Actually software as a second product did not take off until it was no longer bundled for free with hardware. The IBM anti-trust case helped with that.

Perot and Perot Data systems were one of the first to make a business selling software separate from hardware.

However the industry was still limited by two factors. First computers were very expensive which meant that there were very few markets for your software and thus the development cost could not be spread over many customers.

Second each manufacturer used a different, incompatible, architecture which further fragmented the market.

The advent of personal computers produced a vast increase in the number of potential customers and consolidated the market into standardized platforms. CP/M and then MSDOS or the apple products provided many markets and lowered the developers cost.

You are correct that copyright laws have always been critical to the industry. The battle to convince people that software should be payed for continues to today.

There were a handful of patents, a few of them like the LZW patent do represent code that is not obvious to a normal practitioner. But unlike in manufacturing the industry did not, for the most part, respond to that by paying the patent holder but by considering that something that was blocked from use and finding other algorithms. This wasn't particularly hard since it is a complex routine that you are unlikely to invent on your own. It's when more obvious things like "one-click" purchasing get patented that patents go from encouraging invention to discouraging it.

And we both want to encourage invention and assure that inventors get paid.

invention equals invention. A is A

I'll grant that this is a corner case and I don't feel really strongly either way. It seems to me that the distinction is whether you design a device or program it. This seems more like programming to me than designing.

Hello concious1978,
Very good. I believe in some ways, on some issues, Conservatives and Libertarians are Objectivists closest political allies, but they are not Objectivists philosophic equals.
Respectfully,
O.A.

Putting aside the thought of parroting believers (in which I don't classify 'ewv'), the case can be made that calling Objectivism a libertarian philosophy cuts off its identity and publicly associates it with the eclectic libertarian spectrum. This only confuses the identity of Objectivism because libertarians are so subjective in their rationale.

One wouldn't call Objectivism a 'Conservative philosophy', even though it may share isolated agreement on various Conservative political issues. The same should be true for the isolated political agreements with libertarians.

Yes, Objectivists have isolated points of political agreement with other groups. However, it seems there is enough misunderstanding of Objectivist philosophy in the world without adding to the confusion via an unnecessary association.

Software as a separate product did not take off until copyright laws were enforced. Before that software was always bundled with hardware. No one thought you could make money only selling software. But even then some patents were being obtained on software that was not at the application layer.

Yes because you are a second hander.

Why do you think switches were invented? So you did not have to physically rewire the circuit. That is rewiring.

Yes because you know that you are a second hander.

Your stupidity is on display again.

Ayn Rand did discuss the "merits of the case", and so do we.

The libertarian movement is crawling with religious conservatives and subjectivists who do hold a hodge podge of inconsistent "irrational, self-sacrificial ideals that undermine" the Objectivist meaning of liberty.

There is no doubt that Ayn Rand rejected the Libertarian Party and the label "libertarian." Now, one can either assume Ayn Rand was right about everything, or discuss the merits of the case.

Discussing the merits of the case is what I did in my essay being discussed here.

The question is: are most libertarians wedded to irrational, self-sacrificial ideals that undermine or render meaningless their professed commitment to liberty?

I don't think so. I think that most libertarians argue from facts and hold, in effect, that the pursuit of happiness is a moral good.

That said, does liberty require a particular philosophic basis? Yes, it does. Are there tendencies toward value relativism (i.e. subjectivism) and rationalism in the a lot of libertarian thought? Yes, there is.

Is Objectivism vitally needed? Again, I say yes.

Compilers were patented? Every computer company -- IBM. CDC, DEC, Prime, etc. -- had its own compilers implementing the same languages (with annoying minor differences in some aspects of the syntax). They ran on patented mainframes, mini-computers, and later desktop (PCs).

(Mini-computers were computers and peripherals smaller than mainframes, but still much larger than PCs, such as the DEC PDP-11 and VAX used in labs and by small engineering companies who no longer had to rely on time-sharing services on mainframes. By the 1970s and 80s general purpose computers were all solid state; previously they used vacuum tubes, not relays.)

Once the electronics could be built small enough for affordable PCs, then anyone could do it. I think that is what he meant by the explosion in software companies (which mostly did not try to patent their code). Before that there were software companies for engineering analysis and financial applications, but far fewer of them. The programs had not been "conceptualized" by the compilers and the languages they implemented, but did have to follow the specified procedures and syntax required for coding the new algorithms and functions in the applications.

The development process is similar, but the programming-like language (similar to ADA) uses the logic specified to define the firmware, not run on it. It plays the role of a circuit diagram plus a means to implement it in conjunction with a physical process controlled by it.

Every component in an electronic circuit affects how the electrons flow. They don't rewire the circuit.

Switching circuits with physical switches (relays) haven't been used since before WWII.

Patch cords were for configuration, not the step by step program operation, which relied on vacuum tubes to change the state for each clock cycle. The wiring does not change in that process and the state is set by voltage thresholds, not requiring that literally all current stop. The "switching" in a switching circuit refers to switching binary states represented by the voltage configurations, not mechanical switching.

Aah, Now that's just wrong, on so many levels. A computer (the PC or officer computer type as applied in this discussion) can only do a very limited set of operations, It's constrained by being a binary device and Boolian Algebra. Engineers, mainly Electrical but also some Mechanical) had been using and applying similar systems for years, the vast relay systems, then transistors and magnetic donut RAM for decades. Those systems, when unique, were patented.

You may never have seen a ladder logic diagram for those type of systems, but I've worked with some that were up to 500 pages and I've seen some that were larger.

The thing that really generated the growth of programming was the growth in I/O availability and application, and small business and professionals desire to get away from the huge business and institutional computer companies and their monster machines and costs. Once you could transition a computer to keyboard entry and TV display, everybody started writing their own programs to fit their own applications, and again those that were unique and were possibly usable by other people or usages were patented. It had nothing to do with blocking others. Once you have the patent, it's published and everyone can see it. The honest will contract with you for it's use, royalty or buy--the dishonest will steal and use anyway. Bill Gates with DOS and Steve Jobs with Xerox's selectable Icon and mouse, (though I guess payed some nominal fee).

As more PC's, (we first called them mini-computers - 258K as compared to micro) moved into small business and then into personal use and RAM and ROM grew to affordable prices, it then became feasible and more productive to buy an app from someone instead of having to do your own programming and upgrading and maintenance. That's when pure programming became profitable and expanded. And everyone expected what they bought to be patented and it was.

And for a number of years, it was semi Wild West. It was only patent laws that stopped a lot of that and we all benefited. Usually, the patent holder, or company that bought the patent, worked hard to continue to debug and improve and upgrade their product. If you hated the app and couldn't find another, you did your own, or waited patiently for a number of years till the patent expired and another app came out that fit your needs better or had a better track record or wasn't as over priced.

But you're conflating programming with a compiler and a certain number of languages to develop an app, with programming done at the machine language level. Those aren't the same thing. What you're primarily involved with is using an already patented language, with already patented instructions, with an already patented compiler--so now I see why you compare what you're doing to writing a novel. You're not actually doing anything that wasn't already conceptualized by the patented language and instructions, and the patented compiler. I can see why you wouldn't think that was patentable. Not sure I agree, but I can see why you might think that way.

I don't think its so much that libertarians mistake countries for people. I think it's more that the public libertarian, the everyday libertarian, the lay libertarian, if you will, doesn't think of country, nation, or state. They only, or at least mainly, think of people to people interaction. They all run into problems when they start to move into any group to group interaction and the concept of non-uniformity within the group. I think it's why so many of the lay libertarians push the NAP to near pacifism levels, even in allowable speech in their gatherings.

I would suggest that the copyright model is still the appropriate way to protect the IP in the firmware. While the implementation is very close to hardware, the development is similar to traditional programming with compiling and testing the code in a simulator before burning the array.

If someone were to develop a similar program that performed the same function, compile it, debug it and install it, it would not be a copy of the first one.

Does this mean that FPGA firmware should be treated differently from software? What if the FPGA firmware are in sequentially-executed statements inside a VHDL Process that look kind-of like software?

(BTW, I have no knowledge of the legal issues. I'm just reading the commenets.)

Switching a light switch is not the same as rewiring your house. You need a permit to do that.

I actually remember manual patch panels, although I've never programmed them I've taken one out and put another one in to run a different program.

Modern software is so far removed from patch panels as to make the comparison ludicrous. There is nothing in common about the way programs are built and tested with the patch panels.

No I have plenty of that here

When a switch is set or changed it changes the flow of the electrons. That is rewiring the computer. The first computers had manual patch panels, the switches replaced those - rewiring.

Software does not "wire" a computer but its operation and purpose are inherently related to the operation of the hardware. The static computer hardware is not changed, but in a crucial sense the computer is "changed": the state of the hardware as represented by the voltages is changed (for each clock cycle), in a sequence that is unique for each program and is required to run the program. This is why a program is more than just an intellectual exercise.

I haven't seen cultists on the ARI web site and don't regard Shermer as a credible source.