Remember when Amazon, Apple, ARM, Cisco, Facebook, Google, Huawei, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla, Netflix, Nvidia, Samsung Electronics and Tencent all had to come together and form a super group to develop a royalty free video codec because something as simple as compressing and decompressing video was so god damn patent encumbered by people who just existed to suck money out of everyone.

Literally, every time software is patented, it ends up being used to screw with everyone, then eventually the patent expires ten years after the software was useful, or we have to waste huge amounts of effort to sideline it.

You sound like you need a history refresher on patents in the software industry and the disastrous effect that it has had in hurting innovation and consumers and how it is dominated by trolls and squatters.

[+] BaroqueInMind@kbin.social -19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I don't know how to convey to you how important it is to incentivize innovation without worrying someone else will simply steal your ideas to make millions from your hard work you did inventing something while they literally did nothing.

If I make something and someone else can simply take it and dominate the market with it and pay me nothing for the work i did, why the fuck should I even bother making anything?

[–] echo64@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Again, look at the history of software patents. Tell me a single time it incentivied innovation and wasn't just used by patent trolls and wasn't just a huge waste of time and money for the industry to spend time on.

I think you are wholey unfamiliar with software patents in general and are just going on some basic guiding principal and I can tell you right now, history has not played out in your idilic description at all and you are just coming off as ignorant on the topic.

[+] BaroqueInMind@kbin.social -12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Let's take a look at countries with no patent laws and compare their innovations that contributed to the rest of the world:

East Timor - nothing
Suriname - nothing
Somalia - nothing
Eritrea - nothing
Maldives - nothing
Marshall Islands - nothing
Micronesia - nothing
Myanmar - nothing
Palau - nothing
South Sudan - nothing
North Korea - nothing

[–] ricdeh@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

This is literally just whataboutism. You must be degenerate if you think that there's a correlation between the research performance of the listed countries and their patent laws. There are dozens of more useful and much more relevant indicators for why these nations are disadvantaged in this regard. But just stick to your belief that North Korea is what it is because it doesn't have patent laws lol.

Also, for you to better understand the harm that software patents caused and are causing, consider reading Free Software, Free Society by Richard Stallman.

[–] BaroqueInMind@kbin.social -2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

My mistake, you're right. We should completely remove the incentive to innovate novel ideas and no longer protect them if they are created to allow theft.

I am a hypocrite thief that uses free software in my daily life.