Xref: utzoo misc.legal:16956 comp.software-eng:3356
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!hsi!stpstn!cox
From: cox@stpstn.UUCP (Brad Cox)
Newsgroups: misc.legal,comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Should software ideas be protected? (Was Re: Software Copyright Law
Keywords: European Community, copyright, reverse engineering
Message-ID: <4469@stpstn.UUCP>
Date: 9 Apr 90 16:52:49 GMT
References: <1093@goofy.UUCP> <14867@s.ms.uky.edu> <1990Apr8.003410.9841@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu>
Reply-To: cox@stpstn.UUCP (Brad Cox)
Organization: Stepstone
Lines: 34

In article <1990Apr8.003410.9841@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu> hes@ccvr1.ncsu.edu (Henry E. Schaffer) writes:
>  This whole thing bothers me very much.  It is giving software ownership
>priveleges which other owners of intellectual property do not have.
>If I buy a patented machine, I am certainly allowed to take it apart,
>to observe how it works, and to learn from it.  If I buy a copyrighted
>book, or map, or design, I am certainly allowed to look at it, to
>study it and observe how it "works", and to learn from it.  In these
>cases I am allowed to alter the item I bought to make it more suitable
>for my own use.

Software Engineers says software is a thing, like other entities of the
external domain of tangible experience (bridges, plumbing systems, space
shuttles, etc). Computer Scientists say software is information, like other
entities of the internal domain of intangible thought (mathematics, logic,
etc). 

But software is neither land nor sea, but *swamp*, a hybrid of land and sea
that is simultaneously too thick to drink and too thin to plow.

To me, what is behind the rush to object-oriented programming languages,
direct manipulation user interfaces, etc, is a wide-based awareness that
programming (in the large) is an organizational phenomenon more than
an individual phenomenon. It is a 'drain the swamp' movement; do whatever
we can to make software more tangible and more concrete, rather than
more intangible and abstract.

Competing 'flood the swamp' movements are also prominent in computer
science circles, notably in the rash of ACM articles and rebuttals this fall.

Although I am generally associated with the drain the swamp movement, what
I really believe is that we need to get army (software engineering) and
navy (computer science) together and weld the best that the two sides
have to offer into a hybrid solution to a hybrid problem; something 
like the marines.