I am well aware of the foundations of CS and the lambda calculus, but this is more than a bit reductionist, like saying "everything is made of subatomic particles."

Patents on processes and methods are pretty common. Dismissing it as "they just patented some math" and then falling back to saying "oh, lambda calculus" -- I think you can do better :-)

But, yes, I'm sure the patents suck.

B-frames (bi-directional predicted frames with a reference frame in both the past and the future) are patented. I'd say that's a process or method.

I don't feel like you were asking on good faith after this response.

Why should Free software advocates need to "do better" than to argue from literal first principles?

Fourier could call his transform a "process" all he wants, but that does not make it patentable.

So yes, "oh, math."

Almost all inventions can be reduced to "just math", because after all, that's what we use to describe the physical world, and oh also computer software things.

I'm not in favour of patents at all, but the entire "it's math" argument has always seemed exceedingly weak to me.

These files have carefully constructed format though. To read and write the patented format goes beyond patenting math. I think cmrdporcupine was getting at something.

Yep, it's not like I think the patent is just. I think software patents are mostly junk. But saying "because it's math" is highly uninformative.

First principles is fine, but where is the argument?

I don't quite understand how you do not recognize that that is a strong argument against your position.

Insofar as GP seems to be against software patents in general, it is not an argument against his position, is it?

It definitely is. Church Turing thesis basically states that all systematic procedures can be encoded as math. So, software can be encoded as math yes, but also music can be encoded as math. Life can be encoded as math (which is what our DNA is).

Rather than providing a basis of not allowing software to patented, I think it makes the statement "X can be encoded as math" trivially true - and therefore uninteresting.

In so far as there is value in patents on any systematic procedure at all, the position that "software should not be patentable because it can be encoded as math" is completely untenable.

The difference is that music is not, in fact, math. The representation is abstract to the utility. With software, the math is the utility.

Software is also, in fact, not math. Nor is the math the utility of software. Software's utility (usually) is the business problems it solves. The processes are encoded as math, and a lot of writing software is about improving those processes, but that is not in fact the utility.

Think of the guy who invented the equi-tempered scale. All throughout history you had to make instruments that are tuned to play in one scale. Now you can suddenly make instruments that can play all of them. Solves a real problem from music by making an improvement in the representation, so it can be viewed as all math. But is it really "just" math?

What does “the representation is abstract to the utility” mean? I mean, music isn’t patentable, but it is thoroughly copyrighted.

The link you're looking for is curry howard correspondance

Everything is math.