"Finally, I don't see why development once the invention has been patented should be included."
I'm guessing you are in the US where (I believe) you can patent up to a year after your idea becomes public. Here in the UK we have to patent before we make our idea public.
That means that I have to have the idea, prototype and then patent *before* I take it to backers to be sure that I'm not going to get screwed. For me, most of the investment in real development happens after the patent is filed.
That's a key difference between copyright and a patent - I can only copyright what's finished but I can patent something that is still only a prototype.
Don't get me wrong, I'd like to see patents fixed, but I don't think better bookkeeping is the answer: I think better patent examination to reject overly broad and obvious inventions is the only way... and no software patents at all!
"writing out the methods as do-nothing stub routines"
This can be dangerous. I once tracked down a nasty bug to a method which had been left as simply "return 0.0" (by someone else)
The really sad thing was that there was also a test program for the code... unfortunately it only checked that f(a) + f(b) = f(a + b)... which it did of course.
I think it's just too hard to pin down how much investment was required to produce a particular patent. Also, a lot of investment is made after the patent is applied for: further development, QA, marketing...
The problem with standing up for free software is that the vast, vast majority of people don't get it. To nearly everyone I know, "software" is the stuff that comes preloaded on their new PC. Microsoft is it as far as they are concerned. OK, they moan about stuff being hard to use and crashing, but they (think they) are far too busy to actually go out and find anything better.
... is the second thing I think of on hearing Jef's name (after The Humane Interface and before all the Canon Cat rumours I heard when I worked for the Japanese).
I agree about formats. Closed formats will die sooner or later (sooner I hope) because people will realise that you can't "own" something that is stored in something that someone else owns - and maybe you wont be able to even use it one day either.
New formats are just too easy to create. OK, they may not be the "best" format, but I'd take a directory full of PPMs over a WMV file any day...
Slashdot Mirror
"I know Steve Jobs is a god." ???
This is a harder problem than many people here seem to think. PARC have been working on this stuff for a long time to get it this robust.
Shame it's still a solution looking for a problem...
I'm guessing you are in the US where (I believe) you can patent up to a year after your idea becomes public. Here in the UK we have to patent before we make our idea public.
That means that I have to have the idea, prototype and then patent *before* I take it to backers to be sure that I'm not going to get screwed. For me, most of the investment in real development happens after the patent is filed.
That's a key difference between copyright and a patent - I can only copyright what's finished but I can patent something that is still only a prototype.
Don't get me wrong, I'd like to see patents fixed, but I don't think better bookkeeping is the answer: I think better patent examination to reject overly broad and obvious inventions is the only way... and no software patents at all!
This can be dangerous. I once tracked down a nasty bug to a method which had been left as simply "return 0.0" (by someone else)
The really sad thing was that there was also a test program for the code... unfortunately it only checked that f(a) + f(b) = f(a + b) ... which it did of course.
I think it's just too hard to pin down how much investment was required to produce a particular patent. Also, a lot of investment is made after the patent is applied for: further development, QA, marketing...
The problem with standing up for free software is that the vast, vast majority of people don't get it. To nearly everyone I know, "software" is the stuff that comes preloaded on their new PC. Microsoft is it as far as they are concerned. OK, they moan about stuff being hard to use and crashing, but they (think they) are far too busy to actually go out and find anything better.
I hope someone at the Raskin centre knows the answer to this http://jef.raskincenter.org/humor/alien_arithmetic .html
, or was it just a hoax all along :-(
I agree about formats. Closed formats will die sooner or later (sooner I hope) because people will realise that you can't "own" something that is stored in something that someone else owns - and maybe you wont be able to even use it one day either. New formats are just too easy to create. OK, they may not be the "best" format, but I'd take a directory full of PPMs over a WMV file any day...