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Comment by raganesh | Hacker News Reader

"I actually agree with Google. On that note, I think their search algorithms have become essential for the industry. As much as I've tried switching to Bing or Yahoo, I keep coming back to Google's engine.

Those algorithms should be de facto standards and licensed under FRAND"

Came across the above comment at http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/151423/google-argues-popula...

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The algorithms aren't the critical part of Google's engine- it's the signals which help the system learn what you're interested in.

This is why Bing is desperate to get traffic- as long as it's numbers are low then it has significantly fewer signals which cause its ads to underperform.

This is also the source of the 'Bing is copying our results' kerfuffle last year- http://searchengineland.com/google-bing-is-cheating-copying-.... Bing needed more signals, so used the toolbar to get them, inadvertently copying Google.

Maybe software patents should only be good for a few years? I think that a current patent is good for twenty, but maybe it's only fair if a patent can last for five years? That might really encourage innovation...

Frankly, and I realize this might be a radical notion (said with tongue firmly in cheek), but I think none years is about right.

Yes, none years sounds good. Shall we go with that? ;)

I think that this might also be the sweet spot for copyright!

GPL depends on copyright, so you'd be eliminating enforceability of that too.

So be it; if we got rid of copyright and lost copyleft in the process, I'd consider that a net win. The Free Software Foundation has said on several occasions that they feel the same way.

GPL was really just an attempt to use copyright against itself anyway.

I think the key thing to note is that it would be less necessary, since there would be no legal means to prevent you taking apart a compiled binary, working out how to improve it, and sharing those improvements.

Patents have demonstrated no such value.

Copyright is most definitely not a good force. Whenever the government intervenes to prevent voluntary transactions among individuals, it destroys more value than it creates. Copyright falls under that category.

Absolutist statements like that sound nice, don't they? Shame that both history and the present day don't bear out your claims.

Thanks for playing, though!

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