Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-edu (243 mails)

[Michael Brown <mbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 12 Dec 2001, Paul Munro wrote:
> Ideas simply should not be copyrighted or patented. Information should
> be a free vehicle for the expansion and progression of freedom and the
> human race full stop; exploiting a consumers power to spend by tying
> up your "ideas" in a package is fine, and some may think this is
> reasonable, but when you then say that that same information is yours
> alone and cannot be "copied" neither in word nor deed--that's
> dangerous. If this was how early scientific leaders dealt with their
> findings and research results, we would all be living in extreme
> conditions. Information, in its raw form, should be entirely open.
> That same information should be exploitable by all and for all. To
> patent schemes or information or applications is wrong and
> antithetical to sharing and furtherance of society and even business.

I tend to agree with the general direction here.  Information should, by
default, be freely redistributable and modifiable.  This is taken into
account by current UK law: it is explicitly impossible to patent an
algorithm, mathematical formula or software, for example.

However, I do think that copyright works quite well in its current form,
at least in this country.  If I write a piece of software then it's mine,
in the same way that if I write a book it is also mine.  You are free to
re-use any ideas from my software; you are only restricted from copying
the actual code I have written in order to do so.

If I want to give my software away (which I do) then I can do so via the
GPL and be assured that copyright law will prevent anyone from ripping off
the code that I have written.

The patent situation is tending towards the ridiculous.  Patents are
allegedly designed to protect R&D investments, but this is clearly not how
they are used in practice.  Consider James Dyson - the cost of patenting
his invention through the years before production started nearly
bankrupted him.  Now consider IBM patenting a method for automatically
moving a search dialog when the search highlights a term hidden beneath
the dialog.  Patents are used by people who already have plenty of money
in order to make life difficult for potential competitors.  They do not
provide any realistic protection for the small inventor, or the company
that doesn't have the resources to employ a team of lawyers to enforce a
patent.

The current storm about digital rights management is, as far as I can see,
pretty much irrelevant because it's provably impossible to implement.  It
has about as much relevance as would a law passed to change the
acceleration due to gravity.  However, the possibility of software patents
becoming legal in this country is seriously worrying.

Just my 2p,

Michael