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From: chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach)
Newsgroups: net.micro.pc,net.micro.atari,net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: DRI agrees to change GEM
Message-ID: <3244@nsc.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 9-Oct-85 23:18:25 EDT
Article-I.D.: nsc.3244
Posted: Wed Oct  9 23:18:25 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 13-Oct-85 02:28:41 EDT
References: <3208@nsc.UUCP> <1196@vax1.fluke.UUCP> <3226@nsc.UUCP> <27@mit-eddie.UUCP> <1538@uwmacc.UUCP>
Reply-To: chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach)
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Organization: Cultural Fugue, Ltd.
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In article <1538@uwmacc.UUCP> oyster@maccunix.UUCP (Vicious Oyster) writes:
>   Does anybody else out there think this matter of patenting a "look and
>feel" is stupid?  If this is actually legal and defensible

Actually, there is a lot of precedent in it. If you spent 10 man-years
developing a product, and someone else ripped it off and spent 1 man-year
copying it, selling it for half price, and putting you out of business,
you'd think differently. Software is expensive, and good software is more
expensive. If you can't protect your investment (and we're talking big
bucks for software) long enough to make it pay off, then nobody is going to
be doing it. If GEM had taken the Mac and bothered to fix its limitations,
then more power to them -- that is evolutionary. What they seem to have
done, though, is simply take the Mac and reinvent it, and that is
plagiarism. 

-- 
:From the caverns of the Crystal Cave: Chuq Von Rospach 
nsc!chuqui@decwrl.ARPA                 {decwrl,hplabs,ihnp4,pyramid}!nsc!chuqui

Our time is past -- it is a time for men, not magic. Come, let us leave
this world to the usurpers and rest our weary bones....