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From: cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Reasoning by analogy (was Re: Software, development & copyrights)
Message-ID: <44223@bbn.COM>
Date: 14 Aug 89 12:15:58 GMT
References: <73@ark1.nswc.navy.mil> <4547@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
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Reply-To: cosell@BBN.COM (Bernie Cosell)
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In article <4547@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee) writes:
}From article <73@ark1.nswc.navy.mil>, by dsill@relay.nswc.navy.mil (Dave Sill):
}" 
}" The *real* problem is that we don't have a good system of software
}" publishing; i.e., one that protects the author's "intellectual
}" property" and the publisher's profits without stifling creativity or
}" burdening the consumer.
}
}We used to have a good system, before the copyright law was changed to
}protect binaries.  We ought to go back and require that only human
}readable forms of programs can be protected by copyright directly, and
}that binaries can be protected under copyright only as derivative works
}from published sources.  Copyright should serve as an incentive for
}making information public, as it has historically, not provide a reward
}for keeping it secret.  (And referring to a firm that deals in
}proprietary binaries as a "publisher" is a perversion of the term.)

I'm not sure I agree.  The question, as Dave sums up, is what you want
to protect and what you want to allow.  A key question to me is whether
we are best served by copyright-like or patent-like protections [This
is assuming that you basically agree with the two of them in their
normal venues... I don't want to get into a debate on whether patents
and/or copyrights are worthless *period*...].

The more I ponder computer systems, what they do, what are the key
characteristics of *good* ones, and the things you have to do to
actually MAKE a good one and get it to work, the more well-done
computer programs and innovative computer applications and techniques
look like *devices* than they do articles (or songs).  Why is an
innotative storage management technique, or a breakthrough application,
any different-in-kind than discovering a new shape for the slot on a
screw-head or devising a neat new mechanical-widget.

In most of these fields (as in computers), the really hard part is
knowing what is possible and worthwhile and what works.  Once you SEE
what it is that is worth doing, be you a machinist, chemist, or
computer programmer, it is generally not hard to reproduce it... but it
is still someone ELSEs idea...  And so, as I say: if *I* got to tweak
the laws about software, I would probably NOT make them be
copyright-like, but rather I would try to figure out how to make them
more patent-like.

   __
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