Against User Interface Copyright
The League for Programming Freedom
Reason #4: Meaningful Competition Is Reduced
Under the regime of interface copyright, there will be no compatible competition for established products. For a user to switch to a different brand will require retraining.
But users don’t like to retrain, not even for a significant improvement. For example, the Dvorak keyboard layout, invented several decades ago, enables a typist to type faster and more accurately than is possible with the standard “QWERTY” layout. Nonetheless, few people use it. Even new typists don’t learn Dvorak, because they want to learn the layout used on most typewriters.
Alternative products that require such an effort by the consumer are not effective competition. The monopoly on the established interface will yield in practice a monopoly on the functionality accessed by it. This will cause higher prices and less technological advancement – a windfall for lucky businesses, but bad for the public at large.
Reason #5: Incompatibility Does Not Go Away
If there had been a 50-year interface copyright for the steering wheel, it would have expired not long ago. During the span of the copyright, we would have got cars steered with joysticks, cars steered with levers, and cars steered with pedals. Each car user would have had to choose a brand of car to learn to drive, and it would not be easy to switch.
The expiration of the copyright would have freed manufacturers to switch to the best of the known interfaces. But if Ford cars were steered with wheels and General Motors were steered with pedals, neither company could change interface without abandoning their old customers. It would take decades to converge on a single interface.
Reason #6: Users Invest More Than Developers
The plaintiffs like to claim that user interfaces represent large investments on their part.
In fact, the effort spent designing the user interface of a computer program is usually small compared to the cost of developing the program itself. The people who make a large investment in the user interface are the users who train to use it. Users have spent much more time and money learning to use 1-2-3 than Lotus spent developing the entire program, let alone what Lotus spent develop the program’s interface per se.
Thus, if investment justifies ownership, it is the users who should be the owners. The users should be allowed to decide – in the marketplace – who may use it. According to InfoWorld (mid January 1989), computer users in general expect user interface copyright to be harmful.
Reason #7: Discrimination Against Software Sharing
User interface copyright discriminates against freely redistributable software, such as freeware, shareware and public domain software.
Although it may be possible to license an interface for a proprietary program, if the owner is willing, these licenses require payment, usually per copy. There is no way to collect this payment for a freely redistributable program. The result will be a growing body of interfaces that are barred to nonproprietary software.
Authors of these programs donate to the public the right to share them, and sometimes also to study and change their workings. This is a public service, and one less common than innovation. It does not make sense to encourage innovation of one sort with means that bar donation of another sort.
Go to: Reason #8: Copyright Will Be a Tool For Extortion
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