danielx wrote: > [The suggestion that works apparently given away unconditionally become part of common culture.]
> Extremely interesting point! This should really motivate people to > answer the question I posed earlier: Does an author of software forfeit > his rights to the code if he shares his program (ie, reliquishes > _complete_ protection over the code)? Well, although some software may be used without the user being particularly aware of the licence, licences such as the GPL are defined in terms of distribution. The authors of that licence perhaps realised that grounding such an agreement in terms of the usage or performance of a work may be susceptible to the misunderstandings which seem to have plagued the music industry. Listening to music over the radio is in practice an involuntary act, whereas recording and redistributing the music is something that one actively has to do. The apparent difference between broadcast popular music and software is that software typically arrives with a licence (or one is typically forced to view such a licence before downloading it), and that redistributing software is an act where any later argument that one was not aware of the licence would be a less credible defence. Of course, copyright laws may state that a work without a licence is "strongly owned" by the author in that redistribution is prohibited, but as I noted earlier this seems to have been perceived as counter-intuitive, especially where the work is widely "performed" for free. > Let's say this happens: I want to sell some software, but I'm affraid > people will just copy it. So I prototype it in Python (or whatever > programming language) and never release the program. Based on that, I > design a chip (I know this is nearly impossible, but we are doing a > mental experiment), which does exactly the same thing. I don't think it's an unreasonable suggestion. > First of all, the chip can be reverse engineered (of course, with MUCH > greater difficulty than the equivalent code). Should I still be worried > that my invention will be copied? It used to be said that the first people to buy the latest games console were the competition. > A second point to consider: The chip is patentable (I think this is the > case legally, as well as in the court of public opinion), so what about > the equivalent code? This is why people are very worried about the scope of patents gradually expanding from areas where companies have sought some kind of incentive for investment in manufacturing, for example, to areas where patents have actually been forbidden in the past, such as in computer software. Sadly, there's a kind of misguided attitude amongst law-makers (particularly certain "visionaries" in the European Union) who think they're encouraging innovation when unquestioningly accepting arguments that if technology A is patentable and if technology B is like technology A, then technology B should be patentable, rather than considering that patents on technology A should also be forbidden. Paul -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
