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From: eve@ssc-bee.UUCP (Michael Eve)
Newsgroups: net.micro.atari
Subject: Re: DRI, GEM, and Visicalc
Message-ID: <403@ssc-bee.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 17-Oct-85 17:28:41 EDT
Article-I.D.: ssc-bee.403
Posted: Thu Oct 17 17:28:41 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 19-Oct-85 04:02:31 EDT
References: <533@ihlpm.UUCP> <851016083704.4.SHIFFMAN@RAMOTH.SCH.Symbolics.COM>
Organization: Boeing Aerospace Co., Seattle, WA
Lines: 21


	In all the discussion of visual copyrights, nobody has brought up
	the plague of spreadsheets.  Many of them were clearly Visicalc
	clones, yet I didn't hear about a wave of lawsuits against 
	competitors.  If Apple's case against DRI is so good, I would
	think the case for Visicalc against its competitors is even
	better.

	The reason I bring this up, is that I think the Apple lawsuits 
	(legally justified or not) are bad for the consumer.  The 
	spreadsheets now are vastly superior to the original visicalc.
	I doubt this would have happened if Visicalc could have suppressed
	competition.  Similarly, I think  other companies will approve on
	the Apple desktop metaphor (just as Apple improved on  Xerox) while
	others will merely attempt to copy the most obvious visual features
	with inferior, underlying implementations.


-- 
	Mike Eve     Boeing Aerospace, Seattle
	...uw-beaver!ssc-vax!ssc-bee!eve