[opensuse] Re: [SLE] Novell-Microsoft: What They Aren't Telling You

On Sunday 05 November 2006 05:24, you wrote:

Re: software patentability:
I ask this in all seriousness; I don't have a particular pre-conceived
bias one way or the other:

Why would assembling a collections of "objects" (as in C-objects)
together to perform some function be any different that assembling a
collection of resistors, capacitors and active devices together to form
a "circuit" (which is certainly patentable)?
     hi Tony,

     Great question. I asked it also, as I was thinking through this...

     The answer is simple, but in order to answer it you need to ask another
question.... how is "software" like or unlike a collection of resistors and
capacitors assembled on a circuit board... compare and contrast.

     The circuit board containing resistors and capacitors is a physical
(meta-physical) construction comprised of real objects manufactured from
"stuff" that we generally call matter (we can touch it). Software is text.

     The point is that software (as a medium) is only text, like a play, a
novel, a short story, a poem... or a recipe in a cookbook. It is a set of
symbols which can be read (by another person, or by a machine)....  it is
text, plain and simple.

     Text is protected by copyright (or copyleft... as I see it) and is not
patentable. Software is text, and as such should be protected by copyright
(or copyleft) and should not be patentable any more than a recipe in a
cookbook (designed to be read and "executed" by a chef in a kitchen). The
recipe in the cookbook, and any other software objects, are both text....
protected by copyright perhaps (or copyleft) but not patentable.

     As a side note... some software ( none if it is intellectual property in
my view) can also be viewed the same way most of us view mathematics. No
mathematical "truth" can be patented. Much of software (if not all...) is
similar to mathematical truth... whether trivial or not... and should not be
patentable for the same reason. This is of course a minor point to the real
answer... which is that software is text and should be protected as text...
not as a physical (meta-physical) object.
--
Kind regards,

M Harris <><
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