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[Paul Boddie]

Ben Sizer wrote:
> Paul Boddie wrote:
> > Ben Sizer wrote:
> > >
> > > Imagine if you were the single-person developer of a small application
> > > that did something quite innovative, and charged a small fee for your
> > > product. Now imagine you were practically forced to make your algorithm
> > > obvious - a couple of months later, Microsoft bring out a freeware
> > > version and destroy your business in an instant. Sure, they and others
> > > can (and have) done that with closed-source products, but you increase
> > > your chances of survival 10-fold if the key algorithms are not obvious.
> >
> > This point is fairly comprehensively answered in the following article:
> >
> > http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/08/apple_eats_whiners.html
>
> I don't believe so.

Well, it talks about competing against some large business who will
eventually emulate your work. The advantage of small businesses
competing against anyone with a fairly rigid schedule and an arguably
non-agile internal organisation is that there will be a certain amount
of time before that large business firstly gets round to dismantling
your product (as opposed to that of the other small competitors),
secondly manages to produce something which does more or less the same
thing, and thirdly is able to bring it to market with the same level of
quality/branding that its customers expect.

Successful software businesses are not merely founded on the process of
having ideas and implementing them - they might also need to be
effective at delivering those ideas and going through the whole process
again and again. Writing a neat utility for Windows is not by itself
the foundation of a successful business - other factors are critical,
whether they be continuous improvements, service, support, or a number
of other things.

> That talks about copying of ideas, which is quite
> distinct from copying of implementations. The distinction may be
> meaningless in your typical desktop app where implementation is usually
> obvious from the interface. However in more high-tech systems such as
> multimedia or AI, the same is far from true.

Well, let's say that algorithms are a step up from mere ideas, and
let's also say that actual code is a step up from mere descriptions of
algorithms (since actual code serves to verify the behaviour of those
algorithms). The article I mention states that people shouldn't expect
to be rewarded forever for dreaming up some idea, and I extend that
point by stating that people shouldn't expect to be rewarded forever
for describing an algorithm - both of these things being patentable in
various permissive patent regimes, which (in conjunction with a few
other factors) really is quite harmful for anyone actually doing work
in any of the affected lines of work.

So, if we decide to ignore people waving pieces of paper around which
make some claim to an idea or some way of solving some problem, instead
investigating the actual code, others have pointed out already that if
you provide just a binary and there exist people who want to know what
you've done, those people will find it out whether you make it easy for
them or not. Now, if we sidestep the issue of decompiling binaries and
cast the affected work as some kind of service, the question can now be
expressed as whether you should expect to be rewarded forever for
providing such a service. This brings in a number of issues that are
suddenly more apparent than in the case where the end-user has some
binary - notably the issue of control over the activity that the
service performs - and such issues could possibly increase competitive
pressure rather than enhance any supposed competitive advantage if
people felt that the market wasn't providing enough in the way of
choice in that area.

> > I read an article where various aging popular musicians were
> > lobbying the British government to extend the period of copyright
> > beyond 50 years because their first works would soon fall into the
> > public domain and that they'd no longer earn royalties on those works.
> > But in what percentage of the many other jobs that exist do you still
> > get paid for a day at work that happened over 50 years ago?
>
> However, in most of those jobs you get paid properly at the time. Aside
> from the 1% of musicians who are pop stars, musicians generally do not.

The article I read was in the paper edition of the newspaper in
question, but here's a fairly similar electronic version:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/03/29/nroyal29.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/03/29/ixhome.html

I don't doubt that sessions musicians are paid badly, but multiplying
every musician's income by a certain factor doesn't necessarily
represent a just solution to that issue.

> I'm not saying I agree with extending the copyright period, however I
> do think you can't just compare it to 'a day at work'. It's a totally
> different set of circumstances which requires a different set of rules
> to both encourage artists to continue creating while benefitting
> society in the long run too.

For some of those musicians (ie. probably not Sir Cliff Richard), it
probably was a day at work for which they were badly paid, whilst
others (eg. Sir Cliff Richard) went on to make quite a bit of money. Of
course, one can always argue that the result of this particular kind of
day at work is something that can be enjoyed again and again, but then
you should consider the issue of why the person working at the car
factory doesn't get paid royalties every time you turn the key in the
ignition (even if it's just $0.0001 each time).

Paul