The great and brilliant Donald E. Knuth has produced an excellent statement on why software algorithms shouldn’t be patentable. Granted, it’s my position that nothing ought to be patentable (thanks to my good friend Dane Weber for making the issue of intellectual property clear to me, by the way), but this statement, focusing as it does on software and algorithms, is really worth taking on in its own right.
But first, some introduction. Donald E. Knuth is widely considered the father of algorithmic analysis; his monumental work The Art of Computer Programming is one of the very few books which can really be considered a classic in this very young field (Kernighan and Ritchie’s The C Programming Language is another notable example, though it’s naturally much more focused in scope). He is also a brilliant mathematician, an organ player, and a variety of other things.
When he was finishing up the second volume of TAOCP, the page proofs he received from his publisher were some of the earliest typesetting ever done by computer. This was in 1978. Knuth was appalled by the low quality of said typesetting, and felt that he could design a computerized typesetting system that would do a significantly better job. So he did, eventually dedicating ten years to the project. The result was TeX, a computer typesetting system which still produces better and more professional results than any other typesetting system available even today. For some examples of the power of TeX, see The TeX showcase; for some more mundane examples showing its normal, everyday typesetting power, I’ll note that every single one of Goretti Publications’s works are typeset in LaTeX, an offshoot of TeX, and that Bill Powell, has even more excellent examples.
Knuth also, as a side project related to the development of TeX, developed the Metafont system of font design, an incredibly brilliant piece of software which also provides the interface for another great piece of software by John Hobby, Metapost, which uses Metafont’s interface but produces PostScript output. Using Metafont, Knuth proved himself to be a true master of many trades, creating the excellent and beautiful Computer Modern family of fonts, a complete font suitable for any purpose.
Knuth was clearly ahead of his time even back in 1978, and he remains a formidable force in the computer science field. So his pitching in on this great and important subject of software patents is no minor thing.
So give it a read; it’s worth a little time and effort.
Praise be to Christ the King!
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