But that wasn't the point you were arguing against. You presented RH and SuSE as counter-examples to my point that lack of copyright protection removes the incentive for company innovation. Yet the majority of the innovation in Linux wasn't done by a company.
Firstly, RH and SuSE didn't develop Linux, so that's not actually a counter-argument. Secondly, isn't it the case that they sell support rather than software?
You might argue that copyright has
increased the quantity of work produced. I might also argue that it has decreased the average quality.
Frankly, I see the average quality as irrelevant. The peak quality and the quantity of good-quality work is a better measure of the success of copyright.
In other words, your tax dollars are making these copyright owners wealthy.
And since I'm replying anyway, I don't pay my taxes in dollars, you insensitive clod.
Microsoft's version of innovation is to buy out or rip off startup companies which are innovating. Without potential future profit (or buy-out), where will the startups get venture capital?
I don't believe in copyright, any of it. But I still think things should have value. I just don't think that the government should grant monopolies on any idea.
I could be misunderstanding you, but it seems that you misunderstand copyright. Copyright protects not an idea but an expression of an idea. Taking the kind of area where copyright originated: the idea of a series which tracks a wizard boy through school as he fights baddies has no doubt been expressed many times, but the particular expression which is the Harry Potter series is protected.
So, to go back to the analogy, I think you should be able to charge for what you make, be it software or tables. But I also think that the person you sell that item too should be able to make one of his own, and give it away or sell it or whatever.
To continue with the HP example, would Rowling have spent years writing and polishing the HP books if the first publisher she approached with the manuscript could rip it off and make all the profit? Maybe she would have written the first one or two, but seeing others getting fat on her work while she got nothing would have been a strong disincentive against finishing the series.
Application to software, then: if a company spends thousands or millions of $CURRENCY developing a product, and then the first person they sell it to can make as many copies as they want and sell them on for half the price, that person will make more profit per copy, because they didn't have the overheads, and will sell more copies to boot. The only way to avoid this is to sell it to that person for the price of developing, which means that there will only be incentive for a company to write software if it's in-house or built-to-order. There goes company innovation.
If when you say
the person you sell that item too should be able to make one of his own
you mean that they should be able to make a clean-room implementation and sell it, then that's fair. However, copyright protection doesn't prevent that, so it's not an argument against copyright.
Googling the keywords highlighted in yellow turns up a Filepro developer's reference, a Recital/4GL reference, and a page which is so badly formatted I didn't try reading it. Removing "clears" from the search brings up a lot FoxPro pages.
I can certainly see the web replacing libraries for reference purposes. For serious research in, say, history dead-tree probably still wins, because most history books aren't available online in their entirety, it can be hard sorting the wheat from the chaff with Google, and even the wheat probably had orders of magnitude less time spent on it. As for leisure reading of non-fiction, I'd rather have a dead-tree book: less eye-strain, better UI, and recent titles.
Good point. But if the x-ray machines used at airports are like the ones used for making the pictures in the article, it appears that the way to disguise your IED in a Coke can is to have a centimetre or so of water at the boundary, and the explosives and electronics in a waterproof inner can.
Its as if Colombus had come back to Spain and been told "hey, nice that you found a new continent and everything, but we'd rather sit here with our thumbs up our asses than spend the money to go there"
Columbus was looking for a trade route; the Spanish founded colonies and traded things like gold and food; what do you think the U.S. should be mining from or growing on the moon? Or is it simply a case of colonial expansion for its own sake, now that it's not politically correct to colonise other countries on Earth?
Re:Okay I am confused. what is the point?
on
GPS Coke Can X-Rayed
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Water blocks EM radiation fairly well - I believe it can only go through a quarter of a wavelength of water. Hence the US Navy's use of ELF for communicating with submarines.
Fonts? Spacers? What are you talking about? Nested tables don't bother me either - I only have one or two, and the nested is due to a script I wrote to bung a standard header and footer around a file containing the page contents.
I learnt basic HTML in 1996 from a three-page magazine article, learnt a bit more (tables, lists, etc) from an NCSA tutorial, that's all I use nowadays. I'm not going to bother learning any of these new-fangled standards until the average browser won't support HTML 3.
Slashdot Mirror
Has it ever been explained how he heard It's a nice day continually repeated while living in England?
I wasn't aware that English law had a statute of limitations.
At least it's a fair way offshore.
But that wasn't the point you were arguing against. You presented RH and SuSE as counter-examples to my point that lack of copyright protection removes the incentive for company innovation. Yet the majority of the innovation in Linux wasn't done by a company.
That was "rip off" as in "steal" rather than as in "imitate". If it's uniquely British slang, I apologise.
Google isn't slashdotted. I can use it fine. It must be selective filters Google are applying.
$1000 to a pound? Now might be the time to convert my savings from GBP into USD.
Firstly, RH and SuSE didn't develop Linux, so that's not actually a counter-argument. Secondly, isn't it the case that they sell support rather than software?
Microsoft's version of innovation is to buy out or rip off startup companies which are innovating. Without potential future profit (or buy-out), where will the startups get venture capital?
That's when you send the developers a copy of your 192-bit-per-pixel multilayer tiff and say "It doesn't open this file correctly".
Application to software, then: if a company spends thousands or millions of $CURRENCY developing a product, and then the first person they sell it to can make as many copies as they want and sell them on for half the price, that person will make more profit per copy, because they didn't have the overheads, and will sell more copies to boot. The only way to avoid this is to sell it to that person for the price of developing, which means that there will only be incentive for a company to write software if it's in-house or built-to-order. There goes company innovation.
If when you say
you mean that they should be able to make a clean-room implementation and sell it, then that's fair. However, copyright protection doesn't prevent that, so it's not an argument against copyright.Googling the keywords highlighted in yellow turns up a Filepro developer's reference, a Recital/4GL reference, and a page which is so badly formatted I didn't try reading it. Removing "clears" from the search brings up a lot FoxPro pages.
I can certainly see the web replacing libraries for reference purposes. For serious research in, say, history dead-tree probably still wins, because most history books aren't available online in their entirety, it can be hard sorting the wheat from the chaff with Google, and even the wheat probably had orders of magnitude less time spent on it. As for leisure reading of non-fiction, I'd rather have a dead-tree book: less eye-strain, better UI, and recent titles.
Isn't it called /.?
Well, a robot might be less likely to attack you if you mention monkeys...
Good point. But if the x-ray machines used at airports are like the ones used for making the pictures in the article, it appears that the way to disguise your IED in a Coke can is to have a centimetre or so of water at the boundary, and the explosives and electronics in a waterproof inner can.
I seem to recall that it was the other way round a bit over a year ago - Bush (and Blair, on his behalf) going round begging other countries for help.
Water blocks EM radiation fairly well - I believe it can only go through a quarter of a wavelength of water. Hence the US Navy's use of ELF for communicating with submarines.
Fonts? Spacers? What are you talking about? Nested tables don't bother me either - I only have one or two, and the nested is due to a script I wrote to bung a standard header and footer around a file containing the page contents.
I learnt basic HTML in 1996 from a three-page magazine article, learnt a bit more (tables, lists, etc) from an NCSA tutorial, that's all I use nowadays. I'm not going to bother learning any of these new-fangled standards until the average browser won't support HTML 3.
Nonsense. The inverse of your statement is even explicitly spelt out in the FAQ.