[Patents] Patent system run for consumers or producers?

[PILCH Hartmut phm@a2e.de]

> > People in poverty suffer.
> > People in warzones suffer.
> > People discriminated against suffer.
> > 
> > Because of (bad) software patents, software users are at best
> > inconvenienced.  But suffer?  Homeless people suffer.  Not software
> 
> Yes, but software authors suffer (legal problems). Since in the free
> software world users often are authors this means that (some) software
> users suffer. I would urge you to read some of Richard Stallmans
> writings, if you haven't.

Indeed.  Some good texts on this kind of suffering are

        http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html
        http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

The suffering from proprietary software is a daily experience for many
people and one of the driving forces behind the existence of GNU/Linux.

Many people who are far living away from computers tend to lose the
feeling for this, even if a while ago they were computer scientists.  This
is especially true for patent lawyers who were former computer
scientists.  The younger they are, the more easily they find it to
understand the suffering that is causing the furor about software patents.
But even the young ones tend to forget, because they no longer write
scientific articles with TeX and all the paperwork is done by secretaries
using MS Office -- no more time for any indepth contact with the computer.

> And in this context I would like to ask you what a (bad) software patent
> is, and what differentiates it from a good one? 

Right, so would I.

-phm