[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Thursday, December 27, 2001): >Tom Brinkman wrote: > >>On Tuesday 25 December 2001 07:17 pm, Doug Lerner wrote: >> >>>What do people think about free vs commercial software in general? >>>I myself don't object to commercial software. In fact, I work for a >>>company that makes very high-quality commercial software with a >>>great, loyal customer base. >>> >>>Surely there is nothing wrong with paying to have software >>>supported and updated? >>> >>>doug >>> > >Well the analogy of the clay pot may not be good at all. Consider this-- > >I make a clay pot, and I fire it and I go to a lawyer and show him the >product and get him to draft a patent so that no one else can glaze clay >pots or decorate them in any way without paying me royalties. I file >the patent and use the proceeds from my clay pots to threaten to keep >anyone else who fires clay pots in court for years of ruinous spending >battling my army of lawyers unless they pay me ransom for protection >against lawsuit. I believe that patent law requires more than just something new. It has to be something that is not obvious too. Let me ask the opposite question. Suppose a drug company takes hundreds of millions of dollars from thousands of investors and uses the money for research and creates a drug that improves the daily lives of millions of people. Do the people who invested in the enterprise deserve to profit from this? Or should anybody be allowed to come along and make generic copies of the drug without bothering to invest in time and effort to do the research? > >The problem does not rest with Intellectual property but with >application which has definitely become a reductio ad absurdem. > Non-productive drones feast off the efforts of the workers, the >software writers, and squelch creativity. This is the reality and it is >why anything I write is GPL. > >Civileme > > > >Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? >Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
