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I've always found the, uh, "IP-flexible" environment of Shenzhen to be a fascinating insight into what a fully open source world would look like. From what I've
by taneq 5y ago
I've always found the, uh, "IP-flexible" environment of Shenzhen to be a fascinating insight into what a fully open source world would look like. From what I've seen (please correct me if I'm wrong!) no energy is wasted on licensing or who you should ask for permission, because what are they gonna do to you? And little effort is wasted on locking things down, because they'll just crack it anyway. If you can make something you just do it, and then you ship it and hopefully make some money before someone copies it. And the rate of progress is incredible! Mostly because of the huge amount of hard work done by the people working in in the industry here, but also because there's less time wasted on these regulatory questions.
- fiddlerwoaroof 5y agoYeah, I think IP creates a local-maxima where it seems essential to have IP to have innovation. But, it’s not at all clear to me that it doesn’t simultaneously restrict innovation: all the locked down walled gardens, content silos and such make it significantly harder for people to recombine inventions in unforeseen ways.
- bcrl 5y agoPatents certainly cause unforeseen damage all the time, sometimes with damages with far too many zeros to be considered at all reasonable (like what happened to Blackberry a few years back). My personal belief regarding software is that if a skilled practitioner of the art can come up with a particular solution when given similar design constraints for solving a problem, the solution should not be considered novel and worthy of patent protection. Sadly this is not anywhere close to how patents actually work in the real world.
- makapuf 5y agoI'd agree with your definition of novel except for the addition "in a minimal timeframe or effort" because else of course you can replicate the same outcomes with about the same effort.
- api 5y agoThe rate of progress is fast, but how are the wages and opportunities? Does this progress translate into progress for the people doing it or is it a rat race to nowhere? There are many ways to goose growth and progress that are bad for people.