Date: Sun, 5 Aug 2012 11:08:06 -0600 From: Chad Perrin <perrin@apotheon.com> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Patent hit - MS goes after Linux - FreeBSD ? Message-ID: <20120805170806.GA9129@hemlock.hydra> In-Reply-To: <20510.40571.417415.852536@jerusalem.litteratus.org> References: <20120805045800.29444.qmail@joyce.lan> <alpine.BSF.2.00.1208051330090.21508@wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl> <20510.27576.562781.36878@jerusalem.litteratus.org> <20120805093320.7b7f0fc4@scorpio> <20510.40571.417415.852536@jerusalem.litteratus.org>
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On Sun, Aug 05, 2012 at 12:25:31PM -0400, Robert Huff wrote: > Jerry writes: > > > > I agree up to the point about financial incentive. For myself, I > > like making money. I don't apologize for that. Most engineers, > > software / hardware designers also enjoy receiving a monetary > > reward for their hard work. Simple giving away our hard work, > > sweat and time to some socialist just because they feel they have > > the right to the hard work of others is repulsive. > > Would you call Jeff Bezos (CEO of Amazon) a socialist? > Some years ago, he was giving an interview and was asked "Jeff, > Amazon has applied for a patent for the One-Click system. If Amazon > had > known before it started there was no chance of receiving a patent - > would it have created One-Click anyway?" > [While I'm paraphasing, the essential content is preserved.] > There was a long pause, during which you could tell Bezos > understood _precisely_ what the real question was ... > ... and (to his credit) answered "Yes." > > The programmers got paid. > Amazon gets paid in the form of more expedient processing and > (presumably) more sales due to ease of check-out. > Why, as a society, should we deny other innovators the ability > to use that technology to develop - hopefully - even better stuff? Patents don't encourage innovation. They primarily do three things: 1. They direct innovative effort away from non-patentable things and toward patentable things, even when the patentable things are less actually innovative or useful. 2. They favor large corporations with the resources to pursue patent litigation and build gigantic patent portfolios, thus creating hurdles for smaller business endeavors to become successful. 3. They encourage more time and resources to be spent on patent filing than on actual research and development. 4. They support a specialized lawyer class, which naturally evolves into an entire industry of patent trolling. 5. They make small organizations and individuals afraid to innovate because they fear they might run afoul of patents, and make large organizations waste a bunch of time and money buying other companies just for their patent portfolios so they have more ammunition with which to defend themselves against other patent-holders in a kind of "mutually assured destruction" arms race deterrence scheme. I guess three wasn't enough to list the major negatives of the patent system. I could come up with more, given a little time. Ultimately, the patent system is in many ways the opposite of a free market. In fact, the socialistic "labor theory of value" is a much more effective basis for justifying a patent system than any concepts of economic schools of thought more oriented toward free market capitalism, because patents are designed to "protect" a labor resources investment in the patentable "invention", rather than any kind of actual proprietary investment. -- Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ]
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