TeeDub

In hindsight, I shouldn't have been so surprised to hear of groups farming likes for profit...

Are there any good articles that talk about this practice? Seems like that could be interesting...

So, I understand that FOSS is great and we all want more open software because there are tangible benefits to working with open software.

I'm less clear on why API's shouldn't be copyrightable. An API isn't just a few lines of code. It's often an intense creative endeavor that ultimately represents a very specific (sometimes innovative) way of looking at the world. Sometimes, those views are uniquely terrible or uniquely elegant... but what's clear is that they are not "natural" in the way that a mathematical equation or physical law may be. It's clearly an act of creation, at least in my mind.

With that in mind... What are the best reasons to deny copyrights to API authors in a legal system that allows writers (who create intense creative endeavors representative of very specific and often innovative ways of looking at the world) copyright protections?

(Mind: I'm not against reforming said legal system; however, given the status quo, I'm not convinced about the differentiation between an API and a written work as creative (and copyrightable) works.)

(Disclaimer: I'm a huge fan of open source and being as "free" as possible. I love Creative Commons and fiercely enjoy the freedoms that FOSS can provide to developers and consumers. I think that API's are something that should be open rather than closed, but I don't think that means that all API's MUST be copyleft / public domain.)

Slate.co looks like it could evolve into a viable contender in this space. I have a few qualms about the way questions are structured, but the site is pretty and nice enough.

OneNote is pretty great. It uses SkyDrive, but is available for free on most mobile platforms (Iphone,Android,Win8 Phone) and any platform with a moderately up to date browser. (Via the web app on Skydrive)

What do you mean when you say tester? If you mean "someone to run manual test cases," it is probably because those sorts of jobs are pure tedium... They can be outsourced to websites too.

If you mean a software engineer that designs software to validate that other complex software systems function (often dealing w nontrivial engineering efforts and undecidable problems) , they probably don't freelance because we denigrate them by calling them "testers" and they'll get hired fulltime by companies that understand the value of their work.

Maybe it's just my phone (I have a Lumia and am not in a place right now to ask for someone else's phone to repro on another platform) , but it seems that the mobile site could use a slight improvement. It's a gorgeous page, but if I want to make multiple comparisons I have to scroll up to the top... Maybe some nav buttons can appear at the bottom? Or at least an anchor link to get back to the top?

Maybe you could present the different options in reverse order of votes? (filtered a bit so that spammy answers aren't always first.) Changing the order of presentation can be a good way to stem cascade effects from seniority/etc. For example, the US supreme court votes in reverse order of seniority to help prevent cascading effects. (That way less senior justices can vote Wo undue influence...)

Are there any serious benchmarks that compare the performance of Java and C#. As someone who works with both languages, I can generally but the qualitative arguments that the author is making, but I would really like to see some data...

Maybe our community has more wide-reaching problems that could also be addressed? Sexist humor strikes me as coming from the same general jackassery that made people mock Heather Arthur's Replace project. I don't think we, as computer scientists /engineers /hackers/etc, have cultivated a positive environment for collaboration or communication... We have plenty of toxic tendencies that should be addressed. (sexism then being one of many things.)

InclinedPlane mentioned "Working Effectively with Legacy Code," and I'd just like to add that's one of the greatest software engineering books out there.

Feathers (the author) methodologically chose to copy / inspire some of his examples from code he's worked with as a mentor / developer (some of it from his time @ Thought Works w/ Beck, et al.)

The book is similar to Fowler's Refactoring in that it provides some core thought processes / ideology and then a long list of heuristics and techniques for revising/updating legacy code. (I find his definition of "legacy code" as any software without automated testing to be challenging and insightful, especially since it indicts most code written ever. ;)

If you get the chance, you could also consider reading "Clean Code", it doesn't have /as much/ "real world" source but is still excellent.

The book that this game originates in ("The Paradox of Self Amendment") is actually a very delightful and thought-provoking book. If you're into self-amending systems (law, software, etc), you may enjoy reading it. It's all available online here: http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/writing/psa/

>"There's also something else...rate of advancement is likely going to seem slower than it was in the past few centuries, because of a natural diminishing rate of return. To paraphrase -- I think, Stephen Colbert -- it's easy to make scientific discoveries when not burying diseased corpses next to your water supply is considered a health breakthrough."

This is a particularly superb point! I really like this argument.

>"I don't think America surpassing Britain in any category was solely due to copyright laws."

This may be incorrect, at least for one category (literature). There's actually some really interesting lit that argues that lax/nonexistent copyright laws of the revolutionary period are the reason that the publishing industry ever took off in America. And these same laws, it could be argued, are how American literature got its start. (Sorry, this is skeevy, but I can't remember the title of the book that articulates this argument for the life of me... Will post it if it comes to me.)

As to your second argument: Are there other aspects of Japanese society that could influence their innovation that go beyond intellectual property? I'm not going to deny that IP protections could play a role in innovation, but I could certainly imagine two countries with identical IP regimes having RADICALLY different levels of innovation. (Education, culture, etc could all create positive impacts on innovation... and these effects may even outweigh any effect produced by an IP regime.)

Are there any metrics for innovation as a whole? This would be an interesting thing to look into...

>So you're saying: "It's very complicated, you won't understand my arguments."

No, that's not at all what he's saying. He's saying that intellectual property is actually an immensely broad and complicated issue. (Rather: That's what I interpreted him to be saying; I could be wrong here.)

I don't think you can really make a statement like "IP laws lead to slower development of science and industry..." because "IP laws" are such a broad category of laws. Do you mean patents? What kind of patents? (Does a 5 year patent on medicines, something proposed by the Pirate Party, count as an IP law that reduces development? Why? How does it differ from other patents that are longer / renewable?) Can I make a contract to stop someone from disclosing an idea of mine? Is that an IP law? (Probably) Is it aggregating money into the hands of the few? (More dubious claim there...)

Don't get me wrong, I tend to agree that there should be limits on the sorts of monopolies that IP laws tend to foster, and I think that the current IP regimes that are dominant are typically very damaging. But I also think there could be certain IP controls that are acceptable and positive. (Allowing for IP regimes that are basically "trade secrets only" seems a bit inadequate to me, especially since patents offer valuable protections to certain kinds of innovations.) This is a view that your wildly over-broad/under-specified interpretation of IP would not accommodate.