Re: Chapter on Open Source in Friedman's _The World is Flat_

On Tue, 21 Jun 2005, Russell McOrmond wrote:
>  I guess I am one of those people who believe that the temporary monopoly 
> offered by patents make sense where there is physical manipulations of nature 
> (and the resulting up-front costs and barriers to market entry), but do not 
> make sense in pure intangibles such as software and business models.  One of 
> the things that frustrate me about these conversations is the mistake that 
> this is an "all or nothing" thing, and that those of us who oppose 
> information/mental process patents also oppose hardware and/or pharmaceutical 
> patents.

Who's to say the physical-bits innovator doesn't also see physical-bits 
patents as a limiter on their ability to innovate and work?  Is it just 
that historically the physical-bits innovators have come to terms with the 
balance of interests, whereas computer science had a good thirty years of 
relatively patent-free innovation to get (too?) used to the idea?

 	Brian