Re: The Reg on RMS in London

Hi James, on Tue, 25 May 2004 16:32:17 +0100 you wrote:

> ... doesn't like his dead Africans analogy
> 	http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/05/25/stallman_lecture/
> but otherwise all good stuff.

Mm. I don't blame them - whilst I understand what RMS is saying, equating
software patents with AIDS is unhelpful at best. There was another bad
(taste) analogy he used last Friday too, though it has now slipped my mind
and the Reg reporter obviously overlooked it too.

The classic "music analogy" obviously works quite well though, and is
understandable by anyone. I was just thinking it through, and it also
leads very easily into the "copyright not patent" argument:

[snip basic argument]

- ok, so we don't want to allow patenting of notes and chords, because
they are not where the real creativity lies

- so, the only thing left to "protect" is the piece (music, == software)
as a whole

- but patenting that doesn't make sense, because even if you could it
would be pointless: all it would do is stop someone "manufacturing" the
same "product", but if they did "manufacture" the piece of music, that
would be copyright infringement.

Hence why patenting intangibles just doesn't make sense.


Tim