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Re: [LUG] GLUG - free and non-free



As a programmer in a modest way, but a user of rather than a contributor
to free software, may I say it's always seemed to me that software is
built by the same process as science or scholarship: by making use of
other people's advances and building on them, or as someone (probably
Isaac Newton) put it, standing on the shoulders of giants.  Those who try
to restrict the use others make of what they have developed, discovered or
created are simply obstructing progress.

Copyright was invented to protect works of (fine) art.  Its use to protect
programs is a bit accidental, for a program is applied art and more akin
to a machine than to a painting or a novel.  Copyright doesn't frustrate
the public benefit of a work of art, because in spite of copyright the
public can enjoy it and learn from it.  That goes for scientific works
too: the authors' copyright does not prevent the world from reading them
and learning.  However copyright in a program (if used to keep the program
in the sole custody of its author(s), rather than to keep it out of
anyone's sole control, as GPL does) _does_ prevent other programmers from
building on it, because the program is a machine, rather than a means of
communicating ideas.

Patents were invented for engineers at a time when developing a new
machine was slow and required heavy investment of money.  It was right in
those circumstances that the investor should be able to recoup what he'd
spent and a not excessive profit, _provided_ that in the end he didn't
frustrate the public benefit that would eventually follow from his
discovery.  That's wny a patent is strictly limited in time and requires a
total revelation of the new invention.  It is also why there is serious
debate about limiting the profits from some patents, e.g. those on drugs
that are needed in poor countries.

Am I right in thinking that patents are undesirable in software precisely
because the investment can be so _small_ in relation to the public utility
of the product ?

(What bothers me about that formulation is that it seems to belittle what
programmers do, and mock at their toil and concentration, which I do know
a bit about.  Still, it seems obvious that Linus didn't spend millions but
did make a kernel of enormous utility, and that sort of productivity just
isn't available in traditional industry.)

-- 
John Palmer
Preston near Weymouth, Dorset, England
e-mail:  johnp@xxxxxxxxxx (plain text preferred)
website: http://www.palmyra.uklinux.net/





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