On Aug 13, 2009, at 6:03 PM, Shlomi Fish wrote:
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.
Why are software ideas different than any other ideas? Not only does
your last statement make no sense, it discriminates against software
developers and is totally unsubstanisated.
While I very much support FOSS (and public domain software, which is
what it was called before people started to make money off of it), I
support the right for people who invent new software to protect their
rights. Copyrights do not protect them "enough", it still allows
someone who is as smart or smarter than they are to take their idea
and sell it.
I have had many conversations with a competitors about startups that
had interesting ideas that made them unique. The conversations always
go something like "what makes them different is that they do xxx and
we don't", I ask "when will you have it", and they answer something
like "next week".
Very soon everyone does it, and the startup disappears, taking with it
the life savings of the seed investors. I can't speak for anyone else,
but the people I know are relatively honest, if the startup had filled
a US provisional patent and claimed (as their right) "patent pending
technology" they would not.
I also have had experience with people who are not as honest and do it
anyway, but that's a different subject.
It's even happened in the last few months to someone on this list,
they announced their existance and looked for employees on this list,
which caused a competitor who is a lurker to look at their web site
and a week later we had the exact conversation I mentioned above. He
has a big company, they were one or two people looking for some part
time employees.
Is that the effect on the "software industry" you wish to have?
Geoff.
--
geoffrey mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM
Jerusalem Israel geoffreymendel...@gmail.com
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