[simoncion]

> Most programmers do approximately zero work that is R&D.

So, what you're saying is one or more of the following:

1) The work of most programmers should not be considered R&D, and shouldn't be covered by tax schemes intended for R&D.

2) Most "software IP" in the industry is not the result of R&D.

3) You've rarely been involved in the sale of non-R&D "software IP". (Do recall that your original statement was "As anyone that has ever sold software IP knows, most of the value is vested in the person that wrote the code, not the code itself.")

[Tanjreeve]

The first two statements would upset a lot of people but I think you'd find theyre arguably true. Most software products are various flavours of configuration. Unless you're genuinely leveraging some novel algorithm/hardware etc it's very hard to argue it's R&D if it's just branding on a collected bag of software various OSS/commercial companies developed. Claiming all software is R&D because you leverage OSS and put a known algorithm on top of some components would be like a supermarket claiming to be a research company because they have a different mix of products + customer experience to their rivals.

I think the third statement is a bit personal so will leave that alone.

[simoncion]

So, it seems that you and I are definitely in agreement about the rough proportion of novel research done to "figure out how to fit preexisting things together and patch over the areas where the parts mate poorly" in the software field. I'd argue that the latter activity does qualify for inclusion in the development half of R&D, but -because I don't know [0] the relevant legal definition of the term, I won't strongly argue for the position.

The unfortunate thing that kicked off this discussion was that you talked about "...[selling] software IP...". Thanks to active work by copyright maximalists [1] over the past 20+ years, the term "Intellectual Property" applies just as well to plug-and-chug Enterprise CRUD software that sells for megabucks as it does to leading-edge research projects that -like- actually have Key Personnel and die dead if those folks go away. Anyone who is capable of paying attention and has been in the industry for more than a year or three is quite aware that plug-and-chug CRUD is far more valuable than the overwhelming majority of the people who make it.

So, yeah. From that arose the confusion.

[0] ...and because I can't be arsed to go look it up...

[1] My position in brief: copyright and patents are absolutely essential, copyright terms are insanely long, and patents frequently granted when they should not