On Thursday 13 August 2009 14:35:43 geoffrey mendelson wrote: > >> The cost == cost of writing, issuing, enforcing > > > > and licensing! Don't forget that one. > > > >> The benefit == increased revenue to the company > > Shachar, licensing is a cost, but it's also a benefit. If you happen > to be the person using someone else's work for profit it's a cost. If > you happen to be the person who did the work, or invested their money > to create the work, it's a benefit. > > Do you not believe that you (or anyone else) should be fairly > compensated for their ideas and efforts? >
Ideas by themselves are a dime-a-dozen, require very little effort to come by and generate very little value to society. An illustrative table I once saw said that: Stage Amount of Effort Amount of Value 1. Idea stage - 1 1 2. Development 10 10 3. Mass Production 100 100 4. Mass Distribution 1000 1000 It's great to have good ideas, but you should invest some effort in pushing them forward through development, production and distribution, before they truly become worthwhile. Back to software, let's suppose I have an idea for a good application (let's suppose it's an SQL database). I can assume that several people already had this idea by now, or will have it soon. But I take the time to develop it and bring it to a usable state. After the product is good enough, I can do with it what I want: * I can sell it as commercial, non-FOSS software, and hope to get some money. (e.g: Oracle, Informix, MS SQL) * I can distribute it under a copyleft licence, and allow open-source users to take advantage of it free of charge, but still possibly require exemption in case one wishes to use it in proprietary contexts. (e.g: MySQL) * I can distribute it under a permissive, BSD-style licence, and possibly have some indirect revenue from it, or just be content that I've made a useful contribution to the public well-being. (e.g: PostgreSQL, SQLite). Now, if I made some money from my idea by developing it into a program and then licensing it, then I've benefited. All of this without using or depending on patents. It's possible other people will develop similar programs after my product has shipped, but by that time, hopefully I can move forward and enhance my application so it will be even more attractive to potential customers. And those who compete against me will have to catch up. I'm all for making money out of good ideas, but I still think that people need to take the necessary effort in taking these ideas forward, instead of just issuing vague, generic and/or trivial software patents that prevent people from developing similar programs. Copyrights gives enough protection for software and for making money of it, while software patents tend to do more harm than good. Naturally, I'm not very familiar with the effect of patents on other industries, and accept the fact that some companies issue software patents as a way to defend themselves, which may be necessary given that they are still legal. Regards, Shlomi Fish > Geoff. -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ Rethinking CPAN - http://xrl.us/bjn7p God gave us two eyes and ten fingers so we will type five times as much as we read. _______________________________________________ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il