You’re probably all aware of my opinion regarding software patents… apart from all the other arguments against, purely looking at “time to market” and effective use of limited resources, it makes no business sense spendingwasting time on software patents. Just be faster.
I heard the following recently, and I think it’s an interesting observation:
An IP lawyer recently remarked that the most money that an engineer can earn is in patent litigation. When we take our best and brightest and put them to work litigating against the rest of the best and brightest, we shouldn’t be surprised when we get passed by countries that actually make things.
The real question may well be: what business are you in? Producing something real, or just creating more work and income for lawyers?
This may even apply to some innovations outside the software realm. Increasingly, time to market is critical – even if your innovation gets copied, by the time your competitor gets to market, you’ve already sold what you can and it’s done. Next!
Never bet the farm on a single magic innovation; the world just doesn’t work that way any more. And no matter how bright you are, there are always other (perhaps even brighter) people out there also. Coming up with something nifty important, but it’s really only a tiny part of what’s needed. Getting it out there fast and in a smart way, that’s the real trick.
To give you a very practical example… I once mentioned as part of a talk “a tarball is not a product”. Now think about Red Hat. They took a huge pile of tarballs, and turned it into a pretty nice product. And with that standardised environment, they were able to sell complementary services.
So, while they didn’t make the original inventions, they sure made a product, got it to market, and they’re very successful. Us geeks can debate the technical details of their offering, but that’s really beside the point ;-) It’s not about being perfect, but about being reasonably workable and on the market. If “perfect” only exist in your head, it’s irrelevant to the world. Get it out there, fast.
Also, I’ve yet to know a geek who developed something that made tons of money and then stopped developing. This suggests that “success” isn’t in money; and that the goal isn’t to get “the most money”.
Prestige, perhaps, or doing something useful. But really, even when a geek earns prestige or makes a valuable product or service, they keep working.