That is the whole point of copyright, trademark, and patent laws. These create artificial scarcity, or Government enforced monopolies.
The question remains were is the maximum benefit for society with these laws. Right I think we are much on the side or welfare of existing companies, than on the side of maximum benefit to society.
> Software is the only thing you can have both a patent AND a copyright on.
This is not true, Mechanical components have patents on the idea, and copyrights on the drawings of the machine that implement the idea. Software is the same way, patents on the idea, but copyrights on the source code and executables.
That does not make software patents a good idea however.
Imagine the possibilites for emacs / vi or any other highly customizable interface if when teh more of prefix is activated the keys change to display the funtion they will perform. No more acrane keyboard combinations, just an infinitely large set of (dynalic) custom buttons.
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That is the whole point of copyright, trademark, and patent laws. These create artificial scarcity, or Government enforced monopolies.
The question remains were is the maximum benefit for society with these laws. Right I think we are much on the side or welfare of existing companies, than on the side of maximum benefit to society.
> Software is the only thing you can have both a patent AND a copyright on.
This is not true, Mechanical components have patents on the idea, and copyrights on the drawings of the machine that implement the idea. Software is the same way, patents on the idea, but copyrights on the source code and executables.
That does not make software patents a good idea however.
Imagine the possibilites for emacs / vi or any other highly customizable interface if when teh more of prefix is activated the keys change to display the funtion they will perform. No more acrane keyboard combinations, just an infinitely large set of (dynalic) custom buttons.
Interesting way of measuring complexity.
$ diff --help | wc -l
81
Does that make svn twice as simple? Does it not have a good diff built in?
Was this the only article without a picture?
t ml
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS8233268776.h