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

On Saturday 11 November 2006 20:21, M Harris wrote:
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.

Software is not text. Software is the pure essence of mechanism
operating only on information. Text is just a means of encoding
information.

Programmers are applied mathematicians. The basis of all software is
mathematical logic of one sort or another.


     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.

Textual representation is not the essence of software. Software is
complexly structured (like knowledge) but to convey from its point of
origin (a person's mind) to a machine where it can be made precise and
thence executed requires serialization. That serial form is a
programming language. It's analogous to human language insofar as both
are serial representations of complexly structured information and
knowledge.


     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.

Again, software _is not_ text. It is mechanism. It is logic. It is
ideas. Text is only the way it is externalized from its point of
conception in a human mind (or, in some cases, from another program).


     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.


Apart from you misconception about the essential nature of software, I
agree that patents are an inappropriate way of providing legal
protections for programs. Copyright and trade secret law is applicable
and mostly adequate.


But if you think software patents are bad, gene patents will make you
apoplectic. Well, it does to me...


Randall Schulz
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