Phill O'Flynn wrote:
>
> As a budding software developer, I find this copyright and
intellectual property
> topic increasingly tragic. Where does it end? Who doesn't copy ideas?
Didn't
> Microsoft develop Windows 3.1 by borrowing the GUI idea from Apple ( and
> subsequently squashing them). Now they want to protect themselves
from what they did
> to others. Or perhaps they want to continue to squash any other
alternative to them
> ( or better put "Resistance is futile"
Let me clarify things a little for those getting started in the
programming side of things.
There's three different things you need to care about, and they have
completely different impacts. Since there seems to be a little confusion
in your comments, let me clarify in simple points. These are
extraordinarily hand-waving definitions, but hold true for the most part.
1. Copyright.
- Don't cut and paste other people's code without asking them.
- Don't use someone else's module/API unless you agree to their terms.
Plagiarism fits mostly into here, but in the academic and media sense,
it's altered somewhat to...
- Cut and paste all you like but ALWAYS say where you got it from.
Open Source (in the extreme broadest sense of the term) is a massive
positive for you here, because it lets YOU make a legally enforcable
deal where you let other people copy your work, as long as you can copy
theirs back again if you want to.
Free Software extends this idea further, but in the most general
share-and-share-alike sense it's similar.
2. Trademark
- Don't steal someone's logo in a similar industry.
- Don't use someone else's name in a similar industry.
- Don't "sort of" do either of the above in a similar industry.
Basically, don't present yourself to the public in a way that the
average layman might get confused and think you are them. And even more
strictly, don't ever make money off the similarity.
Trademarks are why the Microsoft Pillow Factory on the Princes Highway
in Tempe (no really, this actually exists) is completely safe, while a
notional "Open Source Microsoftware" company or something that used the
"four colours" windows pattern could be in trouble.
3. Patents
While copyright and trademarks are quite clear and work pretty well,
patents are another story.
A patent, fundamentally, goes like this.
- You have an awesome idea that isn't obvious to anyone else.
Imagine you are the first person to invent gold plating.
- You can make a huge of money from it, as long as nobody else knows.
Imagine nobody has seen gold cups and forks except for solid gold ones
owned by kings and great figures, and now YOU can eat like a king for
only $199.90 per fork!
- So you go to huge lengths to keep it secret.
You never write down the chemical solution formula, and you guard
carefully the machines in sealed buildings and you make the machines so
only you can operate them.
- You die, and because of the extreme secrecy, your idea is lost to society.
This, obviously, is very very bad. Forget gold plating, imagine losing
the ability to make penicilin.
So society does a deal with the devil.
- Society lets you exploit your idea in the open, but do so AS IF you
had kept it secret.
So society enforces your "secrecy" (exclusivity/monopoly) and lets you
make even MORE money quickly, because you don't have to go to the
efforts to keep it secret.
- In exchange, Society forces you to tell it in extreme detail EXACTLY
what your great idea is. Now when you die (or rather, in 20 years), all
of society benefits and your idea isn't lost.
In fact, in any patent application the standard of documentation to this
day remains something similar to,
"Enough detail so anyone else in your industry could copy your idea"
And over the course of history, this deal with the devil has worked
pretty well. Much of the key technical and applied scientific knowledge
of mankind is stored in the vast patent office collections, and mankind
advances on a (relatively short) 20 year delay without losing the ideas.
So patents themselves are not inherently bad, even in it. That's a
somewhat unpopular idea in this community, but I note that Donald Knuth
holds the same position.
The problem for us is that the standard of judging what is "obvious" and
what isn't in IT is dangerously bad, and when you look at the speed of
the IT industry compared to, say, chemistry or engineering or biology,
20 years is just a ridiculously long period of time.
In this sense, software patents are completely broken.
---
So what should you do then.
If you are wanting to be a programmer, you should learn how copyright
law works (to the extent you reasonably can without becoming a lawyer),
and learn how trademarks work (to the extent you reasonably can without
becoming a lawyer) and more or less ignore how patents are SUPPOSED to
work, leave campaigning for change to people like Pia and
