On Mon, May 30, 2005 16:30:36 PM -0400, Daniel Carrera
([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
> "What? Is Daniel crazy? Did he just say not to reward hard work?"
>
> I'm not crazy yet :-) and I do see where you're comming from. But I
> think I have an interesting, and outside-the-box thought here:
> What you just described could be called a "big bang" development model.
> That is, an inventor works in secrecy for a long time, and one day
> announces to the world this one massive invention. I believe that this
> development model should be discouraged in favour of the "small step"
> model. Similar to the FOSS mantra "release early, and release often".
Your thesis is interesting indeed and it would be a wonderful world if
it were always applicable. But it doesn't scale, so to speak, outside
certain research fields. You can follow the "FOSS mantra" with
software, that is something immaterial that every kid can "rebuild" to
test 10 times a day with extremely cheap equipment which fits under a
desk and does the hard job (the actual compiling process) unattended.
You can do it with small material things which can be built with
*very* little space and money, or in "environments" where, again
unlike software, everybody plays by the same rules. But you can't
"release early and often" new fuels, cars, microprocessors, or the
extremely complex machinery needed to build even one single working
prototype. Not when you want to actually build and sell many units.
Some years ago this lady: www.suberis.it discovered by herself a
process to make shoes, clothes and other things directly out of
cork. DISCLAIMER: I have no relationship whatsoever with that her and
her company, just read this last week on the net.
Now, I am quite confident that she could afford to do it only
because, thanks to the patents she got, she could borrow the money
with confidence she could give it back asap. I can test a kernel patch
coming from Antarctica and share it without expenses, so it would be a
shame not to share it. But if she had shared his early experiments, I
could have NOT done anything with them (no cork trees in 200 Kms, no
space at all for machinery at home), and very probably some far-east
sweatshop (no unions, no laws for child or environment protection)
would be now flooding the market with the same goods at a price that
would not leave her any possibility to recover her R&D expenses.
> The scientific community has been following it for a long time. And
> historically, most breakthroughs come from this model.
Historically, yes. It was a simpler world, with simpler technology to
discover.
> A useful historical analogy is alchemy vs chemistry.
Alchemy had such powerful mystic/esoteric components and motivations
that I'm not so sure it's meaningful to look at it to decide a doable
scientific process for today's world.
Again, it would be wonderful if all inventions could happen in the way
you describe. And I surely want to see a world where as much
scientific research as possible is funded by governments and other
non-profit institutions. for the common good. But I am convinced that
*real* patents, as they were meant to be, would NOT hurt or slow down
that process, and stimulate a lot of activity in the meantime.
Ciao,
Marco F.
--
Marco Fioretti mfioretti, at the server mclink.it
Fedora Core 3 for low memory http://www.rule-project.org/
"What terrifies you most in purity," I asked?
"Haste," William answered. -- The Name of the Rose, Fifth Day, Nones
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
