4 ms·

In the very long run I'd hope we get sane intellectual property law: Software and logic circuitry is mathematics and should be unpatentable and trade secret is

In the very long run I'd hope we get sane intellectual property law: Software and logic circuitry is mathematics and should be unpatentable and trade secret is about the only protection for software/firmware/hardware; copyright terms shortened to the actual window of profitability (5-10 years) and only applying to "business logic". Nothing else makes much sense in the modern world; standards and interoperability benefit everyone to such an extent and change happens so rapidly that the majority of existing IP protection duration only harms historians.

Expurple 1y ago
Yeah, copyleft has always been just a hack to cope with the current legal framework
eddythompson80 1y ago
> and only applying to "business logic" One person's business is another's platform.
- benlivengood 1y ago
  That's why I used the scare quotes; I don't have a hard and fast rule here for what's legitimate market-making software value and what's just rent-seeking. I think that much of the core features in Desktop Photoshop-style products or video games probably requires legitimate short copyright, for example. I don't think copyrighting a plugin interface or header files or hardware drivers makes any sense, unless there's significant creative work like e.g. the portions of GPU drivers that trade off appearance and speed in novel ways.
- bitwize 1y ago
  The AS/400 (now IBM i) platform has a neat feature: all application software is compiled into a sort of bytecode called TIMI, for Technology Independent Machine Interface. The use of TIMI is completely transparent to developers and is implemented at an OS level; you as a programmer do not get access to the underlying instruction set. When a program is run, if the OS does not detect a native-code "shadow" binary for the program, it will AOT-compile it from the program's TIMI code before running it. Among other things, this allowed IBM to convert their systems from AS/400 CISC to 64-bit POWER-architecture in one swift yank of the tablecloth, with all application software running 100% backward-compatibly on the new architecture. But that's not the reason why TIMI was implemented. TIMI was implemented to fulfill an antitrust consent decree, under which IBM agreed to unbundle IBM hardware from software. But they still wanted to ship an OS with each system! So they declared that the OS was "firmware" and "microcode", hence part of the hardware, despite being loaded and booted from disk like any other OS. Anything considered "software" for the platform was written in TIMI. So here we indeed have a bright-line distinction between OS and application code; between platform and business logic. Such a sharp definition is pretty rare in the industry.
rhelz 1y ago
There can never be a sane intellectual property law, if by "sane" you mean reasonable and/or free from negative consequences. Imagine you live in the star trek universe, and we have those replicator machines which will happily deliver as much of anything to you as you wish to get. Now imagine trying to come up with some "sane property laws" to exclude people from using them. What would even be the point of trying? How would any such attempt be anything more than arbitrarily giving one class of people unjustifiable power over another class of people? We are actually in that very position with the fruits of intellectual labor. Just because one person is using a program, or an algorithm, or a theorem, that doesn't prevent anybody else from also using it. So any mechanism for prohibiting somebody from using a program--which is to say, any mechanism to turn a program into property--is going to be globally suboptimal. It is going to arbitrarily harm one class of people so that another class of people can benefit. The genius of the GPL is that it it gets this. The miracle of the GPL is that has found a way to give us something like a replicator machine even in this ultra-capitalistic society.
- throwawayqqq11 1y ago
  Your star trek example is cute but misses one important point: cost. In ST there is apparently an infinite energy source running these replicators, so almost no cost. For any software project, developmemt and maintanenace costs time/money, so anyone replicating your invention or contributing to your project requires time/money(/expertise as a derivative). That's what the GPL doesnt get and what scares me alittle about the future of the linux foundation. Imagine Torvals gone and only highly payed corporate devs maintaning the linux kernel and worse, controlling the foundation. If a user hostile descision is made and the nerd outcry is shacking the force, what are they supposed to do? Forking and maintaning their own kernel in competition with high velocity veterans that just boil the frogs slow enough? I cant imagine this succeeding. Just look at the slowly shrinking market share of BSD. https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/os-bsd https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/os-bsd Or the very uneven fight between MS Office and LibreOffice.
  - rhelz 1y ago
    // In ST there is apparently an infinite energy source running // Think about a server farm, which rents out cpu time for linux servers. Sure, you have to play for energy, land, and labor. But are you saying that somehow implies that linux would have to be BSD licensed instead of GPL licensed? I agree, energy, land, and labor are things which we don't have infinite supplies of, and therefore we need some way to ration them and distribute them efficiently. But I don't see what bearing this has on software licensing. // If a user hostile descision is made // Yeah, I don't see what this has to do with BSD vs. GPL or any other software license. I mean, Microsoft has been "boiling the water" forever. // cant imagine this succeeding. Just look at the slowly shrinking market share of BSD. // So the answer is not releasing things under the GPL? I don't quite follow the argument here, would you care to clarify?
steve1977 1y ago
One could argue that business logic is mathematics as well.

Expurple 1y ago

Yeah, copyleft has always been just a hack to cope with the current legal framework

eddythompson80 1y ago

> and only applying to "business logic" One person's business is another's platform.

benlivengood 1y ago
That's why I used the scare quotes; I don't have a hard and fast rule here for what's legitimate market-making software value and what's just rent-seeking. I think that much of the core features in Desktop Photoshop-style products or video games probably requires legitimate short copyright, for example. I don't think copyrighting a plugin interface or header files or hardware drivers makes any sense, unless there's significant creative work like e.g. the portions of GPU drivers that trade off appearance and speed in novel ways.
bitwize 1y ago
The AS/400 (now IBM i) platform has a neat feature: all application software is compiled into a sort of bytecode called TIMI, for Technology Independent Machine Interface. The use of TIMI is completely transparent to developers and is implemented at an OS level; you as a programmer do not get access to the underlying instruction set. When a program is run, if the OS does not detect a native-code "shadow" binary for the program, it will AOT-compile it from the program's TIMI code before running it. Among other things, this allowed IBM to convert their systems from AS/400 CISC to 64-bit POWER-architecture in one swift yank of the tablecloth, with all application software running 100% backward-compatibly on the new architecture. But that's not the reason why TIMI was implemented. TIMI was implemented to fulfill an antitrust consent decree, under which IBM agreed to unbundle IBM hardware from software. But they still wanted to ship an OS with each system! So they declared that the OS was "firmware" and "microcode", hence part of the hardware, despite being loaded and booted from disk like any other OS. Anything considered "software" for the platform was written in TIMI. So here we indeed have a bright-line distinction between OS and application code; between platform and business logic. Such a sharp definition is pretty rare in the industry.

rhelz 1y ago

There can never be a sane intellectual property law, if by "sane" you mean reasonable and/or free from negative consequences. Imagine you live in the star trek universe, and we have those replicator machines which will happily deliver as much of anything to you as you wish to get. Now imagine trying to come up with some "sane property laws" to exclude people from using them. What would even be the point of trying? How would any such attempt be anything more than arbitrarily giving one class of people unjustifiable power over another class of people? We are actually in that very position with the fruits of intellectual labor. Just because one person is using a program, or an algorithm, or a theorem, that doesn't prevent anybody else from also using it. So any mechanism for prohibiting somebody from using a program--which is to say, any mechanism to turn a program into property--is going to be globally suboptimal. It is going to arbitrarily harm one class of people so that another class of people can benefit. The genius of the GPL is that it it gets this. The miracle of the GPL is that has found a way to give us something like a replicator machine even in this ultra-capitalistic society.

throwawayqqq11 1y ago
Your star trek example is cute but misses one important point: cost. In ST there is apparently an infinite energy source running these replicators, so almost no cost. For any software project, developmemt and maintanenace costs time/money, so anyone replicating your invention or contributing to your project requires time/money(/expertise as a derivative). That's what the GPL doesnt get and what scares me alittle about the future of the linux foundation. Imagine Torvals gone and only highly payed corporate devs maintaning the linux kernel and worse, controlling the foundation. If a user hostile descision is made and the nerd outcry is shacking the force, what are they supposed to do? Forking and maintaning their own kernel in competition with high velocity veterans that just boil the frogs slow enough? I cant imagine this succeeding. Just look at the slowly shrinking market share of BSD. https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/os-bsd https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/os-bsd Or the very uneven fight between MS Office and LibreOffice.
- rhelz 1y ago
  // In ST there is apparently an infinite energy source running // Think about a server farm, which rents out cpu time for linux servers. Sure, you have to play for energy, land, and labor. But are you saying that somehow implies that linux would have to be BSD licensed instead of GPL licensed? I agree, energy, land, and labor are things which we don't have infinite supplies of, and therefore we need some way to ration them and distribute them efficiently. But I don't see what bearing this has on software licensing. // If a user hostile descision is made // Yeah, I don't see what this has to do with BSD vs. GPL or any other software license. I mean, Microsoft has been "boiling the water" forever. // cant imagine this succeeding. Just look at the slowly shrinking market share of BSD. // So the answer is not releasing things under the GPL? I don't quite follow the argument here, would you care to clarify?

steve1977 1y ago

One could argue that business logic is mathematics as well.