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As helpful as this may be, the real transformative code is often proprietary. As others have mentioned here, not everybody will use every reusable component, w

As helpful as this may be, the real transformative code is often proprietary. As others have mentioned here, not everybody will use every reusable component, whether it be because of ignorance, larger system incompatibility, or simply turf protection. We should look into solutions for intellectual property that are based on an information economy instead of an industrial economy. Personally, I think it would make sense (perhaps more for pharmaceuticals than software) to significantly shorten the time a patent is valid and/or strip the protection of monopolistic production rights, and instead allow the free market to sell the product at the lowest cost it can be made at, as long as there is a royalty fee. How the fee is determined, I'm not sure yet. Still, it's clear that our IP system is creaky, overcomplicated, and is tilted too far in the direction of big business, lawyers, and patent trolls, instead of the actual inventors and consumers.

notduncansmith 10y ago
Not sure why this comment was downvoted. I feel similarly about IP reform, and would love to see more discussion around how we can reward innovators appropriately for inventing things without artificially limiting the production of those inventions (via patent trolling, royalty fees, or any other mechanism). If the issue is that inventors want to get compensated for their inventions (to a degree commensurate with their value), but we don't want to limit what the market can produce, then maybe we could imagine an IP-buying group that paid a fair price to inventors and then made the IP available for general use among the financial backers of said group. One could imagine this as a governmental function (distributing purchased IP among taxpayers) or a corporation (s/taxpayers/shareholders), and it appears to me[0] either one could fit within the framework of existing IP law. [0] I am not a lawyer and have no idea if this is true.

notduncansmith 10y ago

Not sure why this comment was downvoted. I feel similarly about IP reform, and would love to see more discussion around how we can reward innovators appropriately for inventing things without artificially limiting the production of those inventions (via patent trolling, royalty fees, or any other mechanism). If the issue is that inventors want to get compensated for their inventions (to a degree commensurate with their value), but we don't want to limit what the market can produce, then maybe we could imagine an IP-buying group that paid a fair price to inventors and then made the IP available for general use among the financial backers of said group. One could imagine this as a governmental function (distributing purchased IP among taxpayers) or a corporation (s/taxpayers/shareholders), and it appears to me[0] either one could fit within the framework of existing IP law. [0] I am not a lawyer and have no idea if this is true.