Innovation is the point of software freedom: Without innovation, there would come time when there would be no need for new software, no need for software developers to be able to alter the code.
On 17 May 2012 12:45, Ciarán O'Riordan ciaran@member.fsf.org wrote:
I can't do any more on this. Exams coming up.
Whichever intro is used, it should explain how swpats are bad for:
Free software - important for users
Software freedom - important for developers
Free software is harmed because swpats give an advantage to companies
with money and lawyers. This category is the least likely to spontaneously give freedom to users of their software. Spontaneous offers of freedom (and pressure on large companies to also give freedom) comes from individuals, academics, hobbyists, and (to a lesser extent) SMEs. Anything that helps big companies and harms small developers, will reduce the amount of free software in the world.
- Software freedom is damaged because it becomes illegal to develop or
distribute certain types of programs.
For FSFE both are important, but users might only see the value of #1, and developers might only see the value of #2, so both should be explained.
The harms of software patents can also be explained with two other categories: 1. They add financial and legal risks to *all* software development. 2. They specifically block the development of useful software because (a) they block standards and (b) when a software package gains a lot of users, *then* it becomes a target for either patent trolls wanting money or big software companies wanting to kill competition.
I think it's also important to ignore innovation. FSFE has no mandate to promote innovation. If some reliable studies proved that swpats help innovation, or if politicians were convinced that this was true, then FSFE saying "Promoting innovation is important" wouldn't be helpful. We can leave that work to researchers. FSFE's role is to say "They also hurt free software and software freedom, and these are important!".
Some people will see freedom as a tradeable value. (Do I want more freedom if it will ruin the economy?) To reassure those people, a *minor* mention of not hurting innovation/SMEs/economy/other-stuff is worthwhile.
Last comments:
- Avoid words like "oligopolistic" - not everyone knows what exactly
they are and how they affect software freedom / free software
- Words like "market" are difficult to use right. The software *market*
is just an incidental aspect of what FSFE cares about.
Hope that helps. This groundhog is now going into hibernation...
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Innovation is the point of software freedom
Well, let's look at who judges our software:
Who will judge if we have developed software that we want? We will. We use our software and it either does what we want, or we change it or file bug reports (or complain on slashdot and other forums we created).
Who will judge if we have developed innovative software? The patent office. Or, if the patent office ignores software, then no one will judge if our software is innovative. If innovation was important to us, and no one was examining our software for innovation, then FSFE would have to hire someone to monitor how innovative free software is. But they won't, because it's not important. Clearly innovation was never the point.
Put another way: Are we happy when we have innovative software that doesn't do what we want? No. Are we happy when we have non-innovative software that does do what we want? Yes. (Example: a free clone of an existing proprietary package.)
All things being equal, scientific progress is good, and it will happen, but it's a side effect, not our primary goal.
Innovation is sort of the point of the patent system. So maybe this paragraph should stay there to explain that software patent actually work against innovation in software.
One strong point in favour of keeping this paragraph is that most people don't actually understand that writing software is a substantially different activity than producing drugs for instance. Patents are trying to cover an activity (writing software) which wasn't meant to be covered by the patent system, applying patent to it is actually counterproductive.
Again, this is a side-issue of software freedom. But Software freedom is directly impacted by lack of possibility left for innovation.
Now I draw your attention to this: the current paragraph about innovation is not well written in my opinion (and this largely my fault) so native English speakers are really needed here because they will do a much better job of putting in one or two sentences what would take me 5.
Thanks, Hugo
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First, thank you all very much for your spontaneous efforts to improve our leaflet about software patents, you are great!
On 05/18/2012 12:05 PM, Hugo Roy wrote:
Innovation is sort of the point of the patent system. So maybe this paragraph should stay there to explain that software patent actually work against innovation in software.
I agree. "Innovation" is a buzzword when it comes to talk with politicians about software patents. Because one of the most repeated arguments from our opposition is that patents boost innovation. And therefore patents are needed for nations economy to be innovative. IMHO it is important for our work to try reframing this argument and open up peoples mind: that the freedom of creation produces much more innovation than a patent system who serves monolistic economies. Such a system, instead, reduces innovation in the hands of just a few players holding the patent rights. If we ever like to persuade the majority of a Parliament about the negative aspects of software patents, I think "innovation" will be a key argument to get them on board.
cheers, Erik
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