[Patents] American Inventor Coalition / was Re: Software andTechnical effect

[anders.holtsberg@decuma.com (Anders Holtsberg)]

Roland Orre wrote:
> On Mon, 7 May 2001 kodama@netcourrier.com wrote:
> > 2) could you cite some major R&D employers of software programmers
> > who are 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.

Yupp.

> [...]
> 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 it is usually.

> 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.

Wrong. I guess most do like I do and as someone cited an IBM 
executive: if the mayor allows all sorts of guns in the city we
better arm ourselves with kalashnikovs, if just to defend us. 
I just filed a software patent. I am against software patents after
having read the patent drivel in the area we are working in (and after 
having ditched a project to write animated GIFs; Unisys didn't even 
answer us). Embarrassing hypocrisy? No! Not at all. Not a bit.

Anders Holtsberg.

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   Anders Holtsberg                  Decuma AB
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