Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!ucsd!ucbvax!bloom-beacon!eru!luth!sunic!tut!pk From: pk@tut.fi (Kellom{ki Pertti) Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss Subject: Re: Why I do not support GNU Message-ID: Date: 17 Oct 89 09:30:44 GMT References: <8910160520.AA01740@sugar-bombs.ai.mit.edu> Sender: News@tut.fi Distribution: gnu Organization: Tampere Univ. of Technology, Finland. Lines: 24 In-reply-to: nelson@sun.soe.clarkson.edu's message of 17 Oct 89 00:58:49 GMT On 17 Oct 89 00:58:49 GMT,nelson@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Russ Nelson) said: Russ> You can argue that this is a powerful disincentive to creation. Why should Russ> someone create software if someone else can come along and copy it? Going Russ> back to the VCR example, the first company to produce it pays all the Russ> costs of the development. The second company pays only the cost of Russ> adapting the first company's VCR software to their own hardware. Russ> But of course, the same thing goes on all the time. For the most part, Russ> the second manufacturer of a product can steal most of the ideas from the ^^^^^ Russ> first product. Why should software be different? I understand that you didn't literally mean 'steal', but there is a point in there. Ideas are abstract, and 'stealing' of them is hard to define, if necessary at all. Software, on the other hand, is an implementation of ideas. It is something physical (you ever seen someone execute abstractions on a computer? ;-). Software is of course different from many other implementations of ideas in that it can be copied at a very low cost (or seemingly at no cost at all), but it is still good to remember the differences. -- Pertti Kellom\"aki (TeX format) # These opinions are mine, Tampere Univ. of TeXnology # ALL MINE ! Software Systems Lab # (but go ahead and use them, if you like)