Re: [fsl-discuss] Re: [Patents] The politics of software over-protection -- moving forward..

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

    >The important question is whether software ideas should be monopolized
    >by patents, not what current US law says.

    "Software ideas" - which means that software is not protectable by
    copyright anywhere in the world, since US Copyright law, the WIPO
    copyright treaty, and the TRIPS agreement all explicitly prohibit
    copyright for ideas.

To claim that "software is not [covered] by copyright" is quite
misleading.  (I disagree with the slant of the term "protect" so I
won't use it.)  Software ideas are not covered by copyright; software
programs are covered by copyright.  

    Now you can try to play silly semantic games, for example by saying
    that software has "behavior" or that software is "not technical",

The European Commission is playing semantic games with the word
"technical".  We're trying to replace it with a clearly defined
criterion.  However, there is no disagreement that we are talking
about ordinary patent law.  The question is simply whether there
should be patents on software ideas.

    Given that the questionable results (patent quality) is
    a solvable problem,

Yesterday sent a message mentioning that people could miss the real
problem by putting the blame on "patent quality".  I think our
messages must have crossed, which makes it interesting that
you've done exactly this.

    The language of software ideas, software engineering, computer science
    is the language of the scientist, the engineering, the inventor -
    the language of the patent system.

It is perfectly consistent to apply patent law to software ideas (just
as it would be consistent to prohibit selling milk, like beer, to
anyone under 21).  However, it is harmful, so we should not do it.

Roland Orre wrote:

    As I have understood, rms (nowadays) has a similar view as
    Greg that obvious software ideas should not be patentable, but I
    consider no software to be patentable.

I am against software patents completely; that has been my position
since around 1990.  Where did you come across a statement that my
views are like Aharonian's?  Maybe I should write to correct the
statement.