From orre@nada.kth.se  Mon May  7 09:56:21 2001
From: orre@nada.kth.se (Roland Orre)
Date: Mon, 7 May 2001 10:56:21 +0200 (MET DST)
Subject: [Patents] American Inventor Coalition / was Re: Software and
 Technical effect
In-Reply-To: <mnet3.989222779.13069.kodama@netcourrier.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.4.30.0105071009360.18788-100000@faun.nada.kth.se>

On Mon, 7 May 2001 kodama@netcourrier.com wrote:

> 1) is "software engineering" only "programming" ?
> (versus architectures, protocols etc.)

Specify further! I don't really understand your question?

What do you mean by "programming"?

"Programming" or better, software design, is an art including a
multitude of skills. When you say "programmer" some people may
think about someone just transcribing code from a specification
or so.

No, software design means that you have to be creative, really
creative. You have to understand the problem that need to be
solved. You have to be able to split the problem down into modules
which are handleble. You need to be able to describe your design
into a specification, often at several levels, and finally into an
implemention into some specific language. You need  to be an inventor
all the time.
The last part which is merely transcribing, is rather trivial.

If a software designer would have to care for software patents,
then the software development would be the most tedious process
prologing the project time and cost incredibly, so in reality
I would guess that the software designers would most often not
care. The company would be responsible in any case.
The company would most likely want to keep their good software
designers so they will not go through the code so thoroghly
anyway. This would render most software patents mostly meaningless.

> 2) could you cite some major R&D employers of software programmers
> who are against software patents ?

First I would say that all companies working with free software are
most likely against software patents.

Apart from that I consider the question to be somewhat wrongly asked.
The employers are most often not aware about the real problems with
software patents as the employers themselves are not computer
scientists. To really understand the serious problems with software
patents you need to be a rather experienced computer scientist.

If I have had to think about software patents when programming I
would probably have chosen another career. In my master thesis
project for instance, 20 years ago, which resulted in about 2500
lines of assembly code I got to know 10 years later that I had used
two patented software constructions in my code, covering a total of
about 10-12 lines of code, which I accidentaly got to know ten years
later.
---------

The question you should ask is merely:
How many experienced software designers are pro software patents?

I know a multitude of software designers but of those I know I
can only recall one single person, which I knew 11 years ago and he
was not really a software  designer. He only wrote a couple of small
programs at the department and then he become an administrative boss
instead. His education was not computer science either. It was he who
persuaded me to patent my expert system software method 11 years ago.

So I guess the good programmers will probably quit if they have to
deal with software patents, leaving the company with the less skilled
programmers who don't yet understand the problem.

	Roland Orre



