And then when you place a condom on the table it redirects you to a porn site.

You've got a typo in the second word of your article. I blame QWERTY -- you should be on Dvorak.

I really hate patents.

The whole idea about patents has gone out of its main purpose. The idea was to protect the inventor's invetion during a limited time so that he could get some money back from the spent research and development and give headroom during initial years of sale. Now it have become more or less a permanent ownership of ideas, which is sad for coming generations. Can you actually own an idea? Sounds like fascism. Luckily, the European Union have voted against software patents.

If anybody is really interested in promotion of innovation should read "Against Intellectual Monopoly" by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine. The book is available online for free. It was #1 for short period on Amazon. By the way it is book about economics not about the legal crap.

ps. I am not representing the authors and I am not doing self promotion ether, that is way I am not including the link to the web site were the book can be found.

Milleman, how does ownership of ideas sound like fascism to you? I'd like to understand your reasoning.

I believe that patents and copyright help to encourage innovation. Think about it. Would you spend as much money developing new ideas and technology if you knew that your competitors had the right to use your ideas for free? That would put you behind the competition by exactly as much money as you had spent. Nobody would spend money on R&D and, especially in the computer industry, technology would become stagnant.

Or is the argument against how long someone has total control over their idea? My reasoning is that the world was doing alright before the invention was thought up. The most profitable thing for the inventor would be to either produce as many of those things as he could or license his idea to other manufacturers. The great thing about new ideas is that none of them are essential to life, so if the inventor decides to gouge the price, people can decide to do without the widget.

What do you guys think?

Chris312,
D

Chris312,
You are raising interesting question. "Can you really own an idea?" Let see. You can own a car. You can use your car as you wish. You can sell me that car and then I will own that car and can use it as I wish. You can not use it any more. If I steal your car you will not have it any more.
If you have an idea and you tell that idea to me. You and I will have copy of the same idea. You can use your copy and I can use mine. So the idea really is not a property. The only away to steal your copy of any idea is to erase it from your brain. There is only one away to do this. I need to kill you, but that will make me murderer not a thief.
Let a assume that idea is property. That raises even bigger problem. Why you can own your property only for limited time? You can own your car as long you want. Other issue is that when you own a property you pay taxes to the government to protect your property. Do you really want to pay taxes on your ideas? I don't.

The rest of you argument require very technical discussion, If you interested give me a call and will setup better channel for sensible communication. I am very interested into the subject.

The number of owned patents is not a measure of value, but it is quite a good way to count the roadblocks put in others way to innovate.
m$ is not actually known for innovation but really famous for hoarding of that of others and a champion at stifling competition.

why? without them there would be less incentive for progress.

I beg to differ

MS is a company so they will look out for #1 but I don't hear the ridiculous claims that other companies have done.

Here's my general personal opinion on patents and IP. If you put the work and time into something you deserve compensation for that work. Otherwise scumsucking leeches (usually someone with more money and contacts/power) will take advantage of your innovation and there is no reward for said work.
How long etc depends on the medium etc. Sometimes I think patents are too long.

What I have a problem with is scumsucking leeches who get patents for ridiculous things. People who just start throwing out patents on processes, phrases or gestures....people without the skill or talent to do these things. Think Kramer from Seinfeld "1.9% financing on a Toyota 1 ton. That was my idea too!"

These make the patent process a joke. There does need to be a serious overhaul of the patent process I agree, but there needs to be some protect for ACTUAL innovation.

It's not innovation if you are copying someone else's idea. Innovation is coming up with new things, not plagiarism.

SAL-e, if I come up with an idea that will make a million dollars, why would I tell it to you so you can use it? Then I'd only make about half a million because you would make the other half. You did not work to create my idea and thus you do not deserve the profits the idea brings. That's how I see this.

That's way false. Look back to some of the greatest thinkers in American history. Ben Franklin and Joseph Priestley. Anytime they came up with an idea or invention they quickly shared their discoveries and ideas with others and encouraged them to use it. When Priestly invented soda water (carbonated water) he shared it with everyone. That's how it was back then. He didn't try to make a dime off it, and wanted to share everything he came across. That was typical of the information system back in those days. Knowledge was shared, cause Priestley believed that good ideas should be shared so it grow and can be improved on. Ben Franklin, and Jefferson both shared those values of sharing information.

They innovated and improved society way more than anyone that I've known of. Imagine what we could have been accomplished if information was shared now like it was back then.

to chirs312 How can you know that idea of yours will make you 1 million dollars in the first place? Numerous cases in history have proven that at somepoints a great idea is objected by almost everyone and not until like decades later it can be done correctly and I'm not sure you'll be there to collect your profits.

Patents do provide incentive for innovation and invention. While Benjamin Franklin may not have patented his designs, the vast majority of inventors did. Eli Whitney, Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, the Wright Brothers... They all patented their works, and hence were able to make a living as innovators; Benjamin Franklin, on the other hand, was a statesman first and foremost, NOT an inventor, and hence his inventing was more of something he did in his free time. And it can readily be argued that his inventions were hardly as revolutionary as many others that came after him; so really, without the protection afforded to patents, we would've certainly not been in quite the same technological age today. So no, the argument that a lack of patents would've meant more progress is utter falsehood.

Patents are perfectly fair, and operate on a reasonable principle: if someone manages to invent something, and spends all the resources to do so, then by all means they should have the ability to profit on it for a limited duration. Mind you, for those confused, patents do NOT last anywhere near as long as copyrights; the current term length is 20 years from the filing of an application. It used to alternatively be 17 years from the date the patent was issued, an alternative that was removed because it was exploitable. (so yeah, in other words, law shifted to make patent coverage SHORTER) Also, patents aren't exactly close to as free as copyrights are; they cost a sizable sum, generally into the thousands of dollars, depending on their length; so a small-size inventor can at least afford a few years of protection to really get the most important part of profiting from their invention, while larger corporations will, often enough, find that their patents filed for maximum length, will often cost them MORE to maintain than they are making because of the patents.

For those that don't like patents, don't use them for your own creations. Sure, you can make all your stuff public domain/open source, but then you won't also be making any money off of it. But for those that want to be able to actually get a monetary reward for all their effort put into creating an invention, patents actually help ensure that the large corporations can't just scam them, and use their massive amounts of money, power, and influence to make it their own. And lastly, to get a patent, you must explain and detail your invention, making sure that once the patent expires and it goes into the public domain, there is no chance for the new technology to be lost.

well, at least they are good at filing patents, we're happy for them!
i wish they where this prolific at getting there Os to be "passable"...
(yes i have been to vista hell of late, and yes I'm still furious with them).

What they have brought to the industry is high tech to the masses.u can install windows on almost anything; PC, Toaster, washing machine, cars. And with a fair amount of luck, and some minor headaches it will run. this is what makes windows so good, it's not the quality of the products or how advanced they are, it's the way u can bash the crap out of it and it still runs ( when it runs at all).
what u can say about MS is that they have an incredible nack for selling. They may have in a small way contributed to the insdustry technologically , well in some aspects they may have... what amazes me more is the way they keep selling these faulty unfinished products and how people keep coming back for more Service packs! On the marketing side these people are geniuses!


kind regards

[citation]SAL-e, if I come up with an idea that will make a million dollars, why would I tell it to you so you can use it? Then I'd only make about half a million because you would make the other half. You did not work to create my idea and thus you do not deserve the profits the idea brings. That's how I see this.[/citation]
Chris312,
You are expressing the scarcity point of view. If you have one good idea, can you have one more? If you tell me your idea, I might have positive feed back that will improve your idea. Now You and I can make 2 million dollars more each. This is know as synergy. The best example in live is when man and woman get together and bring new life to the world.

SAL-e,

Well, if I have my 1 million dollar idea and patent it, it's not like it's a secret idea anymore. If you have something you can add to it to make it worth 5 million you can approach me and offer to be partners in business or buy my idea or something.

I really don't see how producing babies has anything to do with patents, lol

I have no problem with patents in concept, I just have a problem with the length of time these patents last. Look at the pharmaceutical industry; by allowing long patents, you're effectively KILLING people by not allowing competition to lower drug prices.

As mentioned, the key is that if you patent something, it immediately becomes public knowledge. So those new ideas are instantly out there. That way patents are placed in public view so that anyone with ideas to improve an invention will be able to see the original, and also be able to find out who to talk to.

As for pharmaceutical patents, the length is perhaps of some concern, though I would note that patents are done generally on a country-by-country basis. (unlike copyrights, where conventions mean that a copyright in one country is generally honored in nearly 200 others automatically) A major thing for a lot of developing countries is the fact that many important drugs, like anti-retroviral drugs for fighting HIV, are, in fact, not even patented throughout Africa, meaning it's quite possible for local companies there to spring up and produce generics affordably for the African market.

Nottheking,
Can you explain better what you mean by saying "it immediately becomes public knowledge". Because my research so far shows that once company gets a patent you can not improve this patent except if you pay monopolistic price and some time no amount of money will be enough, and the only option is to wait for 20 years. If we replace the word 'patent’, with word 'car'. The patent regime will sound like this. "I have to pay you to improve your car". That is ok if the objective of the patent is make patent owner rich, but in our constitution says that patent system has to promote innovation. The current system does not work at all; in fact real inventors are sued more and more often. See:

Patent defendants aren't copycats. So who's the real inventor here?

And if you replace the word "patent" with the word "banana" it says "I have to pay you to improve your banana." That makes as much sense.

The objective of the invention IS to make the owner money. Otherwise his time would be better used making minimum wage at McDonald's. If you have a problem with capitalism, debate capitalism, but in a capitalist economy, ideas are another source of wealth.

Basically, to GET a patent for an invention, you have to explain the invention to the national patent office, to a point where anyone can look at that filed application and re-create that invention. And because of how the US Patent office is, ANYONE can peruse their entire database of patents, right online.

Also, you over-simplify the phrase; you wouldn't be merely improving their "car" for them; you'd be taking it from them; just because the car itself was improved wouldn't be reason enough you should be able to take it away from them without giving them any form of direct compensation; people need to eat, and cannot derive a living off of a warm fuzzy feeling inside that they made something nice. Benjamin Frankling could afford that because he was a highly-paid US ambassador.

As far as infringement cases, I find most stated numbers to be a bit dubious. If you were sued for patent infringement, would you really WANT to admit that, "yeah, you copied it and hoped no one would notice?" You sure as heck wouldn't; you'd assert that you invented it independently, perhaps on a false hope that you'd have a loophole that you'd exploit to keep on going; however, such a loophole does not exist, purposely for that reason. Additionally, of course, you aren't doing society any further good to advance science and technology if you invent something that already existed in the first place.

Basically, as much as a number of you may hate, this society is capitalist, not socialist/communist/open-source/whatever else you want to call it. Because simply put, those societies fail for a reason; if you want inventors to not really profit from innovation, you invariably wind up with people politicising science and technology instead, since they will find SOMEWAY to advance themselves through it. And then you wind up with things run by people like Trofim Lysenko, perhaps the most significant lesson in the form of a human the entire subject of science/technology and political economy has to offer.

Nottheking,
Thank you for explanation of your position. You and Chris312 are applying that I am socialist or communist. For the record I am not. I do support Open Source because make sense. For example, recent data shows that programmers working for open source projects are making about 40% more then programmers working on close source projects.(http://www.crn.com/it-channel/206900235)

Yes my example is non-sense at all, as Chris312 noted and that exactly is my point. The current patent system is non-sense if our goal, as stated in our (USA) constitution, is to promote innovation. And again I can not steal your idea. See my argument in earlier comment (02/12/2009 6:33 AM). The government assigning monopolies through patents are left over from very yearly capitalist theory called Mercantilism. This theory has been rejected by modern economists promoting the ‘free-market’, starting with Adam Smith. Yes, mercantilism allow quick rise of European Powers in 17th and 18th centuries but it is primary cause for many wars that followed. I think the monopolies are showing their ugly face right now again and we need to stop that.

You are absolutely correct that in infringement cases the defendants have no incentive to admit copying, but you are omitting that plaintiffs has very strong incentive to show it. It guaranties triple award and yet they don’t. The fact of life is that independent inventions exist. Any new scientific theory has to be confirmed by two or more independent researches, before it is accepted. I also believe that all inventors will have better profits if the current patent system is removed because the only away for companies to stay competitive on the market would be constantly to invent. All this will result in higher demand for highly educated and creative people. Also more money will go into the R&D instead of legal department.

I have to thank you and to Chris312 for short debate. I wish everyone the best.
SAL-e sign-out! :-)

For those who only live to make money, opposed to those who make money to live:
A true inventor is not pursuing just his own wealth, he tries to also improve the well being of others.
As for the argument that capitalism is the supreme form for a society, just take a look at the actual world economy, the direct effect of corporate and bankster greed.
Getting back to the subject, patents, it is enough to analyze the example from the article with "surface computing". If you take a closer look it's plain nothing, it describes just, in very broad terms, some form of interaction between a personal object and a computing system, without going any deeper, which "absolutely" needed a lot of R&D of the yearly 8 billion mentioned, except a lot of lawyer fees. It isn't a real invention, but will surely be used as a roadblock and coercion mean for everyone who will (try to) do something specific, which would just peripherally resemble the patented "invention".

I'll just come out and say it here, then: open-source is, inherently, at least partly communist. They both are plagued with similar problems: because the invisible hand is removed, the main driving force is personal; and only a fool is optimistic to think that everyone in charge is altruistic enough to be trusted with the power they have. For open-source software, this yields the problem that those few programmers who ARE in the middle, those that make the actual decisions as for what the actual program itself will be when released, have only their own desires to pursue. Which, as I've noticed, do NOT line up with the mainstream. This is why, for instance, Firefox's market share is less than 1/3 that of Internet Explorer, in spite of the latter being bad enough as it is, and both free; (and not exactly hidden) it's hardly the best browser if you're not like the core group at the Mozilla Foundation.

Also, ossie, I'd appreciate if you'd stop voting other replies up and down just based on whether you agree/disagree with them. It doesn't paint a very favorable picture of yourself.

That was precisely my point: those people aren't making money off of open-source, but rather, they have the time to spend because they're making enough money already, working a REAL job during the day. In other words, they're programming NON-open-source stuff during that time, for which they make money. This world ain't free.



I do understand most enthusiasts aren't exactly known for being politically savvy. Hence why you see a huge array of various career paths leading into politics, (entrepreneurs, lawyers, farmers, physicians, military officers, and professors being the most common, as I recall) but virtually no techies. But still, I'd feel a bit better about reading your posts if you'd actually bothered to read up on what you professed to speak of beforehand. Especially when you claim that Patents are even mentioned in the US Constitution.



While you are correct to note that mercantilism is heavily rejected and refuted by actual capitalists as much as actual capitalists refute communism, and wouldn't even be making much of a stretch to argue that a lot of the largest multi-national corporations act in mercantilist, rather than capitalist, manners, (especially if you were speaking in regards to copyrights) you cannot argue that patents are a mercantilist idea. In fact, they are, as defined in their reason and function, inherently VERY capitalist. The basic principle of mercantilism lies in the tangibility of wealth; that the overal level is un-changing, and is possessable. While patents make intellectual property possessable, by definition they absolutely MUST expire after a set time period, and often sooner. This inherently does provide a punishment for companies that try to over-step themselves; if they patent an idea before they actually have it working, and then spend the next 20 years to actually get it to work, they've just made an invention that immediately lands in the public domain; they spent all that money, and get no protection for it. In other words, they've just poured potentially millions upon millions of dollars to develop something that, in their prior greed, they just squandered their real chance to rake in profit on it; sure, they can sell it, but now others can as well without investing anything into development, thus providing for competition.

Also, there's the other bit that kills any possible idea of patents being mercantilist, and that's the fact that ideas are not finite. Basically, I doubt anyone's going to run out of ideas or inventions any time soon, or perhaps even in all of humanity's existence. That literally makes patents impossible to mercantilist, since there would literally be never any chance to have "all" of the ideas.

The existence of patents versus the non-existence of them has the primary effect of placing high value on inventing, value that would not be there in the monetary market without them, as the value would be placed on something else, namely dirtier stuff like theft and corruption. (again, Trofim Lysenko)

Lastly, I'd note that patents also create challenges, to spur innovation; while you cannot simply make an improved version of a patented invention and have it be your own, you can make an entirely different alternative that is superior to the first choice, in one or more ways, and market that. but without the first idea, there is no challenge to tackle. A strong case of this idea is with Hybrid vehicles: virtually every hybrid car in existence follows a design that is similar enough to what Toyota developed in the 1990s and subsequently patented for their Prius. Now, because like virtually every invention these days, it falls into an already existing market, it faces competition even from companies without that invention. Hence, there is still incentive for them to license their technology out to every other automaker, which is precisely what they've done. Meanwhile, General Motors took a look at Toyota's patented THS/HSD technology, (Toyota Hybrid System/Hybrid Synergy Drive) and thought they could make a better alternative invention. This resulted in them inventing their new E-Flex technology, something that in all likelihood would not have existed had GM been able to simply make their own cars on the THS/HSD technology without paying any royalties.



Basically, it shows that it's harder to claim that someone copied when they didn't, then it is for someone to copy, claim that they idependently invented it, and got away with it. Were it the other way around, the majority of cases would've been come out as rulings the defendant NOT copying; either because that was true for >50% of the cases, or that, of course, >50% of the cases containing lies would rule that the defendant did not copy.

Inversely, were it so easy to claim that someone copied one's invention and prove it, there would be a far larger quantity of such rulings, if not the majority of them, a majority being the fact that it's far easier to steal someone's invention rather than to invent it independelty, since stealing merely needs one to see the patent.



These new sentences have zero practical relationship to each other; scientific theory is not the same thing as invention; you CANNOT patent a scientific theory. Also, a scientific theory takes more than 2 researchers; generally it takes hundreds, if not thousands, of repeat experiments, conducted over a decade or more. Inventions are the product of applied science & engineering, also known as technology. Scientific theories are the product of theroetical science, the collective of natural science, behavioral science, and social science. The former group follows the process of invention and thus is not technically science; the latter group follows the scientific method.



Not in the slightest; companies would cease bothering to invent entirely, since it would cost money, when they could just otherwise seek out those that have inventions and ideas, and steal them. Basically, corporate R&D would cease to exist, and be replaced with corporate espionage. They would have ZERO demand for educated and creative people, merely for those who were incredibly glib and slippery, or others of untrustworthy character.

The basic idea is that yes, with a patent, a company can profit from an idea for a number of years. But you forget that companies try to make money, so why stop with just one invention to make money, rather than trying for more? They wouldn't try aggressive inventing if they couldn't have their inventions protected; in the end, the evidence is right in the article here, that Microsoft didn't just stop with Windows, but went on to try to tackle other markets as well, hence all their fuss over Microsoft's "Surface" technology. And what if a company hadn't? Well, that's what competition's for, to invent a superior alternative.

Furthemore, profiting from these earlier inventions has allowed them to be able to AFFORD some of this inventing, which has cost a lot of money just for development, and certainy was out of the range of what a single programmer, or even a group of programmers, could manage with their off-time. This is why the rate of invention in this world is accelerating, as it did entirely independent of the open-source movement; businesses got better and better organized, planned better, and hence started pouring more and more money into research.



I would say that if they're putting a lot of perspiration into their work, and it's new and previous as-yet never realized, it's most certainly an invention. And you know darn well that Microsoft makes its money by selling its products to a LOT of people. So, it would be a complete surprise if Microsoft planned to do anything aside from that. And if Microsoft patented it before they had it ready? Then that's a number of years whittled away at their usable protection; remember, unlike copyrights, patents don't last effectively forever. Their pre-invention protection may sound a little silly, but for now, it appears to be that they're ensuring that no one gets a peek and manages to be "inspired" (also known as "only stealing PART of their idea") enough to develop their own invention before Microsoft can finish.

@nottheking Just don't be a hypocrite... (I hope you know why.)
OSS has nothing to do with communism, presumably it's FOSS what's horrifying mccarthyists.
The last time I looked at it, FF share was still rising, as opposed to m$'s iexploder, despite the last one having all m$'s corporate might behind.
Don't divagate with real world patents, the whole discussion was about the so called SW patents, which are a completely different species - in the EU, despite heavy lobbying and pressure, they are still not accepted (at least officially).
Actually the greed of the few chosen ones in the party bureaucracy wasn't supposed to be a function of communism either... at least in theory.
m$ is actually making it's money by screwing a LOT of people, and it's no surprise that they are doing it all over again and again.

I know why you assume why, but apparently, it was disproven with prett solid evidence if you noticed that now your comment got a -2; I didn't vote, and there's no way I could've voted twice, anyway. (or voted myself up) Apparently there are others reading that got fed up with you. Possibly due to your arrogance at writing poorly-made comments that are full of pure rhetoric, and attacking lengthy, well-written ones purely because they contradict your own little bubble.



Not very fast, I would note. And it owes most of that to the almost rapid advertising done for that by its own backers. That's one thing that un-paid people are good at: grassroots advertising.



Um, that's only at the EU level itself that said things cannot be patented; if you read the entirety of Article 52, it limits its own exclusions. And, of course, can be readily gotten around by simply individually filing a patent in every EU member country, rather than submitting one to the EU.



The problem with Communism was, is that most people have a fantasy idealized version of it that was actually never put forth prior to, oh, the collapse of the USSR. Karl Marx never described a system terribly well, except that he made it clear that what he envisioned was something akin to the labor unions that existed at the time. And coincidentally, labor unions are *NOT* perfectly equal for all people in it; those in charge have a distinct advantage over ordinary members. And as we know quite well by now, they are a ripe location for corruption. So yeah, that's an inherent flaw with communism. And that's not far off from the inherent flaws in open-source software projects, at least provided the creators aren't being paid for their work; that's a key difference between, say, Mozilla's Firefox, and Google's Chrome; the source code was released for both, Firefox relied on an ad-hoc, unpaid group of programmers, who had literally zero incentive to make something other than for themselves. Meanwhile, while Chrome was to be free, its developers were under paid orders to make a good browser for the general market. The result was that Chrome became a far superior browser.



Who's being screwed? All the schmucks who expect everything to be free for them? Hundreds, if not thousands, of honest programmers are employed because of projects like this, people who would not have their jobs if not for the fact that patents gauranteed the profitability of their talents.

Nottheking,
At least we can agree on couple of points. The first is that experiment conducted in USSR and the rest of the Eastern Block was very far from the original communist and socialist ideas. The main problem was that those ideas were never theoretically developed and if there was time, we could found the theoretical problems, instead of destroying the life of millions and millions of people. Only the people who lived under the regime knew and undarstand that. There was very popular joke that I learn in Moscow. I will try to translate it for every one.

"In late 80's the soviet scientists able to resurrect the mummy of Lenin. The moment Lenin woke-up he demanded the paperwork to examine the progress of USSR. So they gave him all documents and left him alone to work. He never appeared for days so the communist elite enter his room to see what was going on, but Lenin was missing. The only thing they found was a note. 'I am back at Avrora, and I am starting the revolution all over again. Lenin'"

My biggest problem is that I see the same problems here in USA. The career politicians are corrupted and they are failing to do their duty at the same time people are failing to hold them accountable for that. I will hate to see USA destroyed because we were not able to learn from mistakes of others. That is what smart people do.
The second point that we agree is that smart people and inventors should be rewarded, but we radically differ in our approach. This is the best part of USA as long we can find away to maintain constructive dialog.

About the open-source software I think you are misunderstanding the process. You are correct that some projects are run by small core of people and they can make or break the project. But here where the agility of the OSS is coming to play. If you disagree you can take the current source and fork it. You can modify it the way that will work for you or your selected business. For example Sun exercises strict control over the OpenOffice and many programmers are turn-off by that. As result different version of the OpenOffice called Go-OO exists. That is what most people include in their distributions. Other OSS project that had completely different style is MySQL. For many years they had dual-licenses, Commercial and GPL. But they had found out that it would be simple to drop the commercial license. Now the MySQL server is distributed only under GPL and they have been very successful. The same happen to Qt library; recently Nokia changed the license from GPL to LGPL. This is going to allow development of commercial software and the company can publish only portion of their source and continue to improve the Qt library. That is how both, commercial companies and OSS communities can benefit from each other. Canonical is trying to develop what you call mainstream Linux distribution and they are getting a lot of criticism, but at the same time they are one of the most popular distribution. At the same time the people that need special distribution can find it or build it. Here the efficiency of the OSS is coming. If you have a special case you can take core from existing projects and build only your component instead of re-inventing the wheel every time. That is why programmers that understand OSS are in high demand right now. If you are OSS programmer, you can move from one company to other and your skills will apply. The company doesn’t have to spend time to train you. The company can have you working on their project without wasting time and money on usual overhead. Many companies are realizing that, including Microsoft. Yes, Microsoft has removed ridiculous restriction that you can not use their development software to produce OSS and recently they have contributed to Moonlight, OSS implementation of Silverlight. Some people argue that all software should be OSS. This is nice idea, but is not practical. In some cases more efficiently from business point of view to be close source and this should be left to the company to decide. The business models around OSS are very young and they need time to mature. The only people that are scared by OSS are the people that don't want to change. Those people are using their money and power to prevent the change, but they will fail in the long run. Do you really believe that MS will work so quickly to fix Vista, if Linux was not around and some OEM vendors have not started to distribute Linux? Like it or not but Linux is becoming real competition for MS. In fact the power of OSS is just started to show. I bet you that you have at least one device that runs OSS and most of the software will be OSS in the future. Some companies are all ready taking notice of that. Sun is building OpenSolaris. Nokia is in process of opening the source of the Symbian OS. IBM, HP, Novell, Red Had, Intel all are working together to improve the Linux kernel and yet they are big competitors to each other. Recently IBM was sued by patent troll. IBM never announced it publicly, but they have received many documents from other OSS companies. As result the IBM won the case in such way that all OSS companies are protected form this kind of racket. That is why I support OSS. We also agree that many companies are not working in the free-market competition instead they are looking and promoting mercantilism. Those companies are looking to eliminate competition by abusing their monopolistic power. MS was found guilty of doing that. Those companies are using temporary granted monopolies through patents to block competitors and in the process stifling innovation. That is why I oppose current patent regime. There should be better way of protecting inventors. For example instead of granting monopolies to one company why we don't have patent that require to pay tax to use it and portion of tax to be paid back to inventing company or individual. That way no one can stop implementation of that idea. If the idea is implemented by many companies the inventor will receive more royalties. That way the company that provide best implementation can win the biggest market share and profit. If any one implements the idea with out paying the patent tax will commit tax fraud and the government should step in. The best part would be that other companies will police that and we don't need extra government expenses. I believe that we do not need monopolies, even if they are temporary only.
Best regards,
SAL-e

@ nottheking Well, you still didn't get it. It is naturally to grade a comment by it's value, but quantity will never replace quality - even if m$ is a great supporter of the first one. I always grade comments by the ideas expressed and not the length, and the main criteria is if those ideas are sound and have a solid background.
SW patents are filed, but are unenforceable under current law in the EU and it's component countries.
In your place I wouldn't theorize too much about communism, as it is a system of which you just heard of in the police states of amerika propaganda.
If you really believe that capitalism is free of corruption I already pity you.

To end in a more cheerful mood, some famous quotations - some may be old, but are still quite actual:

"If you can't make it good, make it LOOK good." Bill Gates
"The Internet? We are not interested in it" Bill Gates, 1993
"We had planned to integrate a Web browser with our operating system as far back as 1993" Microsoft (27 Jul 1998, filing its first court responses to federal antitrust)

"Microsoft does not innovate. It buys, imitates, or steals. It makes things difficult for software developers, and thus eventually for users." Richard Brandshaft
"There is a fantasy in Redmond that Microsoft products are innovative, but this is based entirely on a peculiar confusion of the words "innovative" and "successful." Microsoft products are successful - they make a lot of money - but that doesn't make them innovative, or even particularly good." Robert X. Cringley
"We have no intention of shipping another bloated OS and shoving it down the throats of our users." Paul Maritz
"Microsoft's biggest and most dangerous contribution to the software industry may be the degree to which it has lowered user expectations." Esther Schindler

Nottheking,
I needed some time to think over your example. This case can be looked in different light. Let assume that GM had free access to Toyota hybrid technology. They are producing cars with it, but still Toyota will sell more because they was first and many people will consider their experience in the technology. That exactly why James Watt’s company continued to thrive after their patent on steam engine expired. But let’s get back to GM and Toyota. The difference would be that consumers could have a choice between Toyota and GM. If GM executes the technology better then Toyota, GM will win bigger share and Toyota would be forced to go back to the drawing board and create new technology. If GM was lagging behind they will be forced to invent new technology that gives them an edge. So the invention of new superior technology will happen any way. (I know your argument that all R&D will stop, but history shows that inventions was existing long before the modern patent system, but I respect your opinion.)
I have to agree that in this example the restrictive patent accelerated the development of the alternative technology, but the price that was paid is impossibility and benefits of improving Toyotas technology.
Here is my problem, isn’t the price not to improve existing patented technology for 20 years in order to promote development of alternative technology too high? Consider the fact is that most inventions are incremental rather then new. Second implementing incremental inventions is much more efficient and required less resources then implementing new technology. I can provide an example of the early days of the aviation. Yes, the first flight was here in USA, but because the patent war that Wright Brothers started the aviation in USA stopped to improve. The situation was so bad that about 10 years later during the WWI the US army had to use French plains. The US government had to intervene and to nationalize their patent. I am sure that you know the whole story, but for the rest here is the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrigh [...] patent_war
The worst is that Wright Brothers never able to make other better plain and the surviving Orville Wright had to spend time restoring their public image, that was completely destroy as result of their rent seeking behavior.
For the record. They really were two of the brightest engineers that I admire. I only wish that they had better business partner to make them really successful in business sense.

SAL-e