Re: Strawmen and Urban Legends

[Stefaan A Eeckels]

On Thu, 28 Dec 2006 16:50:35 +0000
Rui Miguel Silva Seabra <rms@1407.org> wrote:

> Qui, 2006-12-28 às 17:32 +0100, Stefaan A Eeckels escreveu:
> > > The EPO is already doing a great job as far as "software patents"
> > > are concerned.
> > 
> > And you are an authority on these matters. 
> 
> No, but the EPO is, an they declared about 30 thousand software
> patents circa 2002.

Lots of patents don't mean they're doing a great job :)

> > That, however, has nothing to do with the fact
> > that software is not written as a poem, but rather as a set of
> > logically coherent statements in a restricted language, much more
> > like mathematics.
> 
> Many mathematicians would argue that some works are science yet also
> art.

I wasn't arguing about mathematics, software or poems being art. Some
work in all these categories most certainly is art. Most of it isn't. 

But even when software is art, it's certainly not written as a poem,
though one could argue that the formal precision of a sonnet, or the
austerity of haiku have their counterparts in good programs. 

-- 
Stefaan A Eeckels
-- 
A journalist is someone whose business it is to explain to others 
what he personally does not understand       -- Alfred Northcliff