On Wed, 1 Oct 2003, Richard Todd Carlson wrote: > *pop* (that was the sound of a can of worms being opened) > > So given the benefits of OSS, is it unethical to produced closed source > software?
You have to remember that software was really a nifty invention designed to redesign computers which were designed to do pure mathematical work, so the thought of "hiding" source code would be completely stupid. EE Bob asks EE Ted: "how did you get your computer to solve the intergral of e^x^2?" "I can't tell you or I'll have to shoot you."! Ha Ha! OK, just a little pathetic satire. This is also equivalent to the Cossists of the 1500's who performed mathematical tricks for royalty and the like and didn't reveal their "secrets". Mathematics experinced significant maturation under Viette and his school (which included such inhuman mathematical luminaries as Descarets, Fermat, and Pascal) in the 1500-1600's where restricting one's information would be completely absurd, except for Fermat who derived great joy from humbly putting forth "insignificant" (quotes mean my tounge is in my cheek) thoerems to his mathematical contemporaries which he himself had proven, sometimes by the ridiculous means of infinite descent! But even then Fermat would show his ideas when an "uncle" came back to him. Ask Peter Prier about hiding violin-making "secrets". He will tell you that the Luthiers that shared their ideas, discoveries, and methods made the best violins. Interesting that the OS method has been working for almost half a millenium. Society has esteemed the virtues of idea ownership for a long time, because it worked. Business/trade half lifted Europe out of the Dark Ages and stronger than anything else eroded in deliberation of practice the monolithic arbitration of estates of that same state and others. Perhaps it is time to let go of the old standard of property-makes-money to the-proliferation-of-good-ideas-will-improve-the-human-condition standard. The more I think of how IP codified into law that protects (restricts?) software, the less I can legitimize for myself the restrictions on any kind of ideas. Yes, let us let go of it. Justin ____________________ BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
