From mi.ro@iol.it  Thu Oct 12 11:12:31 2000
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2000 13:12:31 +0200
From: Roberto Micarelli mi.ro@iol.it
Subject: [Patents] simple questions

I would like to ask people who agree with software patents some simple questions.

Do you think that IT needed patents to get better?
Don't you think that it was already working well, without patenting everything?
People are doing good businesses since at least 20 years with IT, and patents are
just one of the most recent issues in this field.
Why to change something which shows to play nice?
Where interests to do that come from?
Where are universities and why costs are so high?
Why is the open source world never taken into account?
Why don't you ask for a zero-cost patenting process, only substained by taxes?
What is the role of little and middle sized companies in european economy?
Always you tell about the needle to protect investment, don't you think that
no-patenting is a good protection too, given the lower development costs and
knowledge-based business it can raise?

As a reference for last question I show an example: open source system are public
and available. Their quality is sometime out of discussion. Everybody can take it
modify and sell. But only highly specialized people can do that. Everyone who aims
to compete a free version of Oracle Parallel Server has to cover a knowledge gap
so high, that it will probably give up. This is showing some form of protection,
and I still have the chance to develop no free-source systems.
On the other hand it supplies me a lot of benefits, saving me from developing all
that I need but just my add-ons, and allowing me to sell it as a whole system of mine!

>From this innovative point of view I see patent system a middle-age practice,
highly damaging innovation and inventiveness. Not compatible with the new
connected world that IT people is going to implement.

Regards.




