I have little knowledge about the topic(only an opinion) and do not wish to join the discussion. Please carry on.
Cheers! --- On Thu, 4/8/10, Peter Becker <[email protected]> wrote: From: Peter Becker <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [The Java Posse] Software Patents To: [email protected] Date: Thursday, April 8, 2010, 4:30 PM On 09/04/10 08:13, Scott Melton wrote: Would you agree that patents and property rights greatly accelerate the rate of innovations, accelerating the growth of a free market economy? Not at all -- I claim the opposite and the jury is still out. Even proponents of patent law seem to occasionally admit that the innovation benefit has not been proven. The cost of patents is manyfold. Read the two excellent articles posted previously in this thread: http://mises.org/daily/3702 http://mises.org/daily/4018 Why would I would I work nights and weekends to come up with a solution to a real world problem if I knew that as soon as I did I received nothing for it? The answer is I would not. I would do something where I would get rewarded instead. Camp, fish, raise kids, work a few extra hours for that new toy money, you get the picture. I can think of at least two reasons: (1) you just want to do it. Believe it or not: there is such thing as intrinsic motivation and it can be the core driver for some people. Being one of them I'd like to believe they are the truly innovative bunch. (2) you need to do it for some business reason. Whoever invented the doubly linked list most likely did so because they had some other problem to solve (or it fell into category (1)). Or you might improve on some existing system to get a competitive advantage. What patents do is to artificially extent that advantage. Is that ethical? Depends on your value system. Is that useful? Who knows -- it is something hard to study, I can't see scientific experiments done on this. Peter -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
