Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Great Artists Steal (Small Post #4)
"Good artists borrow, great artists steal." Although creating software is not technically art, it takes a creative mind to make innovative programs. Most ideas programmers use are not new. They blend ordinary ideas to create unique software. The product itself is the masterpiece, not its common parts separately. It is ridiculous that companies own patents to the building blocks of software. It is like an art company that owns the patent to a color and requires other artists to pay royalties to use it. The novelty is not the discovery of the color, but rather the complete painting. Programmers should be able to freely steal the parts that compose programs, and have their masterpieces, not the parts, protected from being borrowed without permission.
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I agree that the algorithms, data structures, and components of programs should be more readily available to the community. It's not like some unnamed large companies never had the need to "borrow" a GUI or even an operating system...and then turn around, copyright their product, and call it closed source.
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