Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!brunix!cs.brown.edu!rca
From: rca@cs.brown.edu (Ronald C.F. Antony)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Boycott NeXT offerings that include a free copy of Lotus Improv
Message-ID: <54357@brunix.UUCP>
Date: 25 Oct 90 15:02:16 GMT
References: <123663@linus.mitre.org> <970@earth.cs.utexas.edu> <31403@netnews.upenn.edu> <5816@mace.cc.purdue.edu>
Sender: news@brunix.UUCP
Reply-To: rca@cs.brown.edu (Ronald C.F. Antony)
Organization: Brown Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 45

I guess the most important idea of patents got lost nowadays.
Originally patents were invented such that specific procedures to produce
something did not get lost as earlier in history because the inventor dies
and took his secret with him into the grave. It was supposed that the inventor
had to disclose the content and the procedure such that any other person in 
the same field could reproduce the results exactly. (That's also where the
name patent comes from, the latin patere which means be open).
So in exchange for a contribution to human knowledge, the inventor had the 
exclusive right to use it for a limited amount of time. This way he could get
back his research costs, and make the profit he needed to live and reward him 
for the risk he took.
Patents also don't stop research. If you build on top of a patent and improve
it significantly, you can get a patent on the improvement, and the original
inventor may not use your invention although you built on top of his. Usually
this is resolved with a cross-licensing agreement. This is a fair way to make
sure there will not be a technology monopoly if there are other inventors around.
Then there was the copyright that protected artists from people that wanted
to make a quick profit from work another did. But in a piece of art through
the publication, it is also become a piece of human knowledge. (Well except
it it is too abstract, but that's something else). Because it is creative
work there is noone dependent on it, protection of artwork does not restrict
someone else to be creative. Thus the protection holds for a much longer time
than for patents.
And finally we have the computer industry that comes along, sees both and
wants to pick the best out of both: 
- long protection
- no publication
- no contribution to human knowledge
- hefty profits

I think it is just not fair to give programs copyright protection. It would be
more appropriate to give them patents. Just look at all the tool the big 
software companies have in house. Will we ever see them? No. Can we ever
learn from them? No. Can we ever extend them and improve them? No.
Basically what happens is that the software companies get all the protection
and more than from a patent with no contribution to the community as a whole.
That's what I think is disgusting, not the fact that intellectual property 
is protected.

-- Ronald 
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"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists
in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the
unreasonable man."  Bernhard Shaw | rca@cs.brown.edu or antony@browncog.bitnet
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