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The Forum > Article Comments > Trading our intellectual property for a lamb chop ... > Comments

Trading our intellectual property for a lamb chop ... : Comments

By Dale Spender, published 24/8/2007

Intellectual property has become the new wealth; and coming from a culture of government approved piracy the Americans know how to work it to their advantage.

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James Purser,

You seem to have very strange priorities for a supposed leader of the Open Source community.

The economic and practical case for government bodies to immediately commence to ditch Micro$oft and a large number of other proprietary software products seems overwhelming to me.

A feature of political life these days seems to be that powerful vested interests seem to find ways to compromise and co-opt those who ostensibly stand opposed to them. Sadly, this now seems also true of many avowed advocates of Open Source software.
Posted by daggett, Tuesday, 28 August 2007 2:02:18 PM
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dagget,

I'm a little confused. What priorities should I have?

I joined LA because I felt that Free and Open Source Software offered a choice, a viable alternative to the lock in offered by companies like Microsoft. I still feel that way. However I do not believe that replacing one lock in with another is the best way to go, and thats what people who want to mandate FOSS in government are demanding.

A governments duty is to produce the best outcomes for the people, and while in many cases yes Open Source can do that, there are some where it can't, that's just a fact of life. We should not be mandating anything other than best tool for the job.
Posted by James Purser, Tuesday, 28 August 2007 3:39:21 PM
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cacofonix “ we should aim to remove copyright altogether.”

Payment of copyright is to the originator or owner of the work. The music writers are paid copyright fees, distinct from royalties which go, in the case of music, to the performers of the work.

If I invent / originate a piece of music or document which someone then utilises to earn income from (example a magazine reproduces an article written by me to help sell their publication), why should I not be compensated for my originality?

Re “Think of how much better than even this the Internet would be, if, say, 10 or 20 years ago the U.S. had refused to protect software Intellectual such as that of the rapacious Micrsosoft monopoly.”

Darn it, I thought the USA government, in the form of the Federal Trade Commission, was pursuing Microsoft to actively seek its breakup and separate the operating systems from the application systems. I would also note the first anti monopoly laws were enacted by the USA as the Anti Trust laws specifically targeting Rockafella (Esso), Edison (diverse Electronics and cinema) and JP Morgan (Banking) etc.

Having used the opensource applications, it could be said, that which is free often has little to recommend it.

I note, AshtonTate failed to secure copyright for Dbase because they were not the "true originators" of the program language.

I own my own software applications. They are protected and I go to extreme lengths to ensure usurpers cannot steal the products which I have spent considerable time and effort developing and from which I expect to be adequately compensated (this is, of course, commercially more sustainable than simply designing for others to merely deploy for free).

Whilst the internet and the modern ease of duplication has presented a range of copyright issues, which have been progressively dealt with through the normal legal processes, that is a function of who controls and benefits form distribution.

Denying fair reward to the copyright holder or originator is to legalise piracy and theft.

Same goes for patents and all other forms of "intellectual ownership".
Posted by Col Rouge, Tuesday, 28 August 2007 3:51:40 PM
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Col Rouge,

Firstly I am curious as to what Open Source apps you have used and what it was that put you off them.

Secondly, yes the US Justice Department was aiming for a breakup right up to the election of George Bush who put a stop on that idea.

Thirdly, I agree that patents are useful in for physical inventions, however to my mind software patent are just to broad and prone to abuse to make a usable system. Instead we end up with business processes masquerading as legitimate inventions.

I am not denying your right to select how you want the software you build to be distributed, thats your decision. I just feel that aspects of the system you rely on are flawed.

Oh and a little pointer, Open Source has proved itself to be quite financially viable. It's just that the focus has moved from supplying the software to supplying a service and customisation.
Posted by James Purser, Tuesday, 28 August 2007 4:12:33 PM
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I'm always fascinated when people begin to make artifical distinctions between different types of technology. Physical machines should be patentable but software should not? How do you justify such a position? Is it because you work in software, so you feel you should be free to do what you want, but those making hardware should be subject to patent law? Sounds like a double standard to me.

How about an inventor who develops software to make a machine work more efficiently? For example, if I come up with firmware that controls a fuel injection system, where the clever "bit" of the invention is in the fact that I control the injectors in such a way as to save fuel, should I receive a patent for that software?

The fact of the matter is that you are confusing the issue of whether an invention should be patentable with the issue of whether an invention is inventive. Software can be just as inventive (or even more so) than any mechanical widget.
Posted by Gekko, Wednesday, 29 August 2007 1:07:59 PM
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Gekko,

You already have IP protection for your software. All software is covered by copyright, something which does not protect physical inventions.
Posted by James Purser, Wednesday, 29 August 2007 4:28:04 PM
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