Dear god...sensible legislation!

From Wisconsin, no less!

Though I have business issues with the open source movement, this kind of legislation is just plain common sense. Computer scientists have been screaming since the whole electronic voting debacle that you have to have a paper trail for something as important as voting, and for transparency reason the "blueprints" for the voting software need to be viewable by the public. I mean, fucking "duh."

On a related topic, I realized the other day that there's kind of an inherent tension between patents and open source. As I've said before, I think freely available source code for commercial software is generally, with a few exceptions, a good thing. It allows for external evaluation and better compatibility between programs. I part company with open source, however, when it comes to the "free software" movement because, well, it's stupid, or at the very least counter-productive. But I've rambled about that topic before.

In my ideal world, you shouldn't need to hide your code in order to protect your inventions or business model. Things like copyright should prohibit you from using a piece of commercial software willy-nilly without paying for it because, all things being equal, the law should prohibit actions you could potentially take rather than fundamentally strip your ability to take those actions in the first place. It's the difference between having speed limits and putting a speed regulator in your car that prevents you from going more the 65 mph. One is a sensible world, the other downright Orwellian (no really...it's definitionally Orwellian...read "1984").

The problem is that such a world depends on protections of intellectual property, or in other words, the degree to which allowing anyone and everyone to look at your code does not jeapordize your incentive to develop a piece of software is directly correlated with the strength of intellectual property law, i.e., patents. But we've already said that the state of patent law in this country is ridiculous. Well, fuck. I guess you can't win.

Anyway, I stand by my assertion that IP law needs to be drastically more intelligent. Copyright is actually generally okay (except for its duration, which is unjustifiably long...80 years? Really? How much protection does Mickey need?), and is a good way to prevent outright theft of code. Patents are trickier...at the very least, the bar needs to be much higher ("one-click" is something that Sling Blade "french fried potaters" guy could have thought up while watching tv...that is _not_ a significant invention), and idiotic protections of things like business practices need to go. That was a pandora's box that never should have been opened.

But, of course, we have a government that goes to the highest bidder, so until Microsoft and the other tech giants decide to really put their muscle behind reforming patent law, it ain't changing any time soon.