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People who do math (in a large sense that includes programming) often have a streak of Platonic realism: the idea that ideas are less invented than discovered.

by celoyd 16y ago

People who do math (in a large sense that includes programming) often have a streak of Platonic realism: the idea that ideas are less invented than discovered. Lots of important code boils down to identities: a^0.5 == sqrt(a) == (b such that b×b == a) == (a certain line of x86 assembler) == (a certain line of python) Or equivalences: Turing machine == lambda calculus == Java Virtual Machine == Haskell == Conway’s game of life == Excel Or other relations: worst-case runtime of X ≤ worst-case runtime of Y The notion of owning necessary relationships between concepts is at best problematic. It’s not helped by the fact that a lot of pretty obvious ideas get protection. The first one that comes to mind is US patent 4941193, which covers doing fractal image compression in the way that any competent programmer hearing the phrase “fractal image compression” would immediately imagine. There’s no incentive to license that kind of patent to the little guys, and the little guys don’t want to do the paperwork anyway, so a lot of things like fractal compression have stagnated because someone owns the predicate that images are often self-similar. This is obviously not the whole story. There are benefits to society, and specifically to programmers, from moderate IP protection. But I think it’s is a reasonable answer to your question. The default attitude for hackers seems to be that anyone should be able to implement anything in the literature for any purpose. If you have the technical ability to circumvent what you see as immoral restrictions on knowledge of the structure of the world, you’re likely to do it. (I’m not trying to argue for this view in this comment, only to point it out.)

jacobn 16y ago
The original question seemed to pertain more to copyright than to patents - the patentability of software is very much debatable, but the copyrightability of the works of science/art/cobbled together messes that we make seems pretty clear?
- celoyd 16y ago
  I’m not an IP scholar, but my impression is that patents and copyright have basically the same intent; the only big difference is that patents are for methods and copyrights are for expressions. Where you draw the line between methods and expressions, or discovered and invented things, depends on how much you like Plato’s style of thinking. We can imagine people on either extreme of realism/idealism arguing (A) that 1 = 1 is an invention of our mathematical system, or (B) that Girl with a Pearl Earring is merely the discovery of the pre-existing fact that that pattern of paint is pleasing. Likewise, as things stand now, I can copyright a map. There’s an obvious argument against this: I didn’t make what the map shows, and I can’t own the fact that land is the shape it is. And an obvious argument for it: it took real work to research, design, and produce, and this deserves a reward. I think that hackers generally tend to come down further on the first argument’s side than most people do.
  - carussell 16y ago
    it took real work to research, design, and produce, and this deserves a reward. That's not necessarily the US's position on copyright, either. See Bridgeman v. Corel.

by celoyd 16y ago

jacobn 16y ago

The original question seemed to pertain more to copyright than to patents - the patentability of software is very much debatable, but the copyrightability of the works of science/art/cobbled together messes that we make seems pretty clear?

celoyd 16y ago
I’m not an IP scholar, but my impression is that patents and copyright have basically the same intent; the only big difference is that patents are for methods and copyrights are for expressions. Where you draw the line between methods and expressions, or discovered and invented things, depends on how much you like Plato’s style of thinking. We can imagine people on either extreme of realism/idealism arguing (A) that 1 = 1 is an invention of our mathematical system, or (B) that Girl with a Pearl Earring is merely the discovery of the pre-existing fact that that pattern of paint is pleasing. Likewise, as things stand now, I can copyright a map. There’s an obvious argument against this: I didn’t make what the map shows, and I can’t own the fact that land is the shape it is. And an obvious argument for it: it took real work to research, design, and produce, and this deserves a reward. I think that hackers generally tend to come down further on the first argument’s side than most people do.
- carussell 16y ago
  it took real work to research, design, and produce, and this deserves a reward. That's not necessarily the US's position on copyright, either. See Bridgeman v. Corel.