Plenty of ideas are good in theory (ie, the interface) but don't seem to work out in practice (the implementation). I think this describes software patents. You can probably get me to agree that some form of software patents isn't a terrible idea in theory, but I don't think I'll ever agree that coming up with a good implementation is humanly possible.
It isn't just an implementation that needs tweaks, it is a horribly broken system, and the only reason it hasn't destroyed our economy (or what's left of it) is that, so far, only a relatively small number of patent holders abuse the system. Consider this - given how many over broad and blatantly obvious patents have been granted, every single app, website, and online business is in violation of numerous patents. How is that good for innovation? How is that fair? How is it beneficial that, as the JavaPosse pointed out, companies are now spending *billions* of dollars to acquire patents - not for the underlying technology, but to use as legal weapons? What is it going to take to convince people that what we have is beyond repair? There are plenty of real, relevant examples of how patents are hurting businesses and hurting innovation. There are no examples of software patents helping innovation, just a hypothetical inventor who won't bestow their brilliant idea (say, in app purchases?) on the world unless they get the right to sue anyone else who has the gall to do something similar. There is a counter-point against even that hypothetical argument - open source software. Almost every piece of technology you use owes at least some of its functionality to open source software, which is pretty much the opposite of patented software. I'm not an open source fanboy, and I certainly appreciate the role and value of proprietary software, but the fact that open source software is at the heart of so much we do is compelling evidence that innovation in software can (and does) happen on a breathtakingly large scale without the need for software patents. - Spencer On Aug 7, 9:58 pm, Cédric Beust ♔ <ced...@beust.com> wrote: > On Sun, Aug 7, 2011 at 5:59 PM, mP <miroslav.poko...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I wonder if religious people support patents more than non religious, > > primarily because patents are a weapon of the elite to further their > > own interests rather like the Bible and other so called holy books. > > Let's avoid this kind of sweeping statement. > > Basically, I think that software patents are an interface and the US > software patent system is a buggy implementation. One thing I have noticed > about buggy implementations is that they usually don't invalidate the > soundness of the interface they implement. > > -- > Cédric -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to javaposse@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to javaposse+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
