Unbalanced Data Leads to Obsolete Economic Advice
Few computer scientists and technological workers worry about their role in the economies of their industries and their countries. Background supplementary material available.
Gio Wiederhold
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Computing Does Not Support Its Infrastructure
All large, multinational companies that depend on their intellectual prowess are able to avoid most taxation. Two factors enable the trend: first intellectual property (IP) as product designs and software are hard to value in financial terms; second, the creators of software IP do not care about what businesses do with their products — they just as soon give them away — as long as they get paid. The infrastructure components that supported their education, the underlying research, and the communication facilities are to be supported by others. Transitioning to a fair balance requires more than patches to fix loopholes.
Follow the Intellectual Property
How companies pay programmers when they move jobs and the related IP rights to offshore taxhavens.
By applying well-known principlesof intellectual property valuation,sales expectations, growth of maintained software, discounting to present value, and the like, a method is presented for valuingsoftware based on the income that use of the softwareis expected to generate in the future.
Digital libraries, value, and productivity
A digital library is popularly viewed an electronic version of a public library. But replacing paper by electronic storage leads to three major differences: storage in digital form, direct communication to obtain material, and copying from a master version. These differences in turn lead to a plethora of further differences, so that eventually the digital library no longer mimics the traditional library. Furthermore, a library is only element in the process of creating, storing, culling, accessing, selecting, and distributing information to customers. While the technical focus of digital library research is on the central functions of storage and access, major changes will occur in the interaction within the new systems.
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