Subj : Re: Software Patents
To   : comp.programming
From : Gerry Quinn
Date : Sat Jul 09 2005 02:46 pm

In article <dalfc5$7hu$03$1@news.t-online.com>, f.fracassi@gmx.net 
says...

> The thing is that in Software the Research cost is very close to the
> Development cost (as opposed to for example Pharma). Lets take an example.
> Even if you know each idea that influenced how Microsoft Office was build,
> and want to write something simmilar, it would take you some 1000 of
> man-years to do. It would perhaps take a bit longer if you had nothing to
> guide you, but not that much.

I completely disagree.  Cloning MS Office would not take a tenth of the 
work of developing it.

- Gerry Quinn

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