Re: WebObjects become opensource ?
Re: WebObjects become opensource ?
- Subject: Re: WebObjects become opensource ?
- From: Mike Schrag <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 15 Sep 2009 17:02:28 -0400
If you were well-versed in ANY field, wouldn't your scenario equally
be true? If I'm a mechanic and you come up with a new engine design,
once I see what you've done and how you've done it, it's probably
pretty easy for me to make one ... I have no idea about Pharma, but I
presume that once a drug is released, it's probably pretty easy for
generics to replicate it. It does seem there should be some
consideration for that, and the patent system is the current answer to
that. Why should software be in some other category?
Also, re: MP3/JPEG (and things like RSA fall into this category too)
-- It's grunt work to do it once someone already has defined a spec,
or figured it out and you cheat off their paper, but it's no small
feat to come up with it in the first place. This is sort of the point,
it seems to me. Stealing the idea is always easier than making it
first, so we have patents to give incentive to people to bother coming
up with it first. There's obviously a failure window in the patent
system for the guy who truly independently develops it, but I don't
really see a way to close that gap -- i think it's a weakness you have
accept for the greater good of the imperfect system.
Mind you, I'm not even saying I'm for them at the moment -- I'm pretty
well on the fence about it. I'm certainly not for the way they are
currently implemented/granted in the US, but a bad implementation
doesn't necessarily make the entire concept wrong. Certainly in the
US, the current implementation of the system (both in granting and in
enforcement/litigation) greatly favors the big guy.
Out of curiosity, are you against traditional patents? I still can't
reconcile a meaningful difference -- i recognize there probably IS a
difference, but I just haven't been able to come up with a lucid
explanation of the difference.
ms
On Sep 15, 2009, at 4:42 PM, Anjo Krank wrote:
Sorry, can't resist :) From what I understand is that your supreme
court basically said that everything man-made under the sun should
be patentable. Recently even they finally came to their sense and
said it had to have some physical component.
The reason (as I understand it) is that patents are *not* for the
benefit of the holders. They are to get holders to disclose on their
stuff and to get a limited monopoly in return. This is to *promote*
innovation so that others can simply look at the patent and build
from that.
I find it pretty hard to imagine a concept in IT that is hard enough
for someone well-versed in the field (not IT, the special
application) that you can't come up with too once you see it can be
done. The reason being it's pretty cheap. Look at MP3 for example,
or JPEG. Once you got the idea that you *can* compress images or
sounds with some math crap, it's only grunt-work to do it. LAME took
about a year from a crappy patch-set to the final product.
Cheers, Anjo
Am 15.09.2009 um 22:19 schrieb Mike Schrag:
That example is tricky. Data structures can be considered
mathematical concepts
sorry .. lazy example .. i kind of intended that in the "objecty"
sense --- "data structure + algorithm". as i understand it, you
would not (at least in the US) be able to patent a data structure
(and technically not JUST an algorithm either). i believe you
patent the use of a particular data structure + algorithm to solve
a SPECIFIC problem.
ms
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