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Comment by alex_smart | Hacker News Reader

I don't quite understand how you do not recognize that that is a strong argument against your position.

Insofar as GP seems to be against software patents in general, it is not an argument against his position, is it?

It definitely is. Church Turing thesis basically states that all systematic procedures can be encoded as math. So, software can be encoded as math yes, but also music can be encoded as math. Life can be encoded as math (which is what our DNA is).

Rather than providing a basis of not allowing software to patented, I think it makes the statement "X can be encoded as math" trivially true - and therefore uninteresting.

In so far as there is value in patents on any systematic procedure at all, the position that "software should not be patentable because it can be encoded as math" is completely untenable.

The difference is that music is not, in fact, math. The representation is abstract to the utility. With software, the math is the utility.

What does “the representation is abstract to the utility” mean? I mean, music isn’t patentable, but it is thoroughly copyrighted.

Software is also, in fact, not math. Nor is the math the utility of software. Software's utility (usually) is the business problems it solves. The processes are encoded as math, and a lot of writing software is about improving those processes, but that is not in fact the utility.

Think of the guy who invented the equi-tempered scale. All throughout history you had to make instruments that are tuned to play in one scale. Now you can suddenly make instruments that can play all of them. Solves a real problem from music by making an improvement in the representation, so it can be viewed as all math. But is it really "just" math?

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