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When designing an algorithm, you pour hours upon hours into creation and testing. If the source is freely available, you basically hand this over to other peopl

When designing an algorithm, you pour hours upon hours into creation and testing. If the source is freely available, you basically hand this over to other people to copy. We would completely hamstring R&D in the private sector if we don't allow them to guard this secret. Now if govenerments actually posted money into basic R&D in collaboration with the private sector on the premises that the work will be public domain, this might not be a problem, but when they pay for it themself, it's foolish to belive they want to share in this market economy. I could see a model where all e.g. car manufactures collaborate on creating an ECU software company, they all pay to, but it requires ALL manufactures to participate, otherwise someone enter the party, without paying the entrance fee. It's a classic prisoners dilemma - if all play nicely, it's a net benefit for all of them, but if one doesn't it's a net loss for all. I would like a "Rights of ownership" define access to the source code, I just cannot see how.

mattmanser 10y ago
Hours upon hours is the problem, hours upon hours isn't very long. Putting a couple of days work into something isn't something that should be patent-able. It's practically obvious. I was thinking about this the other day, the basic problem with software patents is that almost all problems are trivial to solve as soon as you actually ask the question. It's just that there are so many questions in software engineering. Most programming problems are fairly easy to solve for a smart person. Many programmers have come up with virtually ideal solutions very quickly, people matching grep's search speed in days or came up with almost an identical shuffling algo as the ideal one in a couple of minutes. Until you have a storefront and logged in users, you can't ask the question "how can my users quickly buy something online", and come up with a one-click button. And so instead of being awarded for hard, complicated work that took months or years of man-effort, patents are being awarded for being the first to ask questions that are simple to solve with a few hours work.
- hvidgaard 10y ago
  When I said "hours upon hours" I was thinking about years of work to create or prove something. If you cannot protect and benefit from that work, private companies are not going to do it. We agree on the sad state of software patents right now, but it seems that there is some movement against it.

mattmanser 10y ago

Hours upon hours is the problem, hours upon hours isn't very long. Putting a couple of days work into something isn't something that should be patent-able. It's practically obvious. I was thinking about this the other day, the basic problem with software patents is that almost all problems are trivial to solve as soon as you actually ask the question. It's just that there are so many questions in software engineering. Most programming problems are fairly easy to solve for a smart person. Many programmers have come up with virtually ideal solutions very quickly, people matching grep's search speed in days or came up with almost an identical shuffling algo as the ideal one in a couple of minutes. Until you have a storefront and logged in users, you can't ask the question "how can my users quickly buy something online", and come up with a one-click button. And so instead of being awarded for hard, complicated work that took months or years of man-effort, patents are being awarded for being the first to ask questions that are simple to solve with a few hours work.

hvidgaard 10y ago
When I said "hours upon hours" I was thinking about years of work to create or prove something. If you cannot protect and benefit from that work, private companies are not going to do it. We agree on the sad state of software patents right now, but it seems that there is some movement against it.