Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!bbn!bbn.com!cosell From: cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell) Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss Subject: Re: Look and Feel (was Re: State-enforced monopoly) Message-ID: <50096@bbn.COM> Date: 26 Dec 89 16:27:25 GMT References: <1989Dec13.213445.13639@world.std.com> <16030@pollux.UUCP> Sender: news@bbn.COM Lines: 50 bschwart@elbereth.rutgers.edu (Computers are toys) writes: "}"Has anyone ever noticed how much a GM looks and feels "}"like a Ford? There's the makings of a big lawsuit there . . . If someone can claim to have originated that, perhaps... I think that when they come up with specific real innovations they can, and DO, patent them [e.g., such randomnesses as different kinds of built-in alarm sensors, on-the-steering-wheel-hub shifters, antilock brakes, etc] and if you want to put that in YOUR car, you have to license the stuff from whoever developed it. "}"If GM comes out with a new kind of airbag, does that mean "}"Ford can't use anything like it? Almost certainly. If someone managed a new design for the air bag itself, or its housing, or its trigger, or its inflator, you can bet it would be patented and Ford would either have to invent their own or license GM's. "}"If SoftShop comes out with a new means of making sure computer "}"operators do not make horrible errors, does that mean "}"FirmWarehouse can't come out with something similar? Depends on what you mean by a "new means". If it is something like that they designed a new keyboard layout and [after suitable development and testing] showed it to, in fact, be superior to the 'old way', or rethought and restudied a whole mode-of-operation and invented an overwhelmingly more effective one, I suspect that if you wanted to use their stuff you'd better be prepared to license it from the folks that originated it and developed it. "}"Who has the right to withhold The Answer? "}"No one. Poo. The most vocal folks bleating this chant, as has been thrashed to death time and time again in this newsgroup, are the people LOOKING for Answers. It is almost always code words for "tell me YOUR answers, and too bad if it cost you a lot of upfront time and hassle and expense to find them". If *YOU* want to spend a couple of years working up something really worthwhile and useful, and then *YOU* want to give it away, more power to you! And moreover, leaving religious matters aside, there ain't any "the" answeres, anyway, so go find your own. /Bernie\