Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!gatech!utkcs2!moore From: moore@utkcs2.cs.utk.edu (Keith Moore) Newsgroups: comp.emacs Subject: Re: ./etc/APPLE. No Free Software for Mac users. Message-ID: <575@utkcs2.cs.utk.edu> Date: 30 Sep 88 15:48:38 GMT References: <8809281340.AA16052@EDDIE.MIT.EDU> <664@esquire.UUCP> Reply-To: moore@utkcs2.cs.utk.edu (Keith Moore) Organization: CS Dept - U of TN, Knoxville Lines: 80 In article <664@esquire.UUCP> sbb@esquire.UUCP (Stephen B. Baumgarten) writes: >Look, the suit is to prevent companies from "developing" substantially >the same interface (i.e., windows with the same kind of title bar, close >box, scroll bars; drop-down menus, dialog boxs with exactly the same >kind of scrolling regions, buttons; similar icons; etc.) as the one >Apple spent time and money developing for the Macintosh. Nothing more, >nothing less. Look, the suit is to keep people from competing with Apple by designing similar products. Apple got there first, and they want to be the only players in the game. They will do so if they can get away with it. Nothing more, nothing less. >It's just the same as arguing with an author, complaining that his >novel shouldn't be copyrighted since you like the characters, plot, >and settings so much and you wanted to write one of your own, using >some of the dialog verbatim as well. The expression of the ideas in >that novel is the author's intellectual property, and as such it is >copyrightable. It's not clear that your analogy is valid. Furthermore, several authors have borrowed characters and settings from other authors' works and somehow managed to publish their works without problems, but actual dialog is another manner. >Apple has no quarrel with people or companies that develop different >(and preferably better) interfaces. SunView is fine. From what I can >tell, OPEN LOOK is fine. Much of what is being done now with Xlib is >also fine. Microsoft Windows may not be. It is a windowing system >that bears more than a slight resemblance to the Macintosh windowing >system; this is why Microsoft is being sued. Microsoft is being sued because their windows system is the only serious competitor to Apple's and because if Apple wants to keep people from competing with them, the time is now. >Whether or not the suit has merit (since Apple did in fact license the >use of part of their windowing system to Microsoft in 1985) must, like >all other legal issues in our society, be decided in the courts. The >court may well hold that Apple does not have a case, and that Microsoft >has not infringed on the audio-visual copyrights Apple holds for the >Macintosh. However, this can *only* be settled by bringing suit. There are other ``courts'' besides the one in which Apple is bringing suit. Furthermore, since the suit doesn't appear to have much real merit, it's value to Apple is to stall the competition and retain its advantage for as long as possible. [...] >In fact, Apple's suit is probably the best thing they could do for the >industry, since it will keep people with little imagination from >constantly reinventing the user-interface wheel, and get them off their >asses and design better ones. The reason the Macintosh was successful >was not that it closely mimiced the computing environment people were >already used to on other machines, but because it provided them with a >substantially better one. Apple's suit is probably the best thing they could do for Apple. Apple would like to keep people from designing better products by constraining them to make sure they *don't* look anything like Apple's products. Apple is free to produce a better interface at any time, whether it looks like their old one or not. Potential competitors have to work really hard to be sure their products are okay; this means that lawyers get involved in the design process, and this means inferior products. >Really, why would anyone *want* to copy the Macintosh interface? >It was a good idea 4 years ago, but it's beginning to show its age. >Why not work on better ones instead, and try to imagine what computing >could be like if windows, menus, icons, dialog boxes and mouse manipulation >were not as they are on the Macintosh? Because in fact this is the only >way the state of the art will advance. I agree that no one should want to copy the interface verbatim, but there are some good ideas there that I would like to see in other interfaces. I just don't agree that Apple should have exclusive rights to these features, especially since many of them existed on Xerox software that predates the Macintosh or Lisa. I don't speak for my employer, and they don't speak for me, either. -- Keith Moore UT Computer Science Dept. Internet/CSnet: moore@utkcs2.cs.utk.edu 107 Ayres Hall, UT Campus BITNET: moore@utkcs1 Knoxville Tennessee 37996-1301 Telephone: +1 615 974 0822