therefore it should be patentable, just like all engineering inventions. Real (theoretical) math is published in textbooks or papers.
Sorry, but software is a tangible machine than runs off another tangible machine called the CPU.
Wrong. Look up the concept of Turing Machines for starters.
But can your precious Turing machine allow you to edit and print a simple word document? No, because it is abstract. You need a real CPU machine and another real software machine for word processing. According to your magical theory of Turing Machines, if I were to take a real hardware machine invention, and represent it with software, instead of plastic and metal, it would magically transform into mathematics. The software you use everyday is not pure math, rather the application of math, and application of math to build technology is engineering. Since software is also technology, but pure math is not, software should be patentable. Let's face it, your regular C statement: "x = y + n;" won't be printed in any textbook because it is an application of math rather than math itself. The distinction is subtle, though obvious.
Therefore, software should be patentable, just as electronics hardware is. After all, today's patentable electronics hardware is developed using VHDL (like Pascal/Ada) or Verilog (C). So why should software be discriminated against?
Then hardware shouldn't be patentable, not the other way around. Seems you failed not only your CS courses but Logic as well, huh.
Your weak, asinine insults bounce off like pebbles. It seems you, like many clueless people, are stuck in the mindset of the horse-cart era -- if I can't see it, touch it, it's not tangible. Wrong, it's time to upgrade your thinking. If some technology yields tangible results, then it is not abstract, it is very, very real. Abstract mathematical equations don't yield tangible results (plugging numbers into equations doesn't count, since that too is a machine, of sorts).
Name any machine or invention out there. Well, the function and operation of each and every one of those can in turn be converted into a set of equations. So, according to your retarded logic, something should be patentable only based on how to convert those equations into the final product. If the equation can be converted into a piece of wood, plastic or metal, then it should be patentable. If the equation can be converted into a bunch of logical gates and registers, it should be patentable. Ooh, but if the equation is converted into sequence of 1 and 0 bits on a hard disk/CD somewhere, then it is not patentable. How utterly stupid and backward minded is that?
The process and technologies to convert ideas into usable products is getting easier and easier by the decade. Very soon, we'll be able to build massive ships, organs and other machines with a set of instructions -- sofware. But the intellectual effort to generate those ideas is getting harder and harder (as all the easy ideas have already been done). Software, like all technologies, should be patentable, because
It yields valuable, tangible results
Requires massive, unique, intellectual effort -- more so than older technologies in many cases
Software is, fundamentally, a collection of data inputs and NAND logic
Well, everything can be modeled and represented as a collection of data, including planet earth and every single thing on it. In this case, the software is both a collection of data and a complex machine.
The data that represents the software is NOT patentable, it is copyrightable.
By that retarded logic nothing is patentable, since every machine invented by man can be represented as data on a computer somewhere -- every machinery involved in cars, factories, buildings, electronics etc.
Well for a start software already gets copyright, there's no need for double protection. Secondly, the whole patent idea seems a little flawed...
Fine, why don't you write a successful, profit-making software that has some new, innovative technology. I will just look at the disassembly of the innovative algorithms, figure out how they work and rewrite in another language and slightly change the structure/variable names etc. to avoid copyright infringement and make big bucks off your talent.
If you patent something that is intangible, that is against the intent of patents themselves. This is what is completely misunderstood.
Sorry, but software is a tangible machine than runs off another tangible machine called the CPU. Software is tangible because it is always stored in a sequence of 1s and 0s on some tangible medium such as a disc. Math does not operate any machinery that we know of although mechanical, electrical and computer engineers use math extensively to develop their technologies. Math does not require a CPU or any other technology to be useful whereas without a CPU, all software is useless.
Therefore, software should be patentable, just as electronics hardware is. After all, today's patentable electronics hardware is developed using VHDL (like Pascal/Ada) or Verilog (C). So why should software be discriminated against?
You make it sound like it's trivial to copy a patent worthy idea when it really isn't.
BS argument: patent worthy idea I: 1. Number of people that can convert patent I to X language code: millions. Rarer assets are automatically worth more than commonly available skills.
If an idea is interesting, it will be exceedingly difficult to copy the work that's rather the point.
LOL. The whole point of a patent is to provide a HOW-TO guide to create the final product after the patent expires -- exceedingly difficult patents won't be awarded in the first place. Patents are kinda like open source -- except the creator gets paid for a few years, unlike slaving away for free like OSS.
If you have never read the relevant patents but have managed to "copy" the relevant invention
then that should nullify the patent right then and there because what is happening now is that
the patent holder is TRYING TO STEAL THE PRODUCT OF YOUR INTELLECT.
There is no way to prove the latecomer did not intentionally or accidentally read the original patent. Besides, patents are first-come first-serve, just like business, real estate etc. You snooze, you looze.
There is nothing honorable, let alone interesting, about the idea.
Really? Are you willing to share your salary with random strangers on the street even though you performed work to earn the salary and they did not? Like it or not, there nothing wrong in keeping competitors that steal (leech) your ideas out of your market. They did nothing to deserve the profit. Patents are perfectly valid instruments to enforce that people who innovate make money instead of copycats.
3) Sue manufacturer on the grounds that they weren't safety scissors
4) Profit!
5) Try to create a new law forcing inventors to license their patents to competitors.
It may be okay to regulate having "Stop Saw" patented tech in every single power saw sold henceforth, but changing the law to affect all patents is robbery in broad daylight.
By his own logic, seems he should also be liable for not buying a saw using the "Saw Stop" technology. I hope the jury sees that.
This bullshit lawsuit and verdict is yet another bomb dropped to destroy patents or its benefits to inventors. Patents guarantee the right to prevent competitors from entering the market using your patented technology unless you license it to them. The logic behind that is simple: fewer the competitors, higher the profit and you invented the tech, they didn't. Therefore the inventors of "Stop Saw" are well within their rights to not license it to competitors in order to gain maximum profit (companies are built primarily for profit, not charity).
If the luser suer should have spent a couple of days doing his homework and spent the extra cash buying a safer product there would be no injury. I guess it worked out in the end, though, as he made a fortune by doing something stupid.
The right of inventors to profit from their invention by excluding competitors overrides the right to safety for some one-in-a-million random consumer.
Software consumers have been *winning* by having to pay less, at the expense of software creators *losing* by earning less, even if their product is superior to the OSS version. There is no free ride, someone has to pay. Creators earn less every time consumers pay less. Don't worry, at some point economics will catch up, and you'll be paying less, as well as earning less. So, in the long run (decades), you may end up losing. Because, with OSS type schemes, there will be fewer rich people in the world. That in turn will lower the average income of workers/businesses.
OSS is creating a form of slavery where individuals work only for the benefit of society, not themselves. The society then shares a few scraps of food equally among all people, so that high-output producers earn the same as stupid, lazy bums -- communism!. It's a govt conspiracy again, trying to push communism all around the world.
You see, in a capitalistic society, the middle class and the upper-middle class own a large amount of wealth. And the govt hates anyone but itself consuming a lot of the planet's resources. So by promoting OSS, and destroying copyrights and patents, it destroys and steals the wealth of these upper-middle class and middle class producers. I'm justified in calling it stealing, because OSS has yet to produce truly original products. They simply copy (steal) ideas from the paid products and give it away for free.
in that with real capitalism one couldn't have copyright and patent, since they're entitlements of monopoly granted by the state.
Bullshit, they are protections provided to the creators of products to prevent thieves from copying other people's work and making illegal profit or reducing the profit of the creators.
On the contrary. I consider the very concept of private property to be fundamentally evil.
You would make an excellent slave. If private property is evil, then your body (a form of possession and property) should not be private property as well. You should not have the monopoly in controlling your body, I should also be able to control it, making it perform tasks that benefit *me* instead of just you.
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Is it? Patents protect profits. If a VC invests in a company that has patented their tech and the product is a hit, the patents would definitely prevent predatory competitors (like MS) from eating a big, fat slice of the profits. So it is illogical for a VC to not support patents unless he is investing in a product that is not very innovative.
To make a car analogy of the ridiculous suggestions of these VCs: "car accidents cause death and injury. Therefore cars should be banned." Software patents should not be banned. Instead they should be made more stringent to prevent creation of "junk patents" and accidental infringement that the VCs are complaining about.
Software patents are a vital requirement to allow for the survival of startups from predatory competitors and as such must be allowed as they are allowed in other fields of technology. Why the heck should software companies not get the same protection as hardware companies?
Wrong again, any creative work can be copyrighted. Or are you one of those soulless corporate drones who thinks technical work is only performed to satisfy customer needs and earn a paycheck, but not creative?
And those little creative bits are mighty important to the success of any product, so as to need patent protection from predatory competitors who want to piggyback profits off someone else's hard work.
Wrong, you are describing a copyrighted engine, which is quite easy for a competitor to clone without breaking the law, which is why inventors seek patents. A patented engine is much broader than a copyrighted engine. So, it wouldn't matter what cylinder arrangement you used, what the method of fuel injection is used, what parts you used. If you were to use ANY of the below, you would be infringing:
Yes, but such an invention still depends and infringes on the original engine patent, which must be licensed if not expired.
If it were so obvious and easy, software tools and algorithms would have long ago reached a state of perfection/saturation and you would see no more change, except perhaps graphics style in today's products, and programmers would be out of jobs. But that is not case, newer products are usually more innovative than the previous ones. Therefore, your statement that all software is obvious and easy is false.
While individual software statements like if-then and assignment are easy, the large, patentable concepts connecting thousands of such statements together is neither easy, nor obvious.
You fail to grasp the core abstract argument: the algorithm (mechanism) for engine control using mechanical means is patentable. Then why is engine control using software not patentable since the concepts are the same?
I'm trying to express that all inventions are algorithms at their core. They use a network of components that work step-by-step, like an algorithm, to achieve the desired result.
Think of C, C++, VHDL, Verilog, mechanical components as various programming languages and platforms. You call software inventions algorithms, electronic inventions state machines and mechanical inventions mechanisms. But in essence they are all the same, i.e., subroutines, state machines and mechanical machines are all implementation of mathematical algorithms. The algorithm spec of a car engine is:
engine( input: fuel, air, ignition ) --> (output: crankshaft_rotation, exhaust)
Since the function and behavior of an engine can be represented mathematically, why was the engine granted a patent when it was created, since math is not patentable?
Software patents are stupid, eh? Let's take a car analogy. Before software was widely used, the http://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Engine_control_unit/Engine Control Unit (ECU) mechanism (algorithm) to control ignition, air and fuel mixture was implemented using patented mechanical and pneumatic sensors and actuators. Nowadays, ECUs are implemented using software and CPUs. Can you tell me why the mechanical ECU should be patentable, but the software ECU not? Calling the software ECU unpatentable is stupid, IMO.
As opposed to the stupidity of OSS, where smart-as-hell programmers make $0 for their work while sysadmins and support people and companies like RedHat rake in $$$$$? We don't want a retarded, evil communistic world where programmers and inventors make nothing while sysadmins and support people make money. Sorry but mathematically speaking, this should be structure of money paid for work:
patent > design > programming > testing > support
Difficult, rare and creative work like patents should obviously be worth more than something any programmer can do. Therefore, an inventor should be paid more than rest of the staff.
The problem of accidental infringement (and patent trolls) can be somewhat rectified by making the "non-obvious" component of a software patents more stringent. That is, a glorified swap algorithm written in convoluted legalese should not be granted a patent. If a dozen people accidentally re-invent an algorithm within a short period of time, the patent is obvious and should not have been granted in the first place.
If the problem of obvious patents were to be somehow solved, it would be a win-win for people both for and against software patents, since patents were designed to prevent willful infringement, not accidental use.
Not sure if that's 100% true. Several attorneys will work for free, provided they get a percentage of the settlement if they sue and win against the infringing party. If there's money to be made, no smart attorney will refuse to handle the case.
Only if you take the view that consumers are somehow magically more important than people who manufacture and provide goods to them. Without patents, the inventor of this hammer may not even bother spending months, years and thousands of dollars introducing his product to the market. He knows he will get ripped off by copycats who have more capital and marketing experience. So he'll give up and the invention won't reach the market at all and that would be a BAD thing.
Is that because you'll never create anything worthy of a patent? Or because you like to undersell yourself and give the value of your efforts to your boss or your customers?
People who say that usually don't understand the difference between copyright and patents. Copyright protection is weak because it protects only the exact representation of the product. Patents, however, are much broader and protect the entire concept behind the idea. Think of it this way: if you copyright a wooden handle hammer, I can defeat it with a metal handled hammer. But if you were to patent the concept of a hammer, it would be harder/impossible for copycats to eat your marketshare for hammers.
Not always. Sometimes software is just connections from widget Foo to Bar and from Bar to FBar, just like many mechanical or electrical inventions. Just because such connections are represented in code that looks vaguely like mathematics does not make it a formula, let alone mathematics. Most software patents fall into this connection-based category and not the math category. Math category algorithms are created by smart PhDs with deep understanding of computers and math: eg: quicksort, bubblesort, etc.
Your garden variety software inventions has little to do with math. Rather it consists of "how to do X" by connecting existing widgets in interesting ways.
It is bad news. You've just been brainwashed by the thousands of stories in the media about how patents are bad that bad news looks good to you.
Patents allow inventors to earn a living. How is making money by creating valuable things bad?
Software, like engineering, is applied math. Therefore it should be patentable, just like all engineering inventions. Real (theoretical) math is published in textbooks or papers.
But can your precious Turing machine allow you to edit and print a simple word document? No, because it is abstract. You need a real CPU machine and another real software machine for word processing. According to your magical theory of Turing Machines, if I were to take a real hardware machine invention, and represent it with software, instead of plastic and metal, it would magically transform into mathematics. The software you use everyday is not pure math, rather the application of math, and application of math to build technology is engineering. Since software is also technology, but pure math is not, software should be patentable. Let's face it, your regular C statement: "x = y + n;" won't be printed in any textbook because it is an application of math rather than math itself. The distinction is subtle, though obvious.
Your weak, asinine insults bounce off like pebbles. It seems you, like many clueless people, are stuck in the mindset of the horse-cart era -- if I can't see it, touch it, it's not tangible. Wrong, it's time to upgrade your thinking. If some technology yields tangible results, then it is not abstract, it is very, very real. Abstract mathematical equations don't yield tangible results (plugging numbers into equations doesn't count, since that too is a machine, of sorts).
Name any machine or invention out there. Well, the function and operation of each and every one of those can in turn be converted into a set of equations. So, according to your retarded logic, something should be patentable only based on how to convert those equations into the final product. If the equation can be converted into a piece of wood, plastic or metal, then it should be patentable. If the equation can be converted into a bunch of logical gates and registers, it should be patentable. Ooh, but if the equation is converted into sequence of 1 and 0 bits on a hard disk/CD somewhere, then it is not patentable. How utterly stupid and backward minded is that?
The process and technologies to convert ideas into usable products is getting easier and easier by the decade. Very soon, we'll be able to build massive ships, organs and other machines with a set of instructions -- sofware. But the intellectual effort to generate those ideas is getting harder and harder (as all the easy ideas have already been done). Software, like all technologies, should be patentable, because
Well, everything can be modeled and represented as a collection of data, including planet earth and every single thing on it. In this case, the software is both a collection of data and a complex machine.
By that retarded logic nothing is patentable, since every machine invented by man can be represented as data on a computer somewhere -- every machinery involved in cars, factories, buildings, electronics etc.
Fine, why don't you write a successful, profit-making software that has some new, innovative technology. I will just look at the disassembly of the innovative algorithms, figure out how they work and rewrite in another language and slightly change the structure/variable names etc. to avoid copyright infringement and make big bucks off your talent.
Sorry, but software is a tangible machine than runs off another tangible machine called the CPU. Software is tangible because it is always stored in a sequence of 1s and 0s on some tangible medium such as a disc. Math does not operate any machinery that we know of although mechanical, electrical and computer engineers use math extensively to develop their technologies. Math does not require a CPU or any other technology to be useful whereas without a CPU, all software is useless.
Therefore, software should be patentable, just as electronics hardware is. After all, today's patentable electronics hardware is developed using VHDL (like Pascal/Ada) or Verilog (C). So why should software be discriminated against?
BS argument: patent worthy idea I: 1. Number of people that can convert patent I to X language code: millions. Rarer assets are automatically worth more than commonly available skills.
LOL. The whole point of a patent is to provide a HOW-TO guide to create the final product after the patent expires -- exceedingly difficult patents won't be awarded in the first place. Patents are kinda like open source -- except the creator gets paid for a few years, unlike slaving away for free like OSS.
There is no way to prove the latecomer did not intentionally or accidentally read the original patent. Besides, patents are first-come first-serve, just like business, real estate etc. You snooze, you looze.
Really? Are you willing to share your salary with random strangers on the street even though you performed work to earn the salary and they did not? Like it or not, there nothing wrong in keeping competitors that steal (leech) your ideas out of your market. They did nothing to deserve the profit. Patents are perfectly valid instruments to enforce that people who innovate make money instead of copycats.
5) Try to create a new law forcing inventors to license their patents to competitors.
It may be okay to regulate having "Stop Saw" patented tech in every single power saw sold henceforth, but changing the law to affect all patents is robbery in broad daylight.
This bullshit lawsuit and verdict is yet another bomb dropped to destroy patents or its benefits to inventors. Patents guarantee the right to prevent competitors from entering the market using your patented technology unless you license it to them. The logic behind that is simple: fewer the competitors, higher the profit and you invented the tech, they didn't. Therefore the inventors of "Stop Saw" are well within their rights to not license it to competitors in order to gain maximum profit (companies are built primarily for profit, not charity).
If the luser suer should have spent a couple of days doing his homework and spent the extra cash buying a safer product there would be no injury. I guess it worked out in the end, though, as he made a fortune by doing something stupid.
The right of inventors to profit from their invention by excluding competitors overrides the right to safety for some one-in-a-million random consumer.
Software consumers have been *winning* by having to pay less, at the expense of software creators *losing* by earning less, even if their product is superior to the OSS version. There is no free ride, someone has to pay. Creators earn less every time consumers pay less. Don't worry, at some point economics will catch up, and you'll be paying less, as well as earning less. So, in the long run (decades), you may end up losing. Because, with OSS type schemes, there will be fewer rich people in the world. That in turn will lower the average income of workers/businesses.
OSS is creating a form of slavery where individuals work only for the benefit of society, not themselves. The society then shares a few scraps of food equally among all people, so that high-output producers earn the same as stupid, lazy bums -- communism!. It's a govt conspiracy again, trying to push communism all around the world.
You see, in a capitalistic society, the middle class and the upper-middle class own a large amount of wealth. And the govt hates anyone but itself consuming a lot of the planet's resources. So by promoting OSS, and destroying copyrights and patents, it destroys and steals the wealth of these upper-middle class and middle class producers. I'm justified in calling it stealing, because OSS has yet to produce truly original products. They simply copy (steal) ideas from the paid products and give it away for free.
Bullshit, they are protections provided to the creators of products to prevent thieves from copying other people's work and making illegal profit or reducing the profit of the creators.
You would make an excellent slave. If private property is evil, then your body (a form of possession and property) should not be private property as well. You should not have the monopoly in controlling your body, I should also be able to control it, making it perform tasks that benefit *me* instead of just you.